Giovanni Gallo

@japaninator @pancas_rant @moseskagan How does that 50 hrs/week get split up?

@pancas_rant @moseskagan This is absolutely dead on, looking for a job and customizing your resume, writing cover letters, applying, interviewing... It's more than a full time job already if you're serious about it.

Without meaning to be insensitive: Really find it hard to get inside the brain of someone sitting around applying for jobs for six months, waiting to be hired. It for sure doesn't take all day to apply. You have unbelievable amounts of time. Use that time to build something valuable. Maybe it's a podcast where you interview noteworthy people in your field (learning and building a network as you go). Maybe it's an anon X account where you post interesting observations about your field and build an audience. Maybe it's a service business an entirely different field. Whatever you choose ought to be something that grows in value as you put in more effort. Along the way, you'll either get noticed and hired or you'll find that you can support yourself from the new thing you've built.

@lawyer4SMBs All that matters is your frame of comparison. Humans are wired to aspire. We compare up and be dissatisfied instead of comparing to: the avg of our high school class, our parents, the avg world lifestyle, the comforts and experiences of the top 5% a century ago. WAGMI

Is $300K still a great income? About 2 years ago I saw a post here suggesting that $300K was the "perfect" income. You can afford just about anything you'd reasonably want. But you're not working 60+ hours a week and can still be there for your kids. What do you think, is this still true?

@SullyBusiness @moseskagan I'm w you. Classical education, broad reading, understanding people and the world is a great fdn and always has been. Gap between great and "you owe $140K and took a bunch of Gen eds " is wide though!

@moseskagan A great liberal arts education is unironically VERY valuable right now. Emphasis on great.

Changed my mind: I used to think it was dumb for young people to think of, and describe themselves as, generalists, bc the world tends to reward specialization. However, due to AI, the future of the economy is more uncertain now than it has been during my whole career. So I think the best move right now is to try a bunch of stuff to develop broadly useful skills, especially including applying AI to "regular" business. (Note that I'm v bullish overall; just don't know where the upsides and downsides of all the change will accrue.)

@aschwags3 GA

This quarter, I’ve closed multiple $1M+ without a slide deck. I’m using a single AI tool. Today, I want to share it, free. After signing, a prospect asked me how we created the site. They were so wow-ed they wanted it for their own clients. Here’s what floored them: it took a single designer 5 minutes to prompt and launch. The AI chains together 6 key parts of our sales process, turning a 18-page deck into a single, personalized website. When they asked, I gave them this template and workflow. Now I want to share it for free: Follow me + comment “GA” and I’ll DM it.

@JohnstonNqj @IRaiderette Now do Christianity.

@IRaiderette Homosexuality isn’t a choice LMAO why would someone choose to be part of a group that is negatively stigmatized?

@axiomalpha @connorpera This is salient. Some people get some arbitrage (pay 60% and get 80%) but a non obvious driver is that quasi-fractional piece: "I really only have 40-60% of a full weeks work here for now" The biggest hidden cost is that people coordination cost. More people, more problems.

I also have limited experience (a few tens of overseas hires), but what I see for those roles is generally cost that is 10-25% of the cost for 10-25% of the quality output. It's useful if you are dollar constrained because it basically lets you buy "lite" versions of a position before you have enough cash to afford a 100% person, but it doesn't scale. If you can afford 4 25% people, you are better off hiring a single 100% person and then saving time and headache that would have been necessary to manage 4 people

I might lose some friends on SMB X for saying this but I think the global talent/outsourcing thing is extremely overrated. After multiple attempts, our experience has been that the talent level isn’t anywhere near what we’ve found from US-based employees. At 50% of the cost, even 80% output justifies the expense. Our experience has been 50% of the cost and <50% of the output plus the cost of headaches addressing performance issues. Admittedly a small sample size - we’ve made 4 hires total since inception from a couple different sources but am I the only one who has tried it and been like “this ain’t it”? I remain open minded to being convinced, but at this point our default is back to US-based, on-site for all roles.

@GuyDealership @ReyReyTweets Anything about inventory management?

“Your Headcount is Wrong!” Designing The Dealership of the Future (And the 5-Year Dealer Playbook) My conversation with Chris Walsh, President and Acting CEO at @ReyReyTweets 13:30 Why Dealerships Have More Employees Now. 17:10 Why Dealers Aren’t Firing People—Yet. 19:55 The Three-Phase AI Playbook For Dealers. 22:40 Why AI Augments, Not Replaces. 24:10 Data Advantage Fixes Used Car Pricing. 25:20 The Accounting Department Nobody Is Fixing. 31:20 Why Salespeople Won’t Answer Leads. 34:45 The EV Policy Whiplash Costing Billions. 35:55 The One Thing Keeping The CEO Up At Night.

