Sandcastle Worms of Success w/ Jeff Karp | Ep. 178

What does it take to stop living on autopilot—and start building a life that actually lights you up?

Dr. Jeff Karp—Harvard Medical School professor, world-renowned biotech inventor, and author of LIT: Life Ignition Tools—joins David and Gary on the Biz/Dev podcast to talk about what it really means to live with purpose. They unpack how Jeff’s experiences with ADHD and innovation shaped his approach to leadership, creativity, and mentoring the next generation of changemakers.

This one’s about science, self-awareness, and becoming the architect of your own life.

LINKS:

Jeff on LinkedIn

Jeff's Website

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

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The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: I can't let you go without asking about your Johnny Cash and your guitar. What's going on there? Is that is that a dream? Is, do you play guitar? What's going on there?

[00:00:11] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, and I am joined Per usual by Gary Voight. Hello, all in black again. You're so boring.

[00:00:23] Gary: Yeah I have a very boring wardrobe, but I did find one brand of T-shirt that fits, looks good, feels good, and believe it or not, repels a lot of the pet hair. So I've just been buying the

same 

[00:00:36] David: is that a thing you can buy pet hair? 

[00:00:39] Gary: Hair repellent 

[00:00:40] David: already. I. No one cares let, that's the key. No one cares 

[00:00:45] Gary: Yeah. No

one has pets. You're right.

[00:00:47] David: More, more importantly, we are joined by Jake Fecal Stein, who is the founder and CEO of 10 cubed. Hello. Good sir. Please save us from our inanity.

[00:00:57] Jake: Hey David, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate the.

[00:01:01] David: Yeah, so I'll get right into it. So I know of you as the method savvy guy and you're not that anymore, so I, I. I knew, so your companies were about a little older than mine, so we started in 2013. You guys were a couple, few years, and I knew several of your people early on and they were some of the really great people who had to helped me get going.

And again, marketing versus development, but it was just a company that I had always known. So I was shocked when I heard that, oh my gosh, they're no longer here.

And so I, I.

[00:01:33] Gary: Raleigh area in the

[00:01:35] David: This is, yeah, they're, they were a well-known marketing digital agency. Correct me where I'm wrong, but in, in the area. And they had been around forever in my world, literally forever.

'cause I started and they were already big and they were, they were everywhere and all of that. So they wound down. Is there any what was that story? Is there anything you can say about what happened there as a, for other people to learn?

[00:01:57] Jake: Yeah, so it was certainly a journey. We were in business for 14 and a half years,

In 2009. And we had a great growth trajectory there for a while. The short version of a long story is we got into a cash crunch. Towards

[00:02:10] David: Yeah.

[00:02:10] Jake: and, despite some best efforts to recapitalize the balance sheet and sell the business, it just wasn't able to pull it off in time. But very proud of the team that we had and, the good work that they did. And it was a good run for us.

[00:02:22] David: So in a services business. This is something I, I worry about for myself. What is it that, I'm almost all payroll, right? Which I assume a marketing company is almost all payroll. So how does cash, you gotta make the money to pay the money. Was it just a, people didn't pay on time or did you buy something like, I've always heard like a lot of service company buy a lot of stuff and that kind of how things go sideways.

[00:02:46] Jake: Yeah, so the little bit deeper, the story is back in 2022, we saw a big slowdown in business in Q1. Typically Q4 and Q1 are our busiest times of year, and we saw a big slowdown in Q4 moving into q1, which created a cash crunch, and I ended up raising a debt round. At that

[00:03:04] David: I gotcha.

[00:03:05] Jake: and doing some restructuring of the business, which allowed us to continue.

We didn't have a great year, but it was an okay year.

But then it happened again in 2023 and

[00:03:14] David: Gotcha.

[00:03:14] Jake: that. So we had a pretty steep decline in sales. And given the way that our cash cycle was running, it just created again, a big cash bottleneck. So of.

[00:03:25] David: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I don't mean to, to PPO on that. I think it's a learning opportunity is all I'm saying.

And so now you are running 10 cubes. So let's talk about the happy side of this. You've got a new company

when you had a company for 14 years and you get an opportunity to start a new one.

How did you approach it differently?

[00:03:46] Jake: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I got really interested in the emergence of new automation and AI technologies and the, how they were disruptive to the agency model. Because when you're focused on, as a consultancy and an integrated consultancy, you're using what are called.

