SE03 E024 - Balancing Business and Family Life | Adam Spector

Hello, Opening Pathways viewers. It's Tom Lenoble, and I'm excited about our show today. I have Adam Spector with me. He is the CEO of Chor, and we're going to learn all about Chor, but we're going to learn more about Adam. Adam, welcome to the show.

Tom, it is great to be here. Great to see you again. Excited to chat.

Yes, I'm thrilled you're here. Let's start from the beginning. Tell us about Chore and what sparked your idea to start it.

Man, it's the beginning. Well, that goes a long way back, but no, I'll answer your question specifically. So the whole idea of Chore is the world— life is too short, and especially founders and entrepreneurs are too focused, hopefully, and good at what they do to spend time doing chores, essentially. And what I mean by chores is essentially human resources, finance, compliance, and equity. Essentially all the back office stuff that you need to do to run a business is not why you started your business. Like literally, literally by definition, if you started your business to do that work, you build a competitor to Chor, which would be fine. But it's not why you started your business. You started it because you're world-class at baking pies or world-class at AI or whatever it is. And you should spend all of your time and energy focused on that one thing, Not on all the distracting stuff that will slow you down and arguably kill your business.

Yeah. So, so where were you when I needed you? That's the real question.

We didn't—

You're here now.

We are here now. And the reason it hasn't really existed is because it's really hard to do right. And also, I think people just haven't had the idea to go fix this and solve for it, which is kind of crazy since it's something that's shared by every single business in the world.

So tell me this, when did you know and say to yourself, yeah, this is my path?

Yeah, yeah. So, um, so this is— so Chore is my 4th company. So my first 2 were sort of standard venture-backed companies. We're actually doing machine learning and kind of big data work, sort of predecessors to artificial intelligence. And, um, the 3rd one was I was actually working sort of part-time as an external, like, chief of staff, chief operating officer. And as part of that, and I was like, Wait a second, they need so much help doing just the basics. Like, they're paying me a lot of money in this role, and what they really want me to do is like run payroll. And, and that doesn't seem to make sense. Like, sure, I'll, I'll charge them, but like, I didn't feel good. It was a nonprofit. I didn't feel good charging them a lot of money to do payroll work. Um, it's not that it was below me, it just felt like it should be— it's sort of repeatable and standardized, and yet it was super broken for them. Um, so I realized then for that company, and then for the previous 2 companies also, my previous 2 companies, I was this product sort of focused, product and sales focused founder, and I was spending 10, 20, 30% of my time running operations. And that, I was like, wait, I need to be building product. I need to be getting customers, not deciding what payroll system is the best.

Interesting. So tell me this, when you look at yourself today from when you started Shore, how have you changed?

I mean, in so many ways. One, being a father. I have, I think, 2 babies now since then. So that certainly has changed me a ton. But the other way is, in a sense, I would actually argue I haven't changed that much. The entire thesis is still the same, which in some ways I'm pretty proud of. I think some companies pivot and need to pivot. We've stayed, generally speaking, very close and true to our vision of the initial idea of what my previous company, AbstractOps, and what my current company, Chor, which is sort of a spinoff almost of AbstractOps, was, which is we want to automate back office chores so founders can get back to doing what they do best.

Yes. Tell me this. You know, I find that, that we— something in our early life, someone was involved in our very early life that planted some seeds of who we became. Who was that for you?

