The Question That Forced Me to Finally Bet On Myself

Sean Weisbrot: Adam Judelson is the founder and managing partner of First Principles Catalyst, an agency and consultancy that helps ambitious startups to build their products so that they can scale fast. In this conversation with Adam, we talk about different parts of. Our founders' journeys from what made us want to be founders to if there was anyone in our life that motivated us, or mentored us, or challenged us to go down this path. Some of the things we've learned from our journeys and how we feel about where we are and where we're looking towards the future. So I hope you enjoy this episode. It is the first one recorded in 2024, episode 100 and. We are getting so close to the 200 mark. Thank you very much for sticking with us. I know you're gonna love this episode. Let's get to it. Um, what made you want to become an entrepreneur?

Adam Judelson: Oh, that's a great question. You know, there's just something about knowing that you control your own destiny and knowing that your ideas are gonna work or not work in the market, and that you'll get real feedback on that. And it's not, you know, put through some sort of artificial filter. That determines whether or not your concepts and ideas are going to have an impact is just super powerful. And so I love the idea of controlling my time at the end of the day and controlling the bets that I get to make in the market and in the world and get to be the desire of the impact that I'm going to have and get to shape that narrative. Um, so, you know, when you think about all those things, it just becomes very clear to me that. The right way is to run your own business, try to build your own thing. And uh, that's kind of why I started, uh, going into business for myself at least at a high level.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there someone that you looked up to when you were younger that maybe made it possible for you to dream for something like this?

Adam Judelson: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I'm kind of one of these odd people that has a lot of people that I feel like I learn from, but not that many people that I look up to from the perspective of, oh, this person has done. Exactly the thing that I want to do. You know, I've had dozens of amazing mentors throughout my career. I still have dozens of amazing mentors that I lean on all the time, who I'm deeply grateful for and respect. But, um, you know, there's, I, I think for me it was more like I grew up in Silicon Valley and everybody's parents were doing something spectacular and crazy, but no one parent and no one experience stands out in my mind. In fact, it took me. Probably like 20 years to even realize that one of my best friends in elementary school's, dad was like one of the first 10 or 12 people at Apple. And I just thought like, oh, they've got a really big house. That's cool. You know, but I didn't really, I, I, I didn't, I didn't like look up to him, per se. You know, I'm, I'm one of those people that kind of feels like, you know, you've gotta choose your own version of the path. Then you can learn from others about how to do incremental pieces of it. Um, but, uh, you know, I don't have it, it actually took me about seven or eight months into the founding of First Principles before I even clearly was able to identify a couple of other people who were doing things that were pretty similar to what I'm doing. And now that I've done that, it's much more comfortable. 'cause I can say, okay, you know, here's someone who's, who's leading the charge, who's doing a good job of this. Um, but you know, we're, we're not trying to be carbon copies of each other either. And so to me, the, the idea of like looking up to someone, it's always like, oh, like it's a strange philosophy for me because it means that you think their life is sort of better than yours and you want to achieve the things that they've achieved. Whereas I look at it much more atomically. I'm like, okay, you know, this person has like a really cool newsletter. That's interesting. I might like to have that right. What can I learn from that experience, but not necessarily the entire package. Um, so I wouldn't really call out a specific person's name for someone I looked up to, like as a kid. Um, but there's certainly people that have, have shaped how I think about different parts of the challenge, uh, now. And I'd be happy to go into some of those, if that's interesting to your audience.

Sean Weisbrot: I guess I was looking for something like, was your father or your grandfather, or your uncle or your aunt or your mom, is there someone that you had direct access to that was actively running businesses that you had a chance to observe that kind of gave you this idea or this mindset or no?

