Flow State for Startup Founders: Deep Work That Actually Ships

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Foreign.
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Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
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startup scene with news interviews and
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live events.
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If you're a founder or engineer fighting distractions,
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here's the challenge most productivity hacks
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create Flow Stephen Puri, the VFX
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producer behind Oscar winning Independence Day and former
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Fox Greenworks executive Turd Shuka
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founder, has shipped under Hollywood level
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pressure. Today we'll unpack his Flow State
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playbook from the coffee shop effect to remote team
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rituals so he can do deep work and
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be2 time your meaningful
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output today on
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startup rated IO Stephen Puri. He helped deliver the visual
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magic on Independence Day. Braveheart, True Lies,
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Godzilla Dentur then moved
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upstairs as a studio executive at Fox and DreamWorks. Along
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the way he co founded Centropolis FX with his friend
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Roland Emerysch, later selling the company and produced in the
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Transformers universe with Transformers Prime. He's
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a founder again building
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Flow State platform for remote workers, developers and
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creators. We'll explore what Hollywood war rooms taught
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him about focus and what his startup failures told
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him about resilience and how to design teams for deep work in
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an AI driven distraction heavy world.
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That is a nutshell. That's a big sentence.
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Yes, but. But you know, in Germany we love big sentences
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and compound bounds. Yeah.
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Let's talk a little about origins. You told me both of your parents
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were engineers. You started in CG and
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Metroland Emirates through vfx. What
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was the first this is bigger than me moment on
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Independence Day? Oh, I think
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there were a lot of this is bigger than me moments. I was
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very fortunate to meet Roland and Dean, his co
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producer and co writer, after I had worked
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on about 13 movies. How
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that happened is you mentioned my parents were both engineers at IBM.
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So when your mother is a great ice skater, you probably learned to ice skate
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when you were little. So. So I learned how to code. I was in Los
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Angeles at the University of Southern California when computers
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became powerful enough to handle film. So I
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worked on the digital effects for True Lies with Jim
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Cameron seven with David Fincher. I did
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Braveheart and Mortal Blood with Mel Gibson, did a bunch of movies and met
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Roland and Dean after they'd done Stargate. And
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I remember coming over to chat with them and they were building in one of
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the hangars at Howard Hughes old aircraft factory which
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was been abandoned, but it was a very cheap place to have huge stages. Right.
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They had under construction the
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alien fighter craft that Jeff Goldblum would later
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be inside and install the virus to help save the world.
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And it was pretty great having a conversation with them about
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doing the movie Together when you're standing next to this massive
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starship being created, that was one of many moments
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that was hard movie to do, but a great one to do.
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Every day. What did leadership under pressure look
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like across Braveheart? True Life's Godzilla, and which
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habit from those sets still lives in your
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founder routine? Okay, so in
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many ways, I view leadership as
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a way to create an environment for a team to do great things.
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I don't view leadership as, oh, I'm here to be
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the great one. I think, for example, in the entertainment world, Bob Iger
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is a great example of a leader where he has amazing people running
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the divisions he's navigated, very complex acquisitions, but
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he doesn't make it about him. In contrast to someone like
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Elon Musk, who's very full of himself. So
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going back to working with people who are very talented,
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Mel, Jim, Cameron Fincher, Spielberg, I work with
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Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch. The thing that was important was
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we have a team here and if everyone has something
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inside them that is great to express, how do you create the conditions where
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they're going to be great, they're going to get that out. And that's a very
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strong theme of my life. I've worked with incredibly
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productive, creative, talented people. And it's
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about, if we all have something great inside, how do you
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make sure you don't die with it still inside you? That's how
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I view leadership.
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We had quite an extensive conversation before that, and you said
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the studio sequel Treadmill felt at one point meaningless
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to you, pushing you towards a startup. What
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snapped and why? So what you're
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referencing is when I had sold
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that company with Roland and Dean, and I was in my late twenties,
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and as one thinks in their late twenties that they're smarter than they are, they're
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more successful, they're better looking than they are. Right. So I had that moment of
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like, oh, wow, I sold a company and I had some money in my pocket.
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My girlfriend was a flight attendant for Air France, and we traveled for a year
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or two and just sort of experienced the world. And I thought,
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when we come back, I want to make
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movies. I don't want to make a portion of someone else's movie.
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So I worked my way up the ladder to be, as you said,
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an executive vice president for Kurtzman Mercy at DreamWorks, Vice President
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at Fox doing Die Hard, Wolverine and things like that. And I wanted to
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be like a studio chairman. So when I got to
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Fox, what was interesting is
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I came to understand for the first time that my job, which Was
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from the outside, rather prestigious.
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I'm responsible for delivering the next Die Hard movie, the next Wolverine movie,
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a bunch of movies on the slate. It's really just a chair.
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The studio will live beyond my tenure there. It was around before
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I was there. I'm the guy in the chair for these couple of years,
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and someone will come after me. And the studio is going to make these movies
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regardless of who is there, because people will just see a movie
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because it says Die Hard on the poster. And my
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boss, who was the chairman of Fox Films Entertainment, who was a
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smart guy, if not a nice guy, a smart guy, he was very
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pragmatic. He said, you know, it doesn't actually matter how good this movie is,
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how good the script is. We can financially model it based
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upon the previous four movies. So as long as we make it cheaply,
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we know we won't lose money. And, Yorin, that
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is not an extremely inspiring way to lead a
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team. It's like, hey, would you go kill yourself to make
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this thing? By the way, we know the script sucks, but as long as it
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gets shot, when Bruce has some time to shoot the movie, we'll release it and
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it'll be fine. And that for me, was the breaking point where I was like,
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am I going to wake up, be 40, 50 years old doing die hard
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nine in the retirement home? Because people will go see it even
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if there's no idea. I couldn't see spending
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more time there. I think there's a real value misalignment at Fox.
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If you do Die Hard 9, it has to play in a retirement
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home. Pretty much, yeah. And obviously now
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Bruce is not making his movies anymore, and I hope he and his family are
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well. But at the time, he was still quite
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vibrant. And the movie got made because he had a
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window of time in his schedule. It was not made because this is the
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most amazing idea. The best script ever, the best director ever. It was
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more, just get something ready and shoot in April
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and we'll find a country in Eastern Europe where we can shoot it cheaply.
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Not inspiring. Good to have a. It pays well
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and it's a fun job to have, but. But someday you're like,
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I'm going to wake up sitting around talking about how I did these bad
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movies. Not a great way to spend your life.
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For everybody who's interested, we do have a founder's world. And then we
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also talk about his talker's moment and how Stephen
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rebuilt his identity as a founder. The full story, of course,
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inside our Founders vault.
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I was wondering because you've been in
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corporate. I have been two. Even though completely different
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capacities and industries. What specific
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anti patterns did you learn there that
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now shape Shuka product bets.
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Okay. An anti pattern. And this might fall
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into category of values also, which is,
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I think you,
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all of us right now are looking at how do we measure work.
