Lazy Leverage

By Jon Matzner and Peter LohmannBusiness

Lazy Leverage episodes

September 29 I Would Not Spend $50,000 on a Front End. (Do This Instead) | Lazy Leverage #128
We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that.
61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/
Jon's Airtable had one job description copied 135 times, once for every row. Some of it was written by people and some by AI summaries feeding off other fields, because whenever somebody needed a new thing they added a column.
Peter runs his Airtable with an iron fist and makes people justify every new field to him personally. Jon lets it sprawl and then goes in with a weed whacker. They land in the same place anyway. Jon tells his one remaining coaching client that he would not put a dime into an application layer right now, and would put all of it into the data underneath.
In this one: why venture-backed companies build for scale first while everyone else builds for whatever answers today's question. The five terms that made this click for Jon, including ETL and reverse ETL. Why Peter's market rent lives in three systems that never update each other, and what an owner sees on the portal when they disagree. Why Jon turned down a real recruiting system a year and a half ago and says he would be in trouble now if he had not. Peter's three rules for a software stack. And the three grand a month hire he thinks non-technical companies are all about to make.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:51 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
03:00 - Why a Data Episode Pays
05:39 - Venture Builds for Scale, You Built for Profit
08:04 - The Same Job Description 135 Times
12:24 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport
13:42 - The Plain English Definitions
15:38 - The Market Rent That Lives in Three Places
19:21 - Do Not Spend 50 Grand on a Front End
22:47 - Why Jon Refused to Buy an ATS
28:11 - All Business Software Is Just a Database
33:35 - Put a Developer on Staff
35:43 - The Five Problems Behind One Good Search
38:06 - Peter's Three Rules for Your Stack
42:58 - Who Gets to Pick the Software

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
Pollan, M. (2008). In defense of food: An eater's manifesto. Penguin.

Quotes Referenced:
Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Peter cites it as the shape he wants for his own three rules.

People & Frameworks Cited:
Source of truth, system of record, and application layer
ETL and reverse ETL
Peter's three rules: limit where data lives, favor open and free APIs, permit no duplication
Policy, process, tech, with tech last
The walled garden
Vectorizing a candidate database so keyword search stops missing people

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Buildium, AppFolio, Rent Vine, Rent Engine, Airtable, Postgres, Zapier, n8n, Make, Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, Slack, Monday.com, HubSpot, JotForm, LeadSimple, Indeed, Zillow, Homes.com, Claude Code, Grok Bot, Fable, Cloudflare Workers, Apify, Service Titan, Salesforce, MCP

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation
👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
51 min
September 24 You Should Be Paying People to Sit Idle. Justin Roff-Marsh. | Lazy Leverage #127
We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that.
61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/
A Formula One pit crew is twenty-two people who work for four seconds a race. Nobody has ever suggested firing most of them, because everybody already knows the crew is there to serve the car. Justin Roff-Marsh's question is why that stops being obvious the second you walk past a customer service desk and catch somebody doing nothing.
Justin has been consulting for thirty years and wrote The Machine, the book Peter read years ago and still goes back to. For two decades he has been working inside Theory of Constraints on the part nobody else built, an application of it for a whole company rather than a factory floor. That work is a mini book now, called Ode to Speed, and Peter and Jon have been quoting it on the show since episode 93. His argument is that most people who read The Goal came away with the wrong lesson.
In this one: why you pick your constraint rather than hunt for it, and why throwing a dart at one beats getting it right. The two numbers Justin says will run any company, throughput per constraint unit and on-time task completion. The black market for tasks that turns up inside every chaotic business. Why a salesperson takes two years to get good when an aircraft engineer takes two months. And Jon saying out loud for the first time that Sagan is pulling AI back to one centralized team, because a manager with a frontier model will optimize their own department at the whole company's expense. Justin's line for that: a three year old without a chainsaw pulls the cat's tail. Give them one and they dissect it.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:41 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
04:17 - Who He Is, and What The Machine Was
06:49 - Why Most People Misread The Goal
10:58 - The Pit Crew That Works Four Seconds
14:58 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport
16:14 - Free Cash Flow, Not Lap Time
18:51 - Every Business Has a Heartbeat
22:10 - Optimize Many Things, Maximize One
27:30 - The Two Numbers That Run a Company
33:38 - The Black Market for Tasks
40:15 - Pick a Constraint and Throw a Dart
47:54 - Pit Crew Behavior and Global Talent
51:25 - Your Salesperson Should Never Open the CRM
57:39 - Three Jobs Every Two Days
1:00:05 - AI Against the Constraint
1:06:49 - Where to Find Justin
1:08:36 - Clock Speed, and the Next Book

