Body Doubling and Productivity With Christian Rat of Focus101.com

Join us for this episode as Shane Thrapp has a discussion with Christian Rat, CEO of Focus101.com, about how his company is working to provide a free platform for body doubling to help people stay productive and accountable while working remotely.

We explore how Christian was inspired to create Focus101 after noticing his team's focused productivity during long video calls at his finance job. This is where he recognized the power of body doubling and virtual coworking. Focus101 aims to facilitate growth for everyone who wants to improve productivity, find fulfillment at work, and gain more time for themselves.

We talk about how body doubling and Focus101’s features, like the Pomodoro technique, to-do lists, and ambient sounds, can benefit those with ADHD. They also discuss the importance of starting small, building momentum and learning from mistakes. Christian also talks about his commitment to listening to user feedback and improving Focus101 based on actual needs.

Overall, it’s a fascinating conversation about leveraging technology, psychology, and community to help people overcome distractions, build consistency, and accomplish their goals.

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Transcript

Welcome to the men's ADHD support group podcast. This is Shane Thrapp operations director for the nonprofit men's ADHD support group. And. ADHD life coach. I am joined today with Christian Ratt. He is an international man of mystery. He is the CEO of focus101. com, a body doubling service designed to help people.

Especially those who are neurodivergent, find the community of people working to find their productivity style together. Thank you for coming on, Christian. How are you doing today? 

Hi Shane. Thank you for having me. I'm doing great today, thank you. How about you? 

I'm pretty good. Dealing with the cold, so y'all who are listening, you may hear my voice do these weird high pitched things.

Can't help it. Editing's only gonna do so much. So, Christian, let's jump right into it. What inspired you to create Focus 101 and provide the service? 

Well I guess it all started in the pandemic so many things did, I suppose. I was working at a, at a FinTech here in London, and we were going through quite a major project which was to migrate our current infrastructure from one cloud provider to a different one.

And we were doing that over a video call, actually multiple video calls throughout the weeks. But right on the last day, we pretty much started at 7 a. m. and finished basically after midnight. So as you can imagine, it was quite a tough day. What I did notice during that day and other days as well is that we were all very focused and basically functioning like a well machine.

So why, why was that happening? Wasn't sure. But it seemed that when we were working together, and it wasn't just like two people, we were sometimes 10 or more from from various teams coming and going over over the hours. So, long story short, I've noticed that we were working better. And then later I found out it's an actual thing.

People are doing this thing called virtual co working. I didn't even know what body tumbling was was at that point. So I thought, okay, well, this is this is an interesting thing. So I know tech. I got this idea. Let's build this. And I thought I'm going to build it and I started building it not because it was easy, but because I thought it was going to be easy.

It's just a couple of pages, a couple of calendars and a video call. So that's what I thought. So that's kind of how it how it started. 

So for those who don't know, what is body doubling? 

A body doubling is when you work in the company of others doing usually you're doing your own thing while others are doing their thing.

So think of it like you're going to the library, everybody's studying. So the way our brains work, we, we tend to take our cues from our surroundings. So if you're in a workplace environment, you tend to do your work, your colleagues do their work and you kind of feel out of place not doing the same thing as them.

But now that we're working remote, so many of us were just at home in our own bedrooms, kitchens, it gets a bit confusing and also Distractions are plentiful, whether it's your phone, your cat, or your dog. So long story short, body doubling is you're working in the company of others, holding each other accountable.

I love body doubling. It's one of those things that really helps me when it comes to trying to get things done, because the accountability is there. Right? When we get into the call, you have the great pop up that comes up and says, talk about your goals, talk about what you're wanting to accomplish. And then at the end of it, you have the other pop up that says, Hey, how did everything go?

Let's talk about how that went. There's a certain level of accountability there that helps me not get so distracted because I know at the end of my call, I'm going to have to talk about the things that I got done. And I love that about your site. When you were putting this in place, You know, what kind of tools or features do you think offer?

Neurodivergent people the most support when it comes to body doubling. 

I think the biggest support is the one to one session. For me, I found that very, very useful. So, what you're mentioning when you jump in and... You have to say what you're going to do and at the end you say what, what you have done.

