We Live to Build

What if the secret to happiness wasn't a grand epiphany, but a bad movie playing at 2AM? In this episode, Sean sits down with Ben Narasin, a veteran venture capitalist who has backed companies like LendingClub, Rippling, and Omada Health, to explore what decades of investing at the highest level teaches you about life, patience, and staying true to your standards. Ben reveals why lowering the bar in venture is the beginning of the end, and how he learned to sit with the discomfort of seeing 2,500 pitches in a year and funding just one, without letting that silence become a compromise. You'll also hear his counterintuitive advice to founders: stop optimizing your valuation pitch and start treating your investor relationships like a marriage, because you'll be living with that choice for ten years or more.

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📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Happiness Is Wanting What You Have

00:35 - Why Ben Only Funded 1 of 2,500 Pitches

01:11 - LendingClub, Rippling, and the Fired Founder Pattern

03:11 - Game Theory Will Ruin Your Investor Relationship

06:44 - The ChatGPT Trick for Vetting Your VC

08:14 - No Skeletons: The Open LP Meeting Experiment

18:03 - Specifics Are Your Friend, Generalities Your Enemy

25:04 - Work Hard When There's a Reason To

31:28 - Sleep, REM, and the Brain-Cleaning Function

33:46 - Life Is Hard for Everybody. Get Over It.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the real reason most businesses fail isn't strategy or market fit, but the behavior and value system of the owner themselves? In this episode, Sean sits down with Jay Aldebert, a business consultant who has studied patterns across 88,000 businesses and identified 11 biomarkers that predict whether a company will thrive or struggle. Jay explains why he starts every client conversation with a single pointed question about profit, and how the answer reveals far more than most owners expect. He shares why education has to come before measurement, drawing a parallel to how doctors measure without explaining, and why changing an owner's value system is often the hardest and most important part of the work. If you have ever wondered why smart, driven business owners keep hitting the same walls, Jay's framework will give you a completely new lens for looking at your own business.

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📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Business Owners Are Addicts to Their Own Behavior

00:25 - Changing a Client's Value System From Scratch

01:06 - The "Shock and Awe" Hook That Wins Clients

04:03 - The Five Dimensions of Profit Explained

05:37 - The Two-Day Diagnostic Nobody Else Offers

07:45 - Why the Engagement Is a Loss Leader

10:50 - Sand Castle Consulting vs. Project-Based Work

14:01 - The 2-to-1 Return Assurance Unpacked

22:53 - RTO Software and the 11 Business Biomarkers

25:28 - One Profit Decision Affects 40 People

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What if the single move almost no seller bothers to make is the one that multiplies your pipeline by eight? In this episode, Neal Goyal, a go-to-market leader who built 8x pipeline at Postpilot in just eight months, breaks down exactly how he did it using LinkedIn in a way that only one out of every hundred sellers actually does. Neal reveals why content is the last step in his three-part flywheel, not the first, and why showing up in your target ICP's comments before ever sending a message is the real foundation of trust. You'll also hear why the spray-and-pray outbound tactics that dominate most sales teams are actively eroding the trust you need to close deals, especially when thousands of software companies are all fighting for the attention of the same two thousand brands. If you want to understand how to compete for attention instead of just competing on features, Neal's approach will change how you think about pipeline building entirely.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - No Shortcuts to Building Real Relationships

01:04 - How Neil 8x'd Postpilot's Pipeline

02:45 - The Three-Part LinkedIn Flywheel Explained

05:22 - Deposits Before Withdrawals on LinkedIn

09:14 - Meet Your ICP Where They Actually Are

18:16 - Why Neil Won't Let AI Build Relationships

23:11 - Coaching Reps Out of LinkedIn Fear

27:13 - Personal Brand Follows You Everywhere

28:03 - Bet on Yourself Before You're Ready

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the key to unlocking your team's potential wasn't hiring better people, but simply removing the friction slowing them down? Shelton Mercer III joins Sean to share how a shift from a 60-day process to a 60-minute one completely reframed how he thinks about the people around him and what they're truly capable of. You'll hear Shelton break down why power is less about authority and more about influence, how bringing together leaders from government, capital markets, and philanthropy in the same room creates a parity that cuts through political gridlock, and why framing collaboration around shared geography rather than competing agendas is what actually moves things forward. If you've ever wondered whether the systems your team works within are the real bottleneck, this conversation will make you think twice about where you're looking for solutions.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Philanthropy Is Limited, Government Is Broken

01:25 - The Power Shift Redefining Who Leads

02:01 - Using the World Cup to Unlock City Change

07:56 - One City, One Day, 100 Leaders

08:34 - How Activate's AI Cuts 60 Days to 60 Minutes

15:50 - AI Took My Designer's Job — Now What?

