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Honestly? I Thought This Would Be Easy · Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of Founder Unfiltered.
• 0:03
  My name is Bradley Jacobs. I'm your host, the founder and
• 0:07
  CEO of Mylance. Today I'm going to take you on
• 0:10
  my own journey. I think there's nothing like
• 0:13
  hearing it from another founder who's been on the journey, who's
• 0:17
  been through the ups and downs and I think can share some
• 0:20
  really relatable experiences, specifically the emotional
• 0:25
  pieces of what it takes. I've been going at at this
• 0:29
  business for over six years now. I'm not going to say it's been
• 0:32
  easy because it hasn't been, but I've never been more confident
• 0:37
  and clear in what I'm doing than I than I ever have been.
• 0:42
  And so I want to share some of this journey because the reality
• 0:45
  is, I'm going to be totally honest with you here.
• 0:48
  This might sound totally ridiculous, but when I left Uber
• 0:52
  in 2018 and went to go start a company, I thought it was going
• 0:55
  to be pretty easy launched markets.
• 0:58
  I had launched the Uber freight business and in two years is a
• 1:01
  billion dollar valuation like I had just done a lot.
• 1:04
  And I had been part of some really, really fast growth as
• 1:07
  part of the business lines at Uber.
• 1:09
  And I was like, you know what, I'm smart, I'm capable, I'm hard
• 1:12
  working, I'm disciplined, I have a great network.
• 1:15
  I'm set up to win like I should win and I should win pretty
• 1:18
  quickly. And frankly, that's not what
• 1:22
  happened at all. And it became really challenging
• 1:26
  because I'm like, I should quote UN quote be further along.
• 1:30
  And the end of the day, I wasn't, I was still learning and
• 1:34
  I was still figuring things out and it became really
• 1:38
  challenging. There was a lot of self
• 1:39
  judgement, self criticism, comparison, especially when you
• 1:44
  see all the stuff on LinkedIn, right?
• 1:45
  I mean, everyone feels like they're boasting about their
• 1:48
  success. And when I'm feeling bad about
• 1:52
  my own growth and journey and progress much on my own, much
• 1:57
  less than seeing their posts as well and friends and all these
• 2:00
  kinds of things, it's really can be really challenging.
• 2:03
  So I want to share a little bit more about that journey and the
• 2:07
  process I went through to get to the place I'm at now.
• 2:10
  And I'll share more about where I'm at now.
• 2:12
  The reality is I thought we would take off.
• 2:15
  I thought I found a, a really big market in, at that time, the
• 2:19
  independent consultant, high end freelance fractional market it,
• 2:23
  you know, it was COVID and a lot of people were quitting their
• 2:26
  jobs. And I was like, OK, there's a
• 2:27
  big market here. These people are underserved.
• 2:30
  They need tools, they need support.
• 2:32
  And I know what it's like, 'cause I had just been a
• 2:34
  consultant for two years, so and I had a lot of success as a
• 2:38
  consultant. I was making a lot of money.
• 2:39
  I was finding clients pretty easily.
• 2:41
  I was loving it. I was the expert in the room.
• 2:43
  It was frankly so much fun. So I was like, all right, I'm
• 2:46
  going to start this business and I'm just going to, she's going
• 2:49
  to grow, right? Like I'm just going to make a
• 2:51
  bunch of money. And I think I told my dad at the
• 2:53
  time, like, yeah, like this business is probably, you know,
• 2:57
  $10 million a year and I'll sell it for 10X revenue, like 100
• 3:00
  million. It'll be set for life and I'll
• 3:01
  do whatever the hell I want. I'm like, not kidding.
• 3:03
  That was that was the plan that was in my mind.
• 3:05
  I was like, yeah, that's what's going to happen.
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  I think the reality is a few things, but the number one thing
• 3:09
  is I didn't have an actual product that could even make
• 3:14
  that happen. Like the first year and a half
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  of the business, I was running a coaching program, and there's
• 3:21
  nothing wrong with that, but there's no way that coaching
• 3:23
  program was going to get to a $10 million number anytime soon.
• 3:28
  It was more of like, actually in in my head, I'm like, OK, I have
• 3:32
  this big vision for the company, but then in reality, I'm just
• 3:36
  happy that someone's willing to buy something from me.
• 3:40
  I wasn't thinking actually practically big and I wasn't
• 3:44
  putting into place a product or service that could actually
• 3:48
  scale. So I was kind of setting myself
• 3:50
  up for failure without really knowing it.