Adam Judelson: Yeah. That's the thing is, is no, you know, and I, and I, frankly, it's a handicap, right? You know, as I get older, I reflect more on what people have learned before they show up at the table. You know, you, especially as you start working with people who are just getting graduating college, you can really notice this difference. 'cause you can see who has certain instincts and who doesn't have certain instincts, even if they come from the same great school, for example. But I'll, I'll give you like a, a, a really short but sort of funny story on this. Um, so in, uh, high school as a freshman, um, my favorite sport was baseball. And I tried out for the baseball team. And the previous year I had been an all star on the baseball team. Um, and so I thought like. No problem. Like, I'll make the baseball team. Well, it turns out I got cut from the baseball team. Um, and uh, this probably had more to do with the fact that like, I didn't really like the coach and he didn't really like me and we were probably, you know, not very nice to each other. And so like, like I literally didn't even get a single at bat and got cut from the team. Um, and this caused me to take up golf. Nobody else in my entire family actively played golf at all. And eight months later with no professional training and no access to a country club, I was a member of the varsity golf team of my high school. And so I think in a way it's almost a personality trait for me that I don't actually expect somebody to have the playbook in a way where I can observe it first. So yeah, we don't really have, uh, a bunch of entrepreneurs in the family. Um, uh, just kinda. Normal jobs, sales, it, some lawyers, uh, an accountant or two, you know, nothing, nothing out of the ordinary, uh, from a, from a business running perspective. So most of that I've learned, uh, you know, through being involved in startups and in fact, my first job out of graduate school was working for the government, which is, you know, the least entrepreneurial thing that you can possibly do, uh, as an initial job. And I think in part that taught me. A lot about what I like to do during the day and what I don't like to do during the day.

Sean Weisbrot: My dad was the only person in my life that had a business, and he was a dentist, so it was a specialty kind of trade. So it's different than, you know, as if he didn't have that professional thing, uh, behind him to do it. You know, like if he created a, an IT development firm or whatever. And I kind of absorbed some ideas about business, but he never explicitly told me about business. He encouraged me to be there, probably because I was cute and smart and funny. So the, the patients liked me and so it made them feel at ease. I would welcome people, like I was like, you know, five, six really young going in, uh, you know, in the afternoons with him when I could. But like, he never sat me down and taught me about business, right? He never told me about the finances. He never told me about supplier management or, or marketing. And so I didn't, I didn't get any training really, but I was able to observe the hardships he faced without him really talking about it, because I could see, I mean, I wasn't, you know, I was there from six to figure 18, um, on and off. So, yeah, I, I feel like. I learned from him that it's okay to not have your own job. It's okay to have a a business, but what I also learned was that you can't be the provider and the owner because that was his problem because he was trained to be a dentist, not to be a businessman, and he didn't have a partner to help him to grow the business. So he was stuck being a dentist and trying to manage the other parts of the business while. At the same time spending the vast majority of his time in patient's mouths. And so I feel like that was a detriment for me in a way because I didn't get a chance to see those things. It was my brother that really was entrepreneurial but didn't have a, a professional skillset in a way. Um, and so I saw him constantly trying to figure ways to make money, you know, at a time when you have eBay starting and PayPal starting up. And um, Amazon was also quite early at that time, so he was more of a, you know, I think, sorry.

Adam Judelson: No, no, go ahead. You finish your thought.

Sean Weisbrot: I was just gonna say, he was more of an encouragement to me to be an entrepreneur than my dad in a way.

