Adam Spector: Why Doing Your Own Books is Killing Your Vision

Everyone, welcome back to the Lighthouse Sessions. I'm excited to have my new friend Adam Spector with me. Adam, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do?

I'm a 4-time founder, an entrepreneur. I've had the privilege of investing in over 200 startups as well as an early angel investor. And I also run a podcast called the Entrepreneurial Excellence Podcast on top of it. So I have, for better or worse, seen a lot of different changes when it comes to being an entrepreneur, especially in the tech side of being an entrepreneur. I'm based in San Francisco, so I've seen a lot of change, a lot of different things happen, and a lot of crazy ideas and a lot of crazy people actually make the world— change the world in ways that you never would have expected.

I love it. And I think that's the beautiful thing about the word entrepreneur. Most people see problem. Every entrepreneur I've met, they see a problem and they go, I'm going to solve this for myself. Wait, this is something others would pay for. So let's talk about your, your 4-time founder, because I think that's— you're on track for, as I said, my average guest and, you know, my audience has about 7, I'm gonna suspect that, you know, let's count the podcast, you're at 5, and I'm gonna guess there's something that you forgot to count. So

I should— I did. I should have added I'm also a father and a husband. I have 2 young kids and also a husband. So that's a big part of my life too. So I suppose I probably have 7 or so projects going on at any one time at a minimum.

I love it. And that's the beautiful thing about visionary founders. You know, we don't think in terms of A to B. We're not linear. We tend to have multiple projects. So let's talk about what you're doing today and how did you come to that? Because I think what you're working on is fascinating and I think people need to understand what is a back office done for you? What does that look like?

Yeah. So look, the, the, what my company is called, Chor. We, we do things that we do, the annoying chores in a sense. But the whole thesis is that the world's companies have founders who spend their time focused on what makes them special, what makes them different, their superpowers, and not any time on anything else. In a sense, if you think about the most successful companies in the world, right? So forget his politics for a second, but Elon Musk is certainly one of the world's best entrepreneurs. And do you think he's spending any time wondering what payroll system to use? Or— Yeah, exactly. I mean, Jeff, you're laughing because you should be, because of course he's not. Literally, if the head of HR from Tesla walked into Elon's office and said, hey, Elon, Should we switch to payroll system A or payroll system B? He'd probably say, you're fired. Get out of my room. I'm trying to get to Mars, or whatever his big next thing is.

Yeah.

Because it's ridiculous, because he's laser-focused on doing one big thing. Everything else is secondary. And I come across founders all day long who think it's their job as a CEO and founder to figure out how to run payroll, finance, compliance work, all this stuff. And I'm like, no, this has been solved. This is a solved problem. Why would you ever spend any time on this yourself? And so that's what we're getting done is ADI. I want to give you all more time back in the world so founders can build more successful businesses. More successful businesses and entrepreneurs lead to a better world. And that's my mission in life is to hopefully make a small little dent in the universe in that way.

I love it. And we were talking about saying no to things because I think one of the challenges with founders— and I'll tell you what one of my mentors said early in my career— I can do a lot of things. And I'm one of those— Robert Kiyosaki talks about A students who work for B students. The problem with being extremely gifted and smart is we can figure things out, so we do. And it's like, sometimes those things aren't worth our energy to figure out. Um, find the person who's already solved it. And I think saying no to things feels limiting to founders, especially the visionary ones. But I'm seeing and learning as I get older, if I don't say no to the mundane, I don't have time to say yes to the extraordinary.

Really well said, Jeff. And that's exactly right. So I'll use a personal example of this that I'm sure resonates with people. I find doing— to use your terminology, I find doing laundry a fairly mundane task, but I want to have clean clothes. And the extraordinary that I would be spending my time on other than doing laundry is with my kids or frankly helping to build my company. Either one to me is a much more extraordinary thing than the mundane task of doing laundry. So what do I do? I take my laundry to a wash and fold place. I paid the money. They wash my clothes, they fold my clothes, and then I go pick it up and that's it. And yes, I spend some money on delegating and outsourcing a task that I could do myself, but for that money that it takes, it costs to do that. And by the way, it's like, I think $50 every 3 weeks or something. Right. Like for that $50, I get, I don't know, 3 hours at least back of my life that I can do things that I enjoy more. That is worth it all day long for me. And I get not everyone can afford it in that, like I'm privileged in that way, but I think we all make decisions irrespective of our level of wealth about where to spend our time. And if you spend your time on the things that not only bring you joy, but bring you more money, right? For that 3 hours, like my hourly rate for doing anything in life is worth way more than What is that, $15 an hour or so? Way more personally. And so I'm going to spend my time on those things that will actually make me more money too.

