Finding Focus and Freedom with Steven Puri

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. For today’s episode, we are talking to the founder and CEO of the company and what he does, I love this, this line. He makes a focus app for people who are from home, which is great, and he helps them to go from at 6:00 PM they say, where did the day go to at 3:00 PM Let’s play with the kids. So I’m excited to hear more about this, but first, uh, Steven Puri. Hey, are you ready to rock?

Steven Puri: Are you ready to rock?

Tim Melanson: I am definitely ready to rock. What a

Steven Puri: Let’s do it.

Tim Melanson: you have.

Steven Puri: Let’s

make it happen.

Tim Melanson: So we always start off on a good note. Tell me a story of success that we could be inspired by.

Steven Puri: You know what you reminded me with that very fun introduction. I’ll tell you a success story involves not only my wife, but also one of the people I serve. And when I started, um, back in tech, because I’d been in film, I got back into tech, the [00:01:00] company center I was running were all remote.

And I loved, you know, I could hire people from anywhere, global talent pool.

You didn’t have to live driving to the office, you know.

No wasted time commuting. All the things people talk about. I was like, that’s great. But there are some challenges ’cause we’re both, my wife and I are both working from home, right?

So in the course of developing what it is we were developing, uh, you know, my wife and I got married a couple years ago and we were on, uh, our honeymoon in Bali, right?

Beautiful idyllic place. And when you, you know, run small companies, you’re accustomed to, I think when you’re run any company you’re accustomed to, people ask you questions all day long.

So for this one stretch of like 10 days, no one bugged me. Everyone’s like, stay away from bur, he’s on his honeymoon.

Just let him have his moment. Right? So I was talking to Laura and I was like,

I know this sounds crazy, but when we come back, I really want to figure out like, what do we call this? Like I, I, I want to, I want to brand this in a certain way. And I was thinking maybe the best people [00:02:00] that guide me about what it is we do are the, these early users, the the members who are here already that, you know, pay us.

So do you mind if I, like, I have a couple quick zooms with ’em just to feed my unconscious mind of like the things they would say. ’cause they’re outside the bubble and I’m inside the bubble, like building and you know, working on it. So she of course love her.

She’s like, yeah, talk to people. There was one of our members I spoke to was still a member years later, and he said that to me, I was like, what’s your favorite feature?

Why do you like using it? He gave me a bunch of answers that, and he finally said, this is, I think what you’re asking. He’s like, why do I pay you? And I was like, yeah, why do you pay us?

And he said. Because at three o’clock I could be playing with my kids, or at six o’clock I can be like, where the hell did the day go?

And the difference is, did I open your app in the morning? So I was like, man, that is so way better than any question I was asking. Thank you for guiding me to like the gold. So that night, you know, we had dinner and Laura and I were talking, we hanging out in bed and I was like, this guy said this thing to me.

It’s just ringing in my head all [00:03:00] day. I think it was the greatest thing I’ve heard about what we do. And Laura, we met in yoga.

Laura and I have a daily yoga practice. There are a lot of Sanskrit words that are in our, and concepts are kind of in our Daniel minds and our spirit, and she’s like, that’s Suka.

Like I think what it is you’re talking about is you’re not like focus at 14, you’re not remote focused 12. You know, you’re not that. It’s actually the productivity is the path to happiness, to self-fulfillment. And that’s what this guy’s telling you. He is like, I want to get to the place at three o’clock where I’m like, Hey, let me go throw a ball with my kid in the yard, not at six o’clock, being like, I missed that time with my family.

And she said, I think that’s what it is. And that’s why I called it the Suka company, which basically means the happiness company. ’cause that’s what we want to do.

And the path may be helping you work smarter and better, but ultimately it’s just like i’m happier in my life. And that was probably the biggest success I think I was doing, is going, you’re right that that’s what I wanna do with my life.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. Well, and I think, I think [00:04:00] that people who decide that they wanna work from home, I think that that’s. Probably the majority of people what they want, they want that flexibility.

