April 21, 2025 • 50 mins
Dive into the common struggle founders face with burnout and the inability to truly relax. Ryan and Will share their personal experiences and discuss how traditional relaxation methods often fail for them. Instead, they highlight the importance of finding other meaningful and challenging obsessions outside of work to channel their energy. From woodworking and home-building to martial arts, they explore how these activities can provide a sense of accomplishment, progression, and actual mental rest, ultimately making them better and more effective in their startup journeys. Tune in to gain insights on how to recharge as a founder by embracing big, consuming projects that challenge and fulfill you.
Resources:
Startup Therapy Podcast
https://www.startups.com/community/startup-therapy
Website
https://www.startups.com/begin
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/startups-co/
Join our Network of Top Founders
Wil Schroter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilschroter/
Ryan Rutan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-rutan/
What to listen for:
00:44 The Struggle with Relaxation
01:36 Failed Attempts at Relaxation
03:32 Vacation Dilemmas
05:52 The Need for Mental Engagement
09:47 The Importance of Completion
14:07 Finding New Problems to Solve
22:10 Woodworking as a Solution
24:13 The Obsession Begins: From Birdhouses to Building a House
24:48 The Challenge of Building a House from Scratch
25:35 Balancing Work and Passion Projects
26:31 The Importance of Completion and Physical Activity
27:53 Managing Overwhelm and Finding Solutions
29:14 The Power of Small, Consistent Efforts
30:22 The Role of Meaningful Side Projects
33:17 The Need for Mental and Physical Challenges
36:21 The Value of Overwhelming Projects
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to the episode ofthe Startup Therapy Podcast.
This is Ryan Rutan, joinedas always by my friend, the
founder, and CEO of startup com.
Will Schroeder.
Will, it is no secret thatas founders we get a little
obsessed with things.
We, we dive in, we gofull onto our startups.
This leads to burnout.
And we know, like thanks to someof the, the, the new narrative
(00:21):
that it's appearing, that itisn't just all crush, it, kill,
go, you know, 80 hours a day.
And so there are a lot ofthings we try to do to relax.
And I know you've tried a bunchof stuff, a bunch of stuff.
Like the whole sitting on thebeach thing doesn't seem to
work all that well for us.
We can't really fully unplugand disengage and so sometimes
relaxation becomes as muchof a frustration for me
(00:41):
and I know for you as justactually doing the work.
And so what have you tried?
Like
what's worked for you?
Will.
Here's the weird thing.
I've tried everything.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, andyou and I've talked about
this especially I'd sayin the last Ryan, probably
a decade of our lives.
Yeah.
Where we've realized thatlike working all the time
also isn't the right answer.
Fortunately obvious to a lot ofpeople was less obvious to us.
(01:02):
So then I was, okay, so I'mgonna, I'll work less so
to speak, I'll relax more.
And then I tried relaxingand it didn't work.
It became a real issue.
Yeah.
It became an issue where likeI knew I needed the downtime.
I knew I needed to reset,come off the field rest, and
then, you know, go back, uh,healthier and more productive.
I knew that was true, so itwasn't a matter of I'm not
(01:23):
willing to to work less.
It wasn't that Right.
It was when I cameoff the field.
I never felt rested.
Yeah.
When I came off the field,like I was more distracted.
It was almost like all Iwanted to do was play and now
you're keeping me on the bench.
What's not worked for you?
Like, what have you
tried that just didn't work?
A lot of the same stuff.
Right.
So it's like the, thetraditional hobby set, right.
(01:44):
The, all those things.
So like for example, I,I think you, you messaged
me this morning earlyand, and I responded,
you know, that I was out.
I was, and I jokingly said thatI was, you know, conducting
a case study for today'sepisode and I, I was running.
And so some of these things,like people have all kinds
of hobbies and I've triedlots of different stuff.
Something like running doesn'twork at all for me because the
entire time I'm running, I'mstill just thinking about work.
(02:07):
There's nothing else to do.
Right.
I don't like tolisten to podcasts.
I don't like, it doesn't,doesn't work for me.
Uh, for whatever.
I, I love to be able totake notes during podcasts,
so it's the same kind offrustration because I'm just
thinking, so I'm basicallypodcasting in my own head
while I'm running this morning.
I have no way to acton any of this stuff.
I think that's kinda the macrotheme for me is basically
anything that's where, where I'msupposed to just be relaxed and
(02:27):
like I've got nothing but time.
Like, like I'm on the beach,I'm, I'm by the pool, I'm,
I'm walking, whatever it is.
I enjoy these activities,but they don't recharge
me as a, as a reset.
And I think it's because whenI'm given that much free time.
My mind gets reallyactive typically on a
work startup problem, butI can't take any action.
I think that's wherethat's, maybe that's
the same thing for you.
(02:48):
That's where I start to, itturns from just not only not
being restful to actuallybeing actively frustrating.
Absolutely.
It makes it worse happen today.
Halfway through my jog,I had this argument.
I was like, oh, I shouldtest this thing, right?
And something happened.
I had to dodge a lady and a dog,and then I saw my mother-in-law,
the direction to be high fived,and then all of a sudden I was
like, shit, what was that thing?
Because if I had been sittingdown, if I had been working.
(03:09):
I would've just written it down.
I would've typed it out.
I would've done somethingthat would've memorialized it,
and I was running, I'm like.
Damn it.
Now I can't remember what wasthat thing I wanted to do.
And it just turns intofrustration 'cause
I can't take action.
And the thing is, we cognitivelyknow that rest and relaxation
is good and we're seeking it.
Yes.
So it's not likewe're saying rest bad.
Right.
We're saying rest good,but she's not working good.
But wear rest.
(03:30):
Yeah.
Right.
So I would go on vacations andmy wife and I were just talking
about this last night and,uh, we were planning our, our
next anniversary trip Uhhuh.
And she's like,you hate vacation.
And I was like.
You know, you're not wrong.
I do hate vacationand I suck at it.
Yeah.
And, and, andhere's what happens.
Lemme just play this outand, and I'm saying this
because I've gotta imaginethat there's some other
(03:52):
folks in the audience, right?
You know, that, that arelistening to this, that are
like, yeah, this is prettymuch how vacation goes for me.
But here's howvacation goes for me.
I have two paths in planningthe vacation path a. Is
I plan a really nice,like rewarding vacation.
Mm-hmm.
Which translates toa lot of expense.
Yeah.
Path B is, I, I, Ido a phone it in.
I don't give a shitwhere we go vacation.
(04:12):
Right.
Which usually is afamily vacation, right?
Yeah.
Because they're always the same.
What ends up happening in bothcases, if I go on nice vacation.
Right.
Where like it feelslike a reward.
Like the place we'regoing is like super nice.
Yeah.
The entire time all I'mdoing is almost like, like an
odometer running like a taxi.
Yeah.
Running the costof this vacation.
(04:33):
You're, you're constantlyreal time calculating ROI.
Yeah, exactly.
Am I getting $1,800 aday, which would be how
many per hour right.
Am I getting?
$75 per hour worth of me.
Now I'm
stressed, right?
I'm stressed that I'm sitting onthis, this beach chair, right?
Yep.
Staring at the ocean whereall I can think about is work.
And now I'm more stressed,that I'm stressed, that
(04:55):
I'm on va. I'm like, thisisn't working at all.
And when I go oncheap vacation, right?
Just to wherever I. I'mmiserable the whole time.
It doesn't feel likea reward at all.
I'm like covered in, inlike dirt from all these
other kids at Disney Worldor something like that.
While I love the time withmy kids at the same time,
it's like this doesn'tfeel relaxing whatsoever.
Right.
I always have the sense thatI'm also doing something in an
(05:16):
environment that's somehow lessenjoyable than my own home.
Right?
Yeah, exactly.
We, we have nice houses.
We like, we've, we've designedwhere we lived in a way that
makes us happy to be there.
And so like if I go on somethinglike run of the mill vacation.
It feels like a step backwards.
Like, it's funny we'vesaid this before, but my
wife and I both said this.
Sometimes when we go home, thatfeels like the vacation, right?
(05:37):
And to me, that'skind of the goal.
That's the way I want it tofeel right At this point.
We don't go on vacationsfor relaxation.
We don't go onvacations to, to reset.
We don't go on vacationsto escape our every day.
We go on vacations to seethings we haven't seen before
or, or have new experience.
And I think forus, that does work.
And I, I do enjoy those.
But it also isn't necessarilya, a, a reset in, in that same,
(05:57):
that traditional sense thatit's like, no, it's worse.
Take the book, go sit bythe pool, read it, you know,
it doesn't work, right?
Just absolutely doesn't
work for me.
What bothered me washow consistently and
effective it was.
Right.
How everyone else does itand everyone else seems to
like, my wife's great at it.
She goes, and she,she enjoys herself.
She recharges does everythingyou're supposed to do,
(06:17):
and I'm glad she does.
But when I go, I'm justanxious the whole time, all
I'm thinking about is work.
In fact, for a long time I usedto say, I can't wait till I can
get a, get some vacation timeso I can be better at work.
Like to me, like.
Vacation was literally just amechanism to do more work later.
Um, and I was okay with that.
But my point is, what itdidn't do woefully failed
(06:40):
at was getting me to, toreset my mind, getting me
to think about somethingelse other than work in a
productive, useful, happy way.
And all the otherthings that I've tried.
I've, I've tried meditation,which is almost like that
frustration on steroids.
I love the idea of meditation.
Yeah.
The practice of meditationis maddening to me.
(07:01):
It's like the worst place
you can put me.
I cannot get rid ofthe monkey thoughts.
Like it, my, my, my, the monkeyon my back is way too strong.
It rides around, it slaps mein the face and it's like,
think about this, thinkabout that, think about
this, think about that.
And I'm like, just let it go.
Like I, I, I go back tothose earliest days of
listening to the Headspace appwhere, where Andy was like.
Just treat each thought asif it's passing traffic.
(07:21):
And I'm like, yeah, butevery bit of that passing
traffic says something to me.
I have to say something back.
Some of them drop stuff off.
Some of them want me toput things in their cars.
Like every bit of it.
Like there's, there'sno, just watching it go
by for me doesn't work.
It's
funny, I love Dandy 'causeobviously he's got the
best voice in the world.
A hundred percent.
Um, like nobody couldhave done a better job.
And I remember thinking aboutthis of Andy at getting me.
(07:43):
To try to relax my mind andby the end of like day 10
of Headspace, I hated Andy.
Yeah.
Wasn't it his fault?
I was like, this guyjust reminds me of being
trapped in a coffin.
Right.
If you tell me, ifyou tell me to let my
thoughts go one more time.
Andy, I'm gonna find you.
What's interestingthough, Ryan is.
I think, you know, thecommon narrative for all
the right reasons is thatrelaxing and taking a break
(08:06):
and going on vacation ishow you reset from work.
That's just how you do it.
Yeah,
and what I found over and overand over again, more so with
founders, is it's actuallynot what we're built to do.
However.
However, that's not the same assaying, so let's just work more.
Right.
What it's saying iswe have to find an
(08:27):
entirely different way to
relax.
Oh.
'cause I, because itjust doesn't work.
Right.
And so I think we, we do wantto like, play devil's advocate
here for just a second.
Like, so we, we do know thatsome people can unplug, right?
There are peoplethat can do this.
And so it's, it's not thatI. Vacations don't work,
uh, for, for some people.
So I just, I want to make surewe're not overgeneralizing here.
I'm, I'm saying for mostpeople it works great.
(08:48):
It works great.
Yeah.
So here's, here's, but so Iam, I'm saying even within
the overgeneralization of justthe, the founder population.
I'm trying to think of,of founders that I know.
So is this just a foundercondition or is this a
subset of a, a personalitytype within the, the
overall founder archetype?
What do you think?
Oh, I'm sure itgoes beyond that.
The reason I think it seemsto be so damn, um, prevalent
(09:09):
within founders is becausewe tend to create our worlds.
If I'm an attorney, it's notthat I'm not dedicated to my
craft, then I'm a hard worker,but I'm not creating law.
Yeah, right.
Like I'm, I'm thinking about acase that, you know, I'm trying
to think creatively about howI'm gonna attack something,
but it's not existential.
Like we get into this in avery existential way and we
are creating the universe.
(09:31):
If you have that type of mindthat is running and building
and creative nonstop, I wouldalmost argue it is a disservice.
To turn that mind off.
Yeah.
Now most people are, again,are gonna take that and say,
well, what you're sayingis you just keep working.
No.
What we're saying and whatwe're gonna unpack in this
episode is how to take thatenergy and maintain it,
(09:55):
but do it somewhere else.
Yeah.
Because I, I think in, in, inthe, the founder's mind, right?
It's, it's if we're notbuilding something right,
if, if we're not building thenext feature, next campaign,
then we're just sitting andprobably worrying about.
What's already been builtor the fact that we're
not currently building,and that's the real trap.
Right?
And I think that'sthe, the problem.
(10:15):
So if, if moving to relaxationmode, if that's all that buys
you is anxiety around thefact it's not working, then,
then I think that's where youand I are most of the time.
Then clearly just pushinginto relaxation has a net
negative impact, right?
Because I, like, I've tried thelounge on the beach approach,
I found myself more stressed.
My mind was just spinning onall the things that I could
(10:36):
have been doing other thanthat, and it's hard to let go.
Why is this right?
Like why is.
Just
relaxing.
So useless for us, I thinkbecause our minds want to grind.
Yeah.
Right.
Our minds wanna chew onsomething all the time.
And I think when we try tolisten to Andy and we try
to say, okay, mind stopchewing on things, it's
not what we're built for.
(10:56):
Right, right.
And, and again, that's whyit feels so foreign to us.
And for the longest time Ikept saying, it's my fault.
It's my problem.
Yeah.
I can't unwind, so I haveto change in, in a while
back I learned that.
