Sean Weisbrot [00:00:00]:

If you want to be good at networking, don't be the person who needs something. Be the person that people need.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:06]:

Sean Weisbrot has spent his life networking and building meaningful connections. Sean is the founder of SparkVox and the host of We Live to Build, a podcast where he has interviewed over 300 founders and operators running 7- to 9-figure businesses.

Sean Weisbrot [00:00:14]:

I've been doing this for 6 years, and the people I interview are doing 5, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100, $200 million a year in revenue. They're managing billions of dollars in investor money.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:29]:

At 21, Sean bought a one-way ticket to China with no clear plan, taught himself Mandarin, and eventually became a well-known speaker, event organizer, and connector in the Chinese business world. One event he helped build grew to 700 attendees, attracted government support, and opened doors to media appearances, paid speaking gigs, and other business opportunities. Later, through the relationships that he built, Sean generated $15 million in his own business and helped create over $100 million in value for others. Today, Sean teaches founders how to build personal brands and networks that bring opportunities to them. And with SparkVox, he's helping busy founders turn their ideas and voice notes into LinkedIn content that actually sounds like them. So how do you build a network that compounds over time? How do you become known by the right people? And how can creators and founders use their personal brand to create real business value?

Sean Weisbrot [00:01:18]:

My superpower is networking. If you can understand that you have to just slow down and build a friendship first, then the opportunities will come.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:25]:

Welcome to The Creator's Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:41]:

Hey Sean, welcome to the show.

Sean Weisbrot [00:01:41]:

Hey, how's it going?

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:44]:

First question for you today is, what would you say is the biggest thing either you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Sean Weisbrot [00:01:52]:

I think the most important thing I've done in my life was move to China at the age of 22 by myself. I only had a few hundred dollars in my pocket. Everyone thought I was crazy, but it was what I needed to do. I had just finished university in 2008 in the middle of the financial crisis, for people who weren't old enough to remember. And I knew that I had two options: go back to school for something I didn't know I wanted to do, or find a corporate job, which I knew I absolutely didn't want to do.

Sean Weisbrot [00:02:16]:

Instead, I chose another path, which was to go teach English in China, where I could have a completely new opportunity to live in a culture I knew nothing about and face my demons and become a person that I did not know I was going to become. But I knew that I had an opportunity, and it was the thing that I needed to do for myself. And doing that allowed me to learn Chinese. I taught myself when I wasn't teaching English.

Sean Weisbrot [00:02:46]:

Then eventually I got good enough at speaking Chinese that I moved down to southern China and got into doing business there. My first business was an event company. It was in a style of TED, where people go on the stage and give speeches. But instead of inspiring, I wanted to educate because I felt like TED speakers versus the audience, the disconnect is so large that they can't really relate to them. And having spent years being a teacher, I wanted the audience to relate to the speakers so that they could feel like they learned something from them and that they could aspire to be more like them.

Sean Weisbrot [00:03:20]:

Doing that got me into the graces of the Chinese government. They started to sponsor the events and put me on TV shows and radio shows, and do private speeches and host private events for them and do private training for the government officials. All of this stuff was paid by them to me, and all of this stuff was in Chinese because I was so good at it that I could do it all myself. I didn't need someone to translate for me or anything like that.

Sean Weisbrot [00:03:43]:

I took that opportunity to build a massive network all over China: some media people, some government people, some business people, some people that were just working for other people. I ended up being there during the time of blockchain rising. Because I could speak Chinese, I learned about blockchain through some friends and was able to leverage that into a consulting company that was serving mostly Chinese people in Chinese. From 2016 to 2018, I generated $15 million of revenue for that consulting business. And it was all because I had the guts to go to China on a whim and teach myself Chinese and invest in understanding their language and their culture and their psychology.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:21]:

Yeah, that's awesome. I think it's cool to hear because I can kind of add on to that, that this isn't one story of only Sean did this and got lucky and you probably should ignore what he says. Because out of school, I did very much the same thing, actually. I thought, okay, what am I going to do here with my life? Am I going to go to school? Am I going to try to find some other kind of job? Or do I want to travel?