Adam Judelson: So I would say this, this makes me think about the fact that though I don't have sort of an archetype entrepreneur in my family who paved the path and showed me what to do, I learned an incredible amount. From the experiences of each of the people in my family. For example, my uncle, um, who's a, a, a tax partner and has been a tax partner for a long time, um, you know, when I was in college, I remember he sat me down and he said something to the effect of, you know, everybody else is gonna study Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and they're gonna drink on Saturday and Sunday. Or you know, basically Friday and Saturday they're gonna drink and party. And that's fine. You should do that too on one of those days. One of those days, you should also set aside to do something big, to study harder than everybody else, to try to create a new opportunity to find a new path. Um, and look, I was in college. I won't say that I took that advice perfectly, but that's been a hugely influential piece of guidance that I received. 'cause you can repackage it in a hundred different ways and the hundred different ways, just the, the abstraction of it is what everybody, everybody else is doing. Do that same amount plus like one more big increment. And if you always do that and you apply that to everything you do, you're gonna build a better business. You're gonna be a better dentist, you're going to be a better person growing the dental practice, if it's a dentist practice, whatever you're doing. Um, and you know, uh, my mom and dad, like each have an incredible work ethic. And the thing that I learned, I think the most from them, if I tried to sum it up, just from a business perspective, obviously learned a million other things from your parents. But, um, from a business perspective, they're just extremely dedicated. And, you know, when they work for someone, they, they give everything that they have to that entity. They're putting all of their thoughts into it in a and in a way that taught me to also dedicate myself. But it also taught me, you know, after I'd had a couple of jobs in my career, how badly I didn't want to work for someone else. Because what I realized is like I, I also developed that same work ethic. And so, you know, I'm the guy, I, I empathize with your, um, with the, with the dentist in your family because it's, you know, your dad, he, it's. It's difficult when you are good at that thing and people value your skill in that thing, and you want them to be successful and you want your clients to be successful. And so you have to, you have to establish your own boundaries. And I would say that's one of the hardest things that I experience every single day is saying, okay, I know I just did really good work for you, or I know someone on my team just did good work for you and I still see problems here and I'd still like to make this better, but I'm gonna stop now and I'm gonna stop now because I need to do something to scale the business. I need to do something to grow. I need to do something to open up a new sales channel. I need to do something to recruit a new person or develop a new person. And just forcing yourself to make that really uncomfortable trade off has been very difficult. And I would argue in a, in a roundabout way, I learned that from my parents because, you know, they each worked for, my dad worked for the same company for almost 40 years. Um, and it was a great ride. He joined at a very early phase. He got to do a lot of different things. Um, he loved his career. You know, he does, he's not like regretful or anything like that, but when I look at it, I say to myself, gosh, like, what if he had, what if he had done that for 10 years and then spent 30 years doing something that was his own dream? Making his own dream real. And I've got a, I've got a fantastic, uh, coach and uh, you know, one of the things that, I don't think he actually said this to me, but he got me to say it, which is I think the testament to a fantastic coach is, uh, something to the effect of like, well, that's really cool that you're excited about all these other people's ideas, but like, why aren't you betting on yourself? Why do you think their chance of success. Is higher than your chance of success. Like why is their chance of success with you helping them, higher probability of a great outcome than you pursuing that same thing, but for the ends that you have in mind without any of the constraints or baggage. And by the way I say this, I. At the same time that I say that I absolutely love founders. I work with founders every single day. I love their passion. I love their dream. I love their energy. That's what motivates me and energizes me. But I also realize that I, I too need to be in the founder seat even while I'm helping them, if that makes sense.

Sean Weisbrot: I think your coach has a great question. I think for me, what I would have answered to him from my own experience would be I've tried running my own businesses and I much more enjoy helping other businesses solve their problems. That's what makes me excited. And if you would say, well, why can't you do their business if you know how to solve their problem? To which I'd say, I don't wanna have their problems. I don't wanna have their teams, I don't wanna have their investors and their customers. I don't want to run their businesses. I just want to help them solve their problems so they can go and grow.

Adam Judelson: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, the funny thing I tried for me is No, no, I, I get it. The funny thing for me is, um, like my entire career experience is in venture-backed product startups. I'm personally building a consultancy. It's an agency, it's not a product startup. And so a lot of people from my background in my past will ask me like, you know, is this some sort of mistake? Like, didn't you intend to found a product company? And, you know, and, and really from, from that background, there's almost like a, like a condescension in the question. It's like, you're, you're aiming at this lower thing. And, and you know, at some, to some extent, like if you wanna be objective about the numbers, it's hard, it's hard to build a multi-billion dollar agency. Sure. It's not necessary, but it's not create, but it's not necessary. It's not necessary. And I don't have any board of directors when I mess up. When I mess up, the market tells me, and then I know, and like, that's enough. Like that's sufficient for me to learn the lesson. Right. You know, I don't have to have. Somebody, you know, I think there's certain, certain personality types need somebody to be pushing them every single day, but I honestly don't think that those individuals become successful entrepreneurs anyways. So founders who go and take a bunch of venture capital in the beginning, it's amazing because it's a lot easier to grow quickly in the beginning. With that, you can hire the right people. You can start off on a good foot. You don't have to bootstrap. There's a million reasons that that first phase is easier, but once you complete that first phase. You know, now you have all these bosses, you don't even own a majority of your company. People are hounding you about, you know, it's like, Hey, we grew by five x. This year's not good enough. It needed to be 10 x. You know? And like, I also value my family. I value a hobby or two. You know, like I value spending a little bit of time reading once in a while. Uh, you mean, and you can't do all those things living,

Sean Weisbrot: you mean you, you wish for a European lifestyle.

