T.O.S. EP #198 "Obsessed founders break through walls." W/Adam Spector.

You scale when you start having people who are interested in buying your product. If people don't know your product exists or your product isn't delightful, you won't scale.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Test, Optimize, and Scale. Have Adam Spector here with us today, founder and CEO of Chor. Going to be speaking about the world of HR, everything it takes to run the back office of a business. And how you can really streamline these processes and bring in experts into your model as a founder, as a CEO, as an operator here. I should mention as well, Adam's invested in over 200 companies, has a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur, host of the Entrepreneurial Podcast at that. So I know I've been looking forward to today's discussion. Adam, thanks for taking the time to join us.

Jason, it is an absolute pleasure. Look forward to the conversation.

And just to kick things off, where did your career begin? How did you get into this world of thought leadership for entrepreneurs and creating solutions to make their life, their, their growth easier?

Yeah, I told you, Jason, I had a, a non-PC answer for you when you first said that that way. Um, but, uh, my, my career, my career really began So, look, I'm kind of a tech guy sort of through and through. And what I mean by that is back in high school, I had a subscription to Wired magazine. I bet I'm one of the oldest, longest Wired subscribers ever. I've had a subscription since I was in high school. I know it's coming up on 25 years or so, which shows my age a bit. But just forever, I've always been into the tech side of things, loved it, found it fascinating, and really had a lesson learned. So after graduate school, I got a JD MBA, moved back to Washington, DC, which is where I'm from, was working in strategy, essentially like financing strategy at a kind of mid-sized publicly traded tech-ish company in DC, right? DC is not maybe the hotbed of like cool tech, but there's a lot of tech. In DC and had the opportunity to potentially go out to work at a company out west. I sort of wanted to do that anyways, was interested. And part of this was pushed by a guy I met. He was a founder of a Sequoia-backed company. So for those who don't know, Sequoia is one of the top VC firms, and obviously getting invested by them is very rare in general, even more so if you're based in Washington, DC. This founder happened to be, and I got an intro to him, so he sat down with me and gave me some of his time. And he essentially said something that just has always stuck with me, and it's advice I give people even today, despite the virtual world we kind of live in, which is, if you want to be in politics, you should be in DC, like be there where all the politics people are. If you want to be in finance, go to New York. If you want to be in media, go to LA. And if you want to be in tech, go to San Francisco. And so for me, that was like, yep, like I just can't stay. in DC anymore, even though my family's from there, everything else. And 15 years ago, I moved out to San Francisco, started working for an awesome tech company. It was acquired 18 months later for $400 million. I was like, heck yeah, I just got like, you know, I was a small shareholder, of course, as just an employee, was not an owner, but, you know, got like some real money. Like, for me at that time, like, I was like, oh my gosh, like, this is welcome to the gold rush. This is freaking next level. And that just started the journey that I had always wanted to be on. And one thing led to the next, and 4 companies later and 200+ investments made, it's been quite the journey.

I love it. I share that tech enthusiasm, infatuation, especially from a young age. Love the fact that you were focused on strategy. I'm actually intrigued by DC and want to get more involved out there. I'm part of some professional associations. So I feel like I'd ask you questions just on that landscape. But, but think you made the right choice hopping over to San Francisco, getting really embraced into the world of tech over there, seeing what the finish line looks like with, with an acquisition, $400 million at that. And then, you know, interested to hear about how you made your choices for the next 4 Endeavors and ultimately what had you focus on HR? And I imagine it's from some of your insights from working with entrepreneurs, but where did you go from there? You said, hey, I have this home run. I was a part of a company that exited. What did those next discussions look like? I've heard, you know, it can be an unclear path at first of, you know, okay, you know, where do I go next? Where did you choose to put your time?

So I want to, before we get to that question and answer, I want to just go back to the DC point. Yeah. All due respect to my good friends who still live in DC and who are part of that ecosystem, part of what really made me want to leave DC is, to me, it's mostly a backwards-looking mentality. Interesting. And tons of really smart people and amazing people.

Of course.

