Bootstrapped Web

Alright, it's bootstrapped web. We're we're back for two in a row here. All right.

Two weeks in a row. Barely though. I really regret not not bringing coffee for this conversation.

Yeah, I'm just now hitting my afternoon lull. And I'm I haven't been sleeping well, so it would be unwise to go for that afternoon coffee.

Oh, interesting. I ignore that entirely. I got my commenter back in my life. Missed that. My Cometeer Coffee that direct to consumer, very high quality frozen concentrate.

It's awesome.

That sounds interesting.

Yeah. If anyone listening to this signs up, DM me so I can give you my affiliate link. I'm like I'm like two referrals away from like some giant gift.

That's our new business model here. Affiliate links.

I think that's a, you know, tried business models and nothing

Yeah. This this thing won't be like a nine year loss for us anymore.

Yeah, I see the charge, you know, every month. I'm like, it's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it.

I think it's worth it.

Oh, it is absolutely worth it. So yes, what are you doing today? I've had a very intense, challenging week. And probably the most difficult thing I'll do this week is get through this podcast with an absolute belly full of like fried chicken lunch that I just had with a friend that I went to school with.

There you go.

I'm ready. I'm gonna do

it. Very nice. When when we record two weeks in a row, not a whole lot has changed from last week to this week. I'm sort of in this like tying up loose ends mode. This is what happens to me when I you know, because I talked a lot about how did a lot of research, we're planning a ton of big new features, big new directions in zip message.

That's all at the, in the early stage of design and planning and building out. So that's gonna be a long term effort. And whenever I'm like in between these big efforts, I try to knock out a lot of quick wins and loose ends in between them, you know, and I've been in that mode this week. And part of what I wanna talk about is like managing multiple tracks of work. There's the, I've seen the analogies of like the big rocks and the pebbles and the sand and and all that.

That's been sort of on my mind always. Right? But it's there are these big things, but I think it's really important, but but definitely difficult to keep a steady stream of quick wins and smaller projects and smaller things that you can continuously ship while still making real progress against the big things that are important to keep pushing on. You know, that's a challenge.

So I just want to like stretch that for a sec. If we look at that analogy of like rocks, pebbles, boulders type of a thing, My experience doesn't match with that because those are all rocks. And that feels like, let's say I have a specific role. Let's say I'm an engineer and then I have like big features, small features, bug fixes type of a thing. My challenge is that they are like completely different substances.

They're not all rocks. So this week for me has gone from a recruiting phone call to try to close a backend engineer candidate that's like, you know, getting to me as the last interview. And I see that as like, that's like a sales call almost, but on the company. And then talking to an investor and then having a sales call with a potential merchant and then having an internal call about next week's all hands. So those are like completely different jobs.

That is the hard part I enjoyed, but that feels like very difficult for me to make progress on my to do list, because all of those feel important. Those are all live synchronous calls that happen and are important and are like a performance. Like you got to show up at a certain time, thirty minutes, like do all the right stuff and then shut it down. And when I do that four or five, six times in a day, I feel amazingly accomplished and absolutely nothing has changed on my to do list. And then I ended up not knowing how to feel about that.

Totally. I mean, I deal with a lot of the same things, a little bit less on occasionally, I'll have, like, sales or, like, sales calls like that, but not not as much in this business as I had in previous ones. I do have research calls that come up a few times a week. But other than that, I don't have many calls where I have to show up and quote unquote perform. Most of my calls are recording videos sent via zip message to my team, you know?

But those are those require a lot of energy and time. And like a lot of those things are like fifteen minute videos that I'm going deep and talking about something, you know? I think that topic of managing rocks, boulders, pebbles, sand, air, I don't know what else you want to call them. That sort of bleeds into the other topic I thought might be fun or interesting to talk about today is just daily routines and like optimizing our day from like, you know, start to finish. For me, like I'm kind of interested in both the personal life and the work life.

On personal front, I'm trying to optimize for health and happiness. And work wise, I'm always trying to optimize that like, what am I spending my time on? Am I properly moving the things, the right things forward? And, or am I allocating too much time to certain things and then scheduling? Like that's also an issue because my team is in five different continents.

