Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

Formerly Six Figure Secrets of Fractional Experts, Founder Unfiltered is the show about the stuff founders don't talk about: the identity crisis when you go from operator to leader, the weird shame of self-promotion, the gap between who you are and who your business needs you to be. Hosted by Bradley Jacobs, founder of Mylance — a LinkedIn thought leadership platform for B2B founders — this show gets into the psychology, the patterns, and the honest conversations that actually move the needle. No hacks. No hype. Just the raw truth about what's really holding you back.

Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say is a business podcast hosted by Mylance, with 143 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Mylance hosts Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say, a business show with 143 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #130

  Trying to Get Visible While Staying Invisible | The Fear That's Costing You Clients

  Aug 27, 202612 min

  A few months ago I got on a call with a business owner who almost canceled on me twice. She runs a real consulting business, real clients, real revenue, and she's smart and experienced. But when we finally connected, she told me something I hear constantly: she's trying to grow her visibility while staying invisible. She wants more clients and more reach, but she doesn't want to actually put herself out there to get it. In this episode I dig into that contradiction, because it's one of the most common things I see in founders, consultants, and fractional executives. I ask her the question I ask almost everyone in this spot: what are you actually afraid of? Her answer was blunt. She's scared to fail in public. Scared of bad takes. Scared people will read what she posts and think less of her. I walk through why that fear feels so real and so specific, and why it almost never matches what actually happens once people start posting. If you've ever sat on a draft, rewritten a headline five times, or talked yourself out of hitting publish, this conversation is for you. This is the fear that quietly costs founders clients, and I want to help you name it so you can move through it instead of around it. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 The client who kept rescheduling 00:53 Why founders stay invisible 01:26 Naming the real fear 02:33 Fear with no actual consequence 03:10 The vulnerability of putting yourself out there 04:09 The founder who never posted once 05:04 What actually happens after a bad post 05:51 Why posting daily doesn't bombard anyone 06:30 The algorithm myth everyone believes 06:53 Your content isn't about you 08:18 My own fear before hitting publish 09:15 Why nothing is ever perfect at launch 10:02 The hardest part of being a founder 10:30 The exercise: name what you're avoiding 11:02 Let your vision be bigger than your fear 11:33 Closing and where to find Mylance

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  Episode #129

  13 Years to $180M: What Bootstrapping Really Looks Like with Gregory Galant

  Aug 20, 202638 min

  I sat down with Gregory Galant, co-founder and CEO of Muckrack, the leading PR software platform, and co-founder of the Shorty Awards. Greg bootstrapped his company for 13 years on roughly $200K in angel funding before raising $180 million. That's not a typo, and getting there was not a straight line. We talk about persistence, and how to actually tell the difference between an idea worth sticking with and one you need to walk away from. Greg shares the story of spending two years building a podcast ad network that never found its market, even while competitors were getting funded by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, and how that experience shaped the way he evaluates decisions today. He also gets into one of his most useful habits: writing a private memo before every major call so he can go back later and separate a good decision from a lucky or unlucky outcome. We get into mindset too. Greg is honest about how hard it is not to take a failing business personally when your identity is wrapped up in it, and the mental model he uses to treat entrepreneurship more like running experiments than staking his self-worth on every outcome. We also cover why he thinks courage and judgment matter more than ever now that AI has made tactical knowledge nearly free, why Muckrack went all-in on remote work over a decade before it was normal, and how he actually measures performance on a distributed team. If you're building something and wondering whether you're pushing a boulder uphill or riding a market that's actually pulling you forward, this conversation will give you a real framework for figuring that out. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro to Gregory Galant 00:47 The single biggest factor in success 01:50 Knowing when to persist vs. pivot 02:31 Two years on a podcast ad network 03:45 Competing against Sequoia-backed rivals 04:28 Pushing a boulder vs. market pull 05:19 A mediocre team in a great market 06:07 Learning it wasn't him, it was the market 07:25 The Edison filament analogy 08:41 Giving yourself entrepreneurial longevity 08:57 How the Shorty Awards went viral in 24 hours 10:14 Talking mindset and imposter feelings 11:09 Separating identity from outcome 12:18 Treating decisions like experiments 13:07 Writing private memos before big calls 14:35 It's not about you, it's the market 15:26 Why this never gets easier 15:59 AI and the death of tactical advantage 17:41 Why Silicon Valley insiders had the edge 18:00 Courage and judgment as the new differentiators 19:21 Why AI won't give you conviction 20:06 The Felix Dennis paycheck-addiction line 21:09 Founder mistakes that actually cost him 22:00 Building tech before proving the business 23:32 Launching a dozen side projects 24:29 The angel investors who called him unfocused 25:05 Discovering Muckrack's real audience 26:19 What changed to make him double down 27:02 Muckrack's first $8,000 in MRR 28:15 The market kept pulling harder 28:51 Going remote before it was normal 30:08 Why they never made anyone commute 31:38 Giving up the New York office for good 32:26 What remote work exposes about culture 33:31 How he measures performance remotely 34:04 The Andy Grove input/output framework 36:09 Advice to his younger self 37:13 Where to find Gregory Galant

