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It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work with Jason Fried

everybody. What's up? It's Chase. Welcome to another episode of the show. That's right, The Chase Service Live show here on Creativelive. I hope you know the show by now. This is where I sit down with amazing humans and I do everything I can unpack their brains with the goal of helping you live your dreams and career and hobby and life. My goal today is to introduce you to a super fine human. Um, Jason Freed. You'll know him as the co founder and CEO of Base camp, which is a amazing piece of software that my photo studio use used for. Ah, long time for more than a decade. He's also the best selling author of Now I think three books, too, I've read before remote and rework. Rework Really, uh, jogged my brain in a way that was super refreshing. And I'm very excited to have him on the show today to talk about his new book. It does not have to be crazy at work. My guest is again Mr Jason Freed. Hey, what's up? Yes, I've had the good fortune saying Now, with your business partner, David Han...

nah Mayer Hansen is fun to sit down with you guys. Fiery. Andi have a lot of mutual friends. I've been looking forward to this day for a long time, so welcome. Thank you for having me here. Yeah. Congrats on the book. Thank you. Were proud of it. I love it. I think I was. See, I think I saw some early designs or David was talking about you guys and, like, this is just brilliant. Perhaps. Look how that turned out. Yeah, it was. The idea was like we wanted the cover to say it all. What's the book about? Just look at the cover and you'll know, and that's kind of the idea. And our names are on the cover to did notice that a hard thing to kind of get done with the publishers because they don't really. That's an unusual thing for them. Yeah, I'm comfortable with that idea. Well, speaking of unusual and uncomfortable and not like what everybody else does, it seems to me having followed you for now, probably close to 15 years, that that is part of your Emma. You do things differently. You do it to the beat your own drum. Um I se Teoh our audience here in the show. And professionally, Personally, even you can't stand out and fit in at the same time. So you might as well do your own thing. Yeah. Uh, how has that been a mantra for you? Because you've been doing it. But rework was a completely new thing for me. The idea of not crushing yourself at work is completely new. Especially antithetical to our culture. Yes. Is this Ah, vein in your life? Are you a contrary in? Probably, I guess. Technically. But I don't really set out to be. Yeah, I, um just kind of do what I think makes sense. Maybe my version of what makes sense is different than other people's version. It makes some sense fair. I also don't pay attention to a lot of things. I think that's another part of it. I think sometimes people are paying attention to too many things and they become so informed by everything else. Yeah, that you just think that's the only way to do things. So by being sort of willfully ignorant most of the time, you know, I can kind of, I guess, skip the influences that I probably don't want. I also stay away from like the for example in our industry were in the software business. Everyone's here in Silicon Valley for the most part. Yes, we're in Chicago, which helps us just stay away from that world. I think if I was out here and be easier to be lured into ever sucked into it, I gotta start stay away. So I think I probably have a lot of defense mechanisms that I'm not like, consciously aware of, but I think they help me stay fresh and original. Hopefully, yeah, they have clearly have helped you stand out. Let's go back if we can. Just a second to some of the previous books that I just mentioned. The 1st 1 was reworked, right? Rework came out. Actually, you did one. Before that we do. One called getting really. There's a self published book That's right, but rework was our biggest, like first publishing. Yeah, I have it. It's got and like, well, this one again. You guys were kind of sent this to me. It's dog eared like crazy already, but but rework looks like a tattered like a gift that you give to a puppy, and it just treads it because I had really consumed it a lot. But to me, that was the first exposure had had to your all's writing rather than on the blawg. And again, not it didn't. Never felt like it was contrarian as the objective, the end goal being to say something that was different than everyone else. But how do you or how have you programmed your body, your mind, your company, your ethos to think differently? You know, um, I think a big part of for us is again, like what? What actually makes sense. So, um, our company is relatively small in our industry. Of 55 people in the company, we could have many more. We don't want many more. We want a smaller company which is again different than the most most people needed. Sure, they want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And it's not that we want to be small because they're big. It's we want to be small because small works for us. Yeah, for the people, we have the kind of culture we want and for David and I running the business, we don't wanna deal with a bunch of people. I mean, it's just hard enough, you know? T get everything right with 55. So, um, so it's not like we're trying to be different. We're just trying to be what works for us. And I think that we have our company and perhaps Dave and I are pretty self aware about what we want. What we don't want were very clear about what we don't want. Yeah, In fact, we're more focused on what we don't want than what we want. It's like whatever is left over is actually what we want. Very careful about any of these things. Don't hail. Take this. Yes, basically. So eso size is important. Us not raising money is a big part of that. So, like, we were bootstrapped company. And because of that, we're able to do a lot of things that you can do If you raise money like we can leave money on the table. We can say no to customers. We can stay small. We cannot have to grow or fall the hockey stick pattern. You know, we can just do whatever we want essentially were truly independent. And I think that we value that more than almost anything else and How is that? Was this come from your childhood? Where did? Because it's different than most. Yeah, there's. And it's also different than what's celebrated. Which is one of the reasons I think you're amazing guests. An amazing person to follow. But it didn't. It doesn't seem like this is the path that you want. Doesn't seem like the natural path to me. Feel like the exception rather than the rule again, which is brilliant. But how was it, like, was it? Yeah, was it? You know, you're something your parents instilled in. You were you always, like, just Can you trace it back? I can probably think about it. Yeah. So I'm an only child. I don't know if there's anything to do with it, but I am that we have that income. All right. Very good. Okay, so So, um, I've always sort of just kind of done my own thing, you know, without the influence of brother Sister. Basically, I think that's part of it. My dad always told me, just never worked for anybody. That was like his thing. You always just told me. Never worked for anybody. He also said, never have a partner in a business which I do have but which has worked out great. But he told me not to have a partner. My grandfather was was an entrepreneur. He opened a grocery store business. It turned into something. So maybe it's in my blood a little bit, that sort of doing things my own way. But I think I also I worked in some companies when I was growing up that I think, even though I didn't realize at the time, really informed me, um, some small businesses that I thought the owner wasn't nice, but the manager was nice. I always flourished in environments where I was trusted and kind of didn't give a shit when people didn't trust me. I just did not care about them or their business at all. Trust had a lot to do with that. I think it's a lot of these Siris of sort of moments that really colored my outlook, although I didn't realize it when I was growing up on the connected outs, looking, looking backwards, right, so I think that if I have to connect those dots is probably a series of events, plus being an only child, my parents being very supportive of me and giving me a lot of room to roam and make a lot of mistakes and getting a lot of trouble when I was younger, Um, and learn from that and realize that independence and doing what you want is good. But there are limits to yourself in real troubles. You got, like, really understand what those limits are, and then you can flourish within that space and not to just do what everyone else does. And I think I saw this with my dad to my dad, worked for someone for a while and just was miserable time and then went off to work on his own. And I shouldn't. Here's Mr all the time, But he he talked about his boss and he didn't like the work in the whole thing. And then he went off on his own and he was a lot happier. And I think I saw that, too. I saw that happened, So it's probably these things you know altogether. Also, like I just never really was good at school, like was kind of doing other things that little businesses on the side. I would always just tinker and figure stuff out for myself found that I could do what I wanted. I could figure it out and make it work. So there's a handful of I think you just did a nice job of mapping that out. So there are a handful of those things that are every bit that you were in your sleep too. That you guys again. The pop culture movement right now is hustle. Yes. And if you're not doing 80 hours a week, you're not enough, right? Um, I'm really interested, I think in be, like culture of being enough. Like, right now, today you're worthy Just because you're here, um, inspirations from folks like Bernie Brown and others to talk about that we don't have to perform all these amazing tasks to be somehow worthy. It doesn't have to be crazy. At work. To me is a It's almost like a manifesto. An anti manifesto to the pop culture train. But this is the obvious question coming at you here. Nice and slow down the middle of the pipe. But why don't you want me to work hard? You know, I don't What if I want to work hard and surely I can you know, if I'm if I'm compelled to work hard, constraining how hard and willing to work is probably a bad thing, because I'm not gonna feel the joy and I'm gonna be slower. It's gonna take me longer to get to quote 10,000 hours. Yeah, sure. I'm just throwing all of the shit you've heard said about us, your books and your philosophy in the past in one question. Why? Why you hating on the hustlers? Yeah, Well, here's the thing. Right. Uh, hit this from a variety of angles. First of all, to me, hard work and ours are not the same thing, right? So people say, like, work hard, I can work hard and 40 hours, which is, like work. Basically 40 hour weeks. I can work hard for 40 hours. I don't need to work 80 to work hard. In fact, I think a lot of times people are spending a lot of times on things that don't matter a lot of time on things that don't matter, right. So they're hustling and they're busy. But if they cut out a lot of the ship that they're doing, they probably be getting just much stuff done and actually be able to go home and rest and get some perspective. This is the thing I think is missing when you work 80 hour weeks, which is, you know, 10 12 hours a day essentially can be more than 10 if it's seven days a week. But let's call 12. Whatever working the weekends, whatever it is, right. You know, you lack perspective because if you're always in it, you can't get out of it. And you've got to get out of it, to see and to think and to have your brain come up with different ideas that you couldn't come up with if you're looking at the work itself. Um, you need spacing perspective, need a different point of view. You need different experiences. I think at least, and I think that these things benefit people. If you want to be really good at what you do, I think getting away from it is actually the way to get better at it, cause then when you come back to it, you come back to it renewed, refreshed with new perspective versus being heads down all the time. I don't know if you've ever worked on something creatively were like 10 hours in neck. You're no good anymore. Yeah, I can't Totally. I'm cashed. I got to go and you go and you go back. You get you get some sleep. Hopefully next morning of a new idea. Yeah, they didn't have. You could not have brute force had that idea. No matter how many hours you put in a row, you've got to get space. Do you think space is really valuable? So what has to keep going? I was nothing. I was going to say about that, too. Is that the problem with the thing I hear? Sometimes people say, like what about if you're starting a brand new business, you need to put more hours into it. Maybe there's some truth to that. But you got to be careful because the things you do or the habits you form and you cannot not form habits. Basically, you're gonna form, right? If you're having machines, all humans were having machines. Exactly. And if we're if you're working, you know, 100 hour weeks or 80 hour weeks or 70 or whatever it is when you're getting started and you think that, like this is the way you do it, This is what you're gonna keep doing. But at some point, you're gonna do that anymore. Maybe when you're 21 you can do that. You have nothing else going on in your life. You're gonna at some point probably have a family or not have a family or wherever you gonna do. We gonna want to other things. You have other pursuits in life, and you're not gonna get a chance to experience those things. If you're just busting your ass constantly because you think that's all you can do is you don't work 80. I can't make it. Yeah, and that's just not fair. It's also not true because there's a lot of people who work really, really long who don't make it. So it's not about the hours, you know. What you do is talk about it is about luck. You know, we have toe all admit luck is a huge part of this huge for sure. Huge. Yeah, not not dimension where you were born. What time would gender what race? All of it with social economic status were born into all those things matter probably more than work. I think more than pretty much all of it. I mean, I was fortunate. I I was born in 1974 so I wanted to college from two through 96. In about 1995 the Internet became a thing kind of before, before that. Like it was a text based thing. I had an email address. Yeah, that time