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

This is part two of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, and if you haven't listened to part one about launching Raleigh, the Lyft wars, and Uber Eats in Miami, go back and start there first.

This episode picks up right where things got hard. I talk about getting rejected for a role I was asked to interview for, and the lesson that rejection taught me about making career moves about what a company actually needs instead of what I want. From there I take you through moving to Europe to launch Uber Eats in Milan, managing a team of over 25 Italians without speaking the language, and learning the difference between managing and leading the hard way.

Then I get into the part of my Uber story almost nobody knows: Uber Freight. I walked into a warehouse in San Francisco with a handful of people from the freight world and helped build a digital freight brokerage from scratch, inside a hundred billion dollar industry that was still running on phone calls and fax machines. Two years later, that business crossed a billion dollar valuation. I talk through the two-sided marketplace problem we got completely backwards at first, why enterprise sales in freight is a game of pure reliability, and how Uber's willingness to make big, bold, expensive bets is what actually built the business.

If you're building something new inside an old industry, or you're trying to figure out how much risk you're actually willing to take on to grow, 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 and part two setup
00:40 The rejection that taught a lesson
01:10 Launching Uber in Italy overview
01:23 Getting rejected for the Madrid GM role
01:50 Applying anyway without fluent Spanish
02:07 The call that changed everything
02:49 Putting ego aside to add value
03:11 Asked to launch two cities at once
04:01 Choosing Milan over Madrid
04:47 Launching Uber Eats in Milan
05:16 Grassroots marketing with no brand
05:45 The lunch culture clash
06:38 Managing the pressure from corporate
07:39 First launch day: 50 orders vs 1,003
08:16 Becoming a pure manager for the first time
08:52 What he'd do differently in Italy
09:44 Deciding to come home after seven months
10:04 Hearing about the Uber Freight acquisition
10:52 Getting the call to join Freight
11:16 Why chaos and building excite him
12:02 Sponsor: Lodify
13:05 Walking into the Freight warehouse
14:03 The disconnect between plan and reality
14:44 Breaking the news to leadership
15:08 Grassroots interviews with truck drivers
16:15 Crossing a billion dollars in two years
16:39 The hundred billion dollar fragmented market
17:00 The chicken-and-egg marketplace problem
18:07 Why loads mattered more than sign-ups
19:35 First time doing enterprise sales
20:01 What shippers actually care about
20:39 Proving reliability with the worst loads
21:16 How they hit a billion dollar valuation
21:38 Growth versus profitability tension
22:32 Spot market versus contract market
23:16 Beating the market with technology
24:23 Using the Uber name as leverage
25:22 Would Freight work without Uber's name
25:54 What made Uber succeed overall
26:24 Travis and the big bold bets philosophy
27:41 Bradley's own lessons from getting slapped down
28:38 Setting up part three

This episode changed how I see my own business.

Most founders think their product is the thing they sell. It isn't. Your thinking is the real product.

I sat down with Simon Bowen, founder of the Models Method and creator of the Genius Model, a system he's used for nearly 30 years to help founders and consultants turn complex expertise into visual frameworks that actually close deals. Simon's work spans 30 countries and industries from defense to one-on-one coaching, and he's spent his career helping people get out of their own heads long enough to see what they actually know.

We get into why "uniqueness" is a trap in a world flooded with AI-generated marketing copy. Simon breaks down his framework for company genius: the 20% that's truly yours (your original perspective, shaped by your story) integrated with the 80% you've curated from everything else in your industry. We talk about why purpose doesn't make the sale, why the sale is made in the how, and Simon walks through a real example of finding "the ache," the deep, often unnamed problem underneath the problem a customer says they have.

If you've ever struggled to explain what makes you different, or felt like imposter syndrome was creeping in because so much of what you do isn't "original," this conversation will change how you think about your own value.

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 Simon Bowen
00:56 Simon's origin story
02:35 Ideas start as a drawing
04:10 Facilitating rooms that disagree
05:24 The real Pareto principle
06:44 Getting rooms to the breakthrough
09:24 What is company genius
10:09 Make me safe, help me win
11:04 Why AI breeds sameness
12:00 Thinking is the real product
13:15 The founder's story as a lens
15:13 The laundromat example begins
18:03 Curate, create, integrate
19:02 Imposter syndrome reframed
20:28 Purpose, mechanics, and magic
21:29 Consistency builds reliability
22:15 Culture creates character
23:13 The believability crisis
25:12 Purpose doesn't make the sale
26:55 The sale is made in the how
28:44 What AI can't replace
32:02 What the market really wants
34:19 Introducing "the ache"
36:02 The acne treatment example
39:05 Three levels of problem
40:59 Naming the ache
42:00 Why founders forget their own ache
44:34 Closing thoughts on business
46:01 Business as the cornerstone of community
48:37 Where to find Simon Bowen

I was recently a guest on Cassidy Warren's podcast, For Your Own Good, and the conversation went so long and covered so much that I wanted to bring it here too. This is part one of a three-part series pulled from that interview, and it goes all the way back to when I was 24 years old, joining Uber and getting handed the Raleigh, North Carolina market.