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And in the tug of war between working at
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home, working remotely, working hybrid, working in office,
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there's a lot of fear. Right?
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I think the fundamental thing that we should focus
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on is not, well, where did you do this work?
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Were you here under the fluorescent lights with me where I could watch you?
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Were you at home? Were you at a beach or at a park? I don't
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know where you are, not what time of day you did it. Like, if you're
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not here at 2am Joran, you're not working hard, you're not part of the team.
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If you're not sleeping under your desk, you're not doing meaningful work. I
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don't think those are important. I think work should be measured by the effect
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of what you do, not where or when you do it. So if you walk
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in the staff meeting tomorrow and you say, guys, actually yesterday I had some
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time to think. This is what I was considering.
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And everyone in the meeting looks over and goes, oh, my God, we should do
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that now. That changes the trajectory
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of our company. And then you say, well, you know what? I actually
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just thought of that. Walking my dog. Who cares?
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I would much rather you said I was walking my dog and I had this
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revolutionary idea than I was here all day. I was here 14
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hours yesterday. And I have some mediocre things to share. You
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know, Stephen, between you and me and something like 50
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to 100,000 people listening to this interview, can I tell you a secret?
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Yes. I have the best ideas when smoking a cigar.
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Okay. I'm glad it's our little secret. No one
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tell anyone what you just heard.
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Yeah. Awesome. Why do you think that is? Hold on, I want
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to ask you a question. Why do you think that is? That's pretty simple.
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That's like a moment I do get
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completely for myself. I sit there on our covered
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porch, on the balcony where there's another balcony on
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top. But I have awesome neighbors. They don't mind me going
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out late at night smoking cigarette because they're already in bed. Thank you,
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neighbors. I look out like it is peaceful world.
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There's. There's a lot of green. I see some squirrels running around and
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all that stuff. And I. I can really wind down my brain. I can
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really relax. And it
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takes some time to smoke, like a really good cigarette. So you
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relax it for quite some time. May I tell you a story?
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Sure. That's why you're here. So when I was
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transitioning from being a student at USC
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to the film world, which was not my original intention, I sort of fell into
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it. I had gotten a job
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working at a company that did trailers for movies,
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largely for Warner Brothers and for Buena Vista, which is Disney.
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So my job, when I was 20 years old at this company was
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we would have contracts with the studios where they would send us rough cuts of
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movies. Hey, next spring we have this romantic comedy with Steven and
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Joran in it. Find a way to promote it. So I would assign
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those incoming movies to writer producers. Hey, go take this home.
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Watch it. They want it to feel fun or they want it to feel scary.
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They want to feel right. So the company is owned by two
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guys who are very well established in this field in Hollywood. They were very
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respected as great guys to promote movies. So one of them
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comes in my office one day, and he's 40 years old,
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by the way, smoke cigars. So he comes to my office, and
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he's the only person in my life who calls me Stevie. So he goes,
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stevie, do you know Bart?
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And I was like, there's the guy in the vault that delivers tapes. Yeah, I've
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met him. Seems nice. Why? He's like, you ever
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give Bart a trailer to ride?
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I was like, are we talking about the guy who delivers coffee? The same.
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Bart, the guy. Where are you going with this? He's like,
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stevie, I have an instinct about him.
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Jeff, you own the place. Let me give him something to work on, Right? So
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I found, like, a Warner Brothers B title that had a month deadline.
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So if after a week, he's like, I don't want to do this. I could
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give it to a pro. Right? Jeff comes to my office two days
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later. Stevie, how's Bart doing? Like, Jeff, I gave him this
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thing two days ago. I'm not going to bug him. I'll check with him on
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Monday. Okay. Okay, that's great. What else did you give him?
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Jeff, he's never written a trailer in his life. I gave him one movie,
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and Jeff said something that I've seen
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proven true for 20 years in both film and tech.
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Jeff said to me, stevie, let me explain to you how
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creativity works. It's always about the
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other thing. He said, if you give Bart one movie to work
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on, he's going to stare at that with little beads of sweat coming down
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his temples and he's going to write the most
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obvious B version of a trailer.
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He's like the part of your mind that does the huh,
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what do chocolate and peanut butter taste like together? He's like, that's not the part
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of your mind that you think you're thinking with. So you have to give
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him something else to think about.
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Not only have I seen him proven right so many times, but there is a
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book about the neuroscience of this called the Net and the
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butterfly by Olivia Fox Caban
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and Judah Pollock. And it talks about the
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executive mode and the default mode networks in the brain and
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talks to a lot of inventors, talks to a lot of creative types and say,
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how do you do this? And what's interesting is the default mode
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network, which actually exists first when we were small, is
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the one that just explores the world. It looks at a cell phone and thinks,
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I wonder what that tastes like. Well, the executive mode network is more
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like the adult in the room. I have to finish the slide
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deck for tomorrow's presentation. Oh, the investor thing is coming up. I need to
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do my homework tonight. So it's only when the
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executive mode network is busy doing something the default mode network
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can play and come up with those ideas. You go, oh, actually that's interesting.
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So that is why people have ideas when they are sitting out, looking,
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smoking a cigar, walking their dog, driving,
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doing the dishes, showering. So many people come to me like, I have my best
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ideas in the shower. My best ideas like washing dishes. And
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that is why. I see. And
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actually I also learned that when I became an entrepreneur,
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I sent the adult in my brain a part time vacation.
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Okay, let's talk about Transformers prime and later studio
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roles. Put you in a massive cross functional team.
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What's a communication ritual from that
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world every startup should steal today.
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Oh, okay. I would say probably the most
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valuable thing that you see on show because Transformers prime is a
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TV series that I helped set up. I helped staff
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and create the organization for that. So that
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is a 3D animated show based on the Transformers universe and all
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that. So a very similar thing does exist
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in the standup world, which is you do
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have a morning standup
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and that is something that in the animation world
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you will have a practice that Pixar is famous for about, you know, the
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Pixar movies, right from Toy Story to today, like they've done an
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amazing job. They have a very collaborative process of saying, hey, let's
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watch things together. Let's talk about the struggles we're having. I don't know why the
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third act is not working here. It's a similar thing that I see in the
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best startup, you know, best startups that have a standup that's
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not just a. This is what I did yesterday. This is
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what I'm doing today. This is where I'm blocked. You know, it's like that
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becomes such a rote sort of a thing that's not actually that
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inspiring as to say, hey, you know what? I want to show something.
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I built this feature. What do you think? And take 10 seconds. Take
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20 seconds. Go. Now, when you do this in our app, this
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works this way. And it's an interesting way to engage
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the team, to get collaborative ideas, to shoot down bad ideas
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quickly. And you, as a leader, have to create an
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environment where best idea wins, where there is no ego.