like everyone else. Right. Exactly. In the mid nineties, it became like this graphical thing where you could go to aware browser and look at website and and, um, I was fortunate to come around or come up at that time when no one knew what they were doing because it was brand new and I got to learn alongside everybody else. No one had an advantage, and I learned in the beginning, and so I've had a lot of time doing it Now. I've gotten good at it. If I was starting today, I wouldn't There's no chance I would be able to do what I've done, including our own business of our business one of business today. And I started another one tomorrow. I don't think I'd be anywhere near is successful ever is what we've done with base camp just because we've been doing for a long time. We brought their right place the right time. Luck was there were good at it. But you need more than that, too. Yeah. And so, um, anyway, I just don't think you can brute for some of the stuff. Yeah, that's really I think it's brilliant. And in a way, you've heard that probably heard the adage of, like, constraints drive creativity. There's that too. And if you just apply that same concept of constraints to time that you're gonna work on something, it's okay. I wanna work a reasonable schedule. I do notice that it forces me, for example, on the weekend or when I'm traveling or and I have to do something. What's the I forget the laws of Perrotta's law, whatever that you it's something expands to the time you work. Parkinson's law works expands to fill the time available. Yeah, which is so true, it's so true. And so, by setting some constraints, um, I think that's probably what you're really getting it right. Like those air constraints that you've said I'm gonna place under over my company or my particular day. Do you feel like there's a beautiful little line in the book and, uh, fear of missing out and what I hear often, especially in this town, were talking from San Francisco. I just came from downtown. All the startups are all over. The place of my home is writing between Twitter and new burns like you can't escape, right? Right. And there's literally, always something in the tech and entrepreneur seen happening tonight. You feel like you're missing out because your clock in 40 hours and no, no, I mean, I feel like I'm What's the opposite of missing out rich with? Yeah, I know you have everything about the things to do. I can do other things. I have no desire to spend all my waking hours in one thing. Um, I have hobbies. I have things I want to do, or I just want to sit and do nothing and not feel like I need to be doing something or showing up to something because other people are there. I just don't have never, ever had that. That's never been a part of my thing, which is like, I need to be there because they're there or this is where you're supposed to be. It's just not a thing for me. In fact, it drains me to have to be somewhere because like you're supposed to be at all. I don't like that in the book. Just Give Away. Here is, as they called Joe McComb, a joy of missing out joy missing out. Brilliant. Yeah, join Missy I. And that's something we believe in at work, Which is that, um, and that's kind of why it's in the book, which is that a lot of people today in a lot of businesses feel like they have to follow everything that's happening. It's have an organization. Yeah, so they back chat rooms open. They're following a dozen real time conversations all day long because if they miss that one thing that's going on, they're gonna miss something they think is important. Very few things that are actually important happened in any given day. Most of it is just work. It's boring. I mean, not like boring, like you hate it, but just like it's standard work. And that's what kind of work mostly is. Yeah, we don't need to turn work into it like a 24 hour news ticker where you're like following breaking stories at work all the time, right? There aren't breaking stories that working there shouldn't be right. How did we get there? Uh, how do technology ruined it for us? I think you actually believe that. I think the sort of the advent of real time communications, real time chat, primarily business at work, um, has caused more problems than it solved. And there's some good things about real time communication. But I think it's made it too easy to follow too many things at the same time. And it's sped up everything where you can't now think about something anymore because everything's on a conveyor belt and the conveyor belt is constrained by the screen that you have. And once the conversation scrolls up the screen like it's over. And so if you don't get your word really powerful, isn't it? Like there's a conveyor belt, it's it's it's actually become. In a way, we become factory workers again, in a sense, because in a conveyor belt in a factory setting like the thing slides by year at your station, you've got to put your thing on there before it goes by or you miss it, and that's what's happened At work now with communication is that communication is literally scrolling by one line at a time. And if you're not there when that thing is being discussed, you don't get your word and it's over. You can't put that word in two hours later because that's like two hours later is like, you know, 14 feet up in the sky. You know, on the conveyor belt, right? So So now people are forced to pay attention to everything all the time. And if you're paying attention, everything all the time, what do you have time to do your work? You don't basic? Yeah, so we're very careful about that. At base camp, we don't make decisions in real time. We make decisions in slow time where a synchronous primarily where we use chat and stuff in base camp has it built in. But we have primarily post long for messages in base camp, like a traditional message forum, like old school like message board, basically, and that basically says, Here's my idea, not one line of time, but one thought at a time. I want you to read it, and you could tell. I put time into it. So I want you to take the time and think about it and get back to me tomorrow or the next day. It's fine. There's no rush things. If it takes a few days to discuss something that's fine versus trying to rush everything. So we're discussing it in 15 minutes like there's no reason why that one rushing all the time. I don't get it. There's no reason for it. It's so powerful. Yeah, I think the the fear of missing out, I think, in part is you've crafted a really nice response that most of that stuff is just noise. Um and what? What? What do you say to the person who's listening or watching right now saying, Yeah, but my industry is moving quickly and my boss expects me. It's it's really nice to be able tow Listen to you talk about this great company that you built, but I got a boss and I got a you know, Ah, a team. And I've got all these things, none of which conform or allow me to try an experiment with this great idea you come up with with which means it doesn't have to be crazy at work. That's your work, right? So what about my work? So I will grant people this that it's very difficult, obviously, to be able to do some of these things if you don't have a power to implement some of these things, right? So some of these ideas air for in the book are for the business owner who's open minded and going. Maybe this isn't a healthy situation I'm creating for my people. Or maybe I'm not creating the best environment for the for them to do the brakes work like I expect the best work out of them. Well, if the environment is in great and how they gonna give that to me. So maybe some people at the top are going to see this and go, Okay, there's something I can do. Sometimes you're in the middle and you might manage a team. You have some stuff you can do there with a team, perhaps. Right. And then there's other times where you really don't have a lot of power except your own local space. You Maybe it's maybe it is you in one of the personal. Maybe just you and at that point like I will grant you the fact that some of these you can't probably go up your boss and go if he expects you to work 80 where she expects you work. 80 year can't go. I'm gonna work 40 like that's just not gonna probably work. That's probably not the right job for you. And you don't have. You have to figure out what are you in control of? What you're in control of right, Which is really important in life in general. Like what you have control over what don't have control over and the things you have control over you can maybe change. It might be that just you that you control your own atmosphere, your own will space. And then if you don't want other people to constantly interrupt you all day, maybe you shouldn't be interrupting them all day. And perhaps, you know, it's like you must be the change you wish to see in the world like that. Gandhi quote whoever said, which is like, if you don't like what's going on at work, and some of these things might pertain to and you wish people weren't interrupting you and you wish people weren't pushing you and which people weren't calling into more meetings and whatnot that maybe you shouldn't do those things and and you can begin to affect a little bit. Maybe one other person going out. That's cool. The chase doesn't bug me for a while, like he used to ask me all the time. Now he's finding out question or getting answers for himself. Maybe I won't bother him as much or interrupt him as much. And so you can kind of have some minor influence there, and that's the best you can do. But I think it's unreasonable. If your boss or the owner or your manager is out of their minds, you're not gonna be able to move them. Yeah, um, but there are things you can do, so I'll give you another example. Like something we often encourage people to do. They want to work at home. Um, it might be hard to say. Like I want to work at home, flat out like they're probably gonna get Yes, there. Yeah, but maybe you can Maybe you could say, Can you give me a shot to work one day a month at home, but Can I try that? At the very least. And there's a good chance we have a reasonable manager. Boss will let you do that. And if you do that and you show them that the world isn't ending and the businesses and falling apart and you're getting your work done, they're going to be like, Okay, maybe I'll give you two days. You know, maybe you can start to build up some successes, and it just takes a couple small steps like that to finally build some leverage. Because you don't have any leverage if your brand new and your power you don't have any leverage, right? So you gotta build a little bit here and there, and then eventually you can find the equilibrium. Like, what is the balance? It's reasonable for you and your business. Given the constraints. A grounder you mentioned trust earlier. And I think there is a big part of trust between a relationship. Ah ah, company and employer and employee. A boss. Ah, a a teammate. Is you in particular? Do anything, Teoh Foster that base camp? Yeah. Yeah. How do you grow? Trust if you're largely remote, Largely asynchronous. You know, I'm just I'm trying toe stand because right now there's people out there like I want everything that Jason has. I want to not have 80 hour weeks and packed schedules, and I don't want to be super busy and have yeah, overflowing inboxes and all this stuff. But, like, I'm trying to get to practicality like Sure, yeah, man. But you're just talking about this utopia. Let's get practical. Yeah. I mean, we are in some, like we are talking about our business in this book. These there are things, but it didn't start this way. We kind of figure out what works for us on what doesn't work for us. And there's other things in here. Why is it it's a hour weeks? We say we worked 40. Why isn't because, like, forties about right for us, made for someone else. It's 45 I'm not like, yeah, so strict in that forties around rough numbers. That's the idea, right? The trust thing is important, because I mean, first of all comes from a place of laziness. To be honest, I don't want I don't I don't want to be looking over everybody to work, cause I'm a little bit lazy. I don't want to have to do that. Like I want to trust people to do great work, right? And also, like, I just don't want to have to do everybody's works. I think sometimes when you're when you're on top, everybody, you're actually end up doing everybody's work for them. Like I don't want to do that. Yeah, First of all, David doesn't want to do that Second, like you hire great people. If you If you want great things out of them, you gotta give them room to do their work. Yeah, they're not gonna First, although not gonna stick around if you're on top of them all the time for sure. They're not gonna do great work. If you're looking over their shoulder all the time, who does? Nobody does. Um, you got to give people space and room and autonomy and trust. And, um, I think that's the only way to really my pain. It's the only way to get the best out of people. And it's the only way to actually build an organization that surprises you constantly, which is what I want. I want to be surprised a lot of business owners Don't they want to know everything that's going on? And they want everything to be just right. I don't care for that. I mean, I don't be surprised on the downside too often, it's okay to be surprised on the downside. Occasionally, I want to be surprised on the upside, because people are doing things. They have room to explore their creative. And they come up with something that we would have come upon with ourselves. I love that potential. Anyone, when you get to that, is by giving people space and stepping back and letting them do great work on their own. So brilliant. Now, how can How can this happen? Let's go tactical. I mean well, actually, going to interject one thing. How? Because we have a mutual friend, Toby. Yeah. If I Yeah, brilliant guy, really, and hardly loved those guys. Great business. Yeah. Great business. Yeah, I probably let us Shopify users listening and watching like, base camp. And you read. The reason I'm bringing it up is because you reference it in the book. Yes. Toby developed a thing called the trust battery, which is basically we'll let you. It's great. I mean, that was something that really when we heard that it made so much sense to us, we kind of had thought about. We kind of had the principles in mind, but we've never had a name for it. Sometimes he didn't name for something to really have it sink at way that words matter to humans. They totally dio and you got a label it so you can talk about it. So the trust battery the concept is, I think it's Shopify, the way he