Show Notes
Before you add another piece of software, another AI model, or another agent to your business — watch this.
The problem: New business owners get told they need this tool and that tool and this agent. Next thing they know, software is 60% of monthly revenue. Scott has seen it firsthand. That’s not sustainable, especially when you should be protecting runway.
Where Scott learned the principle — and it wasn’t from technology.
About 20 years ago, Scott’s dad — a photographer in his second career — invited him to a weekend workshop in Cincinnati with David Ziser, an internationally in-demand wedding photographer. Ziser’s images are iconic. Twenty years later they still hold up.
Scott watched him work: setting the scene, posing the subject, finding the light. Then the secret — Ziser would put a flash behind the subject, firing back toward the camera, so it lit up the veil, the train, and the white of the dress. All light. Nothing to do with the gear.
Then Scott saw the gear. Cases of lenses. Multiple $5,000 camera bodies. Tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. Scott had a cheap camera and started to discount the whole thing — I can’t replicate this.
Ziser stopped him:
“You shouldn’t go out and buy all this equipment. You don’t need it. I would not invest in any equipment, any lenses, any camera bodies, until you know with confidence that you are missing shots that you could get.”
And then the part Scott never forgot:
“Everything I’ve ever bought has not come from this desire to buy this tool. It’s come from frustration from not being able to do what I wanted to do.”
When Ziser hit a wall, he bought the cheapest thing that solved the problem. His equipment grew with his capability — not ahead of it.
Applied to software:
Earn it. The tool has to be justified by the business, not by what someone else in your industry uses.
Keep it in budget. Don’t let software outpace what’s reasonable, especially early.
Don’t grow into it. Grow, then earn it. No business ever grew because of the software.
People on task are often cheaper. Transactional contractors cost less than a stack of subscriptions, and they don’t become a fixed expense.
On the agentic-company videos: If your intent is to build an agentic business and you have the capital, go do it. But if you’re early and you’re not there yet, the tech becomes a boat anchor on your expenses at exactly the wrong moment.
The mindset shift: The question isn’t “should I add this tool?” It’s “what constraint am I hitting consistently that this tool would solve?”
That’s thinking first. Not tool-first.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Before you add a software, an AI model, an AI agent, or any like new tool to your business, I want you to watch this video because the one thing that I know about entrepreneurs is that there is this instant fear of missing out that's occurring because of the quick evolution of AI and the different softwares that are available to run our businesses. I'm Scott Todd. I'm the author of Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors and also a book coming out.
next year called think first, then automate. And here's what I know. There are so many business owners that are being overwhelmed by technology. And I want to just say right off the bat, I'm not anti-technology. I believe in technology. I love technology. I use it heavily in my business, but I do think that there's a right and wrong time to add technology to your business. And it's not because someone else in your industry is using it.
It's when you can identify the exact thing that's missing in your business that this particular tool will provide or solve for you. So I have seen and witnessed firsthand so many new business owners who go into a business, they go to start their business and they start to talk to somebody or they start to try to figure out all the tech stack that they need. And someone says to them, well, you need this software and you need this software and you should have this AI agent, you should have this thing.
Well, the next thing you know, their software budget, and I'm putting AI and all the software into this one SAS kind of bucket, could be 60% of their revenue. That's not unheard of. I've seen it. I've seen it with my own two eyes. It seems ridiculous, right? But 60% of their their revenue is going to fund this software. And when you're at that level, especially when you're new, where you should be trying to protect the runway.
keep the expenses as low as possible so that you have all of the available capital to you.
Then you have to make choices and you have to decide: hey, those tools sound great, but not today, later on. And it's it was for me, it was kind of this discovery, not through software or through technology that I kind of uncovered this, but it was through a completely different route. There's a guy, he's a wedding photographer, he's a world-renowned international.
Renowned internationally in demand wedding photographer. He might be retired by now. Okay, because this was probably 20 years ago. His name was David Zeiser. And if I can find some pictures that he has taken, I'll put it on the video version of this. But David's work is just incredible. Like you look at this wedding portraits that he does, and it's just night and day different. And
About 20 years ago now, I think it was around 2008. my dad was really, really heavy in photography. It was like his second career. He had retired and he was going to go and create his photography studio again, which he did. And he was on this circuit where he would go to see different photographers to kind of get up to speed on like what they were doing and how how they were taking pictures and learn from them. He was going to these seminars. And
He said to me, Do you want to go to this guy's seminar? His name's David Zeiser. And I'm like, yeah, I like his work. I I'm interested. I got a camera. Like, I'd like to know how to do this. So we went. We went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and really the Kentucky side. And we're at this event, this like week weekend workshop with David, and he is showing how he brings this beauty to life.
