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Jermaine Ee on Scaling an AI-Powered Startup, Designing for the 70%, and Not Getting to Choose Your Founder Story
33 Plays1 month ago
Jermaine Ee, founder of Heirlight (heirlight.com), an AI-powered estate planning app, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com) to discuss what it takes to make one of life's most avoided conversations easier. Jermaine shares how a dinner with his parents about retirement planted the seed for Heirlight (02:37) and how the app uses guided AI conversation rather than a laundry list of assets to build an estate plan around the user (04:53). He also describes his deliberate choice to stay bootstrapped and away from the venture treadmill (15:35), the mentality required to run a product-driven startup (21:38), and how losing his mother gave his mission a clarity he didn't ask for but can't ignore (22:56). Recommended reading: “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown, “Die with Zero” by Bill Perkins, and “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jermaine and AirLite
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey everyone, Dan here. Welcome to another episode of Forward Looking Leadership. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Jermaine E. Jermaine is a tech entrepreneur building AirLite, an AI-powered app designed to make estate planning faster and more accessible.
00:00:18
Speaker
Jermaine, thanks so much for joining me on Forward Looking Leadership.
Jermaine's Journey to Meaningful Work
00:00:23
Speaker
Glad to be here, Dan. Thanks for taking the time. So you say that clarity is love in practical form. And i think it's a beautiful sentiment. I would love for you to explain how this led to the founding of Light.
00:00:38
Speaker
Well, clarity is something I think we can all have a little bit of a little bit more of because oftentimes we live life on autopilot, right? We inherit the values, the cultural, the societal acceptance of everything around us from money to health to how we eat and how we walk around, how we dress. And so I think clarity...
00:01:04
Speaker
is love in a practical form stems from the idea that, you know, sometimes if we question ourself a little bit more of why we do what we do and to be clearer on what matters, whose validation we're seeking in everything that we do, that we are able to live a life that is more grounded and more true to who we are.
00:01:26
Speaker
how did How did this really come about for you in your journey as an entrepreneur here? Well, it's a newer thing for me because in my, all over my 20s, I'm in my mid-30s now, but all over my 20s, I've chased the headlines. I've wanted to be in an article in TechCrunch or a Business Insider that says, Jermaine, founder of XYZ, had raised X amount of dollars in X valuation, right? That's like the dream of this Silicon Valley life that I live in, in this bubble, even though I'm not physically in Silicon Valley.
Inspiration Behind AirLite's Creation
00:02:03
Speaker
And as I get a little bit and older and I got to travel more and I saw the way that other people live all around the world, I started realizing that you know there's a lot of good things that we can learn from a lot of places.
00:02:17
Speaker
For example, when I first started learning Spanish in Mexico... I realized that there's two ways to say happy in Spanish. ah One of it is Feliz, which is you know what we know, Feliz Navidad, Happy Merry Christmas. Or there's the other way, Contento, which translates to content.
00:02:37
Speaker
And I think in our culture, we don't think about content as much. We think more of happiness as a pursuit and and as an act of happiness. Yeah.
00:02:48
Speaker
And this really took place in a conversation that I had with my parents about retirement. And we were having Thai food down the street from our office. And I asked them, hey, why don't you guys think about retirement? you know what What are you working so hard for? I'm not saying to stop working because it's fulfilling for them.
00:03:08
Speaker
But what about the other things? And what are you realized was that there was not a sense of clarity as to how their full 1K translates to the rest of their life.
00:03:19
Speaker
And I think for most people that is true. And with that, there is a sense of uneasiness of what if I run out of money before I die? And I think that uneasiness is at the core of what Air Light started as.
00:03:35
Speaker
AirLight, my company, was built initially as a chatbot to take life's inventory, to help my mother have a chat with an egoless, biasless, and judgmentless agent on a chatbot to talk about the things that she liked, the relationships she's had, the assets, her bucket list, all the things that we may not normally talk about over lunch.
00:04:03
Speaker
And a few months in, I realized that if I had your assets and your relationships, I'm able to create an estate plan for you. And so then we started working on the legal side of it to make sure that we guardrail our AI. You know, our AI doesn't just yes to everything and it doesn't go ahead and do everything that you ask it to do. It actually pushes back to ask for clarifying questions.
