Cameo Doran

Chief Product Officer ⇢ Fractional Prices with Full-Time Impact ◆ Digital Transformations ◆ Advising Startup Founders and Executives Building Innovative Products ⇢ AI / XR / Web3

I’ve always been fascinated (and a little frustrated) by how many great companies can’t seem to ship great software. I’ve sat inside teams where brilliant ideas died in Jira backlogs, and I’ve watched the opposite too: features rushed out fast, only to flop because they were poorly executed or customers didn’t care. Both hurt. Both waste time and burn cash.

Cameo Labs is my answer to that problem. I started it because I couldn’t stand watching founders lose momentum on ideas that should have changed their business and their lives. 

My mission is simple: help founders build the right product, fast enough to matter.

Since starting, I’ve led projects that:

- Shipped an EdTech platform that closed $3M in contracts in under five months.
- Migrated 1,000+ servers with zero downtime, saving $6M.
- Built an AI training platform that scaled to $1.5M ARR in 9 months.

I’m dorky about this stuff. I love the messy early product conversations, poking at assumptions, figuring out where speed really matters, and then helping a team pull off what feels impossible. That’s what gets me up in the morning.

If you’re a founder under pressure to ship something that can’t wait, I’d love to hear about it.

Chief Product Officer / Fractional Product Management

As the owner and founder of Cameo Labs, I am dedicated to helping CEOs and executives of $100M - $500M businesses in the Edtech, Fintech, and SaaS sectors achieve rapid and transformative innovation. 

At Cameo Labs, we understand that staying competitive in today’s market requires more than just innovative ideas—it demands strategic execution and a customer-centric approach.


I founded Cameo Labs to empower our clients by streamlining their product development processes, aligning their business strategies with technological advancements, and fostering a culture of continuous innovation.

We operate differently than most agencies. 

Our holistic approach combines technology, strategic foresight, and customer insights to create cohesive and impactful product visions. Our clients have experienced faster innovation cycles, improved product success rates, and higher customer satisfaction.

With a proven track record of success, we are committed to turning your challenges into opportunities for growth and success. Our goal is to be your trusted partner, helping you achieve your business vision and lead your industry.

Let’s Connect:
Discover how Cameo Labs can transform your business. Visit http://cameolabs.com or reach out to me directly to explore how we can work together to drive your business forward.

This headline cracks me up.

OpenClaw runs on the infrastructure Linux built. Without it, there’s nothing to achieve in 3 weeks or 3 decades.

I don’t know if this is a direct quote, but if it is, it doesn’t make Jensen look smart. It makes him look butthurt. 

Linus has been openly dismissive of NVIDIA for years, and this feels less like an actual data point and more like a score he is trying to settle.

From Vision to Execution | Faster Products, Better Results, Bigger Impact | SaaS Companies | Strategic Software Partner

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IP is the bedrock of modern capitalism. 

It’s the promise that if you build something, you own it and you get paid for it. But that promise is crumbling. 

Of course, LLMs were trained on thousands of copyrighted works without permission. And tools like Claude Code let you screenshot a product and whip up a clone in an afternoon.

And these Ai company’s are so confident they’ll get away with it that they’re not even being subtle anymore. 

Earlier this week, Grammarly got caught promoting the ability to have an literary expert edit your content. Except they never asked the experts if they could use their names, and never had any intention of paying them. 

They didn’t just steal their work, they stole their name and creative identity. 

Grammarly would only do something like this if they believed everyone’s already cavalier about identity, ownership, and the rest of it. 

I don’t believe these are edge cases. The are testing to see what we’ll tolerate. 

If IP protections become unenforceable, we’re not just losing copyright law. We’re dismantling the incentive structure that we built modern business around. 

People talk a lot about jobs being lost, but are we actively destroying the very foundation that makes our economy work?

And if so, what comes next?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

As a side note, Grammerly quickly turned it off after the backlash. But I am sure they will try to do something like it again.

graphical user interface, text, application

Today is the 2026 Utah Tech Week debrief, where hosts and participants will come together to figure out how to make next year even better. 

As I was filling out the pre-debrief survey, I just had to stop and say it:

I love Utah Tech Week.

I remember years ago seeing Trent Mano’s post announcing the whole thing. He’d gone to LA, saw what their tech week looked like, came home, bought the domain, and announced it the next day. From the moment I saw that post, I knew I wanted in.