Well, it's funny that you put it that way because I have this conversation with a lot of founders and they mistakenly, in my opinion, believe that their time is free. And they also, it is fascinating because we're a weird group where I think we're optimists You know, we think we'll get things done. But what they don't recognize is there's always that opportunity cost. And yes, I can do my own laundry, or I could spend that time finding a strategic partner that's going to double sales. One is an asset to the company. Another is a drain on my time.

Correct. I mean, in the end, this is all about comparative advantage. What is my comparative advantage compared to you? And I will buy services and products from the things you do better. You're wearing headphones right now. You could figure out how to go build those headphones, but probably to build the headphones you're wearing would take you years of time and cost you way more than the $300 it might've cost for those headphones. And so instead, you have the comparative advantage to Sony or whoever made those headphones. They do their job, they do it great, they do it at scale and give it to you for a lower price and build a better product than you could do yourself. That is the same thing. Why do you order DoorDash and get food delivery instead of cooking at home every day? Because sometimes there's somebody who makes better food than you could make, and they're good at it, and they're faster at it. It's literally the whole underlying premise of our entire society is comparative advantage. And yet I agree, founders make this weird error where they're like, well, I can be penny-wise and hold all my little pennies and not think about, no, The pennies you're hoarding, you should be spending and investing in giving yourself more time to do the things that you do best, because that is how you grow. Like, you need to invest to have growth. So I'll give you one example on that. Um, we had a potential customer to my company, Tour. They came to us because their team said the CEO was messing up a lot of the back office work because he was too busy. He didn't have time for the work. They needed it. They needed him to get it off his plate. So I had a chat with him. We just called. Um, he basically was like, no, I can work 100 hours a week. No problem. I'm no, this isn't broken. I can do this work. I'm like, dude, your team came to us and said it's broken, but he didn't want to hear it. He's like, I can work harder. It's not worth the cash. Okay. Part of that conversation turned into actually a sales pitch for his product, which was really cool. I was like, this is a cool product. We might want to use that. So after the call, I followed up, I think probably that same day, maybe the day after with like, hey, here's an update on Shore. Hope we can chat. I understand if you're not ready for us, whatever. Send me more info about your product so I can learn more and we can decide if it's a fit for us. It took him 3 weeks to get back to me. If you're trying to sell, like, if you know anything about sales and it takes you 3 weeks to get back to a potential customer, you are not a good salesperson. You're, you're, you're failing at your job. Had he just hired us, he would've literally gotten us at a sale. It probably would've been break-even for him on both sides.

Yep. Well, and, and I think that's the, the aha moment. And by the way, I have over sales as a service. If you're that bad and have a 3-week turnaround in the sales process, I also know what your service end looks like because—

You're right.

At the sales point, you're on your best behavior and you're trying to win me, whether you accidentally dropped the ball or not. And honestly, I look at a lot of things. I know a lot of founders who are like, one day I'll do this, one day I'll do that. Um, I have a feeling— so let's talk about the, the capabilities of chore, because I think honestly, and I see a lot of founders, the number one problem is they don't know that they can give something up, let alone that they should give something up. And they don't even get to the cost-value analysis because they were told that this is, you know, everybody in the media says hustle culture, you gotta grind and blah, blah, blah. To me, it's about pushing on flywheels that cause momentum, not carrying that— what's that scale where I think it's in Greek mythology where some guy keeps pushing a rock up a hill and then it falls down and he starts over. If we don't get things done, that thing never gets solved. We just keep pushing it ahead of us.