described his. Everybody who's hired comes in and just trust battery 50% basically, which is We mostly trust you. You're probably gonna be good, but you've got to earn some more, and you can also lose some, um, And so if you want more autonomy, more responsibility and more flexibility, you need to build up the trust battery, and that's done through personal relationships. It's done through ah, examples of doing good work. It's doing the right thing over and over, and you just build up your battery with people. The key, though, is that the battery and by the way, there's no like actual measure of the battery. It's a mental thing. It's like you just have a sense of what your batteries with somebody and batteries, air independent and relatives. So if we work together, we would have a battery between us. Or actually, I would have a battery about. You need to have a battery about me, but your battery might be different with somebody else. The organization. Which is why sometimes two people aren't getting along and you can't understand why you're like they're great people. I can't get along. And the problem is, is that their battery between each other's low? For some reason, they had a run in. Someone said they were gonna do something they didn't. Someone didn't deliver on what the promise, whatever it was. And so their battery is low. So it's a great lends toe look at personal relationships instead of a business and try to understand why some things work. Some things don't when you can't possibly understand why it's because everyone's got their own relative battery. So that's something that we thought about a lot, and we basically assume that people come in about 50% as well, and people's batteries low with somebody. You have to kind of figure out why and what's going on. You got to figure out how to build that up, because if you and I have a good relationship, it doesn't affect someone else was a bad one. Yeah, they need to have a good one with the other person, so you kind of have to recognize that it can only be repaired directly with individuals so you might facilitate some stuff with them or put them on projects together or not. Put them on projects together if they're rubbing the wrong way and figure out other ways to have some good experiences between them so they could build a battery back up again so they can trust each other again. Such a good. It's such a great I mean, Toby nailed that. It's it's really good, and it really And when you begin to look at it that way, a lot of things that didn't make sense in the organization begin to make sense. You know, of course, that they have a low battery between them and figure How do we fix it? Trust battery trust battery Bryant. It's great. So presumably you've thought a lot about how you want your company structured and run and we've talked about how trust is a really important aspect. Yeah. What else? What are some other really key things that you look for that you've built into your company? Just some of the ones that air. Maybe more important to you. Yeah. How do you think about it? Well, a lot of it is the things we don't want. Yeah, that's a great way of filtering. That's how we think about it primarily. So, um, we want to remain independent, fully, completely independent. Which means that we don't want to raise outside money. We don't have a board of directors, so we haven't raised outside money for the business. Full disclosure. We took some money from Jeff Bezos in 2006 but that wasn't for the business. So Jeff bought a small piece of my ownership and gave his ownership. That money went to David nine. Not to the business. We've always been 100% funded by customers and always will be got it. So we don't have any outside influence on the business. We don't have a board of directors. And those two things right there have a huge impact on the things we can do. um we don't want to sit in meetings all day, so we don't have a meetings. Heavy culture, which means that we right a lot of things down versus say them out loud. So we write, write long form and writing detailed passages so people can absorb everything on their own time versus having a meeting. We have to pull people off their work to sit in a room together, talk about something that has nothing to do with right now. But you're having the meeting right now. It's very inefficient, actually. Very inefficient way of doing it. So to do that, to facilitate that, we have to hire great writers so we don't hire people who can't write. Very, very, very important. That's actually probably number one hiring criteria after, like, can they do the work? Sure. Are they good at the job? Yeah, the thing. But the next thing is, can they right? If they can't, right, Well, we will not hire that. So do you do a test? A written communication test? They do the test for us essentially by submitting cover letters. We look at the cover letter first. We don't look at the resume. Don't care about previous experience. Don't care about where they went to school. Don't care about any of that stuff. We look at the cover letter and if they don't have one, resume gets tossed. All right. They have to be able to write tow us, saying, like Why they want this job, who they are, what's important them. Why is this? Was it this job? But not just any job? Or if it is any job to say that, too. But I want a bill to read it and you read the letter and you quickly can tell Like this person can write. This person can communicate. They can express themselves. They're clear minded. They're thoughtful. They're good at nuance or good, the subtleties that matter that separate them from somebody else. They know how to persuade. Um and persuasion is super important. Any line of business because you've got to sell. Not like Selda customer always, but selling an idea internally to your team, whatever it is, Right, So So um so the cover letter is fundamental for us. We're very, very careful about that. So that's the writing test. It's not a test, but it is very mean um so So have to hire a good writers so we can do some of the other things that we can do. If you weren't a good writer, you couldn't work in our company and we have to have more meetings. That's what we want. We don't want to have a lot of distance between ownership and the product or ownership in the customers. So we have a small company because if we had a big company, we have to have multiple layers of management. We don't want to have multiple layers of management cause things are always lost in translation as you go, and we just don't want that. So we don't do that. You know, a lot of it is driven by what we don't want to do. UM, way don't wanna have like for for a while we had four different products and to have four different products and maintain them at a high level would have to have more people, and we have toe work longer out. We didn't want to do that. So he said, like, let's not have those anymore. Let's either spin those off or like, kind of wind them down, and let's focus just on base camp. And so we didn't do what we're doing before we started not to do that anymore. Um, there's a whole bunch of the donuts and the don't sort order again. Whatever's left is what we do. Basically, yeah, it just at the end of the day, it's about like, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you're building a company, of course, but you're also building your own job, and it's a selfish way to look at it. But I'm comfortable with that right now, especially which is basically, where do I want to go to work every day? I want to do this job. Maybe for 2030 40 years. I don't know. We've done it for 20. Hopefully, we can do it for a lot longer, right? Still having fun, Still having fun, loving the love in the work, loving the people. It's great. So I want to keep doing this. So I want to build the best place for me to work selfishly, um, and I'm hoping that that my judgment is what other people would want out of a business as well. And so you end up just finding like minds who want to work in a place like you want to work similarly are similarly, We build base camp for ourselves, the product for ourselves, and just find customers who are like us or want to be like us versus trying to convince people who don't understand what we're doing to understand what we're doing. I'm not interested in convincing anybody of anything. Yeah, I mentioned putting us something out there that we think is great. That works well for us that we explain well, hopefully and clearly enough and show the benefits of. And if you one in great. If not, that's cool to. Another thing I'll say about a don't is the This comes down to a pricing model for our products. Um, almost everybody in the industry charges by the seat, so they charge per person. Big company. Bigger, bigger bill. Right? So it's something 100 bucks a person. Ah, year 10,000 people. Big numbers, right. Well, that has a material effect on the business, not just, of course, in the revenue which it can be beneficial for revenue. But what ends up happening is is that you end up just working for the people who pay the most. Then you end up having customers you can't afford to lose. Those are your words. Customers, you know, so nobody can pay us basically more than 99 bucks a month for base camp. I don't care if you have 10,000 people or three people. If the price is the exact same. It's 19 bucks a month flat period, no per person charges. And that forces us not to do what we don't want to do. We don't want tohave to service a few high paying customers because we don't want to have to lose those customers. So So you end up taking good care of them in you into becoming a consulting business, and I don't want to do that. So we make sure that nobody, we make sure, basically that we can afford to lose any customer. And in fact, we could afford to lose. Let's call it 25% of our customers any 25% at any time, and we'd be okay. You couldn't do that of some. Paid you a lot in some Pedro little because it was the wrong ones. You belong. You have the wrong percent, right? Balance the right. Screwed. So I'm a big fan of a business that looks like static, which is basically, if you think about an old TV static, right? Just all the dots are based on the same same size in the random. I think that's a good business versus a business. We have a couple of big circles and a bunch of small dots because those big circles air with the whole business is really about. And then you're just servicing a few customers. So so by not doing that, we can afford to do a bunch of other things that we want to do. So it's It's these collections of donuts that give us the dues. That's beautiful, great lens, I think a really easy, simple, logical follow up question, though. Yeah, is how do you decide those things? Because there's some. It seems like you have to have this inner compass and you strike me again. From what I've known from all of our mutual friends and what I've read, these things air their self evident to you, their obvious. They're intuitive there, and, you know, maybe I'm maybe putting some words in your mouth, but it just from where I'm sitting and I'm trying to put myself in the shoes and the ears and the eyes of people walking, listening like how she knows exactly what he wants. And it's actually easy to build something if you know what you want. But I'm a 23 year old designer who just went out on my own. I'm a freelancer. And how did you develop your internal compass? Your point of view, Your style of work? Overtime? I mean, it's modifies its first. That's the first, like, pressure valve right there. Like you don't have to know everything immediate. Hell, now, hell, no. I mean a lot of the stuff in the book. We figure out of the last five years because we've been trying and trying and trying stuff in something's working. Some things don't. Right. So you have course when you're right, a school or brand new or whatever. If you didn't go to school, doesn't matter. Whatever is like anything. Your brand new at it. You gotta practice to get good at it. Right. Um you know, no one expects you to step on stage. If you were the first time you ever played guitar and like play. No one ever expect that to be true, But people have that expectation of themselves. Sometimes when they started business that they've gotta have it all figured out. But you're on stage for the first time, Like your would be with the guitar. You're not gonna be any good, right? So you gotta, like, figure this out. The key, though, I think, is that you'll benefit yourself by going slowly. And a lot of people in business today think you need to go really fast. You go really fast, you skip over lessons and you don't learn them and tolls too late. So because we kept our business small for a long time, we always have been a small as you possibly can. We just grew within our means. We never got ahead of ourselves. We learned the lessons and we figured out what we were good at. What we weren't good at, um, think about like if you have a buffet of food and you just try to taste everything really fast, like you wouldn't really know what you liked, what you didn't cause all the flavors that blend together which, like, wouldn't be pleasurable. But if you had a week to sample all the food like slowly. You go. I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that. I don't like that. I don't like that. When you move slowly, give yourself a chance to think it over and to feel it really know what it is and to absorb it. It's the same with another food around you, like if you eat really fast, you don't know your full until it's kind of too late, if you would. Slowly, you don't eat as much because you you feel it. Your body takes some time to adjust to what you're eating. And, um, I think the same thing is true in business. So for us, been a matter of moving slowly questioning what we're doing, reflecting on what we're doing. We reflect a lot, but is that worth it? Was that that makes sense? It was this what we want to do again, when we want to do the same thing again and thinking another thing. I always use a little like, um, trick. Perhaps it's just like whenever you make a decision, I go. Will I be happy with this in a year and I don't know. But I think about that. I go. I know I'm making it about now, but why regret this decision? And I'm not always right about it. But I've gotten better at honing that instinct. And so that's another framework. Three's a lot. Well, I'd not be happy about this. In your case. It's really easy to make short term decisions that you think like for right now. Yeah, but you know, you're stuck with a lot of these decisions and, like, you know, we don't want to regret these things. I don't want to pile up regrets as I go or pile