The Startup Ideas Pod

Today Greg is joined by Julien Smith, the CEO of Practice, bestselling author of The Flinch, and executive coach. In this episode, Greg and Julien talk about the podcasts, books, and x/twitter feeds that entrepreneurs should be reading and following. They also explore why you should think of your life in seven-year increments. 

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LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Production Team:
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Julien Smith
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http://juliensmith.com/

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 - Intro
7:27 - The Silicon Valley info diet
13:47 - The network multiplier of high quality content
20:35 - How to play the content long-game
30:56 - Think of you life in 7-year increments


Creators & Guests

Host
GREG ISENBERG
I build internet communities and products for them. CEO: @latecheckoutplz, we're behind companies like @youneedarobot @boringmarketer @dispatchdesign etc.

What is The Startup Ideas Pod?

This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).

📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/

X: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/

Greg: Julian Smith, friend of the pod, New York Times bestselling author, probably raised a quarter billion dollars.

You can't see it right now, but it has more tattoos than I think I have, I have hair. Welcome back to the show.

Julien: Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. And I'm a fan of the show.

Greg: The VC market is hurting right now, especially with B2B businesses. You know, you have enterprises just cutting back spend on things like software. So I imagine the next wave will be B2C companies. once consumers start tightening, they're going to be the ones that are hurting. Uh, it's already happening in Canada.

I saw an article today saying that the GDP, of Canada was a surprise and it's actually declining or it's contracting. As long as you don't run out of cash, you're doing something smart.

You've extended your runway because you're in Canada. One US dollar is 1 35 Canadian. So basically if you raised $10 million, you now have $13.5 million. So the thing I'm thinking about, and I'm curious your opinion, is How has hiring internationally helped you run your business?

Julien: , first of all, I knew from the get go, even in 2019, when we were first ideating on this thing that we want to do at remote, keep in mind, my last company was an office space technology company. And so because of that, Like there was no chance it was not going to be offices and there was no chance it was not going to be an in person business.

And the world was different in 2014 to 18. And when I was CEO of that thing, , but I was, I was really clear on my boundaries. So my boundaries were, I cannot be in an office every day. And there were a lot of things I didn't like about that. . And so I shifted like some of our friends that you know, Greg, right into a remote business that have different structure that are really like that really results oriented environments and where people are hired based on talent, not really based on their geography necessarily, or in some cases, not even necessarily based on a common background.

Um, native language, and we have gotten together in the past, either regionally or globally, like all as a team, and that really helps people gel together. Uh, but you know, if people like on the internet, like Keith Reboy and like other people are telling me to go back to the office legitimately, like, I don't know if maybe they think I'm a shitty operator.

I don't know. I don't think that I'm a shitty operator. Clearly I've proven some things out at some point. And so if, if they, uh, if they want me to return to the office, I would legitimately not be a CEO again. there is a Canada based portion of my business, but over time there was a set of hiring that happened internationally.

And I would say it does present its own challenges, but it is absolutely worthwhile the way that we've made it work is. And the thing that's really mattered for us is we have driven towards a set of leaders in the business that are Silicon Valley oriented leaders. Like, I think I proved myself out as a CEO having raised what I did and built the kind of business that I did that even though I'm not in Silicon Valley, I'm Silicon Valley oriented.

Greg: is the idea that Silicon Valley esque people are teaching non Silicon Valley esque people to be more Silicon Valley esque?

Julien: Yeah. . So the first thing is, is like culture is absorbed, like if, if you have, I mean, you were inside of the, maybe the, Um, In your cases, it was a little unusual like you were inside we work I don't know how you would talk about that culture, but I bet there's a bunch of things we could do a reverse interview Uh, you were inside sort of adjacent to stumble upon which is an early silicon valley success and you were I mean, you lived in San Francisco for a while, so you know what it's like to run a business in Silicon Valley. Now, a lot of people in Canada, and I have some coaching clients in Canada to give you a sense, right? Like, they think they know what it's like to run a Silicon Valley business. Truly, they do not. They don't know what it's like to work at, to have worked at PayPal in 1999 as, as the economy was crashing and they were like, we have so much fraud and we don't even know what to do.

They don't know what product market fit feels like. And then you can ask people the question, do you have product market fit in their business? And they'll be like, I think so. And you'll be like. You do not have it because it is such a, uh, a, a, a crazy clear feeling when you have it that you're like, oh shit, this is it.