But when you're working in politics, there's a lot of relitigating the past. It's a lot of fight. Good politicians are fighting for how do we improve the future. Many of them, and certainly in our political world right now, it's about making America great again, which is sort of a past tense idea, going back to some former greatness. Whereas I'm much more focused, and I think people in the Bay Area and San Francisco are much more focused on looking to the future. How do we make the future better and brighter? How do we try new technology, new tools, new procedures, new systems to build a better and brighter future every single day. And that mentality is one that I really enjoy, and it's led to all the different companies I've tried to build. And sometimes people talk like, oh, you're, you're at the cutting edge of things. I'm like, yeah, like I want to be. I want to embrace all of the new ways of running a business. I'm sure we'll talk about my company Chore, but to me it's insane that people still try to run operations on their own. Like, you're a founder. Why would you do that? And that's what most companies have done. That's what companies for the past 400 years have done, is the founder either does it all themselves or they hire some person full-time to essentially, like, hand out checks on payroll, like, obviously digitally, but same idea. That's crazy. Like, that is not a new way of doing business. You are a dinosaur slow if that is the way you want to get things done. Um, and so everything I try to do is with that forward-facing mentality.

Yes.

In goal. So I know it kind of took you on a tangent there, but does that make sense?

Absolutely. I mean, I'm a big fan of looking at how to, to better things. Yeah, you say, you know, brighter future. Absolutely. I mean, isn't that part of what we're trying to do here is build, you know, where we're going to have an impact, leave a legacy, actually leave an imprint, not just, you know, take learnings from the past, but not focus all of our time there. What can we do to actually, you know, have an enhancement in the areas we want?

I hope that's what we're trying to do. I'm not convinced that everyone has that mentality, unfortunately, in the world. Um, I think a lot of people are scared of change. Like, the fact is, even, even at my company, and we have really smart people who are forward-looking, there's still a fear of change sometimes. And to me, change is actually the most exciting thing. It's scary. You don't know what's coming all the time. You can't predict it. But the ability to embrace that change keeps the world really interesting. I mean, if I were doing the same thing every single day, God, I'd be really bored. Every day is something new. I get to learn new things. I get to try and test new things. Like, there's a dozen tests I want to go run right now with AI. It's just kind of obviously a very exciting future right now. And to me, that's what I get up in the morning to do, not to relitigate the past. And yes, that means change. It means the future won't be the same as it was as today, but that's exciting. It's something we should all, I would hope, embrace.

The only constant is change. And I think a fear of it creates a whole nother set of issues for it when it actually occurs.

Yes. If you have too much fear of change, you're in trouble. Um, and you will get run over by change because you cannot stop. You can slow it down sometimes, but you cannot stop. Progress. Um, anyway, so going to your, your question, uh, like the rest of the journey, right? So I, I, the company got acquired. Um, I stayed at the acquiring company for a year, had some sort of golden handcuffs, had to kind of do that part, um, help transition. Right. Uh, after that, um, I was like, I'm working with a ton of really smart people at this company and let's see, do what you kind of, what smart, I like to think smart people do is like band together, say like, we have an idea, let's go build a company together. So I, I got together with 2 of the smartest engineers, one who was at the company, one who actually lived in my building in San Francisco. go, goes to the necessity of living in the place. He was one of the earliest engineers at Google and then one of the top engineers at the company I was at. And we all were together like, let's go build this new business. And so we did. To be clear, the business failed, but it was quite the ride and a ton of fun.

Yes.

I learned from it with a bunch of great people and learned some good stuff.

Very nice. Very nice. So working in this world of tech, you know, having an interest in over 200 companies and interacting with founders, entrepreneurs directly, what made you focus your attention on HR, on back office, on everything it is that Shore does?