Correct. And that's— and this is where the hustle culture— I do think you should hustle as a founder. Like, you have to work really hard to build a successful business. Like, you know, Elon Musk is the world's richest man, but he also works harder than 99% of people in the world, despite the fact he clearly doesn't have to for his own survival. But you need to hustle on the right things. If you're hustling on what I would determine, I call it the business version of TikTok, empty calories, if you're spending time on playing around on TikTok, and to me, that is like all the stuff around back office in that case. It's like I've had founders like, oh, I'm really busy. I'm managing payroll and finance and doing my own books, et cetera, et cetera. I'm like, you're wasting your life. Your company is going to fail. It's empty calories. I get it. You feel like you're busy. You feel like you're doing what a CEO is supposed to do, but you should be hustling every single day to build your product. If you're not making your product amazing and delightful, the fact that you saved $250 a month because you didn't outsource bookkeeping, no one will care. Um, I actually— another example, I came across a founder. He worked at McKinsey, so really smart guy, worked at McKinsey, and he was talking to me about a startup that he was about to go do a Series A for. They'd been around for 6 years and they basically had never raised a round. And he's like, I think we're ready for a Series A, or it might've been even a seed. Um, and I was like, okay. And we talked about his bookkeeping. He was doing his own books. And I was like, why are you doing your own books? He's like, because I know how to do my books. I can do it. It doesn't take me that much time. And you've heard this excuse, right? Everyone says it doesn't take me that much time, but you add on all these things that don't take a lot of time. And next thing you know, it actually does take a lot of time. Um, add up and contact— no one takes into account context switching. Um, anyways, and I said to him, he's like, hey, what do you think our chances are of raising? And I was like, look, I get you have some good metrics now. but you're unfundable. And he asked, why am I unfundable? The reason he's unfundable is because it took him 6 years to get to that point.

Yeah.

That means he does not move fast. And at least as an investor, I invest in people who move quickly, not in people who are slow, because if it takes you 6 years to get to your seed round, what's it going to take you 6 more years to get to your A? The return, the IRR, the rate of return on my capital is a key metric. Right? If I spend the money on you today, I can't invest it somewhere else where I can make money. So it needs to have a fast return or at least a time-based return. And he was— and he didn't get that. I'm like, yeah, but you wasted— you, yeah, you saved $250 a month. Okay. That's like, you know, $3,000 a year. It's not zero. Yep. But it took you 6 freaking years to get to a seed round. Like, who cares? Like, literally no one cares. It's irrelevant that you save that money. No investor is going to give you an award because you saved $3,000. And yet it took you 6 years to get there. So this is where founders make mistakes all the time.

Well, it's funny. I'm not being a jerk because I love my visionary founders, but the reality is we're unemployable for a reason. But part of that is, again, how do the Brits say it? Penny wise, pound foolish. You really need to focus on that leverage. And believe it or not, I had a founder who didn't have time to go meet with one of her clients because she had to go to Costco and pick up toilet paper.

Costco delivers, so you can just order it online.

Yeah, but she, she refused. She didn't trust her people, so she wouldn't give somebody a card. So she had to put it on her corporate credit card. And I was like, wow, you are controlling entirely the wrong things. But she wanted to save You know, because she had given an employee a card and they went and spent— bought toilet paper at some luxury store and bought 3-ply, for God forbid. And she's like, I was losing money on the toilet paper, so now I go to Costco and I get the 1-ply and blah blah blah. And

I'm like— But see, like, no, that's another like funny example. Like, this is exactly where founders fail all the time. And it's like, okay, first of all, let's think through that. Well, one, this isn't an issue with someone like misusing your credit card, you clearly didn't outline the correct things to do, number one. Yeah. And number two, like if you want to say like, hey, we need to be really cheap about these things, I don't want to spend a lot of money. Okay, let your team figure out the right options. Be like, hey, Costco's good, but Walmart's fine. Like just figure it out and get it done, number one, and just give them some high-level goals and let them figure it out because you can't micromanage everybody, number one. And then number two, um, Look, I've been guilty of this myself. Don't over-optimize the wrong things. So the toilet paper is a funny example, but it's the true one. It's like, look, don't buy the cheapest toilet paper for your team because if they're feeling the cheap toilet paper when they're wiping their booty, it's like, is this a company they want to work for and founder they care about? Maybe a better example would be, get your team decent computers. Like, okay, I could buy the cheapest MacBook Air for $1,000 or get them an upgraded one for like an extra $250. And that lasts for like 3, 4, 5 years. And guess what? If they work a minute faster every day because of the speed of their new computer, cuz it's better. Yeah. I have a really positive ROI and, and they're happier because they feel like I'm making a worthwhile investment in them. And not cheaping out every day. That's a win.