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And I'll tell you another story. When I was at DreamWorks
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and I had worked hard, and I got to the point where I was a
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senior executive there with Alex and Bob, I remember the very first
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meeting I had in Steven Spielberg's conference room, which, yes,
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I'd worked hard to get there and had done many projects. But I'm just going
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to tell you straight up, the first time I was sitting there and Steven's, it's
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all Southwestern Adobe style.
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And I looked around, I was like, oh, my God. My life has gotten to
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the point where I'm having a story meeting with Steven Spielberg in his private conference
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room. This is amazing. And the chairman of DreamWorks, Stacy Snyder
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is there, and the president of DreamWorks, myself, two writers,
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writing producers. And I saw something that I was
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like, wow. And I'm going
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to change the details, Jorn, just to be respectful of Stephen in the
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process. Okay, I'm going to change the details a bit, but we're working on a
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project that's like an Alien movie. And Steven has done
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some big alien movie. He spent a lot of time thinking about aliens, right?
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So he said something where it's like, oh, you know what? The alien should come
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through the wall, and then we're going to discover its weakness. Is this
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right? And everyone, of course, writes that down. Steven
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Spielberg said, the alien comes to the wall. Weaknesses, right? And. And then
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someone who I'm going to say is like, the coffee boy was coming through the
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room and said, actually, I feel like we
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just saw that last summer in this other movie.
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And what if it were actually this thing that the alien
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was weak, it was his weakness. And I
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thought to myself, that Coffee Boy will never be seen alive
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again. He just contradicted Steven Spielberg. This would be the
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end of Jerry. He'll be in a dumpster out back.
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And what was amazing is, without a
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missed beat, Steven said, oh, yeah, that's good, we should
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do that. And there was no feeling of, oh,
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my God, someone contradicted Steven Spielberg. It was rather
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Steven saying, I want this to be great more
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than I want it to be mine. And I'll tell
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you, I saw this with some of the best designers, some of the
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best writers, directors. They
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don't have a possessive relationship with ideas. It's
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not like you're in, this is my idea. I must defend it to the death.
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We'll do it this way. It is rather, I will defend greatness to the
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death. And then you lose the
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ego because you want the products to be great. Whether it is an
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app, whether it is a movie, a TV series.
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That process, if you can create that in your company, it comes from the
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top. Because once they see the leader is fine with their ideas
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being improved, then everyone goes, oh, well, it's okay. It's not an ego
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thing. That sounds pretty good. Can I tell you another secret?
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Oh, boy. Is this about cigars? It has done a lot of
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very cool stuff. But when you first said Steven Spielberg, do you know what
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first thing came to my mind? The animated series. He did
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Pinky and the Brain. Pinky and the Brain.
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Okay, you're going to laugh. That's funny. That was on your mind. You know what
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was on my mind today when we were going to talk, when I was thinking,
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oh, I wanted to talk to Jordan today, was I think you did a recent
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episode where you were interviewing someone who was
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working in the finance. I think she was in private equity or something, and she
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made selling finance. And you said, you know,
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you don't need five apps to tell you you're broke.
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Remember this? Yes, I remember
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listening to that in the car. I was going to the gym and I laughed
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out lo. You know what? You're absolutely right.
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Really cool. Let's talk a little bit about
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Shuka, your
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current company, your current startup. That's why you are here. As
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an entrepreneur, you aim for the
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coffee shop effect. I
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assume it's not being over caffeinated. What does
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the science and your user data say about
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ambient accountability versus solo focus
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playlists? Let me answer that, but then I'm going to
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expand it a little bit, if that's okay with you. Okay, so
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for those listening at home or playing in the car, what Joran is
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alluding to is there is an effect that's known
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colloquially as the coffee shop effect.
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In research circles, it's often called social facilitation
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theory, the Hawthorne effect, other things. And it's based on this
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idea, which is there is a
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productivity boost, a measurable boost if
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you can see someone else working and, you know,
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you can be seen working. And whether that is
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the negative side of that is, well, it's surveillance. It's like, oh,
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everyone can see me. I have to work. Or whether it is, hey, we're doing
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this together. It's inspiring. You can debate that, but there
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is a productivity boost you get from that. Now, I think what
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Joran's getting at, because he wants to laugh a little bit at me, is when
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I was a film executive, I had to read a lot of
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scripts, a lot of books. You were continually getting
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this flow of things coming at you from people who
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want you to buy it, Right. Will your studio please buy my idea,
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my pitch, my treatment, my. My video game rights, you know,
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whatever. And that means you read a lot. And
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I'm not a great writer, but
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there is a coffee shop, a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf that
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is across Sunset Boulevard from the Directors Guild of America.
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And it is famously known as this writer's coffee shop.
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And when you walk in There, all the MacBooks
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are out with people writing on their laptops. And it's not
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incredibly social. It is not like people are just running around talking to each
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other all the time. But there's an energy in that room that's really interesting because
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in one corner, you have that weird old guy writing
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who's written, like, three studio movies this year. His quote is a million dollars
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a script. But he still comes here in his 50s or 60s, because it's his
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habit. He loves the energy of this room. Maybe he's been there for 20 years,
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whereas there are other people who just got off the bus from Iowa, you know,
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or from Wichita Falls, and they are
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writing their first TV pilot. So
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what's interesting about that coffee shop effect, and then I'm going to move on to
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a broader point, is I would go
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there to read. Even though I was not a writer,
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I would go there to read because it was inspiring to me. On weekends when
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I had, like, six hours, eight hours of reading to do, to be there among
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so many people who are trying to do something with their lives,
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all of them are trying to write something great. And that is something that, you
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know, with Sukha, that we wanted to recreate where you have the ability, if you
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want to participate in a group chat, to you Know, turn your
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camera on, see other people. It's a very simple idea
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of that African proverb, we go
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together, we go further. You know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If
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you want to go far, go together. Now let me
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expand that a little bit, which is the why
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of what I do. And actually the most important reason that I'm
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sharing a lot this year is what I've learned about flow
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states. Because we began talking today. And
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for those of you listening, I appreciate your being here because this is really the
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closest thing to my heart. I
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believe that all of us have something great inside. And the question
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that you're going to answer in this lifetime is, will you get it out or
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not? And there are some very strong forces
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in this world to make sure you do not the people who make
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distractions, the trillion dollar companies that hire some of the
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best behavioral psychologists, some of the best designers
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from the best engineers, their business models to
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steal your life. Because they don't want you to create that startup. They don't want
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you to come with that new idea. They don't want you to even write that
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book. They want to have your life so they can sell it.
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So if you are out there listening and you have that thing inside you
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like, I refuse to die with this idea
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still inside me, then that tug of war
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for your life you really have to look at. Because on one side you have
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those trillion dollar ideas paying the biggest paychecks to the smartest people
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tugging, and on the other side of that rope,
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it's you alone.
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So you need to have people around you and tools that help you
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to actually become who you could be. Because you don't want to end up
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that 80 year old guy or girl sitting on the sofa scrolling and double
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tapping and telling people how you could have created that company, you had
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that idea for the app, you could have written that book, because that's
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miserable. And by the way, no one wants to be around that person.