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:44]:

An opportunity was presented that I could travel, in my case to Italy, to teach English as well. I did that and I realized that the work I was doing, it was design and web design, graphic design at the time, I could do remotely. After a month there, I was hooked. Then I came back, and less than a month later bought a one-way ticket and was just out for over a year. I didn't spend much time in China, but I've spent over 4 years living in Hong Kong. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, to go and do that. The things that I was able to learn from that, it changed who I am today. So yeah, I can definitely see how that's really valuable.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:27]:

I would also say that people are maybe scared to take that leap into doing something like this, even if they think that they want it. But I think people also doubt themselves, like, okay, well, if I go to this place that I don't even know the language or anything, how am I going to succeed or be successful? But if you can believe in yourself, you also can be potentially seen as the expert from afar, and in a way that you can actually kind of gain this other credibility that you wouldn't have otherwise had. What do you think about that?

Sean Weisbrot [00:06:04]:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I thought a number of times, how can I use what I know about China to help Americans to understand Chinese? Because I thought for years the business wasn't helping Americans understand Chinese. But soon enough, I realized that actually the Americans didn't want to understand the Chinese. They wanted to dominate the Chinese, but the Chinese just wanted to sell things to the Americans. So the Chinese ended up becoming the better customer base because they were truly willing to learn as the Americans weren't. So I stopped bothering trying to understand how I could help Americans with the Chinese.

Bryan McAnulty [00:06:42]:

Yeah, it's interesting. Definitely noticed interesting differences in culture and how if one culture was just able to act a little bit different, then they could reach a different level of success in some ways. Applies to China, to America, to Europe. But yeah, I want to talk a little bit specifically about networking because this is something that you've done so well. You've helped generate over $100 million in value. When you look back at it, is there one moment where you kind of realized that networking is not just for meeting new people, but is a real business asset?

Sean Weisbrot [00:07:11]:

Yeah. So when I was doing that first business, I had a number of people that were not Chinese coming to the events. The events were completely in English. I insisted on it being completely in English, even though I could have done it in Chinese. The reason why I wanted it to be in English was because I wanted to attract people who were living in China who could speak English at a high level and give them something unique that they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. And so this also attracted expats because they were used to things being in Chinese, and a lot of them couldn't speak Chinese, so they didn't attend those things because they just weren't able to understand what was going on.

Sean Weisbrot [00:07:40]:

One of the people that I attracted to come was this guy from Israel who I'm still really good friends with now. It's been 13 years that I've known him now. He was coming to the events. He loved the events. He decided to introduce himself after coming for like three or four times. We became friendly and he decided to mentor me. He realized that I had never been an entrepreneur before, so he realized that I was missing something really important, and that was what I was actually building. He said, "You've got something great, but I don't think you realize what you have." He said, "If you could figure out what your superpower is, you could turn this into something much greater." And I realized through talking to him that my superpower is networking.

Sean Weisbrot [00:08:30]:

It was as a result of that that I started to get into deal making and networking, connecting, putting together deals. And that's where I got into the second business, although it took about 2 years from when I met him to when that started to happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:41]:

How did learning Chinese culture maybe change the way you think about trust and business and relationship building? And I guess maybe this is what you're planning to explain anyway, but I would love for you to kind of talk about the concept of face that exists over there, because I think many people in the West don't understand that.

Sean Weisbrot [00:08:57]:

So trust in the West and trust in China are very different things. For Americans, you can essentially shake someone's hand and assume that there's trust between the two of you and that that person's not going to break that trust. Now, obviously that doesn't always happen. But for a Chinese person to feel like they trust you, you need to spend time with them, like a lot of time. Oftentimes, you have to eat meals with them. You have to drink alcohol with them. You have to sing karaoke with them. Depending on the kind of deal and the size of the deal, sometimes they want to do things that are a bit more like, okay, now we're really friends, and if you get screwed, I get screwed. I'm not going to go into what those things are. People with ideas can think about what that is.

