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A conversation with a founder inspired this discussion about maintaining freedom of movement while you build new products and companies. It might be the most important startup thing that nobody ever talks about: The need to stay nimble and not give away your advantages by pre-committing to decisions that steal your freedom of movement.
On episode 17 of Jake & JZ, we also talked about:
- How startups beat big companies
- Identifying your unique advantages in a Foundation Sprint
- Eight Sleep, but it’s not an ad!
- New and old sleep tactics that we use every night
- Recording the audiobook for Click
- And much more
📩 Get an email about every episode at JakeAndJZ.com
💸 Learn more about our seed fund at Character Capital
Creators and Guests
What is Jake & JZ?
Weekly podcast about startups, design, marketing, technology… and anything else we’re thinking about. 🤓
Hosted by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, co-founders of Character Capital and bestselling authors of Sprint and Make Time.
JZ (00:00)
in the history of this been through so many of your wardrobes, Jake, or elements of your wardrobe. was the Nike hoodie, there was the plaid shirts, there was the incredible winter sweater that your mom knitted. And now this outrageous, tight-eyed shirt. What is going on over there?
Jake (00:05)
you
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, this is a special shirt that I've got on here. Tye-Dye is not normally one of my go-to looks, but this is a, if you're listening only, this is a Tye-Dye shirt yellow kind of a, I don't know.
And it is a Lithuania basketball shirt. so if I kind of lean back, you're going to see a skeleton there. Yeah. Dunking basketball and.
JZ (00:49)
wow. That is so cool.
If you are listening
only, should get over to YouTube and check this out. It's worth changing apps.
Jake (00:58)
Yeah.
Well, in the I guess, this is the same year of the first Dream Team.
JZ (01:07)
Oh, cool. So this was like
the team that went to the Olympics, the Lithuanian national team.
Jake (01:12)
Yeah. And so this is the year that 92, I think when it was the first year that professionals were allowed in. so the U S had Michael Jordan, you know, magic Johnson, Larry bird, just all of the, all of the legends of the, of the nineties and, uh, know, late eighties there on that team. And the other really fun storyline about that Olympics was the Lithuanian national team who.
JZ (01:15)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah.
Jake (01:41)
was sort of sponsored by the Grateful Dead and they had a really good team. Also, the other thing was they had a really good team, but they, like, they didn't have the money for uniforms or something, you know, was sort of post like Soviet Union kind of thing. And so they had these warmups and maybe even uniforms that were tie dye. And I just really stood out in my mind because they were, I think they got the bronze medal. don't know. should, somebody should, you know, fact check that, there was a guy on the team who
JZ (01:44)
You
Yeah.
Wow. Wow.
Jake (02:08)
Serunis Marshal bonus who ended up playing for the Seattle supersonics later. So like, it was, it was a big thing for, for in my head and our friends, Steph and Khrushchein in Switzerland. Well, Aglai is from Lithuania and we were talking about this at some point. And then the next time I saw them, they had been back to Lithuania and they said like, Hey, here's a gift for you, Jake. And so this is like, this is my Lithuania and Lithuania basketball shirt. Big, big treasure. Yeah.
JZ (02:16)
Yeah.
That is amazing. Wow.
Was it difficult for them to find the shirt? Is this like a... Okay.
Jake (02:40)
I don't think so. No,
I don't think so. think that, I think it's a thing you can definitely get in Lithuania. That's my understanding. It's like, they were, were like, we're talking about it. They're like, yeah, we know that shirt. So.
JZ (02:52)
funny about the Grateful Dead because when you showed it, when you lifted it up and I saw the skeleton, was like, that looks like a Grateful Dead shirt. But I didn't say it because I was like, that's sort of a silly thing to say. Okay. Well, with that out of the way, should we make a podcast? Let's do it.
Jake (02:59)
Yeah.
I think we should record a podcast.
JZ (03:28)
Welcome to episode 17 of Jake and Jay Z the weekly podcast about startups, design, technology, marketing, Lithuanian basketball, the grateful dad, tie-hide t-shirts and other stuff that we're thinking about. That's Jake over there. I'm Jay Z that short for John Zyratsky. We are the founders of character capital, the authors of sprint click our new book and make time. And this is our podcast. And if you'd like to get a weekly newsletter.
with the latest episode and other cool stuff that we found. can go to jakeandjay-z.com and sign up for that. Jake, I wanted to tell you a short story about an interesting conversation. I thought it was an interesting conversation I had with a founder recently. Is that cool with you?