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They want to be around someone who tried. You may fail what you are
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contemplating doing. You come here to listen to this podcast because you have
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something you believe you can do. You may not succeed,
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but if you try and fail, that is noble
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and people can respect that. But giving your life away,
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there's no nobility in that. So that is why I talk a lot
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about flow states and how to block distractions and how to
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get out the great thing inside you. And that's why I was really excited to
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come on this podcast today. Because I think the
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people listening here, they want to do Something with their lives,
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and I love that. Back to you, Jorn.
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I actually realized that I also used this effect of
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being seen, because with a friend of mine, I'm doing like one
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hour a week. We call it the hour of the Skunk, where
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we just go online on a meeting, webcams on.
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We both work on the things you really don't want to do,
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like tax filings,
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all the administrative trivia. You just have to.
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Yeah, I love that in German. Die
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stunde Distincties. And so have
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you. I've not heard an episode where you talked about body doubling. Is that something
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we should talk about now? No, no,
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no, actually. Actually, I do it all myself. Like the owl of the
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skunk. It's all me. Oh, it's just you. I thought you were on webcams together
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with your friend. Yeah, exactly. So. So I'm there, he's
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there, and we both work on different things, but we force each
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other to do the stuff we don't want to do. You know, like the book.
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Eat that frog. Exactly. That's the idea behind that. Eat the
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frog. There you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So
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the technique that Jorn is referencing is commonly known, and it's very popular
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with neurodivergence, popular in ADHD circles,
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of turning on your webcam, working with one or more people.
466
00:29:38.580 --> 00:29:42.220
And it's not that you talk, it's not that you interact, but it's just a
467
00:29:42.220 --> 00:29:46.060
way of having a sense of presence. There's someone else there, as I do
468
00:29:46.060 --> 00:29:49.660
the thing that may be super annoying to do or I've been procrastinating
469
00:29:49.660 --> 00:29:53.410
on, and you eat the frog. You do the thing that's hard.
470
00:29:53.410 --> 00:29:55.850
You, I guess, spend an hour with the skunk.
471
00:29:57.290 --> 00:29:59.370
Exactly. Sometimes I feel like that.
472
00:30:02.410 --> 00:30:06.010
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in here.
473
00:30:06.410 --> 00:30:10.250
But let us move to next question. You shared that 22
474
00:30:10.250 --> 00:30:14.010
minutes can be lost, regaining focus after interruptions.
475
00:30:14.170 --> 00:30:17.930
How does Shukra reduce this, like,
476
00:30:18.010 --> 00:30:21.750
context switch tax in practice? Oh,
477
00:30:21.750 --> 00:30:25.550
good question. Okay, so, as you know, I love stories. Let me
478
00:30:25.550 --> 00:30:28.550
tell you a story about how I discovered this. And then I'm going to go
479
00:30:28.550 --> 00:30:31.910
into more of the neuroscience of it and how it can be applied. Right. So
480
00:30:32.310 --> 00:30:36.110
I live in Austin, Texas. You know where this is very well, because you've lived
481
00:30:36.110 --> 00:30:39.910
in Texas. I was flying to San Francisco, where
482
00:30:39.910 --> 00:30:43.670
the next day I was going to meet with my team. And on the flight
483
00:30:43.670 --> 00:30:47.080
I thought, I'm going to mock up. I'm going to go into Figma, mock up
484
00:30:47.080 --> 00:30:50.840
this idea for a feature well, enough that I can Demonstrate it tomorrow,
485
00:30:50.840 --> 00:30:54.080
and then actual designer can pick it up and finish it.
486
00:30:55.280 --> 00:30:58.480
I got on the flight, and there's an Alaska nonstop
487
00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:02.720
from Austin to San Francisco. We took off. They announced the WI
488
00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:06.560
fi was out, and we landed about 15 minutes later.
489
00:31:07.120 --> 00:31:10.640
And I thought, the engine has fallen off. Something bad has happened. We lost
490
00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:14.480
hydraulic systems, and we're in Dallas. We didn't go anywhere.
491
00:31:17.190 --> 00:31:20.830
I looked down at the little clock on my MacBook. Over 2 hours
492
00:31:20.830 --> 00:31:23.430
and 40 minutes had gone by. I had no
493
00:31:23.990 --> 00:31:27.790
concept. Time had moved. We were in San
494
00:31:27.790 --> 00:31:31.590
Francisco, and my designs were done. And I was
495
00:31:31.590 --> 00:31:35.390
actually quite proud of them. And
496
00:31:35.390 --> 00:31:39.030
I thought to myself, I couldn't tell you if the drink cart came by. I
497
00:31:39.030 --> 00:31:41.600
couldn't tell you the name of the guy in the seat next to me. I
498
00:31:41.600 --> 00:31:44.520
had no concept of any of these distracting things around me,
499
00:31:45.400 --> 00:31:49.160
but I had this great feeling of being in control of my life. That night.
500
00:31:49.160 --> 00:31:52.920
I thought to myself, I'm going to get off the plane, grab a sandwich in
501
00:31:52.920 --> 00:31:55.800
the hotel lobby, go up to my hotel room, and try and finish the designs.
502
00:31:56.840 --> 00:31:59.560
In reality, I called a friend of mine and said, hey, I have a free
503
00:31:59.560 --> 00:32:03.320
night in San Francisco. Do you want to have dinner? And that felt
504
00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:07.640
amazing. To not be behind, but to start, be ahead.
505
00:32:08.950 --> 00:32:11.830
And at the time, I did not know the term flow state.
506
00:32:13.910 --> 00:32:17.510
Now, I'm sure there are many people listening who are flow
507
00:32:17.510 --> 00:32:21.310
masters, and they know all about flow states. But for those who
508
00:32:21.310 --> 00:32:24.230
don't, or maybe have heard it in passing, let me just do 30 seconds on
509
00:32:24.230 --> 00:32:27.670
what a flow state is, that we're all on equal footing. Okay?
510
00:32:28.550 --> 00:32:31.950
There was a Hungarian American psychologist, Mihai Csik
511
00:32:31.950 --> 00:32:35.110
Nai, and he had a strong thesis.
512
00:32:35.940 --> 00:32:39.580
His thesis was man high performers in these
513
00:32:39.580 --> 00:32:42.980
different disciplines, inventors and athletes and
514
00:32:42.980 --> 00:32:46.340
artists, they get into these
515
00:32:46.340 --> 00:32:50.180
concentrated states where they do the things that make them famous, the things
516
00:32:50.180 --> 00:32:53.700
that change the world. And they describe these states in very similar
517
00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:57.540
ways. What is that state? How does it work?