Yeah. And so everything we do, just so folks know, look, we're almost like a Fractional chief of staff, right? So we we come in and just take on all the back office admin work. Essentially, things you might say are a chore to do, and that is everything from HR compliance, finance, and equity. All these key things that you don't want to run yourself. It's not your core competency. It's not your comparative advantage of why you did your business. For me, though. part of why I did it is the same reason everyone should start a business. It's because you have specific, clear knowledge that you think makes you a world expert at it, and you felt that pain. And so you know there should be a solution. So I had felt that pain. So I had founded 2 companies before I started the predecessor to Chore, which was also sort of trying to solve this problem. And then I had also been chief operating officer of another company. I'd been chief revenue officer of another company. Um, and of course I'd invested in, invested in that point, maybe, uh, 75 companies or so. Um, and the key question that kept coming up in my mind is like, this is a big problem. Like you go talk to all these founders and they're like, I'm drowning in all this work. It's not why I started my company. It's not what excites me every single day. And I'm drowning in this work. And this is, I know, a book we talked about on our first call, sort of The E-Myth Revisited. Um, this was written 30 years ago. And it talked about how the founder of a pie shop, the example that the book uses, founder of a pie shop loves making pies. She's world-class at making pies. And yet then suddenly she's drowning in all the admin work to run the pie shop, and it just drains her energy. It drains her excitement for the business she's building. Um, and it actually hurts the business ability to grow and, and produce the outcomes that she wanted originally. That pain still— I didn't know the book existed at the time. That pain was still really obvious to me. I was the one doing those, that operational work, um, for my companies. And I was like, why am I doing this? Like this, this wasn't my world-class differentiating ability at the time. It wasn't my superpower. Why am I spending time doing this when I'm essentially repeating, reinventing the wheel, right? I have to reinvent my hiring process, decide which HRIS tool, essentially payroll tool, is better for my business, figure out the right bank. Why should that be the founder who has world-class abilities and superpowers in other areas spending time figuring out those answers? And that was insane. So that's why I started Chore, was a pain I felt acutely, something I had learned through— I just sort of the school of tech startup hard knocks in a sense. You just have to go do it and do it, figure it out. And I was like, oh, this is really cool. If we can build systems, essentially systematize operations that will lower the cost and increase the quality for every single small business in the world, and arguably for every large business. Um, in fact, when you look at publicly traded companies, something like 10% of their entire expenses go towards essentially G&A, like back office running the company. Yeah. 10% of revenue. That's insane. Like, that is an inefficient system of lots and lots of people Essentially pushing people around is archaic. It's crazy, and it has not changed once again for 400 years since the rise of the modern corporation with the East India Company back in Britain. Has not changed. Like literally back then, there was just a dude, a guy at the time, of course, with a ledger be like, "Oh, you worked this many hours. Here's your here's your paycheck." Not probably wasn't a paycheck at the time, but like coins, right? It hasn't changed. It's just people pushing buttons on on. you know, a spreadsheet online today. So that's why, that's why I started Shore, was there needs to be a solution that is low cost enough to offer a quality, delightful product, an option to every single business owner out there. So you can focus on your comparative advantage, your superpower, and have a higher chance of wonderful, delightful outcomes for you as a business owner.

That's a big game. I see why you've put your focus, your passion into it. And want to add at that, I mean, I love how you brought up The E-Myth. We were talking about it before because I said, this sounds like the baker in The E-Myth. And I've quoted it so many times. I've quoted it on this podcast, in our webinars. And it was really a radical distinction to work on your business versus in your business. Yeah. To have the chores and be, you know, COO, CRO, but bogged down by management or directly inputting all the information into the accounting systems and the ERP and all the different tools you have to use to run the business, uh, you know, to then have to pull in the right experts and get individuals who have experience in HR for your specific industry in these incidents over time. And they've seen it play out different ways. They've probably seen it play out where it didn't work. And like

you said, you can mess it up easily. There'll be tough fines if you mess things up. Yeah. Um, we have a ton of customers who we still get started with us and they have, they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of bills they haven't sent out invoices to their customers. They haven't collected on that. Just money sitting out there because they either missed it, forgot about it, didn't have time to follow up or focus on other areas. Even so small things, accounts payable, accounts receivable, all of that. This needs to be systematized and run well. Like that, that is what a good business is. And once again, like you as the founder, you probably have one or two superpowers. One maybe is go-to-market, figuring out how to grow the business, and you know it better than anyone else. Or the other is usually on product, and you are world-class at building the product that your customers want to buy. That's it. If you're, if you're world-class at building operations and back office stuff, come work for us. Like, don't go start your company. That is not why you should start a business. Like, that is a bad reason to start a startup. And for us, our mission's really clear. We want, like, we wake up as a team. I want more entrepreneurs to be successful in the world. I think the world is a better place when every entrepreneur of every race, religion, gender, nationality, etc., etc., etc., has a better— has a chance at outsized success in returns for themselves. That makes for a better world, more successful entrepreneurs, better world, end of story. And we believe we accelerate that in a pretty massive way.

Yeah, well, like you said, you're setting up founders to work on what's actually going to produce their growth, not the management of their systems Which, by the way, if neglected— I'm here in the state of California as well. There's a whole list of rules we have to follow for HR, for compliance. I've seen companies go under by being, you know, negligent to the rules. So making sure it's set up could be the make or break of a brand. And then, like you said, putting the actual passions, the expertise, the superpowers to use so you can accelerate, take on more market share, and be able to focus on what you're really good at.

Yep. And that's, that is the thesis. So I don't want to belabor the point, but yes, that is why we exist.

And how's the audience responding to it? What type of industries are you working with the most? Where are you getting the best responses?