00:04:26
Speaker
And so the product today is only live in California. and Depending on you know when the listener is listening to this, we'll be expanding to the rest of the country.
AI and Estate Planning Innovations
00:04:35
Speaker
And because every state has different laws in the state probate code, as well as the health code, which is in charge of the health directive.
00:04:45
Speaker
And so we're working through these legal hurdles right now. walk me as a very much a layperson through how how you built this and what this entails technologically. Yeah, so think of it as it is a mobile app.
00:04:56
Speaker
And when you log into your mobile app, you will be greeted by Faye, which if you're watching on video, I'm going to flash it in front of you to check it out. And the idea is that you would talk to Faye, a Firefly that we had dreamt up ah as the agent. And in fact, Faye is now all over my life that this is Faye handling documents.
00:05:16
Speaker
Amazing. If you're on video, you get to see that. Essentially, it's a green Firefly holding documents. And you'll you'll talk to Faye. And as you talk to Faye, Faye will pick up on things like...
00:05:30
Speaker
this There's this concept called the gift of residue in probate code. In layman's terms, what it means is everything else. So when you normally write a will, you list out all your things and who do you want to give it to.
00:05:44
Speaker
But we tackle it in a different way. We we ask you, hey Dan, do you have someone in your life that you would like to give most most of your things to? And if you do, let's structure that order first.
00:05:57
Speaker
You know, let's say instead of having you come into our app and we start hammering you with questions of, oh, I have a watch. Who do you want it to give it to? I have a car. Who should it go to? A house. And instead of going through a laundry list of things, we ask you the questions in reverse.
00:06:13
Speaker
Who is most important? Who can make decisions for you? And as you're answering these questions in a conversation, our app is remembering all the things and we're building a world around you. So we have the context as to who you are. And so when you ask us, what is an executor?
00:06:32
Speaker
Then the app can answer you based on who you are, contextual to everything we know about you. Yeah, you can see the utility of this this a lot. How did you go about building this? How how do you understand like how to code this, how to use use this chatbot, how to bring in legal knowledge into it, all of that kind of stuff?
00:06:55
Speaker
On the coding side, I have two incredible co-founders. One is working on the AI side, Mikey, and ZJ is just like great at everything we want to visualize, he's building.
00:07:05
Speaker
And so on top of that, we have a design advisor who works at Spotify and a design team who helps us with UI UX. So this is now a seven-person operation.
00:07:18
Speaker
So it' it's getting to be a real team now. And in terms of the legal side, The probate code itself is publish every state. So the probate code essentially is what happens to everything in your life when you when somebody passes.
00:07:33
Speaker
And all that is available online. What makes every state different is the interpretation or what languages needs to be inside of your will to make some things legal or some accepted.
00:07:51
Speaker
And then if you really think about it, there's
Legal Considerations in Estate Planning
00:07:54
Speaker
there's plenty of companies that can do this, right? You can download a template or you can work with LegalZoom or an incredible company called Trust & Will.
00:08:04
Speaker
So you can actually go to these companies. I know they're officially my competitors, but I genuinely believe that rising tides raises all boats. And since the 70% of Americans that don't have an estate plan, there's plenty to go around.
00:08:18
Speaker
So if you prefer to fill out a form, you can log into one of these companies' website and fill in everything. And so what what we've done is we work with local attorneys to create a very sophisticated template.
00:08:37
Speaker
And when our AI chats with the users, we're basically looking to fill out this template in the most clear way so that their intentions are fully reflected onto the will.
00:08:51
Speaker
Like all of these apps, we're not allowed to give legal advice. And we do our best to just, based on the context of the user, give them the best practices that are available out there. And they choose.
00:09:03
Speaker
Okay, cool. And then this this comes out with a will that they can then put into practice, right? Yeah, so every state is, again, a little bit different. But typically, if you have a will and you you print it and you sign it in front of two witnesses,
00:09:20
Speaker
ah some you know Some states, for example, say, I think in California, it says that you have to be in the same room looking eye to eye. You can be in the same park bench you know looking eye to eye that that will work too.