Adam Judelson: I actually lived in the UK for a while and it was wildly eyeopening because I was working for a US-based startup and living in the uk and like literally one part of my job was to try to indoctrinate the same level of urgency culture that we have in America for a startup in a variety of different countries in Europe and the Middle East and, uh, no, and, and really all around the world. And it was. That part of the job was exceedingly difficult. Exceedingly difficult because you know, people would say, well, yeah, there's more to life, right? And so you could get someone to work really, really hard from like nine to six. Um, but you know, come seven o'clock was a totally different ball game.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I mean, I live, I've lived in Europe for a year and a half now, and the vast majority of people I know are, you know, marketers or consultants or tech workers and weekends. They don't talk about work. They don't think about work. They don't take calls, they don't take, in fact, Portugal made it illegal for companies to contact their employees when they're off work hours. So

Adam Judelson: I mean, I think it's one of those things where if you can set the whole culture that way, then there's a semi fair playing field for the other startups that are working in that environment. I think the difficult thing is we compete in a world market. So you know, if your business is centralized in a particular country with a particular culture, you can do that and it's great. I think when you try to blend that with America and then you have to compete, that's where it gets difficult for the venture-backed companies. And that's one of many reasons why I decided, decided to start an agency instead for exactly the reason you said, because I am a founder, but I get to spend my entire day helping other founders make their visions a reality. And so it's super gratifying because I don't have to sit and come up with all the ideas. Um, I don't have to necessarily like have the background in these 45 different topics. To be successful. Uh, but I can help them on the abstractions that make the business actually work, which are, you know, for me it's the product abstractions that I obsess over and get excited about.

Sean Weisbrot: When I started this podcast three and a half years ago, it's crazy to even think that I was in the middle of launching a B2B SaaS and I wanted us to be venture backed. We were. Competing. Well, we thought we were going to compete with Slack. Um, we had big dreams. Those dreams fell apart, and I've since realized that what made me happy was consulting. And so I've started a consultancy again, and this time, instead of focusing on the blockchain, which is what I was doing before the B2B SaaS, I'm now focused on e-commerce because I lived in China for a long time and I can speak Mandarin, and so I understand. You know, supply chain logistics, and I did international trade for a few years, so I know shipping and manufacturing and you know, fulfillment, different kinds of things. And the thing that's great about e-commerce brands is you can launch an e-commerce brand and within six months to a million dollars in sales. Mm-hmm. And you can grow it to $10 million in sales within a year pretty easily. If you can tweak a few things, who's supplying, who's fulfilling, who's shipping? How fast can it get done and is my, is my paid ads good enough and cheap enough that I can convert profitably? And I think e-commerce is so much easier than software. 'cause you don't have to, you don't have to code something for six months and then, you know, see if people wanna try it. Like you can literally take an idea, spend a few hours building a Shopify website and then be drop shipping from a factory in China. Until you make enough money that you decide to customize things and develop your own brand and get your own warehouse. So for me, like I, I spent years thinking about software and SaaS and, and wanting so much to be a part of that scene and just realizing that e-commerce is so much easier to work with. 'cause the, the moving parts are so much fewer. I tell people

Adam Judelson: a lot of, uh, a lot of people who are in similar business areas to me will, will ask me, you know, how good of a business. Is it, and I'm very blunt with them, like, this is not the easiest way to make lots and lots of money. It's not a bad way to do it. But on the grand scheme of things, selling people, selling things that have never existed before is extraordinarily difficult. Right? And that's what all of my clients are doing, is trying to build something that's never existed before. And you know, that's kind of, I always say I work in emerging tech. People are always like, what does emerging tech mean? And there's like 10 different words for it. Emerging tech, hard tech, frontier tech. You hear all these things. To me, the only real thing that is unified is it hasn't existed before. It's not just a, uh, a modification of the process. It's not just a slightly better mouse trap, like it's something that's like brand new. And, uh, you know, that's, it's super hard and it doesn't always work, and things blow up and, you know, you can have a client that, uh,