So that sort of hacks your brain because we tend to be consistent about our self image. We, we all think we're trying to do the right thing. Nobody in their brain is is a villain, right? Or a liar. And if we think ourselves as not liars, then we show up. But first of all, you show up on time because there is somebody waiting for you, right?

If you, if you don't show up and You're not being very nice. You're wasting somebody else's time. So first of all, you will probably show up. And I can see I can see quite a lot of users struggling to show up. They're doing their best. Sometimes they, they're late, but they generally 

do show up. Yeah, because we're kind of tapping into our people pleasing tendencies at that point, correct?

We're like, this person's waiting on me. I gotta be there. And even if it's a little bit, a few minutes late, we're like immediately jumping in. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I've done this a thousand times so far. I get distracted. And, but you do a great job with the reminders as well. And like letting us know via email, Hey, someone's in your room.

Oh, crap. You know, it drags this people pleasing thing out of me. What other tools do y'all have? 

So apart from the one to one session we also have a what we call rooms, which are. Pretty much 24 7 always open. You can come in and stay for as long as you want. So sometimes You'll come in and you'll see some people they'll look up when they hear the thing that you joined their way You wave back you just type in if you want what you're doing and like thumbs up and you do a thing So that's that's also quite good for when you either can't find a session or you don't want to create one Or you just need to focus right now And we've also added the Pomodoro technique.

So some people like that and we've also added white sounds And I've also added the storm which you suggested so it's quite good is my favorite and we've we've also added those while you're in the call. Because generally people mute themselves. So if you want an extra thing, just add some whites.

What's the Pomodoro technique for the people out there listening? 

Pomodoro technique is when you work distraction free, hopefully, for 25 minutes. And then you take a short break, five minutes. And you go back and you focus for 25 minutes, you do that, I think, three times, and then you take a longer break, which is 20, 25 minutes.

And then you, you take the cycle from the beginning. Pomodoro is actually tomato in Italian. And the guy that created it, whose name escapes me, I believe he had, tomato shaped oven timer. And that's, that's how the name came to me. 

I love sometimes like how the human brain works when it comes to naming things like there's, there's the ego that says, Oh, I'm going to name this after myself.

And then of course this guy is just sitting in his thing and he's just using a a, a tomato timer. And he's a, I'll call it Pomodoro.

So. You know, why does, why do you, why do you think the Pomodoro technique is useful to people? Why is it useful for you? If you use it?

 I actually haven't used it much, but I know, I know a lot of people who do use it. I had somebody at work was using it and his alarm was going off every whatever, 25 minutes.

And I wasn't, I wasn't aware of that technique at that point. So I asked, and he told me I think. And this is me thinking so could be totally wrong. I think it's because you have a set limit of. How much you need to focus. Right. And you know, your break is coming, so you've got your carrot, I suppose in this case, you know, you're gonna take a break and 25 minutes is not that much.

You know, you just, can you wait 25 minutes? Ah, I suppose it's not that bad. I imagine that's why it works. Plus it gives you a bit of structure. 

Yeah. Structure's super important, 

but it's just me guessing 

so I could be wrong. No, I, I agree with you. For me, the Pomodoro technique is useful because it stops me from hyper-focusing.

Well rephrase. It allows me to hyper focus, but not to the point of exhausting myself because we have ADHD, we only have an X amount of mental energy that we can use throughout the day and knowing that I only have 25 minutes puts that sense of urgency that I need to be able to get that thing done. And as you said, like the carrot, I'm going to take a break in, you know, after 25 minutes and then.

If I've planned my day correctly, like I'm, I've got my to do list, which you also have on the website is a little to do list that you can pop up in there. Yep. You know, having that and doing those things and recognizing that it's only going to take me X amount of time really helps me not have that decision paralysis.

And helps me kind of move out of that to just simply starting the process. And I think that's one of those things that I struggle with the most in a lot of people with ADHD struggle with. Is the starting because usually once we get into it, like the momentum starts flowing and we start moving from thing to thing to thing, especially if we've put in place our tools that we need and designed our to do list the way that we need so that we are moving from one thing to the next without really having to think too much about it.

I really appreciate that about your site. 

Thank you. You've only got good words. On the topic of starting, so that is something that is is a big issue for me as well. I'm sure, I'm sure many people struggle with starting, like you need to go to the gym and, oof, you just can't Where to actually go, or you need to start cleaning your house or whatever it is that you need to do.

