Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

I stopped pitching on my calls, sales calls included, and now I ask questions to find out whether someone has a project they cannot avoid. The framework comes from Rob Snyder's founder bootcamp and his book The Power of Pull, which I picked up while digging into product market fit and why people buy.

Customers buy when a project is sitting on their to do list, and a problem on its own is not enough, since people live with plenty of problems they never pay to solve. I walk through the four parts of the framework: the project to be done, why it is unavoidable, the other options they have (competitors, doing it themselves, doing it manually, or AI), and where those options fall short. Then I apply it to Mylance, where the project is showing up on LinkedIn to demonstrate expertise and attract clients. That is LinkedIn thought leadership, and many founders I talk to have tried AI for their LinkedIn content marketing and found it generic and unlike them.

I share the twelve questions I ask every customer, including what happens if you do nothing for six months and how convinced you are that LinkedIn works for you. I cover the signs that someone is ready to buy, why I ask people where their head is at, a recent call where I was pitched for ten minutes without a single question, and a UX designer example that shows how this works for any service or software.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Welcome and what Mylance does
00:40 Why I stopped pitching on calls
01:25 Rob Snyder's founder bootcamp
01:50 Customers buy to finish a project
02:20 The six month do nothing question
02:55 The four part framework begins
03:30 The other options customers have
04:10 The framework applied to Mylance
05:30 LinkedIn conviction, AI shortfalls
07:00 The 10 minute pitch I sat through
08:35 The twelve questions I ask
09:45 Any service or software
10:15 UX designer example
12:45 Signals someone is ready to buy
13:10 Asking where their head is at
13:45 The customer who went on vacation
15:00 Try Mylance and design your voice

I used to think building the business, hitting the number, and checking every box on the list would eventually add up to feeling good. My guest today spent over a decade as a business attorney, built her own law firm, scaled it, sold it, and by every external measure had made it. Then she realized hitting every goal on the list wasn't actually making her happy, and the whole path she had been running on wasn't built for her.

Sloane is a transformational mentor who helps high performing women create success on their own terms, and she brings something most people in this space don't: a certification in neuropsychophysiology, combining neuroscience, psychology, and biology to back up what she teaches. In this conversation we get into why so many founders sacrifice themselves now hoping to be happy later, why that trade almost never pays off, and what she calls the slingshot effect of building from alignment instead of pure hustle.

We also talk about something founders rarely discuss openly: how the male dominated default of business, the single pointed focus model, differs from what Sloane calls diffuse awareness, and why understanding this matters if you lead a team, run a company, or are building your own version of thought leadership and visibility. If you have ever felt like your linkedin thought leadership or your business success looked great from the outside while something quietly felt off on the inside, this episode is for you.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Welcome to Founder Unfiltered
00:45 Meet Sloane, attorney turned mentor
01:22 Building the dream and still feeling empty
03:22 The pattern of chasing the next big thing
07:29 Selling the firm and moving to coaching
09:07 The dinner in Mexico that changed everything
11:31 The two things missing from a fulfilled life
13:59 How this applies to founders
15:16 What happens after you sell the company
16:11 The slingshot effect of building from alignment
20:21 The research behind subjective well being
22:06 Diffuse awareness versus single pointed focus
25:07 Why business culture is built for men
27:11 The four different women in one cycle
28:40 The superpowers hidden in each phase
33:14 Leading with curiosity instead of judgment
36:43 Why true pleasure is profitable
39:40 Sloane's five core beliefs framework
43:07 How to work with Sloane and what's next

I thought product-market fit meant people liked what I built. That belief was wrong, and it cost me time.

In this solo episode, I walk through what product-market fit actually looks like once you get past the surface-level idea of "people gave positive feedback." I talk about the pain cave, the identity crisis that comes with being a founder, and why nine out of ten people give up before they ever get there. I explain the exact situation I look for in a Mylance customer: someone with a task they cannot avoid, and existing options that are not good enough for very specific reasons.

