What a 3x Ironman Knows About Building 100+ Businesses

Charles Cormier: from talking to so many CEOs and founders, a bunch of them were like, Hey Charles, what'd you do? And then I'm like, Yeah, do Lee Gen. And probably 10% would become my clients, And this was a match in heaven with Cold E mail because no one flags a podcast invite as spam. So I united like both of these things to create gtm.ventures,

Carmen: Hey everyone, my name is Carmen Durvad and I will be hosting today's episode of Behind the Founders. Joining me here today is Charles Cormy. Charles, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

Charles Cormier: I'm Charles, serial entrepreneur, ultra athlete. I'm a dad. And yeah, thanks for having me here.

Carmen: Yeah, really excited, excited to have you joining me as well. So Charles, obviously I had had the chance to take a look at your LinkedIn profile and you have a really, really interesting background from being an athlete, from building multiple ventures, from also running your own podcast yourself. can you just walk us through how you got into all these different businesses over the years?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, it's a long story. I'm gonna try to make it short because I've been an entrepreneur for 10, 12 years now. So I've launched over a hundred companies. Most of them were experiments, right? So not all of them actually worked out in the end, but it taught me so much, right? And it brought an obsession on me, which is product market fit. So testing various offers to various ICPs. And finding out what sticks in the middle, right? Like is there demand for your actual offer? I launched a bunch of agencies along the way, Google Ads agencies, Facebook Ads agencies, SEO, LinkedIn outreach, and LinkedIn would not allow you to send more than 20 messages. I was like, there's this thing called cold email. I'm gonna try it. And lo b lo and behold, I tried cold email around what, 2000 And I discovered that this was infinitely scalable to generate a bunch of leads for all of my business, right? So then I started a cold email agency called Top Leads. that was quite successful, but in 2022, Outlook and Google started pretty much spamming all emails. And then I had to find a solution because I had a golden goose, which was this cold email system that I've built with mailboxes and so forth. It's quite technical. And I've always listened to podcasts, right? Like Tim Ferris, John Lee Dumas, Andrew Warner, which I all had on my podcast. And I was like, why not start my own podcast? I'm naturally curious about most things. So I started my podcast. I started interviewing CEOs, founders, and I discovered that I could actually make money from podcasts, not from sponsoring, not from getting views and getting paid from YouTube, although I also do these things, but just from scaling relationships, right? So from from talking to so many CEOs and founders, a bunch of them were like, Hey Charles, what'd you do? And then I'm like, Yeah, do Lee Gen. And probably 10% would become my clients, right? And this was a match in heaven with Cold E mail because no one flags a podcast invite as spam. So I united like both of these things to create gtm.ventures, which is today's

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: Main cash cowing company. I target founders, CEOs, NAI and B2B. And I help them start a podcast so that they can generate more leads. Exactly what you're doing right now, which is pretty genius. Yes.

Carmen: wow. Yeah, yeah.

Charles Cormier: that's why I wanted to have your your founder on the pod and wanted to be on to test it out. I'm just curious as well. And I I do think podcast is way more than money, right? It's just like satisfying your curiosity and getting answers to your most burning questions, but most importantly building relationships which can scale infinitely, right? So last week I had the the guy that started QuickBooks. then I had the guy that raised 50 million Series D. I had Casey Anmer that one that was on Stripe co-founder's podcast right like was interviewed by Patrick Olson. So I had like all I have all these elite people hanging around me. I'm doing lead gen for these people and ultimately my goal is to get Rev share and equity in their companies because GTM Venture is the venture studio. And apart from that, I'm launching my fund, which is called MACTEN Fund. We invest in YC companies. So that's probably like the 80% of what I'm doing nowadays.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for the very lovely introduction as well. And yeah, I do remember, you know, outside of the podcast, we were talking a little bit about how you are also doing exactly the same, having founders, CEOs on the podcast as another strategy to also like generate leads and everything like that. So I definitely have quite a couple of follow-up questions. I don't even know where to begin, but I guess to start off, So you mentioned you've had the chance to interview thousands and thousands of CEOs, founders through your podcasts. So after talking to them, what would you say from all the knowledge that you've gathered, what would you say separates the founders who are actually building something that was successful than from everyone else?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, pain resistance. So coming back to Iron Man's and Ultras, like how much

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: pain can you take, right? It's an expandable tank. You can expand your pain cave, your pain tank here and tolerate way more. I think that's an important one. Obsession, right? So most successful founders that I know are either on the spectrum or are ADHD or or OCD, right? Like me and pretty much all of these three things. not predominantly, I can also talk to humans, but I can focus, I can endure pain, I can go in an unbeaten path, and I don't need like social approval, right? Like most humans, they as soon as you tell them no, that they're like, Okay, yes, sir, and they fall in line, right? or they get incredibly hurt feelings

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: when. Someone that's not even important or in a position to judge your business tells them that it's not gonna happen. I mean, there's I have a list of a hundred traits, right? Hundred plus traits. You need to be technical as well, right? You need to be a total nerd. You can see that in Silicon Valley, right? Like Elon's is is that successful because he's technical, because he can build very complex stuff and he's willing to go where others are not going, right? You need to be able to raise capital. Obviously, right? Like that's a skill you need to be able to sell, right? So you need to be full stack, right? The thing that's changing nowadays in this era is that people can vibe code pretty much everything, right? So that means that selling is becoming something that most people are not good at. They just think they can build products and push them out there. And that's why they go to guys like me to help them with their sales. But I do think that if I would back a founder, I would want them to to be good salespeople as well. Because if you can't sell anything, you can sell a co-founder to join you. You can't sell your f your future hundred X coder to join your team. You can't sell a VC, you can't sell clients, you can't sell partners. So selling I think is still a very, very important skill to have as well as a founder in the vibe coding age.

Carmen: So how do you act how did you actually get into sales?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, 200 phone calls a day as a guy that would sell LEDs in two thousand fifteen. That was my only corporate job that I ever had, right? Like I was recruited by this eccentric man to go work for him around that time and I didn't I wasn't like super successful at selling, but the guy saw my hustle. And he was like, hey, you're good at marketing as well. Why don't you become my CMO?

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: after some time, which is a pretty weird transition. And then we decided to co-found a company together eventually. What that was my first agency was an AdWords agency around 2015. So yeah,

Carmen: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: talking about mentors, right? Like I think I did my first stint with this guy, worked for him for two years, impressed him. He gave me The entrepreneurial spirit in exchange. I learned that anything was possible. He was like this Steve Job type of guy, right? He had his quirks as well. But this guy changed my life and also sales changed my life, right? Because before that I was teenage guy full of ego, right? And I would just not accept no for an answer. While when you make 200 phone calls a day, you get 200 no's a day almost. So that really

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: broke me. And it allowed me to be lighter on my feet and to to launch companies after that. because I left this agency right after starting it, six months after, to start my own stuff without this partner. And how I kick start the the other agency after that was picking up the phone and calling out realtors. And this second

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: agency was. Facebook ads for realtors. This one was successful, right? I scaled it to 30 grand a month and I was 21 or 22-ish back then. And yeah, like cold calls. nowadays I wouldn't recommend them, but just to break your ego and to to become a better entrepreneur, I would 100% recommend it.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. I think definitely when it comes to cold calling, right? You Have to really expect a lot of no's and not take no for an answer, expect a lot of rejections. But I like what you mentioned, how it's about like it is a way of like breaking ego as well. Because especially when you go or go into the entrepreneurship path, like you are gonna be faced with like a lot of setbacks, with a lot of no's, a lot of rejections, which is also part of the process to be able to successfully build to where you are today as well. So I'd love to know a little bit about your experience when it comes to the businesses that you you mentioned that earlier on that you started them but you had to shut them down some of them were not working what would you say those what have you learned from those experiences