My job was simple to say and brutal to execute: beat Lyft. We launched on the exact same day, with basically the same product, and six months later we had 90% market share. I walk through exactly how that happened, the five-mile launch radius, the obsession with five-minute ETAs, the live recruiting with a backpack full of iPhones and cash incentives, and the sheer amount of experimentation inside a very tight discipline.

I also get into launching Uber Eats in Miami from scratch in six weeks, saying no to an entire city team who wanted a flashy launch party, and instead building the actual marketplace first. Restaurants, eaters, couriers, in that order. This is what it looks like to own a market as if it's your own company before you actually know what you're doing, and to do it anyway.

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

00:00 Intro and episode setup
00:46 Uber at 24, goal to beat Lyft
01:27 Uber Eats Miami preview
02:01 90% market share explained
02:41 Early Uber culture, Wild West
03:36 Launch day vs Lyft in Raleigh
04:19 Five mile radius strategy
04:58 Six months later, 90% share
05:43 Focusing on one KPI
06:33 Experimentation within discipline
06:58 Incentive experiments explained
07:29 Managing events and driver supply
08:12 Pitching drivers on gig economy
09:07 Background checks and security
09:52 Signing up riders at UNC
10:54 Organic growth over paid ads
11:41 Who do you trust, then and now
12:41 Comparing to AI hype today
13:52 Communicating with skeptical users
14:30 Answering 500 driver emails weekly
15:52 Building a text expander system
16:28 Transition to launching Uber Eats
17:14 Getting picked for Uber Eats launch
18:09 Six week launch challenge in Miami
19:06 Three sided marketplace explained
19:36 Metrics needed to launch
20:07 Killing the launch party idea
21:05 Biggest Uber Eats launch to date
22:10 Becoming a leader under pressure
23:07 Jumping in wherever needed
24:03 Conflict on a commission team
25:04 Offered the Miami GM role
26:08 Reflecting on ownership mindset
27:23 Talking to restaurant partners
28:37 Explaining the restaurant pitch
29:10 Ghost kitchens and on demand lunch
31:02 Why the restaurant model failed
32:20 DoorDash winning on volume
33:12 Backpack full of iPhones story
34:49 Copying competitor features
35:23 Why Uber tracked Lyft so closely
36:26 Live dashboards and supply scores
37:39 Why lost riders rarely return
38:18 Lesson on owner over optimization
39:32 Door to door restaurant signups
40:04 Closing and part two preview

My guest this week, Robin Daniels has held executive roles at Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box, Matterport, and WeWork, and he's now Chief Business Officer at Zensai. He watched WeWork's valuation swing from $20 billion to $47 billion to nothing in the span of a single year, and what he took from that isn't a war story, it's a way of leading.

We get into the delusion that fuels great founders, the fine line between visionary and reckless, and why people always buy with emotion and support with logic, no matter how "B2B" the sale looks. Robin shares the courage it took to buy a one-way ticket from Copenhagen to California at 21, why high performers fear not trying more than failing, and how he made the brutal transition from doer to leader by learning to trust his team and optimize for speed. We also talk honestly about imposter syndrome, self-promotion, and the question he asks people frozen by the fear of posting: can your ego handle a few people thinking you're wrong?

His core argument is one I keep coming back to: you can't control outcomes, you can only control your inputs and your outputs, so reward how people show up, not just what they hit. Robin's book, The Human Success Playbook, is out now.

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

00:00 Meet Robin Daniels
01:18 The Uber and WeWork parallels
03:00 The founder's useful delusion
06:00 Buy with emotion, support with logic
08:30 Market B2B like B2C
10:50 A one-way ticket to California at 21
14:30 Fear of not trying vs fear of failing
17:40 From doer to leader
20:00 Why micromanagement kills teams
23:00 Optimize for speed and trust
25:30 The mistake that shaped his leadership
28:00 Imposter syndrome at every level
30:30 The voice that says you're a fraud
32:00 Getting started on LinkedIn
35:00 The 90-9-1 content model
38:00 Can your ego handle the judgment
39:30 Why worshipping outcomes backfires
43:00 Reward how people show up
47:40 The Human Success Playbook
49:50 Where to find Robin

This is part four of my four-part series on AI and the founder opportunity, and it's the one that answers the question I get asked the most: once AI makes it easy for anyone to build a product or service, what's actually left to protect?

I walk through why AI is a multiplier, not a moat. The technology gets you to market fast, but so does everyone else's. What separates one founder from the next isn't the product, it's trust, credibility, and the story only you can tell. I share the honest version of my own journey building Mylance since 2020, including the products I sold and the ones I shut down, and why I don't count any of it as failure.

I also get into the real reason most people never do this: not laziness, but fear of judgment. And I close with the four things I'd focus on if I were starting over: know what you're passionate about, validate there's a business in it, get honest about what's holding you back, and pick a strategy and stick with it for years, not weeks.

No books or resources referenced in this one, just the lessons from building and rebuilding Mylance since 2020.

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

00:00 Welcome & what we're building
00:39 Recap: the AI series so far
02:20 AI is a multiplier, not a moat
03:15 Why customers choose you
03:46 Products I built and killed
06:41 Your story is the differentiator
08:28 Why founders hide instead of market
09:37 The real reason: fear, not laziness
10:58 Consistency over years, not weeks
13:01 Recap: short game vs long game
14:08 4 keys to set yourself up right
15:52 Wrap up

I sat down with Dr. Ruth Gotian, a success researcher and executive coach who has spent her career studying the world's highest performers, Nobel laureates, NASA astronauts, and Olympic champions, to figure out what they actually do differently when the pressure is real.

What surprised me most is how often these elite performers say "I don't know." They're not protecting their egos, they're staying curious and pulling knowledge from outside their lane. We dug into why imposter syndrome is actually a sign of your success, why high achievers fear not trying more than they fear failing, and why focusing on your next goal beats obsessing over the ultimate one.

We also got into self-promotion, the thing so many founders avoid. Ruth's take reframed it for me: it's not about you, it's about the value and the people you put the spotlight on. And she shared a networking system, the 24/7/30 rule, that any founder can use right now.

Resources mentioned: Ruth's book The Success Factor, her LinkedIn Learning courses, and the free Passion Audit at RuthGotian.com.

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

00:00 What elite performers do differently
01:15 The subway that sparked the research
03:30 No one teaches you how to succeed
05:00 The surprising power of "I don't know"
07:00 Reading isn't it, open your mind
09:30 Get out of your lane to learn
11:30 Ego and saying "I don't know"
14:00 Your five people set your baseline
16:30 Think next goal, not ultimate goal
19:00 They're terrified too
20:30 Imposter syndrome is a strength
22:30 Failure is just data
25:00 Saying yes only to aligned goals
28:00 Giving value across seasons
30:30 Self-promotion is really value-giving
33:30 Becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice
36:00 Don't fear giving away your secrets
39:00 Breaking through the praise plateau
42:00 What got you here won't get you there
44:30 Using AI for real human connection
47:30 The 24/7/30 networking rule
50:00 Remember your why

This is part three of my four-part series on how AI is reshaping the workforce, and it's the one I promised would be tactical. If you've listened to parts one and two, you know about the macro shift and the inner-game work, this episode is the playbook.

I walk through the exact mistake most founders make: they get excited about an idea, build it, then go looking for customers, only to discover they built the wrong thing. I share the step-by-step process I used about a year ago to launch a brand-new product at Mylance, one that had paying customers before we'd even built it.

You'll hear how I wrote out my hypotheses, ran real customer conversations instead of asking leading questions, built a no-code MVP I could ship in a day, and used the Sean Ellis score to know when I'd actually found product-market fit. I also talk about how tools like Claude Code, Lovable, and Base44 have made building fast, but figuring out what to build is still the hard part.

Part four, on building trust and a sustainable customer experience, drops in two weeks.

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

00:00 Intro and what Mylance does
00:50 Recap of parts one and two
01:30 What this episode delivers
02:15 The mistake most founders make
03:00 Step 1: write your hypotheses
04:15 Bradley's own hypothesis example
05:30 Step 2: real customer conversations
07:00 Talk to real ideal customers
08:00 Step 3: brainstorm the MVP
08:45 Build fast with AI/no-code tools
10:00 Get customers onto the MVP
11:15 The Sean Ellis score and PMF
12:30 Why founders skip this step
13:15 Recap, Part 4 coming in 2 weeks

I sat down with Mark Samuel for an episode that pushed back on a lot of startup gospel. Mark's a serial CPG entrepreneur. He built Iwon Organics into thousands of retail doors before licensing it, had a global brand in Fitmark that was acquired, and he's now building MARK'S, a better-for-you snack company. He also hosts the Let's Eat podcast, where he's interviewed over 250 CPG founders and operators.

We got into why getting onto the shelf is the easy part and why velocity in the door is the metric that actually matters. Mark challenged my own belief that winners are simply the ones who never quit. His reframe: "keep going" means keep moving your feet, not keep pushing a product that's clearly not working. We talked about how to tell a real pivot from a sunk cost, the emotional weight of carrying private investors' money, and why he puts his own health ahead of family and work, in that order.

It's an honest, unfiltered conversation about identity, failure, and starting over. No books or external resources were mentioned in this episode.

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

Connect with Mark Samuel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markalansamuel/

00:00 Welcome + meet Mark Samuel
00:48 Iwon Organics: scaled then licensed
03:00 Getting in the door is the easy part
04:51 The emotional weight of investor money
07:02 The numbers speak for themselves
11:13 Marks' go-to-market: Amazon + DSD
09:25 Pushback: do winners just never quit?
09:46 "Keep going" means move your feet
16:36 How to know: pivot or move on
15:58 The Poppy outlier story
21:00 Health, family, work — in that order
24:53 Marks as a health & wellness platform
25:25 Discipline over motivation
25:45 On resilience
27:00 What drives him now + brand position
31:13 "Nobody cares about you" — the takeaway
31:43 Where to find Mark