everybody. This is Stelly,

Ft. And this is heating Shah. And today, on the start of chat, we're gonna talk about sleep.

People like talking about more than just sales and market. We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide along value todo for people trying to get shit done. Yeah, we don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit.

You want you to do your best and specifically we're going to talk about how to get more sleep, you know, because sleep is really about. Usually when you talk about sleep, it's about how do you get more sleep? And so you know, I think even deeper than that, and this could be being applicable to others. But we wanted to focus on basically thoughts on sleep. For founders, this could be really valuable. Anyone who's not a founder as well. So that's the topic to just give you context on why a founder might not be able to sleep

awesome. Well, before we go into it, I want to give a shout out to a sponsor of ours, brain dot FM. That's a music app that actually helps you focus, relax or sleep better. This product uses science backed music, and it actually does work both. Hey, deny our customers. We love the service. We use it all the time. Don't believe us. Just give it a try. You could go to brain dot FM slash startup jet to get a 20% discount, so that's less than six bucks a month or less than 40 bucks a year.

Once you've given it a free trial and you notice its power and effect grain dot FM slash startup chat, make sure to check that out. Now back to sleep. For founders, that's actually an interesting angle, right? Let's maybe highlight all they don't like before we talk about the importance of sleep and why having good quality and quantity of sleep With Aid a founder, I'll just for now assume that many people could just rationally understand why those things would be important. But what do you think are unique challenges when it comes to sleeping that apply to founders more so than other people?

I think a founder can have more things in their head in general, just like so many different things that they have to worry about, like at some point in a company. At some scale, there's somebody in the company you're definitely looking to figure out whether you should let them go. There are whether you, someone else, figure out what they should move them around. So I think what ends up happening is like at some point you have so much going on that there's a number of things that could be in your head that could be impact, your ability to actually get a good night's rest. And that's not exclusive to founders. But I find it. I find that founders cento have more trouble with this than other types of folks and organization because they're dealing with so many different factors that other folks might not be deeply with. That usually has to do with people problems because they're the ones that tend toe the less, um less clear, the ones that will be as human beings generally struggle with, and ones that I think can cause us a lot of anxiety and thoughts in our heads about should I do actually not.

What should we do? What's gonna happen? Like a lot of that kind of things. There's also other types uncertainty that orient around being able to raise money, for example, or running out of money on a similar note. So I would say that there's a number of these types of things that I find constantly on people's minds, as as their founders, and they greatly impact your ability to actually sleep for me, for example, anything. People are different and different people have different perspectives and excuse, depending on what you know kind of occupies your brain. So for me, a lot of the time when I'm unclear about relationship I have, whether it's at work or personally, and I haven't found a way to, like resolve it, I tend toe, not be able to get sleep.

Yeah, lots and lots of worries as a founder, right, which impacts typically how you go to see the other thing that I find particularly challenging, especially for founders, that founders like us, which is an increasing amount of funders that just use a lot of technology or even the core of their businesses. Technology is that now, more so than ever before, you're you know, you're probably you have an easy time to be impacted by work, even way late into the night, right? So even if you're at home on your couch watching a movie, you of your phone and maybe somebody's writing you a chat on slash. Or maybe you're checking an email that you just got. Somebody texted you or you saw a tweet about somebody complaining about your service.

It's so easy for your employees, your customers, the the world to get in touch with you, Which means is a founder, that a lot of people and a lot of problems, a lot of words and a lot of communications constantly raining onto you. And for most founders, especially those that this is most of us probably at some point or the other that don't have, like the discipline to have really good hygiene when it comes to what they do, you know, a couple of hours before they go to sleep is that there's a high chance you're working, maybe even a couple of minutes before you go to bed. Or, even worse, you go to bed with your phone, and you might be answering a couple of emails as the last heroic work act off the day you're falling asleep with work on your mind.

It's so that could be one thing, which also leads to the next thing, which is maybe the feeling of guilt. If you sleep too much, I don't know. That's feel like that's still a big thing. Founders feel like they need toe artwork, others they feel like there's so much to do that there's not time to sleep. Or if they go to sleep to try to, like, you know, maybe just for now, baby, just for the short term, I'm gonna be on a six hour sleep cycle of five hours sleep cycle versus, you know, eight hours, which you know the signs today, if he suggests, would be much healthier for our brains and our health.

Yeah, I you know, one of the reasons I'm excited about a product like brain Dot FM is because there's this sort of science to sleep. There's a science Teoh so many different things in the world today, and there's not like a clear path in terms of how do I believe that this thing is gonna help me? I mean, that's even why we have this episode, right? It's Everyone knew how to get better sleep. They would be getting better sleep. Right now, I guarantee it. You know, there's no doubt in my mind so products like that feel like the types of products that have that ability to give us something that we can feel more confident about in trying. And it might not work for us, right? Who knows?