It's actually a combination of my dad and my brother. And I don't want to downplay my mom. She is a part too, of course, in this too. But My dad is a really good lawyer and was always working really hard. And I mean, I remember one day when he actually had to fly to— from— we lived in Washington, D.C., where I grew up, and he had to fly from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo. And he did. It was a 24-hour trip. And I remember thinking, that is mind-blowing that my dad is like so important that someone is willing to fly him out to Tokyo for one meeting to be there. And actually even remember he said he was the only native English speaker. It was a French company and a Japanese company doing a deal together, and he was the only native English speaker as well. So they flew him out for the deal, everything else. And I was like, oh my God, like he's so important. And, and that's so amazing. And like, I kind of looked up to that just to being in that hardworking, like he was always at work late. And I know it was really hard on my mom to her credit because my dad wasn't around a lot. He was working hard. And so in some ways he set this amazing example for me as a, as a child of like what hard work meant and what success comes from, from that hard work. On the other hand, of course, I recognized that it was hard on my mom, so I've tried in my life to— I work really hard. I work 6 days a week, but I do it from home, and I have a— Tor is a fully remote company, so I'm here all the time for my kids. I see them all the time. So trying to do my best combo of those 2. Um, and then with my brother, he's also an entrepreneur, and he's actually younger than me, but I think we have a bit of a competitive streak with each other. Um, he would say we don't, and I would actually say in some ways we don't either, but I do think there's, uh, an ego element between us that says like, I want to build the best and biggest company that I can and to show off in that way. And so, there's that competitive element as well. Yeah.

That's great. Tell me this, what personal values have guided you from the start?

Probably the biggest personal value that's guided me literally from the start of maybe my entire career has been leaving the world a better place than when I arrived. So, I actually had that mindset when— so I was president of the student government, um, at Vanderbilt where I went to college, um, and vice president of the student government in law school, um, where I went to University of Miami. And the whole— I actually remember, I think one of my slogans and pitches was like, leave the world a better place than when you arrived. And so like, I wanted to leave Vanderbilt better than when I arrived. I wanted to make a difference, not just be a random college student going to parties. And I did that plenty, but I wanted to be someone who made a difference and made the university better. And, I view that same path as being a big part of what I'm doing certainly at Chor today where, look, I utterly believe deep in my heart that the world is a better place where there are more successful entrepreneurs. That keeps our economy vibrant. It gives people the option to go live their greatest version of themselves. And yet, once again, so many of them fail. I don't know if you've read the book, The E-Myth Rediscovered, But it's all about how this has been happening forever, basically, about how every type of founder goes, starts a business, and they fail in many ways because they don't know how to— they're great at making a pie. They have no idea how to run a business. And yet the moment the pie business becomes successful, they have to start running a business and then they fail. And that seems insane. We've lost so many wonderful entrepreneurs because we haven't solved this problem. And so for me, this is a passion project in some ways. It's a real business, but it's something I'm passionate about changing and fixing.

Yeah, I love this. We've heard so many times, I know in my career, of the entrepreneur is not the operator. The person that drives the beginning and has the ideas aren't the person to take it after it's public or whatever that is. And I think you're building something that helps bridge those two because it's often that part of the work that people really are like, oh, this isn't ideas. This is— I've got to actually get very tactical here and really changes the game of being creative.

And Tom, I mean, you were obviously early at Facebook. You kind of know that story well. You know, Mark Zuckerberg brought Sheryl Sandberg in to be the operator. And I think that partnership is an example of how Facebook wouldn't be the way the company it is today if it wasn't for Sheryl. Without a doubt. And I don't know the details of it, but like, yeah, without a doubt, like, it's clearly a better company because of her influence and what she brought to the table. That wasn't Mark's skill set, probably. And maybe it's become that now over time, but it took him 20 years to get there. Most founders don't have such a successful rocket ship to ride that they have the time to figure it out over 20 years. They need to bring in that operator.

That, and I think the other lesson for us is also to realize that we can't be everything some of us want to be. And To surround ourselves with the people that are really good at the things that we're not or what there is really core to them and allow yourself to blossom that way, be able to use the energy of support and have the right people in the right place. But she definitely made a difference there without a doubt. Tell me this, Adam. Where has life asked you to slow down recently and what did you hear?