So that first year I co-hosted two events: 
A Web3 in 2023 panel with Krystee Miller, Derek Wride, and Nicki Sanders. 

and an Assumptions and Risk workshop with Connor McLeod and Jacob Crockett

The next year, I co-hosted three events: 
AI acceleration - using AI to map assumptions with Lucy Harrison, 
a PMF panel with Jennifer Moore, 
and a strategic foresight working session with Christopher Federer (which somehow I have 0 pics of)

The next year I didn’t run anything of my own. I just showed up as a volunteer and spent the week helping where I could. 

And this year, I co-hosted one event. Vibe Mania with Krystee Miller and it was a huge success.

4 years and honestly it has been life changing. 

But the best part has never been the events. It’s been the people. Meeting new people that turned into true friends. Collaborators who turned into business partners. Individuals who became customers. 

So may people who have changed the direction of my life and I met them because of Utah Tech Week. 

So thank you Trent Mano for imagining what could be possible, and thanks to Kyle Spencer and the rest of the team for making it happen every year.

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cmeo-labs

voyantai

productinnovationlab

theory-of-anything-podcast

wow3

Utah Tech Week

Pre-seed investor/GP @ Convoi Ventures

Head of Product | UX Strategist | Designer | All the things

Founder & CEO @ CPAI - Crypto Tax Intelligence

Blockchain & Crypto Tech/Strategy Leader and Consultant | Engineering Leadership at Anchorage Digital

AI, GTM, and Product at SageCreek.ai and SageCreek Partners

fixing the hiring bottleneck for home services || ask me for my cookie recipe

CEO at Voyant AI | Driving Enterprise AI Adoption | From Readiness to Deployment

Chief Product Officer | Board President | Keynote Speaker | Community Builder

I share tips and tricks for strategists working in Experiential Learning industries.

Helping others buy or try campervans Operations | Strategy | Events

Most of the crap in your backlog isn't worth building. 
And AI is about to make that problem a whole lot worse.

I know that sounds harsh but it's true.

According to the product analytics company Pendo, close to 80% of features in the average software product are rarely or never used. 

Now hand your team AI coding tools and watch what happens. They will build faster. If they are smart and have good fundementals, it could be way faster. 

Oh YAY, now you are building more things your customers dont want. 

So instead of using AI to continually think of new things to add to your product, figure out how to eliminate more out of your backlog. 

Then you can truly focus on things that bring impact and value. 

The teams winning with AI aren't the ones generating the most code. They're the ones who figured out what not to build, and then used AI to build the right things really well.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi 👋 I am Cameo
▶ Helping startups fast-track product success! 💡

All these data centers will be worth it, right?

Claude code can’t fix everything!

That was my takeaway from yesterdays The AI Collective Utah Claude Code event (sponsored generously by Anthropic) 

Josh Dennis did a fantastic job demonstrating how his company is using Claude code to build their customers custom marketing solutions. 

But then I got home and noticed I had this enormous chocolate blob on my shirt, which means I was talking to people and networking with people all night with this enormous chocolate blob on my shirt, and Claude didn’t do one damn thing to fix it. Seriously what’s even the point of AI?

So as much as Claude has improved and changed my life, it hasn’t figured out how to eliminate my remarkable ability to embarrass myself. 🤦‍♀️

Thanks to Leslie Koch and the rest of the amazing AI Collective on a great event. The chocolate cookies were delicious even if I’m not sure if they were worth it.

SheTech Explorer Day is a full day experience designed to expose teenage girls to the possibilities of working in technology.

This year that meant 3,500 girls from across Utah coming together in one place. And let me tell, that is a lot of teenage girls.

I was grateful for the opportunity to host an AI workshop with Leslie Koch and The AI Collective. 

Even though research shows that women are adopting AI at a slower pace than men, I was pleasantly surprised to see how engaged and thoughtful these young women were about AI and how they are using it in their day to day. 

Thank you to Cydni Rogers Tetro, Kristin Wright and the whole team at Women Tech Council for creating such a critical annual event for our girls. 

I believe it doesn’t only change the trajectory for the girls who attend, but it changes the perspective for any adult who gets to be there as a mentor or volunteer.