Yeah. So we're today more focused on the early stage sort of venture-backed tech companies just because that's an area I know well. It's the area I come from. Yes, we do have businesses that are very traditional businesses as well. We have super traditional recruiting firms, marketing firms. We have some real estate companies as well. So we're slowly expanding in other areas. They aren't the core focus for us today, but in the end, the whole thesis that we have, and this is kind of crazy, is like every business likes to think there's some special snowflake. And the simple fact is like 99% of them are pretty similar to everyone else. Um, yes, your core product and your core go-to-market message are different, and that's what you should focus on. But the underlying DNA of a business Payroll, finance, compliance, kind of the same. And so we can work with anybody.

And I love how you emphasize cost and quality, because that's a big question working with early-stage, growth-stage companies. What does this all cost? So being able to show, hey, it's, it's a lower dollar amount than what you'd hire for an entry-level person, let alone the experts that are going to be advising on your business. And then more importantly, the quality, because like I said, protections, setting it up so everything's running smooth, you're keeping talent Everything's flowing smoothly. That quality has to be present.

It is. And, and we, we stress this as an entrepreneur and as someone obviously has Entrepreneurial Excellence Podcast. One of the key things I try to stress is just customer delight all the time. Like that is the end-all be-all goal for us as a business is customer delight. If you aren't delighted, we're doing something wrong. And by the way, the way we align that is our pricing in our contracts are always and will— unless I mean dramatic changes, I'll just say forever will be month to month. You hire us, our domain is hiretor.com, hire Tor. And guess what? It is a month-to-month contract. So if we aren't utterly ROI positive and the best vendor you've ever had in your life, fire us. End of story. No questions asked. I will actually ask you for feedback, but you can still fire us. And that is because we want to be always aligned with achieving absolute delight for you.

I imagine you have a long average lifetime. We use LTV, lifetime value, though, because this isn't something that you move. It's very sticky, especially if the quality and cost are there.

Correct. 100%. And this is also why— but I also think this is just a pricing thing in general. Any company that feels that they need legally to bind someone contractually to stay with them as a vendor, to me implies their product isn't all that good.

Mm-hmm.

Right? I have to trust that, um, that our product is so good and the quality is so high and the delight is off the charts that you're gonna stick around for forever. And yes, we have companies churn, but mostly it's cuz they go outta business. We work with startups and small businesses. They go outta business. Um, but we literally, a bunch of our customers have actually gone outta business and the founders cut their salaries to zero and they kept paying our contract because they needed us to help them shut them down even. So we were like the last vendor there. The day the business shut down and closed, like press a button, close, it's done. We shut it down for them.

Yeah.

Just to give you an idea of the value we were providing these businesses.

Makes sense. And then I have to ask, as an LA guy, I'm always fascinated when I get up to the Bay Area. Like you said, the tech companies, the scene. I've been to conferences, investor meetups up there. How has the community responded in Northern California?

It's been pretty good. I don't know off the top of my head the distribution of our customers. I mean, they're, they're all over the US.

Okay.

Certainly a large number in the Bay Area, but we are a fully virtual team. I can go on a long rant if you'd like about why I think virtual is the— virtual and remote is the right way to go for the large majority of businesses. Not all. Obviously, if you're like a plumbing company, you need to be— you can't be remote. You have to be physically available. But we're fully remote and our customers are also all over the US.

Mm-hmm. Just a quick one-liner on that. Why, why is remote hybrid better than in person? Let's say, uh, hybrid's not better than agency.

Hybrid, hybrid, hybrid's a compromise. Compromises are almost always a compromise, which means no one's really winning. Um, I think hybrid's a terrible way to go. No offense if you guys do hybrid.

We do, we do hybrid. I like it, but, but it's based remote. But I, I like seeing people in 3D from time to time, and I find it leads to better relationships over time. It's not available for every remote company, but that's why I've chosen it. But just remote versus in-person, why do you find better results from remote?

Pretty simple. We can hire world-class people anywhere in the world. We can give them a better lifestyle because we essentially say like, you can deal with whatever family issues you have, your own stuff. We trust you as professionals to get things done. And you can work from wherever, wherever you are, as long as you're doing your job well.

Mm-hmm.

Um, yes, it means you don't come in, in person, but it also means you don't have to do 2 hours of commuting every day.

Yes.