Alright. , most people feel like they understand what working at a startup is and what it's like to work in a tech company. But , if they haven't been in one in Silicon Valley, they really don't know what it feels like and they don't really know how to work that hard. And I don't know what a product market fit feels like.

So they're kind of aping it without ever really having been in it before.

Greg: Yeah. I wonder where my head's at is if that culture. And that way of thinking is a multiplier on productivity and high quality work. I'm just wondering, beyond having great leaders and managers, how else could you... accelerate your team. Uh, you know, when someone gets onboarded to your, to your team, do you like set them up with five podcasts that they should listen to?

You know, do you say like, here's, here's a Twitter account with, you know, that's following 200 people that I think you would really benefit from.

Julien: It's interesting that you say that. Uh, it's true that sometimes when you hire people and they're inside of the sort of content bubble of tech that they start with a set of standards and that, , if they don't like if they don't come from that world that you kind of have to, you educate as you build.

And if you're educating as you build, here's the sort of way that that manifests itself. You have to be like, Hey, here's why we're going after this type of customer, because this type of customer will do X for this type of business. And we could bring that to. 100 million people or 200 million dollars in revenue.

. But most people that have not gotten a business to product market fit, maybe that had revenue. It doesn't have to have been SaaS, it could be anything, like those, they, they have a slice of understanding of what, what business is, and I know that that's certainly true for me, like. When I started breather, , like, did I understand that I was really starting a low margin, a lower margin business?

Not really. Like I didn't quite get it. I was just like, there's a product and we're going to build it. And I know a lot of people are going to like it. I was right about a lot of things, but at the, at the core of it, there were a set of misunderstandings about business that I did not have.

Greg: So Sam Altman. Although when we think of Silicon Valley, we think of someone like Sam Altman now. He's a New Yorker, you know, he's a New Yorker who moved to Silicon Valley, but he did surround himself with the Silicon Valley, you know, people, right? So I think, , you don't need to be from Silicon Valley to to, to, to get that as long as you absorb it.

And my thesis is, you know, with so many podcasts and YouTube channels and, and so many people now tweeting, you know, you're the average of the five friends you spend the most time with, but you're also the average of the five podcasts you consume. And think that a really underrated way. And a cheaper way, frankly, than moving to San Francisco or the Flatiron district in New York City, , is you just make it a point to load up with content and from these people in, and I'm not talking about like listening to the all in podcast, which is like obviously a great podcast, but it's more, you know, a big podcast, I'm saying like, what is the niche podcast that you should be listening to that can really uplevel you, that has a lot of these, a lot of this DNA? So for example, you know, Lenny Ruchitsky's podcast, who, he spent, you know, 10 years in Silicon Valley, and he's interviewing all these people, and he talks to product managers, and it's very specific to product managers.

Julien: Yeah, it's, you're right that you need to be absorbing all the time. You know, it's funny, uh, when I was a writer writing books for a living and doing talks in the social media space, like way before I was ever a tech CEO, uh, convinced at the time, by the way, that I couldn't become a tech CEO and Greg, you were instrumental in convincing me that I could become one.

So thanks for that. I owe you one, uh, at the time. I read fucking shit tons. And my, my bookcase to the left of me here is actually filled with, in a lot of cases, garbage books, but it kind of didn't matter. I kept absorbing them and absorbing and absorbing and absorbing. I was nonstop learning. And I will say it's been a great challenge of mine and audio really does help.

It helps a lot, but it's a great challenge to while working and being a. Operator of a business to also be absorbing as much as possible audio. You're right is the right way to do it for me because You just can't absorb as quickly and you can't absorb passively Like I think i'm reading listening to three audio books at the moment that are either classic or that are important kind of Tech books about certain things, in some case sales, in some case operations and other things like that, like books that are known to people, a Phoenix project, uh, eat their lunch, uh, high output management, these types of books that you could just sort of passively absorb that those are books about how tech happens And you're right it you can you ideally you absorb it on the cheap the part that you cannot absorb On the cheap and both you and I know this actually and and we do it So it's important to actually to say it is that it cannot create network for you And so if you're at zero network, I got this question last week from uh from someone It'd be like how did you meet the people at andreessen horowitz?

Well, holy shit I met andrew chan my partner today at andreessen horowitz In 2014, 13, we did a deal in 2021, eight years later on a separate business, like networks are built and you become a trusted person inside of those networks over time, Not immediately. So there's, there's a funny thing now where we can, we can go remote and my company can become good enough, have a great series A.

