Nidhi:

The most impactful creations from artists or writers comes from those moments when they were bored. We're very much programmed in this work, grind culture where we mistake busyness with productivity and boredom as being lazy or as not having enough to do. When I think about success, I think about being able to have more of my time back and the opportunity to really be able to choose what I want to do, including being bored.

Chris:

We're going to be talking about why boredom is important for creativity. Let's get right into it, Mo. Set up the context. What are we talking about?

Mo:

I was asking Chris how he's able to innovate his business and how he's able to come up with such wild ideas to reach his goals, and also because he's in the content space, how he's able to constantly be as prolific as he is. And one of the things that he said to me, which is, "You have to give yourself time to be bored, to allow for that creativity to happen, so you can tap into your innovative thinking." Now, here's your boy's problem, your boy, AKA me, and I'm sure Chris will tell me I'm talking too much, so allow me to preface with, oh well, I don't feel like I have time, like right now. And maybe this was a prop for this call. He was like, "You ready?" I was like, "Yeah, but you got to give me two minutes." He was like, "You're late." So not to jump to solutions or anything, but either I'm not saying no to enough things, either I'm not delegating enough, so this call is going to be half, "Hey, Chris help me better time manage as the leader of a company that now has a team and not just me and one person," and two, whenever I'm able to tap into that effective time management for myself, what do I need to do with my free time to move myself and my company forward.

Chris:

That sounds pretty good. There's a couple different things we're going to be talking about today. First, the concept of boredom as a necessary component, as a precursor to creativity. And then, the second part of that is, how do you become more bored? How are you able to create time for yourself so that you can sit around, put your feet up and think about something or not think about anything at all. So let's take this one step at a time. I think we're going to have to get into savage mode again, so fair warning for everybody, it's a lot of tough love. As we say, I'm here to hand out lollipops and kick ass and I'm all out of lollipops.

So here's the thing, Mo is a family man. You've got two young ones. You're married. You're working. You got one business that you're working on. And then, I'm married, I have two kids, I used to run two businesses and I'm doing all kinds of stuff and I'm just sitting there like, "I think we're both given the same amount of hours per day." The same set, 24, a fresh pack every single day. All of us the same amount of time. How is it that you're not doing as much as I think you can be doing and I'm doing a lot myself, so what is going on? There's something about the way that you're maybe scheduling yourself or what you think you need to be doing, that essential work that only the leader, the executive, the founder of a company should be doing.

And I'm just wondering, why aren't you reading the books that we talk about? There are books that I've referenced with you for years now and I'm like, "Are you going to read that book or not?" And then, I'll mention a podcast and I'm just throwing these things out all the time, when I mentioned a podcast like why hasn't he... "I haven't listened to it yet, Chris." Mo, there's this video about storytelling, and since we're both storytellers, it's really good for you watch. A week, two weeks, three weeks go by, still haven't watched it. Mo, have you been hitting the gym, because looking a little round in the face there, Mo. Nope, didn't go to the gym. What is eating up all of your time, Gilbert Grape? What's eating all your time, Mo?

Mo:

Honestly, it's going to be the same answer, I feel like I'm always working.

Chris:

There's a difference between feeling and knowing.

Mo:

I'll tell you, I'm always working. That's a fact, but I don't believe that I'm as productive as I can be. Not I don't believe, I know I'm not, so there have been changes more recently that I'm doing, but there always seems to be, and it's day by day. Right? But there's a lack of, maybe, consistency or finding my rhythm. It just feels like there's moving parts constantly. So I've seen you, for example, make your calendar that you posted with the pro group and you've posted on social media and you're like, "Tuesday, reading day." I'm like, "I wish I could allocate a whole day to reading, that'd be nice." So I want to discover with you as much as I want to for myself, because I feel like you're going to tap into something that maybe I'm not seeing, per usual.

Chris:

Yeah, okay. So I think the reason why I said there's a different between feeling and knowing. I think most of us would feel that we're working all the time, yet if we look at the byproduct of our productivity, like I know I had the same results, something is going on here and we don't understand this. So in his book Peter Drucker talks about this, it's called the Effective Executive, in that when you ask most busy executive CEO types, "What are you doing?" They say, "I'm working all day." And he says, "If you look at their assistant they'll shake their head like, 'They're not working all day.'" And then you actually look at their calendar, like what they did that day, it's shocking to everyone, I guess. I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. If you look at their calendar, it's not shocking to anyone except for the executive. Because we create the illusion of work and [inaudible 00:06:22] stuff, unessential stuff.

We're answering some emails, we're checking in on socials, that's what we're doing today, we're taking on meetings, meetings about meetings. We're filling out paperwork, we're doing all kinds of things that actually don't move the company forward. It's all busy work, right? There's a problem here. I'm going to phrase the problem, I'm going to label it, and I'm going to phrase the problem. Mo is stuck in a catch-22 situation. If he were more successful, he could hire more people, so he'd more free time, so that he can plan his company, but because he doesn't have the free time and he can't do other things to grow his business, he's stuck in this loop. We got to break the loop. We got to break the cycle. So something is amiss here, because like I said, we're given the same set of time every single day, a fresh pack of 24. How are you using your time?