So that comes into play for me a lot now, you know?

Time zones. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

The coordination Like, and it's not like, again, we don't do live calls. It's, we're basically a 100% asynchronous in everything that we do, but it does mean that their responses to me come at certain times of day and I need to send off my responses to them by certain times of the day so that I'm not holding them up, you know? And yeah, kind of

a challenge. You get that pressure. And this time of year, right? It's this transition, at least for people with kids or even not like it. It does feel like the summer is ending and you go into the fall and there is like a mental shift there.

For us, it's pretty straightforward. It's like, well, the kids go back to school and then the schedules change. So yeah, I've been thinking about it too. How do you deal with the morning? Right?

Let's start at the beginning. Yeah. So like, are you like my younger brother wakes up at like 04:30.

That's craziness.

Look, to me it's crazy, but he goes to sleep at 09:30. I do a decent amount of work and thinking and email between like 10PM and 12PM. It's not actually-

That's also crazy to me.

It's not that different than just going to bed at ten, but then waking up at 04:30 instead of 06:30 or something like that. But for him, he needs that in order to be like, I'm on top of my life.

Yeah. I'm very much a morning person. I like naturally waking up, I'd say relatively early, but these people at the 5AM or 04:30AM wake up, that just seems a little bit extreme to me and to a point where it cuts off some valuable nighttime hours for me.

Yeah, it's a shit. Don't do that.

Many years now, I have been really all about getting my exercise minutes in the very first thing in the morning when I wake up, Before coffee, before all of it. I'm up like on average around 7AM, sometimes 06:30, just naturally waking up.

What time do your kids get out of the house?

So yeah, they started school. Their bus picks them up at 07:40.

Okay. That's pretty early. And then do you exercise after they leave or before?

Before.

Before. So your wife's handling a lot of the breakfast, getting

ready Yeah. I think now that they're starting school, I'm gonna try to really get up by 06:30 and then do my exercise from like 06:30 to 06:40, get done with that by 07:15, 07:20, hang with them for fifteen minutes before they Right.

Help get them out. Because getting out the doors, that's the challenge. Right now we're not in our house yet. We're still at the hotel waiting for our house to get ready, but exhausting. But what it means is it's not easy to get out the door because there aren't buses, we're driving.

So I just joined the gym. I have not been able to go because to go first thing in the morning, which is how I like to do it also means leaving my wife with, it's just too much. That's too much junk.

Let's stick on this exercise thing for a minute, because I'm really focused on it right now. Exercise and general health and nutrition. I actually just joined MyBodyTutor and I'm about a week into having a daily coach, like a coaching relationship with someone who I have to report all of my meals to through this app, but also report my exercise minutes and everything. And that's been a good process so far. No crazy results in the first week, but it's been a good exercise for me.

Is that like an accountability and education

type an of actual coach. It's a person who I'm basically messaging with on a daily basis.

I have- More asynchronous city in your life.

It's asynchronous. We do have a fifteen minute call every week. Oh, nice. Adam Wathen, he's had this Twitter thread that has probably driven like at least a 100 plus new customers to this service by now. So that's been pretty interesting, especially just for like being aware of my snacking habits and food choices and things like that.

So, are you not eating like large amounts of fried chicken and rice for your lunch like I am?

Not usually, but I definitely have cheat meals all the time and just being more aware of that and like seeing photos of those things in this feed of, you know.

I'm sorry, seeing photos of those things? Do you take pictures?

Yeah, you take a photo of the meal and then you like log that in your daily report of what you ate.

I don't know if that's very private.

I know, it's like, I'm trying to just like, this is totally new for me. And I'm like, it's a little bit weird, but a little bit like, well, I've never tried it before. So let's see.

Yeah. I mean, you know, what I see when I look down right before I eat is, that is, you know, that's very personal to have that. Look, it's not like you're exposing it to Twitter, right? But it is someone and that must add an element of You know

what it was with MyBodyTutor? Their

sales

and marketing copy just is so perfect, right? Really? I mean, it just hits the pain point for me so specifically with like,

Are you eating too much and know it? No, you know what

it is? At least for me, what spoke to me was the inconsistency, right? Like every other diet program or exercise program or new habit change, for me, my whole life has been like, it comes and goes. Like I commit to it for a month and then I slip and then I'm back to my normal routines. And this is like the, and it's like, their whole theme is like, well, if you're actually speaking to someone on a daily basis about it and you have to report, then you're more likely to be more consistent.

