From Homeless to Six Figures in Eight Months

Ash Lonare: Imagine transforming your life in just eight months. From stacking lumber in the freezing cold to building a six figures business, Jarek Robbins shares his incredible journey. Did you know that 96% of businesses never scale beyond their founders? And today we are going to discover how Jarek defines the odds, leveraging partnerships, and relentless drive to succeed. Stay tuned as we dive into the strategies that took him from humble beginnings to global impact. This is a story of resilience, transformation, and the power of failing. Forward. Hello, Jarek. How are you doing today?

Jarek Robbins: Good, how are you?

Ash Lonare: I'm good, thank you. Welcome to the Founders podcast.

Jarek Robbins: Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. And for those of you listening, thank you for giving us a moment of your time. We're excited to share some good stuff with you.

Ash Lonare: Indeed. Indeed. Before we start, Jarek, then do you have a favorite quote, something that motivates you, inspires you, you would like to share with our audience? Gosh.

Jarek Robbins: Um, I mean, one I read today that just kind of struck a chord is death will find all of us on an ordinary day, most often when we didn't plan for it. And it reminded me of the concept of, you know, squeeze as much memories as you possibly can with the people you love, every opportunity you have. Um, I had a few relatives pass away recently, and so it's been a rising topic in my nervous system. But it's just a reminder of, like, no one's going to brag about how cool your car was or how big your house was or how fast your plane flew. Um, but they all will have memories of a time you helped them when they needed it, a time you listened when they needed to share. Um, a friend of mine said, I think he was his great grandpa. He flew small village, went to his funeral, and he expected like, you know, a couple family members, maybe extended family. And when he got there, it was like hundreds and hundreds of people that had come hundreds or thousands of miles to pay their respects to this person. And they all had a story. His neighbor had a story of they were having, uh, a wedding and he rerouted and they, they went dry on their well and he rerouted his water pipe down to their property over the weekend and never said anything or asked anything and made sure their wedding had, you know, for all the guests and family visiting.

Ash Lonare: Wow.

Jarek Robbins: And like, story after story after story was some way that this gentleman had clearly gone out of his way. Not boastfully, not trying to prove anything to anyone. He just kept showing up in ways that in my mind, created memories Moments where he showed up for others when they really needed it. And hundreds of people showed up with those memories. And it's like, what a person, What a person. I mean, he rippled into hundreds of people's lives just by being a good human. And finding a way to show up when it was needed is beautiful indeed.

Ash Lonare: Indeed. And, and that reminds me of like I was very close with my grandfather. Fortunately, when I was a very small kid, you know, when you just start walking. He used to live with, with, uh, with me, my dad, my mom, in the same city. Because he used to work for central government at that time. He was there for, for some years. So I had a lot of memories with him. Like, you know, early childhood when he was about to, you know, he was very old, he was in, in a hospital. Fortunately, for some reason I live 10,000 miles away from where he lives. Right. I flew there and I was there in the hospital when he took his last breath.

Jarek Robbins: Mhm.

Ash Lonare: And in our culture it is considered that when you're so. In our culture, we burn the bodies instead of burying them. Right. So it is considered that the first son of a man is responsible to give the light. Ye. And my grandfather already has two sons. Right. And they're very well, very close to them. They were always living. But when it came to that moment, my uncle said to me that the grandfather actually said to me once that he would love to have some light from you.

Jarek Robbins: So that's beautiful.

Ash Lonare: Yeah.

Jarek Robbins: What a special honor that is.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, yeah. And when I felt that, you know, it was so good that I was there, you know, so. Yeah, I uh, recognize it. Just give me one second. Thank you. We have so much things going on in our life. Right. Sorry about that. Didn't want it to make it more emotional, but. Yeah, no, so let's.

Jarek Robbins: There's a million things going on. But the quote stopped me in my tracks because it's true. Indeed, on a day we're not expecting it and not planning for it, it'll find us. And so I hope everyone squeezes the memories you can with every time and every opportunity available.

Ash Lonare: Indeed. Great. So Jarek, with our emotional burst started today, Right. Imagine you are in a room of. Full of founders, early stage builders. Right. You walk into the. And you have the stage, you have the light. What do you would tell them about your story? That they will stick with us for the rest of the hour?

Jarek Robbins: Yeah, I mean I would start and I, I don't normally share my whole story, you know, but the interesting part, for someone who's a Founder was kind of my startup story. I was. Well, I did a handful of things. First, I moved to Canada and took a job stacking lumber for a summer just to learn hard work. And I worked with a whole bunch of guys. We'd be up at, God, 4:30 in the morning, I'd go to the gym and work out, then get picked up on the side of the highway by a group of workers, and we'd stack lumber all day. And I met a guy there who was 80, God, 84, 85. And he was still stacking lumber. And he'd stacked lumber since he was 20. And I asked him why did he do it? And he said, my culture. The oldest boy is financially responsible for the family. And so When I turned 20, my father had passed and I was the oldest boy, and I needed to find something I could do and that created dependable income to take care of my family. And this is the best I could do at the time. And so for 60 years, he'd been stacking lumber, and they called him Uncle Dubai. Cause he'd stack lumber in Dubai in the heat, stack lumber in Canada in the cold. Like, this guy's traveled the world with this drop. But this dude royally kicked my butt because I'd never stacked wood before. And so when someone has 60 years experience and someone's brand new, even though I'm younger, faster, stronger, and I think I'm going to do better, oh, this dude roasted me because he had technique and core muscle strength that I didn't have. And the reason I share that with people is two things. One, are you willing to take on a task outside of your normal scope to figure out how to gain strengths that you might not have right now?

Ash Lonare: Just.