To get to an office. It also means we don't have to pay crazy salaries in San Francisco Bay Area or New York. We can pay salaries that are more appropriate across the US and across the world. So it means we can get higher quality people for probably lower price, which we then pass on to our customers, which by the way, goes back to leading to delight. Delight is a function of price largely, right? I mean, if you probably love your iPhone, but if your iPhone was $5,000 or $10,000, you'd probably be like, oh, this isn't actually that delightful for that price. Um, and so delight is a function of price. And so we pass along the savings to our customers that we're able to achieve. So to me, it's a function of delight overall. Once again, we don't have, we don't have to pay crazy salaries. We don't have to pay for an office space. We don't have to ask people to commute, which means they have a better lifestyle. They're happier on a regular basis. And they can delight their other stakeholders, like their family members or friends who they're a part of. So to me, they all stack up, leading to a better company with lower cost structure, which we can pass along, leading to higher product quality delight for our customers. So to me, it's all just a win-win-win. Yes, you have to work a little bit harder to build a remote culture. You do. There's a little bit of extra work you need to do to get that done right. But if you can, you can harness this global world we live in that essentially is able to produce higher quality products at a better price, which with the comparative advantages that we have as a business, and, you know, we could get into a whole discussion about tariffs and, and my thoughts there, but the short version basically is, um, I think you should hire people once again to do their comparative advantage, best thing they do. Hire Chor to do your operations because we are better at it than you are. We're better at it than you will ever be. We do it every single day. We do it for I won't say the exact number, but a large number of companies. Why wouldn't— why would you want to do it yourself? It's like, why don't I just build my own, sew my own clothes too?

And like you said, it's a lower cost and higher quality. So why sew the clothes if it's going to take longer and not come out as nice?

I couldn't build the shirt I'm wearing. I couldn't sew this myself. I could probably try and it would look terrible. I wouldn't want to wear it. That seems like a terrible use of my time. It's not my skill set.

Yeah,

I can do things that are my skill set. So it's just— so to me, that's why remote is just, is just way better overall. And once again, yeah, like, I, I've met in person maybe not even 10% of the people on my team, maybe 5%. I met in person, no one else.

No, I think you said it all with delighted employees.

Yeah,

team members. delighted customers. I mean, that, that is the focus. That is the value point. Um, I'd say throw in a summit from time to time and have people doing something fun in person. But, but that's really the focus of our hybrid. But it's whatever works best for a business and all around the delighted employees and customers.

We thought it's all about, it's all about delight. Like, if you think from first principles, what does delight mean? So once you go back to the point, like, Delight is a function of cost with every product in the world. And so if your cost structure is high, you have to— like, why do people love Costco? People, when Costco started, people thought it was insane. Like, you have this massive warehouse that's ugly, filled to the brim with massive amounts of product to buy, not nicely displayed, really kind of ugly. Just everything about it, right, is not delightful in that sense. But, you know, you were getting a deal and a half every time you go there. You know, they will literally give away things if it doesn't hit their margin profile or essentially cut Like give you cash back or other things to hit their margin, keep their margins low. And you know that every single time. And they built this incredibly incredible business, incredibly loyal fan base.

Yep.

That is what laser focus on delight is. And cost, once again, is a function of that. If you want to spend more, go to— I don't know what's an expensive— I was going to say like Bloomingdale's or something like that, like with stores that don't really exist anymore. There are ways to spend more money on things. Most people don't want to do that. Yeah.

In Los Angeles, it's, uh, Erewhon.

That's the, uh, fancy grocery store.

Yeah.

If you look, sometimes that can be great, but you can get really niche-specific things there.

Um, one at a time, you'll probably end up spending more at Costco, even though things cost less and have a good feeling leaving doing so, where it isn't always the case leaving a luxury store.

And look, in our, in our scenario, you can go hire a consultant from McKinsey.

Yeah,

for $1 million a year. Like, cool, go do that. You probably won't get anything of all that much value out of it. You'll get a big report and they'll tell you a bunch of things you should go do, and then you have to go do it yourself and you won't maybe even get it done. I think that's a crazy way of being. You can hire us and we— our goal is to be this delightful, low-cost provider every single day that you're not locked into any contract. So anyways, that's why we do it.

There's only so many companies that could work with McKinsey, and even the ones that could, I think, are looking for more of the entrepreneur entrepreneurially minded consultants, teams, solutions. Hey, what works for, you know, lean growth stage businesses? We want to apply that to our model. Like you said, tradition, you said archaic, not necessarily what most groups are looking for, but even just looking at the percentage of businesses that are small businesses, mid-market businesses, it's the majority of companies out there. Yeah. So I understand your addressable market.

Yeah, let's focus.