00:09:34
Speaker
right And again, not legal advice. you know If you have questions about this, do consult an attorney. But we will give you instructions based on your state as to what will make it legally valid.
00:09:45
Speaker
the The will is simply a document for when someone passes away that the court uses to ah determine who gets what and who is appointed to be the executor, which is the person that carries out the wishes.
00:10:02
Speaker
For a lot of people, they actually do need a trust, which is an entity that contains all of their assets that then can be passed on without going through the court, which is the probate process. If you're listening to this and you know the difference between a will and a trust, you probably need a trust, if I'm just guessing, because you have some level of sophistication on the topic.
00:10:22
Speaker
um But i'm ah I've built this for the average person that has really just no idea about this topic. And that person was me just a year ago. What did you do to get up to speed on wills and trusts and all kinds of legal matters?
00:10:39
Speaker
a lot of conversations with attorneys. And typically, it starts with them telling me for 20 minutes that this is too complicated, AI cannot do it, an app cannot do it. And then after 20 minutes of me explaining to them, you know, where what is the lane that we play in, why we exist.
00:10:59
Speaker
And really, at the end of the day, some attorneys still never come around. And, you know, I've i've gone into some pretty... I wouldn't say heated, but some kind of uncomfortable conversations where we're talking over Zoom and there is no client-attorney relationship.
00:11:16
Speaker
And I feel like I was a punching bag for 30 minutes of like how technology is destroying people drafting like ah legal documents, which generally I agree with them.
00:11:27
Speaker
you know and And I can sense fairly quickly now if an attorney is open to the possibility of an alternative solution for people who cannot afford them. And the way we've learned this, we have 22 attorneys as of recording that we're bouncing our ideas with. We're we're sending our base template to, we're sending some questions over. and then I have another at one attorney working
Overcoming Estate Planning Challenges
00:11:55
Speaker
on making sure I don't break the law in terms of giving legal advice.
00:12:00
Speaker
Why should people trust me? your service with something so important for their life? I think they shouldn't, right? They got to evaluate.
00:12:11
Speaker
They got to take a look at my track record. They got to do their research and understand. my bigger concern is less about the user that is putting in the work to do their research, to Google me, to understand this.
00:12:29
Speaker
I'm trying to get people from zero to one. You know, I'm trying to go on podcasts and talk about things like this. You know a lot of young people say, well, I don't have a lot. Why do i need a will?
00:12:40
Speaker
Well, there's this other document called the healthcare directive. It's what happens to your body when you cannot make decisions, but you're not quite dead yet, right? You're laying in a hospital you're in a coma or something, you can't make decisions. You're unconscious. You cannot make a decision about your body.
00:12:58
Speaker
Who can make a decision about your body? And if you don't have this, then you can either leave it up to the medical professionals. It depends on how urgent things are. Or you potentially can have your family fight it out.
00:13:11
Speaker
right What if your mom and dad disagrees on what to do? Or next of kin disagrees with um your parents? So there there was an actress recently, a few years ago, who her husband and her, they knew. If she was in a vegetative state, she wanted to be let go. She didn't want to just be kept alive.
00:13:31
Speaker
but But this was not communicated in a document. And her husband knew that, but her parents didn't. And her parents fought her husband for six years to keep her alive.
00:13:44
Speaker
And at the end, six years later, she passed away. But just think of the emotional stress and the legal stress and the financial stress it puts people through. When you can just fairly simply, well, through Airlight, you can get this document done in probably 10 minutes.
00:14:01
Speaker
You know, there's some uncomfortable questions that we'll ask you. But the AI doesn't judge. The AI has no bias. So it's likely the easiest way to get that done.
00:14:13
Speaker
One of our biggest challenges right now is we make a promise to our user that when you use our app, we'll give you a estate plan. I would love to be able to tell my user that if at any moment you feel that you need to speak to a lawyer, that we can refer you to someone.
00:14:34
Speaker
There's a few things in it. There's ethical issues with referring and splitting fees and things like that. So let's assume that we don't get paid for the referral, which we don't right now. the The price point jumps from $179 to whatever a lawyer charges, which you know on the lower end is $1,500 maybe to to get a trust done. And if you live in Los Angeles or New York or Boston, the price is high, right? The hourly rate is very high.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so for my users who really deep down inside, I know they need a trust, I don't have a good solution for them simply because of the complexities of actually getting a trust funded and all the work that needs to happen outside of the app.
00:15:20
Speaker
So you founded lots of other startups and projects and things like that in the past. I would love to hear what you've most drastically changed your mind on from when you were a first time founder to founding Airtlight.
00:15:35
Speaker
The most drastic one that came there comes to mind right away is the external perception of my business and how I handle it. in I think a younger me spent a lot of time to make my business look bigger than it is or more impressive than it is.
00:15:55
Speaker
Because therere there is a case to be made that success attracts success. right When you seem successful, more things come around in your ecosystem. Things just happen.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I think at at this stage, you know I've turned down investors because I understand that if I start raising money and play the venture capital game, then I'm on this treadmill of like an 18-month fundraising runway.
00:16:21
Speaker
I got to keep hitting the metrics. and And I think worst of all of that is that I may lose some mental autonomy because I do i will care about the people that I take money from. And I will care about their opinion of where I'm taking the business.
00:16:40
Speaker
And being a very non-confrontational person, I know it would affect me. And so just being very self-aware of who I am as a founder now has helped me shape the kind of business that I want to run. And whether or not I take venture money or even just angel checks ah is quite a different ballgame.
00:17:00
Speaker
Have you taken venture money for previous projects? I have when I was much younger. And mostly in the pre-seed stage, you know, just like very early on, pre-MVP.
00:17:13
Speaker
Essentially, when you're... i mean, things are things are changing quite a bit now. Pre-seed checks used to be like $50,000 or, you know, pre-seed rounds used to be like... $75,000 before the founder has a strong base of of any of a product even.
00:17:30
Speaker
Sometimes people are just betting on founders. ah These days, I think pre-seed checks, pre-seed rounds go up to $2 million dollars and even beyond. And so if I'm thinking about where Airlite is now, to raise $2 million, dollars I'd give up probably 18% of my company.
Funding Strategies for Entrepreneurs
00:17:44
Speaker
And I don't know if I want to dilute myself so much in exchange for money that would be helpful, but Truth be told, I'm not sure what I would use it for because I have everything I need right now to build.
00:17:57
Speaker
That makes complete sense. If you're kind of advising other aspiring founders, what are what are some of the factors they should keep in mind if they if they do want to pursue the VC route or if they want to bootstrap it?
00:18:11
Speaker
think the first thing you had to ask yourself is why you know why. First of all, why why are you building a business? And then, is it a are you chasing something? Is it a passion project? Is it something you really care about? And then to understand the difference between the funding methods.
00:18:30
Speaker
There are many businesses that can be funded with SBA loan, but a small business administration, so governmental loan with very low interest, or maybe a local bank.
00:18:41
Speaker
to play the venture per capital game is you have to be in a business that is able to scale, you know, to millions, hundreds of millions, right? To, I think there is a,
00:18:55
Speaker
lack of understanding of how venture firm functions. There's this concept of the power law, which is, you know, in in a venture firm, I'm going simplify this a lot.
00:19:06
Speaker
they may Maybe they invest in 100 companies in their 10-year fund. And typically, two to five out of the 100 companies are successful enough to make all the returns of the the other 95 that might not have been so successful.
00:19:22
Speaker
And so a good venture firm typically would only bet on businesses that has a chance of being that 5%, the one that fulfills the power law.
00:19:35
Speaker
And so if you're looking to start a services business, it is absolutely not a venture business. you know If you're looking to start... Even AirLite may not be the best venture business.
00:19:49
Speaker
AirLite may eventually become a private equity business. where funds to do performance marketing, paid marketing, will amplify the growth.
00:20:01
Speaker
But i don't I'm not sure if we'll ever go to billion-dollar market, if we even want to.
00:20:08
Speaker
what would What would be the point where private equity would get interested in it and you might be interested in bringing them in? There's so many reasons.
00:20:19
Speaker
And to to kind of define private equity, it's basically anyone's personal money, right? I mean, legally, the venture capital is a form of private equity. Anything that is not on the public market that's tradable is private equity. But in in a more common sense of like what private equity means...
00:20:37
Speaker
i I'd be interested in private equity if it's strategic. So let's say we stay with estate planning. And a strategic private equity play could be a roll-up of AirLite plus a, probably plus a life insurance company or a money management company, right? Something like that would make sense. But ah but short of a strategic play, i think we may be able to grow and just by having good cost of acquisition and lifetime value ratio.
00:21:13
Speaker
How do you think about managing businesses differently with the different strategies here. So there's obviously like the exponential kind of businesses would be more of a VC play.
00:21:26
Speaker
You're doing what you're doing now with Airlight. You're also running your mother's logistics company, right? And how do you how do you think about like behaving differently as a leader, as a manager in these different entities?
00:21:38
Speaker
Yes, so for context, my my mom passed away exactly five months to this day and she she and I had a small business together. And in the small business, I'll try not to get too technical. So we we free cash flow is very important.
00:21:55
Speaker
Essentially, how much cash comes in and out. And that also allows us to grow or take home more if we want with the business. So in a business like that, you know keeping our books very tight, our APAR, very tight bookkeeping is super important.
00:22:13
Speaker
It's a very different kind of task. It's more like a SOP operational heavy company. Whereas Aerolite is more of a product-driven company for now. So we're building the best product possible.
00:22:27
Speaker
And we're really focused on design. And then we're really focused on getting more attention. So very different gears and very different sets of motivation. When I wake up and think about both things, you know, sometimes I think, which one am I in the mood for?
Personal Influences on AirLite's Mission
00:22:44
Speaker
yeah Do you mind sharing a bit more about your personal journey with losing your mother and and having to go through this whole will and trust process and what that was like for you?
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think this this process has been extremely rewarding already because since I've been building AirLight, I consciously have a lot of conversations with my mom about, had a lot of conversations with my mom about things that she cared about. And so because of those conversations, I was able to get to know her more.
00:23:18
Speaker
And I think that is ultimately the goal of Air Light, which is to help people have these conversations. Like going back to what we started with, which is clarity is love in practical form.
00:23:31
Speaker
you know If you love somebody, you can cook for them, you can hug them, you can tell them, but you can also help them gain more clarity in their life. And I think with her passing, I never really asked for this founder story and this mission.
00:23:49
Speaker
But in some ways, that's what she left with me. you know I don't really get to choose. And so I'm building this in honor of her. And she's helping me to stay very focused on the mission.
00:24:01
Speaker
I think one of the benefits, if we can call it a benefit of... having my story with my mom's passing is when we have decisions that are unclear, I can always go back to why we started building this in the first place.
00:24:21
Speaker
And that mission is very clear to me. Thanks for, ah yeah, thank you for sharing that. And it it really does bring in tremendous clarity into business decision making when you have such a real and visceral reason for for starting something like this and kind of wipes away a lot of the the nonsense, I'm sure, with, you know, do I do this, do I do that, when you can really ground it in this.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what I challenge most people to do, even if you just have a job. And, you know, one simple thing we can always do is to look into our calendars or our bank accounts and see how we spent the last 30 days.
00:24:58
Speaker
You know, we can...
Balancing Work, Life, and Fulfillment
00:25:00
Speaker
very easily highlight the things that added energy to us and circle those that took away energy from us and maybe to do more of the ones that you know add to us and that's very subjective to everybody so it's a great challenge for people what have you started doing more or less of in your own experience here I've started slowing slowing down a lot more.
00:25:25
Speaker
You know, i I'm someone who's a workaholic. i I don't know if that comes off. I love working. I love everything that I'm doing. i just really do genuinely enjoy being in the office a Saturday night because it's so quiet, you know.
00:25:40
Speaker
But i started I started catching myself when I feel irritated. Let's say like I was just in Seattle for five days. And for the first three days, I was very present. I was just being a tourist.