Jarek Robbins: Just the concept. Because what do I need to know how to stack wood for? You know, halfway through it, I was pissed at myself. I'm, um, like, am I stupid? I should have taken an internship. Like, I would have learned so much more. But I learned a lot from a guy who took responsibility for the ones he loved, who found something he could do, who pushed himself to stick with it over long periods of time. Because I don't know about you, but I've started a project that halfway through, I've been like, I don't want to do this anymore. And he chose to keep going for 60 years. That's not a short period of time. Like, that's a significant amount of time. And he did it honorably, he did it proudly. And he was very proud of what he did because it was the best he could do at the time. And he stuck with it for a long period of time. And so my thought is, could you find something ideally that you like? That'd be a perfect scenario. But do you find something you like that you're willing to go long term on? And so I stacked lumber with this guy for a few months, took a trip around the world on Semester at Sea. It's a student voyage. Stopped in a bunch of countries and saw how the world was. Went back and lived in a village in Uganda teaching organic farming. I've always liked helping people. So out in the villages, uh, you know, very rural, so no running water and electricity, no toilets. Very rural living. But could I help? Could I find some way to add value? When I was younger, my dad said, if you want to start any relationship, show up and, uh, find a way to add value. And if you want to be important in the relationship, find a way to add more value than anyone else is willing to add. And the key word there is willing, not capable of adding, because lots of us are capable of adding an obscene amount of value to each other. But you're adding more value than anyone is willing to and willing not. Okay, fine, I'll do it. Willpower. I'm going to will myself to continuously add more value to you than anyone else in your life. And I will build a relationship with you that will last a lifetime. Because you'll know that when you need it, that old man will pipe water to your family. He'll walk miles to bring you something you need. They'll go out of their way continuously to serve you and to, uh, care for you, because they consider you part of that inner circle, that part of those special ones that they're willing to take care of. The other part to consider is, how big is your circle? For some of us, we struggle to take care of ourselves. For others, they take care of them and their family. For some, you, your family and parts of your community. For others, the community and the city, the city, the state, uh, there's some people who take it upon themselves to try to take care of the world in some way, which seems, you know, how do you take care of the world? Like, is it even our problem? Why do we care? Who cares? Like, but. But for some people, they take the feet and they're like, nah, I don't know that person. I don't know what they're going through. But they're human. Why not help them if we can? And they find a way to get through and make a difference to them and so with that in mind, anywhere we've ever traveled, one of my favorite things to do is just ask if there was a need right now and where we are, what is the need, and is there anything we could possibly do to help with it? And so we've. My favorite. We were in, Gosh, I don't remember what city we were in. Probably Delhi. Um, and I met a friend on the Internet and he was like, oh, I'd love to take you to lunch. And I was like, can I take you to do something different? He's like, sure. What? I was like, why don't we go to a corner market and, uh, we're going to buy everything we can afford off the shelf. We're going to pack it in little bags and then drive around and just hand it out to people. And he looked at me, he's like, you are a good man. You have a good heart. And I was like, I think it'll be fun. I genuinely find fun in trying to help people and surprising people when they don't expect it. And so we did, and we had a ton of fun. It was a little dangerous. We had a few parts where we, we created too big of a crowd that we couldn't control.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, yeah, it happens. Yep.

Jarek Robbins: So that was our mistake. We didn't plan that, that well, but we quickly moved to another location and, and did our fun and, and had a ton of fun. But it came back to, when I enter any place, a home, a city, anywhere that's welcoming me to be in there, in their presence, is there some value that I could add that that's available? Is there some need that I could help fill while I'm there? And it's allowed me the opportunity to create a global community, a network of people all over the world who know if I'm involved, I'll always be looking for something that I can do to help. And that's very different. There was a guy in Silicon Valley that wrote a book, Give and Take, Adam Grant, I think it was. And he, he interviewed a bunch of the most successful people and all people of all different levels. And what he found was there was givers, takers, and traders. And in the beginning, the takers got ahead because they took everything they could, and they quickly excelled. M the traders kind of stuck in the middle, but the givers were behind in the beginning, which sucked because they were the good hearts. Like, they're helping everybody, but people are just taking. But m over long periods of time. Give it 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. He found the givers made it to the very, very top. The traders eventually eliminated the takers and pushed them very far down. The traders landed in the middle, the takers on the bottom, and the givers landed up on top. And it was a very unique study. It's worth reading the book just to see the dynamic of how it happened. Oftentimes people will hear this and think of it as a strategy of calculation. How much do I have to give? Like, uh, just enough to trigger me going to the top. No more. That's not it. That doesn't work. That's still training. Um, but it's the thought of find something you enjoy giving. And so I ask it a different way. When men age, usually we're trying to figure out who we are until we're 40, 45, 50. Somewhere around that stage we usually get lost trying to find ourselves and then at some point have clarity around something that we believe is our gift to offer. Life, uh, friends, family, community, just life in general. And when we find that gift, we often feel that nothing else is worth doing. We're not interested in anything else. We, we. If you get invited to a party and they're talking about a bunch of other stuff that has nothing to do with the gift, you, you might be cordial, you might, but there's nothing in your nervous system that's excited to talk about that. But the moment they bring up the thing that you feel is your gift, my God, you, you'd see a guy go from shut down to talking for days. He never shut up because he, he's just sharing the gift and he's so excited. And one of the coolest things is finding a spouse that actually enjoys receiving your. There's nothing worse than, you know, the 80 something year old couple where he starts to share his gift and she goes, God, this again. Oh, uh, here he goes and walks out of the room. But it's beautiful when you see an older man share whatever his gift is. His time, his thought, his effort is caring, his love is listening, whatever. And you see a little coup come out of someone next to him. And she goes, I love it. I love this part. I love this part of the show. I love it when he does this. That's so special. But anyways, fast forward. So living in a village, finding a way to give and add some value. Came back, finished school, you know, went into sales as I studied psychology and decided sales clearly was the solution.

Ash Lonare: Most of us do that.

Jarek Robbins: Yeah, yeah, of course, sales, uh, you know, that's going to fix it all. Uh, but, but honestly, it was one of the best lessons I ever learned. It was door to door, office to office, B2B sales for my father's company. And so every three months I moved around the country to go pre sell his event. And it was hard. I mean, we had to cold door knock office to office to office and get kicked out of plenty of places and told no a million times and have people ridicule us in the meeting and tease us and tell us it's ridiculous and you know, enough bought tickets every time that we had a job. But it was tough. I think that's probably one of the best first jobs you could ever take. Only because it's giving you a skillset you're gonna need as a founder, which is the ability to continually present yourself until you either get the clients or get the money or get the fundraiser, whatever. You know, get the team, convince the team to come and work with you. All of those are the same process in a different format. So went through that for a couple years. I was totally average. Uh, moved back to San Diego. I just. Fun story for founders. I think they enjoy these silly ones. I text four friends when I got on the plane and said, hey, does anyone know if there's a room for rent somewhere in San Diego? Plane took off from Tampa. So many hours later we landed in San Diego 9pm at night on a Thursday. One friend text back and said, yeah, we have a room coming up available this weekend. I 9pm on the tarmac on, uh, my phone text back, can I come see it? She said, sure. When? I said, how about now?

Ash Lonare: No.

Jarek Robbins: I picked up a rental car, threw my bags in the back, drove up the hill, pulled up to the house at 9:40, I guess, maybe 10 o'. Clock. And she came out in her pajamas and was like, hey, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm doing great. How are you? Just got in from Tampa. She's like, okay, like, life good, you're not like in trouble? And I'm like, no, no, no. Plane just landed. And she's like, well, you know, she walks me in the house and she shows me the front den and she goes, well, you know, this one's open right now. It's just a front den with a curtain and a wood floor. Nothing in the room. And she's like, but that room back there will be open this weekend. We have a grad student who's gonna move out. She's like, you know, that might be a good fit. And I was like, how much would the front, Den, be. She's like, $500 a month. I was like, cool, I'll take it. And she's like, okay, awesome. Uh, she goes, when do you want to move in? I said, I'll go get my bag. And I walked back out to the car, grabbed my suitcases, dragged them in. There was a mattress of someone who was moving in or out against the fireplace on the other side of the living room. And I was like, is anyone using that tonight? No. I'm like, can I borrow it? She's like, I guess. So I dragged it across, threw it on the ground, emptied my suitcases, stuffed a, uh, hoodie full of clothes and made a pillow, and then crawled under my clothes for a blanket for the night. Uh, the funniest part was in one of the other roommates was a researcher at Children's Hospital. And so in the morning, I heard high heels clicking down the hallway towards the front door. I heard click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Heard click, click, click. M. And I heard my friend became a good friend of mine, Valerie. She was like, okay. And just walked out the front door and locked it. And so that's where I launched my business from that front end, my original coaching business. Uh, it was the bed, an Ikea closet, a desk, launched a little website. If you use the Wayback Machine, you can go look at my website. It was horrific. Cloud design didn't exist back then, so it was me trying to drag and drop images to say something inspirational. But that website, as ugly and ridiculous as it is, plus Twitter at the time, got me my very first coaching client, which was a lawyer from a law office in London who was looking specifically for assistance on time management and productivity.