And I could, I could walk into whatever, fucking Sequoia Capital or whatever, right? I could certainly get a meeting at Sequoia Capital. And I can certainly take that meeting and they absolutely will consider it. But it wouldn't have been the case in the same way ten years ago. So, what happened then? Track record?

And you don't get a track record remotely. and by the way, track record can involve failures, but it has to involve smart failures and also network being in the same places as all these people being on podcasts, right, is, is one way actually, because people consume it also to be at parties with people and to go to these stupid retreats, like not lots of them are douchey, but on occasion, you are able to meet people this way.

And so like. The networking part, and we, I hesitate to call it that, it's really just build a, building a set of people that have an alignment with you, and that You know them and they're smart, and one way or another, either you're going to work with them, or you'll invest in their company, or they'll invest in yours, or, or you'll spend time together somewhere, who knows, right?

they put you very tightly into an ecosystem, and if you're in one, you will go the same direction as the ecosystem goes.

An ironic thing about being a CEO coach that I didn't expect is that I get access to companies as they are succeeding, and in some cases I get a chance to invest in them. And because of that, I'm like, oh wow, here's this company that I would never have seen otherwise. You know, that I get a chance to be a part of and I get a chance to be, uh, able to be involved with and help and help.

Have the the founder succeed like you need to be in these conversations all the time It's not easy to do that and you can't buy your way in

Greg: So, one school of thought is in order to get into these rooms, you have to get on a plane and meet these people. Another school of thought is you create high quality content. And you attract people. You are an interesting person in this case, because you're like, OG blogger, OG, like podcast person. and when I say that, I mean, like.

I'm on your blog right now. when Facebook likes were a thing and people were embedding Facebook likes on blog posts, you were getting tens of thousands of likes onto your blog posts pretty regularly. Like you were breaking the internet back then. And

Julien: Did I did a few times? That's

Greg: yeah. And you know, when I look at your posts, you know, you had some posts.

I'm looking like 2013. 2013, and then you, then you went to one post in 2014. Then you had a two posts in 2020. Then you had one post in 2021. Then you had two posts in 2023. So interestingly enough, You did the content thing before content was cool. You had a mega popular blog on the backs of that you created, you know, New York Times bestselling books, and then you sort of retreated from content

Julien: hmm. Yeah, and actually I lasted longer than most people I think there's a thousand blog posts on my blog over a period of what's got to be 10 years or more. And it was my job for a long time. And so there's two paths. I think there's two paths to making content and having it continuously grow. So one of them is be an operator and be able to hire someone.

So that's definitely one way. Like, for example, when I, the way I used to do it at breather, I don't do it here today, but the way I used to do it at breather is I would have a A person on my marketing team and I would reach out to them I'd be like, hey, we're gonna build a tweet storm and I would be like And i'm gonna say it to you And then you can write it down and you can make it into a tweet storm Let me know when you've got it put it into a google drive a google drive doc and then i'll publish it once i've Kind of consented and agreed that my ideas have been well presented by you. So now all that I did is the same thing that I did here, which is to talk about my opinions and my experience and, and, uh, it involved didn't involve sitting down in front of content in the same way. What I discovered was me being the engine meant that I was the, actually, I will say I was the engine and the gas.

This is actually, this is an expression from Emily, uh, Emily, my God, I forget her last name. It'll come to me. Uh, from a marketing standpoint, you need both engine and gas to build something in marketing. And if you are the engine, the engine is the mechanics of the marketing and how it happens. If you are the gas, you're the fuel, you are the thing, something is being pumped into it and through it, and it could be contact, for example.

But when you're the engine and you're the fuel at the same time, it's super easy for you to burn out. I think it's the real you on this podcast. That's like not fake able but certainly someone could Uh, goes to write a book and they would never have really written a whole word of it.

And, and so the engine is their brand and, and their, distribution mechanism, but the gas, the fuel is not really them in the first place. And I will say that in the early days of content going back to your point I all of us that we're trying to do this Chris Brogan my co author on trust agents when I published it in 2009 Uh, a bunch of us did not have proper engines around our content.

This is actually a huge lesson. Some of us did. Gary Vaynerchuk is also from that era, but Gary had a machine around him, and he had a clear business model. At the time it was actually selling wine at the very beginning Then it was he's the social media person and he built a social media agency So now he's got the machine the engine around him and he has a clear business that where he's trying to drive now You can do that.

