The Mirror Test: What Every Founder Needs to Confront with Chris Deaver

<p>Chris Deaver spent his career shaping culture inside Apple, Disney, and Dell. Then he went out on his own and learned what that culture work actually costs a person.</p><p><br></p><p>In this conversation, Chris and I get into what &quot;brave&quot; actually means when you&#39;re a founder with no big company behind you. We talk about the mirror test, a principle from his book that pushes you to get quiet enough to ask what you actually need to do differently, instead of copy pasting someone else&#39;s playbook. We go deep on the difference between being brave alone and being brave together, why deleting priorities is harder than adding them, and why the best leaders lead with questions instead of answers.</p><p><br></p><p>Chris also gets real about his own valley. Right as his book was launching and his career should have been peaking, his marriage was ending, his company was getting acquired out from under him, and he couldn&#39;t get out of bed to shoot a video with his own co-author. He shares what actually pulled him through it, and why he thinks becoming a founder might be one of the most spiritual experiences available to us today.</p><p><br></p><p>If you&#39;ve ever felt like your business identity and your personal identity got tangled up in a way that isn&#39;t working, this one is for you.</p><p><br></p><p>Build your founder brand with Mylance: https://mylance.co<br>Connect with Bradley Jacobs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-r-jacobs/</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Intro to Chris Deaver<br>00:45 What brave means for solo founders<br>01:44 Why bravery alone has limits<br>02:42 Getting stuck without knowing why<br>04:08 The mirror test explained<br>05:44 Why the founder journey is confronting<br>06:25 Ed Catmull and asking better questions<br>07:14 The hero&#39;s journey and sacrifice<br>09:21 The Warren Buffett top five method<br>10:23 Steve Jobs and the sacrifice question<br>10:53 Why deleting is harder than doing<br>11:25 Ed Catmull, take care of the baby<br>12:35 Amazon&#39;s sequential build lesson<br>13:57 Culture as the golden goose<br>14:14 Leaving big companies to go solo<br>16:55 What it was really like eating glass<br>19:41 AI disruption and founder priorities<br>20:11 The bottom falling out moment<br>21:28 The Weekend at Bernie&#39;s video shoot<br>22:16 A hand on a tree<br>25:07 When founder identity confuses with the business<br>27:30 The solar startup culture turnaround<br>30:04 Building a brain trust<br>32:39 From 15 million to 150