Ash Lonare: Wow.

Jarek Robbins: I signed him up. There's a hilarious story. I'll skip it just for now, time's sake. But signed him up. We worked together for three months. He got phenomenal results. He passed me on to other peers and clients that he knew, which grew. You know, a couple clients at a time. I was going. And then what really caused the business to grow was partnership. And a friend later taught me a formula for partnership that I wasn't aware of. In the beginning. The formula was, you need a world class product or service. Can't be average, has to be world class. You need someone who, someone who has a relationship with the audience you're going to be reaching into, know, like and trust. And then third, the third piece is you need reach. So you need a platform that has reach specifically into the audience you're trying to get to. And when you combine those three, you get lift very quickly. And so I found a partner who had a list of 10,000 small business owners in Los Angeles county that she had been working with. Uh, she had a relationship with that specific list of people because she had been, you know, adding value and teaching classes and doing all this stuff. And then her and I together co created a product that we thought would really hit at the time. And in partnership we launched it. Little half day event in the evening. We did it and I went from signing up one or two clients a month to 20 clients per meeting. And I in coaching we can usually take on 20, 30 clients, that kind of stuff. So I went from you know, four clients, five clients, 10 clients, to all of a sudden 42 clients in a couple meetings. And I was 23, 24 years old. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to work. I just went from working three jobs to I have my own business. It has 100, you know, six figures in revenue. This is amazing. And it was probably an eight month period of time and all sprouted because of partnership.

Ash Lonare: M very, very interesting. And you had all these crux and full of inspirational moments in your life. For example, getting the text when you landed at the airport, getting yourself in a uh, in a room where there was literally nothing, even the bed was borrowed. And getting yourself from that calling you as a homeless to a six figure business within eight months of period of time. Which is fabulous, right?

Jarek Robbins: Here's what's fun. If you fast forward there was the lesson that's hidden in there is be willing to drop your ego, be willing to let go of how you think things should be and be willing to go after what it is you really want. And you know, there were stories in there when the gentleman signed up on the credit card form where I called my mom and asked her how do you get money off a credit card? And she thought I was in trouble. She goes, are you okay honey? And I was like, no, not my credit card, someone else's. She's like, honey, that's illegal. I'm like no. He signed a form that said I can take the money. How do I get it off the form? She's like, well honey, you need a merchant account. I'm like, what the hell's a merchant account? I've never done business before. And so repetitively willing to fail forward through things that you do do not know how to do at the time, which now seems ridiculously silly, especially with stripe and all these companies, they made it so easy like, you. You used to have to, like, fill out a stack of forms to get a merchant account. Now you enter some stuff online and hit go. And it turns on, but it, you know, failing forward repetitively. Fast forward, same situation. Gosh, 26 years later. So a different part of the journey. Not the beginning, but I remember a few years ago, I started studying private equity, and I got really fascinated. I read the private equity playbook. I'm like, well, this is fascina. I like how they're rolling up and doing all this stuff. Then I took a course at Wharton, uh, Online of Private equity. And I was like, okay, I want to speak the language. I want to know how this works. I want to get into this. And then I did the research. And, you know, like any other industry, the majority of funds kind of struggle, but the ones at the very, very top, Excel. I was like, how do you get a piece of those? And everyone laughed at me. And I wrote it down. 22 separate people, including my father and my brother and a bunch of partners, all laughed at me. When I made the next statement. I said, I want to own a piece of this thing. And there, uh, they all. My dad told me to my face, lovingly, but truthfully, you don't have enough money to say something like that. Like, okay, noted. Thank you. I'm not going to listen to that. I'm going to keep forging through Fast Forward. He had a partnership going on with a gentleman in Texas. At the time, I think they had 4 billion under management. Now they have 11 billion under management. But. But they were doing a partnership and about to launch a book together and all this stuff. And I again, added value. So I was like, how could I add value? I don't think they need performance coaching. That's not valuable here. It is, but it's not the thing. So what could I do? And it turns out in my network, I had two people that I had worked, two women that I worked with who were consultants and worked in the private equity space and had done extraordinarily well, and they had connections at a very high level on a certain part of the industry. And I was like, well, wait a minute. They know how to access institutional capital. The sovereign wealth funds, the pension funds, the big money. I wonder if this current partnership has current access to institutional capital. And I asked, I said, do you guys have that dialed in? Like pension funds and sovereign wealth, all that? Like, is that already ironed out? And they said, no, actually, it's not. We have a few, but not a bunch. And I was like, is that interesting to you guys? And they're like, that is very interesting to us. Uh, if you think you could possibly help in some way. I said, I don't know. I have a relationship with some people that I've helped tremendously in their business. Let me see if there's any alignment. So I went and asked the girls. I was like, hey, do you have any interest in possibly working with someone like this? And they said, yeah, we'd be interested in that. I said, cool, let me set a meeting. And so I walked up. The first time I met the guy in person, I had invested with him. Um, you have to be a qualified purchaser. So it's million dollar minimum investment. So I had invested with the fund itself, but I had never met Christopher, the guy who built the fund. Um, and we flew to Houston to go to their annual meeting. And I had a chance to meet him. And he walked up and he was like, well, thank you for investing in the fund. It's been great having you, and we're thrilled you're here. Thank you for coming. And I was standing next to, I think it was two friends who also worked for him. And I looked him straight in the face the moment I had the opportunity, and I had guts. And I said, christopher, I'd love to own a piece of this one day. And my two friends laughed at me that I was joking. They're like, that's hilarious. And he looked at me and he kind of saw the seriousness in my face, but also laughed a bit. And he said, what's that phrase? They say maybe someday, and today's not the day, but I'm through. What, you're here, and, um, I'm glad to meet you. And we shook hands, and he walked away. And I looked at my wife and said, that's the best you can do? Have enough guts to walk straight up to the guy and just ask him, I'd love to own a piece of this someday and let him tell you no and be willing to ask again. And I was just proud of myself for failing forward again. I got laughed at by 22 separate people, including my dad and brother. I had the guts to walk straight up to the guy and shake his hand and tell him, I'd love to own a piece someday. And he said, maybe someday, not today. And it was really interesting because the next day I got a call from our, uh, family office manager, and he said, I don't know what you said to Christopher, but he told me I could let you buy into the fund if you want.

Ash Lonare: Okay.

Jarek Robbins: And, uh, my mouth dropped. I didn't know what to say. I said, thank you. Tell him thank you.

Ash Lonare: Wow. Wow.

