#025: Q&A with Adrian & Ben: Real-Time Lessons From 25+ Episodes

This is a special one because it's the first episode that we are doing with no guests today. I also think it's cool that we've made it this far. 99% of podcasts don't make it past their 21st episode. So to be able to sit here after we kind of just had this crazy idea a few months ago, we're still doing it. I think it's dope.

You guys have no idea how the early days— this was an absolute shitshow and there were constantly moving parts. And it's really cool that we've actually gotten it to a point where it's, I think, really enjoyable too.

In our first Q&A episode, we dive deep on our biggest learnings and mistakes from season 1 of the podcast, the inside growth stories at Verbatim and Platter, and how we've been able to balance high-volume content creation while building our own companies in tandem. Welcome back to episode 25 of the Turning Pro Podcast. This is a, this is a special one because it's the first episode that we are doing with no guests today. I also think it's cool that we've made it this far. I know I talked about this before we started, but 99% of podcasts don't make it past their 21st episode. So to be able to sit here after we kind of just had this crazy idea a few months ago, we're still doing it. I, I think it's dope.

You guys have no idea how the early days, this was an absolute shit show and there were constantly moving parts. And it's really cool that we've actually like gotten it to a point. Where it's, I think, really enjoyable too. It was fun, but also a little crazy early days. Now we can kind of just like hop in here, catch up with some friends, essentially catch up with ourselves like this one. Yeah, it's way more fun.

So we had an agenda for the things we want to cover, which I still do think there's a couple of topics on there that I want to jump into that I think would be helpful. In addition to maybe just double-clicking into some of the things we weren't planning on talking about, which is just the the chaos of everyday running a business.

Yeah. So context before this, we were going to do our first, like, solo episode where you and I are just sitting down. We're not interviewing someone else. So we've been wanting to do this for a while and we prepped some directions that we want to go. And then all of a sudden I come in here, Ben is super stressed and you're like, dude, I'm having a day. And then I get in and I'm like, I probably had the worst day of our company yesterday. And we looked at each other and we're like, all right, I think that's what we're going to talk about. So to dive right into it, I don't want to actually cover— I don't want this to be a therapy session about what's actually happening in our businesses, but I do want to talk about mindset and just like real time when things aren't going correctly. How are you processing it internally? Like what stages do you get through? Do you start with, I just need to like fix this and action it and I need to go into a hole and then I'll come out and talk to people about it. Or while you're going through stuff that's not fun to go through, are you leaning on support? Are you talking to friends about it? What's your approach?

I think one of the— one of the— even just you asking this question is prompting me to think about an answer in this— in real— to answer this in real time. And one of the things I've realized about myself, for better or worse, I'm an extremist, right? It's like I decided I was gonna do a thing and then I went sober for 12 months. I was like, I'm gonna run a marathon, and I went and did it. Or I, I was I'm very extreme in my decision-making, and I don't know necessarily if that's a good thing. But what's amazing for me when it comes to the context of business, my co-founders are very different in that regard. And I think the fact that I like to push the boundaries in terms of like my views, they're able to like understand that I feel strongly about something but also like reel me in in the best, most like conducive way possible. And so I think there's been scenarios where like something's going wrong and I'm like, fuck, this is 'Really not good?' And they're like, 'No, it's actually okay, and here's why.' But I think the fact that I'm able to bring it up and really like raise a red flag around something, it forces us to talk through it and discuss it. And so I think for me, the learning experience for myself over the last couple months has been to have my own filter mechanism and my own process for analyzing problems and not just jump to conclusions and not just stress out and assume the worst, which is something that I've continued to work on because one of the other interesting aspects of it, I think I deal with in a different way than you because you're a solo founder, right? So you lean on friends or advisors or peers. It's very different when you're in the weeds with co-founders. The best co-founding teams are those that have very different personalities, very different skill sets, and genuinely can balance each other. My outlook on situations are always different than them, and that forces us to be able to come to some sort sort of agreement in the middle. And so I think over the last few months, it's, it's been very, very good. And just today, like before we were talking, when I— you could tell that I was very stressed. We were just having like a fundamental disagreement in terms of like our positioning of, of like a very specific aspect of our business. And like the technical co-founder had one perspective and the non-technical people had a different one, which is then where empathy comes into play because it's like we're you know, we're selling the business, we're structuring the deals, and then they're the ones delivering on it. So a lot of coming to an agreement there is us being able to put ourselves in their shoes and also them being able to understand what these real conversations look like previous to signing a customer. And that's all to say that like we've been very good about being able to, to resolve problems. But just broadly speaking, I'm recognizing that for me, the, the thing that I'm trying to work on is just filtering through problems, recognizing what's high touch versus low touch in real time. To be able to not like waste other people's time and to come to conclusions on my own when it should be that way.