I love that. And I actually had a friend who 100% virtual even before COVID and he insisted every new hire got this amazing new— it was about a $3,000 MacBook. And he said, we've done the numbers on this. And when we use people's bring their own devices, we've got more support issues, we've got more downtime, we've got Worse customer service. And quite frankly, we have more employee turnover because they're complaining because their computer is too slow. Yet when we give them this $3,000 Mac, we have an employee for life because we've made their life easier.

Yeah. And that's exactly it. And these are these small things that people don't think about. Once again, to the point of Pennywise and Pound Foolish, it's far too easy to acting that way. And once again, for that founder you mentioned with the toilet paper, she probably was thinking that she was making the right decision for her company. Obviously she thought that. Yeah. But this is where once again, you're making— at some point you need to delegate. You need to hand things off and just say, do a good job. I'm hiring you to do a thoughtful and good job. And if you are unsure what that looks like, ask me questions. And then if you still make errors and you didn't ask the question, then maybe you're not a fit for my company. And then you just move on and that's okay. That's probably a win for the employee too. If they don't know how to ask questions and don't feel like they know what to do, then maybe it's the wrong company for them.

I love that. And I think a lot of people, they underestimate the value of an employee who asks questions. And, you know, I've seen some companies where they say, we value questions, you just don't ask us any. How do we get better? Um, so let's talk about delegating and working with, with chore, because another thing I see in a lot of entrepreneurs, they carry so much they get to the point where they collapse and they just drop it. And I see a lot of abdication, not delegation. So, um, what would you suggest for a founder who's carrying a whole bunch of things and trying to figure out, can I work with Adam and his team or should I keep carrying these things myself?

Yes. I mean, look, so you need to work with a team. You can't carry it yourself. I don't know if you've read the book, The E-Myth or The E-Myth Revisited, but this problem has been around since the dawn of business basically, where— and to give people the general thesis is you have some amazing idea for business. You're great at it. People love your product. The next thing you know, it grows. You now need to hire help to help you build that product and make it happen. The people you hire, next thing you know, you're managing lots of people. You're not doing what you love best, and the company fails. Why does it fail? It fails because it turns out you're great at whatever it is. The book example is like a pie shop, right? You're great at baking pies. Yeah. But the next thing you know, you're actually becoming a business manager, and you hate it. You're not good at it. You hate it. That's not why you started the business in the first place. So the quality of the pies goes down. They're not what your customers expect. And you fail. So what do you— what should you do? The right answer is find people who can manage the business well so you can keep doing what you love. And that is what every single founder needs to be thinking about. And if they are not doing the things they love, then why the heck are they in business?

I love that. And I think that's such a powerful reminder because it does all come to time. Earlier you mentioned you're a husband and a father. Those are my 2 first principles. If something gives me time with my family, I'm all in. But if it takes time from my family, I need to think long and hard about how valuable it is. And believe it or not, one of my, my favorite books on this topic of time is Perry Marshall. He wrote a book, I think it's called 80/20 Marketing and Sales. And in the book he talks, and these are relative numbers, but there's $10 an hour tasks, $100 an hour tasks, $1,000 and $10,000. And people get so busy with $10 an hour tasks that shouldn't be done, they never get to the $10,000.

Yep.

And believe it or not, I think that the reason we have a high failure rate in business, it comes down to the, the allocation of time.

