This is Nationals, a podcast that brings you weekly summary of the best music for this episode is provided by a singer. You could find Adam on Twitter at cinder or check show notes as always, a threat to the music you can find at the end of the episode. Let's get started. Do you like signs? I do. And Bill Nye, the science guy, has a new podcast, all about signs. I've listened to a couple of episodes, and to be honest, I'm not super impressed. I didn't grow up listening to Bill Nye, the science guy as a child, so I can't really Jay's early success.

But if I'm listening to a scientific podcast, I want heart science. I want something that can be proven. I want a fact, and I want you to teach me something that I didn't know. However, what I'm hearing instead is a lot of maybes, a lot off. Let's save the planet with this big goals and ideas and very little off hard core evidence based signs. However, on his episode with Ali Ward, who has a podcast called Religious, they did say something which I think is important to share. Do You have to be smart to understand science. Let's see what they have to say. New thing to be made be that either Elektronik microphone and podcast,

Yeah, mobile phones or ah, Vaccine's sure people have a fear of this stuff, right? No technology generally makes your life better. Oh, sure, as do vaccines and medicine. I think it's great, I think. I think that's the thing is is closing that rift with people and letting people know that just there's there's not a science person and they're not science People were all science people. If we if you've ever ridden in a car or seen a doctor or eaten something that's cooked your science person and I think closing closing that rift of like in order to be interested in science, you already have to know the science is like the biggest problem that we have with it because it's just science is curiosity and just asking questions is, is the only key ingredient you need to be interest in science is just curiosity. And one of the biggest things that I tried to promote with what I do is just ask smart people stupid questions cause so much you're so afraid. What's one of your favorite stupid question? Oh,

my God, Bill, I asked the dumbest stuff. It's the best for my job. I can you think of one? Oh God. I ask what people's favorite movie about their subject is. And then you'll see like a vulcanologist just light up and start talking about Inferno versus Dante's Peak. And like what they liked about it, what they hated about it and just things like I will never forget I had a cell enologist. He's a moon expert on this. The Saleen is the moon. Yeah, she's amazing. She is. Her story is fantastic.

She's so smart and she knows everything about you can ask her anything. And then she submitted a question for a test student ologists, which is a turtle expert. And her question was, Could turtles get out of their shells? She's she's like, I don't know. I don't study turtles, and the turtle expert was like, That's one of the biggest questions I get. An eternal shell is like fused to there. It's like the verdict spine is gonna show, but she's like I guessed wrong. Yeah, I get that question all the time.

so okay, enough about turtles. What it really like is that they said that everyone is a science person and that if you want, understand science, all you need to do is be curious and ask smart people stupid questions and that it's totally okay to ask stupid questions. I think that's very, very important. Now. This next episode is all about health. Do you know who Scott Jurich is? If you into running? You know, Scott is kind of a here in the ultra marathon running world because, ah, he's just amazing. And he tends to win everything he participates in. If you want to know more about Scott and Ultra running,

you should definitely check out his book called Eat and Run. My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness to Wish I link in the show notes. But today I wanted to share a segment with you from my friends podcast called the Backpacker Radio, where Scott and his wife talked. I came to talk about his latest achievement when he did the Appalachian Trail and said their record for the fastest known completion time. If you run long distances, you'll be able to relate to this, and if you don't run long distances. The segment will kind of put you in the mind off what it's like to be running 30 50 100 mile races. It's

really it's a bit of a challenge mortar, physical challenge. But it's definitely of the mine, and and then some, like you, go to places

where you never think you do. You lose your mind because it sounds like you're a hamster at that. You do. And you Actually, I try to tell people like I I try to lose my mind in the sense of I try not to think too much. I mean, use thinking for the basic thing strategy. And I mean, I'm sure a lot of through hikers and hikers can relate to this as well That there times, when you just got you've just got up, do the basics in terms of mental machinery. And then after that, it's just kind of find somewhere else to go. Whether it's music, it's when I was on the 80 people. It was so funny. Like I'd see all these people watching movies in the middle of the night. Her, you know, 8

