- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KRGYXSAR08RPXRN2WWVEMQVH (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Michael Houck: Hey, I appreciate it since I know you’re gonna be out for like the next 10 days. So I really do appreciate it. Ben Ornstein: I wanna make sure everyone’s okay, has clear directions. I’m probably overvaluing myself in my head, but that’s okay. Michael Houck: No, no, no, you’re taking ownership, which is good. So I know it’s great. I guess, I just talked to Blake. He’s really excited. He’s ready to jump in. He said he feels prepared. Obviously, things will come up. But I guess just maybe check in with him today or tomorrow and just see how he’s doing, getting ready. I’m going to drop those messages in the channels in an hour or two. But it’ll be nice, I think, to get that off your plate so we can focus on the highlights. Leverage stuff when you get back. Ben Ornstein: It’s going to be amazing because if I can just focus my full effort on like perfecting these guys, like it’s they’re going to get good and it’s going to be faster. Yeah. Michael Houck: And also we’ll be able to scale to more of them quickly, too. So. Right. OK, what’s on your mind? What should we chat through today? Ben Ornstein: So first was the so so Trent is basically built. Maybe you’re seeing some The engagements. I don’t I’m still trying to like tweak the He’s flagging keywords and like He says there’s like, you know, he’s looking at the the client’s keywords and flagging when something is um, like I’m trying to pick one up. For example, he sees like a certain keyword that is trending but I don’t exactly know the logic behind why he’s doing that yet. And it’s so general where he’s looking at a keyword, so it’s not even that helpful. Michael Houck: It’s not like a news story, like a topic or like a viral post or something. It’s just like a key phrase. Ben Ornstein: Because it’s looking at keywords, but then it’s also doing what Casper was doing when he was looking at specific stories. And the ones that Ben Gusper was actually responding to lately have been really good from the workflow that we had before. But that obviously was only, that was not social. That was just looking at press. I consolidated that into one. Ben Ornstein: I saw. Michael Houck: Yeah, I saw that. That’s smart. Yeah, I think that there’s going to be some trial and error as we learn the social side, because it’s obviously very different. But yeah, I’ve been taking a look I can see you going back and forth with him on some stuff too. So what can I do to, I don’t know, put us in a position where when you’re out, he’s doing things that are useful, basically. Ben Ornstein: That’s, I mean, that’s what I’m like trying to spend as much time as possible on. I’m trying to get them in an autonomous state or as close to possible. That’s like when I’m not doing studio stuff, this is what I’m doing. I’m like tweaking around, looking at the infra, In terms of what you can do, not much, I don’t think. The one that would be helpful right now is on the proactive engagement side. So today, for the first time, the 11 a.m. Cron, which is the second, where he does a second pass, looking at any posts from 8 a.m. On, it worked. He found, Trent found more posts, put it back in the same threads, exactly as I’d expect. And there were new posts that were found for each, for most clients. Some weird bugs on a couple of them that I don’t understand that I’m still looking into. But like in general, it is working. Which is great, that’s great progress. Michael Houck: Yeah, that’s good. Ben Ornstein: What I was chatting with Venus about this morning was, So the reason I created this in the first place, as I said in the chat, was 7.30 a.m. Was because that was when she was just starting engagements, because she kind of had to to get through all of them through the day. If these properly work, we could push both of these back. And that’s what I said in the chat as well. The biggest issue is that for Ben, he needs, for Ben Gusberg, he needs us to be logged in from 9am And then right like then he has someone other VA logging into his account by then. Okay, so that’s like the sole constraint in terms of like getting the engagements out. And then I guess for well, that’s not the only one. Until we’re autonomous with facet, we’ve been checking in with Zara and because she’s in the UAE, we’re trying to get those done early in the morning as well. So those are like the two constraints that we’re working Zahra said, I’m getting closer each time when I’m giving them to her. So we’re almost autonomous. Michael Houck: Yeah, I think it’s likely that we will get more requests like that, like those timing related requests. So we should make sure that there’s some layer of this workflow that allows us to plug and play when different people should be accounted for. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, and I guess the biggest issue is if we are doing those early, because how it works right now, Casper at 7.30 is looking for posts for the last seven hours. So like, that’s not great, right? Like when he’s doing that first pass, we’re not getting much engagement, who’s posting at 1 a.m. Eastern, you know? So there’s like the timing gap, that’s the biggest issue with that for those earlier clients. Michael Houck: Our token costs for this, like are we under control? Is it, how much are we spending right now? Ben Ornstein: We’re spending a decent amount. It keeps, it’s re-upped a few times recently, like more frequently. Michael Houck: We’re doing it in like $50 increments, right? Ben Ornstein: $50 increments. Michael Houck: How many $50 increments you're going through per week? Just rough. Ben Ornstein: The past few days, because I've been like talking with them more in Slack, it's been much higher. I don't want to give you a wrong number. Let me like, actually. Michael Houck: Is it like three? Michael Houck: Is it Oh, no. Ben Ornstein: So I think like yesterday, cause I was going back and forth. We had two within the same day yesterday. That was the first time ever. It's never been done. $50 increments. Then it’s re-upping and putting. I will eventually analyze how to minimize that because it’s got, yeah. Michael Houck: Unless we’re much higher than we are right now, I’m not super worried about it. Higher priority is making sure the system works right. We can worry about, I also think that like optimization could be an area where Raphael sort of uses his like engineering principle expertise to come in and help. So for now, let’s just focus on making the system as good as it can for users. Ben Ornstein: We’re not burning like tens of thousands of dollars, I promise. I promise that if we were getting to that point, I would have flagged as much, but just wanted to check. We may be at like 1000 in the last month. Michael Houck: Okay, that’s fine. That’s totally fine. Ben Ornstein: And that might be too high. That might be high. Michael Houck: I’m Yeah, don’t don’t even don’t even worry about looking into it more levels seem fine. I’m not worried about it. Okay. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Yeah, we’re not blowing A ton of money on that. But so what I wanted to try for fixing this tomorrow was shifting back the time horizons, because the 11 a.m. Run did work. I could push everything back or we could just because it’s like working, we can keep it the same and then I could tweak it afterwards. I think that’s probably the better approach. Michael Houck: Yeah, I agree. I think that makes sense. Let’s just do that for now. That’s fine. Ben Ornstein: OK, cool. So that was really the only on the Asian stuff. I’m gonna continue tweaking for the next couple of days. One of the things I was gonna talk about is I gave Raphael DM access to all three agents. So he has that. And then the other thing that we should probably do is get him that SSH, get him SSH’d in. Michael Houck: Yeah, let’s do that today. Can you send a group chat message in the megaphone channel or not a microphone channel, just in DM? And we’ll, we’ll get a time set up. But does he know what each of their roles are? Like, does he understand the system, how it works? Ben Ornstein: Probably very high level, but I would imagine not, not so much. Michael Houck: Okay. I’ll, I’ll give him context on that when we, when we meet later. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Okay. So that was one of the things I was talking about. He gave him the access. I wanted to confirm that he, I know I didn’t send my one-on-one thing. Sorry. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Oh, it’s fine. Ben Ornstein: but I did write some stuff down. So he, yeah, I’m waiting for him to hear back, waiting to hear back from him to make sure like he does have that access. We’ll do the SSH stuff. I’ll take a second pass at those post onboarding call docs. I generally know what we need. I just, I threw it into AI and then started focusing on other things, which was not great. Michael Houck: So- No, it’s fine. I figured as much. Yeah, it’s just about making them, it’s a source of truth for strategy. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, and I understand the goal that we’re going for here. Michael Houck: Yeah, we just want to make sure that when they complain, we’re like, hey, you agreed to this. This is what we’re doing. It’s not our fault. We’re not missing the mark. It’s your fault for changing the goalposts, basically. Ben Ornstein: Yep, absolutely. On the newsletter side, I will get the next week’s 2 to 10 finalized. I’ll have in the how to Pick stuff, it’ll be not as recent content, because obviously I’ll be completing it by tomorrow. But that’ll be in. And then so we said that I don’t need to worry about the next one, because I’ll finalize that before I get back. Michael Houck: Yeah, I’ll just send that on Wednesday that week. It’s fine. Ben Ornstein: Perfect. We also need one more viral examples. So because because for next week, the last one ended this week, I was a week off in my head. So I’ll get that done before tomorrow, too. Cool. So I’ll message you when that’s done. The only thing on the client side, Zara sent me a message this morning. She was confused why a post went out because it was, we haven’t built into the whole technoethics thing. So she was like confused about that. She was also confused about the reposting, why it auto reposted, but I told her, like it just gives it another chance in the feed basically. And she was cool with that when I told her that. So I think the biggest issue is like the David’s communication. Like I don’t understand. Michael Houck: So David is, David runs a ghostwriting agency. Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay. He runs a crypto specific ghostwriting agency and he does everything through Telegram. Which makes sense. Crypto guy. Yeah. Right. I have a, we basically white labeled him, right? For our crypto clients. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Oh, interesting. Michael Houck: And I have a telegram DM with him that he responds to very quickly, but he does not respond in Slack very quickly. So if you need me to get in touch with him in a timely way, just like DM me and tell me to reach out to him and I will. Ben Ornstein: Got it. So yeah, that was like my, the communication was just part of an issue I was thinking. I even considered saying like, Should we consolidate with, with Jacob for him? Michael Houck: Because the crypto native stuff is most important thing to these crypto people. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, makes sense. But yeah, so Zara was like, where is the short form content? And so I messaged David, I was like, I thought we were gonna have more by now. I don’t know what the holdup is, or what the issue is there. Michael Houck: But are we doing are we doing too much long form stuff for him? Is that the deal? Ben Ornstein: Well, so it was long form, and then Zara was like, hey, we just want short form. And then so since we kind of agreed upon that and talked about it, and David is aware of that, I don’t know where the new batch of content is. Michael Houck: OK, I’ll check in with him on the next batch. Ben Ornstein: Cool. Michael Houck: I was asking about next batch for Rafi with more short form. We have an TA on that. We should ideally be in a standard workflow. Okay. I just DMed him. Cool. Ben Ornstein: The other thing was that in edits required, and he may not just be familiar with the process. Maybe like, and this is what I DMed him. There was content in edits required, but like it was just sitting there. So. Michael Houck: He is familiar. He’s just, again, because he operates through Telegram. It’s tough for him to do normal stuff. So we just got to remind him a lot. That’s all. Ben Ornstein: Yep. So I handled those ones for today. And I said, like, and I tagged him, said he would handle going forward because they were simple ones. And yeah, I mean, that’s all I had written down. The other things is just introducing Blake to all the clients. Which you said you’ll handle, which is great. I am going to try to add more detail to that doc. I did provide the whole process for if Michael happens to ask about another post for everyone. So that’s written down. Yeah, and then it’s going to be like, optimizing the bots to get them as close to autonomous as possible. Okay. Michael Houck: Yeah, just let Blake know what he needs to know. And, you know, I’ll be available if needed to placate any clients. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, in terms of the client stuff, I mean, I think that’s it. We’re trying to get scheduled ahead of time. Um with clients um okay I mean if there’s nothing else there’s nothing else no big deal yeah I I’m just trying to think I you know it’s valuable time when I chat with you so yeah of course of course trying to think if there’s anything else to discuss right now no I I think that’s probably it for now I let venus know that like blake would be the main point of contact while I’m out for for anything for her And then if there were any like absolute emergencies, you could reach out to you. I also told her that Raphael would like have access to the bots in a worst case scenario, so. I think things will be in like a serviceable spot. They’re not gonna be optimized, but serviceable. Michael Houck: Okay, so then when you get back, We will, we’re basically just going to go into pretty fast mode. Cause when you’re back, we will have, we will have one month exactly to the day before I am out for those two weeks. I’m