• 3:52
  And the other thing I did is I built a team of advisors and not
• 3:55
  a single one of them had been a founder before.
• 3:57
  Really smart, amazing, capable people love them.
• 4:01
  They've really supported me along the way, but they had
• 4:03
  never been founders. They didn't know what it was
• 4:05
  like to come up with a product that could scale.
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  And my time at Uber, I was scaling products that already
• 4:13
  had product market fit. And that frankly is a very
• 4:16
  different skill set and experience then finding the
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  product that's going to have product market fit that could
• 4:22
  scale. So I was almost like completely
• 4:25
  disconnected from reality in where what I think I'm capable
• 4:30
  of and what I was actually doing in practice.
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  Cause what I've learned since is the businesses that really do
• 4:37
  scale to the one, ten, $100 million, they solve a very
• 4:42
  narrow problem incredibly well, probably like best in the world,
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  at least for a certain customer segment.
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  And they nail that one problem. That's it, right?
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  They crush it. And then sure, you eventually
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  get to adjacent markets and adjacent problems and things
• 4:57
  like that. But if you really think of, you
• 4:59
  know, maybe Salesforce is a good example.
• 5:01
  It's like they do enterprise CRM, but it's just ACRM.
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  It's it, right? They don't do all this other
• 5:07
  stuff and maybe they they kind of do now, but their bread and
• 5:10
  butter product, they got them to 10s or hundreds of millions of
• 5:13
  dollars in value, if not more billion dollar in value is we do
• 5:17
  this one thing for this one customer insanely well.
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  And yes, we can charge a lot for it 'cause these customers are
• 5:23
  massive and we deliver a huge amount of value.
• 5:27
  And it's a very complex software, but it's one software
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  for one customer that solves one very, very, very deep and
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  troubling problem, right? Which is like tracking leads
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  through the funnel. It's like the lifeblood of of
• 5:38
  every business, right? So that's why they're able to
• 5:40
  command such amounts of money. So I wasn't doing that, right?
• 5:44
  I was like, I'm going to launch a coaching business and then I'm
• 5:47
  going to build some software and it's going to be a turnkey
• 5:49
  landing page for consultants. And then we're going to build
• 5:52
  this community. And in the turnkey landing page,
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  we're also going to build invoicing software and a
• 5:57
  marketplace. And then we're going to launch a
• 5:58
  bookkeeping business line. And like over the years, I was
• 6:02
  kind of going after this moving target of almost any time a
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  customer was like, I want something else from you.
• 6:07
  I was like, OK, I got you. Like let me go build that.
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  What ended up happening is I ended up building all of this
• 6:13
  stuff for all of these people being completely scattered.
• 6:17
  All of our products, I'm going to say, were like relatively
• 6:20
  average, even being a little hard on myself because I think
• 6:23
  some of them are pretty good. They weren't best in class, they
• 6:26
  weren't best in the world. They weren't like, Oh my God,
• 6:29
  you know, let me have thousands of people pay ME50100150
• 6:32
  whatever dollars a month for this product because this is
• 6:36
  freaking amazing. As you can imagine, this was
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  really challenging for me, this disconnect between what I'm
• 6:41
  capable of and what I'm delivering.
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  And there's three things that really ended up coming out of
• 6:48
  this emotionally that helped me get to the other side.
• 6:51
  The first thing is realizing I was tying my worth as a founder
• 6:57
  to my business. It's like how I feel about
• 7:00
  myself is how my business is performing.
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  Like the outcomes, the revenue, the profitability, the number of
• 7:07
  customers, customer feedback. I made it about me.
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  And it's really easy to do that because I'm the one creating the
• 7:13
  business. I'm a solo founder.
• 7:15
  I can't really put it on anybody else.
• 7:17
  And then I remember I'll never forget some coach asked me, he
• 7:20
  said, are you successful? Regardless of what Mylans does,
• 7:25
  are you successful? And my first gut answer was
• 7:28
  like, no. And then I thought about it a
• 7:30
  little bit more and I was like, wait, right.
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  I have done successful things. I like, what does it even mean
• 7:37
  to be successful, right? There's definitely a money
• 7:40
  component here because the end of the day, we do get to pay for
• 7:42
  our lives and afford a quality of life that we want, but it's
• 7:46
  not directly to tide success to money.
• 7:48
  And I've made a bunch of money, right?