Growth Marketing & AI Strategist | B2B, Creator and Social Marketing | Ex-TelevisaUnivision, CNN, HBO

The AI Collective

Growth Leader| AI Women Power List | 3× CEO & Co-Founder | Board Director | Investor | xSwire Coca-Cola | xDisney

Programs Director at Women Tech Council

Women Tech Council

$14 billion can buy a lot of things. But apparently it can't buy your way into AI leadership.

In this week's Build Signal, I break down how Mark Zuckerberg's record-breaking investment in Scale AI and its founder, Alexandr Wang, has unraveled in less than a year.

I think this matters for anyone building in AI right now because the core mistake is one I see constantly: Confusing expertise in one area with the ability to lead the whole thing.

Read it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

There's a specific type of mistake that executives keep making when hiring or promoting AI leadership. They find someone who is clearly brilliant, cle

Open article: The Most Expensive Hiring Mistake in AI History by Cameo Doran • 4 min read

The Most Expensive Hiring Mistake in AI History

Say it with me:
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.
It’s dumb to build without talking to customers.

This year you are going to see this argument a lot: “Software is so easy now, so the constraint moved to marketing.” Or sales. Or distribution.

Nope!
If you’ve been building for months and haven’t talked to a single customer, the constraint didn’t move anywhere. You’re just doing it wrong.

CB Insights analyzed 431 VC-backed startups that shut down since 2023. The number one root cause? 43% failed due to Poor product-market fit, and two-thirds of those were early-stage companies that never found a market at all. 

These weren’t teams that had a marketing problem. They had a “We spent a boatload of VC money and we still built the wrong thing” problem.

Vibe coding and agentic development can be a trap if you’re not careful. It feels so easy and productive while you are building that you never stop to ask whether anyone cares. 

You can ship in days features that used to take weeks and mistake speed and velocity for validation.

A product that’s easy to market doesn’t happen because you figured out distribution after the fact. 
It happens because you solved a problem that actually matters to real people, in a way that resonates with how they think about it. 

That requires thoughtful discovery and customer work. 

Knowing what to build is still the whole game. The speed at which you can generate code doesn’t change that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi 👋 I am Cameo Doran 
I help your org move faster by identifying the right thing to build the first time.

It sure is easy to start things 

And vibe coding is like magic.
New project? Ten minutes and you've got a working prototype. You get the dopamine hit and start to think you a genius.

Now all you have to do it polish it, publish it, and promote it, right?

Except you said that about the last four projects too. And the six before that. And you've never done anything with them either. lol

Starting has always been the easiest thing. No matter how many times you see hyperbole that says the first step is the hardest, it's actually continuing to take step after step that's really hard.

LLMs make it easier than ever to start.
You better get damn good at finishing.

”Who is a woman who's made an impact on your career? Celebrate her with a post or video.”

I’m sure you’ve seen this prompt from LinkedIn for International Women’s Day. 

Yeah, That’s nice. Go ahead and do that.
But don’t pretend it’s anything other than being performative. It’s weak sauce.

Women don’t need more celebration or more empowerment. We don’t even need more mentorship.

We need to get paid. 

We need sponsorship. We need partnership.
We need more promotion. And we need more investment. 
We need to get funded and we need to get elected to office. 

Anything else is just lip service.

Anthropic wants you afraid. 

They released this chart last week.
And if you are in the blue zone, your job is disrupt-able with AI. 

But look at it carefully. The blue is what AI could theoretically do. The red is how people are actually using AI. 

That gap is massive. For industries supposedly facing replacement within 12 months, real adoption sits at 10-20% of potential. And that is across every category.

This matches what I see with every client. There is a high desire to adopt AI. But organizations don’t have the capability to execute on it.

I think this chart tells more truth than Anthropic meant. We are nowhere near the disruption that they are selling. The organizations aren’t ready.

The savviest companies aren’t just buying AI tools. They’re doing the change management work to make sure people actually use them.

I’m partnering with Voyant AI on executive training built around exactly that. Drop a comment or message me if you want details.

Hey Anthropic, where's the data?

I'm sure by now you've seen these charts. 
The first is the radar graph Anthropic released with their labor market report last week. 
The second is a bar chart version that Peter Walker made by extrapolating values off that radar graph, because that was literally the only way to get the numbers.

I went and read the full report. And guess what?
Other than computer/math and a passing mention of office & admin, they don't publish the actual percentages for any of the occupational categories. 
Not anywhere in the report in the report, not in the appendix and not in a supplementary table.

