Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast.
This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by my friend, the
founder, and CEO of startup com.
Will Schroeder.
Will, it is no secret that as founders we get a little
obsessed with things.
We, we dive in, we go full onto our startups.
This leads to burnout.
And we know, like thanks to some of the, the, the new narrative
that it's appearing, that it isn't just all crush, it, kill,
go, you know, 80 hours a day.
And so there are a lot of things we try to do to relax.
And I know you've tried a bunch of stuff, a bunch of stuff.
Like the whole sitting on the beach thing doesn't seem to
work all that well for us.
We can't really fully unplug and disengage and so sometimes
relaxation becomes as much of a frustration for me
and I know for you as just actually doing the work.
And so what have you tried?
Like
what's worked for you?
Will.
Here's the weird thing.
I've tried everything.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, and you and I've talked about
this especially I'd say in the last Ryan, probably
a decade of our lives.
Yeah.
Where we've realized that like working all the time
also isn't the right answer.
Fortunately obvious to a lot of people was less obvious to us.
So then I was, okay, so I'm gonna, I'll work less so
to speak, I'll relax more.
And then I tried relaxing and it didn't work.
It became a real issue.
Yeah.
It became an issue where like I knew I needed the downtime.
I knew I needed to reset, come off the field rest, and
then, you know, go back, uh, healthier and more productive.
I knew that was true, so it wasn't a matter of I'm not
willing to to work less.
It wasn't that Right.
It was when I came off the field.
I never felt rested.
Yeah.
When I came off the field, like I was more distracted.
It was almost like all I wanted to do was play and now
you're keeping me on the bench.
What's not worked for you?
Like, what have you
tried that just didn't work?
A lot of the same stuff.
Right.
So it's like the, the traditional hobby set, right.
The, all those things.
So like for example, I, I think you, you messaged
me this morning early and, and I responded,
you know, that I was out.
I was, and I jokingly said that I was, you know, conducting
a case study for today's episode and I, I was running.
And so some of these things, like people have all kinds
of hobbies and I've tried lots of different stuff.
Something like running doesn't work at all for me because the
entire time I'm running, I'm still just thinking about work.
There's nothing else to do.
Right.
I don't like to listen to podcasts.
I don't like, it doesn't, doesn't work for me.
Uh, for whatever.
I, I love to be able to take notes during podcasts,
so it's the same kind of frustration because I'm just
thinking, so I'm basically podcasting in my own head
while I'm running this morning.
I have no way to act on any of this stuff.
I think that's kinda the macro theme for me is basically
anything that's where, where I'm supposed to just be relaxed and
like I've got nothing but time.
Like, like I'm on the beach, I'm, I'm by the pool, I'm,
I'm walking, whatever it is.
I enjoy these activities, but they don't recharge
me as a, as a reset.
And I think it's because when I'm given that much free time.
My mind gets really active typically on a
work startup problem, but I can't take any action.
I think that's where that's, maybe that's
the same thing for you.
That's where I start to, it turns from just not only not
being restful to actually being actively frustrating.
Absolutely.
It makes it worse happen today.
Halfway through my jog, I had this argument.
I was like, oh, I should test this thing, right?
And something happened.
I had to dodge a lady and a dog, and then I saw my mother-in-law,
the direction to be high fived, and then all of a sudden I was
like, shit, what was that thing?
Because if I had been sitting down, if I had been working.
I would've just written it down.
I would've typed it out.
I would've done something that would've memorialized it,
and I was running, I'm like.
Damn it.
Now I can't remember what was that thing I wanted to do.
And it just turns into frustration 'cause
I can't take action.
And the thing is, we cognitively know that rest and relaxation
is good and we're seeking it.
Yes.
So it's not like we're saying rest bad.
Right.
We're saying rest good, but she's not working good.
But wear rest.
Yeah.
Right.
So I would go on vacations and my wife and I were just talking
about this last night and, uh, we were planning our, our
next anniversary trip Uhhuh.
And she's like, you hate vacation.
And I was like.
You know, you're not wrong.
I do hate vacation and I suck at it.
Yeah.
And, and, and here's what happens.
Lemme just play this out and, and I'm saying this
because I've gotta imagine that there's some other
folks in the audience, right?
You know, that, that are listening to this, that are
like, yeah, this is pretty much how vacation goes for me.
But here's how vacation goes for me.
I have two paths in planning the vacation path a. Is
I plan a really nice, like rewarding vacation.
Mm-hmm.
Which translates to a lot of expense.
Yeah.
Path B is, I, I, I do a phone it in.
I don't give a shit where we go vacation.
Right.
Which usually is a family vacation, right?
Yeah.
Because they're always the same.
What ends up happening in both cases, if I go on nice vacation.
Right.
Where like it feels like a reward.
Like the place we're going is like super nice.
Yeah.
The entire time all I'm doing is almost like, like an
odometer running like a taxi.
Yeah.
Running the cost of this vacation.
You're, you're constantly real time calculating ROI.
Yeah, exactly.
Am I getting $1,800 a day, which would be how
many per hour right.
Am I getting?
$75 per hour worth of me.
Now I'm
stressed, right?
I'm stressed that I'm sitting on this, this beach chair, right?
Yep.
Staring at the ocean where all I can think about is work.
And now I'm more stressed, that I'm stressed, that
I'm on va. I'm like, this isn't working at all.
And when I go on cheap vacation, right?
Just to wherever I. I'm miserable the whole time.
It doesn't feel like a reward at all.
I'm like covered in, in like dirt from all these
other kids at Disney World or something like that.
While I love the time with my kids at the same time,
it's like this doesn't feel relaxing whatsoever.
Right.
I always have the sense that I'm also doing something in an
environment that's somehow less enjoyable than my own home.
Right?
Yeah, exactly.
We, we have nice houses.
We like, we've, we've designed where we lived in a way that
makes us happy to be there.
And so like if I go on something like run of the mill vacation.
It feels like a step backwards.
Like, it's funny we've said this before, but my
wife and I both said this.
Sometimes when we go home, that feels like the vacation, right?
And to me, that's kind of the goal.
That's the way I want it to feel right At this point.
We don't go on vacations for relaxation.
We don't go on vacations to, to reset.
We don't go on vacations to escape our every day.
We go on vacations to see things we haven't seen before
or, or have new experience.
And I think for us, that does work.
And I, I do enjoy those.