But like, you know the way that I think about the the people that are making mistakes in this space It's my perspective by the way is like You may, you may remember, lots of people remember Nerdwriter from YouTube. Used to be a huge, amazing, uh, account with tons of visitors and viewership. Got too philosophical, started writing books.

Could not keep going at it and didn't make it commercial enough. This is by the way. I don't know them I'll just give you my perspective versus a mr Beast that is very clearly like i'm i'm I just don't care like I will find whatever Is the most compelling thing I have no aesthetic sensibilities You know, I'm literally just going to make a little thing that people love clicking on and it works and it works essentially to infinity. So, and, and by the way, Gary did a version of that and Gary is from that time and so on. So the, the big book that changed my perspective on this was a book called the big switch that I read a really, really long time ago and it really made clear. That either someone was in the engine or someone owned the engine. so everyone is building little businesses inside of, uh, Twitter or Instagram or something. And they're building these little micro businesses. And for a long time, my focus was building a little micro business that was, that had followers. And, you could, you could build, what we did, we didn't call it then, but like an influencer based business. Now my focus is build a machine that is a real business that can get to fucking shit tons of revenue with a really big set of users. And the result is, is you become an influential as a result of your success.

Greg: So where are you with respect to content for Julian Smith? Like it feels like you're. Slowly getting back into it. Now you have a podcast that you've been doing. Saw a couple 2023 blog posts. You change your profile picture from some like strange lizard looking person to something a bit more serious. where are we at?

Julien: you're right. You You're noticing that I am taking it more seriously because I am taking it more seriously. I felt that I feel for the first time like everything is aligned properly. One of the big struggles that I experienced at the time was the voice that I had built on my blog and how, how difficult it was to align with being a CEO of a 250 person business that was accidentally ended up selling, um, fractional office incongruent. With what my brand was and that's because they were really built it by accident. I'll tell you what they, what that gave me is it gave me a confidence that I wasn't a fluke success and that I wasn't a fucking idiot because I was like, okay, well clearly I had a voice on from a blog standpoint and a book standpoint that resonated with people.

Oh. And I also was able to build a business and raise a lot of money. I was like, okay, I'm not a like, and so my imposter syndrome didn't exactly vanish, but. Uh, it definitely like diminished. I was like, Oh, okay. I'm, I'm qualified for like the first time, probably. But nonetheless, that incongruence, that, that contradiction between blogger writer Julian and CEO Julian really did exist.

And I didn't deliberately align it, but I did kind of accidentally align it when I, um, made a decision. About what next business I want to run. And I said, okay, well, what are the few things that I really cared about? And I've always cared about. And I knew that when you run a, uh, especially a business that you're trying to get somewhere big, it's going to take you 10 years.

I think about our friend, Rob, uh, who has been running a business for. I want to say 12 years or something, and it's now really successful. But, but at the very beginning, like everybody else, you know, it's like, like a zigzag, you just don't know where it's going to go. You get to the other side. You're like, wow, that was impressive.

It takes a long time to build something that lasts and that's really powerful. So. I thought, what are the things that I can build that I really have always cared about and that I will always care about? And a few things came to my mind. One of them was self development and I always cared about self development.

Another one was, I always cared about the little guy and that's always been a theme throughout everything that I've done. And then another one is I, which is not really related, but I thought about is I always. really cared about games. I'm a huge board game person. I'm a huge Dungeons and Dragons and RPG person, less so computer games or console games, but still games were always at the center of, uh, how I spend my time.

So I was like, well, what do I care about today that I'm going to care about in five years? There's only a few things that have been in, in that realm. So I said, well, I got to build something around those things. And that's why we started at practice. Building around coaches and solopreneurs. Now we're way past that.

Now we're like coaches, tutors, a lot of tutor customers, teams of these people, virtual assistants, like all these other solopreneurs, individual businesses and team businesses. So all of those things align themselves. And then, then I had a coaching practice, which I've had for, I want to say three years, four years, and I still have some clients from back then. And so everything has kind of aligned itself in a way that it wasn't before. Now I run a business working for the little guy. I have a coaching practice, which is self development oriented. I have tons of writing that I've done that is self development oriented, if you remember from the blog back in the day, and all of my books were about that stuff. I'm 44 today, I feel like for the first time everything is kind of aligned.