T-shaped people. So these are individuals that have depth of expertise, but range of experience, and they can offer integrated guidance and solutions, which typically works really well when you're dealing with larger organizations because quite frankly, they can afford the price point and, protecting the margins that come along with that. Where I really saw an opportunity with 10 was in servicing more high growth organizations that required more leverage and lean teams while still offering integrated. Activities. The automation AI technologies and the tool toolkits that we developed allow us to service those companies in an efficient and effective way, in a way that I can never really do at. We're having a lot of fun and quite frankly, it also allows us to build and tools that, over time gonna be able to commercialize and, have stream the business, not just our kind technology enabled services business that we have right now.

[00:04:57] David: So you guys are, you have devs and such involved with you so that you're building your own products.

[00:05:02] Jake: Yeah. Yeah. So we're eating our own dog food right now.

[00:05:05] David: Nice. And so I assume that AI is a part of this 'cause How do, how is it not, how are you guys utilizing ai? How does that affect you guys as a new company?

[00:05:16] Jake: Yeah, so again, another interesting question. So we're much more interested in how AI integrates with the automation tools that we're developing. So it allows us to deal with unstructured data in some interesting and innovative ways, and we can leverage the models in order to do some strategic and analysis work that just allows us to be that much more efficient and effective in terms of how we're operating. We see ourselves as a automation and AI first agency. We don't wanna overleverage AI either because what our clients really care about is outcomes, 

[00:05:49] David: sure.

I find, I don't know who coined it 'cause I'm horrible at that. Gary makes fun of me all the time 'cause I can't attri attribute anybody. But there is a lot of people out there who think that AI is the end solution, which is silly to me because it's just a tool. It's a very cool tool. Don't get me wrong, it's very interesting.

It can do some really wild stuff, but in the end it's like in my world, I. No one said to me, Hey at least early on, especially, the first few, I need to process payments using Stripe. That wasn't a thing. Now, maybe some people nowadays do it, but when Stripe came about, and this is very small, but it changed the world in a very real way, right?

You could suddenly take payments without being insanely complicated and. It was a tool, but no one was saying I need this or it's gonna change my life. It was just a tool that we knew how to use. And now you're seeing companies, even though probably millions of companies had not built, been built on stripe and the like, it did change the world, but now it seems like everybody's eyes are way more open as to this tool.

This tool. When isn't just a B2B thing, it became B2C. How do you think that happened? Like why is AI so different?

[00:07:05] Jake: Yeah, so the hype cycle is huge and we have to be a little bit careful about that in terms of how we're, analyzing the market. But, I think it's just a really novel technology. It reminds me a little bit of the internet, back in the mid late nineties. Where everybody understood the potential, but didn't really have a lot of great use cases for it yet.

Just a wow factor, particularly in utilizing kind of the chat bot interface that a lot of people just gravitated towards. But, the ways in which people are using it, I think are still emerging. And same thing with companies. It's really easy to slap AI on a business and, get caught up in the hype cycle.

But the way that it actually works as a feature is, 

[00:07:42] David: it reminds me of the old days I Did you ever use stumble upon?

Long time ago. And that was back when the web was weird. And you could click, so for younger people out there, it was a button. You put it on your browser and it just went to a random website. That was cool in some way. And 'cause the web was this weird, strange place that you could find fun things.

And I missed that. Someone reminded me of that not that long ago. I was like, man, those were good times. I think you're right in that AI is like that. The new a meta mobile app, which they, I have, 'cause I have the classes. I think I'm the only person 'cause why does anybody have that app?

But anyway it has a whole thread of literally people's AI prompts, which is super creepy by the way. But it shows what other people are using meta AI to do to inspire you to use it and yeah, it's weird. Like some,

[00:08:31] Gary: using it though 

[00:08:32] David: no, it's anonymous.

[00:08:33] Gary: Look at how we're being used. Okay,

[00:08:35] David: It is just, it's just a th a literally a feed of AI prompts that people have used and a lot of weird pictures and a lot of weird questions.

And people are weird, man. But it is that stumble upon vibe where it's I didn't know you could do that with AI kind of stuff. And then of course, the funny pictures. But

it is the wild West. So how does. So I'm not giving away any secret sauce, but if I hire 10 Cubed versus some other marketing company, 'cause we've interviewed several, right?

At this point. A lot of marketing companies out there. What is it that you are giving me that another one might what? How are you guys engineered different?

[00:09:12] Jake: Yeah. So there, there's a couple different ways to answer that. I think the most fundamental way, as I said, because we can operate more efficiently in terms of how we're structured and the technology baseline that we have, we can pass that along, is cost savings to our customers. So the way that our pricing is structured is a little bit different which allows us to offer integrated services without necessarily. The enterprise level, the cost structure that's associated with it. The second thing is that allows us to have a speed to market, which I talked about it a little bit earlier.

