Barrett Sharpe

Everything I know cost me more than it should have. Sharing the receipts.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

The most valuable skill of the next decade won’t be coding.

It won’t be marketing.

It won’t be sales.

It will be allocation.

Knowing which decisions require a human and which can be delegated to machines.

The future CEO isn’t the smartest person in the room.

They’re the person managing 10,000 AI agents that never sleep, never forget, and get cheaper every year.

The companies that dominate the 2030s won’t scale headcount.

They’ll scale judgment.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Before you start doubting what you can accomplish, take a look at how many people talk about changing their lives but never actually do a damn thing about it.

Everybody wants the payoff. Far fewer are willing to get uncomfortable, take responsibility, and keep working when things get hard. They’ll spend more time bitching about their circumstances than trying to improve them.

You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. But if you show up consistently and follow through while everyone else makes excuses, you’ll give yourself one hell of an advantage.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Tesla FSD is getting almost freakishly good.

I’m on my way to Charlotte and the car is just… driving. And not “kind of” driving. It’s handling real-world traffic like it’s done this commute 1,000 times.

At what point do we stop calling this self-driving and just admit the car is a better driver than most people on the road? ���

@elonmusk — you guys are building some wild shit.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

My dad used to tell me something I’ll never forget:

“Son, you get too old too soon… and too smart too late.”

I didn’t really understand what he meant when I was younger.

Now I do.

I think a lot of people are going to wake up one day and realize they let fear, ego, or skepticism keep them from learning one of the most important tools they’ll ever have: AI.

Think about this…

If I had told you 10 years ago that one day you’d carry a device in your pocket that could connect you to the smartest people on Earth—experts in medicine, law, psychology, marketing, engineering, history, business… literally any subject you could imagine…

…24 hours a day…

…for little to no cost…

…and they’d patiently answer every question, never get tired of you, help you think through problems, write, build, teach, brainstorm, and challenge your ideas…

You probably would’ve looked at me like I’d fallen off the cabbage truck.

Yet here we are.

The crazy part?

Most people still aren’t really using it.

It’s like buying a Ferrari… parking it in the garage… walking out every morning to admire it… maybe starting the engine once in a while to listen to the radio…

…and never actually driving the damn thing.

AI won’t replace people.

But people who learn how to use AI will replace people who refuse to.

My dad was right.

You really do get too old too soon…

…and too smart too late.

Don’t let that be your story.

Pain is inevitable.

Misery is optional.

Regret is optional too.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Nobody cares how much you know until they know you genuinely care.

So stop chasing people.

Chasing pushes people away. Become so good, so valuable, and so undeniable that people start chasing you. Nobody wants to do business with someone who looks desperate. They want the person everyone else wants.

And while you’re building your business and your future, don’t lose sight of what you’re really spending.

You can always make another dollar.

You’ll never get another Tuesday.

Money is renewable.

Your time isn’t.

You’ll make mistakes. Everyone does. Don’t treat them like failures. Treat them like tuition. Learn the lesson, pay the price, and keep moving.

People love to say, “Learn more, earn more.”

There’s truth in that.

But money was never the real reward.

The real reward is the person you had to become to earn it.

Because when you become that person, nobody can take that away from you.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

What’s one thing you’re grateful for today? I’ll start: moments like this

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Everyone is talking about AI.

Very few are talking about what actually causes businesses to fail.

Businesses don’t fail because they don’t have AI.

They fail because they stop learning.

Because ego convinces them they already know enough.

Because they become comfortable.

Because they accept “good enough” instead of pursuing excellence.

Because they stop answering the phone.

Because they don’t follow up when they said they would.

Because they fail to build trust.

Because they tolerate mediocrity.

Because accountability disappears.

Because they confuse being busy with making progress.

Because they spend more time defending why something can’t be done than figuring out how to do it.

Technology has never been the deciding factor.

Leadership has.

Discipline has.

Execution has.

Humility has.

The businesses that continue to win are usually led by people who are willing to admit they don’t know everything. They stay curious. They ask questions. They seek out people who are smarter than they are. They change their minds when the evidence tells them they should.

The ones that struggle are often led by people who believe they’ve already arrived.

The moment you think you know it all is the moment your competition starts passing you.

AI is one of the greatest business tools ever created.

But let’s be honest…

AI won’t answer your phone when your customer calls…not with the empathy, judgment, and human connection that builds lifelong trust. That day is coming, and it will likely be indistinguishable from a person. But we’re not there yet.

AI won’t keep your promises.

AI won’t earn your reputation.

AI won’t create a culture of excellence.

AI won’t make difficult leadership decisions.

AI won’t care more than you do.

What AI will do is amplify whatever already exists.

