August 26, 2025 • 33 mins
B.D. Dalton sits down with Steven Puri—a battle-tested entrepreneur who’s raised over $21 million, and whose career spans iconic film studios like DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, and Sony. Steven shares his fascinating journey from being the son of two IBM engineers and a “code monkey” in his teens, to working at the intersection of creativity and technology in Hollywood, to founding the Suka Company—a company devoted to helping people maximize productivity and happiness, especially in our new world of remote work.
Together, B.D. and Steven dive into actionable strategies for thriving in hybrid and remote work environments, drawing on lessons from both the film and tech industries. They talk about the importance of deep work and flow states, why company culture and vision can’t be outsourced, and how leaders can blend in-person and remote collaboration for maximum creativity and productivity.
Steven also opens up about his motivation for starting Suka, the art of timeboxing, and what it really takes to make progress on your biggest goals.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, remote team leader, or just craving some inspiration for leveling up your productivity, this episode is packed with practical tips, memorable stories, and a healthy dose of good humor. So tune in for some wisdom, some laughs, and maybe even the permission to finally delete those “fat clothes” from your closet!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-puri/
https://www.thesukha.co/
Together, B.D. and Steven dive into actionable strategies for thriving in hybrid and remote work environments, drawing on lessons from both the film and tech industries. They talk about the importance of deep work and flow states, why company culture and vision can’t be outsourced, and how leaders can blend in-person and remote collaboration for maximum creativity and productivity.
Steven also opens up about his motivation for starting Suka, the art of timeboxing, and what it really takes to make progress on your biggest goals.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, remote team leader, or just craving some inspiration for leveling up your productivity, this episode is packed with practical tips, memorable stories, and a healthy dose of good humor. So tune in for some wisdom, some laughs, and maybe even the permission to finally delete those “fat clothes” from your closet!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-puri/
https://www.thesukha.co/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Grow Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bad with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Everybody, Beaty Dalton here bringing you an amazing episode today.
I've got with me in the podcast studio whatever you
want to call it, battle tested entrepreneur who's raised twenty
one million, and we talked about this dollars only dollars,
Oh my gosh, right, not euros? Yeah that Canadian? Okay, Canadian.
Well it could be a lot more than Canadian. But
(00:51):
you've worked for dream Works, You've worked with twentieth Century Fox.
Easy for me to say, you've worked with Sony, you
work with all this. But right now you're helping people
this big thing that we're having right now, which is
remote working. How do we keep on track? How do
we do this stuff? So we're going to talk about that,
but Steven Perry walk us through what got you here?
(01:12):
And then what you're doing now, and then we're going
to go into lots of questions. This will help people out.
So Steven, welcome to the Gross, Sell and Retire.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Podty great introduction for those who are listening in their cars,
at home, in the gym, on their spaceships, where they are.
This episode will be one where we drop, hopefully some
actionable knowledge and couple it with some really fun illustrations
from things that I've seen in film and tech like
here is a great way in which this principle was
applied by the guys I worked with who did X,
(01:41):
Y and Z. So I hope it's a fun one
and I hope we learn more than three things.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
That'll be awesome. That's the plan. So tell me how
you are doing this working as a film executive, also
creating some tech, raise some money, doing all this stuff
and still having time to have a family of life
and relationships fun.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, you know, I'm about to have a family, so
if for those listening at home, I am having my
first child, this son, in November.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Super excited.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I had never really been that interested in having children
was not a big goal of mine, but with my wife,
I suddenly one day I was like, this would be
really great with you. This actually seems like a fun idea,
so thank you for bringing that up. Now let me
answer your question more directly, which is for those who
are playing along at home. My path is varied in
(02:31):
that I was the son of two engineers at IBM.
My dad is a hardware engineer, my mother was a
software engineer. So you know, as your mom is a
great figure skater, you probably know how to ice skate.
So as a youth, I was a little code monkey
in my teens, and I ended up going to school
(02:52):
in Los Angeles at USC, which happens to also have
one of the best, if not the best cinema TV
schools in the country in the United States, right, And
so a lot of my friends in the door were
aspiring Spielberg's and Lucases and that sort of thing. So
I ended up going to you know, a lot of
Tuesday night late movies and debating at coffee shops, like
you know, how the direction in the cinematography and all that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So it's super fun. Now.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I was a Watson Scholar at IBM, which meant I
had a job at IBM whenever I wanted, so I
earned money for school coding RNE and also got super
into film and I, I will tell you my life
is a series of very lucky Forrest Gump like breaks. Okay,
so let's just prepare ourselves. Let's frame our minds around that.
(03:36):
I was in Los Angeles getting out of school right
when film when digital. So suddenly all those photochemical optical
things that had been done, you know in the dark
ages of Wizard of Oz and that were like Avid's
and pro tools and you know, silic and graphics equipment,
we can make computer generator effects for movies. And I
(03:57):
was there and it was one of those like plucked
out of the forest line, give me your kid, you
know how to do this because I spoke engineer, and
I also spoke creative. And the people living in that
little intersection of that Venn diagram, it's a very small set.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was one of them.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So how I got into film was sort of the
back door. I ended up producing digital effects. So directors, producers,
studios that needed to make computer generated parts of the movies.
I was a guy they turned to to say, Hey,
you could work with the engineers, but you could also
talk to the director. So I did, like fourteen films.
I worked on everything from Brave Part with Mel Gibson,
(04:33):
True Lives with Cameron, Seven with Fincher, Jim Jarmish on
Dead Man, like Woody Allen on stuff like all these
very directors are super interesting and I ended up meeting
Roland American Dean Devlin when they were going off to
make Independence Day.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So I produced the digital effects. Got along really well
with them. We want the Academy Award, as you know,
for the visual effects.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In that movie.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yes, it definitely helps your career, full stop, period, just
luck of the draw. There were a lot of great
movies that year. We just happened to win. Okay, you
know it's an honor to be nominated BD. Yes, Fabulous
is even more of an honor win. Yeah, So that
really helped me because Rol, indeed and I decided to
set up a company. First company, I set up, Hey,
(05:13):
let's go make visual effects because we all like doing it.
We're making big action movies. Raised a bunch of money
for that, and we exited a couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Nice. Oh, I was in my twenties.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
You know, when you think you're good looking, you're invincible,
you're really smart, all those things, right, and so I
was like, wow, this is not so hard. You build
a company, you sell it, you take you know, two
years off, travel the world, the whole thing, and you know,
later to realize, you know, things are actually harder than that.
But at the time thinking I was really hot shit.
And that's when I had that first career turn, which
(05:45):
was m it would be interesting to not just do
like the computer generated part of the movie, but how
could I actually help produce the entire movie? So I
got onto that ladder. I worked hard and rose up.
And I don't mean to slap it us, just like
hard work, right, So I worked hard and that's how
I ended up, you know, an executive vice president for
(06:05):
Kurtzman Norssy at DreamWorks Pictures. I was, you know, vice
president Fox, you know, running the Diehard Wolverine franchise, stuff
like that action movies. Basically what I did and did
that for a number of years, learned the lexicon, learned
a whole new set of people, you know, that sort
of thing. And it was interesting to me when I
went from there back into tech because then I started
(06:26):
doing startups again. How when the pandemic happened, for a
lot of verticals. It was like a shock to the system.
