Why Andrew Vontz, cofounder of The Better Lab, is the Keyser Söze of Sleep

The Better Lab addresses a fascinating topic that is on the minds of most everyone on a weekly basis in this stressful world: sleep. In a sea of gadgets that track various bio metrics there are few products that have gained notoriety guiding users in incremental improvements on the key to life: sleep. Ex Strava executive Andrew Vontz and his cofounders have dug deep into research on not just sleep but also human behavior and more specifically the average person’s ability to affect change in their life when they want to change and when they know what they need to do to make it happen. For most of us, intention and execution do not always play nicely together. At the core of this interview is a theme of developing conscious awareness, which is also a throughline in both Andrew’s buddhist practice, his podcast "Choose The Hard Way," and guess what, his cycling habit. The Better Lab has a hot take on how you can change your life to improve your sleep, but you’ll have to keep listening to learn more.

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Transcript

0:10

Hey. This is Sam Huntington, and you're listening to Hill Climbers. Over the last 10 years, I've ridden bikes in Philadelphia and then LA and more recently, Austin, Texas. And it's been one of my life's pleasures to meet 100 of cyclists over the course of this time. And, sure, there's been friendships and camaraderie built around some healthy competition on group rides and and on Strava, and and that's great. But Hill Climbers is really paying homage to those, cyclists I've met that I admire off the bike. These are individuals that have really fascinating stories. They're they're building businesses, or or they're part of the cycling zeitgeist in alternative ways. And I think it is a fantastic opportunity here with this podcast to tell stories of what they're doing off the bike that, maybe you you would never hear about on the group ride riding next to them. The Better Lab addresses a fascinating topic that is on the minds of most everyone on a weekly basis in this stressful world, sleep. In a guiding users in incremental improvements on the key to life. Guiding users in incremental improvements on the key to life, sleep. Xtrava executive Andrew Vance and his cofounders have dug deep into research on not just sleep, but also human behavior and, more specifically, the average person's ability to affect change in their life when they want to change and when they know what they need to do to make it happen. For most of us, intention and execution do not always play nicely together. At the core of this interview is a theme of developing conscious awareness, which is also a through line in both Andrew's Buddhist practice, and guess what, his cycling habit. The Better Lab has a hot take on how you can change your life to improve your sleep, but you'll have to keep listening to learn more. Can we start with the with the founder story? How you and you and your got together and and decided to to do this company? Yeah. Absolutely. So I founded the company with David Lorsch. We were both executives at Strava. We worked together for 7 years. We helped grow the company from single digit millions to about a 100000000 users, and we also were, you know, part of the executive team that helped the company become highly profitable and And what was date David's role? Yeah. David was the chief revenue officer, and he also was responsible for really building Strava's entire partnership's ecosystem. So Strava, at the time that, David and I both decided to leave in 2022 and shortly thereafter, started working on some early ideas that later became the better lab. And during our time there, David helped build the entire partnership ecosystem. And at the time, Strava had more than 400, you know, apps, pieces of hardware, devices, wearables that integrated with the platform. So he built that out on the business side, one of the things that I did in my role as a communications executive there was helping to leverage those partnerships to help grow Strava and, and to better serve athletes. So telling the story of that and leveraging those partnerships to facilitate growth and better serve our users. So we had a lot of experience working together, and it it takes a To pay you guys a compliment and, you know, partially on the on the tech side as well, As long as long as I've been using Strava, which is which is more than 10 years now, the partnerships have always been really seamless. Like, there hasn't been much friction there to speak of. There was there always let's put it this way. There always seem to be an incentive for the the hardware users and even some of the other competitive platforms to partner with you guys. So, yeah, like, job job well done. Well, yeah, I mean, our intent was to position Strava as the platform at the center of connected fitness, and I would agree with you. I think the experience that I have and had then as a user of Strava is that most of the devices, apps, experiences that I use in the connected fitness wearables domain are even better because of what I get out of them with their connection to Strava. Exactly. So I think it really enhances a lot of those experiences. Yeah. So so we had a lot of reps of doing a lot of fun and a lot of challenging things together. And so we knew each other really well. We both broadly were quite interested in starting our own thing, And we started to explore some ideas, and it's interesting because at the outside at the outset, we thought super broadly, and we were just looking for an alignment between areas where we had deep expertise, high credibility, and where that overlapped with the type of business that we were most interested in building and megatrends that we saw in culture, society, technology. And we actually like, we sat in this room where I am currently in Hope, Maine, and I still have a lot of the Post its on the wall because I find them to be useful. And we just started to jam and started to think about, okay. What would this look like? What would we do? Who would we serve? Just classic. What problems do we perceive in the world? What have we experienced personally where we see opportunity? And over time, we just started to really focus in on, you know, people who are probably, like, 30 to 60 who are active, and we started to explore what was happening initially with, like, the proliferation of content in the health, wellness, and performance space. And there's just so much information coming at people these days and a lot of it from