So one of the exercises that most business management books will tell you to do is to do a time audit. When I first met my business coach, Keir McLaren, he said, "Chris, do you know where you spend your time?" I'm like, "I think I do." He goes, "I don't want you to think. I want you to write it down. I want you to keep a diary and write down every single thing that you're doing, logged next to it, time." And about a week in I stopped the exercise, I got the point. I was doing unessential things. I was doing a lot of busy work and I catch myself doing this all the time. Now, luckily though, I'm in a position now that I have a whole bunch of people doing everything it is that I don't want to do. And Mo, you know this now, because you're part of the team, and I think you thought before I was joking that I was exaggerating, being hyperbolic about this, but now you've been a part of several staff meetings, right? How many staff meetings have you been to?

Mo:

About three.

Chris:

Oh, just three. Okay. So we do these Monday morning staff meetings, right? And we do video content meetings for the team. How many meetings have you seen me at?

Mo:

That's zero, by the way.

Chris:

Zero. And then Mo calls me after the first meeting and he's like... Well, what'd you say? What'd you say to me after the first meeting?

Mo:

Yeah, that was a wake-up call. I was like, "You're not lying." Yeah, I was very surprised that he was not on our meeting, and this was the Monday morning, all team, on hands, operational meeting where they're talking to each individual department, what's going on for the week, what's going on relative to the goals for the month, and he wasn't there. And I was like, "Wow. You literally practice exactly what you preach."

Chris:

And you thought I was lying to you beforehand?

Mo:

No, I didn't think you were lying, but I also didn't think that it was to the point where you weren't on the operational meeting. Because I know you have a... so maybe unpack that for me. I know you have Ben, which I realized on the meeting, Ben was doing all the operational stuff.

Chris:

It's in his title. Chief Operating Officer. COO. I like to create a situation and maybe some people will get upset at me when I say this, but people really have to think two, three, or four times before they actually call me. And when they call me they usually say something like, "Chris, I'm sorry to bother you. There's something that we need to get your approval on." Right? Now, this is a drastic change from the way things used to be. It used to be like, "We're not sure if we should use red or dark red." And then I'm like, "Get this out of my face. You guys are here to make a decision. Make decisions. It's okay for you to be wrong, but I don't want to create a culture and a work environment where no one is going to make a decision. Everyone's afraid."

So I said let's just look at the hierarchy or the chain of decision making here. It's got to get through a lot of people before it should arrive on my desk, don't you think? I don't need to know if we prefer the trashcan in this corner or that corner. Whose job is it to make that decision? Somebody makes that decision. Great. If it doesn't work out, they make a different decision and they get feedback from the team. So part of effective leadership means you need to hire good people, be clear about what it is that they're doing, empower them to make decisions and especially create a culture where they understand we do not fire people for making mistakes, we only fire people when they don't acknowledge they've made a mistake and pretend like one had not been made. This is how we learn.

And so, it is a strange environment, especially if you come from a corporate place. The corporate mindset is the person who sticks their head up just a little bit gets smashed. And so, people tend to fly under the radar and I say, flying under the radar is the fastest way to fly yourself out the door. Don't fly under the radar. Make some noise. I'm not talking about being reckless. I'm not talking about being disrespectful, but making decisions so over time the culture starts to change, people make all kinds of decisions. In fact, people routinely argue with me, I accept that. I want to create a culture where that can exist. My only caveat is once I make a decision, we don't revisit this, we don't exhibit passive aggressive behavior. I listen and listening doesn't mean I follow what you say. I listen, I factor, I make a decision, let's move on.

So a lot of these meetings tend to suck up all of our time and we ask ourselves, "What happened to our day? How come I got nothing done? Why am I eating now at 5:00 pm? Who's managing this schedule?" So Mo, something is eating up all of your time. I think you think the illusion of busy work is being productive, it is not.

Mo:

It's not an illusion. I'm fully aware that there are things that I'm still doing that I should not be doing.

Chris:

Tell me three things that you do that you know you should not be doing, but you're still doing.

Mo:

Paperwork, emails, onboarding, responding. I just hired an EA like a month ago, so there's that. The second thing is there's a lot of [inaudible 00:12:07] that I do on a daily basis, because, I mean, we're putting out content at a ridiculous rate across multiple clients. And I'm still that person grooming my editors to replace me as I train them up. And the last thing is social, if I'm being honest. Between community engagement to the posting, which is something that I am starting to offload to my EA. So I'll tell you the problem that I'm recognizing, and please correct me, as you do so well. I'm finding myself, as I've hired people now, I realize that there's not many systems in place. So I'm having to do two things simultaneously.

Nidhi:

So what I heard from Mo is that he doesn't have systems in place to be able to buy himself time back. And then, I think that the other challenge and I don't know if this is Mo's challenge yet, to be determined, but I know a lot of people struggle with this, is that once they hire people then they feel the need to micromanage them, and now more of their time is sunk in trying to keep up with what everybody else is doing, instead of hiring people that you trust and can see will be able to maintain and accomplish the things they need to accomplish for your business, without you continuing to have to invest time. So it sounds like it's a prioritization of the systems that is what's lacking in Mo's business right now. And the good news is that that's something that you can put into place and is absolutely needed as part of the foundation of any business, especially when you're scaling.