00:25:57
Speaker
Day four, I was feeling a little bit like, i got to go back to my emails. Day five, I was definitely irritable. i was I was that guy who's like, okay, it's vacations over. I got a lot to do. i got payroll. And so I started catching myself earlier in these experiences and telling myself that,
00:26:19
Speaker
that's It is life. you know we We got to enjoy it. and And still, when I do work hard, I go all in. And so when I rest, I should probably also go all in on resting, which sounds counterintuitive.
00:26:34
Speaker
Taking it as seriously as work. Can I ask how you got into tech and in the beginning? like what What is it that draws you to this kind of startup life? Yeah, when I graduated from USC, this was the height of technology.
Early Career and Entrepreneurial Drive
00:26:50
Speaker
I could not land a job because i was underqualified for things that I liked and I was overqualified for some things. I don't think I was ever overqualified because it's interesting to me, i want to do it.
00:27:05
Speaker
But I think the recruiters probably thought it was too risky because I was overqualified and that I wouldn't stay too long. And they're probably right if I had to put myself in their shoes. I had always been looking at, yeah you know, I'll just build something. I'll just try to make money.
00:27:20
Speaker
And for ah a few years of my life, I drove uber when it was like the peak of Uber trying to grow. And it was like guaranteed $45 an hour.
00:27:33
Speaker
i mean, those days are gone now, but but it was like guaranteed $45 an hour in 2012. So it was good money. You know, it was really good money back then. So I drove for, let's say, four to five hours a day.
00:27:45
Speaker
And then I spent the rest of the day just working on whatever I was building. And from there, just being obsessed with solving problems. So I stayed in tech. And i think the main difference between...
00:28:02
Speaker
a younger, germane, and currently, is when I have a vision for an idea or I want to do something, a solution to any problem, I get to solve it much faster now and I get to be more resourceful.
00:28:15
Speaker
right As you get older, you have more clarity and I know myself better and so things move faster. What was the most surprising takeaway you had from from driving Uber?
00:28:29
Speaker
The people... who seem to have less treated me the best. I don't know if that's surprising though. You know, it's like we kind of knew that. I remember having... And I know who he is because I had his name on my app at the time. ah He's a public figure and a famous one and on the news. And he was in the car and he was such an asshole.
00:28:55
Speaker
You know, it was just like disappointing because because in the in the persona, it was so great. And actually, I haven't thought about this for a very long time. So... So funny that you brought it up, but I've also ended up becoming friends with a lot of my passengers because I talked to everyone, right? and And I ended up multiple times, turned off the app and just went to hang out with them.
00:29:19
Speaker
And so it's it's been quite a
Networking and Learning Strategies
00:29:21
Speaker
journey. I mean, I wasn't doing it for my full livelihood. I was doing it just to have enough money so I can build the business on my other time. And so I only focused on peak hours that I drove.
00:29:32
Speaker
And then the rest of the time, I'm just like sitting at Starbucks something, you know, you're trying to build something. You're you're actually, that's a great question. I'm going to go and journal about this and try to dig up some old stories.
00:29:44
Speaker
I do remember myself sitting in the car and I i filmed these selfie videos of myself at 4 a.m. in the morning and kind of a message to my future self saying, it's 4 a.m. in the morning.
00:29:57
Speaker
i got to hit 20 rides today so I can hit my bonus and then want to go to work. Someday i'm going to look back at this video. You know I got to find those videos. I don't know where they are. Feels like the right time to look back at it. Yeah. That's so cool.
00:30:10
Speaker
How do you keep up to speed on everything tech and startups and and all of this kind of stuff? I know it's all moving so fast and changing so rapidly. i tried to talk to smart friends.
00:30:23
Speaker
So you can get overwhelmed because there's there's just so much. And the truth is you don't need to know most things. So for me, i I think I stick to at most for newsletters and they're very tech-driven maybe a little bit too tech-driven and that's how I get all my information and then when I have a question I just call up a smart friend and ask him hey what do you think No, i've I've found the same thing on talking to smart people in different spaces, and I'm so glad we were able to connect. And I was telling you earlier that it's it's rare that I find a third degree connection on LinkedIn these days that no one, we we don't know anyone in common, basically. It's just such a cool way to have a conversation with somebody who's in a totally different world than you are and in a lot of ways. And
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it's it's just way out of the bubble and way too many people spending a lot of time with people who are doing basically the same exact thing as them all day. Yeah, last night I went to a fintech meetup and, you know, Airelight isn't quite fintech, but it's kind of adjacent. And so I went to it thinking,
00:31:34
Speaker
I go to all the events thinking the same thing. I want to have one very interesting conversation. And if I can walk away from that that meetup or social happy hour with one interesting conversation, one connection, that's a win.
