Why People Matter More Than Products

The longer I spend building businesses and working with founders, the more convinced I become that people are far less rational than we like to believe.

We all tell ourselves that we make decisions based on facts, logic, and careful analysis, but human behaviour rarely works that way. Whether someone is buying a product, hiring a salesperson, investing in a company, or deciding who they trust, there are countless assumptions, emotions, and unconscious biases influencing that decision long before they can explain it logically.

That’s part of what makes business so fascinating to me. When you stop looking at outcomes as random events and start looking for the behavioural patterns behind them, you begin to see the same dynamics repeating themselves over and over again. What looked unpredictable starts to make a lot more sense.

I’ve spent a lot of my career trying to understand those patterns because, in my experience, the businesses that consistently outperform everyone else aren’t necessarily the ones with the best products. They’re usually the ones that understand people better than their competitors do.

That idea came up in a few different ways this week, and I thought I’d share them with you.

AI Doesn’t Replace Judgment. It Reveals Patterns.

One of the reasons AI has become so powerful is that it’s exceptionally good at recognizing patterns that most people would never spot on their own.

The challenge is that recognizing a pattern and understanding what it means are two very different things.

I’ve watched companies feed AI more data, buy more software, and automate more of their workflow, believing that better technology would naturally lead to better decisions. In reality, those decisions are only as good as the questions being asked in the first place.

That’s why I don’t see AI as a replacement for human judgment. I see it as a tool that helps good operators recognize patterns faster, validate assumptions more effectively, and spend less time guessing.

That’s also a big part of the thinking behind SalesFit.AI.

The platform doesn’t make hiring decisions for you, and it doesn’t tell you who someone is. It helps uncover the behavioural patterns that influence sales performance so leaders can make more informed decisions about hiring, coaching, and team development.

The better you understand people, the better decisions you make. AI simply gives you another way to see what’s already there.

If you’d like to learn more about how SalesFit works, you can explore it at salesfit.ai 

Growth Is More Predictable Than Most Founders Think

In the latest episode of  The Vault Unlocked, I sat down with Colin Hodge, entrepreneur and author of the USA Today bestselling book Outrageous Startup Growth, to talk about one of the biggest misconceptions in business.

Most founders assume they have a product problem. They keep adding features, refining their offer, and working harder, convinced that growth will eventually follow. Colin argues that, more often than not, the real challenge has very little to do with the product itself.

Our conversation explored the psychology behind why people buy, share, and trust. We talked about how companies like Facebook and Clubhouse built growth engines around human behaviour, why more than 65 cognitive biases influence buying decisions, and how the most successful businesses design for those behaviours instead of hoping people will simply discover a great product.

What I enjoyed most about this conversation is that it reinforces something I’ve believed for a long time: the businesses that grow consistently are usually the ones that understand people the best.

If you’re looking for growth that’s repeatable rather than accidental, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode.

You can listen to the full episode of The Vault Unlocked on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

If it hits, leave a review. It helps the right people find the conversation.

And if you’re looking to better understand the people behind your pipeline, your team, or your customers, let’s talk. Book a call.

Kayvon