not out out. Right. But like, I’m like, yeah. So my goal before then is that we launch the AI voice clone and product pass slash FJ plus what we’re calling it. I have J plus two profounding journey. So that’s like five big launches and each one requires me to build funnels and to build info products and things like that. And it’s also going to require, I mean, it’s not going to require a full team of agents to be built up on day one, but we need them to be built up on day one. So we’re going to do that. We’re going to do that. We’re going to do that. And we need to like, you know, we want some of them probably, right? So what we will need to do, you and me, is just start creating those docs pretty fast when we get back for each one, and then seeing how the process goes with Raphael on executing some of them. Because it would be great if in that month we’re able to have, you know, five successful launches, basically. Ben Ornstein: I was thinking about this more after we talked. I think there’s still a world where it makes sense for Raphael to do the actual building. I’ve really enjoyed it, but I am just meaning, I’m slow. And he knows, he just knows code. The context part, I think we can work through together. And we’ll save cost. Michael Houck: We’ll see. I care about quality more than anything else. I don’t want to launch it. I don’t want it to be some complex process where he builds something, and then you have to redo the whole thing. He hasn’t worked with this stuff as long as you have, but obviously he does have these engineering best practices. He also is a pretty quick learner. Let’s try it out with at least a couple and see how it goes, and then we can make a more long-term structural decision at that point. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Michael Houck: As far as the upcoming launches, when I was talking to Blake, I think it makes sense if he’s able to do well with the megaphone stuff. I think it makes sense for him to sort of fit in as this like account management layer as much as possible across some of them. I think some of them will make more sense to just continue to own as well. But like, you can let me know if there are ones you specifically want to be more involved with or less involved with. That’s up to you. And just feel free to lean on him. So you’re not, I don’t want you to take on like 10 agencies worth of bandwidth because you would, you would die. You know, so. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I wonder. Michael Houck: Use him as more of an active resource than we have in the past, basically. Ben Ornstein: Okay. That sounds good. Yeah, I am. Ideally, most of these things are going to be like the agencies are we still I guess I don’t know all the details about like, I generally understand what the different agencies are. But like, are they going to be similar in the sense of like, are we going to be doing weekly reporting for these guys? And is that going to be like on us? Michael Houck: Yeah, so my guess is that it’ll vary. Right, like with Lore, Emma and her team already handle that, we don’t need to worry about it. With Fulcrum, I imagine Max will give status updates more than, it’s not gonna be like metrics, it’ll be status updates on like where projects are at. With Jolt, we’ll probably have a VA work with Tatum to handle that, right? So we do need to find templatized, scalable, copy-pastable processes across all these, because otherwise we’re gonna, like, I don’t want to have to go out and between now and Q4, hire five or 10 more people to make some big ops team. Like I don’t want to do that. No, right. Ben Ornstein: No, definitely not. Michael Houck: I would, I would imagine that if we are going to launch all of these, we might need one more person. Right. Um, but if we have partners for them, like Emma, Max Tatum, Blakey mall, right? Like if we do that and we have these automated systems and you and Blake are able to sort of do your things around all of them, I don’t anticipate needing to hire a big team. Uh, so we’ll see how that goes, but, um, I would like to avoid that if we can. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. That’ll be interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. Michael Houck: So like, I guess, yeah, my prompt, my prompt for you would basically be think like an engineer, like we need templates, we need systems, we need to think, how do these things scale across five, 10 different businesses in a way that doesn’t add five to 10x more time, it can add, you know, to 2x more time, but it can’t add a linear amount of time. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yep, understood. Okay. Michael Houck: So I’ll be helpful there too. I’m pretty good at doing that kind of stuff, but just as you’re building stuff, just keep that in mind rather than building like one-off relationships between things. Or what have you, just think about like, how does this scale when we have 10 agencies? Ben Ornstein: Yeah. And in terms of how things are getting built, that’s where I think Rafael is going to be like, oh, hey, Ben, you did this. What if we changed it to this process? So it applies to like, those are the things like I feel like someone with an outside perspective, given context, will actually be even more helpful. Michael Houck: And what I think what I would say to you Yes, you’re right, but traditional engineering systems, the code works. You write the code, it does what you say. With these AI systems, you write the code or the MD files, and it interprets what you say. So there’s little nuances like, oh, maybe this is less token efficient, but we’ve seen edge cases where this actually makes it be better. So I’m going to need you to push back on him in those is like, hey, there are some decisions that make sense to stand firm on. And if you guys can’t come to an agreement, loop me in and I’ll make the call basically. Ben Ornstein: Yep. And that’s where the value of me like actually having built these things. Yeah. Correct. I totally see what you’re saying there. Look, I’m pumped about all this. I’ve got so many other things in my head right now getting ready for this. I maybe haven’t been like as excited as I actually am. I’m so pumped about the future of all of this. It’s super exciting, so. Michael Houck: I think we’re gonna meaningfully grow the business over the next six to 18 months. By the end of 2027, I think we’ll be much, much bigger than we are right now. So let’s see how that plays out. Obviously, with AI, the world can change in a week, but I do think our strategy is, at least for the world right now, right now in the foreseeable future, I think it’s a good strategy. So yeah, if you wanna chat more, just any thoughts on your mind before you head out tomorrow, we can put some more time on, that’s totally fine. But if not, then I’ll just, we’ll do the one-on-one Tuesday when you’re back. Ben Ornstein: Sounds good. Michael Houck: Also, I don’t think I’ve said it in a little while. I know I said it originally, but just congrats, man. Enjoy the time. Like, delete Slack. Like, don’t check in. I don’t want to hear from you. Enjoy it. You deserve it. You’ve been working really hard. And it’s a special time, so you guys should, you know, be as present as you can. Ben Ornstein: Thank you. Yeah, I’m going to have to find a way. I may literally just delete the app temporarily. I need to do something because otherwise my brain is going to default to just checking. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: No, I know. I know. Michael Houck: But yeah, Gmail or whatever. Michael Houck: And I’ll see you in a week and a half basically. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I’ll make sure everything is ready to go. And yeah, what, what’s the late I think I may have asked us like three days ago. So sorry if I did. On the acquisition front, I know you sent them docs. And you said maybe they’ve hop on a call or something? Michael Houck: Yes, so I have a call with them on Monday. We have to go through the P&L with their finance team and whatever. So that’s on Monday. So by the time you’re back, I don’t think it’ll be closed by the time you’re back, but I’ll probably have an update on timeline. I again pushed that I want to get this done before I go out and they were like, yeah, we can do that. Ben Ornstein: So, okay, great. So that’s good that, you know, either way, we’ll, we’ll get done by what and that’s first week of July, you said, right? Michael Houck: It’s Okay, then I’m out, quote, unquote, until July 12, Nice. Ben Ornstein: Where are you going again? Michael Houck: Well, I’ll go to New York for a night, getting dinner there was like a 24 hour layover. So, you know, Carly I’ve never been to New York, so I’m gonna show around. Then Nice in France for two nights. Then Provence, Rhone Valley, and Bordeaux for a lot of wine and good food. And then Sardinia for five or six days on the beach before we head back. Ben Ornstein: Oh man, that’s gonna be awesome. Michael Houck: Yeah, I’m pumped. But I wanna make sure we get in good shape, so I’m gonna be grinding pretty hard next month. So when you’re, when you’re back, I’ll be, you know, I’ll be pushing us pretty hard, I think for the next, next month or so. Ben Ornstein: Yep, that’s all good. That’s expected. I’m ready, or I will be ready. Michael Houck: As a result, like, please don’t check in this, this, this week. Ben Ornstein: You will not hear from me, I promise. Michael Houck: All right, man. Well, I will if you want to chat more tomorrow, we can but otherwise, yeah, I’ll see you soon. We’ll talk in Slack Awesome. Ben Ornstein: Sounds great. See ya. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Later, man.