[Top Resources Series] What the Best Founders Read, Use, and Automate To Win

Justin Brooke is the Founder of AdSkills and AgentSkills, companies that help marketers and businesses master paid advertising and advanced AI tools for marketing and automation.

Seva Ustinov is the Founder and CEO of Plurio by Elly Analytics, a marketing analytics platform that delivers full-funnel insights and AI-powered automation to optimize performance and growth.

Paul Powers is the Founder and CEO of Physna, a world-leading 3D AI and geometric search platform that codifies 3D models into detailed data that is understandable by software applications.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:42] Justin Brooke discusses how AI agents are transforming digital advertising for marketers
[4:22] Justin explains why product-led growth is fueling billion-dollar companies
[16:06] Sales tips from copywriting legend Elmer Wheeler
[18:35] Seva Ustinov shares how Elly Analytics uses AI agents to automate ads
[21:15] Seva’s journey from agency owner to SaaS founder and discovering an underserved market
[32:48] Seva explains integrating ClickUp with Cursor AI agents to reduce unnecessary tasks
[40:29] Paul Powers explains how Physna turns 3D data into code to cut costs and speed operations
[43:07] Paul highlights automotive, aerospace, and defense companies using 3D intelligence
[47:21] Paul shares AI hacks, using ChatGPT to replace multiple apps

In this episode…

Are you searching for tools and strategies that give you an edge, but find everyone using the same playbook? What if scaling and outsmarting competitors came not from pricey courses but from overlooked books, AI tools, and tactics used by top founders? What unconventional approaches keep today’s most innovative entrepreneurs ahead?

Justin Brooke, Seva Ustinov, and Paul Powers reveal how they’re transforming marketing, operations, and productivity with innovative AI and business strategies. Justin highlights how product-led growth and sales-focused copywriting can boost conversions and uncover customer behavior insights. Seva explains how integrating AI agents with workflow tools like ClickUp can streamline processes, reduce unnecessary tasks, and optimize ad management for software and service companies. Paul emphasizes how leveraging AI for both personal and professional use — like creating personalized GPTs or tracking key metrics — can replace multiple apps and enhance efficiency across teams.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Justin Brooke, Seva Ustinov, and Paul Powers to discuss how AI and innovative strategies are transforming business growth. They cover product-led growth and sales insights, AI-driven workflow optimization, and leveraging AI for personal and professional productivity. They also share tips on using AI tools to streamline operations and gain a competitive edge.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special mentions:

Related episodes:

Quotable moments:

“AI agents are transforming every industry — and now they’re automating my work and creating real business value.”
“If you read the same books as everyone else, you’ll think and act like everyone else.”
“I questioned my role when I noticed most tech founders started in services before building products.”
“I use ChatGPT as a personalized app for everything from calorie tracking to business tasks.”
“Generic AI agents can already run complex workflows with zero coding required.”

Action steps:

Embrace product-led growth strategies: Focus on delivering value through the product itself, such as free trials or core features, to attract and retain customers while standing out in crowded markets.
Build deep work habits and reduce distractions: Design your environment to minimize interruptions so you can focus on high-impact work instead of constant notifications and task-switching.
Automate repetitive tasks with AI agents: Use AI tools and agents to handle routine workflows, saving time, reducing errors, and freeing you up for strategic and creative work.
Centralize data for better decisions: Integrate tools like CRMs, analytics, and project management platforms to create a single source of truth and eliminate information silos.
Experiment with emerging and personalized AI tools: Create custom GPTs or test new technologies to tailor automation to your workflow and stay ahead of rapid tech changes.

Sponsor for this episode

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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…

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Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Thanks for tuning in to this special best-of episode, where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite moments from previous conversations. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production number two. We are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, and prospects. Simple, seamless, and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff. From a culture perspective, all you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there, from gift selection to the card to your branding on the box.

We call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress-free as possible for companies, so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade than having them on my podcast, featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25.com to learn more.