I get into how I use LinkedIn content marketing and LinkedIn thought leadership as the backdrop for this whole conversation, since that is the product I have spent years building. I also share how I separate my identity from my product so I can hear real feedback without taking it personally, and the list of questions I now ask every customer to understand what is actually unavoidable about their situation. If you are building something, whether a product or a service, this is the mindset shift I wish I had earlier.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co

Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/
00:00 Why building a company is so hard
01:36 The typical product-market fit path
02:42 The emotional weight of putting yourself out there
03:35 What I used to think product-market fit meant
04:57 The unavoidable task and the limits of existing solutions
06:21 Why skeptical customers are not "hell yes" customers
07:27 Building authority versus expecting inbound leads
08:15 Becoming an investigator into your customer
10:31 Separating your identity from your product
12:08 The 12 questions I ask every customer
13:33 Finding your hell yes customers
14:39 Staying detached while believing you will figure it out

I sat down with John Assaraf, someone who has built five multimillion dollar companies, written 18 books including two New York Times bestsellers, and appeared in 14 movies including The Secret. But none of that is why I wanted him on the show.

I wanted to know what actually happened in his brain the day everything changed. John dropped out of high school after 10th grade, was working for $1.65 an hour in a factory, and by his own account was heading toward jail or worse. Then at 19, one conversation with a mentor named Alan Brown shifted the entire trajectory of his life, not because of a single piece of advice, but because it forced John to choose between being interested in his goals and being committed to them.

We go deep on what it actually took to rewire his identity from the inside out, the belief work he still does every single day at 65, and why fear of success is just as dangerous and far less talked about than fear of failure. John breaks down the neuroscience of prediction, why your brain is constantly trying to keep you safe from embarrassment and rejection, and how he taught himself to turn fear into fuel using tools any founder can practice. We also get into why consistency beats intensity, what he's doing today with AI to run 80 percent of his business, and the daily non negotiables that have kept his mindset sharp for over four decades.

If you have ever felt like you know what to do but cannot get yourself to actually do it, this conversation is for you.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Intro to Founder Unfiltered
00:21 Meet John Assaraf
01:32 The $1.65 an hour years
02:20 The lunch that changed his life
04:21 The 1980 goal setting guide
05:32 Interested versus committed
06:50 A mentor says yes
08:03 Rewiring identity from scratch
09:26 Creating new beliefs on day one
11:30 Reading and feeling the vision daily
12:15 Reverse engineering the sales goal
13:01 The cold call script
14:15 First deals and first wins
16:00 The exceptional life blueprint today
17:20 Understanding the brain's mechanics
18:32 Two paths after the opportunity
19:14 Sick and tired of being sick and tired
21:25 Escaping the old environment
22:52 Owning your gifts without arrogance
24:17 The podcast mistake that humbled him
25:48 Fear of success explained
26:17 The brain's prediction loop
28:21 What fear of success is protecting
29:57 Self regulating the nervous system
31:23 Practice versus reacting in the moment
32:59 The hardest part of business today
34:05 Bradley's own avoidance pattern
35:04 Understanding your role on the team
36:57 Disappointment avoidance in sales
37:59 Separating rejection from self worth
39:22 Changing the meaning changes the feeling
41:09 Daily non negotiable practices
43:18 Consistency before complexity
44:34 Relearning to walk after surgery
45:20 Where to find John Assaraf

I want to tell you about something I almost didn't admit out loud. I shipped a feature I'm genuinely excited about, one that finds the people commenting on your posts, scores them against your ideal customer profile, and even drafts a reply for you. It's working, and I told almost no one. No email to my customer list, no newsletter blast, no LinkedIn post.

In this episode, I dig into why I did that, and why so many founders do the same thing without realizing it. The honest answer is fear. Not fear of failure exactly, fear that if the product isn't perfect, that says something about me. When you're a solo founder, or when you are the product, like a fractional COO or independent consultant, that fear gets even sharper because there's no cofounder in the room to call it out.

I break down the real loop every growing business depends on: build something imperfect, put it in front of real customers, get their honest reaction, and iterate. That loop only works if you're willing to be seen before you're ready. I talk through how to separate your worth from your product, how to notice the voice in your head that's actually running the show, and what it really takes to keep showing up every day even when the thing you built has bugs in it.