What are some of the things that you'll go to? It could be going for a walk, could be going to work out, could be going to a bar. I'm not sure. When things aren't working out in your favor, it could be business or like life too. Whenever you're stressed, what's your go-to reaction aside from hopefully like actioning the things that are on fire?

I mean, to be honest with you, I can't really do anything else until the thing that's stressing me out is resolved. Yeah, you know, like sometimes there's people like, oh, I'll go for a walk, I'll put my phone down and meditate, I'll go to the gym. For me, I, I think because of my tendency to just be an extremist in a lot of instances, I get consumed by the problem and I just need to solve it. And I can't— it's like I can't think of anything else until I get that problem solved. Which, look, there's, there's pros and cons to that. I don't know if it's necessarily the right or wrong way, but I think it's part of the learning experience for me. But that's just the reality of how it is.

Yeah. Something that I've— okay, this sounds a little crazy. I don't think I've told anyone this, but sometimes being a solo founder, when I need to go clear my head or like get advice, I'll do this thing where I'll go on walks and I'll like put my headphones in so I don't look like a lunatic and I'll like talk through the problem live. Like I'll essentially like ask myself a question like, what do we think we learned from this? What's the lesson here? Because I always try to reframe what when something bad objectively happens, even though you can try to reframe it and be like, no, it's a good thing on the surface. Some things are just not good and like a net negative. Whenever that happens, I try to reframe, okay, what's the learning from this? What's the lesson? How are we gonna change as a result? It's not a bad thing, it's just a learning lesson. And then to actually work through it in real time so I don't get really stressed about it. I think this is because I don't have a co-founder. I'll go on a walk and just Imagine like in 3 weeks and I'll actually rehash it. Just sometimes I'll talk out loud, sometimes I'll just walk and think about it, but I'll actually rehash and be like, okay, yeah, this thing happened a few weeks ago. This is what I learned about it. This is how I'm going to change in the future. And I think it was really important because of XYZ reasons. I think that— I think objectively that sounds a little crazy, dude. It has been so helpful. It's just like processing in real time, but without, I guess, like co-founder or without like a therapist, like prompting those questions to you. But you still get the you still digest exactly what you need to do.