30 nine o'clock and they'd be all cozy in their sleeping bags. And they're like, we're out here for six months way Need to watch and expensive Thrones. All right, I'm gonna spoil it for us. I was I was shocked at that. But it's interesting. I think so. Yeah. Your mind goes. All kinds of place of my events

are of the type of 24 hours. Warriors you're on a trail for no three months, four months, five months, six months. Yet you need to go other places. So mindless activity. So the idea is that mindless activity doesn't go too far awry and you start toe go places like, Why am I doing this? Yeah, even though you go there occasionally. Well, there you have. If you're looking for a new podcast to maybe take you into different territory to listen to something you're not usually consuming, this is a great one. Go to the show notes and check out, back,

back A radio genius card Jurich on the Appalachian Trail. Speed record, parenting. And what's next? You feel like startups? Or maybe you're working at one. Then you know of this thing's called unicorns? $1,000,000,000 startups that raise lots and lots of money and try to dominate the market. But there's also a new movement, new movement of startups that trying to be profitable and not raise any VC money. And within it, there is actually a sudden movement off startups, uh, run by single founders with no employees to give you a taste of what it's like. Here's Abby Walker, the founder of Vivian Liu, a shoe company, talking in a podcast called Company Off one about building company that she manages and built entirely with the team of contractors and no employees,

honestly, that when people are like Are you serious? You could be growing so much faster and you should be taking on investors. And you should be a Nordstrom and you should be here and you should be there. And why aren't you doing this? Honestly, I questioned myself. I'm like I am I stupid. Am I dumb? Am I good enough to even run this company if it could be so much bigger than what I'm dreaming of it being? And I keep going back Thio. It's easier now these days to sit in my vision because I hear people. I go to conferences. I am in masterminds and business owners. Number one complaint are always human resource issues. Someone quit in the middle of a big project. Someone was stealing from them.

Someone waas there have a huge hole that needs to be filled and they can't find the right person. But I feel like most of the people who are building brands and building businesses most of their heartache and most of their time is spent worrying about other people, not their customers, but people in their businesses. And so I actually had a phone call today with the woman who runs a multimillion dollar business. She and I are in a mastermind together, and she and I spoke just separately today. She's like When we first started our mastermind, my mission was to convince you that you should grow a team and she owes. As of today, I think you are extremely smart for not wanting employees and growing a team. So it's the same thing she's like every time I have a human resource is issue. I think of you like man, I should think like happy Uh so I mean, it's I no longer believe that I am stupid or dumb. I feel like I am incredibly smart because while my way of life may not be the way of life for everyone,

and you know they may want to build big legacy companies in huge companies and big brands that are spread everywhere in every retail locations, that's just not my vision, and that's not me. But I am very happy selling insoles for high heels from my home and wearing yoga pans and high heels but wearing yoga pants and high heels and making myself a turkey sandwich for lunch versus having to go out for lunch with people. And you know, that kind of stuff. It's covered my lost corporate salary and then some, and I'm hoping to retire my husband soon. And so at some point I'm like, I feel like there's building a business. You can reach diminishing returns where you're trying to get so big.

If you want to hear more of a happy, you should go to smash nose dot com and look for the company of one podcast. Personally, I really like that she's chasing her own goals without trying to fit any predefined mold. Speaking of setting your own goals, I also want to share with the U. S story of a company called one month's two founders who were teaching a General Assembly and noticed that a lot of people really wanted to learn how to code and killed specific things within a short period of time. So they start a company around it, and now they're running it profitable, and they're having great time doing it. They have a lot of good points on this episode. But since coding schools and all sorts of code lessons becoming really popular right now, I wanted to share the part where they talk about pricing their product and how customers experience online code schools and what questions they have and how you could think while doing a similar business. Advice for people like really tough. And I definitely don't pretend toe come here and be like, Hey, here is how you do pricing because I think it's different for every product service,