Jarek Robbins: I felt like I failed forward and somehow I accidentally succeeded in this. And I hung up the phone. I walked over to my wife and I was like, you never going to believe what just happened. He said we could buy into the fund. And she was like, I'm so proud of you. Like, having someone who has your back is another key to long term success. Because she was cheering for me even when we failed the night before. She goes, you know what? I'm proud you had the guts to ask. I'm proud you walked in there. I'm proud you did it. Straightforward. I'm so proud of you. Even if it didn't work, it doesn't matter. I'm proud that you tried. Uh, someone that gives you space to fail forward and loves you through it. That's the real gift. Fast forward. He said, we could. All of a sudden, the other sweet part was I didn't have an extra million dollars cash setting aside in this very moment. So she looked at me and says, okay, cool. What do we do? Do we sell the house or what do you. No, no, no, no, no. You'd never do that. You don't, you don't risk your personal livelihood for an investment. That's not smart at all. I said, but, but let me, let me get creative. Let me figure out how to put the money together. Which we did. But that thought, being willing to fail forward, it was the same failing forward in the beginning as it was most recently. It was the same guts to be laughed at and told no. It was the same willingness to try without guarantee of reward. And one thing that gives you superpowers is having a spouse or someone that'll love you through the failures and still champion and cheer for you even when you go face first into a wall.

Ash Lonare: Definitely. And that's, that's one of the blessings you could receive from whatever. You know, power or God. If you have faith and believe. Right. That if you have a partner who believes in you, that is removing half the hurdles of your life.

Jarek Robbins: Yeah.

Ash Lonare: No matter how many times you fell down, no matter how many times you. So I recently had a big setback in my life. I got laid off because of a big in house team transformation. So, you know, when a new CEO or CTO joins our organization. I was working for an organization with 50,000 employees. Right. And they have gone through a big transformation. So I got, actually I got into argument with my director that why did you fire a lot of people who were working under me and didn't let me know? And that actually didn't go well because this person was like, well, it doesn't hurt you, but it does hurts me because that these people look after me. They look up to me and say, uh, I am their shield. I'm taking care of them. And now somebody else is reaching out to them and saying, oh, your service is not required anymore. So I got into a heating discussion and then they finally decided to let me go, which was okay, because you know, what else you could do with that kind of situation. But the reason I'm, uh, sharing this story is I shared this with my partner and she said, ash, don't worry about it. No matter what will happen, we will fight it together. M and that moment was just enough for me. Even though the market is terrible right now. You see Amazon firing 15,000 people. Microsoft fired 21,000. Google, uh, fired 11,000 people. Right? There's lots of, you know, headcount reductions that are going on. But having someone believing in you make a big difference. And that moment I decided, okay, I'm not going to, like, sit down and feel sad about it because my whole life was upside down. What I'm going to do is I'm looking to my finances, what do I have, how much padding I have available. And until that instance come, I would keep fighting. And that's what I did for six long months. I had literally nowhere. And in London, you can imagine everything is super expensive. I mean, you must be aware of it. Like, uh, you lived in New York and San Francisco and all these kind of places, right? Even if you go and buy a Starbucks, there's six, £6.25. It's horrible. But I think it's, it's the mindset which carries you on. And that is where I want to go with my next question. Jared. 96% of business actually never scale past the owner. And the reason I'm saying that is because once the owner says, okay, this is my limit, that's where the business stops, right? The identity shifts requires the owner or the businessman or the founder to shift the perception of building the revenue into the next year. For example, let's say they're doing hundred thousand pounds a year and the next year is half a million, right? And then next year is million, and then until a hundred. Why do you think is that? Why 96% of business never actually scale past the owners.