Sean Weisbrot: hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are. I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your. Subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now

Adam Judelson: is off to a really good start and then, you know, they can't close the next check and the whole engagement ends, uh, through no fault of your own. Is that frustrating? Yeah. Is it worth it to work on the coolest things and be a part of those things? I think so. You know, and so like at the, at the end of the day, it comes down to what are your root motivations and you know, I started my career in the government making peanuts, barely able to pay my own student loans. And I think, you know, that same uncle. Was actually the one who advised me to, to make that choice. You know, I had like a commercial opportunity and the government opportunity and he was like, it'll never be easier for you to have a low salary than at the beginning of your career. And he was super right about that. And I didn't challenge him like it made sense and that's what I did. Um, but you know, later on, like you have these needs, you wanna send your kids to this school, you have kids, you know, there's, there's someone else involved in your life if you're married or have a partner. Um, and so there's just, uh. You have these other considerations. And so like to me the, the test is like, can it make enough that I have the lifestyle that I enjoy? And I think, you know, Tim Ferriss was like one of the first people who actually influenced my thinking on this. Back when he first wrote the four Hour Work week, I picked up a copy like very early before he was like, you know, extremely famous. And I remember there was like an exercise where he was kind of like, you know, write down what it is that you actually want. And one of the examples I think was something like, you know, a Lamborghini sports car and, and it was like, oh yeah, write down how much that would actually cost every month, you know, and it's like, I think at the time it was like $2,500 a month to have a Lamborghini. And it's probably more than that now. I don't know. I don't have a lamb. I'm not a car person, so like that's not where I spend my money. Probably 20,000

Sean Weisbrot: a month right now.

Adam Judelson: Yeah. Right. And it seemed like. You know, that's a lot like when you're working for the government. That does seem like a lot of money. But when you're a business person, $2,500 a month, like that's not a lot of money, right? Like if that's a lot of money, your business is not going anywhere. Right? And if, if you want that, you can have it. Right? And so like to construct, I think the point that he was making was basically like to construct the lifestyle you want might only be one order of magnitude higher than what you currently make. It's not like a hundred x or a thousand x. And then if you achieve that. You have to ask yourself what's the next thing that matters? And for most people, the immediate next answer is more money. Right? And you know, you have to ask yourself like, what's the marginal, I mean like, think about the falling, what's the marginal difference in terms of reward for your own life between flying first class and flying, flying on a private plane? The difference in cost is 10 x. Right? But like, what's the marginal difference? Maybe an hour. You know, like in terms of when you actually arrive? I don't, I, I

Sean Weisbrot: think for people that are looking to fly private, it's not about the time they're saving so much as the privacy they have going, coming and going. I.

Adam Judelson: That makes sense. And that's a totally different use case, right? It separate entrances. Yeah. If you're a celebrity, and I

Sean Weisbrot: think you can, you can avoid borders, you can, I think there's like private border crossings for private jet owners and yeah, it's, it's much more private.

Adam Judelson: And by the way, I'm not saying, it's not my job to say if you should value that or not. If you value that, fantastic. Figure out a way to create a business or a lifestyle that produces the income that's necessary to fly private, if that's your thing. Right. Like we all have different things and that's the thing that makes it fantastic and beautiful and makes everything tick.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I would be much happier with business class where I would then spend the difference on like good quality food and good experiences.

Adam Judelson: Oh yeah, me too. In fact, I still fly economy or economy plus most of the time. 'cause when I look at the ticket and I think about what I can do at the money, most of the time I don't do it when I upgrade is if I know for sure that I'm gonna work the whole flight. If I think I'm gonna just watch movies or take a nap, I don't even bother. But if I'm going to, if I'm gonna work the whole flight, then I'll get that extra space. 'cause then I feel comfortable. It's, it's not hot, you know, you can get in and start doing your thing. Um, but yeah, like everybody, to me, I don't have like a policy. It's like I, I do it when I think I need to do it. I don't do it when I don't think I need to do it.

Sean Weisbrot: Would you say you fly internationally often then? 'cause I, I would only do it international.