Charles Cormier: I had lots of failure, right? And I guess like I always kept this experimental mindset, right? I've always stayed like flexible with what kind of business do I start, who I targeted, and I've learned that the ICP, right? Like people you target actually matters exceptionally. before the agents, I forgot to tell you about that one, but I started like a a nootropic business, right? Like these guys We basically were student, me and my co-founder back then. And we had all these supplements that we would take separately to increase our memory, increase our alertness, increase our connect or cognition to get better grades. And basically I was like, why not create like one pill? One pill that reunites all of these ingredients together, right? And basically I was targeting students with that one. Students, as you know, they don't have a lot of money. So that was super challenging to actually scale,

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: right? So I was like, Students, no, not the right ICP. Then I became an entrepreneur. I I started targeting entrepreneurs. I started targeting realtors, which are not fully real entrepreneurs in my opinion. meaning that they don't really didn't they're not super creative to talk to to sell one thing. They all sell the same thing, right? So that was my second business. And frankly, I didn't want to become a realtor myself, right? I wanted to become a attack billionaires. So I was like very far away from my ideal customer persona. And the goal when you target your ICPs to work to to target with and and work with someone that you want to become like, right? So that's I think has been a gigantic lesson in in the last ten years. I see entrepreneurs that are just targeting people they don't like, right? Like I don't know, Fortune 500 CTOs.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: And eventually that shows in their churn That shows in like their energy that they show up to work and eventually they burn out. They they burn out serving people they don't like. Plus,

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: if you target someone that has money, right? Like I won't I want to be, for example, a tech billionaire. Well, that person obviously has money, right? So your ICP is like super important. So mine, it's it's not just like liking them and feeling energized working with them. Is how do they react to called email? Is it the same way as Everyone is like, that's an just another cold email, or it's actually someone that will react to a cold email if it's good enough. Then how quick do they take a decision? Right? How big is my TAM as well? That's super important.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: I don't believe in targeting 3,000 people. I believe in in targeting a niche TAM enough, but that has substantial amounts of people, because else I'm just gonna run out of contacts, right? I don't believe in In going super niche. I did that with realtors and it caused a bunch of problems, right? Because realtors at the end were jealous of like that you would work with like someone in their territories in their same firm. So I think that's been my a gigantic lesson. Target an ICP that hits a criteria list of a hundred criteria, and then just become the predominant player in that list, in that niche. In my case, it's Pre-seed, seeds, Max Series A companies in Silicon

Carmen: It's not.

Charles Cormier: Valley. I deal with CEOs and founders directly. I don't deal with employees. usually they don't have a lot of employees, right? Like because they they subscribe to the vibe coding revolution. They're funded, obviously. Right? They've tried GTM, they failed. They may have one salesperson. So I've defined my ICP to the bone. And then it's

Carmen: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: offered the best. offer ever to these guys. So to me a a great offer is not necessarily Alex or Mulsey style of like promise them the sky and and a guarantee and a refund back. I don't subscribe to that because then you'll get low accountability buyers. It's like, I don't care. I'll just buy your thing and then I'll ask for a refund sixty days later. And not because they're shitty human beings. It's just because it's human nature to always seek to be winning, especially

Carmen: Yeah.

Charles Cormier: in business. So My best offer is pretty much test out an offer, very niche offer that works. Obviously, in my case it's podcast lead gen. I can bring them

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: hundred leads per month and it's no jokes, it works. And then I stack

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: like a closing system on the back end of that so that they can close ten percent of these leads into actual clients. And that Took me what, 10 years to build. You need to be good at deliverability, you need to be good at copywriting, you need to have AI set up. It's infinitely complex to set up. And most founders suck at cold email, especially the technical founders that I target. They suck at sales, right? They don't want to touch it with a stick.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: so so with that in mind, I just know that I have a great offer with the demand that I get, the reaction that I get, because I tested this pitch on thousands of

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: Sales cones and eventually I can measure my closing rate. So that's no that's how I know that I have a great ICP and a good offer. That's how I know I have product market fit.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for sharing and also like elaborating that as well. And I think at the end of the day, it's also about knowing who, you know, who you're really targeting and then also running a lot of multiple tests to really ensure that, you know, you're reaching to the right people and also being very intentional as well with who you choose to you know, support or collaborate and partner up with as well. So Charles, I am just revisiting your LinkedIn profile, right? And you have like multiple ventures going on, GTM Ventures, RasRocket.com, Marge10 Fund, Alum North, The Greats, Founder Humor, just to name a few. can you help the listeners just understand a little bit about how all of these are connected? And also generally, how do you? Well, that's two separate questions, but how are all of these connected? But how do you balance all your time, running these multiple ventures, being an athlete, being a father, that's definitely like a lot of balls to juggle in the air. So I'd be curious to learn a little bit more about

Charles Cormier: Yeah.