I mean, and I'm telling you, these images that he would create are iconic. I just before this podcast, I went back and looked at his website, and this work is still beautiful 20 years later. It's like, wow, wow. So he's showing how he sets up the scene, how he sets up this whole environment. He has these brides that are just basically models for the day. They're in wedding, wedding gowns.
They're going to these different venues that he's arranged for us to go to. He's showing how he basically how he sets up the equipment, how he poses the brides, the subjects, how he poses them, the lighting conditions that he's looking for. He's just rapid fire with this thing. And he snaps a picture, and there is his iconic image. It is just beautiful. And the secret sauce that he had, I'm gonna tell you, is that he would put a flash.
It could be a cheap flash behind the subject so that when he took the picture, the flash would shoot toward the camera and it would hit the wedding veil and it would hit the train and it would hit the the white of the the dress and it would flash back and it would create this just beautiful image. I mean, it was all with light. It had nothing to do with his equipment. It was all light.
And I was talking to him and he's showing me all of the equipment that he had. He he had this like case of all these lenses and multiple cameras. And we're talking 20 years ago, $5,000 cameras. Okay. I can't tell you tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. And here I am 20 years ago. I didn't have the money for this. I had like a cheap camera. And I wanted to discount it. I wanted to say to him, wow, yeah, that'd be cool, but I really can't replicate this.
Because I don't have the same equipment you do. And I must have said something along that lines. I can't remember. I must have said something along that line. Because what he said to me was, hey, wait a minute. You shouldn't go out and buy all this equipment. You don't need it. And I said, Well, what do you mean? He's like, it has nothing to do with the equipment. It's number one, understanding how to use the equipment that you have. And number two, for him, it was all about the light.
Where the light was being captured from. It was all about the light. It had nothing to do with fancy lenses, fancy camera bodies, nothing. He's like, I just look for the light. And he said to me, he's like, I would not invest in any equipment, any lenses, any camera bodies, or anything until you know with confidence that you are missing shots that you could get.
He's like, everything I've ever bought has not come from this desire to buy this tool. It's come from frustration from not being able to do what I wanted to do. It's come from this constraint that I've run up against while I'm trying to get what I'm trying to get. Then when I recognize that my equipment is not capable of doing this, then I've gone out and I've bought the
Cheapest piece of equipment that I can buy that would solve the problem. And he's like, that's how I grew all of my equipment over all of the years. It grew with my capacity or capabilities, if you will. It grew with my capabilities of, hey, I can do better. And when I heard that, I took it to heart. I didn't go out and buy all this equipment. But as I grew into having my own business.
That's the one thing that I have carried with me for my software and the tools and the AI models. It's not about all of this stuff because you don't need every single AI model to run your business. You don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on software. Where you want to add in the software is when you recognize that something in your business is not.
Capable of producing what you want to produce. Someone on your team could do better if they had this specific software. You could be more efficient if you had this software. So applying this to software, how do I know when it's time to add a piece of software? Number one, I have to earn it. And when I say I, I mean my team too. We have to earn.
What we're going to put into the business. It has to be within the budget. I cannot let my software expense category outpace what's reasonable, especially in the beginning of your business. It's easy, as I said, to go into spend all of this money on software. Next thing you know, it's 60% of your monthly revenue. That's not sustainable. And you can say, well, Scott, I'm going to grow into it.
Well, I'd rather you grow into it and then earn it as opposed to trying to get your business to grow because of the software. I've never found one business that grew because of the software. Now, you could also push back on me and say, Scott, I saw this guy on YouTube. I saw him too. And you're like, I don't know what's what who you're talking about, Scott. It's okay. You don't you're not missing much. But I saw a guy on YouTube and he's like, Man, I'm building an agentic company with.
All of the AI models. Cool. Cool. If that's your intent, is to build an agentic business and you have the capital to go do it, great. Go do it. I'm not telling you not to. In the beginning, where your business is not going to be agentic, where it's not going to rely all on just software alone, where you're going to have people. People, believe it or not, on task are cheaper than all of the tools that are coming in.
Because you can get people that work for a specific transaction. I want you to go do this and I'm going to pay you for this transaction. You don't have to add them as full-time employees. The technology becomes a boat anchor to your expenses. And it could come at a time in which you're trying to just get this thing off the ground. So I want you to really think about: hey, before I add this tool, is there some constraint?