Like these. These are things that but at least it's science back, at least their studies behind it. And there's more and more of this that's gonna happen in the world. I, for one, like think that you know there's people that go into sleep studies and try to figure out why they can't sleep or sleep. Apnea is a thing, and there's a lot of studies around that there's machines around that right. I have friends who carry around those machines when they travel because their sleep is dramatically improved, right? I don't know enough about it. I don't have it. I haven't studied it, but I have friends who have told me all kinds of things about Kidnap Mia and things like that. There's so many factors here,

you know, for me, like I have another issue, which is like I want to get like blackout blinds because my I stay a little bit open when I sleep. I actually have like, a little blanket, like a small in like a kid's blanket that I wrap over my head. So she that's to me. That's better than one of those little

icings. I think

so, Yeah, for me, right? Uh, and it helps me sleep. And if I need to take a nap in the middle of the day and it's study, cause something that do take a nap in the middle of the day and it actually helps me think then, like I need that I need something like that. So I'm excited for the fact that we're going to get technology that can help us with this. I think music and sound and things like that can be a great driver to help you relax, right or help you focus or, in this case, even help you sleep. And there's even, you know, other products in the market,

whether it's like products ICOM that are more meditation, focused or even headspace. Everyone's getting into this game of like being ableto help give us these kind of tools, so that's my sort of Mini ran on this and why I am excited about the topic. In general, we have trouble sleeping, and the more demanding our work is, whatever that means for you doesn't mean you're founder or not. Doesn't matter. I think the more chances are that we have trouble sleeping. And for me specifically, I've never had trouble sleeping until, maybe like six months ago. And what happened six months ago was that I started feeling a lot more pressure in my life around my work, my family and and the things I wanted to accomplish. Maybe it's the age I'm getting closer to 40.

I'm 38. I just turned 38 a little while ago, about a month ago. And so, you know, I don't know what it is, but I definitely have been more digging into this and look forward. Toa figuring out some really good solutions for sleep.

Yeah, I've heard of Matthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep on a Podcast a couple of months ago, and I thought it was You were super insightful and thoughtful in, and I bought the audible version of the book Why we sleep haven't listened to yet but it has been for the last six months. Kept seeing this being recommended within my circles. So I have a bunch of friends who read the book and really loved it. And, uh, through this conversation right now, it's kind of bubbling. Pick up at the top, I think. Similar to you. Honestly, like, um,

think of all I've never had a problem falling asleep, so that's never been an issue. A lot of my friends have had a challenge with sleep I never have encounter, but so and I've never been. I mean, I had phases in my entrepreneurial career where police left, you know, the five for six hours, but not for like decades. For maybe for two or three years. Mostly I born in eight hour sleep cycle. It's I sleep for eight hours almost every night. But the quality of my sleep, especially last yes, drastically declined. And here's how I how I know when I wake up,

I don't feel rested and it doesn't matter. Like I played around. I've slept for nine hours, 10 hours. Wake up, don't feel rested. And then the second thing is when you if you use, if you saw me the 1st 2015 minutes after wake up in the morning, you might get really scared. I looked like I was in a fight all night long. Like my face is just, like has this angry expression that comes from many hours of not good sleep. Eso So I'm this been on top of my mind's been really personal, So I was excited when you suggested we should talk about sleeping because it's kind of bubbled up. Have been ignoring it for a couple of weeks, but now has bubbled up to the top of like,

I know I need to tackle this like I need to figure out this. There's some issues that worry me, and I know that if I tackle them, that could make a difference. But I also know it's, you know, I need to experiment with the temperature light. I'm very light sensitive, and I know that the blackout cheats that you talked about the blackout, not cheats, whatever they're called, making sure that the room was really dark, making sure that the room is really cold, that you're sleeping. And those are kind of some some basic things that science has figured out can really help us and then making sure that in our hour or so before there's no a lot of like electronic light and all that stuff. Those are some of the things that that I have very high on my list of things I wanna tackle.

I need to grok this because I'm getting more more scared looking in the mirror in the morning. And I'm like, OK, I get enough hours, but the quality is not good, son. You do, and you play a round, figure this out on and work on it.

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's usually just my hair stands up in the mornings pretty funky looking, so I definitely have Ah, What is it like morning morning hair bedhead or whatever they call it? And so if I if I get on a call before I take a shower, it definitely looks funky. Sometimes I'll just literally go to my sink and pull water on it, and it looks great. So that's my morning issue. Ah, and I think you know one thing I'm gonna leave everybody with here is I think there's a lot that happens while we're sleeping in a dream state that we're just not privy to that we don't necessarily remember, understand. And sometimes I can leave us feeling, you know, a certain way in the morning. And I've noticed that about myself and other folks even use telly. Maybe you're going on big missions in the

some kind of big dream state. You know, Big Santa

Claus all over the world or something, who knows? And, ah, whatever you want to believe. But I find sleep to be one of these things where it's like if you can sleep and this is what I'll leave, leave us with. And maybe you have one of these if you can sleep, if you can go to sleep but nothing on your mind and find whatever is required for you to do that, your life will be better. It doesn't matter, Helen, usually, and so if I were to give a very prescriptive thing that I think is true is going to sleep with nothing on your mind. And that means like you've shed the day and you're kind of ready for a new day because every day you could have a blank slate like that if you really tried And if we woke up with the blank slate, like just ready to take on the day without anything from the past impacting us in a negative way, that would be amazing.

So that that's what I would try to do if they were me. Look, you know, improved my sleep, which I am so gonna probably take that advice soon enough.

You go beautiful. A. If any of you listeners have advice tips, stories to share when comes to your sleep, uh, your challenges with it or your victories with it that has no we always love to hear from you. Stelea close dot com h in charge gmail dot com And if you have not checked it out before police to us a favorite and this is a real recommendation. Good brained out of having slash spot check, Check it out into dope service. Both human our customers and love it, so make sure to check that out as well.