Now, our, our audience, viewers, listeners, you know, founders, marketers, VC, VC industry professionals, what would you recommend for them to test out? This could be towards their growth. You've done this successfully with businesses. This could be towards their admin model. And obviously, you know, using your solution is gonna be part of that answer. But what, what would you recommend for them to test towards their own entrepreneurial journey?

I mean, the first test you should be asking yourself every single day when you wake up in the morning is, what is the number one thing that I need to do to move the ball forward? And what is that number one thing that only I can do? No one else in the company can do. That should be your first focus. And that's the question you need to ask yourself. Um, is that fixing your product? Is it building a new feature? Is it figuring out a new go-to-market motion on sales or marketing? Um, what is the one thing that you need to be spending time on? When you wake up and try to focus on that sort of to exclusivity of everything else. Um, and, and so that's focus is the key thing. Um, figure out what you can be obsessed by, right? Out of my, there's one key takeaway from doing, um, about, I think, 90 or so episodes at this point of Entrepreneurial Excellence. The best entrepreneurs are just obsessed. Are you obsessed with your problem? That you are trying to solve, and does that get you excited every day? And figure out what that is. So that's the next big thing that I would focus on and think about. And then we can talk about like specific like look there's definitely different marketing options out there today that are working some that aren't. We can talk through those, but but at a high level it's like obsession and focus. And and yes, that goes back to the mantra that we have all the time at Shore, which is like don't be distracted by stuff like operations. Like it's I view operations for founders as almost a Um, uh, it, it's like TikTok for them in the sense that you're, you have like bigger things to deal with during your day, but you're like, but I don't wanna deal with that big thing cuz it might go wrong or it's scary, or just like you're, you have anxiety about that big thing. So you go do the small easy thing like, oh, I need to go fix this one thing on payroll. And like you feel like this small dopamine hit cuz you got it taken care of, but you actually didn't move. It's like, but it was empty calories. It didn't really move the ball forward. Yeah. in any real legitimate way. And we found all the time who do that and we say, dude, stop doing that. Like, that's why you hired us. Like, don't, don't go do those empty calorie things. Go find, go focus on the big things. Um, 'cause once again, like, life is short. Your time is short. It is arguably the most precious thing you have is your time and where and how you spend that is the most important decision you'll make every single day. And so Doing it, spending it on things that are low value from social media. And like, as one example, like, I do a lot of social media for my business, but I don't do it a lot personally. Or doing admin essentially work. That's just, I don't like why life is, life is too short. Is that what you're really enjoying?

There are other ways to get that sense of accomplishment, that dopamine hit. And what you're saying, which I wanna echo, is where and how you spend your time makes all of the difference for your personal life, for the success of your business. And this can remove all those items that may feel, you know, a sense of satisfaction completing, but are really distracting you from your larger goals.

I'll give you an example today for me, and this is my own where I'm not perfect yet, despite the advice, I'm not perfect at it. Um, I had to go in and update the credit card we were using for some different vendors. Um, someone on my team probably could have done it, but I was like, I just need to go get this done. I don't have a real sense of satisfaction that I had to go spend probably 15-ish minutes making sure I got the right login, finding the right places, all this stuff. On the other hand, man, I am pumped when we get a new client. We're like, we're ready to start. We're excited. I'm like, yes, like that is, that means things are working where you're getting it done. The business is growing. Our message is resonating. That is a sense of accomplishment. Um, cuz we need, can go out there and get it done. And then I check in 30 days after that when they start with us. Mm-hmm. And I say, how are we doing? And I love it when they say things are freaking fantastic. This is the best decision I've ever made. Um, and then I ask them all for a testimonial. So we have, I don't know, 60, 70 testimonials on our website. Um, cuz not all of them say yes to that, even if they're, they're delighted. Sometimes they wanna sort of stay in stealth more, but like, but it's great. Like that is a sense of accomplishment. Like that is fun. not updating my credit card in a few different places. Like, sure, I get a little extra, few extra points or something, but it's irrelevant to the scope, the real scope of the business and the real outcome for me individually, mentally, but also financially. The real outcome is, can I make Chor a fantastic business that will live on well past my demise?

It's ambitious. And yeah, Prioritizing the list of chores versus just tackling them and feeling like you're getting somewhere makes all the difference. What about how to optimize? Because I could tell you some people don't have those wins that you're talking about. You know, hey, we brought in a new client, we're, you know, doing something exciting over here. So they just go for the low-hanging fruit of, you know, I need to pay these bills, I need to do this, I need to do that. I should remove the expenses to pay the person that I pay to pay the bills. Like, you know, I've seen the cycle. Working with thousands of founders over the years, how do you optimize? How do you look at, let's say, your time and say, this is what's more important, I need to do this, or here's where we need to put more efforts to see more growth?