So let me share a technique with you. And this is something that maybe sounds stupid, but trust me, it works. I've tested many times. So, what you do is you start with the smallest possible thing you can think of that will take you towards what you need to do. And then you do that smallest thing and then you do the next thing.

From that smallest thing, and that's exactly what you do. You're building that momentum. If you think of a snowball rolling downhill, you know, it starts very small, but it really starts growing exponentially. So to give you an example, let's say you are sitting on your couch comfortably watching TV, but you want to go to gym or you want to clean your house.

But what's the smallest thing you can possibly do? Well, your hands on your hands on the couch. You can move your pinky. And then you can just move your hand, then you can move your arms, and then all of a sudden you're like, well this is stupid, I'll just get up already. Well, I'm up, might as well start cleaning.

So, for me, that actually works quite a lot. It's just, start with the smallest possible thing. 

You know, I 100 percent understand where you're coming from. One of the things that I use as an example is like how I clean my kitchen. Like, I know I need to clean my kitchen. First off my Alexa goes off, you know, Hey Shane, clean your kitchen.

And Alexa is my, is my go to tool to tell me to remind me to do the things that I need to do. Because I can yell at her and tell her to fuck off. I can't say that to my wife. Because they'll find my body in 10 years and I'll be on a murder mystery show. And, you know, I have found that when I hear Alexis say that I have to make a decision, but my decision is not based on all of the things that I have to do, which is, I know like will freeze me up.

If I have to think about doing the dishes, cleaning the counter, wiping down the Island, sweeping, mopping, cleaning out the fridge. That's, that's what's all going through my brain when I think about cleaning the kitchen. However, by simply having Alexa saying, clean the kitchen, at that point, I have a decision to make that's based on two things.

Either do it or don't do it. Yeah. And more often than not, I find myself doing that thing. But all I really focus on when I go into the kitchen is simply starting the dishes. Because starting the dishes means just kind of cleaning off the counters, putting them in the sink, rinsing them off, putting them in the dishwasher.

Well, now the counters are mostly cleaned off. I just got to take this wet towel that's already in my head and start wiping down the counters and the stove and the island. And I'm just flowing from one thing to the other. And because I'm one of those people who essentially just sweeps all the dirt and crust off the counter into my hand, which also then winds up on the floor, I can now feel it as I'm walking across the floor.

Well, I got to grab the broom and sweep all that. I got to do the floor. Right, and then, you know, I've already done that, when I go to put my broom up, the broom is right next to the mop, I might as well grab it, well, my sink is right there, so I'll go ahead and fill it, put the pine sol in it, and now, wringing out the mop, doing the, you know, the floor.

And I'm done. I eyeball the fridge and I usually just go fuck that bullshit, but I do try to do it like once a week and you know, but I have a separate alarm, but I have a separate alarm for that so that I am not focusing so much on, you know, making sure that I do everything perfectly. And I find that that has always been really true for a lot of people.

If we design our homes to be very ADHD friendly or neurodivergent friendly, if we design our to do list, so that we're flowing from one thing to the other without having like hugely drastic changes, I see a lot of improvement in the way that people are able to be productive.

Like, I don't clean the kitchen and then go mow the yard, right? I clean the kitchen and then I may wind up going into the back room and cleaning the back room because that's kind of a natural progression for me because they're right next to each other. It's just that momentum. Right. And it's just all about designing your to do list and your, your, your style and your household so that you're able to kind of flow from one thing to the other when you do start it.

Because the second we have any kind of setback, we're just going to freeze up and completely lose our shit. Oh, I can't find my broom. Where the fuck is my broom? So we hunt down the broom. Oh my god, there's all those loads of clothing that I have to wash. And, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna load them in the washer.

And then, oh, I found the broom and I'm sweeping. And then I completely forget about the clothes that just wound up in the washer. And then, like and then it, like, it just completely throws us off when we have that. Well, it's the 

same for me. You mentioned starting with the dishes. I generally do that, and then, well, you know, now I got to do the counter, and then...