Sean Weisbrot [00:09:37]:

Essentially, what they don't like about Americans is that Americans want to get to business, and they're like, I want to get to know you before I decide if I want to do business with you. And so there's this huge difference in that. I think if you can understand that you have to just slow down and build a friendship first, then the opportunities will come. But if you're too hyper-focused on trying to make money, then they're going to notice that, and they're not going to want to be involved with you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:01]:

What do you think about somebody who is not doing any business in Asia in any way, who's maybe never planning to visit Asia? What do you say to the person who is only doing business in the US or in Europe? Is there anything they can take from that that would benefit how they work with people in the West?

Sean Weisbrot [00:10:20]:

I don't think Americans see that there's a problem with that. I think Europeans feel the same way as Chinese. But I also think Chinese have a much stronger desire to do business than Europeans in general. I think Americans don't think there's a problem. I think Americans in general think that they're the best in the world and that the way they do things is the best in the world. So I think Americans are very, very difficult to change in that regard. And I don't think that they are willing to be open-minded about that. So I don't know if it's worth mentioning in too much detail. Yeah, that's my answer.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:52]:

Yeah, it is interesting. I'm an American. I live in Texas, but I think I've noticed as well how in Europe, for example, I would see people who are extremely talented at whatever they do, but they are doubting themselves and they're thinking, "Oh, well, I'm in Europe, so I can't do the same thing as if I were in America." And on the opposite side of the spectrum, I see people in America who think, "Oh, I'm just great at this, whatever." And they're kind of fooling themselves at the thing. If both sides would just change a little bit, if people in Europe would realize, you are really talented, you can do business in the US, you're good at what you do, and truly value themselves. And then if people in the US would take a step back and realize maybe there are some things that you can learn here, I think both sides would be able to grow a lot better.

Sean Weisbrot [00:11:44]:

I learned how to hustle in China, and I learned how to slow down and enjoy life in Europe. I don't think people will change unless they take themselves out of their environment first.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:54]:

Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point. Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an all-in-one platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities, and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow. You can try for free for 30 days. Links in the description. Now, back to the podcast.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:26]:

So when you were in China and doing these English-speaking live events, you're in a city of 50 million people, and you grew that to one of the largest English-speaking live events in that city. What is the biggest lesson that you maybe learned from that experience?

Sean Weisbrot [00:12:43]:

So to be fair, I think it was the largest English-speaking event in the whole country.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:49]:

Wow.

Sean Weisbrot [00:12:49]:

We had 750 people attending our events, live butts in seats. And it was only because we had a relationship with the government that we were able to be that size. There was one event where a government official from another part of the country flew to the event, gave me his card and said, "I want you to do this in my city. Whatever you need, you let me know and I'll make it happen." And I said, "I appreciate that very much, but I can barely manage this by myself as it is. There's just no way I can split myself between two different provinces."

Sean Weisbrot [00:13:25]:

We had people coming from Singapore, from Hong Kong, from Macau, from Taiwan, from Malaysia to watch the events in person. And we did no advertising outside of China. We had a public WeChat account, an official WeChat account, and we could see where our followers were. We literally had at least one follower in every province in China, including in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. We had one in Tibet and one in Inner Mongolia, but we had nearly 20,000 followers in the rest of mainland China. Outside of China, I have no idea. We just had no way to manage or measure that information. So we could have been a lot bigger than we even realized.

Sean Weisbrot [00:14:11]:

I did too much on my own, and my partner did too much on her own. And I think because it was my first time doing business, I didn't fully understand what I had, what it could be, or how to monetize it. As a result, we burnt out after 2 years because we were paying our bills, but we didn't make enough to hire more people. We attempted to hire people two times, and it just wasn't enough money.