Jake (04:15)
up for a founder story.
JZ (04:15)
Um,
I was chatting with a founder. This is not somebody that we've invested in, of a, a friend of a friend who, what, who I like, think seems, she seems really smart. You know, I think, uh, she's got some interesting ideas, things she's working were catching up and she was kind of sharing with me a difficult decision that she had to make for months. She's been, negotiating a deal with a.
with a large company, not an acquisition or anything, but like a partnership that would really help this startup, her startup with and some other strategic advantages. But the sort of thing that's like would actually be a big deal. It would change the fortunes of this startup. And I guess unsurprisingly in the negotiations had just dragged on and on. It had just been like super difficult. Like at first,
You know, they, they basically, had a verbal agreement this whole time, but at first the company was, you know, really easy to work with and really eager. And then as it got into legal and all the, all the things that happen when you're dealing with big companies, just became like a huge distraction. she was beginning to wonder if it was even continuing with the partnership. So we were talking through that and, and I was sharing with her an observation.
that I had had from working with so many companies over the years that I just kind of thought of in the moment, I was just sort of like, this might be a helpful way to think about your decision, which is you're building a new company, there's a few things that are really tiny loops where you can learn really quickly, showing things to your customers, testing. There's sort of some core things that really matter.
One of the meta things that matters a lot when you're starting a new company is maintaining your freedom of movement, your ability to maneuver and to operate and to make decisions. Because when you don't have it, when you're stuck on a track for whatever reason, maybe it's because you've committed to something. Maybe it's because you've got put all your eggs in this basket of partnering with this one big company. it could work out well.
Jake (06:00)
Hmm.
JZ (06:20)
But in the meantime, you don't have any ability to do anything about it, right? Like you can't pivot, you can't try a new idea because you're sort of locked in. And so was explaining this idea of freedom of movement to her and she ended up, she followed up with me a couple of weeks later and said that that was a really helpful idea for her and that it, and she actually ended up like calling off the deal with this And she just, she said that it felt like even though
Jake (06:24)
Yeah.
JZ (06:47)
There was, that was going to create some new challenges for her. She felt so much better. She felt like she could do the work of being a founder, which is to like try things and learn from those experiences. And she hadn't been able to do that before. So anyway, I just thought that was kind of interesting. And it, it, reminded me of what we do in sprints, which is like, in a way give people freedom of movement, right? Because like, if you're locked into like, we're building this product and like,
Jake (07:08)
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
JZ (07:15)
It's going to take us three months. going to take us six months. And you're just sort of like, you're, on the tracks and you're, you're executing the roadmap. not free to change. And that's why people end up shipping things that, that don't make sense. know, I think in sprints, like you have freedom of movement because you can like really quickly test ideas, learn from those, change things, try them again, et cetera. So anyway, how does that strike you?
Jake (07:38)
I think that's pretty interesting. was about a conversation that you and I had this morning with some other founders who they were just talking about. They were just reflecting on something that I actually, I feel like we can probably list off a bunch of founders who are in our portfolio who have this problem where they've been inside the big company. So there's, this is the partnership with the big company, but they've been inside the big company and they've had the experience of trying to build something inside the big company. And at some point they're like,
JZ (07:46)
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (08:07)
They leave and then, now you have freedom of movement because you're now your startup and there are so many advantages that a big company has. And in the case of a partnership, they provide money and stability and social proof of that, logo you can envision on your, Once you, done that partnership and got it out in the world, the, the speed of a big company is not fast.
JZ (08:10)
Yeah.
Jake (08:32)
And that is the primary, one of the primary advantages of a startup is that they're not encumbered by legacy organizations, legacy products, legacy commitments. the seesaw goes from lots of money and you know, audience and everything distribution at the big company. But the seesaw shifts when you're at a startup and now you can move fast. You can do whatever, like you can build whatever you think the right thing is. If it's wrong, you change direction, throw it away.
JZ (08:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (08:58)
things that are hard to do inside a big company. So if you're at a startup and then you tether yourself to a big company, it's like, man, you you've, almost given up what makes you most startup-y. Not in every case. I certainly think there are examples we can think of too, where a company has started off, they, you know, they have that pilot, that design partner, so to speak, the company who they're working with to figure out the first version of the product and it works, but...
JZ (09:01)
Yeah.