I think the reason that I struggle with this issue is because I operate with the level of urgency that everything needs to be done yesterday, and it's very unhealthy. Um, and so I think in some instances I add stress to myself that doesn't necessarily need to be added. But at the same token, I know that we're pushing the pace a lot faster than we probably would be if I wasn't strung this way, because my co-founders aren't like this, right? So I think Elon Musk has this quote that resonated with me. I think it's something along the lines of like, if you try to accomplish your one-year plan— or if you try to accomplish your five-year plan in one year, you probably won't do so, but you'll get a hell of a lot further than if you try to accomplish your one-year plan in one year. There's a lot of validity to that, I think, where it's like, don't be complacent, try to push the pace on things. But at the same time, that also makes me struggle with trying to like take a deep breath, just like, it's gonna be okay, go for a walk, put it away, it's not the end of the world. That inner switch is something that I've had to gradually work on, uh, over the last couple months. And I would say I'm getting incrementally better at it. And I think part of what I've identified is where are these stressors coming from? And we can talk about this because I think it's partially to something you want to talk about on this episode was just like, where have you seen yourself leveling up? Um, and so, I mean, I guess I'll just jump right into it. For me, it's a couple things. The first one is being able to say no. It's been like a really big one for me. I tend to just like overextend myself in the sense of like, there's a lot of meetings that I'll take where if I had this filter beforehand of like, can this wait a week, can this wait 2 weeks, I wouldn't have to add this stress to myself where I'm like stuck on back-to-backs for, you know, a long period of time, and then I start my work at 6 PM. And so there's a filter of like, how many meetings a day should you be taking? How many days a week should you be taking meetings? And what's your like prioritization process for meetings that need to happen now, meetings that need to happen this week? And then there's those that either can happen over email where you don't need a meeting, or it can wait a couple of weeks.

Right.

And so saying no has been one thing, more effectively managing my meetings. And then I think the third thing, just broadly speaking, is simplification.

Tell me more about that last one.

Yeah, so I, I put a tweet out about this a couple days ago, and this is one of the, one of the last episodes, uh, we did with the podcast with Seth. He talked about this concept, and it's something that I alluded to where a lot of my most successful friends, their superpower is simplification. Where you can get overwhelmed and distracted by a lot of noise, but to be able to distill the simple problem that you're actually facing and take a step back and figure out this can probably be solved in a much easier way than what I'm doing or how I'm thinking about it. I think for me at times I get carried away, I get excited, I get like aggressive and eager that I just start to overcomplicate in some instances where it's like, you should have just taken a step back, like looked at the wall in your room that says Simplify and say to yourself, okay, I know I have a solution, I think, for this problem, but is there a more simplistic way to do this? I don't like, become present enough to actually ask that question to myself. And I think that's because I, I'm just on the go all the time with meetings and whatever, where basically I need to be more intentional about taking time to think and understand that everything doesn't need to be done yesterday. And I can actually have a clear head and think critically about problems and solutions, uh, versus just feeling like everything is in this world of chaos, because I bring it on myself in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I think most most startups as well as like established businesses that A, are crushing it and B, I just really respect, especially if they're like seed, Series A stage, tend to be incredibly simple companies. And I think increasingly at Verbatim, as we're launching like new features and new product lines that are adjacent to the core product, I really try to remind myself whenever we get too in the weeds of like, how should this new feature be like communicated or rolled out? Like what exactly is the little step-by-step workflow? End of the day, companies need more leads. Content is a way to do that. You write good content and you ship it. That's kind of it, right? And obviously there needs to be workflows and like guardrails around it. Okay, what's working? How do we inform the next ones that we need to do? But at the core of it, that's kind of the whole business. And so increasingly, whenever we're running into like those, those in-the-weeds conversations that really stress us out, we always try to come back to that. Like, is this part of that core workflow? And if it's not, toss it. And if it is, let's just do it really damn well.

I think simplification— another way to say that is like, get back to the basics.

Yeah, right.

Any problem you want to solve. I think the, the one, uh, anecdote that I'll add here, because I think this is really helpful for people who maybe struggle from the same issue, uh, a friend of mine, very successful founder, had an exit. He's our age, made a ton of money. And I was talking to him a few weeks ago, and he was talking to me about his goal setting framework for for 2024. And one of the things he thinks about is like, how much money do I wanna make this year?

Right?

And so it's a very challenging question to ask yourself if you're entrepreneurial, where most of the time, if you're in like a 9-to-5 job, you kind of know what your salary is and you might make a little bonus. You might have a side hustle. When you think about entrepreneurs, especially those maybe working on a couple different things, when you ask yourself that question, it's— you, you can throw out a number, but the real question becomes, how are you actually gonna achieve that number?

Right?

