This time we go deep! – In this episode we dig into sleep culture, and how much sleep entrepreneurs really need. I talk about safety nets, or how the lack thereof can be the best thing for you. And we contradict the popular, steadfast rule of paying yourself first.
[Transcript]
– [Adam] All right. Hey everybody. This is Adam Steele and this is Episode 4 of the Steele Entrepreneur Show.
♪ [music] ♪ Today, we’ve got three topics for you, topics that I think I could speak pretty well to. I’m kind of still playing with the format of this show and I’m going to keep playing with it until I get something that I really like or someone, one of you perhaps, says, “Oh, I really like this.” So we’re going to keep playing with it. I’ve got Brandon and Rhianna with me of course, and they’re going to help me a little bit through the show.
The first question I’m going to…it’s not so much a question, rather a topic I suppose, is about sleep and entrepreneurs. And this is a topic I’ve been… I’m blogging a little bit about it. I think I might have made a little mini Facebook video about it, and it’s something I kind of dive deep in and done a little bit of research on my own. And what’s kind of brought it to the forefront more so than perhaps it has been in the past is Arianna Huffington’s new book. I don’t actually remember the name off the top of my head, but it’s basically on this sort of sleep culture or lack of sleep culture. And her argument…it’s an argument but she also claims that it’s very much science-based, is that entrepreneurs are not getting enough sleep or people in general aren’t getting enough sleep, and that they are kind of, I think the phrasing that she uses and I’ve heard this phrasing before, is that folks are using lack of sleep as a badge of honour. And she goes into some pretty good detail. She did an interview on CBC, I’ve listened to that twice through because I wanted to really understand what she was talking about and what her arguments were. And then she did another interview and I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I get the general gist now. She talks about her experiences with sleep a lot. She goes back to when she was building Huff Po back in the early days and where she wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. And what I find interesting, just to cut her off a little bit here, is she says that the company started really taking off once she had kind of had this realization. I think she fell asleep and like broke her face, something like that, which is no laughing joke, but I’m trying to imagine what that would look like. She sort of woke up to the fact that, pun intended, woke up to the fact that she needed more sleep if she was going to survive pretty much.
So she claims that because of her ability to get, her decision to get more sleep, that Huffington Post was able to take off. Drawing from my own experiences, I’d say today I get a fair bit more sleep than I did in previous years, especially during years one, two, three, and even four. During year one, I don’t remember really…there were plenty of nights per week where I just wouldn’t go to sleep, where I would just work all the way through the night. And then the sun would come up and I would keep working, and then around noon, I’d have to throw in the towel because I was no longer productive. I was essentially useless. And some days I’d be able to last longer, some days I would be able to last a little bit less. I’d sleep for four hours, two hours and then get back at it. And you know, she says that it took off because she started sleeping more. But what about all those years? And I don’t know how many years it was that she put into the company when she wasn’t sleeping, all that grinding that she did before it started taking off. If she had… I just wonder I suppose, had she been sleeping that 8 to 10 hours, whatever it is, 7, 8, 9 hours, whatever is right for whomever, would she have seen success as early as she did? Assuming it happened fairly early, I’m not sure. Or would it have taken longer or would it have happened at all? And I know in my case, absolutely not. It wouldn’t have happened. I don’t have the…it just wouldn’t have happened. During the night is when I get stuff done because it’s peaceful, it’s quiet, I can concentrate. And especially during the other years where there was just too many distractions. At that time, I still had a lot of things going on. I’ve been able to kind of cut a lot of those things out, unnecessary things. I had a lot of distractions. And so, during the day, all those distractions were present. At night, they were not and so I was able to get a lot of great work done. So I don’t know.
I question that and I also question that whole badge of honour thing. I think there’s a lot of people who walk around and kind of brag about how little sleep they got, but I don’t think it’s the lack of sleep that they’re bragging about. I think, and certainly for me, I think what they’re talking about is the work. It’s the work ethic. It is knowing that, you know, at some point in their life, they may not have had that work ethic or they see people around them and they’re lazy and not doing anything and they’re sort of creating a contrast between themselves and other folks or themselves and their previous selves. And through that distinction, through that contrast, they’re very proud of it. I certainly am. I don’t wear my hours of sleep as a badge. I wear my hours of sleep as a, you know, “Look how much work I got accomplished. Look at how dedicated I am or committed I am to gettin’ ‘er done.”
So I don’t know that I totally agree with her argument. I’m not ignorant to the science but I think everybody is different, and I think in those early years, you just have to do what you have to do to make it happen, especially if you don’t have a fallback plan, if you don’t have maybe a part-time job. And hell if you have a part-time job or you have a full-time job, well then when are you going to do it, right? Because you’re probably working 9-to-5. You get home, you make food, you maybe take care of your kids, and then 7:00 rolls around, put your kids to bed. 9:00 rolls around, that’s when you get your work done, 9:00 to 2:00, and you go to bed. You wake up at 6:00 and you get it done again. So I don’t know, I question it and it’s got me thinking a lot. And I’ll probably have some more thoughts on the subject in the near future but for now, I just find interesting. That’s all.