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (09:25)
Yeah, you probably have to be really wary of is this the healthy kind of benefit I'm getting from that partnership or have I been drawn back into the web of slowness?
JZ (09:31)
Yeah.
hadn't been thinking about the contrast from being inside a big company to being at a startup because maybe not every, but certainly many startup founders worked inside a big company at some point in the past. You know, we sometimes, you know, we invest in some founders who start companies right out of college, but like I would say most of them probably they, know what it's like to be inside a big company. And yeah. And so then if you like, you start a startup, but then you.
Jake (09:51)
Right. Yeah.
JZ (10:05)
You make decisions that limit your freedom of movement and you become more like a big company in some ways. And yeah, you take away one of your big advantages. We, in the foundation sprint, have this like step, this set of activities about identifying your unique advantages. because we think that that really helps the team kind of figure what their differentiation can be, like what solution can they make? That's going to be.
radically different than what exists in the world. And ideally that comes from their unique, their capabilities, the insights that they have, what's their unique motivation. we probably could like always just have that in there as like a standard advantage, which is like, we can move fast and we can like change our minds. Like that's like always an advantage, at least over big companies. But we don't put it in there because it's like sort of the...
the built in, it's like built into the firmament of like, you know, what it means to be a startup. But yeah, if you like, if you inadvertently take that away, taken away a part of what makes a startup a
Jake (11:01)
Yeah.
that's interesting. It's a good one. Freedom of movement.
JZ (11:10)
like to think of a slightly better name for it because it sounds sort of geopolitical. So if you think of one or if anybody listening or watching, if you think of a for this phenomenon, let us know.
Jake (11:17)
Yeah.
Well, I've been thinking about sleep a lot lately to take a left turn here with no signal. because I keep, I keep waking up. Holly, my wife keeps waking up. We had a lot of problem with like getting the temperature right in, the room. where we were starting to have some hints of spring, but like you open the window, which we do at night.
JZ (11:40)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (11:46)
You know, it's cold, you don't want to be too cold. You don't want to be too hot. And I feel like the older I get, the more I have these kinds of random wakeups where I'm too hot or I'm too cold. And so I, I would got a recommendation from both and from our friend, Jonathan Courtney to check out the eight sleep. Both of them have it. And we're like, it's.
It's, really great. You should check it out. so I've, I've been down the rabbit hole recently of researching this. And so what the eight sleep is, if you're not familiar, and this is by the way, this is not an ad, this is one of the few podcasts where you'll hear about the eight sleep and it's not, it's not a paid advertisement for the eight sleep. So if you're listening to like Huberman or like whatever you're going to hear, it's sort of the paid ad for it, but this is actually, my experience researching it. And I.
JZ (12:24)
Hahaha.
You
Jake (12:38)
It's a, it's a very expensive mattress cover. goes over your mattress. has like a pump kind of thing connected to it and it pumps hot or cold water through the mattress. There's a separate settings for each side. you pay a subscription. not only buy this expensive mattress cover, but you also pay a subscription for the AI, like in the app that
Figures out dynamically, I guess, through the night, like, are you too hot or too cold? And adjust the temperature accordingly, according to the people. Yeah.
JZ (13:09)
So the
thing also has sensors in it. it knows something about you. Yeah. Huh.
Jake (13:14)
Yeah, like thermometers or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
And I can't tell if it's, that's like a hard engineer. mean, I'm sure it's hard. It's for sure. It's not something I could like build in my garage, but like it's, anyway, the idea is you, you have fewer wakeups. In fact, literally what Jonathan said was fewer random wakeups with this thing and it's great. And now I hate to sleep.
JZ (13:23)
Yeah.
Jake (13:38)
Not, you if I travel, it's annoying to me that I don't have temperature control throughout the night. So I researched this thing. it's just a weird enough thing where I was like, well, what are the alternatives? and I found myself in shopping mode, which we often talk about in sprints, trying to get people into shopping mode when you're testing your own ideas, because this is a mode we all know so well. And so I was like, what are the other products out there?
JZ (13:58)
Yeah.
Jake (14:05)
There was one in Canada called perfectly snug that makes, which I thought was a great name. It's adorable. And there's this like uses air and there's no subscription fee. You just buy it once and you're good to go. And then I was on Reddit, you know, and I found this Reddit thread where an eight sleep user had gotten a new size bed. And so they had to get a new one and they were like, well, I'm going to try this perfectly snug thing.
JZ (14:10)
What an adorable name.
Okay.
