How To Find REAL Meaning In Your Work (With Alex Greifeld). transcript

sort of wondered if you were having an online existential crisis but I'm kind of glad to hear that it was actually uh it was actually like for the sake of external facing content what what was the piece for future Commerce that you were writing um it's evolved a lot and it's actually only 75% finished but they're they're doing a a published Journal like a paper journal and I really wanted to try to get something in there if I could um and the concept has evolved at least twice it's made dramatic pivots at least twice since we started so I can't even tell like if I tell you what it is it might be different when it's actually published yeah okay all right so just look out for you and future Commerce and uh yeah that's awesome yeah so yeah right so what what have you so when you say you've been thinking about this for a couple years like what when what is this that you've been thinking about um well it's really come from two places so I started um I started my consultancy in 2022 right after my first daughter was born and up until that point I'd been working you know in an office I'd been living in the New York metro area and going into an office every day and that was it you know that was like the the rhythm of my life and then all of a sudden um we moved down to Florida my husband travels a fair bit for work and it was you know it was me and my daughter and at that point it was like um part-time nanny so I was just like completely uh immersed into this new situation where I didn't really know anyone and um honestly I was just spending a lot of time either alone or on Zoom like a lot of my my closest connections with people were through Twitter and zoom and um that's part of it the the other part is just I keep hearing so much about uh younger people like people who are just entering the workforce now or who are in high school feeling this pervasive sense of loneliness even though they are like physically surrounded by other people and it's not something that I want my own children to experience so I've started to to try to dig into it a little bit more and think about like what I can do to try to set the course for them so that hopefully that they're not feeling that way when they got to high school there's so much there when you so when you talk about the atomization of work in relation to this are you and maybe maybe I'm making a connection you're not making but are you referring to the way that like work becomes this one little siloed part of your life that isn't that isn't actually going to generate community in a meaningful way because I mean what you just described is interesting and and I really relate to the notion of like being on Zoom a lot but that is really different than both human presence in general like in person but also just like you know even though you're talking about things with people you like most times like most times my zoom calls are with people I like and this work but it's just not Community you know in the same way yeah yeah that's definitely part of it it's I think work whether you work in person or or remotely it's just consumed so much of everyone's time and mental bandwidth that it um you you don't have time for spontaneous Community Building or you know you you get to this place where you feel like you don't have time for things that you can't assign a dollar value to um like I remember when I was young and broke and living in New York like in my very early 20s before I met my husband I would just go out on the weekends and like walk around and I had friends working at different restaurants and stores in the neighborhood where I lived you know you just like spontaneously run into people and it was really nice um and those weren't the the strongest social bonds but I feel like that kind of um spontaneous unplanned Community socialization without like an agenda behind it is is just so rare um and and it's definitely part of why people are are feeling so lonely yeah do the so that that there's another thing there maybe maybe a place that we can sit for a second I think about I think I think this is probably a well I mean people are expressing this loneliness Factor all over the place right this is like a really known thing I mean I've even seen stuff from researchers saying like the predictor of longevity at this point like if you're going to talk about longevity is like deep friendships essentially like that that's like a stronger predictor of your longevity than um I don't know this literature well so I could be misquoting it but like uh that it's a stronger predictor of longevity than almost any like traditional Health Factor basically like if you think of it relative to sleep or muscle mass or or you know obesity or something like that like basically that like it's the thing that does this and of course probably reinforces some other things so it is a fascinating thing because it's this major thing and it's much broader than us but I do think you and I inhabiting the space of D Toc land specifically D Toc entrepreneurs there is the entrepreneurial thing and I certainly feel what you're saying is that you like I mean like right now you and I are talking I and and it's producing content or whatever right Al that's not it's not really like the point of this right but like I we could hang up this I could work I could finish my day at 5:00 and I could I absolutely could spend the next few hours after that working more to generate more money and it would probably create more money for myself right like if I if I did that instead of went and like hung out with my kids and my wife or whatever it is he' probably do that and so that temptation is so ever present and and once you know once you do the math on this sort of thing it's like wait a minute I mean what is my what is my dollars per hour that I'm saying no to to like hang out with my friends or hang out with my kids and wife you know and that becomes like a ter like a you know tyrannical calculation you know what I mean like it's just so yeah it's a really a what you're speaking to I think this combination of loneliness with like the entrepreneurial work for yourself like thing is a real thing uh that does make it so that work becomes all consuming I think yeah and even it happens to people who are are not Entre entrepreneurs I I think ironically maybe now so so my last full-time role before I started my Consulting practice was at a a very big company which was a complex highly Matrix organization where people had a lot of meetings and I was looking and kind of getting a view into my boss's day and their calendar and like they started taking meetings at 8:00 a.m. and didn't finish until 700 p.m. like consistently so where and then they were they were getting work done whatever like work product they had to produce and and I knew that like I didn't want that I knew I wanted to have a kid um I you