That I'm actually hitting. And in fact, that's kind of the mindset shift that I hope that you'll take away from this is not, should I add this tool? It's really to challenge yourself. Hey, what is the constraint that I'm actually hitting consistently that's stopping me from building the business that I want, that this specific tool, and I use tool for software and AI or whatever, that this tool will solve for me. And this is the whole concept of thinking first, right? It's not about.
Tool first thinking, like I got this tool and what do I do with it? It's about how do I think about this so that I put it into my business in a way in which it makes sense. And then I'm able to leverage the tool to grow what I want. Thanks to my dad, I've had the pleasure of meeting just a bunch of great photographers. I mean, we're talking about people who have written books, we're talking about people that do this full time as a career.
And here's what I know about photographers, especially the ones that make their money from this. They might have all of this equipment. They might have all these lenses and camera bodies and everything. But when they get to be where they are, it's not because of the equipment. It's because of their ability to leverage what they have at the moment. And then they add, they add the tool when they can truly say.
This is the problem that I'm trying to solve. And I want you to put that same mindset into what you do with your business. If you have a business question, head over to scottodd.net forward slash ask. I always enjoy spending time with you. And I will see you in the next episode.
Before you add a software, an AI model, an AI agent, or any like new tool to your business, I want you to watch this video because the one thing that I know about entrepreneurs is that there is this instant fear of missing out that's occurring because of the quick evolution of AI and the different softwares that are available to run our businesses. I'm Scott Todd. I'm the author of Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors and also a book coming out.
next year called think first, then automate. And here's what I know. There are so many business owners that are being overwhelmed by technology. And I want to just say right off the bat, I'm not anti-technology. I believe in technology. I love technology. I use it heavily in my business, but I do think that there's a right and wrong time to add technology to your business. And it's not because someone else in your industry is using it.
It's when you can identify the exact thing that's missing in your business that this particular tool will provide or solve for you. So I have seen and witnessed firsthand so many new business owners who go into a business, they go to start their business and they start to talk to somebody or they start to try to figure out all the tech stack that they need. And someone says to them, well, you need this software and you need this software and you should have this AI agent, you should have this thing.
Well, the next thing you know, their software budget, and I'm putting AI and all the software into this one SAS kind of bucket, could be 60% of their revenue. That's not unheard of. I've seen it. I've seen it with my own two eyes. It seems ridiculous, right? But 60% of their their revenue is going to fund this software. And when you're at that level, especially when you're new, where you should be trying to protect the runway.
keep the expenses as low as possible so that you have all of the available capital to you.
Then you have to make choices and you have to decide: hey, those tools sound great, but not today, later on. And it's it was for me, it was kind of this discovery, not through software or through technology that I kind of uncovered this, but it was through a completely different route. There's a guy, he's a wedding photographer, he's a world-renowned international.
Renowned internationally in demand wedding photographer. He might be retired by now. Okay, because this was probably 20 years ago. His name was David Zeiser. And if I can find some pictures that he has taken, I'll put it on the video version of this. But David's work is just incredible. Like you look at this wedding portraits that he does, and it's just night and day different. And
About 20 years ago now, I think it was around 2008. my dad was really, really heavy in photography. It was like his second career. He had retired and he was going to go and create his photography studio again, which he did. And he was on this circuit where he would go to see different photographers to kind of get up to speed on like what they were doing and how how they were taking pictures and learn from them. He was going to these seminars. And
He said to me, Do you want to go to this guy's seminar? His name's David Zeiser. And I'm like, yeah, I like his work. I I'm interested. I got a camera. Like, I'd like to know how to do this. So we went. We went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and really the Kentucky side. And we're at this event, this like week weekend workshop with David, and he is showing how he brings this beauty to life.
I mean, and I'm telling you, these images that he would create are iconic. I just before this podcast, I went back and looked at his website, and this work is still beautiful 20 years later. It's like, wow, wow. So he's showing how he sets up the scene, how he sets up this whole environment. He has these brides that are just basically models for the day. They're in wedding, wedding gowns.
They're going to these different venues that he's arranged for us to go to. He's showing how he basically how he sets up the equipment, how he poses the brides, the subjects, how he poses them, the lighting conditions that he's looking for. He's just rapid fire with this thing. And he snaps a picture, and there is his iconic image. It is just beautiful. And the secret sauce that he had, I'm gonna tell you, is that he would put a flash.
It could be a cheap flash behind the subject so that when he took the picture, the flash would shoot toward the camera and it would hit the wedding veil and it would hit the train and it would hit the the white of the the dress and it would flash back and it would create this just beautiful image. I mean, it was all with light. It had nothing to do with his equipment. It was all light.