Jake (14:34)
And they were kind of writing and, people are replying. And then they, said at one point, actually the perfectly snug is great. Uh, this is, this is a revelation. And then later they wrote back and they were like, update. got, I can't remember if it got, I think it got hotter here and it can't, it's not cooling as well as the eight sleep. miss the eight sleep. So anyway, so I ordered the eight sleep. That's the TLDR. I ordered it and we'll see, we'll see what happens, but.
JZ (14:41)
Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah.
wow, you did, okay. Yeah.
Jake (15:01)
All of this made me think about sleep in general. And it's another topic that you and I have talked about a bunch and we talked about in make time. but that was a few years ago and I find already like my needs for, for sleep are different. And maybe, maybe, or maybe not the eight sleep will make it in to my repertoire. But I wondered if you had any new or adapted.
sleep techniques or if you're using ones that were in the book, like what's your, what's in your sleep stack?
JZ (15:34)
I, I remain very low tech in my approach to sleep. And part of that is, I guess it's basically laziness. It's laziness crossed with cheapness, just like not wanting to like investigate and buy a bunch of stuff. And then I also have what is perhaps a not entirely principled.
Jake (15:52)
Yeah.
JZ (15:58)
opinion about sleep resilience, that idea of like, I travel and then I don't sleep well because I don't have my like fancy mattress. Like that sounds really bad to me. So I'm I want to like learn how to sleep in all different beds and like, be able to take my sleep stack with me so that I, you know, I'm more resilient. but I don't know if that's right. Like maybe that's not the right way to think about it.
Jake (16:12)
Yeah.
Yeah.
JZ (16:21)
So a couple of things that have not changed since we wrote Make Time and even years before that, my wife and I, still have a pretty strict no devices rule in the bedroom. when, gosh, I don't remember. I think we had this in San Francisco too, but when we moved to Milwaukee, one of the things that we did when we were setting up our apartment was our phones have like a home, they have like a charging.
Jake (16:31)
Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (16:46)
place that is, it was in the dining room. Like now it's in the kitchen, but it's a nice little tray with like, we have two like Megsafe chargers. like they live there. So it's like, that's part of the evening is like, put the phones there. they don't end up in the bedroom, don't have TV in the bedroom. Kindles are sort of the only device for reading. and so that's the one thing. And the second thing that is still really important is,
Jake (16:57)
Yeah.
JZ (17:12)
how I interact with light at bedtime and leading up to bedtime. So I don't know if it, this is one of those things that I think there has been some research about the effects of it, but as time goes on, it becomes less conclusive, not more conclusive, like the effects of blue light and just bright lights in general before bed. Regardless of the research, I find it sort of just soothing to like lower the lights and just kind of have the last couple hours of the day before bed.
Jake (17:36)
Yeah.
JZ (17:40)
around the house, like turn lights down, have just a couple of lamps on in the bedroom. And, you know, even with the Kindle, like I don't turn the backlight on. I would much rather have a lamp on the bed stand and like be reading without the backlight on. I don't know if that makes a difference, but it just kind of like gives me this overall sense of coziness and comfort, the sort of warm, yellow lights versus like the bright white, know, bluish white light.
Jake (17:52)
interesting.
Yeah.
JZ (18:06)
So that's the second thing.
Jake (18:06)
You don't- do
you have a Kindle with the warm light?
JZ (18:08)
I guess not. I guess I missed that innovation, that Kindle innovation.
Jake (18:09)
What kind of kindle, what are you using like a 1992 kindle? mean the, because
the kindles for like, if you get a kindle now, it's got the warm light. You know, you can adjust.
JZ (18:17)
Yeah. Really, I just got a new Kindle
like a couple years ago. Does it have a, maybe does it have a temperature adjustment? Can you make the light? okay. I need to dig into the settings. Okay. Yeah.
Jake (18:25)
It does. Yes, it does. Yeah. And it's
embarrassing for you that you don't know that, but it's, yeah. So you go into the settings, there's like a warm to cool slider. Probably, unless you got like some kind of low end one. If you didn't, if you don't have one, I'm going to mail you one because I have an extra Kindle. I'll mail it to you. you let me, I want you to let me know immediately after the recording this, what kind of, if you have that adjustment.
JZ (18:31)
It is,
Amazing. Yeah. I think I got like a refurbished like.
Okay
Okay. I'll check it out.