know I didn't want to spend the entire day at work and then see my kid like tuck them in at night um now that I'm I'm working as a consultant there is definitely that protected time um but I'm I'm constantly like fighting the urge like you said to you know the kids go to bed my husband's traveling am I going to zone out am I going to chill out or am I going to like try to do more work um and I think it's it's hard because we both work in uh metrics oriented like a metrics oriented part of marketing and so I know at least for myself I get a lot of gratification out of like seeing the numbers go up as a result of something that I'm doing so I'm constantly having to fight the urge of like oh I want to comp what I made last year I want to grow it by 2% when there's actually like I took a maternity leave this year so I'm not you know I'm not going to comp what I made last year like it's constantly like beating down that urge I um I remember talking to wa wa you just described first of all it's right that like the people in in a more traditional corporate setting definitely feel this and I think I mean especially you're in New York right like there's just going to be an element where work becomes kind of allc consuming as like a normal thing um and that's probably true in a lot of places right but I think especially when you're in New York that's you're gonna you're going to see that's the definitely part of part of the cultural uh thing there um the the other thing is um you know I I agree with you that like part of the thing that was appealing to me about running my own business was the was the time freedom um and yet I always think back to a conversation I had with Dave recook who was talking about um when he was going through um cancer and it was not a form of cancer that was going to kill him and he knew that um but when he was going through cancer he uh he was like you know at the doctor like going to chemo sessions or something like that like checking his ad account and his reflection about that was he said that you know on my podcast his ref about that was because first of all he wasn't it wasn't life-threatening right so it was just like a thing he had to get through for the day so that's part of it you know it didn't it didn't whatever so um so there's that but he was also saying that part of it is because it was it's fun like he it's a game to win and you like you said like you see the numbers go up and you like it and so it becomes all consuming and I think that's actually really fundamental to the challenge of navigating this thing here this like sort of social ties broader life values your relationship with your family and your relationship to work the challenge is is that work is pretty fun and pretty interesting you know and and and but I think for me what I've experienced is that while that is true it actually isn't as ultimately deeply satisfying as other things and um it's almost more like like maybe a way this is probably a clunky analogy but it's almost like at times like eating candy or something where it's like it is really appealing and you you do it because you like it not because you not because you feel forced to and that that I think is the way I used to think about what work would be like is some you know it's like your boss is standing over your shoulder telling you you have to do it or whatever in my case I if I'm tempted to do that it's because I want it it's because there's like a desire to to go and build more and do more things and and at least for me it's actually not even primarily about how many dollars I make at the end of the day it's like I mean that's nice but like it's just fun I just like the work I find it energizing certainly easier to take my mind there than playing with a four-year-old you know where it's like it's just that that requires something really different of me um and as much as I love my boys like it's just it Taps into something that's harder to tap into so there's a tempt but what I found is that um when I'm able to actually fully set that aside for a while the potential depth of joy that I can experience in these other areas of Life is meaningfully Richer and Fuller and so so it's a big deal to be able to do that so like in in that respect it is like the candy analogy where it's like actually there's a way to you know not that it's a problem to eat candy all like occasionally but just that like there's actually some ways in which you can be nourished and feel better if you if you resist eating candy more often you know what I mean I don't know that's again like I said probably a clunky analogy but like that is I that is the the thing that is the way that I'm thinking about like the sort of what's fundamental of the challenge in my mind yeah the way I and I was having a discussion with someone about this and the an interesting analogy came up out of that which is it's kind of like playing a video game where is it a skill you can home that's right that's right like is it a thing that gives you a sense of satisfaction yes is it accomplishing anything in the real world no I mean debatable like with with a video game probably not with our careers like that's debatable and so it's um it it it's I I don't think that hard hard work or marketing Talent or whatever you grit whatever you want to call the stuff is is necessarily a virtue it's almost like a skill or a feedback loop but you have to be really cognizant of like what's the input that's getting fed into it because it will just you can just take yourself on a a wild goose chase and like wake up in five or 10 years and realize that you're not where you actually want to be or like you're not doing things that are like truly truly nourishing you and like making you feel like you're you've made the most out of your life getting into deep ter territory now um this is where I expected us to go this is great yeah this is great um and that's been like that's been the story of my career really a lot of the things I've done or a lot a lot of the paths that I've set out on have been kind of like a reaction to something or a I wanted to prove someone wrong about something versus trying to think about like where I actually wanted to wind up and so the Consulting practice was really the first major step away from that because I was my motivation There Was You know I I want to work with people who I'm happy to help um who treat me with respect and like I want to have more control over my day and I want to like architect my work around my the things that I'm actually naturally good at instead of like being being in a corporate environment where I felt like I had to become like a I had to Riz myself up I don't know I had to become a master um I I just you know it's not me I can't be that I can't be always on like that like off yeah your meta ad success is powered by meta ads machine learning meta ads machine learning is powered by data so you owe it to yourself