Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast

Victor Cheng spent nearly a year using AI before realizing something surprisingly basic: it did not even know the name of his company.
It did not know what the company sold. It did not know who his customers were. It did not even know who his best customer was.
That realization became the foundation for his book, Teach AI Your Company.
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, Julian Castelli sits down with Victor, CEO of SaasCEO.com, to explore why the quality of AI output often depends less on switching models and more on the context a company gives the model in the first place.
Victor explains why businesses need to capture the tacit knowledge currently living inside employees’ heads, meetings, presentations, customer conversations, documents, and workflows. His own team spent months transcribing years of material, eventually building a knowledge base of roughly four million words.
But the breakthrough started much smaller. Victor created a basic company overview and ideal customer profile. With only a few pages of additional context, he says his AI outputs became roughly two to three times better.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Why disappointing AI results may actually be a context problem

What it really means to “Teach AI Your Company”

How to turn tacit company knowledge into usable AI context

Why Victor digitized years of presentations, recordings, and company knowledge

How just a few pages of context improved his AI outputs by roughly 2 to 3 times

Why company-specific knowledge can make AI dramatically more useful

The lesson is simple but powerful: before expecting AI to understand your business, you have to teach it what your people already know.
👉 Learn more about Growth Elevated: https://growthelevated.com/

What if your executive team could turn an 8-hour weekend finance project into a 5-minute task without opening a single piece of software?
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, Julian Castelli sits down with Zaigo Co-founder and Managing Director Kyle Richless to explore how custom AI agents are eliminating "decision latency" and automating the workflows that slow growing tech companies down.
Zaigo acts as an outsourced AI implementation team for mid-market and owner-led businesses, operating in rapid sprints to map workflows and deploy intelligent systems. But adopting AI isn't just about buying new tools. 
Kyle argues it requires navigating internal resistance, or "political antibodies." Drawing on a diverse background as a lawyer, venture capitalist, and startup operator, Kyle brings a rare, operator-first perspective, demanding strict business ROI in a technology space currently clouded by FOMO and confusion.
From automating FP&A variance memos and candidate screening to building secure, open-source "Company Brains" that connect your entire software stack, this conversation dives into what it really takes to scale operations efficiently.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Why successful AI adoption is 2/3 leadership buy-in and only 1/3 a technology challenge

How to identify and beat the "political antibodies" resisting AI in your workforce

The strict "2-Sentence ROI Rule" every CEO needs before approving an AI project

How to build a secure "Company Brain" to query your business data instantly

Why you shouldn't automatically hand your company's AI strategy over to your CTO

👉 Visit us at: https://growthelevated.com/ 
📲 Follow us on LinkedIn for daily leadership inspiration and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growth-elevated/

What if the smartest product decision is to stop building?
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, Julian Castelli speaks with Vitalii Sydorenko, serial entrepreneur and partner at AI product studio Gearhart, about how AI is changing product validation and MVP development.
Vitalii shares how his team stopped a founder after one week of development, returned to customer discovery, and created more than 10 product iterations in roughly 10 hours. The process helped the founder test ideas faster, reduce risk, and improve the chances of finding product-market fit.
Vitalii also explains why industry access matters more than knowledge alone, and why validation should never be confused with growth.
🔑 Key takeaways:
Why Vitalii stopped a product build after one week

How AI enabled 10 iterations in 10 hours

Why customer access is essential for validation

Rapid prototyping can reduce cost and risk

Why founders must validate before they scale

👉 Visit us at: https://growthelevated.com/ 
📲 Follow us on LinkedIn for daily leadership insights and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growth-elevated/

What if the housekeepers cleaning your hotel room were replaced by robots?
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, Julian Castelli sits down with Brian Coyne, CEO of The Service Companies, to explore how automation is already reshaping the hospitality industry and what it means for the workforce behind the scenes.
The Service Companies provides outsourced cleaning to luxury hotels, casinos, and timeshares, recruiting more than 10,000 people a year. But reliable labor keeps getting harder to find, and Brian is betting that robots and drones are part of the answer. Drawing on 25+ years in the US Marine Corps, where he rose to colonel and led more than 7,000 Marines, Brian brings a rare mix of operational discipline and systems thinking to a business most guests never see.
From floor-cleaning robots already deployed on property to why culture is what happens when no one is looking, this conversation dives into what it really takes to scale a people-driven business.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Why robots are already cleaning hotel floors today

How COVID forced a rebuild from the floor up

Why reliable labor is hospitality's biggest challenge

What the Marine Corps taught Brian about scaling people

Why outsourcing is about more than cutting costs

👉 Visit us at GrowthElevated.com
📲 Follow us on LinkedIn for daily leadership inspiration and updates

What if the housekeepers cleaning your hotel room were replaced by robots?
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, Julian Castelli sits down with Brian Coyne, CEO of The Service Companies, to explore how automation is already reshaping the hospitality industry and what it means for the workforce behind the scenes.
The Service Companies provides outsourced cleaning to luxury hotels, casinos, and timeshares, recruiting more than 10,000 people a year. But reliable labor keeps getting harder to find, and Brian is betting that robots and drones are part of the answer. Drawing on 25+ years in the US Marine Corps, where he rose to colonel and led more than 7,000 Marines, Brian brings a rare mix of operational discipline and systems thinking to a business most guests never see.
From floor-cleaning robots already deployed on property to why culture is what happens when no one is looking, this conversation dives into what it really takes to scale a people-driven business.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Why robots are already cleaning hotel floors today

How COVID forced a rebuild from the floor up

Why reliable labor is hospitality's biggest challenge

What the Marine Corps taught Brian about scaling people

Why outsourcing is about more than cutting costs

👉 Visit us at GrowthElevated.com
📲 Follow us on LinkedIn for daily leadership inspiration and updates