Yeah. So no devices, warm, low lights. and then I also, probably the only change in the last couple of years is I wear a, I wear an eye mask, like, not, not every night, but many nights I wear an eye mask. And that's, that's part of sleep routine is that I travel with it. And so wherever I am, like I can put that on and
Jake (19:02)
okay.
pretty frequently.
JZ (19:13)
It makes a huge difference. mean, I guess it's related to to light, but it is such a good physical cue for the body of like it's time to sleep. It works really well for me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jake (19:22)
This day is over, man. Just, yeah. Yeah.
Interesting. So yeah. I'm asked for me as always only a travel thing if, you know, because I, it just feels, you know, like it's, I've never comfortable for a whole night. I could take a nap with an eye mask, but like, for me, it's just like, I'm really sensitive head, I guess it's just the tightness. But the, the other thing about the eye mask, I'm curious how you work around this is.
JZ (19:32)
Yeah.
Totally. Yep.
Jake (19:53)
morning natural light, does that play a role in waking you up or are you able to wake up with the eye mask on?
JZ (20:00)
So usually, like, so I put the eye mask on and I fall asleep and then at some point in the night, it comes off. and sometimes I noticed that it came off and I like, I put it on the table. Sometimes it just like ends up on the pillow or like in the bed somewhere, but I have never worn it the entire night. So like I've never, and actually it's interesting that you, you mentioned that because we were both a few weeks ago, we were in Berlin. We were working with AJ and Smart, you know, speaking of Jonathan.
Jake (20:07)
Okay, okay.
Yeah.
Interesting.
JZ (20:28)
launching the, new book Click. And so we were in hotels. We were, we were staying in hotels and they, they had, I don't know if you, you probably noticed and appreciate this. They had pretty good like blackout curtains. you you could make the room pretty dark there. And I actually, that is more challenging to me. not having the natural light in a hotel room where there's blackout curtains versus at home, our curtains are not
Jake (20:32)
clickbook.com buy many copies of it.
JZ (20:55)
super, super dark. So I like that, my eye mask manages to come off. And then I do have the cue of early morning light to help me wake up more naturally. Whereas in hotels, I kind of feel like I wake, you my alarm goes, I wake up and I'm like, what, what time is it? Where am I? Like, what's going on? And then they're like, I see like some little sliver of light, you know, next to the curtain. I'm like, okay, yeah, it's daytime. Cool. Let's wake up.
Jake (21:17)
Right,
right. Yeah, it's yeah, when changing time zones, I feel like, okay, the light from outside is really helpful, but the chances that it's going to get like the sun's going to rise when I need it to is probably not amazing. So I always play this game where it's like a slider between the, how much light am I going to let in?
JZ (21:29)
Right. Yeah, yeah.
Jake (21:38)
I want the blackout shade to be like 90 % closed. So like a little bit gets into like the corner and I figure like I can sleep through that for maybe an hour, but you know, whatever I'm looking at the, know, the time that the sun rises, probably overthinking it and not getting any benefit.
JZ (21:42)
Yeah.
Hey, I, that actually
gives me an idea for a, for a new sleep business, like smart blackout curtains. Like does that, I'm, I'm kind of surprised. Maybe, maybe it does exist, it'd be kind of cool if you could program it based on, you know, sunrise and sunset where you live. that seems kind of useful.
Jake (21:58)
yeah, yeah.
And what if the curtain itself had full spectrum warm lights built into it so that if it was the dead of winter, you could get the glow right from the, it's probably a little over complicated. But maybe in 2050 when everything's being run by AI and it's just trying to figure out ways to make us happy, maybe that'll be a product.
JZ (22:13)
Ooh, that sounds nice. Yeah.
at the exact time you want it.
What if you could travel
with your curtains?
Jake (22:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you make sure you're coming into the hotel with like my curtains and like my mattress cover.
JZ (22:38)
You have like another suitcase with you. It's like all your sleeping gear.
Jake (22:42)
Yeah.
The thing that I opted not to buy because it made the eight sleep even more astonishingly expensive was a, um, a base that goes under the mattress and is, is mechanical and will like, like lift you up. it detects that you're snoring, it'll like lift up your head. And I've read a bit about it and people talked about sort of the sound of that might wake you up anyway. Uh,
JZ (22:59)
Whoa.
Jake (23:10)
sort of like mechanical snoring instead of, instead of human snoring. Although it's snoring supposed to be not great for you. So I was a little torn. mean, I definitely thought about it a bit, but then Jonathan said like, it's a moving part that's going to break. And this is like the V1 of it. So they're on V4 of the mattress wrapper. So they probably have that more figured out anyway.