That's what I'm trying to get to.

And never churn. And never churn, exactly.

Anyway, but that's more about food. I mean, on the exercise thing, I also feel like I don't have enough min or I'm not giving it enough minutes. I mean, maybe I can go more intense, but given that short window of time when I wake up, partly it's like, wanna get back before the kids get off to school, but also like I am eager to get in and working by ideally like 08:30 the latest, you know, if my workout like pushes me, you know, to like 09:00 plus, I start feeling antsy. Like I'm eating into my workday and I don't like that. Yeah.

You know?

And now, how many days a week you're doing this on the exercise front?

You know, I've gotten to at least five days a week, but it's not hard workouts. Like I'm usually biking a couple mile, like maybe seven miles or walking a few miles. You know, I tried running and my knees hurt and I'm like, hate

running. All that bullshit. But that's pretty good consistency.

That's yeah, because it feels good. It feels good mentally for me to at least get a couple of miles of walking in or biking, but it's not a hard enough workout is my problem, right?

Is it, is that because you're doing it on your own? Well,

I'm doing it on my own and it's, and it's probably no more than like forty minutes max of workout time. So the rest of the day, I got my workday and then we're at dinner and then like, like I know so many people who like leave work in the middle of the afternoon and then they go on like a two hour exercise thing. And like, I've just never, I've never had that. I'm just way too committed to work that I can't break myself out of it once I'm into the day.

Yeah. I do walks during the day. I mean, right now I'm at exactly zero days per week of exercise, other than walking. Yeah. So the walking, keep up.

I do a short walk like after lunch, but that's basically nothing.

Yeah, that's pretty good. That's what I could use right now. It's where I should be right Given how I feel.

But I'm looking into, I'm looking into like joining a tennis club. Okay. Just so you

want more minutes. You just want more active time.

Yeah. And I think if I, if I can join like a tennis club or something where I have an appointment to, play a match or something every week, then it's like, all right, I have to go and meet this person. I'm not going to fail. And

it's easy to schedule also between your family and like, you know, you cover this, I'll cover this other thing that you're doing. I have a lot of difficulty with that because our routine isn't normalized yet. And so what that means is anytime I want to take an hour and a half out, like I'm screwing something up. It's just rare when it's not doing that. So I joined Orangetheory because that was what worked for me previously.

It was you pay, you set an appointment like a week or so ahead of time, and then you show up, right? It's on the calendar, it's on the family calendar. It's easy.

How does Orangetheory work? I've joined some gyms in the past. So like, what do you mean by an appointment? Do you have a trainer?

So there are classes that let's say it fits 20 people. So that class, every class gets full. And so you need to look further out into the schedule for an open class and book a time. You can cancel up to like twenty four hours ahead of time, so it doesn't cost you anything, but

then- What are the classes? Like, what are you doing?

The class is an hour long and it's roughly broken out between twenty minutes, twenty minutes, twenty minutes each on one of three stations. One is a treadmill, one is a rowing machine, and one is like a weight room.

I might need to look into that.

So you're just rotating. It's what I need because if I walk into a gym, I don't really know what to do. And then I'm like, oh, I do the things that I am used to or know how to do, or what I remember from literally fifteen, twenty years ago. Orange Theory is like, I'll tell you what to do over a very loud speaker with a lot blaring music. And you can kind of get lost in the crowd, but also decide how much you want to compete with that crowd.

And it's like this very interesting in between experience.

I like what I'm hearing here. Like me too. Like I'm not, I've never been deep into workout programs. I tried to research it and all that stuff, but like, yeah, just, and I like the fact that it's an appointment. You gotta go and show up.

You gotta go.

Yeah. It's not crazy expensive, but it's, you know, you don't wanna waste your money. You wanna do it. So I just like walking in and basically not having any thinking. I just do for sixty minutes and then I leave.