Carmen: that.

Charles Cormier: Well, starting with the father part, I have two nannies and I spend about an hour or two or three with my daughter per day, playing with her. She's like early stage, right? Like five months. so got that part settled. My wife is mostly in charge of that and my nannies, I'm starting my AI school and when she can do physical activity, I'll spend way more time with her, just like running and Teaching her stuff and her being the first client to my AI school. the other activities, it's pretty logical from a time standpoint because Mac 10 we're just about to launch and so far haven't had to put in that much time on my s on my side evaluating pitch. And that's what I do anyway with RasRocket and GTM Ventures. I evaluate pitch on these companies. More on that later. So Mac 10 is not. hundred percent active right now. We're about to launch. So I don't have to put

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: a lot of time. So right now it's mostly GTM ventures, right? So Legion as a service and Ras Rocket,

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Charles Cormier: which is raising capital as a service. and

Carmen: okay.

Charles Cormier: when Mac 10 will be active, Raz Rocket, I'll sort of lay back a bit of that because it's raising as a service, right? So if I can fund your company rather than doing it for you, it's a more efficient use of my time. Alum North is a new hatchling, right? So it's not active yet, it's an experiment. I'm bullish on it because I'm bullish on masterminds, which is another topic. I think masterminds are great to close business because you constantly get to re-speak to CEOs and founders that you've built relationships with. and then yeah, the founder humor, it's it's pretty insightful and interesting because. It's a system, it's very much related to everything that I do. There's no ed energy loss. Why? Because I speak to so many founders and CEOs and they inspire jokes because founders are very quirky and it's they

Carmen: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: they have like very various quirks, right? Like pitching your company,

Carmen: Yes.

Charles Cormier: like, my company is a a baby between Uber and Airbnb, which doesn't make any sense, but we do it anyway. so

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. Those quirks, yeah.

Charles Cormier: I I take this. Because the my business life is always go go go and and demanding and stressful and I create jokes, so I reduce my cortisol cycle with founder

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: humor and I mo I monetized it as well because it's a paid substack

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: in the end, right? So I make money with this, plus I I chill the fuck down. And just me chilling

Carmen: Explanation.

Charles Cormier: the fuck down and being the number one customer of founder humor usually is an ROI decent enough so that I can justify it. Right. And so I I spend what like 20 minutes a week on this company and I laugh it out.

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: Like and there's a nice ROI. The greats, there's a gigantic ROI from it. The back end is monetizing through YouTube. It's a an AI faceless channel. You would love it as someone that studies

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: High performers. it takes very few of my time. Plus, I'm the number one customer of it again. So every morning when I walk my dogs, I listen to one episode. Every workout that I do later in the evening, long mountain runs, I listen to multiple biographies of the greatest out there, right? So that's instantly

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: monetizable. Plus, as you know,

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: YouTube pays creators. so I'm almost hitting that threshold here. It won't be gigantic quantities, right? It may be like 300 bucks a month, but I I do feel it can scale to 3,000 and eventually 30,000 bucks a month for that one. Plus I would have sponsors like ramp and

Carmen: Mm.

Charles Cormier: technology companies sponsoring that one. So it's a fun new side project that that I started and it's it's handling the road. Why? Because I'm I'm I'm the first customers and I can justify the ROI by by being the number one user there.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it's really interesting to kind of like get a better breakdown about all the different side projects that you've been working as well. And also just to show that it's not necessarily about like, you know, working longer hours or working more, but it's about really being smart and strategic as well. And so it is really interesting to kind of like just really understand a little bit about how they all come together. So Charles, let's talk a little bit more about GTM Ventures and RASRocket.com. I think for me, what will be interesting to learn is Do you have a team or more on the operational side, right? how does your team look like? Is it a one-man team or do you have other people working remotely or in person to support you?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, I have a very weird system. Okay. So maybe we didn't talk about the other businesses also that led to that, but I had a call center with two hundred employees. I had a whole bunch of agencies also that led to GTM ventures. And overall I managed a thousand salespeople over the the past ten year. That's a lot of people, right? that was the scale

Carmen: Okay. Yeah, it is, yeah.