up things that I just wish I hadn't done. I don't want to do that. So I just think moving slowly is the way to do it. But it's hard for people. Yeah, because the expectation to get back to your point, like society and the entrepreneurial community, whatever is all about speed. Gary Vaynerchuk wants you to go real fast. Gary. He's running the show. Good friend Love, carry. Sure, I love Gary. We disagree, and probably 10% of things he's spot on on everything else, I think. But yeah, he's definitely a very different perspective on speed and hustle on growth and 24 7 If you're not working hard enough, some else you cannot work. You. I don't believe there's such a thing. Is out working anybody, Um because that's all about when you say when you talk about it that way, you're taking out of variable, which is does the work even matter at all? A lot of people can work hard and long and jump from one meeting to another one coast to another and go to this networking event. Go to this conference and, yeah, you're busy. You're playing the game. You're acting like like you're an entrepreneur, you're busy and you're doing it. But, like, are you really doing what matters? That's the real question. And so that's why I don't like the whole aspect of, like, working long and hard and all the time, because it doesn't, um, consider value and quality in that network, Gary would say, like Gary would agree. He would say, If you sitting here, you go. Totally. You gotta do what matters if you're not doing what matters. Your fucking idiot. Yeah, right. And he's right about that, too. But you don't hear that talked about enough. You just hear about like the hustle on the time in the hours because those are also things what I've learned in this and in a previous life where I was primarily a photographer. It's like you. It's like if you're not doing the thing someone else is and therefore they're getting better at your craft and everything's relative because I got to be faster than Bobby Orr, Sally or whatever and right to get the get the prize right. But it's just not true. It's not. I don't think it's true. I It's like I've come to realize that it can't be true. It can't be true because it's because the understanding would then be that if you just work hard enough, you will get all the work that's possible in the world. You can't do all the work anyway. There's so much work in so many clients in so many things that you can't possibly commanded all or whatever. So busy is sort of shows not really being effective, but it's it's more of a lack of priority, it seems right. Yeah, And do you think it? Yes, I agree. It really is. And, um, and the other. The other reality, I think, is that any given day, you only probably have a good couple hours, 34 hours, Max. It's really good work anyway. In your in you, you can't You're not really working an eight hour day or a 10 hour day or 12 hour day like on the thing. You're probably not, actually. So a lot of time is wasted, even in a short day apart. A lot of time is wasted on things that don't actually matter. There's so I think, so much. One other thing actually is a great. I want to say one thing about this because part of me doesn't like what I'm saying, because I don't think it's fair. Um, in that I shouldn't be giving a 23 year old advice because I'm 44. It's too far. Yeah, I'm too far removed like I don't think I should actually be. No one should listen to me about how to start a business. I have inserted business for 20 years. Okay, I can talk about how to run a business. I can talk about how toe build a profitable business and how to hire people on how to market, how to build products, to make decisions and because that's what I do every day. But I haven't started business for 20 years. I have been 23 for 20 years, so I kind of think advice has an expiration date. It certainly does. And if you're starting a business, you're probably better off talking to someone who just started 16 months ago. I don't care if it made it or they haven't heard They don't know yet. Doesn't matter. But they're much closer to the thing. And I think in our world, in the entrepreneurial world, especially, there's a lot of people dishing advice that haven't done the thing that ever write or they did it a long time ago, and I think you need to discount that. I think advice gets goes stale, has 1/2 life and it's pretty quick. Yeah, they're sips. It's surprising how much advice there is out in the world, and even I try and be free with giving it and open to getting it and actually aggressively seeking it. And what I've found is that what what it helps me do more than anything It's not like, Oh, you know, Freddie said, Hop on one leg and so I'm gonna go hop on one leg. It's just like no, Janine said, Hop on one leg Freddie said, You know, do the cha Cha, Gregory said. To do something else, and what I need to do is some, like I haven't thought about this, and it's really aggregating those opinions into something that works for you versus just like signing on wholesale for, like, work hours a week or whatever. You know. Yes, you should absorb like let's say you should listen to me and he should listen to Gary. Were poor opposites of that point on, right? And you should figure out what works for you. You know, it's not about what I say or what he says. Yeah, these air just points on the spectrum, basically, and I think you do need Teoh form a matrix and, like pay attention to and then you also need to do what you believe, and I think one of the things I have noticed, and I do remember when I was younger, although again, far removed from that is that a lot of people it's funny because a lot of people were younger are really confident. Sometimes, like they put off an air of confidence. But they're really not sure what to do most the time. And they're afraid to just go with their gut because they feel like they can't possibly know it yet. I think like when you're in college, you kind of feel it. But then you get out because then you're like the king of schooling like your you're like you've been to. This is the last year of school. You now know everything about figure out school system, time to leave, right. Then you leave and then you're into a professional world where your newbie complete newbie and so that confidence goes away and some people still have it. So people actually have over there over conference, which is bad, too. But I think people begin to second guess themselves like I don't know what to do. So I'm gonna look to those who have done it and just do what they do. Um, and I think the only if I was to throw some advice back to that time it would be Follow your gut, trust yourself and like you probably know more than anyone does about you. I'm a huge advocate of instincts. Yes, no. And yes, I'm getting is most look. I believe everyone's making apposite go anyway for the firm dinner. Everything. Yes, everything. So, like every business is pretty much held together with duct tape. People are figuring out as they go, they're making apposite go. You know, you have ideas and you have thoughts and you should have a perspective and whatever. But you're still making up. You go. And so the idea that this person or that person has it all If I just read their book, I will know what to do. And if I just they don't know either. We know what's worked for us. That's why you are so good about articulating that in your books were clear about very clear. This works, but I want to be very clear because some people would say we're preachy and see where it comes from. But really, we're just sharing our story like, you know, you know, passionate way. Hopefully and we believe it. We believe everything we're saying, but this will work for us in your environment and your time with your collection of people. It's gonna be different. You cannot replicate something. Yeah. So, um, was trusting your instincts Something that you had to learn. And you have some examples of where you went against your gut and I went badly. Um, I've always I think I've always been that way. Um, trusted You trusted? My God, I just feel like in most cases, no. Again. I am fortunate for variety reasons. My parents were very supportive. Two great parents, apparently still married. Like a lot of stability at home. They've always supported me. It's important to acknowledge they gave me. They gave me 5000 bucks when I got to college to get a computer, and that was like to get going. And like So they help me with that. Um and, um, you know, there's some things I had clearly, obviously, I'm I got in a lot of trouble when I was younger, and if I was someone else, I could have spent some time somewhere else. You know, things might not have been bit is rosy for me. So, like, I acknowledge all of that. But I think at the end of the day, I've always still trusted. My just trusted my gut. Just gone for because I feel like you might as well. If you're gonna fight against what you believe, it's not gonna have that happy life. I don't think so. Even if this is telling you to go this way, and this is talking to go this way like you should pay attention to those inputs. But if you're always doing what you don't want to do because someone else is telling you to where the data is telling whatever, like you're probably gonna be miserable unless you don't really know where to go. And if you don't know where to go, it all you don't have a point of you at all, then you probably will follow something else. And you could probably do well. Some people do well that way. I think unbalanced, though. If you spend your life to when other people tell you to do what other people say you should do, you're probably just not gonna be that satisfied at the end of the day. And I'd rather screw up. I'd rather not live up to my potential, whatever that means. Um, but do it my own way and I feel like I'm satisfied and I gave it a shot my own way. I feel like I'm satisfied that way. Otherwise, I would feel like they're the things I would have done differently. I don't want to feel that way. No, we have a business partner, any of other things, other like. Sometimes you have to compromise and you debate you butt heads and you figure it out right. You can't always do what you want to do. I'm not suggesting that's what you should always do, either. But I think for the most part you should probably trust your gut, your instinct. There's something in there. It's innate, and I think it's probably pretty smart. Do you have the same advice for so the audience that pays attention to the show? Largely entrepreneur solo preneurs Small design teams course they're still, it's basically evenly. 1/3 30 people are freelancers. 1/3 or FT's and 1/3 are split between people. Rondo like 1/5 6th career. People were just getting started so really interesting and pretty even curve across those areas of consideration. But let's just for a second take into account the individual solo printer entrepreneur starting a business on his or her own. And so a lot of what we were talking about, like Oh, your partners, your business, set your own rules and does all the same stuff apply to a new individual? Creators? Uh, first business. I think it's easier. Okay, here's the sort of something dirty secret. It's just like, No, no, I like calling. All right, let's call Terry in the dirt. Um, business only gets harder. It's the easiest business over. Being is your own business, which is you now. It might be hard because it's always hard, like getting your first giant is hard like, you know, of course, if you have nothing and you have to get that's challenging, but it only gets harder because you start adding people eight more responsibilities. You start anymore, people person needing someone else to help manage those people. Then you've got personalities, and you got politics internally. It just gets harder or social animals of their social trend. I get it right so and then, then then like you've got a bigger monthly payroll to cover, and then you probably end up getting office space, and then you've got rent and you know it doesn't get easier ever. So So, Ah, lot of the things about business. I think like the smaller you are, the pure it can be. And you can live up to a lot of these ideals that become harder actually, as you get bigger, because there's more pressure on those more influences. And there's more outside pressure and different forces pushing you in different directions that you don't have when no one's paying attention. Which is you when it's just you like when you talk to entrepreneurs, successful ones. I know a number of them who have done extremely well for themselves, and you ask him like, what was their best time? It was when those there were smaller. It's when they that have no wonder. Five people working out of my apartment remember? Um, I haven't talked to Joe in a long time, but from Airbnb, Joe has been in the show. Loved. Yeah, yeah, and I'm visited them early on when they were working out of I think his apartment or him or Brian department was me. Was their apartment. Yeah, I think it was actually, they were risky. Yeah, originally. And they're working here in San Francisco, and I was I was in town for a wedding and I wrote, Joe, I love what you guys were up to. Can we meet or ever? And he's like, Yeah, come on box, you pick me up in his pickup truck. I think it was and we drove, drove to his apartment. That's where they were. That's what Airbnb was there. And I bet, um, if you asked him today his like his favorite moments, I'm sure there's some amazing They built an amazing business, right? Obviously. But I bet there's some stuff that I loved it. We're in our apartment. And so so It's funny that as as as a business grows, it grows away from the moments everyone really loved. And then you end up having all this other shit gotta deal with all the time. So So it's like the good old days basically right, and we've decided to keep it just the good old days as best we possibly can. I mean, it's not like we used to. We used to be four people, three people for 55 now, but we're really trying to stay as close to the good old days we possibly can for as long as we possibly can versus jettison, though. Jettison nose and going off. I'm just growing so fast that you just are so detached from the good old days. I don't ever want to attach from those. I'm gonna run through a short list of things that you've thrown under the bus. Okay? Police. I'm not getting enough of the proverbial bus. A nice shortlist. It sounds like a lot, but I don't know many buses that air proverbs, but the Okay, So you've talked shit about ambition? Yeah. To some degree, we're ambitious in a different way. Okay, well, what is going to give me living a finalist? I'll just give you a list of three things. We go through regional ambition. Uh huh. Goals? Yes. Again. You like? Like literally throwing? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, quantity, I'll say, because you emphasize quality. So you're talking about like, Mawr people more? Yeah, Just as the theme. You're generally throwing quantity one no. 14 products. You want one? You don't want 100 people. You want 50 people, right? You don't want quantity? Want quality? Right. So is this Are these universal things that you've that as I'm saying them, Do you really unite against, uh, those three things? Yeah, and maybe there's others. But there's just a theme of those 33 and I think goals is especially interesting, But take each of these instruments. I love to talk about the goals one. So let's start with ambition, though. Okay? Yeah. I just think we have a different definition of it. I think that in our industry, you'd be considered ambitious if you're working crazy hours. If you've raised a bunch of money, if your goal is to dominate or destroy a competitors like dominated market, destroy computer conquer market share like there's all these things bellicose, warlike terms, Um, that's what ambition looks like. If you were to look at it from a far right, Um, who's gonna build the tallest office building? Who's gonna, you know, have the most employees like whatever it is, right. But that's not our definition for us. It's like, Do we enjoy going to work every day like we're ambitious there? I wanna have a great day every day. Yeah, um, I don't always have a great day, but that's that's my ambition. Is to make sure that my day is free to do great work and that everybody, our company, has a full free day to do great work. That's what we're ambitious about. Were ambitious about sharing our story and telling these stories and showing that there's an alternative to what we're railing against. So that's kind of another ambition is to share ideas, Um, and to make something great for our customers and for ourselves, like that's it, like it doesn't need to be bigger than that. Essentially, I think that that's just a different form of it, really. Gold is a great one, because at base camp we don't have basically have any goals we don't have. I'm gonna get all the acronyms wrong because we don't have them. KP eyes okay, Ours don't know what the other ones are. Um, we don't have any goals. We don't have financial goals other than to be profitable, which we've been for 20 years every year. But we don't have revenue goals or growth goals or any customer growth goals or any like number we're trying to hit. Um, just that's not what we do. We don't want to do that. We just want to do the best work we can. Isn't it? A goal? Uh, yeah, fine. I'll give you that. But it's like it's not really it's not a medical going to assume that you're like, OK, Jack, that covers everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, Like I look at goals as people set numbers and they try to achieve those and then when either do or you don't. And if you do, you send another one. It's like if you just do the best work you're capable of doing, like shouldn't be doing that anyway. Like, what is the goal have to do with you doing great work? You just try and do the best work you can. You're either gonna hit it or you're not if you don't. But if you don't try to hit every, you just intrinsically want to do great work. That's enough. I think that's what we've always believed hiding. Rally a team, then, for someone who is the leader of a small team or even a big team, given the space to do great work, and they're they're intrinsically motivated by the work itself. I'm proud of the work that they're doing versus the statistic. I mean, if you look at like a cabinetmaker, do they need goals to be proud of the big thing they built, taken, finish the thing, do the joints to state whatever and sit back and look at it. Go. That's great work. I'm proud of that. They can look at it closing. I'm proud of that work. You know, we didn't do this just quite roll. I'll do that better next time. Whatever it might be. You don't need to measure everything to be proud of it. You just be proud of the work and be part of the people you're working with and be part of the interaction between the people and all the things. Work is so much more than hitting that. That number, it's about like, What was that experience like that? I enjoy working on this project. Was it fun? Was it enjoyable day? I learned something new. It's that kind of stuff. I think that really matters. Human stuff. Yeah, and one of you know, um, I mention this t Tim on his show about about this thing. This this moment I had where I was. I don't remember exactly Numbers. I think I was running, I run. I don't run as much as I used to, but I run, jog. Whatever. And I remember there was a while back I was trying to hit some number that was, like, six minute mile or the hell was And like, you go out. And I did, like a 609 or something. And I was I remember feeling like, upset for a second that I didn't hit the six. And there's, like, Why does that matter? Did I enjoy the run? Like, Did I go out and have a good run? Yeah. Um am I, like, feel like I worked out? Yeah. Um did I get some fresh air? Yeah. All the things I got from it were the value. The nine seconds didn't matter at all. Why would it matter? Why should it matter? Why should I leave that moment? Getting like I didn't do what I set out to do. I didn't achieve the goal that I made up for myself that I just made that There's no reason I had to run a six. Maybe I should have been said it is 609 or six away. Like why don't pick six like Why this all arbitrary for the most part. So it's a few experiences like that, plus just a recognition that, like whenever we set a goal, it's numbers based. It's sort of discounts. All the other things that were the real value is, and so that's what we don't believe in goals. Um, And then the last one was what was here was a lot of like, You're not seeking quantity quantity. Yeah, or sort of. I guess maybe it's it be filed, filed under ambition. I was looking for just read. It's like less people less Yeah, less number of products. Less. It's easier. Yeah. So getting back to the laziness in a sentence like it's easier to do that. Um, I think also, um ah, lot of things that are about quantity and size. Our ego. It's all you go. Um, and I've learned to check that as much as I possibly can. We all have it still, of course. But just to be aware that, like, why? Why is it that I want to hit this number? Is it so I can tell people about it? And if I tell people about it, like, why am I doing that? Is it just a puff me up? And I'll still do that from time to time and I'll catch myself. Go on Twitter, like we sold this money books is like, Why am I? Why am I saying those things? And some of it is like cause I'm proud of it. But a lot of times it's because of something else that sits deeper. That's not healthy. Um, and so of course, we all have ego. You can't probably get rid of it, but it is sort of the enemy is what Ryan Holiday Road and and it just it's a force that you need to be careful about. So I think a lot of the numbers chasing a lot of the puffing, all that stuff is really body. You go. We just tried to remove as much as we can. Have you done a bunch of personal work to be able to work through that? Or is this like a thing that your parents taught you going back to you being an only child and deciding that you we're becoming aware that you knew what you wanted and what you didn't and these were things that were, uh, earthly. I don't know. Um, I don't know where it came from. Become more aware of it recently, I guess, Um uh, reading Ryan's book was important for me. Although I felt it was kind of one of these books where you read it and like, Oh, yeah, I've kind of felt this way. But I didn't really understand why. That's what a good book does, right? Told it codifies there or puts in a word, something even feeling totally. Which is, like, the thing with Toby and the trust batter. Yeah, we kind of thought about that, but didn't know what to call it, right? So I think that was part of it. Um um, I feel like a lot of the ego victories I've ever had have been very shallow in very temporary, and it just doesn't feel worth it to put all that energy into something that's so shallow and temporary. Basically. And I still have more work to do in this area, of course, but it's something I'm paying more attention to, um, lately, especially lately. And I don't I don't really know why then, like a few things gotten, read some of Ryan's books. Got a bit in the stoicism, gotten some of the things that are really kind of clarifying some of these things for me. And maybe it's just maturity is. Well, you know, I think probably 10 years ago, I would have been ready for some of these things. Maybe I wasn't quite there yet. Um, so, yeah, I just also just a general observation. I just see a lot of people were ego driven, and they end up miserable because you can never really quench it. You can ever fill that thing. You can never, ever get it out of the way. And if so, if that's what you're trying to fill up, If that's the thing you're trying to fill up, you're never gonna get there. And you're just gonna be chasing, like, these false things. And I don't want to do that either. Yeah. You know, I think you've done a great job articulating your personal compass. You just lets it a few, Um, I guess, Influences. Let's pull on that thread just a little bit. Yeah. Other other influences, like, ah, Scandinavian design or yes, or uh, or, uh, you know? Sure. Um you mentioned architecture? Sure. Architecture. The Dalai Lama. You have You got a couple of quotes here? Yeah. quotes out, and that's what What? What are just some, like, survey and then Jason Fried's mindscape. And what are some? What are some influences? Where What has helped shape your view of the world? Sure. All throughout a variety of random things. Yeah, this is This is what I'm hoping. Yeah, Um, so I've always been a big fan of architecture. Um, I love walking into buildings and getting a feel for getting a feel for how they make you feel in space. I've always liked space, So I've started architecture for a long time. Informally, Formally. Informally, I don't I would never be able to put up with school. Teoh study formally. Brutal. Yeah, a brutal on that was not good at that stuff, But, um, I've always looked at I like materials like toe look like I'm curious, like, first thing I'm like, wrought iron. Is this road higher? And this is a look at the would like What is it like, highs? It I've always been curious about how how things joined together. Um, quality of something how it feels, how it ages. I like to look at things and how they age. That's how I actually judge quality on things. So a lot of modern architecture, for example, true modern, today's modern architecture. I don't think it's really good, because doesn't look good in five years, the way like a lot of buildings are white like there's a sort of trend to make white buildings. But then you get, like, rust stains that come down because they used like, uh, didn't use a stainless steel screw on the roof, you know, and like So you get like, they don't look good as they get older and you look at things like old buildings, brick, stone, wood. These things just agent look better and better over time. So I like to pay attention of those kind of details and things. Um, I, um I, uh, loved nature, love just taking walks. Um, I love looking very closely in nature. Um, I think that example flowers, plants, specifically flowers. I like to go look at Florida. I think people are was looking through design annuals to find, like color combinations, at work or shapes, or like ideas like look at a flower, it's You can't beat it, you know. And if you look really close, you can start to see how everything's like they have. You know that shapes repeat, and there's just some real beauty and how that's how it's how it's structured and how the colors always bleed together. This is very rare that you have, like sharp colors that hit you tend to Grady, eight, into each other. I always found that to be interesting and just how the the nature is the best design solution. Like if you look at nature like these things have been perfected for millions of years. Like this, Leaf is the best leaf it's ever been. Is optimized ever right? And so people were looking towards other software product, like in the software world. I never wanna look at software to get inspiration. I don't like it. Leaves only get planted like a tree zone like a buildings. I wanna look at furniture or look at other things. They're designed that have been considered and thoughtful, thought through from a different perspective, because if you just look at software for in this offer business, you look at software, you're gonna end up making what everyone else is making everything we make. We try to make from a unique point of view which is based on other things and not what everyone else is doing. Probably because I don't think again, like I don't want to chase that. I don't want to do what other people are doing cause I don't Then I don't really understand why I'm doing it. I'm just doing cause every else is doing it. That's part of it. Too bad reason, Yeah, but so architecture, design, materials, nature. I have some land up in Wisconsin that I've been restoring overtime, which has been a really fun project, a 10 year project almost so far. Taking this land back to the way it was supposed to be before was farmed and Tilden sort of invasive species have come in. So I'm doing prayer restoration and some stuff which is really fun to watch, very slow process. And that's something that's really inspiring me. It's like it takes 10 years. Teoh, get some of this basic stuff done like you would come and look at the land and be like, Yeah, okay. And I'd be like you don't even understand what's happened here in 10 years. Like, let me take you through. And that's really fun for me. Um, what else? Some. The thing is, frankly, when it comes to business, I'm way more inspired by the local corner grocery store than I am by Amazon or Apple or any of these companies. In fact, I'm jealous of the small businesses, real small businesses. I've got a friend who owns a grocery store down the street for me, and he knows his customers by name. We have a base camp of over 100,000 people who pay for base camp cos I'll never know their names. I were to scale where I can't actually know our customers, our customers, ultimately our numbers and data. And and I mean, I know some of them, but I would love to build our own a business where someone walk in the door and