Two days in Vegas with Dennis Yu.

I flew into Vegas late from Phoenix this week to spend two days with Dennis Yu, my strategy advisor and the operator behind the network that powers Roof Launch Marketing. I thought I had a decent picture of what a serious owner’s day looks like. I didn’t.

The 1 a.m. call

I landed late. By the time we got settled it was 1 a.m., and we went straight onto a call with a developer in Ukraine. Nobody treated it like a big deal. That was the first lesson, before I even slept: time doesn’t apply to these guys. The work happens whenever the work needs to happen.

The Uber is his office

He picked me up the next morning in an Uber and his laptop was already open. That’s when it clicked for me that he doesn’t even drive — because in an Uber, he can work. He finds every 15-minute gap and fills it. Three hours in a coffee shop. Laptop out at lunch. We went to Korean BBQ — his favorite, he’d take you there every time — and between rounds of meat the laptop was out again. Not because he has to. Because he loves it.

Everyone saw the magic show

We did have fun. We hit a magic show, walked the Strip, ate well. But we were working right up until the show, and about an hour after it ended we were working again. That’s the part people don’t see. They see the magic show and the dinners online and think that’s the life. They don’t see the thirty hours of work wrapped around it. I don’t think people realize how much this guy works. Now I do.

Teach your 10%

The actual work was client meetings. My job was to watch how he talks to people — how he communicates, how he teaches. When he’s teaching a client, I’m learning twice. And then he flips it on me: he has me teach what I know to people who are just starting. His logic is simple. The client knows nothing, Dennis knows 100%, and I might know 10%. So I teach my 10% — because teaching what you know is the fastest way to lock it in, and being 10% ahead of someone still makes you their best teacher.

Agencies are dead — unless

One thing he kept hammering all weekend: stay ahead of AI. Most agencies are falling behind it, and those agencies are dead whether they know it yet or not. But if you get ahead of AI — actually build with it instead of hiding from it — it’s the biggest lever you’ve ever had. That’s exactly how we’re building Roof Launch Marketing.

Killing the 9-to-5 mentality

Here’s what changed for me. Almost everyone carries a 9-to-5 mentality — even a lot of entrepreneurs. The clock hits five and something in your brain says you’re done. Watching Dennis, I realized that’s a habit, not a rule. If the work is there and you love it, you can keep going until 10. The people who get ahead are the ones who don’t stop when the clock tells them to.