Yeah, absolutely. This is the whole thesis of Tore is because people are allocating their time improperly and not realizing that like there is help available. I mean, my default assumption is that I can find, I can delegate every single part of my business essentially to someone external. Now, in many cases that might cost me dollar for dollar, a little bit more money. However, if you take into the time cost, of it, it's actually far cheaper, right? So, so people always wonder, well, why did you hire, you know, some million-dollar consultant from McKinsey, um, and not just hire some internal consultant at $100K? Well, it's because a few things. One, I have to first recruit, hire, train, and manage that internal person. So now suddenly my costs actually double, close to double. So now it's a $200,000 person. 2, I need to make sure that that person is fully utilized at all times to get the full value from them. Which isn't always the case. Um, especially with like, you know, an internal person, let's be honest. A lot of internal employees are not great. They're not working 100% of the time, all the time. They're distracted by a million different things in life. Whereas consultants come in for a very specific goal and task and they get it, they deliver it or they don't deliver it. And if they don't deliver it, you don't necessarily pay them everything because they didn't deliver. Um, or like you can be done with them and move on. So, you know, with that internal employee, okay, well, they're over many years, they stick around all these other things. I could be done with my McKinsey project in 3 months. I get it done quickly, efficiently, effectively, and I paid the money certainly, but I made a decision fast and I'm done with it. I don't have to manage them.

Well, and to your point as an investor, time is also— there's a 24-hour clock, there's time in my day, but there's also the speed to execution. You talked about the uninvestable company that took 6 years to get to that round. With a consultant, you're paying money to save time and to build momentum.

Correct. And once again, this comes down to how you value your time. So that's exactly it. Momentum and speed are what makes every company the most successful in the end. Not always, like we're talking about tech startups, but like even for the pie shop and for your average sort of non-tech entrepreneur, it's still not about speed, but it is about time and where you spend it. And so to give you like a heuristic, I try to say my time is worth $2,000 an hour. Now, I'm not so amazing, I can't charge $2,000 an hour for my time, but I like to view my time as being worth that amount. And that helps me reframe where I should spend that time. So if it's worth $2,000 an hour, is it worth it? So this podcast with you, it is worth it. Only I can do this. This is hopefully good marketing for my company and chore, and it helps every entrepreneur out there. And I enjoy it. So it's a good use of my time. Is cleaning out my inbox from junk email a good use of my time? No. And guess what? I have an EA who does that.

Yeah. And I think honestly, and maybe we can have another episode another day, but honestly, I think a lot of entrepreneurs just get so used to grinding that they don't look up and ask, is this— and by the way, I love that you have a value on your time, I try to set at least 1 hour a week at the $10,000 level.

Nice.

And again, it's not like somebody's just backing a truck up and saying, here you go. But it's that looking ahead and saying, okay, what is the best use of my time? You know, and again, back to Elon Musk, if we look at money as the measure of success in business, you can't argue that he is the most successful entrepreneur of our time. I mean, it's— he's got more money than entrepreneurs in the history of being entrepreneurs, probably of all

time, maybe.

So if we judge that as success, I do know, you know, it's fascinating because I've read that he's neurodiverse. So I suspect he's got some time blindness, but he's blind about time when it comes to innovating and changing the world, but he's also ruthless when it comes to minutes and seconds. As you said, his HR person coming in asking about which software probably would get something thrown at their head, let alone fired, you know.

And this, and this is once again, that is exactly it. And this is where we all remind ourselves. I mean, I tell my team this sort of regularly, like I, this morning I woke up too early. I'm busy with a lot of things and I was reading through messages that we have in our system. And one of my teammates told me this long message about stuff. And I was like, what are the key things I need to make a decision on here? Don't send me all this. Just tell me the one thing I need to decide on. You're owning this task. Just make a decision and move forward. And if it doesn't work, we'll go fix it. And I just keep trying to say that more and more and more. And look, Elon's also an instructive example for people, right? He, I think also from what I've read publicly, I do not know him. has made a decision not to be much of a father, a spouse. He, I don't think, is all that healthy. He had talked about his health issues that he's had. But okay, he is so dedicated to his companies that he's willing to forego those things. Now, each of us has our own scale to weigh out all those different areas, and we're all different in that way. But once again, each of us though should be deciding what are the 1 to 3 things that are most important in my life and then say no to everything else. Right. So once again, to your point, like for me, family is important and also making my company successful is important. And so I say no to a lot of events. I get invited to a lot of events in San Francisco. I say no to the large majority of them. Um, I said no. Someone sent me a really nice note today asking for me to be a mentor to them. And I was flattered by that. Um, although the email was like written all by AI. So I was kind of like, this isn't, I mean, I met the guy, but like. I met him already once, but this was an AI email, so it wasn't very good. But even more, I was like, hey, look, I'm flattered. I don't have the time right now. I just don't. I can give back in other ways. I have hundreds of podcasts out there. There's lots of information. I just don't have time. So right now, I have to say no.