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
Roff-Marsh, J. (2015). The machine: A radical approach to the design of the sales function. Greenleaf Book Group Press.
Roff-Marsh, J. (2025). An ode to speed: Why a focus on cost makes organizations weaker, less profitable, and less competitive.
Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (1984). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. North River Press.

People & Frameworks Cited:
Theory of Constraints, and the enterprise-wide application Justin is building
Throughput per constraint unit, subordination, and protective capacity
Suboptimization, and why a local optimum costs the whole system
The black market for tasks, and simmering low-level chaos as a default state
System time versus natural time, which becomes his next book, Clock Speed
Goldratt's rules for embracing a new technology
Isaac Zimmerman and J. Blanton Plumbing in Chicago
George Yamuni and Mender Bath in Melbourne
Adam Smith on the division of labor
The US Marine Corps, where every job is to support the infantry

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Claude, Grok Bot, n8n, CRM, ERP

Related Reading:
An Ode to Speed and the Field Guide, free: https://justinroffmarsh.substack.com/
The episodes that led here: #93, #108, #113, #115 and #123

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Justin Roff-Marsh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinroffmarsh/ | https://x.com/justinroffmarsh | https://ballistix.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
1 hr 19 min
September 15 I Spent $1,300 on Grok Bot in 2 Days (And I'd Do It Again) | Lazy Leverage #126
We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that.
61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/
Jon put a $300 a month Grok Bot subscription on his card and blew through it in three days. The next time he looked he was at $1,300. He had four agents checking four email inboxes every fifteen minutes with a heavy model, feeding it the entire email history each time, which is work a webhook does for free.
Grok Bot spins up its own virtual Linux machine for every agent, so when a tool has no API the agent just clicks around like a person would. That is what the money bought: proof the workflow runs at all. Cleaning it up comes after. Peter comes at the same problem from the other side, three weeks into running Hermes on a VPS wired to his WhatsApp, and opens with the least likely argument on an AI podcast, which is that if you run a real offline business you should be slow to adopt and skepticism is a feature.
In this one: Matzner's Hierarchy of Leverage and the corollary Jon landed on this month, that the bottom rung has its own hierarchy inside it (powerful model with computer use, then cheaper model, then API call, then deterministic code), why the engineers building a direct mail tool used a free open source model to sort interior photos from exterior ones before anything expensive touched the job, why a human labeled test set is the whole ballgame, and why Jon would rather read your sent email than ask you what you do all day.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:55 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
01:38 - What Grok Bot Is, and What OpenClaw Was
04:32 - Be Slow to Adopt
06:31 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport
07:27 - A Virtual Linux Machine for Every Agent
11:53 - Stalin, the Chief of Staff Agent
16:12 - Pointing It at Your Own Models to Cut the Bill
24:12 - Weak Replacement vs Reinvention
31:49 - Everything Is Not an Agent
34:58 - The Hierarchy of Leverage Is Fractal
38:30 - How the $1,300 Actually Happened
41:27 - Cascading Models on a Postcard
46:31 - The Human Labeled Test Set
50:54 - Primary Sources Over Job Descriptions
54:42 - Books We're Reading

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
Carreyrou, J. (2018). Bad blood: Secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup. Knopf.
Grann, D. (2023). The wager: A tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder. Doubleday.
O'Brian, P. (1969). Master and commander. Lippincott.
Forester, C. S. (1937). The happy return. Michael Joseph. (First of the Horatio Hornblower series, published in the US as Beat to Quarters.)

Quotes Referenced:
Bill Gates, on automation: "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."
Elon Musk, on the same trap: "The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist."