I was doing it wrong.
I was approaching,relaxing in the wrong way.
Now, I had a hint of thisthat, that something was,
(11:17):
was off because a lot oftimes when I would try to
relax, I'd play video games.
Yeah.
In the game that I would playmore often than not was called
Civilization, which, youknow, I, I'm sure some of the
folks I, Brian, I know you'veplayed, et cetera, it's the
equivalent of a full-time job.
Right.
Well it is, and you're basicallycreating a civilization, making
all the same time of strategicand tactical decisions that you
(11:38):
would make building a startup.
What I realize now is thereason I was gravitating
toward that is 'cause my mindwanted to chew on something.
Yeah.
I just needed something else
for it to chew on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Our minds are problemsolving engines, right?
That that's, that's specificallywhat like we've geared ourselves
around, or we already had apropensity towards that engine
doesn't just sit at idlesimply because you're sipping
(11:59):
margaritas in Maui or whatever.
Right.
It's that, that's the thing.
Wants
to run.
Now I wanna use, because I thinkthis is important, I want to
use a different scenario becausewe keep talking about like time
off or like going to meditate.
I wanna talk about maybe themost important moment that I
needed this distraction themost is at 3:00 AM when I wake
up and my mind is racing ona problem that by the way,
(12:24):
I will not solve right now.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
So, I mean, this has happenedto me all the time, every night.
I'll wake up at some bizarrehour in the morning and I'll be
like, oh my God, this problem.
Okay.
This is the way my mindworks and I'm a hundred
percent sure it's the waythat our, our listeners,
I had three of thesewake up last night.
(12:44):
Uh, two work related.
One, preparing for paperwork formoving to Spain, stuff right?
Literally at threeo'clock in the morning.
There is nothing Ican do at this point.
Nothing I can do.
All I can do is think about it.
It never gets solved.
That's the worst part.
It never gets solved.
I wanna hold ontothat for a second.
'cause this is actually areally important building
block to all of this.
(13:04):
As founders of startups, wehave an endless number of
problems that actually don'thave a solution anytime soon.
In other words, like weneed to get more customers.
Okay, sure.
Everyone needs morecustomers, but that process
will essentially take yearsto get to that milestone.
Maybe months.
What it, what won't happen iswe'll solve it that day, right?
(13:25):
You're like, got, we gotcustomers Don't need to
worry about that anymore.
Done.
And so what I found was I'mup at 3:00 AM and I'm grinding
on a problem that, number one,I'm not gonna solve at 3:00 AM
I'm just gonna worry about it.
And number two, I can'tsolve anytime soon.
Right.
This is a big one.
Yeah.
I don't think foundersappreciate or understand
(13:47):
how few of our problemscan be solved anytime soon,
or will be solved anytime
soon, or will ever be solved.
Right.
Some of these thingswe're, we're constantly
chipping away at.
Yeah.
I think it's the casethat in as, as a founder
within a startup, werarely get to declare done.
Right.
Very few things areever done, as in it's
any level of finality.
(14:07):
And so I think that's wherelike, and I think this is where
you're going with this, that'swhy like the selection of of
personal projects, somethingthat's still mentally engaging,
creative outlet, physical work,something I. There is sort
of a finite point of victorywhere you can say, Hey, that's
done.
I did it.
Yep, a hundred percent.
This actually happenedyesterday and you, you were
there when it happened.
(14:28):
Yes, yesterday.
Internally, uh, we announcedthat we just launched a huge,
huge feature on the platform,um, to do member search with ai.
It allows people to go on intolike a natural language search.
I'm explaining forthe audience and find.
Anybody in our community thatfits what you're looking for.
Right?
Yeah.
It's so awesome.
It's one of the bestpro, it's the best
product we've ever built.
But the reason I'm bringingit up is because it
(14:50):
actually launched yesterday.
Yes.
And, and, and Ryan, you wereat the all hands meeting when
we were doing the final demoand when we hung up, I actually
stood up for my chair andyelled at the top of my lungs.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Because it was good, I think.
Yeah.
Because I realize thishappens so rarely.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do.
We have few actual finish lines.
Yeah.
(15:10):
And this one wasa big one, Ryan.
Maybe we have twoa year at best.
Yeah.
And, and again, like with someof those mileage varies and,
and even there, like look atsomething like that, like we
rolled out member match, thatpart of it's done, right?
The product piece is done.
Now we gotta go work on it.
We gotta get, yeah, forfive, five years on our
feature, we gotta promote it.
We gotta get people using it.
We gotta get, so like, even,even our DUNS just tend to lead.
(15:32):
It's just.
You kind of get around thecorner, you're like, okay,
I made it around that cornerand now there's nothing but
but road ahead of me again.
And so it's, it's evenwithin those, it's rare
that we get to that liketrue moment of finality.
We get to thesemoments of victory.
Right?
Absolutely.
That's a midseason victory.
There's still a lot of gamesto be played, uh, before
we can call that done.
(15:53):
Often those milestones you don'teven notice when they happen.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
My favorite thing is exactlythis, like a website launch
uhhuh, and like you want thereto be a ribbon and cutting
moment or like a giant like,like fake switch that you flip.
In reality, a developersomewhere just hits enter and
you know, now you've launched.
Right, right.
Like it's, it's live.
The amount of effort you'veput into this, right.
(16:15):
The payoff is zero.
Yep.
But I wanna step back for asecond and I wanna inventory a
couple things that we coveredhere and make sure, make
sure they get isolated as,as key building blocks here.
One, for many of us,our minds will not stop.
It's a, a, a thankless effortto, to try to make them stop.
And, and the truth is.
Our relaxation doesn't have toequate to stopping our brains.
(16:37):
Right.
And I don't think anybody'sever said that to us.
I, I think it's alwaysbe, no slow down, take
a, a breather, et cetera,and you'll be better off.
No one ever says Gochannel that somewhere.
It's the thing because itdoesn't get channeled, right?
I think what, what, it'sbasically the equivalent
of keeping your foot onthe gas, but shifting
into neutral Engines stillrevving RPMs are high.
We just, there'snothing happens.
There's no movement.
(16:58):
There's no progress.
I was playing baseballwith my son last night.
You know, I, I got him thisNerf bat so that we can play
indoors in the basement.
That ends well.
Worst idea ever.
Right?
Uh, I get him the bat.
He's o over the moon, like thebest g gift he's ever gotten.
Right?
And I was like,dad, can we go play?
And so me and, and him and,uh, Sarah, my wife, uh, we go
downstairs in the basement.
It's, and not a huge basement.
(17:19):
We have just enough room tolike, you know, throw the ball.
But it's, you know,it's cold outside.
And so we throw in the ball.
It's a Nerf ball, Nerf bat.
First pitch, hecranks a line drive.
I mean, he connectedbeautifully right into my wife.
I knew where this was going.
Oh man.
And she was like, we're done.
We're done.
Anyway, my point is, lastnight I played with him.
He wants to play the, uh,baseball thing, right?
So we played forever.
(17:40):
He scored like 23 run.
And I was like, okay,yo, let's take a break.
And at that moment where I'mexhausted, you know, I've been
up since 4:00 AM It's like 7:00PM now where I'm exhausted.
He just wants to keep going.
And again, in the back of myhead, I'm like, the, the answer
isn't to find a way to, to havehim do less, it's to find a
way to channel that energy tosomething where he can do it.
Where it's seven o'clockat night, he's gonna
(18:00):
go, go to bed an hour.
But my, my point is,I'm starting to realize.
That for certain typesof energy, the goal
isn't to stop energy.
Oh.
The goal is to channel energy.
Yeah.
And I think that's, I, Iwish I had known that sooner.
I certainly know it now.
I wish I'd known it sooner.
Uh, Ryan, you'vedone martial arts.
That's a big partof martial arts.
Yeah.
Channeling youropponent's force,
(18:20):
so to speak.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what, itwas funny, but, uh, so Juujitsu
was one of those activitiesthat actually worked well for
me because it requires a fullmental shift in focus when
there's some highly trained.
Physically strong persontrying to choke you, bend your
joints the wrong directions,sit on you until all the air
(18:42):
squash, whatever it is, right?
Like there's realconsequences to that.
So you pay attention, you get,oh, my fully engaged, my, my
customer acquisition costs.
I, you know, it's funny,I never thought about that
despite the fact that we'dactually mix these two things
pretty heavily because at theearly stages, the way I was
doing jiujitsu was in return.
For some businessconsultation to the owner
(19:03):
of the studio, right?
We were trading off.
So we were literally gofrom talking, here's how to
structure marketing, here'show we can look at your CPC,
here's how we can, we canwork on your Google ads.
To him choking me outand brutalizing me.
Right.
So in, in,
instead of having you tap out,he's like, lower cac, that's it.
Lower cac.
That's it.
That was it.
I, I had to lowerCAC where he would
snap my, he wouldsnap my, my shoulder.
So one of the elements is, isnot trying to stop energy, but,
(19:25):
but trying to channel energy.
Yeah.
Right.
I think that's one.
A second element is thisconcept that we don't
have a lot of things inthe startup world Yeah.
That tell us we're done.
The sense of finality, ofaccomplishment, of being able
to walk away from somethingtoday, I. And say, I did
that exactly the way youfelt when you left Juujitsu.
Bruises notwithstanding likethat, that the way you feel when
(19:48):
you're, you're done with soccer.
Like you get this feelingwhere you're like, I feel
like something finished.
I think that fucks with us.
And I think it's somethingthat, that we do not appreciate
nearly as much as we need to.
Uh, parenting's the same wayby the way there, you know,
there are clear milestones, butthere are not enough of them.
No, there are no exit ramps.
Uh, for sure.
It's interesting because Ithink that with, with certain
(20:10):
things like with sport, so forme, soccer, fishing, jujitsu,
these things that are all fairlyphysical activities, they, they
do have a start and a stop.
But there isn't alsoa done necessarily.
I mean, it's some, somedaythere will come a done where
I don't play soccer anymore.
Someday there will come adone where I don't jiu-jitsu.
I can't imagine notfishing, but there's always
(20:31):
the next time, right?
Like the, thechallenge with fishing.
We did it last night.
Uh, finally caughtsomething too.
A little flounder.
We're gonna have it for lunchtoday, but there's always the
kids picked up on it right away.
It's one more cast, we'llsay last cast, and there's
one more cast becausethere's always the
chance that the nextcast is the one.
And so what's been interesting,and I I I really wanna get your
take on this 'cause you've had alot of these in the, in the last
(20:53):
few years, which are relativelylarge scale projects, but that
do actually have like a, amore of a sense of completion.
You're in a huge one now.
For example, for me there were,there have been a couple, the
one was around kind of buildingour, at the previous house where
we built out the little, littlekind of gardens and chicken
coop and stuff, and so likethere was a sense of completion.
(21:14):
I built the kids' playhouseand there was a sense of
completion around those things.
My pond of two years ago.
Was a fantastic onebecause it involved all of
these things that I love,physical work, design,
science, biology, like it.
It was just all this reallyinteresting stuff and because
there was sort of a, eventhere, it's not really a
(21:36):
final point because I'mstill optimizing, right?
I'm still figuring outlike, what, what are
the balance of fish?
How do I do this stuff?
But there was,there's a pond now.
There wasn't a pond,now there's a pond.
And that felt great, right?
That was trulyenergizing for me.
Waking up, you know, wakeup at four 30 in the morning
instead of thinking like.
Oh, dear God, whatwill cap be today?
Will we get enough traffic?
Will we, it was, I wonder ifthe rate of flow is too high
(21:58):
given the amount of surfacearea I have based on the
gravel size that I selected.
Right.
This,
this shit.
But that's a solvable problem.
That's exactly, so that'swhere our story begins.
This is the longestintro of all time.
That's where our story begins.
I think that, again,everybody's version is gonna
be different, but what I foundwas that I needed a problem, a
different problem to work on.
(22:19):
Yeah.
That was big enough to matter.
You know, Ryan, you'reobviously familiar with
the story, but like Yeah.
Years ago I started to getreally into, to carpentry.
Into woodworking.
Yeah.
Like building stuff and Ithink it checked a lot of
boxes for me instantly.
I meet a lot of otherwoodworker founders.
Yeah.
I think that, uh, I thinkbecause it checks some of the
same boxes, which is, we liketo create, we like to invent.
(22:39):
I like things that have askill tree attached to 'em.
If we're going back to videogame references where you
can kinda level up, you know,like carpentry, home building,
things like that, have.
Endless skill trees, everythingfrom being able to learn
how to build furniture,to do electrical, to do
plumbing, like you name it,like it's goes on forever.
A few years back, four yearsago, we were about to remodel
our home, and by this point,Ryan, you know, I had built out
my workshop and everything elselike that, like, you know, I,
(23:01):
I got really, really into itwhat was initially driving me.
Uh, toward, this was asense or two things, just
what I just described.
I found that when I wasbuilding things, I was
not thinking about work.
Yeah.
And it was the only, onlyonly time where I wasn't
thinking about work and, and,you know, glad for it because
(23:23):
my hands were in front ofa table saw or a miter saw
or some spinning blade thatthat required some focus.
And I found.
That the second thing thatI, I didn't know that I
was looking for or thatI needed was completion.
At the end of the day, I hadcompleted a project and there
was an overwhelming sense offinality and it felt good.
(23:45):
Feels good.
It felt really good.
Yeah.
Right.
It reminds me of the scene,I dunno if you remember this,
in Fight Club where EdwardNorton is trying to figure
out like he's like, you know,going through life, whatever.
Yeah.
And he finds fight club.
Yeah,
yeah.
And he ends up, youknow, getting in a fight
and he's like, and itfelt good, good, right?
Like, I mean, granted likethat was a very bizarre
and twisted version.
But it's kind of what he meant.
(24:05):
Yeah.
He's like, I, I knew Iwas looking for something.
Something.