19:21 - Upskilling Your Team Instead of Cutting Them

28:05 - Pencils of Promise and Community Buy-In

36:07 - The Three Traits Every Leader Needs

38:00 - Mentor Told Me to Finish Some Ish

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the key to smarter business decisions isn't more data, but knowing when to trust yourself over the algorithm? In this episode, Sean sits down with Robert Indries, a builder and investor who was working with large language models back in 2016, long before AI became a boardroom buzzword. Robert shares why, despite his deep technical background, he still believes human intuition catches what AI cannot, especially when it comes to detecting deception during company acquisitions. You'll hear how his team uses a rigorous due diligence process of up to 170 questions to surface hidden problems before they become costly headaches, and why the best questions on that list came directly from painful past experience. Robert also breaks down how he thinks about failure tolerance in acquisitions, including why growing a company's value before a black swan event can mean the difference between a loss and getting your money back.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Getting Sellers to Tell You the Truth

01:17 - The 21-Question Due Diligence Massage Method

02:38 - Building a "Should Have Asked" Backlog

04:41 - Why AI Can't Catch a Liar in M&A

07:07 - Human Intuition Still Beats Generated Scripts

09:06 - Sean's Podcast Pitch That Turned a Rejection Around

17:25 - No Industry Is Safe From AI Disruption

19:52 - Protoss, Zerg, or Terran: Which Future Wins?

26:53 - Learning to Love as a Daily Skill

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it actually take to back yourself when the whole world seems to doubt you? In this episode, Sean sits down with Travis McGregor, a technology pioneer working to reinvent how the world handles security from the cloud to the edge, including building a world-first innovation in just 90 days. Travis opens up about the defining moment at 22 years old when he froze on stage in front of a thousand people after his team changed his entire keynote without warning, and how that humbling experience shaped him into the prepared, accountable leader he is today. You'll hear how Travis learned to stop second-guessing himself, why true belief in your own ideas is a deeply personal journey, and how choosing to fall on his sword rather than point fingers became the foundation of his leadership philosophy.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Believing in Yourself When Nobody Else Does

01:44 - Choking on Stage at 22 Years Old

05:22 - The Off-the-Cuff Pitch That Changed Everything

09:21 - Patents Aren't What Most Founders Think

12:27 - Why Your Data Is Never Really Yours

14:56 - Flipping the Cloud-to-Edge Security Model

23:13 - SLC's Play to Reach 600 Mobile Networks

27:51 - 6G and the End of Anonymous Fraud Calls

29:32 - Could SIMs Replace Broken Government Systems

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it actually take to back yourself when no one else believes in you? In this episode of We Live to Build, Sean sits down with Stacie Shifflett, a self-taught entrepreneur and subject matter expert in federal government procurement and acquisition, who shares the raw story of orchestrating a 50 million dollar software company acquisition with zero prior experience at that scale. You'll hear how Stacie walked into a boardroom, discovered her name had been left off the org chart despite a signed employment contract, and chose to stand her ground rather than go along to get along. She also opens up about one of the hardest decisions entrepreneurs face, knowing when to say no, take your money, and walk away even when others frame it as a missed opportunity. If you've ever been underestimated or felt pressure to shrink yourself in a room where you clearly earned your seat, Stacie's story will resonate deeply.