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  I worked as AW2. We had a lot of tons of success
• 7:53
  in my professional W2 life. And then I went out a consultant
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  and made a bunch of money there. And I'm selling products to
• 7:59
  people. Like, what does success even
• 8:00
  mean? So one, I got to define success,
• 8:03
  but two, I got to decouple my identity from the business.
• 8:07
  The business performance does not reflect how I feel about
• 8:09
  myself as a professional, as a founder.
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  And that was huge because now the pressure was way less that
• 8:19
  the business could shut down, quote UN quote fail.
• 8:22
  I don't even call it fail, but like I could shut down the
• 8:24
  business and I could still be a success.
• 8:26
  Personally, those are, that's a really important distinction for
• 8:30
  me. The second one is I should be
• 8:32
  further along. And it was really just about
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  comparing myself to not only other people, but the version of
• 8:38
  myself I saw when I started the business.
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  I'm like by year 3, by year five, I'm going to be crushing
• 8:44
  it. And I was sitting there and I'm
• 8:47
  not crushing it and I'm like, what the hell is going on?
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  So it's comparison to not just others, but myself, the, the
• 8:52
  version of my, the vision of myself.
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  And then the last one is control.
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  I am someone who like, all right, I'm going to do XY and Z
• 9:01
  and that's going to get me ABC results in my brain.
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  It's really simple. And I used to build all of these
• 9:08
  models. I, I built 100 models, business
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  models. It's like, all right, we
• 9:12
  acquired this many customers and we get this retention and we get
• 9:14
  this churn and blah, blah, blah, conversion rates.
• 9:17
  And this is how I get to $1,000,000, right?
• 9:19
  That's how you do it. And I built model after model
• 9:22
  after model only to realize it doesn't matter what I get the
• 9:25
  numbers to say, right? The end of the day, it's about
• 9:28
  process, it's about actions, It's about moving the needle
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  every single day with projects I believe will deliver the
• 9:37
  businesses I want. But I can manipulate numbers on
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  a spreadsheet all day and that is not going to move the needle
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  at all. And realizing I don't have full
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  control over what happens here and there's a lot of trust and
• 9:49
  surrender that gets to happen. So that yes, numbers are
• 9:52
  important of like, what do I need to hit?
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  And let me look at the numbers to see what's not working so I
• 9:57
  can spend more time there. But that I don't at the end of
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  the day, have full control over how the business performs
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  because it, it relies on customers, it relies on other
• 10:07
  people. And I don't control other
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  people. I can try to convince them, hey,
• 10:12
  use my product, it's freaking amazing.
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  And I can build the most amazing product I can so that I convince
• 10:18
  them to stay, but I can't force them to stay.
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  I can't force them to sign up. So at the end of the day, the
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  control I have is over my actions, over the process I
• 10:27
  choose to execute every day, over my own strategy.
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  Those are the things I have control over.
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  But I get to release control over other people and other
• 10:36
  things. And there's a beautiful
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  perspective shift that has happened for me where instead of
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  saying being frustrated by all these things that didn't work
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  right, the business lines, I shut down their products, I shut
• 10:52
  down the people I let go of or left the company or whatever it
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  was. It's what did I learn from that
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  experience? And if I hadn't have gone
• 11:01
  through that, I wouldn't be where I'm at now.
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  And I told recently the story of me being asked to interview for
• 11:08
  the GM of Miami at Uber, GM of Miami, Uber Eats, and then
• 11:13
  essentially getting rejected based on my resume, which is the
• 11:15
  one thing I asked them not to do, how frustrated I was at the
• 11:19
  time. And then on the other side, or
• 11:22
  actually many even years looking later, I wouldn't be where I'm
• 11:28
  at now and I wouldn't have had the experiences I I've had if
• 11:32
  they had said yes to me. So at the time I was so
• 11:35
  frustrated. And now I'm so grateful because
• 11:39
  I got to go launch Uber Eats in Milan and spend time in Madrid,
• 11:42
  in Amsterdam and Paris and London.
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  And then I got to go launch this Uber Freight business, which was
• 11:47
  an incredible experience. And on down the line, right, I
• 11:50
  wouldn't be where I'm at. So I'm actually incredibly
• 11:53
  grateful. And how can I apply that same
• 11:55
  lesson to me as a founder now of if I'd had this amazing success
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  right away, the fantasy of, Oh my God, I just crush it.
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  I wouldn't be the person I am now, which is way more
• 12:07
  resilient. I know way more things.
