Selling companies for millions — Jesse Stein's playbook for fast scale and clean exit

Jesse Stein, founder of Hermetic AI and former founder of Sportsmemorabilia.com, shares his hard-won lessons on scaling and exiting businesses. He highlights the dangers of 'shiny object syndrome' for curious entrepreneurs, advocating instead for ruthless focus. By narrowing his sights and leveraging low-cost acquisition channels like SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), he successfully grew and eventually sold his e-commerce company to Fanatics. A core strategy for a clean exit, Stein notes, is cultivating relationships with potential acquirers years in advance. He explains how building trust early—often by acting as a customer or supplier—greases the wheels for future acquisitions. He also shares a major pivot with his current venture, Hermetic AI. After receiving blunt advice from industry heavyweights like G2's Godard Abel to avoid the overcrowded SaaS market, he shifted his ideal customer profile (ICP) entirely to private events for restaurant chains, prioritizing 'speed-to-lead' and finding an underserved niche.

Discussed in this episode

• The danger of 'shiny object syndrome' and why curious entrepreneurs must actively fight distraction to scale successfully.
• Cultivating relationships with potential acquirers years in advance to build trust before you ever plan to sell.
• Using low customer acquisition cost (CAC) channels like SEO and underutilized strategies like Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to drive incremental revenue.
• The importance of finding co-founders with complementary skills, a good sense of humor, and the ability to apologize quickly.
• Why Hermetic AI was built to solve the universal 'speed to lead' problem, knowing 75% of business goes to the first responder.
• How advice from G2's Godard Abel and Andy Paul convinced Jesse to pivot his new AI startup entirely away from targeting SaaS companies.
• The untapped revenue opportunity in managing private event lead follow-ups for polished casual restaurant chains.
• Why letting go of perfectionism and adopting an 80/20 iteration mindset is critical for startup survival and speed.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Welcome and Jesse Stein's background
2. 3:15 — Learning focus from domain investments
3. 6:30 — Building trust with future acquirers
4. 9:45 — SEO and CRO as acquisition hacks
5. 12:20 — Successful co-founder relationship dynamics
6. 16:10 — The origin of Hermetic AI
7. 19:45 — Why Godard Abel said avoid SaaS
8. 22:30 — Pivoting ICP to restaurant private events
9. 25:15 — Unlearning perfectionism from business school

Key takeaways

• Cultivate potential acquirers years early.
• Ruthless focus beats shiny object syndrome.
• 75% of business goes to the first responder.
• Avoid the overcrowded SaaS sales market.
• Leverage CRO for low-cost incremental growth.

Transcript

I asked him for his I said, do not sand off the truth and put varnish on it. Like, what do you think? He goes, I absolutely love it. I said, well great.

So what what, you know, what do you recommend I do to avoid the kind of typical uh hurdles, rocks in the road, snags and potholes that SAS companies experience. And he goes, first off, don't target SAS. He says, Yeah. Oh, we couldn't agree with that more.

Dude. Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagine podcast where we have with us today, Jesse Stein, who has founded, operated and sold multiple technology ventures. He's currently the founder and CEO of Hermetic AI and before that, started sportsmemorabilia.com.

My kid would love that by the way, growing it from a mere domain into the world's largest autograph store and a top 500 internet retailer. That was sold to a small little company you might have heard of called Fanatics. And before that, he started and ran a D to C consumer D to C consumer. That made sense, Adam.

Online skincare brand generating a mere 48 million dollars in revenue in two years. Prior to that, Jesse worked and lived in Tokyo for six years. Definitely want to dig into that for a little bit. Uh, but Jesse, thanks for joining us, man.

Glad to have you here. My pleasure, guys. Thanks for joining. Um, so I'm going to take it in a bit of a different direction than we originally talked.

What brought you from like sports memorabilia, skincare into the SAS? Like, why why'd you come into the SAS space? It was less about the fact that SAS is fashionable and more that I saw an opportunity and thought that the best and highest way to explore that opportunity was through a subscription business that people call SAS now. Super interesting.