So the way that he described it to me is like he broke it down all the way to like the micro level of how you're spending your time, right? So the best example that he gave me was, let's say with a podcast studio, your goal is you want to make $100,000, $120,000 a year in revenue. Forget the salary piece for the sake of the example. In revenue, it's like, okay, so if we break that down, that means you want to make $10,000 a month, which means you want to make $2,500 a week. Which means how many clients need to come in on a weekly basis? Okay, let's say that's 2. How many leads do you have to reach out to to convert 2 clients? Okay, that's 30. How much time is it going to take you to actually talk to 30 leads? Okay, it's 7 hours a week. Okay. That means if you spend X amount of time, you can get to that number. And when he said that to me, I was just like, holy shit. Like the way that you broke that down for like a 4th grader to just simplify things. You can take that mindset and just extrapolate that across so many issues you face in your life. And it really makes you realize that you're really not, you're not solving world hunger. You're not solving cancer. Like we're, if you think about it, we're working on pretty simple things. If you try to distill what we're doing, like you're telling someone, I'm going to give you content and get you more business. I'm saying, I'll give you a little bit of a better website to help you make more money. Yeah.

I think when it comes to time management, this also leans into, I think biggest, biggest learning, I guess, or like lesson over the past 6 months is sometimes I can get really in the weeds of something that just does not matter at all. Like say we're thinking about the core of any business, like drive more revenue, cut costs and reduce burn, and then you're going to have more profit on the other side. Obviously more complicated than that. But I was going down a rabbit hole a few days ago because I got stressed about like our margin because we, for context, we went from like 4 to 20 people over the past 12 months and it's just very expensive. And it's like whenever I get the, the recurring wires or the recurring ACH pulls from Justworks, I'm like, whoa, that's a lot of money. That's like kind of scary. And just all these little expenses add up. And so I'm not saying to not pay attention to that. That is very important. But I was going through it and I was like, oh, we can cut this or we can renegotiate this. I spent— I swear to God, I spent like a full day on a weekend going through this and I had an action plan and it came out to like saving a few thousand bucks a month or something. And I won't share like our LTV and contract sizes on here, but you know what they are and they're decently sizable. And then I was like, dude, what are you doing? You just waste a whole day doing this. Just close one more deal and this will solve it 5, 10x, potentially even more. Like, why the hell are you spending your time on this? And when it comes to simplifying, I think a lot of my time is spent, hey, don't get in the weeds of like each tiny little thing that has that you've kind of eked out the majority of the gains that you can get. Same thing happened last week. I was, I was like, I want to redesign our logo. Because we never had a designer do it. I just like picked a font and we made like a little circle and we colored in the circle neon. And we've had that since for the past like 2 and a half years or 2 years since we launched. And I spent probably 6 hours drawing on my own and I had our designer do a bunch of mocks and we were going back and forth and back and forth. And I was like, this doesn't impact our revenue whatsoever. And now if we didn't have a logo or an icon and it like really sucked, okay, then you can get from 40 to 80%. But we were already probably like 95% of the way. If I spend days on it, maybe we can get 95 to like 96. But trying to reprioritize my time to know some things are worth spending time on, but some things like our margins and our expenses, when I actually went through it, we're not spending stupid money. It's getting from 95% perfect to 96 and then realizing, hey, that's a terrible use of your time. Go spend it on things that are going to drive revenue.

Well, the other leveling up thing that I've, I've thought about a lot, I've learned this from a lot of my peers, is you have to start to— and this is one of my own things over the last couple months— is like, respect your own time and respect your own calendar and put a number on it, right? So with you, you're running a pretty big business at this point. You guys are doing real revenue. Like, your dollar value in terms of like what— for someone to pay you for an hour of your undivided attention is pretty expensive. My point in saying that is if you actually quantify the amount of dollars that your time is worth, where you spent 6 hours to like make a logo, that either A, you could have just paid someone the amount of money that you just wasted of your own time doing that when you could have been going and getting new leads, or B, when you're going through this exercise and like, how can I save $2,000, right? I think it's a good exercise because you didn't know what the number was.

