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

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