Interesting... The only place that info appears is in that unlabeled spider chart. 👀 

The entire point of this paper is introducing a new metric called "observed exposure" that they want researchers and policymakers to adopt as a framework for tracking AI's labor market impact. 

They go out of their way to describe their methodology. They make a big deal of how they came up with their unemployment analysis. So it's super baffling that the central finding of the paper doesn't provide any actual numbers. It's almost like it's all made up.

The report still tells an important story though. There iss a massive gap between what AI can theoretically do and what the vast majority of organizations are actually doing with it. 

If you're an executive trying to figure out how to close it, send me a DM.

Your developers aren't the problem. Your decisions are.

I sat in a meeting last month where a CEO realized his CTO and head of product had been building toward a different vision from his for five months. He thought they were close to release, but now he's looking at something that is likely to miss the mark.

This kind of thing happens all the time.
In this week's newsletter I talk about the 6 decision that would have caught and prevented this problem early.

The single biggest factor in whether a project succeeds or fails isn't methodology, team size, or technology. It's how fast leadership makes decisions

70% of Software Projects Fail. Here Are the 6 Decisions That Beat the Odds

Have you heard that Spotify's engineers haven't written a single line of code in months?

A lot of CEOs are seeing that headline and now they are mad at their teams. 
Why can't their team do that? 

They want their developers using AI that effectively. Hell, they want their whole company using AI that effectively.

They want to achieve what Spotify has, and they're looking around wondering who to blame. And they should want that. But most of them aren't being honest about why they don't have it.

Spotify didn't just hand their engineers AI tools one day and watch magic happen.  This isn't a bunch of schmucks who got lucky with AI. They worked for years on this foundation first. 

- clean data 
- clear processes 
- reliable architecture
- consistant standards

So when AI showed up, it had something to work with.

But at most companies, it's the opposite. Their data is a mess, and their processes are fragmented. Nobody's following the same playbook because there isn't one. And now they've dropped AI in the middle, and they're wondering why it's not performing miracles

So before you get mad at your team for not being Spotify, ask yourself what foundation they are working with.

How important is AI accuracy?

It really depends on what you are using it for. 
If you're generating marketing copy or brainstorming product names, close enough might be fine. Nobody dies if your tagline is a little off.

But 40 million people are using ChatGPT Health every day to decide whether they need to go to the ER.

And according to a new study in Nature Medicine, the results are abysmal. 

ChatGPT Health failed to recommend emergency care in over half of actual emergencies. Among a host of other issues, It told patients with impending respiratory failure to wait 24-48 hours instead of going to the emergency room.

and the suicide crisis safeguards didnt perform any better. In some cases, when patients described specific plans for self-harm, the crisis banner didn't appear at all.

We keep hearing that speed and scale are the metrics that matter. But speed without accuracy is worthless when the situation is life or death. 

And remember this is the same systems that the US government is going to let make autonomous decisions...

What are you willing to sacrifice to make a good impression? 

If you're like me, you get daily reminders from LinkedIn about how important it is to have a verification badge. 

Oh, and how exciting! It's free! 

I have spoken out several times about LinkedIn’s verification service, and the dark patterns they use in promoting it and how unnecessarily invasive it is, but I honestly didn’t realize the full horror of what they are doing 

This article is a pretty shocking breakdown of what they are asking you to give up to get that blue badge, and "make a stronger Impression"

I highly recommend you read it. A lot of the info in the article is specific to the EU and rules like GDPR, but if you're American, you don't even get that protection, so it is even more horrifying.
https://lnkd.in/gguNZ53v

Is it worth it to you? Its a hell no for me. 
Also LinkedIn, I get plenty of profile views, even without verification, thank you very much.

Nano Banana 2 dropped today and it is so impressive! 

But damn my productivity took a hit today.

I am a big fan of leaders being willing to take risks and make mistakes.

But also, this seems egregious for someone in this role.

The Director of AI Safety at Meta just let an AI agent delete her entire inbox. 
She told it “confirm before acting.” It did not confirm. It just deleted everything. 

She had to physically run to her computer to disable it.
She called it a “rookie mistake.” 

But she is the person Meta hired specifically to make sure AI doesn’t do things it’s not supposed to do. That’s the whole job.

I don’t want to pile on her personally. She has gotten plenty of that, including from Elon Musk.

But the lesson here is that if the head of AI alignment can lose control of her agents, what does that mean for the rest of us handing AI access to our business systems and customer data?