Yeah.

When you get to the bottom of it, you realize And this is part of the leveling up, and I've learned this from all these people around me, is you start to realize what is worth your time and what is not. And you just need to understand that taking that leap of faith to get rid of those things that really aren't worth your time, it has to happen if you want to get to the next level. Because if you're just stuck in the business all the time, you're not going to be able to do the bigger picture things that actually move the needles. And again, I go back to this, but Seth from Masa is the perfect example of this, where he— you ask him like, what, how do you spend your time? He's like, well, I just think about How can I get outsized returns on any sort of activity? So the context would be, you know, go find an event where there's going to be 20,000 people there and influencers, and how do I get my chips in the hands of all these people for $0 because I did a deal with the founder or whatever? It's like he's moving boulders. He's not like sitting in, you know, these little spreadsheets like fixing typos. And yeah, those things need to get done, but like, what is actually going to move you forward and move your business forward? And I think you have to start to reframe in a way where you feel like you deserve a seat at those bigger tables before you're actually going to get there.

100%. And I think part of that reframe is also— I know it's very in vogue to talk about like, what's your superpower? What are you naturally really good at? I like distilling it down into like, what do you really have a knack for? Which just means like you're uncommonly good at something. And most people discover that they have a knack for something like in middle school or in high school. Some people discover it later that you like run into a new discipline. But I think most people discover that they have some knack for— it could be socializing and they could go do BD and partnerships, or it could be engineering or design or whatever it is. And so I think part of reframing how you spend your time on high ROI activities has been really just having conversations with myself and like trying to do some reflection around— I'm pretty good at product, I'm pretty good at hiring, I'm pretty good at content. But what I actually love doing that gives me a lot of energy and I think I have a knack for I mainly like hanging out with people and trying to help them in some way. And I think you and I both share this in that we were talking about this when we were having lunch before, that we've just developed a network somehow over the past few years that one right intro at the right time to someone can fundamentally change their business, their life. Not all the time, but sometimes it really can. And that's the thing I have the most fun on. And so if I reframe of most of my time, yes, I have to spend time with my team. I have to ensure the product is killer. I need to spend time with a lot of our new clients to make sure they're actually implementing our advice correctly. But most of what I'm really good at, I just kind of like meeting new people or catching up or going deep with folks. And then if we can help with content, awesome. But 90%, 90% of the time it's not on that. It's an intro. It's an intro to a customer, to a partner or investor. And so I've really been trying to reframe my time around how can I spend 80% of the time just doing that and then go do the necessities, right? Make sure everyone's happy on the team or client side of things. But really taking a look at the calendar and being like, am I meeting new people and am I actually helping them? 'Cause those are two separate things, right? Difference between us hanging out or you meeting someone new, and then you actually spending 20, 30 minutes going through your network to see that one introduction or those two introductions. 'Cause it's easy to say, oh, go talk to Adrian, like I'm sure he'll help in some way, versus you going through, and I swear to God, if you met someone new and you really spent 20 minutes going through your network, you'd find that one person that could change their life or change their business or lead their next round and invest $20 million, I don't know. But I think that follow-up is really important too.

I have a question on that topic. It might be a bit of a tangent, but do you use any sort of tools to manage your network?

None. Um, I have every week everyone that I meet or catch up with, I have my VA pull their emails and their names and drop them in a rolling Google Sheet and just add a tag of like they're a founder, they're an investor, they could be a partner, but there's just like 1,000 people on that list. That's the extent of it.

Have I told you what I— I told you what I use for this, right?

No. Do you use Klaviyo or something?

Yeah. Have you never tried it?

It looks overbuilt, man. I'm a little wary of it. What do you think?

I mean, it literally does what you just said, except it automates what you just said.

What does it automate, though?