Yep.
Right.
Needed
to channel some energy.
Right.
Needed something with asense of completion needed.
Yep.
All those things.
Yeah.
And, and, and obviously thepremise of Fight Club is much
cooler than the premise ofWoodworking Club, but I don't
know the, the same feeling.
Right.
Um, I knew I needed tobuild bird houses and so.
So I get into it, right?
I go down this rabbithole and you've been
(24:26):
watching this, uh, develop.
So a few years ago we decidedwe're gonna remodel our house.
And uh, and I was breakingdown all the costs to do it.
This is right before Covid.
And, and I said to mywife, I was like, you
know, like, for, for what?
It's gonna cost us to fullyremodel a house 'cause you're
really paying for it twice.
I was like, we shouldjust go build a new
house, build a new house.
Right.
And that's where it began.
Yeah.
That's, that's wheremy obsession began.
(24:48):
And so for, for the folks inthe audience, what I ended
up doing was I was like,I not only wanna build a
house, I wanna do everything.
Like I, I wanna designthe house, I wanna
learn 3D modeling.
I wanna learn interior design,I wanna learn, I structural
engineering, like the basics3D modeling, plus rendering.
So I could, you know,figure out exactly what
everything would look like.
I
still trip out, man, when wego to the house now to the
(25:10):
site and walk around there,because I spent, you know.
Probably an hour in totalinside that place when it
was still just a 3D modeland I was headset's on.
Yeah.
Running around witha, an Xbox controller.
Although I still, I,I wish that you would
include it in real life.
The feature where I couldjust levitate between floors,
that was to take the stairsthat was pretty new or become
a drone in, in, in fly out.
(25:31):
So he, here's what, here'swhy this, and why I'm setting
it up and why this mattered.
What I was lookingfor was a massive.
Overwhelming challengenow for a lot of people,
they're like, fuck that.
I've already got a massive,overwhelming challenge.
Like it's my kid,or it's my my sharp.
Why would I wantanother you psychopath?
And here's why.
Because it gave me somethingmy mind was looking for.
(25:54):
Yeah.
Which was a reallypowerful challenge.
So powerful.
That it could force me tohave to think about that.
Yep.
At the expense of work.
Now, again, a lot of peoplesay, well, I don't want
anything at the expense of work.
Dude, if you're built like weare, that ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem isn't, oh, I guessI'll become lazy and not work.
It's like that.
Is that Uhhuh, you crossedthat bridge a long time ago.
(26:17):
That ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem is you are soconsumed by work, you don't have
the ability to recharge, whichis making you a worse player.
Yep.
That's the part that I knowI missed for years, you know
what I mean?
Yeah, for sure.
So look, you're, you'rebuilding a house.
We're getting ready to engagein another international move.
I've decided that internationalmoves are actually one
(26:37):
of those things for me.
And like trulyit's, it really is.
It's a, it's a fullcreative project that
you have to go through inyou're redesigning life.
Is there, in your minda, a risk, like how do
you do the calculus?
It does have to be bigenough to matter, right?
If you're just like, I'mgoing to, I don't know, I'm
gonna mow my lawn and it hasa sense of completion and
it's a physical activity.
Yeah, grass grow right back.
(26:58):
But it is how peoplefeel when they clean like
their room or their house.
Oh, a hundred percent.
A lot of people use cleaning asa method, whether they realize
it or not, to get to completion.
Yeah.
They say it makes me feelgood, and what they're saying
is it makes me feel likeI've completed something and
that's a powerful feeling.
I.
It is also one of thenumber one, uh, uh,
procrastination activities.
Oh, yeah.
(27:19):
You gotta be, gotta becareful with that one, right?
It's like, I could dothat next campaign or I
could tidy my desk again.
Right, right, right, right.
From this side to thatside and at least an hour.
Agreed.
Uh, is there, so it's gonnabe big enough, but like what
about, what about too big?
Is there a riskin going too big?
What if the second obsession,'cause I know the people out
there again, like, 'causeone of the things is just
like, will they do it at all?
Right.
As as you just said.
Like, they're gonna think, oh,this is a divergence from work.
(27:40):
I don't need that.
I never need that.
Yeah, you do.
But is there a place where the,the second obsession, there's
a risk of it overshadowingthe startup itself, and how
do you keep from accidentallyprioritizing the, the, the side
passion over the main hustle?
Now I, I've never hadthat become a problem.
I don't think you've everhad that become a problem.
But I think when peoplehear things like.
I'm building an entire house.
I'm doing everything from theCAD to the, to the wiring, to
(28:02):
the carpentry, to the cabinetry.
All they're going.
How do you actuallydo both those things?
You know something that'sreally funny about everything
we talk about here isthat none of it is new.
Everything you're dealingwith right now has been done a
thousand times before you, whichmeans the answer already exists.
You may just not knowit, but that's okay.
(28:22):
That's kind of whatwe're here to do.
We talk about this stuff onthe show, but we actually
solve these problems alldayLong@groups.startups.com.
So if.
Any of this sounds familiar.
Stop guessing about what to do.
Let us just give you the answersto the test and be done with it.
As you know, because you'vebeen on site, uh, you know,
Ryan came and visited me afew weeks ago and he came on
(28:44):
site and he was, he helped mebuild stuff out in the house.
I am way into everything, likeevery last detail of this house.
Yeah.
And it's a big house, right?
So, so the gravity of it,of everything that, that I
need to do is significant.
And so, but Ryan, you'vewatched me do it and in some
case you helped me do it.
You know, I've built everycabinet in the house.
I've built three kitchens,I've built a bar.
(29:04):
I've built every closet, everyvanity tire workshop worth
of like 80 feet of benches.
And yeah, I mean everything.
And how did I do that?
Like how did I findthe time to do it?
Honestly, it was kind of thissimple, I wake up bananas early.
Yep.
And I put in two to three hoursa day before the day starts.
Now when people say that, it'slike, okay, you, you can't do
much in two to three hours.
(29:25):
Bullshit.
Yeah.
Over a, I'm here totell you, period.
Four years.
You sure as hell can?
Hell yeah, you
can.
Yeah, you can.
Um, it adds up waymore than you think.
Most people just don't havethe dedication to do it, and
I'm not Johnny dedicated.
It's just something that I love,which is why I am doing it.
Right, but here's where it getsinteresting at three in the
morning, as soon as that, ohshit, how are we gonna market?
(29:46):
Member match?
Yeah.
Thing comes up, right?
Yeah.
Now I have a process.
Yeah.
Where I say, I've been herea million times, I know
this, I, I can't answer this.
Let me go switch gears.
To something, uh, sosome problem to do
with this house thing.
Yep.
Um, I can solveimmediately, right?
So it's like a, a certainjoint that I needed to put in
or, or how I'm gonna configurelighting or something like that.
(30:08):
It works every single time.
I've found a way to take thatenergy and just channel it.
Instead of trying to stopit, sort of dam it up.
I just channel it.
But here's the key.
I channel it into somethingI can actually solve.
Yep.
Right.
So this morning, again, thisis stupid and minor and dumb.
Uh, this morning, Ryan,you came in, you helped me.
We were building, you know,all the, the benches for the,
(30:30):
the new workshop in the house.
And I was trying to figureout how to get all the
bench tops to line up.
'cause there's like a,like a, a 45 foot long.
I. Uh, countertop that hasall these six foot, you
know, butcher block sections.
Again, none of this isimportant, but that's my point.
And I was thinking like, damn,like the, the, the, if I but 'em
up end to end, they're not gonnabe like exactly symmetrical.
So how can I make sure eachof them is cut perfectly
(30:51):
so they all line up soit doesn't create a long
arc? None of this matters.
That's my point.
The point is that 3:00 AMI can solve that problem.
Yep.
I can run through a bunchof, uh, different ways
that I can do the cuts, themortis, everything else like
that and figure that out.
It's stupid.
And that's exactly why it'sbeautiful because then I'm,
then I go back to sleep.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I guessI've solved my mortis, you
(31:13):
know, countertop problem.
And I know most people aregonna be like, I would never
care about that if really whatI cared about was, you know,
launching new product, whatever.
And I get it.
It's exactly whatI would've said.
That's why what you'redoing, this other obsession
has to become an obsession.
It has to be something that youcan grip into and be as worried
(31:34):
about that, or as excited, asobsessed as you are about work.
Yeah, and, and I know theproblem that I'm solving there
is minuscule and dumb and damnnear irrelevant, but I also know
that if I put my focus there.
My problem is solved.
The actual problem, whichis the, the, the 3:00
AM wake up and worry.
(31:54):
Right.
Which never solves, we'venever solved a startup problem
at three o'clock in themorning that I can remember
and you never will.
Yeah, right.
But 3:00 AM creativitycan actually produce
something tangible.
Right.
Whether it's, you know,the right cuts for to, to.
Eliminate that arc in, in a60 feet of, uh, of workshop
bench or check in the tidesto see what time I should
(32:15):
do I need to be out at fiveor, or, or, or six 15 to go
hit some fish this morning.
Here's where the payoffis for work though.
I actually sleep, so that's one.
But when I get up and I getready to work, my mind is clear.
Yeah.
Right, exactly.
I don't feel like shit.
Right.
I don't feel burnt out.
I can't wait to start work.
Yeah.
It's so counterintuitive.
It's literally theopposite of burnout.
(32:35):
It's so counterintuitive.
But let's, let's talk aboutthat for a second, because
I think that there's alsothis notion that like,
could this just becomelike double burnout, right?
Am I just gonna doublethe, the rate of my burnout
because I'm now spendingenergy in this other way?
You know?
And are we, are we actuallysolving something here?
Or are we just transferringthis obsession from one
(32:55):
thing to another withoutsolving the root problem?
Is this just a coping mechanism?
Does it matter?
So I, I think these arethe questions that people
are probably asking.
I think you and I haveanswers to them, mostly
through experience.
'cause I certainly haven'tthought specifically about that.
Like, is this actually thehealthiest way of doing this?
It's the way that
works.
I can say that.
Yeah, there's no question.
(33:16):
Right?
Here's here's why it'sbeen healthy for me, okay?
Uh, this past weekend, youknow, I'm installing all
those crazy heavy, uh, benchesthat we were putting in.
Those things are like thesize of each one's, the size
of a refrigerator and we'reinstalling 10 of them, and,
and they're heavy and I'mmoving all those things around.
They're heavy as hell.
Every single muscle in mybody is screaming by the
(33:36):
end of the day Sunday.
And I think to myself, allI want to do tomorrow is
not lift heavy shit Uhhuh.
And go work onlaunching our product.
Yes.
See, that's what I'm saying.
That's it.
Like it's the first time I founda way to come off the field
actually recharge and go back.
Now a lot of people look at say,wait, aren't you super tired?
(33:57):
Yes.
I sleep like a baby and Iwake up the next morning.
I don't have tolift a goddamn thing
uhhuh.
So like that's notmy problem anymore.
Right?
Yep.
My problem was when I spentall weekend obsessing over
stupid stuff I couldn't fix.
Yep.
And then Monday I wake upand get this, I'm like.
I need to work on,uh, stupid stuff.
I can't fix.
See, like I, I've beenwallowing in the problem the
(34:17):
whole time instead, insteadof, without doing anybody
disconnecting from it.
Yeah.
I I never came off the field.
That's why I was so burnt out.
You know, it's funny, Ihad an example of this
at a friend of mine.
Uh, we went through a businessschool together and he, he
went off, eventually madeit over to, to Wall Street
and then quit Wall Streetand became a day trader.
This guy just couldnever put it down.
(34:40):
There's also nothing you cando on Saturday or Sunday or
after four 30, but he wouldobsess and worry and wait and
worry and wait, and I'm like,dude, you literally actually
can't do anything until Monday.
Right?
The analysis is done.
You're just waiting to see whathappens, to know whether you're
gonna buy or, and just it was,it was the same kind of thing.
We're just like, he justwouldn't ever switch
(35:02):
off at a point where heabsolutely had no ability
to, to change the outcome.
It just hated him constantly.
Let's stick with that 'causeI, I, I, I really wanna
dig into that for a second.
If we give ourselves in agiven week, Uhhuh, let's say 40
hours to worry about something.
And I'm not saying the partof doing anything, I'm saying
literally just worrying about itin some form or another, right?
(35:25):
Whether it's between slackchats, um, you're journaling
to yourself, you're talking toyour friends, you're complaining
to your spouse, like you nameit, whatever, whatever your
version of how you expressbullshit, you know, worry is,
let's say you spend 40 hours aweek doing it, it's because you
had 40 hours available to do it.
But the actual fixingof the problem doesn't
(35:45):
take any amount of time.
Like if, if you and I areworried about, let's say that
we're trying to raise more moneyand we're worried about running
outta money, yeah, we're gonnaspend so much time worrying.
But the amount of time ittakes to do something about
it still may be a fair amount.
We've exhausted so much,so much time, energy.
Yep.
In worrying.
Okay.
Now what I did was I took allthe time that I was otherwise
(36:08):
gonna be worrying and Idid something else with it.
That's it.
That's all I did.
Yep.
I just took my worry timeand put it into something
that was easy to worry about.
Like, like when you come intothe workshop and you and I were
working on something, I thinkwe were building drawers, you
know, that time before that.
And I'm like, we just have tomake sure that this rabbit joint
is exactly five days, inches.
So it, it, that's it.
It's all we have to worry about.
(36:28):
Well, we had to figure andnot cutting your fingers off.
It's beautifulbecause it's so dumb.
Yeah, right.
And I mean dumb in a good way.
It's simple and it's obvious
and it's achievable
exactly When we're done with it
and it's
immediate, nearlyimmediate, we just have
this, this beautiful outcome,but it's also meaningful.
I think that's the thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can't just cumulative,can't just pick dumb rote work.
(36:49):
Like it's the kinda like, oh,well what a crossword work.
Uh, maybe forsomebody, not for me.
Right?
I'm just like, every, every wordjust prompts another thought.
So yeah, I think that it,it does need to have like
some meaning again, a senseof completion, but sense
of completion of somethingmaybe with some permanence.
I'm trying to think of thisnow, this, so with things
that I've done that gave mesome of this catharsis, I'm
(37:10):
trying to think of any of them.
Weren't somehow memorialized.
Let's dig into, in, intoJuujitsu, you were leveling up.
You, you were learning moves,techniques, uh, things that
you didn't know before.
You had a clearsense of progression.
Yeah.
So maybe the memorialization,maybe the finality isn't
necessarily it as much as it isthat, that sense of progression.
I think the sense of progressionwas definitely there, there
(37:32):
is absolutely no sense ofof of finality because each,
each role, each scenariopresents something different.
Right,
you bet.
Which is what makes it exciting.
Yeah.
But, but knowing like, likewhen you play soccer knowing
that you won the game.
Yeah.
Again, it goes backto, to milestone.
Yeah.
But, but it, it, it's a truesense of accomplishment.
You know, when you'd comewith me to play, uh, hockey
(37:52):
and, and, and we played overanother founder's house, you
know, built a hockey rinkin his backyard, and I, I
would tell you, I was like.
I don't actually careabout winning that game.
Yeah.
Because it's just my friendsand I, and we switch teams
like every other game.
So like the people you'replaying against, you're playing
with in the, in the next round.
But holy cow, I like to win.
And, and when I say that, notlike, uh, because I beat the
other team, nothing like that.
(38:13):
No.
It just feels likeI did something.
Yeah.
You, you did the best youcould at that moment, right?
You,
yeah.
Also, if I lose, Ikind of don't care.
Like there's justno consequence.
But if I have a great shotor, or if I have a hat trick,
like in whatever I'm like.
I feel freaking great about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's weird because I knowthere's no consequence to
this, but I also know thatlike mentally I needed a win.
I, I needed a milestone.
(38:35):
I needed, you know, a level up.
And I think what, what you weresaying, 'cause you said this to
me when you were in town lasttime when we were working on
that workshop, you said, well,it's really cool that what we're
building will be here forever.
Yeah.
You know, when, when we buildthis workbench, whatever, I
know you'll be working at itall the time and I, I know that
like, you know, you'll passthis to your kids, so to speak.
Yeah.
Gimme a lot of joy to thinkabout the fact that like, we're
(38:56):
building something that you'regonna use to build a bunch
of other stuff that will goon and have their, it's it's
funny, it's, it's amazing.
It, it's, it's almost a perfectmetaphor for what we're building
with startups.com, right?
We're building the work.
I better all the time,time's gonna help.
To build a bunch of otherbusinesses and people to
go and do their thing.
Right, which is,
you bet.
It has an exponential factor.
What's interesting aboutit to me is that, yes, I'm
building an entire house withmy free time, so to speak.
(39:18):
I know, I know.
That sounds.
Bananas And it is, and I'mnot suggesting do that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
For me, specifically for mypersonality, in order to achieve
what I needed to achieve,which is to find a different
way to channel my obsession,it had to look like that.
I didn't know that.
I didn't like setout to do that.
Frankly, it ballooned onme, but it worked really
(39:39):
well, like freakishly well.
And now when I talk toother founders, right, I'm
finding more and more of themthat do have an obsession.
That have an amazing amountof peace that comes with it,
where they're like, when I'mdoing that, I am in my zone.
I'm in my Z. Yeah.
Stick.
Stick on this for a secondbecause I think there's
a misconception that thisis a thing that comes
(40:00):
as you achieve a certainlevel within your startup.
I. Where you're now allowedto have this other thing and
you are already feeling veryfulfilled with your startup, and
then you added this other thing.
I think if we were to do somesort of dissection on any one
of these, the vast likelihood isthat they feel that way because
they started the side hustle.
They, they, they achievedboth together, not.
(40:20):
One because of the other.
It wasn't causal.
It wasn't because Iachieved success in startup.
I was able to go pick upthis, this side hustle that
gives me all this zen, uh,happiness, not the case.
And again, I think I needed tosee the other side of it, see
how, how, how these other thingsdid not work for me in order to
have the appreciation that I do.
That this other obsession is,is something that, that I've
(40:42):
needed mentally and emotionally.
Sure.
For decades.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I just didn't know it.
And I gotta say, the moreoverwhelming it got, and I know
overwhelming strikes, fear intopeople's hearts, and I get that.
I understand why.
But the more overwhelming itgot, the more I enjoyed it.
Right.
At which point I was like,fuck it, I'm gonna build
everything in this house myself.
Yeah.
(41:02):
And I remember my, my, uh, mycontractor who, you know, has
been helping me through thisis like, what do you mean?
Like, you, you're gonna buildlike a table or something?
I'm like, no, I'm, I'm gonnaliterally build everything,
every kitchen cabinet, everyvanity, every closet, every
cubby, every everything.
And he is like, when areyou going to do that?
I'm like, I have no idea.
Yeah, actually don't know yet.
And then, uh, I pickedup another habit.
(41:25):
This is maybe four or five yearsago, and you and I have talked
about this on, on the podcastin our early podcast, actually
about one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
The way you move mountainsis one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
So I started to apply thatso like, you know, this
morning I get up right.
You know, crazyearly that, that.
Just happens to be my schedule.
But I go into my workshop andI have exactly one hour worth
(41:45):
of work to do today involvedsanding and, and applying poly.
So it just needed todry, so I couldn't
So you decided, you decidedto do that and you're, you're
taking the, the originalfinish off all those tops?
Yeah.
I ended up getting, you know,for, for those in the audience
that absolutely don't care, Iended up getting 60 feet worth
of butcher block countertopsthat were all stained espresso
happy accident this weekendthat I texted you and, and
showed you the picture.
(42:06):
Yep.
I happened to takea bunch of this.
The stain off by accident ofone of the countertops and lo
and behold, the, the wood below,it was way more beautiful.
And I was like, God damnit.
Yeah.
It's like the one time Ibuy pre-finished, I end up
taking all the finish off it.
Yeah.
I have to take all thefinish off all of 'em.
So that's what I was doing,that five in the morning.
I do it in just little chunks.
If I said, oh my God, I haveto do the whole thing, I look
(42:27):
at it and I say, no, I have todo an an hour a day, two hours
a day, depending on, you know,how much time I have in the
morning and all that adds up.
All that adds up.
Remember when we went tothe storage container?
Yeah.
Where all this stuffis sitting, all this
stuff flat packed and Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so everything I've built,like the entire kitchen, I
would build it like everycabinet, every everything.
And then take thewhole thing apart.
Flat pack it, wrap it in,in, uh, in bubble wrap
(42:49):
and store it like Tetris
Te Tetris is exactly whatit looks like, except
that it's, it's, uh,three dimensional Tetris.
It's three dimensional Tetris.
It also weighshundreds of pounds.
Yeah.
Which we also discovered.
My point is every singlething in there that's
stacked in there Yep.
Was an hour worth of work.
Yeah.
Compounded over a long enoughperiod of time, which like,
(43:10):
it's an important piece becauseI, you, you said it earlier,
which was like, well, whatcan you actually get done
in an hour or two hours?
Turns out a lot, but there's,there's two pieces to that.
You can actually get a lot done,but if you really feel that
that's true, if you're sayinglike, what could you actually
get done in, in an hour or two?
Then you can easilyreverse that same logic and
say, well, what were yougonna do with it anyways?
If you can't get anythingdone in that hour or two,
(43:33):
why were you gonna spendit worrying or working when
you could have spent itdoing something else that
might actually recharge you?
Right.
So it's funny that so often, uh,the, the, the pushback that we
provide, the reason why we can'tdo a thing is exactly the reason
that we could also do the thing.
Right.
You know, uh, a perfect examplelike the visual metaphor.
Ryan, you know how thedownstairs in my theater,
I've got all those DVDs?
Yes.
(43:54):
Like a thousand DVDsfrom backing DVDs.
A thing.
Yeah.
You, you look like, youlook like what happened
when Blockbuster closed.
But I remember sitting thereone day and, and, and I'm
looking at all these DVDsand, and my daughter was there
and she was like, dad, haveyou watched all these movies?
Because remember likeanymore, like a kid doesn't
physically see movies ormedia for that matter, right?
(44:15):
And I was like, you know, some.
I did, and all I can think tomyself is how much I could have
gotten done in this time ifI wasn't watching Bubble Boy
man,
it's funny, I have this, Ihave this, however, right?
I have this thoughta lot because as you
know, I'm not much of amedia or TV guy, right?
I just, I don't know.
The last time I watchedNetflix, there are times
(44:36):
where when people aretalking about something,
like, it was like, oh, blackMirror is made for you.
You're gonna love this.
And I think like I, you know,and I, I hear people talking
about the episodes discussing.
There are times where Ifeel a little left out.
Yeah, I get it.
I feel a little left out andthen I think about, I'm like,
these people are talking aboutsomething that in order to
have this discussion, theyinvested 40 hours plus of
(44:59):
their time each, and that'swhere I go, you know what?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I, I probably spentthat on, on something
significantly more important.
Like mileage will vary.
Of course.
The other thing I wanted to, totalk about was this, this notion
where you said that like the,the more overwhelming it became.
More valuable became for you?
It had consequence.
There's, there's a consequenceand there's also, there's
(45:21):
something about like, I thinkthis is where we said it in,
in a couple different ways,and I think one of the, maybe
the nuance points that wemissed was when we said like,
it needs to be big enough.
It needs to be big enoughand important enough
that it also eliminates,basically squeezes out.
Like eliminates sucks up allthat air that you would've
otherwise spent worrying.
For me, it, it's funnywe're, you know, as, as
(45:43):
you know, we're, we'retraveling right now.
We were in Ohio with my parents.
We're now in in Floridawith my wife's parents,
but we're through lotsof strange circumstances.
There is a bunch of my parents'stuff and I was going through
some of this old memorabiliaand it forced me to revisit a
couple periods in my life thatwere absolutely overwhelming.
They were some of the mostproductive periods, like
(46:04):
in in, in youth, right?
Like, so there was this, wediscovered all of these merit
honor roll, uh, certificates,the, you know, uh, Allstate
first team notificationsfor, for sport and this
other law in the Constitutionconference that I attended.
It was all like the same timeperiod, and I was going, my
God, I was doing a lot ofstuff and I was excelling
(46:24):
and thriving at all of it.
Why?
Because it was so divergent.
It was so different that itgave me that level of catharsis,
but it also squeezed out anytime to do anything other than
do this stuff didn't leave meany time to worry about it.
I couldn't worry about mysoccer performance because
the minute I was done withsoccer, I had to, I was, I was
(46:45):
off studying for something.
I was, I was, you know,going up to, uh, Ohio State
to, to, you know, take partin an academic conference
doing something right.
And so it was thoseperiods where it was
totally overwhelmed.
I think I've shared thisone on the podcast before.
But it was those, the, the, theperiod in university at which
I had started the business,so running the company, I had
a full load at Ohio State.
(47:06):
I had a couple of weirdelectives that they wouldn't let
me take because I was alreadyover my credit hours and so
I, I went to another localuniversity and signed up to take
these transferable credits thatdidn't matter to me anyways.
They were just electiveclasses and so I was completely
over, literally overloadedwith the schedule, like
beyond what was allowableto take at one university.
So I took it a second.
(47:27):
And running the businessat the same time, and I had
some of my best grades ever.
I had fantastic performancein the business.
Why?
I didn't have time tothink or worry about shit.
It was, I was either asleepand, and completely soaking
up the, the needed rest or Iwas on something, but things
that I cared about, notthings that I was just thrown
into or had to do, right.
(47:48):
Things that I, thatlegitimately mattered to
me, that I was engaged in,that gave me very different
types of outlets for, for all
that energy.
You bet.
And it, it doesn't have tobe something that is like.
A job.
Right.
You know, I'm doingsomething that's very
physical and that's fine.
That just happens tobe what my thing is.
You could just put thatenergy anywhere else.
(48:08):
Right.
In a way it has to be in, in, inmy mind for me, I, I, this, I'm
not speaking for anybody else.
It, it has to be challenging.
There has to be amental challenge to it.
If you take out the mentalchallenge to it, or in some
cases the physical challengeto it, the challenge in
general, it actually doesn'tinterest me in a perfect
metaphor for that, Ryan.
Is, you know, as you know,I love to play video games,
but the moment in the game,no matter what game it is,
(48:30):
that I know that I've gotthe most powerful weapon
or I've got, you know, thebest armor or like, I'm just
gonna mow over everything.
Yep.
I absolutely lose interest.
Yeah.
And that's what alwayskilled me, an Assassin's
Creed, because it's sucha big, long game Uhhuh.
But I would grind likenonstop in order to get
like way ahead of whereI should be in the game.
Yep.
And then the moment I gotthere, I could just take
out everybody immediately.
(48:50):
Everybody.
Yeah.
I was, I was like, I don't carehow this game is, I. Boring now.
There's no sense of progression.
Yeah.
I took the challenge out of it.
Yeah.
Right.
Um, and, and now it's funny,when I play something, I'm
very mindful to try to likedo what I enjoy doing, which
is like gaming the game,uhhuh, but also not do it
so that I, I can never see.
Yeah.
It's like now
I've just, I've ruinedthis for myself again.
What's interesting thoughis I, I, I don't think that
(49:13):
for some of us, what we'relooking for is the opportunity
to quote rest, like, youknow, put our brains to rest.
Like, and for some peopleit works great and, and
you know, God bless you.
But for most of us, for mostof us that have this, this
obsessive mind that cannotstop, that is gonna be up every
morning at 3:00 AM grinding onsomething, we gotta feed it.
(49:34):
We gotta feed that withsomething that has the
same type of challengethat got us grinding on
the, in the first place.
Yeah.
So yes, it's somethingoverwhelming.
Yes, it's something that'sgonna challenge us even more.
Some stress us out inits own way, and maybe
that's a good thing.
But the truth is we have to findoutside interests that consume
us because it's the only wayfor people like us that will
(49:55):
ever actually get the rest thatwe need and how we recharge
to go build something amazing.
Overthinking your startupbecause you're going it alone.
You don't have to, and honestly,you shouldn't because instead,
you can learn directly frompeers who've been in your shoes.
Connect with bootstrapfounders and the advisors
helping them win in thestartups.com community.
Check out the startups.comcommunity@www.startups.com
(50:19):
to see if it's for you.
Could be just thething you need.
I hope to see you inside.
Welcome back to the episode ofthe Startup Therapy Podcast.
This is Ryan Rutan, joinedas always by my friend, the
founder, and CEO of startup com.
Will Schroeder.
Will, it is no secret thatas founders we get a little
obsessed with things.
We, we dive in, we gofull onto our startups.
This leads to burnout.
And we know, like thanks to someof the, the, the new narrative
(00:21):
that it's appearing, that itisn't just all crush, it, kill,
go, you know, 80 hours a day.
And so there are a lot ofthings we try to do to relax.
And I know you've tried a bunchof stuff, a bunch of stuff.
Like the whole sitting on thebeach thing doesn't seem to
work all that well for us.
We can't really fully unplugand disengage and so sometimes
relaxation becomes as muchof a frustration for me
(00:41):
and I know for you as justactually doing the work.
And so what have you tried?
Like
what's worked for you?
Will.
Here's the weird thing.
I've tried everything.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, andyou and I've talked about
this especially I'd sayin the last Ryan, probably
a decade of our lives.
Yeah.
Where we've realized thatlike working all the time
also isn't the right answer.
Fortunately obvious to a lot ofpeople was less obvious to us.
(01:02):
So then I was, okay, so I'mgonna, I'll work less so
to speak, I'll relax more.
And then I tried relaxingand it didn't work.
It became a real issue.
Yeah.
It became an issue where likeI knew I needed the downtime.
I knew I needed to reset,come off the field rest, and
then, you know, go back, uh,healthier and more productive.
I knew that was true, so itwasn't a matter of I'm not
(01:23):
willing to to work less.
It wasn't that Right.
It was when I cameoff the field.
I never felt rested.
Yeah.
When I came off the field,like I was more distracted.
It was almost like all Iwanted to do was play and now
you're keeping me on the bench.
What's not worked for you?
Like, what have you
tried that just didn't work?
A lot of the same stuff.
Right.
So it's like the, thetraditional hobby set, right.
(01:44):
The, all those things.
So like for example, I,I think you, you messaged
me this morning earlyand, and I responded,
you know, that I was out.
I was, and I jokingly said thatI was, you know, conducting
a case study for today'sepisode and I, I was running.
And so some of these things,like people have all kinds
of hobbies and I've triedlots of different stuff.
Something like running doesn'twork at all for me because the
entire time I'm running, I'mstill just thinking about work.
(02:07):
There's nothing else to do.
Right.
I don't like tolisten to podcasts.
I don't like, it doesn't,doesn't work for me.
Uh, for whatever.
I, I love to be able totake notes during podcasts,
so it's the same kind offrustration because I'm just
thinking, so I'm basicallypodcasting in my own head
while I'm running this morning.
I have no way to acton any of this stuff.
I think that's kinda the macrotheme for me is basically
anything that's where, where I'msupposed to just be relaxed and
(02:27):
like I've got nothing but time.
Like, like I'm on the beach,I'm, I'm by the pool, I'm,
I'm walking, whatever it is.
I enjoy these activities,but they don't recharge
me as a, as a reset.
And I think it's because whenI'm given that much free time.
My mind gets reallyactive typically on a
work startup problem, butI can't take any action.
I think that's wherethat's, maybe that's
the same thing for you.
(02:48):
That's where I start to, itturns from just not only not
being restful to actuallybeing actively frustrating.
Absolutely.
It makes it worse happen today.
Halfway through my jog,I had this argument.
I was like, oh, I shouldtest this thing, right?
And something happened.
I had to dodge a lady and a dog,and then I saw my mother-in-law,
the direction to be high fived,and then all of a sudden I was
like, shit, what was that thing?
Because if I had been sittingdown, if I had been working.
(03:09):
I would've just written it down.
I would've typed it out.
I would've done somethingthat would've memorialized it,
and I was running, I'm like.
Damn it.
Now I can't remember what wasthat thing I wanted to do.
And it just turns intofrustration 'cause
I can't take action.
And the thing is, we cognitivelyknow that rest and relaxation
is good and we're seeking it.
Yes.
So it's not likewe're saying rest bad.
Right.
We're saying rest good,but she's not working good.
But wear rest.
(03:30):
Yeah.
Right.
So I would go on vacations andmy wife and I were just talking
about this last night and,uh, we were planning our, our
next anniversary trip Uhhuh.
And she's like,you hate vacation.
And I was like.
You know, you're not wrong.
I do hate vacationand I suck at it.
Yeah.
And, and, andhere's what happens.
Lemme just play this outand, and I'm saying this
because I've gotta imaginethat there's some other
(03:52):
folks in the audience, right?
You know, that, that arelistening to this, that are
like, yeah, this is prettymuch how vacation goes for me.
But here's howvacation goes for me.
I have two paths in planningthe vacation path a. Is
I plan a really nice,like rewarding vacation.
Mm-hmm.
Which translates toa lot of expense.
Yeah.
Path B is, I, I, Ido a phone it in.
I don't give a shitwhere we go vacation.
(04:12):
Right.
Which usually is afamily vacation, right?
Yeah.
Because they're always the same.
What ends up happening in bothcases, if I go on nice vacation.
Right.
Where like it feelslike a reward.
Like the place we'regoing is like super nice.
Yeah.
The entire time all I'mdoing is almost like, like an
odometer running like a taxi.
Yeah.
Running the costof this vacation.
(04:33):
You're, you're constantlyreal time calculating ROI.
Yeah, exactly.
Am I getting $1,800 aday, which would be how
many per hour right.
Am I getting?
$75 per hour worth of me.
Now I'm
stressed, right?
I'm stressed that I'm sitting onthis, this beach chair, right?
Yep.
Staring at the ocean whereall I can think about is work.
And now I'm more stressed,that I'm stressed, that
(04:55):
I'm on va. I'm like, thisisn't working at all.
And when I go oncheap vacation, right?
Just to wherever I. I'mmiserable the whole time.
It doesn't feel likea reward at all.
I'm like covered in, inlike dirt from all these
other kids at Disney Worldor something like that.
While I love the time withmy kids at the same time,
it's like this doesn'tfeel relaxing whatsoever.
Right.
I always have the sense thatI'm also doing something in an
(05:16):
environment that's somehow lessenjoyable than my own home.
Right?
Yeah, exactly.
We, we have nice houses.
We like, we've, we've designedwhere we lived in a way that
makes us happy to be there.
And so like if I go on somethinglike run of the mill vacation.
It feels like a step backwards.
Like, it's funny we'vesaid this before, but my
wife and I both said this.
Sometimes when we go home, thatfeels like the vacation, right?
(05:37):
And to me, that'skind of the goal.
That's the way I want it tofeel right At this point.
We don't go on vacationsfor relaxation.
We don't go onvacations to, to reset.
We don't go on vacationsto escape our every day.
We go on vacations to seethings we haven't seen before
or, or have new experience.
And I think forus, that does work.
And I, I do enjoy those.
But it also isn't necessarilya, a, a reset in, in that same,
(05:57):
that traditional sense thatit's like, no, it's worse.
Take the book, go sit bythe pool, read it, you know,
it doesn't work, right?
Just absolutely doesn't
work for me.
What bothered me washow consistently and
effective it was.
Right.
How everyone else does itand everyone else seems to
like, my wife's great at it.
She goes, and she,she enjoys herself.
She recharges does everythingyou're supposed to do,
(06:17):
and I'm glad she does.
But when I go, I'm justanxious the whole time, all
I'm thinking about is work.
In fact, for a long time I usedto say, I can't wait till I can
get a, get some vacation timeso I can be better at work.
Like to me, like.
Vacation was literally just amechanism to do more work later.
Um, and I was okay with that.
But my point is, what itdidn't do woefully failed
(06:40):
at was getting me to, toreset my mind, getting me
to think about somethingelse other than work in a
productive, useful, happy way.
And all the otherthings that I've tried.
I've, I've tried meditation,which is almost like that
frustration on steroids.
I love the idea of meditation.
Yeah.
The practice of meditationis maddening to me.
(07:01):
It's like the worst place
you can put me.
I cannot get rid ofthe monkey thoughts.
Like it, my, my, my, the monkeyon my back is way too strong.
It rides around, it slaps mein the face and it's like,
think about this, thinkabout that, think about
this, think about that.
And I'm like, just let it go.
Like I, I, I go back tothose earliest days of
listening to the Headspace appwhere, where Andy was like.
Just treat each thought asif it's passing traffic.
(07:21):
And I'm like, yeah, butevery bit of that passing
traffic says something to me.
I have to say something back.
Some of them drop stuff off.
Some of them want me toput things in their cars.
Like every bit of it.
Like there's, there'sno, just watching it go
by for me doesn't work.
It's
funny, I love Dandy 'causeobviously he's got the
best voice in the world.
A hundred percent.
Um, like nobody couldhave done a better job.
And I remember thinking aboutthis of Andy at getting me.
(07:43):
To try to relax my mind andby the end of like day 10
of Headspace, I hated Andy.
Yeah.
Wasn't it his fault?
I was like, this guyjust reminds me of being
trapped in a coffin.
Right.
If you tell me, ifyou tell me to let my
thoughts go one more time.
Andy, I'm gonna find you.
What's interestingthough, Ryan is.
I think, you know, thecommon narrative for all
the right reasons is thatrelaxing and taking a break
(08:06):
and going on vacation ishow you reset from work.
That's just how you do it.
Yeah,
and what I found over and overand over again, more so with
founders, is it's actuallynot what we're built to do.
However.
However, that's not the same assaying, so let's just work more.
Right.
What it's saying iswe have to find an
(08:27):
entirely different way to
relax.
Oh.
'cause I, because itjust doesn't work.
Right.
And so I think we, we do wantto like, play devil's advocate
here for just a second.
Like, so we, we do know thatsome people can unplug, right?
There are peoplethat can do this.
And so it's, it's not thatI. Vacations don't work,
uh, for, for some people.
So I just, I want to make surewe're not overgeneralizing here.
I'm, I'm saying for mostpeople it works great.
(08:48):
It works great.
Yeah.
So here's, here's, but so Iam, I'm saying even within
the overgeneralization of justthe, the founder population.
I'm trying to think of,of founders that I know.
So is this just a foundercondition or is this a
subset of a, a personalitytype within the, the
overall founder archetype?
What do you think?
Oh, I'm sure itgoes beyond that.
The reason I think it seemsto be so damn, um, prevalent
(09:09):
within founders is becausewe tend to create our worlds.
If I'm an attorney, it's notthat I'm not dedicated to my
craft, then I'm a hard worker,but I'm not creating law.
Yeah, right.
Like I'm, I'm thinking about acase that, you know, I'm trying
to think creatively about howI'm gonna attack something,
but it's not existential.
Like we get into this in avery existential way and we
are creating the universe.
(09:31):
If you have that type of mindthat is running and building
and creative nonstop, I wouldalmost argue it is a disservice.
To turn that mind off.
Yeah.
Now most people are, again,are gonna take that and say,
well, what you're sayingis you just keep working.
No.
What we're saying and whatwe're gonna unpack in this
episode is how to take thatenergy and maintain it,
(09:55):
but do it somewhere else.
Yeah.
Because I, I think in, in, inthe, the founder's mind, right?
It's, it's if we're notbuilding something right,
if, if we're not building thenext feature, next campaign,
then we're just sitting andprobably worrying about.
What's already been builtor the fact that we're
not currently building,and that's the real trap.
Right?
And I think that'sthe, the problem.
(10:15):
So if, if moving to relaxationmode, if that's all that buys
you is anxiety around thefact it's not working, then,
then I think that's where youand I are most of the time.
Then clearly just pushinginto relaxation has a net
negative impact, right?
Because I, like, I've tried thelounge on the beach approach,
I found myself more stressed.
My mind was just spinning onall the things that I could
(10:36):
have been doing other thanthat, and it's hard to let go.
Why is this right?
Like why is.
Just
relaxing.
So useless for us, I thinkbecause our minds want to grind.
Yeah.
Right.
Our minds wanna chew onsomething all the time.
And I think when we try tolisten to Andy and we try
to say, okay, mind stopchewing on things, it's
not what we're built for.
(10:56):
Right, right.
And, and again, that's whyit feels so foreign to us.
And for the longest time Ikept saying, it's my fault.
It's my problem.
Yeah.
I can't unwind, so I haveto change in, in a while
back I learned that.
I was doing it wrong.
I was approaching,relaxing in the wrong way.
Now, I had a hint of thisthat, that something was,
(11:17):
was off because a lot oftimes when I would try to
relax, I'd play video games.
Yeah.
In the game that I would playmore often than not was called
Civilization, which, youknow, I, I'm sure some of the
folks I, Brian, I know you'veplayed, et cetera, it's the
equivalent of a full-time job.
Right.
Well it is, and you're basicallycreating a civilization, making
all the same time of strategicand tactical decisions that you
(11:38):
would make building a startup.
What I realize now is thereason I was gravitating
toward that is 'cause my mindwanted to chew on something.
Yeah.
I just needed something else
for it to chew on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Our minds are problemsolving engines, right?