JZ (23:13)
huh. Yeah.
Yeah.
What about you? What's
apart from the temperature issue, like how have your sleep habits changed in the last eight years or six years since we wrote Make Time?
Jake (23:34)
Sure, she did.
I think it's a lot of, it's still a lot of the same stuff and a lot of it is low tech and it's kinds of things you mentioned, not, not doing anything like watching TV or using the computer before bed, especially in the bedroom and not having like overhead lights, just table lamps throughout the house in the evening that there's not bright light anywhere.
We will occasionally watch a movie or a show or an opera to make a reference back to a recent episode in the evening, but that's not the norm for us. the norm, because I do find that anything, um, maybe less so an opera, but any movie will like spin up, will get me like a bit jazzed and it was a bit harder for me to sleep. So stuff like that is, is a part of the routine. I have been.
JZ (24:18)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (24:29)
wearing my Apple watch at night to track sleep. Because it'll give you a little chart of when were you in deep sleep and when. that's been, recently just with the wakeups have noticed that you can see it on there. And so I've been trying to draw connections between did anything happen during the day or the way I set up the temperature or the blinds open or the blinds shut.
JZ (24:44)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Trying to establish
the cause and effect.
Jake (24:59)
Is there anything going on there? Yeah. white noise. We'll often use, we have the home pods, the little home pod minis and they have like a nice like ocean sound effect. although those home pods are like kind of they're not great. Like, you know, in general, I don't know if you've read much about that product, but like it's, it has, it's very Siri driven. And as you know, Siri is like limited and the, so almost the only thing we use it for is to play.
JZ (25:17)
I haven't.
Yeah.
Jake (25:27)
this ocean sound. So it's like way overkill, you know, and like, like every fifth time you say, Hey, Siri play ocean sounds, she'll play like some song called ocean or by an artist named ocean. And it's invariably like the exact wrong vibe for when you're trying to go to sleep.
JZ (25:27)
Like a really expensive white noise machine.
Frank Ocean.
you
Jake (25:49)
So that's that's, that's a challenge, but the, yeah. So one thing I've been trying to dial into is when is the latest I can actually have caffeine. And I think we talked about this during the caffeine episode, but it stays in the body for a really long time. And just within the last few days, I've been wondering, cause I see these little wakeups that I, I sometimes like, you know, you wake up in the night and sometimes you just like, not really awake all the way and fall back asleep and don't think anything of it. It's not like being awake for.
JZ (25:58)
Right. Totally.
Jake (26:17)
half an hour, an hour or something, but are those disrupting in a way that's affecting like how sharp I am the next day they might be. And there's a certain amount I can help with the temperature, but then I'm also wondering, am I drinking caffeine too late? And it's not at the level of like obvious, like, it's time for bed. And I'm lying there with like my eyes wide open, but it's a subtler level where it's just bouncing me or
JZ (26:36)
Yeah.
Right.
Jake (26:43)
not letting me get into that sort of smooth sleep. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of in a, like I've got a good, I feel like I have a good foundation of stuff, but at the moment, I'm in a little bit of a quest mode for making it better. So, you know, we'll see.
JZ (26:59)
Yeah.
how late are you drinking caffeine right now?
Jake (27:02)
My goal is to try to, is not having it after noon. Cause I, I think we were, maybe we talked about that during the caffeine episode that that's a, that's like a study or something. And it's like, you're, you're like the death rate goes up or something.
JZ (27:06)
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, we did, Yep.
Yeah, I actually, that changed my
behavior. think since we recorded that episode, I think I've only had afternoon coffee like maybe twice.
Jake (27:27)
Yeah, it changed my behavior too, but I, still will occasionally do it cause it's nice. I just like, I like coffee after lunch and I can still go to sleep. But then lately I've been like remembering the specter of death and also looking at the little chart on my phone. That's like, look at all the little orange spikes where I woke up and I'm like, eh, maybe I shouldn't have the after lunch coffee. Maybe I need to dial it back.
JZ (27:35)
it's so nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (27:51)
was going to make another little topic change here. Another left turn, no signal, which is, uh, audio book recording this week. We're recording the audio book for click our new book, which, which, uh, hopefully, hopefully your listeners already know all about, but you recorded. Yeah.
JZ (27:54)
Okay, great, great.
