Podcast Script: The Trust Engine
Episode: 2025 Bonus Episode: Stop. Don't Plan Your 2026 Until You Listen To This.)
Hey guys, it’s JT.
I wasn’t planning on releasing this one, but I had to get this out before the ball drops in New York City.
I see a lot of you making "resolutions" for 2026 that are dangerous. You're planning to go faster, hire quicker, and automate everything.
But before you finalize that plan... I need you to listen to this.
If you don't fix the foundation you built in 2025, speed is just going to break you in 2026.
So, hit pause on the planning, and give me twenty minutes. It might just save your Q1.
(Standard Intro Music Starts - "Grit gets you started...")
It’s coming. You can feel it, can’t you?
2026 is staring us in the face. And the noise is deafening.
Everywhere you look, someone is screaming at you to move faster.
"Adopt AI." "Automate everything." "Scale 10x."
The message is clear: If you aren't accelerating, you're dying.
(Pause. Music cuts abruptly.)
But I’m here to tell you the opposite.
If your strategy for next year is simply to do what you did last year—but faster... you are going to crash.
We are entering the Age of Acceleration. And in this era, speed isn't your advantage. It’s your biggest threat.
I’m Johnny Terra. This is The Trust Engine. And today, we are going to talk about why you need to stop sprinting, and start thinking.
Let’s be honest with each other. As entrepreneurs, we are addicted to motion.
We are wired to "Go."
We see a problem? Green light—fix it.
We see a new opportunity? Green light—chase it.
We see a quiet moment? We panic, and we fill it with noise.
I know this addiction because I lived it. I want to take you back to the pantry.
You’ve heard me talk about the Pantry Office. But I want to tell you about a specific night.
It’s 11:00 PM. My wife and kids are asleep. The house is silent.
And I’m sitting there, staring at the glow of my laptop screen. My eyes are burning. I’m exhausted.
I should be sleeping. I should be recharging for the next day's battle.
But I’m not.
I’m building a website for Terra Accounting.
Now, understand: I am a CPA. My time is worth hundreds of dollars an hour when I’m doing strategy.
But there I was, at midnight, tweaking the font size on the "About Us" page. Moving a logo three pixels to the left.
Why?
It wasn’t because the website needed to launch the next day.
It was because of a lie I told myself.
I remember the internal monologue clearly: "Johnny, if you can just finish this page... if you can just tick this one box... then you can sleep tonight knowing you accomplished something."
Think about how dangerous that is.
I was trading my sleep, my health, and my mental clarity for a dopamine hit.
I wasn't being productive. I was just soothing my anxiety with motion.
I was addicted to the Green Light.
Now, let’s bring this into today.
Imagine if I had ChatGPT or an AI website builder back in that pantry.
I wouldn't have just spent three hours making one bad webpage.
I would have used AI to generate fifty pages of mediocre content in ten minutes.
I would have felt like a god. "Look at how much I created!"
But would I have made more money? No.
Would I have served my clients better? No.
I would have just scaled my distraction.
This is the math you need to understand for 2026:
AI is a Multiplier.
And a multiplier doesn't care what it multiplies.
If you have a zero—a broken process, a distracted mind, a chaotic business—and you multiply it by AI... you don't get success.
You get a massive, scaling zero.
If you automate a mess, you don't get efficiency. You get a Faster Mess.
I want to give you a real-world example of what a "Faster Mess" looks like. And this one... this one hurts to admit. This was at my current firm, LPT CPAs. We were growing. We were drowning in work. And because we were in "Green Light" mode, we panicked. We said, "We need a body. We need a Tax Senior. Now."
We hired a headhunter. We found a candidate. Her resume looked perfect—18 years of experience. She talked a big game.
And because we were rushing—because we were accelerating without a system—we skipped the deep verification. We didn't have a "Yellow Light" protocol for testing skills. We just saw "Available" and hit "Go."
We hired her.
We asked her to come into the office for the first few days before working remotely.
Thank God we did.
Day One.
She sits down. She opens QuickBooks Desktop.
Now, for a CPA with 18 years of experience, QuickBooks should be like breathing.
But she’s struggling. She’s fumbling.
And then... the crash.
We look at her screen. She is inputting Client A's confidential financial data... into Client B's QuickBooks file.
If you are an accountant, your stomach just dropped. That is the cardinal sin. That is a catastrophe. It was a complete mismatch of skill and reality. We let her go the next day.
Now, imagine if we had "accelerated" that process.
Imagine if we had used AI to automate the onboarding. Imagine if we had let her work remotely from day one because we were "moving fast."
She could have corrupted the books for twenty clients before we caught her.
We dropped a Ferrari engine (the need for speed) into a process that had no steering wheel (proper vetting).
And we almost drove the car off the cliff.
So, what is the answer?
If the world is speeding up, do we speed up with it?
No.
We do the hardest thing a leader can do.
We wait.
We need to reprogram the traffic light.
We have spent our lives jumping from Red (Stop) to Green (Go).
We need to reinstall the Yellow Light.
The Yellow Light is not about stopping. It’s about Intention.
It’s the Sniper's Breath. It’s that sacred pause between the impulse and the action.
I want to give you a system for this. I call it the Yellow Light Protocol.
Before you launch that new product. Before you enter that new market. Before you hire that person or buy that AI tool.
You must pause and ask three questions.
Check 1: The Mission Alignment
Does this actually move the needle on the long-term vision, or does it just make me feel busy tonight?
Is this the "Website in the Pantry" (fake work) or is this "Building the Firm"?
Check 2: The Systems Check (The E.A.D. Framework)
Is the process documented?
If I hire this person, is there a checklist they must follow so they don't put Client A's data into Client B's file?
If the system doesn't exist on paper, it won't work in the software.
Don't automate a mystery.
Check 3: The Leverage Check
Is this $10/hour work, or $1,000/hour work?
Are you the architect designing the machine? Or are you just turning the crank faster?
We are entering an era where "Execution" is a commodity.
The machine can write the email. The machine can code the website. The machine can do the "How."
The only value you have left—the only thing that separates you from the software—is your judgment. Your "Why."
The future doesn't belong to the Sprinters who run blindly into the dark.
It belongs to the Architects.
The ones who slow down to build the machine, so they don't have to be the machine.
So here is your challenge for this month. I know you have a "great idea" burning a hole in your pocket. A new product, a new service, a new market you want to attack. Don't. Not yet. This week, I want you to hit the Yellow Light. Stop. Think about the repercussions. Run it through the protocol. If it passes? Then you hit Green, and you go with full force. But do not move until you have the map.
Grit gets you started. But only Systems get you free.
I’m Johnny Terra. Let’s get to work.