But I'm really curious to hear, because I think the boredom piece, too, though, I think relates also to some of the jumping around, as well. So I'm really curious to hear how we weave that into the conversation.

Mo:

There is no issue of micromanagement. I want to highlight that, so we can remove that. The issue is definitely a lack of systems in place, which is being put together in real time, as I'm literally brain dumping how certain things are done and my expectations now that I'm taking things off of my plate.

Chris:

Okay. How many people work for you right now?

Mo:

Four.

Chris:

Are you familiar with the concept, effective span of management?

Mo:

I'm not.

Chris:

Okay. It goes something like this. How many fingers in front of you? On one hand? Five. That's the maximum number of people you can manage, but right now it doesn't seem like you're really managing anyone just yet, but you're going to quickly hit the limit of how many people you can manage. So the theory goes like this, I can manage five people, that's why there's a C suite, right? You manage those people and each one of those people, CRO, chief revenue officer, CTO, chief technology officer, CMO, chief marketing officer, and COO, chief operating officer, they all manage five people and those five people manage five people and that's why you have this giant mushroom that blows up, right? Each person can effectively manage five people. When I manage more than five people, I always feel like I'm being pulled apart in a thousand different directions and I'm going to drop the ball. It's that sense of impending doom. I'm going to miss something, I'm going to miss an appointment, I'm going to forget to relay an important piece of information to a client.

So all of you that are approaching five people that you're managing, you're going to realize you're at the edge. I suspect what has happened is you probably grew a little bit faster than you management skills grew. Before you were doing all the work yourself, and I think you started to work with your brother, who you're still training, who's still kind of getting the hang of it, you started bringing on more people, so you divert your attention away from your brother and work with more and more people. So no one is quite fully trained up, so that you feel like, you know what? You can do this now. Do I have this about right?

Mo:

Yes. The editors, they don't need a lot of me except for the QCPs, so they have a good understanding of what they're doing.

Chris:

So when you have to QC projects, it's because either they're too new to you or you don't have someone to do this job for you or you don't fully trust them just yet. One of those three or possibly all three exist, which do you suspect it might be?

Mo:

I'm thinking because they all kind of intersect together. There is a part of me, it's not necessarily trust, but I feel like I have to at least have my eyes on it at this stage still. There's that and there is some real time innovation that's happening and projects where some of the things we are doing are new to us and we're having to understand it in real time and things like that, as we're doing it. So I think it's a good blend of the three things you mentioned.

Chris:

Okay, I suspect it was. I think, sometimes, if everybody can visualize this, management and running a company, even with just four people, it's kind of like you spinning plates on a stick, right? And you kind of have to keep the plates spinning, because if they lose momentum, they wobble and they'll fall off their poles, right? And someone who's really experienced, who's worked with you for a long time, you probably can just do one spin and it spins forever. Someone who's new, someone's who's probably underpaid, who doesn't know what their doing, is new to the field, new to you, you sit there and you're spinning and you're spending all of your energy spinning them.

And so, if we look at how we can scale and grow our business and buy back our time, money is better spent by hiring more qualified people. So what happens a lot of times when you're in a position where we're hiring really young junior people who maybe haven't studied, who haven't put in the necessary hours to master their craft need a lot more management, totally okay. We usually call those people interns and we work with them and we bring them up and we know going in it's going to be a lot of coaching and teaching and not so much productive working. Totally okay. I've done this, and I'll talk about that in a second. So ideally what you want to do is you want to be able to charge your clients enough money so that you can hire someone at or above your level, but not below you.

Let's just take you and I, for example. I think I know how to edit, but I haven't spent a lot of time editing. I know the concepts and the theory. And then, we're working with you and your team and they're editing things and they're adding in really nice b-roll, they're coloring correcting, they're adding titles, interesting sound effects, and they're coming up with ideas. So I would safely say you and your team are at a level that are at least equal or above what I expect to happen. How many edits have I over viewed and gave you notes on, Mo?

Mo:

I love when you teach me through real life examples. Hardly any.

Chris:

So you need to understand that. Zero is the number. It's not hardly any. It's zero. And the team tries to get me to look at their edits, and they may have told you this, I don't look at the edits. I said, "I've hired you, you do the job." If there's a typo and it airs, whose problem is that? I'm not here to babysit you. You guys can do this. You can do this, Mo. Your team can do this. So I'm the kind of person who's like, "You know what? I trust you. You have the responsibility and I want you to have the responsibility and I will pay you to have that responsibility." And within a month and half of us working together, I already doubled up with you, right?

Mo:

Right.

Chris:

So this is how I manage, this is how I'm working. And yes, things will not be perfect, but I prefer you and your team to grow with me, to learn, to take ownership of the projects and allow, quote unquote, mistakes or things that are not exactly aligned to the way I want them done than for me to sit there and micromanage you and art direct you to death. I know that's extreme, there's lots of things in between, and this is one of the biggest struggles that creatives have when it comes to production and creative work. They say to themselves, "Oh, it won't be as good as me." You are right. It will not be as good as you, but three times as much work being produced from your shop may not be as good as you, but if you're going to grow the company and if you're desiring growth, this is kind of what you have to do.