It’s not necessarily that they want to work for themselves, it’s that they want to be able to, you know, spend a afternoon with their kids if they want to spend an afternoon with the kids, right?

Steven Puri: Yes. I think it’s a lot about that redefinition of like, work is what you do, it’s not where you do it.

That was a really important distinction for me. And the other part of that is. Work is really about goals. It’s not about hours that you put in. It’s that culture that, and I worked in sap, I worked in la like there’s definitely a, and I’m grinding it out.

I’m so proud. I worked 14, 18 hours to that sort of like badge of honor. And it’s like shifting that into, I don’t actually care how many hours you worked when I care is like, did we meet what we wanted to meet our team? Did it win?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Steven Puri: you can do that in two hours or six hours. Do it in two hours and then just be happier and healthier.[00:05:00]

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you, you also like, you, like you say, you, you, you have sort of these goals of things you wanna meet. And I think that I, I remember when I was in a cubicle, I was so far away from

Steven Puri: I’m sorry.

Tim Melanson: Uh, well, I was just so far away from that end product that, like, the part that I was doing. I even had a hard time conceptualizing of what it, what it did.

Like, what, what am I doing here? I’m just going, and I’m just doing this thing that they told me to do, and I don’t really see how that’s helping the world. You know?

And I, I think that when you’re starting your own business or when you’re doing your own thing, you know how you’re helping your client, you’ve got this connection to them, and you’re like, okay, I feel more pur.

I feel like I have more of a purpose here. Right.

Steven Puri: A lot of people ask me, why did you leave film? And i’ll tell you, it really came down to Die Hard Five. And it was very similar to what you said, where when fox recruited me to come from Dreamworks. They were very aggressive and generous with money. You know, [00:06:00] projects that were like, you’ll run the diehard franchise, the Wolverine franchise, the Independence State franchise, like all this stuff, right?

Which are pretty appealing. And you’re like, oh man, I’ll be a senior executive, like 30 jobs like that in the world.

I have one of them and I’ll be well paid for it. Right? So a couple years in, I remember having this, this day where we’re working on diehard five, and like you said, I was like. There is a complete disconnect between what I am doing and anything good happening in the world.

These are not related. And I was like, I don’t wanna wake up, be like 40, 50 years old to tell my kids, okay, daddy’s going off to make diehard 11 today.

So that’s when I got back into tech to actually build stuff. And you know, I had two failures when I got back into tech. I had two companies raise millions of dollars. They ultimately didn’t work out. But man, was I happier just saying like, I can actually solve things and hopefully help people as opposed to what should Bruce say in this movie?

Tim Melanson: Yep. Yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, you mentioned the, the, the failure, [00:07:00] so, so I think a lot of people don’t. Take that step because they’re, they’re just afraid that it’s not gonna work out for them. Right.

Steven Puri: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: gonna make a mistake. And, you know, I try to talk about this because, you know, everybody I’ve had on the podcast has something to say about this, about that bad note.

Right. And like, what would your story be like, what was the bad note of your, you know, journey?

Steven Puri: Oh wow. Okay. So i’m gonna give you a bad note and a grace note, if you will, to extend the music metaphor. Okay. So definitely that moment I was having at Fox was the one that was so bad that I was like, I. Wow. I made a series of decisions that got me

here, but I feel like I’m wasting, I’m trading my life for meaningless stuff, so I’m making money and I have a job.

A lot of people like envy and it’s true when you’re a senior executive at Studio, you can kind of call anybody and they’ll pick up the phone, you call anyone in government and they’re like, oh my God, it’s a Vice President Fox. Maybe they wanna make a movie about me. So it was crazy access you had, but it was also kind of [00:08:00] meaningless in a way where like I have a friend who’s still working on like the Antman series.

We’ve been friends for 20 plus years.

He’s like, Hey man, my kids need to pay for private school. Like, don’t judge. I’m making antman nine, or whatever it is. You know? It’s like, okay, it’s a thing. So what I thought was interesting was there was that moment, which was a bad note of like, if it had not been so bad, I wouldn’t have left film to get back into tech, right?

But here’s actually the deeper bad note, which is a flaw in myself that I had to come to terms with, which is.

My first two companies, um, ’cause I, I had had one successful company when I was like 28. We sold it at a computer graphics company, right? So I thought, oh, this is easy. So when I went from film back into tech, I didn’t listen enough to my members, to my users.

I had that feeling of like, well, I know what this thing should be like. Let me just create it.

Man, it was like, it was like being tone deaf.

You’re like, actually that’s [00:09:00] not a, you’re not tuning to four 40.

Like you, you’re tuning to your own frequency and it’s not four 40, bud. You know? And those companies didn’t work.

And that was a lesson going into this one where, like the story I told you about our honeymoon, where I was like, I just craved talking to members and being like, how am I doing? You know, so hopefully I’m getting better at it. But

man, did I suck at that for a while?

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and I mean, that’s, that’s the thing. We feel like we’re the expert and you know, we know what we’re doing, but. You know, I think that, um, I think that if you’re in a company, I mean, companies spend so much money on market research to figure out what these, what the, the client wants, right? And then we jump out on our own and go, I think I know better, but I.

Steven Puri: You know, our culture celebrates those success stories. This deck of cor came from this thing, da, and let’s be super honest, like, um, good example. [00:10:00] Before Airbnb and Uber, people had tried similar ideas, but that idea of like, Hey, you want to have a stranger sleep on your sofa for a couple bucks?

Hey, you want to drive around someone else?

Like, you’re a, you’re a taxi driver, da da. They hit.

That moment in the recession when those two companies tried the idea, people were like, actually, uh, how much? Like 40 bucks?

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

40 bucks saved myself for tonight, you know? So those tailwinds carried those ideas forward, whereas, you know, if you launched ’em two years earlier, those ideas failed and two years later this idea failed.

So there’s also that thing of like, you can think you’re as smart as you want to be, but if you’re not selling water in the summer. You know, there’s, there’s a reason. Lemonade cells in the summertime,

Tim Melanson: yeah. Sometimes you might have the right idea, just the wrong time, right?

Steven Puri: there are a lot of factors. You can work as hard as you want, be as smart as you want, and there’s also an element of like luck.

Tim Melanson: Well, and now, I mean, [00:11:00] let’s talk a little bit about that though. That, so like you say, I mean, there are situations where your idea is really good, but no one’s getting it yet.

You know what, what do you like? Is there sort of like a formula or is there a, like how do you know when to give up?

Like

Steven Puri: Well, let me give you an example because I spent a bunch of time in film and there’s actually a very clear answer from film, which is I got to work from the bottom up. I started as an assistant, literally the you in like, Hey, you get me coffee, right?

Tim Melanson: mm-hmm.

Steven Puri: And I treated it like an apprenticeship. I worked a year for a manager, a year for the president of Paramount as his first assistant because I wanted to see both sides, like the sell side, I’m trying to sell my clients and the buy side, will I buy your clients?

Right. That was fascinating to me. So I started there. Ended up obviously as a senior executive, you know, studios and all that. I went into it thinking, oh my god, I read the script. It’s so good. This guy’s so talented. I saw this short film. This guy’s so talented. This girl’s so talented, whatever. [00:12:00] They’re gonna be successful.

And I’ll tell you this, after 10, 15 years in film, the determining factor that I saw about who is still working in it was not the amount of talent that I gauged subjectively they had. It was how tenacious they were. And that definitely informed me in my life. And I hope, uh, like right now, Laura’s pregnant. We’re gonna have our our son this fall and is something I hope. Thank you. I’m super excited about it. And. I hope that is something that I can, in the most gentle, sort of subtle way imbue in our household, the sense of like, if you really believe in something, keep at it.

Don’t just have your first disappointment and be like, oh, well I’m not meant to be a guitarist. I’m not meant to be a writer. I’m not.

It’s like, no, man, they, they spend a lot of time getting rejected and just saying, well, I’ll get a little bit better.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Or tried a little bit different or, or, or, you know, there’s, there. You know, there’s some of that too. Maybe. Maybe you need to change instruments, Right. Like, [00:13:00] hey, you know what I mean? That that’s a thing too, right? There are some musicians that will start on one instrument and end up being very, very good at another right.

Steven Puri: Ab

Absolutely true. And the same thing like, you know, going back to the film thing is you have some writers that move with facility between media, where it’s like, oh, I’m writing this TV series I created, but I’m also doing a feature, and then we’re doing interactive game based on, you know, like that sort of thing.

You have others who are like, they stray out from the medium that launched them and they’d never really find their footing in the next one.

And to understand like how those things work, like you’re right, I guess in the musical terms, which you know better than I, there is a, hey, let me try that instrument, see if that’s more organic to, you know, how I create, um, and maybe you do find your thing, but I think it’s really about like, do you keep at it because you love it and it’s something you can’t live without or is it something you’re like.

Oh, you know, maybe I’ll do this. It works, you know, uh, I’ll give

it three weeks and if I’m not Mark Zuckerberg, then clearly I’m gonna do something else. Okay. [00:14:00] Dude, you’re not cut out for this.

Tim Melanson: Yep. Absolutely. Well, and I think it’s such a like paradox, right? Because I mean, well, even in music, so there’s a lot of people that play music for free, like a lot of people that do it for free.

Steven Puri: I live in Austin. I know.

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

I mean it’s, but then there’s a lot of people that make a lot of money with music and there’s a lot of people that are kind of in the middle that they just, you know, do it as a hobby, but still make a little bit of money. But, but the thing about it is that I think, I think we get discouraged maybe through programming, I don’t know, from doing something that is fun for money.

And isn’t that interesting because what you just said about uh, you know, the tenacity, you know, those people are doing it ’cause they have this big burning why of why they want to be what they’re doing and they’re doing it ’cause they love it and chances are they’re not making a whole bunch of money.

Right. But what they keep at it and keep at it, keep at it, eventually get there. [00:15:00] So I’m, I’m wondering, like, do, do you think that that, uh. Actually, let’s ask you, how are you going to speak to your child about this? You know about following the passion, even though that passion might be music or something that might not make the money in the end, I.

Steven Puri: You know what I, it is a good question because I credit my mom with wanting me to have options. We grew up, uh, relatively poor, and my parents both grew up like poor on a level that. They work really hard. I’ll never understand, I’ll never have a real touchstone for how poor they were. Right. But I know that was one of the things my mom, when I was little is my mom was like, with the money we have, I wanna make sure that you get some exposure to a lot of things.

And I mean, crazy stuff. It was just like, you know what, why don’t you try ice skating? I’m gonna find a way to get you to a rink. Why don’t you try swimming? Why don’t you try soccer? Why don’t you try, uh, bowling? Why don’t you try golf? And what it was, it was just like, see which one of these sticks with you.[00:16:00]

You know, and I learned, learned to play piano. My brother is a classical pianist now because that was one of the things, it was like play piano. He’s a dual doctorate from Yale Musicology Music Theory. He’s a professor at UVA, like Harvard undergraduate. He took to the piano. Whereas I had a certain point was like, tap out.

I wanna go into entertainment. Right.

And I think about that because I realize the sacrifices my mom made so that we would have that optionality.

Right. Like you said, to sort of get there. I think the reason I worked so hard is because even as a young child, I recognized that my mom and my dad made sacrifices so that I could figure out what it is I wanted to do as opposed to what I had to do.

You know, I live a life of privilege, like i’m not worried what I’m gonna have for lunch, or if there will be lunch, or if I have a place to sleep today that’s privilege and it’s not lost on me. Like that was not super clear always from my parents, and. [00:17:00] I hope that with my child, answer your question, I can, without making them fear where they’re gonna sleep tonight.

You’re in the, you’re in the street tonight, Billy, that they can see like the options, they get to figure out where their song is.

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Steven Puri: It is a privilege to be able to do that, you know?