The answer isn’t to stop using the tools. But you best make damn sure you are taking the guardrails a lot more seriously than most people currently are.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi 👋 I’m Cameo. I turn AI pilots into production software for companies that can’t afford to get it wrong.

Investor

Todo Cloud, an Appigo Productivity product

Board Member

As CEO of Appigo, I work with my team across all functions of the company.  Todo is a top-selling todo list and productivity app for power users and teams.  We have nearly 100M tasks tracked on our platforms and users in nearly every country of the world.

Gears Sports

Strategic Advisor

Nerd United

I left my semi-retirement in January to start a new gig with my fellow nerd Tom Karren and its called Nerd United.  We're building a whole suite of block-chain enabled applications that will bring the power of crypto and decentralized systems to the world.  Many people have a legit criticism about crypto that it isn't really being used, its only being traded and speculated.  Well, we are changing all that.  We're doing a bunch of really awesome, world-changing projects like:  blockchain gaming, green energy mining, crypto banking and especially developer tools based on blockchain.  This brings crypto in the REAL WORLD. 

In a scant 90 days we've hired and brought on 90 devs and tech professionals who are among the best people I've ever worked with. A seriously rockstar team working on our crypto and web3 initiatives.  We're building out about 10 projects simultaneously that each has a world-changing potential.  Message me if you're interested in joining a really cool team that is dedicated to web3 tech and using it to improve the whole world.

President at Nerd United

SolutionStream

We started SolutionStream in 1996 to deliver high-end programming capability and systems.  Since then we've done projects for many companies large and small like Novell, FranklinCovey, Valero, Excelon, FinancialFusion and more.  

Designing and developing an online application is a complex process-- and the amount of failed projects and frustrated customers confirms that fact.  Over the years we have developed a software methodology that allows us to design, develop, and deliver these systems in a very affordable, practical way.  And the number of happy customers of ours confirms that!

We offer our customers a complete solution to their online needs ranging from strategy and analysis to development, database work, and implementation.  

Here are just a few success stories over the past few years that include edtech and e-commerce builds:

‣ For Western Governors University, we built an online strategy, assisted in pioneering a competency-based online platform, and executed on software systems to help achieve 60k online enrollments.

‣ At BYU-I, we provided an executive and strategic direction for their Online Scheduling Management (OMS) and the Educational Position System (EPS) which increased student retention and post-graduation success.

‣ Working with Young Living Essential Oils, a successful company with millions of customers in the essential oil industry, they found themselves with an outdated user experience. As this was limiting their growth, we rebuilt their entire system while it was running, and provided them with next-generation technology. These strategies allowed them to continue their double-digit customer growth.

‣ Extra Space Storage, the 2nd largest storage company in the US, engaged our services to reduce their call center load, provide increased mobile reservations, and minimize unconverted site exits. We implemented best practices in the user experience and updated their design approach and technology to solve their challenges.

Founder

Peak Venture Capital (Peak Ventures)

Advisory Board Member

ATL Technology

Chief Technology Officer for this high-tech manufacturer responsible cables, connectors and wiring assemblies.  I was responsible for all systems, integrations, ERP, and management of IT personnel.  This position required a high degree of interaction and integration with our subsidiaries in Taiwan and mainland China.

Chief Technology Officer

NuSkin International

Directed all desktop and web development efforts at NuSkin on a team of 15 people.  We build their first e-commerce system, integrated to SAP, built much of BigPlanet's offering.

Manager, Application Development

LDS Church

Programmer

Hi, I’m Travis. I'm a tech expert with over two decades of experience in the custom software field. I help founders and CEOs dramatically improve the trajectory of the businesses they're growing. My decades of experience and success and failure in the business world, my favorite tools and softwares, my connections and network.... it's all yours when we're doing coaching. 

In 1996, as a Java developer, I co-founded SolutionStream to solve the consulting industry problem by *actually* getting things done on time and on budget. 

SolutionStream is a custom software development provider for medium to large companies, organizations, and higher ed. learning institutions.

Some of our clients include Panasonic, Western Governors University, Overstock.com, and Fidelity Investments.

I started SolutionStream to ensure custom software projects are complete, both on-time and on-budget. I found that too many IT departments and consulting companies couldn’t get the job done.