But it also isn't necessarily a, a, a reset in, in that same,
that traditional sense that it's like, no, it's worse.
Take the book, go sit by the pool, read it, you know,
it doesn't work, right?
Just absolutely doesn't
work for me.
What bothered me was how consistently and
effective it was.
Right.
How everyone else does it and everyone else seems to
like, my wife's great at it.
She goes, and she, she enjoys herself.
She recharges does everything you're supposed to do,
and I'm glad she does.
But when I go, I'm just anxious the whole time, all
I'm thinking about is work.
In fact, for a long time I used to say, I can't wait till I can
get a, get some vacation time so I can be better at work.
Like to me, like.
Vacation was literally just a mechanism to do more work later.
Um, and I was okay with that.
But my point is, what it didn't do woefully failed
at was getting me to, to reset my mind, getting me
to think about something else other than work in a
productive, useful, happy way.
And all the other things that I've tried.
I've, I've tried meditation, which is almost like that
frustration on steroids.
I love the idea of meditation.
Yeah.
The practice of meditation is maddening to me.
It's like the worst place
you can put me.
I cannot get rid of the monkey thoughts.
Like it, my, my, my, the monkey on my back is way too strong.
It rides around, it slaps me in the face and it's like,
think about this, think about that, think about
this, think about that.
And I'm like, just let it go.
Like I, I, I go back to those earliest days of
listening to the Headspace app where, where Andy was like.
Just treat each thought as if it's passing traffic.
And I'm like, yeah, but every bit of that passing
traffic says something to me.
I have to say something back.
Some of them drop stuff off.
Some of them want me to put things in their cars.
Like every bit of it.
Like there's, there's no, just watching it go
by for me doesn't work.
It's
funny, I love Dandy 'cause obviously he's got the
best voice in the world.
A hundred percent.
Um, like nobody could have done a better job.
And I remember thinking about this of Andy at getting me.
To try to relax my mind and by the end of like day 10
of Headspace, I hated Andy.
Yeah.
Wasn't it his fault?
I was like, this guy just reminds me of being
trapped in a coffin.
Right.
If you tell me, if you tell me to let my
thoughts go one more time.
Andy, I'm gonna find you.
What's interesting though, Ryan is.
I think, you know, the common narrative for all
the right reasons is that relaxing and taking a break
and going on vacation is how you reset from work.
That's just how you do it.
Yeah,
and what I found over and over and over again, more so with
founders, is it's actually not what we're built to do.
However.
However, that's not the same as saying, so let's just work more.
Right.
What it's saying is we have to find an
entirely different way to
relax.
Oh.
'cause I, because it just doesn't work.
Right.
And so I think we, we do want to like, play devil's advocate
here for just a second.
Like, so we, we do know that some people can unplug, right?
There are people that can do this.
And so it's, it's not that I. Vacations don't work,
uh, for, for some people.
So I just, I want to make sure we're not overgeneralizing here.
I'm, I'm saying for most people it works great.
It works great.
Yeah.
So here's, here's, but so I am, I'm saying even within
the overgeneralization of just the, the founder population.
I'm trying to think of, of founders that I know.
So is this just a founder condition or is this a
subset of a, a personality type within the, the
overall founder archetype?
What do you think?
Oh, I'm sure it goes beyond that.
The reason I think it seems to be so damn, um, prevalent
within founders is because we tend to create our worlds.
If I'm an attorney, it's not that I'm not dedicated to my
craft, then I'm a hard worker, but I'm not creating law.
Yeah, right.
Like I'm, I'm thinking about a case that, you know, I'm trying
to think creatively about how I'm gonna attack something,
but it's not existential.
Like we get into this in a very existential way and we
are creating the universe.
If you have that type of mind that is running and building
and creative nonstop, I would almost argue it is a disservice.
To turn that mind off.
Yeah.
Now most people are, again, are gonna take that and say,
well, what you're saying is you just keep working.
No.
What we're saying and what we're gonna unpack in this
episode is how to take that energy and maintain it,
but do it somewhere else.
Yeah.
Because I, I think in, in, in the, the founder's mind, right?
It's, it's if we're not building something right,
if, if we're not building the next feature, next campaign,
then we're just sitting and probably worrying about.
What's already been built or the fact that we're
not currently building, and that's the real trap.
Right?
And I think that's the, the problem.
So if, if moving to relaxation mode, if that's all that buys
you is anxiety around the fact it's not working, then,
then I think that's where you and I are most of the time.
Then clearly just pushing into relaxation has a net
negative impact, right?
Because I, like, I've tried the lounge on the beach approach,
I found myself more stressed.
My mind was just spinning on all the things that I could
have been doing other than that, and it's hard to let go.
Why is this right?
Like why is.
Just
relaxing.
So useless for us, I think because our minds want to grind.
Yeah.
Right.
Our minds wanna chew on something all the time.
And I think when we try to listen to Andy and we try
to say, okay, mind stop chewing on things, it's
not what we're built for.
Right, right.
And, and again, that's why it feels so foreign to us.
And for the longest time I kept saying, it's my fault.
It's my problem.
Yeah.
I can't unwind, so I have to change in, in a while
back I learned that.
I was doing it wrong.
I was approaching, relaxing in the wrong way.
Now, I had a hint of this that, that something was,
was off because a lot of times when I would try to
relax, I'd play video games.
Yeah.
In the game that I would play more often than not was called
Civilization, which, you know, I, I'm sure some of the
folks I, Brian, I know you've played, et cetera, it's the
equivalent of a full-time job.
Right.
Well it is, and you're basically creating a civilization, making
all the same time of strategic and tactical decisions that you
would make building a startup.
What I realize now is the reason I was gravitating
toward that is 'cause my mind wanted to chew on something.
Yeah.
I just needed something else
for it to chew on.
Yeah.
Our minds are problem solving engines, right?
That that's, that's specifically what like we've geared ourselves
around, or we already had a propensity towards that engine
doesn't just sit at idle simply because you're sipping
margaritas in Maui or whatever.
Right.
It's that, that's the thing.
Wants
to run.
Now I wanna use, because I think this is important, I want to
use a different scenario because we keep talking about like time
off or like going to meditate.
I wanna talk about maybe the most important moment that I
needed this distraction the most is at 3:00 AM when I wake
up and my mind is racing on a problem that by the way,
I will not solve right now.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
So, I mean, this has happened to me all the time, every night.