If you're a founder who has been sitting on a launch, a post, or a feature because it isn't polished enough yet, this one is for you.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to Founder Unfiltered
00:35 The feature I shipped and hid
01:28 Why I didn't tell anyone
02:22 The fear underneath the silence
02:40 Shipping before it's perfect
03:27 I coach founders on this daily
04:13 The hypothesis every founder is running
04:34 The vulnerability of being the product
05:19 Getting judged by the market
06:16 The feedback and iteration loop
07:14 Why this hides in the shadows
07:46 Not telling anyone about your product
08:30 The unconscious fear behind the story
09:07 Making it about you, not the work
10:03 Distraction and procrastination as avoidance
10:37 What you would tell someone else
11:05 Owning the truth about building
11:45 Separating yourself from your product
12:32 What makes a great founder
13:09 Naming the voice running the show
13:29 Realizing it's not true, it's not you
14:17 A daily battle, not a one time fix
15:21 What Mylance does with your story
16:10 Ratings, thanks, and sign off

Chris Deaver spent his career shaping culture inside Apple, Disney, and Dell. Then he went out on his own and learned what that culture work actually costs a person.

In this conversation, Chris and I get into what "brave" actually means when you're a founder with no big company behind you. We talk about the mirror test, a principle from his book that pushes you to get quiet enough to ask what you actually need to do differently, instead of copy pasting someone else's playbook. We go deep on the difference between being brave alone and being brave together, why deleting priorities is harder than adding them, and why the best leaders lead with questions instead of answers.

Chris also gets real about his own valley. Right as his book was launching and his career should have been peaking, his marriage was ending, his company was getting acquired out from under him, and he couldn't get out of bed to shoot a video with his own co-author. He shares what actually pulled him through it, and why he thinks becoming a founder might be one of the most spiritual experiences available to us today.

If you've ever felt like your business identity and your personal identity got tangled up in a way that isn't working, this one is for you.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Intro to Chris Deaver
00:45 What brave means for solo founders
01:44 Why bravery alone has limits
02:42 Getting stuck without knowing why
04:08 The mirror test explained
05:44 Why the founder journey is confronting
06:25 Ed Catmull and asking better questions
07:14 The hero's journey and sacrifice
09:21 The Warren Buffett top five method
10:23 Steve Jobs and the sacrifice question
10:53 Why deleting is harder than doing
11:25 Ed Catmull, take care of the baby
12:35 Amazon's sequential build lesson
13:57 Culture as the golden goose
14:14 Leaving big companies to go solo
16:55 What it was really like eating glass
19:41 AI disruption and founder priorities
20:11 The bottom falling out moment
21:28 The Weekend at Bernie's video shoot
22:16 A hand on a tree
25:07 When founder identity confuses with the business
27:30 The solar startup culture turnaround
30:04 Building a brain trust
32:39 From 15 million to 150 million
34:41 Finding your tribe at a company
35:37 Spock and Kirk co-founder dynamics
36:28 Softway and the trust question
38:06 Ice baths and stacking habits
39:03 The spiritual side of building
40:23 Leading with questions, not answers
44:32 Asking for help and refining leverage
45:23 A team that rocks together
46:13 Where to find Chris Deaver

A few months ago I got on a call with a business owner who almost canceled on me twice. She runs a real consulting business, real clients, real revenue, and she's smart and experienced. But when we finally connected, she told me something I hear constantly: she's trying to grow her visibility while staying invisible. She wants more clients and more reach, but she doesn't want to actually put herself out there to get it.

In this episode I dig into that contradiction, because it's one of the most common things I see in founders, consultants, and fractional executives. I ask her the question I ask almost everyone in this spot: what are you actually afraid of? Her answer was blunt. She's scared to fail in public. Scared of bad takes. Scared people will read what she posts and think less of her.

