The AI Advice From Stanford That Rewired How I Think About Business
The Mental Math I’m Using to Add a Million to My Bottom Line. You Got To Shoot For The Stars If You Want To Get To The Moon.
The internet is flooded with noise and negativity. I focus on stories that make me a better human being, entrepreneur and professional.
Here are this weeks three short stories:
The AI Advice From Stanford That Rewired How I Think About Business
The Mental Math I’m Using to Add a Million to My Bottom Line
You Got To Shoot For The Stars If You Want To Get To The Moon
You can find all past editions here. Let’s dive in 👇
(1) The AI Advice From Stanford That Rewired How I Think About Business
I was listening to Jeremy Utley, a creativity expert at Stanford, and something he said completely changed the way I think about AI. He pointed out that most people treat AI like a vending machine: you punch in a prompt, get an answer, and move on. But the ones getting extraordinary results are using AI differently. They’re not treating it like a tool—they’re treating it like a teammate. That one shift changes everything.
Jeremy gave an example that stuck with me. Instead of asking,
“How should I answer this question?”, ask AI, “You’re the expert—what’s the right question I should be asking to solve this?”
That flips the dynamic. You’re no longer the boss delegating to a machine—you’re collaborating with it. You’re inviting it to think with you. That’s when the magic begins.
He even shared a prompt that can turn AI into your personal consultant:
“Hey, you’re an AI expert. I want a consultation with you to figure out where I can best use AI in my life. Ask me one question at a time until you have enough context about my goals, workflows, and KPIs—and then give me two obvious and two non-obvious recommendations.”
That one prompt doesn’t just produce an answer. It builds a strategy. For free. But here’s the catch—AI only gets smarter if it knows you. And that’s why I’ve stopped sharing my ChatGPT account with my colleagues. They needed to create their own. Because if you want AI to become a teammate, it needs time with you—your questions, your decisions, your quirks. The more you train it, the more powerful it becomes.
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking deeply. I run a profitable business and an unprofitable one. That gives me a rare window into both sides of the entrepreneurial journey—what works and what doesn’t. I spent hours trying to chart the 5-year path. We’re on track to 5x, but I genuinely believe we can 10x. That belief sent me down a rabbit hole—questioning assumptions, examining every person’s role, and trying to design a machine where every moving piece works with precision.
AI helped me speed up the process. It gave me language, frameworks, and models. But it didn’t do the thinking for me. I still had to choose what to keep, what to discard, and what to challenge. Most nights, I went to bed with more questions than I started with. My wife saw me staring into space for hours—lost in thought, trying to connect the dots.
But slowly, the picture came together. I shared my rough idea with the team. They added to it, improved it, and suddenly we were all building something together. That’s when things really come alive—when the team rallies around an idea that’s bigger than any one of us. AI accelerated the process. But it was still up to us to build it.
Jeremy said something else that I’ll carry with me:
Inspiration is a discipline.
Everyone has access to the same ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok—you name it. But your results will only be as good as the thinking and prompts you bring to the table. That’s why you shouldn’t settle for the first thing it gives you. If you want something exceptional, you have to prompt for variation and volume. You have to iterate. You have to push your own thinking. Because the ultimate decision making model sits inside your brain.
Creativity isn’t typing a sentence and hitting enter. Creativity is doing the work—again and again—until the idea reveals itself.
AI won’t do your job for you. But it will work with you. And that shift—from tool to teammate—is what changes everything.
Takeaways:
Treat AI like a teammate, not a tool.
The best results don’t come from one-off prompts. They come from ongoing collaboration. Ask better questions, give feedback, and train your model like you would train a colleague. The more context you share, the sharper it becomes.
AI doesn’t replace your brain—it extends it.
Use AI to think faster, not think for you. It can offer structure, ideas, and shortcuts, but it’s still your judgment, clarity, and creativity that make the final output valuable. The work is still yours to do.
Inspiration is a discipline, not a mood.
Your inputs define your outputs. If you want world-class thinking from AI, bring world-class curiosity to the table. Read widely. Ask more. Prompt deeper. Iterate more than feels necessary. That’s where breakthrough ideas live.
(2) The Mental Math I’m Using to Add a Million to My Bottom Line
How do you add a million to your bottom line? It’s simple but not easy. It all starts with one question:
What’s the dream in a year?
Without a clear dream, you’re just busy—not building. You need to know exactly what you’re driving toward. If the dream is to add $1 million to your bottom line, you can’t leave it to hope. You have to work backward. Because a dream without execution is delusion.
For example, in a services business, your ability to deliver outcomes is what people pay for. So first, map your numbers.
Know your worst case, base case, and best case.
Understand whether you’re building one-time projects or continuous retainers.
Know exactly how many customers it will take to hit your dream.
I saw Jesse Pujji break a business down live with the entrepreneur to understand how one should be thinking about it.
Let’s say you want $400,000 in gross income to walk away with $200,000 net. You’ll need around 8 customers paying $50,000 each a year. That’s roughly 10 people per project at $10,000/month.
Now the real question becomes—how do you get 8 customers?
If your conversion rate is 20%, you need 40 serious conversations. Not marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) who are just browsing, but sales-qualified leads (SQLs) who are serious about buying. Given that it can take 3–5 months to close a deal, you better start filling that pipeline today. Your sales team and execution team need to be in rhythm—always thinking about today’s deliveries and tomorrow’s opportunities.
Before anything else, you need 3–4 case studies that move the needle. Proof drives progress. It encourages others to try you.
And here’s something no one tells you bluntly enough:
Big goals are not unrealistic; they are necessary.
Small goals create inertia. You keep doing the same things. But a goal that forces you to 5x breaks that cycle. If you plan for 2x growth, you might hit 1.8x. If you plan for 5x, you might hit 2.5x. Big dreams force different thinking, and different thinking changes the game.
That’s why an entrepreneur’s first job isn’t just to deliver. It’s to dream differently—and then build the bridge back to today.
And before anything else every morning—block your calendar till noon. Four hours of nothing but prospecting and selling. No meetings. No distractions. Make it your first goal every day—not the last.
Takeaways:
Dream Big, Then Build Backward: A goal that forces you to think differently is far better than a “realistic” one that keeps you stuck.
Master Your Numbers and Pipeline: Know your P&L like the back of your hand—and work backward from your income dream to your prospecting targets.
Sales First, Execution Second: Your mornings should be sacred for prospecting. Without leads, there’s no growth.
(3) You Got To Shoot For The Stars If You Want To Get To The Moon
Here is a story of asking for a meeting with Steve Jobs. P.S. he got to meet him!
👋 I’m Harsh. 7000+ founders and CXOs read these three short stories from me every Sunday. I also run a podcast called Master of the Deal where I uncover the personal stories and strategies of M&A, private equity, and investment banking leaders.
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Ideals VDR - We are the world’s most secure and highest rated Virtual Data Room provider. Companies share confidential information using our technology. Here is a short demo.
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Harsh Batra