Oh my god, we can't meet in an office with
fluorescent bulbs above our heads eight ten hours a day
and staring at each other by the fax machine, you
know what I mean. It was like, oh wow, Like
we didn't develop different ways of working. But here's the
weird thing. Bed For one hundred years, filmmaking has been
(06:51):
remote and hybrid and in person like there are different
stages of filmmaking that are each of those so leaders
know how to lead through those periods. I sees know
how to contribute through them. And now that I'm you know,
an entrepreneur again and like building small companies, man, I
can bring a lot of those lessons to bear. And
that's a lot of what I've been doing these days
(07:11):
is sharing, Like, here are some tips and techniques that
are actionable, They are simple, most of them are free
that you can learn about how to be healthy and productive.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Cool. And what's what's the current what's the current company called?
I don't want to mispronounce it.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
So oh, it's called the Suka company. It's actually it's
a kind of odd name. There's a story behind it,
but it's a Sanskrit.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Word and so what does it mean? In Sanskrit it
means happiness.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
It means the self fulfillment that you feel when you're
in your lane doing something you're good at and you
can do with ease, and you know.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And so when you talked about this has always been
happening in film, not always, but it's been happening in
film for years. So now people are doing this in
service industry they're doing it, and creative they're doing it
everywhere else. So how what what's a good blend in
general that you you see when companies are starting off
this route back to work and outsourcing work from home
(08:08):
and teams hybrid rto the whole, how do you how
do you smash that all together and make it so
that people still love each other, work together and can
continue some of this good momentum. And the the analogy
that I use is it's very much like if you
were a leader of a team or an organization, maybe
(08:29):
pre pandemic, you had reds and yellows and you could
paint sunsets and you know, things like that. And in
the pandemic, a lot of people suddenly got blue added
to their palette. And I was like, oh, there's this
other thing. Right, it's super cool to be able to
paint a lake or a river for the first time,
or a blue sky. Right.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I don't think that means that in this world and
the world we're moving into, that everything needs to be blue.
I'm not a everything should always be remote all the
time and never see each other at all. I do
think it is something where leaders now can understand and
great leaders understand. You know what I'm working with BD.
This is the sort of thing where we should get
(09:10):
in the room with Steven and you know, Joe and
Mary and like really brainstrong. There's something that that energy
of being in the room, we're going to brainstorm thing
and you know this other thing that we need to accomplish.
This is usually when Bed goes off for a couple
of days on his own, and then he walks into
the Monday staff meeting and he says a thing where
everyone's like, oh my god, we should do that, like
that's the future of the company. And that generally doesn't
(09:30):
happen by him being here by the water cooler talking
about sports four hours a day. That's when he goes
off and does that deep work crazy. I can come
down to the mountain and here's a really amazing idea
and understand deep and shallow work, which you know Cal
Newper talks about a lot. That is something we start
to become as a leader, empowered to say, how do
(09:52):
I get the most out of my team? How do
we do the things that move our company forward and
hopefully move the people here forward where they feel self
actualized because it increases retention.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So how do you when you're dealing in a company
that's not a creative company, not not a what's really
not a creative company? Every everything's everything's a creative company.
But I meant that you're either trying to take marketing
forward for a widget company or you know you so
everything everything has to be creative when it goes to
market and takes it to market. But what's what's one
(10:24):
of this? When you're giving these people enough rope, enough
time to go out and be deep thoughts and and
you know, thinking fast and slow and all that fun stuff.
How how long do you give you've read the books? Yeah,
read too many books, But so how do we how
do we know to give them enough time where it's
(10:44):
not so much time where they're sitting there looking at
their naval for too long and the team has to
wait for that person's delivery, the oh my gosh or
aha moments.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You know what you open up is really an interesting
conversation that we can expand and do. The idea of
time boxing, which is it is absolutely true and you
know the principles around this. Things generally expand to fill
the box that they're given. Yep, right, Oh, I have
all semesters write my turn paper. I will be doing
(11:14):
it towards the end of this semester.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Like, we know this from school, We know it from
preparing the slide deck for the meeting on Friday.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We know, right, keep your keep your fat clothes just
in case you get fat again. Those are my fat clothes.
I'm going to keep those in the drawer. Burn burn
the fat clothes.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Right yeah, So toward that end, and again, anything I
say to this podcast that is smart is probably not
necessarily mine. There are smart people who have written great
stuff on this. So if you read flow by me,
he said, if you account newports work, clear nears work
on triggers, like, there is awesome stuff out there, right,
So let us pick up on. Let's build upon that
(11:55):
and say, answer your question is there is a reason
and an aggressive schedule for doing almost anything, even if
you're saying, we need to invent a new electric battery
for this car, or we need to figure out a
different way of coming up with a drug configuration for
the molecule. You know, these things, they can sprawl. You
(12:15):
can give it seven years, or you can say, what
do we need to do in the next month to
come up with some things to test right in the lab.
So that is really a question about do you adhere
to timeboxing? So That's what I'd say to you. And
there is an element. Let me just make sure we
all understand this. There is an element of, like you said,
letting someone go off and work and dry com up
(12:37):
that great idea or a staff meeting is like, oh
my god, right, that doesn't happen if you're sitting there thinking,
you know, is bed really working? He hasn't come in
for two days, he see at the beach shy check
his Instagram is doing. And that's not really a time
boxing problem. That's not a remote work problem. That's a
(12:58):
hiring problem. If you are questioning whether BD and I'm
using you an example because I know you waste a
lot of time.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We both know this, right, that's unemployable.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
That's thank you for being my example in this said
this talk. But that's a hiring problem. That is, you
need to look at am I hiring people that are
engaged with the mission? Because let me tell you something.
If B comes here and like his dad died of
cancer and you're working on curing cancer, you're not going
(13:28):
to need to check and see if he's working. He
is going to be passionately going, this is how I
want to change the world. So you need to hire properly.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
That is cool. So if you're looking at this and
a lot of people they say that creatives or other
people that are helping them don't don't understand, even if
it's in most of the stuff, if they don't understand
how we do our thing, our secret sauce, our magic.
So how do you how do you choose what to
work from home versus outsource? How do you choose a
(13:58):
remote in verse sourcing directly? Let me speak from my
personal experience. Right, So in this case, I alluded to
this earlier.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I've been a part of a lot of what you
were calling creative conversations, right, where it is you and
I need to together somehow come up with the idea
that each of us.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Alone might not have. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yes, a lot of that in film, you know, a
lot of like ABD, it's the end of the second act.
He's got the sword, he broke the arrow in the bow,
the dragons in.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
The other cave. What could happen here? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And you're like, well, you know there's that, right, So
that thing. I have never been on a zoom, a Google,
meat a teams thing where I've felt the same creative
energy as being in the room looking at you, vibing
with you. I don't know if it is fearomones. I
don't know if it's physical proximity.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's all the non verbo cues you don't get in
a little zoom box yep. But I'll tell you something
like that. If someone else feels that they can creatively
brainstorm that well over a video conference, bless them, and
they should tell the secret sauce, because whether it's with
UIOX designers, whether it's with engineers, developers, whether it's with writers,
I've never had an experience better than being.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Them going what could we do?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
M and great start comes out as opposed to let's
go to the other end of the spectrum. There are
things and again this is drawn straight from cal where
you need to recognize deep work and what is deep work? Right,
So if I turn here and go, hey, BD, you
know what we really need to do. We've got to
revise this onboarding flow. We have to go dig in
(15:35):
deep refactor this. And you're like, Steven, you know what
I need is I need two days. I don't come
in like I need to be uninterrupted. I'm gonna put
my slack in a way mode so everyone knows I'm
not responding. If you can slack me, I'll get back
to you at five o'clock. Like I'm not getting back
to you now right, I'm going to need you to
give me this rope this rope, and I can do that.
(15:59):
But that has to be a way to you can
respect someone's flow state, and if you want, we can
talk a little about flow states, because I think that's
super valuable if you're an entrepreneur, if you're trying to create.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Something great, people have to do that because I think
people get too stuck in the weeds, they get too
working in the business versus on the business and don't
give themselves enough time to pull back and ask questions. Right, true? Okay,
so can we talk about flow states for a moment?
Go for it? Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
So many of you are nodding in the car. You
know what flow states are. You're the grand master of
flow states. So some of you are a little bit like,
I've heard it. What exactly is this?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
So here's sixty seconds on what you need to know
for this conversation to be super fun. A Hungarian American psychologist,
this guy me high. She said, Hi, I spent years
practicing his name. That's hey, pronounce it? He said, hmm.
I have a thesis that there is this concentrated state
that high performers get into where they do the work
(16:55):
that moves their world forward or moves the world forward period.
I want to study it. I want to figure out
what are the conditions precedent that allow them to get
into that, what are the mental tricks and techniques that
they use.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
To get there.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Right now, you may not know the phrase flow state,
but you may know it as being in the zone
or something like is that great Michael Jordan quote about
when I'm in the zone, it's me and the ball. Yep,
there is no defender, there is no scoreboard, like it
is just me and the ball. And that is that
state of intense concentration where it's just wow, right, and
(17:30):
I always mangle it. But there's a great Picasso quote
where he's talks about I was up all night, I
forgot to eat drink and I don't think I peede.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
But hey, you know, Gareth, I do you like it?
What do you think? You know? Like good night?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You know actually took him I think fourteen nights. But
he has a good quote about that. So whatever you
may call it, whatever some may call it to you,
is that state where time falls away. You don't have
a sense of like, hey, an hour went buy you're
not really thinking about all the fidgety stuff. I should
get something from the fridge, Oh should I do laundry?
Let me run downstairs and grab the whatever. All that's
(18:05):
kind of gone. And as we hid discovered, there were
some conditions precedent that helped these high performers get into
the state. You had to have skills that apply. Right.
It's not Michael Jordan painting, it's not Picasso trying to
play basketball.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You have to be challenged. It's not Michael Jordan playing
with eighth graders.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
If we at the edge of your ability, you have
to believe it's meaningful. And this is a leadership thing.
If you like, again to use you as my guinea
pig here, if I'm having a conversation with bad or
on bed, we need one of those great things you
do where you come to the staff meeting every three
months you say somewhere ever, it's like, let's go build that.
Like for you to go off and do that thing,
(18:49):
you actually have to believe where the hell it is
is meaningful because you're not going to be in a
flow state stapling TPS reports together, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Nope, not at all.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Right, So as you think about to bring this all
home to the people listening, as you think about, okay,
so there's this highly concentrated state where like these high
performers get to do these things like how do I
create this for myself?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Most studies show it takes fifteen to thirty minutes to
drop in. It's not like you sit down, you're in
a flow state for nine minutes and then you go
do something else. You have this amazing nine minutes. Right, No,
there is a process in which your brain starts to
shut out the distractions, you start to flow into this.
There are things you can do to accelerate that. Music
is something for a lot of people. Right, the research
(19:39):
shows and this is not everybody, but this is most people.
Is that music that seems to be between sixty to
ninety beats per minute, certain key signatures, ambient, non vocal,
rhythmic music helps lull your brain to that state where
things fall away, right, And.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
That's why everybody, that's why everybody in like from the
Spotify to Amazon music has flow state channel or whatever
it is. That's so it's like it's right there, built
for you and.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
We all have you know, the friend that listens to
ninety gangs to wrap whatever to get in the flow,
and God bless me, that's the outlier. It's not like
the middle of the road. Right, You've got my playlist done? Okay,
you and me, babe, California Love come on.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
So, so music is one thing you can use. Also,
you can create an association with scent. Like people don't
recognize this often, but scent is the sense most closely
linked to memory. And if you start to associate. Oh,
here's that candle or whatever it is. You know that
(20:42):
that scent that I have when I come straight, it
again accelerates that drop in.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So there are some other things we'll talk about later
in the episode. So if the sense is okay, well
I could get into the flow stage. You need also
make sure that when you get there, you're not disturbed.
You know I mentioned earlier as you know, my slack's
going to be in a way mode. Yeah, not not
a joke, No, I got to turn it off. Yeah,
when you get disturbed, even if it's simple as like
I'm doing this in BT's like hey man, can you
(21:10):
send me that you know, report from last week and
I've got to go do it, it will take you
another fifteen to twenty some odd minutes to get back
into your flow state. Right, So you need to It's
a respect you need to show. So for example, in
my company, we're all remote and we have a rule
no meetings before eleven. Yeah, like that is the time
when most people I work with are clear, you know,
(21:32):
their thing is most clear, and we just try not
to schedule synchronous meetings. So you can actually do an hour,
two hours, three hours, of let me go deep, let
me go write the code, let me go work on
those designs, let me go think of a marketing plan
as you were joking about earlier. You know, so I
share all that because it is one of the strongest
(21:53):
tools that I've encountered.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It is powerful. And three yeah, so what's in that
flow state everything else? So if we if we rewind
back to something that you should ann ouncesource, there's something
that you shouldn't you shouldn't take away. Because we talked
about marketing or letting other people because they don't understand
(22:16):
your secret sauce. So we want to come back to that.
But what is something that you should not outsource to
somebody else? Okay, well, I think they're probably two answers
to your question. One thing is, I will say you
I believe the core of these organizations is really about
vision and culture. So what unifies an organization, and if
(22:39):
you are a solar preneur, it is how you think
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's not that you don't have a culture, it's not
that you don't have a vision just because you're working alone. Now,
maybe someday you'll have thousands of people working for you,
but in this state of being a solopreneur. You still
need to have a vision culture, which is how you
manage yourself. And by that I mean vision is what
are we trying to do. Are we trying to clean
up the environment? Are we trying to launch a new
social media apps so people can hang out with their grandparents?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Whatever?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
The thing is, right, and the culture is how do
we treat each other? How do we treat other people?
How do we treat our competitors?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know? And that style comes from the top.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So you may be solar Crew aer now or you know,
small entrepreneurial company of two three, startup whatever. Someday you
may be much larger. But what you do to establish
vision culture on day one is baked in the DNA.
It is like having a child. It is in the DNA.
You can later teach the child manners and you can
teach the math, but that DNA is never changing.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So when you talk about this with your the Suka company,
with your what your think, what's what's kind of your
your mantra, your your idea, your vision, how it all
comes together? Well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I say the name of my company, which is a
very odd name, right and fact in Slavic languages, Suka
means basically b ich. Right, it's not a good word,
which friends pointed out to me, and I was like,
I think anyone who has used our app knows that
that's about what we're about.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
But the way it came is we had a working
title in an early version. Laura, my wife and I
we met in yoga. So when we went got married,
we went on a hin went to Valley, which is
a great place to do yoga, hang out for ten
days yoga at the yoga bar, and stuff like that. Right,
we were traveling there and I said to you know,
in these ten days, no one's going to bug me
from the office. Maybe the universe speaks to me and says,
(24:33):
here's the name you've been groping for, right, something better
than Flow State app fourteen or you know, Distraction Free
Zone twelve. You know some awful name I had. You know,
it's like Amazon or Nike, just powerful names. They are
not like shoe store, not like bookstore.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So Laura, of course, being well is like, I wish
that for you. I hope you do find a great
name on this trip. So I asked on the first day,
do you mind if just to see my imagination, I
have a quick zoom with a couple of current members
and this version, maybe they'll say something that like bubbles
up later into a name. She's like, go for it.
So I spoke to three people. I said, hey, man,
I just dropped the group chat. Who is ten minutes
(25:08):
to chat? Spoke to three people and asked them. She said, hey, BD, like,
what's your favorite feature? Do you love the flow music?
Do you love the timers? The smartest system or whatever?
And the third guy was talking to We're wrapping up
like eight minutes, and I was like, hey, you know,
I want to spend your time.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We've asked for eyes for ten minutes. Let's go.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And he said, Stephen, you asked the wrong questions. And
I was like, okay, what should I have asked? He's like,
you should have asked me why I pay you? And
I was like, we charged like thirty cents a day.
I didn't really think that's a big deal. He said,
let me tell you something I find. I have two
kinds of days. I have three o'clock I'm playing with
(25:46):
my kids they're two and four, and I have six o'clock.
Where did the day go? I suck, I'm down on myself,
off to get up burly and mort of work. He
said the differences that I opened your app in the morning,
so I pay you because my kids are not going
to be two and four forever and I want that
time with them. And I was like, that is more
(26:08):
articulate than I have ever been about my own company.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
I told this to Laura and we're brushing our teeth
that night, and she said to me, you know what
you wanted the universe to speak to you? This guy
channeled that. He described Suka, that stuff we hear in yoga,
you know, Prana and Karma and Dharman and all those things.
She's like, He basically described that. He said, this is
how I want to feel. I want to feel in
a good place. And I think that that that idea
(26:36):
of how you manage your life is supposed to be
managed is very powerful one. I will tell you very bluntly.
A number of our friends work or have worked at Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
And some used to be a Twitter.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And those companies are engaged straight up in a business
model called steal your Life. So if you want to
be a great entrepreneur, a great solo or whatever, and
you're spending your time scrolling through TikTok or Instagram telling
yourself you're doing market research, or you're seeing what the
competition is posting whatever. You are allowing those companies to
(27:11):
take your life, sell it to an advertiser and keep
the money, and you will do nothing with your life.
You will be another old, grumpy girl or guy who's
like I could have been a contender, you know. And
the best designer is the best behavior psychologists, the best
engineers in the world work for those companies because the
paychecks are ridiculous, so they are very well designed to
(27:33):
make sure your thumb doesn't want to stop scrolling. So
that is really the heart of the conflict that I
see in the world is that you have the smartest
people trying to make sure the rest of us do
nothing with our lives.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So what's the one question that I should ask myself
If I'm an entrepreneur and I haven't done time boxing,
I haven't done any of this stuff before, but I
want to buy some time back five minutes.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, you can look at your task list. It could
be so long that it's daunting, or there's some task
on there that's so big it's daunting. You'd be paralyzed
and do not't know where to start. Just say, you
know what, why don't I just do something for five minutes,
something productive for five minutes. I'm telling you, when you
put the foot down on that thousand mile journey, yep,
(28:24):
it just changes everything. You got to get out of
the house. Metaphorically speaking, I mean you know what I mean. Like,
if you're lying on the sofa scrolling, Yeah, you just
got to start the thousand mile journey and you'd be
surprised off how you get the first dight. But it
starts with just telling yourself, hey, man, if I could
just work on this design for five minutes, or if
I could just like maybe knock out this one bug
in my code for five minutes, it gets the ball
(28:46):
rolling zero to one is hard.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So when you're when you're doing this, my coach originally
told me, said, why do you think your clients want that?
So what's something that your your app and when you're
doing this and you're helping people you thought that people needed,
but you had to take it away because it was
an extra nother whistle or something that you thought everybody's
gonna love this and nobody liked it.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Okay, Can I tell you something that I wrestled with
and I didn't.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Know what to do?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yes, go for it. It's related to this, okay. So
here's the deal for those who don't know and BD
I appreciate bringing this up. Is what I created as
a website that is a close state website, right. It
is simply how could I make this a sex excuse
me accessible to more people? Really inexpensively all the tools
you need with one play button.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
So in the course of doing this, I had this thought,
which is, you know what, there are so many of
the members with whom I speak, but it's almost like
a hub and spoke model where I know all of
them and none of them have a sense of each other.
It's like a single player game, right, yep. What if
they knew each other? What if there's a group chat?
What if they could see each other like body body doubling,
(29:57):
you know, like very popular in the ADHD community. By
the way, I have add medically diagnosed. So I thought
maybe we should do this or will this be a
feature that everyone hates on It's just like, oh, pure,
you destroyed, you know, the thing. You know, it's so distracting, right,
So again, I love talking to two members. I was
talking to a couple of members about this, and one member,
(30:18):
she's still in the app. I asked her about this.
I was like, is this a great idea or is
this I'm going to get, like, you know, drawn in
quartered over the distraction of being able to talk to
other people and whatever, being able to body double. And
she said something so succinct. She said, listen, I can
go down to the Nike store and I can buy
(30:39):
a pair of shoes. They will sell me a left shoe,
a right shoe. I can put the mummy feet, I
can go running.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
They work. It's done right.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
There are a hundred million people that belong to the
Nike Run Club. Because when you run together, you run further,
you run faster. You know, you're more accountable. The days
that you don't want to get into bed, one of
your friends comes over, It's like, come on, Vida, let's
do this. And the day that we your friend needs
you to kick them out of bed feels great too.
She's like, you should do it. It is one of the
(31:07):
most popular features of the app. I didn't know what
I wasn't sure, So where do we find the app? Oh,
it's really simple. It's just a website. It's really easy.
You can sign in ten seconds. It's just the Suka
the Happiness right T G s U K h A
dot co and it's free for seven days, no credit card.
(31:27):
Try it if you love it, sign up. If you don't,
we'll never bug you again.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Very cool. Okay, and this is the rewind moment. So
the rewind moment is you're gonna come in here and
you're gonna drop some serious knowledges you've either already dropped
or this is the Oh my god, I need to
rewind this and listen to Steven because it was fabulous.
So what's the rewind moment? I love the.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Rewind moment thing. So the rewind moment is number one.
Do something great. And this, I hope is implicit in
every thing I said, which is I have a strong
thesis the way I had a thesis around these high
performers do something to get into these high concentrated states.