I love that. I think it's funny because I'm a recovering people pleaser myself where it was like, You know, I was raised that you should help people and you should be helpful and kind. And, you know, I was the sucker in high school and college. If somebody was moving, I had access to a truck. Sure, I'll come help you move. And back then I traded my time for pizza. And it was like, wait a minute. But now as an entrepreneur, and, you know, my value on my time is based on time with my kids, time with my spouse. If I am going to give up time with my wife or kids, It's got to be worthwhile.

Correct.

And, you know, the podcast, again, I love meeting new people and hearing their stories, but I wouldn't do this unless it helped me help my business and it helped me meet great people. So.

Yeah, same with me. Once again, like, this is all just— we need to be making smart decisions about where we spend the time, what we work hard on, and how we do it. That decision is different for each of us, but as an entrepreneur, Um, just, just don't do the $10 an hour tasks, right? That's a great way to kind of put it.

Well, it— I, I have an internal metric I use. So anything $10 an hour has to be eliminated or automated. Anything $100 an hour, if I can eliminate or automate, great. If not, it's delegated. And then for the $1,000 an hour, I try to automate and delegate as much as I can. So that I can sit, because give me an hour with my whiteboard, I will find a solution to something that was not there before. But get me filing my own taxes or doing my own bookkeeping, not only is it a low-value effort, but it's also painful because I don't enjoy doing those things.

Right. So why would— yes. So once again, like, why would you go do those? Why would Why would you spend time with them? And once again, people, part of it is a lack of creativity, I think, on a lot of people's part. And what I mean by that is most people don't even think to check, can I hand this off to someone else? Is there an option for me? Um, or even if they know there is, they're like, oh, it won't be as good. So like for doing your taxes, well, people generally know there are accountants out there to do your taxes, but they haven't really done the research on how much it would cost to have an accountant out there or What if I use some software that makes it way easier than it used to be in the past? Things like that just aren't— people don't even spend the time to do that research. And to me, that's sort of shocking. And frankly, a lot of people still have an old-school mindset where they're like, I'm going to throw people at the problem. I'll hire more people.

Yeah.

Please, more people are really hard to hire, recruit, hire, manage, and train. That is a lot of work. Like being— I have a bunch of direct reports. It's a lot of work having those direct reports. So be thoughtful about who you hire and bring on and try to delegate and outsource all of it. Like we are moving into a world where the greatest companies will be a company of like one employee.

Yeah.

Founder. Everything else will be outsourced, delegated, or AI.

Well, and that's, you know, one of my favorite uses of AI is to ask, number one, can I delegate this to somebody? And then how do I delegate it? It's given me a lot of creativity around that. I'm going to share a story of a founder that I think you'll find funny. He was inherently lazy. And he told me that from the get-go. But he had built his business around systems and processes. He was obsessed with The E-Myth. And he got his life down. He ran a multimillion-dollar business on 1 hour a day, 5 days a week. And then, Tim Ferriss came out with The 4-Hour Workweek. week. And he lost his mind. He had a fit. And he went to his team and said, why am I working an extra 20%? So he challenged them and said, you got to find a way to get me down to 4 hours a week. And it was that he did it. And the funny thing was, he spends his time now, he's got a small, small team of direct reports. Each one of them has an accountability area. They have their parameters. And so he spends most of his time finding the system solutions to the problems. Um, and then the rest of his week he's off doing whatever he does. But, uh, it was just fascinating that he was so upset that he was working an extra hour a week more.

What, what was his secret to being able to delegate that much away? Like, how did he pull it off? Whereas once again, like a lot of people never do. What was his secret there?