Now let’s look back at some of our favorite moments from past conversations. This is great people, great resources. I’m here with Justin Brooke, and we’re going to talk about, I mean, Justin, we could probably geek out for a couple of hours on podcast books and software and tools. We’re going to really talk about books. If you’re watching the video, you can see behind Justin all of the books there, so that we’re going to talk about his favorites and why. Before we do, he’s going to talk a little bit about what he’s doing. Now. You can check out AdSkills.com and AgentSkills.ai. So Justin, start there with talking about AgentSkills.ai and AdSkills.

Justin Brooke: 02:42

Okay. Yeah. So I’m I’m an advertiser for the last 20 years. My business is AdSkills.com. We teach people how to win with paid ads in that AI has come along and it’s touched every industry from doctors to lawyers to media buyers. And so I’ve started creating AI agents to automate my day. As I did that, people liked my agents, wanted my agents. So I started up AgentSkills as well, where I’m showing people how to build agents, you know, and so the education this one’s a little different. adskills is all education AgentSkills, you buy my agents the things that I’ve already built that automate my LinkedIn and automate my customers. We’ve got some really cool ones in there that you guys.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:25

Can see right here. We’re on AgentSkills.ai if you’re listening and you can see there’s an ad prediction agent, there’s a newsletter writing agent, there’s a LinkedIn posting agent, there’s a Facebook ad copy agent, sales prediction agent, Google PPC agent. Right.

Justin Brooke: 03:42

And so there’s ten of them. Now that’s just the last time I updated my sales page. There was only six of them in there. My goal is to have 20 of them in there. So it’s kind of a yearly club.

And then if you pay the yearly fee, then you have access to all of them and you can use them and you can get the updates and all that glorious stuff. And every month we do a build a thon, so you can kind of join me and watch me build and ask me questions and stuff like that. So it’s just a byproduct of what I’m creating through doing AdSkills.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:09

Love it so people can check it out AgentSkills.ai, AdSkills.com to learn more. Let’s talk about books. Some of your favorite books.

Justin Brooke: 04:18

Absolutely. Well my favorite topic man.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:20

Love it.

Justin Brooke: 04:22

Okay, so there’s probably a couple of books that I think if I would say like must buys. You know, before you do anything else make sure you have these. So I prominently feature one. Let’s see the yellow one behind me I don’t know. My camera is mirrored. It’s a little hard to tell, but the yellow one behind me is called Product-Led Growth. And if you notice Zoom and Uber doesn’t they don’t have like a funnel, you know, I mean they do, but they don’t you know, they don’t have like a long direct response sales page. You know, they’re not trying to sell you on a webinar or a VSL. They do something a little bit different.

And if you think about it, a lot of the biggest companies in the world do something different. And they do what’s called Product-Led Growth. And that’s or Product-Led Growth. And that’s what that book is all about, is like, why do these giant companies start for free, give you things away for free? And they make a very convincing argument as to why you may want to do this instead. I think it’s a book that every marketer should try out Product-Led Growth, and there’s a whole movement.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:25

ProductLed.com. It’s by Wes Bush. Is this the one?

Justin Brooke: 05:28

Yeah. And so there’s a lot of teachers and educators in this in this space. I think Wes is doing it the best. Nice yellow book. Great website. You know definitely can see the direct response marketer in in Wes here. But I think this is really worth checking out if you want to know how the big dogs, the big, big dogs not like the gurus, but I’m talking about like the Ubers, the Salesforces, the the HubSpot’s. If you want to understand why they do what they do and how to add a little bit of that sauce to your business. Check out Product-Led Growth.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:02

I’m going to get it. I don’t I don’t have it on my audible. I don’t think.

Justin Brooke: 06:04

It’s a good read too. I mean, it’s it’s it’s not super dry like it’s just a good read as well. The next one that I would say is actually another yellow book. Maybe, maybe this is like the the top three yellow books you could buy. I’m sure the search engines are easy to rank for that.

The other one would be Deep Work by Cal Newport. You know, I think this is becoming increasingly more and more popular. In fact, I just switched I used to have this, you know, kind of famous in my customer and follower world. I had this obscene monitor, you know, 49in long, curved, you know, like, engulfed my whole desk. And I got away from that so that I could have more, less distractions.