Jarek Robbins: So there's something interesting about this. And they talk about it In Silicon Valley, which is which I've had clients do this. I've helped multiple clients go out and do their raises, or they've hired me directly after their raises. And some have raised, raised, you know, 50 million, 160 million. One of them raised 250 million from the top VCs. And they were bringing some really cool products and businesses to life. I helped one of them in Austin scale from 16 team members to 160 team members in six months, which was quite an adventure. Um, and then for one of them, I remember he shared something that was insightful, even though it was heartbreaking in his specific experience, which was the person who starts the company oftentimes is not the same person that keeps the company going long term because the ingenuity, creativity, the guts, the energy, the ability to have vision when no one can see what you're dreaming of, that's a very specific set of traits that gets the rocket ship off the ground. But those traits will often derail and destroy the company if they continually innovate too much instead of finding what works, refining and allowing it to move forward. And so the hard part is the version of you that started it has to die. For the version of you that's going to maintain and grow it and optimize it, it's a different version of you. Now, some people are able to make that transition from them in themselves, some people aren't. Some people cannot switch gears and therefore you'll see big venture replace the CEO. They'll keep them, they'll put the founder on the board or pay them out or do something, but they'll bring in someone else who is now the operational person that's going to optimize the operations and trim down the options and laser focus on, uh, a, uh, linear path that makes sense and is profitable and continue to optimize. And there's predictable stages. There's a wonderful book worth reading that, uh, I'm a huge fan of. It's the size of a dictionary. It's, uh, Dr. Ishak Adiz and it's called the Corporate Management Life Cycles. It's very boring. Sorry, Ishak. I don't mean to call someone's work boring, but from a creative performance coaching background, that is not a businessy person in my tradition who's all heart and passion and you know, the purpose of life is to find your passions and overlap it with value, add that kind of stuff. To sit down with someone who's pure business, it, to my mind is like, but where's the purpose statement and where's the passion and where's the big vision? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, then he goes into the technical stuff of what it takes. But that's the difference. The vision and the passion and the excitement is what gets it off the ground. His strategy, his frameworks are what actually keep it fundamentally functioning at a high level. And so that that's been doing most recently is saying, okay, how can we learn from people who are the best at this stage of business? And how can we integrate what we've learned from their experience? My mentor told me trial and error is the stupidest way to learn anything. It's like if you want to ride a bicycle, you don't go to the scrapyard and find pieces of metal and rubber and randomly create an idea of a bicycle that would take you months or years to finally ride something rideable versus you go to a bike shop and someone's already figured it out. So buy the bike, ride the bike. Now, if you're creating something that hasn't been created before, of course you're going to wander out into the unknown and figure it out. But most things have been figured out already. Therefore, don't waste your time trying to reinvent something that's already there. You can make it better, though. That's something we regular see. If you look at the triathlete bikes, like the bike they're riding in 2026 is very different than the bike they rode in 2000, uh, or 1995. It's a different iteration because it's getting better performance through new adjustments. But no one has redesigned the entire concept of a bike. It's still two wheels, frame headed that direction. That's the way it works for high speed races. Um, and so the same thing oftentimes I'll catch founders who fail 50% die in two years, and they're trying to reinvent a very simple concept that they could buy and improve. And the iteration of improvement would be amazing. The reinventing it from the ground up is often a waste of time. Not always. Every now and then, someone completely reinvents a concept. But for most part, the iteration is where the opportunity is for founders nowadays. But the thought, in my world, understanding someone's figured out, there's predictable stages someone's figured out at each stage, there's a psychological and emotional shift that has to happen. For the founder, it has to go from my effort is what drives productivity and results here to I get results through others. So all of a sudden you go from I drive results to how Do I get them to drive results when it's so easy to say, move, let me do it. Uh, especially if you're talented and I like learning things. So I will learn how to code. I will learn how to do this stuff. I will try to do it myself, which really screws you up from growing because you'll watch someone do it 90% and you'll be like, oh, I know how to do that. And you'll want to push them out of the way, but the ability to realize. And I'll fast forward a few stages. What's the purpose of hiring people in a business? And there's a fork in the road here. There's two camps I'm aware of, maybe more. One believes in value extraction. It's how they treat everything in their life. What's the purpose of Earth? Extract the value at it and use it so we can have a good life. Uh, well, it's kind of messing up Earth that. That thought process. Extract the value, take what we can get out of it, and then, you know, toss the rest aside and move on. Interesting. Not mad at it, just realize it exists. There's a different mindset. A different mindset sees Earth as a relationship. You know, Mother Earth has provided nutrients for all of us to exist for many years. We should probably take care of her. Wow, that's an interesting concept. How could we take care of Earth in a way that she provides for us and we provide something for her? Uh, of value. We're now trading. We're not giving the give, we're trading. You take care of me, I'll take care of you. But we're doing it with Earth as an entity. Same with your employees. There's a trade of employees, of, hey, people come and work here. As long as they do their work. I'm not trying to extract value and milk them and then toss them aside. They add value to me. I want to add value to them. What is valuable to them besides the money? Money is good for a certain part, but what else could I do to add value to their life? But then there's a third level. A third level is. And you find this in people who've run businesses a long enough period of time, they start to take pride in the humans they've developed, because you ask them, what's it been like owning this business for 50 years? 60 years? 70 years? What's it like that your great grandpapa started this, and you're the third generation to take it over? And that generation will tell you stories. I grew up with that guy over there, I remember when he was just a kid, him and I used to wash the dishes. Now he's the maitre d. He's amazing. He's like a brother to me. Or that lady. Oh, yeah, we used to play down at the docks together and we did this and this and this. You start to hear the relationships and the bonds that have been created. Oh, I remember when so and so's spouse passed away. Yeah, we all went and took care of him. We all cooked him food all week and just carried on him. You start to hear the stories, but you also hear the development of humans. I remember when that guy didn't have these skills. And my dad took him aside and helped him learn these skills over the years and developed him into this man that's now able to accomplish these things. Isn't that incredible? And you hear this story of the purpose of business is to develop the humans that we've been blessed to have a relationship with. And that's a totally different reason to run a business. And you hear of some of these, they, you know, they, they celebrate them often in the news where there was a group down in, in Texas who, this guy, I think he's in oil. And they had a big year. They had a multi billion dollar profitable year. And he took his share off the table as the owner. But then he cut a pool, a big old check and gave every one of his team members a huge glob of money just to celebrate them for being there and being part of making this possible. And when Covid happened, he was the guy who said, yeah, we're not going to fire anybody. Uh, I'll cut my salary down a bit. I don't need to take as much profit this year. We're going to squeeze a little, but I'm not going to let anyone. Sally, I've known Sally since she was a kid and she's been here helping me for blah, blah, blah. And Jim, he's amazing. And they have a few hundred employees. It's not fifty thousand or a hundred thousand, but they operate different because they believe the purpose of business is to have relationships with the team members. You choose not to extract value out of anyone you can and toss them aside when they can no longer produce. And so it's a different mindset. Everyone's got to choose their path. Some people, they're like, screw it. It value extraction. That's what I'm here for. Cool, do it. I'm not mad at you. I'm not gonna work with you, but I'm not mad at you. Some people are pure trade. I pay you, you do X, you do X, I pay you, that's okay. But I love uh, when I have the opportunity to work with people where we look at it like a relationship and we don't choose to get in the business together unless we think this thing will go long term. I was doing a uh, track with a, uh, you know, someone I was doing business with and as we were going through the contract, I said, listen, I'm a relationship based person. If I don't see us working together 20 years in the future, I'm not going to sign a contract with you at all because I'd rather have a relationship. If I'm going to do business, I'd rather find someone I could have a relationship with that we both enjoy spending time together and we'd like to spend time together for 10 or 20 years. If that's not of interest to you, go find salesperson who sells some shit for you, that's fine. Not me. And these guys do big contracts. You know, the minimum size contract they do is 6 billion. And so it's, it's big deals. It's all relationship driven globally. And we were talking back and forth and we came back and we signed a, you know, agreement that allows us to earn and work together for 20 years. And I'll find relationships for you guys and I'll, I'll find the opportunity to work in this sector in this way with you. And I need to know that you guys are interested in hanging out for 10 or 20 years together if we're going to do it. And I talked to the father, both agreed and it's, it's a way better situation because now I'm looking for that these people have the right values. Are they the right human beings that I want to interact with? And are they someone that I enjoy spending time with? Like can I take them on safari with me? Can I go hang out with them in Dubai? Can I go, can we, we fly out somewhere else together? And do I enjoy spending time with them? Or is it a deal just for the deal's sake? And if it is, I'll pass. At this stage of life. There's times in my life where I'd have to do that. But at this stage, you know, I'll pass. I want to find the people I'd actually want to, want to hang with too.

Ash Lonare: Definitely, definitely. And, and I, I feel like that if we just keep talking we can just never end this conversation because it's so interesting with all these stories and everything. And uh, you know, I want to make sure that we cover everything. So we have uh, a quick fire lightning round. But you have, have touched upon a very good point. Like adding value is so important and it gives you so much upfront direction. So I want to share some things. I was um, uh, sitting with my partner and she said that it's very difficult for me, especially in London because the weather changes so frequently to understand what kind of outfit I should be wearing today because I have. She has like two cupboards full of outfits and we have at least two cupboards full of outfit. You know those box, you know those plastic bags where you pump out the air and then put it under your mattress, all these kind of things. So we were discussing that and then while we were discussing that during the discussion, it came up that it would be super interesting to have something which could solve this problem. So I want to share something with you because I have this amazing mind with me right now. So I want to utilize that and then say if I can get some feedback from you. So we created something which is this. It's not yet launched right now.

Jarek Robbins: If you see me looking other ways, I have multiple screens. I'm going to move in just a bit so I could see it, see it.

Ash Lonare: Okay, great stuff. So if you seeing it right now, this is like not launched yet, but it is about to be launched. And what it is, is you see, you take a picture of your outfit and then you take a picture of yourself or partner, like a selfie. Select what you want, where you want to go, what kind of weather it is.

Jarek Robbins: Does it have a catalog of all your outfits?

Ash Lonare: Well, you can add that and then what it does, it analyzes it and tells you exactly how you would look into that outfit.