His true secret, I'm not kidding. Number one, he was from Bangladesh, so he had a labor pool of friends and family back home that would work cheaply. But really, truly, he will tell you to this day his secret was he was lazy. So whenever something felt hard to him, and at the time I was a little disparaging of it because I'm like, oh, Lazy doesn't get it done, but he turned lazy into an art form. And it was just anytime something felt hard or like effort, he just wanted to get away from himself as quickly as he could. And no surprise, the stuff he loved doing drove his business forward. The stuff he hated doing was holding him back. So he touched something painful once. Literally, it was like watching the old days of kids playing hot potato. Anything that landed on his plate that he didn't like, he threw it back to the team hard.

I mean, he is a genius. Literally, he is a genius. He might call it laziness, but he's actually a genius. It meant that he clearly could build a great business doing the things that he loved and hand everything else off. That is genius-level work. That is what we should all be doing, how we should build our businesses and succeed. I've not fully— I've kind of failed, I'd say, at that front. I still take on way too much myself. And it's not an area— it's something I'm working on every day to get off my plate because I don't have superpowers at everything that Troy has.

Yeah.

And everything that I'm in is almost certainly going to run slower in less well. There are certain things I have superpowers in, and I should be doing everything I can in those areas and nothing else.

Yeah. And I think that was, you know, whether he, he saw it or not, he had that discipline. But he was very aware of what he hated. And so, you know, it was funny because he loved going out and having fine meals in fancy restaurants. So It was— that was his measure of would I give up a meal at a restaurant to do this task? And if the answer was no, it was gone. So

yeah. Yeah, that's good for him. That is, he's, he's a brilliant man.

It was— it took me a while to see the genius of it. But, and the other piece he recognized, you know, he was sending work overseas. This was before we had Zoom and video conferencing and stuff. He recognized that things were going to get done about 80% of what he could have done or had somebody here do. But basically, he realized that it was all for him— systems, processes, and communication.

Well, and this is maybe a wider macro discussion to an extent, but like the— I'm concerned about Americans and American job security, or for you, Canada too, sort of in the same boat though. In the sense that you can get someone overseas who's going to do the job 80% as good as someone in North America, but they're going to be 90% lower cost.

Yeah.

And that is a real hard thing to compete with. And so the Americans and Canadians, North Americans who are doing these jobs need to be significantly better and unique at what they do. And so my hope for all of your listeners and everyone, I care deeply about America and North America itself, our brothers in Canada too, very much so, doing well. But that means we need to— we've in many cases gotten almost lazy, like sort of fat and lazy in a sense, because we are used to so much. There are people out there who are hungrier, who work harder, building for far less than you can ever. So you need to figure out what your comparative advantage is. And do that. Almost the same you were talking about with entrepreneurs, same thing with Americans overall. Like, if you want a job, find the reason why you are so good you can never be fired.

Well, and I think honestly too many people focus on the costs. You know, I can go overseas and get somebody in the Philippines for $3 an hour, but how much more management time do I need because different time zones, different Ideals, etc. So I'm a big fan, and you and I will have another conversation about this, I'm sure. If we can identify that that superpower in our employees and invest in that, and then show them how to delegate the crap that drains them, it's a ripple effect where you know we can keep the best jobs in North America. And we can send stuff overseas that maybe needs less creativity and just needs somebody to put in some time.

Well, this is, this is all about systems and delegation. Same thing. It's who is the compare— who has a comparative advantage at doing a certain task? And then can I set up a system so that they can do that successfully? That, that is essentially the only question that we all need to be asking every day. It's like, can I build a system that can be run over and over again? by a smart individual anywhere in the world? And then who's comparatively advantaged by that? And is that a job that a US person should do or an overseas person? That's it. So once you go into your toilet paper example with that founder, that's not her comparative advantage. She could have built a system to say, go find toilet paper that is cheap. If your goal is cheap toilet paper, go find a way to do that. And by the way, consider all the costs that go into it. It's not just the cost. I can go to Costco myself, just using that still as an example. Costco is pretty close to my house where I live, but I get it delivered most of the time. You know why? I pay $3 extra for delivery. I maybe miss out on some special sale, but not usually. It's usually about the same price. And I don't have to drive to Costco. I don't have to check out at Costco. It all just shows up at my doorstep. And that time savings is easily worth the slight price differential in cost of shipping, if I even have to pay it. Usually it's free shipping. So people think in basic dollars and cents and they don't think in systems, and that is a failure.

