Jay Papasan:
This week’s guest is Cathryn Lavery. She’s the founder of the BestSelf Co., and a good friend of mine. What I love about our conversation is we’re exploring. If you feel maybe out of place in your workplace and how you pursue your work, maybe the default operating system the world’s throwing at you just wasn’t made for you, you’re gonna find a lot of inspiration in this podcast. That was Cathryn. She got diagnosed late in life with ADHD, and she’s also just kind of cut from a different cloth. What worked for everybody else wasn’t necessarily gonna work for her. And she found the courage and the curiosity to go find her own innovative ways to solve it. And guess what? Those ended up turning in some of her biggest selling products in her amazing company.
So, there’s lot of entrepreneurial inspiration here. And for those of you who may just be having a soundtrack in your head, something’s not right about me, maybe you can reverse it and you can start saying, “Something’s not right around the default system and I’m gonna find my own. I hope you enjoy this episode.
————
Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
————
Jay Papasan:
Cathryn, welcome to the show.
Cathryn Lavery:
Thanks for having me.
Jay Papasan:
You know, we’ve been in the studio before. For our listeners, you helped us design our core values deck, which people love. So, thank you again. That was the last time we were here. I can remember, it was like maybe 2017. 2018. I don’t even know.
Cathryn Lavery:
Was it that long ago? I was like, “Was it before I had my daughter or after?”
Jay Papasan:
I think it was before.
Cathryn Lavery:
Okay.
Jay Papasan:
But anyway, we’re here again and get to hear about your journey. And yesterday at our ONE Thing Summit or day before yesterday, we were talking about ADHD and performance. And you talked about this feeling that so many of us get. Like I am very clearly in that group, as I’ve shared publicly, even though I’m not formally diagnosed. You have been formally diagnosed late in life as someone with ADHD. It feels like we’re trying to and we’re having to conform to a system that is not built for us. Can you unpack that a little bit for us, what that feels like and what we’re talking about?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So, I was diagnosed when I was 31. And when I look back, there was just so many signs. But once I was diagnosed, I learned about this thing called INCUP, which is a terrible acronym, but it’s actually a great formula, which is interest, novelty, challenge, urgency, passion. And those words basically mean this is the framework that works for our brain. So, it has to be interesting to us. It has to be new. ,So we haven’t done it before.
Jay Papasan:
It has to feel new, like novelty.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. It has to be challenging, so we have to figure something out. There needs to be urgency. So, you don’t need to have all five of these, but you have to have at least three for it to get our brains going, which is why I remember at university, we would have this 12,000-word essay to be in, and we’d have a semester to do it. But that wasn’t a challenge.
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Cathryn Lavery:
Or there was no urgency. But the day before I would start it and I have to get this whole thing written in a day. And that was the only thing, when I look back, was the things that I either abandoned or I started. I had, at least, three of those things. And they’re things like essays at school that you have to do, but I couldn’t do it in a timely way. It was like I had to get that pressure of, “Okay, it’s due tomorrow and I haven’t started.” And so-
Jay Papasan:
So, procrastination. Like a lot of people, a lot of achievers I know use procrastination as a way to get focused.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Long term, it’s not super healthy to burn the midnight oil for things, but by waiting until 24 hours before, and I did this all through college. I could just stay up really late the night before and knock it out. That is a challenge knowing. And now, you’re stressed out, “Oh my gosh, can I do it?” And you’ve got the urgency, but we’re still missing a check mark. So, how do we make it interesting or novel? How to make it feel fresh? How to make it feel interesting to us, connect the dots or connect with our passion? All of those, to me, kind of feel like they’re living on the same side of the quadrant. They’re in that interesting novel. They can command my attention. Have you figured out hacks? Like, how did you do that in university? You checked two boxes, how did you find one of the other ones?
Cathryn Lavery:
Well, I was at architecture school, so we didn’t have, actually, a lot of essays and exams. It was projects that you would have to work ’cause every week, you’d have a review. And so, that was pretty consistent. And I was interested in it. So, it hit many of the things. It was, like, interesting. It was new ’cause I’m designing a building or whatever. There was passion there. And the urgency was every week, I had a team review or a project review. So, I worked better if I had like that instead of, okay, you have an exam or a huge essay that’s has to be in three months, I’m just not gonna work on it; whereas, that forced you to be consistent.
And there’s other things where there’s certain things in our life that will just never be interesting And we have to get around it. And so, it’s like cleaning or laundry or things you have to do to keep your life together where it might be, okay, I’m only gonna listen to this podcast when I’m doing the thing that I hate because that’s never gonna be interesting to me.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Cathryn Lavery:
But if I put on a good podcast-
Jay Papasan:
The only way I can do the thing I’m interested in is to compare it up with this other thing. We call that lining up your domino dominoes, right?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And so, I think there’s hacks like that where you don’t have to think that this thing will ever be interesting or you gamified in some way. I set timers all the time. Like I can do anything for 20 minutes. And a lot of times, it’ll give you the momentum to keep going. And then, sometimes. I’ll just stop after 20 minutes ’cause I gave it 20 minutes. But you can get a lot done in 20 minutes than you think. So, I think gamification also works because you’re getting that dopamine hit from forcing yourself and putting these structures around things that normal people can do without needing to come up with a game.
Jay Papasan:
Well, I mean, I like batching for that around boring, repetitive tasks. Like, how much of my email inbox can I clear out in the next 20 minutes? And that also forces me not to get lost in the time machine of my inbox, get in and out. But I’m making it challenging ’cause I’m just playing a game with myself.
But at the beginning of this, like the hack is the incur that, Can I make it interesting? Was is it novel, challenging, urgent, or bring my passion to it? That’s how we take something in the regular world and kind of put it on our operating system.
Cathryn Lavery:
I think, for me, I call it like your operating system is the default. And so, it’s the software your parents gave you, your school gave you. It’s kinda like one size fits all. It doesn’t work really well for most people, but they just don’t know they can change it.
And one thing I was talking about was the keyboard that we use every day, every single laptop has it. It’s called the Corti keyboard, which was created in the 1800s for typewriters because if you type too fast on a typewriter, it would jam. And so, they purposely designed this keyboard to be not optimal-
Jay Papasan:
Slow.
Cathryn Lavery:
-and slow. And we still use it today, which is insane.
Jay Papasan:
It’s the default.
Cathryn Lavery:
It’s the default. And that’s just one example. And I came up with that kinda last minute as I was trying to come up with an example of systems that we use that just don’t make any sense anymore. And so, again, if you start looking around, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of things that we’re just designed back in a time that does no longer apply to what we’re doing, but everyone still uses it ’cause they think, “Oh, this is the way.”
And my whole thing is, yeah, some things will work for you and some things won’t. And you have to assume that not that you are broken or that you’re not working correctly. Oh, that’s just the system is not for me, and I have to change how I work.
Jay Papasan:
I love that because you just hit where I want to go with this. I came in thinking we’d just focus on ADHD, but the Corti keyboard is a default system that’s inherently inefficient, that we’ve all accepted and allowed to remain the default. Thank God now, we can do voice to text. We can break out of that system without having to learn to type touch all over again, right? The switching costs might be really high, which is why we still have it. You know, why are we still on Imperial when we should all be on metric?
One is inherently better than the other. There’ll be people who might debate me, so I won’t you say which one that I want, but we shouldn’t have to live in two systems. But switching costs can be hard. But the core message is, and especially if you feel like you might be in the ADHD spectrum or you’re just not in that bell curve of the middle of humanity, most things that have scaled are built for most people, but there are people on either side of that bell curve, truly exceptional or maybe struggling a little bit, they have a challenge that that’s not gonna be a fit for them. And the thing that I love about your story is, again and again, you gave yourself permission to build your own system.
Cathryn Lavery:
Well, I think I did all the things that I was supposed to do. And I graduated, I became an architect. And I did all the things I was supposed to do, and I was like, “This kind of sucks.” I remember, our payroll was late one month. I was living in New York as an architect. I was making $30,000 a year, and I didn’t have enough money ’cause the pay had come in late. So, I didn’t have enough money to put money on my metro card to get to work. And so, I had to bum a swipe off someone, and I was like, “Wait-“
Jay Papasan:
You’re so good. I would’ve just jumped the turnstile and hoped I didn’t get caught.
Cathryn Lavery:
I’ve totally done that. But I think the rush hour is much harder.
Jay Papasan:
That was a wake up call.
Cathryn Lavery:
I think you just get to a point where it’s like, “Well, I’ve tried this way and I’m not happy. What’s the worst that can happen?” I think a lot of people will know a system’s not working, but there’s also comfort in the knowing. You bump into people, it’s like, “All right, fine. They’re not great. They’re not terrible. They’re fine. And it’s this middle part that’s actually force – it doesn’t force you to make a change. So, you just sit in fine for years. And so, for me-
Jay Papasan:
We call that the Okay Plateau.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, I think from a Jonathan Foer book, And he talked about how so many of our skills get stuck. It’s not bad. So, there’s no motivation to get better, but it sure as heck isn’t good. It’s not great for sure. And so, we get stuck in this place where there’s not a lot of pain, but it’s also not exciting or fun. And it takes a special effort to get out of that.
Cathryn Lavery:
And that’s where I was. It was like, “What? I’m like a five out of ten.” And I’m like, “Well, if I try, I could get to maybe a seven or eight out of ten. And if I fail, I can definitely find a $30,000-a-year job, working like 70 hours a week.
Jay Papasan:
But you’re an entrepreneur. Can you imagine a world where you were still an employee?
Cathryn Lavery:
No, but I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was growing up. Like, my family all have normal jobs. But when I look back, like I sold cupcakes on the playground when I was seven. I had an eBay store when I was 13. And it’s funny ’cause I did a commercial for PayPal, and I was talking about my first eBay store, I wasn’t old enough to have a PayPal. And so, my mom set me up a PayPal. And I don’t think she knew what I was doing. I was basically a dropshipper at 13. I was like buying Dawson’s Creek DVDs from Canada and importing them because they didn’t sell them in the UK.
Anyway, so there was all these signs that I was into entrepreneurship, but I didn’t know you could do that as a job. So, I was like, “Okay. Architecture is like a respectable job where I can use design and making things.” And so, once I applied that to entrepreneurship, I look back and I’m like, “Oh, thank goodness, I made that change,” because it’s not only better for me, it’s like I’ve hired people.
Jay Papasan:
It’s better for the world. You’ve created tools that have helped a lot of people, which we’ll unpack some of those I’m sure before we’re done. So, I mean, my first job in New York, coveted job, working at a publishing house, my base salary was 27. And so, a lot of those industries, like you’re in New York, there’s a line of people around the block, so they do underpay you. So, you better be passionate about it. So, the gift they gave to the world is they underpaid you, so that you would have to switch.
Cathryn Lavery:
And the great thing about New York is everyone there is hustling. It’s hard to be there by accident, at least in the circles I was running in. So, everyone, you’re just working and figuring stuff out. And so, I loved being there in my twenties and I learned a ton, but also, it was nice to leave when I left, but I’d highly recommend like getting in that environment if you wanna force, like be a catalyst for change.
When I was an architect, funny story is I worked in this Central Park West designing this really nice apartment, and this woman wanted this very fancy closet system. Actually, it wasn’t even the fanciest closet but it was gonna be $60,000. And I was like, “Wow!” I was like, “I don’t want a closet system like this but if I stay working in this job, I will never have a $60,000 closet because that’s twice what I make in a year.”
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so, it wasn’t about the closet, but it was just one of the things where I’m like, “Maybe I wanna do something else.” Again, not because I want an expensive closet but more of “What else is out there that’s possible?”
Jay Papasan:
So, one of the other things that you do is that once you experience the world, the default mode doesn’t work. You either had an instinct or you gave yourself permission to go find a better way. Before we go to that, we’ll do that after break, for someone out there that is maybe beating themselves up, their operating system is not matching what they’re told to do, what would you tell them? Someone out here is listening, going, “That’s me. The default system does not work for me, but I don’t know what to do,” what advice would you give them?
Cathryn Lavery:
For me, that’s when I started getting into personal development. Not that I expected it to sort of change my life, but a lot of times we’re stuck and we keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting things to go differently. And so, for me, I just started reading and learning other systems that worked for people. So, I mean-
Jay Papasan:
Experimenting.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. Read something. Find a video. Like try something else that works and see if that’s better. And so, for me, it was like these tiny little experiments of trying something, “Oh, that worked pretty well.” And just reflecting on days that you do something differently and how much better you feel at the end of the day because you also slip back sometimes. Even I’ll slip back and realize I’ll feel like in a rut and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. It’s ’cause I didn’t do the things that make me feel good.” I’ve been in work mode and I haven’t worked out or I haven’t been reading, or I like going for a walk in the morning, but things have been like so hectic that I jump right into work.
And so, there’s these like little moments in your day that actually, oftentimes, compound, even though it’s not work related. It’s this keystone habit that actually if you stop doing these things, it will have you slip and be less focused. And so, I think, just run experiments and see what makes you feel good, what makes you feel better. And then, don’t fall for the default.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, don’t fall for the default. You can make a little t-shirt for that for us. Okay. I’ll unpack that. Like, a lot of the people listening are ONE Thing fans. We have a section in the back of the book and everybody gets there, we talk about the journey from E to P. Like, everybody has a natural ceiling. And so, for some of us, our natural ceiling in a default environment might be lower than everyone else. And we say when you move from entrepreneurial to purposeful, really, all you’re doing is picking a bigger model. There is a system, a framework out there that helps people get from below average to average, and from average to good, and from good to great.
And everything has that. Every discipline has that. And the moment we adopt a bigger model than our natural one, what’s crazy, you just see it all the time, so many of the people that we think are so good at things were actually below average, and they just made one change. Because everybody in that Okay Plateau, that’s good, has no motivation, they don’t have any pain. So, one of the gifts of not being in the default mode is you look out and it’s like, “I gotta have a hack. I’m not gonna do my homework without a hack. I’m not gonna return my Amazon packages without a hack.” And the hack actually makes us better and more efficient than everyone else.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
All right. I want to get to your journey and your invention after the break. So, let’s take a quick break and we’ll see everybody on the other side.
————
Jay Papasan: All right. Welcome back, everybody. We were just kind of unpacking some of the stuff that Cathryn has felt and kind of the drives for some of her inventions in her life. And when I look at the products you’ve built, it started with the Best Self Journal. Like you were looking up, you’re experimenting in the productivity space, you’re trying to find a better way, and as an entrepreneur, I mean, from the outside and just hearing you talk, it seems like you’re just systematically solving your own problems, and then seeing if there’s a market for it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. God forbid, I would just have a hobby. I think, for me, the self journal came from, okay. We don’t learn at school how to figure out habits and goals. And once I started getting into personal development, I was like, “Oh, why didn’t I learn this stuff at school?” ’cause it’s a way of, like, gamifying your life. And so, I kind of look at life as a – I was never a gamer, but if you think of life like a game instead of a movie, you need to be playing, not watching. You need to be like upleveling. And so, I kind of see–
Jay Papasan:
I love that.
Cathryn Lavery:
– learning new skills is like, “Okay, I got an expansion pack.” And so, that works well on me. Like any sort of gamification works well on me. whether it’s my Apple Watch, whether-
Jay Papasan:
It’s a game, not a movie. You play a game, you watch a movie. One is active, one is passive. Like that’s really significant. And a lot of people are witnessing their lives instead of participating in it. And that’s just a huge, like, “Oh, by the way, it is a game, and everyone has a right and a call to actually play an active part or we’re kinda – we call that victim versus accountable. Like victim’s a tough word, but we never wanna be a victim of our circumstances when we can be the author of something better.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, I love that, the movie analogy,
Cathryn Lavery:
Well, as main character energy or being an MPC, which is a non-primary character, which you don’t wanna be in your own life.
Jay Papasan:
No.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so –
Jay Papasan:
Those are the little bots and video games that are pre-programmed, and they’re just there to do like two jobs.
Cathryn Lavery:
Exactly. And you never wanna be that. And so, that knowing what works well. Some people don’t like gamification. I’ll do anything for a milestone badge. I have like a workout thing, and they give me a badge, I’m like, “That works on me. I’ll keep showing up.” And so, figuring out that stuff. But with the self journal, it was, how do I create something where I can set a goal, break it down in three months, hit it? Because a year for me is too long.
Jay Papasan:
Right, there’s no urgency.
Cathryn Lavery:
And again, I created this before I knew ADHD, and I created it in Moleskine. And then, because I had a design background, I’m getting tired of writing it every day on the Moleskine. And so I designed this thing for myself. I realized it was gonna be very expensive to just print like a few copies of this in the quality that I wanted.
Jay Papasan:
And I think [crosstalk], you designed like a print product, which most people would use like an Adobe or something. Like didn’t you use like AutoCAD? Like you used architectural tools to do this? Or am I misremembering?
Cathryn Lavery:
Oh, I will literally physically build a 3D model of all of our products before, because when I was an architect, you don’t wanna leave anything up to chance with manufacturing ’cause they’ll take the easier way. And so, to the point where we’re getting a sample of the the journal and the ribbon is a millimeter too long. And I’m like, “Guys, what are you doing here?” And so, when I created this thing, I launched on Kickstarter with the goal of 15,000, which was enough of the minimum quantity.
Jay Papasan:
Had you tested it with other people? Like were you doing it, and people saying, “Can I do that too?” or were you just-
Cathryn Lavery:
I showed it to friends and they wanted it too, but no, I didn’t really test it. I had one copy, which was the sample copy I got from the manufacturer, and that was it. And so, I’m carrying this thing around ’cause it cost me $200.
Jay Papasan:
And you had gotta keep it clean for the photographs and everything.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah, exactly.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so, I showed it to people and they wanted it too. And then, when I launched on Kickstarter, it raised $322,000 in 34 days.
Jay Papasan:
So, 11 times your old salary In how many days?
Cathryn Lavery:
LIke 34.
Jay Papasan:
Wow, in one month, basically, you earned 11 times your salary gross.
Cathryn Lavery:
And it’s funny. So, my little brother who’s still in Ireland, ’cause my goal was $200,000, which is a stretch goal but I want to think big. And then, I mentioned it. I was like, “Yeah, maybe I can get to 250 once it was going really well,” and they were like, “Yeah, maybe sometime. I don’t know that this is it.” I’m like, “I don’t know. I think so.” And my little brother’s like, “It’s a book though.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but it did well.” And that’s when I realized like, “Oh, maybe this is what I need to be focused on,” because I had other things going on at the time. And this was just a passion project that I wanted to see in the world. It wasn’t like I thought this was gonna be a business.
Jay Papasan:
You said you were tired of writing your own thing in a Moleskine all the time. So, like, you’re solving a problem for yourself and seeing if there’s a market. And was there a market?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And what’s funny is I kept getting this feedback from people, “Oh, finally something that works for my ADHD brain” over and over again. And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. “Didn’t think anything of it. And then, I was co-working with a friend once, and I mentioned this pattern kept coming up. I think we’d gotten a review as I’m working with her. I think she thought I already knew I had ADHD. And she asked, “But are you ADHD?” And I’m like, “No,” because I didn’t have any sort of – I knew one boy growing up who was a friend of mine, and he was hyper to the max. And so, that’s what I thought ADHD was.
Jay Papasan:
In the beginning, that’s what a lot of people did. They didn’t realize there’s this spectrum of different kinds of behaviors that manifest.
Cathryn Lavery:
And I also think boys get diagnosed earlier just because it shows up more when they’re young and girls are just more quiet, I’ve heard. Anyway, then, I got diagnosed, I’m like, “Oh, this makes sense.” And so, that’s when I learned about the INCUP framework and started learning more about, “Okay. What should I be doing differently?” ’cause now I feel like I have a manual for my brain ’cause I’m not the first one. So, how do I do this differently?
And when I learned that framework, it suddenly made sense, the projects that I’d either abandoned or the things that I was really excited about. And sometimes, there’s things you have to do that don’t fall into that all the time. And so, it’s figuring out like hacks or ways to force myself.
Jay Papasan:
How can I check three boxes? How can I turn this into a game to check three boxes and just get the things I have to do done, so that I can move to the things that really I’m passionate about?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, the Best Self Journal, roughly, how many copies of that have you sold?
Cathryn Lavery:
Like 1.4 million.
Jay Papasan:
That’s insane.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
That’s huge.
Cathryn Lavery:
What is that if I sold a book? LIke that would be good, right?
Jay Papasan:
It’s been a while since I checked, but like since the year 2000, in the business and self-help category, there’s maybe been 20-25 books that have crested a million. So, that would put you in pretty – and, I think Todd Satton said it on our podcast, three or 400,000 business and productivity books published a year.
Cathryn Lavery:
Oh wow.
Jay Papasan:
So, you can do the math on what – you’re in a very small percentage.
Cathryn Lavery:
Great.
Jay Papasan:
And from there, did you go to the decks? What happened next on your journey? I’ve seen like, didn’t you ring the bell on the stock exchange and-
Cathryn Lavery:
So, we were-
Jay Papasan:
Your company blew up.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So, we did 2.2 million the first year, and then we won the Shopify Build a Business competition, which was a new contest that they would do for new businesses. And you get to ring the New York Stock Exchange Bell and hang out with Tony Robbins, and Tim Ferriss, and Daymond John, I played Monopoly with him for six hours – did I tell you that – until two in the morning. It was just me versus him. And he ended up winning, but he gave me his business card after that. His-
Jay Papasan:
So, who won?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah, exactly. I guess he judges people by how they play Monopoly because he knows, like, “Oh, are you paying your debt? Are you paying attention to your money? Are you strategic?” and all this stuff. And his business manager told me this later.
Jay Papasan:
That’s a really slow interview process ’cause that game takes a long time.
Cathryn Lavery:
It took a while. Anyway-
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
Cathryn Lavery:
So, that went really well. And then, we scaled three X the next year and won the Build a Bigger Business competition, which was this new contest that they did with Tony Robbins again. We got to go to Fiji and it was amazing. It was like professionally, definitely a peak moment. But then, personally, I was, at the time, going through a separation divorce, and it was this juxtaposition between things going really well business wise, but my personal life was just – I just felt like kind of a fraud because I’m, like, how do I have a company called Best Self when everything looks so great from the outside but on the inside I’m like, well, if you have no one to share it with and you’re not feeling like full this way, then how can this be your best self? That’s kind of how I went.
And so, I kind of took the business a different direction where up until then, we’d been kind of what we learn in school of like what you do and what your job is, is who you are and how well you did.
Jay Papasan:
Build a great product, scale that product, right.
Cathryn Lavery:
That’s why we ask four-year-olds, like, “Oh, what are you gonna be when you grow up?” ’cause then I can decide what value you have. And I got to the point where I was like, I feel that we’ve designed this business of like type A, hit your goals, but like not focused on how do you become your best self in other ways because it doesn’t matter really, like if you can hit all your goals, but if you’re going through a divorce, it’s gonna mess up all your goals.
And so, I also learned that people who have ADHD are 50% more likely to get a divorce. And so, then I went down a rabbit hole of like, okay, if I wanted to create a system, how do I create a game? It’s more of a Trojan horse for relationship work. And it became what we call the Intimacy Deck, which is 150 questions designed with relationship therapists to connect you and your partner, build vulnerability and connection with each other, but it feels like a game.
And so, we started with that and other decks. So, it was like the Intimacy Deck, the – actually what came before the Intimacy Deck is we were trying to sell these blank journals and people were like, “Okay, what are the obstacles people get when they’re trying to journal?” And it’s like, “Oh, they don’t know what to do with a blank page.” And it started with journaling prompts and a system for coming up with ideas and making decisions. And then, it was like, oh, people like conversations. And so, we were working on what’s the relationship product? And so, we were trying to come up with that. And then, that kinda kind of came together of this communication system, again, that feels like a game. And so, then we went into what we call the Discovery Decks, which was relationships with your friends, with your kids, with your partner. And we have different decks for different relationships.
Jay Papasan:
You have products that solve problems. And you shared at some point, you realized like, we need to get out of the product business and be very focused in the problem business.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So, it was around the time I’m going through my divorce. And I’m also just kind of checked out a little bit from just the business because I’m not in my most creative head space, and I come back, and realize that we hit these revenue goals, and it’s really tempting to just keep trying to sell product to grow the revenue ’cause, God forbid, you would have a plateau year. And the easiest way to grow revenue is to just create products. But we’re bootstrapped, so we don’t have outside funding. And so, scaling inventory with revenue is difficult, especially if you’re not creating really great products. And it’s difficult to create a really great product in a short amount of time.
And so, I made a couple of changes. One thing is the product and marketing team used to meet every week, and I was like, “If we’re going to create great products, we’re probably not gonna do it in a week where we have something to present to the marketing team.” So, I changed that. And then, I also was like, “We’re gonna be a problem company, not a product company. We need to create products that solve problems.” But we can solve problems with an email. We could solve problems with a video, or with a course, or with a physical product. But I think a lot of times like, oh, let’s create a journal for this. We started as let’s create a journal or then it was, “Oh, are we a deck company?”
Jay Papasan:
That’s a problem with a product company is you might get locked into a product type.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. Well, ’cause it’s easy ’cause you already know exactly. Oh, I know how to create journals. Now, I know how to create decks. Both paper products. And we can do that. It’s not like I’m saying no more of those but it’s easy just to jump into, “Oh, let’s create a deck for this.”
Jay Papasan:
But that’s the default mode that you can fall into to carry that language forward.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so, now, I start every – before we do anything, it’s like, what’s the product story? What’s the problem we’re solving? And deciding, is this the best way? Like what’s the best way to solve this product or what’s the best way to solve this problem? Is it through a product? Are we the right people to solve this problem? And doing a lot of work upfront before we even talk about product. And then, it has to pass through a filtering system where it’s like, okay, we can create this ’cause a product makes sense for this or there’s times where I see this product story and I’m like, “Well, yeah, we could create a product, but actually this could literally be a blog post or an email.” Because it’s so much work to create a physical product, and if I’m looking at two options and one of them we could create in a day and solve people’s problem, then they don’t need a card deck to solve this specific thing. So, that’s happened a couple times where. I’m just like, “Why are we wasting our time on this?”
Jay Papasan:
I experienced that as an author. Like, a lot of times, we always start from the position of I wanna be selling aspirin, not vitamins. So, what’s the pain we’re taking away? And then, once you identify that, who has the pain? What the pain is? Do we have a solution for it? Then, we ask the question, well, what is the right media or format for the solution?
Because writing a book sucks. It’s hard. And a lot of books that we read that get thrown out there now are really just a chapter in a book or it could have been a blog video or an episode of a podcast. And I would rather be experimenting with those other mediums, which are easier and faster because we’re also delivering the solution and people come to trust us as a company that provides solutions to their problems. The ones that blow up might be a signal, “Wow, there’s more there. Maybe we can go deeper.”
So, I think people flip it around. They see the thing that they want to do, I wanna build a journal, or I wanna do a movie, or I wanna write a book, and they pick the first good idea they have, and they don’t really explore it all the way around. So, I love your thoroughness around that. And I don’t know if that’s just your nature that came from your architecture training or just your journey, but you started asking better questions.