That that's, that's specificallywhat like we've geared ourselves
around, or we already had apropensity towards that engine
doesn't just sit at idlesimply because you're sipping
(11:59):
margaritas in Maui or whatever.
Right.
It's that, that's the thing.
Wants
to run.
Now I wanna use, because I thinkthis is important, I want to
use a different scenario becausewe keep talking about like time
off or like going to meditate.
I wanna talk about maybe themost important moment that I
needed this distraction themost is at 3:00 AM when I wake
up and my mind is racing ona problem that by the way,
(12:24):
I will not solve right now.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
So, I mean, this has happenedto me all the time, every night.
I'll wake up at some bizarrehour in the morning and I'll be
like, oh my God, this problem.
Okay.
This is the way my mindworks and I'm a hundred
percent sure it's the waythat our, our listeners,
I had three of thesewake up last night.
(12:44):
Uh, two work related.
One, preparing for paperwork formoving to Spain, stuff right?
Literally at threeo'clock in the morning.
There is nothing Ican do at this point.
Nothing I can do.
All I can do is think about it.
It never gets solved.
That's the worst part.
It never gets solved.
I wanna hold ontothat for a second.
'cause this is actually areally important building
block to all of this.
(13:04):
As founders of startups, wehave an endless number of
problems that actually don'thave a solution anytime soon.
In other words, like weneed to get more customers.
Okay, sure.
Everyone needs morecustomers, but that process
will essentially take yearsto get to that milestone.
Maybe months.
What it, what won't happen iswe'll solve it that day, right?
(13:25):
You're like, got, we gotcustomers Don't need to
worry about that anymore.
Done.
And so what I found was I'mup at 3:00 AM and I'm grinding
on a problem that, number one,I'm not gonna solve at 3:00 AM
I'm just gonna worry about it.
And number two, I can'tsolve anytime soon.
Right.
This is a big one.
Yeah.
I don't think foundersappreciate or understand
(13:47):
how few of our problemscan be solved anytime soon,
or will be solved anytime
soon, or will ever be solved.
Right.
Some of these thingswe're, we're constantly
chipping away at.
Yeah.
I think it's the casethat in as, as a founder
within a startup, werarely get to declare done.
Right.
Very few things areever done, as in it's
any level of finality.
(14:07):
And so I think that's wherelike, and I think this is where
you're going with this, that'swhy like the selection of of
personal projects, somethingthat's still mentally engaging,
creative outlet, physical work,something I. There is sort
of a finite point of victorywhere you can say, Hey, that's
done.
I did it.
Yep, a hundred percent.
This actually happenedyesterday and you, you were
there when it happened.
(14:28):
Yes, yesterday.
Internally, uh, we announcedthat we just launched a huge,
huge feature on the platform,um, to do member search with ai.
It allows people to go on intolike a natural language search.
I'm explaining forthe audience and find.
Anybody in our community thatfits what you're looking for.
Right?
Yeah.
It's so awesome.
It's one of the bestpro, it's the best
product we've ever built.
But the reason I'm bringingit up is because it
(14:50):
actually launched yesterday.
Yes.
And, and, and Ryan, you wereat the all hands meeting when
we were doing the final demoand when we hung up, I actually
stood up for my chair andyelled at the top of my lungs.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Because it was good, I think.
Yeah.
Because I realize thishappens so rarely.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do.
We have few actual finish lines.
Yeah.
(15:10):
And this one wasa big one, Ryan.
Maybe we have twoa year at best.
Yeah.
And, and again, like with someof those mileage varies and,
and even there, like look atsomething like that, like we
rolled out member match, thatpart of it's done, right?
The product piece is done.
Now we gotta go work on it.
We gotta get, yeah, forfive, five years on our
feature, we gotta promote it.
We gotta get people using it.
We gotta get, so like, even,even our DUNS just tend to lead.
(15:32):
It's just.
You kind of get around thecorner, you're like, okay,
I made it around that cornerand now there's nothing but
but road ahead of me again.
And so it's, it's evenwithin those, it's rare
that we get to that liketrue moment of finality.
We get to thesemoments of victory.
Right?
Absolutely.
That's a midseason victory.
There's still a lot of gamesto be played, uh, before
we can call that done.
(15:53):
Often those milestones you don'teven notice when they happen.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
My favorite thing is exactlythis, like a website launch
uhhuh, and like you want thereto be a ribbon and cutting
moment or like a giant like,like fake switch that you flip.
In reality, a developersomewhere just hits enter and
you know, now you've launched.
Right, right.
Like it's, it's live.
The amount of effort you'veput into this, right.
(16:15):
The payoff is zero.
Yep.
But I wanna step back for asecond and I wanna inventory a
couple things that we coveredhere and make sure, make
sure they get isolated as,as key building blocks here.
One, for many of us,our minds will not stop.
It's a, a, a thankless effortto, to try to make them stop.
And, and the truth is.
Our relaxation doesn't have toequate to stopping our brains.
(16:37):
Right.
And I don't think anybody'sever said that to us.
I, I think it's alwaysbe, no slow down, take
a, a breather, et cetera,and you'll be better off.
No one ever says Gochannel that somewhere.
It's the thing because itdoesn't get channeled, right?
I think what, what, it'sbasically the equivalent
of keeping your foot onthe gas, but shifting
into neutral Engines stillrevving RPMs are high.
We just, there'snothing happens.
There's no movement.
(16:58):
There's no progress.
I was playing baseballwith my son last night.
You know, I, I got him thisNerf bat so that we can play
indoors in the basement.
That ends well.
Worst idea ever.
Right?
Uh, I get him the bat.
He's o over the moon, like thebest g gift he's ever gotten.
Right?
And I was like,dad, can we go play?
And so me and, and him and,uh, Sarah, my wife, uh, we go
downstairs in the basement.
It's, and not a huge basement.
(17:19):
We have just enough room tolike, you know, throw the ball.
But it's, you know,it's cold outside.
And so we throw in the ball.
It's a Nerf ball, Nerf bat.
First pitch, hecranks a line drive.
I mean, he connectedbeautifully right into my wife.
I knew where this was going.
Oh man.
And she was like, we're done.
We're done.
Anyway, my point is, lastnight I played with him.
He wants to play the, uh,baseball thing, right?
So we played forever.
(17:40):
He scored like 23 run.
And I was like, okay,yo, let's take a break.
And at that moment where I'mexhausted, you know, I've been
up since 4:00 AM It's like 7:00PM now where I'm exhausted.
He just wants to keep going.
And again, in the back of myhead, I'm like, the, the answer
isn't to find a way to, to havehim do less, it's to find a
way to channel that energy tosomething where he can do it.
Where it's seven o'clockat night, he's gonna
(18:00):
go, go to bed an hour.
But my, my point is,I'm starting to realize.
That for certain typesof energy, the goal
isn't to stop energy.
Oh.
The goal is to channel energy.
Yeah.
And I think that's, I, Iwish I had known that sooner.
I certainly know it now.
I wish I'd known it sooner.
Uh, Ryan, you'vedone martial arts.
That's a big partof martial arts.
Yeah.
Channeling youropponent's force,
(18:20):
so to speak.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what, itwas funny, but, uh, so Juujitsu
was one of those activitiesthat actually worked well for
me because it requires a fullmental shift in focus when
there's some highly trained.
Physically strong persontrying to choke you, bend your
joints the wrong directions,sit on you until all the air
(18:42):
squash, whatever it is, right?
Like there's realconsequences to that.
So you pay attention, you get,oh, my fully engaged, my, my
customer acquisition costs.
I, you know, it's funny,I never thought about that
despite the fact that we'dactually mix these two things
pretty heavily because at theearly stages, the way I was
doing jiujitsu was in return.
For some businessconsultation to the owner
(19:03):
of the studio, right?
We were trading off.
So we were literally gofrom talking, here's how to
structure marketing, here'show we can look at your CPC,
here's how we can, we canwork on your Google ads.
To him choking me outand brutalizing me.
Right.
So in, in,
instead of having you tap out,he's like, lower cac, that's it.
Lower cac.
That's it.
That was it.
I, I had to lowerCAC where he would
snap my, he wouldsnap my, my shoulder.
So one of the elements is, isnot trying to stop energy, but,
(19:25):
but trying to channel energy.
Yeah.
Right.
I think that's one.
A second element is thisconcept that we don't
have a lot of things inthe startup world Yeah.
That tell us we're done.
The sense of finality, ofaccomplishment, of being able
to walk away from somethingtoday, I. And say, I did
that exactly the way youfelt when you left Juujitsu.
Bruises notwithstanding likethat, that the way you feel when
(19:48):
you're, you're done with soccer.
Like you get this feelingwhere you're like, I feel
like something finished.
I think that fucks with us.
And I think it's somethingthat, that we do not appreciate
nearly as much as we need to.
Uh, parenting's the same wayby the way there, you know,
there are clear milestones, butthere are not enough of them.
No, there are no exit ramps.
Uh, for sure.
It's interesting because Ithink that with, with certain
(20:10):
things like with sport, so forme, soccer, fishing, jujitsu,
these things that are all fairlyphysical activities, they, they
do have a start and a stop.
But there isn't alsoa done necessarily.
I mean, it's some, somedaythere will come a done where
I don't play soccer anymore.
Someday there will come adone where I don't jiu-jitsu.
I can't imagine notfishing, but there's always
(20:31):
the next time, right?
Like the, thechallenge with fishing.
We did it last night.
Uh, finally caughtsomething too.
A little flounder.
We're gonna have it for lunchtoday, but there's always the
kids picked up on it right away.
It's one more cast, we'llsay last cast, and there's
one more cast becausethere's always the
chance that the nextcast is the one.
And so what's been interesting,and I I I really wanna get your
take on this 'cause you've had alot of these in the, in the last
(20:53):
few years, which are relativelylarge scale projects, but that
do actually have like a, amore of a sense of completion.
You're in a huge one now.
For example, for me there were,there have been a couple, the
one was around kind of buildingour, at the previous house where
we built out the little, littlekind of gardens and chicken
coop and stuff, and so likethere was a sense of completion.
(21:14):
I built the kids' playhouseand there was a sense of
completion around those things.
My pond of two years ago.
Was a fantastic onebecause it involved all of
these things that I love,physical work, design,
science, biology, like it.
It was just all this reallyinteresting stuff and because
there was sort of a, eventhere, it's not really a
(21:36):
final point because I'mstill optimizing, right?
I'm still figuring outlike, what, what are
the balance of fish?
How do I do this stuff?
But there was,there's a pond now.
There wasn't a pond,now there's a pond.
And that felt great, right?
That was trulyenergizing for me.
Waking up, you know, wakeup at four 30 in the morning
instead of thinking like.
Oh, dear God, whatwill cap be today?
Will we get enough traffic?
Will we, it was, I wonder ifthe rate of flow is too high
(21:58):
given the amount of surfacearea I have based on the
gravel size that I selected.
Right.
This,
this shit.
But that's a solvable problem.
That's exactly, so that'swhere our story begins.
This is the longestintro of all time.
That's where our story begins.
I think that, again,everybody's version is gonna
be different, but what I foundwas that I needed a problem, a
different problem to work on.
(22:19):
Yeah.
That was big enough to matter.
You know, Ryan, you'reobviously familiar with
the story, but like Yeah.
Years ago I started to getreally into, to carpentry.
Into woodworking.
Yeah.
Like building stuff and Ithink it checked a lot of
boxes for me instantly.
I meet a lot of otherwoodworker founders.
Yeah.
I think that, uh, I thinkbecause it checks some of the
same boxes, which is, we liketo create, we like to invent.
(22:39):
I like things that have askill tree attached to 'em.
If we're going back to videogame references where you
can kinda level up, you know,like carpentry, home building,
things like that, have.
Endless skill trees, everythingfrom being able to learn
how to build furniture,to do electrical, to do
plumbing, like you name it,like it's goes on forever.
A few years back, four yearsago, we were about to remodel
our home, and by this point,Ryan, you know, I had built out
my workshop and everything elselike that, like, you know, I,
(23:01):
I got really, really into itwhat was initially driving me.
Uh, toward, this was asense or two things, just
what I just described.
I found that when I wasbuilding things, I was
not thinking about work.
Yeah.
And it was the only, onlyonly time where I wasn't
thinking about work and, and,you know, glad for it because
(23:23):
my hands were in front ofa table saw or a miter saw
or some spinning blade thatthat required some focus.
And I found.
That the second thing thatI, I didn't know that I
was looking for or thatI needed was completion.
At the end of the day, I hadcompleted a project and there
was an overwhelming sense offinality and it felt good.
(23:45):
Feels good.
It felt really good.
Yeah.
Right.
It reminds me of the scene,I dunno if you remember this,
in Fight Club where EdwardNorton is trying to figure
out like he's like, you know,going through life, whatever.
Yeah.
And he finds fight club.
Yeah,
yeah.
And he ends up, youknow, getting in a fight
and he's like, and itfelt good, good, right?
Like, I mean, granted likethat was a very bizarre
and twisted version.
But it's kind of what he meant.
(24:05):
Yeah.
He's like, I, I knew Iwas looking for something.
Something.
Yep.
Right.
Needed
to channel some energy.
Right.
Needed something with asense of completion needed.
Yep.
All those things.
Yeah.
And, and, and obviously thepremise of Fight Club is much
cooler than the premise ofWoodworking Club, but I don't
know the, the same feeling.
Right.
Um, I knew I needed tobuild bird houses and so.
So I get into it, right?
I go down this rabbithole and you've been
(24:26):
watching this, uh, develop.
So a few years ago we decidedwe're gonna remodel our house.
And uh, and I was breakingdown all the costs to do it.
This is right before Covid.
And, and I said to mywife, I was like, you
know, like, for, for what?
It's gonna cost us to fullyremodel a house 'cause you're
really paying for it twice.
I was like, we shouldjust go build a new
house, build a new house.