People & Frameworks Cited:
Matzner's Hierarchy of Leverage, and the corollary that the technology rung runs fractally inside itself
Zaki, Sagan's President of AI, on training agents to check a live model ranking site before choosing a model
Plato's allegory of the cave, on job descriptions as shapes on the wall
Desire paths and emergent order, and emergent role design
The Tiger tank and Sherman tank maintenance ratio
Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos
OpenRouter's acquisition by Stripe
Peter's Twitter DM funnel, 75 a day parsed into Beehiiv for about $25 every three or four weeks

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Grok, Grok Bot, Grok Heavy, Grok Flash, OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude, Claude Code, Cowork, Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Codex, ChatGPT, GPT-5.6 Luna, GPT-5.6 Sol, OpenRouter, AgentMail, AppFolio, Zillow, Slack, WhatsApp, Todoist, Google Calendar, 1Password, LastPass, Beehiiv, HubSpot, Notion, ClickUp, Zapier

Related Reading:
Jon on what the money actually bought, and the hierarchy inside the hierarchy: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/p/i-spent-1200-in-two-days-on-grokbot

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation

👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
58 min
September 08 My Team Should Feel Threatened | Lazy Leverage #125
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
57 min
September 01 McDonald's Says No to Tic Tacs. You Say Yes to Everything. | Lazy Leverage #124
McDonald's could sell Tic Tacs. People have asked. They could put Monster in a cooler on the counter. They said no to all of it, because the thing has to stay simple, replicable and predictable. Your business says yes.
In this one: the 65 door account Peter turned down over four furnished units, why the operator who once drove Uber to pay the bills still can't say no, and the order Peter runs every exception through: values, policy, process, tech.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:33 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
02:57 - The 65 Door Account Peter Turned Down
06:37 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport
07:30 - The McDonald's Model
11:47 - Why Exceptions Keep Companies Small
14:47 - Clients Versus Customers
18:35 - Chief Context Officer, and Adult Rules
24:05 - Values, Policy, and What to Escalate
29:40 - Buying a Business Is Closing Exceptions
32:58 - Tighten Up a Couple Clicks

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
Warrillow, J. (2011). Built to sell: Creating a business that can thrive without you. Portfolio.
Blanchard, K., & Johnson, S. (1982). The one minute manager. William Morrow.

People & Frameworks Cited:
John Warrillow, Built to Sell, on the difference between clients and customers
Marco Pierre White, on the customer not always being right
Commander's Intent, and CCIR, Commander's Critical Information Requirements
The McDonald's model versus the local generalist
Customer intimacy versus operational excellence and product innovation
EOS, rocks, and the vivid vision
My First Million, and the gentleman's agreement
Crane Breaks

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Notion, Slack, Zapier, AppFolio, Zillow

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation

👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators. Next application window is September 25: https://www.joincrane.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
37 min
August 25 He Had Never Touched Plumbing. Now He's at $6M. | Lazy Leverage #123
JD Beck bought a plumbing company in June 2022 doing about a million dollars a year. He had never touched plumbing. He'd spent his career in trades management, most recently in elevators. This year Mountain Valley will do just under six million.
In this one: the $1,700 hire that turns a five-day permit into a one-day permit, why he can name every technician's average ticket but not where his last call came from, and par pricing, which pays techs half of every dollar above the floor.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:41 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
01:26 - The Buy, and What He Runs Now
05:46 - Why Local Hiring Stopped Working
11:21 - The Permit Coordinator Who Cut Five Days to One
13:20 - Specialization, and Judging on Outputs
15:47 - Optimize Throughput, Not Utilization
19:30 - Maximize EBITDA, Then See
21:37 - The $5 Million Marketing Wall
26:49 - Pick One Channel and Get Good at It
29:48 - Global Talent as a Marketing Advantage
35:36 - Par Pricing, and What Gross Margin Tells You
41:01 - Running OpenClaw on a Plumbing Company
43:12 - Remote Management Is AI Enablement
48:05 - Citizen Soldier

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
Gerber, M. E. (1995). The E-Myth revisited: Why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it. HarperBusiness.
Goldratt, E. M. (1984). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. North River Press.
Roff-Marsh, J. (2015). The machine: A radical approach to the design of the sales function. Greenleaf Book Group Press.