518
00:32:58.580 --> 00:33:02.340
So, like Prometheus from the mythology, he wanted to go
519
00:33:02.340 --> 00:33:06.190
up to Mount Olympus, steal some fire, and bring it down to the rest of
520
00:33:06.190 --> 00:33:09.590
us. So when he did his research, at the end of it, he wrote a
521
00:33:09.590 --> 00:33:13.390
book, and the book is called Flow, and that is the
522
00:33:13.390 --> 00:33:17.150
seminal work on this. It is from whence we get the term flow states. And
523
00:33:17.150 --> 00:33:20.630
he said this was the most beautiful metaphor I could use
524
00:33:20.870 --> 00:33:24.470
for what I found, which is, we are all on the river,
525
00:33:25.350 --> 00:33:29.150
paddling to move ourselves forward. But if you align your
526
00:33:29.150 --> 00:33:32.730
boat with the current, you go faster and you go
527
00:33:32.730 --> 00:33:36.490
further, because it magnifies your efforts. And that's what these
528
00:33:36.490 --> 00:33:40.090
people do. Now, in the intervening decades,
529
00:33:40.410 --> 00:33:44.050
many smart people have expanded on his research and said, oh, this is the
530
00:33:44.050 --> 00:33:46.930
thing. There is a way in which you could be more in control of your
531
00:33:46.930 --> 00:33:50.170
day, more in control of your mind and your energy to do things.
532
00:33:51.210 --> 00:33:54.810
Super helpful. If you are an entrepreneur, a solopreneur,
533
00:33:55.290 --> 00:33:59.030
if you are working on things on the side, if you have knowledge,
534
00:33:59.030 --> 00:34:01.950
work to do, like you may be a developer, you may be a designer, you
535
00:34:01.950 --> 00:34:05.790
may be an author, and this is
536
00:34:05.790 --> 00:34:09.430
what I am passionate about. Suka, which you referenced
537
00:34:09.430 --> 00:34:13.230
and I appreciate you bringing that up. Suka is ultimately
538
00:34:13.230 --> 00:34:16.950
a flow state app. I don't call it that all the time because not everyone
539
00:34:16.950 --> 00:34:20.190
knows what a flow state is. We call it a Focus app. But what it
540
00:34:20.190 --> 00:34:23.799
is is we looked at the research and Mihaly did an
541
00:34:23.799 --> 00:34:26.919
amazing job saying, here's how you know you're in a flow state
542
00:34:28.199 --> 00:34:31.919
and here are the techniques that these high performers use
543
00:34:31.919 --> 00:34:35.679
to get into it. And we just said, what if there was a simple website
544
00:34:35.679 --> 00:34:38.919
with a play button right in the middle that did most of this for you?
545
00:34:39.799 --> 00:34:43.199
And I can go into what some of those things are because people can do
546
00:34:43.199 --> 00:34:46.959
this. They don't need my app or anyone's app. If you're interested
547
00:34:46.959 --> 00:34:50.550
in having control of your life, creating your startup better,
548
00:34:50.550 --> 00:34:53.310
creating whatever it is you're working on for your team better.
549
00:34:53.870 --> 00:34:57.470
Mihaly said flow states seem to be
550
00:34:57.470 --> 00:35:00.990
characterized by loss of track of time, which I experienced.
551
00:35:00.990 --> 00:35:04.270
Maybe you weren't. Have you've experienced a flow state, right? Yeah.
552
00:35:05.630 --> 00:35:09.470
Yeah. Okay. So you lose track of time, distractions are blocked, you're
553
00:35:09.470 --> 00:35:13.310
very focused on the task at hand. You do it at a very
554
00:35:13.310 --> 00:35:16.860
high level. Your return of energy
555
00:35:16.940 --> 00:35:20.620
from the task is much higher than things that drain you because
556
00:35:20.620 --> 00:35:24.380
you can look at it and say, oh, I've done something of meaning.
557
00:35:24.940 --> 00:35:28.060
And when he talked about what are the things that help you get into a
558
00:35:28.060 --> 00:35:31.580
flow state and stay there, he said, number one,
559
00:35:32.060 --> 00:35:35.900
everyone that he spoke to could get into flow state on a
560
00:35:35.900 --> 00:35:39.580
task that he thought was meaningful. No one gets into a flow state like
561
00:35:39.580 --> 00:35:42.380
paying their bills or returning stupid emails or
562
00:35:44.050 --> 00:35:47.770
filing taxes, right? You don't get a flow state. When there was
563
00:35:47.770 --> 00:35:51.610
a famous basketball player in this country, Michael Jordan, who
564
00:35:51.610 --> 00:35:54.850
had this quote where he said, when I'm in the zone, it's only me and
565
00:35:54.850 --> 00:35:58.689
the ball. And what he was saying, which zone is another word for
566
00:35:58.689 --> 00:36:02.370
this flow state. He's saying, I can reduce my world down to
567
00:36:02.370 --> 00:36:05.850
what is important and all that's important is I control this ball to go where
568
00:36:05.850 --> 00:36:09.530
it needs to go. The stands are not important. The scoreboard's not important. The
569
00:36:09.530 --> 00:36:13.300
defenders are actually not important. All that's important
570
00:36:13.300 --> 00:36:16.580
is I move this ball where it needs to go.
571
00:36:17.380 --> 00:36:21.220
And this is a guy who did stuff that 30 years later is
572
00:36:21.220 --> 00:36:24.660
still in the highlight reels for the best basketball in the world.
573
00:36:25.220 --> 00:36:29.020
And Picasso wrote about that too. He has a great quote about, I
574
00:36:29.020 --> 00:36:32.780
was up all night and I forgot to pee. No
575
00:36:32.780 --> 00:36:35.540
bio breaks and I didn't drink water.
576
00:36:38.030 --> 00:36:41.070
But hey, look, I made some progress on Guernica.
577
00:36:41.950 --> 00:36:45.750
So Mihaly said, what you're doing has to be meaningful. You
578
00:36:45.750 --> 00:36:49.110
have to be challenged. You have to have skills that apply. It's not Michael Jordan
579
00:36:49.110 --> 00:36:52.950
painting and it's not Picasso playing basketball. You have
580
00:36:52.950 --> 00:36:56.670
to have some feedback. You have to know you're not
581
00:36:56.670 --> 00:37:00.030
pouring energy into a black box with no idea if it's working.
582
00:37:00.510 --> 00:37:04.290
Picasso has to be able to stand back and say, this huge canvas
583
00:37:04.290 --> 00:37:08.010
that I'm creating. Am I starting to realize this vision I have in my head
584
00:37:08.010 --> 00:37:11.570
of what is the horror of war or Michael Jordan looking at the
585
00:37:11.570 --> 00:37:15.210
scoreboard and saying, okay, I'm going to win this game. This is what I
586
00:37:15.210 --> 00:37:18.849
wanted. So as this applies to Suka, what I
587
00:37:18.849 --> 00:37:22.690
built is I just said, without downloading an app,
588
00:37:22.690 --> 00:37:26.050
without doing a lot of things, how can we take what Mihaly wrote
589
00:37:26.930 --> 00:37:30.130
and make that available? Just a simple play button in the center of the screen.
590
00:37:31.350 --> 00:37:34.790
So music helps people
591
00:37:35.270 --> 00:37:38.990
get into flow and stay in flow. You brought up Jorn how a lot of
592
00:37:38.990 --> 00:37:42.710
research is 15 to 23 minutes to get into
593
00:37:42.710 --> 00:37:45.870
a flow state. You don't just sit down, say, I'm in flow, and you're deeply
594
00:37:45.870 --> 00:37:48.550
in flow. It takes a few minutes, like music playing,
595
00:37:49.270 --> 00:37:53.110
focusing. If you get interrupted, it's another
596
00:37:53.110 --> 00:37:56.150
15 to 23 minutes to get back to that state. Right.
597
00:37:56.750 --> 00:38:00.510
So there are a number of components. We can talk about them and I'm happy
598
00:38:00.510 --> 00:38:03.310
to do so, but I've been talking for a long time now. I want to
599
00:38:03.310 --> 00:38:06.590
give it back to you. But that is really what I think is the secret
600
00:38:06.750 --> 00:38:10.470
sauce of our episode is how can you harness
601
00:38:10.470 --> 00:38:14.150
a flow state to do the things that propel your life and your team's
602
00:38:14.150 --> 00:38:14.670
life forward?
603
00:38:17.870 --> 00:38:21.590
Two add ons to that. What really helps me is at
604
00:38:21.590 --> 00:38:25.070
one point listening to a lot of those
605
00:38:25.790 --> 00:38:28.340
background music on a commonly used
606
00:38:29.610 --> 00:38:33.450
video app that is like working jazz, relaxing jazz,
607
00:38:33.450 --> 00:38:37.250
something like this. I have almost. I'm almost constantly wearing
608
00:38:37.250 --> 00:38:40.890
headphones for that simple reason. Because I have like two very
609
00:38:40.890 --> 00:38:44.730
loud boys just behind this wall. And so I really
610
00:38:44.730 --> 00:38:48.250
need to do that. And a second piece that I found
611
00:38:48.330 --> 00:38:51.690
really helps me focus is interaction.
612
00:38:51.850 --> 00:38:55.540
And actually I also do realize that that this
613
00:38:55.620 --> 00:38:59.260
now maybe for a month or two, works
614
00:38:59.260 --> 00:39:02.780
for me with AI, with large language
615
00:39:02.780 --> 00:39:06.500
models, because I assign them roles. I assign them
616
00:39:06.900 --> 00:39:10.500
not, not really personalities. Like they don't have like funny
617
00:39:10.500 --> 00:39:14.260
voices or something, but they do have a purpose. And then you can
618
00:39:14.260 --> 00:39:17.540
work with them like in a, in an,
619
00:39:18.180 --> 00:39:21.300
in an idealized team. Because I found some research.
620
00:39:21.780 --> 00:39:25.540
If you not only set up, for example,
621
00:39:25.540 --> 00:39:29.380
let's say ChatGPT is the most used one. If you not only set
622
00:39:29.380 --> 00:39:33.220
up ChatGPT and give it a prompt, but if you really set up a
623
00:39:33.220 --> 00:39:36.540
personality, something that helps you towards your goal
624
00:39:36.940 --> 00:39:40.700
and then have a group of different people who have different angles,
625
00:39:40.700 --> 00:39:44.460
those virtual people, then you can get a much, much better
626
00:39:44.460 --> 00:39:48.060
result. And that's what I'm doing. And that also newly
627
00:39:48.060 --> 00:39:51.360
helps me get into flow. That is so interesting.
628
00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:55.680
Number one, my hat is off to you that you are that thoughtful about
629
00:39:55.680 --> 00:39:58.320
your flow practice. That's awesome.
630
00:39:59.600 --> 00:40:03.440
And that is interesting to me what you said about
631
00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:08.320
having that interaction that specifically keeps, you know, gets
632
00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:10.960
you there and keeps you there, helps you doing your best work.
633
00:40:12.640 --> 00:40:16.320
It's actually something I'm going to talk about with my partner later today because we've
634
00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:19.890
been working on our, you know, essentially GPT, your, your
635
00:40:19.890 --> 00:40:23.250
assistant in Suga and
636
00:40:23.490 --> 00:40:27.050
I would love to think more about that. That's a great idea. Okay, what should
637
00:40:27.050 --> 00:40:30.770
we talk about next? Well, when we're done with the interview,
638
00:40:30.770 --> 00:40:32.210
I can show you some insights.
639
00:40:34.690 --> 00:40:38.450
You talked about Michael Jordan and Picasso. I'm very sure
640
00:40:38.450 --> 00:40:42.090
they are not the reference customer. And if they. In case of
641
00:40:42.090 --> 00:40:45.650
Michael Jordan, if he's using flow, he's
642
00:40:45.650 --> 00:40:49.430
not stating it outright, but what's your biggest validated
643
00:40:49.430 --> 00:40:52.550
use case so far? Like developers, designers,
644
00:40:52.630 --> 00:40:56.390
writers, solos, any surprising activation
645
00:40:56.390 --> 00:40:59.430
metrics that predict. Okay,
646
00:40:59.990 --> 00:41:03.190
I'm going to tell you a couple things that I found interesting because in running,
647
00:41:03.270 --> 00:41:05.990
you know, this for years now and talking to a lot of members,
648
00:41:06.950 --> 00:41:10.710
I know that our biggest cohorts are knowledge workers, right? Which are
649
00:41:10.710 --> 00:41:13.670
often developers, designers, writers, you know, like
650
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:18.440
people who have multiple hours a day
651
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:22.760
of sitting on a laptop and doing something and if
652
00:41:22.760 --> 00:41:26.120
the desire is to do it better, to do it faster,
653
00:41:27.560 --> 00:41:30.840
that is where flow states are very helpful because you stay in the thing. You
654
00:41:30.840 --> 00:41:34.600
don't context switch going between things. You don't
655
00:41:34.600 --> 00:41:38.120
try and multitask, which is not really a thing it's just monotasking with
656
00:41:38.120 --> 00:41:41.850
context switching. And there are a couple practices
657
00:41:41.850 --> 00:41:45.650
that I have seen validated by a number of people. This is not
658
00:41:45.650 --> 00:41:49.370
just theory number one is time blocking
659
00:41:50.010 --> 00:41:52.490
and time blocking as it relates to your chronotype.
660
00:41:53.530 --> 00:41:57.250
So chronotype, for those who don't know, is the concept that
661
00:41:57.250 --> 00:42:00.970
there are times of day when you're more adept at doing
662
00:42:00.970 --> 00:42:04.770
certain kinds of things. And I'll give you a film example because
663
00:42:04.770 --> 00:42:08.320
it's a fun way of illustrating this and memorable, which is Ron Bass
664
00:42:08.400 --> 00:42:12.040
was a huge screenwriter in Hollywood, wrote My Best Friend's
665
00:42:12.040 --> 00:42:14.720
Wedding and Rain man and all these, like, movie star movies, Right.