Well, again, I get to, well, another floor. I need to do the floor, take out the vacuum. Well, I'm not going to stop here. Just got to do the whole house. And then, of course, at the end, I have one of those with the plastic filter that you empty. Then I see it full. Oh, it's so satisfying to empty that. 

It's like, here's my gauge on how well I did cleaning today.

Dump, dump, dump, dump, dump. Yep, I actually get that one. 

That's why software engineers like software engineering, because usually it's instant results. You write your code, you run it, and you see if it works or not. 

That's a big question I was really curious about. What got you into software development?

Like, what got you into the engineering aspect of it? 

Yeah, well, that's the 1st time I touched the computer was, I think, in 8th grade. I'm from Europe, so 8th grade means I was like 13 or 14, and I wouldn't really call that a computer because it didn't have a memory. And if you wanted to do something, you literally did it from audio tapes.

So that's when I, yeah, no, actually it was before that. I was in fifth grade when we did that. Yeah. So we would we would, you had to for a whole class and we would queue up and we would type our names. I just liked that. I thought it was really awesome. And I just did more of that at school as much as I could.

And then I got access to more computers in, in high school. And then finally I got my own computer. And then, of course, I did what every sane teenager does, which is game until I couldn't game anymore. And then that's when I got interested In web development. So I started building websites just for fun, just to understand what it works.

So I guess to answer your question I just had an interest in just found it fascinating. Plus, I was not the, the social animal that I am today. I was really, really shy and computers can't talk back or criticize. So perfect. Perfect combination. 

I love the fact that like. AI now can talk back to you and we've kind of like gone full circle in like introverts were able to be on the computer because they couldn't talk back to us. And now they can well, yeah, 

but you can tell it to shut up. That is true say, and it's sometimes says aggressive things like.

Oh, that wasn't very nice. And then it guilt trips. You're like, what? 

Like, don't gaslight me Alexa. I'm here for this, right? We will argue. So, you know, for me, it was a very similar, which, but then there was like this hugely wild divergence from like what you did, like I got my first computer when I was 12 and it was like.

Windows 3. 1 and I think we were proud of our 512 megabyte hard drive, which was like top of the line at the time. And we, you know, we had the 28 K modem and we had AOL, which was great, you know because ironically enough, though, I was super socially awkward. In real life because autistic tendencies and things of that nature.

And for me, the computer allowed me to speak to people. And think about what I was going to say in my, my tendencies with my hands wouldn't be distracting. My ticks wouldn't be distracting. My stutter wouldn't be so apparent to my list wouldn't be so apparent. And I found that I was like really, really extroverted on a computer.

I would go into the Yahoo chat rooms, the AOL chat rooms and just have a blast. Having these conversations. And of course my ADHD brain would like, keep up with this huge stream of chat and find friends. And so like a bunch of my like really initial best friendships started online. And it was really eyeopening to me that, and it started bleeding over into my real life, on top of the fact that I used the internet as a researcher, because, like, body language, right, we see, like, for me it was a body language expert who went on Oprah who talked about how body language could be read, and I was like, what?

This is a thing? And so I started just reading about body language on the internet, and of course, you know, it'd take about 15 20 minutes to download a two minute video on it, and so watching that, and then the more that I started understanding that, the more ability I had to kind of start gauging people in a logical manner on their body language and how to react to that in a more appropriate way.

Funny enough you said some things that I didn't realize were true for me as well. So I was incredibly shy. I mean, now people don't believe me. Sometimes they generally don't believe me as I'm afraid to talk to girls. I don't know if that's the thing for everybody, but anyway, maybe I was special. And that's that's what we did as well.

We were always in this IRC chat rooms or Yahoo Messenger playing chess and that kind of stuff or pool. There was a pool game. I remember that. That was really fun. And yeah, it gave us a window into the world. So I discovered the Internet. About, I don't know, 17, 16, and you had to, you had to go to an internet cafe.

Well, unlike you, I actually started with 56kb modems, so I win. But it was it was so expensive we would, we would usually go online only over weekends or after 10 p. m. when it was, I don't know, five times as cheap or something. Because, you know, we just couldn't afford to be online all day. Well, that was something.

But yeah, the internet did, did really open up a window into the wall. Like I knew I was shy, but I didn't know what being shy meant. So I met online, I found a lot of information and it explained what I was like, Oh, okay. So that's that actually helped quite a lot, I think with just like me. 