Adam Judelson: Yeah. So international is its own whole thing. Uh, you know, the, the honest truth is like the, the airline industry has been dramatically propped up, uh, by our government for far too long. In my opinion. I think it should be. Heavily regulated, but more free market. And as a result, we have like nearly inhumane conditions in economy. Um, you know, I make this joke every once in a while and it, and to be very clear to your audience, this is a joke, like I do not think there's a real comparison here, but there's a couple of things that are actually worse in economy class than they are in prison. And one of those things is you can't go to the bathroom when you wanna go to the bathroom. One is actually the amount of personal space that you have. And I could go on and on and like, I think that what has happened is unfortunately the airlines. Took it so far in terms of trying to economize on price that, uh, they created a situation where, you know, in for me, like I would rather not go unless I can afford a ticket that's gonna have sufficient space that I at least feel like a human. Um, so fortunately most of my, I do a lot of, um, coaching and fractional engagements. It's hard to do those across too many time zones, so I don't travel outside the United States for business all that much anymore. It does come up once in a while, but it's usually like for a workshop or something. And if I'm gonna do that, then yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll buy the other ticket.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. I've only done business like maybe four times. Uh, mostly because I try not to fly too far, um, from wherever I'm living. Um, but like right now living in Lisbon, I can fly direct to Miami and it's eight hours. So it's like by the time I am like leaving, it's like five, six o'clock at night here, so it's already like midnight in the States. So I just get an economy plus and, and just sleep. 'cause I'll arrive early morning. But, um. When you're going from, let's say, Miami to, I dunno, Singapore, it's like three flights in like 26 to 30 hours. And you know, in that's a different thing. Regard. It kind of makes sense. 'cause like one flight could be 14 hours. Mm-hmm. You know, so in those instances it's worth it, especially when you're flying with, uh, Japan Air or Singapore Airlines, or if you're going from Europe to Asia where you're using maybe Etihad and you're stopping in Abu Dhabi. Because those, those three airlines are incredible service providers. So in those instances, it's worth it.

Adam Judelson: I can, so I, Sean, I can derive a product lesson from anything. And to me, the product lesson is the airlines are asking you to pay to avoid pain. They're not asking you to pay to appreciate comfort. And don't get me wrong, you can build a business on either model, but the businesses that I respect are the ones that ask you to pay to receive something that you truly want not to avoid being punished. Right. And so like, yeah, that's how it works. And it's, I, and I don't respect the airlines as. Innovative, uh, businesses at all. Like, it's, it's just not a, an industry that I look up to.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. Well, that's one of the reasons why I started the company to compete with Slack because their whole pricing model was, Hey, we're gonna delete all of your chat history if you don't pay us $5 per user per month. I was like, well, that's disgusting. I wanna give it to everyone. I wanna give unlimited chat history for free. I'll charge you based on features that add value to your business. Like, I dunno, automating stuff or integrating with other applications in a way that you can actually manage them inside of the application. Like with a ui, ux, not just a, you know, this thing happened on the app. If you click here, we'll, we'll open that app in a browser for you. It's like, no, like you could actually, you know. Manage the application without leaving ours, right? Things that Slack would never even begin to imagine. Um, yeah. Unfortunately never got there. But

Adam Judelson: no, I think it's, I that's actually, I think one you just touched on, what I think is one of the hardest product questions for SaaS businesses is like, how do we determine the tiers? You know, and there's a hundred different answers to that question, but I think like the most important answer is that you have to deeply understand the psychology of the person in the moment in time. That you're going to present them with this offer. And for you, when you read it, you felt like, hey, they're threatening to take this away, and that put you in a state of loss aversion and it makes you angry and you don't want to pay. Right. Whereas other products are really good at making sure like, Hey, I just got a whole bunch of value. Now I wanna do this other thing that does feel above and beyond. It's gonna add more value to me. Okay. I'm willing to pay now. You know? And I think that's important to really think about what that distinction is when you're offering different tiers of services. Like it should be something that makes the person feel good, not something that makes the person feel again, like they avoided punishment in some way.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. Like Riverside's got a few tears. We're using Riverside to record this. And what Riverside does is they're like, okay, at the lowest level you can record for like what is, I think five hours a month. So they're just assuming this person's gonna be doing four recordings a month, something like that. And at this tier, you can record up to 10 80 p. Fine. Well, if you pay for the next tier, which is like twice the price, it's like $25 a month, you can get 20 hours of recording, which I sometimes hit, and we'll let you record up to 4K, which I have a 2K camera, which I got on purpose because my, um, old camera was 10 80 p and I wanted to try to improve the quality of the video. So for me, paying the extra $12 a month gives me higher quality video. So it's worth it for me because the camera was only $60, so might as well. And if I ever upgrade to A-D-S-L-R, which I may do this year, it's probably like six thou, uh, 600 to a thousand dollars for that camera. But paying the 25 a month allows me to continue showing, actually getting up to 4K instead of being stuck at 2K. So in a way, their business model isn't so bad.