Tim Melanson: I think that’s really, that’s really deep. I mean, ’cause the, the, I think that some parents will sort of like, I want my kid to be a doctor. I want my kid to be a lawyer.

Steven Puri: Oh yeah.

Tim Melanson: they’ll give them that one option that I, this is what you need to do, right? Because I need you to get out of the slum.

All that other kind of stuff.

Steven Puri: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Whereas what you’re saying is put ’em in everything.

Options. Let ’em, because, because like what you just said, I mean, I, I know that when we were, when I was growing up, it was like a statistics thing. They’d be like, wow, my chances of you having success on that is like less than 1%.

Steven Puri: Right.

Tim Melanson: But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna have success in it. [00:18:00] Seriously, like, because what you just said earlier is that factor that made a big difference in the people’s success with their tenacity.

So it’s not a statistics thing where, right, it’s, it’s work at it hard and like you say, a little bit of luck.

Be prepared for when there’s opportunities come. Right.

Steven Puri: Totally agree and something you brought up. ‘Cause I have a number of friends who were on their first child sort of thing, like that stage in life. And it is absolutely true. There’s the, oh my God, my kid wants to be a philosophy major. What is he gonna do? Is she gonna do it? How are they gonna make money?

Are they gonna be living at home when they’re 30? Like that sort of thing. It goes, i’m. Yet when you do look at people who have become like CEOs of corporations who are very successful, i’m not talking about like soccer players are making millions of dollars. Like, I dunno, that’s the career path, but like people who have gotten to that point,

it’s not like they all were just like straight up, Hey man, I studied economics. I went to hBS and now I’m running, you know, Bain or whatever. Right? Is some of ’em do have that. Oh, you know, I [00:19:00] studied this esoteric thing undergraduate that l led me to develop. My brain and now, yes, I can move into different careers and have different conversations.

I hope that if my child comes and says, you know, basket weaving or whatever the joke is, you know that I can balance that thing and going, well, statistically speaking, you’re gonna be living at home at 30. Or maybe there’s a way in which you pursue that in your teen years and it you end up becoming a. The CEO of the new etsy or something, you know, like, who knows? Um, we’ll see. And then, you know, when the rubber meets the road, who knows how I’ll act, but I’m gonna try my best to act.

Well,

Tim Melanson: when you’re in the thick of it, my, my child is just graduated from high school. Uh, and so, uh, and yeah. And so it’s, it’s different when you’re going through it. I will say like in theory, everything sounds like doesn’t all gonna deal with this when it happens.

Steven Puri: Exactly what happened. It’s just like that. Was it the Mike Tyson line about like everyone has a [00:20:00] plan until they’re punched in the face.

Tim Melanson: That’s

exactly, it happen bunches in the face. That will happen, that’s for sure. But, but I think, I think that, uh, just, you know. Being a little bit mindful and, and making sure that you’re open to researching, I think a little bit as well. And not just that kind of rigid, this is how I was raised, so this is how I’m gonna raise my kid, kind of thing.

Right. I think all that kind of helps as well. And we do live in the information age. That’s the lucky thing is that we do have the access to information to help us with this. Right.

Steven Puri: Yes. And imagine like our children and their next generation, like they will look back the same way we look back like before computers, before you know, electric cars or all this stuff. And they’ll be like, oh man, remember life when like I. LLMs were new and no one really knew what hallucinations, you know, were gonna come up like that. Oh, those crazy days my parents lived. Right.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Puri: It’d be fun.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, yeah. Well, I was talking to the last guest on the last [00:21:00] show, and we were talking about growing up in like the eighties and nineties where it was like the school of hard knocks. Like you were like just ramping your bike off crazy things

Steven Puri: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: slamming down on your head like you learned real quick about, about life.

Right. And

Steven Puri: and happily some of those lessons not on the internet forever.

Tim Melanson: no, I know.

I

Steven Puri: worry about that with my kid. I’m like, oh dude.

Tim Melanson: Uh, I, I, that that is, I don’t like, that’s the thing. Most of the things, most of the mistakes that I made growing up are gone. They’re only a memory now. And however I color them in my head, you know, some of them are probably worse than they were. Some of them were probably a lot better than they were, but they’re gone and they’ve made an impact.

But yeah, like you say, I mean, all these things that are recorded now, like, oh my goodness. I, I, no wonder kids are afraid to jump out of the bubble wrap. Right.

Steven Puri: it’s so true. [00:22:00]

I know. So yeah, I’m with you on that one. I’m with you on that one. I haven’t figured what to say about that yet, other than watch out. Everything’s being recorded.

Tim Melanson: yeah. Uh,

I’m, I think maybe it’ll be, oh, no, no, no. That’s an ai, that’s video. That’s

Steven Puri: that’s true. That’s true. Do you remember there was actually a michael Creen book that was fantastic. Um, it was made into not a great movie, as I apologize. Very few books translate well or are well translated into film.

Um, it was the one with, uh, it was made with, um, Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

It was essentially the era when japan was coming to this country in a very strong economic way. And people are very afraid of Japan the way they’re afraid of China right now.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Steven Puri: The central idea of it, like the plot, the technical plot of it was Japanese buy some new skyscraper in downtown la, which is actually the fox Plaza skyscraper now.

And, uh, there’s a party there, or it’s one of the skyscrapers down there downtown.

[00:23:00] Um, and there’s a party there and a girl gets killed and there are security cameras all over the building, but they try to get the footage of them and the cameras have been. The footage has been already doctored by the time they get it right. And very, it became a very procedural sort of thriller thing. It was not a great movie, da da, da. But I’m telling you, I read the book before I saw the movie, and what I thought was fascinating about it was this.

The point of it was not who’d done it, which is what the movie was about, right? I think Phil Kaufman made the movie.

The point of it was. They can’t prove with visual evidence what happened. And Michael Cretin was like, we had remember the Mex guy where it’s like, is it live or is it Mex? And like he’s sitting in front of the speakers and they’re, that whole campaign was saying like, we can now trick your ears. You can’t tell if it’s live or it’s Mex.

We become that good with the fidelity of sound. Right.

And [00:24:00] Creon basically wrote that to say the last sense that we have. To judge where something is true seeing is believing, right? Showing proof. He’s like, we just became good enough to fool our last sense. That may sound obvious on its face, or it’s like true Photoshop with Gen ai. Now da da. You can create anything.

But on an even deeper level, he was like, we all grew up with a sense that there was an objective reality. This is what happened. It’s recorded. I believe it. He’s like. How does it affect a generation that grows up in a world where you could show them anything and they’re like, dunno, maybe, maybe not.

Tim Melanson: Mm.

Steven Puri: does it change you as a

generation? And I thought that was an incredibly profound and subtle point in the book that was lost in the movie.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s deep. That’s very deep. And that’s probably why there’s so much divide in the world today is just because of that.

[00:25:00] We, we can’t, there is no such thing as a fact. There actually is no such thing as a fact anymore.

If you can create your own.

Steven Puri: You’re not really Tim. Who are you?

Tim Melanson: Not really too, I’m a robot. Well, and, and that’s coming, right?

There’s gonna be avatars that, you know, in, in the virtual reality world that are gonna be looking just like me. I’ll be able to have a bot that’ll act just like me. And I think that’s already starting to come out now.

Steven Puri: Yeah. You have like 10 episodes a day while you’re in bed.

Tim Melanson: Yep. yep. I. And,

and the, I mean, I don’t, we’re definitely, I don’t think we’re there now. Maybe we are, maybe we are there right now and, and the tools that I’m privy to aren’t, haven’t gotten that far yet. But maybe the ones that are at the top are Right.

Who knows?

Steven Puri: is true. And when we think about like, you know, normally about working at home, right? How do we work at Home rockstar? And you think about how are the professions changing? Because like with LLMs, people often just conflate. AI in general with, oh, it’s an lLM, right? But [00:26:00] even with, if you just narrow to these large language models and you say, wow, they’ve been trained on everything they could get their hands on.