I love it. And yeah, I think a lot of people undervalue their time. So I think we'll encourage people to figure out what their time is worth. Um, believe it or not, I love working with trades who are innovating because almost all of them have learned the value of their time. Now it's undervalued, but at least they think about their time. Whereas I find a lot of visionary entrepreneurs, they've come from maybe salary backgrounds where I think that is the, the worst problem because people don't recognize value. They just, you know, here's what I get paid. But for me, it's always about finding that, that thing that you're a superhero at. I have no interest in fixing my many flaws. It's like, I'm going to hire somebody to do that.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. And that's what you should do. And what also it means is you should be good. And this is something that's difficult to be clear. You should be good as a leader in setting up Clear outcomes-based work. So we at Chore, we actually do track time of what people are doing because we want to make sure we're not over— clients sometimes have a— they ask for a lot from us and we want to make sure we're not overdoing it without getting paid for the amount of time we're spending on it. However, in the end, our goal is outcome-based. We want to achieve great outcomes for our clients that delight them. That is it. That is what matters. That's what they care about. That is our focus. And so that's what you should do for everybody. So. Once again, the outcome for the toilet paper founder, the outcome should have been, make sure our bathroom is stocked with toilet paper. That is low cost. I don't need to tell you exactly you need to go to Costco. It should only be this much. You need to wait for a sale. That is not outcome-based. So then tell the person and get, hey, if that person who you assigned the task of getting toilet paper to figures out a way to automate that and they can work 30 minutes less per week because of that automation, Hey, more power to them. Let them go hang out. Let them automate every single thing they do for their job. And sure, at some point, then they need to find new things to keep doing, otherwise they probably are out of a job. But also, they'll be out of a job anyways. That's what people don't get is it's like, to keep a job, you need to keep innovating yourself. And that usually means innovating yourself out of the job you were doing last year into a new job today. And the job I'm doing today, especially in the world of AI, the job I'm doing today is not going to be the same job I'm doing in a year. And if I'm still doing the same job, then I should be fired as CEO of my company.

That is the parting note. No, I think that is the parting comment that people need to take away, because the irony is no CEO in their right mind would hire somebody and pay them a big salary to go find deals on toilet paper. Yeah. As a CEO, if you're doing that, and I'm going to guess you as an investor, you're going to be very concerned about a CEO who's obsessed with the price of toilet paper.

Yeah. Oh, I mean, I generally, I used to have a rule where I would only invest in companies if they at least acknowledge they'd be interested in buying my product from my company, Chore, because the whole thesis is you're delegating all the back office stuff that is non-differentiating not your core competency, to outside experts. If you are a founder who's like, yep, that makes total sense to me, I'm all in on that, you don't necessarily need to buy the product, but at least acknowledge this makes sense, I'm interested in investing in you. If, on the other hand, you say, no, I can do that myself, I will never put money into your company. I know you will fail. It is guaranteed that you will fail.

Yeah. It's literally a red flag for a reason. Adam, I could talk to you all day. This has been a Fun conversation. I want to be mindful of your time. Where can people go to learn more about you, your podcast, or your chore company?

Ideally, just start with every— our website. So hirechore.com. So if you need to hire chore to do the back office admin and tasks and operations, hire us at hirechore.com. And of course, you can always find me on LinkedIn. It's Adam Spector. I think it's Adam Spector 2 at LinkedIn, the LinkedIn domain name. I'm there, very active on LinkedIn. Podcasts, all the major podcast services, Entrepreneurial Excellence. You can find it on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, all the other places in the world where great podcasts are found.

Wow, that sounds like you've shared that before. So thank you for hanging out with me and sharing your thoughts on founders. I love your perspective. So thank you, Adam.

Thanks for having me on, Jeff. I appreciate it.