────────────────────────────────--─────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Stacy Led a $50M Acquisition From Scratch

01:00 - The CEO Who Didn't Know What to Do With Her

03:28 - Leaving Money on the Table Was the Right Call

05:22 - The One Time Stacy Actually Threw a Punch

09:59 - Stacy Woke Up and Decided to Buy a Company

15:40 - Self-Taught, No Degree, Still Outperformed Everyone

26:02 - Peace of Mind Is Our Greatest Personal Asset

29:22 - Know Yourself Before You Can Go Anywhere

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens to marketing, consumer culture, and the businesses built around them when AI eliminates 90% of white collar jobs? In this episode, Sean sits down with Zachary Rischitelli to explore how networking, relationship-building, and human connection are becoming the most durable competitive advantages in an increasingly automated world. Zachary shares how his business has sustained client relationships for over sixteen years through genuine personal investment, not transactional card-swapping, and why showing up in person still moves the needle even as LinkedIn floods everyone's inbox. You'll also hear his simple but powerful networking reframe: be interested rather than interesting, a mindset shift that cuts through small talk and builds real trust fast. If you're thinking about how to future-proof your business and your relationships before the landscape shifts beneath you, this conversation will give you a lot to chew on.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - The Networking Hack Nobody Talks About

00:22 - Building a 17-Year Business Through Relationships

03:46 - "Be Interested, Not Interesting" in Practice

06:22 - Reading Body Language at Networking Events

08:39 - Moving Past Small Talk With Strangers

11:31 - What Makes Networking Events Exhausting

19:07 - Pitching a Marketing Agency in the AI Era

21:15 - Who Are We Marketing to When AI Wins?

28:17 - The Acquisition That Only Goes Forward

36:53 - Work-Life Balance Is a Founder's Hardest Problem

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it really take to break through a revenue plateau and build a business that outlasts your mistakes? In this episode, Ephraim Ebstein, an MSP entrepreneur who scaled past seven figures, shares the hard lessons he learned the long way. You will hear how developing financial literacy with the help of retired CEO mentors was the turning point that unstuck his business when it was trapped between seven and nine million dollars. Ephraim also breaks down why networking is never optional, showing you how a single spearfishing connection led to the job that taught him the entire industry and eventually the clients that made his company possible. And if you have ever wondered whether burning a bridge could cost you more than you think, his story of a former boss who later became his employee will make you rethink every professional relationship you have ever let go cold.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

──────────────────────

📋 WORK WITH ME

──────────────────────

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

──────────────────────

🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN

──────────────────────

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

──────────

🕐 CHAPTERS

──────────

00:00 - Networking: Love It or Hate It?

00:22 - Flying to Events to Find the Right Rooms

01:08 - The One Connection That Started Everything

03:49 - Retired CEOs Roasted Ephraim on Financials

06:21 - Pay to Be in the Right Places

11:26 - Two Takeaways, Two Relationships Per Event

13:17 - Intentional Networking Beats Hoping for Luck

16:00 - Never Burn Bridges Because The World Is Small

21:07 - Diversifying Investments to Weather Any Storm

40:00 - The Principle Behind All of Ephraim's Success

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Entrepreneur Scott Meier evaluated over 100 businesses before deciding to acquire three unique brands under one roof: Budsies, Petsies, and Stuffed Animal Pros. But instead of applying a ruthless corporate "roll-up" strategy, Scott chose to become a steward of an artisan-driven brand. In this episode, we dive into the world of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) and the booming "kid-alt" nostalgia market. Scott breaks down the complex logistics of global plush manufacturing, how his company uses its profits to support kids in hospitals and disaster zones, and how he personally uses AI tools like Claude to automate annoying tasks so his team has more time to be human. Finally, Scott shares his ultimate leadership lesson: why the best thing you can do to build trust and solve complex problems is simply to "say less." Check out the company: https://budsies.com

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📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

▶ Get my eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network

-----------------------------------

📈 WORK WITH ME

-----------------------------------

▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook

▶ Book a Paid Advisory Session: https://welivetobuild.com/book-a-call

▶ Startup Fundraising: https://welivetobuild.com/fundraising

▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship

---------------------------------------------

👀 CONNECT WITH SEAN

---------------------------------------------

▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot

▶ Inquiries: [email protected]

---------------------------

🕒 CHAPTERS

---------------------------

00:00 - Evaluating 100 Companies to Buy

02:50 - The Budsies & Petsies Ecosystem

05:50 - The "Kidault" Market & Nostalgia

08:35 - Making Artisan Products at Scale

12:15 - Avoiding the Corporate "Roll-Up" Model

16:20 - Pencils of Promise & The Power of Charity

20:00 - Why Facebook Ads Are Creepy

23:45 - Using AI to Give Us Time to Be Human

26:10 - The #1 Leadership Lesson: Say Less

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.