Normally I write about what I’m observing from meetings with other founders, but today I want to try something different and share some of what I’m learning from building my own business, in the hope that it resonates with you too.
I had an aha moment recently with a client. They told me about a situation they were in, and instead of calling me, they went to their AI of choice. It had a couple of our calls recorded, and he asked it, “What would Dave Rubinstein do? How would he answer this?” When he told me the answer, it was a little unsettling. It was probably what I would have said. Maybe it was better.
My first reaction was defensive. I thought about pulling back, maybe I shouldn’t let clients record calls at all? Maybe I should stop putting so much of my thinking out there publicly? If people can learn how I think without me in the room, what’s the harm in just... not letting them? But that instinct didn’t last long. Trying to lock down my own thinking isn’t a real strategy. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not really who I want to be either.
So I sat with the more uncomfortable question instead: if a client can record a few calls with me and learn how I think, do they still need me? I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this. You build something valuable, someone sees it, they replicate it, and the value you offer erodes a little more every day. You can keep adding features, but that’s not a real answer. It can start to feel like an endless race just to stay one step ahead.
So what do you do?
Here’s where I’ve landed for my business: the value of knowledge is finite. Every day that passes, what you know is worth a little less. The real question for me is how you keep generating new knowledge, a stream of insight that’s yours alone, so you stay ahead instead of just defending ground.
For me, that comes from live conversations. That’s my moat. I talk to 60 to 80 people in a typical month, and those conversations give me three things: ongoing data, ongoing relationships, and increasingly, a real edge in how I run my own business.
That third one snuck up on me. I didn’t set out to find vendors or tactics through these calls, but it’s happened more than once. One founder from Germany I met is phenomenal at AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and he wanted to show me what he could do with my own business. Now LLMs are surfacing me as an answer more than 70 times a day! That’s not content I can write about. It’s not data I’m collecting to share with you. It’s tip-of-the-spear knowledge that makes my business run better, and I got it because the relationship existed first.
Another new relationship led to something I couldn’t have engineered on my own: an introduction to the managing editor of Harvard Business Review, which turned into getting published there. That’s not a tactic. That’s someone who knew me, trusted the work, and opened a door I didn’t know to knock on.
These are different outcomes that share the same pattern. The people I talk to aren’t just sources, they’re sometimes the edge, showing me what I’m missing or opening doors I couldn’t open myself. That’s not something you can replicate by scheduling more calls. It only works because the relationships are real. Many of these relationships I didn’t have a year ago.
It’s the combination of all three, data, relationships, and the edge that comes from them, that’s hard to copy. Anyone can decide to have more conversations, but building a system to actually have 60 to 80 of them a month, capture them well, and stay in touch with those people over time? That’s not trivial. That system is the foundation of my business.
But even those conversations lose value over time if I’m not getting the most out of each one. When I went back through my early recordings, I noticed something: a lot of what I’d captured was just me talking. So I’ve pushed myself to flip that, to make sure the other person is doing most of the talking, and that I’m pulling out what they know, not reciting what I already know.
I’ve also gotten more intentional about capturing information before the call even starts. When someone books time with me through Calendly, they answer a few questions, and the answers flow straight into my CRM, things like their LinkedIn profile and how they found me. By the time we’re actually talking, I already have context that shapes the conversation. I’m still refining what the right questions are, but automating that capture has made a real difference.
All of this has shaped how I’ve structured my business. Most clients come to me wanting answers fast, so we keep it simple: one week together, four hours total. There’s prep work on my end before and between sessions, but the founder only has to invest four hours. In that time, we dig into their specific business using a framework built from 300+ founder conversations.
After that week, founders usually have what they need to run with it on their own, and I’m fine with that. I used to think I needed to offer an ongoing retainer. I’ve since realized that week is where the real value is, and I don’t push people into more. Some clients do ask to keep working together, and I’ll do that for the right people. But my focus is making those four hours count, because that’s the part that’s actually mine to offer. Everyone talking to me is also talking to ten other people who look a lot like me, so I have to be clear on what’s genuinely different about what I do. No one has a 1 week offering for Founders like I do. The structure and impact are clear and my clients feel it.
Everyone knows they have problems with their business. My goal is for founders to think: “Why Dave?”
If you’ve read this far, you are probably curious…spend 30 minutes with me. At the very least you’ll come away with a new relationship. Book here: daverubinstein.com