go, Hey, Jim, Hey, Joan, you know, and just get to know them and know where they are. And so I admire those kinds of businesses, and I think about how can we be more like them? We can't really, But are there ways we can be more like them s o. I just I don't think it's a good idea to look to your own industry and look up. I think it's good to look at other industries and actually look at different kinds of businesses. They're smaller and get to the real pure side of what business really is all about, which is good product. Treating people well, returns once called when they call you, you know, knowing someone's name, that kind of basic, fundamental stuff like your grandparents would would do if they had a shop, that kind of thing. What drives you crazy way wasting time like I cannot stand. Luckily, I don't We don't have sort of meetings anymore. But when I was in the client services business, you know, and like doing client work and have to go to meetings like they don't want me to drive over and talk about this thing that literally we could talk about on the phone in five minutes and I'd have to like, go over there and commute and go there and sit there and we talked for an hour one of only five minutes worth of stuff. But you're there, so you keep going. That's one example of wasting time. Um, but, um, processes that don't have toe happen. Time that doesn't do. Spent on those kinds of things. Um, traffic, traffic, traffic, Teoh time. I know I know bad place for that, but traffic to me is one of those things. Course, like, man is this. I mean, yeah, you could listen to an audiobook or podcast or something, but it feels like a waste of time to be doing that in that setting. Um, um, do you think I would say in business? It drives me a little bit crazy, I would say is how our industry specifically holds up businesses that are actually terrible fundamental businesses as huge successes that people try to follow. Take uber, for example. Um, for a variety of reasons, I'm not a fan of theirs. I do still use their products Sometimes, though. Um, but, um, they just lost another $1,000,000,000 last quarter. I think so. They're just they hemorrhaging money and they're gonna go. I p o. And some people get rich, but it's a shooting business. And but people look at that and go like I want to be the next uber off gonna be the next you want to be the next $1,000,000, loser of this business. Like I don't understand why, Um, bad business is great ideas, Totally. But bad businesses are being held up as the model businesses. I think that's really unfortunate and really irresponsible of sort of the industry large to celebrate that kind of stuff. I think there is this a big, like Cold War culture of lemmings for a culture of attention. Attention goes, but you know, some of it gets attracted, and that breeds more. And that's why I kind of started off with thinking joyously and joyfully of you all you and your partner David and base camp in what you built in the books as a little bit of a contrary and culture. But not it doesn't seem like it's in and of itself, like contrarian ism for contrarian ism sake, right? It's really more like No, no, we've actually thought about it. We don't want to run a business like uber. Yeah, yeah. What I want to know. What do we value? We value freedom, Independence authority over our own domain. A lot of I think that's part of why I was so excited having on the show. And I was gonna, you know, if you could give some advice. Yeah. Put this to the positives. Like framing it as a negative and contrary. Yeah, it's a really powerful tool of the way you personally have applied it. So give some advice for the folks knowing that we've got all sorts of different walks of people creators, entrepreneurs listening, try and give some advice to them to help them think more like you. The first thing is, um I would say, um do whatever you can to practice getting good at saying no, which is really hard. When your brand new you come into a new company, you can't be the no person you know. You start a new business. It's hard to be the no person you want to take all the business you can get. I get all of that but somehow find a way to practise saying no, because no is the only word that will ever protect your time and attention. That's all you've got and everyone wants a piece of it. And everyone's a piece of mawr and more, more, more people want pieces of it. Technology wants a piece of it. Are the people want a piece of it? And if you don't have any of that left for yourself, you're never going to do what you want to do. You're never gonna build to think the way you want to think and act the way you want to act because your time is now owned by everyone else. I'm not being I feel like I'm failing on the question of two degrees and not being totally practical. I don't have. There's no silver bullet clap, you know, snap your fingers, clap your hands. Way to be good at this. But what I've noticed here's one like more practical yeah, client services. You have a lot of people who watch this, who are designers for shock refers. That sort of right and something I hear from them all the time is you're lucky because you have a I'm saying you I mean, they're saying to me, you're lucky because you have a product business. I have to answer to clients and client calls me 11 Tonight I have to answer the phone. I say, Fuck, no, you do not. That's a place to practice. Just because someone pays you does not mean they own you. It certainly does not mean they own your nights and weekends or any of that kind of stuff. And the people think that their clients actually expect that from people what they typically don't you give it to them by answering the call 11 o'clock at night or by getting back to them an email a 30. You're giving them permission to ask that again. And then you set the tone so practical. Basic thing is, and this happens all the time. But I know this is a practical one for all you kids are way. We're going to that, Um um is that if if it's late at night, if it's 9 30 10 whatever it ISS right, Um, and one of your clients writes you and they're demanding something or asking for something like Just don't respond and get back to the next morning and see what happens. Most likely, it will be fine if they go. Hey, you know what the hell Why don't you get back to me? Said, Because it was 10 and it's either family time. I'm sleeping or I'm reading or I'm watching. It's whatever it's my time. Like I'll get back to the next morning first thing in the morning. I'll get back to you. You're my top priority in the morning for my when my day starts. You probably won't have to do that, though. You probably just find the people are cool with it and you just imagine that they were not. And so a lot of the stuff is about you setting the tone and you said in the direction for a relationship professional rations relationship with other people, especially clients. So that would be the one practical thing I would say is Do not answer humility. And I went to the next morning It's gonna be OK. That'll build your confidence. And that's one way you can begin to start saying no and getting comfortable saying no and realizing that no is a very reasonable answer. In many cases, you might think it's not, but it actually is, and that's the best way to build a moat around your time and attention, which is all you've got. It was a bit circular, but that's no. They end up not to me. I think it all plays together nicely, so there's a, um, there's a voice inside our head that often works against us. I know that voice that creates a lot of stories. That's basically my question is, yeah, so do you have this voice? Have you trained it? If we're just habits, what are some of the things that you've done to either unlearn these bad habits? Or rather, if you want to put it in the positive, to train yourself to feel good about ignoring the client email at 10 PM or whatever, what do they? How do you train your own habits? I think the key is is first. I don't think you can unlearned over something. You have to transition into something so big part of is not being disappointed if you screw up again, because if you like, if you know, if you're like I'm not going to do this any more than you do it again, you're upset like that's unreasonable on your putting unreasonable demands in yourself. So I think it's about knowing that any sort of transition between one course of action and another is going to take time, and it's going to be smooth. Transition might be some bumps along the way but that you just have to set a slightly different course and no is gonna take some time to get there. That's the only thing that I've found works for me. Cold turkey is just a very difficult thing to do for people. I don't think it's really successful pattern for most. Some people are really good at being. I will never do this again, and they're great at that. I don't think it's reasonable in this study for most people. So I think as you're transitioning, be extremely easy on yourself because you can talk yourself out of the transition really quickly, then bounced back to the bad habit. So I think that's the thing I've figured out how to do. Um, it's just to be, be fair and kind of myself as I'm changing. Otherwise, it's not so good. Anything else you do specifically for self care being kind yourself sleep is important, although like I have a new baby was had a baby two months. Thank you very much. Weeks, three weeks old. You look great for having an eight week old. How about your don't feel well. I feel tired right now, to be honest, but thank you very much. My wife is she's in during a little more of it right now, especially in the early that we have a four year old to. So we've sort of been through this once. But of course, in the first few months, it's really difficult on the mother feeding and whole thing. Right? Um but, um, we're doing okay right now, but sleep It is the most important thing. And there's a great book. Why we sleep. I don't know if you've read that. I just saw it in your feed. Wonderful. Highly recommend. It's really enjoyable and interesting smart guy, but can write a book in a really approachable way because I'm not a scientist, but that's scientific, wonderful book. But sleep is the one thing that affects everything. So you gotta exercise. You got to eat well on stuff, but you could actually eat like shit for a week, and you kind of be all right. You can skip exercise for a week, and you kind of beer, right? If you get a few bad nights of sleep, you're like everything in your body is trash like healthwise your bad. Your temper's bad. People know that you haven't slept well. Cognition is down on missions down. Can't remember things. Um, you're not nice. You know, all these things so sleeps really important. So I try to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep right now a night, um, usually like to get a little bit more than eight. But right now is just not quite possible that with the kids, but okay, I'll get back to that, Um, get extra few days a week. I'm not like crazy about it. Like I'm not. I don't I don't do like, you know, ultramarine. No. Now I'll do a couple mile jog here and there. Um, I will my workout the trainer a few days a week. I go for long walks, I'll do stuff, got got a rowing machine, got a bike, that kind of stuff, you know, move your body, move. You gotta move. You just feel like I think you've got to feel like things were circulating, you know? But I'm not a big fan of like, um, the boot camp be style workouts where you're tired because you've got a life too. And if you if you try. If you like burning your energy by nine AM early in the morning. The gym. It's very hard to live your day out, so I'm actually more of a fan of working on a way where you you end up having more energy at the end of the workout than you came in with versus, like, burning, all often sweating yourself wet and then you're like, exhausted like that doesn't really work for me at least. So got eat well, exercise and sleep, but sleep. It's so, so critical. And also the other thing is perspective. So getting away from the thing that you love like I love toe work. I love the work that we're doing, And, um, I want to be able to come back to it every day, excited versus exhausted or never get away from it. Then you never get to see it again. There's there's something that's nice about if you're always in it, you just can't see it. You're too close to it. You need to build a back away. So that's another thing. I'd say those four things perspective is really a key thing. Brilliant. Yeah, what about, um, your specific personal habits in the morning or evening. Is there anything you do? Because sleep at the reason I'm asking with higher, deeper is because I was a terrible sleeper for the 1st 38 years of my life. Yeah, terrible hair. Like I could hear somebody and wake up. I get. Here's a man jogging past my house outside my house, like, freakish level of awareness while sleeping, and it was just not not great. So I shifted gears and did a bunch of stuff. So that's why I want to go one level deeper. Yeah. And you started doing a little bit with fitness. But what about sleep? Are the things that you do in particular to drive Sleep? Yes. Um, I've been learning more about this, um, really important. So I used to kind of work out at the end of the day. I just tend to have a little more energy at the end of the day, but that's not really that great. If you go to sleep, I have to go to sleep early now, like by nine. Otherwise, because my son gets up at, like, 5 30 which means you get a Yes. So I've got to go to sleep earlier so I can't work out at, like 7 because that's too close to be so So Mark says in earlier in the day. Zampese Key. Um, I try to go hours between meals. You doing the intermittent fasting or like, time restricted eating? I don't know. It depends who you talk to. Some people like That's not a fast it's time or whatever but time. So like I eat. So you dinner and only breakfast for about 15 hours. 