Like, it pulls in your calendar for you and then you could just go through the list of meetings it literally has in there and you could just click the person and tag them and you can assign multiple tags. And so you have your list of the different categories that you want, and you could add notes about the interactions. You can set reminders, like follow up with this person every 3 months. Um, and instead of your VA going in and doing that, it automatically pulls it in. But what it also does is it tracks every interaction you've ever had with that person.

Mm-hmm.

So like the email threads, the events, the text messages, et cetera.

Do you find that useful? Do you use that?

I, I use it. I do. My workflow is similar to yours where at the end of a week, I'll go in and I'll just tag each person that I met that week into the little buckets that I care about. And so now if I'm talking to someone like, hey, do you know X, Y, and Z? I'll go look in my tags. But wait, this is probably the person that you should meet.

I think I'll try it out, but I think there's separate use cases because there's a difference between like I have that Google Sheet in case I need it. And once in a while I'll like Ctrl+F and look through tabs of like, oh, buddy needs like a list of investors in this sector. Like, and I'll Ctrl+F that. It's helpful for that. But when it comes to deepening relationships with people you really care about and adding as much value through introductions or events or partnerships, whatever it is, I'm a really visual person and I think most people are. And I started this like a month ago. I— so far it's been like very useful. I had my designer build like a custom Figma dashboard where it literally kind of like Facebook, I— there's probably like 30 to 40 people that I've known for a while, yourself included, that I'm really close to. They could be a client, founder, investor, whatever it is. And those 40 people are where 80% of the good things have happened to me. They're the ones introducing new people. They're the ones sending us business. They're the ones just like there if I need to vent about something. And I basically had her pull the headshots of everyone and I just blew them up. And like each headshot is on a row. It's like a 3x3. And that has been enormously helpful because any time I'm like, I need an introduction to someone or I need to go help these people, or I met someone new who could be the right intro here because that's where 80% of like my high ROI activities come from. I pull that up and it's so weird, but like seeing Ben Sharf on a line item, I, I have no interest in helping the Ben Sharf on a line item versus if I'm looking at your face I'm— there's something about it. I'm like, I got to help out Ben.

That's a crazy insight. Like, I've never heard anyone say that before.

Do you think that would work for you?

Maybe.

Yeah.

I think looking at a spreadsheet and looking at a face, it like humanizes it and makes the relationship feel more real even when you're just looking at a thing. Yeah. That's interesting. I always ask that question. I'm always curious because, you know, there's a small subset of people who we would define as super connectors. It's like every time you meet them, they introduce you to 10 people. And I feel like we're both like that with other people. And so I always wonder, like, how do you manage that at scale? Because I know for sure that I have areas to improve. I'm sure there's intros I didn't make that I could have made, but then it's like you have to focus on yourself at times in your own business. So how could you be thinking about who to introduce other people to when you have to just focus on your day to day?

Yeah.

So understanding from others how they build that in a way that's conducive, like a flywheel. I'm very fascinated by the whole, the whole category in general, just like relationships at scale.

It's so interesting because there is someone that I've met— could be recently, could be years ago— that I could introduce you to right now that could probably unlock $500,000 of revenue for you, guaranteed. And there's someone in your network that you've met— it could be investor, founder, whatever— who could be the perfect partner for us, or the perfect investor, or the perfect client. And that exists. There's no doubt about it that there's someone you know and someone I know, probably more than one person. And so then it just becomes a question of like, how do you unlock that? And like one of the intro, you linked me with Ben from Tribeca, right? Yeah. Great guy. Shout out, Ben. But when we synced, we immediately had a ton of overlap, a ton of deal overlap that we were both investing in. There are a lot of folks within his portfolio that like were ramping up good market, really needed content support, whether with us or someone else. And then there are a lot of clients that I was working with that were raising soon that he should go talk to. And immediately one of those happened. You know, when you meet someone new, you're like, Yeah, we should have known each other for like the past 2 years. We can really help each other personally and professionally, but I don't know how to solve that. But there's no doubt that there's someone in each other's networks right now that could unlock potentially millions of dollars.