@Molson_Hart @rossiadam Because I took Strategy 301 and Entrepreneurial Talking to Proles in b-school.

The typical buyer of these businesses is the overconfident highly educated Millenial. Here’s how they should think about it: Could a freshly graduated zoomer come in and do your job with AI better than you? No. Then why do you think you can do it better than someone whose been doing it for 30 years longer than you’ve been in the workforce.

There's a romantic narrative online right now: buy a baby boomer's business, apply your digital skills, print money. The pitch usually goes something like: Old owner, fax machine, terrible website, great book of business, 30-year reputation, he needs to retire. You look at that and get this big head where you think: I could do better. Sure, you could build a nicer-looking website. Set up a CRM. Plug in some new software. Run some Google Ads. Automate the invoicing etc. You could probably do all of that in the first month. But there are a lot of aspects where that old guy is The Man, and you're not. And those are the aspects that actually keep the business alive. Every business is hard and every business is competitive. And in a lot of these companies there’s been no effort put into making the company transferable to someone else. Every operation is “Ask Jim”. There’s very few systems or documentation, usually just a network of relationships and knowledge that lives inside one person’s head. By all means, buy the boomer business. But there's typically not this simple button you can press where you upgrade some of the tech and extra business starts rolling in. A friend of mine put it simply: if you buy a roofing company, you're going to end up on the roof at some point. Another friend went from a white collar job to buying an HVAC business from a retiring owner. He said after an employee pulled a gun on him, he knew he was in over his head. Jim knew how to handle this type of employee. My friend didn’t. He was lucky to sell the business and move on. And the issue is, Jim is old and wants to retire. He is probably unwilling to give you more than a one year transition - max. I can tell you from personal experience it took me every bit of two years to transition from a Jim. I was lucky that my Jim was willing to put in that time and that we liked working together. Another humbling aspect from my experience was that a lot of my bright ideas to improve over Jim’s processes took much longer to bear fruit than I anticipated. So we were spending a lot more money and doing about the same as Jim was doing in terms of revenue. Jim was bemused. There is a lot of opportunity in the boomer businesses. Stay humble though. Jim knows a thing or two that you don’t. It’s not going to be as easy as you think. You may end up on the roof. You may have a gun pulled on you. You will definitely end up doing some dirty jobs you never imagined doing. Have fun!

@bethanyjbabcock @thesamparr This is a personality trait. It's OK. I have a friend who would never dream of asking for a change. And a family member who will send even the right order back 80% of the time. We're all OK. Great that your friend had your back!

@thesamparr I get so much crap for this. A friend of mine was teasing me because I almost ate something I was allergic to because I didn’t want to bother them 🙈 she sent it back for me

A high character move: When the waiter brings your the wrong order...you say nothing and eat it. Only losers tell them they got it wrong. I ordered a steak and they sent chicken pesto pizza. So i ate chicken pesto pizza.

Someone has been listening to this song too much! youtu.be/tW8F8JCn6UQ?si…

@BillDA All I picked up is that you didn't know anything about fans before this. Cool strat!

I was quoted $10,000 to install two dehumidifiers in my crawlspace. I saved $7,500 by designing a DIY custom crawl space dehumidification system with Claude 🤑 I am not an HVAC professional. Here’s how I did it. Our story begins with the discovery that our new home needed a dehumidifier installed in the crawl space to prevent mold. The professionals told me it would cost $10k, since I’d need one unit on each end due to the size of the space, plus a second drain line installed. “Can’t we just use fans to move the humid air from one side toward the dehumidifier?” They wouldn’t do that. Enter Claude… I uploaded a floor plan of my crawl space and air volume dimensions, telling Claude what I was trying to do. It researched the best dehumidifier sized appropriately for my air volume (100 pints apparently). Found me the best price - $1,500. Now it was time for fans 💨 I had originally envisioned the single dehumidifier at one end of the space, with fans on the opposite end. Claude taught me that would just draw more moist outdoor air in through the vents on that side, creating a linear flow through the crawl space. Instead it modeled the air flow and suggested a circular vortex with 4 fans, one on each wall, in a circle. That sucks in minimal outdoor air, keeping cool dry air circulating. I told it to research appropriate fans. It found four 20” sealed bearing fans on Amazon (impervious to dust), with DC drive motors (more energy efficient than AC apparently). $120 each. 🔌 It told me to buy a smart plug for each fan and a few internet connected humidity sensors. Another $200. Claude mapped where to install everything in the crawl space. Here’s how it works - the humidity sensors monitor the crawl space air continuously. If it ever exceeds 60% humidity, the smart plugs switch on all 4 fans, circulating the air in the crawl space past the dehumidifier until the humidity is below 50% 🔃🔃🔃 Total cost ~$2,500 for everything and one Saturday of work for me. I saved $7,500 vs. the original quote because I didn’t need two dehumidifiers, and Claude tells me my version is nearly twice as energy efficient. Plus I learned a ton about my home and had fun. I didn’t know anything about dehumidifiers, fans, or air flow dynamics before starting. AI can do so much more than write code - the applications are endless.