Typically, what should have happened is you work with a person, in this case it's your brother, and you're like, "You know what? Here's how I look at things. Here's how I cut. So every time you cut, I want you to show me something." The goal is every single time you get a little bit better, I have less and less input, so it's a sliding scale from heavy supervision to autopilot. The faster they can get to autopilot, the better it is for them and the better it is for you. Believe or not, you're both motivated for them to go to autopilot. Why is this? So you can go do other things and they can feel like big bro doesn't have to look over my shoulders anymore. And they feel accomplished, their self-esteem goes up, their self confidence goes up. This I management.

People get this all wrong. There's a meme that goes around and shows a person working at a desktop and they have their hand on the mouse, and then their client's hand literally sits on top of their hand and everybody's who's ever had a client like that knows how true that moment is and how cringe that is. We've all had that client like, "One half pixel to the left. Can we just see it with a little bit more saturation?" And there's a trick, because I used to work in post-production, that whoever's working the machine, they pretend to make the change and the client's like, "Oh, so much better," and everybody just laughs inside.

So what you need to do is you need to hire people who have got experience, who are at or above your level, trust them to do their job and allow them to fail. And when they you do you say, "Hey, last time there was a typo or there's a glitch frame. We got to get that stuff out. You have to QC your own work. I'm not your crash pad. I'm not your parachute. You jump out of the plane with no parachute, it's going to be hard landing." This gets people to go through your system really fast. They're either going to make it or they're going to get... it should be that simple. Now, of course, there's lots of gray in here, we can talk about that later.

I did mention before about interns. Interns are a little different. Interns are a weird thing, where you barely pay them any money, but they're really getting an education. Where people get this wrong is they pay them no money and they teach them nothing and they're taking advantage of people. So when you bring in interns, you now have a system in place, you have seniors who know what they're doing and you can have your interns shadow your highest performer. It's called best practices. When you're managing large organizations, you look at your best salesperson, your best customer service person, and you try to model others after them. What is it they're doing that you love so much. You actually have those people teach the other people and you take their recommendations on who to hire and who to fire, so you're building mini clones of the same type of person, and those people are usually very good at identifying people just like them.

Nidhi:

Yeah, I think that what you said Chris is 100% accurate and that is ultimately the biggest struggle is you need to spend more time vetting and engaging somebody on the front end rather than having to micromanage them throughout the course of their time working for you. And I love the way that you put it, where it's hiring somebody at or above your level, because I hadn't conceptualized it that way. But it totally makes sense, because otherwise then you are having to do... it creates more work for you. You're ultimately paying somebody to not even really do the job themselves and it does erode their confidence. It sounds like Mo is kind of in a place where he is going to have to source some of those people and have to be able to feel comfortable delegating out some of the tasks.

Mo, do you feel comfortable relinquishing control, I guess would be the thing, right? Because, like Chris said, I think that ultimately is the hardest part for us as entrepreneurs is we want to be able to control every element or the outcome, but when we're bringing somebody in to be a part of the team, then that trust has to be there, unless something is going so awry that it demands our intervention. So is that a place that you're in that you're willing to be able to relinquish control and trust in the people and really take the time to vet them?

Mo:

Yeah, I have no problem relinquishing control. It's something that I did have a problem with before, which was the reason behind not hiring. Gave that up last year, I would say. I think my issue, and me and Chris have talked about this before and it's something that I'm constantly doing my best to get better at. It's the talent piece, had to learn it the hard way, by freelancing certain talent that I assumed was up to par, and then realized that wasn't. And now I'm blessed with another editor who's just a rockstar. And just followed what Chris said about paying people what they ask, what they're worth and doing my best to hire there, as far as above me or where I'm at, but not below me. The other problem that kind of tie into this, and Chris has said this before, I'm sure we'll get into this, is the charging enough piece, because to get to where he's saying and I know he kind of painted it as ideal, you have to charge enough to be able to do that, which is something that I'm leaning into heavy.

And I think hearing some of what Chris said, particularly with my brother who is one of the editors, that was what we did with him. And I think hearing Chris now, I even feel like I can relinquish even more. The QC part, I feel like after this call I'm just going to have a call and be like, "Yo, you ready?" Because he's been ready. And there's hardly any oversight except towards the end when there's just high-level conversation now, but I feel even more empowered from this call to be like, "Yo, you got this, even without me and it's fine." And I'm a student of [inaudible 00:26:04], so if you were at any of my team meetings, I do my damnedest to create a space where you are okay to fail, you are okay to make a mistake. I think the inner workings of this conversation has more to do with my personal time management and allocating my efforts effectively. So I'm excited for where we're going to be taking the rest of this conversation.

Nidhi:

If you have downtime, do you feel as though you should be filling that downtime with some activity? Do you feel weird just being or sitting still? Is that part of the challenge, as well, that because we're not efficient or we're not necessarily scheduling things in a way that allows for time, sometimes it can be an avoidance strategy, so I don't want to make that assumption, I wanted to ask you about it.