and to your store success to get the best quality data passed from your store your Shopify site back to meta so that it can optimize the best and that it can report the most accurately in your dashboard and you can do that with Billy it's b. a billy is the tool I use for conversions API integration for my entire pixel setup for almost every client that I work with uh and that's because Billy has outperformed every other pixel tool that I have used including and especially most obviously the Shopify native pixel integration with meta ads if you're still using that like press pause right now on this episode go to billy. a and go install it on your store for $1 for the first month it is the most affordable solution in the marketplace it is the fastest and easiest to install and when I look at my event match quality in meta events manager I see improved event match quality at every event on my store by going to Billy as opposed to both the native Shopify integration and every other solution like this you should really be considering this it's also like a One-Stop shop replacement for um basically the entirety of Google tag manager it's incredible software you can have oneclick installs for ga4 Google ads if those things have been bugging you with enhanced conversions Tik Tok ads all those kinds of things so uh go to billy. b. to get started for $1 for your first month today um and get the most affordable best performing uh thirdparty pixel tool for your Shopify store and your meta ads account right now yeah oh man there's there's so many things I think your video game analogy is way better it's way better my candy analogy it's it's exactly right it's such a similar feedback loop and I think your I think your point to go back a little is like is uh is also so right about uh this this challenge of sometimes feeling like maybe it's actually not adding anything to the world so let me ask you that question do you do you think your work is generating any value and by the way I do I do have a similar principle with client selection which is um this is important um I do have a similar principle it's client selection which is uh I one of my rules for client selection and this is the nice thing about working for yourself and whatever uh is um is no clients who I think if I if I succeed in making them Rich will make the world materially worse that's like that's like one of my rules right so and I'm happy to say I have no such clients I really like all the folks I'm working with but um you know without trying to totally impose my values on them right there's going to be a limit to that kind of thing that that is a something I think of so so so within that constraint right do you I mean do you know you said it's debatable whether your work ads adds any value to the world um do you think it does is question one follow-up question immediately does that matter to you one way or the other I think it does I have a similar rule where I wouldn't work with you know ethically an ethically dubious company um and I I kind of look at it from the position of um I actually have some experience as a failed physical Goods entrepreneur and this was like back in um back in 2010 when I was still working in I was like completely a fashion designer I knew almost nothing about marketing I don't think Shopify existed at that point maybe it did um but but thinking back to like how clueless I was and I'm not the my clients are not clueless my clients are all incredibly you know skilled at at what they do but being able to like offer that unlock to people or um you know help them from making unnecessary mistakes or like helping them build out a company that um where they can offer jobs to other people I mean that that's also kind of part of my working criteria is I I want to work with uh with brands that treat their employees well and that treat everyone who they they have a working relationship well um yeah I think it's positively influential in that way but the question like the deeper question for me is like is that the most meaningful thing I can be doing with my time like I'm not say I don't think the most meaningful thing I can be doing with my time is joining the peace courp but like having kids kind of puts that into perspective like do I think setting you know building a strong relationship with my kids or like helping them um helping them make better mistakes than I did I don't know help more mistakes that I did I think that's more adds more value to the world than like doing marketing yeah so I mean that's that's there yeah your kids my kids are are just about to be three and five how old how old are your kids um one is about to be three in February and then the other will turn one in March yeah okay so yeah same Gap just two years behind me but like yeah the that's like a that's a real thing and and I think it's this is where maybe it actually gets at the value structure of a lot of of a lot of stuff which is like um this ability to impact meaningfully relationships that are closest to you and you have the most responsibility for and then the potential like my little phrase that I use for lot of the stuff right is optimize for Joy um like that's like the way I think about life is like and and because I'm in the DDC Entrepreneur Space it has to have the word optimize in it so optimize for joy and and uh and so I try to I'm trying to think about that a lot with like the way that I organize my work and the way that I organize my time um and and I so yeah I think that's I think that's probably the the lens through which I'm trying to view things like this like my my work time commitment versus my parenting time commitment Etc um but it is I mean but OB but the answer at the same time as far as I I'm curious how you work this out at least for me is not like okay stop and be a stay-at-home dad in fact I I think like my my I mean that's it my why my wife my wife stays home and so and she you know she was a teacher doing she taught in the inner city for nine years she was doing it wasn't the p but was pretty close you know it was like she she she was doing work that I think anybody would see as sort of um oriented towards really important things and people she was with working with students who had access to less resources than others and you know all of those kinds of things and um and yeah so so there is this like interesting trade-off between what it means to sort of like quote unquote make an impact or do something meaningful or something in relation to yeah you know me doing me selling in various cases supplements and other consumer goods on the internet versus um versus my wife being a teacher versus my wife being a stay-at-home mom for at least while our kids are this age like who knows what the long term is uh you know and sort of sorting all those things out yeah a lot of it is financial too like I think I that's not that I'm absolutely not saying that everyone should quit working