It's only really recently. My wife was out of town traveling. for some stuff and I was sole parenting, so I had to be the sole parent on all the stuff. And that meant literally picking up my kids to do stuff or actually just even last night. So my older son was at an event for school till sort of late. And so I was just one-on-one with my younger son and we went out to dinner together and I just had to sit there and we just talked. I didn't look at my phone. Didn't care what was happening work-wise and really just said, I'm going to be here in the moment with him. And he's pretty young, so it's kind of like a deep conversation or something, but really enjoyed it. And he was really excited to be like, hey, we're having daddy and son dinner together, just us. Because it's usually my— at minimum, it's usually my other son is with us and usually it's all 4 of us. And so that really made me— forced me to slow down and say, look, I just got to enjoy this moment. Right. Yeah. And everything else, work will happen and life will happen. And hopefully, I've set up CHOIR in a way that I can take those slow moments when I need to and remember them as well.

Yeah. I've been talking to people lately, couples, and they have 2 or 3 kids and how they're navigating so that just like you said, you have one-on-one time with one without the rest of them. And even as they get older, taking separate vacations with them just so that you have that one-on-one And get to know them individually, not as a group of people. So it's an interesting thing balancing all we do and parenthood. Tell me this, Adam. I want to know about a risky decision that paid off and what gave you the courage to act.

Yeah, I mean, so a risky recent decision that we took was one of our competitors, a company called Diana HR, was essentially pivoting away from their business of being sort of a services company for human resources. Um, they came to us and said, hey, look, we're, we're, we made this decision. We want to move really fast. Um, are you interested in doing a deal with us? That's pretty risky, right? We, they had a good number of customers. We needed to make sure we had the capacity to take on those customers, price them properly because they were very underpriced. Um, with Diana, they were sort of subsidized. Diana was subsidizing their work essentially with venture capital dollars. Um, and so we needed to figure out how we could, could bring them on and if we could do it in a way that was a win for Diana. We wanted to make them look good. A win for, of course, the customer so they could come in and get great new support and have their human resources still run. And a win for Tor so we could do it in a margin-positive way that also didn't stress out our team. That's a lot of things to decide. We don't have— there's never perfect information. And we needed to make a very quick decision as well because they were trying to move very fast. And I talked with my leadership team, but in the end, it was my decision. I'm the CEO and sole founder. And I said, look, we're going to make this, we're going to make this, give this a shot. And I'm, we've, we have, today is actually the last day of Diana HR running that side of their business. So they've transitioned all their customers off who can be transitioned because they're shutting that side of their business down today when we're recording this. And I'm happy to say, like, it's actually been far more of a success than we expected. We're already getting early reports from their customers who've moved over to Chore and they are ecstatic. So it's seemingly been great so far for us, and it actually helped open my eyes to some new business lines that we really should be focused more on as well. So I'd say it was all around a win. I'm glad we took the risk. It— we would have been— life's too short not to take some risks. Like, very little bad things that can happen if you take risks. So why not?

Congratulations. And I love the focus on the customer. I've had to do the reverse of that when I was closing a company to move them somewhere else. And a lot of compliance issues. It was actually a payroll and benefits company that had done really well, a startup, and we ran out of money and we were being bought and we just didn't have enough runway to get the due diligence done to satisfy them. And, you know, I remember someone asked me, Tom, why are you taking so much time with getting customers back or where they need to be? And of course, my thought myself was, why wouldn't I? But I think this focus on what's right for the customer, for the people involved, what's right for everybody, and in that case, the employee as well, says a lot about who you are and who I am for sure. So tell me, Adam, how do you decide when to pivot or when to push through?