high authority sources. So we started to investigate, you know, what is happening with all this information, and is there an opportunity there to help people put it into action and improve? I just found that I was constantly listening to podcasts or, you know, when I was on BART, I would be listening to a podcast, reading stuff on my phone, often about health, wellness, and performance. And I bet at my peak, I was probably and when I was out training on my bike as well. So I just was trying I have a deep degree of interest in these topics, and I was like, I was trying to maximize the amount of inputs that I had to try to learn as much about these things I was really curious about and with the intention of putting them into practice as well as, I think. What I learned over time, though, and this really catalyzed when I started doing all these user interviews and kind of putting content prototypes in front of people, or David and I did, was that I think people often conflate listening to stuff, reading stuff, watching stuff with I'm actually doing the thing. And they're for almost everyone, information goes in one ear and out the other. You know, you read a book or you read part of a book, it goes back on the bookshelf, people come to your house and ask you about it, that type of thing, and you're not necessarily Here's another one. One of my one of my Ray Dalio, principals, takeaways. One one of the few few things that I I really stuck with me was, it takes people 18 months to change. So you can be reading and, you know, reading and reading and reading but, you better keep reading for about a year and a half for to really make a material change in in your life. And I I just think that's interesting, and and I look at my life, and and a lot of it rings true. Yeah. Even that is an interesting question. How long does it take for someone to actually change? And, yeah, actually, right before this call, I was meeting with one of our advisors for the Better Lab, Jen Labrecht, who's, one of the world's top behavioral scientists. And she came out of Wendy Wood's lab at USC, and that's one of the world's foremost labs on habit formation. And it's been interesting looking into that specific question of how long does it take for someone to actually change? And I also believe that article once they listen to that podcast. Yeah. Whatever. You know? Because, like, there's a lot of, like, pop science stuff out there. Oh, it takes 21 days. It takes 66 days. It takes 18 months. Like, whatever the case may be. And, also, like, this this idea of, you know, do you wanna build habits, or do you actually wanna be conscious and aware of what you're doing and be engaged in an actual practice versus, like, robotic automaticity? And there are certainly some things for which maybe it better serves you to just have automaticity and achieve actual habituation. For other things, and I'll get to this when we're talking more specifically about the Better Lab and what it does, we've realized through our research and prototyping, what people need is guidance combined with science backed practices that are the most essential and effective practices to improve your sleep. And then then they need to actually engage with conscious awareness and reflecting on what happens when I do thing x. How do I feel? Like, what's my mood like? What's my stress level like? What's my energy level like? And I guess I'm kind of getting to the second part of the problem that we saw because there's the content component. And then And and how I'm sorry to I'm sorry to, jump back in. How did you guys, decide on sleep? Yeah. So I'll I'll get there in a second. I so initially, we were kind of I'm just I'm just gonna keep going endlessly, and eventually, it's all gonna come into focus. It's gonna be like the end of the usual suspects, so you can try to focus me, Sam. But Alright. You know, I swear I'm a communications professional at some level and have have been a high level journalist. I we're you're gonna wow us. Yeah. Go go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a rambling man, the Kaiser associate of sleep. Okay. Yeah. So initially That is officially the the title of this episode of Hill Climb. Thank you, Andrew. We we've done our work for the day, but, yes, we'll we'll continue the podcast. Yeah. So Strava obviously focused on keeping active people motivated, inspired, engaged, sharing activities they love with other people, which is fantastic. Strava is the best in the world at doing that. What David and I noticed during our time at Strava, and we reflected on this afterwards as we started to explore what business we might build, was that highly active people often, you know, they don't actually get great sleep and that that's not just, people who are athletes. It's just like people who generally care about their health and wellness and have the intent to, like, feel good. That's usually the reason they wanna improve their health and wellness. They wanna feel good. They don't wanna just live longer. They wanna feel good while they live longer, which is what's now generally referred to as health span. And what people tend to do is just, like, they just add add more. Like, they add, you know, more complex diets. They add more exercise. And, really, at the foundation of everything, if you're someone, you know, who's active, whether that's somebody who, like, goes and walks a couple of times a week or up to and including people like you, Sam, who are competitive cyclists or out doing group rides, things like that. You know, these are things that you care about, and a lot of people who are doing those things experience problems with their sleep at least 1 night a week. And there's great CDC data on this that there are a large percentage of Americans so that, you know, who are actually having a a problem with their sleep at least one night a week. And I'm not talking about insomnia. Insomnia is characterized as someone who, 3 or more nights per week, has trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early, just like not getting enough total sleep, and that goes on for 3 or more months. That's that's not our target market. That's about 11% of people in America have actual clinical insomnia. Just for for listeners' context, you know, I was really excited to to learn about Andrew's business, BetterLab, and discuss it with him before the show because I I've really had, quite a journey with, with sleep difficulty over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, let's say. And Andrew was the first one to define, you know, what what being in an insomniac is, and I I was like, holy shit. I I definitely fit that bill for for years years years. And it's it's something that I'm really passionate about because I've kinda turned a corner over the last, let's say, 2 years, and and it's just been, the impact on my life has been outstanding. I mean just making a few changes in your life and we'll talk more about this on the show has has really positively impacted, my my life personally, you know, my my relationship. It's just and I I say this every week, sleep is it's the key to life. Right? So, it's worth it's worth examining a bit and and maybe making some tweaks. So sorry sorry, Andrew. Go ahead. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more, Sam. I feel like sleep, sleep is is free. It's often neglected by people who have the intention to to feel good, to be healthy, to be high performance, like that's like at one end of the continuum. And yeah, so about a third of Americans have trouble with their sleep. A subset of them are people who have actual insomnia. What we decided to hone in on is people 30 to 60 who are probably having trouble with their sleep about 1 night a week. They understand that sleep really is like the ultimate amplifier for everything that is good in your life. It makes you feel good. It improves your mood. It improves, as you mentioned, like, from a relational health point of view, it's gonna make your relationships better because you're going to feel better and be the best version of yourself when you get enough sleep and sleep well. It lowers your stress levels. You know, as a parent, it enabled this is something that I definitely experience when I'm getting good sleep. I'm a more patient and present parent, and I show up more the way that I would like to. And then for me, when it comes to physical activity, I love cycling. And boy, my bike rides, I always love them whether I've gotten a lot of sleep or not enough sleep, and they just feel much more enjoyable when It's it's different. When I'm well rested. Yeah. It it really does. And the same can be said for for work. When you when you show up to work Yeah. Totally. Well rested as opposed to feeling like you got, you know, run over by a truck. It's, it's a big difference. Yeah. How about that? To go to to rewind, to go back to, like, say, hey, hey, how do we Thank you. Thank you for having me so safe. Yeah, totally. So, yeah. So as we're exploring health and wellness broadly and kind of this intersection with the customer that I've described, we realized that there was this huge problem and that sleep is the foundation of everything that's good in your life. And there are a lot of sleep products out there, and I think that what we're building is very different. I think it's very different for a couple of reasons. As I shared before, there's this whole I mean, there's just so much content and there are a lot of people out there approaching this problem from a content knowledge information point of view. So it's just sharing information with people. What we discovered, as I said, is kind of goes in one ear and out the other. Now as it relates to sleep, what we've observed is that, you know, wearables definitely can be useful. And, like, right now, I'm tracking my sleep with a Garmin fenix 7 x. I also have a whoop. I've been toggling back and forth between these, just taking different looks at the data. And what happens for a lot of people is, especially with, like, proprietary sleep scores from these devices, we've seen this over and over again in our research, We've seen this with people we've talked to in professional sports, and other domains of high performance. These scores tend to make people highly neurotic. So, like, they'll they'll look at the score. Right? And they just, like, they that's, like, the thing that they orient everything around. And the reality is and I think, again, this is kind of the benefit for me of my background as a as a journalist and, like, what I did at TRX and then what I saw at Strava and being around all these world class performers in sports and entertainment and the arts, all these different domains. You know, for a lot of people the night before a competitive event, whether that's I have to go and do a big presentation at work or I'm gonna go do a bike race tomorrow, whatever the case may be, The reality is a lot of people brace yourself, Sam. They don't necessarily get a great night of sleep before, like, going to win the Olympic gold medal. And if you are to wake up on the day of a big performance and look at a device that tells you, like, hey, Sam. You know, you're gonna you're so tired. Yeah. You really shit the bed on sleep last night. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's, that's that's probably not going to improve your performance, and in fact, it can make you really anxious, right? And again, I think that all these devices, do provide information that I think can be really valuable. The proprietary scores are something that that tend for a lot of people to create a lot of anxiety. And just looking at the information for most people over time, what they see over and over again is, wow, I'm not getting enough sleep. I feel bad. I'm not getting enough sleep. I feel bad. And it just kind of continues like that because there's no actual guidance to take science backed proven information that will improve your sleep and then to actually put it into practice. So we observed this problem with just wearables, we observed this problem with content, and then we started to think about, okay. Well, how can we take the what we've learned and start to put the science backed information that's out there into action, provide guidance for people, and develop a method so that they're actually successful, that they stick with it over time. It's achievable. It's gentle because I I think that that's actually really important for anyone out there whether you wanna change something in your life related to sleep or, I don't know, something you're doing as a parent, like, with your workout, whatever the case may be. If you talk to top behavioral scientists, and we have, you wanna start small and you wanna make it something that's that's achievable. And And sorry sorry to jump in here. You you talked about the profile of your, you know, potential customer, that that addressable market. Right. And and you said that they basically have kind of, just just the right amount of, concern, let's put it that way, about their fitness, about their sleep they get. That that type of profile is probably someone, that's an achiever, that wants to perform, that wants