Mo:

I don't think of myself in my current state as efficient. I would say I'm inefficient with my time. I would say, in the past, there have been avoidant behavior toward specific tasks, per what we've talked about in previous calls. And I think because of my lack of experience regarding those tasks, my gauge for how long they're actually going to take, it's much less than what they actually end up taking and I've told Chris this before, right? Some tasks require not just the execution of the task, but there's a learning curve towards the task, as well. So the reason why this conversation, for me, is even different now is because in the past it was trying to do everything myself, and it was the control piece. And now that there's people doing this stuff, I'm trying to get to a place where I'm mindful, okay, how do I become even more efficient, because I do now have those pockets of time, because I'm relinquishing a lot of things that I used to be doing.

I'll say this, I feel like I'm always at the edge of the hour. Does that make sense? When something's due I'm at the edge there or, "Oh, I need to send this right now," and that's a constant feeling in my day-to-day and I'm not a fan of it and I know it's of my own doing and maybe I'm blind to how I'm finding myself in this position or how I'm putting myself in this position.

Nidhi:

I have a thought here, Mo, if I may. It was something Chris said last year, when I hear you, Mo, I wonder if one of the issues might be that you're over scheduled. And I was late to a thing I had with Chris and Jule and Martha and it's like running around with you hair on fire. And I remember Chris, I don't even know if you remember, you said something like, "It gets to a point where you start to say no to almost every request for your time." And that hit me. I realized that i was saying yes to things where there was no money involved, to things to be nice, to things to let people pick my brain, to things for people who can literally go to my LinkedIn but would like to hear me verbally tell them about what I do. Just things that don't matter and I was over scheduled and I didn't have time to think and be, which is so much a part of the work.

I think when we talk about tasks, we're forgetting that tasks, the part of the work we're actually writing or typing or talking is only a part of the work. We need time to actually think about the work to create the work in our minds. And so, I have taken a huge... a lot of you have probably noticed, I'm not even on social media as much. I've become very protective of my time. People like Julie, in the audience, who I work with on projects probably feel the pain of this, but to get me to be in a meeting with you, it's because we're doing something where we're making money or there's a path toward that. Other than that, I'm probably going to say, "We're not going to meet," and it's really changed my focus and my level of ability to just feel at peace. So I wonder if thinking about how much you're saying yes to needs to be part of this for you.

Mo:

I think it's a small element now. It was a much bigger element in the past. So many of the things that both you and Nidhi have brought up were true and there's remnants of them still. But I don't believe that that's my current main issue. There are things that I could probably say no to, yes, but for now, unless the three of you prove to me otherwise, which is very likely, I don't feel like that's the core issue here for me right now. But it was, for sure, in the past.

Chris:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

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Chris:

Welcome back to our conversation. Now, Mo, you were asking me some questions. Chris, I got to talk to you about the video content, et cetera. And you told me, "Chris, here's what I'm thinking. I want to do this, this, this, and that." What did I say to you, Mo?

Mo:

You were like, "You don't need to ask me this, just go execute."

Chris:

And so, was this shocking of surprising to you?

Mo:

When you ask me that question, no because it's you. However, it is shocking that I still had to do that. And not to get woo-woo or fluffy, but in reflection, before, I am a person that has required permission to do. So I think I bring that into business and that probably slows me down. So I think that's something that I need to relinquish, is this need for permission. Sometimes even it's the permission like, "Hey, we have this idea we're thinking based on the strategy we did. What are your thoughts?" And there, again, the great clients have always been like, "Go. We trust you." So that is something that I'm definitely working on.

Chris:

Be client you desire to have, like be the change you want to have in the world, right? And we all want a certain type of client. What are they? Okay, it's pretty simple, one who pays us, pays us on time, pays us what we ask, allows us to do our best work, only is there when needed and is responsive. So I think about that a lot, right? Because I'm on the internet bashing people who don't do this. I don't want to turn around and be that kind of client. You're asking me for things that is pretty normal, pretty standard operating procedure for client work. You're like, "Client, I'm thinking about this. I just want to run it by you," except this is some kind of patent interruption for you, because almost all clients would say, "Mo, thanks for involving me in the decision-making process." Right? "Well, I'm thinking, yeah, I like purple. And what's the other... Oh, green." You guys have a whole conversation about it.

You come to me it's like, "Chris, I'm thinking this." I'm like, "Just do it, man. If it works, it works. If it doesn't try something else. Just don't over commit to one direction or the other and learn every time you do it." And you're like, "Huh, okay." It's that you know what to do, try stuff, break stuff, make stuff. And you're like, "Okay." Now, I'm pulling this apart in our conversation to share with our community because, first of all, you all should desire to find clients like this. I'm not hiring, but find clients like this. But the other part to this is, if you can see me managing you and you like that, it should start to get your gears turning to say, "What is the difference between the way that I'm managing and the way that Chris is managing? Which one seems to work better at protecting my time?"

Now, Nidhi's back channeling me saying, "Yo guys, what's this got to do with boredom?" I'm going to tell you. Thank you Nidhi for keeping us on track. The reward for you being a better manager of a company is boredom. I know this sounds crazy. The reward for you being better at running your company is you get to be bored. So before we get to the boredom state, and there's a benefit to it, we have to clean up our house. I'm going to tell you how to do that, and then for the next part of this conversation, we're going to talk mostly about why boredom is so important to running a creative and innovative company, even if you're not in a creative industry. Alex, go ahead.