Yeah, it's always— look, it's always a very difficult decision for every founder. I think if you have the kernel of something that's working, Right? If you have some customers who love what you're doing, you should keep pushing through. You should continue to fight. If you have customers who are willing to pay you money for a product that's working, you keep pushing. Now, that doesn't mean you do exactly the same thing over and over and over again. You should still keep iterating and changing based on market conditions and other things like that. And I'll give you some examples of what we've done at Shore. But if you have something that's just not working and you're just not getting customers, people are not in love with your product, then you should pivot and do it soon. And we have some customers in my portfolio— I've done, as you know, lots of investments, early-stage investments— and a huge number of those have pivoted. And some of those pivots have been extremely, extremely successful. But I really think if you have customers who love what you do, you should push through, and time will tell. So with Shore, once again, like, look, we've been around in sort of one form or another for 6 and a half years now. We weren't always just a services company. We started out more as a tech company and became more of a services company. But we— and our pricing has changed a number of times because we were trying to figure out what the right pricing structure is, what is— what makes the most sense. With the Diana acquisition, we just recently updated our pricing again to reflect sort of new business realities and new things we're testing. And that's difficult, but it makes total sense for us because it enables us to stay, keep trying things in the market, and also be here. And then the last point, Diana acquisition actually is interesting at this point too. Had we not stuck it out and been a significant trusted player in our space, Diana never would have reached out to us in the first place. And so what I, what I've seen, and you've probably seen this a lot in your career, is sometimes the people who stick it out the longest are the ones who get the luckiest.

I like that. I like that. Tell me, how do you lead when you're not sure of yourself?

I mean, every leader is never sure of themselves, right? I think, well, maybe very— unless they're delusional. I'm not going to— I'll stay out of politics. I think there's a few delusional leaders who maybe are always sure of themselves, even though they have no right to be. But I think rational leaders recognize they can never be sure of themselves. I never have complete perfect data. At the same time, I run the risk of destroying my business if I wait too long until I have perfect data. So I have to make a choice between the two of move quickly with limited data and trust that I'm making the right decision. And that it's very rare that anything is a one-way door, right? Very— most times I can go back if I need to, um, and it's okay. Uh, so, so how do I trust it? Like, how do I make decisions? I try to do the best way I can, get— ask my team questions, ask my friends, colleagues, advisors questions, um, ask AI questions, and then make a decision to move quickly and don't look back unless like the data supports that I should turn around. Um, and that's rarely the case.

Mm-hmm.

So that's how— just cross, cross my fingers a little bit, hope for the best. But Be thoughtful about it too, and don't wait too long. And just remember, you can reverse almost everything.

Yeah, I think people forget that there is— we have the ability to reverse. And, you know, speaking with somebody earlier today, a client, and the fear around how they would be judged for that reversal was very, very strong. And it was interesting as we kind of looked deeper into where that was coming from, some things emerged that were great because Net-net, we got to the point where how it was not useful. It was not serving him well in the situation he was in because he needed to move fast and there was some uncertainty. And that can, of course, bring us to a standstill. So, what impact are you most proud of? Not publicly, not professionally, but personally?

Personal impact. I think Probably like building Chor into the company it is today. In some ways, I mean, this is sort of— but not just the company, right? That doesn't matter. Like, we're, we're a good company. We have a long way to go to be great. Um, but it's the impact we've had on a lot of the team members we've had. I've had a large number of people tell me that Chor was— Chor is and was the best company they've ever worked for. I mean, it made a significant impact on their lives, their families, everything else. We aren't perfect. We— people complain here and there. But generally speaking, like most people say this is the best company they've ever worked for. And me as a leader, because I ask for feedback too, as much as I can, have been one of the best leaders they've worked for. And that means a lot, right? It means that, look, I'm building something that like we aren't venture-backed. We pay ourselves out of the money we make from our customers because we do a good job. And so like, and that means then we can pay our team and say, thank you for doing a good job and you can support their life and they can support their lives. We have a Our team is filled with a lot of people, not completely by any means, but a lot of people who are parents. Um, and we give them a flex— the flexibility to work remote, work from home, deal with things that come up in life is really meaningful to a lot of them. Mm-hmm. And to have a job where they get to work with amazing companies too. So I'm, I'm really proud of the fact that we give them that flexibility, optionality in, in a place to do their best work while still being the parent they wanna be.

Yeah, I love this. You know, sometimes we miss so much in companies that our people are the key to the success. And actually, I believe and have always believed that they are first in line because without them, your customers aren't going to be happy, you're not going to do well. And it's great when I hear things like this about how you're approaching that and treating the people that are actually the What's making it happen for you and the company.