Charles Cormier: of my companies back then. And I came to one conclusion which is pretty drastic but makes all kinds of sense. And talking to me can know that I'm a bit of a contrarian, right? but I scientifically tested the the freelancer model, the nine to five model, and I just came to the conclusion that this wouldn't scale, right? Like this this would just not scale for one reason, right? And it's very much related to to the ICP. the the ICP thing is work with people you love, right? So

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: there was a clear dichotomy with these assistants, right, and these nine two fivers and it was that I would always need to tell them what to do. Hey, go the go do this, go do that. And then they would come up with questions. So nowadays I don't recruit any employees. I've tried to really pivot to a full AI pivot, which is great. It's like program your Your systems program your employees, but we're not fully there yet. It's still very hard to do. so that led me to one clear need. As a human, I need to talk to other humans. I can't just work with robots, right? And I I love

Carmen: Course, yeah, absolutely not. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: I love working with high performers. So it's like, only work with founders, right? Only work with founders, CEOs, and high agency people. So I'm recruiting these folks, but not like in a common way that you would think of.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: I don't give them salary, I give them ref shares, I give them equity. How do I find them? Because I can't just call them out people and be like, hey, do want to work full commission for for my company? They start as clients first, right? So that's pre-contrarian

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: as well. They start as clients, they understand me, they understand the systems, and then I have a another contrarian view on churn. Churn, you shouldn't try to optimize for zero churn. I think churn is natural eventually, right? Everything leads to churn, right? Like it's the in the laws of physics. So when the client churn, aka when they don't have money, doesn't mean my services didn't bring them ROI, just means that they have a longer sell cycle and they might get ROI later on down the line. I'm like, hey, I like you, you like me, come work for me. I'm gonna give you Rev share. I'm gonna give you equity and you're gonna I'm gonna implement my system for you, but you're gonna sell my shit instead of yours. And then they

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: get commission from that, they gain Rev share they gain equity, and eventually they start referring me naturally more clients, right? And that's how I build my empire organically. And then once I've worked with them for a couple of years, then I can give them an official role in the company. So right now I do have a CTO, right, Emir. he was referred to me by an ex client

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: that became a partner. My main co-founder, Sunny Ray, was a a client of mine. I have another partner,

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: Emiliano, was also a client of mine. They're pretty much all clients of mine, and then they became internally related to the business. One thing that I found out with time is that most people can't sell for shit, right? Like that's like a an obvious thing, and that's why these people join me, right? Like Maybe they're good at closing, but they just don't have a system that will give them 100 leads per month. And then obviously my product has a high closing rate, higher than theirs. It has a lower sales cycle than theirs. So that is my contrarian thesis with that. Because I did run a company that was very similar to Cherry. right.

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: Like we would just we weren't broad like doing a bunch of things, we're doing sales as a service, right? So we would do lead gen for them. So

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: That's that's my stance on hiring it. And when I filter people, when I invite them to join my company, there's various layers of filtering, there's various interviews, there's various questions, there's personality tests, right?

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: and I worked with them for like a year or two prior to me giving them that. So it's pretty flawless so far. What do you think about

Carmen: Hmm, okay.

Charles Cormier: that system?