15 to 6 to 14 to 16 basically usually 15 ish. That's really been very interesting. And talk more about that. Yeah, um, and I've done and I try not to look at a screen like there's light in your room, but, like look at a screen for a good 90 minutes before I go to bed. Although I'm not always good at that, the most challenging it shows you how addictive and dangerous these devices actually are. Um, I'm consciously trying not to eye, so grab reach for it. So so exercise. I try also not to go to sleep within like three hours of eating dinner. I don't eat dinner earlier so I've sometimes. So some of those things have really made a big difference in Detroit. Enough. We're allowed to talk about products that Yeah, some called it or a ring? Yeah. Oh, wow. You are. Even with that product, I just saw their their next. Okay? Yeah, yeah, I just have one of sizing kit on my dad. Yes. Okay. Awesome. So I started using that recently. I these other things in the past 10. It's a You are a No. Oh, you are a ou all right. I've used other things in the past which have worked as well. Well, also sleep tracker, sleep, tracking things. But what I like about the ring is that, um um So when I travel like there's other devices I've used that, like, go under your bed or under your mattress. But that only works if you're sleeping in your own bed. And I'm not. Sometimes I'm not. Or sometimes, like now. Well, since we have this baby sometimes will sleep in different beds, depending on the sound like so that doesn't really work for me right now, So this ring is great. Throw on your finger and a tractor sleeping quite accurate. from our underscored would have read. Yeah, and it's been very enlightening. I can tell now, like certain foods I eat around dinner time affect my sleep. Actually, when I exercise definitely affects my sleep tonight when I, uh, five screens definitely affects my sleep. So now I have some feedback, a feedback mechanism in which to make better decisions and see the impact. And it's not always direct. Sometimes you just have a shooting night, or sometimes you're a great night, even though you did something wrong. But you can see trends and you can start to finally pick up on. Yet you know what? If I do this like, it's definitely affecting my sleep. So I've been I've been doing that a lot, which has really been helping quite a bit. And, um, there's also a bit of a placebo. Or maybe it's on placebo. I guess it probably wouldn't be, but there's a bit of a placebo when you look at your sleep information in the morning. Go. Should I had a good night's sleep? Actually, do feel better? Yeah, I really dio and maybe it's because I did have a good night's sleep, but it's like extra multiplying. I wonder if war takes that into consideration? I don't know. Interesting speaking in devices. Do you wanna get blisters? Shift gears? Yeah, sure. Or that. That ring is phenomenal. Kevin Rose, a friend of ours, is also very, very passionate about, Um, So you track your sleep working out all that kind of stuff. We talked before the camera started rolling about technology I wanted. Go back to it. You mentioned screens. Um, how does it negatively affect? How do screens negatively effect you in your world In your health, your in the business of creating things that are on screens today during. Okay, so this is good is when we get to qualify. Yeah. So actually, there's a feature in base. Camp three called Work Can Wait, which allows each individual employee anyone who's the base camp to set their own work hours in the product. And outside those work hours, base camp cannot send u any notifications or any emails or anything. So, um, minor set from 95. So 501 base camp is essentially holding my calls. He's like an old old parlance, basically, and I will not get a single notification of base came until next morning. So that's like our little tiny role in the world is to, like, try to create some work life separation there. Yeah. Um, these devices, I think, are extremely dangerous because they're just hitting your dopamine receptors or whatever. I don't know the science, but you have dopamine constantly, right picking this thing. I'm picking this thing on picking this thing up there. Dick. Highly addictive. They reward addictive behavior. Um, I found them to be also a gateway for negative information to get into your brain. Um, I think that, um, if you I found that Twitter specifically, um, Twitter specifically like if you're even friends that you follow, there's just a lot of bitching on Twitter, and there's a lot of negativity on Twitter and some of its negativity might agree with. So that's negative. You may not agree with, but I still just don't even want even if I agree with X, I don't want I don't want to get enraged about stuff. I don't want this thing to make me pissed off, and it does a lot of the time, and I have been really working on not paying attention to that and hiding. People are muting people that are posting anything. That's that's not all, like, uplifting or anything. You know, um um And so I think that this is a way unfortunately for negativity to get in your brain and to get you upset about things. And I don't want to be that way. Um, I also this one of the reasons I don't really follow the news. I used to follow the news. I used to be like a news junkie. I just like I don't pay attention to the news at all anymore. Yeah, and you still get it. You get you get it because you can not get it and pick up your phone. But also, like nothing. I shouldn't say nothing. Almost nothing really matters right now. So I hear about it the next day. I read the paper. Yes, funny out. I was at a hotel and the like, Would you like a newspaper? And I was like, Yeah, I will, actually. This time I'll take the newspapers like USA today to do that like I don't know what doesn't matter in your time, supporter. So I get the paper and read the paper in the morning like this is the best fucking format for news ever. Because it's everything I kind of really want to know or need to know essentially once a day. That's enough. It summarizes what happened yesterday and like that's enough. That's the rate cadence. I think for news like maybe once a day, maybe even every few days, maybe once a weeks, probably enough that everything is breaking news 24 7 Everything's hot story like none of this shit is hot story that matters right now. Um, unless there's like a natural disaster, what a different story like you're in there, you're in the path of a hurricane. Do you want to know that a lot of other things can wait? So I'm more a fan of things that can wait right now. Um and so, um, anyway, I think that these devices are polluting us in a lot of ways, and I think it's really unfortunate, and I think it's I think the time of reckoning is coming. It seemed. People's attitudes return a shift in turn, and I think looking attack, Look at Apple like with screen time monitoring how much time you're on each other category. I use that. Yeah. And allowing you to turn things off after a certain amount of time. Yeah, you got another. They have the data, for sure. And if the data is saying that we got to give these people control over their own sort of how much impact our devices have on them that's not on accident. They typically products want you to use them more. That is, their mechanism in life is to engage you. Course. And if someone like Apple is already sort of curbing that there's they don't do that on accident. No, right. Yeah. We're sort of riffing on this little bit earlier of this idea. Like I was thinking, like with cigarettes. Um, like that. I wouldn't be surprised if if social media in general is eventually Sina's the next cigarette that we look back on this and go Wow, This was incredibly unhealthy. For, like, kids, for adults, for everybody, for our brains, for developments, for our egos, for all these things. What is the dough? What has 100 dopamine hits a day due for some, It's gonna where your brain out has to be. We're not built for that right? Something is gonna happen. And this is the first generation that's had daily hits like that, and it will be for decades. Something's gonna go wrong at some point, but you think about like Philip Morris. Um, they knew cigarettes were bad and they withheld that science. And that's what people really got pissed off about. In the end, it wasn't The people made a personal choice to smoke cigarettes. It was that the company's knew they were bad and didn't tell you basically, And you kind of wonder in some ways, if these technology companies air beginning to heed that call and go, you know, we should be getting in there are we know, like you said, they have the data. We know this stuff is probably not good for you, even just for sleep, like sleep effects, every system in your body and they have everywhere. It's called now a night night shift or whatever. Yeah, on the Mac and the phone. It's good shit. I think it's great that that these things exist, but it's kind of also like you could almost cynically say that this is awaited to guard against the liability that we know this is bad. We're giving you tools to prevent it. Like you wouldn't imagine a cigarette maker ever. Making a cigarette packet would only dispense three a day. But that's kind of what Apple and I don't know if Group if Android has the same stuff, probably does, is kind of doing. They're saying, like we're giving you the tools that you can over And it was a button on the bottom and let you over and over right, Because that's freedom. You can do whatever you want because freedom, yeah, but at some point, like you know, they have, like haptic feedback on the screen. People have, like, electric shock extend for 15 minutes. Don't do that. I think you have to pay for that. But anyway, I think that I think that you're right, that they have the data they know and he's definitely affecting us, and we're gonna see what the effects are. A number of years. I think it's too early, but people are beginning to start to notice. Yeah, and I think the general pushback against two against companies like Facebook and these other companies where they're saying like on, and this is probably in that negative. Yeah, I know it's cool to get together with your eye school friends or stay in touch with long lost relatives like there's definitely value in that. Sure, sure, but net negative with because of everything else. And I think people are starting Wake up to that. It's half. So that's those are a couple things there that we think are weird over this offer. Frustrated? Let's forget script like yet or something you love. Yeah. Um, would it just again Wild Bill feel free to cover any domain or something you love? I love seeing. It's funny. There's this book, um, got, can't Member was called. Not once. If I could remember. It's a book on two of my think on Russian folk, like full conventions and Eastern European ones where they this This person went to these thes, I guess, these small Russian towns, where people didn't have much during communism specifically, but they needed things like they need to shovel, but they couldn't afford a shovel. There's no shovels at the store, and so they would take like a stick. An old coffee can and, like, make a shove a lot of it and um without I love those two books because there's this this catalogue of these in super super clever inventions. What I'm getting out there. I love ingenuity. I love when I see people solve a problem in a clever way. That's the simplest possible way to solve. The problem is, there's there's like you could brute force some solutions to things that it doesn't seems interesting when people have very little and they solve really club clever creative problems. That's something. Whenever I see that always makes me smile whenever it doesn't matter what it is, that's the kind of stuff I really dig. I love things. They're just built well. Toe last. So one of my weird hobbies is I collect vintage watches and this is actually a new watches is not old, but I mostly older stuff because they work forever and they built to last forever, essentially as long as someone oil's it and cleans it once every decade. Essentially, it will last forever, and that's an amazing thing to make enemies that I can put a watch on that years old, and it works just fine and nothing we make today not nothing. Most of things we made today will not last anywhere near that long because we don't live in that kind of world anymore. Devices we use are extinct essentially in a few years. A lot of things we make today or disposable there. They're meant to be disposable. There's a ton of waste around that. So I love running into things that go like this is well made. It's gonna last. It's worth paying for. So I love whenever it could be furniture. It could be a piece of clothing. It could be, Ah, home. It could be anything. So I love that kind of stuff. I also love looking at things that things that I could never do. That's the kind of stuff I love the most like, like like, not like Some rugs you look at that are like hand nodded like I looked at some of these Turkish rugs like, you know, and to think that someone hand nodded that design, and I don't know how long it took, but it took forever. I couldn't I actually couldn't do that, and I'm so I'm so thoroughly impressed by that kind of stuff. So I love that kind of just blows me away. Like what? Amazing pursuit and patients and artistic ability and all those things that that kind of so that, like, kind of a combination of things always gets me, um, simple, like just again being out in nature and just seeing just seeing the inventions of nature. I just love that. It's funny, cause, like, there's nothing in nature I don't like and there's a lot of things you can say that you don't like about other things, but it's hard to let go out in nature and glad like that. So true, you know, just everything is just it just right. It's just right. And, um, seeing that sing natural systems work is really fascinating to me in any way I could go on and on, but there's a lot of things I like. I also like really well written sentences, so I just love sent in precision you're after. There's a great book there, like called on Writing. Well, I think, is that the title of it and it's got a terrible cover has like a CD on it. It's like I don't understand the cover, but it's it's It's not. I'm started revising prose, by the way, on Reading Wells, another good book about writing, revising pros. And this guy talks about how to write sentences, and he just squeezes all the fat out of them but doesn't make them sterile. And I think that's the real art. How do you, like, really compress a sentence and be concise, but also let it flower, you know, And there's something really beautiful about really well written sentences. So I love, like whenever I read something like, That's a good line. All right, here's something I watching movies. That's a great line. I love lines. You know, Um, I don't think there's more things, but you're all beautiful. How would you have some resource is for other people. You listed a couple of books. You're a couple of things that you're just are are just like Jason Freed. Go twos. Um, that was fine. Answer or I got Yeah, when people ask me, that's what I'm not saying. Like superlative, like, what's your favorite? But I hate being asked those questions because, like, I'm on the spot on, I don't know, I have a favorite thing right