Adam Judelson: No, that's great because they're, they're clearly segmenting and saying there's people that care about this quality. There's a hundred people doing podcasts right now, aren't even using the video piece of it. Could care less or couldn't care less. Right. And so like, that's fine. They belong in the first tier. You belong in the second tier. Everybody's happy. Everybody's getting value that they feel like they paid for. I think the other thing too though is people don't like to pay for value. That they don't feel like the company that's providing it had to work for. So if it's like something that everybody assume, I gotta come up with a good example of this, but if it's something that everybody assumes is an obvious feature, like to be preposterous, it'd be like, you know, they try to charge you for deleting your account or something like that. You know, they have to support the ability to delete an account. Now they're charging you for this behavior that makes people really angry. So the, the resolution one kind of makes me think, okay, that's a little rough. But I think what they're really saying is like, you know, on their side they have higher processing costs for data. 'cause there's more data flowing across the wire. They have more storage costs, so that makes sense, right? It's sensible. You can kind of understand the logic and most people aren't like thinking of this actively, but I think it's in the back of their head subconsciously when they make these purchasing decisions.

Sean Weisbrot: I think more people are not thinking about this, even if it's subconscious. I think some people just make a decision and then just they don't pay attention to the detail at all.

Adam Judelson: Mm-hmm. They're just like, is this right or is this not? Do you think they even read the text? What do you think?

Sean Weisbrot: Probably not. I don't know. I talk to a lot of people and I don't know. I guess the people I talk to tend to skew more intelligent. So maybe I'm wrong or maybe I just have a, a, a skewed mindset about it. But I also, uh, studied psychology and I've observed humans diligently for 20 years now. And, uh, well, I'm older than 20, but you know what I mean? And I just feel like the thing is people, I come across like

Adam Judelson: one or two things at a time.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I, I love how I, I've had this conversation with women before, not too many, but of the women that I've had this conversation with, they find it funny that men can't multitask. And then they get mad at us for not being able to multitask. And we're like, like it's, I feel it's quite often quite well known that we're like one, we have one track minds and if you want us to be able to like, you know, stay alive and protect you, like we have to be able to focus on that thing that's immediately in front of us that's going to potentially hurt us or hurt you. And so if you try to split our focus or expect us to be able to split our focus, we're gonna possibly have problems. So I, I just think it's funny that, uh, some women have expressed that to me that. Like we should be able to task and that we can't stand at us for not being able to,

Adam Judelson: I don't even like know, I don't even know what it means when people say multitask anymore. You know, like at at a fundamental level. I think what people mean is in a given period of time, in a given unit of time, how many different things are you able to think about? And I think the answer is like any person can theoretically think about any number of things in some unit of time, sequentially. I don't know anybody who thinks about multiple things, like exactly at the same time. And so I kind of feel like it's this weird, esoteric debate, honestly. Um, but I definitely agree with everybody that says that if you wanna accomplish something big, you have to have long periods of focus. Now, for me, as somebody who's. I don't know what the proper term is. Maybe you know from your psychology background, but I'm a little bit more of an organic thinker in the sense that like, while I'm thinking or while I'm focused on task one, like new thoughts will come to me about task two in the middle. And to me that's different than multitasking. 'cause I'm not, you know, I'm like maybe writing an article over here, it doesn't mean I'm like also sending a client an invoice. Maybe I remember, oh shoot, I haven't sent it yet. And so to me the important thing is to just, you know, have a thoughtful system for being able to like write that down in a sticky note or in a notion document and just like come back to it in a couple hours or in a to-do list. And I think that's really what people are saying is like, are you good at making sure that that stuff doesn't get dropped on the cutting room floor just because you were busy focused on something else?