The first way you do that, and maybe the easiest for people, is put a real number on the value of your time. Okay? Like, no one's going to probably pay you $1,000 or $2,000 for your time. They might. I mean, like, I've had people do that for my time, but they probably won't. But you should put that on your clock and say, okay, my time is worth at least $1,000. So Naval Ravikant, who for folks who don't know, is sort of the muse, philosophical muse of Silicon Valley. Um, he was the founder of AngelList, a bunch of other great companies, and also a fantastic investor. Um, he famously said that he basically doesn't do anything unless he thinks it's worth at least $2,000 an hour. Now, that doesn't mean someone's going to pay him $2,000 to do something. But it means he will say no if it doesn't meet that level in his mind. So he sets a really high price. And so I try to do the same thing. I say, okay, what is something that I think is worth at least $1,000 an hour? In my case, maybe $2,000. And if, if it doesn't fit that, then I'm gonna hand it off to people or just put it down at the bottom of the priority list. And so that enables me to say no more often. And then refocus on what is important. And I try to do that every single day, right? So being on your podcast, I can't hand that off to anyone else. And yeah, like I think if it helps us get new customers, helps get the vision out there and just helps more startups be successful, this is a good use of my time and this is worth $2,000 an hour. But many of their calls are not. And so I say no to them.

I like that measuring stick. Hey, is this worth $2,000 an hour or whatever it may be? But I like that metric because like you said, it doesn't mean you're going to send someone an invoice as much much as calculate for yourself, am I being of high impact, high value? I mean, we're in a world of AI and more things are becoming redundant and streamlined each day. Where can we actually apply knowledge? Where can we actually be, you know, of utility and doing more of what's working for you?

And to reframe that too for people, another way to think of it is if you have children, so I have 2 young kids, if I think about like, is my time with them, worth $2,000 an hour? Like, that becomes easy. I think every parent would say, of course, it's worth way more than $2,000 an hour. Spending that time with them and helping them grow up and being a part of their lives is worth well more than $2,000 an hour. So then why don't you apply the same lens to your business dealings? It's sort of funny how people sort of view things differently. And then what happens, I come across a lot of founders do this. They say, I don't value my time as anything. Like, I can work harder than anyone else and I'll work harder. So I'm going to save extra cash. To go do that. And here's where they're making the wrong choice, which is if you at least are a company who is expecting growth and you want to build a real sustainable business, you have a short window to really do that in. You don't have forever to go build a sustainable business. You have a relatively short period. So every second you spend on saying, I'm going to optimize my little amount of cash and save a few thousand dollars here a month on these small things, But I then missed out on getting this next big deal, or this next big partner, or this next big product launch because they saved a little bit. It feels good, like, oh, I saved, I did my job, I saved cash. That is the wrong mentality. You actually need to switch from a— once you get that first funding and a little bit of cash in the door, you need to move from being frugal with your money to frugal with your time. You essentially— your time, it's a weird way of thinking, but you actually move to a world of money abundance and time scarcity. You don't have enough time. So for us, every day at Shore, how do we move faster? Like, we don't have enough time. I want to be in front of every single small business in the world immediately today.

Mm-hmm.

Yesterday, really. We can't obviously do that, but how do I focus on that every single moment and not waste it on saving a little bit of money here or there? I'm not perfect. I get distracted too. But like, that's the mindset you should have is time is scarce, money is abundant. If you build a great business, you will get more money. You can never get more time back. So be thoughtful about where and how you spend it.

I love that. I, I use the word abundance and I believe you operate in a more powerful, more effective manner by, by coming from that place. I look at the time as an investment. I really like how you're saying don't be frugal with money, be frugal with time, the allocation of those resources. And time being the most valuable, as you mentioned earlier. What about scaling? You've been a part of exits, multiple ventures, you've invested and seen companies grow. What are any tips, any examples you could, you know, encourage the audience to take to scale? And, you know, perhaps when ready, but to scale?