00:31:49
Speaker
Because most of the days we have zero, right? Yeah. And so I don't go into networking events thinking about maximizing. you know I think when you do think about maximizing, it's when you get caught you know by reading up people's name tag and trying to qualify people, whether it's worth your time. And and maybe, i don't know if I did that when I was younger. I'm sure a younger version of myself was more diligent and research people before going to meetings like that. But I think now I i try to just have really, really good conversation and go deeper.
00:32:20
Speaker
For books or any resources of any kind that you find yourself recommending most to people, anything come to mind for that? Yeah, the book that I recommend the most historically has been Essentialism ah by by Greg McKeown.
00:32:35
Speaker
And I actually met him once 10 years ago. um And yeah, just incredible guy, great storytelling. And then the book that really helped inspire Air Light is called Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. I think a lot of the concepts in there affected affected how I thought about the topic and how I thought about living life more and spending and memory.
Living Life by Seasons
00:32:59
Speaker
And so those two books are great.
00:33:01
Speaker
I really like this book called Predictably Irrational. It talks about humans being predictably irrational. And by a social psychologist called Dan Ariely, I think he's Portuguese. Okay.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah. What is your big reason for recommending essentialism? I think it's the same thing as what I'm doing, right? With clarity. it's It's actually, yeah, it ties all back into the same thing, which is having the clarity to know what is essential. What is the most important thing?
00:33:30
Speaker
And do more of that and less of everything else. And then Die With Zero is an amazing concept. How is it affecting the way that you're now choosing to live your life?
00:33:43
Speaker
ah One of the concepts in there, it talks about the seasons of your life. you know For example, I'm in my mid-30s now. So in my 20s, I did not go backpacking and sleep in hostels and party.
00:33:58
Speaker
I would not do that now in my 30s. Even if I did, it would be a different experience. I wouldn't be hanging out with early 20 years old in hostels. It would just feel different and a little strange.
00:34:12
Speaker
And there are things that I would do now in my 30s that I won't do in my 40s and 50s and 60s. And so the concept of like seasons of life and and don't put off the things that belong in that season.
00:34:25
Speaker
it consciously take action to do those things ah because there's you know you can argue that some things are never too late but but there's also the concept of like yeah at some point you just don't want to backpack in Europe Right? When I'm 50, definitely don't want to do that.
00:34:44
Speaker
And so so before you finish a chapter of the season that you're currently in, you can think about whatever things that you can do now. So for me, it would be to go to places that are difficult to go to when I have kids. Like to go to India, for example, would be more challenging to have a stroller in the middle of Delhi.
00:35:04
Speaker
ah So I would do that now. And I did that last year. Very cool. Where'd you go? I went to Delhi. I went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. And then I went to yeah Jaipur for Hali.
00:35:18
Speaker
And then after that, my girlfriend and I, we flew over to Kathmandu in Nepal and then went to visit the birthplace of Buddha. And so and these are not places that are super easy to go with kids.
00:35:29
Speaker
What an incredible trip. So how can listeners California, I guess, now and possibly in other states in the future, learn more about Air Light and follow along with your journey?
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, I Jermaine E. Everywhere. i'm I'm pretty easily searchable. I have a unique name. Aerolite is at H-E-I-R-L-I-G-H-T.com. And depending on when you're listening to this, you know if you're listening five years from 2026, then we should be in all 50 states.
00:35:57
Speaker
you know You can try out the app. It's free to download, free to use, and then you only pay when you export your document. So yeah, go ahead. And if you're not in California, you can still try it and just put California, but know that that will is tailored for the state of California.
00:36:14
Speaker
We'll definitely encourage folks to check out AirLite and follow along with Jermaine. And Jermaine,
Future Plans for AirLite
00:36:19
Speaker
thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Dan.