and just spend all day right of course of course yeah it's more um for me personally I I want to be able to flex in like if I have to flex up my time commitment to my kids for some reason I I don't want that to be a point of friction in my life and I don't want to feel like I have to forgo it to you know like if I if I stayed in in the job I was in I would you know if I miss too many 7 a.m. meetings or whatever it would start to reflect you know poorly on my sure sure internal perception or whatever um everyone has to find you know the the right balance for them in terms of you know the financial aspects the Fulfillment aspects the family aspects um but I think it I mean it is tricky I think there 's no prescriptive solution for how any one person should structure their lives what do you think about what do you think about the financial relationship of this like what I mean how do you calculate the trade-off between making more money in the various Goods of that you know uh versus sacrificing more income for deeper time commitment in ways that let's just say cost you yeah well this is like this is we're getting into real talk time now um my husband's the primary earner and I would have to I'd have to like really restructure what I'm doing to out earn him like even doubling my workload at the the way I'm currently able to to charge I wouldn't outter and so I don't necessarily think about it like that um it's more but if you doubled your workload Alex like you would make a bunch more money like I you're you're you're good and sought after you can charge good money for your time by any by any global standard right so like you could get richer is what I'm saying right like so you are actually making that calculation for me it isn't worth the headache like there are definitely and it's happened in the past and the reason it's happened in the past is not because I was trying to hit a financial goal it was because I didn't I I wasn't able to accurately estimate how long certain things would take because I was just starting out That's a classic problem um and that that's something I still struggle with I still struggle with like the impulse to say yes sometimes I feel like I get so invested in a client and like so excited about the work that I say yes and honestly it's something that's that's kind of happening now where I have a lot of different projects on my plate and it's because I I either really am rooting for theany any founder or like I just think the work is really interesting um but it hasn't gotten to the level where like I don't wanted to to impact my you know my family relationship so that that's more of the calculus for me like the extra money is not worth the extra headache yeah that's an optimized for Joy decision I think you know you're you're you're looking at things and joy in the broadest sense right like in the in the deepest and most important sense I think yeah um so I I have a theory right now since we're doing since we're doing real talk uh I have a theory right now as I sort of survey the dtoc entrepreneur landscape and broader entrepreneurs as far as I'm actually I mean I pay much less attention to broader entrepreneurs like I I have very little connection to like the venture-backed world you know that that kind of entrepreneur um but I have a theory right now that people are in general meaningfully over optimizing for money um that that like the you know the pursuit of an exit for example I'm not actually sure the pursuit of an exit is always about money per se one of my little thoughts is that it's actually partly about status and that it's about um you know an exit is the mark of success in our in our space and so so I think that's part of it but I um and I want to be really careful like I'm not saying this is all bad I'm exits bad whatever like it just seems to me that I've just heard and talked to a lot of people who have had exits for whom it did not materially add joy to their life in any way that it in fact it may have materially subtracted Joy from their life because it took away a Pursuit that was really enjoyable for them like once you have to stop working on your company it actually you actually lose something there um there's also all kinds of challenges with money like Morgan how obviously talks a lot about this kind of stuff but you know one of the things that he pointed out that I think is as as a parent I think about which is like um handling there's basically like no obvious right answer for how to raise kids well if you are rich um and and it's like extremely hard problem to figure out how to like not turn your kids into monsters with wealth like so like um and and of course again that's like a very broad stroke wave thing I know people have sort of sorted this out I'm certainly not saying it's like bad to be wealthy um but but here's like maybe the Baseline calculation that I think about in all this which is that it seems to me that there is a point of earning where you go from scraping by to like having enough money and not really worrying about it where there's like a meaningful step up in like let's call it Joy something like that right where it really it it does materially add to your life what I'm less sure of is that the next step up from there materially adds joy to your life and if that's true then the calculation um the calculation of suing that is potentially a really problematic dead end for that that is going to be really tough for for a lot of people and they'll work through it and they'll they'll you know experience those things but it just seems to me that that is that is a factor weighing in here and yet the appeal of making more money is always in front of you I mean you have been around Shopify stores enough Shopify is like the perfect example of this every time I have ever seen a brand hit a new single day Revenue High the fun of that moment lasts for like five minutes and then immediately what does everybody turn around to do they go how do I beat it it is like all you do when you hit that moment is that you raise the bar again and I think that same hamster wheel happens in personal finance as well that you just you you actually never get to the point where you're like you know satisfied this you know what I'm saying here is not new like there plenty of people have said this in various ways but I I think I I guess part of the reason I'm on it is that for me I've recently spent some time with people where this has dawned on me in in sort of deeper ways I've sort of believed this for a while um but it has it has it has landed with me more significantly actually talking to somebody recently who is making a like made a lot of money and as I heard him describe his life something hit me which was that like um he has nothing that I don't have and and I and I I don't mean this in like a holier than that way I mean as he was describing his life I thought like there's not a single thing that he has