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So I have a DHD and my brain tends to be extremely noisy. And I found a way to be able to make sure that I don't forget anything and I think it freaks some people out how efficient and, and how good my memory is. Um, but mostly it's just a to-do list and I just keep it open in front of me all day and if something pops up, I'll just write it down so it's impossible to forget and I'll include details. Um, and then I actually go through the list and I hit those things as fast as I can so that. If they get done and as a result, I just remember, oh, this person said they were gonna do this thing. They didn't let me follow up with them on it. Hey, what's going on? Like, there's this one guy who wants to introduce me to a list of his clients that potentially need, um, credit card processing and um. He promised me the list a few days ago. Didn't hear back from him, Hey, what's going on? You know, a few days later, you know? Fair enough. Early, early in the, um, in the year, right? Oh, I got the flu, sorry. Yeah, no worries. Uh, I just wanna remind you about that list. He's like, oh crap, I forgot. Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate it. A few days goes by, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't get it done yet. Right. So like, some people you just have to kind of nudge. It's like, okay, you know, take your time. Like, Hey, look, I've got other people coming to me that need help. You know, I just want to. Be able to help your clients if they need this help. You told me they need help. Um, but yeah, I feel like so many people I talk to, they promise things and then like forget to follow up where I'm the one that remembers everything that I've said to everyone and then follow up with all of it and even the action items that they're supposed to do. They're just amazed at how I'm able and, and it's, this is spread across, you know, multiple people. Like I've got, uh, a spreadsheet for Referers and a spreadsheet for clients, and each spreadsheet has multiple tabs for people that are cold, people that are connected, people that are active, people that dropped off. And I follow up with all of them and I've got status, you know. Uh, thing. So it's like I've made my own CRM as well on top of the top the to-do list. Um, and so I just keep on top of everything, but that doesn't mean my brain isn't noisy as hell in the process. I just, I'm able to kind of cut through the noise a bit and, and keep things moving.

Adam Judelson: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I understand that I. You've got a, there's some great tools now too though, that help, like, I don't know if you use Superhuman, but I love, it's got a feature where you can get reminded if there's no reply to an email and then you set the duration. So if someone says, Hey, like let's talk in a week, you can just, you know, hit command K, remind me, and type in, you know, 10 days. You put a little buffer. Then it reminds me and you're like, oh, cool. 'cause like I'm not quite like you on it. Like I'll remember a lot of them organically, but not all of them. And uh, like, you know, kudos to you actually entering them into a system. 'cause then you can be methodical and then you don't miss opportunities. But, uh, yeah, that's, now that I think is a trait, I think to be able to have that level of organization. That's a thing that not everybody can do.

Sean Weisbrot: And the thing is, my brother taught me how to use Excel like 20 years ago. So he's, he's the one that taught me how to get organized. Before that, I didn't know how, I mean, I had, even in middle school, I had a to-do list on a piece of paper. I folded up in my pocket and carried around with me. But even then, I think my brother taught me to do that.

Adam Judelson: That's cool. But, um, you know, I always joke, I, but yeah, I spent a lot of my career at. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I, I spent a lot, my career, career at Palantir, say, even, nevermind. Go for it. Sorry. I spent a lot of my career at, at Palantir, the, the data company. Um, and, uh, people are always like, you know, what's the beta best data tool on planet Earth? And even when I worked there, I used to give the same answer every time, which was Excel. It's the most prolific, widely deployed, helpful data tool that has ever been built in the history of humanity. Uh, and, you know, maybe I hope Palantir will, will, you know, hold that number two spot. Uh, but when you have billions of users, it's a, it's a different bar. It's super helpful. You can use it for a million things.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's the most important thing you've learned in your life so far?

Adam Judelson: For me, it really comes down to you have to show that you care and you have to let the market teach you. And I think if you do those two things, like if you put pride and love and thought into the work that you're doing and then you just see what happens when you do those things, you'll learn faster and better than anyone else and you'll be appreciated. And so to me, that's kind of the most important lesson show you care and let the market teach you.