Carmen: Yeah, no, that's actually very interesting as well. So because it really seems like it is like really coming from like, I would say, because you mentioned that all of them were clients at first before officially joining and becoming part of your team. So I think it is a very interesting strategy to build rapport as well, because through that you're able to build like a trustful, trustworthy relationship before they have them on board. I think my question more to follow up is. so how does it work when it comes to you bringing them as part of the team? How do you allocate the specific roles that you have in mind or what kind of roles do they typically operate under your team?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, there's two very s simple roles in business in the age of AI, because I believe AI can do it like most roles, right? They can AIs can do legal ninety-five percent well, they can do CFO role ninety-five percent well. They can HR is disappearing because it's it will be a a world of only AI agents and high performers that have very low need for for HRBS, in my opinion. it's selling and building, right? Selling and building. So and I can do both by the way. I expect most of my partners to to be building and not just code but selling and building. So I recruit technical people that don't know have any idea of sales, right? I just recruited one yesterday. He was a client of mine, right? Just to go again.

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: So always full cycle. he doesn't know crap about sales, right? So I'm gonna run his campaign,

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: he's gonna be on board and I'm gonna work with him for a while before I start giving him actual equity in the company. but he's gonna build stuff for me, right? So I'm building like a full backend to my companies that can fully replace me. Ultimately GTM Ventures is Charles, right? Like that's it's it's like

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: Charles launching campaigns for you. Charles thinking of an ICP, Charles blah blah blah. So we're seeking just to replace me and we need someone to build that. And it's quite technical stuff, right? even for me. So I I had to recruit people for that. And then there's sales. So sales is I run the full Legion system for you and you hop on podcasts with these people and you close them. I manage a full Legion. I give you advice on

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: the closing part. I'm my co-founder is also fully in charge of building your closing systems, right? And these people, they just increase the size of the company. And I believe that if you increase the size of the company, there is deep wisdom to that. because you get more experience, you get more referrals, and you get more partners, right? Because I I

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: can recruit more of these people. So

Carmen: Mm.

Charles Cormier: that's pretty much how we see it. I'm not saying CFO HR and all that is fully obsolete as of now. So

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: let's say that I recruit a partner, which really happened before, just that he didn't pass the test specifically, but this guy had deep experience in CFO roles, right? so

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: this guy would bring him on. In my CFO seat, let's say. it's just that at this stage of the company we're we're like oscillating between 50 and 100 grand a month, right? So I still feel we don't really need like a a CFO and Claude is can do probably 95% of what classic CFOs do. And the humans I'm recruiting are one percenters always there, they don't care the about the 95%. Claude may get ninety eight percent, ninety nine percent good in the next ten years. But these CFO they're such savages that

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: no AI will ever catch up to them. So that that's the type of people I'm I'm aiming for.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Actually, as a follow-up question, I wanted to ask because you did mention that, you know, at the beginning you were, you know, recruiting a lot, but now you're also seeing that there's some elements or aspects where AI can do the job, right? So one of the questions I typically love to ask all the the founders coming onto the podcast is Which parts of your business do you usually utilize in terms of AI? And which parts do you still feel like, okay, we still need that human element?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, human element is cells, right? Like no one will buy shit from AI. That and that will stay like this for a very long time, unfortunately, right? Like I wish it would be different. I will buy stuff from AIs for sure because I'm an early adopter and I don't mind dealing with robots. I think robots are are better than most humans. They're more honest than more more humans, but most humans have this weird thing in them called emotions and all these psychological triggers that were built ten ten to fifty thousand years ago, right? Like we're cavemen's at the end of the day, and we

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: want to buy from another humans, right? And we have these weird instincts and and urges. I don't think that will go anywhere. Even customer service to some degree, like me, I don't want to deal with human personally when I do customer success. Like I just want the solution to to my problem. It ideally agentic CSM, right? An agent that could go and fix my problem once I open the live chat and not just tell me how to fix it, right? And ideally, this agent would also patch the software at the same time so

Carmen: Hmm.

Charles Cormier: that I wouldn't ever have to face that bug again. I think that's the future. but yeah, sells sells a very strong one. Probably HR for those that will be scaling HR will need humans. But I mean, I'm an AI maxer, right? So it I I think anything can be done by AIs. I also think that these types of companies, these AI maxers like me, it will pretty much dominate the market and others won't have a choice to sort of join the bandwagon or create an entirely new economy, right? A new economy

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: that is more on the social side. I think that will exist, right? Or maybe capitalism will stay the same and There will be this new type s of cali capitalism that will be more agentic, right? And pe just like people have forked bitcoin, people will be able to opt in or opt out this new economy.