Jarek Robbins: Okay, I have a side topic. I'm loving this. First off, yeah, I have a side topic. When I was young, my, there was this special tailor. Um, his name is David August. Uh, he's based out of New York and London or New York and LA. And he does gosh, President BA players fleets, Conor McGregor, like go down the list of fancy suits. Tony Stark, whatever. Go down the list of anyone who has a super sharp fancy suit. He's Normally the guy. 90% of the time he's the dude. And these things are just God awful expensive. Like I remember I was in his. I mean he has like Shaq's shoe signed in his desk and like all the helmets and all the player jerseys and all this jazz and he'll sell you a Pair of socks that cost, like, $600. Uh, he's the most ridiculous thing. But they're cool suits. And I remember I was in his room, and he brings out samples to kind of show you things he's making. And he brought out one, and he's like, oh, yeah, this one's Steve Wins from Wynn Casino. I'm like, oh, that's cool. And I held it up. I'm like, how much is this one? I don't know.

Ash Lonare: I don't know.

Jarek Robbins: Like, $20,000 or something. I'm, like, putting that back, like. But gosh, why did I bring this up? Oh, so when you I every now and then, I'll order, like, two suits from him. That's it. And they'll last me, like, 10 years because they're phenomenal. So I'll be like, two suits, 10 shirts. That's it, David. I'm not buying anything else. He's like, what about the belt and the shoes? I'm like, that's a fortune, dude. I can get those on Amazon. Like. And so I, I have a cheapness about me. Uh, which it is what it is. But I, I try to find the most affordable things to pair with things that are also worth doing. And his suits are worth doing. Uh, but one of the coolest parts, he does. And as a young guy, my ability to dress myself is not My talent is not in this category. Like, I I I would put the same clothes on every day if it didn't limit me in life. Um, I don't have that gift. And so the one thing he would give you that I thought was the coolest thing in the world is when he gives you your clothes and you drop. They bring you the stuff. They hand you this binder. And when you open the binder, it has a list of all different occasions. And for every occasion, it has a number code of how to properly put together the tie, the shoe, the belt, the slacks, the pants, and the shirt. And as a guy, this that does not understand fashion. To have a decoder. I call it, like, I can hold this up to an event, and it decodes what combination I need to put on. I literally go into the closet, and I'm like, tie, three, done. Shoes, four, done. Suit, three. Got it. Like, that's it.

Ash Lonare: It's basically a recipe book of outfits for success.

Jarek Robbins: My gosh, I can look like I know what I'm doing without knowing what I'm doing because of someone like him. What you're showing me reminds me of that, which is mind bending right Now. And so my initial thought was like, oh my God, if somehow I had a picture of everything I owned and it was numbered and categorized and this would use an algorithm that I could be like, spring this event and it would be like, shirt 5, uh, you know, shorts 12 tied to. If it did that, like, that would be amazing. Humans out in the world instead of goofy like I do some of the time.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, yeah. The decision fatigue we have every time we go out for, for a ball or for a party is huge. We spend at least 45 minutes to one, uh, hour just deciding on what we, we gonna wear. Right. Well, so wait a minute.

Jarek Robbins: There's a difference I've learned between men and women deciding. Yeah, there's, there's science behind this. My wife and I have a different app we've created that track the hormonal cycles women go through. And depending on which day and which stage, there is a reason why they're choosing outfits. The most common is, does this outfit reflect how I'm feeling on the inside? Which screws us up as guys because they say, do you like it? We hear the words, do you like it? Yeah, it's fine. What she was saying is, do you feel that this is representing the emotions I'm currently feeling on the inside? We didn't hear any of that. So we're screwed because we're just like, it's, I told you. It looks.

Ash Lonare: We're mostly screwed anyways.

Jarek Robbins: And she's like, like, well, you didn't ask what I'm feeling.

Ash Lonare: Yeah.

Jarek Robbins: And then, well, how are you feeling? You should know how I'm feeling. Why don't you know? Oh, uh, man, like we're going down a spiral on this one. But one thing I have learned is women specifically, they have this thing, the term is called mental load. All the things they're carrying with them. Are the kids ready? Did you eat? Did I eat? Uh, what time is it? Are we going to be on time? Like the stuff that piles up and they really appreciate what you're offering. When mental load is high, which it often is, is there a solution that can help get me to where I need to be, how I need to be there, without adding more to the mental load in this moment. And so if that offers a solution for that, amazing. And then for men who don't know fashion, which happens to be me, I would also be a first time subscriber if I could take pictures of my closet and it could tell me how to pair and match stuff because I don't have that skill in Life.

Ash Lonare: So right now, I think right now I would say that. So by the way, we are naming it AI Outfit. Very simple.

Jarek Robbins: I love.

Ash Lonare: Nothing to be confused.

Jarek Robbins: Yeah. What it does is David, he knows how to pair shit up.

Ash Lonare: Yeah. And what it does is basically first on the onboarding, it takes the uh, info from you. Are you a man? Female, you know what type? What is your body type, eye color, hair color, things like that. Yeah. Once it done it, you know that specific moment of decision fatigue when you have to go somewhere and you want to decide if you want to.

Jarek Robbins: Yeah.

Ash Lonare: If you're going to look in this good or this. That is what we are solving right now. But in my head I'm also thinking about B2B solutions. You know, all these small boutiques, London, New York, anywhere who specif, uh, specifically are very good with designing dresses or outfit. If they have something like this in house, let's say on a big screen, and people just go, how does this dress looks like on me? That could help a lot. Yeah.

Jarek Robbins: No, really, truly, you should reach out to David. There's a couple of business opportunities I instantly see with this one in, gosh, London, Singapore, New York, Shanghai. In the larger cities, there's professional closet organizers. There are people who get paid thousands of dollars to come into a man or woman's closet or both, and to properly categorize and organize the closet because these things are so damn big and have so much inventory or stuff in it that they do this. Uh, if there was a company that you could hire, I don't know, I have a friend who does this in New York City. I'll have to ask her what she charges. I think it's like five or ten thousand dollars to do this. But, but if she could then snap all the outfits and they have their own wardrobe categorized that AI could then help them like pair organize all this stuff. There's another friend. Gosh, I need to remember her name. There's a really sweet lady I worked with years ago, 20 something years ago, this was her job. People hired her to come into their closets and help them organize which outfits go to what things so that they could properly dress themselves for all the occasions. This would be perfect for a business. This would be perfect for David, who like you just said this dude's printing 15, 20, $30,000 suits. Like, yes, it would be awesome if I could see myself in the suit. PR to signing, you know, buying a car.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, indeed, indeed.

Jarek Robbins: That's, that's, yeah, that would be helpful to see it first. And again, he Would do the same thing. I think he'd want it to take a picture of every outfit he sells the clients because there's people who come in seasonally to him and buy a whole wardrobe. So, like I need a summer season set. David. And he'll come and bring him, you know, seven pairs of jeans and five new suits and summer suits. And he'll update their wardrobe quarterly or seasonally so that they're always fashionable wherever they go. And those people, it'd be perfect. Have a little app that can be like, okay, this party, David says two done. He gets it. A little book right now. But if you digitize that for him, it'd be phenomenal.

Ash Lonare: Yeah. And something like if he's running a, uh, outfit house or a boutique, it would be good to personalize it for just himself. And then. Okay. Jarek sends a message to David. David, I'm going to ball. I'm meeting some really, like, presidential people tonight. What should I wear? This. You already have access to my wardrobe. Just send me some suggestion. And he does. Okay, these two are the best for you.

