Your Comfort Zone Is a Coffin

Sean Weisbrot: I felt safe. I knew that I was in good hands and everything was fine until we actually like left the plane and I started to feel gravity and then I was like, holy. I was not prepared for how strong gravity is. It's one thing to understand the physics of gravity. It's another to feel gravity. And like gravity is very, very, very strong. So I came out of it knowing I can handle a lot more than I thought I could because I didn't dive.

Jason Todd: Yeah, well that's that. Whether that, that's to my point of, you know, fear guards the gateway to your growth. You have learned something through that experience. It's an experience you don't necessarily wanna repeat. And maybe it did not, you know, categorically take away certain fears, but you, but it did expand your capacity, it your, under your understanding of your capacity of what you can, can and can't handle and what you do or don't need to actually be afraid of. And, and that's why I do, I encourage people, you know, back to this idea of psychology, you know, and being afraid of being afraid of. Things in business. If you're not doing something that scares you, you're not doing something, you're not trying hard enough. I can assure you that.

Sean Weisbrot: So this is an interview with Jason Todd about his psychology and his business past and present. So thank you for taking the time to talk with me again, Jason. I appreciate it. The last one we did was fantastic. And so before we go any further, why don't you tell everyone real fast what was, uh, the businesses you did in the past and, uh, if you don't mind also saying like what you were earning at the time or what the businesses were generating at the time.

Jason Todd: Um, can't necessarily tell you what the businesses were generating at the time, uh, but I can give you broad, broad figures. Uh, I started an e-commerce company back in 2002. We were the first to sell residential and light commercial heating and air conditioning equipment online, direct to consumer, which broke open an industry and capitalized on the wave of e-commerce. Prior to many people, even knowing that e-commerce was a thing, um, that, that sort of launched me, uh, on this wave of generating more businesses. I sold that organization in 2011, subsequently, started an electrical contracting company, a gym, uh, also owned an HVAC distributorship in Kentucky. Uh, I then started an organization to help other entrepreneurs start, run, and grow their businesses, and that launched me into advisory in, in into advisory work, which I do now. Um, the businesses that I, that I ran, um, I think the electrical contracting company did a million bucks its first year, um, maybe a little bit over, uh, the e-commerce company. By the time I had sold it, we had done probably a hundred million. Uh, through that organization. Um, there were ups and downs in that, um, like any organization, but the, generally it was an, an uptick each year. Um, yeah, that's gives you some scope.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. And of all of those businesses, which was the one that was most exciting for you?

Jason Todd: The e-commerce business was the most exciting at the, um, probably because there was a new industry being opened up. In addition, the scale of that organization was national and international. So we, we were working with very large distributors at the time. Uh, I think one of the largest, or the largest HVAC distributorship in the world. We were working directly with manufacturers. We were, um, working with 30,000 contractors across the us. I built the computer systems to manage that and, um, and generated a lot of strategy to. Create a, a type of business that, you know, didn't exist at that scale before. Um, because we were opening a new, we were opening up new channels, new distribution channels in a very closed industry. So that was, that's pretty exciting. It is different than that. Sort of, that sort of work is different than, um, you know, creating a better mousetrap, you know, when there are already mousetraps that exist.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. Of course, I've heard the term blue ocean strategy.

Jason Todd: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I dunno if that

Jason Todd: brings a mouth. Yeah, that's a, there's a, yeah, that's, um, however you want, however you wanna term it. Everybody's got new terms for things that have existed for thousands of years. The idea is. Ask yourself. And that's actually the title of a, of a book I just wrote. Um, ask yourself what could be, and for whatever reason, my, you know, from a psychology standpoint, my particular skillset seems to be, and I don't know if this is, if this is part nature, part nurture, I'm sure, um, is always pushing the envelope of what could be. I just realized that the, the rules were all made up when I was starting and programming. And this gets back to, you know, what your question of, you know, why was this so exciting? Because I'm a, because I have been an, I guess still am a programmer. I know what software can do. If you don't know what software can do, you just exist within the confines of that software. And that's, that's what a typical user would do. They just, they're like, well, that's what the software does. I guess I have to press the control C button. Um, I. They never asked the question like, why is it control C and could we make it into something else? The answer is yes. And so when a person would ask a programmer, Hey, can we do such and such a thing? The answer is yes. How much time and money do you want to take to do that? The always the answer is yes, we can of course do that. So, because my brain is like, well, we can do that. I don't tend to be caught in obstacles. I tend to see obstacle obstacles and opportunity. Um, and so yeah, I mean, blue Ocean Strategy, the idea of the, uh, the old Pinky in the brain, uh, television show from years ago when I was growing up, you know, every, every, uh, at the close of every show, pinky asks brain, Hey, you know, brain, what are we gonna do tomorrow? And brain says, same thing we do every day, try to take over the world. And that's, that's the idea of, you know, big, big strategy. You know, whether you call it blue ocean strategy, whether they call it something else, you know, what could be, answer the question. And it's pretty big. The, the answer to the question of what could be is pretty, uh, pretty, pretty broad.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm. I remember Pinky in the brain and I always thought that the cartoon was very clever.

Jason Todd: Super clever.

Sean Weisbrot: So was there at any point a time that you were afraid while running this business, something you were, something that made you fear maybe losing the business or it being too big too fast or any, anything like that?