666
00:42:16.160 --> 00:42:18.640
He famously would not talk to his family in the morning.
667
00:42:20.720 --> 00:42:24.360
He's like, I'm not the dad who's going to say, who wants pancakes? You know,
668
00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:27.520
did you do your homework? Who needs a ride to school? He's like,
669
00:42:28.960 --> 00:42:32.800
I can't talk to you because when I talk
670
00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:35.760
to you, I lose the ability to hear my character's voices.
671
00:42:37.330 --> 00:42:40.530
And that's when I get paid a million, $2 million a script to do. So
672
00:42:40.530 --> 00:42:43.290
what he would do is he knew his chronotype and he said, I'll get up
673
00:42:43.290 --> 00:42:45.890
at 4 or 5 in the morning. So I have four hours to write
674
00:42:47.090 --> 00:42:50.730
and I'm going to get up, not say hello to his wife, go to his
675
00:42:50.730 --> 00:42:54.570
office and write. Now, he knew that his chronotype was such. He was very
676
00:42:54.570 --> 00:42:58.290
good with collaborative work. In the afternoon, after lunch is when he was
677
00:42:58.290 --> 00:43:02.010
good, meeting with other writers, meeting with producers and studio executives
678
00:43:02.010 --> 00:43:05.710
and talking about story, talking about. About things like that. So that was
679
00:43:05.710 --> 00:43:09.470
the first brush I had with someone who was very aware of their chronotype
680
00:43:09.470 --> 00:43:11.990
and harnessed that. Why do I bring this up?
681
00:43:13.270 --> 00:43:17.070
Because you can figure out your chronotype very easily. You don't need an
682
00:43:17.070 --> 00:43:20.790
app. You don't need to pay anyone. If you have a pencil and a
683
00:43:20.790 --> 00:43:23.550
piece of paper and you can use a computer if you want, but I'm just
684
00:43:23.550 --> 00:43:25.990
saying, it is this rudimentary, right?
685
00:43:28.550 --> 00:43:31.760
Create a simple list for each day,
686
00:43:32.160 --> 00:43:35.920
morning and afternoon, and just roughly say what you did and do it for
687
00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:39.600
five days. Oh, Monday morning from 8 to 11, I worked on
688
00:43:39.600 --> 00:43:42.880
blog posts and put down how you felt. Tuesday
689
00:43:42.880 --> 00:43:46.240
afternoon, I was working on coding from two to five. How'd you feel
690
00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:50.160
when you look at that after five days or do it for two weeks, you
691
00:43:50.160 --> 00:43:53.760
will start to see your patterns. Man. When
692
00:43:53.760 --> 00:43:57.040
I write creative stuff in the morning, I have a clarity.
693
00:43:58.090 --> 00:44:01.890
Then in the afternoon, I try and do it and I always feel blocked. Or
694
00:44:01.890 --> 00:44:05.010
I feel like it's stupid. I have to rewrite it. Oh, when I write my
695
00:44:05.010 --> 00:44:08.250
code late at night, because I think all code should be written in the middle
696
00:44:08.250 --> 00:44:11.410
of the night, I get a lot done, but I end up refactoring it the
697
00:44:11.410 --> 00:44:15.170
next day. I should pay attention to that. And then you start to develop
698
00:44:15.170 --> 00:44:18.410
a sense of when you should be doing certain things. So if you are a
699
00:44:18.410 --> 00:44:21.850
solopreneur, if you're doing a side hustle or you're working from home,
700
00:44:23.140 --> 00:44:26.700
you may want to have a meeting with yourself that you put in your
701
00:44:26.700 --> 00:44:30.376
calendar. When you say, Hey, 2 to 4pm
702
00:44:30.464 --> 00:44:34.260
Is my sweet spot for this, or 8 to 10 in the morning
703
00:44:34.260 --> 00:44:37.620
is my sweet spot for this. Block it in your calendar so no one schedules
704
00:44:37.620 --> 00:44:40.980
team meetings with you. Zooms. If they slack, you know,
705
00:44:41.620 --> 00:44:45.220
they know you're busy. And use that time for that thing
706
00:44:45.380 --> 00:44:49.200
because you'd be amazed if you know you're good from like 7
707
00:44:49.200 --> 00:44:52.920
to 9am at this thing. You can get in that time done what other people
708
00:44:52.920 --> 00:44:56.760
do in seven to 11. And you have to respect that. You have to
709
00:44:56.760 --> 00:44:59.040
treat the time as sacred. Was her little jingle.
710
00:45:00.640 --> 00:45:04.200
That's just my smartwatch. I have two
711
00:45:04.200 --> 00:45:07.960
pieces to add to that. One of them is actually when you talked
712
00:45:07.960 --> 00:45:11.520
about seeing or hearing the characters talking,
713
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:15.000
what came to mind was when I was in London, I was in the house
714
00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:18.580
of Charles Dickens, and he actually had a mirror in
715
00:45:18.580 --> 00:45:21.900
front, a big mirror in his writing room. And he got in front of it
716
00:45:21.900 --> 00:45:25.740
and acted like his characters. And then at one point, he knew
717
00:45:25.740 --> 00:45:29.540
how this would play out. And then he got back to writing. And that's incredibly
718
00:45:29.540 --> 00:45:32.940
cool. Second piece is. I already knew for quite
719
00:45:33.580 --> 00:45:37.300
decades that I'm a night person. I'm a night owl. I do my
720
00:45:37.300 --> 00:45:40.700
best work between, let's say, 8:00pm, 20
721
00:45:41.020 --> 00:45:44.730
and 2:00am the next morning. Yeah,
722
00:45:45.450 --> 00:45:48.890
that. That's my best time. But I do have some
723
00:45:48.890 --> 00:45:52.730
blockers. That's time for best. Time for what, though? Because that's
724
00:45:52.810 --> 00:45:56.410
time for creative work. Yeah, it's. It's not for tax
725
00:45:56.410 --> 00:45:59.850
filing, but it's for, like working
726
00:46:00.009 --> 00:46:03.690
on the business, not in the business. Doing some preparation,
727
00:46:04.090 --> 00:46:07.690
having some new ideas, what to do. And basically that's the best
728
00:46:07.690 --> 00:46:11.290
time for me to do creative work. That's awesome. You know that I
729
00:46:11.610 --> 00:46:14.090
do have blocks in my calendar.
730
00:46:15.610 --> 00:46:18.730
I'm not a philosopher, so I just call them get you done.
731
00:46:22.410 --> 00:46:26.170
Fair enough. But I'll tell you a funny story. So there's a guy
732
00:46:26.330 --> 00:46:30.010
that I've seen body doubling in Suka
733
00:46:30.730 --> 00:46:34.490
about The last year or two, usually in the evenings or on weekends.