I'll wake up at some bizarre hour in the morning and I'll be
like, oh my God, this problem.
Okay.
This is the way my mind works and I'm a hundred
percent sure it's the way that our, our listeners,
I had three of these wake up last night.
Uh, two work related.
One, preparing for paperwork for moving to Spain, stuff right?
Literally at three o'clock in the morning.
There is nothing I can do at this point.
Nothing I can do.
All I can do is think about it.
It never gets solved.
That's the worst part.
It never gets solved.
I wanna hold onto that for a second.
'cause this is actually a really important building
block to all of this.
As founders of startups, we have an endless number of
problems that actually don't have a solution anytime soon.
In other words, like we need to get more customers.
Okay, sure.
Everyone needs more customers, but that process
will essentially take years to get to that milestone.
Maybe months.
What it, what won't happen is we'll solve it that day, right?
You're like, got, we got customers Don't need to
worry about that anymore.
Done.
And so what I found was I'm up at 3:00 AM and I'm grinding
on a problem that, number one, I'm not gonna solve at 3:00 AM
I'm just gonna worry about it.
And number two, I can't solve anytime soon.
Right.
This is a big one.
Yeah.
I don't think founders appreciate or understand
how few of our problems can be solved anytime soon,
or will be solved anytime
soon, or will ever be solved.
Right.
Some of these things we're, we're constantly
chipping away at.
Yeah.
I think it's the case that in as, as a founder
within a startup, we rarely get to declare done.
Right.
Very few things are ever done, as in it's
any level of finality.
And so I think that's where like, and I think this is where
you're going with this, that's why like the selection of of
personal projects, something that's still mentally engaging,
creative outlet, physical work, something I. There is sort
of a finite point of victory where you can say, Hey, that's
done.
I did it.
Yep, a hundred percent.
This actually happened yesterday and you, you were
there when it happened.
Yes, yesterday.
Internally, uh, we announced that we just launched a huge,
huge feature on the platform, um, to do member search with ai.
It allows people to go on into like a natural language search.
I'm explaining for the audience and find.
Anybody in our community that fits what you're looking for.
Right?
Yeah.
It's so awesome.
It's one of the best pro, it's the best
product we've ever built.
But the reason I'm bringing it up is because it
actually launched yesterday.
Yes.
And, and, and Ryan, you were at the all hands meeting when
we were doing the final demo and when we hung up, I actually
stood up for my chair and yelled at the top of my lungs.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Because it was good, I think.
Yeah.
Because I realize this happens so rarely.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do.
We have few actual finish lines.
Yeah.
And this one was a big one, Ryan.
Maybe we have two a year at best.
Yeah.
And, and again, like with some of those mileage varies and,
and even there, like look at something like that, like we
rolled out member match, that part of it's done, right?
The product piece is done.
Now we gotta go work on it.
We gotta get, yeah, for five, five years on our
feature, we gotta promote it.
We gotta get people using it.
We gotta get, so like, even, even our DUNS just tend to lead.
It's just.
You kind of get around the corner, you're like, okay,
I made it around that corner and now there's nothing but
but road ahead of me again.
And so it's, it's even within those, it's rare
that we get to that like true moment of finality.
We get to these moments of victory.
Right?
Absolutely.
That's a midseason victory.
There's still a lot of games to be played, uh, before
we can call that done.
Often those milestones you don't even notice when they happen.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
My favorite thing is exactly this, like a website launch
uhhuh, and like you want there to be a ribbon and cutting
moment or like a giant like, like fake switch that you flip.
In reality, a developer somewhere just hits enter and
you know, now you've launched.
Right, right.
Like it's, it's live.
The amount of effort you've put into this, right.
The payoff is zero.
Yep.
But I wanna step back for a second and I wanna inventory a
couple things that we covered here and make sure, make
sure they get isolated as, as key building blocks here.
One, for many of us, our minds will not stop.
It's a, a, a thankless effort to, to try to make them stop.
And, and the truth is.
Our relaxation doesn't have to equate to stopping our brains.
Right.
And I don't think anybody's ever said that to us.
I, I think it's always be, no slow down, take
a, a breather, et cetera, and you'll be better off.
No one ever says Go channel that somewhere.
It's the thing because it doesn't get channeled, right?
I think what, what, it's basically the equivalent
of keeping your foot on the gas, but shifting
into neutral Engines still revving RPMs are high.
We just, there's nothing happens.
There's no movement.
There's no progress.
I was playing baseball with my son last night.
You know, I, I got him this Nerf bat so that we can play
indoors in the basement.
That ends well.
Worst idea ever.
Right?
Uh, I get him the bat.
He's o over the moon, like the best g gift he's ever gotten.
Right?
And I was like, dad, can we go play?
And so me and, and him and, uh, Sarah, my wife, uh, we go
downstairs in the basement.
It's, and not a huge basement.
We have just enough room to like, you know, throw the ball.
But it's, you know, it's cold outside.
And so we throw in the ball.
It's a Nerf ball, Nerf bat.
First pitch, he cranks a line drive.
I mean, he connected beautifully right into my wife.
I knew where this was going.
Oh man.
And she was like, we're done.
We're done.
Anyway, my point is, last night I played with him.
He wants to play the, uh, baseball thing, right?
So we played forever.
He scored like 23 run.
And I was like, okay, yo, let's take a break.
And at that moment where I'm exhausted, you know, I've been
up since 4:00 AM It's like 7:00 PM now where I'm exhausted.
He just wants to keep going.
And again, in the back of my head, I'm like, the, the answer
isn't to find a way to, to have him do less, it's to find a
way to channel that energy to something where he can do it.
Where it's seven o'clock at night, he's gonna
go, go to bed an hour.
But my, my point is, I'm starting to realize.
That for certain types of energy, the goal
isn't to stop energy.
Oh.
The goal is to channel energy.
Yeah.
And I think that's, I, I wish I had known that sooner.
I certainly know it now.
I wish I'd known it sooner.
Uh, Ryan, you've done martial arts.
That's a big part of martial arts.
Yeah.
Channeling your opponent's force,
so to speak.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what, it was funny, but, uh, so Juujitsu
was one of those activities that actually worked well for
me because it requires a full mental shift in focus when
there's some highly trained.
Physically strong person trying to choke you, bend your
joints the wrong directions, sit on you until all the air
squash, whatever it is, right?
Like there's real consequences to that.
So you pay attention, you get, oh, my fully engaged, my, my
customer acquisition costs.
I, you know, it's funny, I never thought about that
despite the fact that we'd actually mix these two things
pretty heavily because at the early stages, the way I was
doing jiujitsu was in return.
For some business consultation to the owner
of the studio, right?
We were trading off.
So we were literally go from talking, here's how to
structure marketing, here's how we can look at your CPC,
here's how we can, we can work on your Google ads.
To him choking me out and brutalizing me.
Right.
So in, in,
instead of having you tap out, he's like, lower cac, that's it.
Lower cac.
That's it.
That was it.
I, I had to lower CAC where he would
snap my, he would snap my, my shoulder.
So one of the elements is, is not trying to stop energy, but,
but trying to channel energy.
Yeah.
Right.
I think that's one.
A second element is this concept that we don't
have a lot of things in the startup world Yeah.
That tell us we're done.
The sense of finality, of accomplishment, of being able
to walk away from something today, I. And say, I did
that exactly the way you felt when you left Juujitsu.
Bruises notwithstanding like that, that the way you feel when
you're, you're done with soccer.
Like you get this feeling where you're like, I feel
like something finished.
I think that fucks with us.
And I think it's something that, that we do not appreciate
nearly as much as we need to.
Uh, parenting's the same way by the way there, you know,
there are clear milestones, but there are not enough of them.
No, there are no exit ramps.
Uh, for sure.
It's interesting because I think that with, with certain
things like with sport, so for me, soccer, fishing, jujitsu,
these things that are all fairly physical activities, they, they
do have a start and a stop.
But there isn't also a done necessarily.
I mean, it's some, someday there will come a done where
I don't play soccer anymore.
Someday there will come a done where I don't jiu-jitsu.
I can't imagine not fishing, but there's always
the next time, right?
Like the, the challenge with fishing.
We did it last night.
Uh, finally caught something too.
A little flounder.
We're gonna have it for lunch today, but there's always the
kids picked up on it right away.
It's one more cast, we'll say last cast, and there's
one more cast because there's always the
chance that the next cast is the one.
And so what's been interesting, and I I I really wanna get your
take on this 'cause you've had a lot of these in the, in the last
few years, which are relatively large scale projects, but that
do actually have like a, a more of a sense of completion.
You're in a huge one now.
For example, for me there were, there have been a couple, the
one was around kind of building our, at the previous house where
we built out the little, little kind of gardens and chicken
coop and stuff, and so like there was a sense of completion.
I built the kids' playhouse and there was a sense of
completion around those things.
My pond of two years ago.
Was a fantastic one because it involved all of
these things that I love, physical work, design,
science, biology, like it.
It was just all this really interesting stuff and because
there was sort of a, even there, it's not really a
final point because I'm still optimizing, right?
I'm still figuring out like, what, what are
the balance of fish?
How do I do this stuff?
But there was, there's a pond now.
There wasn't a pond, now there's a pond.
And that felt great, right?
That was truly energizing for me.
Waking up, you know, wake up at four 30 in the morning
instead of thinking like.
Oh, dear God, what will cap be today?
Will we get enough traffic?
Will we, it was, I wonder if the rate of flow is too high
given the amount of surface area I have based on the
gravel size that I selected.
Right.
This,
this shit.
But that's a solvable problem.
That's exactly, so that's where our story begins.
This is the longest intro of all time.
That's where our story begins.
I think that, again, everybody's version is gonna
be different, but what I found was that I needed a problem, a
different problem to work on.
Yeah.
That was big enough to matter.
You know, Ryan, you're obviously familiar with
the story, but like Yeah.
Years ago I started to get really into, to carpentry.
Into woodworking.
Yeah.
Like building stuff and I think it checked a lot of
boxes for me instantly.
I meet a lot of other woodworker founders.
Yeah.
I think that, uh, I think because it checks some of the
same boxes, which is, we like to create, we like to invent.
I like things that have a skill tree attached to 'em.
If we're going back to video game references where you
can kinda level up, you know, like carpentry, home building,
things like that, have.
Endless skill trees, everything from being able to learn
how to build furniture, to do electrical, to do
plumbing, like you name it, like it's goes on forever.
A few years back, four years ago, we were about to remodel
our home, and by this point, Ryan, you know, I had built out
my workshop and everything else like that, like, you know, I,
I got really, really into it what was initially driving me.
Uh, toward, this was a sense or two things, just
what I just described.
I found that when I was building things, I was
not thinking about work.
Yeah.
And it was the only, only only time where I wasn't
thinking about work and, and, you know, glad for it because
my hands were in front of a table saw or a miter saw
or some spinning blade that that required some focus.
And I found.
That the second thing that I, I didn't know that I
was looking for or that I needed was completion.
At the end of the day, I had completed a project and there
was an overwhelming sense of finality and it felt good.
Feels good.
It felt really good.
Yeah.
Right.
It reminds me of the scene, I dunno if you remember this,
in Fight Club where Edward Norton is trying to figure
out like he's like, you know, going through life, whatever.
Yeah.
And he finds fight club.
Yeah,
yeah.
And he ends up, you know, getting in a fight
and he's like, and it felt good, good, right?
Like, I mean, granted like that was a very bizarre
and twisted version.
But it's kind of what he meant.
Yeah.
He's like, I, I knew I was looking for something.
Something.
Yep.
Right.
Needed
to channel some energy.
Right.
Needed something with a sense of completion needed.
Yep.
All those things.
Yeah.
And, and, and obviously the premise of Fight Club is much
cooler than the premise of Woodworking Club, but I don't
know the, the same feeling.
Right.
Um, I knew I needed to build bird houses and so.
So I get into it, right?
I go down this rabbit hole and you've been
watching this, uh, develop.
So a few years ago we decided we're gonna remodel our house.
And uh, and I was breaking down all the costs to do it.
This is right before Covid.
And, and I said to my wife, I was like, you
know, like, for, for what?
It's gonna cost us to fully remodel a house 'cause you're
really paying for it twice.
I was like, we should just go build a new
house, build a new house.
Right.
And that's where it began.
Yeah.
That's, that's where my obsession began.
And so for, for the folks in the audience, what I ended
up doing was I was like, I not only wanna build a
house, I wanna do everything.
Like I, I wanna design the house, I wanna
learn 3D modeling.