People & Frameworks Cited:
Justin Roff-Marsh, Sales Process Engineering, on optimizing throughput over utilization
Eliyahu Goldratt, and Theory of Constraints
Michael E. Gerber, and the E-Myth
Alex Hormozi, on picking one channel and getting great at it
Isaac Zimmerman, on hiring for the smallest possible jobs
Rich Jordan
John Wilson
Yossi Wachtel, Monkey Wrench Plumbing, Heating, Air & Electric, and "reverse hospitality"
Jameson, the West Coast deck guy, on local content
Par pricing, borrowed from solar sales

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
ServiceTitan, Slack, OpenClaw, Upwork, Google PPC, QuickBooks Online, Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow JD Beck: https://x.com/dirtyhandsops | https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndavidbeck/ | https://www.mtnvalleyplumbing.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
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
52 min
August 18 Giving Everybody Claude Won't Make You Money | Lazy Leverage #122
Electrifying the factory didn't make anyone money. Owners pulled the steam engine out, dropped an electric motor in, and changed nothing else about how the floor was laid out. A Stanford economist wrote the paper on it in 1989, and Jon thinks it's the most useful thing you can read about AI right now.
In this one: why global talent made it to phase two while AI is still stuck at phase zero, what a leasing manager actually does with the two hours AI saves her, and the Fortune 500 that got quoted $80,000 for a single agent.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:29 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
02:05 - Electrifying the Factory Floor
05:48 - Phase One: Global Talent as Lazy Replacement
08:27 - Phase Two: Hiring What You Couldn't Afford
13:17 - AI Is Doing the Same Thing Again
15:24 - Phase Zero: Where AI Actually Is
19:43 - Why Nobody Wants to Redesign the Factory
24:51 - Fantasizing About an AI Native Property Manager
28:34 - The Rolls-Royce Lesson on Domain Knowledge
30:53 - It's 1998 and a Pullback Is Coming
35:56 - The Fortune 500 That Got Quoted $80,000
40:49 - Revenue Growing Agents, and Raising the Bar

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Papers:
David, P. A. (1989). Computer and dynamo: The modern productivity paradox in a not-too-distant mirror. Center for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University.

Books:
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.
Goldratt, E. M. (1984). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. North River Press.

People & Frameworks Cited:
Paul David, Stanford economist, on the productivity paradox
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and the Lindy effect
Eliyahu Goldratt, and Theory of Constraints
Derek Turner
Rolls-Royce, and the aftermarket service gap on its gas turbines
Pets.com
RL Property Management, Peter's company

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Claude Code, Claude Cowork, ServiceTitan, AppFolio, LeadSimple, Airtable, DocuSign, Google Workspace, Notion, Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses

Related Reading:
Jon's newsletter on this exact idea: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/p/you-won-t-make-any-more-money
The 1989 paper: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/268373/

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/| https://x.com/MatznerJon| https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/| https://x.com/pslohmann| https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation

👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators. Next application window is September 25: https://www.joincrane.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW
45 min
August 11 The HR Mistakes That Can Actually Get You Sued | Lazy Leverage #121
Jessica Doyle's CEO and CFO were hand-building the company's reports in Excel. The formulas kept breaking, which meant the owners of the business were the ones fixing them. So Centennial went looking for a teammate who worked opposite hours, and the fix would be waiting before anyone logged on.
In this one: what it takes to run people operations across three companies at once, why HR's love of process makes global hiring feel like breaking a rule, and what changes when a talent leader stops being reactive and starts planning ahead.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:05 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
01:15 - Three Companies, One HR Team
04:14 - What Managers Misunderstand About People
07:50 - The CEO and CFO Were Building the Reports
11:33 - The Prep Cook Model, and Why It Blooms
13:50 - Building Marketing, Then Building HR
17:32 - HR and the Habit of Saying No
21:24 - Start New Concepts or Buy Old Ones
23:42 - Where Are Your Employee Records
26:32 - Advice for HR Leaders Going Global
29:46 - Visit Your Team, It's a Business Expense

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Quotes Referenced:
Jessica Doyle on management: "You're not just managing somebody else's workload. You're managing people's feelings, and people's personal lives."
The leadership framework Jon cites at Sagan: habit one is know and take care of your people, habit two is communicate about performance, positive and negative.