Jarek Robbins: And. Or if it was digitized enough and he had your measurements, he could send you a couple options that you don't have right now. Like, ooh, you know, it'd look good. We just got this new shirt and these new shorts here. Check your app. And they go, oh, I look great in that. He goes, awesome. I'll FedEx them to you right now.

Ash Lonare: Perfect.

Jarek Robbins: So my two cents would be. In all businesses I've built, I've always started serving the really, really high caliber, upper level clientele. And once I find a really good fit that rocks their world, I'll, uh, then iterate and say, okay, is there an ability to bring this to a mass group of people that would also add tremendous value in their own unique way. And I've always gone top down. Lots of people go bottom up on how, like, how do I serve the mass consumer, which is most tech I've seen, and then eventually create a high end version. My own experience. I've always done the opposite. Because if, you know, if someone's going to pay $9.99 a month for an average consumer having it available at home or 25 bucks a month versus David might pay 2,500 a client. That. That's a thousand.

Ash Lonare: That's a thousand x revenue. Yeah. Yep.

Jarek Robbins: Uh, definitely have David get 100 clients for me. We're gonna have a solid base and then I'll figure out how to iterate for the hundred thousand. You know, Everyday users, definitely. And it might be a partnership. You know, someone like, I'm just using David because I know him. But someone like David usually can only serve this audience for the first time. In partnerships like this, we've now been able to widen his expertise into an opportunity for everyday people. People like that would be really cool.

Ash Lonare: Yep, definitely.

Jarek Robbins: I miss the pictures of society where people look sharp, just walking down the street. Like, there were times in history you look at pictures, you're like, damn, was it at a wedding? And they're like, no, this was like a random Tuesday. No. And you're like, good back then.

Ash Lonare: Great stuff, great stuff.

Jarek Robbins: But I love it. And I'd be happy to connect you with David if you have any interest.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, definitely. Let's, uh, talk about it. But towards, um, the pod, then we have, uh, six quick fire questions for you. Now, you can skip any of them if you want to. Just give me a skip and then I move on to the next one. And I, uh, think we can jump into them now if you're ready. Yeah. All right. What are the top three strategies to shift your mind to get into the next phase of your business? For founders in 2026.

Jarek Robbins: So the simplest thing oftentimes hesitation, fear that. That tension that'll rise when you see an opportunity to ask and step into a conversation or do or ask to own a part of the business or whatever it is. People will often hesitate because of their state. And so I learned this from my dad, but he calls it your state, your story, and your strategy. Do you have the right strategy? Because if you have the wrong strategy, it doesn't matter how hyped up you are, you're going the wrong way. Like the sun sets in the west, so if you're going east, you ain't gonna find it. So need the right strategy. Those we can often learn from others. We can watch what's worked in the past from others and learn strategy number two. You need a story, and you need to create a story of why now, why you, why this? What's the story? What's the real story of why this coming into life does make a difference right now? Why you? Um, I have friends who are VC investors, and the first thing they told me they do is they flip to the people. They. They don't care about the idea. The idea's. You know, an idea is an idea. But who are the people? Have they done this before? Do they have experience? Do they know what they're doing? Can. Can they figure out how to get through tough times? There's a guy named Bill Gross that has a. A com organization called Idealab. He's a big proponent of this where he'll tell you, we have thousands of billion dollar ideas sitting around. Uh, we wait for the right team that's cohesive, that has experience. We get that we can give them just about anything. I think they've had seven plus, uh, unicorn exits from scratch. So they've gone from scratch to unicorn exit seven different times. And it's never the idea they say. It's always getting the right team together and letting them rock. So you need a story that collects the team. One of my favorite examples, the guy who put up a poster that said, I'm looking for a group of men. Long hours, low pay, extremely dangerous, few will survive. This is the advertisement. And thousands of men show up because it's an epic story to be a part of. And so for most founders, do you have that epic story that people want to be a part of? Um, and then state. This comes down to physical state. Where can you get your biochemistry working in your favor? So cold plunge, breath work, meditation. There's tons of science behind all these stuff. Pick the pattern that works for you. The example I give you ever played video games when you were young? You know how to enter like Mario. In games they call it God mode. You have a special. It's like, up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, start. And then your character does, like, superpowers. I think the same thing happens for men, specifically when we find a morning routine that activates the superhuman part of ourselves. It's usually when we hit a stage of life where we go all in on God and we find some pattern that allows us to connect beyond just our physicalness and tap into something beyond ourselves. And doors start opening that we could have never imagined. People help us in ways we never thought they would. Miracles happen for our friends and family and children that we prayed for, and we're uncertain if it would work out. And like when, when you find that cheat code in life where you figure out you're up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, above start and your character, you all of a sudden elevate to a better version of yourself. Some people, that's cold plunges or breath work or meditation or walking or whatever, but there's some combination each of us has to find that allows the best version of us to show up.

Ash Lonare: Indeed. Indeed. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Jarek Robbins: I love to read. I've got thousands of books. I mean, one of my favorite books is the Alchemist. And it's just we'll all go out seeking in life and looking for the thing we think is it oftentimes to come back home and find everything we were looking for right there in the first place. But we need to go on our grand adventure. The other book I recommend that I love at this stage of life is finding your second mountain. The first mountain is what you can get from life. Eventually life either gets boring because we get everything we want and realize it ain't it, or life kicks us off the mountain with a jolt, like if death threat or something crazy happens. And he said, but a handful of us will eventually go through the valley of despair. Very motivating. And then find this thing called, uh, the second mountain, which is what we can give to life. And I love that read. It's a wonderful thought process to work through.

Ash Lonare: Awesome. Awesome. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

Jarek Robbins: The ability to continuously fail forward?

Ash Lonare: Uh, indeed. What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

Jarek Robbins: Probably breathwork. Breathwork was the one like I've done cold plunge, running, meditation. I've done most, all of them. The things that shock you like all kinds of stuff. Uh, and the one that is most controllable and consistently delivers the result is the ability to study and learn breath work. Um, XPT life with Laird Hamilton. He's a big wave surfer. They have a great app that takes you through all the different modes. Uh, there's a woman who's, who's the top person that they seek out. Uh, whether they're the big, uh, hedge funds or NFL players, athletes, all kinds of people seek this lady out. Her name's Dr. Leah Legos. She's in New York City and she's a biofeedback and breath work specialist. And she has a protocol that she puts you through for 10 weeks. 20 minutes of morning, 20 minutes at night. You got to do the protocol and it recalibrates your entire nervous system to calm so you can go back into the exact environment that used to trigger and jar your nervous system. And mentally you can be like, yeah, this really pisses me off. But biochemically and all your biomarkers don't respond to it whatsoever. You are totally calm in the middle of the chaos. And as a founder, there's usually a lot of chaos.

Ash Lonare: Yeah, you need that. You definitely need that.

Jarek Robbins: Totally calm. When everything repetitively breaks will help tremendously over time. And you'll probably live a few years extra instead of dying early because of all the Stress.

Ash Lonare: Indeed. Indeed. What's a new or a, uh, crazy business idea you would love to pursue if you had time?