I wanna learn interior design, I wanna learn, I structural
engineering, like the basics 3D modeling, plus rendering.
So I could, you know, figure out exactly what
everything would look like.
I
still trip out, man, when we go to the house now to the
site and walk around there, because I spent, you know.
Probably an hour in total inside that place when it
was still just a 3D model and I was headset's on.
Yeah.
Running around with a, an Xbox controller.
Although I still, I, I wish that you would
include it in real life.
The feature where I could just levitate between floors,
that was to take the stairs that was pretty new or become
a drone in, in, in fly out.
So he, here's what, here's why this, and why I'm setting
it up and why this mattered.
What I was looking for was a massive.
Overwhelming challenge now for a lot of people,
they're like, fuck that.
I've already got a massive, overwhelming challenge.
Like it's my kid, or it's my my sharp.
Why would I want another you psychopath?
And here's why.
Because it gave me something my mind was looking for.
Yeah.
Which was a really powerful challenge.
So powerful.
That it could force me to have to think about that.
Yep.
At the expense of work.
Now, again, a lot of people say, well, I don't want
anything at the expense of work.
Dude, if you're built like we are, that ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem isn't, oh, I guess I'll become lazy and not work.
It's like that.
Is that Uhhuh, you crossed that bridge a long time ago.
That ain't your problem.
Right?
Your problem is you are so consumed by work, you don't have
the ability to recharge, which is making you a worse player.
Yep.
That's the part that I know I missed for years, you know
what I mean?
Yeah, for sure.
So look, you're, you're building a house.
We're getting ready to engage in another international move.
I've decided that international moves are actually one
of those things for me.
And like truly it's, it really is.
It's a, it's a full creative project that
you have to go through in you're redesigning life.
Is there, in your mind a, a risk, like how do
you do the calculus?
It does have to be big enough to matter, right?
If you're just like, I'm going to, I don't know, I'm
gonna mow my lawn and it has a sense of completion and
it's a physical activity.
Yeah, grass grow right back.
But it is how people feel when they clean like
their room or their house.
Oh, a hundred percent.
A lot of people use cleaning as a method, whether they realize
it or not, to get to completion.
Yeah.
They say it makes me feel good, and what they're saying
is it makes me feel like I've completed something and
that's a powerful feeling.
I.
It is also one of the number one, uh, uh,
procrastination activities.
Oh, yeah.
You gotta be, gotta be careful with that one, right?
It's like, I could do that next campaign or I
could tidy my desk again.
Right, right, right, right.
From this side to that side and at least an hour.
Agreed.
Uh, is there, so it's gonna be big enough, but like what
about, what about too big?
Is there a risk in going too big?
What if the second obsession, 'cause I know the people out
there again, like, 'cause one of the things is just
like, will they do it at all?
Right.
As as you just said.
Like, they're gonna think, oh, this is a divergence from work.
I don't need that.
I never need that.
Yeah, you do.
But is there a place where the, the second obsession, there's
a risk of it overshadowing the startup itself, and how
do you keep from accidentally prioritizing the, the, the side
passion over the main hustle?
Now I, I've never had that become a problem.
I don't think you've ever had that become a problem.
But I think when people hear things like.
I'm building an entire house.
I'm doing everything from the CAD to the, to the wiring, to
the carpentry, to the cabinetry.
All they're going.
How do you actually do both those things?
You know something that's really funny about everything
we talk about here is that none of it is new.
Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a
thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists.
You may just not know it, but that's okay.
That's kind of what we're here to do.
We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually
solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.
So if.
Any of this sounds familiar.
Stop guessing about what to do.
Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.
As you know, because you've been on site, uh, you know,
Ryan came and visited me a few weeks ago and he came on
site and he was, he helped me build stuff out in the house.
I am way into everything, like every last detail of this house.
Yeah.
And it's a big house, right?
So, so the gravity of it, of everything that, that I
need to do is significant.
And so, but Ryan, you've watched me do it and in some
case you helped me do it.
You know, I've built every cabinet in the house.
I've built three kitchens, I've built a bar.
I've built every closet, every vanity tire workshop worth
of like 80 feet of benches.
And yeah, I mean everything.
And how did I do that?
Like how did I find the time to do it?
Honestly, it was kind of this simple, I wake up bananas early.
Yep.
And I put in two to three hours a day before the day starts.
Now when people say that, it's like, okay, you, you can't do
much in two to three hours.
Bullshit.
Yeah.
Over a, I'm here to tell you, period.
Four years.
You sure as hell can?
Hell yeah, you
can.
Yeah, you can.
Um, it adds up way more than you think.
Most people just don't have the dedication to do it, and
I'm not Johnny dedicated.
It's just something that I love, which is why I am doing it.
Right, but here's where it gets interesting at three in the
morning, as soon as that, oh shit, how are we gonna market?
Member match?
Yeah.
Thing comes up, right?
Yeah.
Now I have a process.
Yeah.
Where I say, I've been here a million times, I know
this, I, I can't answer this.
Let me go switch gears.
To something, uh, so some problem to do
with this house thing.
Yep.
Um, I can solve immediately, right?
So it's like a, a certain joint that I needed to put in
or, or how I'm gonna configure lighting or something like that.
It works every single time.
I've found a way to take that energy and just channel it.
Instead of trying to stop it, sort of dam it up.
I just channel it.
But here's the key.
I channel it into something I can actually solve.
Yep.
Right.
So this morning, again, this is stupid and minor and dumb.
Uh, this morning, Ryan, you came in, you helped me.
We were building, you know, all the, the benches for the,
the new workshop in the house.
And I was trying to figure out how to get all the
bench tops to line up.
'cause there's like a, like a, a 45 foot long.
I. Uh, countertop that has all these six foot, you
know, butcher block sections.
Again, none of this is important, but that's my point.
And I was thinking like, damn, like the, the, the, if I but 'em
up end to end, they're not gonna be like exactly symmetrical.
So how can I make sure each of them is cut perfectly
so they all line up so it doesn't create a long
arc? None of this matters.
That's my point.
The point is that 3:00 AM I can solve that problem.
Yep.
I can run through a bunch of, uh, different ways
that I can do the cuts, the mortis, everything else like
that and figure that out.
It's stupid.
And that's exactly why it's beautiful because then I'm,
then I go back to sleep.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I guess I've solved my mortis, you
know, countertop problem.