um in relation to his money he has this actually is a very high character individual who's really awesome like I would like to be more like him in many ways right so in those ways he has a lot of things I don't have but in terms of what what the money in his life and his success has given him it is not clear to me that it has actually meaningfully added even with some of the cool stuff that he does it's just not clear to me that it's added anything and so anyway so in the midst of this conversation that is in my own calculation that I'm trying to make in my life which is like thinking very carefully about the the in the um that Shopify hamster wheel effect that I was describing like that is always there pulling on me in some way and at the same time I have this thing where like if I am honest about the commitment I am not sure it is going to really do anything at all like and I mean like anything like I really think maybe the answer is it will it will provide me nothing in that I don't that I don't have already and so trying to sort that out in relation to okay I'm an entrepreneur with work charging for my time thinking about how much to build clients and all that is like this really weird mix of stuff that I'm sort of sorting through every day so that's that's a mess of thoughts but say whatever you want about that those exits at least in my experience or observation the big exits are a combination of like intrinsic motivation and luck where sometimes it's just 100% luck um and it's walking into the right opportunity at the right time but I think a lot of people who wind up in those positions go into it agnostic to the how they're like my ambition is to make $100 million my ambition is to become a billionaire and they they kind of keep they just keep trying things until they get there and they're not tied down to a single idea or brand um and that's just how they're wired and and maybe they wouldn't be happy if they didn't you know hit those Milestones but for a lot of brand owners there's this there's almost this unwillingness to admit to oneself what it is that you actually want um especially like I'm thinking back to a company I used to work for that was founder owned like this was when I was a full-time employee and um the the stated goal was to grow the business by X percent or like they wanted to make the e-commerce business revenue on par with the wholesale Revenue but when you actually drilled down into it the founders just wanted complete creative control and she wanted to to be able to meet a certain level of overhead that covered like different marketing activities that she liked and like development of the product and like working with different creatives so if you're not if you can align your financial goals with what it actually is you want um they just creates this in congruence in the business where that becomes a nightmare for every single person you work with because no there's no actual goal if you're building an e-commerce business and you need help adding to your team you should be considering doing that in the Philippines with my friends at more Staffing more Staffing is incredible Filipino staffing agency and if you're thinking about uh helping the Philippines as just like like inexpensive virtual assistance you are you are missing the total opportunity in your business more Staffing will connect you to highly skilled virtual professionals across like manager director executive roles across supply chain marketing um you really anywhere in your e-commerce business where you are looking for help you should be looking in the Philippines and I can tell you that because I have worked with more Staffing in my business uh I run an agency not an e-commerce business so whether you're doing an e-commerce business or an agency there is help for you uh but more staffing has been absolutely critical in my business growing meaningfully in the last couple of years I could in fact I could not be where I am right now without them I am thankful for them every day taking a trip to the Philippines soon to go visit people like I love them more than I can tell you so um go now to Mor staffing.com staffing.com to go get uh help from more Staffing today they are going to make the whole thing easy on you they'll give you a one-year guarantee on anybody that you hire in the business so um so if you hire somebody and they do not do not last for a year they will help you replace that person uh for no extra charge uh and it's just really great uh low Opex as a percentage of your total revenue is a core thing that makes e-commerce businesses work more Staffing can help you add incredible Talent while maintaining that go to more staffing.com right now there's a stated stated preference versus revealed preference problem there that I I agree I've seen that a lot with a lot of companies I'll I'll push back a little bit towards the um ambition thing and how people are wired I think you're right that a lot of people are ambitious for for large outcomes and that's like their thing they they do this is very me I won't put these words into your mouth but one of my thoughts about life is that there's that people's ambition and desires lead them asay all the time that the thing that they think they want actually does not deliver for them what they want and so they they are ambitious they feel that really strongly like you said I totally agree with that assessment but uh um and and I'll I'll I'll even put this a step further I think many people doing that if not most will in fact experience um real letdown when they get there uh that that that it won't provide won't provide the thing that they think it's going to provide for them and I'll tell you what like I'm I don't mean that I actually really don't mean that in a context any way I I have been LED astray by my desires and Ambitions plenty of times like it is it is part of the human condition and um and I think it's it's really hard to sort that out you know so I don't mean that in an unsympathetic way at all and but I think part of why I perked up at your Tweet and part of why I pered up with this is like when people in our space are talking about this this weird relationship between the pursuit of money the pursuit of success joy and family um how to make Work Fit the right space in your life um I think are the things that a lot of people are wrestling with and sometimes is clear and obvious as I'm chasing a big exet other times it is simpler and and more of like just like a sort of a pebble in your shoe every day of like does this matter am I doing anything that has any impact on the world that you go to work and you do your thing because it's kind of encouraging but yeah so yeah I think I think there's just these little things like that that are going on in people's heads all the time sometimes they're as as present as obvious as I have a goal for a nine figure exit um you I hear some people say this uh and