Is there someone on your team you've been avoiding a hard conversation with? Odds are everyone else on the team knows it too, and they're covering for it. Kindness without accountability can actually hurt a team.

Welcome to Grind Optional: AI, tech and business for entrepreneurs making $200K to $3M who don't buy into the hustle culture. Below: what Ted Lasso teaches about kindness and accountability, the influencer tool I would skip, and why AI use is climbing at bigger companies but stuck at the smallest ones.

Dustin Baier

BY DUSTIN BAIER

Our story this week starts in the fictional world of Ted Lasso, where he has just moved over the pond to try coaching soccer, something he has never done before. Despite not knowing the rules, he connects rather quickly with most of the team through his thoughtful, calm, honest demeanor. However, after lots of losses pile up, he learns a hard lesson that kindness alone isn't always enough.

His acts of kindness build trust:

But this isn't always enough to be successful. In fact, something I have learned over the years is that "kindness" without accountability can actually hurt a team, whether that's in sports, work or family.

Finally, Ted realizes that he has to start holding people accountable, and that results in benching Jamie. Which leads to AFC Richmond's first win under Ted.

Gallup estimates managers account for at least 70% of the difference in how engaged or checked out one team is compared to another. That's a big influence on productivity.

This is especially true in smaller companies, where the manager is oftentimes the owner or CEO and responsible for getting everyone on the same page.

When building out an engineering team or onboarding a new engineer, the starting point for me is always building trust. I explain to them how the team dynamics work, how I manage, what to expect from their team leads and the product team.

I try to clearly articulate what performance is expected and the timeframes that are expected around that. I also want to make sure those are reasonable and that I have buy-in from the team and the individual. The more I can have the individual set their own benchmarks, the better I have found that makes them fully bought in.

So then it becomes a lot easier to have conversations around those standards. When that needs to happen, I typically find that open-ended questions around how is a project going, or do they think it was a success, what went well or not are the best ways to get started.

When I need to have the hard accountability conversation(s), I will start by making sure everything is ok first. Sometimes poor performance is just a small blip due to a life event. Once it's clear everything is ok and the poor performance is still there, then I have to clearly articulate what is needed from them and the timeframe for those changes. This works best when I can be very specific and get them to even be the ones to acknowledge it.

The team effects of someone not performing their job duties are the thing that really highlights to me that it isn't actually kindness, it is fear of having these tough conversations. Typically team morale is down and people feel like they have to cover for someone and do more than their fair share. That things like poor performance are rewarded rather than high performance being rewarded.

Ted didn't bench Jamie to punish him. He did it for the rest of the team.

The test for this is if you can think about the teams you manage, is there a person that you are avoiding having a conversation with because it is difficult? Or because they have a bad attitude? Think about the teams you manage. Is there someone you’re avoiding a conversation with because it’s difficult?

Source: Gallup, Why Great Managers Are So Rare

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An influencer marketing platform for finding, vetting and tracking creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, with a built-in CRM, campaign tracking and a Shopify integration.

Modash says it helps you "find, vet and connect with the right creators for your brand, at scale," from a database of more than 350 million creators.

Essentials is $199 a month for 2 seats, 300 profile views and 150 email lookups. Performance is $499 a month, and Enterprise starts at $14,700 a year. We paid $299 in 2025, Modash's old Essentials price.

Brands with someone in-house running creator outreach every week, where $2,388 a year for the annual Essentials plan is small next to the influencer budget.

Overall it felt like it was hard to manage and find good influencers. Lots of wrong data in the process. The cost adds up when you're a smaller ecommerce company.

Maybe it works for a larger company, but if you are just getting started with influencer marketing I would use tools like Google Sheets and Claude to track and figure everything out at a fraction of the cost with more functionality.

Real reviews of tools we have used, no affiliates.

More than half of workers say they're falling behind their AI-savvy colleagues
PwC surveyed 49,364 workers in 48 countries. 14% are what it calls front-runners with strong AI skills, while 56% sit in the "engine room," with no specialized skills and not far along with AI. Only half of that group feel confident about their job security.

Why it matters: In a small company, this gap is a few specific people, not a trend line.

A judge tossed the publisher lawsuit over Google's AI summaries
Penske Media, which owns Rolling Stone, and Chegg argued Google used their content in AI Overviews without paying and cut their traffic. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the antitrust claim, writing that publishers had an expectation of search traffic, and "an expectation is not an agreement."

Why it matters: If your leads come from Google, plan on AI answering more of your customers' questions before they ever click through to you.

SBA loans for buying a business got slower and stricter on Oct. 1
Acquisition loans of $350,000 or less lose the express process and go through standard 7(a) underwriting, which can stretch approval from weeks to about three months. Loans of $3 million or more now need a quality of earnings report, which typically runs $5,000 to $40,000. Owners and key managers now have to be U.S. citizens, and sellers can stay on as consultants for 24 months instead of 12. 7(a) approvals had already fallen nearly 30% in fiscal 2026, from 74,830 to 52,924.

Why it matters: If you're buying or selling a business with SBA financing, plan for a longer close.

FedEx's 2027 rate hike is bigger than the 5.9% it announced
The increase takes effect Jan. 4, 2027. Five of FedEx's seven major services came in above 5.9%, ground rates rose 6.06% to 6.15% across zones, and extended delivery area surcharges jumped 9.09%, according to an analysis by Loop's Paul Yaussy.

Why it matters: If you ship product, rerun your costs on your actual zones and package sizes before you set 2027 prices.

Consumer confidence hit its lowest level since 2014
The Conference Board's index fell 6.7 points in September to 81.9. Its chief economist said mentions of prices, especially oil and gas, "rose to new heights" after September's jump in fuel costs.

Why it matters: Expect customers to take longer to buy and push harder on price heading into Q4.

MY FIRST MILLION  •  86 MIN

Joe Hudson coaches founders including Sam Altman, and he says he has never seen a startup fail from lack of effort. His measure of a healthy company is how fast the hard conversations happen and get resolved.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE

of US businesses were using AI as of early May, according to the Census Bureau.

Use climbed at firms with 20 or more employees but didn't change significantly at firms with fewer than 20. Firms with 250 or more employees were at 37%, and retail sat at 14%.

Source: US Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey

Have you ever moved and lost the pieces to put your bed back together? Then had to try and randomly figure out which pieces you need without instructions and had Wayfair refuse to sell you the parts or give you the instructions they had online for free previously? Asking for a friend ;)

If you would rather have a business that works for you instead of one that consumes you, you are in the right place.

P.S. Know someone running a business between $200K and $3M? Send them this. It is the single most helpful thing you can do :)