And I know most people are gonna be like, I would never
care about that if really what I cared about was, you know,
launching new product, whatever.
And I get it.
It's exactly what I would've said.
That's why what you're doing, this other obsession
has to become an obsession.
It has to be something that you can grip into and be as worried
about that, or as excited, as obsessed as you are about work.
Yeah, and, and I know the problem that I'm solving there
is minuscule and dumb and damn near irrelevant, but I also know
that if I put my focus there.
My problem is solved.
The actual problem, which is the, the, the 3:00
AM wake up and worry.
Right.
Which never solves, we've never solved a startup problem
at three o'clock in the morning that I can remember
and you never will.
Yeah, right.
But 3:00 AM creativity can actually produce
something tangible.
Right.
Whether it's, you know, the right cuts for to, to.
Eliminate that arc in, in a 60 feet of, uh, of workshop
bench or check in the tides to see what time I should
do I need to be out at five or, or, or, or six 15 to go
hit some fish this morning.
Here's where the payoff is for work though.
I actually sleep, so that's one.
But when I get up and I get ready to work, my mind is clear.
Yeah.
Right, exactly.
I don't feel like shit.
Right.
I don't feel burnt out.
I can't wait to start work.
Yeah.
It's so counterintuitive.
It's literally the opposite of burnout.
It's so counterintuitive.
But let's, let's talk about that for a second, because
I think that there's also this notion that like,
could this just become like double burnout, right?
Am I just gonna double the, the rate of my burnout
because I'm now spending energy in this other way?
You know?
And are we, are we actually solving something here?
Or are we just transferring this obsession from one
thing to another without solving the root problem?
Is this just a coping mechanism?
Does it matter?
So I, I think these are the questions that people
are probably asking.
I think you and I have answers to them, mostly
through experience.
'cause I certainly haven't thought specifically about that.
Like, is this actually the healthiest way of doing this?
It's the way that
works.
I can say that.
Yeah, there's no question.
Right?
Here's here's why it's been healthy for me, okay?
Uh, this past weekend, you know, I'm installing all
those crazy heavy, uh, benches that we were putting in.
Those things are like the size of each one's, the size
of a refrigerator and we're installing 10 of them, and,
and they're heavy and I'm moving all those things around.
They're heavy as hell.
Every single muscle in my body is screaming by the
end of the day Sunday.
And I think to myself, all I want to do tomorrow is
not lift heavy shit Uhhuh.
And go work on launching our product.
Yes.
See, that's what I'm saying.
That's it.
Like it's the first time I found a way to come off the field
actually recharge and go back.
Now a lot of people look at say, wait, aren't you super tired?
Yes.
I sleep like a baby and I wake up the next morning.
I don't have to lift a goddamn thing
uhhuh.
So like that's not my problem anymore.
Right?
Yep.
My problem was when I spent all weekend obsessing over
stupid stuff I couldn't fix.
Yep.
And then Monday I wake up and get this, I'm like.
I need to work on, uh, stupid stuff.
I can't fix.
See, like I, I've been wallowing in the problem the
whole time instead, instead of, without doing anybody
disconnecting from it.
Yeah.
I I never came off the field.
That's why I was so burnt out.
You know, it's funny, I had an example of this
at a friend of mine.
Uh, we went through a business school together and he, he
went off, eventually made it over to, to Wall Street
and then quit Wall Street and became a day trader.
This guy just could never put it down.
There's also nothing you can do on Saturday or Sunday or
after four 30, but he would obsess and worry and wait and
worry and wait, and I'm like, dude, you literally actually
can't do anything until Monday.
Right?
The analysis is done.
You're just waiting to see what happens, to know whether you're
gonna buy or, and just it was, it was the same kind of thing.
We're just like, he just wouldn't ever switch
off at a point where he absolutely had no ability
to, to change the outcome.
It just hated him constantly.
Let's stick with that 'cause I, I, I, I really wanna
dig into that for a second.
If we give ourselves in a given week, Uhhuh, let's say 40
hours to worry about something.
And I'm not saying the part of doing anything, I'm saying
literally just worrying about it in some form or another, right?
Whether it's between slack chats, um, you're journaling
to yourself, you're talking to your friends, you're complaining
to your spouse, like you name it, whatever, whatever your
version of how you express bullshit, you know, worry is,
let's say you spend 40 hours a week doing it, it's because you
had 40 hours available to do it.
But the actual fixing of the problem doesn't
take any amount of time.
Like if, if you and I are worried about, let's say that
we're trying to raise more money and we're worried about running
outta money, yeah, we're gonna spend so much time worrying.
But the amount of time it takes to do something about
it still may be a fair amount.
We've exhausted so much, so much time, energy.
Yep.
In worrying.
Okay.
Now what I did was I took all the time that I was otherwise
gonna be worrying and I did something else with it.
That's it.
That's all I did.
Yep.
I just took my worry time and put it into something
that was easy to worry about.
Like, like when you come into the workshop and you and I were
working on something, I think we were building drawers, you
know, that time before that.
And I'm like, we just have to make sure that this rabbit joint
is exactly five days, inches.
So it, it, that's it.
It's all we have to worry about.
Well, we had to figure and not cutting your fingers off.
It's beautiful because it's so dumb.
Yeah, right.
And I mean dumb in a good way.
It's simple and it's obvious
and it's achievable
exactly When we're done with it
and it's
immediate, nearly immediate, we just have
this, this beautiful outcome, but it's also meaningful.
I think that's the thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can't just cumulative, can't just pick dumb rote work.
Like it's the kinda like, oh, well what a crossword work.
Uh, maybe for somebody, not for me.
Right?
I'm just like, every, every word just prompts another thought.
So yeah, I think that it, it does need to have like
some meaning again, a sense of completion, but sense
of completion of something maybe with some permanence.
I'm trying to think of this now, this, so with things
that I've done that gave me some of this catharsis, I'm
trying to think of any of them.
Weren't somehow memorialized.
Let's dig into, in, into Juujitsu, you were leveling up.
You, you were learning moves, techniques, uh, things that
you didn't know before.
You had a clear sense of progression.
Yeah.
So maybe the memorialization, maybe the finality isn't
necessarily it as much as it is that, that sense of progression.
I think the sense of progression was definitely there, there
is absolutely no sense of of of finality because each,
each role, each scenario presents something different.