Viewing this gap, I had to make a critical change in the industry, and that’s when I discovered my mission: to deliver quality custom software projects through excellence of process, people, and technology. 

My team specializes in solving some of the most challenging problems, which can include: finding top people, cutting-edge technology architecture, building clean code, tight integrations, and custom builds. 

Our SolutionMap process removes the uncertainty and risk from custom projects and allows us to deliver excellent solutions.

I'm passionate about understanding and solving companies’ critical technology objectives.  
I understand how developers, software, and technology play a significant role in the workforce. I also help CTOs and CMOs meet their strategic technological objectives.  

I know that when a company has the right leadership, a top mix of teams, and the best software and processes put in place, they can beat their competition ethically and strategically.

You’ll find that we are more than a software development company. We are an energetic team that provides personal, ongoing, and transparent interaction with every single client.

And, we love what we do.

Want to learn more? Please reach out.

I’d love to know how I can help you meet your goals.

Travis Cook

My wife’s health on this Bali trip hasn’t been what we hoped.

I don't post much about it, but she’s recovering from radiation and brain surgery on a dangerous meningioma tumor.

We thought Bali would be a calm place to heal.

But the scooters, fear of getting sick, and lingering recovery anxiety have made parts of this trip really stressful for her.

And when she’s stressed… I feel it too.

It’s forced both of us to learn some things.

She’s learning breathwork and how to calm her nervous system.

I’m learning that I can’t actually help her if I’m stuck in my own head, sad or frustrated about how things “should” be.

I’m realizing my role here is smaller than I think.

Like an ant trying to understand the whole universe.

I don’t control outcomes.

I just control how present, steady, and calm I choose to be.

Trying my best to do that!

Any advice for me?

Investor | Strategic Advisor | Multiple Exits | Obsessed with Cars and Traveling | Want coaching on your business? Book a call below

The first month of 2026 has taught me a very important lesson.

You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

A few years ago, I met a guy who had hit rock bottom.

Messy divorce. Lost his job. Drinking problem. No clear direction.

I wanted to help.

So I came up with a plan:

I’d buy a truck.

He’d take jobs, pay it off over time.

We both win.

At first, he said all the right things:

“I’m grateful.”
“This is my fresh start.”
“You’re changing my life.”

But nothing changed.

Weeks went by. No jobs. And no payments.

Then he asked for a $1,000 loan. I gave it to him.

He said it was for "expenses related to work".

It wasn’t.

I had given him a credit card for truck expenses such as fuel, maintenance, and repairs.

Soon, charges started showing up that had nothing to do with the truck.

Still, I stayed patient.

I wanted to believe he would change...

But on Christmas, I found out he’d driven the truck across the country to Georgia without permission, without paying me back, without even dropping a message.

When I asked him to bring the truck back, he refused.

It took over a month of fighting to get the truck returned. I even had to threaten to call the cops and have him charge with Grand Theft Auto.  Not the game version.

Now, the same person who once thanked me sees me as his enemy.

That’s the cost of helping no one warns you about.

Some people don’t need opportunities.

They need accountability, and they’ll resent you for providing it.

Helping is good. But boundaries are non-negotiable.

My mind is blown. This weekend I set up OpenClaw for one of my businesses.

Not theoretically. Not as a demo. I actually installed it, wired it into the company, and onboarded it the way I would a new employee.

I gave it context about the business. Priorities. Constraints. What matters and what doesn’t. I even gave it a name — Nigel — partly as a joke, partly because once you see it work, it stops feeling like software.

Then I did the uncomfortable thing.

I gave it access to my website, Slack, customer support history, and Apple Connect. With one rule: draft everything, change nothing without approval.

What happened next forced me to rethink how small a “small team” can be.

Within MINUTES, it had read 500 historical customer support tickets and drafted responses to the open ones. It audited the website, flagged weak copy, compared positioning against competitors, and suggested SEO improvements. It reviewed 88 WordPress plugins, prioritized what was necessary, removed outdated ones, backed up the site, and deleted 9,000 spam comments that had accumulated over time.

Then it moved to product analytics — downloads, retention curves, crash data, revenue trends — and proposed a structured plan for improving onboarding, tightening ASO, and coordinating fixes with the dev team.

This wasn’t hype. It was operational output.

It did a week's worth of worth IN MINUTES.

I couldn’t be more energized about what this means for this particular business. The leverage is real. The time compression is real. Weeks of managerial cleanup collapsed into a single focused session.

