We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: http://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ A recruiter at Sagan used to run a Boolean search that took four days to surface candidates. Jon built an internal help desk that does it in one pass, and then told the team his expectations went up with it. Nobody there gets to keep grading resumes. Michael Valenzano co-founded Perennial Management Group, the operating engine behind seven portfolio companies, and runs the whole thing with three developers. He and Jon are neighbors in Encinitas, and they landed on the same answer independently: centralize it. In this one: why Sagan's AI lives behind an internal help desk, the twelve Green Berets who took Afghanistan with air power, and why Jon would rather start an accounting firm from zero than buy one. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 01:49 - The Sagan AI Event, and the Case for Centralizing 06:03 - Seven Companies, One Operating Engine 12:25 - Primary Source Data, and the Twelve Green Berets 18:00 - Why Most Companies Never Get There 21:04 - Greenfield Beats Acquisition 26:01 - What to Centralize and What to Leave Alone 32:27 - How the Help Desk Actually Works 35:02 - They Should Feel Threatened 39:26 - He Hired a GM Who Lives Overseas 43:38 - The Leverage Ladder 50:06 - Redefining How We Make Money References Mentioned in This Episode - Books: Stanton, D. (2009). Horse soldiers: The extraordinary story of a band of US soldiers who rode to victory in Afghanistan. Scribner. People & Frameworks Cited: Perennial Management Group, and its seven portfolio companies Harold Geneen, who built ITT into a conglomerate as CEO, on centralizing accounting and leaving the GMs alone Zaki, Sagan's President of AI, on SaaS starting with scale and non-tech starting with profitability The Sagan AI event in San Diego onlinejobs.ph Tools Mentioned in the Episode: Claude Code, Codex, Fable, Cloudflare Workers, Airtable, Make, Replit, Lovable, Supabase, Postgres, Front, Linear, JotForm, Monday.com, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, OpenRouter Related Reading: Jon on using AI everywhere and restricting who gets to build with it: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/p/i-was-the-hypocrite-in-my-own-ai-policy Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Michael Valenzano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-valenzano/ | https://www.perennialmgt.com/ 🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW