Identity Stack

Chris Savage
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[00:00:00]

Chris: What is my identity stack? It is husband, father, brother, son, entrepreneur, early adopter. I've always been into trying new things and trying to figure out the implications of those things. It's creative, energetic, we used to call it quantified self, but like really into measuring and managing and improving my health with data, lifting, rock climbing, sim racing, gaming. I can go on.

Tyler: In this episode, we're learning out loud with Chris Savage, the CEO of Wistia. Get ready to hear how Chris integrates his life and leadership, proving that you can indeed have relationships, career and [00:01:00] health.

Chris: I think people assume I have a busy job and I do, but also like busy people figure out how to make space for the stuff that you wanna make space for. And I just really believe that anyone can do this, and when I say do this, I mean like have all three, like I think you can have friends and I think you can have your career and I think you're can have your health.

Tyler: Welcome to Identity Stack, the podcast for anyone who's tired of leaving parts of themselves behind just to get ahead. What is an identity stack? Here's how I think of it. I am a spouse. I'm a parent, youth sports coach, friend, believer, learner, software nerd, an advocate, and the primary components of my professional success are rooted in who I am as a person. That's why we're here. No masks, no split personas, just real people showing up whole and leading with authenticity. Each episode [00:02:00] we talk to folks who've built lives and careers grounded in their values. They're not thriving despite who they are; they're thriving because of it. If Severance gave us the dystopian blueprint of work-life disintegration, consider this the Anti Lumon movement. At Identity Stack. We're putting the pieces back together. Whether you're leading a team, navigating your career, or rethinking what success really means, you're in the right place. This is identity stack where who you are is how you lead.

Today we are learning out loud with Chris Savage. Chris, we're curious, what's your identity stack?

Chris: What is my identity stack? Well, I would say, um. It is like husband, father, uh, brother, son, um, entrepreneur, early adopter. I've always been into trying new things and trying to figure out the implications of those things. It's creative, [00:03:00] um, energetic, um, like I would probably go with, uh. I, we used to call it quantified self, but like really into measuring and managing and improving my health with data lifting, rock climbing, um, sim racing gaming.

I can, I can go on.

Tyler: That, that's amazing. We know you publicly as CEO of Wistia. Right. And, and that kind of, you know, public persona just like tends to dominate. And I just appreciate you, um, sharing. Right. And being seen in this moment, right. As someone who is a lot of things. Right.

Chris: Yeah.

Tyler: before they are that thing that is, you know, so, so public facing. I'm curious to hear, like you, you mentioned entrepreneur, right? You mentioned early [00:04:00] adopter, you mentioned founder, you mentioned energetic. You know, you, you are somebody who prioritizes their own health. Right. You're even a gamer, right? Which I'm super interested to learn which sims we are, are, are doing.

Tell us how some of those things maybe even show up right as that, uh, CEO of Wistia, Chris Savage,

Chris: Yeah, I had an idea of what a CEO was that was from like movies

Tyler: Mm-hmm.

Chris: TV and the office. It was like, you know, there's a boss who tells you what to do and all they care about is like work and money and they're like this one track thing. And I think, like, I thought that and I was very, very wrong.

And what I've learned over time is that, for example, like the health thing. I used to think I couldn't work out and I got into bad shape. Like I had struggled with weight as a, as like a teenager. And then I got into good shape right at the beginning of starting Wistia [00:05:00] and I was like, look at me. I've done it. And then I got into very bad shape pretty quickly. Like I gained a lot of weight back. I was like unhappy with how I felt. I was not working out. And I kind of told myself, I don't have the time to do this. The most important thing in my life at that moment, uh, seemed to be just making Wistia happen.

So if I felt like if I wasn't spending an extra 30 minutes a day, like I didn't have the 30 minutes a day is what I thought, we would work late. We'd get up early. We would work early. It's like, where is the time supposed to come from? But also what I learned over my experience of doing this is that like.

We don't know how long things are gonna take. In general, like a lot of the secret is actually staying on problems. And so when it comes to your health, like yeah, if you're burning out and you're not giving yourself time to work out, that's really bad mentally. That's bad emotionally. There's a lot of research that says, you know, if you're working out consistently, you're going to sleep better, you're going to be more alert, you're gonna be [00:06:00] sharper.

Um, and over time, I, I figured out that hey, actually, part of being a great CEO and being a leader is really taking care of myself. And if I show up tired, if I show up and I'm having a bad day, if I show up and I can't handle the stress. Then it's gonna impact a lot of people. And conversely, like if I can handle those things and I do show up ready to go and I am excited and I did sleep well and I did work out, then you can literally manage more stress, right?

And, and working out specifically is, I'm just staying on this one thing. But when you lift weights, when you run and push yourself hard, you're stressing the body. That's what you're doing. You're stressing the body. And then as a response to that stress, if you recover properly, if you eat properly, um, then you get stronger, you get faster, you get better, which really just means that same amount of stress in the future doesn't cause you.

The same stress to, to feel the same amount of stress, you have to lift more, you have to push yourself harder. And [00:07:00] the stress that we experience working out translates to the very similar, and I would say to the emotional stress we can feel at work. And so if you have a high threshold for stress, it's gonna be easier to stay calm and manage through stress at work.

And one of the ways I found to do that is through working out. So it's completely deeply integrated into that.

Tyler: Shout out to integration. Uh, shout out to listening to your body, and you know, choosing health as an outcome unto itself and seeing the connection to how you show up at work. Right. I think that's, that's really interesting to just hear you talking about you were stressed out and then you trained to deal with that stress.

Chris: And I, and it made me a happier person by default.

Tyler: Yeah.

Chris: I, I think a lot of people sacrifice, you know, you've, I, I feel, what's the phrase? It's like, [00:08:00] um, pick, pick two. It's like, have a great career or have friends or your friends health or career, and I feel like I've, what I've heard in the past, you have to pick two.

So you can have career and friends, but you're gonna lose your health. You can have, uh, friends and family and health, but you're not gonna prioritize your career. And I think that's bs. I actually think that like the, one of the things that we uncovered at some point along this journey is that most of us overestimate how quickly we'll find traction on something.

So we think, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this for six months, and then I'm gonna know if it works or not. I was like, no, in most cases, six months is not long enough. Um, but. If you do find traction, we often underestimate how far you can take it, because especially in an internet world, billions of people out there, you can have something that serves an incredibly small fraction of the [00:09:00] overall population, but if you serve them really well.

You can make something really big, but it turns out to get people to pay attention, to get people to use things takes a long time. And so those two things together, you, I look at it as like, well, if you take a very long-term view, you can compete on a very long-term view, but that also means you gotta be able to stay at it.

And if you, if you sacrifice friends and family, you can't stay at it. My opinion. You just eventually burn out. If you sacrifice health, you can't stay at it. And also if you have fulfilling work it's easier to spend time with friends and family and be happy and not come into it from like a bad place and have bad expectations.

So, yeah, it just, for me is, a lot of it is around longevity. Longevity in the business, longevity on a problem, um, and prioritizing what actually I, I don't wanna look back on my life. And regret that I didn't spend time with my kids or spent regret that I gave up my friendships to do this. Like I'm unwilling to do that.

And so I just haven't, and it's, and it turns out it makes it, by not giving those things [00:10:00] up, it's a lot easier to keep going. I mean, I've been doing this, I've been doing w almost 19 years. I, and it really doesn't feel like that. That's, that's the craziest part about it, is like, it, it feels so short. 'cause it's been so fun.

Tyler: Well shout out to you picking three, right, like really embodying the concept that I'm trying to promote here at at Identity Stack. Right. Is to say that there might be moments in time where entrepreneur might be the, at the top of the stack,

Chris: Yeah.

Tyler: terms of, uh, you know, your priorities. But then recognizing that if we're gonna be successful in the long term as an entrepreneur we need to have a, a fluid stack, right?

That is able to adapt and to, to deal with, with situations. Um.

Chris: talked to other entrepreneurs who are really like unbelievably successful, made gobs of money and they are not happy, and so what's the point? I think a lot of people do [00:11:00] this. They get really successful, they make a lot of money. They're not happy. Then they do it again. Again, searching for something, and I got good advice early from folks who were like, you don't realize what you're sacrificing when you sacrifice these other pieces. It's kinda like if you're winning and you can't share it with anybody, what are you, what are you doing? So, um, yeah, I don't know. I, I, I've, it's, it's not all about money at, at all.

I think like that's a part of, it's a piece of the puzzle, obviously, but I think it's, it's all these other things that really fulfill us.

Tyler: Okay. Rewind to your video gaming

Chris: mm-hmm.

Tyler: What sims are you playing?

Chris: Yeah. So right now the main thing I'm playing is Grand Turismo 7 and like, uh, F1 on the PS five. And you know, I've got the wheel, I've got the pedals. Grand Turismo's really fun because there's like a VR headset you can get and if you're in the car and it's interesting 'cause it's like it. It pulls from the part of your brain that has driven your whole life. Whereas like [00:12:00] the other games where you're like looking over the hood, it is, you're learning a video game, but it doesn't, your brain doesn't translate the same way. So I am better with the VR than I am, like trying to time like turns and stuff like that.

Tyler: Okay.

Chris: but I've always been into gaming and it's, that's interesting. When I was really into gaming in high school, I was really good at a few games like, um. I was playing half-Life and Counterstrike. And Counterstrike in particular was like, I was extremely good at it. Um, and then I remember thinking, this is a waste of time.

So I, I gave it up for a long time. I was like, games are a complete waste. But as I built Wistia, and I saw like, kind of was talking about before, like perseverance, like the beautiful thing about gaming is you can see yourself getting better. It, and it, you can over enough time, like you can build confidence like, Hey, I could get good at this game if I just put effort into it.

And I see that at work in the same way all the time. Um, [00:13:00] and it's almost like now for me, it's kind of like I'm, it's pretty extreme to say it's meditative. I wouldn't say it's meditative, but it's close. It's like a, it's like a focus reset. Like when I play one of these things, I have to be 100% focused on it or I'm not good.

So I like the fact that I can do it, and I'll probably play for like 35, 45 minutes at a go, and that's enough for where I can like, stay good, feel like I won a race or two, or got close, like feel proud of it and then move on to something else. That's a beautiful thing about games and a lot of, a lot of skills in life are the same.

It's just not as obvious because you're not getting the score and the timing and like the replays, you know, so you have, you have to add that in yourself.

Tyler: I'm hearing this through line, like you mentioned quantified self and then you

Chris: Yeah.

Tyler: you know, the, the high score, right, and seeing number go up. Right. You expressed yourself as a creative person and you're talking about [00:14:00] yourself as, as a quant, right?

Or, or, or that you want to quantify

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyler: see the outcomes and, and that help, help me like reintegrate

Chris: the pieces together. Yeah, this is something that came from, so I talk about like health, where I saw that as like, oh, I'm gonna do better at work if I'm like, feeling better in my life, which I've found to be true. But from the work side, you know, you start building things, you start building dashboards.

You want to know over time, like how things perform and what gets measured gets managed. So, you know, I learned that at work, like literally what you pick is like the headline metric matters. There was a moment when we were losing $40,000 a month after we raised our first angel round. And we wanted to climb back to zero.

So we wanted to get back to $40,000 a month. So we put these big sheets of paper on the wall. And it was a month for each sheet of paper, and we wrote down every new customer we got on that piece of paper in the month that they came in. So we came with [00:15:00] this plan. The first month there's like one, then the second month there's like zero, and then the third month there's zero.

But then the fourth month there's three, and then the fifth month there's sixth. And you eventually. We did it and like, you know, we started having so many customers come up that it was going way below the sheets of paper, but having this visual reminder on the wall, at that time, there were four of us on the team, it made it crystal clear what we were doing every day.

You couldn't ignore it, you couldn't hide from it. The data was there and it changed our actions, like on the margins. When you got bigger, yes, you have dashboards and say that stuff. So I just started asking myself like, why don't I have this in my life? Like, why am I not managing my health in the same way?

And I don't think I, if I can basically have a behavior change that is just to, man, just to measure it, I don't even have to say. Get into shape or I don't have to do anything. I just believe if I, if I measure it, that I will see a change. And that is exactly what happened. And over time, I built more habits on specific, discrete things that gave me [00:16:00] more data and all that kind of stuff.

It was like at one point I wanted to weigh myself every day. As I wanted the data, so I just put the scale in a spot in my house where I couldn't miss it. And I said, my goal is, I don't care what the number says. My only goal is to step onto the scale. And I, you know what eventually happens is you see it enough and you start making small decisions to change that based on the number that you see.

And I've just done that with lots of different things. And so that's where the measurement comes in. And on the cr, the, but you asked about the creative piece here.

Tyler: Yeah, connect the

Chris: W

Tyler: us, Chris.

Chris: Yeah, the is like, I love creative problem solving. I love seeing a hard problem and trying to come at it from a lot of different angles to solve it.

And often the way that you figure out which problems you wanna solve is by looking at the data. And so if you have the right data and you could figure out. We tried this test and it moved this number. We tried a different test and move a different number, [00:17:00] and we're triangulating on which problem to solve, and then we finally think we have the problem to solve.

That is going to us usually the best solutions if they're not blindingly obvious, require creative solutions. And I've also learned over the years that having people have very. Um, discreet goals that they have total ownership over, like they know the realm of the world that is theirs to operate in actually allows people to be even more creative because they have clear constraints.

And often without having clear constraints, it becomes harder to be creative 'cause you don't know what is within the limitations of what you can do or not. And so therefore your brain like stops looking at a lot of, uh, a lot of options you would look at otherwise.

Tyler: I'm writing down and I'm holding on to these ideas and I'm hearing a unified self. Right. I'm hearing Chris having done the work and put the pieces back together for himself. Right. But you also mentioned family and be able to celebrate and [00:18:00] share with others.

Right. You, you set off the top that, you know, you're a husband, father, brother, son. I, I guess maybe I'm like, Please. I understand that this is a stranger asking these questions, so I don't want

Chris: Hmm.

Tyler: pry too much into that space, but like from that perspective of, okay, these are the pick three, right?

I'm gonna choose my health and my career and my family and friends, right? Those relationship things. how does this stuff that we've been talking about interact with relationships.

Chris: I think it is literally giving me time and energy for it. it is funny, there was a moment where I can think about, I was really stressed by something that happened at work. I was on a family trip. And I said I wasn't gonna look at my email, but I did. And I looked at the email at like 10:00 PM at night 'cause I couldn't sleep.

We're in Greece, uh, where my father-in-law lives. And um, [00:19:00] I got this bad news and I like couldn't fall asleep. And it was like the combination of this bad news and the time change and everything else, I was just like up, up, up through the night. And. Recently to that, maybe two weeks before I'd heard someone talk about mindfulness and how it can help with like anxiety and I, up until that moment, I never thought I had anxiety.

I never would've named it. I never would've thought it. But I was clearly being anxious, uh, worrying about this problem. And so I decided in the middle of the night that I would do some kind of mind, I would look something up, I would do some kind of mindfulness. And so I installed Headspace and I did a 10 minute meditation.

I'd never done a meditation in my life and I remember vividly doing it 'cause it was such a stark moment for me. But I, you know, three minutes in my, my thoughts are all over the place. Like I can't, I, all I can think about is the work thing. Five minutes in, it's similar and the [00:20:00] meditation is telling me things like your thoughts are clouds and there might be stormy, but there's always a blue sky above the clouds.

And, you know the thoughts are gonna pass and you're gonna get back to the blue sky type of a thing. And maybe like seven minutes into this 10 minute meditation for the thought occurred to me like, huh, well this bad news from work, like it was happening either way. It's just that I know it, and it just like fell away.

And I finished the thing and I went to sleep and I woke up and I thought, Hmm, this is interesting. Like, I was so impacted by work, but like I couldn't control or change anything in that moment. So there, there wasn't really a point in worrying about it. And I was like, maybe I should try this mindfulness thing.

And that is as is my personality. I went after it pretty hard and I, I set a goal to do it every day for a year. I ended up doing it like 500 days in a row. Through that period of time, there would be times when my wife would be like, Hey, hun, you're like, you're not in a good mood. Like you're in a bad mood. Like you're not present. [00:21:00] You need to go meditate. And I would go and I would spend 10 minutes meditating. I'd come back and I'd be like, a different person. And you do that enough and you start to like build the tools that it's, it's pretty easy to do. And so. Now that's kind of how I look at it is, um, like even when I talk about this, what I'm noticing is the feeling of sitting in my chair and I'm noticing the feeling of my feet on the ground and it's making me more present.

And it's only because I've done it so much that is like easier to fall back into that. What that really means for relationships is when I look to spend time with my friends, when I look to spend time with my family, my goal is to be as present as possible. And it is like if I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do it. And maybe it's only 30 minutes right now, but if it's 30 really quality minutes, that's actually a lot. And I don't want to be on my phone stressing about things that are happening on work. I don't wanna be stressing about things that are happening in the world. I would prefer to like be with the people I am with and be present.

And I think like. That moment really did change my [00:22:00] approach. honestly, like I think we, again, you don't need that much time with people if the time is really high quality to have like a great relationship. But if you have a lot of time with people and it's really low quality, then it's, it's hard to have a good relationship.

So it's just making time for it.

Tyler: I'm so grateful for your, uh, pick two framing, right? And I feel like this idea of, of, no, no, no, no, all three, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Tyler: is the theme that I'm hoping to champion here on this podcast. I, I, my spouse is a therapist, Chris. And, um, I'm very grateful for their influence in my life. Um, I'm, I'm very grateful for the ways that they've invited me to be present and intentional in the ways that you're describing. And think there is, a version of ourselves that, that [00:23:00] is a meditation away.

Chris: Yeah.

Tyler: I'm curious to hear you say like, okay, how does that show up for you?

You know, in business as well.

Chris: Yeah, the way that this shows up at work is basically in the expectations you have for others and the way that work is divided and work is done. So I for a long time, basically thought, if I want this extra time in my life. If I wanna have time to work out, if I wanna have time to see friends and family, then the secret to that is gonna be productivity gains.

It's gonna be productivity hacks, right? Like how do I get to inbox zero? What is the um, what is the to-do list that I use to manage this? And I think I thought that, 'cause that is what it was like when we were small. That was how I got the time back, was creating methods for my email, methods for how I run meetings, all these types of things.

And so I was [00:24:00] trying that all the time. I felt like I was like a productivity nerd. And I, I feel like you see these people online all the time talking about how to eek out like a little bit more productivity. I was in that mode. I was talking to a friend, uh, Ben Chestnut, who is the CEO of MailChimp, and at that time, they were way bigger than us. They're growing really fast. And I asked Ben, Hey, like what productivity hacks do you have? Like what do you, how do you do it? How do you manage all this stuff? And he looked at me and he goes, productivity hacks. No. He's like, you don't, you don't have a productivity problem. You have a people problem. I was like, people problem, what is he talking about? And basically he's like, are you delegating to people? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, no, no. Are you, are you delegating like you're giving them something to own themselves without you, like they run the whole thing. They could take on the whole pro. Are are you doing that? And I really thought about it. I was like, I don't, I [00:25:00] don't know if I am. I was like, well, if you don't know, you're not doing it. He's like, so the question is, do you have people around that you can delegate to? Like the, are they actual actually capable of it or are you actually giving them the bigger things to own?

And it was such a reframing for me around productivity and getting that time back to, to do all these other things. And so I sat down a path towards like trying to figure this out and I quickly went to the people who reported to me and started trying to give them a, give them the same thing that they were working on, but give it to them much more completely and really rapidly. I saw people step up and do things that like I had never seen them do before. And you know, I stopped going to the meetings that they were in and let them take them much farther. And for some people they hated it. They did not want that. And they were not, it wasn't the right fit because like they actually liked being the person who was enacting other plans versus coming up with the plans.