So I have a question actually sort of right back at you though, Tom, on this front. So I totally— obviously, I believe everything I obviously just said. But the question I come across sometimes is the team struggles with sometimes because we keep pushing and changing metrics, right? Because the world is changing with AI, and our expectation is that everyone is more efficient and more effective, and we give them the tools to do so, we do change the metrics and expectations we have of people, understandably. And sometimes people get really frustrated by that change or annoyed by it and think it's sort of unfair and would say, hey, you're not looking out for my best interest. And I try to say, hey, look, if we don't make this change, we won't have a business. And so I'm trying to think through how we can all be employed in 12 more months. Yeah. But people get frustrated and they're like, this seems unfair. This doesn't work. And so it's this weird— I'm like, but I care so deeply about you and you don't get that I'm doing this for your own good. A child who's unhappy because they don't see the bigger picture.

Yeah, there's 2 things about change. One, there are some people who just don't do well with change. And sometimes that is useful to bring someone in even to help do some sort of work with people just to help them understand, especially in a fast-paced startup environment, what change means. The other thing that I have found really effective is how we involve them in the change that's being made. None of us like to wake up and find out that something that we do every day technologically have changed. Somebody's made an update. Now, I've got to stop. I can't do the path. I mean, Zoom as an example, they move things around, right? That's a small scale of what we're starting about. And we wish we say to ourselves, well, if I had been asked that question, I would have said, put that here or do that. So, I reflect on that because often when we engage with people and involve them in our thought process, and even allow them to have a voice into the change, it shifts how they accept the change.

Yep. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so having a voice is important. And we, we once again try to do that. But once again, there's always even trade-off there, like not to make any excuses. There's a trade-off on that front too, where it's like we're trying to move quickly. So I'm not going to sit there and poll the whole team about every decision we make because— and so it's all— it's tough. But we— I try to do that and get people's feedback.

Yeah, it is tough. It is tough. I think it, you know, And again, there's always going to be people that just have difficulty with change. For sure. If we admit it, as much as we are nimble in change, there's times that change just makes us crazy. You know, and I think some people, that's a supercharged thing. I do think that it comes to some sort of communication about it and talking through it. And, you know, at the end of the day, I've always thought that when we ask people what they think and have them input, put, you know, as the leader, you still get to make the decision. But there's something about that decision that people understand when they've had a voice, and more so when they don't get that opportunity. When they've had a voice on some things and they don't, it's able to like, okay, this has got more meaning to it that I wasn't involved or somebody wasn't involved at this time. So I think it's a, you know, it's a balance, right? So tell me this, what boundary has become essential to your sustainability?

Sleep. That's, that's the boundary I feel very strongly about having of going to bed. I'm very disciplined. I think probably a lot of entrepreneurs are. I'm very disciplined about when I go to bed, how much sleep I get, optimizing that sleep and doing my best to part— and then secondarily, I guess, is health as well and sort of wellness. And I've told my team this. I'm like, look, I try to do all these things because I need to show up every day for you all. It's my duty as a CEO to show up as best as I can and do my best work every single day. And I admittedly, look, maybe I'm lucky genetically or I don't know, but I don't get sick very often. And then I hear my teammates who get sick on a regular basis. We have people who live all over the world in very different conditions than I'm able to live in. But also, I don't think I could get sick as often as they do and still be as good a CEO as I am. And so my obligation to my team, to my family, is to show up as best as I can every single day, day in and day out. There is no time off from being a good friend, parent, CEO.

Balance.

Yes, as much as possible. But yeah, it is a balance. It's like, look, I will just stop looking at my computer to serve in time.

Yeah.

Just say, whatever I didn't get done, I'll get done tomorrow.

Yeah, it's, um, I think you're also modeling something for others that, uh, at some point hopefully they see. So have you ever said no to growth because it wasn't aligned?