Jason Todd: All the time. A background, the background noise in my life. You know, when you, before we got on this podcast, y you know, you, you asked, Hey, do, do you hear any static on my, on, on my microphone? The, the, the, the, the background, the static that is. Pre that has been consistent throughout my life, is the background noise of fear. It's just, it's just the, like sitting in the background. Yep. There's fear there. There's fear there. There's fear there. So much to the point that I happen to know that fear is the gateway to your growth. It guards it like that. Your growth is right on the other side of that fear. And, and that's because if you're an entrepreneur, or I'll make this personal for me, if I'm opening up a new market that has not existed before, I'm getting pushback from people who have been in that industry before. Uh, so, you know, dealers would call us up and say, you can't do you, you can't sell directly to consumers. And I think, really? Can't I? Well, no, of course I can. Just because you haven't done it before doesn't mean I can't do it. Or a distributor would call up and say, yeah, we can't sell to you because you're, you know, they're, you're at the time. It's like, well you're those terrible internet retail people that are cutting out the local dealers. I. Okay, should I listen to you? Just because you're running a $250 million company and I'm not No. You just haven't done it before and you're scared that if you broke off into e-commerce, that your dealers would stop working with you. So don't, don't put that figure into me. But, but we take, I, I would tend to take that and it's like, oh, is is something happening here? Or, you know, there was a, a great story of when we misread seasonality. We didn't know the seasonality of E of of HVAC across the us and so we thought, you know, we're getting this uptick of orders, so let's hire a bunch of staff. All of a sudden, you know, six months later or something like that, the floor dropped out from underneath of us and we're like, oh my God. Is it con, you know, what are our, are there competitors out there? Is somebody else doing this now? No. You just misread seasonality. Nobody buys furnaces at that time of year, or, uh, you know, we get questions for, you know, people, people would buy something that they did, they, they that they didn't understand. It's like, okay, well how do we support these people? Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Because, because if you wanna do something right, or you wanna do something that's new, you're doing something that kind of, uh, it should be challenging to you. And if the challenge doesn't invite fear, is it really that big of a challenge? So for me at least, I, I've call it anxiety, call it fear, call it, um, call it what you will. But it's, uh, fear is a, fear is sort of a, a background resonance in my life.

Sean Weisbrot: I definitely feel fear and anxiety around my startup because. I, I wonder what hap what will happen to my life when it blows up? You know, will I lose my privacy? Will my family lose their privacy? You know how I, I don't know how to deal with that stuff. I like being private. I like being anonymous. I like being able to travel around the world and nobody knows who I am. It's great.

Jason Todd: Yeah. There's, there's fear of failure. There's fear of success. People, uh, the, the fear is just the, something that you haven't done before. Like, I, I, years ago, had this fear of heights and I thought, well, this is dumb. I'm tired of being afraid of heights. I have no, there's no, you know, you know, why should I be afraid of heights? This, I felt like this is controlling, not controlling me. I mean, I don't wanna make a huge deal, but it was like, I'm tired of being afraid of heights because if I charted my three to five year plan, I was like, I wanna be more adventurous. I'd like to climb a mountain. Um. So I have this fear of heights. I gotta get rid of that if I'm gonna be more adventurous and climb a mountain. And my reasoning was, if there are two people standing at the edge of a cliff, one person's afraid and the other person isn't. What is the difference between those people? Their experience of the situation is different, but they are in fact, in the same situation. They are equally as safe, but one person's afraid, the other person isn't. And I thought, well, the person who's afraid must not know something that the person who is not afraid must know. And if I, as the person who's afraid in that moment, uh, can discover, can learn what the person who's not afraid has learned, then I wouldn't have to be afraid. And so I learned to rock climb, and I, and I learned to keep myself safe when I was rock climbing. And now I have been able to separate the idea of safety and, uh, fear. So if I'm safe, I don't have to be afraid. If I'm unsafe, maybe I should be afraid. But if I'm safe, I, it allows me to, it allows me to, um, understand that my experience of fear is, is really just an indicator of something that I have not yet done. And, and even change the dialogue in myself and, and I encourage other people to change the dialogue too. It's like, stop saying you can't do something. Just say you have not yet done it or you don't know how. They com it changes the conversation internally and once you change the conversation internally, you can express it externally differently. Have you ever gone skydiving? I've not gone skydiving. I almost, I, I, I was at the skydiving place watching other people thinking maybe I should do this. I actually, it's, it's on my list of things to do in very short order, uh, because I want to experience that, and I think I would get such charge out of it that I might want to, uh, be able to skydive by myself instead of, you know, tandem.

Sean Weisbrot: So, like you, I've been afraid of heights and I thought that skydiving would make that better. And I can tell you it didn't make it any better. It just made me know I never want to jump out of a plane again. However, I was feeling a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety from my startup and I thought. If I survive the plane jump, then my bar for anxiety can go up much higher because I don't know what else you could really do to get closer to death than jump out of a plane and go like hundreds of miles an hour plummeting towards the earth hoping that your parachute opens. Um, and so I, I wasn't afraid on the plane. I wasn't afraid going up 'cause I knew that these guys do it like 10 times a day and no, none of them have ever died. I felt safe. I knew that I was in good hands and everything was fine until we actually like left the plane and I started to feel gravity and then I was like, holy. I was not prepared for how strong gravity is. Like it's one thing to understand the physics of gravity, it's another to feel gravity. And like gravity is very, very, very strong. So I came out of it knowing I can handle a lot more than I thought I could because I didn't die from that.

Jason Todd: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well that's, that, whether that, that's to my point of, you know, fear guards the gateway to your growth. You have learned something through that experience. It's an experience you don't necessarily wanna repeat. And maybe it did not, um, uh, you know, categorically take away certain fears, but you, but it did expand your capacity, it your, under your understanding of your capacity of what you can, can and can't handle, and what you do or don't need to actually be afraid of. And, and that's why I do, I encourage people, you know, back to this idea of psychology, you know, and being afraid of being afraid of things in business. If you're not doing something that scares you, you're not doing something, you're not trying hard enough. I can assure you that.

Sean Weisbrot: So then, what's the hardest thing you tried in business?

Jason Todd: The hardest thing I tried, dear Lord. I don't even know how to, I don't know how to, uh, I don't know how to. Off the top of my head, come up with something that I would determine is the hardest thing. Because everything, the hardest thing is the thing that, um, that I'm going to do that I've not yet done at that given moment. Really. I mean, there's, because when I make it through, it's like, well, that wasn't that big of a deal.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. So then what's the most important thing or the hardest thing that you know you wanna do and yet you haven't done yet? Besides skydiving?