And that really worked for me, like so before the pandemic, that was the only thing I had ever consistently been able to do for like a year straight. And I felt amazing. And then the pandemic hit and I got a Peloton and I didn't use it. And now I, you know, it's time to go back.

Okay, so we figured out working out. So then what? Just check.

There you go. So

after your workout and kids are off to school, you're getting to work?

My hypothetical workout that will happen soon. Yeah. Yeah. I drop one kid off and I head to, now I head to a coworking space. In the past, I just go upstairs.

I have some real issues with the morning. I am not very productive in the morning. So I usually sit down and I'm gonna show you this. You're gonna see, don't laugh, don't laugh.

We've got yellow legal pads.

How many we got?

I see three.

Yes, we got rally, we got personal and we got tasks.

Okay.

So I got a personal list because I'm an adult and I have too many goddamn things to do on the personal front.

So the killer app here is a pen and paper.

Three pieces of paper, okay? Yeah. One pen, three pads. And then I have Rally, I have like, here are my work tasks. And then I have another one called like, basically like to do.

So I don't like looking at the 30 different things that I have on my plate. I want to be able to rip out a piece of paper and write down what do I want to do like now? Like what's next? I try to put it in the order that I want to get it done instead of just having, here's a menu of eight things for you to choose from. And of course what everyone goes to is, well, what can I just knock out real quick?

And that's very often not the thing that is most important. So I try to do like, number one is the thing I want to get done first. And then number two, and then number three, doesn't always happen that way, but at least it's like mentally, I know. And then underneath that, this is where we get start to get into some bad habits. Underneath that, I have a little line called tonight.

And the things that I think I'm not going to get done today, I but really want to get done by the end of the day, I move those over into the nighttime. And that's what I do in front of the TV at night. The problem is sometimes I will identify that as something important to do, but I want to get done by the time today's over. I put it down in the tonight bucket, I make myself feel better. Okay, don't feel guilty about that, you'll get it done tonight.

Then I get home at night and I eat dinner and I'm like, I would rather pluck my eyebrows one by one than do any work right now. And then it falls into the next day, then I feel shitty. How about you? How do you manage your tests?

Oh man. I mean, so for me mornings are definitely my most productive creative hours. I've said this before, feel like I am like 10 X more effective at anything I'm gonna do if I do it during my morning hours before lunch. And especially in the first two hours, like while I'm drinking my super strong espresso, like Americano coffee made at home, I'm on like hyper speed at that point.

Okay. Hell

yeah. And what I would love to do if I had This is where I feel like it's a little bit suboptimal, but I've gotten into a workflow. I would love to get into my deep work in the morning and hammer out the features or the big creative projects that I wanna ship before dinner. I would love to be doing those in the morning. The reality is those are now pushed into my afternoon because my afternoon now is when I'm alone in the business.

When I get into my computer first thing in the morning-

You have overlap.

What happens is there's Okay, so I'm gonna have an inbox full of tickets from my developers who are based in India. I'm the head of product. I see that as my primary role, but I'm also the head of marketing and I'm collaborating with both of those teams. And those teams are on product, it's me plus two developers in India. And in marketing, it's basically me and Claire working on stuff.

And then we have a VA and some writers who are in the mix. The first thing for me is checking out the tickets from the developers, seeing the progress that they've made overnight. And the reason why I want to get those, get to those first thing in the morning is A, they're really technical and I'm going deep on either checking their work or giving them feedback on it. But B, they are still online when I'm there at 8AM and they will be online for me up until around 10:30, 11AM.

That's too good of an opportunity.

So it's a golden opportunity for me to give them like a few final tweaks or, oh, I just tested this doesn't quite work. Let me give you that now around 08:30AM so that you can fix it before you finish your day in the next And two

you're there for another two hours for any feedback or questions. Yeah. Okay.

So it's too good of

an opportunity. You can't let that go.

So that's when I get some really good, like direct, like very fast question and response and feedback, usually through GitHub issues and Slack with my developers early morning. Then I also have some messages in my inbox from Claire. She's exactly opposite. She's in Australia. So she's making progress literally while I'm sleeping.