Right,
you bet.
Which is what makes it exciting.
Yeah.
But, but knowing like, like when you play soccer knowing
that you won the game.
Yeah.
Again, it goes back to, to milestone.
Yeah.
But, but it, it, it's a true sense of accomplishment.
You know, when you'd come with me to play, uh, hockey
and, and, and we played over another founder's house, you
know, built a hockey rink in his backyard, and I, I
would tell you, I was like.
I don't actually care about winning that game.
Yeah.
Because it's just my friends and I, and we switch teams
like every other game.
So like the people you're playing against, you're playing
with in the, in the next round.
But holy cow, I like to win.
And, and when I say that, not like, uh, because I beat the
other team, nothing like that.
No.
It just feels like I did something.
Yeah.
You, you did the best you could at that moment, right?
You,
yeah.
Also, if I lose, I kind of don't care.
Like there's just no consequence.
But if I have a great shot or, or if I have a hat trick,
like in whatever I'm like.
I feel freaking great about it.
Yeah.
And it's weird because I know there's no consequence to
this, but I also know that like mentally I needed a win.
I, I needed a milestone.
I needed, you know, a level up.
And I think what, what you were saying, 'cause you said this to
me when you were in town last time when we were working on
that workshop, you said, well, it's really cool that what we're
building will be here forever.
Yeah.
You know, when, when we build this workbench, whatever, I
know you'll be working at it all the time and I, I know that
like, you know, you'll pass this to your kids, so to speak.
Yeah.
Gimme a lot of joy to think about the fact that like, we're
building something that you're gonna use to build a bunch
of other stuff that will go on and have their, it's it's
funny, it's, it's amazing.
It, it's, it's almost a perfect metaphor for what we're building
with startups.com, right?
We're building the work.
I better all the time, time's gonna help.
To build a bunch of other businesses and people to
go and do their thing.
Right, which is,
you bet.
It has an exponential factor.
What's interesting about it to me is that, yes, I'm
building an entire house with my free time, so to speak.
I know, I know.
That sounds.
Bananas And it is, and I'm not suggesting do that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
For me, specifically for my personality, in order to achieve
what I needed to achieve, which is to find a different
way to channel my obsession, it had to look like that.
I didn't know that.
I didn't like set out to do that.
Frankly, it ballooned on me, but it worked really
well, like freakishly well.
And now when I talk to other founders, right, I'm
finding more and more of them that do have an obsession.
That have an amazing amount of peace that comes with it,
where they're like, when I'm doing that, I am in my zone.
I'm in my Z. Yeah.
Stick.
Stick on this for a second because I think there's
a misconception that this is a thing that comes
as you achieve a certain level within your startup.
I. Where you're now allowed to have this other thing and
you are already feeling very fulfilled with your startup, and
then you added this other thing.
I think if we were to do some sort of dissection on any one
of these, the vast likelihood is that they feel that way because
they started the side hustle.
They, they, they achieved both together, not.
One because of the other.
It wasn't causal.
It wasn't because I achieved success in startup.
I was able to go pick up this, this side hustle that
gives me all this zen, uh, happiness, not the case.
And again, I think I needed to see the other side of it, see
how, how, how these other things did not work for me in order to
have the appreciation that I do.
That this other obsession is, is something that, that I've
needed mentally and emotionally.
Sure.
For decades.
Yeah.
And I just didn't know it.
And I gotta say, the more overwhelming it got, and I know
overwhelming strikes, fear into people's hearts, and I get that.
I understand why.
But the more overwhelming it got, the more I enjoyed it.
Right.
At which point I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna build
everything in this house myself.
Yeah.
And I remember my, my, uh, my contractor who, you know, has
been helping me through this is like, what do you mean?
Like, you, you're gonna build like a table or something?
I'm like, no, I'm, I'm gonna literally build everything,
every kitchen cabinet, every vanity, every closet, every
cubby, every everything.
And he is like, when are you going to do that?
I'm like, I have no idea.
Yeah, actually don't know yet.
And then, uh, I picked up another habit.
This is maybe four or five years ago, and you and I have talked
about this on, on the podcast in our early podcast, actually
about one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
The way you move mountains is one pebble at a time.
Yeah.
So I started to apply that so like, you know, this
morning I get up right.
You know, crazy early that, that.
Just happens to be my schedule.
But I go into my workshop and I have exactly one hour worth
of work to do today involved sanding and, and applying poly.
So it just needed to dry, so I couldn't
So you decided, you decided to do that and you're, you're
taking the, the original finish off all those tops?
Yeah.
I ended up getting, you know, for, for those in the audience
that absolutely don't care, I ended up getting 60 feet worth
of butcher block countertops that were all stained espresso
happy accident this weekend that I texted you and, and
showed you the picture.
Yep.
I happened to take a bunch of this.
The stain off by accident of one of the countertops and lo
and behold, the, the wood below, it was way more beautiful.
And I was like, God damnit.
Yeah.
It's like the one time I buy pre-finished, I end up
taking all the finish off it.
Yeah.
I have to take all the finish off all of 'em.
So that's what I was doing, that five in the morning.
I do it in just little chunks.
If I said, oh my God, I have to do the whole thing, I look
at it and I say, no, I have to do an an hour a day, two hours
a day, depending on, you know, how much time I have in the
morning and all that adds up.
All that adds up.
Remember when we went to the storage container?
Yeah.
Where all this stuff is sitting, all this
stuff flat packed and Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so everything I've built, like the entire kitchen, I
would build it like every cabinet, every everything.
And then take the whole thing apart.
Flat pack it, wrap it in, in, uh, in bubble wrap
and store it like Tetris
Te Tetris is exactly what it looks like, except
that it's, it's, uh, three dimensional Tetris.
It's three dimensional Tetris.
It also weighs hundreds of pounds.
Yeah.
Which we also discovered.
My point is every single thing in there that's
stacked in there Yep.
Was an hour worth of work.
Yeah.
Compounded over a long enough period of time, which like,
it's an important piece because I, you, you said it earlier,
which was like, well, what can you actually get done
in an hour or two hours?
Turns out a lot, but there's, there's two pieces to that.
You can actually get a lot done, but if you really feel that
that's true, if you're saying like, what could you actually
get done in, in an hour or two?
Then you can easily reverse that same logic and
say, well, what were you gonna do with it anyways?