Jason Todd: I don't know. I, I would, I'm gonna philosophize this a little bit on you and not turn it into a particular thing to do, but a, but a quest to be on the hardest quest to be on. Having, having started run, grown, several companies, exited, some, advised a thousand more entrepreneurs by now. Um. And I've been around, been around the block a bit, you know, not my first rodeo. Um, the hardest thing to do is to get outta your own damn way and just be confident in being humble. There is, that is the absolute hardest thing to do for me. It might be different for somebody else, but the hardest thing to do is address your own self and how you are not how you're getting in your own way. And again, how we get in our own way might be different for everybody, but for me, it's, uh, for me it was asking for help and not having to figure out like I had to do it all the time and, and really engage experts and be okay with that. Um, that was a big, that was a big deal to me. Um, and, uh, waiting, like not chasing after every, every new thing, that was a big deal for me. Um, because I'm capable of so much, I've done so much. Just 'cause you can, doesn't mean you should. Um, you know, bite the bullet and just stop, shut things down. I mean, that was, it was a big deal to sell a company. You know, how do you stop the business ball from rolling once you get it started? It's very difficult. Um, or shutting things down that really should never have started. And then, you know, don't, don't, uh, go down with the ship that's asinine. You know, get while that ship's sinking. At least build a life raft and jump off. I mean, that was, that was difficult at the time. Uh, managing relationships, interpersonal relationships, family relationships, friends through business, being able to tell people, no, that was a big deal at the time, but these are lessons that now I look back on. I say, well, well, that was, I made that molehill into a damn mountain. Uh, why? And as, as I look back, I'm like, well, you know, I. You know, uh, I'm 44 and living life, and I, and I just look back at some of these things. It's like, well, that it's been incorporated into my existence now that it doesn't seem like a big deal. Was it hard at the time? Yeah. Was it terror? You know, did it terrify me? Keep me up at night? For sure. A hundred percent. Would it now? No. So, yeah, the, the idea of being hard is different,

Sean Weisbrot: right. I hope I look back on these years and, and, uh, feel the same way. I, I know I look back at my first business, which I, I ended in 2015 and in the moment I loved it, but I couldn't sleep 'cause I was so stressed, going, broke, trying, trying to figure out how to monetize.

Jason Todd: Yeah. And, uh, it gets back to the, the, the place that you, I see it best is if a, if an entrepreneur, you, somebody else thinks of mentorship. It's like, I don't need that. You've identified your problem. There you go. There's a problem. It's you. Because if you, if you can stand, and this is for me too, if I think that I don't need assistance from somebody, that I can just figure this out on my own or I can, you know, I can sort of, uh, I don't, I don't have to expose stuff to somebody who's been there, done that. If I'm not willing to allow somebody else to show me a path, um, that's hubris, I think. And that, and it's, and it's ripe. You are ripe for, um, ripe for a real challenge. I. Don't go bush whacking like even businesses when they, like, I remember when I started the e-commerce company, I was, we were, you know, my business partner and I were like, we need some assistance with this. And so we went to score service Corps of retired executives and um, and it was people who were just willing to get back mentoring, free mentoring to the community. We talked about email and e-commerce and got the blankest stares in front of them. They're like, what are you talking about? What is this e-commerce thing? Okay, let's not confuse the fact that a person doesn't understand the intricacies of e-commerce with the person, with the fact that that person doesn't understand how to grow a business. Because you can learn e-commerce working with distributed teams, growing a business, understanding distribution, understanding psychology of people, how to, how to manage people. That person might have been doing it for the last 40 years. Just because they don't understand e-commerce doesn't mean they don't have something valuable to add. And, and that, I think, you know, looking back it's like, well, we discounted that whole, that whole concept. And yet there were times, you know, we, we talked to a bank at one point in time and they didn't understand e-commerce either. Uh, and they, they were willing, the local bank was willing to take a flyer on us and, and we launched their whole e-commerce processing arm of their business because we understood it better than they did. Um, so there was, you know, it's kind of a work, work with somebody. If you're not, if you're not willing to work with somebody and at least follow somebody who's blazed the trail before, um, I think you're setting yourself up for, for real challenge. And if, if not outright failure, either way, you're gonna learn something, you'll learn that, Hey, I'm not gonna do that again.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm. Yeah. That's why I like interviewing people like you, because I get to learn a lot of really great stuff and, and I, I get to learn patterns of thinking. From people I get to see, like, wow, I've, I've talked to over 200 entrepreneurs and a lot of them have very similar understandings of themselves and of, of what their roles are within their organizations, despite having different industries, different, uh, sizes of companies, different upbringing. Some are poor, some are come from wealthy families. You know, everyone's got their own psychology as well. And, and through all of it, everyone is very similar in, in some other aspects. And it's really cool to see like all of those differences and yet these core, uh, similarities,

Jason Todd: well, of course similarities haven't changed for thousands of years. Mean, I follow some, I, I do some stuff on TikTok. I've got a TikTok channel now, and I was always so against social media for, for particular reasons, but I started this TikTok channel last year, and I've gotta think I'm, I'll pass 6,500 followers today. I've got 6,499 at the time of this recording. Um, you know, kudos to me. And, um, there was a, there's, i, I, for whatever reason, as I'm scrolling through TikTok, you know, people come up, they're talking about dating and whatnot. Like, you know, here's the challenges with dating. It's like, okay, first of all, you've never, you've never made it past 30 and, uh, you've never been married. You don't know what it's like to have long-term relationships. So not sure you're qualified actually to talk about relationships, uh, because the fundamentals of people have not changed in thousands of years. How we express those things on social media and the fact that you can open up an app and all that type of stuff has changed the landscape, but how people connect. What people care about really hasn't changed, uh, because people are fundamentally are the core of ourselves fundamentally the same, which is why you can take somebody who has understood management for 40 years and you can put them in charge of, you can make them a CEO of an organization just like Google did. You know, you didn't take the techies and turn them into the CEO overnight. That was not, that would've been a mistake. Let the techies do their thing. The, uh, they, the, the, the founders of Google took over CEO later, right? They, they brought in a CEO from the outside who was not necessarily, you know, he'd, he'd never done anything with search engines before, but he knew how to build a team. He knew how to make a company cool. The, the core, the core, the core of business is the same from one to the next. In fact, I've got a map that I, when I work with entrepreneurs and, and, and existing businesses, I've got a map. I'm like, this is exactly how your business runs. Here's the map. Whether it's anytime you get people together, you get people together to buy from an organization, to eat at your restaurant, to build your church, to have people over, you know, as friends, anytime you gather people together, this is the exact map it follows. And at each one of these points, I can tell you exactly what I can tell, I can help you figure out exactly what went wrong at each of those points. If you drop a person in the front and at the top and you don't get a person plus another person at the end, I can tell you what went wrong. Somewhere in this map, the map of how people engage is the exact same. You just inter you interchange the technology into it. Um, or the ways we can communicate, you know, we're, we're doing this podcast thing, well, podcasting didn't exist 30 years ago, but radio did. Okay. So we're just doing snippets of radio shows, call it podcasting.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. So I am curious what has been the most expensive decision you've had? Whether, whether it was a mistake or, or whether it was a success?