And I wanna get back to her before she starts her day, but at least I have the rest of my day to give her my feedback because she's not gonna start until later.

Okay. So no pressure on that side.

Yeah. Just this morning, we have a big new project that, so we're kicking off like a new community for coaches. Okay. Pretty soon. Interesting.

And so I did like a pretty deep dive zip message for her this morning and to kind of collaborate on the strategy on what's gonna be involved, how is this gonna be different? How are we gonna launch it and all this different stuff, right? And she has three or four different projects that she's working on. And there's some messages where I just see it and I give it a thumbs up or I just see that it's happening. I don't need to be involved, but they're like The thing with marketing in general, the different projects that we might ever be working on are either one of two things.

It's either running the engine that we already have up and running, You know? Like like for example, right now, we already have SEO content development, like articles being researched and briefed and then handed off to the writer and then edited and then published and then distributed. That whole process

is That's up like an ongoing set of projects.

It's- Week to week though, that's always happening. And we have writers, we have SEO strategists, we have Claire and myself, all giving input at different and the VA, all giving inputs into that process. That's up and running. But two months ago, we were creating that process. So two months ago, new thing was actually a big project to figure out who are we hiring for this and what is the process and what is the strategy that we're putting in place?

And so it was many more creative building hours back then. Now it's like that team is operating it. I'm popping in with a quick input on this or that, and that's going.

When it comes to creating like the beginning of a new project that will then either, you know, be one time or ongoing, do you work synchronously on that with Claire?

No, I mean, literally everything we do is asynchronous. So like, so for example, like I said, the articles, the SEO articles that was in creation mode two or three months ago, and now it's up and running. But now this community thing that we're, that we're gonna be launching at some point pretty soon, this is now in creation mode. So, so what that looks like is in Notion, I make a big outline of ideas and bullet points of what this is gonna be all about, how it's gonna be structured. And then I'll record a fifteen minute zip message video of me walking through these ideas.

I sent that off to Claire this morning. Meanwhile, Claire is in many other communities with coaches. So she has been on her own doing research into trends and what's interesting about these other communities, what's some voice of customer stuff that we can work into our value prop. So then she's gonna see my message in the next twelve hours. She's gonna come back to me with her thoughts and feedback and ideas to add and build on that.

I'm gonna digest that and come back to her early next week. And then we're gonna start to form it into to do lists and deadlines and deliverables. And all of that is asynchronous. And that's a combination of using Zip Message. We document everything in Notion.

And then we have Slack for like quick questions and stuff, but we don't do like project work in Slack.

We run very different companies. Yeah, it's kind of amazing that you could do that. I'm still amazed that we can run a software company remotely. That's like where I've gone. We really rely on those synchronous conversations in a lot of different ways to make difficult decisions, right?

It's like a, one of our difficult decisions coming up is which platform to build an integration for next.

Yep. So there's a- This is another area I want to talk about.

Which one, the communications or?

Well, integrations is an example of, so like we, I just shipped a ConvertKit integration for Zip Message. Soon working on integration with less annoying CRM, Tyler King's product. Did a thing with Transistor FM. I did a webinar for Pat Flynn. I did a webinar for these are small marketing slash integration projects that are short lived, but need to happen.

Guest article here or there, or or like get get interviewed over here. And like, these are little projects that come up and like quick wins. And I wanna make sure that like, I'm not missing out on these little opportunities. They have to keep coming, right? And that's been a challenge to like make sure that those still get time and resources.

So I don't know.

Okay. So we've had breakfast, we've gone to the gym, we get into work. Now, how about life? Somewhere around 4PM, I can't lie, I'm looking at the exit. That exit sign starting to blink a little brighter for me.

And I'm starting to think, what time do I want to meet up with my family? Do I like what's going on with the sports stuff? Who am I picking up? And I start to think about my personal life. I have that section in my, that yellow line piece of paper called tonight.

And I have that in the back of my mind. But once I have that down, I tuck it away, like emotionally. I don't think constantly about the work I have to do. I'm like, it's personal time. And I got my kids and I want to join my life.

