I run it by myself. I've got a couple of like part-time contractors that kind of aid with some stuff.

But it's just basically myself. Surely you've been pummeled with advice and offers of money over the years.

People tearing their hairs out saying, man, if I was in Jesse's shoes, I would be competing with the big dogs and have commas and zeros all over the

place. My days are entirely dictated by myself, which is fantastic. I don't want to log into a

Slack and see conversate. And no amount of money can kind of entice me to go over that. You want to be a

cockroach. You just basically don't want to die. Tell me about this concept you have about main quest versus side quests.

Happy Thursday morning, everybody.

Welcome back to the Tropical MBA podcast.

Today we are going to continue our series of talking about how we can use a mix of AI tools, smart thinking, and mindset.

In today's case, to interview a founder who's built a business well over $1 million in annual recurring revenue by himself.

That's right, a solo operation based out of Japan.

Today's guest is Jesse Hanley, the founder of Bento, which is an email marketing platform

that takes eye incredibly seriously. If you've been listening

to the pod, you know that Bento has been a sponsor. We have recently switched to Bento because of

their AI integrations. And this interview is not the result of that sponsorship. In fact, I've been

trying to track Jesse down since before he was a sponsor. And you're going to hear about why he's

pretty hard to track down.

He has an incredible daily routine. He doesn't even work full eight-hour days. He's got a whole

rationale and mindset for that, something hopefully you can take inspiration from. I think

Jesse's such an amazing example of the script that this podcast espouses, doing it your own way on your own terms.

You're going to hear about an acquisition offer that he turned down that will make your eyes

pop. So today's whole concept is how can you build an incredibly lean, profitable

...