I have a thesis, and that is we all have
something great inside us, and the question of this lifetime
(32:13):
is are you going to get it out or not?
It starts with one step. It's really hard to think about,
Oh my god, am I going to create the thing
that's going to change the world.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It starts with one key stroke, one line of code,
one pixel in your design, one word in your blog.
But when you go zier to one, one to two
is easier and I hope that helps people.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Fabulous Stevid, thank you so much for coming on the
Gross Selling Retire That's awesome. Thank you for having me
fabulous and good good luck, good luck in November.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Good I know it's gonna be a big fall.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Will it will be a big fall. But thank you
so much for coming on the Gross Selling Retire podcast.
It's been fabulous having you on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I hope this is helpful for everyone listening and really
appreciated we guys to talk.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information, tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BT's
three books, The Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and the Book
The podcast is based on grow Sell and Retire. If
(33:28):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Grow Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bad with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Everybody, Beaty Dalton here bringing you an amazing episode today.
I've got with me in the podcast studio whatever you
want to call it, battle tested entrepreneur who's raised twenty
one million, and we talked about this dollars only dollars,
Oh my gosh, right, not euros? Yeah that Canadian? Okay, Canadian.
Well it could be a lot more than Canadian. But
(00:51):
you've worked for dream Works, You've worked with twentieth Century Fox.
Easy for me to say, you've worked with Sony, you
work with all this. But right now you're helping people
this big thing that we're having right now, which is
remote working. How do we keep on track? How do
we do this stuff? So we're going to talk about that,
but Steven Perry walk us through what got you here?
(01:12):
And then what you're doing now, and then we're going
to go into lots of questions. This will help people out.
So Steven, welcome to the Gross, Sell and Retire.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Podty great introduction for those who are listening in their cars,
at home, in the gym, on their spaceships, where they are.
This episode will be one where we drop, hopefully some
actionable knowledge and couple it with some really fun illustrations
from things that I've seen in film and tech like
here is a great way in which this principle was
applied by the guys I worked with who did X,
(01:41):
Y and Z. So I hope it's a fun one
and I hope we learn more than three things.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
That'll be awesome. That's the plan. So tell me how
you are doing this working as a film executive, also
creating some tech, raise some money, doing all this stuff
and still having time to have a family of life
and relationships fun.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, you know, I'm about to have a family, so
if for those listening at home, I am having my
first child, this son, in November.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Super excited.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I had never really been that interested in having children
was not a big goal of mine, but with my wife,
I suddenly one day I was like, this would be
really great with you. This actually seems like a fun idea,
so thank you for bringing that up. Now let me
answer your question more directly, which is for those who
are playing along at home. My path is varied in
(02:31):
that I was the son of two engineers at IBM.
My dad is a hardware engineer, my mother was a
software engineer. So you know, as your mom is a
great figure skater, you probably know how to ice skate.
So as a youth, I was a little code monkey
in my teens, and I ended up going to school
(02:52):
in Los Angeles at USC, which happens to also have
one of the best, if not the best cinema TV
schools in the country in the United States, right, And
so a lot of my friends in the door were
aspiring Spielberg's and Lucases and that sort of thing. So
I ended up going to you know, a lot of
Tuesday night late movies and debating at coffee shops, like
you know, how the direction in the cinematography and all that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So it's super fun. Now.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I was a Watson Scholar at IBM, which meant I
had a job at IBM whenever I wanted, so I
earned money for school coding RNE and also got super
into film and I, I will tell you my life
is a series of very lucky Forrest Gump like breaks. Okay,
so let's just prepare ourselves. Let's frame our minds around that.
(03:36):
I was in Los Angeles getting out of school right
when film when digital. So suddenly all those photochemical optical
things that had been done, you know in the dark
ages of Wizard of Oz and that were like Avid's
and pro tools and you know, silic and graphics equipment,
we can make computer generator effects for movies. And I
(03:57):
was there and it was one of those like plucked
out of the forest line, give me your kid, you
know how to do this because I spoke engineer, and
I also spoke creative. And the people living in that
little intersection of that Venn diagram, it's a very small set.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I was one of them.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So how I got into film was sort of the
back door. I ended up producing digital effects. So directors, producers,
studios that needed to make computer generated parts of the movies.
I was a guy they turned to to say, Hey,
you could work with the engineers, but you could also
talk to the director. So I did, like fourteen films.
I worked on everything from Brave Part with Mel Gibson,
(04:33):
True Lives with Cameron, Seven with Fincher, Jim Jarmish on
Dead Man, like Woody Allen on stuff like all these
very directors are super interesting and I ended up meeting
Roland American Dean Devlin when they were going off to
make Independence Day.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So I produced the digital effects. Got along really well
with them. We want the Academy Award, as you know,
for the visual effects.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In that movie.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yes, it definitely helps your career, full stop, period, just
luck of the draw. There were a lot of great
movies that year. We just happened to win. Okay, you
know it's an honor to be nominated BD. Yes, Fabulous
is even more of an honor win. Yeah, So that
really helped me because Rol, indeed and I decided to
set up a company. First company, I set up, Hey,
(05:13):
let's go make visual effects because we all like doing it.
We're making big action movies. Raised a bunch of money
for that, and we exited a couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Nice. Oh, I was in my twenties.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
You know, when you think you're good looking, you're invincible,
you're really smart, all those things, right, and so I
was like, wow, this is not so hard. You build
a company, you sell it, you take you know, two
years off, travel the world, the whole thing, and you know,
later to realize, you know, things are actually harder than that.
But at the time thinking I was really hot shit.
And that's when I had that first career turn, which
(05:45):
was m it would be interesting to not just do
like the computer generated part of the movie, but how
could I actually help produce the entire movie? So I
got onto that ladder. I worked hard and rose up.
And I don't mean to slap it us, just like
hard work, right, So I worked hard and that's how
I ended up, you know, an executive vice president for
(06:05):
Kurtzman Norssy at DreamWorks Pictures. I was, you know, vice
president Fox, you know, running the Diehard Wolverine franchise, stuff
like that action movies. Basically what I did and did
that for a number of years, learned the lexicon, learned
a whole new set of people, you know, that sort
of thing. And it was interesting to me when I
went from there back into tech because then I started
(06:26):
doing startups again. How when the pandemic happened, for a
lot of verticals. It was like a shock to the system.
Oh my god, we can't meet in an office with
fluorescent bulbs above our heads eight ten hours a day
and staring at each other by the fax machine, you
know what I mean. It was like, oh wow, Like
we didn't develop different ways of working. But here's the
weird thing. Bed For one hundred years, filmmaking has been
(06:51):
remote and hybrid and in person like there are different
stages of filmmaking that are each of those so leaders
know how to lead through those periods. I sees know
how to contribute through them. And now that I'm you know,
an entrepreneur again and like building small companies, man, I
can bring a lot of those lessons to bear. And
that's a lot of what I've been doing these days
(07:11):
is sharing, Like, here are some tips and techniques that
are actionable, They are simple, most of them are free
that you can learn about how to be healthy and productive.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Cool. And what's what's the current what's the current company called?