I mean, look, you scale when you start having people who are interested in buying your product. Um, if, if people don't know your product exists or your product isn't delightful, you won't scale. Um, once you start getting that market pull, that will start just happening kind of organically, right? If it, if it's good, it will, it will grow organically and hopefully grow quickly. Um, now to be clear, most companies are not overnight successes. It's more like they're a 10-year overnight success. Yeah. In other words, like the first 9 years of the business, they were like very slowly growing. And then year 9, everything starts compounding amazingly and it just shoots off. into the stratosphere. Um, that's what businesses generally like. That's what you should really expect. Um, and so it, it is a slog. I mean, there are no shortcuts in most cases. Sure, there are, there's always the rare company that has a shortcut that just takes off, but generally speaking, it's very rare. And so you just have to wake up every day and like, I'm gonna do one new thing to keep moving the ball forward. One new experiment. I actually have a bunch of messages I need to send to my marketing team right now about experiments I want to go run. I mean, I tell them I'd like say no to things too, because I come up with too many ideas. But like, you need to just move the ball forward a little bit every single day and let it start to compound. So how that scales is over time you start building a name for yourself and a brand. And so we've done that. I mean, we started SEO. SEO is the first thing we started on the marketing front 2 and a half years ago. And when we essentially started— longer story, we kind of spun out of my last company, but like when Chore officially became a business, 2 and a half years ago, we started SEO on that. And that takes a lot of time, but it starts to compound. You start to show up in search results, people start to see you everywhere. And now we're starting to layer on advertising and a lot of other things. And really we're revamping and improving and expanding our social media operations. And so all of these things keep growing. And hopefully over time, it leads to a place where you are the default provider. And people know who you are. Once again, very few companies manage that, but it's just this one step after the next every day. Most days you will hear no from other people who value their time. They will say, no, we're not interested. No, it's not the right time. But you just keep coming back in a nice way, of course, and saying, hey, look, is now a better time? Is now the right time? Are you ready to solve the pain that I know you have? I mean, that's— you just can't get discouraged from that.

Well said. Well said. No just means not yet. Gotta be relentlessly moving the ball forward, looking at where time is best spent for that day, and understanding this could be a 10-year overnight success. If it happens sooner, great, but be playing for the long run and using each day intelligently Removing hats, using the right providers, the right solutions to get there.

Right.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Adam, I, I'm gonna be speaking to my partner further about, uh, you know, Shore. And we actually, we, again, we reference the, the E-Myth all the time. Uh, so, you know, it's probably in our future, uh, probably have some clients that, that make sense for it too. Uh, but, but wanna thank you so much for, for taking the time to come on the podcast, share, Your recommendations, your ideas, your thought leadership, and any final notes that you want to leave listeners, viewers with. And where's the best place for them to go to learn more?

Yeah, best place. I mean, look, you can find me at hiretor.com, on LinkedIn. I'm very easy to find, Adam Spector. Twitter, I think it's @ASpec00. You know, and then Entrepreneurial Excellence, you can also find it on all major podcast platforms as well. And, um, I think the key takeaway is once again, like, be greedy with your time. Be so protective and careful with it. Life is short. It doesn't mean just because you're greedy with your time doesn't mean you have to spend it more on work. Maybe being more greedy with your time means you have a little bit more time to spend with your spouse, or you have more time to spend with your kids, or on your hobby. And spending time on your hobby helps your mind free up to think about the next big product push that you need to make. There's so many different ways to spend that time, but be thoughtful about where and how you spend it. And don't be shy about spending a little bit of money to get a little bit more time. It's just, I go on like my laptop and they're like, hey, get a new laptop because you need something that's faster. Like if your web pages load a little bit slower every day, at some point that slows you down. Like that is a waste of your time. Yeah, like cash is, cash is critical. But man, I want to spend more time learning every day so I can prepare for this crazy AI future we're heading into, um, and prepare my business for it and my team. And I owe it to them to be ready for all that. So you owe it to yourself. Be thoughtful about where you spend the time. Don't be scared to say no. Thank you for spending time with us today listening to this. Um, and please reach out if I can be helpful, literally in any way. You do not have to be a customer. I just want to help startups win.

Awesome, awesome stuff, Adam. I'm going to be looking at my calendar and trying to reevaluate my time afterwards.

And you should do a time audit. I do that. I try to do it at least once a year, if not more often. Do a time audit of my calendar of where I'm spending my time— internal meetings, external meetings, sales calls, etc., etc.—

and calculating the numbers, percentages, full hours.

Wow. Yeah.

Years are moving. I'm going to be doing it. I actually— I have so little time on the weekends. I'm very intentional with that, but I want to apply that same greedy intensity to it and highly, highly encourage everyone to take Adam up on his offer. Get in touch with him, do your own time audit, and be meaningful, be frugal, be greedy with your time.

Yeah.

Thanks again, Adam. Really privileged. Appreciate it. And thank you everybody for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Take care.