Sean Weisbrot [00:14:41]:

So I think what I learned from that was don't work so hard. I'll tell you a little lesson that I learned. One of the ways that we made money was the government gave us cash for each event we did. They gave us like 3,500 RMB. It's like 500 bucks, right? Nothing. And we were doing these large events once a month. It took both of us the entire month to plan one event. I was finding every speaker. I was training them. I was preparing them for the stage because I wanted to have the best quality experience that anyone would ever experience. I wanted there to be no doubt in anyone's mind that they would never experience anything like this again.

Sean Weisbrot [00:15:25]:

And to that, I will say, years after we stopped doing it, I still got people asking me, "Are you going to do it again?" Even after I left China, people were still asking me, "Would you ever do it again?" No, I wouldn't. But I learned a lot from that experience. One of the things I learned was the government was actually willing to pay that amount for every event we did. So after a year and a half of that size, we started doing one a week instead of one a month, but instead of 700 people, we did 100 to 150 people. We were able to end up getting four times that amount from the government every month because we did it smaller and more often.

Sean Weisbrot [00:16:04]:

I was like, damn, we should have done that more. We should have realized that earlier, right? The amount of work to put that together once a week is way less. Instead of having five speakers talk for 10 to 15 minutes each, I had one speaker talk for an hour, kind of like the way people do teaching classes. So I could have one speaker do an in-depth speech instead of five people doing less deep speeches. The speakers weren't asking for any money, so our costs were significantly lower, and we got more money because of the government. So that was something I learned: how can you do less and earn more?

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:44]:

Yeah, it's a great point. What would you say, if somebody wants to get better at networking, what's the difference between somebody who just knows a lot of people and somebody who can actually turn those relationships into opportunities?

Sean Weisbrot [00:16:52]:

I think one of the most important things that people don't think about is that because I was the founder of this thing, everybody wanted to know me. I never had to go to an event to find opportunities. People came to me bringing me opportunities. I had to decide who I wanted to meet and who I didn't want to meet because everyone wanted to meet me. So if you want to be good at networking, don't be the person who needs something. Be the person that people need. If you start something and you're good enough at it, people will come to you. And at that point, you decide what opportunities you want to take and which ones you don't.

Sean Weisbrot [00:17:34]:

I'd rather give that advice than something else, just because that is far more valuable than anything else. That's one of the reasons why I started the podcast. I realized I can talk to people that would never give me the time of day otherwise. I've been doing this for 6 years, and the people I interview are doing 5, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100, $200 million a year in revenue. They're managing billions of dollars in investor money. Who the hell am I? I haven't done any of that. Sure, yeah, I had a business that was crazy successful. Sure, I've done some angel investing and people bug me all the time to invest in them, but I've also had software companies and done other things.

Sean Weisbrot [00:18:11]:

But those people have consistently done these things, right? Some of these people have been running these businesses for 20, 30 years. They might not look at themselves the same way someone like myself would. Like, you're older, you're more experienced, you've made a hell of a lot more money. So surely you have something I can learn, right? Some of them are younger than me, some of them are a few years older than me. I just interviewed a guy recently who is based in Eastern Europe and he runs a private equity firm. Half the money that goes into any company he acquires is his and his own partner's money. The other 50% comes from other investors. And he's 36. He's got a kid, looking to have another kid or two, and he's thinking about retiring because he's made so much money that he doesn't even have to care anymore.

Sean Weisbrot [00:19:02]:

The people that I talk to have these great lives. They're well-traveled. They're well-versed in the world. They like what they do. They have good relationships with their employees, good relationships with their families. And I am privileged enough to have their time, where I essentially get to ask them anything I want and I get to learn from these people. I don't even have to pay them for their time and their energy. They're coming to me because they want me to interview them, and I get to decide if I interview them or not.

Sean Weisbrot [00:19:28]:

I'm literally picking my mentors because some of them I have friendships with after the interview. I've just launched a software and I went to 10 of them, and they all got on and did a 30- to 60-minute session with me, where I was showing them a demo of the software and getting their advice because they are running software businesses doing 5, 10, 15, 20 million a year. They are where I want to be with the software. I never made money like that from a software. I made money from consulting. So even though I know how to build a software, I don't know how to commercialize it like they've learned. So I value their advice significantly, and I only got their time because I did an interview with them and I started to build that relationship.