This is where we are different.

So what do you do in that transition? So I don't leave the office at four but I'm starting to think, all right, what do I want to do before I leave the office, before I'm off the desk, right? Today I need to send out two offers to two people who I want them to get the offer for the job today, not Monday. So I'm doing that before I leave the desk. Then boom, boom, I'm out, I'm off into my personal life.

In the afternoon, so after lunch, after I do a dog walk, I'm back to work and it's like 2PM up until 06:30PM.

You go straight to 06:30.

That whole stretch, I mean, it's a little hard for me to even admit that I work that much, but like I do. And in the afternoon is when I'm basically trying to ship my number one priority for the day.

Because you don't have all lap. There's no conversations that you need to, like that's your time.

I mean, there's always interruptions. There's gonna be emails occasionally. Like this afternoon after this, I still have to do a research call that got rescheduled, but like, or I might be recording a different podcast episode or whatever it might be. But most days, and I really don't have that many calls. My calls these days are either research calls or podcast recordings.

Again, I don't do team calls. It's all asynchronous. So the afternoon is when I usually have that stretch of hours where I could sink into a big project. I'm like fiftyfifty on being successful with actually shipping the thing that I intend to ship Like that for example, like this week was a small project that I wanted to ship, which was an improvement to our onboarding helper bubbles that like pop up for new first time users. Like, hey, this is how to use message recorder, how to record your first message.

Right? Like pointing here, click this button and become an active user. Right? We've had that in place. I wanted to make some improvements to it, show it to more users, more strategically, all that.

I thought that that would be a one day project for me. It wasn't building from scratch. It was just improving it. I thought it would be a one day project. It turned out to be a four day project because of distractions that came up, you know?

Is that where like a lot of your stress comes from in terms of like those estimates and then feeling like you're falling behind because Yes.

And I mean, of the distractions are personal life. I mean, our Tesla got hit in the side and got a dent and I have to work with the insurance and the body shop and like they're only open during business hours, right? So I gotta interrupt my day on that. And you know, so like that shit happens. But you know, you were talking about that 04:00 moment.

From four up until like dinner time for me, that's when stress starts to set in because I'm like, I have to ship today because Okay,

so you feel pressure at the end of the day to finish Yeah, because five

for me, like you have that nighttime thing. For me, once dinner, once my family is calling me, like we're sitting down to dinner, for me, it's like pencils down, your day I is can't do anything else until tomorrow.

Okay. Well, you've shifted that, those hours that I do at night after the kids are in bed to the end of the afternoon. And I feel like I run out of stamina there. And a lot of that is directly related to the nature of the work that I enjoy most, which are these thirty minute calls. And it's multiple performances in a day and some of it's intense.

A podcast can be intense. Pitching investors is always intense. Pitching new people. And, you know, we had a very unfortunate resignation in the company. Our chief of staff decided, look, I think it made sense for her and for us.

So I'm very happy for her. And she'll still stay close to the company in like a consulting type of a role, but she's no longer full time. And she was doing a lot and she was doing a very good job of a lot of it. And this week I had to pick all that up at the same time as everything else. And so this week, I really felt like it was a series of sprints.

And by 04:00 I was like, I'm toast. I'm mentally toast. I can't talk anymore. I feel literally tired. And yeah, all the stuff we talked about before work, it all has an impact on it, right?

Because we don't have a house yet. We're not cooking home cooked meals the same way. And then you're not eating as well. And then I like to sleep on a really firm bed and anything other than a really firm bed really hurts.

Like a hotel that's like not ideal, that's not.

That's right. And I got the, you know, I got the right pillow for me and I got all the stuff that I don't have right now. So I'm not getting great sleep. So all of it's kind of combining to like, I still have felt great in my ability to step up into what's needed. And that feels great.

My goal was by the end of this month to get the full funnel in place to people at the front of house. And the two offers that we're making today are to a director of sales and to a customer success manager. That means we're done. We got the marketing, we got the sales, we got the two AEs, we got the success person. Like I did it.