Different. Things that would just take us, days or hours to do it and method savvy as an example, we can now do in minutes. And it allows us to just test and optimize that much faster. Also have some novel use cases for our technology. Whether it's doing brand strategy or creative strategy work all the way ve.

[00:09:59] David: Meta. I keep bringing meta up, but they recently, was it meta? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's recently it. Started talking about where Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast was talking about his infinite creative concept where you literally, his ideas in a few years. You say, okay, I'm gonna make this up. I'm a car local car dealership and I want you to sell more cars.

I do Toyotas and my primary market is 20 to 40-year-old men. Let's just say you tell. Facebook or Meta or however they wanna market this. You tell 'em these basic things and they make all your copy, all your images and all the variations for all the target markets, and you never, you don't have to do anything.

That's the dream. As a marketer, how you feeling about that?

[00:10:47] Jake: I find that terrifying. It's the, beautiful goal that both Google and Meta have in that, you just tell 'em a goal and let their systems run both sides of the auction. The testing that we've done, I. Still shows that the systems are not ideal in terms of outcomes that, you can have, better results by having experts, run the campaigns. But I understand why Meta wants to do it, 

[00:11:10] David: you sure.

[00:11:10] Jake: lot of sense for them. I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense for the businesses though.

[00:11:15] David: Do you think it'll ever get there? Is it, is, do you see, 'cause like in development land, I'm, we're hearing literally every 10 minutes that developers are useless and that we're all gonna be replaced by bots and to be fair, there is some truth to that there. If you're not a very good coder, you don't probably have the job you did five years ago.

That's probably true. But are you feeling 'cause I know you're not an ad agency but digital marketing, digitizing ads that's always a part of marketing companies. How does that scare you at all? Or you think they're never really gonna hit that?

[00:11:47] Jake: So I look at it as a robotic curve. So I think that the more that you automate and as the tools get better, you will be able to automate more and more. It actually allows humans to do what we do best, which is be optimally creative and strategic. I see it a little bit like What you're talking about on the developer side, like if you're mediocre, then yes, you're gonna have some challenges.

But if you know how to utilize these tools, it is actually like a self-actualization opportunity. I'm a I have a very positive outlook on how a lot of this technology is gonna impact the marketing and advertising space. But I think it's just gonna take smart people in order to use the tools in order to be successful.

[00:12:23] David: I find, 'cause our clients always ask about this stuff and we're playing around with all the tools and gizmos. I still feel and I'm not sure I see an end to this, where a human still has to be involved at the end of the day where, you know if AI might be able to build you something, but it's probably gonna be crappy and you need the human to kick it up to.

Quality state. 'cause it's gonna give you it, and it can save you a ton of time in that initial draft. But the final result still requires a human even. Even if at the end of the day, you wanna automate this. But I don't see that, and I don't see anywhere that improving.

They're getting faster, they're getting cheaper. That's nice. But they still lie or. They just like in development, we'll see them go in circles and they're just lost in their own muck and we, a human is still required, or the output doesn't make sense 10% of the time and you can't have gibberish 10% of the time.

That doesn't work. So we always tell everybody, you gotta put a human in front of there. There's a cue here. It might be able to make 10 things for you, and maybe two of those are great, but someone's gotta choose those two. And that's still a human.

[00:13:34] Jake: Yeah. No, you're a hundred percent correct. The human in the middle piece is important and is, right now, I find that it's pretty good. getting it roughly 50 to 70% of the way there, depending on what the use case is that you're actually trying to do. But you do need humans to polish it up and take it to the next level. Now, I do believe that as the technology continues to improve, that relationship and balance is likely to change. I think there, particularly with the more ag you're gonna see these tools, be able to get further. Down that stack. But I, again, I'm an optimist in terms of, human's ability to work with these tools and really be symbiotic in terms of that relationship.

[00:14:13] David: So did you have something, Gary? Go ahead.

[00:14:15] Gary: Yeah, I was gonna ask 'cause this again on the AI topic and recently Figma just came out with a product called Figma Buzz,

Like a competitor to Canva or Adobe Spark. But what made me think about it is they also have an integration there for AI to help with images and create multiple templates of, like an infinite amount of digital ads. So I was curious with your company, do you guys also produce graphic content, digital imagery or video

[00:14:43] Jake: we do.