I walk through why that fear feels so real and so specific, and why it almost never matches what actually happens once people start posting. If you've ever sat on a draft, rewritten a headline five times, or talked yourself out of hitting publish, this conversation is for you. This is the fear that quietly costs founders clients, and I want to help you name it so you can move through it instead of around it.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 The client who kept rescheduling
00:53 Why founders stay invisible
01:26 Naming the real fear
02:33 Fear with no actual consequence
03:10 The vulnerability of putting yourself out there
04:09 The founder who never posted once
05:04 What actually happens after a bad post
05:51 Why posting daily doesn't bombard anyone
06:30 The algorithm myth everyone believes
06:53 Your content isn't about you
08:18 My own fear before hitting publish
09:15 Why nothing is ever perfect at launch
10:02 The hardest part of being a founder
10:30 The exercise: name what you're avoiding
11:02 Let your vision be bigger than your fear
11:33 Closing and where to find Mylance

I sat down with Gregory Galant, co-founder and CEO of Muckrack, the leading PR software platform, and co-founder of the Shorty Awards. Greg bootstrapped his company for 13 years on roughly $200K in angel funding before raising $180 million. That's not a typo, and getting there was not a straight line.

We talk about persistence, and how to actually tell the difference between an idea worth sticking with and one you need to walk away from. Greg shares the story of spending two years building a podcast ad network that never found its market, even while competitors were getting funded by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, and how that experience shaped the way he evaluates decisions today. He also gets into one of his most useful habits: writing a private memo before every major call so he can go back later and separate a good decision from a lucky or unlucky outcome.

We get into mindset too. Greg is honest about how hard it is not to take a failing business personally when your identity is wrapped up in it, and the mental model he uses to treat entrepreneurship more like running experiments than staking his self-worth on every outcome. We also cover why he thinks courage and judgment matter more than ever now that AI has made tactical knowledge nearly free, why Muckrack went all-in on remote work over a decade before it was normal, and how he actually measures performance on a distributed team.

If you're building something and wondering whether you're pushing a boulder uphill or riding a market that's actually pulling you forward, this conversation will give you a real framework for figuring that out.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Intro to Gregory Galant
00:47 The single biggest factor in success
01:50 Knowing when to persist vs. pivot
02:31 Two years on a podcast ad network
03:45 Competing against Sequoia-backed rivals
04:28 Pushing a boulder vs. market pull
05:19 A mediocre team in a great market
06:07 Learning it wasn't him, it was the market
07:25 The Edison filament analogy
08:41 Giving yourself entrepreneurial longevity
08:57 How the Shorty Awards went viral in 24 hours
10:14 Talking mindset and imposter feelings
11:09 Separating identity from outcome
12:18 Treating decisions like experiments
13:07 Writing private memos before big calls
14:35 It's not about you, it's the market
15:26 Why this never gets easier
15:59 AI and the death of tactical advantage
17:41 Why Silicon Valley insiders had the edge
18:00 Courage and judgment as the new differentiators
19:21 Why AI won't give you conviction
20:06 The Felix Dennis paycheck-addiction line
21:09 Founder mistakes that actually cost him
22:00 Building tech before proving the business
23:32 Launching a dozen side projects
24:29 The angel investors who called him unfocused
25:05 Discovering Muckrack's real audience
26:19 What changed to make him double down
27:02 Muckrack's first $8,000 in MRR
28:15 The market kept pulling harder
28:51 Going remote before it was normal
30:08 Why they never made anyone commute
31:38 Giving up the New York office for good
32:26 What remote work exposes about culture
33:31 How he measures performance remotely
34:04 The Andy Grove input/output framework
36:09 Advice to his younger self
37:13 Where to find Gregory Galant

Leaving Uber was one of the strangest experiences of my life. One day I'm running a business line worth billions of dollars, the next I have no manager, no structure, no salary, and no idea whether I'm doing a good job. In this episode, part three of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, I get into everything that happened after I left: pitching my first consulting client on a $25k proposal I basically made up on the spot, learning to ask for what I actually want (something corporate culture trains out of you), and the existential wobble of defining success for myself for the first time.

