This is 100% real 😂 SpaceXSI is running an ad on a different platform about how to use Grok Bot to buy a local home services business featuring... Never mind… just watch it yourself. My head is spinning.

For non-lawyers: This is a HUGE story! Weil is legal royalty. Founded in 1931. $2.1 billion in revenue last year. One of the most powerful law firms on Wall Street. Lehman Brothers. General Motors. Enron. Weil handled their bankruptcies. These are the lawyers you call when your company’s collapse is going to end up in a history book. Now they reportedly need restructuring counsel themselves. A wind-down would be a stunning end to a 95-year-old institution. How does this happen?

“We’re going to buy businesses and implement AI.” Guys, with the exception of maybe a handful of people or firms, I’m not sure many people have a better front-row seat to the small and lower-middle-market acquisition ecosystem than we do. We take 200+ calls every month from prospective buyers, searchers, independent sponsors, family offices and private equity funds. And that doesn’t include the orders of magnitude more conversations we see through communities, group chats, conferences and the hundreds of transactions that move through our firm. Based on our own deal volume and what we see in the market, we believe we’re among the most active law firms serving the lower-middle-market M&A ecosystem in the country. And I can tell you: “We’re going to buy businesses and implement AI” is EVERYONE’S thesis right now. Greg’s piece is thought-provoking, and I think his broader point is right: everyone buying or operating a business should be thinking seriously about how AI can be layered into the company to improve productivity, reduce costs and expand margins. That is absolutely where things are going. And damn it, it’s a GOOD thesis. I say “good,” not “great,” because there is a huge assumption buried inside it: That you actually get to the part where you can focus on growth and AI implementation. The acquisition lifecycle usually looks something like: 1. Acquire 2. Stabilize 3. Grow 4. Exit AI implementation is largely part of Step 3... Growth. But before you get to Step 3, you have to survive Step 2. And Step 2 is where things get real. > You inherit employees you didn’t hire. > Customers you didn’t acquire. > Vendors you didn’t negotiate with. > Processes you didn’t design. > Technology you didn’t choose. > Financial statements you didn’t prepare. > A culture you didn’t create. And often years of institutional knowledge sitting inside the head of a seller who just got wired a life-changing amount of money and is mentally halfway to the beach. Meanwhile, the debt payment is due every month. A lot of acquirers get stuck somewhere between Stabilize and Grow for years. > They fix people problems. > They replace customers. > They rebuild accounting. > They improve working capital. > They learn the industry. They deal with equipment breaking, key employees quitting, sellers behaving strangely, unexpected capex and a thousand other things that never appeared in the CIM. They put out near CONSTANT fires. They service the debt. They hold on for dear life. They may still create seven figures of wealth... But they never really reach the clean, optimized growth phase they imagined when they built the model. That’s why I think assuming you can simply acquire a business and quickly increase EBITDA margins by the magnitude Greg is describing will be wishful thinking in most cases. Not because he’s wrong about the opportunity. He isn’t. AI can absolutely improve margins. It can reduce administrative labor, improve sales processes, accelerate quoting, enhance customer service, automate workflows and create enormous operating leverage. Everyone should be thinking about how to use it. But growth requires stability, management bandwidth, good systems, clean data and capital. AI is a tool. It is not a substitute for competent operations. You still have to buy the right company. At the right price. With the right capital structure. You still have to retain the right people. Protect the customer base. Understand working capital. Manage cash. Navigate the transition. And actually operate the thing. So if you’re considering acquiring a lower-middle-market business, do your homework, hire good advisors and go in with your eyes wide open. Greg is right that AI creates a massive opportunity for business owners and acquirers. But the hard part is still getting the business into a position where you can actually capture it. This is hard as FUCK. And AI didn’t make that part any easier.

You need to stop and read this again… Warren Buffet’s final words of advice from his very last annual letter 🥹 "One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best. Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior. Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it. Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior. I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman." And then today, his last letter to shareholders as chairman…

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read 😂 Three hiking novices asked Gemini how to climb 14,179-ft Mount Shasta. It packed them for an 8-hour day. They left camp 3 a.m. They were supposed to summit by 7 p.m. Gemini said pack simple carbs, not fats, because fats “take too long to digest” Horrible advice 😂 Phones died. Backup chargers died. One person blew their knee out. Night fell on them at 11,000 ft in Mud Creek Canyon, with no extra layers. They survived but barely. “We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking.” You think? 😂

Ohh there’s a good back story! Walmart didn’t just “resist” Tap to Pay… they waged a full 12-year cold war against it starting the exact day Apple Pay launched in 2014. They helped lead a secret retailer cartel called MCX that tried to kill Apple Pay with their own competing system called CurrentC, which spectacularly flopped and died. The reason is data. Apple Pay hides your card so the store never sees the real number or full identity. Walmart Pay forces you into their app so every single item you buy is permanently linked to your profile. They wanted surveillance more than customer convenience. They lost!

The full story here is NUTS 🤯 TLDR dude hikes 6.5 hours to avoid a helicopter medical bill impaled while his friends make kebab jokes… > 32yo ER nurse named David is day-hiking Montana’s tallest mountain with his boys
 > He slips on a rock near the top and full-on impales himself on his own trekking pole that goes clean through his lat with like 8 inches sticking out both sides 
> nurse brain kicks in immediately, checks himself, realizes nothing vital got hit and he can still breathe fine
says screw the helicopter bill and just starts hiking the entire 10 miles back down with the pole still stuck in him
 > takes SIX AND A HALF hours, friends are spotting him the whole way, one even runs ahead to warn families so kids don’t see this gnarly shit
 > about 4 miles from the car they realize they’re actually gonna make it… and start cracking kebab jokes 😂
 > dude never complained once, stayed in weirdly high spirits the whole time
 > walks himself all the way to the trailhead, gets the pole pulled out later at the hospital, and already says he’s going back next year to finish the summit

No one wants to admit to but the world runs through X. We’ve built one of the country’s fastest growing law firms on the back on this app, brick by brick, and we’ve never had more engagement, traffic and fun since @nikitabier took over. Ten years from now, the brands built on X will be some of the most recognizable in the world. I’m 100% confident @smblawgroup will be one of the most recognized law firm brands on the planet thanks to X. More than though, we’re on the cutting edge of tech implementation, consumer trends and relationship building thanks to this app. If you’re building a brand and you’re not active on X, you’re missing out.