Jason Todd: By far, the most expensive decision I've made over time. This is a recurring theme. This is why I'll call it the most expensive, because this, the, there, there, and this is, you know, every, any, we're talking about psychology. There are always recurring themes. I. In a person's life journey, recurring themes of success, recurring themes of failure.

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Jason Todd: And one would do well to figure out what those recurring things are, and then go find a mentor who can help you stay accountable to that thing not happening. Again. Don't think that you're gonna just drum it up. The don't, don't, Dr. Don't think you're gonna drum up the change all on your own. You won't. Uh, but the most expensive recurring theme is not, is working with safe people rather than people who are real experts and have done that thing in the past. And then continuing to pay for that with time and money until it completely falls apart. That is, that is the recurring theme.

Sean Weisbrot: Are you able to potentially put a number on how much that costs?

Jason Todd: Oh, it's easily, it is easily cost me, um. I am not sure if I could put a number on it. Actually. I, I mean, if you wanna broadly paint a, a, a figure on that, it's cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not million or more for sure.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. Yeah. I, I like to ask this question of guests because we all have something that we do, and there was, there was one guy that said he had a specific mistake that cost over a million. Um, and that was quite a painful mistake. He still, I mean, he, he's done other businesses since then and gone on to generate many, many more millions. But, uh, that thing still sits in the back of his mind. And so I, I feel like it's very curious to,

Jason Todd: it should, and if it doesn't sit in the back of your mind, you haven't learned the lesson,

Sean Weisbrot: right.

Jason Todd: That, you know, it's, it's, uh, you know, I've forgiven myself for my, for mys significant, I would call significant failures. Um, but at the same time, they took years sometimes to work their way through me to be like, okay, I'm all, I, like, I can carry on with life after this. Uh, instead of kicking myself. There's no advantage to kicking yourself for the past, but if you keep kicking yourself, you have a, you, you have a real problem. 'cause you're gonna try and you're gonna try and overcome that, uh, in, in the next time, the next time that presents itself. Rather than just being like, well, I'm not gonna deal with that and push it. You know, it's like, I'm not going to do that. It's not been integrated into your, you know, into your existence. Like, I, I know how to have conversations now that I wouldn't have had conversa. I wouldn't, I know how to direct conversations now with people that I might care about, um, you know, friendship and otherwise the. I would have those direct conversations and not fear the outcomes, not fear that they're gonna leave the organization or whatever. Um, whereas before I'd be like, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna let this carry on a little bit because I know them, they've been friends for a long time. And, you know, first of all, I probably wouldn't hire them in the first place. So there's, there's, um, yeah, the recurring theme, uh, and, and biggest losses is, um, yeah, you gotta integrate that stuff. Don't kick yourself for it. It's gone. It's done. It's not gonna come back in the same form. Um, but you recognize it. For sure.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever regretted starting any of your businesses? And if so, what were those regrets?

Jason Todd: Well, okay, let's think about regret from a deep, deep standpoint. 'cause, you know, should I regret anything? Um, I. Yes, the, you know, the, the, the things that I've done have brought me to the place that I'm at, and I am really good with me mentally, spiritually, uh, socially I'm really good with me. Um, the, my ability to speak into other people's lives and make real life change, helping people grow businesses without losing their lives, um, or helping them maintain their mental health. All of that, all of my experiences have been incorporated into that moment when I, when I can talk to a person with very high confidence level, I can see what they're going through. I've been there, done that, or I'm connected to somebody who's been there, done that. I can help them out or I can connect them to an expert. All of my things that I should, quote unquote, regret have been incorporated in my life to bring me to that moment. So, do I regret it? I regret the pain. I should. I don't want the pain. I didn't want the pain. I, that was not my intent. My intent was not to cause harm to myself or others. The re I regret that. Do I regret the fact that that somehow is part, part and parcel of my story and brings me to a moment to really make an impact in ways that I would not have been able to make an impact? No, I don't regret that at all. I don't regret how, I don't regret where I'm at. Um, and that's a, that's, it doesn't mean that I don't take ownership from my own failures too. 'cause some people might look at that and well, well, you know, yeah, but you, you know, you hurt yourself or others due to, you know, lousy decision making. It's like, for sure I take ownership of that. However, I'm paying it forward. So what do you want?

Sean Weisbrot: I'm currently in the process of taking ownership of my, of some mistakes I made around communication inside of my company. And, uh, my team gave it to me. Good. I I took it pretty hard for hours. They were not happy. And, uh, that wasn't, that was an eye-opener because I always looked at myself as like I was raised to be. Like honest and transparent and kind and, and all of these things. And I thought that I was doing that. And I guess the team disagreed. And, uh, so I had to answer for that. And now I'm trying to rebuild my trust with them. And who knows, you know, some of them may never trust me again and others I may be able to rebuild that trust with. But, uh, I think what was the best thing for them was me inviting the conversation where I said, it seems like you guys are unhappy. Let's have a call. And then not running away from the call, not hiding, just listening to their questions and answering them as bluntly, honestly as I could, even if it's not what they wanted to hear. And I, I could tell one of them was ready, you know, really wanted to scream at me, but was holding back. Another one was ready to cry, but held it back and. I think my honesty helped a little bit, but, um, that's been, I think, the hardest thing I've had to go through as a business owner so far in all the businesses I've done. So, um, I guess what I could share for whoever's listening is like, if you think you're doing a good job with being transparent and honest, ask your team. Because sometimes you may have a blind spot and that blind spot may give you a positive, uh, understanding of yourself. And you may be completely wrong. And the only way you can really know is if you talk to your team and have your team tell you what they think of you.