Mm-hmm. Uh, yes, but not in any major ways. There have been situations where we said, said no, and we talk every once in a while about different types of customers that we shouldn't be working with because they don't feel like they're aligned. So we have as a team, it's hard, but I give my leadership team especially sort of the ability to say no when I'm like, hey, here's a customer, they're willing to pay us this much, should we do this deal? And they might push back and say, no, this doesn't seem like it's really a fit for us. We could probably serve them, but is it really going to help us achieve our long-term vision and mission? Because there is a part of me that says, I just want to get more revenue in today, even if it messes us up in building the long-term product we need to build. And so luckily they can be a good check on that and I want them to be, and that's kind of, I've tried to set them up in that way.

Yeah. Good. How do you balance being a leader with being a learner?

I think I wouldn't even call it maybe balance in the sense that I really try to strive first and foremost to be a learner more than a leader. I think the best leaders come from being a learner and you have to have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. to be a good leader. If you aren't curious, if you aren't asking a lot of questions, which to me is a definition of a learner, then there's no way you can be a good leader, right? If I don't ask my team questions and ask for their feedback and try to hire the best people by asking them questions and figuring out who the best people are, I don't think I can be a good leader. So I learn every day. I read, I don't know, probably let's call it 15 different articles on a ton of different topics on average every single day. I'm usually reading between 2 or 3 books at any given time. I average about 24 books a year, so about 2 books a month on average that I go through. And I just read a ton. Now, granted, I don't watch a lot of TV, so there's trade-offs, but I'm always learning, and I think that's the only way you can do— you can build any sort of successful business, let alone a business that is in a competitive space where, like, sure, we're in some ways competitive, some ways very not competitive space, but the world is moving so fast, and if we aren't constantly being aware of what's happening, we will fall behind. Yeah. If we think we can keep doing the same thing we were doing yesterday and expect it to work to tomorrow, We will fail.

Yeah, I love this idea of learning. I'm a lifelong learner. In fact, I think when I go to take my last breath, I'll say, just a moment, I have a question. And I quit watching TV just basically because there wasn't anything that I found interesting enough to watch. And I can learn much more and be much more interested in things I'm reading as well. Adam, tell me this, Adam. What have you learned about trust since starting Chor?

Man, look, we're a fully remote company. I don't believe in looking over people's shoulders or being a micromanager. We do track a lot of the work we do because I think that's important for our work and to have data about what's working and what's not. But we don't micromanage. And that requires a massive amount of trust. So I was actually speaking with a teammate just this week. We did our performance reviews for everyone on the team. And we do those monthly, by the way. I mean, I have a number of direct reports myself, and it was a big conversation with him about trust, actually, and saying, look, my impression right now is we don't have a lot of trust, and that's the only thing I can have. I need to know you're on top of things, you're paying attention to the messages that are going out, that I don't need to follow up with you. If I'm doing your job, there's no point in you being here. And that comes from trust, and I want to be able to trust because I don't want to have the mental overhead of worrying, is someone not doing great work? Are they doing something wrong in various ways? And so to me, trust is actually maybe the most important element that we can have in a business. In some ways, actually, I will take someone who I can trust over someone who moves faster and maybe isn't even slightly more intelligent because the trust means I have peace of mind. And that peace of mind is so Valuable.

Yes, I hear you. I think trust is so important, and it's difficult when it gets broken. Trust is something that is not easy to rebuild, and I think there's always that little thought in your mind, am I going to be able to trust it again? And so it's critical, especially in the kind of environments everywhere in life, but especially this environment where things are moving so fast and there's so much going on. Um, and I love your idea. If I have, if I can't trust you and I'm having to do your job, why are you here?

Correct. Well, and let me, let me add, let me add adjacency really quick, Tom. Um, I think the adjacency to trust is communication. So, and this, by the way, I tell my team this all the time. This isn't just for trust, it's every relationship arguably, right? Imagine your significant other, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. If you just stopped communicating for 24 hours and disappeared and they didn't know why. you'd probably be pretty frustrated. And if you did it over and over again, they'd really start to get worried.

Yeah.