and yeah and so again not every ambition is wrong not every ambition for something big is wrong I don't mean I don't mean any of that I just mean sometimes I think there's there's a thing that people are chasing there that has gotten into them that I'm not I just really am skeptical that it's going to do what they want to do yeah it's interesting because I now I Mentor um people who who are in the graduate program that I went to for business and I was in one of those discussions a week ago and and the woman asked me like you know what would you do differently like if you could go back in time what would you do differently and and I thought about it for a minute and I was like you know I could come up with a list of things but honestly if you know 36y old me went back in time and tapped 20y old me or 25y old me on the shoulder and said hey you should do this I don't think I would have listened like this is so right this is completely right yeah so you it's like you have to weigh you know you have to weigh the sacrifice that's going to be required to meet your ambition uh against the basically against the resentment or how it might eat away with you if you don't even try and I think those that calculus only comes it shifts over time like I used to if you talked to me 10 years ago I would have said like I want to be the CEO of Fortune 500 retailer I I don't want to do that anymore because I I have enough experience I've I know this I don't want this to sound pompous but I know enough CEOs of larger to know that it's like an all it's all consuming and it's not something I'd be good at it's like being a politician and like I don't want to do that so it's you can't um you can't beat yourself up for trying you can only say well you know I keep trying to do this I keep feeling resistance like maybe if and that's another thing that I really believe that I I would have disagreed with 10 years ago like if you try something and you and it doesn't feel like if it feels like pushing a huge boulder up the hill 247 you're probably do like going in the wrong direction but yeah I agree if if you're feeling resistance and it's like blowing up all of your relationships with people then maybe it's a bad idea and you need to recalibrate um but the fewer relationships you have the less of that kind of feedback you yeah so like you don't know that's really insightful that's really insightful yeah I my my take on the 10 years ago thing is first I think you're completely right I wouldn't have listened in a lot of those cases either and I think there's two things to do about that one of them is um I think there is real wisdom in in finding some people who are some years ahead of you whose lives look to you to be really what you want really really like this is this is my experience with this friend of mine recently where it was like seeing how rich he was and and again this is a really high character indivual ual he's he's not he has not put his joy into his wealth like he has he is successful because he's really smart and talented but he has he's really made a point of organizing his life not around that basically and um and spending that time with him made me helped me go like okay I want to actually I want to like I want to feel some of what he's got and do that because because just the advice won't do it right like there's got to be some way in which you're able to find people who you go like I actually want my life to be like that and then to sort of get close to them at some point and find out like try to get a little of what they have to rub off on you you know I think that is a more effective way to gen to to glean from people's wisdom who are further ahead than you and then the second thing is I think part of the reason I like to have a conversation like this is like you know I know probably nobody's going to watch or listen to this and suddenly change their whole life but maybe they'll get to that moment where something happens or they'll they'll resonate with what you're saying about the atomization of work and the way it's working against social things or for you you're talking about like how you've calculated being a mom versus a work thing and maybe in a couple years they'll get to a point where they'll be like you know what I like it'll like I said it'll just kind of that thought will stick with them for a little while and it'll just be enough to where when they actually run run up against those moments themselves even if they can't remember where they found it or heard it they'll have some sense of this was valuable to me you know um yeah and so so even if they have to go through the experience themselves at least having heard somebody talk about it will help them contextualize it or something like that um yeah yeah I think something that was really powerful for me was um I was back I think in 2020 I was doing this artist way group and like the artist's way if for anyone who's unfamiliar it's it's this like series of exercises that you go through over the course of like a couple of months and at the end of it you're supposed to be creatively unblocked so like if you're a you're just never going to be scrambling for ideas and I think it it really worked I actually do recommend it to everyone because that's like how I'm able to write two newsletters consistently um but one of the things one of the exercises was you had to write out your ideal day like hour by hour and at that point I hadn't had a kid yet but I was trying to get pregnant so I'm like I'm going to factor having a kid into this and like you realize that if you're working eight hours a day every day it's actually like there isn't a lot of time left in there for your kids so I like that's something instead of that's basically an exercise or something that I encourage everyone to do is like be truly honest with yourself and like write out your ideal day hour by hour and then compare it to like what your current day is and figure out what it is you have to change to get closer to your ideal yeah I think that's really really helpful do you um I want to come back to something that you started that you started with and then maybe even I'm curious ious to hear about any other you know that's a that's a very specific practice you just mentioned you know writing out the hour by hour thing I would actually like to spend a little bit of time more on some of those things like what are you doing to navigate this stuff in Practical terms in your life um but but um I do want to come back to one question you brought up earlier that I've been sort of wanting to come back to which is you mentioned the sort of social isolation element of some of these things and the challenge of that have you solved that uh no no yeah I still I'm still trying to make friends down here um and I I think it's hard because um everyone it's like it's hard to make friends with other parents who work full-time because you have so little free