Yeah.

For me, it was the, the access to the information because I tried to get into coding fairly early we actually had a really good. Computer science teacher who really did develop systems and like, he was super smart about it. We'd get into his class and we had an hour and a half class and he'd let us spend the first 30 minutes playing video games.

And then he would have us start coding. I found, for me, coding was horrifying. I understood the lingo, I understood how to do it, but typing that much, that often, just kind of drove me insane. However, my skill set turned into somebody needing to know certain information, and me being able to go and find it.

And do the AOL search for whatever they were looking for and then give them the information and then they were coding it and our teacher didn't force us to code if we weren't any kind of coder. He would then say, okay, well, here, we're going to also have you put together the computers and we're going to learn how to put them together and, you know, how to give these people the ability to do it.

So there would be one corner of the classroom where we're essentially just getting our A plus certification. In putting together computers and figuring out how to boot up the, the operating system and reformat the hard drives figuring out how to solder together different things and putting together all the motherboards and all that stuff and I found a real, a lot of joy in that aspect of it. And that's where I found my skill set when it came to computers. And that's also where I learned to delegate to other people. Like, hey, I've got this computer for you. I need you to go ahead and do all the programming for it. And they would go and they would troubleshoot any issues, or they would sit here and they would go into it and figure out, all right, we need to put this operating system on it, da, da, da, da, and then they would program all that.

And, you know, I just find it really fun to see how two people who apparently have a very similar background went in wildly divergent paths that are very parallel. 

I had a, you reminded me of my, one of my high school physics teachers. So he was, that is something I think at that point, but he was really into computers and coding and I was as well.

So my colleagues would sometimes say, oh, when he comes in, why don't you ask him some computing technical question and then we'll waste half the hour. There was sometimes asking questions and we were just. Spent half an hour just talking about things and everybody else was just sitting there listening or whatever they were they were doing.

I really, really liked him. He was such a such a good man. We would we would compare notes. I'm using this software and he's like, I am using this software and what you like about that. As he was also learning web development, just like me. So I had a. 

That's a physics teacher thing because my physics teacher was much the same and physics was one of my favorite classes because it would challenge me to think way outside the box.

I love science. Science has always been my thing. And we would often, there was like two or three of us who Very much the same concept, like, Hey, get him to talk about, you know the big bang theory and see if we can just get some of this. And, and he knew it, he would be like, okay, now that we've wasted 30 minutes of time on this conversation, let's actually get into what we're actually supposed to be talking about.

And the whole class of law, you know, then he would just, but he was one of those physicists who would experiment in class and make us experiment in class. And he would have fun with it and when somebody would break something because, you know, he would throw in chemistry and other things like that in there, when someone would break something, he never got angry about it.

He's like, all right, everybody stop. Let's get together. Let's find out what happened. Yeah. Alright, you mixed blah blah blah blah with this and this and this and this. What did we talk about proportions and why is it important to make sure we're putting the accurate amount in there? Well, when we don't, this is what happens.

And now we're gonna have to get the counter cleaned off because apparently you made hydrochloric acid. Oh, you know, right. It's like, you know, but he was always also about safety. So even when we did those things, when we were playing with anything that could cause those kinds of issues, he made us wear the certain gear and make sure that we have that possibility taking care of.

And it was always learning from our mistakes and always learning from our failures. It was never making us feel guilty or crappy for making the same mistake because one of his favorite phrases was. A child would eventually always say, Ugh, I keep making the same mistakes. And he was like, no, I doubt that very seriously.

You probably make similar mistakes, but you most likely have made slight changes in how you did things. And that's how science works. You know, every time we make a mistake, we have to sit down and, you know, we're going to probably make a similar mistake, but now we have new data to look at and how we can move forward to make that a part of our success.

And he would make us write papers. On the different mistakes that we would make until we got to a success, and then he would cheer us on for understanding the process. And I thought that that was really fascinating. 

Yeah, that is, that is actually something that I wish somebody would have. Told me when I was young in these exact terms, you know, learn from your mistakes.

It's normal. They happen, we tend to really avoid failure or like we're embarrassed by failure, which is not really the right approach because If you don't fail, or if you don't make mistakes, it means you're not doing anything It's not difficult to fail at sitting on a couch, right?