But here’s the part that stuck with me. And scared me.

I can see a clear line of sight to how tools like this eliminate entire categories of work — including parts of mine.

That’s not dystopian. It’s arithmetic.

The question isn’t whether AI will shrink companies. The question is whether leaders will adapt their teams fast enough to expand what those companies are capable of.

For me, this isn’t about downsizing. I’m already lean. It’s about upgrading the people I have and redefining what output looks like. If each person becomes dramatically more leveraged, the ceiling changes.

I’m now looking at every business I own and asking the same question: where can we hand off coordination, analysis, and first drafts to an agent — and reserve human time for judgment?

The disruption is obvious. So is the opportunity.

We’re not entering a future of marginal productivity gains.

We’re entering a future where clarity of direction becomes more valuable than hours worked.

Last month, I moved to Bali with my family for 3 months.

And it’s quietly challenging how I think about success, comfort, and pace.

5 cultural differences that caught me off guard:

1) Rules vs Awareness

In the US, order comes from rules.
Lines. Lanes. Signs. Someone telling you what to do.

In Bali, order comes from attention.
No lanes. Scooters everywhere. Dogs on the road. Somehow… It works.

People don’t follow rules.
They watch each other.

2) Hurry vs Flow

Americans move like time is chasing them.
Fast walks. Faster decisions. Even vacations are optimized.

Bali moves… when it moves.
Traffic crawls. Meals stretch. Rain decides the schedule.

Nothing feels rushed.

Except for your patience in the first week.

3) Professional vs Friendly

Every time we go to a restaurant here the waiters and servers want to take my two year old grandson on an adventure around the facility.

This totally took me off guard at first. 

But now I think it’s adorable. And so neat that people are so nice and trusting here that that kind of thing isn’t just tolerated - it’s expected.

4) The Clock vs The Day

Back home, the clock runs the show.

Meetings at 9. Lunch at 12. Gym at 5.

Here, the day has opinions.

Rain changes plans. Traffic rewrites schedules. Nobody apologizes.
Time bends, and everyone adapts.

People are so chill and I love it.

5) System Trust vs People Trust

Americans trust systems.
Processes, rules, enforcement, paperwork.

Balinese trust people.
Eye contact. Gestures. Reading the room.

One culture builds guardrails.
The other builds instincts.

I can't decide which one is better.

But switching between them makes you realize something uncomfortable:

A lot of what we call “order” is just fear of uncertainty dressed up as efficiency.

PS – I offer free consultation calls for business owners feeling stuck. If you book a call this month, you’ll get to see the amazing view out of my window.

Check out the link in bio or just DM me for more details.

All you people who are trying to grow their LinkedIn account. Know this one thing. 

You might be posting over and over about your business, what you’re selling and how awesome and smart you are. 

It doesn’t matter. 

People connect with people. And humans want stories. They want a little drama. They want something real. 

So if you’re just talking about your biz and your expertise only, you need to level up by being real and connecting with the actual people. 

And if you really want to level up ask Ryan Cook to write a post or two for you. He interviews you and pulls the interesting story out. 
He’s a gifted writer already.  

And so it’s a great combo here on LinkedIn. You get to tell the real story of you plus occasionally pitch your biz.  Give it a try.  Or don’t. But at least stop talking about your pitch and start telling the story of you.

I never thought these words would escape my mouth… I love the DMV.

I know it’s used as the butt of many jokes and the example of inefficiency and torture.

But honestly the Utah DMV specifically is a breeze compared to what I’m experiencing right now in Bali. 

We came on Friday, 90 minute drive, well before the close just to find out they would not print a new ticket because they were already too many people in line. 

Turned us away. 
90 minutes back home, waste of an entire day.

Came first thing Monday morning because now we’re so smart. The system is down and now there are 250 people in line ahead of us already. System finally comes up and it’s madness and we’re literally going to spend another 6 to 7 hours here in immigration to get Visa renewed.

Two entire days.

And it’s ver hot. 

So next time you are frustrated at a couple hours of the DMV remember that it can be much worse!

taplio

The Battle

Cameo Doran

Travis Cook

Followers

Posts

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Performance ScoreCameo Doran's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreTravis Cook's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Cameo Doran

Travis Cook

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Cameo Doran's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreTravis Cook's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreCameo Doran's LinkedIn Performance