to, improve improve performance, but they're also probably a little anxious. Right? They the same gene that makes them want to achieve, also makes them anxious about all all those categories, you know, their their health, their their sleep, their performance, their work, etcetera. So it's it's when you say, providing a a gentle solution, I think that makes a ton of sense because when you wake up in the morning and and it it, your sleep tracker shows you that you slept poorly, like, my my go to was was sort of being, you know, disappointed and and, like, down on myself. You know? And and that creates, and I don't know what the term is, but more anxiety becomes a cycle where, if let's put it this way, if you didn't already have a sleep issue, it it's planting the seed for what could become 1 because sleep, I think, is, is so psychological. It really has a lot to do with almost confidence in in your ability to to get to sleep and have a a restful, night sleep. So, I I think, yeah, these are it's fascinating that you're, creating the product to address folks that have the healthy amount of anxiety that that is needed to improve on themselves. No. I couldn't agree with you more, Sam. And this is a concept that I talk about a lot with Dara Harris, who is one of our advisors. Dara, is a psychiatrist and she is a high performance expert who's worked in professional sports. She's worked with, special warfare in a number of branches of service and with a lot of world class athletes, top executives, now works with farmers actually through the Landis Coop in Iowa. So it's incredible. She's taking all of these concepts of high performance and bringing them into, agriculture, which is amazing. And something we talk about all the time is how important this concept of being gentle is, and really the idea that presence is performance. Like, being attuned to, you know, being consciously aware of what you're doing and what's happening in your body in response to different methodologies or practices that you're trying is really foundational to actually performing at your highest level. And I think that this is something a lot of I think that this is really the direction that a lot of culture and society is moving. And I think you're gonna be hearing about it a lot more because I know it's definitely happening at the highest levels of sport in the military, in special operations, and that's all this stuff is gonna come downstream. So I think a lot of people have this idea, and I think they're you know, there's a lot of stuff out there, the Goggin David Goggins of the world, Jocko. And I think that those those people have had a lot of really positive impact, and their methods might work for some people. And, also, there's something other than, you know, getting up at 4 AM and doing things, a certain way. The reality is that for most people, life is really variable and stochastic. And with sleep, for example, and in relation to our product, because, again, it's this gentle you know, you go through a personalized intake process, and then the BetterLab is checking in with you daily and then you're checking in with yourself to see, hey, you know, how do I feel about how I slept last night in relation to this practice that I'm developing? And the practice is science backed, it's proven, and it could be something you've heard about before such as getting 10 minutes of direct sun exposure before 9 AM can really help anchor your circadian rhythms. It also makes you feel fantastic, most people discover, when they get out and do that. So, like, hey. If I go do this thing today, how do I feel? What's my stress level like? What's my mood like? What's my energy level like? So we're getting you to start reflecting on that, sharing that, and then Just, you know, huge distinction from looking at the previous night's rest where maybe you didn't knock it out of the park. You know, it's a really big it's it's a big difference as far as your approach. Well, I think you have to do both. You know? So we also ask you, like, hey, how do you feel about how you slept last night? And it's interesting because you might see unexpected correlations, which is what we auto magically are doing is based on things you share. Over time, we're helping you to understand the relationship between these practices, your sleep quality, like, you know, like factors of life that are happening, and then information and and scoring that you're doing of yourself that you're sharing with us. And then as we detect that you're getting consistent with that, then we might suggest the next practice and so on as you continue to go on this journey. And and it is now a good time to talk about the product, like, actually how it works? Or Yeah. I mean, what what I just described is broadly how it works and, and behind it. Like, that's that's my question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the tech is actually magic, Sam. So I don't know if I can get too deep into that. I said automagically, so not sure what you didn't you didn't understand there. Yeah. Well, I part of what's happening is, you know, on on the back end leveraging, this is gonna blow you away. There's some AI happening. It's Oh, man. You know? Got you. Yeah. It this isn't like a chat GPT bolt on product, you know, but part of what I'm talking about in terms of taking scores that you provide, your evaluation of, hey. What do I think my quality of sleep was? What's my stress level in relation to how I slept, what's my mood like, etcetera. Taking that, any qualitative inputs that you provide to us, And then we help you to understand those correlations over time as you continue to work to improve your sleep. And as you go through this process, you're, you are cultivating conscious awareness. So again, for me, this kind of like holistically goes back to, for me, all these different areas of interest I have are converging in this product. So I mentioned my partner, David. We also have an amazing founding engineer, Eric Shao, and Eric has a lot of experience. You know, he's a full stack engineer, and he has a lot of experience with l LLMs and AI as well. And large language models for for those folks that are not. Yeah. Yeah. And, again, we've we're about to drop the 3rd version of our beta. It's in the App Store. Just search for BetterLab or you can go to the betterlab. Io to link to the App Store and learn more about the product. And, again, we're just trying to find the best places to deploy the best technology to get the job done because ultimately what the user wants is they want to improve their sleep and they want to feel better. Right? So I don't they don't necessarily care about what tech stack is behind this thing. We wanna make it, a simple, delightful, automagical experience that they're thrilled with and that they wanna talk to their friends about and recommend to their friends. So that's what we're working to build, and that's how the product works. Cool. Very cool. And as far as, you you mentioned, it is in the App Store or what can you can you just reemphasize those details so listeners know Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Right now, we're in the Apple App Store. Just go there and search for BetterLab, and you'll be able to find us. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to mention Sam, I keep talking about practice and I'm not talking about habit. Right? So habits are things that you do where you develop automaticity and they're just kind of happening in the background. You're not thinking about what you're doing necessarily, we think it's important and useful for you to actually have conscious awareness of these things you're you're doing. And a lot of them are relatively low time cost, and you typically feel quite good when you do them in addition to them being beneficial for your sleep. And I didn't mention this, but we work with Eddie Bensimon is our sleep science adviser. She runs the sleep lab at UC Berkeley. She's a coauthor of, many big papers in sleep science. She's a coauthor with Matt Walker who, many people have heard of who wrote Why We Sleep. Good good book that I've read. Definitely recommend it. Yeah. Definitely. And I'd like Why We Sleep is a fantastic book. And if if you haven't read it, I recommend reading it. And for me, I when I read it, I also, by the time I got to the end end of it, was even more fired up about what we're doing with BetterLab because I think, again, a lot of people I know have read Why We Sleep. And in fact, in our research, I often talk to people who even have hired a sleep coach because they so highly prioritize sleep. They wanted to, like, go work with an actual coach, and things change in life. And, you know, I've I talked to one user who worked with a sleep coach 3 years ago, and they're now a daily active user of the BetterLab. And I know it's really helping them. And, you know, in the absence of of having the guidance that we're providing, they've indicated, like, you know, I'm I just, like, wouldn't do these things because it's kind of easy to think, like, yeah, I should do that thing, but I'm not doing it. And then it's this cascade of, lifestyle factors, work, family, whatever, and then you just end up not getting to this stuff. So like providing a simple low friction way for you to integrate these practices into your daily life and also shifting how you think about sleep, I think is really important. And, you know, as you know, Sam, you've had a lot of entrepreneurs and highly successful business people on this podcast. And when you're building a business, you're always thinking of problem, solution, customer. I would say there's a huge total addressable market of this customer I've identified or that we have identified and that I've talked about 30 to 60, they're active, they care about their health and wellness, they know sleep is really important, They're probably using a wearable, and they're really struggling to actually do the stuff that will help them sleep better. And just providing this this path for them is I think what we're hearing is it's extremely helpful and we're we're really want people to shift their view from this is a problem to this is a relationship I have with my health and wellness. So I think that's like, that's a big shift to make. Not like my body is a problem or my sleep is a problem. Rather, I have a lifelong relationship with sleep. It's a holistic approach. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So, you know and here are some things that I can do to improve that relationship, and you're going to have to nurture it and care for it over time. And, you know, when I think about we're at the beginning, of course, of this experience of building the better lab, and we wanna serve people for as long as they need help. And what I've experienced is even with the highest intent, even with guidance, and I think most people experience this, is stuff comes up in life that just disrupts your typical patterns of life. So as a for example, my wife was gone, on a trip, a work trip for 4 days, so I was here solo with 2 kids, and that meant that my patterns of life were slightly different and some of the things that have become a steady practice for me of conscious awareness related to my sleep, Just like, you know what? They just weren't possible for the 4 days. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, you, or you travel for a work trip or you get sick, like, whatever stuff pops up, and I think something we've seen in our research is that again it can like lead to this loop of neuroticism and anxiety of people when they get off track. I think what works is thinking holistically, thinking about this as a relationship, and kind of breaking free of the the digital handcuffs of the cycle of anxiety that these scores can create for you and just accept, well, this is what's happening right now, and then the better lab can provide you with the guidance to stay on on track over time. I'm so glad you bring this up because this was one of my favorite parts of our conversation we had before the taping, which is you with with the Better Lab are providing sleepers with a playbook for, yes, how to improve sleep, but also how to manage your your life and your days when, hey, maybe you don't get the best night's sleep. So the example that we discussed was, and and what you already cited about getting outside and getting your 10 minutes of sunlight before 9 AM, that's something low hanging fruit that you can do when you when you don't sleep well. And and it's you're gonna go outside. It's gonna make you feel a little bit better. It'll be incremental, but it's it's a small win. And when you when you start to incorporate those things into your life, even when you don't get a good night's sleep, you know, gradually you're you're essentially helping yourself, and and all of a sudden not getting the best night's sleep isn't as big of a deal because you know the next day you can get outside, you can get your 10 minutes of sunlight. Our anecdote I'm sorry. My anecdote that I shared with Andrew was, you know, taking my my infant for a walk in the stroller and doing push push ups and pull ups at the at the playground. And I know that little it's gonna kinda suck if I haven't slept well, but it's not a big workout for me in the grand scheme of things. And if I can get my heart rate up and get a sweat on a little bit, like, that walk back with my son and the rest of the day is just gonna be a little bit better, and and I can kinda, like, quote, make it to to when I go back to sleep. And I know and I'll sleep better than the next night. So I think I think that's a a really important distinction because that is what, I forget the language that that you were using, Andrew, but it's it's it is the reminders that, you know, habits isn't the best word, but the the little steps you take to make your day a little incrementally better, helps overall. It's the holistic sort of relationship that you're managing that we touched on. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a holistic relationship. It's about thinking of what you're doing as a practice and having conscious awareness while you do it. And with what you've shared about your sleep journey with me, Sam, I know that, you know, it was in a pretty rough place. Now you've got the baby. I'm sure that a lot is changing in your life, and that can be, you know, that can be anxiety provoking and distressing for a lot of people. And also it is this opportunity to return to these simple things that can pay big dividends and really make you feel a lot better. And right? And the way to do that, which it sounds like you're doing, is to stay grounded, to think about the big picture, not just, hey, what happened today? Like, maybe I'm I've had this experience many times and, you know, something goes on with your one of your children. I remember a couple of weeks ago, my wife waking me up from a dead sleep at 3 AM. She's like our daughter was puking and she was like, hey. Get the bucket. This has happened enough that I'm like, alright. I know the drill. Those three words. Yeah. Get the bucket. Nothing. And, you know, it's whatever. The 50th time, it hasn't happened 50 times, but it's happened enough times that I was like, okay. Like, I wasn't stressed out about it. I, you know, I had a lot of compassion for my child experiencing that. And just at a practical level, I knew what I had to do. And the next day, did I feel like a $1,000,000? No. And I also didn't worry about it. I just took some time to reflect on it. I got outside. I got my morning sunlight. I did my other practice. Take it easy on yourself. You know? That's part of it too. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So it's just about thinking about the the long view and cultivating the practices every day to get you towards where you want to go. And knowing that that doing that stuff steadily with conscious awareness over time is going to result in you, Again, it doesn't just build, like, you're gonna feel better. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So so as far as the the company itself, where are you guys at in the in the business life cycle? How have you funded it so far? Do you have kind of what are the plans for fundraising and any any kind of business and and revenue objectives? Yeah. So it's early days. Our plan for the business is to have a subscription based product. Right now, the Better Lab is free. You can try the app for free, and we encourage you to to please go check it out. Think you're gonna like it. And, yeah, over time, similar to Strava, you know, this is where David and I have expertise is in building a freemium subscription product. So that's the game plan. Mhmm. Right? And and right now, we're just laser focused on building a product that people will find to be delightful and useful that they'll recommend to their friends. That's 100% of our focus, and that's really where we're spending all of our time. And then, of course, we are thinking about how do we help more people discover what we're doing and getting it to as many people as possible. Great. And and do you have, can you share, like, number of beta users or any interesting insights you're getting from folks that that have that have used the product? I think the most interesting thing that we've discovered is just how helpful people find having guidance and having these relatively simple and achievable practices. Honestly, like, because we are laser focused on getting to product market fit and serving this customer and and helping them to build this relationship, that's really the main insight that we have right now is people find it to be highly useful. They find it to be different than other things that they've tried, and they're enjoying using it. Cool. And and just to just to drill down on, like, what what success looks like, I guess, from, from, like, let's from a sleep perspective, Yeah. Is that are those metrics that you guys are are tracking and and try trying to see sort of a up into the right, progression? Or or, have you gained any sort of, metrics driven insight from the the beta users so far? Yeah. I know. So you and I talked about this a bit when we originally were talking offline about what this process looks like over time. So if you imagine that you have a baseline today for how you're sleeping, how you feel, how stressed out you feel, what your energy level like is like in relation to your sleep. And keeping in mind that it's just inevitable. Stuff's gonna come up in life that's going to shift your schedule, and your relationship might become different for small periods of time or for some people longer periods of time. Our intention is that we're gonna continuously move that baseline higher and higher over time. So as you build these practices, you're just gonna have this foundation that is going to result in you getting higher quality sleep. Like, your perception of how you sleep is going to be higher. Right? Mhmm. And you're going to notice an impact on your mood, on your stress level, and how you feel when you do the things that you're caring about. So that's that's the signal that we're seeing as we help move users in this direction. Yeah. And that's the intention, and that's how we plan to serve people. And it it, it really does tie back. I mean, I love, for for me, you know, a an an a a theme in this, podcast that I hadn't anticipated is is consciousness. So essentially, what you're measuring is is, you know, people's consciousness and and, hopefully, an improved awareness over what they're doing, how they're feeling, and, improve quality of life. So so, yeah, very, very cool, and and I I can't can't wait to see how that I I will jump on the app moving forward, and and, again, when we have you you back on the show, we can we can discuss how how, I guess, how my sleep's doing with the with using using the better lab. Yeah. But, and you definitely you're in an interesting as we've talked about, you're kind of at this interesting point in your relationship with sleep because you don't have control over a lot of things that are gonna happen in relation to your sleep Right. For for a while, maybe for years. With the infant. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? But but the most important thing is is I'm at I'm at peace with it. The the nights the nights I don't get a good night's rest, it's like, well, let's let's do do what we can the next day and then and then get back to sleep. You know? It's that it's that simple. Yeah. Completely. And from what you've shared, that's not what your relationship with sleep was always like. And it Oh, not at all. Right? So it took conscious and awareness and engagement with what you were doing in relation to sleep Yeah. To to get to a a different spot with it. And I bet that some of the practices you've developed over the years have probably, like, waxed and waned depending on what's going on, and I'm hopeful and confident that when you're using the BetterLab that you're going to get in this these steady practices that will continually help improve your relationship with sleep. Yeah. Amen. To to start wrapping things up here, you have a very long relationship with with cycling. Now, you know, with your career, you've been, in really all all over the map as far as journalism, you know, executive roles at at basically startups that became more or less household names, and now you're on your own entrepreneurial journey. Do you ever think about some of the parallels between, you know, the the challenges in in business and and bike racing? Does that does that ever, cross your mind, some of the the comparisons, parallels? Yeah. Interestingly enough, at my Sangha this week, and if you're not I've talked about it a bit, but if you're not familiar with the Sangha, it's just a a community of Buddhist practitioners. And one of the things that happens at Sangha is you do dharma sharing at the end. So people just talk, other people deeply listen, and no one Can you define dharma sharing? I've I've never heard that at the time. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's the practice of deep listening. Everyone in the community is invited to share about their practice or whatever is on their mind at that moment. There are some rules governing what happens during Dharma sharing. We always take the space of 3 breaths after one is someone who's spoken for someone else to talk. There's no crosstalk. No one addresses what anyone else has said. No one you're it's it's completely confidential. Like, you don't share anything that's said in Sangha outside of the Sangha. It's, like, Fight Club in that regard Mhmm. Unexpectedly. And yeah. And when I, you know, when I started going to Saga, because I had I had been reading a lot of texts from different Dharma teachers and had been practicing meditation and walking meditation for a long time before I finally found a Sangha. And it's really surprised me how powerful this practice of deep listening has been. And I think particularly I bet for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, so I bet you're highly motivated, You're high achievers in probably whatever you're doing in business, in life, in sport. You're probably very action oriented, probably very solution oriented, and you probably, I would bet, don't very often just sit there and deeply listen to people without trying to respond to what they're saying or come up with the solution or fix it? I know that this is a tendency that Especially the men, especially the males listening. So when I when I went to Sangha and and started being part of this community with Dharma sharing, and also part of what I love about my saga, the true heart's saga here in Hope, Maine, is we just, like we have, like, a very, there's a great diversity of experiences and ages, and there are a lot of there are a lot of people that are older actually, probably older than me. So there are people in their seventies eighties who I've everyone there is wise in their own way, and I think it's fantastic to have the experience of just, like, intergenerational sharing of experience, just because at different phases of life, people have such different and interesting perspectives. So I really value that. And when I was at Sangha this past week, since it was my sharing, I think I can share it, but I had had the experience of, over the weekend, I was watching my kids, and my mother-in-law came over for, like, 2 hours so I could go on a bike ride. And for me, that's actually a very critical part of my my mental health and not just physical health. I think for me, it's it's more about it's a that for me is a practice of conscious awareness that makes me better in all domains of my life. And also at times feels has felt a bit selfish because, you know, if you're, like, training for, I don't know, a 6 hour race or something, like, is that really, you know, kind of like have you kind of gone to the Is that necessary for the family? Yeah. Does the family need that? Yeah. Like, maybe I can get my mental health out of, like, an hour long ride, but, you know, I my my wife has always been very confident. Different seasons of life. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, so I got off for a 2 hour ride. It wasn't at a time of day that was my preferred time of day and, you know, for right? Because of traffic and other reasons. So I get out there. It had been a really nice day. I entered what to me was a very long winter or something like I felt entitled. Like, I have this entitlement. I need you know, I should have, like, a clear blue sky, Dan. It should be warm. It's June. So I get out. I'm riding. It's sunny for a little while, and I'll send you a picture of what the sky looked like. But, basically, there was, like, a wall of black clouds coming in under the blue sky as I was out there, and I was in the middle of a down like, 5 different downpours. It kept it was just like a squall where, you know, clouds would blow in. There'd be a severe storm. It was raining so hard. It actually it hurt. It was, like, stinging me. Sounds like like a biblical experience almost. Yeah. Totally. And later it, later after I got home, it's it started hailing. I've I kind of wondered if maybe it hailed on me a bit or maybe I'm just getting soft. And what I shared with Dasanga was when that was happening, all that I thought about