now. Um, I, um I think for me it's it's This is not like what I recommend specifically, but it's kind of a direction which is find something that sort of parallel to what you do and get into that. So that's what I've always found to be enlightening. So, for example, I'm in t technically graphic design software design, But I like architect. I pay attention more to architecture in furniture design, and that kind of stuff were just close enough to what I dio where I can draw some lessons from it. But im not, but its new and different. And I haven't have to use a different part of my brain to think about why it's good wines. Not so. I think that's one thing like, it's a general go to like, What do you kind of do? And maybe if you're cook and you're like, you're really deep into Italian food, like getting a Spanish from for a while, just like it's still cooking? Yeah, and learn, you know, that kind of thing. Adjacent areas of now, Jason. Areas of knowledge. Yeah, I think that's something I would recommend people get into. Um, I would also just say take more walks without a device and just look up. It was like looking. I feel we're gonna have these, like, really strong. Next in the future, we'll actually be able to look up, you know, because, like, everyone, is this always looking down like big eyes and hunched over and neck? Yeah, something like that. They leered thing, right, Kelly, And look, just walk around, get out in the woods, walk around, look, look around That kind of stuff, which is not it's not. The cool thing is, I know in some areas that's harder to do, but it's accessible some level for most people, and it doesn't cost anything, you know, just to go take a walk easily into some woods. That's amazing. How refreshing that it really is. Um, so, yeah, I'm gonna try and bring this back to work, okay? So see if you can do that, I do love, but to me, that's the real core message that the show has been about for 10 years now, which is areas of influence outside. That's why the show is developed, in fact, because I wanted to learn from other people who are outside my area of expertise to bring them in and to be able to be inspired. What not So are there influences outside? Your very clear of saying this is how we do it? Yeah. Are there other places that are at work are inspiring to you? Like do you look it? Other companies? Yeah, their companies are other cultures. Or or you're very careful. I think that's part you could do. A good job of making such bold statements is like What I'm saying here is not for everybody, but it works for us, right in line with the questions about your outside inspirations and now bringing this back toe work. Are there other models that you look to for, like, brilliance and work style? Yeah. I mean, I admire any organization of any kind that works. Um, that's sustainable. So, um so But I'll give you something specific. Actually, that's that's very broad. Not very helpful. Um, one of the guys who inspired David Nye a lot early on was this guy named Ricardo Semler, and you should try and get him on your show. Wow. He's greats from Brazil. And, um, he wrote this book called Maverick, which was a book about his business. He inherited this business from his father. It's a big like It's a Brazilian company. Big industrial company. They make like oil pumps for oil tankers. A big, huge, completely different from our world industry industry. Like hard into heavy industry stuff, Right? He got this business from his father because that's how it works in Brazil's handed down. He gets this business. I feel like I remember it. This book is a while. It's been pried 15 20 years since I read the book or years or something. But remember he said that something about like, you got this big rule book they started looking through. The book is like, I don't understand any of this. None of this makes sense to me. We're going to throw this out. I've inherited this business, but I'm gonna do it my own way. I'm gonna go talk to people like, how should we run this thing? And what we do here, what were the things we should do is different. And he came up with a vastly different way of running a business in a very traditional country in a very traditional industry. So he did things like, um, we don't do this But, um, everyone's salary is out in the open. Everyone can see whatever they make, and they can give themselves raises. You give yourself a raise because it's public. So if you're gonna give yourself a raise and everyone's gonna know what you're giving yourself, like, there's some self regulation there because you're not gonna. And also, if you don't live up to your new salary like you could lose your job, so but it's about like, what do you think you're worth? And why don't you prove it? Yeah, and I thought that was We haven't done that, but that's really interesting. Um, he would he would let their employees hire managers. Typically, Manager would hire employees, but the employees that get to hire their own man it's really like some of the stuff has been adopted in other places, but it still very rare. And like 15 years ago or so, it was very, very where, um, the factory floor where they made this stuff can be rearranged by the people making, making the stuff. They can paint things any color they want. They can move machines around any way. They want it set like a foreman's job to say This is how it has to be. Um, they, uh he was very early about, like, working reasonable work hours. Um, his whole feeling was like, if work can take you way from life 3 30 in the afternoon on Sunday for a call like Why can't you go see a movie 3 30 afternoon on Monday? Like why you're supposed to be at work like it's got to be equal? Um, so he's very big into that, um, more time with his name. His name is Ricardo Semler, and the book is called Maverick Here. Another book called I Think Like um, I can't some of them about seven day weekend or something. But there's another book out with similar titles. It's not I'm not sure you look up his name. Ricardo Semler and Maverick highly recommend reading that book. He's also the cool thing about him is he's taking these ideas and brought into education in Brazil. Eso is open schools around a very different method of education rather than like a very traditional classroom lecture style teacher thing sitting behind desks and made it very participatory. And apparently it's been understood, stood at least back then it was doing very well. I don't know how I was doing now or what he's doing, but really fascinating guy doing a lot of inspiration from him, saying like, you just don't have to do things the way everyone else does and find the thing that works for you. And just cause no one else has done it doesn't mean it doesn't work. Yeah, just because everyone is doing it this way doesn't mean it's working either. They're just doing it this way. Um, which is why the same thing about like, um, people work as we start talking about the beginning, like working long are working hard, doesn't mean you're working Well, it just means you're working hard and working. Long doesn't have any correlation with actually the output about your producing the quality. So for a similar there, So he's wonderful. Anybody else and people like I mean, this is such a cliche Boring answer. But like, uh, Warren Buffett Charlie Munger. Yeah. Um, I'm just so admire those guys. Um I mean, it's hard not to, I suppose, but would I admire about them Is their their fundamental understanding of what matters and what doesn't um, there they're focused on value, their rejection of trends in favor of just what sound. Um, and they're like Charlie Munger is just like a quote machine. He's just, so, so, so thoughtful and so smart. He's like 92 still still there. Nothing is like Berkshire Hathaway, the company, which is a massive company. I believe they have something like 25 or 30 employees. That's it, give or take a five or 10. But like small company, the company's a runner large. But this group, that man that runs that that that owns the company's is actually quite small. And so I take a lot of inspiration from that to that. They can do that with a small crew and that they've chosen to do with a small crew. I love those guys. They're one of a kind. Are the two of a kind against? And but it's also like that, the sort of the end of an era, because they're both eighties and nineties now. But I really respect admire them, and I love to read all. Like Warren Buffett's letters to his shareholders. Brilliant, must read or must read for anybody. If you're listening right now. And you haven't, uh, ever read one of those letters? You should just go search the Internet right now, and everyone must read mustard there. So good. And they're not only like, they're just it's a great pros. It's clear minded writing. Um, I could see how you just love it so good. It's so good. And I didn't like you don't have to care about business. It has nothing to do with business like money. So good, so good. So I love that Bezos has been running really good. Cheryl Drillers to he's clearly inspired by them. Yeah, I like. I like reading his reading his stuff as well. So Ah, a couple of days, those things to into rapids that we talked about. He talks about being wildly misunderstood for long periods of time. Do you feel like that's what's happening right now that you're you've got it right with business and on the way toe work because you really were really right about work? Um, and it's just your being people misunderstanding. You saw a lot of books and you have a lot of fans and customers, Sure, but for pop culture, they're gonna come around. At some point you're gonna be on the right side, and I think this could get worse before it gets better. OK, I think it's some point it's going to turn, and it's interesting that there is. There is a trend. I mean, by the way, this is primarily an American problem. Yeah, um, in Germany, they primarily working 40 hour weeks and do amazing work. Scandinavian countries work France. I believe they're cutting their back. 34 32 now 32 now. And some people in America, like I used to feel this way like, Well, they know. But look what we've built and what they've done. Yeah, but they're they're happier, so funny and taking and taking August off for, like, 500 years now. We're like, I don't wanna work so much in August. It's really nice to have more time exact all of my Internet tech friends trying to figure out how to work less in August. There you go, big in France. I was like, put my feet up totally. And like, there's more to life and work, you know, that's they figured out, right? So, um, so I do think I think in time. More and more of these ideas well, well, sort of ripen up for other people, but I think it might be a while. I think it's gonna get worse for a while, disagree and commit. Yeah, another Bezos quote. That was a Bezos thing, which is something we've practiced as well. But again didn't really the name for which is this idea that base camp decisions are not made by consensus or by voting. People will gather around, We'll talk about it and people will have input. But then somebody makes the decision and use it like product donor or whoever's in charge. Whoever's in charge of that thing, um, it doesn't matter. Like what rancor, role or any of that stuff is acquired was in charge of that thing because we depends on the project. But there's always one person whose job it is to make a decision and consider. And then it's everyone's his job to either agree and commit or disagree and commit, disagree and commit, going like I don't agree, but I'm in because you gotta get We gotta get you gotta get line, then do do the work has something else might come down the road where someone else disagrees with you and you're gonna count on them. So but the amount of effort that's required to get everyone to agree on something is often not well spent. You're better off, of course, listening, having a vigorous debate and then going okay here that we're gonna dio and then going. So that's that's the idea committing David and I do this with each other occasionally, like we'll be battling and it's like, You know what, David, you want this one more than I do. So like, I don't think it's the right decision, but let's do it. I'm cool with that. And it's kind of like two friends going out for lunch like you got this when I get the next one, like, you don't know how it all evens out, but it kind of evens out in the end. It's sort of similar to that as well. I think you and David are doing a good job. You're you're writing about working away, that nobody else is inspirational and meaningful, and I just went and tried to buy a few other books to give give his gifts and they were sold out so, yeah, tell me with that to get the more more confident more copies of a chance to be, Really? It worked. Our publisher under printed the book, so stand back to you like they didn't think you're gonna be is popular is interesting. I mean, I'm happy to talk about it. Um, it was weird because, um, we got a big advance. And so when you get a big advance, you'd expect that they need to sell a lot of books to make the money back and that they would expect that it's gonna be a popular book. And they didn't print enough. And it wasn't like we sold, Okay? They put about 14,000 copies rework, though, which was done almost 10 years ago. They printed 35,000 copies, and for some reason, they printed 14,000 for the Okay, fine, whatever. Somebody disagreed, and yeah, fine. Whatever. Right. But the thing that was bad about it was that we couldn't get a reprint for about a month. That's what. So the momentum, like, sold out on Amazon in five days. Yeah, thousands of copies. And then out of stock, like shipping to 4 weeks that sucked, but they just print another, I think 15,000 or something. So they're back in stock and Amazon and all the booksellers now. So you just telling them on the shelves again? There's just a little blip, right? Little blip? It sucked because, like is kind of took the momentum out of it for a little bit. But the book is back in stock everywhere, all right. I love giving game getting audio, but by the way, is it's a great way you get that. I love giving books as gifts, and I've been a big giver of rework for on. Thank you very on. It doesn't have to be crazy. Work is a new gift. So thank you. Thank you so much for writing it. You think being a pioneer in future work and, Ramon, all the things that you've called out here and thanks for me to get it was really fun. Thanks for having me really appreciate it. And for the folks at home again. Here's one more Look at the book. Pick up a copy. Um, chases been Jason and thanks. Have a great day. Hold with you tomorrow. Thank you.