Founders don’t scale by working harder; they scale by capturing the “essence” of the work locally, then documenting, delegating, and automating the repeatable parts with the right global talent. In this conversation, systems architect Patrick Doyle Brown explains how retention outperforms simple labor arbitrage, why automations need human oversight, how to map a customer journey before you spend on acquisition, and practical first wins like offloading social monitoring, inbox triage, and competitor price tracking into an AI-assisted loop. We cover region-by-strength role matching, the “first 100” rule for founders, and the mindset that keeps growth durable: don’t overspend, avoid shiny objects, always be selling.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) - Cold open and setup: why founders hit scaling bottlenecks
• (00:02:12) - Local first, then global: capturing the “essence” before you scale
• (00:06:45) - Retention over raw savings: compounding human capital
• (00:10:02) - Region strengths: sales, dev, ops, and hospitality by market
• (00:14:18) - Where to start: social management and inbox triage wins
• (00:18:40) - Market intel loop: competitor pricing + simple AI dashboards
• (00:22:55) - Automate vs. delegate: “trust, verify” and QA in the loop
• (00:27:31) - Customer journey map before ad spend
• (00:32:10) - Founder “first 100” rule and SOP handoff
• (00:36:48) - The scaling mindset: stay in lane, avoid shiny objects, always sell

• Patrick Brown on LinkedIn
• Website
• Amplafy Media
• Hector Santiesteban on LinkedIn
• Hector Santiesteban on Twitter