734
00:46:35.290 --> 00:46:38.870
And this spring he posted in the group
735
00:46:38.870 --> 00:46:41.990
chat, where you can share things you're working on and people can ask you, oh,
736
00:46:42.070 --> 00:46:45.710
I finished my website, here's a link, right? So it's a nice collaborative thing. He
737
00:46:45.710 --> 00:46:48.390
posted in there, he finished his dissertation
738
00:46:50.950 --> 00:46:54.750
and people asked him like, hey, congratulations, that's awesome. He said, well, you know
739
00:46:54.750 --> 00:46:58.150
what? I'm actually a high school assistant vice
740
00:46:58.150 --> 00:47:01.990
principal in Missouri. And what I've
741
00:47:01.990 --> 00:47:05.620
been doing is using Suka because at night I have maybe 90 minutes of
742
00:47:05.620 --> 00:47:08.860
focus time in between family dinner and school
743
00:47:08.860 --> 00:47:11.780
responsibilities and all that. So I have to use it really well. So at night
744
00:47:11.780 --> 00:47:15.220
I have this 90 minute block and in that I've been studying for my
745
00:47:15.220 --> 00:47:18.980
PhD in engineering. And then on weekends I do the same thing. He
746
00:47:18.980 --> 00:47:22.820
said, so I have to be very efficient with the little bit of
747
00:47:22.820 --> 00:47:26.380
time I have when I'm not with my kids, I'm not at work. And so
748
00:47:26.380 --> 00:47:30.140
he said, but don't get excited because I only turned
749
00:47:30.140 --> 00:47:33.790
in the dissertation. I still have to defend it in front of the panel, like
750
00:47:33.790 --> 00:47:37.510
two weeks from Monday or something. So that weekend, coming up
751
00:47:37.510 --> 00:47:39.990
to the Monday, there are a number of people in the group chat. They're like,
752
00:47:39.990 --> 00:47:43.750
hey, Roy, good luck, man. You have this. We're excited to hear how it
753
00:47:43.750 --> 00:47:47.510
goes. And on Monday, he was absent, he
754
00:47:47.510 --> 00:47:51.150
didn't say anything. And people started asking like, hey, has anyone heard from Roy?
755
00:47:51.150 --> 00:47:54.190
How did it go with his defense of his PhD thing?
756
00:47:55.230 --> 00:47:58.590
And Tuesday morning he dropped into the group chat
757
00:47:59.080 --> 00:48:01.880
and he said, you may now call me Dr. King.
758
00:48:02.680 --> 00:48:05.800
And people went crazy.
759
00:48:06.760 --> 00:48:10.440
And it validated something. You began this episode by talking about this,
760
00:48:10.760 --> 00:48:14.600
but I had to learn this. It validated the power of
761
00:48:14.600 --> 00:48:18.280
community. When we started
762
00:48:18.360 --> 00:48:22.120
doing suka, even under an earlier name and developing this whole stuff, it
763
00:48:22.120 --> 00:48:25.550
was a single player game. It was here, here are your tools.
764
00:48:25.630 --> 00:48:29.230
There's beautiful music, there are timers, there's a smart assistant.
765
00:48:29.390 --> 00:48:32.790
We'll block your phone, we'll block your website. They're all the tools sitting there. But
766
00:48:32.790 --> 00:48:36.550
it was alone. And I, as the founder, knew all these members,
767
00:48:36.550 --> 00:48:39.790
almost like a hub, and spoke sort of model, but they didn't know each other.
768
00:48:39.790 --> 00:48:43.590
And I had an idea. Should people be able
769
00:48:43.590 --> 00:48:47.310
to see each other, talk to each other? So I talked to a
770
00:48:47.310 --> 00:48:49.590
couple members. I was like, is this a good idea or is this the most
771
00:48:49.590 --> 00:48:53.220
distracting thing ever? Is this going to be terrible? Right? And one
772
00:48:53.220 --> 00:48:56.780
woman said this to me. She said, listen, Steven, I can go to the
773
00:48:56.780 --> 00:49:00.540
Nike store. I can buy a pair of shoes. They will sell me
774
00:49:00.540 --> 00:49:03.460
a left shoe and a right shoe. I put them on my feet, I run.
775
00:49:03.460 --> 00:49:07.020
It works. But there are a hundred
776
00:49:07.020 --> 00:49:10.820
million people around the world in the Nike run club because
777
00:49:10.820 --> 00:49:14.180
when you run together, you run further, you run faster,
778
00:49:14.820 --> 00:49:18.560
you're more accountable. The days that you
779
00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:22.160
feel bad and your friends come by and pick you off the sofa and you
780
00:49:22.160 --> 00:49:25.760
go running, you feel great. Are amazing. And the days when one of your
781
00:49:25.760 --> 00:49:29.000
friends needs you to be there and support them and give them energy, they feel
782
00:49:29.000 --> 00:49:32.520
even better. She's like, you should do it. It is one of my favorite things
783
00:49:32.520 --> 00:49:36.120
because now we do have experiences, like what I was saying with Roy King,
784
00:49:36.440 --> 00:49:40.160
where you're part of a group of people
785
00:49:40.160 --> 00:49:43.840
who are trying to do something great and there's an energy. Whether it's the
786
00:49:43.840 --> 00:49:47.030
coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, whether it's
787
00:49:48.070 --> 00:49:51.870
a run club, there's something powerful about when you're around people
788
00:49:51.870 --> 00:49:55.630
like you that are all trying to do something great. It lifts all
789
00:49:55.630 --> 00:49:59.430
of you up. I
790
00:49:59.430 --> 00:50:02.790
see. For our audience, I was wondering
791
00:50:03.190 --> 00:50:06.710
what breaks your focus most
792
00:50:06.710 --> 00:50:10.470
like Slack pings, meetings, social media, comment.
793
00:50:11.510 --> 00:50:15.190
We'll compile a cheat sheet down here. Steven,
794
00:50:15.350 --> 00:50:18.950
actually, we would be now going into the ad break,
795
00:50:18.950 --> 00:50:22.470
but we've been talking so long. How do you think
796
00:50:22.630 --> 00:50:26.150
we call this episode one and then instantly start recording
797
00:50:26.150 --> 00:50:28.870
episode two? Fantastic. Let's do it.
798
00:50:29.430 --> 00:50:32.870
Awesome, guys. Hope to have you back pretty soon. And
799
00:50:33.270 --> 00:50:36.390
actually, for you and me, it will be just a few seconds. For the people
800
00:50:36.390 --> 00:50:39.910
out there, it will be a few days until the next episode comes out.
801
00:50:40.150 --> 00:50:42.640
See you soon. Talk to you soon.
802
00:50:47.680 --> 00:50:51.280
That's all, folks. Find more news, streams,
803
00:50:51.440 --> 00:50:52.480
events and
804
00:50:52.560 --> 00:50:56.880
interviews@www.startuprad.IO.
805
00:50:57.200 --> 00:50:59.520
remember, sharing is caring.