time and it's it's hard to like align calendars and then it's it I I almost wish I could like block off a couple of hours a week for that kind of thing totally I'm also why don't you because I'm bad at it and I I actually I I have kind of like trying to meet with new people and make friends with new people is it's not not my zone of Genius so it's something where I I know I have to do it but there's also the there's also an aspect of like you have especially like in this stage of life when your kids are under five you have so little free time that you're comparing like for me there's just this joy in having unstructured time to think Le and walk and like you're weighing that against essentially blind dating because trying to make new friends with no no so with without an pre-existing social context is you're just like shooting a lot of shots and like hoping you find someone you click with so it's hard to I'm gonna I'm going to make it happen but it's just you know I'm bad on it can I so I have a question about this this is the question I always ask people this so uh if it sounds like I'm putting you on the spot just know I've asked I asked this question before but um do you currently or have you previously at any point in your life gone to church regularly yeah and I think that's a good question I was raised Catholic but so I went to like Sunday school and I did my sacraments and at a certain point maybe in like first or second grade I was going I was also going to church and that was like motiv that was like me and my brother saying like oh we want to like try this out and like also go to church but my parents were like you know we're going to send you to Sunday school to like so you can get married in the Catholic church if you want to but they they they weren't really big into it and I think um now like my my dad is even like actively kind of like I brought up God or something and he was like do you really believe that and I was like yeah but I think it's that that's something that's on our family road mapap we want to find a church down here and like try to go regularly um but it's a there just a lot of stuff going on and that's like it's pop out and it's like I'm gonna make it happen but it just hasn't happened yet I I bring it up for two reasons one of them is because for me it's um I've actually never related to this thing that people talk about with not having community and and the reason why is because I've like I've gone to church for my entire life my dad was a pastor um you know church was a huge part of my family's life U my wife same thing like just like her parents got married at a CHR you know after going to a Christian College together we Wheaten College in Illinois like they went there and then lived in Wheaten for 50 years 60 years whatever you know it's just like they were just like really deeply involved in a local community in churches my mom's dad's dad was a pastor like all I mean my wife's dad's dad was a pastor sorry um so it's just like the the all of these all of that has been so part of my life and my wife's life and everything that was just never a question so I'm I'm with my friends at their house or them in my house two three days a week like it's like it's so such a normal part of my life that I and so what I always ask people like for people who are like who are you know uncertain about sort of like where to meet people orever I always always say like well and but then the second reason that I brought it up is exactly what you just also brought up which is that at the same time I know exactly what the barrier is for a lot of people which is like what your dad said which is like do you really believe that and I I real you know church is a community oriented around belief and so for some people like it's sort of a non-starter because they just don't believe it but I think for a lot of people who have some kind of level of belief it's always my like gentle push to them is like if this is at all something that you're open to you know like essentially if you're not sort of totally closed to belief and if you are I understand like you're not going to go to church you know um just go and do it because it's the it's the it's the place where I found and it's still can be hard and take time and you know relationships all take time but it's the it's the number one place that I that I have found to do that there's another fascinating thing with this which is um just sort of to this point like a couple weeks ago my wife got it in mind that in our neighborhood we live in a very Suburban neighborhood in Suburban Los Angeles I mean all of La is a suburb basically so um so we you know that's that's kind of our uh place and we've made a few friends in the neighborhood along the way and just like sort of seen them around with it's like exact you know you have small kids you're out walking with small kids you see somebody else's small kids and you just chat you know so my wife got it in mind like what if we just had some of the neighborhood friends over in our backyard and we're just GNA have and she called it a pumpkin party and it was just like get the kids to paint pumpkins and it was like it's very it was a very simple craft it didn't require a whole crazy whatever but it was like this this whole thing and um and the response we got from it was crazy like over like we had like five or six families over they all came and people were like like immediately started a group chat they're going like maybe this is a neighborhood where we could raise our kids and live you know they like they one woman was immediately saying look I'm making friends like and it it really reminded me because my experience of church is so different than this um you know I think most of these folks don't go to church but um so they they have a very different experience of this than I do I just was astounded at how much people were like so thankful to go to somebody's house with their kids and just be sort of like welcomed in this simple way and I I think part of the reason I say that is like it's just crazy how far that goes because people are so starved for this kind of relationship that like even doing something simple like that with people like in this case we didn't really know most of these people very well at all having just something like like that as an entry point was like I think people are always nervous like are they going to feel are we going to host well enough when you know there's like pressure and like all you know whatever and like man people were just like one woman was saying like oh I'm finally making friends you know it's just crazy so um yeah it's a small step but but those have like been our recent experiences with this where it's like wow it actually goes really far for people yeah there something that I want to do is just hold it like we live in a really not we live in like a fairly small subd development and unfortunately like being in