And now I'm like collapsing toast. So that's what it feels like to me, like by the four, 04:30, I'm like, I'm out of here at 05:00 and it's personal time and I will come back around. It's funny in some ways in those moments in the evening, I can't tell. Sometimes I'm lying to myself and sometimes I've been very honest to myself. When I look at that task list and I say, does it really need to be done tonight?

Yeah, okay. This is what I wanna ask you about in your evening, because this is totally different for me. So after dinner, okay, let's go after dinner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What are we doing after that? Are we drinking? What's that routine like?

What's your substance abuse preference? Exactly. All right.

Substitute drinking for whatever you want.

For whatever. That's right. And that alarms means I have a sales call in fifteen minutes. Gotta go in five I

usually have like a beer with dinner. That's about it.

I have kind of really stopped having beers. Like right now I don't have anything in my fridge with alcohol because it makes me exhausted. It puts me to bed. So when I'm out socially and I'm getting like energy from being out and talking type of a thing, I can have a drink or two. In the evening, like with dinner, I am crashing in that case.

So I have stopped. My preference is a little teeny tiny edible after dinner. Helps me feel a little happier, a little lighter. It gives me more patience with the kids. I found that without it at like bath time, like telling your kid to get out of the bath for the eighteenth time, you can start to lose your patience and then you become the parent you don't want to become.

And if I have like a half of an edible, I laugh at it. And I'm like, this little person is laughing at me and controlling me with her will. And that's hysterical. And so it goes from impatience to like, just laughing. And like, well, this is so absurd and so funny and how lucky am I?

So I can more easily drift toward that gratitude and like a softer version. And then the kids go to bed and then my wife and I will sit down and we'll look at each other and we'll say, Oh my God, I can't believe we had three kids, but hey, we love them. And then we'll put something on TV. We won't talk to each other for thirty minutes. She'll look at her phone.

I'll look at my phone. We're just like, phew, like total unplug. And then I'll look at her and be like, what's my screen? And then we start to kind of like engage and talk and how's your day and like some banter. And then she usually puts on something that she wants to watch and I get into my email.

Okay, interesting.

And the thing I find is that I just get like this wave of energy. Sometimes I will dread it and I will look at my laptop and I'll go, I won't fucking touch you right now. But when I break the barrier and I start, I just like, I just get reenergized again.

So you get energy at night to go work on stuff

Only shift after I've started. Before I start and I'm looking at it, I'm like, I don't want to do anything. Why do I run my own business? Why am I not rich and retired? What am I doing?

Why did I start another checkout? It's like all those dark doubts. And then I open up the laptop and I go to Slack and I ping Rock. And I say, you psyched for your wedding this weekend? You know?

And then I'm going back.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So after dinner, we're hanging out with the kids, which is, you know, playing around, doing that kind of stuff. I'm probably watching the Mets game around that time.

And then we're going to bed and, I mean, kids are going to bed and then, you know, wife and I, we usually watch a show together. You know, we watch a lot of the popular shows, right? So we'll spend an hour plus on the couch just like, for me, like that's a really important part of my day actually is like getting And into shows, just relaxing, like taking it in, just being in consuming mode.

Yeah, it's creative consumption.

Creative consumption. Yeah. And do think like, whatever, like the storytelling and all that and the production, it's just fascinating.

Do you watch my cousin Dorit on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? We do. Oh, that's Shout out to the door. I like like, I mean, we've got the Lord of the Rings coming up.

Yeah. We're watching the dragon right now and all that. Yeah.

All right. So, okay.

So, so she finishes with like one show. After that, I probably continue on the couch with like YouTube and like,

you

know, just random shit.

Just Tik Evil Tik Tok.

Yeah. TikTok, I actually watch with my kids. So good. You know? Okay.

So now we're getting, for me, it's probably around ten, 10:30PM, you know, that's when I'm getting up into bed most nights. And I'll do some reading in bed. Actually, I usually like read news or a book at night.

You do Kindle, like in bed, fall asleep while it hits your face. Is that when you know it's time for bed? Yes. I fall right in the nose, like

it's on me. Yep, on my face for sure.

All the time.