If your business is built on discipline, trust, systems, accountability, and relentless execution, AI can help you scale faster than ever before.

If your business is disorganized, inconsistent, and led by ego instead of humility, AI will simply help you fail more efficiently.

The fundamentals haven’t changed.

Answer the phone.

Do what you said you were going to do.

Obsess over your customers.

Never stop learning.

Protect your reputation.

Remove your ego.

Raise your standards.

Hold yourself accountable.

The businesses that survive the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the best AI.

They’ll be the ones with the best leaders.

AI doesn’t replace leadership.

It magnifies it.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

When you understand…you don’t have to be understood.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Everyone is racing to build better AI.

The biggest fortunes will be made by the people who figure out how to make AI trustworthy.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Every business I have ever run taught me the same thing.

The opportunity is never hiding.

It is sitting in plain sight, disguised as a task everyone hates and nobody questions.

You do not need to be smarter than the room.

You just need to be the one who stops working around it.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

My wife wanted a porch swing bed.

I could have bought one. I decided to build it instead.

Looking back, it was never about the wood or the rope or whether every cut was straight.

It was about building a place where life could slow down.

Morning coffee. Long talks. Sunsets that never get old. Evenings like this one with Stephanie and Lola that remind me what wealth actually looks like.

The older I get, the less impressed I am by what costs the most. And the more grateful I am for what you build with your own hands, for the people you love.

Success isn't always what you can buy.

Sometimes it's your wife laughing from a porch you built together. While your border collie makes it clear she's the one really in charge.

Here's what this porch taught me.

The best investments in life don't gain value on paper.

They gain it in memories.

Years from now, neither of us will remember anything about the build itself.

But we'll remember every quiet evening it gave us.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

The biggest shift in AI this year wasn’t a new model. It was who quietly gained the power to say “no.”

Most people missed it.

Anthropic released Fable 5 on June 9…its most capable public model ever.

Just three days later, the U.S. government ordered the company to suspend access after concerns that the model could be prompted to generate exploit code. Because Anthropic couldn’t immediately distinguish every affected user, it shut the model off for everyone while it complied.

That wasn’t just another uproduct update.

It was a preview of a new reality.

OpenAI clearly took notice. Before broadly releasing GPT-5.6, it worked with federal officials and initially limited access to a small group of vetted partners before expanding availability.

Think about what that means.

For the last two decades, software followed a simple formula: build it, ship it, let the market decide.

Frontier AI doesn’t work that way anymore.

A new layer now sits between the companies building the world’s most powerful models and the people using them. In some cases, governments can influence when those models launch, who gets access first, and under what conditions.

You can argue that’s necessary.

You can argue it’s dangerous.

That’s not the point.

The point is that if you’re building a business on top of frontier AI, you’ve just inherited a new kind of risk.

Your biggest dependency may no longer be the AI company itself.

It may be whether someone else decides the model is ready for you to use.

This changes everything.

And, I don’t think enough people are paying attention.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

We spend years chasing what silence gives away for free.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

Consistency creates extraordinary results.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

@sweatystartup The hardest part about creating something new isn’t building it.

It’s spending the time, money, and energy convincing people they actually have the problem you’re solving.

Build on a proven model and you skip most of that battle.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

It took me far too long to realize that the people who looked “lucky” weren’t actually lucky.

They were simply the ones who stayed in the game long enough for opportunity to find them.

Most people quit before their break ever arrives.

Showing up is the strategy.

Everything else is decoration.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

a 60-person company just canceled Salesforce and built their own CRM in a weekend. $200.

read that again.

building software used to take a team and a year. now it takes a rainy saturday and knowing what you actually want.

the tools are free. the clarity isn't.

most people are still waiting for permission that's never coming.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

@garyvee The mistakes that actually cost me were never from moving fast.

They were from moving fast on the one thing I couldn't undo.

Everywhere else, speed was fine.

The real skill is knowing which decisions only open one way.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

The business world doesn’t reward effort.

It rewards value, leverage, and judgment.

Hard work gets you in the game.

Protecting yourself determines whether you get to keep what you earn.

[Barrett Sharpe @Barrettsharpe]

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in business:

A lot of people would rather embrace the identity of a victim than pay the price it takes to win.

And, another uncomfortable truth…

Not everyone who looks successful got there by creating value. Some climbed by stepping on the people who trusted them.

The people who got burned weren’t always naive. Many were the hardest workers in the room. They built, sacrificed, took risks and failed to protect themselves.

Work hard. But don’t confuse hard work with leverage.

Build. Trust carefully. Get everything in writing. Protect your interests.

Winning doesn’t require becoming ruthless enough to betray people.

It requires becoming wise enough to recognize the people who will.