was, it for me, it was similar to what happens for me. And when I'm doing Vipassana, which is just insight, oriented meditation where you're just trying to have present moment awareness and be conscious of, like, what's what's happening. You're just kind of like this sensory filter, and you're observing what's happening outside of you, what's happening inside your body as you think you're just observing your thoughts and thinking, this is the thought I'm thinking. You're trying not to be attached to it. So I was when I was in these different storms, I found that to be just so easy to do. I didn't feel discomfort. You know, the temperature dropped probably 15 degrees. And I also wanna acknowledge my extreme privilege here. Like, I'm a person out on a a bike ride in the middle of the day on a weekend, But I I just think a lot of endurance athletes think about, I'm doing this incredibly hard thing. It's so difficult. And it's like, you know what? Like, this is an elective activity that you have, like, 1,000 of dollars to put in any cycling pro. In free time, you do. You know? You don't have to be pro. Like, you can go get another job. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like, as as I often say this I'm not sure this is the year I'm going to the world tour. And, what what I shared with the Saga was, you know what? Like, for me, experiencing that kind of change, and it's not, like, extreme physical discomfort, but, like, there's something uncomfortable about, you know, I'm in a downpour. Now it's dry again. Like, oh my. Like, now it's starting to pour rain again, but I didn't really have a preference for I wanted to be dry. I just kind of was present in that moment. I was like, whatever. This I'm wet. It's cold. You know? I'm and then I thought, well, it's a good thing I'm waterproof. So I guess my point is for me, I do think that can being involved in endurance sports or in cycling in particular, can it help you develop resilience or grit? Can it help you to be highly organized and methodical? Can it help you be focused on doing something today that's gonna add up to something bigger in the long term? And does that transfer to business? I I think it can have a lot of positive impacts, and I think it can help you help yourself, can help you help other people. But whether it actually does something transformative for how you show up in other domains of your life, I think is an interesting question, and it's one I've reflected on a lot. And I actually I ask a lot of the guests on my podcast, Choose the Hard Way about this, where, you know, hey. You set a world record. You won an Olympic gold medal. You won a stage of the Tour de France. You won Unbound. You know, what do you like when your dishwasher breaks? What happens when your kid has a tantrum in the middle of the store and is lying on the ground kicking and making a big scene. Because I think for most people, those are the things that that are are actually really challenging, and they're the there's things that, like, pop up. Measured in some way. Yeah. So I I think if you have conscious awareness of, hey. I'm doing this thing that requires me to push myself into uncomfortable spaces and places, and I wonder if that can help me show up and be tougher in another scenario. Yeah. I think it potentially can. I think in general, people are better for going out and doing things where they push themselves in some way. And I also think that, I think that you can hit a point whether it's with physical activity or other things that you enjoy because it it brings you some kind of sensory pleasure, whatever the case may be. I think it actually can be kind of addictive and it you know, taken too far can be self indulgent and a distraction from basic things. Training for the 6 hour race. Well, I mean, whatever. And that's cool too. That's, you know, there maybe that's the thing that that, brings you insight or, you know, as I've thought about it over time, I think what I really get out of my relationship with cycling now is, to me, it's another way to practice conscious awareness. I it makes me highly attuned to my body and mind. I enjoy it. I think it it keeps me healthy. It's good for my body and mind. And I try to pick a couple of big events a year to go do with friends with the intention, 1st and foremost, of having fun doing something hard with friends, which is, like, the whole orientation and thesis of my podcast. Secondarily, I would like to go as fast as I can. And for me, that how fast I go says nothing about me. It's not a point of self identification. I don't attach great meaning to it, and that's just kinda how I approach it now. Yeah. I I, I love the the questions that you're posing, and I I think as I'm as I'm reflecting on them, a big one for cycling and and us cycling obsessed folks that that listen, you know, that this podcast is is speaking to, it is, you know, does it inject more, more gratitude, more more well-being in into your life? And and if that's the case, then you're then you're then you're probably doing the right thing, you know. And and if if, if you're getting to a point where it is a drag and your energy's super low and, you know, you're you're overtrained and you're not able to show up in your relationships and your work, you know, in a way that that sort of, optimizes you to to use a controversial word. May maybe it's not working for you the way the way that it could be. Yeah. I think the these are questions that would be for anybody who's listening, I think these would be great questions to reflect on when you're you're making your 5th trip to the porta potty before that criterium starts. Wondering if you're gonna get that clip bar preem. We're we're talking to you. Alright, man. Well, this this was awesome. Like like I said, I mean, really fascinating topic. I I, I can't wait to see where the better lab goes. I, you know, would love to to support this business in in, you know, any way I I possibly can and and, hopefully, the the the small but growing Hill Climbers community, you know, takes note and and jumps on the beta as well. But it's just, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. It's been a pleasure getting to know you over the last, what, you know, 6 6 or so months. So thank you for for making time for us. Yeah. Thanks for what you're doing with the Hill Climbers podcast, Sam, and I'm really grateful to get to be a part of this community. And I know that big things are ahead for this show and for you, So it's awesome to be part of that journey. Thank you. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.