Jason Todd: Yes. You know? Yep. I mean, if that's, that's prevalent in any, in any, um, if we look at the extremes, any recovery, uh, so if you went through like a 12 step program. Um, and I've not been through 12 Step program, but I understand the frameworks of it and I've read it all. And I've helped launch, uh, some work with people who kind of go through 12 step programs. Um, one of the elements of 12 Step program is that you, you have to invite feedback from the people that have been affected by what your, by your actions. Because we don't see, you know, like you talk about, well, I thought I was showing up with clear communication. That's great, but everybody else didn't think you were clear. Okay. So then I need that feedback to be able to change myself or be able to see myself more clearly. That's why we need each other. We, we need to be able to be, we're communal creatures. We only see ourselves in light of other people. We only see success in light of other people. If it was just you on an island, you'd be fine with everything you're doing right now, you and I wouldn't have this conversation. What would be the possible point? Be no point at all if I was on an island. Be like, well, okay, well. You know, I haven't really failed at anything. Maybe I, you know, didn't, didn't feed myself today, whatever, I'll get over it. But if I have other people that I'm responsible for now it's like, oh no, you know, to what degree am I responsible for them or not responsible for? And well also we start dealing with boundaries. And then how, well, you said this to me and I took it this way and all this other stuff, it becomes this quagmire of stuff that was soup that we are, that we are designed the stew to figure out what do we want in the stew? What, when do we have too much to, of certain ingredients? And, and who actually wants this stew anyhow? Who's willing to complete, you know, to commit to this thing? And then, you know, this other person doesn't even like stew. And so they're not even showing up to the parties anymore. And it had nothing to do with me, but I, but they thought I only liked Stew, you know, and they wanted to bring drinks. And it's like, oh my God. And I, I think one of the best things we can do is really just deal with two things. Number one, um, radi talks about hyper reality. So it's, he's, you only deal with what is reality. Don't deal with the reality that doesn't exist. Because you're solving a problem that doesn't exist. I did a TikTok, ugh, I cannot believe I say that. I did. It's a 44-year-old man. I did a TikTok. Um, man, I don't know, but I did a TikTok the other day where I talked about worry. Why would you worry? And this has been a huge thing, you know, talking about fear and worry and that type of stuff and stuff. Keeping me up at night. Um, I ha I have dealt with or paid forward my attention into the future. Into a future that doesn't exist. I've given that my attention rather than giving today and the, and the, and the real reality of today, my attention. And it's, it's something that we habitually do. We do it in, even in our relationships. We'll be like, well, you know, we, we, uh, they're responding in such and such a way, and I think I know why that's happening. Rather than just asking them and also knowing that they might not even know. Then being able to go through this idea of, well, okay, maybe we need to get all the shit out on the table so we can at least take a look at it and then figure out what we wanna do and what can people put up with, you know, the, there is a great lesson in, in, we are all difficult to get along with every single one of us.

Sean Weisbrot: Oh yeah.

Jason Todd: I get along with me very easily, but that's just me. That's me in a vacuum. And there are some times when I don't get along with me, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're that guy. You, you're that guy who, who like screamed at somebody because he didn't merge in the last three seconds. You're that guy. Why would you do that? It's so stupid. It's what, how did you add any value to the world in that, how did I value To me, I, I took away value from me. I deluded the greatness I could bring to the world because I lost my mind. 'cause for why? So to save three seconds makes no, makes, makes crazy. So be a student of yourself first. And part of being a student of yourself is being able to see how other peop how you show up to the world and invite their feedback. Doesn't mean they're right, doesn't mean you need to incorporate it into it, into yourself, but you at least need to be able to observe it.

Sean Weisbrot: I learned about this 18 years ago when I was 18 actually, when I was studying psychology in school, where I always kind of had an idea that I might have been a dick. I didn't show up to the world going, I'm gonna be a dick. But I guess I had this sarcastic tone sometimes and it, it came out more often than I wanted to, and I didn't really have control of it at times. And I think that's why some people may have perceived me as being a dick. And it wasn't until I was in college where I said, you know, like I'm learning about myself. I'm learning about other people. Clearly there's something here. I'm gonna just start asking people that I know. I. Like, what do you think of me? Because I don't know what other people think of me. And I started asking those questions and I found that actually people didn't really like me that much because of the sarcastic side. And what I learned was if I could get rid of the sarcastic side, then there was a lot for people to really like about me. And even till today, you know, the sarcasm is still there at times it's a lot better controlled. But, uh, I, I do have a very strong personality and so people either really like me or really don't like me and they find out for themselves pretty fast. And I think I'm just saving them time and saving me time. You either like me, whoops, you either like me or you don't like me. And if you don't, you know, I can't please everybody. But at least the process of trying to understand what other people think is important in a way, um, it's important to love yourself and know who you wanna be. But at the same time, it's also important to make sure that if you have goals and those goals involve other people, and chances are they have to, then you also need to understand how you show up, as you said to the world. Because if your understanding of yourself and other people's understanding of yourself are different, then clearly it's going to affect your ability to accomplish your goals.

Jason Todd: Yes. Not everybody's gonna like you. And I would, I would, I would challenge people that you don't want everybody to like you, because if the goal is that everybody likes you, uh, which that inevitably comes like, well, I want everybody to like me. Um, first of all, it's not possible because you're not staying true to your own ideals. And if you're, if you can't stay true to your own ideals and uh, then you will lose yourself in, in the picture of everyone else. Now that's a, that's a balance. I. Right. And our culture now has turned into a bunch of narcissists, in my opinion, who are all about themselves. And I can assure you that there is no value in being all about yourself. You will, you will be an island. And if you're kinda like, well, I'm just gonna show up and, and you know, everybody else can suck it. Um, that's a great way to lose friends. And, and at the end of the day, your business is, is paperwork. Our businesses are held together by the thin court of agreement. It's a keynote I gave to the Better Business Bureau at one point in time, the thin court of agreement. And it is simply the fact that everybody agreed to continue working in that business, or all of your customers agreed to continue buying from you. If you lose that agreement, if everybody in your business is like, listen, I'm not gonna do this anymore with you, the rest is paperwork. It always was paperwork. The rest. Your business is all about relationships. So be a student of relationships and then figure out how that's gonna translate into your business. But don't be a student of your business and think that that's, that, that somehow it's you. You can be devoid of relationships, be show up, show up well to relationships, take care of your relationships, and if that leads you to business, fantastic. If it doesn't go get a job, it's totally fine.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. Our society is also very, very, very thin, uh, agreement that, uh, I don't know, I don't want to go down that route, but I. I don't know. I just looking at America from, from the outside. 'cause I, I'm, I, I left America again. Um, I know the last time we talked I was in America. I think you, I think I was in America.

Jason Todd: Uh, no, I don't think you were, but you, but you are, you have the American ideals in your head that you will never be able to detach from. Uh,

Sean Weisbrot: no. It's so hard. I try, I do try.