Right.
And that's where it began.
Yeah.
That's, that's wheremy obsession began.
(24:48):
And so for, for the folks inthe audience, what I ended
up doing was I was like,I not only wanna build a
house, I wanna do everything.
Like I, I wanna designthe house, I wanna
learn 3D modeling.
I wanna learn interior design,I wanna learn, I structural
engineering, like the basics3D modeling, plus rendering.
So I could, you know,figure out exactly what
everything would look like.
I
still trip out, man, when wego to the house now to the
(25:10):
site and walk around there,because I spent, you know.
Probably an hour in totalinside that place when it
was still just a 3D modeland I was headset's on.
Yeah.
Running around witha, an Xbox controller.
Although I still, I,I wish that you would
include it in real life.
The feature where I couldjust levitate between floors,
that was to take the stairsthat was pretty new or become
a drone in, in, in fly out.
(25:31):
So he, here's what, here'swhy this, and why I'm setting
it up and why this mattered.
What I was lookingfor was a massive.
Overwhelming challengenow for a lot of people,
they're like, fuck that.
I've already got a massive,overwhelming challenge.
Like it's my kid,or it's my my sharp.
Why would I wantanother you psychopath?
And here's why.
Because it gave me somethingmy mind was looking for.
(25:54):
Yeah.
Which was a reallypowerful challenge.
So powerful.
That it could force me tohave to think about that.
Yep.
At the expense of work.
Now, again, a lot of peoplesay, well, I don't want
anything at the expense of work.
Dude, if you're built like weare, that ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem isn't, oh, I guessI'll become lazy and not work.
It's like that.
Is that Uhhuh, you crossedthat bridge a long time ago.
(26:17):
That ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem is you are soconsumed by work, you don't have
the ability to recharge, whichis making you a worse player.
Yep.
That's the part that I knowI missed for years, you know
what I mean?
Yeah, for sure.
So look, you're, you'rebuilding a house.
We're getting ready to engagein another international move.
I've decided that internationalmoves are actually one
(26:37):
of those things for me.
And like trulyit's, it really is.
It's a, it's a fullcreative project that
you have to go through inyou're redesigning life.
Is there, in your minda, a risk, like how do
you do the calculus?
It does have to be bigenough to matter, right?
If you're just like, I'mgoing to, I don't know, I'm
gonna mow my lawn and it hasa sense of completion and
it's a physical activity.
Yeah, grass grow right back.
(26:58):
But it is how peoplefeel when they clean like
their room or their house.
Oh, a hundred percent.
A lot of people use cleaning asa method, whether they realize
it or not, to get to completion.
Yeah.
They say it makes me feelgood, and what they're saying
is it makes me feel likeI've completed something and
that's a powerful feeling.
I.
It is also one of thenumber one, uh, uh,
procrastination activities.
Oh, yeah.
(27:19):
You gotta be, gotta becareful with that one, right?
It's like, I could dothat next campaign or I
could tidy my desk again.
Right, right, right, right.
From this side to thatside and at least an hour.
Agreed.
Uh, is there, so it's gonnabe big enough, but like what
about, what about too big?
Is there a riskin going too big?
What if the second obsession,'cause I know the people out
there again, like, 'causeone of the things is just
like, will they do it at all?
Right.
As as you just said.
Like, they're gonna think, oh,this is a divergence from work.
(27:40):
I don't need that.
I never need that.
Yeah, you do.
But is there a place where the,the second obsession, there's
a risk of it overshadowingthe startup itself, and how
do you keep from accidentallyprioritizing the, the, the side
passion over the main hustle?
Now I, I've never hadthat become a problem.
I don't think you've everhad that become a problem.
But I think when peoplehear things like.
I'm building an entire house.
I'm doing everything from theCAD to the, to the wiring, to
(28:02):
the carpentry, to the cabinetry.
All they're going.
How do you actuallydo both those things?
You know something that'sreally funny about everything
we talk about here isthat none of it is new.
Everything you're dealingwith right now has been done a
thousand times before you, whichmeans the answer already exists.
You may just not knowit, but that's okay.
(28:22):
That's kind of whatwe're here to do.
We talk about this stuff onthe show, but we actually
solve these problems alldayLong@groups.startups.com.
So if.
Any of this sounds familiar.
Stop guessing about what to do.
Let us just give you the answersto the test and be done with it.
As you know, because you'vebeen on site, uh, you know,
Ryan came and visited me afew weeks ago and he came on
(28:44):
site and he was, he helped mebuild stuff out in the house.
I am way into everything, likeevery last detail of this house.
Yeah.
And it's a big house, right?
So, so the gravity of it,of everything that, that I
need to do is significant.
And so, but Ryan, you'vewatched me do it and in some
case you helped me do it.
You know, I've built everycabinet in the house.
I've built three kitchens,I've built a bar.
(29:04):
I've built every closet, everyvanity tire workshop worth
of like 80 feet of benches.
And yeah, I mean everything.
And how did I do that?
Like how did I findthe time to do it?
Honestly, it was kind of thissimple, I wake up bananas early.
Yep.
And I put in two to three hoursa day before the day starts.
Now when people say that, it'slike, okay, you, you can't do
much in two to three hours.
(29:25):
Bullshit.
Yeah.
Over a, I'm here totell you, period.
Four years.
You sure as hell can?
Hell yeah, you
can.
Yeah, you can.
Um, it adds up waymore than you think.
Most people just don't havethe dedication to do it, and
I'm not Johnny dedicated.
It's just something that I love,which is why I am doing it.
Right, but here's where it getsinteresting at three in the
morning, as soon as that, ohshit, how are we gonna market?
(29:46):
Member match?
Yeah.
Thing comes up, right?
Yeah.
Now I have a process.
Yeah.
Where I say, I've been herea million times, I know
this, I, I can't answer this.
Let me go switch gears.
To something, uh, sosome problem to do
with this house thing.
Yep.
Um, I can solveimmediately, right?
So it's like a, a certainjoint that I needed to put in
or, or how I'm gonna configurelighting or something like that.
(30:08):
It works every single time.
I've found a way to take thatenergy and just channel it.
Instead of trying to stopit, sort of dam it up.
I just channel it.
But here's the key.
I channel it into somethingI can actually solve.
Yep.
Right.
So this morning, again, thisis stupid and minor and dumb.
Uh, this morning, Ryan,you came in, you helped me.
We were building, you know,all the, the benches for the,
(30:30):
the new workshop in the house.
And I was trying to figureout how to get all the
bench tops to line up.
'cause there's like a,like a, a 45 foot long.
I. Uh, countertop that hasall these six foot, you
know, butcher block sections.
Again, none of this isimportant, but that's my point.
And I was thinking like, damn,like the, the, the, if I but 'em
up end to end, they're not gonnabe like exactly symmetrical.
So how can I make sure eachof them is cut perfectly
(30:51):
so they all line up soit doesn't create a long
arc? None of this matters.
That's my point.
The point is that 3:00 AMI can solve that problem.
Yep.
I can run through a bunchof, uh, different ways
that I can do the cuts, themortis, everything else like
that and figure that out.
It's stupid.
And that's exactly why it'sbeautiful because then I'm,
then I go back to sleep.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I guessI've solved my mortis, you
(31:13):
know, countertop problem.
And I know most people aregonna be like, I would never
care about that if really whatI cared about was, you know,
launching new product, whatever.
And I get it.
It's exactly whatI would've said.
That's why what you'redoing, this other obsession
has to become an obsession.
It has to be something that youcan grip into and be as worried
(31:34):
about that, or as excited, asobsessed as you are about work.
Yeah, and, and I know theproblem that I'm solving there
is minuscule and dumb and damnnear irrelevant, but I also know
that if I put my focus there.
My problem is solved.
The actual problem, whichis the, the, the 3:00
AM wake up and worry.
(31:54):
Right.
Which never solves, we'venever solved a startup problem
at three o'clock in themorning that I can remember
and you never will.
Yeah, right.
But 3:00 AM creativitycan actually produce
something tangible.
Right.
Whether it's, you know,the right cuts for to, to.
Eliminate that arc in, in a60 feet of, uh, of workshop
bench or check in the tidesto see what time I should
(32:15):
do I need to be out at fiveor, or, or, or six 15 to go
hit some fish this morning.
Here's where the payoffis for work though.
I actually sleep, so that's one.
But when I get up and I getready to work, my mind is clear.
Yeah.
Right, exactly.
I don't feel like shit.
Right.
I don't feel burnt out.
I can't wait to start work.
Yeah.
It's so counterintuitive.
It's literally theopposite of burnout.
(32:35):
It's so counterintuitive.
But let's, let's talk aboutthat for a second, because
I think that there's alsothis notion that like,
could this just becomelike double burnout, right?
Am I just gonna doublethe, the rate of my burnout
because I'm now spendingenergy in this other way?
You know?
And are we, are we actuallysolving something here?
Or are we just transferringthis obsession from one
(32:55):
thing to another withoutsolving the root problem?
Is this just a coping mechanism?
Does it matter?
So I, I think these arethe questions that people
are probably asking.
I think you and I haveanswers to them, mostly
through experience.
'cause I certainly haven'tthought specifically about that.
Like, is this actually thehealthiest way of doing this?
It's the way that
works.
I can say that.
Yeah, there's no question.
(33:16):
Right?
Here's here's why it'sbeen healthy for me, okay?
Uh, this past weekend, youknow, I'm installing all
those crazy heavy, uh, benchesthat we were putting in.
Those things are like thesize of each one's, the size
of a refrigerator and we'reinstalling 10 of them, and,
and they're heavy and I'mmoving all those things around.
They're heavy as hell.
Every single muscle in mybody is screaming by the
(33:36):
end of the day Sunday.
And I think to myself, allI want to do tomorrow is
not lift heavy shit Uhhuh.
And go work onlaunching our product.
Yes.
See, that's what I'm saying.
That's it.
Like it's the first time I founda way to come off the field
actually recharge and go back.
Now a lot of people look at say,wait, aren't you super tired?
(33:57):
Yes.
I sleep like a baby and Iwake up the next morning.
I don't have tolift a goddamn thing
uhhuh.
So like that's notmy problem anymore.
Right?
Yep.
My problem was when I spentall weekend obsessing over
stupid stuff I couldn't fix.
Yep.
And then Monday I wake upand get this, I'm like.
I need to work on,uh, stupid stuff.
I can't fix.
See, like I, I've beenwallowing in the problem the
(34:17):
whole time instead, insteadof, without doing anybody
disconnecting from it.
Yeah.
I I never came off the field.
That's why I was so burnt out.
You know, it's funny, Ihad an example of this
at a friend of mine.
Uh, we went through a businessschool together and he, he
went off, eventually madeit over to, to Wall Street
and then quit Wall Streetand became a day trader.
This guy just couldnever put it down.
(34:40):
There's also nothing you cando on Saturday or Sunday or
after four 30, but he wouldobsess and worry and wait and
worry and wait, and I'm like,dude, you literally actually
can't do anything until Monday.
Right?
The analysis is done.
You're just waiting to see whathappens, to know whether you're
gonna buy or, and just it was,it was the same kind of thing.
We're just like, he justwouldn't ever switch
(35:02):
off at a point where heabsolutely had no ability
to, to change the outcome.
It just hated him constantly.
Let's stick with that 'causeI, I, I, I really wanna
dig into that for a second.
If we give ourselves in agiven week, Uhhuh, let's say 40
hours to worry about something.
And I'm not saying the partof doing anything, I'm saying
literally just worrying about itin some form or another, right?
(35:25):
Whether it's between slackchats, um, you're journaling
to yourself, you're talking toyour friends, you're complaining
to your spouse, like you nameit, whatever, whatever your
version of how you expressbullshit, you know, worry is,
let's say you spend 40 hours aweek doing it, it's because you
had 40 hours available to do it.
But the actual fixingof the problem doesn't
(35:45):
take any amount of time.
Like if, if you and I areworried about, let's say that
we're trying to raise more moneyand we're worried about running
outta money, yeah, we're gonnaspend so much time worrying.
But the amount of time ittakes to do something about
it still may be a fair amount.
We've exhausted so much,so much time, energy.
Yep.
In worrying.
Okay.
Now what I did was I took allthe time that I was otherwise
(36:08):
gonna be worrying and Idid something else with it.
That's it.
That's all I did.
Yep.
I just took my worry timeand put it into something
that was easy to worry about.
Like, like when you come intothe workshop and you and I were
working on something, I thinkwe were building drawers, you
know, that time before that.
And I'm like, we just have tomake sure that this rabbit joint
is exactly five days, inches.
So it, it, that's it.
It's all we have to worry about.
(36:28):
Well, we had to figure andnot cutting your fingers off.
It's beautifulbecause it's so dumb.
Yeah, right.
And I mean dumb in a good way.
It's simple and it's obvious
and it's achievable
exactly When we're done with it
and it's
immediate, nearlyimmediate, we just have
this, this beautiful outcome,but it's also meaningful.
I think that's the thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can't just cumulative,can't just pick dumb rote work.
(36:49):
Like it's the kinda like, oh,well what a crossword work.
Uh, maybe forsomebody, not for me.
Right?
I'm just like, every, every wordjust prompts another thought.
So yeah, I think that it,it does need to have like
some meaning again, a senseof completion, but sense
of completion of somethingmaybe with some permanence.
I'm trying to think of thisnow, this, so with things
that I've done that gave mesome of this catharsis, I'm
(37:10):
trying to think of any of them.
Weren't somehow memorialized.
Let's dig into, in, intoJuujitsu, you were leveling up.
You, you were learning moves,techniques, uh, things that
you didn't know before.
You had a clearsense of progression.
Yeah.
So maybe the memorialization,maybe the finality isn't
necessarily it as much as it isthat, that sense of progression.
I think the sense of progressionwas definitely there, there
(37:32):
is absolutely no sense ofof of finality because each,
each role, each scenariopresents something different.