But it is difficult it is easy to fail the legal business or you know Asking somebody out on a date or whatever it is, but as long as you embrace failure, you pick the pockets of failure, make sure you're holding tight, pick the pockets, steal everything you can in terms of learning from that failure, and then you kick failure out of the curve, because now you're done, but make sure you learn from that, from that experience.

That's why you fall so you can get up. It's a, it's a really valuable lesson. 

So we've kind of gotten off topic, but that's okay. Cause I love the flow of the conversation and everything. So let's jump back into the focus 101, you know.

As you're kind of looking at it, what kind of feedback have you gotten from others as far as how your website works for them or how the process works for them? 

Well, the more the more users we get, the better the feedback gets, because when we first launched, which is a little over a year ago well, the feedback was non existent because nobody knew we exist, right?

And then as I got a user here, a user there, I would join them in session and I found. I'd find issues or we would say that something doesn't work. So we kept iterating. So this is that embracing failure. It wasn't perfect. Didn't work that great to begin with. But now. Now we're getting good feedback.

Just had a user last week, I think. She, she joined, and like two days later I got a message. Oh, I love this. Actually, I'm going to quote why, why to save from memory. She said, A user here been trying it out since a few days ago, and I just want to say that this is an amazing platform as it makes us be more productive, be more accountable.

Really grateful. Kudos to the creators. So, of course, that literally gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I share with her. I share with the rest of the team. It feels good. That's the kind of feedback we're getting. And that's that's not the only one really.

After I think a few months after I launched and my wife didn't actually try it a few months, but I mean, like, then she did sign up, but she never joined. She's like, and then she finally did. And she said, oh, I, I went to session. I joined this guy. And actually managed to get that testing. So it was something she was really frustrated over.

She works from home just like me. So I hear from downstairs, Oh, what the hell? This doesn't make any sense. Oh, I didn't hear in session. So it really worked for her. She actually managed to stay focused. So her feedback was, wow, it really works. And I was like, no, really? You don't say I didn't sleep on the couch.

If you're wondering.

Where is it going next? What's, how is Focus 101 going to evolve going forward? And, you know, what kinds of things are you trying to put in place, especially with like neurodivergent people? What kind of how do you want to make this service more accessible? 

So we're in the background, which is stuff that you probably won't see, maybe you would, but we're doing a lot of changes regarding performance and bug fixing.

So there are things that don't work as well as I want them to. So we're doing a lot of that in the background. But what we're really doing, and I say we mostly me, I really listen to what users say, right? So if they message me, especially with a feature request or a bug. I know it's bugging them. Ha ha.

It's a bug. Or there's something that they're actually lacking. So I'm making my point to obsessively listen. So I'll probably be emailing everybody at some point to ask for feedback as well. Like, what did you like and what you didn't like? Because I can imagine all sorts of features, but to others, they maybe are not necessary.

So that is quite a, quite a bad thing that people doing software. I don't have enough users. I'll just add more features and they just keep adding more and more features that nobody wants. So I would say that whatever people want, that's what I will be building. If I get messages, somebody actually has the pain point that I will, I will try to add that.

So what's coming next feature wise. I don't know specifically, but there will be things some some I know, but I'm keeping a surprise and some others, whatever users will say 

that was actually how we connected was. I was so impressed by you responding to my feedback so quickly and. You know, that's something I really appreciate whenever companies really do value the voice of their customers and not really kowtowing to them or anything, but at the same time, really taking, you know, the opportunity to say, I hear you, and that makes me feel invested in the company.

Now, the other side of this that I really enjoyed about it is. Your service is free. Why are you, why are you providing all of this for free? And, you know, like, are you going to do like a switch around on us eventually, or what, what's going to be the plan going forward as far as that's concerned? 

I'm just not a very good businessman, so I'm giving it away.

Right, so what I did, especially at your prodding as well, I did add a buy us a coffee button. So if anybody wants to support us, there is that, that option. And no, I tend to the principle of don't be an asshole. So I don't want to do this with you because I. I've been at the receiving end of a switcheroo.