And I and so to get it back on topic on what we're going to talk about, which is digital marketing, hacks, that kind of stuff. Um, tell us a little bit about what you've learned in the in the sports in the memorabilia world that now you're bring into the SAS world because there's probably a lot of parallels as you're trying to build this this new this new motion. Yeah, probably the biggest couple big learnings there. First off, cultivate your potential acquire years in advance.

And so Michael Ruben who ended up acquiring us with Fanatics, we had cultivated that relationship directly and indirectly for like three years. And like I acquired the domain name sportsmemorabilia.com in 2006. And Way back.

I was going to say, that'd be way early because you're not getting that domain. There's been more than a few domains you've bought and sold. We'll talk about that later, too. Yeah, yeah.

It was not a it was not um, You were early on that game. I was early in the game, but I mean all the domains pretty much got snatched up in the late 80s and early 90s. So these domains were aftermarket. And I ended up spending about a million dollars on domain names in '06, '07.

This was like hobbies.com, boating.com, yachting.com.

I was like obsessed with kind of like the land holders of the internet. I was obsessed with these kind of like category defining one-word and two-word domains that have no synonym. And so it's kind of like beachfront real estate, and then the idea is to develop out that real estate. And nothing worked out.

I mean, biking.com, boating.com, yachting.com, those I mean, I learned some valuable lessons, which is like focus.

Like, it's really like I found myself, we opened up a biking store because we found out that, you know, like in order to get you know, the the various suppliers of bike derailers and frames and so forth, you had to have a physical store. So there's always when you zoom into each of these categories, you realize how complicated. So one one big lesson from sportsman, which was the original question, is focus. And like, you guys are really smart.

I'm a certainly less smart, but smart people tend to be curious. And what I've noticed is curious people tend to lurch toward the shiny and the new. And that is dangerous, and it's extremely distracting. And I I've noticed it is um, inversely correlated, at least in my experience and the experience of the people who I consider very successful over time as entrepreneurs, to lurch toward the shiny and the new and to constantly reach down and pick up exactly, all of us.

I I I talk all the time. I I I'm trying to be better, but I definitely am one who suffered from shiny object syndrome. 100%. Or what I call Bigger, better, better deal.

Oh no. Zachary with the shoes. Yeah. Yeah, that's a whole thing.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, that resonates a lot. Totally. Totally.

And it's fun because it's new, but it's extremely distracting. And you what I've noticed is like you'll you'll start off, uh, on the yellow brick road on your way to Oz, and then it's very easy to get distracted by, you know, by the tin man and the lion and the scarecrow and the monkeys in the trees, and then you end up in in Munchkin Land instead of Oz. And so with sportsman and these other domains, uh, you know, for example, boating.com ended up opening up a, you know, a branch in Norfolk, Virginia, which is where our biggest competitor was, and we scaled that.

I was just all things to all people and nothing to nobody. And so the moment we focused on sportsman, and I had these two incredible co-founders, Mike and and Stefan. And it's always, you know, it sounds really cheesy, but it's always a team. And so what we learned is just the power of focus.

And the moment we focused, it we were pretty unstoppable. And so the the so focus and then cult cultivating acquires, potential acquires, potential partners, investors, way in advance. And so they have the most important thing of all, which is trust. Trust and comfort.

And so like the year I acquired Sports Mom, I actually went up to Steiner Sports and met with Brandon Steiner. It was like the first meeting I took. I took meetings with all the big, you know, people in the space who'd been entrenched and way better funded. All my businesses except for one have been self-funded for better or for worse.

And so met these people, started doing business with them, became Steiner's biggest supplier, biggest customer, actually, and then mounted memories. And then these people ended up in Michael Rubin's ecosystem over time. And it was kind of like all roads led to to us. And they and they had great things to say about us.

And so it really greased the skids and by the time I met with Michael Ruben, he was like, this is a great idea. Let's do this. Every everyone loves it. So that was another lesson for sure.

Like like was to build trust way in advance. It's like definitely a digging your well before you're thirsty type of activity. And but doing that in advance, I cannot tell you the the benefits. And then the third one was like find an acquisition channel that where you experience unusually low CAC for an extended period of time.

You know, it's like a diabolical acquisition shortcut, except it's sustainable. And so in that case, it was SEO. And then, you know, and then I developed a number of, we collectively developed a number of hacks for media buying as well. And then the the uh the use of CRO, or conversion rate optimization, cannot tell you like as a digital marketer, how that is by far the lowest cost, easiest way to drive incremental visitors, conversions, cash flow, uh that that by the way, very few of your competitors will ever do.

Like everyone talks about Optimizely and and visual website optimizer and these other, you know, and Google Optimize and these other conversion rate optimization tools. Very few people use them consistently, aggressively. So like those are I don't know, four or five things that we learned from Sportsmen. So I I find you said a couple things that I find fascinating, as much as I'd love to dive into like domains and that game and you you said that it's a team effort.

And you talked about co-founders. And I know when we're talking to founders of SAS companies and even just ourselves to be honest, um, I I believe that co-founder or co-founders is absolutely critical. Um, I struggled with the idea of going out on my own. I struggled with the idea of then doing it with anyone.

Um, Dale convinced me like the power of two or three is more, but co-founders are like a marriage, right? Um, like it's not as simple as, hey, we have an argument. I'm going to go, you know, take my my toys, my customers, um, and go cry in my sandbox and, you know, screw you. Like, you got to figure it out.

Um, and that's hard and you have to be able to have difficult conversations, but you also have to have people that you deeply trust that deeply add value to the product or service or company that you're trying to build. And my belief that is a different skillset than you in a lot of areas. But for for the founders listening who either, you know, are founders right now, either technical or sales and don't have the other founder, um, or for, you know, folks listening who want to become founders. How do you find that great co-founder?

What do you look for? How do you know, hey, this is the person I want to get married to? Wow. Yeah, that's Yeah.

I don't have the I don't have all the I have been Yeah. I don't have all. That's a great uh and we can have a discussion together about this. So I've been working with co-founders for 25 years as a tech entrepreneur.

Different co-founders. And I definitely believe that like I agree with you, having people to work alongside is just adds rocket fuel to the business plan, but is also more fun more fun, especially. Certainly complimentary skills, obviously, like is super important. But then like for me, at least, just because you're going to spend so much time with the person, uh to really enjoy their company.

And uh and then a sense of humor together is critical. Like I'm not a big fan of uh people who are, especially if you're going to spend hours a day with people who are very literal-minded or just like can't take a joke, or can't laugh at themselves, or can't can't poke fun. Like you guys joke before this podcast of like, you know, uh making fun of each other. Uh, you know, good-natured uh zingers and gotchas and so forth.

And I think that's all super super important. And then like I think like for example, I have two co-founders, um, with my current venture, uh, Brandon and then, uh, Benssa. Benssa's in Hungary, and he's our technical co-founder. And they're just like a joy to work with.

And and we compliment. There's like stuff that they do that I can't possibly do, and hopefully vice versa. And we really enjoy working with one another. And then I guess the the other thing is just to be quick to forgive and apologize.

Um, you know, if I'm having an off day or I'm irritable. That one's hard. For me, that one and Dale will tell you, like, that one's hard for me. Yeah.

Yeah, I think we all I I think we all have off days and I think the challenge becomes, how do you not take some things personal? How do you not take things some things like And and I think it's it's even harder now because we have this this insatiable need to be connected at all times. So it could be a Slack message, it could be a text message, and we don't get on the phone and like really contextually like ground the conversation in what we need to accomplish. And I think a lot of times that leads into other pieces and then we get busy and you have clients and all sorts of other things.

I'm I'm curious, Jess Jesse, how like why did you pick what you picked to build? Like, you know, for your platform, it's a it's starting to get a super starting to be a super crowded space. Yeah. And and we'll get we'll we'll circle back into digital hacks and what your thoughts are around that, but why pick this space?

Yeah, so all the stuff that I've been lucky to do pretty much comes from uh a frustration that I had in like in my career or in my life where I saw that there was just an opportunity. And then many of them are hair-brained schemes and never actually work out in the real world. And then and then from time to time I get I get lucky. And uh and this one was so we developed an AI called it's just the name of the company is Hermetic AI.

We developed an AI called Mia, M I A. It's a little nod to Miami, which is where where I am. I love it. And and Mia, what I noticed is that uh it's really hard to engage with leads that come in through your website.

Like when someone submits a web form on your site, it's really hard 24/7 to get there first before competitors and engage in a personalized fashion. And then to like follow that lead through the kind of the buyer journey. And then to stay in touch with the lead, to nurture the lead when it disappears into thin air. Right?

And and Hubspot and other CRMs are woefully ill-equipped to do this, right? The best they can do is trigger, you know, a sequence or workflow of four, um, non-personalized emails. And I know that AI tools are coming on board, but they're it's going to be some some time and there's nothing out there. And so this this thing that we're doing now came entirely because my last in my last venture, we spent about $2 million on meta ads and we drove 27,000 uh book a demo leads through our web form.

And I noticed that like even if we got there an hour late, uh or you know, a couple hours late, that competitors were could could already be engaged in the process. And 75% of the business goes to the the vendor that responds first. Even if they're they have an inferior product offering. And then even worse was like Speed to lead.

Speed to lead and then no lead left behind is the bottom line. And like once the lead gets to be months old, and you know, if they didn't if they're closed one or closed lost, like to keep in touch with that lead in a personalized fashion is really, really difficult. And so we and so that's where that came from. And then I had this amazing conversation with Godard, who's actually a couple conversations with with Godard Abel, who's the, you know, founder and CEO of G2.

And I showed him like this is a couple weeks ago. I showed him Mia, and what we got. And I asked him for his advice. He's built a, I think they're up to $113 million in ARR, right?

And and it's a small small little amount of money. small little amount of money, right? And Godard's awesome. He's got a great personality.

He's a very kind person. And I asked him for his unva I said, do not sand off the truth and put varnish on it. Like, what do you think? He goes, I absolutely love it.

I said, well great. So what what, you know, what do you recommend I do to avoid the kind of typical uh hurdles, rocks in the road, snags, and potholes that SAS companies experience. And he goes, first off, don't target SAS. People buy from people.

That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win. The best part, gifting doesn't have to be expensive to drive results, just thoughtful. Sendoso's intelligent gifting platform is designed to boost personalize engagement throughout the entire sales process. Trust me, I led sales for a Sendoso competitor, and I could tell you, no one does gifting better than Sendoso.

If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit Sendoso.com. He says, Yeah. Oh, we couldn't agree with that more.

Dude. And do you know, I don't know if you guys know who Andy Paul is? Yeah. Yeah.

So I had a few uh Zooms with him and his son Alec, who's awesome. And and Andy's first Andy's wonderful. His his first experience share was do not target SAS. And he's like, you know, recounting how he was at some of the first Saster events and so forth.

And he just noticed how incestuous it was, and there was just all selling to each other. And he goes, the market's completely overrun. So Godard's advice, he said, pick a very specific ICP, use that as a beachhead, and then expand out expand out from there. But kind of like further to our our initial conversation, um, Dale and Adam about like shiny pennies and focus.

He like just like focus in and eat, sleep and breathe a a very hyper-specific ICP. So we, you know, we made about 8,000 calls to home services people, uh, through through SDR, testing that ICP. We did some stuff in SAS. Um, I see off of your left shoulder, Adam, the gap selling, uh, book.

Uh, yeah, so Keenan, I had a dinner with Keenan, a couple of great conversations with Keenan. He's a great guy. Um, and he he became a strategic advisor, and we were going to do a bunch of stuff together. And then I actually just wrote him this morning and let him know, you know, what we're not we're not moving into SAS.

It's so overrun. And it's it's packed. And and so we so I ended up talking to a number of, uh, restaurant chain owners, owners of a space that's near and dear to my heart. Oh, beautiful.

Okay. So, uh, I led sales for I led sales for Toast for three years in the South East. So, awesome. Restaurant owners, great space, underrated.

Awesome. And and so I'm in this organization called YPO and so I started reaching out to fellow YPOers who are owners of polished casual and above restaurants. Polished casual to like fine dining, multi-chain, multi-unit, uh, folks and and asking the same question. And so we've zeroed in on private events.

So what we noticed is that speed to lead and no lead left behind in private events for restaurants that have event venues for private dining is a huge opportunity and very neglected. So we're like all last 90 days, we're just all about you know, eating, sleeping, breathing, private events leads for restaurants and hotels and and unique venues. So I was like a meeting coming up with the CEO of, you know, LA Rams and Golden State Warriors and these guys because that's a huge part of the business is private events. Yeah.

Yep. 100%. This is this is like and Adam's wheelhouse. You're you're oh you're you're you're speaking you're you're you're speaking my language so much.

I don't think Dale's seen me get the this smiley on on a show, so. Oh man, I'd love to chat offline about it then. 100%. Um, this is this is my world not just because I lived in it from a sales perspective, but I am such a like we travel and eat and do events.

Like that is what we do for fun in life. Um, so I love it. But not to not to spend time there. Um, oftentimes when you're building, scaling, growing a company, there's a lot of folks out there who want to give you a shit ton of advice, right?

Do this. Jesse, you can't do that. You got to focus on this. What's uh talk to us about where you like bucked the trend?

Like what's some of the common advice that you've just ignored that has actually turned out to help you be really successful multiple times over, which you don't see a whole lot. Yeah, so I mean what's really important to note and I always let people know right away. I do not have the Midas touch by any stretch. And I and I and I don't get I don't get wiser with age apparently.

So I, you know, I just been at it a while. I got fortunate right out of uh, well, I went to Wharton. I did my MBA at Wharton. And this is when the dinosaurs walked the earth, you know, I started my MBA in '96.

And uh that like entrepreneurs, that was a dirty word at at Wharton. It was like all about training. Yeah. Don't work at some big F100 finance company, right?

You got it. And or or McKenzie, you know, or BCG. So it was like finance and consulting. And so the first month at Wharton in 1996, when I declared tech entrepreneurship as a major, the academic adviser looked at me and said, you should have gone to Stanford or Kellogg.

And I was like, great. Awesome. Uh, by the way, I had a great experience at at Wharton even though I I struggled academically and they didn't have a whole lot of classes for me, but uh, but it was still a great experience. And as it turns out, people as a result think I'm much smarter than I actually am because I went there.

And uh, but one thing I learned from there, you kind of asked about advice that people or institutions in this case had given me that I've ignored to my benefit, and Wharton was all about perfectionism because they were training people, Goldman investment bankers, McKenzie, think about it. Like it's all about dotting dotting every eye and crossing every T. Right? And entrepreneurs who do that and are perfectionists get their asses handed to them.

Right? I mean, it's all about you don't 80/20 everything. Obviously, there's some things that you you want to make sure you do extremely well, but a vast majority, you guys know well, like you have to 80/20. That equals speed, right?

And so I think I was fortunate maybe in that I was if in that way, I've always uh iterated I guess, pretty quickly. And uh and so when I graduated there, and then I and then I it was right place, right time. Like late 90s, graduated and that was the beginning of the commercial internet. And so I I think I got my reps in early and then I love it.

I love it. I'm very very fortunate and I've um there've been a number of things Oh, and I cut things off pretty early in general, although I've had some pretty uh interesting misadventures. Uh and I But that's key. That's key, though, right?

A lot of people don't do that. They get that thought that I've invested X dollars or X amount of time, so I got to keep going. And I know there's a term for it, and it's slipping my mind right now. But being able to say, hey, this didn't work.

Cut it now, cut our losses. Whatever we spent, it's it's a cost loss, and move on to something that's going to work, cuz all we're going to do is keep dumping a shit ton of money in something and time that is never going to work. Uh, we talk often about iterating rapidly, tripling down on what works, and abandoning really quick what doesn't. That is awesome.

And being okay with that. That is awesome advice that you guys give. Like, if you're listeners would just pay attention to that, you know, that's that's it. That's the game, you know.

I think I think that's the game, you know. I think it's tricky because I think there's a lot of bad advice out there as well. And and some of it is probably just old old-school go-to-market. Um, go-to-market's changing so quickly.

Like, it's every three months. You have new tech coming out. You have new, you know, new ways of getting a hold of people, or you have Google like shutting off like, you know, putting spam filters on everything, and so now you can't do all the outbound that you used to be able to do. So there's a lot of a lot of tricky parts.

And so I think depending on where you are, you get into like an investor world where they're like, oh, you have to have these many calls and these many emails and this much stuff to convert down the funnel. And that's just not the way go-to-market works anymore. Like, there's different ways to do it, kind of like as Hermetic, like, forget about the SAS space for a second, but speed to lead has always been a thing. Like, there's fundamentals that are always a thing.

But it's like, how do you execute on those fundamentals? And the things that are working, you do more of and the things that, you know, test and taste, test and taste, and then the things that don't taste very well, you don't keep them in the in the in the stack. But I think the other thing, one of the things I learned early on, um, when I went to go get my MBA was, when you you have your MBA? You have your MBA?

Yeah. Once in a while. Once in a while. Unbelievable.

Um, but what what one of the things that that we learned early was, like, once you once you fail at something, like, now you just have something else that you don't have to go about like, you just put that in the loss column and you you move on. Like, you have to be okay with failing. And if you don't fail often, like, you're not you're not going far enough. You're not testing the limits far enough, and you're just going to like, if you don't try to put yourself out of business every day, like, someone else is going to put you out of business.

That's a great insight. Yeah, you have to have a to your point, just picking up on what you're saying. You definitely have to have a stomach for risk and not take the failures personally. And it's hard.

And then and then be Yeah, be pretty I try to be pretty self-aware. Like I've got um multiple source like you can't see yourself swing. And so like you have to, I think, on a regular basis, consult with people who've been there, done that, who aren't yes people. And then I think uh Well, tell you the truth.

Like, they tell you the honest, transparent, goddamn truth. Cuz a lot of people just want to hear what's happening like, yes, you're right. Yes, the product. Like, we we just got off a um, we're on a customer advisory board.

We just got off a call before this, um, on and the the CEO of the company was like, I want to know the real reason why the product sucks, or it doesn't work. Like, I don't want to hear all the good stuff about the product. Makes sense. Makes sense.

Yeah, that's uh and I see that there are and I'm I'm definitely a work in progress, so I'm not saying I've achieved, you know, any like endpoint. But definitely something that's been valuable to me is consistently consulting people who, uh, you know, who've done like Godard. That was a great example. Like, got on got on with him twice.

Uh, he's been very generous with his time. And then a guy who's really has a lot of battle scars over 10 years, building G2, and has done phenomenal with it, but really helping helping me there. And then also just like work that uh, you know, I do certain meditations, let's just say, for 15 years now that uh that have been extremely helpful in terms of calling me on my own BS. And cuz you know, ego, as you guys, you know, ego and pride and shadow and all that stuff.

No. Not at all. Yeah. Dale's Dale's like, Adam, you have the biggest ego in the room.

Um, I was thinking, I'm going to change the that tell me more sign behind you to something else when I see you next week. I I don't think house. Um, I don't think it's ego. I I I my Achilles heel is I take shit personally, um, and talk about like for for forgive and assume positive intent and like a message will come across and I will immediately It happened this morning.

I immediately I'm like, and I don't say it, but like Dale knows me well enough now. Like, people genuinely can't believe it's only been 18 months. And he's like, you're taking this as me attacking you, and I'm not. I'm just asking a damn question.

And I'm like, dude, like, what do you want me to do differently? I did what I could. This isn't my fault. Like, leave me the fuck alone.

Um, and and it is partly ego, right? Because it's like I'm trying to do the best I can and I'm doing this that's hard for people. Um, so I think that's really good advice of you you have to put that aside. You have to be willing to admit that you're wrong and you have to be willing to let others challenge you, especially co-founder, right?

Like the reason you pick a co-founder is to challenge you, to think differently, to look at differently, and to for lack of a better terms, check yourself, um, which is probably the wrong verbage to use. Um, but it's important. Best yeah, best idea wins. And I love I love being wrong.

It's great. I love it when it happens all the time. you know, when one of my co-founders or someone else I'm working with just has a better idea. It's great.

Jesse, where where does the humbleness come from? Because like I look at I look at your bio, and I look at everything you've accomplished. I look you know, starting at Warden and the businesses you've sold and the revenue you've brought in. Like in full transparency, most of the founders that I've spoken with and worked with and Dale, you could probably agree with me.

Like, they don't have a level of humbleness, right? They don't want to be wrong. Uh, they don't say other people could do it better. It's it's the me me me me me show.

Is that something that started in childhood? Is that something that was learned and have you always been this way? Oh, thanks. I well, I've just been humbled over a long period of time.

I mean. A lot of failures, right? A lot of failures. Yeah, well, yeah, not just I mean, I'm just a normal dude.

And um, really. And right place, right time. I've worked very hard over time, but I also had people that really believed in me early on. You know, I my uh, my father was great, but he lived very far from from me.

uh thousand miles from my mom and me. And you know, my mom, I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and my father was in California. And he was a great great person, very loving and kind person, but he had a lot of uh personal problems. And and so I was very independent from uh very young age.

And my mom was my hero, uh, you know, raising me as a single working mom. And then my grand my grandparents lived in New York, really believed in in me. They believed in you know, two things like Judaism and their grandkids. And and they supported my education all the way from, you know, private education all the way from kindergarten through through Wharton, and I did another masters at Penn, and like I was very so I like in all humility, like I had a ton of help as I was very very fortunate to to have that help and I um I've also seen like, you know, I have a great family uh as well.

Uh, you know, and wife and kids and, you know, Uh although Adam you are making us married guys look bad with that photo behind you. I mean, that's just that's that's borderline shameless, but I love it. But it it, you know, it's it's tough for the rest of us, all right? There there there's a whole story there.

Um, not trying to make anyone look bad. We uh we were going to do a big wedding in Chicago where my wife is from and we actually I'll use Crystal's words, fell in love in Big Sur, California. So we rather than doing a big wedding in Chicago, um, flew out her family and ten of my closest friends, paid for everything. It was still cheaper than what a wedding would have cost.

Um, and had a small intimate ceremony literally on the cliffs. Uh, on the So, it was a a cool experience. Oh, that's beautiful. So, it was a beautiful experience.

And then the other the last thing I would say, I mean, first of all, like I feel so humbled and lucky to to have um incredible healthy children and uh wife and that so I and I've seen, you know, just like health health issues for example. Like and and I know that's just luck, you know, and and I really don't take a minute of it uh for granted. But also this this work, like I would encourage or I I'm not here to give advice because I have no advice to give. But like experience shares like last 15 years since I was, you know, 40, I've been working in these meditations, let's just say, and like I applied before and these are very deep type of meditations that really, I think are very humbling, honestly.

And can show you, you know, who you really are and and and in a way that I think talk therapy is great, but um talk therapy by comparison, I think it's a slow boat. And so that's been a great tool as and just to map it onto the entrepreneurial journey, it's really help me uh in in the entrepreneurial journey. Uh, I think it just removes a lot of um, self-saboteurs, let's just say, that entrepreneurs live with and they often can't uh, can't get out of their own way. And this sort of work, I think whatever that uh modality would be for your your listeners or or or you, I think it's really, really important uh to do.

Imposter syndrome's real. Let's uh, let's get some rapid fire running up. All right. What is uh trying to think which one I want to use.

What's your favorite guilty pleasure snack? Oh, Jolly Ranchers. Nice. Which one?

Oh, the green the green one, the apple one. Yeah. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning? Um, LinkedIn.

Hmm. Where do you start? First, marketing or sales? Marketing.

What's your go-to productivity hack? Hmm. Keyboard shortcuts on the iPhone. By far.

I'm I'm I'm with you on that. Uh, early bird or night owl? Early bird. Last one as we wrap this up.

Dream vacation destination? Safari, Southeastern Africa. Oh, you and me both, my friend. You and me both.

Jesse, thank you, uh, so much for joining, for sharing all of that great information. Where can people connect with you and where can people learn more about Hermetic? On LinkedIn. Yeah, just go to my Imagine that.

Yeah, imagine that. We will we will drop that in the uh, in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining. We appreciate it, man.

Thank you, both. Thank you.