And if you haven't already,
you should buy at least a hundred copies of it at theclickbook.com.
Jake (28:12)
At least at minimum, the minimum is a hundred.
If, anyway, this week is audio book recording week for us. whereas when we recorded the audio book for, well, first of all, we wanted to record the audio book ourselves for Sprint, we like, it didn't happen. They did it in the normal way at that time, which was to hire an actor to do it. it's, you know, I hear people say that they like it. So,
JZ (28:22)
Yeah.
Jake (28:42)
That's part of the selfish thing. I perhaps, but I think it's become more, more common. Certainly audio books have gone way up in popularity since 2016 when sprint came out. You and I really wanted to do it and got to do it on make time. And that was really fun. we're both living in San Francisco. We went to a recording studio. sat there together and recorded going kind of back and forth and figuring out, know, should you, how are we going to do this transition and everything? It was great. And.
JZ (28:49)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (29:08)
The only drawback I remember from that one was my stomach was growling so loudly that we had to, you had to do a lot of retakes because while I was talking, it wouldn't happen, but I was just sitting there while you were talking and my stomach would growl and the editor was thinking about sandwiches. had just, I remember I had just come back from a trip speaking of time zones and my whole eating clock was off and I was just perpetually hungry through the entire recording. the engineer kept saying like,
JZ (29:16)
Hahaha!
You're just sitting there thinking about sandwiches or something.
Yeah.
Jake (29:37)
I'm sorry, John, you have to re-record it. His stomach growled. Yeah, I shouldn't have reminded you. anyway, that's what happened last time. But this time, we don't live in the same place. Big drag for me, and I get to hang out with you in person as much. And drag for the audiobook, because you had to record yours in Milwaukee. I'm going to be recording mine in Washington state. And you recorded already. Was it, yes? No, Monday you recorded.
JZ (29:39)
That is pretty funny. I completely forgot about that. Yeah.
Right.
Likewise, yeah. Yeah.
One day, yeah.
Jake (30:03)
Yeah.
So what was that like? Anything different from, besides me not being there, anything different that I should prepare? Cause I'm tomorrow I'm recording here.
JZ (30:12)
Yeah. Well, it went way faster. I was done in like four hours. Yeah. and yeah, you mentioned this briefly, but when we recorded the audio book for make time, we, don't think we marked up the manuscript at all. just, yeah, we both had it. I think we both had a PDF of the book. You know, the book hadn't come out yet, just as you know, now
Jake (30:15)
Yeah, yeah, well now you know why. Now you can know exactly why.
don't remember marking it up.
JZ (30:37)
Click has not come out yet, but we have a PDF of the book. We had it open on iPads, I think, and we would just sort of go through and we'd look at the chapter and be like, okay, you you do this part, I do that part. we just sort of made it up on the fly. which I think made it feel pretty organic and natural. We, we sat in, if we said this at the time or after, but like what, one thing that I remember was thinking like, it was just like a really long podcast, you know, it was like,
Jake (31:03)
Yeah.
JZ (31:03)
The two of us just kind
of going back and forth, talking about stuff. but this time you actually went through the book and you did an initial split. like, think this makes sense. And then you sent that to me and I went through it. read through it and I suggested a couple of tweaks. And then you, you know, incorporated some of those suggestions so going into the studio on Monday, I had a PDF,
and it had all the splits. we just, there were a couple things where I had to talk with the producer. So that's one thing that's different is the producer for the audio book. So that's somebody, sorry, I'm like not explained this in a linear way at all. The publisher hires a producer who's, I don't know if this is their only job or just a big
focus, but they produce audio books. Like this is what they do. I think that that person was with us in San Francisco or I, cause I remember somebody giving us feedback. Like let's redo that part. Like, you know, try saying it differently. That person was on zoom. So I had a laptop and the studio set this all up for me. There was a laptop on a stand. and the producer, he was dialed in. I think he lives in Los Angeles or something like that.
Jake (31:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (32:10)
and then the iPad and the PDF was there. And so there were a few places where we would do something and the producer would say, let's redo it. Or we would get to a section, especially when there were illustrations and the producer would say, you know, do you want to describe this illustration or does the text already describe it sufficiently? There were a few places where we decided it would be best to say, check out the PDF that accompanies this audio book to like see exactly what this looks like.
Jake (32:26)
yeah.
