How the Founder of The Five Minute Journal Built a Business That Runs Without Him.

One of the things that I really want to get into with you today is the difference in starting a business today versus when you started out.

So let me paint a picture.

It's a familiar picture, which you obviously will know, but today is all about clawed maximization.

productivity maximization, the anxiety of am I doing enough fast enough? You know, you go on to X and it's everyone just seems like they're better than you, faster than you, smarter than you.

Also, the amount of information that's available from podcasts like this to LinkedIn posts to, you know, just news in general, it's just far more developed.

It just feels like everyone's so active and successful.

And I think being a founder today comes with a ton of anxiety.

And for me, I run several brands myself, so I'm speaking from experience.

I can't go to bed unless my cloud is doing something while i'm sleeping that's how ridiculous this has become you know we were talking about this morning like anthropic launched today or yesterday now you can have multiple cloud code sessions going at one time and i sent that to my co-founder one of my business partners and he was like yes like amazing like celebrating that we can now triple our productivity so just coming to the point in the question it seems like Today, it's all about efficiency maximization.

And that comes with insane amount of pressure, but also just anxiety.

We're living in an incredibly intense digital world.

And again, speaking from experience, when I leave my computer, I feel like this desire to get back to it.

And I think that's messed up.

And so I was really particularly excited to chat with you because I feel that, or it seems like you've kind of broken away from that.

You're still a business owner, you're still a co-founder, you're still an e-commerce person, you've exited, and yet you have this, what seems super balanced life, not full of anxiety.

So I'd love to get your perspective on all of that.

There's a lot of questions there.

The reality is everything that you said about is true.

The safety that I've been able to earn is through the exit that we spoke about.

For me, and we're just speaking to somebody also here in your office as well, is that we all have a certain number.

that will make us feel more comfortable and safe to a certain degree.

Because even in those years when I was cash flowing a few million a year, which is pretty much what even now is great, right? That's the gold standard that I've learned as well.

It's not just about even how much liquid you have, but it's even if you sell for a certain amount, it's about the cash flows that you're gonna still be coming in.

Because otherwise you'll be able to spend through whatever that liquid you have fairly quickly.

So it's always this chase that we may have of constantly be able to earn more.