So if you want, want a code, they’ve read all the code in the world. If you wanna write a book, they’ve read all the books in the world, that sort of thing.

And they have a good ability to say, probably what you want to hear, write, see, uh, looks like this. Right. So the whole conversation now about like the professions that are creating.

Are

gonna exist, how are they gonna change? And some people, I think, are very bold to say like, well, oh my god, you know, like creative like art design and print design and stuff like that.

You’ll just have people in natural language saying like, I need a really baller poster that shows the so. And suddenly there’s a whole generation of, you know, designers that are outta business.

And other people are like, well, it’ll always be about the prompt engineering. You’ll still need someone who has the aesthetic skills to be able to look at the output and you know, give it notes and make it better.

Right. So you do this whole thing. And I’m very [00:27:00] close to this because the three biggest cohorts of members in the suka, you’re gonna laugh ’cause they’re all work at home.

Engineers, designers and writers.

Tim Melanson: No way.

Wow.

Steven Puri: are squarely people who are like, I am here at home. I could do my knowledge work in six or eight hours. I could do it in three or four. How do I wanna focus and get that done that way? And I’ve been thinking a lot with the, you know, the new version of my platform. How do we accommodate that to say, Hey man, I wanna make sure that you stay in the game. That it’s not just about you feel great, at the end of the day, you’re productive. But we gave you the tools, the modern tools to be productive in that way. ’cause that is an active conversation. Like members I talk to genuinely scared about like, what is the new world, you know?

Tim Melanson: Yep,

I hear you. However, I do think that these tools are going to level a lot of playing fields. We’re not gonna need these giant monopoly companies as much because [00:28:00] now anybody working from home can download a few tools and have a whole team working for them. Right?

Steven Puri: completely agreed.

Tim Melanson: that you can have is, is huge, right?

Steven Puri: It’s amazing.

Tim Melanson: Well, it is time for you to solo, so I wanted, I actually wanna hear little bit more about what.

Steven Puri: Um, I’ll tell you, the thing I’m excited about is this is. When I started working from home and I started leading teams who are working remotely or, you know, hybrid, you know, but some sense of like work anywhere, challenges that came up. ’cause I had worked a lot in an office before that, uh, at the studio and then work on productions.

You sort of work remote and hybrid and on set and remote, you know, it’s kind of all the whole thing. The thing I really stood out to me was like there were a couple problems that were like painful. There was, and this sounds. Maybe vulnerable to say, but I’ve also heard from a number of members there was the where do I start problem. And sometimes that first moment in the [00:29:00] morning of like sitting here alone looking my to-do list and just feeling overwhelmed and finding myself procrastinating. Like, oh, you know, I could probably just, I didn’t do the dishes from last night. I should do this real quick. You know? Or I didn’t load the laundry.

I didn’t, and just finding some little thing to do because I had a hard time starting. Amount of thought we’ve put into how when you, when you open Suka in the morning, your assistant sort of like helps you and like guides you and like finds how you work like that. That was something that really excited me of just like easing that moment, that overwhelm feeling in the morning where it’s like you sort of get going and it suddenly you’re like, oh my God, I’m half done.

This is great. It’s not even lunch. You know, that, that was great. And another thing I touched on, which is like how you, how you work. That was one of the big things for me with this new version is. I have been lucky to have read a lot of, you know, the, the great texts on productivity and you know, behavioral psychologists like that.

And it’s true, I got to meet Cal Newport, [00:30:00] you know, obviously read Miha. She sent my he book on flow before, you know, he died and stuff like that. And there are a lot of guys and girls who have written incredibly smart things. They do boil down a couple of principles, right? So when you have one of those and you say, well, how does that apply to me?

I don’t think it’s that binary black and white thing. And this is something else that really excites me is in doing this, I realized, uh, for example, something like creativity, right? There is a principle in productivity about monotask, right? Like clear all your distractions out and monotask do that. Totally good for some activities. But I’ll tell you,

when I was just

coming up, I was

probably like 20 years old. I was

working in an

ad agency

that did trailers to movies.