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  Episode #128

  The Hard Lessons Nobody Tells You When You Leave Corporate

  Aug 13, 202636 min

  Leaving Uber was one of the strangest experiences of my life. One day I'm running a business line worth billions of dollars, the next I have no manager, no structure, no salary, and no idea whether I'm doing a good job. In this episode, part three of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, I get into everything that happened after I left: pitching my first consulting client on a $25k proposal I basically made up on the spot, learning to ask for what I actually want (something corporate culture trains out of you), and the existential wobble of defining success for myself for the first time. We talk about why so many founders confuse their identity with their business, and why separating "I am Bradley" from "I am the business" was the single biggest unlock in my entrepreneurial journey. I share how a mastermind group, a few minutes of intentionally feeling hard emotions, and a shift from chasing metrics to falling in love with process changed how I run Mylance day to day. We also get into how Mylance came to be, why posting daily on LinkedIn became my entire marketing engine, and why keeping your hard-won expertise to yourself is, in my view, the most selfish thing you can do. If you're building something on your own and wondering whether the chaos is normal, this one's for you. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro to part three 00:16 Everything after Uber 01:18 Making up a $25K proposal 02:08 First entrepreneurial leap 02:52 Learning to ask for what you want 03:29 Why corporate discourages asking 04:14 Knowing your market value 04:42 Never Split the Difference tactic 05:24 Falling into consulting 06:06 Existential first months solo 07:18 Building an informal advisor board 08:06 Corporate structure vs going solo 09:10 Starting a mastermind for support 09:51 Facing the fear of shutting down 10:13 Separating self from the business 11:29 Letting yourself feel emotions 12:26 Trauma responses and burnout 13:21 Ditching fancy business models 14:19 Falling in love with process 15:07 Systems as 98% of the game 15:30 Planning nights for needle movers 17:14 Purpose over hitting numbers 18:09 Why Mylance was founded 19:06 The first client conversation 20:12 Researching the market 21:32 Sales and marketing struggles 21:49 Building trust through daily posts 22:52 Coaching program pivot 23:19 The $12,000 sale story 24:07 The power of compounding trust 25:04 Posting consistently, small audience 26:00 What a thousand followers is worth 26:42 Speak from the "I," not the "you" 27:43 Fear of being seen 29:19 Entrepreneurship as self-improvement 30:05 Keeping expertise to yourself is selfish 32:04 Content as a mirror for others 34:00 Where to find Bradley and Mylance