People & Companies Cited:
Centennial Investment Partners, and the three companies Jessica covers: Loved Veterinary Services, in-home euthanasia and end-of-life care for pets; Dayrise Wellness, mental health therapy for all ages; and The Autism Therapy Group, one-on-one ABA therapy for children and young adults with autism

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
ADP, Indeed, Excel, HRIS, Sagan AI agents

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/| https://x.com/MatznerJon| https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Jessica Doyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-doyle-81222aa7/| https://centennialinvestmentpartners.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
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
33 min
August 04 You Need to Get Good at Wasting Time | Lazy Leverage #120
Juan is who Jon becomes when he finally takes real time off. There is a specific shirt, one extra button undone, a jacuzzi and a cocktail. Then something breaks at the company, the shirt comes off, and Jon is back.
In this one: the AI that told Jon to sit on the beach and not write about it, the three categories Arthur Brooks says will make you good at leisure, and the fourth one Peter's grandfather figured out that Brooks left off the list.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:59 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage
01:39 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport
02:59 - Leisure Is a Skill for Strivers
07:51 - The Irony of Leisure Maxing
10:46 - David Choe and Art With No Purpose
12:46 - Alan Watts and Designing Your Environment
17:05 - The Asset That Never Hits the Balance Sheet
20:00 - Cocktail Hour at the Cottage
23:20 - Meet Juan, Jon's Leisure Alter Ego
27:09 - Category 1: Learning Things You Don't Have To
31:51 - Category 2: Relationships Nobody Pays For
35:57 - Category 3: Getting Philosophically Deeper
39:56 - The Missing Fourth Category: Wasting Time
43:48 - Why Your Best Ideas Arrive at Rest
48:42 - The Head Trash Around Taking Time Off

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Books:
The School of Life & de Botton, A. (2016). Small pleasures. The School of Life Press. (Jon refers to it as "Simple Pleasures" in the episode.)
The School of Life. (2021). A simpler life: A guide to greater serenity, ease, and clarity. The School of Life Press.
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.
Allen, D. (2001). Getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity. Viking.
Quotes Referenced:
Alan Watts (paraphrased): if you live for a goal that sits in front of you, you will still be living in the future once you reach it.
Arthur Brooks (paraphrased): leisure is not compensated, but it enriches us and it makes us better.
Rob Dyrdek: "You can do exactly what you intended to do and still have a terrible experience. That's why we use Energy Ratings in Existence."
Jeff Bezos (paraphrased): a senior executive only needs to make a small number of high-quality decisions a year.

People & Frameworks Cited:
Arthur Brooks, Harvard Business School, on leisure as a developed skill
Alain de Botton, Swiss-born philosopher and founder of The School of Life
Alan Watts, philosopher
David Choe, artist, painted the mural in Facebook's first office
Rob Dyrdek, founder of Existence, the time-tracking platform behind the calendar
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, on the loss of third places
Wim Hof, breath work
Crane Breaks, Peter's month-off practice

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Claude, Zapier, Notion, Slack, Riverside, Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses

Related Reading:
Arthur Brooks on why leisure is a skill worth developing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Sk2LgtJno

Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/| https://x.com/MatznerJon| https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/| https://x.com/pslohmann| https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation
👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW
52 min
July 28 I'd Put These $300 Glasses on Every Employee | Lazy Leverage #119
Jon bought a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses to take pictures with his kids without pulling his phone out. Weeks later, he's texting his AI agent from them, dictating voice memos into Codex hands-free, and rebuilding how his content workflow captures footage.
In this one: why he'd put a set on every employee if he still ran a home services business, the backdoor around Meta's ecosystem that lets you route commands to any AI agent, and why the future of field ops looks a lot like a body cam.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:40 - Meta Ray-Bans: What They Actually Do
02:53 - The Fantasy: Fewer Screens, More Leverage
09:03 - Texting Your AI Agent (The Meta Backdoor)
14:33 - Long-Form Voice Notes via Google Voice
20:49 - Give Every Crew a Set: The Content Machine
25:25 - Live Event Coverage That Actually Works
29:21 - Master Plumber / Junior Plumber Leverage
32:22 - The Body Cam for Your Business
36:20 - How do you picture a year in your head?
38:32 - Wrap + Next Week Tease

References Mentioned in This Episode -

Quotes Referenced:
Leonardo da Vinci: "Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form." (Recorded in Vasari's Lives of the Artists.)

Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, OpenAI Codex, Claude, Google Voice, AgentMail, Zapier, Airtable, AppFolio, Slack, HubSpot, NFC tags

Follow Jon: https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/
Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://www.peterlohmann.com/

🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com
Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation

👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW
🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486
40 min