Right. That took some time to transition. But ultimately I got to [00:26:00] a place where wow. Like the people around me are taking on much more and I actually have a lot more time. And that time part of it is going to my life and part of it is going to the work in a totally different way, which now I have the time to think really long term. Now I have the time actually to talk more proactively with customers. Now I have the time to play with our own product more to play with competitive products. More like it's, it opened up all these things and it was like super exciting. And it just kind of kept evolving where I used to never take vacation, very little vacation, and then on my vacation I would check my email and I started saying, no, I'm gonna take real vacations.

Um, I'm gonna go away for at least a week or two weeks, and I'm not gonna look at my email and I'm gonna say, Hey, if there's an issue. That you actually need me for, text me. And guess what? I have never gotten a text. And also when you go on those vacations and you come back there, there was work still going and some of it you were [00:27:00] involved in and now they don't need you anymore.

And it just is this natural thing. So. Over time I figured out, oh, like the secret productivity hacks are nice, they're important when you start. Uh, there's still something I'm very excited about. I've got a new one with my email that's really great. This actual solution is having the right people and giving them the right things to own.

Not only was it doing a disservice to my personal life by not doing that, it was just doing a disservice to the business because I couldn't spend the time on all the future stuff. So now when we have bigger decisions to make more, longer range things, I've spent more time, I've talked to more people, I've, I've done the things that should be able to add up to have the bigger impact.

And had I never done this, I wouldn't be able to do any of that work at all.

Tyler: I wanna zoom in on one phrase you used there. You actually took some vacations, And you had said, Hey, if there's something that you actually need me for, right. [00:28:00] Text me

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyler: and then you said the magic words. Nobody texted me.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyler: Tell me how, you know, like, like you're somebody who identifies as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, as the, the, the, the prime mover of the business. How did you deal with. Not being texted

Chris: at first it was like rough. I mean, yeah, to be clear, before I made all these changes, my average day, I'd be in meetings all day. I'd feel like I was helping people solve problems all day. I mean, we can argue with whether or not that's true, but I, I certainly felt that.

So I would come home and my wife, who was probably my girlfriend at the time would be like, how was your day? I'd be like, it was sick. Oh my God, I solved so many problems. It was so awesome. Like, it was a huge dopamine hits all day long. And then there was a moment in this new world where like, yeah, I'm not getting texted, [00:29:00] but also I'm in less meetings.

I'm not, I'm not feeling like I'm solving problems all day. And I was like, oh man, like this sucks. Like was I never useful? You just start asking all these questions like imposter syndrome again, kicks in and you're like, did I do anything good here? Like, you know, did I help at all? Like, I don't know. Um, so yes, it was very hard at first.

but I started to see these things that I just wasn't doing. There's like important work and then there's important work and then there's urgent things you can make a grid and then things that aren't urgent. And often what happens is the urgent non-important work can fill your day. What you want to do is the important non-urgent often. That's like the big thing, like, yeah, we don't have to make this change today. We don't have to change our business model today. We don't have to do this partnership today. Like we're fine. But if I did do it, if I made this change or I did this partnership, like we don't know how far it could take us, but this might change everything. That stuff is the hardest stuff to do normally. Because urgency fills everything. So when you have more [00:30:00] space, basically you get to start working on the problems a lot more that are the important non-urgent ones. And a lot of those, you don't know how much of an impact they're gonna have because you're not doing them.

But they're often the ones that can like, change the paradigm, that can totally change the direction, that can completely change what it is that you do. And the only way to get to 'em usually is with time research playing. It's actually very similar to when you first start a company.

You have no idea what you're supposed to do every day. You got tons of time. You're not talking to customers yet then who? They're not gonna talk to you. What do you have? You have nothing. You have to build something. What are you gonna build? Like I, all of that stuff at the very, very beginning, you have this freedom to experiment.