And, and maybe worried for you or jealous or whatever it is. Um, and so if you don't communicate, you can't create that level of trust. And that same thing goes with being curious, asking questions. If you don't ask questions and then you make a mistake, that's also an issue. And so we tell our team over and over and over again, literally the secret to success, like I will tell the world this, so go steal this idea if you want, but the secret to success at Shore Is that our teams communicates a huge amount with our customers. A customer hires us because they want peace of mind to run their back office operations, and that means communicating with them a ton. But by the way, that also means communicating with your manager. It also means communicating with your team. If you are MIA, even if you're doing all this work in the background, and you're you know I'm trying to think of like an example on the personal side. Like if you're if you're making the most beautiful amazing dinner or meal for your significant other. But they don't hear from you for 24 hours because you're so busy doing all the work to make the meal. They're not going to come into that meal feeling grateful. They're going to come into that meal being frustrated. It's the same thing in life in every single way. This is— trust comes from communication, open, honest, transparent, and frequent communication.

And it requires our attention. It requires our attention. Tell me this, Adam. What's the boldest vision for what comes next?

Hmm. Well, for Chore or in the world?

Uh, let's stick to Chore. Otherwise we would have to do another podcast.

Okay. Uh, uh, for Chore, the boldest vision is pretty simple. Um, we've, we've become the essentially like operating system for every single business to run their operations. Like, I, it is insane to me still that the large majority of businesses in the world have one of two solutions to the back office operations. It's either if they're small businesses, it's the founder doing the work. Themselves, which as we discussed about when we started, is utterly insane. Or you hire lots of people to go do this work. You essentially hire lots of HR people to push paper around or finance people to do the same thing. That is insane. That world is changing. The vision for Chorus is that we are the platform to enable that change, which makes these companies all be more efficient and effective. And yes, it might mean that some people who are in the HR space have to retask themselves and learn how to do bigger, better, arguably more enjoyable jobs than just pushing buttons and entering data into form fields. But that is coming, and I hope and expect Chore will be that company.

Yeah, love this. Tell me this, what does legacy mean to you at this stage of life?

It's a great question. It's a combination of things. Look, I think I've made peace with the fact that I'm probably not the next Elon Musk. Um, and I don't know if I'd want to be, to be clear. I think he, he will be remembered in history and many people won't be right. Even, even, even, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or a few others probably won't be remembered in history. There are lots of great entrepreneurs, even 100, 150 years ago, were barely talked about today. Um, however, so I'm, I'm probably not gonna be that sort of person. Um, at the same time, I think my legacy could be someone of a person who has been a good friend, someone who pushed the boundaries in different ways and treated people fairly and honestly, um, and hopefully led just a good life, um, and for all people, not just my family or my friends or people in San Francisco, but hopefully the whole world and essentially a very good world citizen, um, to make everyone's lives Slightly better every day.

Yeah. So tell me, if a very, very young Adam were listening to this podcast, what would you tell him?

Stay on the path you're on. This might seem odd for a lot of people, but like I had— I worked on an organic farm when I was in— right after, I guess it was still in college. I worked on an organic farm for the summer. I stayed at the farm, lived at the farm. did all that stuff. It was up in Maine. It was beautiful. Tons of great stories at some point I should tell you at some point, Tom. But, um, I remember having a conversation with the other sort of intern on the farm. Um, and she sort of, I, I said to her, I was like, look, I know I can look out the next 50 years and know what my life is gonna be. And there's a part of me that doesn't want that. Like, that scares me a little bit that I know exactly what's gonna happen. And she said like, you don't have to follow that path. And I sort of said like, I know what that path is and it scares me that I know it, but I don't mind that that's the path that I'm gonna have. Um, and, and she's right that I didn't have to follow that path, but you know what, like I did. And, and we were like, I knew exactly all the things that were gonna happen. And, and all those things have, right? By, by anybody's definition, my life is one that is very charmed and lucky. I've been able to build a career that I want, afford the things that I want. Mm-hmm. have a great family and do those elements, right? I know lots of my friends who are more financially successful than I am, but who are desperate to have some of the other life things that I have. And so I feel like I would tell my younger self, stay on the path you're on. Like, it's all going to work out great. Don't be stressed.

