We Live to Build

What if the biggest mistake you're making with AI isn't using it too much, but using it without intention? In this episode, Sean sits down with Todd Anthony, an agency founder and AI-forward creative strategist, to explore why most founders treat AI like a vending machine instead of a medium they can actually shape. Todd breaks down how staying attuned to market patterns, rather than reacting to every wave of disruption, is what separates agencies that survive from those that collapse under volatility. You'll also hear his honest take on why the content landscape is flooded with hollow, AI-generated noise, and why audiences are desperately hungry for human authenticity underneath all of it. If you've been wondering whether to lean into AI or pull back, this conversation will change how you think about that question entirely.──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - AI Slop Is Killing Audience Trust00:28 - The Three Men on a Ship Story02:05 - Running a $3M Agency in a Storm04:54 - Should You Actually Start an Agency?08:10 - The Trust Engine Concept Explained10:28 - AI as a Block of Clay20:48 - Building in Public Before You Have Proof26:10 - Guru Culture's Dirty Secret30:08 - It's Okay Not to Have All the Answers

What if the most valuable business intelligence in your company is sitting on the shop floor, earning $25 an hour? In this episode, Sean sits down with Dustin Snyder, a human systems consultant who helps founders and CEOs understand what's actually happening on the ground inside their organizations. Dustin explains how leaders often design broken systems without realizing it, and why the frontline workers they rarely talk to hold insights that no spreadsheet can capture. You'll also hear why delivering that truth to founders requires as much emotional intelligence as it does hard data, especially when the leader's own decisions are part of the problem. If you've ever assumed you had a clear picture of your business just because the numbers looked right, this conversation will challenge that assumption entirely.──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - The $25/Hour Guy Knows Your Business00:33 - Delivering Hard Truths to Founders02:09 - When the Founder Is the Problem05:48 - Founder Proximity and the Scaling Trap07:53 - Layers of Time Horizons, Not Tasks13:59 - Workforce Insight Mapping Explained17:42 - How AI Cut Analysis from Weeks to Hours23:12 - Can AI Replace Human Trust in Interviews27:21 - What Doing This Taught Him About Leadership

What if the key to rethinking aging came from watching one man work joyfully into his nineties? In this episode, Sean sits down with Igor Gurovich, founder building AI-powered support for senior citizens, who shares how his grandfather's vitality well into old age reshaped his entire perspective on what it means to grow older. Igor explains why the global healthcare system is approaching a breaking point as the retired population grows faster than the workforce funding it, and why he believes the window to fix this is closing faster than most people realise. You'll also hear how his company sidestepped the challenge of getting elderly users to adopt new technology by replacing apps entirely with simple phone calls, and how that decision unexpectedly revealed just how deep the loneliness crisis among seniors truly runs. Check out the company: https://getcallie.care // https://www.linkedin.com/in/iogurovich──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - Why Senior Care Is a Ticking Time Bomb01:51 - AI Filling the Caregiver Shortage Gap02:46 - Seniors Actually Love Talking to AI03:08 - The Phone Call Hack That Changed Everything04:31 - SaaSpocalypse and the Death of UI11:42 - One Founder Disrupting Legacy Businesses Alone13:22 - The Commercialization Wall No One Warns You About15:18 - Building a Digital Memory of Your Loved Ones20:31 - Elders Have Wisdom Nobody's Unlocking23:39 - Do Only Things You Love

What if 80% of the work in your industry could be done before a human ever gets involved? In this episode, Sean sits down with Ray Meiring, a founder rethinking the proposal process from the ground up, challenging decades-old workflows in an industry that has barely changed in fifty years. Ray shares how his team is using AI to reimagine RFP responses in a fully agentic world, why bouncing ideas off Claude at 3AM is now part of his product development process, and how he balances the speed of AI-driven iteration with the reality of customers who are still mailing binders. You'll come away with a sharper understanding of what it actually looks like to disrupt your own business model before someone else does it for you.──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - Disrupting Your Own Business Before Others Do00:57 - What Keeps Founders Up at 3AM02:01 - Bouncing Ideas Off Claude Before Your Team04:01 - Why Enterprise Customers Still Mail Binders05:17 - Release to Sales First, Not Existing Customers07:19 - Agents Talking to Agents: 18 Months Away10:36 - Why Smaller Companies Should Sell Into Enterprise Now17:24 - Building Agents on Microsoft Frameworks Explained22:37 - Weeks of RFP Work Compressed Into Hours30:25 - Stay the Course or Innovate Your Way Out

What if the secret to happiness wasn't a grand epiphany, but a bad movie playing at 2AM? In this episode, Sean sits down with Ben Narasin, a veteran venture capitalist who has backed companies like LendingClub, Rippling, and Omada Health, to explore what decades of investing at the highest level teaches you about life, patience, and staying true to your standards. Ben reveals why lowering the bar in venture is the beginning of the end, and how he learned to sit with the discomfort of seeing 2,500 pitches in a year and funding just one, without letting that silence become a compromise. You'll also hear his counterintuitive advice to founders: stop optimizing your valuation pitch and start treating your investor relationships like a marriage, because you'll be living with that choice for ten years or more.──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - Happiness Is Wanting What You Have00:35 - Why Ben Only Funded 1 of 2,500 Pitches01:11 - LendingClub, Rippling, and the Fired Founder Pattern03:11 - Game Theory Will Ruin Your Investor Relationship06:44 - The ChatGPT Trick for Vetting Your VC08:14 - No Skeletons: The Open LP Meeting Experiment18:03 - Specifics Are Your Friend, Generalities Your Enemy25:04 - Work Hard When There's a Reason To31:28 - Sleep, REM, and the Brain-Cleaning Function33:46 - Life Is Hard for Everybody. Get Over It.

What if the real reason most businesses fail isn't strategy or market fit, but the behavior and value system of the owner themselves? In this episode, Sean sits down with Jay Aldebert, a business consultant who has studied patterns across 88,000 businesses and identified 11 biomarkers that predict whether a company will thrive or struggle. Jay explains why he starts every client conversation with a single pointed question about profit, and how the answer reveals far more than most owners expect. He shares why education has to come before measurement, drawing a parallel to how doctors measure without explaining, and why changing an owner's value system is often the hardest and most important part of the work. If you have ever wondered why smart, driven business owners keep hitting the same walls, Jay's framework will give you a completely new lens for looking at your own business.──────────────────────────────────────────────────────📚 NETWORK BEFORE YOU NEED IT (6 LESSONS THAT MADE SEAN $15M)──────────────────────────────────────────────────────Get my brand new eBook free - https://welivetobuild.com/network──────────────────────📋 WORK WITH ME──────────────────────▶ Buy 300 Lessons From 300 Founders: https://welivetobuild.com/300-lessons-ebook▶ Sponsor the Channel: https://www.welivetobuild.com/sponsorship──────────────────────🔗 CONNECT WITH SEAN──────────────────────▶ LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seanweisbrot▶ Inquiries: welivetobuild@gmail.com──────────🕐 CHAPTERS──────────00:00 - Business Owners Are Addicts to Their Own Behavior00:25 - Changing a Client's Value System From Scratch01:06 - The "Shock and Awe" Hook That Wins Clients04:03 - The Five Dimensions of Profit Explained05:37 - The Two-Day Diagnostic Nobody Else Offers07:45 - Why the Engagement Is a Loss Leader10:50 - Sand Castle Consulting vs. Project-Based Work14:01 - The 2-to-1 Return Assurance Unpacked22:53 - RTO Software and the 11 Business Biomarkers25:28 - One Profit Decision Affects 40 People