Finding Peak with Ryan Hanley

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

AI access is not the advantage anymore. Ryan Doser makes the case that the real marketing moat in 2026 is expertise, context, and distribution. The model matters, but the model is not the business.

Ryan brings a useful anti-hype posture to a category packed with fake automation demos and borrowed confidence. We talk about why frontier models can be overbuilt for normal knowledge work, how cheaper open or alternative models can fit the job when you provide strong context, and why generic “tell AI to do it” advice breaks once the work gets messy.

The practical path is cleaner than the hype. Define the bottleneck. Build a context vault. Create granular skill markdown files. Treat those skills like SOPs for agents. Run the work in a space like VS Code where instructions, files, examples, and outputs can sit together without turning into a junk drawer.

Ryan also explains how he pairs different models for critique, keeps skill files narrow, and learns from failed experiments without turning every mistake into another tool subscription. The goal is not more AI. The goal is a system that makes better decisions, lowers waste, and helps good marketers ship work their customers can use.

We also cover guardrails, agent permissions, review loops, and model cost. If AI has felt noisy, expensive, or slippery, this conversation helps you move from prompt collector to operator.

Connect with Ryan Doser

Website: https://ryandoser.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-doser-ai-marketing/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanDoserAI

AI Marketing Insiders: https://www.skool.com/ai-marketing-insiders

Claude Skills Stack: https://skills.ryandoser.com/

Follow Ryan Hanley

Website: https://ryanhanley.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

If you buy Salesforce to avoid fixing a broken sales process, you fail. If you buy AI to avoid fixing a broken business, you fail faster.

David Bach, MD, is the founder and CEO of Optios. Optios is a neurotechnology company building the human-state layer for AI. He is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, a physician, and an entrepreneur who understands what happens when hard science hits the reality of the market. We break down why treating AI like a magic bullet is destroying capital, and why the leaders who win will be the ones who pair aggressive adoption with disciplined skepticism.

We cover the danger of outsourcing your judgment, why most enterprise AI pilots stall, and the story of an investor who made a capital decision based on a competitor deck that ChatGPT hallucinated out of thin air. We also explore the future of physiological AI. Sensors that measure your attention and brain state could train you to perform like an expert in a fraction of the time.

The question is not whether your company uses AI. The question is whether the tool improves a clear process or hides a weak one.

AI does not lower the standard for leadership. It raises it. You cannot outsource taste, positioning, or strategy to a machine.

Connect with David Bach

Website: https://optios.ai/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bach-md-0b81b29/

Follow Ryan Hanley

Website: https://ryanhanley.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

You don't need to build a rocket to make money in space. You may already depend on space technology without knowing it. The leaders watching launches while ignoring the infrastructure underneath them are staring at the mascot and missing the team.

I brought Mark Boggett, CEO and General Partner of Seraphim Space, onto Finding Peak to explain what the commercial space economy looks like when you remove the Mars fantasies and billionaire theater. Mark argues that SpaceX is the public face of the market, but the bigger founder opportunity is in the other 80 percent.

We get practical fast. Radar satellites are helping insurers assess flood damage through cloud cover. New positioning networks are being built because today's GPS cannot support the accuracy and security demanded by autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots. Orbital tracking companies are creating what Mark calls the "Google Maps of space."

We also cover space-based solar power, compact nuclear batteries, off-planet manufacturing, and the founder flywheel forming around experienced space operators.

The rocket is the distraction. The infrastructure is the business.

For founders and executives, this episode offers a sharper way to study platform shifts. Don't stop at the category leader. Look for the data, security, power, logistics, software, and service companies the platform makes necessary.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Mark Boggett

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-boggett-5044631/

Website: https://seraphim.vc/

Follow Ryan Hanley

Website: https://ryanhanley.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A friend of mine sold American Express at $5 a share during the financial crisis. Six months later it was $120. Panic turned a temporary loss into a permanent one, and that story is this entire episode in miniature.

---

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

---

Jim Lebenthal is a Partner and Chief Equity Strategist at Cerity Partners and a regular on CNBC's Halftime Report. Before markets, he was a Navy nuclear engineer who drove submarines. He thinks in systems and decades, and his core truth is simple: stay in the market. Jim ran the numbers on the last five crises. Invest the day before each crash, stay in, and your annualized return is about 10%. The people who got destroyed sold low and chased the market back up.

We get into why your emotions aren't the enemy, denial is. FOMO? Scratch the itch with a small buy and keep dry powder. Fear? Find the data. We cover diversification, why 80% of the portfolio he runs sits in tried and true companies, when an ETF beats stock picking, and what he found hiding inside ESG funds.

Then the big stuff: crypto, gold, and private markets (liquidity first), why he tells clients not to borrow to speculate, and why patience is the biggest investment virtue. He closes with a story he's never told before, about a client's financial autopsy, and the line I can't shake: your portfolio is a fingerprint of your personality.

Stay in. Size it right. Write it down.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Jim Lebenthal

Website: https://ceritypartners.com/team/james-lebenthal/

X: https://x.com/jlebenthal

CNBC: Halftime Report, two to three times a week, noon to 1pm Eastern

Book: How to Ride the Subway: Getting Around on Wall Street and in Life (Regalo Press, 2026): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FVMJFJXL?tag=findingpeak-20

Follow Ryan

Website: https://ryanhanley.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

I spent years believing the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was a work problem. Michael Bernoff calls it what it is: a language problem.

Michael has spent more than 25 years studying how language drives behavior. Jim Rohn mentored him from 1999 to 2009. His book Average Sucks took nine years to write, because he wanted a book people finish. His framework, Human Interaction Technology, is built on one idea: the words you choose program the results you get.

We cover why capable people stay stuck, the success script nobody handed you, and why confidence without competence is noise. Michael breaks down problem language versus solution language and what each does to your brain chemistry. Problems push your body toward cortisol. Solutions push it toward serotonin.

Then he drops the line I can't shake: "Work hard and be a good person. That's a shitty plan for a business owner."

We also get into the three words that rewire any limiting belief, up until now, and his missing Step 13: the way you talk about you is how the world learns to treat you.

This one changed how I hear my own self-talk.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Michael Bernoff:

Website: https://michaelbernoff.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michael_bernoff/ 

Text the word INFLUENCE to 480-800-8051 

Book: Average Sucks: https://amzn.to/3RzS1O3

Follow Ryan:

Website: https://ryanhanley.com 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.