Love it. Love, love, love that. So if you could— if your story could leave the listeners today with one invitation, What would it be?

One invitation. Um, hold on, I wanna answer one other part to your last question, 'cause they, uh, it sort of gets you, but one other quick point. I think the only other thing I would've told my younger self is don't, don't, the one part of the path you shouldn't have followed is follow. I followed in my father's footsteps, went to law school. Good first older son, first son. Um, what I should have done is when I got Facebook at the end of my senior year of college and I was like, oh my God, this thing is amazing. I remember reading some story about Mark Zuckerberg and the whole crew out in some random house in Palo Alto. And I should have just— I loved the tech space already. I was super into it in a bunch of different ways. I was like reading Wired every month. I literally got the paper magazine. I still get the paper magazine, actually. It's the one magazine subscription I still get. And I literally should have just gotten on an airplane and showed up at the Facebook door and just showed up and walked in and said, I'm here. I will work for free, whatever it takes.

Exactly.

And I did not. Have that—that's a part of me that was missing a little bit, where I was just being the good older son and just to take. It wouldn't have been that big a risk. So what? I put off law school for a year or two. It wouldn't have mattered. I should have done that, and that's life turned out great. I really—I have no regrets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I should have done that.

You'll learn more about it later in the year when that book comes out. But I was in that house, Adam.

I know. Yes, you were. We would have met then, which would have been my luck as well.

We wouldn't.

But that was, I think, and this is where I do think for younger people, that is the one thing I would say is if you see something that you think sounds amazing and exciting, just go for it. Anyone listening to this is already lucky, right? You have internet, you have public food and water, and probably a bunch of other things to be able to listen to this podcast right now. There are very few risks you can't afford to take, so go for it. Take that step. If you see the next Facebook taking off, just go show up and be like, I'm smart, I'm hardworking, I don't need any money. You're young, you really don't. You probably can sleep on the floor at the house or the factory or the office, whatever, and no one's going to care. And if you work hard, they will find a position for you. My guess is the people at Facebook early on, a lot of them were not necessarily qualified for the jobs they were doing. They were just hardworking and they were available.

And yeah, they were brilliant kids. I call them kids because I was 50 at the time and they were all 20 and 21 and they deferred business school, law school, medical school, because Facebook was only in colleges and it was their dream job. And you're correct, there were people living in strange places. I remember telling an engineer that I was watching sleep under his desk every night, dude, you need to go home. And by the way, while you're there, take a shower. Because they would just go, go, go, go. It was very interesting. I can't wait till the book comes out later to tell that story through my eyes being old enough to be everyone's father there is magical. But, you know, I love this reflection on taking risks. I think, you know, we've talked enough that I've taken a number of risks and there really is no do-over in life. It's not like the movie you watch on your phone where you get to go back 10 seconds. That's not how life does. So, and this life is finite. Yeah. people who are really young don't realize that the day you're born, you are on your trajectory to die. And some of us get longer, some of us get shorter. And we woke up this morning, some people didn't. So, there are things that you don't want to— I know I don't want to, when I'm taking that last breath, think about the things I could have done or should have done or would have done. I want to know that, as Thoreau said, I sucked the marrow out of life. I've had that on my refrigerator for 50 years, Adam. So, Adam, thank you for being on Opening Pathways today. Please tell us how we can find you.

Yeah, so I'm— so you can find me and more about Chor at hirechor.com. So H-I-R-E-C-H-O-R.com, Hire Chor. I'm all over LinkedIn. I'm on X. I still call it Twitter because I work there. So I'm on Twitter. You name it, you can find me in most public places, uh, and please get in touch. Once again, the goal is to help every entrepreneur be the greatest success they can possibly be. So go take that risk, hire Chore to handle the annoying chores, and make yourself the success you expect to be in life.

Great. Adam Spector, CEO and founder of Chore. Thank you for being on Opening Pathways today.

Thank you so much, Tom. I appreciate it.

And to my viewers, this is Tom Lenoble. I'll see you next time.