• 12:11
  I have just been through so much that has taught me so much and
• 12:15
  so genuinely am grateful for the journey that I have been on.
• 12:21
  And I get to apply that to right where I am now, is that I can
• 12:24
  follow the process I truly believe will get me to where I
• 12:28
  want to go. And I'm going to trust that no
• 12:31
  matter what happens along the way, that I'm exactly where I
• 12:36
  need to be. That I'm building the right
• 12:38
  product, that I'm going through the right process, I'm hitting
• 12:42
  the right roadblocks. Everything, the good, the bad,
• 12:44
  the ugly, the pretty, doesn't matter.
• 12:46
  I'm right where I need to be. I'm on the right timeline.
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  I need to be on that. Nothing externally gets to
• 12:54
  dictate how I feel about myself as a founder, as a professional,
• 12:58
  as a man. And there's no kind of failure.
• 13:03
  There's no kind of doing it wrong.
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  It's like anything that I quote UN quote do wrong is setting me
• 13:08
  up to do something different next to learn what doesn't work,
• 13:13
  to experiment with something new.
• 13:15
  It's like imagine we have these fantasies.
• 13:17
  I have this fantasy of like, I'm just gonna get it all right.
• 13:21
  I'm gonna build the right things.
• 13:22
  I'm gonna market it perfectly. I'm gonna price it perfectly.
• 13:24
  It's gonna scale without any issue.
• 13:26
  And like, we're gonna just sail off into the sunset.
• 13:29
  It's gonna be freaking amazing. And as glorious as that fantasy
• 13:33
  in my head is, there's no lesson there.
• 13:36
  There's no learnings there. There's no growth there.
• 13:38
  And I'm someone who frankly loves the learning and loves the
• 13:41
  growth and wants to be a higher and higher and higher version of
• 13:43
  myself every day, every week, every month, every year.
• 13:46
  And that only happens if I get knocked down.
• 13:49
  Like, I don't grow basically as a person when things are going
• 13:53
  great. That's the equivalent of saying
• 13:56
  like, I want to grow to be a better partner or to be more
• 13:59
  secure in who I am as a person, but I'm going to do it from the
• 14:02
  comfort of my couch watching TV. If we could do that, if that's
• 14:06
  how it worked, we'd all do that. That's not how it works, right?
• 14:10
  We get messy, we get knocked down, we get triggered.
• 14:14
  We learn our lesson, we go get support, we learn new things,
• 14:18
  and then we come out the other side like, oh wow, what an
• 14:22
  incredible learning, growing experience that just was.
• 14:27
  So it's like the trust in this little spiritual here, but it's
• 14:32
  like the trust in whatever you believe in, whether it's the
• 14:34
  universe or God or energy, whatever, there's just that
• 14:37
  trust that I'm, I'm good. Like the universe has got me.
• 14:43
  I'm right where I need to be. I'm good and I'm going to work
• 14:45
  my freaking ass off and I'm going to learn all the lessons
• 14:48
  and I'm going to iterate and all the things, but I'm good like I
• 14:51
  got me. So if I were to go back to
• 14:55
  three, you know, year 3, Bradley is a founder year three in the
• 14:58
  business, I wouldn't tell him to work harder.
• 15:01
  I wouldn't give him a strategy. I would help him with the clear
• 15:05
  understanding that he's not behind and he's exactly where he
• 15:09
  needs to be to become the person who is building, who will build
• 15:15
  what you're trying to build and will impact people in the way
• 15:18
  that you're trying to impact people.
• 15:20
  So hopefully this, wherever you're at in your journey, I'm
• 15:24
  hopeful that this episode helps reframe some things for you
• 15:27
  because I know every single founder deals with similar
• 15:30
  challenges. And so you get to hopefully
• 15:34
  learn from my experiences and be able to reframe your own
• 15:38
  challenges of I'm right where I need to be.
• 15:41
  Come check out our software product.
• 15:43
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• 15:46
  So when you sign up, you'll get a like, here's what your
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  So we're doing tons of work to make it as easy as possible to
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  show up authentically on LinkedIn.
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  And I'm working my freaking butt off as I said, and it's really
• 16:19
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  Our customers are using it and loving it.
• 16:23
  So come check us out my lands.co.
• 16:25
  You can get your free positioning right there.
• 16:27
  And with that, I hope this episode was supportive for you.
• 16:29
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  definitely use some more and have an amazing, amazing day.
• 16:42
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• 16:45
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• 16:47
  Take care, guys.