Greg: What you're saying is in order to come up with a long term content strategy, you have to look inward and really be honest with yourself to basically find what are the buckets that I really care about that I want to be creating content in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. So in order to look In order to go outward, you have to look inward.

Do you have any advice for people who want to, you know, who don't want to wait until their forties maybe or fifties or sixties and who want to get going right away?

Julien: I'm super convinced that the things I cared about in my 20s, I also cared about when I was 12. You're going to find new things, right? Like, you're really into sports. In your teens, you might be really into baseball, like I was. In your thirties, you might be really into basketball.

Nonetheless, you're into sports, and you've always been into sports. Here's what path needs to contain. And these are really broad checklist items. One of them is hopefully it's something that you cared about and have cared about for a really long time. And, and so if so, you're probably never going to stop caring about it in the same way.

Your view will change. You might get more cynical about the basic parts of it. You might, you're, you're sophisticated. I wrote a book to flinch in 2013 that really took off almost everything from there. I'm still very proud of that book. But there's some things in that book where I was like, Yeah, I don't know about that, but I still am really happy with that book, the influence I had with those people, and, yeah, I'm not writing a sequel to that book, but like, I still care about those things.

I'm never gonna stop caring about those things. So, there are through lines in your life that you have

had with those things. Somehow that's really challenging sometimes because sometimes those things don't have a commercial orientation, right? so you're actually you're gonna be like Oh, I I legitimately did think about how could I build a games company in some way? I thought about this for a while in 2018 2019 I found that it would be difficult, but I definitely considered it because I knew the time would just pass And that the people that I would work with would just be so easy to work with and they would be my type of people I just knew that And, and so it's almost like acknowledging, am I and what do I care about? And how do I attach that to things that are going on in 2023? And if you do that, you probably have years of content.

By the way, some of them are so niche. I was watching such a stupid thing to watch. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I, I don't consume a ton of short form. I consume tons of long form videos. So I'm, I'm on YouTube a lot. And I was consuming, I think, a two hour long history of Street Fighter 2, okay? And the guy who has this channel, that's literally all that he makes is history of video game worlds.

And people love it, and it's really clear that this guy also really loves it. Is that big? No. Does it need to be? Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit? He loves it? His millions of people that watch his videos love it? And it'll expand as it, as it goes on way better than trying to follow some trend that you only have a vague understanding of,

Greg: And the truth is, I think he could, he could build a pretty big business around it. Like he could, Well, first he can do a paid community. He can do info products. He can create his own games. He could, there's a lot of ways, you know, if he was interested, I don't know if this is just like a side hobby or just a hobby for him, but if he, you know, he now has the opportunity.

to make that decision. And how cool is that,

One of the cool things about building audiences, I think, is that it allows you to not have to invest tons of money and time into, into learning about a space.

So for example, if you're passionate about food and opening up a restaurant one day. Well, there's like a path that you can take, right? So you could, create a food truck, which is like kind of like the MVP of, you know, building a restaurant. But what's even more MVP than that is maybe like creating a YouTube channel that interviews people, uh, in the kitchen at different restaurants and having, and just like interviewing them and learning with them and seeing if other people might be interested in that.

And then all of a sudden you're building this audience with you and then you build this community and then you could potentially, you know, Hey, you trust me because I know all the cool restaurants are interesting restaurants. and chefs in my city. Now I have my own restaurant or my own food truck come and visit.

So I think the coolest part about audience and content is the doors it opens and how cheap it is to to actually do. So that's why that's where I was coming from when I was like, dude, why aren't you creating more content? And I understand how much work it takes. But I also think that, you don't need to be a full time creator, you can be a part time creator.

And you could spend one hour a week or two hours a week and still create a niche audience

Julien: You are, you're right. I will say as a thought, though, that I really believe in the Gary Vaynerchuk kind of method, which is it's, it's got to happen like an hour a day. That's my perspective. Just having like having written a thousand blog posts, having written. Over three books, probably, definitely. And, and discarded many words along the way.

You don't figure it out without sitting in front of a page or whatever your version of that is like some editing software suite, like whatever it is, you actually don't figure it out unless your, your hands are just in it all the time. And so you can't get really, really good at something. I don't know if it's 10, 000 hours, it could be anything, but whatever it is, like you don't get really, really good at it. by being a hobbyist, unless you're a hobbyist for 30 years, right? If you want to get really good at something, like, being a CEO is a crazy example. You know, being a CEO is a wild job. And being a founder is a crazy job. Like, I would never encourage anyone to do this unless I knew that they had to do it because it's psycho.