ALex:

Hey. Hey, everyone. So nice to jump in here. Hi Chris. Hi Mo. Nice to meet you Nidhi and the rest. I could relate a lot with your experience, Mo, with you're starting up building that team and I also had that experience and wanted to share what was, for me, the breakthrough from going from that like, "Oh my god, I need to be on top of everything," and I have the whole responsibility of the business in my case, whereas the team I was building, my creative team, for a tech company from zero to 15. And the first four or five hires for me were painful. And so, I felt like I had to be on top of everything, that I had no time. And then, for the first nine months, I was grinding and working like 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, and then I went on holidays for like two weeks, just to have kind of a break.

And then, I'm back and there's this hot mess where everyone's [inaudible 00:36:37] on top of us, we don't feel empowered. And I'm like, "Shit. What did I do? I was trying to do the best. I was trying to get my team buttoned up, but I've done the opposite, right?" And, for me, the breakthrough was to actually set the direction very clear, define a clear process and guidelines, and those things, when that was clear, I set up a session, we call it the forum, where the team members would start discussing the work and then it was on them to decide, with the direction that was set up, what was moving forward or not. And then, to both of your points and basically what we've been hearing here is we started failing, but then very soon we started pacing up. And then, I was all of a sudden, if you will, bored, because I was like, "Okay, now my team is going and I'm here to support them." And I feel like, for me, that space where they were giving feedback to each other and collectively deciding what was good based on a direction that was set, that was a game changer.

Chris:

Thank you very much, Alex. I haven't heard your voice in quite some time, so always nice to hear from you. As I promised, what we're going to do is we're going to switch gears a little bit. Okay, so before we do that, I want to teach you all whether you're working with an intern, a junior whatever, how you can start to scale your company. I've had a lot of practice at this, because in year one, almost the first freelance gig I could do independently of an office space, I brought in other people to help me. And so, it seems quite simple, you need to charge enough money that there's enough fat on that that you can make money while paying someone else to do some of the work.

Now, this person obviously cannot deliver it to your standards, because if they could, they would probably get this job instead of you. So you have to become a really good teacher, a coach, a mentor, and art director, something like that. Whatever title you feel comfortable with. So let's just use some numbers here so we can understand. Someone needs to design a logo for you because you were hired to design a logo, and you think that they have the skills that they need to be able to help you, and they get you 80% of the way there. So you spend time coaching them up, so they go from 80% to 95%. Maybe it's still not there, and then you put that last little 5% in. So you've probably now spent 25% of your time working on this. That means you still have 75% of your time to do something else.

The hope and the theory is, over time, this person keep inching up, not from 80% to 90%, but 84%, 86% and they just keep getting better. There will be a threshold, potentially, that they'll get to that will be good enough for you. And what you have to do is you have to realize something, your standards are going to be much higher than you client standard. What you have to do is you have to deliver to the level in which you are paid for and not over deliver. Creative people do this all the time. It's equivalent of going in and buying a swatch watch and saying, "Well, we only make Rolex watches here. Here's your Rolly." I had to learn this. This is very hard. It's hard to turn that switch off, to say, "you know what? This is what the client's paid for, this is what we would deliver and above that." But we're not saying that you get to come in and order the soup and get a prime rib cut. It doesn't work like that in any other business, but creative people can't help themselves.

So then, what you wind up doing is your overwork yourself and now you get caught in a loop where you're doing way more work than what you're getting paid for, so you're never going to be able to hire better people. Managing that gap between what you can charge the client and what you pay someone else to do while coaching them up is the key to your business. So Mo, here's typically what you do, just think of any classic any apprenticeship type relationship, this follows teaching pedagogy. It goes something like this. First, I do. Watch me, don't say anything, don't do anything, take lots of notes and just watch me. Second, we do. I do a little bit. I give it to you, you give it back to me, we do it together. Third, you do. I'm not getting my hand involved in this at all. So it's the transference of knowledge, skills, tools, processes. This is how we train people up. I do, we do, you do.

You have to design the lesson or the way that you work together just like that. And this is exactly how I've trained every single person who's now doing a job that I no longer do. I used to do the bidding. Someone would come in, they know how to bid projects, we would break it down on a calendar and map it out. They'd figure out how much you charge for things. After a while, I don't look at it at all and they say, "YOU know what, Chris? I'm thinking this job should be $60,000." I'm like, "Great. I was going to submit if for $45,000, you've done a good thing. Go submit it for $60,000." And then, after a while, it's like, "Do you want to look at these bids anymore? Do you even want to know what I'm doing?" I'm like, "Nope. You know what we care about, right?" They're like, "What?" "Profitability." "I got it. Here's our margins, here are the parameters, however you want to get us there, you do."

This is important. They get to grow, gain in responsibility, and they can use the skills that have been transferred over to them in looking for other employment, should they want to leave, or for whatever reason, your company doesn't exist anymore. Don't hold onto all this stuff, let it go, or just be a company of one, that's okay, too. Mo, do you have any questions about how to train people up?

Mo:

I do not. That was very clear.

Chris:

Were you doing this before?

Mo:

No.

Chris:

I didn't think so. Okay. Well, is this something you feel confident you could do in the future?

Mo:

Yes.

Chris:

Do you have any additional questions for me, in case something wasn't clear?