We talk about why so many founders confuse their identity with their business, and why separating "I am Bradley" from "I am the business" was the single biggest unlock in my entrepreneurial journey. I share how a mastermind group, a few minutes of intentionally feeling hard emotions, and a shift from chasing metrics to falling in love with process changed how I run Mylance day to day. We also get into how Mylance came to be, why posting daily on LinkedIn became my entire marketing engine, and why keeping your hard-won expertise to yourself is, in my view, the most selfish thing you can do.

If you're building something on your own and wondering whether the chaos is normal, this one's for you.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Intro to part three
00:16 Everything after Uber
01:18 Making up a $25K proposal
02:08 First entrepreneurial leap
02:52 Learning to ask for what you want
03:29 Why corporate discourages asking
04:14 Knowing your market value
04:42 Never Split the Difference tactic
05:24 Falling into consulting
06:06 Existential first months solo
07:18 Building an informal advisor board
08:06 Corporate structure vs going solo
09:10 Starting a mastermind for support
09:51 Facing the fear of shutting down
10:13 Separating self from the business
11:29 Letting yourself feel emotions
12:26 Trauma responses and burnout
13:21 Ditching fancy business models
14:19 Falling in love with process
15:07 Systems as 98% of the game
15:30 Planning nights for needle movers
17:14 Purpose over hitting numbers
18:09 Why Mylance was founded
19:06 The first client conversation
20:12 Researching the market
21:32 Sales and marketing struggles
21:49 Building trust through daily posts
22:52 Coaching program pivot
23:19 The $12,000 sale story
24:07 The power of compounding trust
25:04 Posting consistently, small audience
26:00 What a thousand followers is worth
26:42 Speak from the "I," not the "you"
27:43 Fear of being seen
29:19 Entrepreneurship as self-improvement
30:05 Keeping expertise to yourself is selfish
32:04 Content as a mirror for others
34:00 Where to find Bradley and Mylance

I've talked to a lot of guests on this show, but this conversation with Abhijit Bhaduri gave me a word I haven't stopped thinking about since we recorded it: hunar.

Abhijit has led learning and leadership development at Colgate, Wipro, Microsoft, and Pepsi. He was Wipro's first Chief Learning Officer, has written six books, and has built an audience of nearly a million followers on LinkedIn. But none of that is really what we talk about. We talk about the thing underneath all of it.

Hunar is a Persian-origin word used in Hindi and Urdu, and it sits somewhere between mastery and artistry. Abhijit breaks down the difference between talent (what you're born with), skill (what can be taught and benchmarked), and hunar (the unrepeatable stuff you bring from your own life, your disappointments, your obsessions, your weird taste in music) that shows up in your work whether you mean it to or not. He tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock's childhood and how a single terrifying afternoon became the signature of "the master of suspense." We talk about Roger Federer, why his rivals cried when he retired, and why AI can replicate a skill but never a signature.

If AI can build the CRM, write the copy, and do the accounting, the thing that makes your product yours isn't the execution. It's you, integrated into the work. We talk about what that means for building in public, for LinkedIn content, and for founders trying to differentiate in a market where everyone has access to the same tools.

Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co
Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/

00:00 Introducing Abhijit Bhaduri
01:14 The through line across his career
02:29 Going out on his own after big brands
04:42 Building identity without a big name
05:15 Where the idea of hunar began
06:13 Talent versus skill versus hunar
07:41 The Alfred Hitchcock origin story
09:23 How fear became his signature
10:47 The unsigned painting analogy
12:17 Why AI can steal skill, not hunar
13:30 Why we still need teachers
14:12 The human side AI can't replicate
15:28 What makes a CRM actually different
16:08 The industrial era of interchangeability
17:45 Why benchmarks hurt mental health
18:24 His next book, AI Identity
19:17 The vulnerability of being unique
20:01 Bringing storytelling into corporate work
22:40 Illustrating his own LinkedIn content
23:15 Roger Federer as a hunar example
24:34 Why his rivals cried at his retirement
26:20 Learning from others without copying them
27:00 How founders can go find their hunar
28:42 Coaching founders on money and identity
30:15 What works for him on LinkedIn
32:07 Posting consistently over years
33:33 Writing for yourself and the reader
34:07 His closing message to founders
35:11 Where to find Abhijit Bhaduri