Yeah, I mean, look, it just becomes opportunity cost of like how you want to spend your time. And there's just a harsh reality is there's no, there's no predictability around where that person is or who that person is. And it's kind of, for me, I feel like when I meet someone, my brain will just run through my Rolodex and I'm like, oh, I think you need to meet this person. Like, let me just fire the intro off now. I'll be like, I'll be meeting someone new, whether it's a Zoom or in person. If something clicks in my head, I'm like, wait one sec, I'll make the intro before I forget about it because it just like happens. It matters immediately. But I want to, I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to understand from you changes that you've made over the last couple of months in your own life that you think have had like a material impact on your, your ability to, as we refer to it, turn pro. Because I guess the other thing to highlight here that we can agree on is that turning pro is like not a— there's no end destination. It's like you're doing this forever. So it's just checking in with yourself periodically to understand what have I done over the last couple of months to level up instead of level down.

Yeah, I think a rephrase of that, it's a constant recommitment to the new level that you're at or the new level that you're operating at. It could be every day, it could be every week. I started Verbatim 2 years ago and then a year before I was freelancing. Every single year it happened to be in January, but probably every 6 months. But I remember every New Year I was kind of down on the business for some reason, and especially when it was really working and I had to make like a mental intentional recommitment that like, I'm going to do this anyway. That was a, that was a rabbit hole. But I agree it's important. I think recent changes that I've made, the biggest one is probably, probably the morning routine of like going from— we talked about this in a couple of episodes ago, but going from me pressuring myself to to meditate, to do red light therapy, to do my Duolingo, to read 10 pages, to like journal on it and then go action that. And it stressed me out so much and it just wasn't, it wasn't fun and it distracted me from my work. And so I think the biggest change recently has, I even ditched the like Huberman get light on your eyes first thing. I may go back on that 'cause I think that is important. But now when I wake up, I am always really excited to go check my email and Slack. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I'm 2 years in. I'm still in the excited phase of like, do we get to work with a new partner? Did we sign this new teammate? Is this client really happy? That may change, I'm sure. But I wake up and I'm like, who reached out? Who can we chat with? And so I immediately, I put on workout clothes, I check my email and Slack, A, make sure fires aren't burning, B, there's always something new in the inbox that I get jazzed about. I just triage for like 10, 15 minutes and I go stretch downstairs and that's it. And then I come up, shower, make coffee and start work. And that goes in the face of like almost every piece of advice that you can get. Even the folks that have tampered down their morning routines and they're like, just go for a walk, just get sunlight in the eyes, wait for the coffee. And now it's just straight in. I just go to my laptop right away. That may not be perfectly healthy, but it works, man. It really works.

It's so ironic, the timing of you saying that. I, I legitimately spoke to my therapist yesterday about this topic of how dangerous it is to just like read online all these people who tell you they cold plunge and red light and journal and meditate, and you just like consume this content and think that's what you need to be doing. But you have to recognize that every person is their own unique individual, and what works for you doesn't necessarily work for me. There's not always a right or wrong answer. There's levels to it, of course. But I was always in this phase as well of like trying to force myself to adopt habits of activities that I just— I'm not cut out for. And then you put pressure on yourself, to your point, and it starts to be counterproductive because now you're spending— you're spending time thinking you should be doing these things, you're failing at it, so you're disappointed because you fell short, and then you feel like you're not making progress because you're not doing the things. And it's like a perpetual cycle other than just recognizing, you know, it's not for me and that's okay. But I, I think as long as you find what works for you and being hyper-aware to make those adjustments, that's progress.