and I think it's kind of gift experiment, really learn the market and also like what people are willing to pay. So I would say it's definitely something we've struggled with and do a lot of testing on, um, we things that just weren't working, weren't working for us was we had different courses that were different prices, and I don't know. People were always confused. You know why one course would be more than another course? Some of our courses come with mentorship, some references of testing. But like on the front page, it's like, hard to see. All that's really hard to explain the value proposition for every one of our courses. So to us,

the subscription model of the annual subscription people seem to be getting it more clearly. Like I just get everything. I think people just want access and there's a bit of, Ah, there's a bit of, ah, people like It's like a little hesitant when you have toe, you know, Am I gonna buy an area? I'm gonna buy this or not by this, But if you get access to everything at a fair price, I think people are seeming anymore, are less confused about what they're getting there. You heard it. There is no definitive answers. You have to price your product,

and sometimes you might just want to experiment a little bit and see what you use herself to say. If you find the segment useful. Then I would recommend checking out the rest of the show notes for this episode and specifically the part where the founders air one month's talk about how to explain your product to customers once on abundance of cold schools start to pop up. Last but not least, I wanted to share with you a topic that's interesting to me personally, which is education. This is from my interview is Jeffery Austin, who is now the president of Y Combinator. This interview's about a year old, but I think if you like education and you like start ups and you like y Combinator, if you go and listen to, the whole episode would be really useful to you. But here's Jeff talking about stress and I Q. And I think this is really important because we live in a world where education becoming more and more important or seemingly more important than people of parents put a lot of pressure on the Children to do really well in school. But the question is, Is all that pressure really good for our kids? Here's what Jeff has to say.

Stress is, in most cases, stress makes you stress load your I. Q. Delta is a child and literally, literally. If you give a stress person on I Q test and you give a calm person, I could test the same person that I Q tests the same test of Sabre to the test. When they're calm, Vell do better. You'll have a higher i Q. And that's that's something to think about. Also a great way to hack tests. That's why there's these. These These drugs, like Ritalin, are so popular amongst kids because you can medicate yourself to do better on tests,

and you don't take uppers to do that. You take something that calms your mind down so that you can focus because focuses improves your I Q. At least the way we measure, right? You know, we all feel that right. That's what caffeine does. We know when when, uh, we're about doing something and we're caffeinated all of a sudden, like we just focus it and we have, you know, we have energy, but it's not like crazy. Certainly we also know if we have too much caffeine and we're jittery. We have a harder time,

but just the right amount really helps us right. I guess that explains the bomber peak right? Where you just caffeinated enough, but also under the influence of alcohol enough that you balance that state for longer. Yeah, I don't want to come in that chemicals there for me to make any comment on, but I do think we all know like in the first cup of coffee while jazz. We're doing great. If you have, that's fourth cup of coffee. Not a good idea for any reason. All of a sudden, you're like jumping. You know, your you build a D d into yourself by doing that. And then it's hard to accomplish.

There's Jeffrey Austin talking about stress. If you like education, star ups and parroting as much as I do, then I had the recommend. Checking out this interview is Jeffery Austin on the road That show he's got really great points on many interesting topics, and you definitely have a good time listening to him. Jeff has also just been promoted to the president of Y Combinator, so I'm really looking forward to where y Combinator is gonna go under the Jeffs leadership before we finish. There's one more thing I'd like to include This is not from a podcast, but rather from an essay on Justin Cons Block. If you follow Justin, you know he is a very public person, and he openly talks about both his successes and his challenges. And since we're talking about stress, I thought this was very, very relevant. Justin has previously talked about how,

even though he's been able to make millions of dollars and built all the successful companies, he wasn't always happy. And he talked about what caused that unhappiness and what has been working on in order to make himself happier. This essay to each other, Lincoln show, notes goes, and more details were adjusting explains what's worked and what didn't and how he's been able to make himself happier over the last couple of months in case you two are successful But feeling unhappy, I think you should check out this essay and maybe you'll find the answer. This concludes this week's episode of Smash Notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review until your friends, this podcast and the shows are only gonna get better and better. The more people know about you can follow smash notes on Twitter at smash notes or subscribe to the mailing list to get notified when new show drops. I'll see you next Monday and now Azure Adam's finger.