JZ (32:38)
But for the most part, it was just reading. we weren't having to think or decide anything. So it went really fast. but as a result, it scrambled my brain a little bit. It just like, cause it, cause I was just reading and talking out loud to myself, for, for the whole time. and you know, sometimes when you like look at a word too much, or you look at like a sentence or a paragraph too much
Jake (32:52)
yeah.
JZ (32:59)
It like loses its meaning or you overthink it. You're like, wait, is that the right spelling of that word? Or like, you know, and one of the words we use a lot in the book is differentiation. And that it's like such a weird, it's just a, it's a long and kind of, kind of unusual word. And so it was like that sensation, but, on a grand scale. So I felt pretty scrambled when I was done.
Jake (33:01)
Totally. Yeah.
God, yeah.
JZ (33:25)
But it went smoothly. so that's one thing I would sort of prepare you for is like, you'll be in more of a, just more of a single track kind of mode. Um, I wish that I had taken more breaks. we only, I think we took two breaks.
Jake (33:34)
Yeah.
JZ (33:38)
but I ended up not having lunch until like two o'clock, which also added to like the brain scramble effect. Um, if, if you can try it, either, whether it's the engineer or the producer, try to just like talk normally, basically remind your brain what it's like to talk to another human instead of just like reading to nobody.
Jake (33:46)
Okay.
JZ (33:58)
Yeah. And then the other thing that, I don't know how this will affect you or not, but it was just kind of interesting to see different, what different studios are like. And I remember the one that we were in in San Francisco, it was pretty cozy. it just felt like kind of snug. And there was like, they had tea and snacks. And I just sort of remember it being this pretty comfortable.
situation. This studio it's actually less than a block from where Eli used to live. it's in a converted industrial building. And it's big. It's like for bands. in the next room over, they had like drums and big guitar amps and like pianos and like all this stuff set up. it just felt different. It was a little bit more like
sort of stark, industrial feeling versus cozy, kind of tucked into a small little studio.
Jake (34:44)
Interesting. I'm curious what mine will be like. It's mine's in a house. mean, cause for both of us, they just said like, here's where you're going to go. And, and so mine is in somebody's house, I guess. So hopefully, hopefully they know I'm coming. You know, I'm, seems like it could be cozy, but we'll yell. I'll bring.
JZ (34:48)
That's cool.
Totally.
Jake (35:04)
think they said there are gonna be some snacks there, but I'll bring snacks. Sounds like that's an important one. I mean, we won't be able to go pass lunch and actually make progress with me because of the grumbling stomach. It's a built-in failsafe method to prevent audiobook recording going on too long. That's...
JZ (35:14)
Yeah, right now that you know
Yeah.
I'm hoping that it's not
just in a house, but in a home, and they'll like make you like a soup or something. Yeah.
Jake (35:27)
Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (35:30)
yeah, nice job.
Jake (35:30)
That word differentiation though, I wish there
was a better, you were talking about a better phrase. Is there a better way to say freedom of movement? God, differentiation is a tough one because there's positioning, but positioning is different. It's different, but it's not the same. It's not the same as differentiation. And I, I don't want to say positioning instead of differentiation. And I don't know another way to say differentiation that means it's precisely that. And it's precisely what we're talking about. So, ah.
JZ (35:37)
Right.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. And we, when
we talked about it, I think in the early days of the foundation sprint, I don't remember how you felt about this, I remember making the case for the word differentiation because I like that it's kind of, it's kind of a wonky word, you know, like I like that. but I guess I wasn't thinking about having to say it a lot. It sounds. Yeah.
Jake (36:10)
You did.
It is. Yeah.
Yeah, say it or spell it also when whenever
we're we're writing it whenever I'm somewhere and I have to write it out I'm like, oh god, you know, what did I listen to John when he said that we should use Yeah Yeah, I'll write like differentiation Well
JZ (36:27)
Yeah, right. It's like, how many TIs are in this word? Like, I lost track of where I am. Like, I just wrote Ti. Wait, is it On next or am I?
Yeah, right. Just get stuck in an infinite loop.
Jake (36:48)
I think we should probably sign off here so people can get on with their day and, and, filled the podcast.
JZ (36:51)
We've done it again.
All right. Uh, thanks Jake. Thank you for listening, for watching. This has been episode 17 of Jake and Jay Z. You can get an email from us every week or so at jakenjayz.com. And if you liked this episode, please hit some of those buttons down below, like comment, subscribe, all the things. Uh, thank you very much. We'll see you soon.
Jake (36:58)
Thanks, John.