And I think that's one of the reasons why we see startups that come out with these wild, crazy things all the time. And you're like, why can't the big company do it? Well, the big company has customers. The big company has a lot of needs pulling it. There's a big company, has a lot of very urgent things that must be done, and not all of them are the most important things.[00:31:00]

Um, and so you're beholden to them. So. Really all you're doing is trying to create a space that's kind of similar to when you're starting, and then a lot of these opportunities and decisions become much more obvious.

Tyler: We talked about playing video games earlier, and then you've, you've mentioned the word play a little bit. And for the audio listener, Chris and I are speaking on like a little video conference recording room, and I can see over his right shoulder. Um, a, a reminder maybe to himself to play more.

Chris: Hmm.

Tyler: Um, and it's like this Chevron shape pointing at, uh, I, I can see the, the head of a guitar

Chris: There is a guitar there. It's not,

Tyler: a, with a capo. I,

Chris: yeah.

Tyler: you didn't mention musician as a part of your identity stack. Can you tell us more about playing more? Um, and,

Chris: Yes.

Tyler: musician one of those things that we haven't mentioned yet?

Chris: Yes, sure. I think like [00:32:00] I don't, all the other things I mentioned, I think I am. Pretty good at like, I will play the guitar. I don't think I'm very good at it. Um, I enjoy it. But the play more thing is actually something directly from Wistia. Like, we sent this to the team. Basically everyone on the team has one of these. It's kind of back to that thing I said at the beginning that. When you can work on a hard problem for a long time, like that's how you create a lot of value. But there's no way to do it if it's not actually fun while you're doing it. Like you can't stay on hard problems for a long time. If they're not fun, if then, if they're not rewarding. You see, a lot of my life has now been set up around this, and my work has been set up around how do we stay on hard problems for a long time? How do we keep doing it? How do we make the journey fun? Like if it's fun? It feels fast. If it's fun, it feels easy.

And I'm one of those weirdos who like, I, I love what I do. Like, it doesn't feel like a job. Like it feels like something that gives me more than I give it every day. And [00:33:00] that just comes back to play. I think that play is also like, it's how you get creative. It's giving yourselves two, like the children are unbelievably creative.

Like when you have kids or see around little kids, if you can remember being what it's like to be seven, they're just making stuff all day. They're just trying things all the time. They're looking for new connections. They're playing and they learn through play. And as adults, we spend our time trying to push the play down and not do it. It and I think that you should actually just let yourself do it.

and then the last piece of the puzzle is we have this tagline at Wistia now, which is like less work, more plays because that's kind of like the mantra of the product where like our goal is to make it so that you can at literally do less work and we'll get more plays on the videos that you make and stuff like that, but also that you're having more fun with the work that you do.

Tyler: Okay, Chris, I wanna invite us to conclude here, and you've given us a [00:34:00] lot here today, and I guess I just want to invite you to share. Like you've already mentioned the part where, you know, you had to remind yourself that the blue skies were behind the, the stormy clouds.

Chris: Hmm.

Tyler: Right. I guess I want to like give to that person that maybe is listening today that that is stuck under a raincloud can you help that person to like take the first step? Away from that rain cloud. H how can we become more integrated as ourselves? Right? How can we start to believe this idea that, you know, staying with the problem over a long period of time is the way out? How, how you, you've repe repeated that phrase more than once, and I guess [00:35:00] maybe I want to like. Hear from you, like, how would you encourage that person listening today that says, yeah, I am disintegrated. Yeah, I, I do want, I have picked one or picked two, and I really do need to pick three. Right. And hold on tight to all three. How do we do that?

Chris: I think the thing that you need to do is find the smallest step that you can take that can become a habit that points you in the direction you want to go. So, um, if it was meditating as your thing, like literally trying to do the blue Sky cloud thing, then my suggestion would be to find a guided meditation app. use headspace, use calm, use gyroscope, something. And attach it to some habit you already have. So I would find some part of your day that you already do this every single day. If it's brushing your teeth, if it's getting ready for bed, um, if it's making your, well, you wait for your coffee to be ready in [00:36:00] the morning, I would pick something that just happens and I would try to take the absolute smallest version of the habit that you want to create and attach it to that.