@BuySellSMB I was just saying there's some method to the madness, then joking after that. Have a great weekend!

@purogio1 lol I just don’t get your point

United uses a Window, Middle, Aisle (“WILMA”) boarding system. They also have space for about 100 bags. If you pick an aisle seat, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have to gate check. This is dumb and undisclosed!!

@BuySellSMB Haha you're really passionate about this. If I say you're correct will that help settle this? You're right. I'm roasted.

@purogio1 Correct, if you multiple 2 by 10, it indeed equals 20! You deserve a Fields Medal

@BuySellSMB Then do that 10 more times. Then do that 10 more times. Then do that 10 more times. Now you're at 20,000 minutes. Then do that 10 more times. Then do that 10 more times. Now you're at 2,000,000 minutes!

@purogio1 So you're at 20 minutes, not enough time to work in boarding an additional flight anyway

@BuySellSMB Do that 10 mo times

@purogio1 It saves two minutes.

@CTW_SMB @dmbkparker Age old question. That "should" is the operative word. If those heads are good enough that sends best, but many need the crutch of an intermediate manager.

I’m envisioning this being run by a chief of staff type person (so somewhat ops). We have a head of HR head of sales head of SMB acct, head of mid market acct and head of tax Could argue i should have a COO overseeing much of that but i also think a lot of those folks should run their departments without us needing a COO

These roles are popping up everywhere B/c they are the FUTURE We’re hiring for a BizOps Engineer. “AI Tinkerer” DM me with the coolest thing you built in the last 2 weeks on Claude and what your accounting experience is My ideas list is endless. Sales & marketing. Onboarding. Client reporting. HR items. We’ve grown from $2.5M of rev to $8M last 4.5 years. Goal is $20 next 3 years 1. Maintain some internal stuff we already have. Zap/Make/Supabase/PowerBI 2. Go crazy with Claude. First on internal operations. Then on discreet things for clients. We’ve already done a few things and it’s mind blowing. Work w every member of leadership to build 3. Special chief of staff like projects with me. M&A. Aggressive BD.

@mduddinmohi11 @prinkasusa Can't both be true? Teach them to speak up. Have a release valve if they're overwhelmed. This dumb binary assumes some idiotic things about kids, their ability to predict outcomes, the chaos of friend groups, et al

this is honestly just coddling disguised as good parenting and its why this generation has zero backbone. instead of teaching her how to actually stand her ground or use her own voice you’re just teaching her to hide behind a secret code. you’re not saving her you’re just making sure she never learns how to handle a difficult or awkward situation on her own. if she’s old enough to go to these parties she’s old enough to walk out the front door herself without needing mommy to play secret agent. that silence on the way home isn't some deep bonding moment its just a missed opportunity to actually parent and teach her some agency lol but go off i guess

My daughter texted me from a party: “Mom, do we still have ice cream at home?” We don’t. That’s the code. “Ice cream” means: come get me right now. “Cookies” means: call me in five minutes with an excuse. “Nothing” means: I’m okay. She said ice cream. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t text back. I just grabbed my keys and drove. When she got in the car she said quietly, “People started bringing out things I didn’t want to be around.” We drove home in silence. Every kid deserves a way out without having to explain themselves first.

@PWaffen7528 @AnllyValer3245 @prinkasusa @TribeNTren You've obviously never been with a group our party that got out of hand. You sound pretty boring. Probably a coward.

@AnllyValer3245 @prinkasusa @TribeNTren Do you not see that not putting yourself in that situation in the first place should be the goal, not some escape plan? You obviously don’t have children and probably never will thank God but that type of shit is fucking retarded

This is a smart frame, and doesn't even seem that hot. Complex spreadsheets have always been mini code bases. Finance bros were never as cool as we thought. We're all trying to build our own little Trons, to compensate for our inadequacies.