And so anyways, Cal Newport Deep Work. He talks about this concept in there. It’s, you know, how to not be so distracted in a world full of notifications and social media and text messages and communities like we’re just we’ve never been more alone and more divided ever before, you know. And so he what I like is he talks about this, this concept in there of like I forget exactly what he named it, but there’s a cool name from like the old Greek guys when they were working and writing. But he talks about like customizing your environment into this place that you can just come into, you know, in the comic book world, it would be like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

You know, and and how valuable it is to invest in an office. You know, a good working, deep work space that you can get into and what to do with it and how to use it and all that stuff and everything that Cal does is good. But the cool thing about Cal is he’s not just like a thinker author, you know? Like he’s actually a professor. Studies these concepts, test them out, applies them. You can see he obviously deep work works for him. I mean, look at how many books he’s published, like. So he’s a he’s a doer, not just a thinker, but he’s also a really good thinker as well. So check that out. I think that’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:12

Yeah, that’s a good one. I’ve, I’ve listened to that one. And then so good they can’t ignore you is another great one too. Which kind of it seems like a similar concept to Product-Led Growth as well.

Justin Brooke: 08:22

Yeah. Yeah. Well I don’t know where you want to go with this.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:26

Keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Brooke: 08:28

I wanted to talk about some maybe lesser known books.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:32

Yeah.

Justin Brooke: 08:32

Do it. Because as I was describing to my customers, you know, if you think about it in you ever watched UFC? Martial arts fights or anything. So if you think about it, these guys, you know, whenever you get in any space, whenever you get to the higher levels of something, it becomes increasingly hard to have a competitive advantage because at the white belt level, people are just figuring out how to kick and punch. But when you’re a black belt fighting in the UFC for the heavyweight, like everybody knows how to kick and punch. Everybody knows how to kick and punch really good. You know, so it’s like, how do you kick and punch better than guys that have been kicking and punching for 20 years? Right. Which is relatable to any industry, I think, you know.

And so I made the argument that one of the things that you can do is you can be buying better or different books than your audience, because if you’re just typing in kind of the same keywords that everybody else is, if you’re reading all the same books that everybody else is, then you basically know how to kick and punch the same way as everybody else, right? And so I said, you know what you want to do. What I like to do is I like to listen to podcasts, actually, and hear recommendations and find new books that maybe other people haven’t thought of, and just dig deeper into Amazon than other people in eBay. And so I’ve got a couple of those that I think might help people out. I’ll start with probably these. These are more likely maybe half of the people have heard of these ones.

And so the first one is going to be Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug, kind of a classic, probably a little bit more well known about, but I don’t hear it talked about enough in the copywriting marketing advertising world. And this one is going to help you make sure your website actually works well and converts people when they get there. Everybody’s so hot and bothered about getting leads and getting traffic and all this stuff, but like, you actually have to make sure that they do what you want them to do when they get there. So that’s don’t make me think by Steve Krug really good. A lot of psychological stuff in there. Any questions on that?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:48

No. That’s good. Yeah. Keep going. Okay. I have a lot of questions, but. But keep going.

Justin Brooke: 10:51

Yeah. Okay, so the next one, depending on where you’re at, if you’re a service seller or not, and you know how old you are, you may know about this one. This is Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss. Now everybody’s hot and bothered about the coaching industry, high ticket coaching, and all this stuff. And there’s a ton of amazing people out there. Was it Taki Moore, and what’s the Dan Sullivan? And there are tons of great guys. You know, one of my new favorites is Jeremy Haines. You know, he’s on YouTube. He’s amazing. But this guy, okay, Alan Weiss, he’s been doing this, you know, since Fred Flintstone was driving him to work.

You know, I love you, Alan. And the book is $28. And so what I’m. What I’m trying to say is there’s a lot of expensive information on how to be a good high-ticket coach out there.

And I’m kind of saying like, maybe start with this $28 book that’s been teaching the biggest guys in the world for decades, you know, because a lot of it is in here. You know, I think Russell’s Expert Secrets is also incredibly good. And I think if you took this book and Russell’s Expert Secrets, you probably have more than you need. And you should just start there. You know, that’s probably good enough to take you well into six figures, maybe a million.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:18

Is there anything in the million-dollar coaching that that you remember sticks out to you that was important or impactful?