[00:14:44] Gary: as well as just providing the strategy? And do

[00:14:47] Jake: Yeah.

[00:14:47] Gary: AI for any of that content?

[00:14:49] Jake: We do. And yes. I find that from a iteration standpoint, tools like AD creative AI are similar are very beneficial in being able to spin out, various iterations. I do think the initial concepts have to come from designers and humans. I'm not, I. Some tools there, while they're good, they're not great at concepting, I think once you have the initial concept, the variations very put, where you can have infinite number of iterations that you do of tests.

[00:15:22] Gary: Do you also rely on AI to kinda give you the results of those tests and then come up with more and then strategize which ones on top? Like I know Webflow has a feature now built into. Their tool that kind of does that. It'll automatically generate an AB test for specific audiences in the, over the course of a couple of days, measure the success rate and then another one, or give you an updated metric for which one's working better.

I.

[00:15:48] Jake: We utilize those tools platform specific and we have some you testing tools that we've developed as well. So yeah, always important to explore how those tools can generate positive.

[00:15:59] Gary: Yeah, that's interesting. I love looking into how those tools work. Just around the hype of AI itself, along with this side of the image and asset creation. There's always they show off the best case scenario, but when you start using these tools, a lot of times is not really worth your time if you know what you're doing. Except for in the part of maybe gimme 15 examples and then I'll pick one out of those 15. That might be good,

[00:16:28] Jake: I think that's part of the exciting thing right now is there's just so many tools that you can experiment with and you can find ones that work for your individual use case or in some cases you just need to build it yourself in order for it to work for your use case. So you know, it's an exciting time, it really is a little bit of the wild West still.

[00:16:51] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:17:19] David: I'm in need of marketing, right? But I'm a newer company.

I've got something that's worth marketing. Let's say that's the stage I'm at and I'm coming to you. First off, are, am I your client or do you prefer Biggins? Biggers? Where am I at?

[00:17:33] Jake: Yeah. So we focus on growth stage organizations. So these are companies that already have product market fit that are looking to build the repeatable processes for revenue growth.

[00:17:41] David: Okay.

[00:17:42] Jake: have some clients that are on the higher end of the middle market but we tend to be more growth stage oriented.

[00:17:47] David: Okay, so I've got a product. I've got some customers. I've got some investment probably, and now it's time for my hockey stick. Okay. So I'm coming to you and I'm looking for my hockey stick. I. How does your approach change then today versus how you did it? Let's say three years ago, even, let's just say as, as soon as three years ago?

[00:18:09] Jake: Yeah, so we, without getting into too deep into the weeds, we have a methodology that we utilize that allows us to understand the landscape that a

On. And so we look at not only the historical marketing, but their what their competitors are doing, how their brands position, what technologies they have in place. So we have some tools that we built that allow us. That process and allows us to identify trends, gaps, and anomalies. So we can build strategies that we believe will work from a, not only a communication standpoint, but a channel strategy. We can then push that into market and, test and learn and build, good hypotheses that so we can continually have.

Have improvement. Our approach, has to be very much focused on, who the audience is, is there actual product market fit and.

[00:18:55] David: So is the end result. Different meaning, you guys have these cool tools and stuff that you're doing that allows you to target and do all this stuff, right? But at the end result, it's the same as it has been for 10 years, right? We've got ads, we've got some branding story goodies. We haven't changed any of the end results yet, right?

[00:19:17] Jake: Yeah, no, outputs ultimately are about kind of brand awareness and demand generation. It's, the way that we're different is really about how we're doing that and our ability to, as I said earlier, pass along our savings and kind of speed the market to, to our customers.

But the outputs, as you said are very much the same.

[00:19:35] David: Which is interesting 'cause everyone talks about how the world is changing, but really how we're doing it is changing a little bit, but the end result is the largest even for us. Our code is the same code. How it gets built is changing. It was the same code, it's the same. Gary's doing the same thing he's been doing, which is wasting my time.

But outside of that, man, that was a good one. He didn't even gimme a smirk anyway. You don't.

[00:19:57] Gary: you.

[00:19:58] David: So they don't, they haven't changed. Do you think with all these lawsuits and these and the justice Department taking on the big boys, right? Where every single one of the big ones are apple's in there, meta's in there, Google's in there.

They're all getting threatened to be torn apart, which could change. I don't think people realize. How much the world is about to change in terms of, not ai put that to the side for a second, but Google search might be given to any company that wants it. That's one of the things that's on the table that anyone who wants access to Google Results can do it and then they could build their own thing.