Florida um there aren't actually a lot of young families in our development it's a lot of retired people but I want I want to do like an open house where I just like invite the whole neighborhood to come over for like a few hours knowing that like with a completely no pressure thing where it's like no RSVPs no you know just drop in like don't feel the need to show up at a certain time as long as you you're like in the window I just want to just as like almost as like an experiment um but I'm still like working through the plan of how I'm going to pull that off yeah yeah yeah yeah my push on it my encouragement to you Alex push on it people will be really excited about it old people have the same problem by the way um they just don't know how New Year resolutions I've publicly committed to I'll have you back on in a couple months and we'll hear how it went you know just like accountability device um or commitment device um okay I have one last question for you is there anything specifically you mentioned the practice of like writing out exactly what you want your hours to be like um I have one little practice I'll mention in a second that has been really helpful for me with sort of keeping work in the right place in my life resisting the urge to play more video games so to speak um do you um do you have anything that you do to sort of keep those things in check in the right places no I mean and I I don't always do it perfectly like I'm over booked right now um I think something that I do is that I try to use some of my child care time to do things for myself like I make sure to whether I'm doing it during the day or before my kids wake up I try to exercise consistently I try to take like at least one long walk every day like do that kind of like grounding stuff that that um that goes really far that's actually another thing that is definitely a thing that I do like it's like uh I work out at 4 most times like so like end of the day I work out a few days a week not not like every day or anything but um I do also like working from home like well if I'm if I have 15 minutes between meetings I'll like take a quick like there's a little half mile Loop right around my neighborhood takes me 10 minutes to walk it and so just like go walk that just to do something to get outside and sort of free my brain um I I think that's totally right like some physical activity like that really helps uh here's my one thing my one thing is um is uh having a Sunday practice and you you and I had some interaction about this elsewhere a Sunday practice of taking the whole day completely off um so you know look Black Friday weekend I'm going to check my ad accounts on Sunday right like but like aside from moments like that um I basically just like I do not log in to work at all uh on Sundays um and on Saturdays I'll do like typically an hour maybe two of work or something like that but but I'll do some but what I have found is taking an entire day completely off of work has a meaningful a lot of times election turn my phone off for the day too it it like totally reorients myself during that day to um to like my sense of self in relation to work I'm amazed at how powerful the effect is to take the whole day completely off what I find is I I sort of conceptualize myself on those days as somebody who is Dad is husband is a guy who goes to church is a friend to people is somebody who plays softball on Sundays like I just like do stupid stuff like that um and you know uh eat ice cream with my kids at night on Sundays with my wife like it's like a bunch of stuff like that and and something about that like the moment I check the ad account even for five minutes so even if the work amount is short um it throws my brain back into work mode in a way that it takes me a long time to get rid of and by simply not doing that for the day um I am just amazed at how how effective it is at helping me to conceptualize myself just as a worker and to resist the atomization of work basically it like um it it it it then fits into something broader in my life because I conceptualize myself as somebody with more purpose than work um and more purpose than you know being a marketing guy or whatever so um yeah that's that's like my biggest that's my biggest most practical thing on this yeah well I love that and it's something I want to try to implement at least in some part myself I think at this point a full day might be pushing it but I'll get there try it try it try one full day at some point see if you can do it that's tricky you're juggling small kids and and part-time work and all those things I totally get try out um all right Alex um you're on Twitter occasionally actually tweeting things about these kinds of topics not just uh not just uh very very helpful tactical input on how to grow your business though though everybody ought to know that uh if you got this far in this conversation and you also want tactical input on it you should be following T be following Alex like she's one of the best followers on D Toc Twitter Etc he it's Alex P link is in the show notes go do that and occasionally you'll even tweet out things about uh this kind of stuff which is which is yeah if you want more existential life content tweet at me and let me now give the people what they want you know yeah all right thanks so much for doing this conversation I have no idea how many people are going to listen to this uh because I'm I'm curious but but I think actually deep down I think a lot of people I have a theory which this will actually this episode will be popular that people will just want to hear other people in our space reflecting on this sort of stuff um and so uh thanks for thanks for taking the time and being a little vulnerable on some of those things yeah absolutely this was a lot of fun thanks for watching and listening to this much more reflective episode than what I usually do you can follow me at Andrew J Ferris on Twitter and do follow Alex at hey it's Alex P uh links for those are in the show notes email me podcast a jf.com if you have any questions or thoughts uh any respon to this episode especially I would love to hear from you you feel free to strongly disagree with anything that I said and if you just this struck aord with you in some way and you want to reach out to somebody about it please feel free to reach out to me about it I'd love to hear from you uh of course you can find everything else I'm doing at AJF gr. comom and don't forget to like And subscribe like you what do you do you have to like this I guess maybe on Spotify I don't remember anyway you know what to do subscribe make sure you don't miss any more content from me I've got all kinds of great stuff coming up most of it much more tactical and strategic than this but hopefully you like this content too and if I get enough good feedback about it I'll make more like it thanks so much for watching I'll talk to you next time n [Music]