Mo:

I will try it first and report back.

Chris:

The answer was no. Thank you very much. You were doing so good, Mo. You were doing so good. One time, two times, then the third time back to the old ways. Yes. Okay, so Mo, here's what you do. You're going to say to your brother, "I want you to document how we do stuff here, because we're growing and I will not be training the next person, you will be." "Oh, even more responsibility. This is awesome." See how empowering this might make someone feel? Now, I know from the boss's point of view sometimes you think, "Am I asking my people too much?" And they're sitting back thinking, "When are they going to let go of the reins? Get your hand off my mouse hand. I can do this. Believe in me. Put me in, coach. I can do this." Okay, now if they can't do this and you've done your best to train them and they keep making the same mistakes over and over again, we'll have another call on how to fire them, but not today.

Now, let's talk about why boredom is a thing. Is boredom a virtue? And aren't we supposed to be working all the time? And do we have to feel guilty or to feel shame around that we don't have anything to do. I want to talk about that a little bit. Nidhi, I want to turn this over to you, because this seems to be more like something that you are more qualified to speak about than anyone else in the room.

Nidhi:

Well, I mean, I'm happy to speak to it. I think that boredom is integral for creativity and there is a lot of research behind this that shows that the most impactful creations from artists or writers or people in all different industries comes from those moments where they were bored. But I think that as a society, we're very much programmed in this work grind culture where we mistake busyness with productivity and boredom as being lazy or as not having enough to do, right? And I think that that is ultimately, actually, a complete falsehood. Because when I think about success, I think about being able to have more of my time back, and the opportunity to really be able to choose what I want to do, including being bored, right? And so, I think that one of the things that we see when it comes to boredom is that there's a discomfort around it and what we tend to do in moments of discomfort is we numb.

And when I'm talking about numbing, I'm talking about doom scrolling, watching Netflix, trying to fill every moment with an activity. We don't allow ourselves the opportunity to really sit with our thoughts and to really even just notice what we're feeling and what we're thinking moment to moment. So that is, ultimately, I think, where a lot of the most brilliant ideas are born, are in the times of silence and in the opportunities we have to really be centered and be present with ourselves and all the good, bad, and ugly that comes with the thoughts and feelings that we feel in those moments of silence. I'll just add one more thing and then I would love to hear your thoughts, Chris. I know for a lot of people that are survivors of especially traumatic experiences, the idea of boredom or silence or quiet it feels fundamentally unsafe, because it means that all of this stuff from the past come flooding back in. Or all of the stress and anxiety about the future takes hold.

And so, I just want to encourage people to practice this in small doses. Build in boredom into your schedule. Set a few minutes at a time where you're able to just allow yourself to get used to the discomfort that comes with just being without doing, and you can build your tolerance that way and just see how that improves your creativity. But I'll pause there, because I know I've said a lot. So Chris, I would love to hear any thoughts, and Mo, as well.

Mo:

I agree with the idea of allowing yourself to be bored. My reasoning or my aversion to it is I feel if I'm bored I'm being unproductive, which is not what I'm supposed to be doing, which has, of course, led to burnout. So it's less the fear of the inner thoughts and more so am I doing what I'm supposed to do. And maybe this is the golden child popping its ugly head, but that's my two cent son that. What you said made me think of that and that's probably why busy work tends to consume me, to feel productive and why we're even here talking about all this.

Nidhi:

I'm going to ask a follow-up question, Mo, how is that feeling familiar to you, that if I'm not productive, that means that somehow I'm not doing something or that my self-worth is tied to productivity? Lean into that. Where did you learn that in your life?

Mo:

Oh, I mean, that was my life for the longest. A+ student. First born. First to come overseas. Oldest across both my siblings and cousins, so that was my paradigm for the longest and I think it translated into entrepreneurship, for sure. And again, I'm aware of it and doing my best to get better. There are remnants of avoidance, because of being that A student, because of having so much success in academia that when it doesn't come as fast as I'd like it to, let me find something else to be productive in, right? So the reason for all of this is to allocate my productivity to the things that matter, but also relinquishing this need to feel productive, because I know Chris is going to highlight that. Boredom is productivity, at some point.

Nidhi:

So what I'm hearing you say, Mo, is that your identity is linked, and your self-worth, is very much linked to what you are doing moment to moment, because every time that you achieve something, that strengthened your identity, right? Like every time you got an A, every time that you achieved something, every time that you killed it and got more revenue into your business, every time that you skipped over an opportunity to just be, to be able to fill it with something, that felt as though it was productive. But the thing that we have to look at how to separate the identity from the doing, because they can't be linked. Otherwise, then self-care is going to feel like a threat to you, because now you're all of a sudden challenging this idea that being still or not doing means I'm not worthy. That's, essentially, the underlying judgment that you're making of it, right? Is that I'm not worthy if I'm not productive.

And so, I'm going to fill my time with activities that feel productive, because then that creates a sense of worth for me. Am I getting that right?

Mo:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's stuff that's been unpacked before for me, and it's a constant work in progress.