Look at this, the great amazing e banking service and now they just keep adding more and more fees. Taking away features. Oh, now you want to do this. That used to be free. Well, tough luck. Now we got a fee. So, no, I don't want to do that. At some point, we will probably add a premium plan, which will either make or probably make it as pay what you can, because we've got users from all over the world.

So we've got users from Asia who I don't think are in a position to pay 20 bucks a month. But then again, we've also got users from the USA who maybe are in a position to pay 20 bucks. And when we do, if we do, I will definitely not be removing any of the features we already have. We will just be giving you extra things or priority things like you get access to new features first or that kind of stuff.

But no, I don't want to take things away. 

That's amazing, man. And we're actually seeing that with a number of other companies that are starting to realize that giving people a free service that has a lot of the features that make it really functional. And then simply adding another tier where people get access to it at, you know, a much less expensive rate.

Is really the way to go when it comes to creating, you know, sustainable businesses moving forward. You know, there's things like Fathom AI, the note taker tool that's out there that's free and it's really accurate and it's got a lot of really great features. And they essentially call themselves doing a beta, but at the same time, you know, I've talked to some of the different people in there, they never plan to take away the current features, but they are going to add premium features in the future and give people option to sign into it, but not losing the features that it currently has, which I find fascinating.

You know, so it's really good to hear somebody who seems to have such an abundance mindset when it comes to business and you said you're a bad businessman and everything, and I laughed a whole lot, but I was on mute, you know, but I think what is really happening is you're more of an innovative abundance mindset businessman and moving forward with that.

Yeah, I think there is enough for everybody. 

I appreciate that. 

You were, you were talking about listening to users. Yes, there is that thing on the sidebar and I get the message and I always check it like, whenever I see it. So, usually, like, within the hour. And one of the great things about listening to the users is because you can envision and build a product, but if people don't like it, it's tough, you know, the market will decide if you've got a product to give you a cool story.

So there was this company in the United States, I can't remember which of the many states. They were building scooters, which weren't selling very well, they weren't very good. Except in one of the states, let's say.

Montana, but it's probably not that. And they couldn't understand why they were selling so many. So they went and they checked and apparently farmers were buying them, taking out the engines and using them to drive pumps irrigation pumps. So it wasn't a very good scooter, but the engine was very good for driving pumps.

So what did the company say? They didn't say, you're not supposed to use it like this, use it like this. They said, cool. I guess the market decided where. Water pump company now and then they switched the market decides. 

Well now I have a new hyper focus to research 

But you could find out that I was wrong and I made it up 

I mean, it sounds plausible because that's definitely something that my dad would have done I just like I think he did do it with a motorcycle engine.

I read it on the internet. So it must be true

 There you go. So, all right, we're at the time of the podcast where, you know, we kind of start wrapping things up. So, you know, what do you want people to know about focus one on one and why should they be using your service over others that are out there?

Yes, my lack of business acumen is gonna come out again. I say, try us. If you like us, send us a message with a feature, with a bug, with creosism. And if it doesn't work for you, that's totally fine. There are lots of other competitors which you can try. Esther. Starting to build this, I discovered a competitor and then another, and I think we're like about 10 right now.

Some costs 40 bucks, so I can go and pay 40 bucks. So you can try it for free. Costs you nothing. Plus we're good people. I don't know about the others. I imagined. 

Man, it has been so much fun, Christian. I really appreciate having you on. I enjoy working with you. I think you do an amazing job and I love that you're providing this service for free to people.

It's such a valuable service, and I just want to say thank you. My 

pleasure. Well, I do it for karma points though, 

so. Oh, well, you know, there's just that little bit of selfishness next life, maybe we'll see some good things happening. Well, it, 

I did it and I do it for free, right, but I have met, and I'm not exaggerating, I think this is a shameless plug, but I have met really a lot of cool people, including yourself.

I've met people who are writing books, and I got a copy of the book in e book format. It's currently doing the recording. I've met a lot of interesting people. I, I see people struggling to wake up and show up to the meeting, but they somehow muddled through and they show up. I've met people from Asia.

I've met people from Israel. It's been quite interesting. A lot of connections that I wouldn't have had otherwise. That was, that was really cool. And it's cool. 

Well, keep up the great work, man. I really appreciate you coming on. You have a great day, okay? 

And you, Shane. Nice talking to you.