So if it's meditating, let's pick the coffee example. You make coffee every morning. Let's say coffee takes three minutes. I would put my goal as I'm going to make my coffee and I'm going to meditate for three minutes, and then I'm gonna drink it. And there's no, you don't. The goal is not to feel different.

The goal is not to like have this huge revelation and the first go, the goal is to make a habit. And if you could get that small habit. I would also say people screw habits up 'cause they do too many habits at once. Takes, takes a few weeks before a habit goes from being something that's like hard to something that's easy.

And I would, I would make it that goal to do the meditation at that moment for two weeks, three weeks, something like that. And at which point, probably at some point in there you're gonna say, Hey. This is pretty easy. I like this. And maybe you start extending how long you do that meditation [00:37:00] for. Um, atomic Habits is a good book on this.

It's also controversial, I hear, but if you wanna read more, what should you do? I think it's in the book. And the example was like, your goal should be to put your book, on your pillow, when you get up in the morning, the goal isn't even to read. The goal is to put your book on your, the pillow in your bed in the morning. Because what that means is at the end of the day when you get back and you're getting ready for bed, you're gonna have to lift the book up and move it out of the way.

And at some point when you're lifting that book, you're gonna think what's in this book and you're gonna open it and you switch the habit over time from. Putting it on your pillow to eventually like reading something in the book. Once that's become a habit, and I mean this one I use example, it honestly worked for me.

I wanted to read more. I did this exact thing and then I started reading a lot more and it's been very fruitful. Something I wanted to do. It was like hard to change. So [00:38:00] I just think it's finding the smallest habits on any direction and, and then allowing yourself to do it. The health ones I gave, like the scale I think is a good example.

The goal is not to weigh any less to get on the scale. Um, a trick that I've used also. One of the things if you start managing your health more is like looking at what you're, the food you're consuming is like the other obvious data, like the exercise data you can get from a watch or your phone or a whoop or something, but how much you're consuming, you can't.

And so, um, I use this ad called gyroscope to do it. And the way I tricked myself into doing it is I decided I would time how long I spent per day tracking my food. It's like three minutes. So then I did that one day, and so then it was like, I literally timed it on my phone. How long does it take? It took three minutes for the entire day's food Then.

Then I asked myself the question, is it worth three minutes a day to have the answer to this, to get this data? And I was like. [00:39:00] That seems like a fair trade off and it, and that's all I had to do, and it just made it easier for it to become a habit. So I think it's just finding those direction you want to go in, finding the smallest step forward and then finding something that you can anchor to usually makes it easier.

I.

Tyler: Well, thank you for that invitation, Chris. Thank you for your example. Thank you for learning out loud with us here today and just being vulnerable and sharing your own story and sharing your own identity stack. I'm curious is there anything that you would, uh, like to make a request of the audience as they're listening?

What should we do to follow up?

Chris: Oh, requests of the audience. Um, that's a good question.

The only thing I would say is like, I think people assume I have a busy job and I do, but also like busy people figure out how to make space for the stuff that you wanna make space for. And I just really believe that anyone can do this, and when I say do this, I mean like have all three, like I [00:40:00] think you can have friends and I think you can have your career and I think you're can have your health.

I think it just takes. You, you can't expect it to change on a dime. That's the, that's the hard part. It's like this stuff doesn't happen really quickly. It's small decisions that add up over time to make a big change. So, you know, I just say like, I believe in you, you can do it. anyone is capable of small, small changes.

And, if you want to connect with me, please feel free. I'm on LinkedIn. That's the main social platform I'm on. I'm on the other ones, but that's the main one. Um, I have a podcast talking too loud where I talk too loud about business entrepreneurship, building great products, and uh, obviously you can check out Wistia, but I think if you were interested, you probably would already know it.

So I

Tyler: Chris, thank you so much. We appreciate you.

Chris: thank

Tyler: Talk to you

Chris: you. This is really fun

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