Or Google doesn't own Chrome anymore, maybe not even Android anymore. I think these are huge tectonic shifts. Apple already cannot charge their 30%. On the in app purchases anymore if you don't want them to. Huge seismic that's already live right now, which my clients love. But I can see though that, 'cause right now you live on, in the world of Google, right?

That's everything. If you're doing brand awareness, it's SEO compliant. If you're doing ads, somehow it's related to Google. But that fundamentally might change in a couple of years. 'cause it might be, OpenAI wants to buy Chrome. That changes a lot, doesn't it?

The search engines might be, there might be a thousand different ad platforms that you would now have to be experienced in.

Is that exciting or is that scary?

[00:21:21] Jake: Yeah the only constant is change, right? And this is not new as it comes to marketing advertising. If you look over the last, 15, 20 years, there's the speed of advancement just continues to increase. So personally I find it very exciting 'cause there's always something new and interesting to learn.

And, I try to in view that sense of the world to my team as well. I think that, the marketers that are willing to learn very quickly and most importantly, experiment. To see what works and what doesn't are gonna be the ones that are in the best position to adapt to the types of changes that you're talking about.

[00:21:54] David: Fair enough. I find, I don't know, that stuff fascinates me. I love, not that I'm a lawyer or anything, but I just love the fact that we are in the middle of something really grand that's happening under our feet and we have ai, like it's, and it's like almost an improv skit. Yes. And. So what would you tell if I were a new-ish and let's say you're new-ish in your market, so I've got a product, all that good stuff.

What would you tell them to do differently that you would not have told them? Take your tools out, take your that stuff. But advice, if you're giving, and I'm I'm shooting myself in the foot for our later question, but if you're coming to you. How does this landscape change? How do you tell them to prepare?

Prepare for it, or do you just say, just keep on going. Just do your thing.

[00:22:40] Jake: Yeah. I think that it's important not to throw the baby out with the bath water on some of this. Yes, there's changes that are occurring, but I do believe that some of the fundamentals of marketing continue to be valuable. With that being said. I always emphasize test and learn methodology.

The best thing to do is make sure that you're talking to your customers at a high velocity so you can get feedback about, how they're feeling and what their customer experience looks like. And then that allows you to move that into, your communications programs. So your creative, into all the marketing you, we. Make sure that you understand how it's impacting your customers, also continue to invest in the fundamentals that, that work.

[00:23:22] Gary: I have a question. Besides just brand building and creating your own brand story, seems like advertising is gonna target three things, whether it's eyeballs, engagement, or an audience. And it seems like there's a shift today now that eyeballs is not even a thing because. You could put an ad out to a trillion people in two seconds.

It doesn't make a difference. Audience just tends to be, maybe if you're product based, you just have a lot of people buying the product that would be the engagement, but the audience thing seems to be for brand awareness and brand loyalty, pulling in more people. Out of those three things, the eyeballs, engagement, or audience, which one do you think is the preferred method to A larger group of people that's gonna be more, happy with your brand, more engaging with your brand, purchasing your products, using your services.

[00:24:14] Jake: Yeah know, that's a great question. I think we have an intention economy to your point, it's very easy to get in front of audience right now. It's very hard to capture attention of that audience. And there's a variety of different ways to do that. From, creative to story you're telling to, the value of the product that you have.

I could go on for a while, but ultimately it is about. Whether you can capture attention more so than you know, the reach you're trying to get.

[00:24:41] Gary: Other than just capturing attention I guess what I'm trying to get at is retaining that tension past purchase or past use of surface, almost like creating a brand loyalty that seems to me, almost like the golden goose, the end result, what you want to actually acquire

[00:24:57] Jake: Oh sure.

[00:24:58] Gary: marketing to eventually just build up an audience that is loyal to your brand so that even when you have to pivot, they come along with you. Some might love it, some might not, but it almost seems like over the course of time, if you build up a big enough audience, then they'll actually start doing a lot of the marketing for you.

Just with the spider web of communication that they have.

[00:25:20] Jake: Oh sure. Having an engaged audience is gold. I'm with you there From a brand value standpoint.

[00:25:27] Gary: So does that make it more important to market your brand and tell the brand story nowadays than it has before? You believe so?

[00:25:35] Jake: So I think brand has always been important. The importance of brand continues to increase. Particularly, you mentioned David, SEOA little bit earlier. There's some really good data that suggests that the stronger your brand, the better your performance is on. And that's also carrying over into new types of don't means. And in fact.