I don't want to mispronounce it.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
So oh, it's called the Suka company. It's actually it's
a kind of odd name. There's a story behind it,
but it's a Sanskrit.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Word and so what does it mean? In Sanskrit it
means happiness.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
It means the self fulfillment that you feel when you're
in your lane doing something you're good at and you
can do with ease, and you know.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And so when you talked about this has always been
happening in film, not always, but it's been happening in
film for years. So now people are doing this in
service industry they're doing it, and creative they're doing it
everywhere else. So how what what's a good blend in
general that you you see when companies are starting off
this route back to work and outsourcing work from home
(08:08):
and teams hybrid rto the whole, how do you how
do you smash that all together and make it so
that people still love each other, work together and can
continue some of this good momentum. And the the analogy
that I use is it's very much like if you
were a leader of a team or an organization, maybe
(08:29):
pre pandemic, you had reds and yellows and you could
paint sunsets and you know, things like that. And in
the pandemic, a lot of people suddenly got blue added
to their palette. And I was like, oh, there's this
other thing. Right, it's super cool to be able to
paint a lake or a river for the first time,
or a blue sky. Right.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I don't think that means that in this world and
the world we're moving into, that everything needs to be blue.
I'm not a everything should always be remote all the
time and never see each other at all. I do
think it is something where leaders now can understand and
great leaders understand. You know what I'm working with BD.
This is the sort of thing where we should get
(09:10):
in the room with Steven and you know, Joe and
Mary and like really brainstrong. There's something that that energy
of being in the room, we're going to brainstorm thing
and you know this other thing that we need to accomplish.
This is usually when Bed goes off for a couple
of days on his own, and then he walks into
the Monday staff meeting and he says a thing where
everyone's like, oh my god, we should do that, like
that's the future of the company. And that generally doesn't
(09:30):
happen by him being here by the water cooler talking
about sports four hours a day. That's when he goes
off and does that deep work crazy. I can come
down to the mountain and here's a really amazing idea
and understand deep and shallow work, which you know Cal
Newper talks about a lot. That is something we start
to become as a leader, empowered to say, how do
(09:52):
I get the most out of my team? How do
we do the things that move our company forward and
hopefully move the people here forward where they feel self
actualized because it increases retention.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So how do you when you're dealing in a company
that's not a creative company, not not a what's really
not a creative company? Every everything's everything's a creative company.
But I meant that you're either trying to take marketing
forward for a widget company or you know you so
everything everything has to be creative when it goes to
market and takes it to market. But what's what's one
(10:24):
of this? When you're giving these people enough rope, enough
time to go out and be deep thoughts and and
you know, thinking fast and slow and all that fun stuff.
How how long do you give you've read the books? Yeah,
read too many books, But so how do we how
do we know to give them enough time where it's
(10:44):
not so much time where they're sitting there looking at
their naval for too long and the team has to
wait for that person's delivery, the oh my gosh or
aha moments.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You know what you open up is really an interesting
conversation that we can expand and do. The idea of
time boxing, which is it is absolutely true and you
know the principles around this. Things generally expand to fill
the box that they're given. Yep, right, Oh, I have
all semesters write my turn paper. I will be doing
(11:14):
it towards the end of this semester.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Like, we know this from school, We know it from
preparing the slide deck for the meeting on Friday.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We know, right, keep your keep your fat clothes just
in case you get fat again. Those are my fat clothes.
I'm going to keep those in the drawer. Burn burn
the fat clothes.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Right yeah, So toward that end, and again, anything I
say to this podcast that is smart is probably not
necessarily mine. There are smart people who have written great
stuff on this. So if you read flow by me,
he said, if you account newports work, clear nears work
on triggers, like, there is awesome stuff out there, right,
So let us pick up on. Let's build upon that
(11:55):
and say, answer your question is there is a reason
and an aggressive schedule for doing almost anything, even if
you're saying, we need to invent a new electric battery
for this car, or we need to figure out a
different way of coming up with a drug configuration for
the molecule. You know, these things, they can sprawl. You
(12:15):
can give it seven years, or you can say, what
do we need to do in the next month to
come up with some things to test right in the lab.
So that is really a question about do you adhere
to timeboxing? So That's what I'd say to you. And
there is an element. Let me just make sure we
all understand this. There is an element of, like you said,
letting someone go off and work and dry com up
(12:37):
that great idea or a staff meeting is like, oh
my god, right, that doesn't happen if you're sitting there thinking,
you know, is bed really working? He hasn't come in
for two days, he see at the beach shy check
his Instagram is doing. And that's not really a time
boxing problem. That's not a remote work problem. That's a
(12:58):
hiring problem. If you are questioning whether BD and I'm
using you an example because I know you waste a
lot of time.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We both know this, right, that's unemployable.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
That's thank you for being my example in this said
this talk. But that's a hiring problem. That is, you
need to look at am I hiring people that are
engaged with the mission? Because let me tell you something.
If B comes here and like his dad died of
cancer and you're working on curing cancer, you're not going
(13:28):
to need to check and see if he's working. He
is going to be passionately going, this is how I
want to change the world. So you need to hire properly.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
That is cool. So if you're looking at this and
a lot of people they say that creatives or other
people that are helping them don't don't understand, even if
it's in most of the stuff, if they don't understand
how we do our thing, our secret sauce, our magic.
So how do you how do you choose what to
work from home versus outsource? How do you choose a
(13:58):
remote in verse sourcing directly? Let me speak from my
personal experience. Right, So in this case, I alluded to
this earlier.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I've been a part of a lot of what you
were calling creative conversations, right, where it is you and
I need to together somehow come up with the idea
that each of us.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Alone might not have. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yes, a lot of that in film, you know, a
lot of like ABD, it's the end of the second act.
He's got the sword, he broke the arrow in the bow,
the dragons in.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
The other cave. What could happen here? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And you're like, well, you know there's that, right, So
that thing. I have never been on a zoom, a Google,
meat a teams thing where I've felt the same creative
energy as being in the room looking at you, vibing
with you. I don't know if it is fearomones. I
don't know if it's physical proximity.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's all the non verbo cues you don't get in
a little zoom box yep. But I'll tell you something
like that. If someone else feels that they can creatively
brainstorm that well over a video conference, bless them, and
they should tell the secret sauce, because whether it's with
UIOX designers, whether it's with engineers, developers, whether it's with writers,
I've never had an experience better than being.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Them going what could we do?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
M and great start comes out as opposed to let's
go to the other end of the spectrum. There are
things and again this is drawn straight from cal where
you need to recognize deep work and what is deep work? Right,
So if I turn here and go, hey, BD, you
know what we really need to do. We've got to
revise this onboarding flow. We have to go dig in
(15:35):
deep refactor this. And you're like, Steven, you know what
I need is I need two days. I don't come
in like I need to be uninterrupted. I'm gonna put
my slack in a way mode so everyone knows I'm
not responding. If you can slack me, I'll get back
to you at five o'clock. Like I'm not getting back
to you now right, I'm going to need you to
give me this rope this rope, and I can do that.
(15:59):
But that has to be a way to you can
respect someone's flow state, and if you want, we can
talk a little about flow states, because I think that's
super valuable if you're an entrepreneur, if you're trying to create.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Something great, people have to do that because I think
people get too stuck in the weeds, they get too
working in the business versus on the business and don't
give themselves enough time to pull back and ask questions. Right, true? Okay,
so can we talk about flow states for a moment?
