Your Best Customer Is Dying. Now What?

Send us Fan MailIn-N-Out took 80 years to become a legend. Raising Cane's did it in 36 — with worse chicken and a better marketing team. Two founders sat down with Josh at the Book & Bourbon Club fly-in to debate what actually wins in 2026: the slow, silent build or the personal-brand turbocharge.Guests: Dennis Leis (investor, MetPro, LRT, Whole Body Fitness) and Trace Miller (founder/CEO of Konala — high-protein drive-thru restaurants, konalafranchise.com).Three debates, no filler:The personal branding debate — can you still grow a massive business silently? The In-N-Out vs. Raising Cane's case study, the "sellout" question every founder wrestles with, and why your best customer is literally dying every day.The AI debate — Dennis is all-in, Trace is skeptical, and Josh is in the middle. China just passed a law that you can't lay someone off and replace them with AI. Salesforce is cutting tens of thousands. Only 2% of the world is actually using it. What "ethical capitalism" looks like when the tokens cost more than the labor.The hiring debate — Dennis hires for his weaknesses and openly admits he has zero desire to be a CEO. Trace wants to grow into his weaknesses, Gymshark-style. Two founders, two very different answers to the oldest question in business.Plus Dennis unveils the AI-powered talent-matching platform he's building in beta — outbound recruiting for cultural fit instead of skills-first hiring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Follow Dennis Leis: Instagram @dennis.leisFollow Trace Miller & Konala: konalafranchise.comBook & Bourbon Club: joshkosnick.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Books mentioned:• Raving Fans — Ken Blanchard• Unreasonable Hospitality — Will Guidara• Good to Great — Jim Collins• Blue-Collar Cash — Ken Rusk━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Follow Josh Kosnick:Website — joshkosnick.comInstagram — @joshkosnickLinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/joshkosnickSubscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, faith, and building a life worth living.#SpartanLeadership #JoshKosnick #DennisLeis #TraceMiller #Konala #PersonalBranding #AIinBusiness #EthicalCapitalism #FounderPodcast #HiringStrategyCONNECT WITH ME HERE:FacebookInstagramLinkedInTwitterTikTokYouTubeSUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST HERE:Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTube