Episode #78 He Sold Companies for Millions — Hacks For Crushing Digital Marketing & Scaling Fast! ft. Jesse Stein

In this episode, we’re joined by Jesse Stein, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Hermetic AI. Jesse shares his journey of founding, operating, and selling multiple ventures, including sportsmemorabilia.com, which he scaled to the world’s largest autograph store before its acquisition by Fanatics.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
 • Jesse’s journey from sports memorabilia to SaaS and beyond.
 • The power of focus and cultivating relationships with potential acquirers.
 • Insights into digital marketing hacks like SEO, CRO, and sustainable acquisition channels.
 • The importance of co-founders, trust, and managing team dynamics.
 • Why speed to lead and personalized engagement are game-changers for growth.

Key Takeaways:
 1. Why focusing on a specific ICP is essential for scaling.
 2. How to use conversion rate optimization (CRO) effectively.
 3. Lessons learned from the entrepreneur game: focus over distractions.
 4. Building trust and relationships years before you need them.

Jesse also shares personal anecdotes about humility, navigating failures, and how meditation has been a transformative tool in his entrepreneurial journey.

Follow Jesse - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessejstein/

PS - huge shout out to Sendoso for sponsoring our show.

We could not do this without you.

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🎁 Lastly, we have a gift for you!

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Transcript

00:00 
I asked him for his unvar, I said, do not send 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, you know, what do you recommend I do to avoid the kind of typical hurdles, rocks in the road, snags and potholes that SaaS company has experienced? 

00:20 
And he goes, first off, don't target SaaS. He says, yeah. Oh, we couldn't agree with that more. Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast, where we have with us today, Jesse Stein, who is founded, operated and sold multiple technology ventures. 

00:45 
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. 

01:03 
And before that, he started and ran a D2C consumer, D2C consumer, that made sense, Adam, online skincare brand, generating a mere $48 million in revenue in two years. Prior to that, Jesse worked and lived in Tokyo for six years. 

01:20 
Definitely want to dig into that for a little bit. But Jesse, thanks for joining us, man. Glad to have you here. My pleasure, guys. Thanks for joining. So I'm going to take it in a bit of a different direction than we originally talked. 

01:33 
What brought you from like sportsmemorabilia, skincare in the SaaS? Like, why did you come into the SaaS space? It was less about the fact that SaaS 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 SaaS now. 

02:01 
Super interesting, 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, tell us a little bit about what you've learned in the sports, in the memorabilia world that now you're bringing into the SaaS world, because there's probably a lot of parallels as you're trying to build this new motion. 

02:23 
Yeah, probably the biggest, couple big learnings there. First off, cultivate your potential acquirers years in advance. And so Michael Rubin, who ended up acquiring us with fanatics, we had cultivated that relationship directly and indirectly for like three years. 

02:51 
And I acquired the domain name sportsmemorabilia.com in 2006. Yeah, way back. I was going to say that had to be way early because you're not getting that domain. There's been more than a few domains you've bought and sold. 

03:06 
We'll talk about that later too. Yeah, yeah. It was not a rot. It was not. You were early on that game. I was really in the game, but I mean, all the domains pretty much got snatched up in the late eighties and early nineties. 

03:18 
So these domains were aftermarket and I ended up spending about a million dollars on domain names in 06, 07. This is like hobbies.com, boating.com, yachting.com. I was like obsessed with kind of like the land holders of the internet. 

03:34 
And 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. 

03:49 
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 the various suppliers of bike derailleurs and frames and so forth, you had to have a physical store. 

04:17 
So this all is when you zoom into each of these categories, you realize how complicated. So one, one big lesson from sportsmen, which was the original question is focus. And like you guys are really smart. 

04:31 
I'm 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 it's extremely distracting. And I've noticed it is 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. 

04:58 
Yeah, exactly. Oh, I talk all the time. I I'm trying to be better, but I definitely am one who suffered from shiny object syndrome Or what I call in your son with the shoes bigger better deal. Oh, no, Zachary with the shoes. 

05:13 
Yeah. Yeah, that's all 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 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 and the trees and then you end up in Munchkin land instead of Oz and so with sports men and these other domains You know, 

05:47 
for example boating calm 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. 

05:59 
And so the moment we focused on sports now, and I had these two incredible co-founders, Mike and Stefan, and it's always sounds really cheesy, but it's always a team. And so what we learned is just the power of focus. 

06:13 
And the moment we focused, we were pretty unstoppable. And so the focus and then cultivating acquirers, potential acquirers, potential partners, investors way in advance. And so they have the most important thing of all, which is trust, trust and comfort. 

06:34 
And so, like the year I acquired Sportsmem, 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 had been entrenched and way better funded all my businesses, except for one, have been self funded, for better, for worse. 

06:54 
And so met these people started doing business with them became Steiner's biggest supply, biggest customer actually, and then mounted memories. And then these people ended up in Michael Rubens ecosystem over time. 

07:07 
And it was kind of like all roads led 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. 

07:20 
Let's do this. Every everyone loves it. So 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 benefits. 

07:39 
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. 

08:00 
And so in that case, it was SEO. And then I developed a number, we collectively developed a number of hacks for media buying as well. And then the use of CRO or conversion rate optimization, cannot tell you like as digital marketer, how that is by far the lowest cost, easiest way to drive incremental visitors, conversions, cashflow. 

08:33 
By the way, very few of your competitors will ever do. Like everyone talks about Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer and these other, and Google Optimize and these other conversion rate optimization tools. 

08:43 
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 find, You said a couple of things that I find fascinating. 

08:57 
As much as I'd love to dive into domains and that game, you said that it's a team effort. And you talked about co-founders. And I know when we're talking to founders of SaaS companies, and even just ourselves, to be honest, I believe that co-founder or co-founders is absolutely critical. 

09:19 
I struggled with the idea of going out on my own. I struggled with the idea of then doing it with anyone. Dale convinced me the power of two or three is more. But co-founder is like a marriage, right? 

09:33 
It's not as simple as, hey, we have an argument. I'm going to go take my toys, my customers, and go cry in my sandbox. And screw you. You've got to figure it out. And that's hard. And you have to be able to have difficult conversations. 

09:45 
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, in my belief, that is a different skill set than you in a lot of areas. 

10:01 
But for the founders listening who either are co-founders right now, either technical or sales and don't have the other founder, or for folks listening who want to become founders, how do you find that great co-founder? 

10:16 
What do you look for? How do you know, hey, this is the person I want to get married to? Wow. Yeah, that's. I don't have the, I don't have all the answers. That could take the rest of the show. Yeah, I don't know about that. 

10:29 
That's a great, 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 that work alongside is just adds rocket fuel to the business plan, but it's also more fun, more fun, especially. 

10:50 
Certainly complimentary skills, obviously, like is super. important but then like for me at least just because you're gonna spend so much time with the person to really enjoy their company and and then sense of humor together is critical like I'm not a big fan of people who are especially if you're gonna 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 making fun of each other you know good-natured 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 with my current venture Brandon and then Vince Vince's and hungry 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, 

11:54 
and hopefully vice versa. And we really enjoy working with one another. And then I guess the other thing is just to be quick to forgive and apologize. You know, if I'm having an off day or I'm irritable. 

12:11 
That one's hard. For me, that will tell you like that one's hard for me. Yeah. Yeah, I think we all I think we all have off days. I think the challenge becomes how do you not take some things personal? 

12:23 
How do you not take things some things like, and I think 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 could be a text message and we don't get on the phone and like really contextually like ground the conversation and 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. 

12:50 
I'm, I'm curious, 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 the digital hacks and what your thoughts are around that. 

13:09 
Why pick this space? Yeah, so all this stuff that I've been lucky to do pretty much comes from a frustration that I had in, like in my career or my wife, where I saw that there was just an opportunity. 

13:28 
And then many of them are hairbrained schemes and never actually work out in the real world. And then, and then from time to time, I get I get lucky. And, and this one was, so we developed an AI calls it just the name of the company's hermetic AI, we developed an AI called Mia mia. 

13:46 
It's a little nod to Miami, which is where, where I am. And Mia, what I noticed is that 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 seven to get there first before competitors and engage in a personalized fashion. 

14:16 
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 HubSpot and other CRMs are woefully ill-equipped to do this, right? 

14:33 
The best they can do is trigger, you know, a sequence or workflow of four non-personalized emails. And I know that AI tools are coming on board, but it's gonna be some time and there's nothing out there. 

14:51 
And so 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 book a demo leads through our web form. And I noticed that like, even if we got there an hour late, or, you know, a couple hours late, that competitors were could, could already be engaged in the process. 

15:19 
And 75% of the business goes to the, the vendor that responds first, even if they have an inferior product offering. And then even worse, speed to lead, speed to lead, and then no lead left behind is the bottom line. 

15:35 
And like, once the lead gets to be months old, and you know, if they didn't, if they're a closed one or close lost, like to keep in touch with that lead in a personalized fashion is really, really difficult. 

15:47 
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 of conversations with Godard Abel, who's, you know, founder and CEO of g2. And I showed him like this, this is a couple weeks ago, I showed him Mia, what we got, and I asked him for his advice. 

16:08 
So he's built a, I think they're up to $113 million in ARR. Right. And it's a small, small, small little amount of money. Right. And Godard's awesome. He's got a great personality, he's a very kind person. 

16:22 
And I asked him for his unvar I said, do not send off the truth and put varnish on it. Like, what do you think he was? 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 hurdles, rocks in the road, snags, and potholes that SaaS company has experienced? 

16:44 
And he goes, first off, don't target SaaS. 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. 

16:57 
Sandoso's intelligent gifting platform is designed to boost personalized engagement throughout the entire sales process. Trust me, I led sales for a Sandoso competitor, and I could tell you, no one does gifting better than Sandoso. 

17:11 
If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit Sandoso.com. Dude, and do you know, I don't know if you guys know who Andy Paul is? Yeah. Yeah, so I had a few Zooms with him and his son Alec, who's awesome. 

17:33 
And Andy's first, Andy's wonderful. His first experience share was, do not target SaaS. And he's like, you know, recounting how he was at some of the first SaaSter events and so forth. And he just noticed how incestuous it was. 

17:49 
And they were 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 from there. 

18:04 
But kind of like further to our initial conversation, Dale and Adam about like shiny pennies and focus. He like just like focus in and eat, sleep and breathe a very hyper specific ICP. So we, you know, we made about 8,000 calls to home services people through SDR, testing that ICP. 

18:26 
We did some stuff in SAS. I see off of your left shoulder, Adam, the gap selling book. Yeah, so Keenan, I had a dinner with Keenan, couple of great conversations with Keenan. He's a great guy and he became a strategic advisor and we were gonna do a bunch of stuff together. 

18:44 
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 packed. And so we, so I ended up talking to a number of restaurant chain owners, owners of- A space that's near and dear to my heart. 

19:05 
Oh, beautiful. Okay. I led sales for toast for three years in the Southeast. Oh, awesome. Restaurant owners, great space, underrated. Awesome, 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 folks and asking the same question. 

19:32 
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. It's a huge opportunity and very neglected. 

19:47 
So we're like all last 90 days. We're just- all about eating, sleeping, breathing, private events leads for restaurants and hotels and unique venues. So I have like a meeting coming up with the CEO of LA Rams and Golden State Warriors and these guys, because that's a huge part of the business is private events. 

20:08 
Yeah. 100%. This is like in Adam's wheelhouse. You're speaking my language so much. I don't think Dale's seen me get the smiley on it. Oh man, I'd love to chat offline about it, Dan. 100%. 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. 

20:34 
Like that is what we do for fun, like life. So I love it, but not to spend time there. Oftentimes when you're building, scaling, growing a company, There's a lot of folks out there who wanna give you a shit ton of advice, right? 

20:52 
Do this, Jesse, you can't do that. You gotta focus on this. What's a, 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. 

21:11 
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 don't get wiser with age, apparently. So I've just been at it a while. 

21:28 
I got fortunate right out of, well, I went to Wharton. I did my MBA at Wharton. And this is when the dinosaurs walked the earth. I started my MBA in 96. And that like entrepreneurs, that was a dirty word at Wharton. 

21:44 
It was like all about training people to go into finance. They'll work at some big F100 finance company, right? You got it, or McKinsey, 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 advisor looked at me and said, you should have gone to Stanford or Kellogg. 

22:12 
And I was like, great, awesome. By the way, I had a great experience at Wharton, even though I struggled academically, and they didn't have a whole lot of classes for me, but it was still a great experience. 

22:27 
And as it turns out, people, as a result, think I'm much smarter than I actually am, because I went there. And, 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. 

22:45 
And Wharton was all about profound. perfectionism, because they were training people, Goldman investment bankers, McKinsey, think about it, like, it's all about dotting every I and crossing every T, right? 

22:59 
And entrepreneurs who do that, and are perfectionists get their asses handed to them, right? I mean, it's all about, you don't 8020 everything, obviously, there's some things that you you want to make sure you do extremely well with a vast majority, as you guys know, well, like you have to 8020 that equals speed, right? 

23:18 
And so I think I was fortunate, maybe in that I was in that way, I've always iterated, I guess, pretty quickly. And, and so when I graduated there, and then I it was right place, right time, like late 90s, graduated. 

23:33 
And that was the beginning of the commercial internet. And so I think I got my reps in early. And then I love it. I love it. I'm very, very fortunate. And I've been a number of I want to cut things off pretty early, in general, although we've had some pretty interesting misadventures and I have a lot of 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 a cost loss and move on to something that's going to work because all we're going to do is keep dumping a shit ton of something and time that is never going to work we talk often about iterating rapidly tripling down on what works and abandoning really quick what doesn't and being okay with that is awesome advice that you guys get like if your listeners would just pay attention to that you know that's that's it that's the game 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 go to market changing so quickly like it's every three months you have new tech coming out you have new you know new ways of getting 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 see would 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 it's like there's different ways to do it kind of like as hermetic like I forget about the SaaS space for a second but speed the 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 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 when I went to go get my MBA was you have your MBA? 

25:50 
Yeah, once in a while. But one of the things that we learned early was like 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 a loss column and you move on like you have to be okay with failing. 

26:08 
And if you don't fail often like you're not going far enough. You're not if you don't try to put yourself out of business every day, like someone else is gonna put you out of business. That's a great insight. 

26:23 
Yeah, you have to have a tier 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 then be Yeah, be pretty. I try to be pretty self aware. 

26:38 
Like I've got multiple sources 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- We'll tell you the truth. 

26:57 
They tell you the honest, transparent, goddamn truth. Because a lot of people just want to hear what's happened. Yes, you're right. Yes, the product. We're on a customer advisory board and we just got off a call before this. 

27:12 
And the CEO of the company was like, I want to know the real reason why the product sucks or it doesn't work. I don't want to hear all the good stuff about the product. Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. 

27:26 
And I see that there are, and I'm definitely a work in progress. So I'm not saying I've achieved any in point, but definitely something that's been valuable to me is consistently consulting people who've done, like Godard, that was a great example, like got on with him twice. 

27:49 
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 me there. And then also just like work that, now I do certain meditations, let's just say for 15 years now that have been extremely helpful in terms of calling me on my own BS. 

28:17 
And cause this, you know, ego as you guys, you know, ego and pride and shadow and no, not at all. Yeah. Dale's like, Adam, you have the biggest ego in the room. I was thinking I'm going to change that, that tell me more sign behind you to something else when I see you next week. 

28:34 
I don't think anyone at the house. I don't think it's ego. I, my Achilles heel is I take shit personally and talk about like forgive and assume positive. of intent and like a message will come across and I will immediately, it happened this morning, I immediately am 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. 

28:59 
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. 

29:12 
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 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? 

29:32 
Like, the reason you pick a co founder is to challenge you to think differently, to look at differently into for lack of better terms, check yourself, which is probably the wrong for a bitch to use. But it's important. 

29:46 
Yeah, best idea wins. And 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. That's great. 

30:00 
Jesse, 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, 

30:21 
right? They don't want to be wrong. They don't say other people could do it better. 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? 

30:32 
Oh, thanks. I well, I've just been humbled over a long period of time. I mean, a lot of failures, right? Yeah, well, yeah, not just, I mean, I'm just a normal dude. And really, and right place, right time, I've worked very hard over time. 

30:49 
But I also had people that really believed in me early on, you know, my father was great, but he lived very far from me 1000 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. 

31:11 
And he was a great, great person, very loving and kind person, but he had a lot of personal problems. And, and so I was very independent from a very young age. And my mom was my hero, you know, raising me as a single working mom. 

31:32 
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 private education all the way from kindergarten through through Wharton and I did another Masters of Pen and like I was very so I like in all humility. 

31:56 
I had a ton of help as I was very, very fortunate to have that help. And I, I've also seen like, you know, I have a great family as well, you know, and wife and kids and, you know, although Adam, you are making us married guys look bad with that photo behind you. 

32:17 
And that's just, that's, that's borderline shameless. But I love it. But you know, it's tough for the rest of us. All right, there, there, there's a whole story there. I'm not trying to make anyone look bad. 

32:28 
We, we were gonna do a big wedding in Chicago where my wife is from. And we actually, I'll use crystals words fell in love in Big Sur, California. So we rather than doing a big wedding in Chicago, flew out her family and 10 of my closest friends. 

32:44 
paid for everything. It was still cheaper than what a wedding would have cost and had a small intimate ceremony literally on the cliffs. 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 have incredible, healthy children and wife and that. 

33:06 
So I've, and I've seen, you know, just like health, health issues, for example, like, and I know that that's just luck, you know, and, and I really don't take a minute of it 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 40, I've been working in these meditations, 

33:31 
let's just say, and like I implied 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 talk therapy, by comparison, I think is a slow boat. 

33:53 
And so that's been a great tool as, and just to map it onto the entrepreneurial journey, it's really helped me in the entrepreneurial journey. I think it just removes a lot of self saboteurs, let's just say, that entrepreneurs live with, and they often can't, can't get out of their own way. 

34:14 
And this sort of work, I think whatever that modality would be for your listeners or you, I think is really, really important to do. Imposter syndrome is real. Let's, let's get some rapid fire running up. 

34:32 
All right. What is, trying to think which one I want to use, which favorite guilty pleasure snack? Jolly Ranchers. Nice. Which one? Oh, the green one, the apple one, yeah. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning? 

34:54 
LinkedIn. Where do you start first, marketing or sales? What's your go-to productivity hack? Keyboard shortcuts on the iPhone. By far. I'm with you on that. Early bird or night owl? Early bird. Last one as we wrap this up. 

35:21 
Dream vacation destination. Safari, southeastern Africa. You and me both, my friend. You and me both. Jesse, thank you 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? 

35:38 
On LinkedIn. Imagine that. We will drop that in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining. We appreciate it, man. Thank you, Bill. Thank you.