And it was run by these two guys,

one of whom came to me,

was

president of

the agency, and

was like,

he goes,

he called me Stevie.

He’s like, Hey, Stevie,

uh, you know Bart?

I was like,

uh, Bart.

Yeah. The

guy in the

vault, like who delivers tapes and film around Hollywood. Yeah. He goes, yeah,

I think you should give him a trailer to write. And I

was like, [00:31:00]

the guy in the vault, the, the drives

around?

Yeah.

Okay.

And he’s like, yeah, yeah. I was like, Hey, you’re the boss. Like totally. Got it.

I’ll give him

something. So I found like a, a Warner’s B title

that had like a,

a month before the due date. Right. It was not like, you know,

Batman or something huge. It was like, hey,

gave Bart a

couple examples of similar

kinds of trailers. Here’s another movie we did last year. It’s kind of like this, here’s sort of what the

trailer

should we like

go nuts,

right?

So I give it to him.

Jeff comes to my office like two days later. He’s like, how’s

Bart

doing? I’m like, I don’t know dude. I sort of didn’t wanna

pressure him as his first time. I sent him home with the,

you know,

kind of the

movie and. He

goes like, okay, fine.

Uh, what else did you give him?

I’m like, he’s never ridden

a trailer before.

I gave him one thing. I’m not gonna like blow his

mind to give him two things. He goes, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie.

It’s always about the other thing.

I was like, what? He’s like,

you have

to understand with

creativity,

the thing that you’re focused on the front of your

mind is thinking you’re doing. Is [00:32:00] worthless.

It is only there to distract you. So the part of your mind that does

the really cool stuff is free and is not being watched. And

that’s when you have that moment of like chocolate and peanut butter. Okay? And he is like, if you don’t give him something else

to work

on, he’s gonna sit there

at night stressed

out that the president

of the agency wanted him to ride a trailer

and never have

a great

idea.

He’s like.

You need to respect the process. It’s not about monotasking. It is, in this case, about like context switching and giving him that thing of

ping back and back and

forth, you know, cut to

years later where I’ve

worked with so many writers

and so he was absolutely

right. What a great lesson to be taught, you know, like 20 years old about creativity,

which,

you know, when you read a lot

of

the books.

They frown upon that. But you need to know what does I need to accomplish and how do I accomplish it?

So I’ve tried in Suka to,

to balance that, to be like, Hey man, these are kind of the core principles and we’ll help you with them, but if we see that you need to adapt them, we’ll do that and we’ll

remember, and we’ll always suggest [00:33:00] that for

you.

Um, you’re your smart assistant. We’ll

do that. So those are the things I’m really

excited about. Sorry that was a

long answer, but.

I

love it. I’m trying to help a lot of people, three o’clock play with

their kids or go, you know,

down

to the river or whatever

it is, rather than

six o’clock

be like, where the fuck did the day go?

You know,

Tim Melanson: So, where do we get this app? Then how do we find out more?

Steven Puri: it’s a, it’s a web app. Just go

to the,

the Suka,

T-H-E-S-U-K-H a.co.

The Suka company. So the suka.co.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Wow. Definitely

Steven Puri: yeah. And it’s like free

for a bit.

No, no. Funny

business. No. If you forget

to cancel, we’ll Bill you.

Tim Melanson: okay.

Steven Puri: I just wanna build this. So

the people who need it,

which are largely work from home, engineers, designers, writers, they find

it if they

dig it, boom.

And what’s interesting is if

you start paying us, there’s a 96% chance you’ll renew month over month. Because once

you have that experience, like getting into a flow state,

being like, oh my God.

You’re hooked. You’re

like, why [00:34:00] would I

work and

why would I waste my

day when I could get my stuff done faster?

So that’s what excites me, and that’s where you could find it.

Thank you for asking.

Tim Melanson: Brilliant. That’s so awesome. Well, thank you so much Steven for rocking out me with me today. This has been super enlightening.

Steven Puri: Super

fun. Have

a great rest of your day.

Tim Melanson: Yes. To

the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information.