The next thing I wanted to talk about, and I guess it kind of ties in to what I was talking about before where you don’t have a fall back plan, this is it, especially if you’re in sort of a position where you quit your job to do what you want to do, and perhaps you don’t have much savings, or perhaps you don’t have backing, or perhaps you don’t have family nearby, and you’ve got rent to pay, and you’ve got whatever. In my opinion, that is the best scenario to start a business in, and I question whether I would have had any real and certainly necessary success as early as I did. I had enough to success to pay my bills as early as I did or in the time that I needed it to happen, or else I just would have been quite screwed. If I had a safety net, if I knew that I could, I had savings, and I’m not saying don’t have savings, that thing is very smart to have savings when starting a business, but I know for me, for my personality, I wouldn’t have been have been this motivated. I would have pulled out. I had an Xbox 360 at the time. I would have pulled out that more times, because you know, I was working from home at the time. I still am, but at the time I was working from home, I was new to it, I had shit discipline, and there are so many distractions at home. So I was sort of faced with a decision, you either get your shit together or you are totally screwed. And I was becoming, month after month, I started in August 2010, I want to say, and month after month, I was becoming more and more and more screwed. September rolled around and I probably was $9,000 in debt, then $15,000, then you know, maybe not quite. I don’t remember exactly what the numbers were, but by the end of it, I was quite deep, and with rent coming up and bills and all that kind of stuff. And there was very little, if any, safety net there. I didn’t have a job to go to. Yes I could have got a job if I absolutely had to, but other than that, that was it. If I was going to pay rent, I had to get my shit together. And that sort of led me down a variety of roads, and I think it would force anybody to just kind of get dirty and do what they have to do to make their business idea work or pivot as soon as they need to to try something else just to stay afloat. And I don’t know, for me I don’t think it would have worked if I had done it any other way, if I had a part-time job and I was trying to make it happen. If you’re thinking about starting a business, it’s not that I say that you have to do it that way, but if you’re built like I am, if you perhaps lack discipline and aren’t really 100% sure what you want to do, I think the best way to do it is just to jump, is to go all in, and you’ll just have to make it happen versus taking a little piece at a time and it takes you forever to get there if you ever get there, and most people don’t have the patience by that time anyways. So just something to think about. Something I think about a heck of a lot whether thinking back whether it would have worked or not, and if you’re anything like me, then it probably wouldn’t work, and I highly recommend just jumping and with some savings though. Because otherwise, you’re going to end up paying the bank a lot of money in interest, and that is stupid. What do we have next Brandon? – [Brandon] We’ve got paying yourself first. I’m sorry. Paying yourself last. – The opposite, yeah. – [inaudible 00:12:2] – A lot of people, and I want to say, I think it’s Tony Robbins, heck of a smart guy and who am I to say he’s wrong, but again like sleep, like starting a business, everybody’s a little bit different and things are going to work differently for different people. For me, and I didn’t even realize when it was happening, I always paid myself last, and to this day, I absolutely do. Unfortunately at that time, when I was starting, I didn’t have a lot of structure in place, a lot of structure of anything really. What money I needed, which was way more that I actually needed, I was actually quite stupid with my money at that time, I would just pull out of the company as I needed and then I took no more. And everything else that I didn’t need was left in the company or went into future businesses or future ideas or future investments or hiring more people than I actually need so that they can help me build whatever is next. And I like that. I don’t think you really need all that much to get by. And like I said, unfortunately, in those early years especially as money started to roll around, I was taking vacations, I was buying expensive things, I was just being a real idiot spending money I didn’t even have, which landed me in tremendous debt eventually because it just got totally out of control. But I don’t know that necessarily the best way is to just pull little bits. I think you should figure out what you absolutely need to live, rent, plus food, plus whatever, no more, and take that out as a regular, I guess, a salary, and everything else, keep in the company. I don’t you need a fancy apartment. I don’t think you need anything really all that fancy, especially in those early years. I don’t think you’ve earned it. I think most businesses are bound to fail. So if we do that math, if let’s say 9 out of 10 businesses, I don’t actually remember the number, but let’s just say it’s 9 out of 10 businesses fail within the first year, what makes you think that you’re going to succeed? And so, if you’re spending all that money and not, you know, maybe building different sectors of your business or building different cash flows or what have you, if you’re taking in all that money, what happens when you potentially fail? And that’s what happened to me many times over as I was pulling out so much money that I couldn’t put any money back into the businesses for them to succeed. And that only changed recently. That took me three and a half, four years to figure out to a point where if I hadn’t figured it out, then I wouldn’t be here today. Absolutely not. So I think it’s a mistake to pay yourself any more than you absolutely have to. I’m not saying don’t celebrate, don’t treat yourself, but always be thinking about, “How much do I really need to take home? And if something went south, have I diversified myself enough that I could survive it?” I get the idea of pay yourself first because in a lot of cases, you are the reason whether your business fails or succeeds. In almost every reason, I actually can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t be the reason your business… I don’t care about economics or anything like that, it comes down to you absolutely, which makes me think of a really great book that if you haven’t got, you must. It’s called <i>Extreme Ownership</i> by Jocko Willink, and it’s all about owning everything in your business, your successes and your failures. I digress, however. I think what Tony Robbins is getting at is if you can’t survive, you’re not paying yourself enough to survive and live comfortably, you will deteriorate and without you, what do you have left? Can your business go on without you? I might be wrong about that, but I believe that’s sort of what he’s getting at and I think there’s something to that. But it is tempting let me tell you, once money starts rolling in to start treating yourself, to start, you know, improving your standard of living. And I’m not saying not to do that, but just to be very cautious about just how much you improve, how much you indeed deserve.
So those are my thoughts for Episode 4. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. I think all three of those are pretty fairly controversial topics. Certainly around the sleep bit, there’s a lot of talk around what is enough and I guess we might even be able to call it sleep culture today.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on all three topics. And I hope that Episode 4 was valuable to you and that you’ll come back and enjoy Episode 5 and 6. You can get notifications for when those episodes come out very simply by subscribing to our channel or subscribing or following rather any of our social channels which I will post of course in the show notes but also at the very end of the video.
Thanks for coming. I do appreciate it.
If you have any questions, you know how to reach me, and feel very free to leave a comment in the YouTube comments sections or in the Facebook comments. Or fire me an email. I’d love to hear from you, adam@magistrateinc.com. Thanks guys.