Jason Todd: I wouldn't try if I were you. Go, go to, go to a place that does not have those types of ideals in your head and try and live that life. And you might find that that's a little bit different.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I mean, you know, I lived in China for 10 years. I've lived in Vietnam for four. I'm now, uh, immigrating to, well I have immigrated to Portugal. Um, so I'll be here for at least the next five years. Mm-hmm. And so I, I've spent, you know, 14 years of my adult life, like my entire adult life outside of the ideals of America. And. Sometimes I can adjust myself to where I'm staying and other times I can't. And when I can't, there's friction. And oftentimes that friction is with local people. And in the past, uh, people have felt like I looked down upon their own culture that I was living in, and I was like, no, no, no. I don't look down on your culture. I'm just, I guess, seeing it from a different point of view and, and comparing it to my own experience, which I shouldn't be doing. And yet I struggled to prevent myself from doing so.

Jason Todd: Yeah, well, there's no panacea. Um, or we would all be there. The, the best we can hope for is to aspire to some sort of ideal and then work it out with the people that we intend to live with, whether that be close. Our homes or whether that be regionally in our communities or whether that be in a nation, but it, we are designed to work things out with each other

Sean Weisbrot: for sure. So at what point in the day do you tackle the hardest thing that you need to do?

Jason Todd: Oh, I don't have any discipline around that. I tackle around my energy levels. If, if, if I feel like I'm ready to tackle the hard thing, I'll tackle the hard thing. I it when I, um, when I feel like I'm not working through my stuff. I take a break half day or so, and I reorganize everything that I need to do and I start time blocking. I. It brings me back to center.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. So if I am right, you were saying that you start off with something structured and then over some period of time, maybe it's the week, maybe it's a month, I don't know, you start to kind of lose that structure and then you say, yep, I need to get back to the structure like this, or,

Jason Todd: yes. It's, it's a feature of my personality that enables me to exist in environments that other highly structured people cannot exist in. I can exist in a very low structured environment, just fine. And I can also, I can exist in a, in a somewhat structured, I can exist in a reasonably structured, well, reasonably is not even like, how do you measure that? But I cannot exist in a very highly structured environment for, for forever. I can't do it for a long time.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the difficulty? Because I'm like you, I'm just curious how, how it it is for you.

Jason Todd: Um, here's the, here's the difference. The, we each have the ability to see. Into the future for a certain distance, let's say, or a certain amount of time. And, um, when, so, so a person who thrives in, uh, checking all the boxes for today, you know, I got 10 things to do today. I'm gonna get all 10 done and I'm gonna go home and be like, yay. Life is amazing. That person who can exist in that every day, I'm gonna check 10 boxes and be happy, even be joyful with my life. That per the further it gets from today, if I, if, if you ask that person, Hey, uh, plan something five years from now, plan something a decade, plan something 20, plan something, 50 years from now, whatever that is, the blurrier the future gets. Right? Likewise, there's, there are people who can exist as future futurists, planners, people who are thinking five years out. When you're thinking five years out, the blurrier today gets. And it's not that we can't exist in either of those scenarios. We absolutely can, but we, we, we have different levels of importance that we assign to each of those tasks. And so I could go through the list of 10 things today. I will eventually get bored of that because I, because I'm like, yeah, but where is this headed? Where are we going with this? What's the future hold? What's this gonna look like a year from now? What's this gonna look like three years from now? What's this gonna look like five years from now? And I'll start dreaming of those things because I'm a dreamer and there are frameworks, like EOS is one of 'em. There are management frameworks that come around this. Well, you, for your dreamer, you need somebody who is, is an implementer. And it's true. Uh, so I'm, I would, I would make a great leader and not such a great manager because I'll, I will tire of managing you and the fact that you didn't show up to work. I, I'm just gonna get tired of it. I don't wanna have the conversations around that stuff. I would like, I would like somebody else who really loves that. Can I do it for a period of time? Sure. Am I great at it? No. Will I be great at it? No. Uh, so I'm not gonna try anymore, you know, but, but I can be a visionary and I can, and I can help you move from obstacle to opportunity. The person who's checking off the boxes today doesn't see the opportunity. 'cause they're not seeing five years in, you know, uh, ahead. So they're, everybody has to play their role, um, in that scale of, of, um, what's important. And I think the idea of discipline, the idea of, you know, what do I do today? That, that sort of productivity, that push for productivity and efficiency, um, it's a neat concept, but it doesn't work for most people. That's why you, that's why people are hunting for apps all the time. It's like, well, the NEAT is a new app to manage my productivity. It's like, no, maybe you're just a dreamer and maybe you should. Go find somebody who can implement. But then you put an entrepreneur in that situation and they're like, well, I bet I need to do all the hats. I need to, you know, how would I possibly find somebody to manage this business of mine? Well, that happens all the time in larger organizations. They just have different resources they're dealing with. Okay, so work it out. But that's, um, yeah, this idea of discipline. I, I will stick with that for a period of time. It'll eventually fall apart because I'll be dreaming about something different. I also am an INA fj, so my feelings govern a lot of stuff. I, I listen for the wind, I listen for the spirit of the day. Um, and it's never, it's when I've done that, I've never been disappointed, but I can hear that and other people can't.

Sean Weisbrot: That's eerie. I, I feel so similar to you in that regard, where like, I, I. I look out years into the future for what I want, but then I know that I have to do certain things in a certain order to get there. And sometimes I can do it and sometimes I get lost in the wind because I wanna wake up and I wanna just do whatever it is I feel like doing that day. And so I'll make a list and some days I get everything done. Some days I get half of it done, and some days I get none of it done. But in the process of it all, I know that I'm learning something and at some point it's gonna be useful towards getting those tasks done or or solving this bigger problem. And I'm not a great manager. Straight up. I don't mind managing people, but I'd rather not. Like when it comes to my startup, there's so many things that I had to spend the last few years learning how to do, like ui, ux design, product management, project management, uh, you know, documentation, all these things. I loved the process of learning it, but then when you ask me to put it into action and manage it over a period of time, I break it and I break the team because I'm not the right person to be doing it. And so we had to hire people to take over those things because I just wasn't doing it to the best of the ability that the team needed to have. So like, yeah, I, I think we're very similar in, in that regard.