Carmen: Yeah. Yeah. Just going back to what you mentioned earlier about, you know, some of the chat Chatbot or agent AI, customer agent AI systems. So I remember one time I was speaking with one client of ours, and they were talking a little bit about that they were looking for somebody like human customer support. One of the reasons being that they do have like a chat AI system, you know, the customers would come on, they would ask questions, but then as soon as they find, it's actually an AI agent, they just pretty much back off. They're just like, no, I want to speak with a human. and rather than like having like a bot talk to me as well. what are your thoughts around that?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, I I think just like most thing, it's not AI itself, it's a state of AI right now, right? I think it will be better a hundred percent, but

Carmen: Yeah.

Charles Cormier: it's not it's not as good or better right now because of the state of the technology, right? Because of data centers, the power of chips, right? Like the data sets and so forth. I just think it's not ready yet, but it will be there

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: eventually because Yeah, like you and I we don't like chatting with an AI right now. The AI will just re repeat a bunch of human slurp and how a

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: how customer agents used to do the thing before, right? But while the best way to do it is probably out of these bounds, the best way to do it is to identify the fundamental problem, try to predict it, even without the customer sharing data about their problem. Right. And then fixing it for them, having an agent fix for them and patch the software so that it doesn't ever happen again. That seems to be like the the best way ever to serve a client and not the the classic

Carmen: No.

Charles Cormier: way of an agent typing and just asking human questions and stupid shit like how are you? and

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: can I call you by your first name? Right. So it's

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: like just let's just get to the solution itself, or at least that's what I want. Maybe

Carmen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Charles Cormier: another profile of customer would Want to chat with some humans and want more love, right? And just take their

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: time. And the the AI agent would adapt to that.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it is already interesting to see at least, you know, the past few years how much AI with, you know, the use of like Claude or Gemini and ChatGPD has actually evolved a lot as well because it is something it is a tool that will constantly be upskilled, constantly be trained and pick up and just like generate all the data and information and so on like that. Okay. so Charles, I wanted to ask you so. What are your next steps going forward? Are you looking to expand, bring on more people on board? What are your next goals like in the next couple of months?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, yeah. Always hyper growth mode. So signing up more clients so that I can sign up more partners, right? Like that's that's my full funnel.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Charles Cormier: and get equity and Rev share in my own clients as well, right? And then who knows what will happen when MACTIN will launch because that will be pre game changing as well. Obviously, my habits and my psychology will change. but yeah, it's like enjoying life, being in hyper

Carmen: Yeah, of course.

Charles Cormier: growth. building an army of agents, right, and surviving and thriving in the AI age would be my my next goals.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Good. Sounds good. All right, Charles, just one final question that I like to ask every guest coming on. if there was one advice, or maybe you have multiple insights that you would like to pass on to the listeners out there, whether it's someone considering to start a business or start their own podcast or anything related to generating more qualified leads and effective sales, what would it be?

Charles Cormier: Think you said it all. one, start your business, right? Like my main cause is entrepreneurship. I think that in this new AI economy that I described, it's very much gonna be only founders, only entrepreneurs, only humans with agency and accountability. Start your business. There's no other way around. If you even want a 10% chance of surviving this AI age is gonna be by by being an entrepreneur, not being an order taker, the corporations have really fucked with your brains and you need to start a business. And then two, the best way to start a business is to launch a podcast, to grow a network, to A

Carmen: Okay.

Charles Cormier: B test your offer, to get data right from your offers and eventually scale from there. So you set it all. One start business,

Carmen: Yeah.

Charles Cormier: podcast and generate leads.

Carmen: Yeah. Perfect, beautiful. Well, Charles, again, thank you so much for coming on. And it was definitely very lovely just to have this lovely conversation and learn a little bit about how you scale the different multiple ventures, multiple businesses, and balancing your life also outside of work as well. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be extremely valuable. It's going to be a huge learning curve for the listeners out there as well. So again, thank you so much again. Definitely be sure to stay tuned for the next episode of Behind the Founders.