Go for it? Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
So many of you are nodding in the car. You
know what flow states are. You're the grand master of
flow states. So some of you are a little bit like,
I've heard it. What exactly is this?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
So here's sixty seconds on what you need to know
for this conversation to be super fun. A Hungarian American psychologist,
this guy me high. She said, Hi, I spent years
practicing his name. That's hey, pronounce it? He said, hmm.
I have a thesis that there is this concentrated state
that high performers get into where they do the work
(16:55):
that moves their world forward or moves the world forward period.
I want to study it. I want to figure out
what are the conditions precedent that allow them to get
into that, what are the mental tricks and techniques that
they use.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
To get there.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Right now, you may not know the phrase flow state,
but you may know it as being in the zone
or something like is that great Michael Jordan quote about
when I'm in the zone, it's me and the ball. Yep,
there is no defender, there is no scoreboard, like it
is just me and the ball. And that is that
state of intense concentration where it's just wow, right, and
(17:30):
I always mangle it. But there's a great Picasso quote
where he's talks about I was up all night, I
forgot to eat drink and I don't think I peede.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
But hey, you know, Gareth, I do you like it?
What do you think? You know? Like good night?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
You know actually took him I think fourteen nights. But
he has a good quote about that. So whatever you
may call it, whatever some may call it to you,
is that state where time falls away. You don't have
a sense of like, hey, an hour went buy you're
not really thinking about all the fidgety stuff. I should
get something from the fridge, Oh should I do laundry?
Let me run downstairs and grab the whatever. All that's
(18:05):
kind of gone. And as we hid discovered, there were
some conditions precedent that helped these high performers get into
the state. You had to have skills that apply. Right.
It's not Michael Jordan painting, it's not Picasso trying to
play basketball.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
You have to be challenged. It's not Michael Jordan playing
with eighth graders.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
If we at the edge of your ability, you have
to believe it's meaningful. And this is a leadership thing.
If you like, again to use you as my guinea
pig here, if I'm having a conversation with bad or
on bed, we need one of those great things you
do where you come to the staff meeting every three
months you say somewhere ever, it's like, let's go build that.
Like for you to go off and do that thing,
(18:49):
you actually have to believe where the hell it is
is meaningful because you're not going to be in a
flow state stapling TPS reports together, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Nope, not at all.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Right, So as you think about to bring this all
home to the people listening, as you think about, okay,
so there's this highly concentrated state where like these high
performers get to do these things like how do I
create this for myself?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Most studies show it takes fifteen to thirty minutes to
drop in. It's not like you sit down, you're in
a flow state for nine minutes and then you go
do something else. You have this amazing nine minutes. Right, No,
there is a process in which your brain starts to
shut out the distractions, you start to flow into this.
There are things you can do to accelerate that. Music
is something for a lot of people. Right, the research
(19:39):
shows and this is not everybody, but this is most people.
Is that music that seems to be between sixty to
ninety beats per minute, certain key signatures, ambient, non vocal,
rhythmic music helps lull your brain to that state where
things fall away, right, And.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
That's why everybody, that's why everybody in like from the
Spotify to Amazon music has flow state channel or whatever
it is. That's so it's like it's right there, built
for you and.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
We all have you know, the friend that listens to
ninety gangs to wrap whatever to get in the flow,
and God bless me, that's the outlier. It's not like
the middle of the road. Right, You've got my playlist done? Okay,
you and me, babe, California Love come on.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
So, so music is one thing you can use. Also,
you can create an association with scent. Like people don't
recognize this often, but scent is the sense most closely
linked to memory. And if you start to associate. Oh,
here's that candle or whatever it is. You know that
(20:42):
that scent that I have when I come straight, it
again accelerates that drop in.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So there are some other things we'll talk about later
in the episode. So if the sense is okay, well
I could get into the flow stage. You need also
make sure that when you get there, you're not disturbed.
You know I mentioned earlier as you know, my slack's
going to be in a way mode. Yeah, not not
a joke, No, I got to turn it off. Yeah,
when you get disturbed, even if it's simple as like
I'm doing this in BT's like hey man, can you
(21:10):
send me that you know, report from last week and
I've got to go do it, it will take you
another fifteen to twenty some odd minutes to get back
into your flow state. Right, So you need to It's
a respect you need to show. So for example, in
my company, we're all remote and we have a rule
no meetings before eleven. Yeah, like that is the time
when most people I work with are clear, you know,
(21:32):
their thing is most clear, and we just try not
to schedule synchronous meetings. So you can actually do an hour,
two hours, three hours, of let me go deep, let
me go write the code, let me go work on
those designs, let me go think of a marketing plan
as you were joking about earlier. You know, so I
share all that because it is one of the strongest
(21:53):
tools that I've encountered.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It is powerful. And three yeah, so what's in that
flow state everything else? So if we if we rewind
back to something that you should ann ouncesource, there's something
that you shouldn't you shouldn't take away. Because we talked
about marketing or letting other people because they don't understand
(22:16):
your secret sauce. So we want to come back to that.
But what is something that you should not outsource to
somebody else? Okay, well, I think they're probably two answers
to your question. One thing is, I will say you
I believe the core of these organizations is really about
vision and culture. So what unifies an organization, and if
(22:39):
you are a solar preneur, it is how you think
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's not that you don't have a culture, it's not
that you don't have a vision just because you're working alone. Now,
maybe someday you'll have thousands of people working for you,
but in this state of being a solopreneur. You still
need to have a vision culture, which is how you
manage yourself. And by that I mean vision is what
are we trying to do. Are we trying to clean
up the environment? Are we trying to launch a new
social media apps so people can hang out with their grandparents?
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Whatever?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
The thing is, right, and the culture is how do
we treat each other? How do we treat other people?
How do we treat our competitors?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You know? And that style comes from the top.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So you may be solar Crew aer now or you know,
small entrepreneurial company of two three, startup whatever. Someday you
may be much larger. But what you do to establish
vision culture on day one is baked in the DNA.
It is like having a child. It is in the DNA.
You can later teach the child manners and you can
teach the math, but that DNA is never changing.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So when you talk about this with your the Suka company,
with your what your think, what's what's kind of your
your mantra, your your idea, your vision, how it all
comes together? Well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I say the name of my company, which is a
very odd name, right and fact in Slavic languages, Suka
means basically b ich. Right, it's not a good word,
which friends pointed out to me, and I was like,
I think anyone who has used our app knows that
that's about what we're about.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
But the way it came is we had a working
title in an early version. Laura, my wife and I
we met in yoga. So when we went got married,
we went on a hin went to Valley, which is
a great place to do yoga, hang out for ten
days yoga at the yoga bar, and stuff like that. Right,
we were traveling there and I said to you know,
in these ten days, no one's going to bug me
from the office. Maybe the universe speaks to me and says,
(24:33):
here's the name you've been groping for, right, something better
than Flow State app fourteen or you know, Distraction Free
Zone twelve. You know some awful name I had. You know,
it's like Amazon or Nike, just powerful names. They are
not like shoe store, not like bookstore.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So Laura, of course, being well is like, I wish
that for you. I hope you do find a great
name on this trip. So I asked on the first day,
do you mind if just to see my imagination, I
have a quick zoom with a couple of current members
and this version, maybe they'll say something that like bubbles
up later into a name. She's like, go for it.