As a way to run your life, but I don't have a choice. It's, it's built into me. It's probably built into you. So I cannot learn that part time. I cannot understand the influence of trade offs in a business part time. I cannot understand. The consequence of roadmap decisions, part time, So. I'm a big believer in doing a couple things and doing them well, because you really get compound effects, like hugely compounding effects and committing to them.

I mean, there's this comic, where, uh, they talk about every seven years you get to live a new life. And I found that to be true. So from 18 to about 24, I built a career doing just, not much of a career, building random office, doing random office stuff.

I didn't really have a career, nor did I go to college. I Uh, and graduate from 24 to 31. I was a content person and as a content person. I built out A successful content business right that included new york times best selling books Viral other books and PDFs, uh, viral blog posts by gigantic standards that everybody talked about.

And then at 31, and you were there, ish, 33 really, I started a venture backed business. And my, that course began again. And so that course was started in 2013, 2012, and continues today. And then three, four years ago. So again, a seven year arc, I started a coaching practice and now I'm an executive coach, which was not something that probably I could have done.

My father was a coach and I could not have done that probably while he was alive. It would have been too weird, but now I can do it. And so it's like a whole other arc. So there's so many different arcs that people go on in their lives. So, and they had so many different shots on goal and things that they really can do.

So, so. You shouldn't do things for like a year or two year part time. You really should go at them super, super hard and put your soul in them. You should, you should work so hard that you die a little bit working on this thing. I find when you really put your heart and soul into something Seth Godin taught me this when he was editing flinch the book.

He said to me you're gonna have you said a few things I remember one is is you're only gonna have one shot ever to write a book this visceral. That's what he said I said, okay. And I took that really seriously because Seth Gordon was like, I like my idol a little bit and my mentor. And another thing that he said was, do you want to write a book that's good?

Or do you want to be in awe of what you have written? And I was like, holy shit. I got off the phone. I was screaming. out there in the world after hanging up the phone or whatever the fuck happened with that being like, I don't know how to do that. But, but I, I did work that hard at that thing. And that's why that book had that reach that it didn't.

Greg: All I know is I'm like ready to run through a brick wall right now. That's all I know.

yeah, I feel very, I feel very inspired. I feel, I agree with you on the Every person lives so many lifetimes and every seven years that there is a new life. And I almost think that, and actually I don't almost think, I think that Not only should you reflect on that and be like, wow, I'm entering a new chapter, but also get yourself a physical item that you can wear, or maybe for you it's like a tattoo Um, maybe it's like a gold watch, who knows a ring, a bracelet, something that commemorates that you've entered into this new place so that every time you, you're reminded of it.

Julien: It's true. I, I have some awards from my book writing days that I still look on fondly today. It doesn't mean that they're in the center of my fucking house, but like when I look at them, I'm like, oh yeah, it reminds you and, and you do need to be reminded because you're, the arc of your life is a long one, hopefully.

Greg: Before we head out, what's one book recommendation that, that you can give to people that they, that is a, is a must read based on this conversation?

Julien: I'm just going to give a few things that I find are really interesting relative to our conversation. Uh, we have a, we have a mutual friend, Dario Melli, who's one of the founders of Hootsuite. He got me into these books by... Uh, David Gran, one of them is being made into a Martin Scorsese movie, I think, Killers of the Flower Bomb. And, but he has another book about obsession. His books are always kind of about obsession. And the book that really influenced me that I just finished is Lost City of Z, which is about the exploration of the Amazon and trying to find El Dorado in the early 1920s. And it is an exploration of obsession and how, what obsession really looks like.

And also the consequences of it. So that's a really powerful book.

Greg: I'll take it. Where could, uh, where could people follow Julian and, and your content and learn more about practice?

Julien: Practice is, uh, at practice. do, D O, and, uh, you should absolutely check it out. I am mostly on Twitter at Twitter slash x. com slash Julian J U L A M. And the blog that people are referring to is in over your head dot net. And if you go to Amazon, there's some books that I've written to.

Greg: Amazing. And if you made it to the deep end, hit us up on Twitter with the link of this. Of this YouTube Spotify, Apple podcast, and let us know what you think. Um, this has been fun, Julian. I'll, uh, I'll catch you IRL in Montreal.