I think that— I think that note about failure or making it seem like you're failing yourself by not doing these things is especially dangerous for folks that are Type A and like to quantify everything and like to track everything. Like every day I have like a basic Notion, just like grid page. You can do it on Excel or something else and it just tracks like what are the priorities for the week? Some weeks it's my Oura Ring sleep score. Maybe I'm using it that week or I'm working out or I'm sleeping well. Sometimes it's just like 3 things. But I remember a few weeks ago before I kind of switched this morning routine, I would get so down on myself because I had red light, meditate, journal, and read. And every day for that week, those were all empty. And again, this is not a big deal, but it's like this really pernicious kind of like background noise. Like, you didn't do that today. You didn't do that today. And I just got really down on myself. I was like, this is not necessary at all.

Were there any other big changes you feel like you made, or is that the one that stands out to you?

That's the one that stands out. What about you?

There's a couple, uh, the first one— and I've probably talked about these things on some of the previous episodes because I feel like when I make changes like these things, I just, I get excited about them when I see progress from them, uh, but the two biggest ones— the first one is that I stopped wearing headphones when I exercise, more specifically when I run. That has been one of the most life-changing habit changes that I've made in my life. Um, and the reason for that, that I've realized is as someone who naturally just seeks chaos, like you can put me in a room, I'll find something to do. Like I'll find someone to talk to, whether it's digitally or physically. Uh, I've realized that something I've like, to your point about the meditation and the journaling, like something I've always wanted to be able to do is like sit still and just like relax and meditate. And it's just something I've struggled to be able to do. And so for me, I realize exercising without a phone and without headphones specifically running. It's the first time that I found an activity where I can actually be in silence and process my thoughts and solve unresolved problems during it. That I don't even know if I like running as much as I like the act of what my mental state is during it. And it's been such a good outlet for me to really disconnect and process. So that's been huge. And then the other one is going to sleep earlier.

What time?

I'm in bed between 10 and 10:30.

Really?

Yeah.

Dude, that is really funny you brought this up, especially this week. So I was sick last week. Karina, my girlfriend, was sick this weekend, and we said this week we're going to go to bed at 10 p.m. or like 10:15 every single day. And we are so much happier and so much calmer during the day that we're just both slept all the time. Have you noticed, like, immediately?

The quality of life is so different when you wake up in the morning, not groggy, but like my body's ready to get up. Yeah, because I got a lot of sleep and it's still 6, 7 in the morning when it's so quiet. There's not people out there. People aren't bothering you on Slack yet, things like that. And it allows you to like be proactive with how you start your day versus reactive. And to be honest with you, if I'm awake past that, I'm not doing anything productive. Like I'm not someone who gets my best work done at 11:00 PM. And I know those people exist, but that's not me. And so I think just starting to gain that discipline to go to sleep earlier has been so game-changing for me.

Mm-hmm. I do wanna talk about running without headphones. So I haven't done it yet. I think I'm gonna be in LA next week, so I'll try warm weather outdoor runs without it. But one of the reasons I love playing soccer, usually I'll do like once a week or something. I grew up playing soccer and I just love the sport. But I think part of it all is also that it's the only time I don't have headphones in or I'm talking to someone all week. 'Cause we were talking about this a bit that like I wear headphones at the gym and I just come out, I'm like filled with podcast information and notes that I took from that podcast. And I'm like, what am I doing? That wasn't restful at all.

Yeah, I mean, I, I— the advice that I'll give you is you're probably gonna fail your first time and be okay with that because it's really uncomfortable. It's a, it's a very massive abrupt change, but you have to be willing to stick with it at least a couple times until you learn to enjoy it and learn to like find that peace and stillness from it.

I love it. Any other stuff you want to run through?

Uh, no, I mean, we're at This is like 30 minutes. I think it's a healthy, a healthy time for a, for a solo dolo episode.

Solo episode. The boys go to therapy with each other. Let us know if you have feedback. I definitely want to do more of these.

If you're still listening after 25 episodes and at the end of this episode, please do us a favor and subscribe and leave a review. We would love that. I think this has been an amazing, amazing journey for us that I feel like is still at the beginning, but we would appreciate any support we can get.

Oh yeah, love it, man. Cool, cool.

Done, dude.

That was fun.

Yeah, I enjoyed that.

Let's do that more.