Find Someone Who Thinks Better Than You Do

His first meeting was supposed to be with Mike. About fifteen minutes into the call, Jennifer Bagley joined. She said something simple: she had noticed THE Water Heater Company on their calendar, thought the name was interesting, and wanted to meet them. That meeting lasted nearly three hours.

What struck him was not the technology, Webflow, AI, or a sales presentation. Jennifer spent most of that conversation trying to understand him — how he thought, the business model, why they existed, where they were trying to go. At one point her son and daughter-in-law arrived with their baby. Jennifer held her grandson while they continued talking for hours about business, leadership, technology, and the future of marketing. That conversation told him far more than any product demo ever could.

Two months later, just before Christmas — December 23rd at three o'clock in the afternoon, when most people were mentally on vacation — Jennifer and Mike still took another two-and-a-half to three hours talking through the business. By the end of that meeting, THE Water Heater Company had made its decision. Not because of software or features. Because of people.

A few weeks later, Jennifer introduced Anthony to Hydra. His immediate reaction was not "sign me up" — it was "let's talk." He wanted to understand the risks. Hydra was not fully mature yet; it was ambitious and evolving rapidly. He asked a lot of questions. At the end of that conversation, he realized he was not betting on software. He was betting on Jennifer — her vision, the way she thought, and that she was building for where the industry was going instead of protecting where it had been. Being an early adopter always carries risk. Sometimes you pay a price for being early. Other times it becomes a competitive advantage. For him, the decision was about trusting the person building it.

He will not pretend the onboarding was easy — it was probably the hardest onboarding process he had ever gone through. Hydra was evolving incredibly fast; every time he thought he had completed everything, there seemed to be another layer. Some days it felt like the platform was improving by the hour. Trying to keep up while running the company was not easy. Looking back, he understands why: they were not onboarding into a finished product. They were participating in the creation of something new.

Today the website has only been live for a few weeks — far too early to claim massive business results. What he can say is that organic performance had already improved year over year while CI Web Group was simply hosting and maintaining the previous website. Now that the Hydra website is live, he believes they are just getting started. The bigger change has happened inside him: Jennifer introduced an entirely different way of thinking about AI — not as a shortcut for generic content, not as a replacement for people, but as a force multiplier for creativity, collaboration, speed, and execution.

He had been using AI since ChatGPT was first released, but working with Jennifer opened his eyes to what was actually possible. Since then he has built AI tools for the team, fundamentally changed how he thinks about solving problems, and been introduced to other founders and experts who continue expanding his perspective. Instead of bringing fully formed projects to his marketing partner, he now brings ideas. Together they build them, iterate, and improve them. Many of the initiatives they are working on today never would have existed if Jennifer had not challenged the way he thinks.