Cathryn Lavery:
Well, I think another thing is with ADHD, it’s not challenging if we’re trying to solve a problem that’s not there or if we’re trying to fit our solution into a problem because, yeah, it’s just not that interesting to me.
Jay Papasan:
If you’re just chasing revenue goals, there’s no novelty there. All you’re doing is adding commas to the numbers. So, I could keep going down this path ’cause I know so much more of your story. I’ll throw it out there ahead, and we’ll link to it that you just created the first product, Helm, which checked all five of the boxes for you, and it’s a tool – I’m playing with it on my desk right now – that helps you kind of turn the default mode of your phone into one that will serve you and your goals.
So, I’ll leave that as a little bit of intrigue for people. If they want to check it out, they can go to BestSelf and look at Helm. I like it because when I look at how people spend their time, I think the average person spends four to five hours a day on their phone.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And-
Jay Papasan:
Not all of that is productive.
Cathryn Lavery:
No, I would say a lot of it’s not, and that there’s no judgment. I’ve also been there and I wanted-
Jay Papasan:
Oh, me too.
Cathryn Lavery:
And it’s easy because you pick up your phone to check an email, you pick up your phone to do something actually productive, and then you get pulled into Instagram or-
Jay Papasan:
And then, you’re like, “Wait, what was I supposed to do with my phone?”
Cathryn Lavery:
And then, it happens again ’cause you’re like, “Oh, I actually was doing something,” and then, you get sucked in. And the thing about it is, it’s these apps and they have a whole team of people whose whole job is to have you as sucked in as possible.
Jay Papasan:
I see that manifest when I look at people’s tabs. When they’re browsing online, the number of tabs they have open is how many times they got briefly distracted, and then they can’t remember where they started.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
How many tabs do I have to go back now to figure out where I was starting? I was just gonna buy, order some more laundry detergent on Amazon, and now I’m reading about the origin story of mansplaining. How did I get here?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. But that’s the thing is because we live in this culture of our brains are always just looking for problems all the time. And so, that’s why you’re trying to actually do focused work or you’re trying to read something and your brain’s like, “Oh, you need to order detergent from Amazon.” And then, suddenly, you’re, “Well, I do need to do that right now,” because again, it’s not comfortable with you just like being there. And the problem-
Jay Papasan:
We have a completion bias. The moment we realize there’s something that needs to be done, we have an instinct to do it, which is how people get caught. I call it the busyness trap where they’re just doing, doing, doing. And it’s a lot of activity that doesn’t add up to anything.
Cathryn Lavery:
Right.
Jay Papasan:
We’ve gotta call, I feel like time out ’cause otherwise we’re gonna keep going.
Cathryn Lavery:
I know.
Jay Papasan:
And people are like, “Wait, unwind that thread for me.” We always end these with a little challenge. So, for our listeners out there, what would be one challenge they could take into the coming week that they can maybe explore some of the things that we’ve talked about.
Cathryn Lavery:
My challenge would be starting a problem log for yourself. So, just in your notes app in your phone, that’s all you’re supposed to do, start writing down every piece of daily friction that you have, whether it’s big or small. It could be having to fill up the air in your tire. That’s annoying. So, everything that’s just like, “Ugh.” because in there could be a business idea. It could be something. And I do this all the time and several products or businesses I’ve started from just having a problem log of things that come up that are kind of annoying because that’s where businesses live is that-
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, solving problems for others that they haven’t figured out a solution. That’s where all the opportunity is.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. But people don’t, usually – they have things, but they don’t ever note it down. So, if you sat down for 20 minutes, and every single problem you’ve had in the last six months, you might have solved it, you might not have, or you found a solution for it, like just put it in your phone.
Jay Papasan:
That’s cool. Great, great advice. Thanks, Cathryn.
Cathryn Lavery:
Thanks.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts and opinions of the guests represent those of the guests, and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Really LLC and their affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness or results from using the information.