[00:25:56] David: So I call this my greenfield question. Put on your founder hat now, five years from now, assuming no major hurdles, no life changing things where you have to go in a totally different direction. Where do you see 10 cubed?

[00:26:15] Jake: Yeah, no, that's a great question. We're gonna have a software product that we're gonna be able to sell. So again, right now we're a technology services business. We. A toolkit of, boutique technologies that we're testing, on, on our clients and on their behalf. But ultimately, we're looking to build out, systems that, we can bring you package up and bring to market. We I don't wanna talk too you much about, where those are right now. 'cause we're still in their early stages of some of them.

[00:26:40] David: Sure.

[00:26:40] Jake: really exciting ideas. And I think five years from now, we're gonna have, product that we can actually sell and, spin out into new businesses.

[00:26:48] David: So you see yourself, will you still be doing marketing at that point, or do you think you'll be a software as a service company Ideally.

[00:26:54] Jake: Yeah, so I, I think we'll always have a managed services arm

Some value that, that only humans can create there. But, I do see us over time becoming more and more software based. 

[00:27:04] David: Nice. I ask that question pretty regularly. Not every week, but pretty regularly and I find it surprising. How rarely do people ask themselves that question? I'm like, you're the founder. You're like, big job is vision and you, that usually means you're in such in the day to day that you're not able to look.

On that horizon. And I think it's important, I think it's important for every founder to be able to say man, if everything works right, which is always a big gift, but if everything works right, I know where I'm gonna go. I know what this looks like, as opposed to I am just head down, grind, go, and I don't have a clue where I'm gonna end up.

I find that to be, that's like your COO's job, not your founder's job anyway.

[00:27:49] Jake: percent. A hundred percent.

[00:27:50] Gary: Okay. This brings me to the surprise question that's not really gonna be a surprise. Through your experience, especially now with two companies, what would you give entrepreneurs or startups as your three biggest pieces of advice for them to be successful?

[00:28:10] Jake: Let think about that. Three biggest pieces of advice. So I think first and foremost, you have to spend time really on visioneering to make sure that you understand what your destination is. David, to your, comment a minute ago it's very easy to get caught up in the flywheel and just doing whatever you need to do in order to, pay the bills.

I think it's a lot harder to put a trajectory what I And drive the company there because that is the job of a founder and CEO. Is to make sure that, we're going to that future state that, we can all see so clearly. So getting like really crisp on that I think is important. Second is building the systems of operation that are required in order to get there.

So I'm a big fan of entrepreneurs operating system. EOS I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with it, but. Allows you to have data and high feedback cycles and transparency, to the team. 'cause again, it'll help you get to where you wanna go. The last thing I'll say is take care of your mental health. I think that's an oftentimes. Undervalued aspect of being a founder is that, if you burn out, your team's gonna burn out too. And being able to create space to create routines that allow you to, unplug or, meditate, whatever it is that works best for you, just makes you a better or more effective leader.

[00:29:28] David: Very good. Okay. I can't let you go without asking about your Johnny Cash and your guitar. What's going on there? Is that is that a dream? Is, do you play guitar? What's going on there?

[00:29:39] Jake: Yeah, so I, I'm a musician as well. I play primarily guitar, bass but I have a little bit of drums too. But I actually come outta the music business originally. So back in the nineties when people went to record stores and still bought records, I worked for large, independent major labels. And one of my first businesses was actually a music marketing company that evolved into an experiential and creative agency.

So still a diehard music fan, have some memorabilia on the wall and, 

[00:30:03] David: that's very cool. All right, Gary, wrap us up.

[00:30:07] Gary: favorite Inky is a album.

[00:30:10] Jake: Ooh. I don't know. That's

[00:30:12] Gary: No.

[00:30:13] Jake: Morning view is a good one. I don't know that's a tough one to pick.

[00:30:17] Gary: Yeah, 

[00:30:18] David: I don't even know what you guys are saying. What are we talking about here?

[00:30:21] Gary: you're not cool.

[00:30:22] David: Fair. That's fair.

[00:30:24] Gary: if anyone wants to learn more about 10 cubes, what's the best way to reach out?

[00:30:27] Jake: so you can go to 10 cube.co is our website and happy to, you can, my email address is on there. Happy to chat and you answer any questions that anybody may have.

[00:30:37] David: Very good.

[00:30:38] Gary: notes as well.

[00:30:39] David: Thank you so much, man, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:30:43] Jake: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:30:45] David: And on that note, we are out. We will be back next week. Thank you, everybody. Talk soon.