That's most nights. I would say it's fewer and far between now, but I would say once every three weeks or so, I get a burst of energy around 11PM. Usually like I'm in the middle of a big feature build and I'll pull a night shift and I'll hop in here and I'll work from like eleven to two, 3AM.

Oh, wow.

On a code design project.

Okay. That's pretty hardcore.

But that's, you know, that's like once a month.

Right, right. But that happens. It is important though, that it happens sometimes. I'll have the same thing where I might just like, not go to bed at the same time. And then I do, I have found gold in those rabbit holes repeatedly.

I came up with the idea of a headless checkout in one of those rabbit holes.

Oh yeah. I love that night shift.

Yeah, is. It's fun.

It's awesome. Throw on some music and like, it's super quiet. There's nobody, you know, it's like, it's awesome. But I don't have the energy or the awakeness for it as much as I used to. But sometimes I'm just super motivated to just ship something and I do it, you know?

Yeah, and you're making a conscious decision that the next day will hurt.

Yeah, the next day I'll sleep a little bit later and whatever. It's worth Yeah, it, you

I hear you. One of my biggest problems is that my normal time is around midnight.

Does that that's affect your sleep at all? Like if you're thinking about emailing and talking to people, does that affect your sleep? Because that would affect me, I think.

I think it does, but I've never had real issues falling asleep. You know, I've had trouble with the quality of my sleep, which is why I use a CPAP machine, like an old overweight man.

Because I think that I sleep pretty well. I get a solid like eight plus hours every night. And I think a big part of that is because of the Netflix time. Like after dinner, I'm not thinking about, I mean, I'm always thinking about work a little bit. I'm not active on it.

So my mind is shut down by then.

Yeah. I don't know. Me, the transition is the three pages I read before the Kindle hits my face. That's really like, I might feel like I'm going a 100 miles an hour in my mind. And then I start reading word by word and a few pages in, I don't have that same hamster wheel spinning.

Yeah, real quick, like what about weekends? Is any work whatsoever getting done on Saturday or Sunday?

Sunday night, fiftyfifty. Yep. Depends on the week. These have been big weeks, man. Feel more motivated than I have in a really long time.

So I am kind of really into work right now. And when what's motivating me a lot is new people coming into the company. And it's like you sold these people on this exciting opportunity, and then they join the company, like you want them to be disappointed in what they actually see behind the curtain.

So

I am performing is what it feels like. I am going above and beyond, I'm making the Google Doc, and I'm doing things as soon as I promised them. That that's kind of the mode I'm in. So like Sundays, it's a great opportunity for people to show up on Monday morning, Oh, boss man's doing a whole bunch of shit over the weekend,

which I don't want to do. I'm like fiftyfifty on weekends, like half the time I'm completely just fun times, no work, don't even break it open for two days. I would say probably more times than not, I do sneak in a couple of hours because for us, my whole family, we're early risers. Like we'll get up at 7AM on a weekend. We literally go to the beach, like, for breakfast, like, at that 8AM.

Like, we're we're like weirdos like that, but it's awesome.

That's cool. That's cool. We'll have it.

It's great. Like, it's it's wide open and like, it's it's great. So so we usually do a big family.

Go to Campo, pay $50 for the car.

No, it's crazy. We have an amazing beach here up in Orange. Like it's just beautiful, it's free, you know. Well, it's free because we get there early enough before they actually open it. So we do a big family activity in the morning and then we have downtime.

Like by early afternoon, the kids are, they're tired out. And then from like one to like 3PM, there's some downtime. That's when I might hop in here and do a bit of work. And then we'll go out and do something for dinner.

Right, right. It's not really costing your family time. Yeah. It's like- One does whatever they want

for them. Like in the middle of our weekend day, like we have rest time in between big activities. So what, like, what else am I gonna do? I'll hack on the feature I've been working on, you know?

Cool. Look, I gotta boogie to this sales call.

Right, Those

deals, baby.

Go get it.

That was fun. We'll venture throughout the day.

Yeah, this was a fun one.

Anyone listening, you know, give us some give us some stuff. Critique, Yeah, critique suggestions, habits that you found that work.

All right. Later, folks.

Alright. Great to

see you.