Jason Todd: Anybody who is an entrepreneur tends to be similar in that regard because we are the people who will look at a mountain and say, of course we can take that mountain. Yeah. Like, how high? I didn't even ask you how high the mountain was now. Well, yeah, for sure. We can take that mountain. How are we gonna do it? God, if I know, but we're gonna start.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, we'll figure it out.

Jason Todd: Yeah, and I, and I intuitively know that we will find the people who will pack the food. I intuitively know we'll find the people who will, you know, take us closer to the mountain. I, I intuitively know that we can strengthen our bodies. Like all of those things, I just, I run by the intuition of yeah, of course we can do this. And that has served me well. But the blind spot, like you, much like you talk about, I need accountability to other people to help me check off the boxes for today.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I know when I have a conversation with my CTO and I'm like, Hey, I have an idea. I give him the fully fleshed out like roadmap of this idea in like a few minutes. He starts to freak out because he thinks I want him to go build it. Mm-hmm. And then my COO has to come in and go, no, no, no. Like, look, he, he's just telling you the full vision. Like he didn't think about what version one will be. You know, he is just sharing some information. So he has to like, go in and calm him down because he like, takes me so literally about what I want. I'm like, no man, that's like five years of work. Like, I'm just, I'm just spit balling here. Um, so that's like a really funny kind of, uh, dynamic we have internally.

Jason Todd: Yeah. Well that's the, that's you saying, Hey, if we're gonna take this mountain, let me show you where this mountain's at and look at this amazing mountain and you're gonna get jazzed up about it because you can see what it could become. And, but that person is not equipped for that because they're trying to develop the list of stuff that needs to get done and they're like, dear Lord, this is so much work. And, and how, how are we even going to cross that chasm? Do you see that chasm between us and the mountain? And you're like, I don't know. We'll figure out when we get there. And they're like, no, let, I'm not gonna go on this journey until I have a plan. Well, and you're like, I don't know the plan. I'll kinda spitball it. Do you wanna whiteboard it? Like, well, that's not a plan. So the, that's respecting who you are as an individual and then upfront communicating that so that other people know helps, helps bridge the gap of communication that you, you know, back to this idea of how do you show up. It bridges the gap between how you think you're showing up and how other people are taking you. And that's that before it gets outta, before it really gets outta hand and people are super frustrated and you have to have a come to Jesus meeting.

Sean Weisbrot: I know, I, I also take, like, travel in a similar way where let's say five months ago I said, okay, I know that I'm gonna end up in Portugal. I'm gonna have my residence permit. I've already applied for it, whatever. But first I'm gonna go to Greece. And then I'm gonna go to Slovenia, and then I'm gonna go to Spain, and then I'll end up in Portugal. I didn't know what day I'm getting in Greece. I don't know what day I'm going to Slovenia. Like I, I didn't have any of those details planned. I just knew here's a four chapter skeleton, these are the locations I'm going to, and now I'm gonna buy the flight to Greece. It's a one-way ticket, and I'll just figure out the rest kind of as I get there and feel it out and see what's going on in the city. I was supposed to stay for two weeks and then my friend was like, Hey, my birthday's in like a week. Can you stay longer? And I was like, yeah, sure. Like, I've known you for almost a decade. Of course, I'm not gonna miss your birthday, bro. So like, I changed my plans and I stayed for another week. And part of doing that was like we, I ended up getting invited to one of his friend's wedding, so I got to go to a big fat Greek wedding. It was incredible, you know? Um, and so like, my brother is very, my brother's like a COO, he's like very, very. Uh, oriented with planning. Like to a point where if you're going to New York for three days, he will tell you to the minute where you're going to be. And that bugs the shit outta me. And, but I'll travel with him because, you know, I love him. And we, and we both like to travel. And he has admitted to me that the times that he has enjoyed his travels the most were when he shut up and let me go, Hey, that street looks cool. Let's go walk down it. And we'll end up in a forest where there's a hot spring and there's a goat sitting next to the hot spring watching us chill.

Jason Todd: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: we would've never found that hot spring if I hadn't said, shut up. Let's go over here.

Jason Todd: Right?

Sean Weisbrot: And

Jason Todd: both are necessary. Both, both are absolutely necessary. Uh, and the, the reason would be this, I spent some time, uh, very short period of time teaching in Albania. And before I got to Albania, it's like the week prior or something like that, half an apartment building fell off into the street. Multi-story apartment building just fell off in the street. It's collapsed. Uh, and the old Russian era hotel, which was beautiful, amazing gold marbles, beautiful place. The plumbing didn't work on, you know, upper stories. Uh, and the, and the, the half grade below restroom in the lobby, um, definitely smelled like sewer gas. Like if anybody lit a match in there, we were all gonna blow up. Um, in my shower on the third or fourth floor or whatever it was, uh, would fill up. And then you just have the base of an, of it would just fill up and then you have to let it drain out. The principal reason for all of this stuff was they didn't understand plumbing and venting that you had. You couldn't just not vent your plumbing. Uh, and so water would accumulate in places water shouldn't accumulate. And if you do that in a wooden structure, it's eventually gonna rot away and it's gonna fall off in the middle of the street. So on one hand, you'll get a person in America complaining about how tight the building codes are in some place, but you transport that idea that you just willy-nilly do the things that you think you should do or want to do without any plan, and you end up with things falling apart. So somewhere between those two extremes of, I'm just gonna dream up this thing and I'm just gonna go do it. And I've never done it before and I don't even know exactly how, um, that might work in certain scenarios, and it might fall apart epically. And you might build a building that, that to this day does not, does not drain properly. And that would've cost today, if you were gonna build that building, it'd be millions of dollars. It would be absurd to think about that the plumbing wouldn't work. Absolutely absurd. Or you go the the other road where it's like, well, it takes us forever to get anything built and we gotta go through all this red tape and we can bitch about that too. Okay. Well it takes two people. It takes a visionary and it takes somebody who can actually go off and implement and wants to get all worked up about the details. You want them to get all worked up about those details. I guarantee you, you wanna go take that mountain. If you go take 'em mountain on your own, you're going to die. And if you try to drag, drag people up unprepared, you're gonna kill people with you. And so you actually do want somebody on the team who's gonna be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow the train down. You gotta stop the crazy, I'm not going anywhere with you. And you might be like, oh, you mean I'm gonna go alone? Yeah, yeah. You're gonna go alone until you just wait for us. Like, alright, I. Well, I'll learn to slow down then. And then you're gonna challenge them and say, Hey, you know, do we really have to think about all these details? And they'll learn through time that, you know, sometimes we're overthinking the details, sometimes, you know, we just gotta wait for things to unfold. Alright, fine. But if you take two extremes and just one, one person goes forward and the other person goes, doesn't go forward, it's like, okay, well God bless you. You'll be going alone.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I, so with, with my brother, it works out because I kind of let him have the thing that he wants, which is, let's plan some things. And then sometimes I'm like, you know what? Screw your plan. Let's do my thing. He is like, okay, fine. So we, we, we, we work well together that regard. Um, and, and with my COO it's, it's similar where I'll say, okay, I have this idea. And then he starts to think of all of the details that are needed to make it work. And, and then I'll go, all right, let's go. And he is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. He is like, there's no, you know, there's no budget prepared for this. Like, we, we need to talk with the CTO about how to make it work. We need to talk to the marketing director about how, you know, that part. We need to talk to the product. Okay, fine. You let me know when you've had that conversation with them. And then you get, then you get back to me about it. Then let me know how long it's gonna take and how much it's gonna work. And then I'll just figure out how to, you know, get the money for it and, and all that.