Chris:

I do have some obvious thoughts on this boredom thing, because I'm a big champion of this. Just think about this and see what your answer might be. How long can your business or organization survive without you? And I mean that in the measurement of days, weeks, months, or possibly years. How long can it survive without you, assuming that it's your company or organization? And just think about that for a little bit and be honest with yourself. So if you're a solo operator, if you disappear tomorrow, if you were caught in some kind of interdimensional portal, brought into the metaverse, you just disappeared, how long can your company or organization go on without you? And it'll probably have different stages. For some, I'll be immediately business ends, it's over. Some would continue to move along and then enter into a state of decline, and then die.

And you think about the impact that one person might have on a company. Steve Jobs passed away many years ago, it's arguable that Apple's doing just fine. So, to me, they would get a pretty healthy report card. Now, you could say that the revenue's up, but the innovation is down. That's arguable, so we'll figure that our later. But just think about that. So Mo, do you know how long your company, your business can last if you were to get pulled into some alternate universe?

Mo:

Oof, tough question. Month, two months.

Chris:

Really? That surprises me.

Mo:

Yeah?

Chris:

Yeah.

Mo:

Well, my lead editor, AKA my brother, he's tapped in, so he would pick it up.

Chris:

Mo's saying one to two months. Your brother right now is your right-hand person, right?

Mo:

Yeah.

Chris:

So other than you, he's the lynch pin.

Mo:

Yes.

Chris:

Does he know anyone on our team? Has he spoken to anyone on our team?

Mo:

No.

Chris:

Do you see your problem?

Mo:

Yep. We can end it right here. Yes, I do see a problem.

Chris:

So you know right away. Really, what I'm saying is, if you have a right-hand person and you've not introduced them to your clients, you're in trouble right now. Okay, so one of the things that I did, remember the I do, we do, you do? I do, I'm going to have a meeting with the clients. Come with me. Please don't say anything. Just watch, listen, learn, take lots of notes. Afterwards, if I said anything, if the clients did anything that confused you, ask me once we're in the car. Ask me after we finish the Zoom call and we've cleared the room, so to speak. And wonderful things will happen. They'll say, "You know when the clients asked for more and you said this, I would've just given it to them. Why did you do that?" You get the opportunity to explain to them, this is a teachable moment. This is what I'm looking for. Sometimes you say yes, sometimes you say no and here's why. Like, "Oh, okay."

So as I continue to do this, your clients begin to become familiar with this person and it's important that you give this person some kind of decent title, so that they will be respected by your clients. Typically, I'll say, "This is the project manager, this is the producer, this is an art director, or my senior designer, my right-hand person," so that the client don't look past them. You've seen this before. You might've done this yourself. People look right past you like they're not even in the room. So make sure you introduce them properly with a title that would matter to your client. Internally, it doesn't matter. I don't like titles myself, but from an external business function, they need to know their title. They'll look at them differently, they'll treat them differently.

And as you're going through that sliding scale of handing off the work to someone and disappearing, you're going to say something like this, "You've met Ahmet. He does all the work. I barely have any supervision. Moving forward, just to make sure we don't drop any balls, he's going to be your point-of-contact. Your single point-of-contact is now going to be this person. Your SPOC. S-P-O-C. Single point-of-contact." And they're like, "Great, Mo. We love him anyways. We don't want to talk to you." And you're like, "Great." This happens to me all the time. I don't take offense over this, I take great joy and pride. I've hired the right people, they have a lot of upward mobility. They're really responsible and they have great customer service skills and their attention to detail is better than mine and my clients love them.

Like Matthew's here. Once Matthew was introduced to the chain, people don't even care about me anymore. When Ben Burns was running projects, I had my clients calling me from the Society from Japanese Animation. They're like, "We just love Ben." I'm like, "I love him, too." "Can we adopt him?" You're like, "No. He's mine." This is the point at which you want to get. This has a lot to do with your business maturity and probably your EQ, your IQ and all those kinds of things. Don't feel threatened that your clients now love them, this was the point. So you kind of have to put yourself in that position.

Mo:

That was a huge unlock to me, because though I'm delegated a lot of the work, the production, for some reason, this was like a light bulb moment and we've talked about and we get lost in the day-to-day. So the intent is there, but sometimes we don't get after this, so I'm literally, before I leave the office, emailing him as well as my EA and just letting them know, this is the course of action moving forward. So this was huge for me and I appreciate it.

Chris:

So the reason why I asked about the health of your company, how long can it live without you, this is really important, because some of you are in a relationship with someone. Some of you have children, some of you have elderly parents who are going to need your help at some point in their lives. I want you to think about them. So you holding onto all the work yourself is great, because you get to do the work. But as soon as your hands no longer work, or you are no longer around, your ability to support and help other people, I think, is almost gone.

This is important for you to think about here. This is why I want to be able to delegate as much of the things that are unessential as possible, so that my sole focus is looking at what's coming down a year, two years, five years from now, to work on my own personal development, to read, to sketch, to draw, to have conversations with people, because that's how I learn. This is how I find a good problem to solve. This is why boredom is really important to me, so every day I can wake up and say, "You know what? What am I doing? I don't know. I get to just think about it." That's why I can have days for reading, days for writing, and days for doing nothing at all.

Greg:

Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosting by Chris Do and produced by me, Greg Gunn. Thank you, Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode and thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me, head over to thefutur.com/heychris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.