I’ve spent 30+ years building, buying and scaling companies across global sourcing, manufacturing and ecommerce. Now I’m applying AI to the systems founders rely on. I share what works, what fails and expensive lessons in between. If you’re building, you’re in the right place.

Exotic wildlife auction - can I take your order?

Final boss!

I would ask @grok the odds of grok, ChatGPT and Claude being offline at the same time, but it appears 100% probable at this moment.

This is a very useful way to compare!

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I regret to inform myself Claude remains necessary. It's design and depth still outpace the competition. I am so tired of it being lazy and arrogant - but it does make a difference. I still think building in Codex and Grok and then shoring up the foundation and overall design may be a good flow, but I want to fire Claude for it's insolence; just can't yet.

Most founders I meet don’t have a business. They have a job with overhead. I know because I built that version first. Hustle worked. Then it stopped working. I became the bottleneck. The team waited. Every decision still ran through me. That’s not scale. That’s a well-paid prison with a logo. I built Catalyst88 for the operators who already have something real and are tired of being the system. Clarity. Systems that replace you. Teams that own outcomes. Metrics instead of vibes. Not theory. Not a seminar. Trenches. If you’re still the person every problem has to visit before it can get solved, that’s the work. Strategy. Systems. Scale. catalyst88.com

I didn’t set out to become an “ecom guy.” I had a flooring store. I tripped over samples. I thought nobody would buy flooring online. Then I put rugs on the internet in 1998 in a Yahoo Store. First order was from Bulgaria. It was fraud. That still felt like magic. A few years later I was too scared to buy a $40k container of bamboo. Friends were more scared than I was. We parked it in somebody else’s warehouse and sold it anyway. That company became iFloor. Hundreds of people. Inc. 500 three years running. Then I sold it because the meetings started to bore me. The 2008 financial crisis helped kill that first one. That was dozens of companies ago 30 years later the mission is the same: help entrepreneurs stop being misunderstood and stop doing it alone. Strategy. Systems. Scale.

This may actually help me solve a transcription problem for the Catalyst88 community video function

Unpopular Fact: You don’t own a business if the business can’t operate without you. You own a job. Possibly a very stressful job with a terrible boss. (Plot twist: the boss is you.) The goal isn’t to become better at putting out fires. The goal is to build a company that stops lighting them. Strategy → Systems → People → Scale. If you disappeared for 30 days, what would break first? That answer is probably the next system you need to build.

Axiom 0 - I don’t know nuthin about nuthin. True story.

Yeah!! @XMoney made it down to little ‘ol me! Time to get serious.

Most Amazon sellers I meet don’t have a business. They have a channel. That’s fine until the channel sneezes. Brand, systems, and a second door. That’s the work.

The Grok @bot has been amazing - but I hit 100% usage with a day to go. So I throw in $100 - and I see no reason to limit it, I'll be back online within 24 hours. I only have 2 agents active - doing social media clean up. Delisting youtube videos, cleaning up old posts that went nowhere on X - etc... In just a couple hours the system has already burned almost $75 - there is 0% chance the remaining $25 will be enough to bridge the gap. So either the basic usage is incredibly valuable that I am clearly underestimating or the on-demand is the biggest rip off this side of the pecos. You tell me @grok.

Have you ever had an Amazon ASIN that started dying? I have - it sucks. But the dynamic nature of the market means all listings will face external forces, sometimes creating a stuck or declining product sales trend. Here's a guide on how to deal with reality: catalyst88.com/blog/how-to-r…