Justin Brooke: 12:26

I think it’s the concept of pipelines. I don’t know that he calls it pipelines. I think that’s the more modern one. But essentially, you need to have this like book of business that you’re always working, you know, and that’s I talk to so many in my world, especially, you know, a secret that is maybe I’m not, you know, What is it? Psychologists are not allowed to reveal things about their patients and whatever. And so I’ll just be broad. But many, many marketing agencies don’t know how to get leads. And it’s a little bit of a shoemaker’s problem. It’s like they’re getting leads for everybody else. But they themselves can’t get leads. And so sometimes the high-ticket consult consultants know how to tell everybody else how to get leads, but they don’t know how to get leads. And so he kind of addresses that, you know, with this, you know, book of business or pipeline, I forget exactly how he calls it.

But this ever-flowing door of sales and leads and nurturing and all that. Okay, let me see here. Let’s go to this. This one has been people may know about this one. Marketing warfare. It’s a huge hit in the kind of big business world. The more mainstream business world, you know, the IBMs and the Oracles and all that stuff. Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout. They’ve written a couple books together. Positioning and 22 laws. The 22 Immutable Laws. This is my favorite one because we are often in this position. What do you do? Like, okay, here’s a great example. When I launched AdSkills, digital marketing already exists. How do I launch AdSkills when a giant already exists in my space? You know, what am I supposed to do differently or anything like that? And so Marketing Warfare teaches you littoral warfare tactics to be able to use them in marketing.

Now, it doesn’t mean warfare like, you know, go to Ryan Deiss’ house and actually, you know, declare war on him or anything. But essentially, I would say my favorite tactic is this thing about? What do they call it? Flanking. Right. So I could have, you know. So digital marketer was very entrenched in the helping a newbie become an expert at marketing. And if I would have started in that realm, then I’m a newbie going up against an £800 gorilla in the same exact angle. Right. So a flanking strategy is to go around them instead of head on collision. Go around them. And so I went after people who are already making six figures and wanted to make seven more niches and a little bit different audience, a little different angle, you know. So that’s one of many strategies that I learned from marketing warfare. And so if you feel like David going up against Goliath, that’s the book. One more. We’ve got time for one more.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:37

Let’s do it. Yeah.

Justin Brooke: 15:38

Okay. This is a super rare one that I doubt anybody has heard of. It’s going to be the real die hards that have heard of this one. This is I’ve been tracing and we could talk about why I buy older and older books, but I’ve been tracing, marketing and direct response back, you know, so it’s like, okay, well, who taught Russell Brunson and then who taught that guy and then who taught that guy?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:03

And so it’s the lineage of direct response.

Justin Brooke: 16:06

Yeah, yeah. And so a lot of it goes back to this Elmer Wheeler guy, you know, and so this is, you know, source material for a lot of things, you know, and so this is Tested Sentences That Sell by Elmer Wheeler. And it’s you know, some of the other words on here is word magic that makes people buy. Tripled sales increased sales. And so it’s a bunch of language. It’s how to use language to make people buy. And he has tested many, many, many sentences and explains why they work. And so if you’re looking for how to make your emails work better, how to make your social media work better, you want to sell more, then this is probably one. He’s got another one called Sizzlemanship. I have both of them. They’re a little bit like AA2 partner. But yeah, you can see “Don’t Sell The Steak, Sell The Sizzle”. You know, it’s like a lot of the just the phrases that we use and speak travel back to this guy Elmer Wheeler, you know, and he’s got some amazing stuff like yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:17

It’s crazy though. It’s it’s like $7, you know. $5. Yeah.

Justin Brooke: 17:24

I think people forget about that. I love courses. I think we should hire coaches. Tiger Woods has a coach. Mike Tyson has a coach. Michael Jordan has a coach. We should hire coaches and we should pay them what they’re worth. But let’s not forget that there’s like $7 and $20 books with absolute gold inside of them.

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