Right,
you bet.
Which is what makes it exciting.
Yeah.
But, but knowing like, likewhen you play soccer knowing
that you won the game.
Yeah.
Again, it goes backto, to milestone.
Yeah.
But, but it, it, it's a truesense of accomplishment.
You know, when you'd comewith me to play, uh, hockey
(37:52):
and, and, and we played overanother founder's house, you
know, built a hockey rinkin his backyard, and I, I
would tell you, I was like.
I don't actually careabout winning that game.
Yeah.
Because it's just my friendsand I, and we switch teams
like every other game.
So like the people you'replaying against, you're playing
with in the, in the next round.
But holy cow, I like to win.
And, and when I say that, notlike, uh, because I beat the
other team, nothing like that.
(38:13):
No.
It just feels likeI did something.
Yeah.
You, you did the best youcould at that moment, right?
You,
yeah.
Also, if I lose, Ikind of don't care.
Like there's justno consequence.
But if I have a great shotor, or if I have a hat trick,
like in whatever I'm like.
I feel freaking great about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's weird because I knowthere's no consequence to
this, but I also know thatlike mentally I needed a win.
I, I needed a milestone.
(38:35):
I needed, you know, a level up.
And I think what, what you weresaying, 'cause you said this to
me when you were in town lasttime when we were working on
that workshop, you said, well,it's really cool that what we're
building will be here forever.
Yeah.
You know, when, when we buildthis workbench, whatever, I
know you'll be working at itall the time and I, I know that
like, you know, you'll passthis to your kids, so to speak.
Yeah.
Gimme a lot of joy to thinkabout the fact that like, we're
(38:56):
building something that you'regonna use to build a bunch
of other stuff that will goon and have their, it's it's
funny, it's, it's amazing.
It, it's, it's almost a perfectmetaphor for what we're building
with startups.com, right?
We're building the work.
I better all the time,time's gonna help.
To build a bunch of otherbusinesses and people to
go and do their thing.
Right, which is,
you bet.
It has an exponential factor.
What's interesting aboutit to me is that, yes, I'm
building an entire house withmy free time, so to speak.
(39:18):
I know, I know.
That sounds.
Bananas And it is, and I'mnot suggesting do that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
For me, specifically for mypersonality, in order to achieve
what I needed to achieve,which is to find a different
way to channel my obsession,it had to look like that.
I didn't know that.
I didn't like setout to do that.
Frankly, it ballooned onme, but it worked really
(39:39):
well, like freakishly well.
And now when I talk toother founders, right, I'm
finding more and more of themthat do have an obsession.
That have an amazing amountof peace that comes with it,
where they're like, when I'mdoing that, I am in my zone.
I'm in my Z. Yeah.
Stick.
Stick on this for a secondbecause I think there's
a misconception that thisis a thing that comes
(40:00):
as you achieve a certainlevel within your startup.
I. Where you're now allowedto have this other thing and
you are already feeling veryfulfilled with your startup, and
then you added this other thing.
I think if we were to do somesort of dissection on any one
of these, the vast likelihood isthat they feel that way because
they started the side hustle.
They, they, they achievedboth together, not.
(40:20):
One because of the other.
It wasn't causal.
It wasn't because Iachieved success in startup.
I was able to go pick upthis, this side hustle that
gives me all this zen, uh,happiness, not the case.
And again, I think I needed tosee the other side of it, see
how, how, how these other thingsdid not work for me in order to
have the appreciation that I do.
That this other obsession is,is something that, that I've
(40:42):
needed mentally and emotionally.
Sure.
For decades.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I just didn't know it.
And I gotta say, the moreoverwhelming it got, and I know
overwhelming strikes, fear intopeople's hearts, and I get that.
I understand why.
But the more overwhelming itgot, the more I enjoyed it.
Right.
At which point I was like,fuck it, I'm gonna build
everything in this house myself.
Yeah.
(41:02):
And I remember my, my, uh, mycontractor who, you know, has
been helping me through thisis like, what do you mean?
Like, you, you're gonna buildlike a table or something?
I'm like, no, I'm, I'm gonnaliterally build everything,
every kitchen cabinet, everyvanity, every closet, every
cubby, every everything.
And he is like, when areyou going to do that?
I'm like, I have no idea.
Yeah, actually don't know yet.
And then, uh, I pickedup another habit.
(41:25):
This is maybe four or five yearsago, and you and I have talked
about this on, on the podcastin our early podcast, actually
about one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
The way you move mountainsis one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
So I started to apply thatso like, you know, this
morning I get up right.
You know, crazyearly that, that.
Just happens to be my schedule.
But I go into my workshop andI have exactly one hour worth
(41:45):
of work to do today involvedsanding and, and applying poly.
So it just needed todry, so I couldn't
So you decided, you decidedto do that and you're, you're
taking the, the originalfinish off all those tops?
Yeah.
I ended up getting, you know,for, for those in the audience
that absolutely don't care, Iended up getting 60 feet worth
of butcher block countertopsthat were all stained espresso
happy accident this weekendthat I texted you and, and
showed you the picture.
(42:06):
Yep.
I happened to takea bunch of this.
The stain off by accident ofone of the countertops and lo
and behold, the, the wood below,it was way more beautiful.
And I was like, God damnit.
Yeah.
It's like the one time Ibuy pre-finished, I end up
taking all the finish off it.
Yeah.
I have to take all thefinish off all of 'em.
So that's what I was doing,that five in the morning.
I do it in just little chunks.
If I said, oh my God, I haveto do the whole thing, I look
(42:27):
at it and I say, no, I have todo an an hour a day, two hours
a day, depending on, you know,how much time I have in the
morning and all that adds up.
All that adds up.
Remember when we went tothe storage container?
Yeah.
Where all this stuffis sitting, all this
stuff flat packed and Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so everything I've built,like the entire kitchen, I
would build it like everycabinet, every everything.
And then take thewhole thing apart.
Flat pack it, wrap it in,in, uh, in bubble wrap
(42:49):
and store it like Tetris
Te Tetris is exactly whatit looks like, except
that it's, it's, uh,three dimensional Tetris.
It's three dimensional Tetris.
It also weighshundreds of pounds.
Yeah.
Which we also discovered.
My point is every singlething in there that's
stacked in there Yep.
Was an hour worth of work.
Yeah.
Compounded over a long enoughperiod of time, which like,
(43:10):
it's an important piece becauseI, you, you said it earlier,
which was like, well, whatcan you actually get done
in an hour or two hours?
Turns out a lot, but there's,there's two pieces to that.
You can actually get a lot done,but if you really feel that
that's true, if you're sayinglike, what could you actually
get done in, in an hour or two?
Then you can easilyreverse that same logic and
say, well, what were yougonna do with it anyways?
If you can't get anythingdone in that hour or two,
(43:33):
why were you gonna spendit worrying or working when
you could have spent itdoing something else that
might actually recharge you?
Right.
So it's funny that so often, uh,the, the, the pushback that we
provide, the reason why we can'tdo a thing is exactly the reason
that we could also do the thing.
Right.
You know, uh, a perfect examplelike the visual metaphor.
Ryan, you know how thedownstairs in my theater,
I've got all those DVDs?
Yes.
(43:54):
Like a thousand DVDsfrom backing DVDs.
A thing.
Yeah.
You, you look like, youlook like what happened
when Blockbuster closed.
But I remember sitting thereone day and, and, and I'm
looking at all these DVDsand, and my daughter was there
and she was like, dad, haveyou watched all these movies?
Because remember likeanymore, like a kid doesn't
physically see movies ormedia for that matter, right?
(44:15):
And I was like, you know, some.
I did, and all I can think tomyself is how much I could have
gotten done in this time ifI wasn't watching Bubble Boy
man,
it's funny, I have this, Ihave this, however, right?
I have this thoughta lot because as you
know, I'm not much of amedia or TV guy, right?
I just, I don't know.
The last time I watchedNetflix, there are times
(44:36):
where when people aretalking about something,
like, it was like, oh, blackMirror is made for you.
You're gonna love this.
And I think like I, you know,and I, I hear people talking
about the episodes discussing.
There are times where Ifeel a little left out.
Yeah, I get it.
I feel a little left out andthen I think about, I'm like,
these people are talking aboutsomething that in order to
have this discussion, theyinvested 40 hours plus of
(44:59):
their time each, and that'swhere I go, you know what?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I, I probably spentthat on, on something
significantly more important.
Like mileage will vary.
Of course.
The other thing I wanted to, totalk about was this, this notion
where you said that like the,the more overwhelming it became.
More valuable became for you?
It had consequence.
There's, there's a consequenceand there's also, there's
(45:21):
something about like, I thinkthis is where we said it in,
in a couple different ways,and I think one of the, maybe
the nuance points that wemissed was when we said like,
it needs to be big enough.
It needs to be big enoughand important enough
that it also eliminates,basically squeezes out.
Like eliminates sucks up allthat air that you would've
otherwise spent worrying.
For me, it, it's funnywe're, you know, as, as
(45:43):
you know, we're, we'retraveling right now.
We were in Ohio with my parents.
We're now in in Floridawith my wife's parents,
but we're through lotsof strange circumstances.
There is a bunch of my parents'stuff and I was going through
some of this old memorabiliaand it forced me to revisit a
couple periods in my life thatwere absolutely overwhelming.
They were some of the mostproductive periods, like
(46:04):
in in, in youth, right?
Like, so there was this, wediscovered all of these merit
honor roll, uh, certificates,the, you know, uh, Allstate
first team notificationsfor, for sport and this
other law in the Constitutionconference that I attended.
It was all like the same timeperiod, and I was going, my
God, I was doing a lot ofstuff and I was excelling
(46:24):
and thriving at all of it.
Why?
Because it was so divergent.
It was so different that itgave me that level of catharsis,
but it also squeezed out anytime to do anything other than
do this stuff didn't leave meany time to worry about it.
I couldn't worry about mysoccer performance because
the minute I was done withsoccer, I had to, I was, I was
(46:45):
off studying for something.
I was, I was, you know,going up to, uh, Ohio State
to, to, you know, take partin an academic conference
doing something right.
And so it was thoseperiods where it was
totally overwhelmed.
I think I've shared thisone on the podcast before.
But it was those, the, the, theperiod in university at which
I had started the business,so running the company, I had
a full load at Ohio State.
(47:06):
I had a couple of weirdelectives that they wouldn't let
me take because I was alreadyover my credit hours and so
I, I went to another localuniversity and signed up to take
these transferable credits thatdidn't matter to me anyways.
They were just electiveclasses and so I was completely
over, literally overloadedwith the schedule, like
beyond what was allowableto take at one university.
So I took it a second.
(47:27):
And running the businessat the same time, and I had
some of my best grades ever.
I had fantastic performancein the business.
Why?
I didn't have time tothink or worry about shit.
It was, I was either asleepand, and completely soaking
up the, the needed rest or Iwas on something, but things
that I cared about, notthings that I was just thrown
into or had to do, right.
(47:48):
Things that I, thatlegitimately mattered to
me, that I was engaged in,that gave me very different
types of outlets for, for all
that energy.
You bet.
And it, it doesn't have tobe something that is like.
A job.
Right.
You know, I'm doingsomething that's very
physical and that's fine.
That just happens tobe what my thing is.
You could just put thatenergy anywhere else.
(48:08):
Right.
In a way it has to be in, in, inmy mind for me, I, I, this, I'm
not speaking for anybody else.
It, it has to be challenging.
There has to be amental challenge to it.
If you take out the mentalchallenge to it, or in some
cases the physical challengeto it, the challenge in
general, it actually doesn'tinterest me in a perfect
metaphor for that, Ryan.
Is, you know, as you know,I love to play video games,
but the moment in the game,no matter what game it is,
(48:30):
that I know that I've gotthe most powerful weapon
or I've got, you know, thebest armor or like, I'm just
gonna mow over everything.
Yep.
I absolutely lose interest.
Yeah.
And that's what alwayskilled me, an Assassin's
Creed, because it's sucha big, long game Uhhuh.
But I would grind likenonstop in order to get
like way ahead of whereI should be in the game.
Yep.
And then the moment I gotthere, I could just take
out everybody immediately.
(48:50):
Everybody.
Yeah.
I was, I was like, I don't carehow this game is, I. Boring now.
There's no sense of progression.
Yeah.
I took the challenge out of it.
Yeah.
Right.
Um, and, and now it's funny,when I play something, I'm
very mindful to try to likedo what I enjoy doing, which
is like gaming the game,uhhuh, but also not do it
so that I, I can never see.
Yeah.
It's like now
I've just, I've ruinedthis for myself again.
What's interesting thoughis I, I, I don't think that
(49:13):
for some of us, what we'relooking for is the opportunity
to quote rest, like, youknow, put our brains to rest.
Like, and for some peopleit works great and, and
you know, God bless you.
But for most of us, for mostof us that have this, this
obsessive mind that cannotstop, that is gonna be up every
morning at 3:00 AM grinding onsomething, we gotta feed it.
(49:34):
We gotta feed that withsomething that has the
same type of challengethat got us grinding on
the, in the first place.
Yeah.
So yes, it's somethingoverwhelming.
Yes, it's something that'sgonna challenge us even more.
Some stress us out inits own way, and maybe
that's a good thing.
But the truth is we have to findoutside interests that consume
us because it's the only wayfor people like us that will
(49:55):
ever actually get the rest thatwe need and how we recharge
to go build something amazing.
Overthinking your startupbecause you're going it alone.
You don't have to, and honestly,you shouldn't because instead,
you can learn directly frompeers who've been in your shoes.
Connect with bootstrapfounders and the advisors
helping them win in thestartups.com community.
Check out the startups.comcommunity@www.startups.com
(50:19):
to see if it's for you.
Could be just thething you need.
I hope to see you inside.
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