So I spoke to three people. I said, hey, man,
I just dropped the group chat. Who is ten minutes
(25:08):
to chat? Spoke to three people and asked them. She said, hey, BD, like,
what's your favorite feature? Do you love the flow music?
Do you love the timers? The smartest system or whatever?
And the third guy was talking to We're wrapping up
like eight minutes, and I was like, hey, you know,
I want to spend your time.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We've asked for eyes for ten minutes. Let's go.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And he said, Stephen, you asked the wrong questions. And
I was like, okay, what should I have asked? He's like,
you should have asked me why I pay you? And
I was like, we charged like thirty cents a day.
I didn't really think that's a big deal. He said,
let me tell you something I find. I have two
kinds of days. I have three o'clock I'm playing with
(25:46):
my kids they're two and four, and I have six o'clock.
Where did the day go? I suck, I'm down on myself,
off to get up burly and mort of work. He
said the differences that I opened your app in the morning,
so I pay you because my kids are not going
to be two and four forever and I want that
time with them. And I was like, that is more
(26:08):
articulate than I have ever been about my own company.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
I told this to Laura and we're brushing our teeth
that night, and she said to me, you know what
you wanted the universe to speak to you? This guy
channeled that. He described Suka, that stuff we hear in yoga,
you know, Prana and Karma and Dharman and all those things.
She's like, He basically described that. He said, this is
how I want to feel. I want to feel in
a good place. And I think that that that idea
(26:36):
of how you manage your life is supposed to be
managed is very powerful one. I will tell you very bluntly.
A number of our friends work or have worked at Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
And some used to be a Twitter.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And those companies are engaged straight up in a business
model called steal your Life. So if you want to
be a great entrepreneur, a great solo or whatever, and
you're spending your time scrolling through TikTok or Instagram telling
yourself you're doing market research, or you're seeing what the
competition is posting whatever. You are allowing those companies to
(27:11):
take your life, sell it to an advertiser and keep
the money, and you will do nothing with your life.
You will be another old, grumpy girl or guy who's
like I could have been a contender, you know. And
the best designer is the best behavior psychologists, the best
engineers in the world work for those companies because the
paychecks are ridiculous, so they are very well designed to
(27:33):
make sure your thumb doesn't want to stop scrolling. So
that is really the heart of the conflict that I
see in the world is that you have the smartest
people trying to make sure the rest of us do
nothing with our lives.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So what's the one question that I should ask myself
If I'm an entrepreneur and I haven't done time boxing,
I haven't done any of this stuff before, but I
want to buy some time back five minutes.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, you can look at your task list. It could
be so long that it's daunting, or there's some task
on there that's so big it's daunting. You'd be paralyzed
and do not't know where to start. Just say, you
know what, why don't I just do something for five minutes,
something productive for five minutes. I'm telling you, when you
put the foot down on that thousand mile journey, yep,
(28:24):
it just changes everything. You got to get out of
the house. Metaphorically speaking, I mean you know what I mean. Like,
if you're lying on the sofa scrolling, Yeah, you just
got to start the thousand mile journey and you'd be
surprised off how you get the first dight. But it
starts with just telling yourself, hey, man, if I could
just work on this design for five minutes, or if
I could just like maybe knock out this one bug
in my code for five minutes, it gets the ball
(28:46):
rolling zero to one is hard.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So when you're when you're doing this, my coach originally
told me, said, why do you think your clients want that?
So what's something that your your app and when you're
doing this and you're helping people you thought that people needed,
but you had to take it away because it was
an extra nother whistle or something that you thought everybody's
gonna love this and nobody liked it.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Okay, Can I tell you something that I wrestled with
and I didn't.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Know what to do?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yes, go for it. It's related to this, okay. So
here's the deal for those who don't know and BD
I appreciate bringing this up. Is what I created as
a website that is a close state website, right. It
is simply how could I make this a sex excuse
me accessible to more people? Really inexpensively all the tools
you need with one play button.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
So in the course of doing this, I had this thought,
which is, you know what, there are so many of
the members with whom I speak, but it's almost like
a hub and spoke model where I know all of
them and none of them have a sense of each other.
It's like a single player game, right, yep. What if
they knew each other? What if there's a group chat?
What if they could see each other like body body doubling,
(29:57):
you know, like very popular in the ADHD community. By
the way, I have add medically diagnosed. So I thought
maybe we should do this or will this be a
feature that everyone hates on It's just like, oh, pure,
you destroyed, you know, the thing. You know, it's so distracting, right,
So again, I love talking to two members. I was
talking to a couple of members about this, and one member,
(30:18):
she's still in the app. I asked her about this.
I was like, is this a great idea or is
this I'm going to get, like, you know, drawn in
quartered over the distraction of being able to talk to
other people and whatever, being able to body double. And
she said something so succinct. She said, listen, I can
go down to the Nike store and I can buy
(30:39):
a pair of shoes. They will sell me a left shoe,
a right shoe. I can put the mummy feet, I
can go running.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
They work. It's done right.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
There are a hundred million people that belong to the
Nike Run Club. Because when you run together, you run further,
you run faster. You know, you're more accountable. The days
that you don't want to get into bed, one of
your friends comes over, It's like, come on, Vida, let's
do this. And the day that we your friend needs
you to kick them out of bed feels great too.
She's like, you should do it. It is one of the
(31:07):
most popular features of the app. I didn't know what
I wasn't sure, So where do we find the app? Oh,
it's really simple. It's just a website. It's really easy.
You can sign in ten seconds. It's just the Suka
the Happiness right T G s U K h A
dot co and it's free for seven days, no credit card.
(31:27):
Try it if you love it, sign up. If you don't,
we'll never bug you again.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Very cool. Okay, and this is the rewind moment. So
the rewind moment is you're gonna come in here and
you're gonna drop some serious knowledges you've either already dropped
or this is the Oh my god, I need to
rewind this and listen to Steven because it was fabulous.
So what's the rewind moment? I love the.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Rewind moment thing. So the rewind moment is number one.
Do something great. And this, I hope is implicit in
every thing I said, which is I have a strong
thesis the way I had a thesis around these high
performers do something to get into these high concentrated states.
I have a thesis, and that is we all have
something great inside us, and the question of this lifetime
(32:13):
is are you going to get it out or not?
It starts with one step. It's really hard to think about,
Oh my god, am I going to create the thing
that's going to change the world.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
You know what.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It starts with one key stroke, one line of code,
one pixel in your design, one word in your blog.
But when you go zier to one, one to two
is easier and I hope that helps people.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Fabulous Stevid, thank you so much for coming on the
Gross Selling Retire That's awesome. Thank you for having me
fabulous and good good luck, good luck in November.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Good I know it's gonna be a big fall.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Will it will be a big fall. But thank you
so much for coming on the Gross Selling Retire podcast.
It's been fabulous having you on the show.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I hope this is helpful for everyone listening and really
appreciated we guys to talk.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information, tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BT's
three books, The Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and the Book
The podcast is based on grow Sell and Retire. If
(33:28):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
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