And I was talking to him and he's showing me all of the equipment that he had. He he had this like case of all these lenses and multiple cameras. And we're talking 20 years ago, $5,000 cameras. Okay. I can't tell you tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. And here I am 20 years ago. I didn't have the money for this. I had like a cheap camera. And I wanted to discount it. I wanted to say to him, wow, yeah, that'd be cool, but I really can't replicate this.
Because I don't have the same equipment you do. And I must have said something along that lines. I can't remember. I must have said something along that line. Because what he said to me was, hey, wait a minute. You shouldn't go out and buy all this equipment. You don't need it. And I said, Well, what do you mean? He's like, it has nothing to do with the equipment. It's number one, understanding how to use the equipment that you have. And number two, for him, it was all about the light.
Where the light was being captured from. It was all about the light. It had nothing to do with fancy lenses, fancy camera bodies, nothing. He's like, I just look for the light. And he said to me, he's like, I would not invest in any equipment, any lenses, any camera bodies, or anything until you know with confidence that you are missing shots that you could get.
He's like, everything I've ever bought has not come from this desire to buy this tool. It's come from frustration from not being able to do what I wanted to do. It's come from this constraint that I've run up against while I'm trying to get what I'm trying to get. Then when I recognize that my equipment is not capable of doing this, then I've gone out and I've bought the
Cheapest piece of equipment that I can buy that would solve the problem. And he's like, that's how I grew all of my equipment over all of the years. It grew with my capacity or capabilities, if you will. It grew with my capabilities of, hey, I can do better. And when I heard that, I took it to heart. I didn't go out and buy all this equipment. But as I grew into having my own business.
That's the one thing that I have carried with me for my software and the tools and the AI models. It's not about all of this stuff because you don't need every single AI model to run your business. You don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on software. Where you want to add in the software is when you recognize that something in your business is not.
Capable of producing what you want to produce. Someone on your team could do better if they had this specific software. You could be more efficient if you had this software. So applying this to software, how do I know when it's time to add a piece of software? Number one, I have to earn it. And when I say I, I mean my team too. We have to earn.
What we're going to put into the business. It has to be within the budget. I cannot let my software expense category outpace what's reasonable, especially in the beginning of your business. It's easy, as I said, to go into spend all of this money on software. Next thing you know, it's 60% of your monthly revenue. That's not sustainable. And you can say, well, Scott, I'm going to grow into it.
Well, I'd rather you grow into it and then earn it as opposed to trying to get your business to grow because of the software. I've never found one business that grew because of the software. Now, you could also push back on me and say, Scott, I saw this guy on YouTube. I saw him too. And you're like, I don't know what's what who you're talking about, Scott. It's okay. You don't you're not missing much. But I saw a guy on YouTube and he's like, Man, I'm building an agentic company with.
All of the AI models. Cool. Cool. If that's your intent, is to build an agentic business and you have the capital to go do it, great. Go do it. I'm not telling you not to. In the beginning, where your business is not going to be agentic, where it's not going to rely all on just software alone, where you're going to have people. People, believe it or not, on task are cheaper than all of the tools that are coming in.
Because you can get people that work for a specific transaction. I want you to go do this and I'm going to pay you for this transaction. You don't have to add them as full-time employees. The technology becomes a boat anchor to your expenses. And it could come at a time in which you're trying to just get this thing off the ground. So I want you to really think about: hey, before I add this tool, is there some constraint?
That I'm actually hitting. And in fact, that's kind of the mindset shift that I hope that you'll take away from this is not, should I add this tool? It's really to challenge yourself. Hey, what is the constraint that I'm actually hitting consistently that's stopping me from building the business that I want, that this specific tool, and I use tool for software and AI or whatever, that this tool will solve for me. And this is the whole concept of thinking first, right? It's not about.
Tool first thinking, like I got this tool and what do I do with it? It's about how do I think about this so that I put it into my business in a way in which it makes sense. And then I'm able to leverage the tool to grow what I want. Thanks to my dad, I've had the pleasure of meeting just a bunch of great photographers. I mean, we're talking about people who have written books, we're talking about people that do this full time as a career.
And here's what I know about photographers, especially the ones that make their money from this. They might have all of this equipment. They might have all these lenses and camera bodies and everything. But when they get to be where they are, it's not because of the equipment. It's because of their ability to leverage what they have at the moment. And then they add, they add the tool when they can truly say.
This is the problem that I'm trying to solve. And I want you to put that same mindset into what you do with your business. If you have a business question, head over to scottodd.net forward slash ask. I always enjoy spending time with you. And I will see you in the next episode.