If you can't get anything done in that hour or two,
why were you gonna spend it worrying or working when
you could have spent it doing something else that
might actually recharge you?
Right.
So it's funny that so often, uh, the, the, the pushback that we
provide, the reason why we can't do a thing is exactly the reason
that we could also do the thing.
Right.
You know, uh, a perfect example like the visual metaphor.
Ryan, you know how the downstairs in my theater,
I've got all those DVDs?
Yes.
Like a thousand DVDs from backing DVDs.
A thing.
Yeah.
You, you look like, you look like what happened
when Blockbuster closed.
But I remember sitting there one day and, and, and I'm
looking at all these DVDs and, and my daughter was there
and she was like, dad, have you watched all these movies?
Because remember like anymore, like a kid doesn't
physically see movies or media for that matter, right?
And I was like, you know, some.
I did, and all I can think to myself is how much I could have
gotten done in this time if I wasn't watching Bubble Boy
man,
it's funny, I have this, I have this, however, right?
I have this thought a lot because as you
know, I'm not much of a media or TV guy, right?
I just, I don't know.
The last time I watched Netflix, there are times
where when people are talking about something,
like, it was like, oh, black Mirror is made for you.
You're gonna love this.
And I think like I, you know, and I, I hear people talking
about the episodes discussing.
There are times where I feel a little left out.
Yeah, I get it.
I feel a little left out and then I think about, I'm like,
these people are talking about something that in order to
have this discussion, they invested 40 hours plus of
their time each, and that's where I go, you know what?
I'm good.
I, I probably spent that on, on something
significantly more important.
Like mileage will vary.
Of course.
The other thing I wanted to, to talk about was this, this notion
where you said that like the, the more overwhelming it became.
More valuable became for you?
It had consequence.
There's, there's a consequence and there's also, there's
something about like, I think this is where we said it in,
in a couple different ways, and I think one of the, maybe
the nuance points that we missed was when we said like,
it needs to be big enough.
It needs to be big enough and important enough
that it also eliminates, basically squeezes out.
Like eliminates sucks up all that air that you would've
otherwise spent worrying.
For me, it, it's funny we're, you know, as, as
you know, we're, we're traveling right now.
We were in Ohio with my parents.
We're now in in Florida with my wife's parents,
but we're through lots of strange circumstances.
There is a bunch of my parents' stuff and I was going through
some of this old memorabilia and it forced me to revisit a
couple periods in my life that were absolutely overwhelming.
They were some of the most productive periods, like
in in, in youth, right?
Like, so there was this, we discovered all of these merit
honor roll, uh, certificates, the, you know, uh, Allstate
first team notifications for, for sport and this
other law in the Constitution conference that I attended.
It was all like the same time period, and I was going, my
God, I was doing a lot of stuff and I was excelling
and thriving at all of it.
Why?
Because it was so divergent.
It was so different that it gave me that level of catharsis,
but it also squeezed out any time to do anything other than
do this stuff didn't leave me any time to worry about it.
I couldn't worry about my soccer performance because
the minute I was done with soccer, I had to, I was, I was
off studying for something.
I was, I was, you know, going up to, uh, Ohio State
to, to, you know, take part in an academic conference
doing something right.
And so it was those periods where it was
totally overwhelmed.
I think I've shared this one on the podcast before.
But it was those, the, the, the period in university at which
I had started the business, so running the company, I had
a full load at Ohio State.
I had a couple of weird electives that they wouldn't let
me take because I was already over my credit hours and so
I, I went to another local university and signed up to take
these transferable credits that didn't matter to me anyways.
They were just elective classes and so I was completely
over, literally overloaded with the schedule, like
beyond what was allowable to take at one university.
So I took it a second.
And running the business at the same time, and I had
some of my best grades ever.
I had fantastic performance in the business.
Why?
I didn't have time to think or worry about shit.
It was, I was either asleep and, and completely soaking
up the, the needed rest or I was on something, but things
that I cared about, not things that I was just thrown
into or had to do, right.
Things that I, that legitimately mattered to
me, that I was engaged in, that gave me very different
types of outlets for, for all
that energy.
You bet.
And it, it doesn't have to be something that is like.
A job.
Right.
You know, I'm doing something that's very
physical and that's fine.
That just happens to be what my thing is.
You could just put that energy anywhere else.
Right.
In a way it has to be in, in, in my mind for me, I, I, this, I'm
not speaking for anybody else.
It, it has to be challenging.
There has to be a mental challenge to it.
If you take out the mental challenge to it, or in some
cases the physical challenge to it, the challenge in
general, it actually doesn't interest me in a perfect
metaphor for that, Ryan.
Is, you know, as you know, I love to play video games,
but the moment in the game, no matter what game it is,
that I know that I've got the most powerful weapon
or I've got, you know, the best armor or like, I'm just
gonna mow over everything.
Yep.
I absolutely lose interest.
Yeah.
And that's what always killed me, an Assassin's
Creed, because it's such a big, long game Uhhuh.
But I would grind like nonstop in order to get
like way ahead of where I should be in the game.
Yep.
And then the moment I got there, I could just take
out everybody immediately.
Everybody.
Yeah.
I was, I was like, I don't care how this game is, I. Boring now.
There's no sense of progression.
Yeah.
I took the challenge out of it.
Yeah.
Right.
Um, and, and now it's funny, when I play something, I'm
very mindful to try to like do what I enjoy doing, which
is like gaming the game, uhhuh, but also not do it
so that I, I can never see.
Yeah.
It's like now
I've just, I've ruined this for myself again.
What's interesting though is I, I, I don't think that
for some of us, what we're looking for is the opportunity
to quote rest, like, you know, put our brains to rest.
Like, and for some people it works great and, and
you know, God bless you.
But for most of us, for most of us that have this, this
obsessive mind that cannot stop, that is gonna be up every
morning at 3:00 AM grinding on something, we gotta feed it.
We gotta feed that with something that has the
same type of challenge that got us grinding on
the, in the first place.
Yeah.
So yes, it's something overwhelming.
Yes, it's something that's gonna challenge us even more.
Some stress us out in its own way, and maybe
that's a good thing.
But the truth is we have to find outside interests that consume
us because it's the only way for people like us that will
ever actually get the rest that we need and how we recharge
to go build something amazing.
Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone.
You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead,
you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes.
Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors
helping them win in the startups.com community.
Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com
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Could be just the thing you need.
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