Sean Weisbrot [00:20:08]:

For me, being the founder of something, being someone who's interesting, being someone who's well-traveled, right? I speak four languages. I've been to 60 countries. I've had several startups. I've invested in a number of startups. Not everything is successful, so don't get the idea that I'm insanely successful because I've had a lot of failure in my life as well. But the most important thing I've learned is by being someone who's created something, you instantly become a target of interest for other people. Because the vast majority of people in your life will never do something. They'll never do something. They'll never be worth something. They'll never do something that puts them outside of their comfort zone.

Sean Weisbrot [00:20:44]:

Just the fact that I say I lived in China, everyone's like, "Holy crap." They want to interview me because I lived in China, or because I was in Vietnam, or because I live in Portugal, or because I did this or because of that. Just racking up life experience because you want it to is enough. It's interesting. It makes you more exciting to people. But founding something is the thing that gets people over the edge and makes them want to know you. And that's how you network: by being the person people want to know.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:13]:

Yeah. Imagine the alternative of if you were building a product and you just DM the 8- or 9-figure founder on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, I'm building a product. Can I show it to you?" It's a lot harder to get somebody to pay attention to that than if you were able to say, "Hey, I'd love to interview you and tell your story." Now you get to know them. Now you have a relationship later on. Now when you say, "Hey, I just wanted to show you this thing I've been working on. I think it might be helpful to you." Now you've got a connection to them that they are willing to talk with you.

Sean Weisbrot [00:21:45]:

Exactly. In all honesty, one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast with you is because I think your audience is a potential user base of mine, and then maybe there's a way for us to collaborate. This is an opportunity for me to show you who I am and see if there's interest on your side, right? I give value to your audience, and you learn about me and you're like, "Oh, actually this guy's pretty cool. I'd like to know him more. Let me learn about his product."

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:07]:

You built a system to be able to post three times a day using voice notes. And that's what became this thing called SparkVox, right? So can you tell us about what it is and what is the problem that you're solving there?

Sean Weisbrot [00:22:20]:

So it's actually become more complicated and more relevant. Let me explain. I spent months trying to figure out how to be more relevant on LinkedIn. While reading other people's content to get a sense of what people want to read about, I saw that it doesn't matter who they are or what they're talking about, they all sound like ChatGPT wrote their articles. Everyone sounds exactly the same. There is no voice anymore.

Sean Weisbrot [00:22:49]:

At the same time, I realized that I still needed to create more content. While I am never short of ideas for creating content, I also struggle to have the time to sit down and actually write something because I'm busy. I'm vibe coding, right? So I spend a lot of my time in the code and actually planning features and building and doing marketing and a bunch of stuff. So I don't have time to write content, but I know that the content is really important.

Sean Weisbrot [00:23:13]:

I figured if I could build something that would make it easier for me to create content, then I should build it, as long as it doesn't take away my voice. So I built a bot. It took me about 2 hours and it was based on Telegram. Essentially, I was hijacking Telegram's native voice note feature and embedding it in my system where I transcribe it and turn it into a LinkedIn post. The idea was I want to automate this, right? So literally a voice note, 10 seconds later I have a post generated. I click the approve button, it gets published to LinkedIn. That's what I wanted, something automated, and it was working really well. So after a few days, I said, "This is a business."

Sean Weisbrot [00:23:52]:

I started to rebuild it from scratch as a scalable architecture that other people could use. And I did a bunch of demos and I realized that there was a lukewarm response. I said, "Okay, obviously I'm doing something wrong here. What is that?" And I realized that what I needed to be doing was focusing on people that are podcast hosts and podcast guests, people that are experts, people that are trainers, that are salespeople, that are speakers, people that have a reason to take something and repurpose it into a bunch of pieces of content.