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  Episode #127

  AI Can Steal Your Skills. It Can't Steal This with Abhijit Bhaduri

  Aug 6, 202636 min

  I've talked to a lot of guests on this show, but this conversation with Abhijit Bhaduri gave me a word I haven't stopped thinking about since we recorded it: hunar . Abhijit has led learning and leadership development at Colgate, Wipro, Microsoft, and Pepsi. He was Wipro's first Chief Learning Officer, has written six books, and has built an audience of nearly a million followers on LinkedIn. But none of that is really what we talk about. We talk about the thing underneath all of it. Hunar is a Persian-origin word used in Hindi and Urdu, and it sits somewhere between mastery and artistry. Abhijit breaks down the difference between talent (what you're born with), skill (what can be taught and benchmarked), and hunar (the unrepeatable stuff you bring from your own life, your disappointments, your obsessions, your weird taste in music) that shows up in your work whether you mean it to or not. He tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock's childhood and how a single terrifying afternoon became the signature of "the master of suspense." We talk about Roger Federer, why his rivals cried when he retired, and why AI can replicate a skill but never a signature. If AI can build the CRM, write the copy, and do the accounting, the thing that makes your product yours isn't the execution. It's you, integrated into the work. We talk about what that means for building in public, for LinkedIn content, and for founders trying to differentiate in a market where everyone has access to the same tools. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Introducing Abhijit Bhaduri 01:14 The through line across his career 02:29 Going out on his own after big brands 04:42 Building identity without a big name 05:15 Where the idea of hunar began 06:13 Talent versus skill versus hunar 07:41 The Alfred Hitchcock origin story 09:23 How fear became his signature 10:47 The unsigned painting analogy 12:17 Why AI can steal skill, not hunar 13:30 Why we still need teachers 14:12 The human side AI can't replicate 15:28 What makes a CRM actually different 16:08 The industrial era of interchangeability 17:45 Why benchmarks hurt mental health 18:24 His next book, AI Identity 19:17 The vulnerability of being unique 20:01 Bringing storytelling into corporate work 22:40 Illustrating his own LinkedIn content 23:15 Roger Federer as a hunar example 24:34 Why his rivals cried at his retirement 26:20 Learning from others without copying them 27:00 How founders can go find their hunar 28:42 Coaching founders on money and identity 30:15 What works for him on LinkedIn 32:07 Posting consistently over years 33:33 Writing for yourself and the reader 34:07 His closing message to founders 35:11 Where to find Abhijit Bhaduri

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  Episode #126

  The Billion-Dollar Uber Business Nobody Talks About

  Jul 30, 202629 min

  This is part two of my conversation with Kassidy Warren, and if you haven't listened to part one about launching Raleigh, the Lyft wars, and Uber Eats in Miami, go back and start there first. This episode picks up right where things got hard. I talk about getting rejected for a role I was asked to interview for, and the lesson that rejection taught me about making career moves about what a company actually needs instead of what I want. From there I take you through moving to Europe to launch Uber Eats in Milan, managing a team of over 25 Italians without speaking the language, and learning the difference between managing and leading the hard way. Then I get into the part of my Uber story almost nobody knows: Uber Freight. I walked into a warehouse in San Francisco with a handful of people from the freight world and helped build a digital freight brokerage from scratch, inside a hundred billion dollar industry that was still running on phone calls and fax machines. Two years later, that business crossed a billion dollar valuation. I talk through the two-sided marketplace problem we got completely backwards at first, why enterprise sales in freight is a game of pure reliability, and how Uber's willingness to make big, bold, expensive bets is what actually built the business. If you're building something new inside an old industry, or you're trying to figure out how much risk you're actually willing to take on to grow, this one's for you. Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/ 00:00 Intro and part two setup 00:40 The rejection that taught a lesson 01:10 Launching Uber in Italy overview 01:23 Getting rejected for the Madrid GM role 01:50 Applying anyway without fluent Spanish 02:07 The call that changed everything 02:49 Putting ego aside to add value 03:11 Asked to launch two cities at once 04:01 Choosing Milan over Madrid 04:47 Launching Uber Eats in Milan 05:16 Grassroots marketing with no brand 05:45 The lunch culture clash 06:38 Managing the pressure from corporate 07:39 First launch day: 50 orders vs 1,003 08:16 Becoming a pure manager for the first time 08:52 What he'd do differently in Italy 09:44 Deciding to come home after seven months 10:04 Hearing about the Uber Freight acquisition 10:52 Getting the call to join Freight 11:16 Why chaos and building excite him 12:02 Sponsor: Lodify 13:05 Walking into the Freight warehouse 14:03 The disconnect between plan and reality 14:44 Breaking the news to leadership 15:08 Grassroots interviews with truck drivers 16:15 Crossing a billion dollars in two years 16:39 The hundred billion dollar fragmented market 17:00 The chicken-and-egg marketplace problem 18:07 Why loads mattered more than sign-ups 19:35 First time doing enterprise sales 20:01 What shippers actually care about 20:39 Proving reliability with the worst loads 21:16 How they hit a billion dollar valuation 21:38 Growth versus profitability tension 22:32 Spot market versus contract market 23:16 Beating the market with technology 24:23 Using the Uber name as leverage 25:22 Would Freight work without Uber's name 25:54 What made Uber succeed overall 26:24 Travis and the big bold bets philosophy 27:41 Bradley's own lessons from getting slapped down 28:38 Setting up part three

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