Jarek Robbins: We're doing it right now. So my wife and I are bringing something to life called peak her, which is allowing high performing women which in the United States they own, own. They're 47% of the workforce and they own 42% of the small businesses in the US which is a lot. It's almost half the whole team on both owners and workers. Yet the entire current system. So Earth's been around 4.6 billion years. Modern humans in this form, 300,000 years the entire in the US it's still nine to five, five days a week or six days a week kind of stuff. Uh, different parts of the world have roughly different 6 days in India I think it is, and, and longer hours. But that pattern was never built to honor the natural rhythms of a woman's body. And so if you talk to women, there's three days out of the month when they're at their peak that they can do more. Like we blink twice and They've conquered Earth 12 times over. How are you doing that? And financially speaking, from an investment perspective, it's common to see a female founder, when invested in with the same idea or concept, will produce 2.5 times more profit than the male founder of the same type. The problem is they can't sustain because they burn out over time. I was like, well, why do they burn out? They burn out because a, uh, good portion of the month, they're forcing their body to do the opposite of what the body's asking for. The body needs rest and recovery and they're forcing it to show up and work because this is how we do it. And I think with AI, there's an opportunity to offload a bunch of the busy tasks that are repetitive, replace all of those so that women, 42% business owners, 47% of the workforce in the US can actually honor the natural rhythms of their body. And there was this thing done where they did a survey asking women, if you were stuck in the woods, would you rather be stuck with a man or a bear? And the current temperature in the United States, most women chose the bear. I think everybody's brain exploded because they're like, it'll kill you.

Ash Lonare: Are you an idiot?

Jarek Robbins: Are you stupid? What's wrong with you? Like, like every man can't comprehend. It's an emotional decision that they're we're saying. But there's a truth. We've created a system that works for a 24 hour hormone cycle, which is men's, that doesn't take into account or honor in any way, uh, a 28 day roughly hormone, you know, rhythm that is a woman's. We never built it to honor that whatsoever. And so I think with AI, there's the ability where Jamie Dimon saying, you know, young people should work on EQ because it looks like with AI, a, uh, 3.5 day work week might be soon possible. And I think that creates a bridge and opportunity for the 47% of the team to now honor the natural rhythms and callings of their, their, their body and nervous system instead of keep forcing the boulder up a hill just because that's the way work is. And here's the truth. The modern workplace is only a hundred years old.

Ash Lonare: Yeah. So it's not that modern.

Jarek Robbins: No, it's an experiment. My gosh, it's brand new, you know, Earth 4.6 billion years, humans modern form 300,000 years. We have a hundred year experiment. We've been trying and it might not fit for all of us. So we might need to reset the modern form.

Ash Lonare: Definitely.

Jarek Robbins: And I think AI will give us the opportunity. So I'm hot on both of those right now. One helping. I've learned more about my wife in the past 15 days, tracking with her every day than I have in the last 14 years of knowing her. Unbelievable insight as a husband. And go, wow, this makes sense. I've always wondered why there was tension here. I've always wondered why she's, you know, mentally like hyping herself up, even though physically she needs rest, but she's not allowing herself to rest. Like I've always wondered why that happened. Now I can see literal hormones changing. And just so you know, an uh, average man, his Testosterone will drop 20% from the age of 20 to 50. So over a 30 year period of time, his testosterone will come down 20%. A woman's testosterone levels cycle up and down 25x every four weeks. What takes a dude 30 years to experience, she does every four weeks.

Ash Lonare: Four weeks.

Jarek Robbins: And if you ever talk to a guy in his 20s and then you meet him in his 50s, he's a totally different human, wiser, more grounded, uh, like less intense. She's that version. Every four weeks she goes to the crazy one that can run through a brick wall, to wiser and more grounded back to the one that can run through a brick wall. Unbelievable.

Ash Lonare: That's why they're emotionally more intelligent, because they can handle that kind of, uh, hormone shift.

Jarek Robbins: It's amazing their Progesterone and estrogen fall off a cliff, which is when they feel like they're trying to push a boulder up. Like, I'm, I'm learning stuff that I've talked to women about this, which, as odd as the topic it is to try to bring up at a social event, um, but I've talked to them and they said, I wish one, more men knew about this. And two, I wish more women knew about this. I'm learning that women also have never been taught all this stuff in mass. And so as we're sharing this, women are like, wow, I didn't know that. That really. Oh, my God. That's why I do. Like, it's becoming enlightening to women. And any father or husband I've shown this to has instantly grabbed me and said, how do I get this? How soon can I start tracking my wife? I need insight. I have one client who, he has a wife, two daughters, a head chef, a delivery driver. He has a whole bunch a giant team of women around him. He teased me. He's like, can I get a bulk discount if I get it for every human that's a woman in my life? So I can get them on the dashboard and I know how to interact each day, Like, I'm dead serious, dude.

Ash Lonare: Great stuff.

Jarek Robbins: So anyways, yeah, that's the thing we're kind of hyped on.

Ash Lonare: Perfect. Perfect. What's an interesting or, uh, fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Jarek Robbins: I think something I learned along the way was the cheap is the wrong word. But the more you can love life needing the least as possible to be fulfilled and happy, the faster you can be free. And so luckily, I found a wife that cheap would be an accurate word for both of us when we're together. But we see the same concept and we're willing to live as humbly as we can while still having a good life and invest like crazy so that when life throws curveballs at us, we can live off of our investments instead of our earned income.

Ash Lonare: Income.

Jarek Robbins: Ah. And so oftentimes, like, when I got called in to be the president of Success Enterprise and I was talking with the team there, they had profiled me. They're like, oh, you probably drive a Range Rover and probably have a big house. And my house is very normal. My wife and I share a car. We drive a, uh, Toyota 4Runner. Like, we're very simple. And they're like, wouldn't HM have expected that from you? Really? Why? And so apparently I, I, you know, I don't know people decided I'm. I'm fancy in some way. But our goal.

Ash Lonare: You might have seen those videos New rich and uh, classic rich. That's the definition of classic rich. You're just explaining right now. Yeah, Classic wealthy. Sorry. Classic wealthy.

Jarek Robbins: Our goal is can we keep. Can we be truly abundantly fulfilled and happy with our life, keeping it as simple as possible to allow the maximum amount to be invested to give us financial freedom so we don't have to worry or be caught up in, in whatever happens in the world.

Ash Lonare: Any kind of ret. Yeah, that. That makes sense. Well, Derek, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story, unpacking the last years of building your, uh, past, consulting businesses, coaching businesses. If people want to check out or get in touch with you, what's the best way to do it?

Jarek Robbins: Yeah, find me on Instagram. Normally have the most. Bless you most normally have the most up to date stuff going on on Executive Office AI is our new kind of full stack AI SaaS I've been building personally and having fun with it. PeakHerd AI is our new femtech for women that we're working on and both of those are coming to life right now, which is a lot of fun.

Ash Lonare: Awesome. Great stuff. Jarek, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring journey and the impactful work you're doing through your multiple services. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Founders podcast.

Jarek Robbins: Thank you for having me and thank you for listening.