Sean Weisbrot [00:24:22]:

Because if I spend 3 seconds and I leave a voice note and 10 seconds later I have a post, that's great. But if I had a 20-minute transcript that turned into 20 posts, well, now I'm repurposing something at scale, right? So I rebuilt it into something that actually focuses on a transcript and turns it into a bunch of content. That's gotten a far better response so far. And that's the story of why I built it.

Sean Weisbrot [00:24:45]:

Because if you think about it from the point of view of a podcast host like myself, I spend about 2 hours doing an intro and a recording and editing, reviewing, all of that stuff. I don't do the editing. I have a person that does it for me, and I've actually automated 99% of the podcast operations just so that I could focus on building a new business. What I found was I have a problem of marketing distribution, right? I can create content for the podcast all the time, but if I'm not taking that content and sharing it with people in a way that gets them to start to know me and want to actually become a podcast watcher, then what the hell am I making the content for besides building relationships with these founders?

Sean Weisbrot [00:25:26]:

So I realized if I have this problem, chances are of the millions of other podcast hosts and podcast guests, there's got to be at least 5 or 10 thousand willing to pay for a solution like this. So after doing two more demos and getting a very bright signal from them that that was the right path to go in, I rebuilt it into that new feature set.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:44]:

Got it. I'm really big on finding the right ways to leverage AI. But at the same time, while I use the thing all day, and while I think there's so much value in it, I really hate to see all the slap posts on LinkedIn and X and wherever it is that it's just so clearly ChatGPT or Claude that wrote the thing. It's like, why would I ever want to read this? What's your thoughts on the right way and wrong way to use AI?

Sean Weisbrot [00:26:09]:

Well, I'll answer that second, because first I want to respond to what you just said, which I forgot to mention, which is the most important reason why what I built is so important for me and other people. And that is, if you use other tools, which there are a number of them out there, they create generic crap. It was really important to me that I make something that doesn't do that. What I've done is the transcript is the foundation of a voice profile. Literally, when the software is doing the transcription, it starts to build up a profile of who you are, what you like, what you don't like. It makes assumptions about you and it inserts that information into the prompt that creates the posts. The goal is it gets closer and closer to writing in your own voice the more you feed it transcripts.

Sean Weisbrot [00:27:01]:

So not only do I have a very strict prompt for Claude so that it avoids all of the AI-isms that make it look like crap, but then tying it into knowing who you are, what is your role, what are your goals, who is your audience, are you the host, are you the guest, are you writing on behalf of the podcast brand itself, right? And then feeding it alongside the transcript. Claude has so much information. It knows exactly who you are, what you want, why you want it, and what the content is of the transcript. So it's not going to sound like an AI. It's going to sound like you. And the more you use it, the more it's going to sound like you over time. No one else in the market is touching this voice profile. No one is even thinking about using AI for this purpose. And that's where I win.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:51]:

Yeah. That's a great strategy. I would always say to people that asking ChatGPT or Claude to do something is like the equivalent of walking up to a random stranger on the sidewalk and saying, "Hey, go do this thing for me." If they have no idea who you are, they have no idea that you're asking them to do that for your business. At least if they were an employee, still if you gave them no other context, they at least know, okay, this person has hired me. I generally have this role and they have this business. But with AI, it has zero context about you. People just tend to not give the information that they really should in order to get it to work the right way.

Bryan McAnulty [00:28:30]:

But it can be very tedious if you had to really come up with, well, what are all the important things that someone would really have to know if they were going to do this, then do this in my voice, and know all the nuances and the things that are important to me. That's where tools like what you're building can really assist with that.

Sean Weisbrot [00:28:50]:

Exactly. And what I like about it is it's not a chatbot, right? It's a get-something-done bot. So you don't even have an opportunity to talk with it. You literally just give it the transcript, and then it does it, and then it gives you the output, and you just publish it. Each time you start a project, it's a new context window, but it will never get anywhere near close to the end of that window. So it will never hallucinate because you're never touching that window.