Jason Todd: Yeah. It goes back to know yourself, be a student of yourself. Do your, do your thing. Um, but figure out who you need to, to, to do that with. And present the proposal. Be able to learn from them. Be able to see back into yourself, be able to present to them, you know, what, what, what you see in them. And if you can all agree to go do thing, then great. You have agreement. Fine. Do do your thing. There's, there's no. I think that the, the idea that, uh, we need to squeeze every last ounce of productivity or efficiency out of us is not true. Uh, we are, life is meant to be lived, so allow life to breathe a bit and go do that. But at the balance on that is, you know, we need to, we need to be wise with our resources and wise with the people around us and not blowing in the wind.

Sean Weisbrot: So would you say that's the most important thing you've learned or is there anything more important?

Jason Todd: I think the most important thing I've learned, and I hate questions like this, just for full on, uh, disclosure, when people are like, what's your favorite food? It's like, hmm. Sometimes pizza, sometimes steak, sometimes sushi, sometimes they're all my favorites. I, I don't care to live a life without all of those. So they're all important. They are of most importance sometimes. So this question's a very difficult from my brain, but the a fundamental, we build a, a building block. To life. Uh, and if we don't, because I'm gonna go off the premise that if we don't take care of life, we will take our uncared for life and bring that to an uncared for business. Our business will suffer our, if we're talking about entrepreneurs, your businesses are gonna be reflection of your ability to take care of your yourself, be healthy, right? In yourself. And that's, that's not a, uh, I don't mean that to be a narcissistic healthiness where it's only about you. No, no, no. Are you taking care of yourself so you show up well to your business? 'cause if you don't show up well to your business, your business is gonna suffer. That's my framework, right? So to be able to take care of yourself. Well, I think, I think the most important thing I've learned is to really be a student of yourself and unpack. Open up all the doors that you don't wanna look into inside yourself. The things that you hide, repress and deny, go courageously into the night and figure those things out. Bring somebody with you who's willing to look at those things with you as well. Heal all of those things and, and, and also know that you are already wrong in some way, to some degree you're not yet aware of. I'll say that again. You're already wrong in some way, to some degree you are not yet aware of that will systematically destroy pride because you will show up knowing that I'm already wrong. I just am not even seeing it. And, and they'll be like, well, you know, I, I saw that to somebody at one point in time, and they're like, well, I don't like the word wrong. It's like, well get over it. There are times when we are absolutely wrong and you should be able to, wow, I was wrong. If you can't say that, oh, what are you trying to hide? Then? What aren't you, what aren't you willing to look at in yourself? If you can't be like, wow, I was so wrong. Yeah, you were wrong. Fine. Everybody is in some way, to some degree that we don't even know about. In my book, I talk about George Washington. He was killed by medical malpractice. He,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah. Didn't they, they let him, they let his blood go or they,

Jason Todd: he was killed within, uh, something like 40 hours. Um, less, less than that, in fact, uh, because, um, he has, he was traveling around his estate just like looking at stuff and enjoying a, a ride. Um, it was raining out. He was late for dinner. He decided to not change his clothes as the story goes to show that he could show up on time. You know, 'cause, so he could show up to dinner quickly. Uh, he subsequently got a sore throat. I. As one might do, being out in the cold and the rain, you might end up with a sore throat. It happens. In fact, we might take a cough drop today, but instead, uh, they gave him a sve of ground up beetles, uh, and they swabbed the back of his throat with, you know, the ground up beetles, because that's what a person would do. Uh, they also gave him an enema just to, I don't know, make sure everything, make sure everything's out of him, you know, 'cause the poor guy had a sore throat. They bled, uh, bled him several times, uh, which would've led to about 40% blood loss in 24 hours. And so a man who showed up late to dinner ended up with a sore throat, was killed by the doctors of that age because they were already wrong. In very specific ways to, to pretty large degrees in ways that they were not aware of. They wouldn't have been aware of that in their lifetime. Most of those people who would've believed that those were the remedies of the day they did, they wouldn't be aware of those until they were dead. Okay? So for us today, those of us who have it all figured out, what things are we not yet aware of, that we are so, so very wrong, and a hundred years from now, somebody would be like, you did what? Be like, Hey, I didn't know I was, uh, killing him. It's trying my best, it's trying my best to save him, and I killed him. Or, great. So there are, there are lessons all over in our own lives that we will kill ourselves by our own greatest intent.

Sean Weisbrot: I think a great way to get very quickly to the depths of that, uh, I'm wrong. Is to just be married because I don't know about with your wife, but with my ex-wife, I was constantly being told of all the things that I was doing wrong.

Jason Todd: I don't know that, that, that is always for good intent or not. I'm not here to judge that. But no, if you do want to, if you do want to get better at being yourself, it will only come about by close inspection of someone you love and who loves you. Those are the only people who can really get past the tough exterior. It's the only people who can really look in and they're there, they're there put they're presented in our lives. And it doesn't have to be a, a wife or a husband. It's a, it's, it could be some close friend, it could be some rando who just is really good at reading people. Um, but it is only by, it is only by, uh, the mirror of others that we see ourselves.

Sean Weisbrot: I think that's a great way to end this. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Todd: Absolutely. Thanks.