Sean Weisbrot [00:29:16]:

But then the next time you open a context window, again, this is all hidden behind the scenes right inside of the project settings. So when you do the second transcript, the third transcript, or the fourth transcript, it continues to update the voice profile. It continues to send this new version of the voice profile to the prompt to create this content alongside the transcript. As you feed it new transcripts, it changes slowly over time and gets more confident about who you are, but it'll never be 100% confident because you are always changing. Sometimes your needs don't change, but sometimes you change as you go through life. So it's designed to stick with you as you do it. And that's a way that people are never going to want to get rid of it because nobody else can do that for them. That's where the value is in working with AI.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:03]:

Yeah, I agree. And there's so many more opportunities there of how people can use AI as a tool and not as a chatbot. I think it's insane. We're just only scratching the surface of, even if the models didn't get better from today, there's so much more that we could be doing with them. For myself, I keep surprising myself of how much I'm able to get from them currently. I remember at the end of last year, I was using like 500 million tokens a month. Then earlier this year, it was like a billion tokens a month. Now it's like 3 billion something. Yesterday I used like 250 million in my coding agent. If you told me that a year ago, I would say, wow, are you crazy? How can a model even be good enough that it's possible to get that much value out of it? But here we are, and it keeps going.

Sean Weisbrot [00:30:59]:

I don't know exactly how many tokens I'm using a day, but it's easily a few million.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:05]:

Yeah. No, I'm sure. So I want to get into a kind of quick lightning round here. Looking for quick takes, like 10-second answers for these next few questions. Why do some founders get constant inbound opportunities while others stay invisible?

Sean Weisbrot [00:31:20]:

Because the ones that are getting inbound, it's probably because they have content. They've built authority somewhere, and people trust them, and then they want to know more about them. The people that don't get that, people just don't know that they're there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:34]:

What's one thing that you learned from interviewing 300 plus successful founders that surprised you?

Sean Weisbrot [00:31:40]:

I wasn't surprised by it. It's just they're all very similar in how they want to build something that serves people. They built something usually to solve a problem first for themselves, and then they found other people that had the same problem, and then they were able to do it better than other people. And they love being able to help people. The money is second, and they make so much that they can just do whatever they want with their life, and they're happy about that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:08]:

Yeah. It's so interesting to see at the highest level where the money is always a byproduct. It's not the thing or the end goal for the majority of, I think, the most successful entrepreneurs. But yeah. So what's one relationship-building habit that you would say has helped you grow the business the most?

Sean Weisbrot [00:32:32]:

I have an incredible memory. I have a great memory for names and faces and details, which I learned from being in my dad's dental office as a kid. I was around thousands of people over years and years and years of just hanging out there, and I got to know their stories. Either I already had that skill or I learned that skill innately. I don't know how to call it. But I think just caring about people and caring about their details, and remembering those details, and then following up with them and asking them.

Sean Weisbrot [00:33:05]:

I have friends that I remember their birthday. I keep their birthday on my calendar, and on their birthday I call them and they're shocked that I'm one of the few people that remembers their birthday. I'm like, "Look, I just have it on the calendar, and I have it on the calendar because you're important to me, and so it's important for me to reach out to you and remain a friend with you, even if we only talk once every few months, whatever it is." Just giving a second of thought about other people goes a long way.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:36]:

Yeah. I think that's great advice, and I think not enough people are doing that. So on this show, I'd like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or kind of to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Sean Weisbrot [00:33:45]:

If you knew that you didn't have much time left in your life, would you look back and regret your decisions, or would you be okay with them? And if so, how would you change your life right now to make sure you don't regret it later on?

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:10]:

It's a great thing to think about. All right, Sean, it was so great talking with you here today. Before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Sean Weisbrot [00:34:16]:

Well, I have LinkedIn. I'm sure you'll have the note for that. I have a YouTube channel at Sean Weisbrot. The podcast is called We Live to Build. And if you're looking to figure out how to increase your exposure on LinkedIn, you can check out my tool, SparkVox.io.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:29]:

Awesome. Thanks, Sean.

Sean Weisbrot [00:34:35]:

Thank you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:35]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.