What litigators can learn from entrepreneurs with Aaron Houghton – Part 2

Transcript:

Adam: Welcome back. This is Reed Smith, Disputes and Perspectives. I'm Adam Massar. I'm a partner in the Reed Smith Denver office. I'm a litigation partner and I have a special guest. This is part two with Aaron Houghton. We had too much to cover and we couldn't get it all done. So Aaron, welcome back.

Aaron: Yeah, thanks, Adam. Excited to do this.

Adam: So Aaron, when we left off, we were getting amped up a bit about the different ways to actually figure out where our red line is, but not burn ourselves out. Max potential, max outcome. So I want to pick back up there and talk a little bit more about some of the findings in your study. Okay.

Aaron: Yeah, that sounds great. This is what I've been obsessed with the last 10 years is like, how do we push ourselves as hard as we can as high pressure high achievers without burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up. So I'm excited for this.

Adam: All right, well, perfect. Well, I think we're all excited to and I will say just my own personal story. I'm 15 years, 15 years in the practice and to your point, you know, first 10 years you burn everything you've got to get to the partner level all those pieces, and then you realize you can't do the next 10 in the same way. And so this is an area that's near and dear to my heart and all those things that you pushed off the mental well being aspects, you just, I just couldn't ignore them any longer and so it's a big part of my personal journey which makes me so interested in the maximization piece. I want to talk a little bit more about the study you did. I'm curious how did you come up with what type of which individuals to include in the study and how are you able to source those individuals.

Aaron: So, we built an app, and we promoted it through social channels, just the leaders of teams, and what we got was almost exclusively founders and entrepreneurs, they, they showed the most interest in it. And so we were getting this subgroup of people that really had everything on the line, they were building companies anywhere from pre product to early product and pre revenue to revenue up to 10 $25 million annual revenue. And so we had a lot of top leaders in founders and founders in those businesses. And then it started to trickle down a little bit into their executive teams but these were still entrepreneurial executive teams, looking probably a little bit different than than big corporate working in smaller businesses on average, then, then let's say the fortune 500. And this group came in with a lot of passion for trying to figure out how to resource themselves better, and they were feeling a couple of things they were feeling concerned that they would burn out where they kind of threw up their, their arms at one point and said, maybe this isn't for me, maybe this whole startup thing isn't for me at all, maybe I should go do something else. These folks are the ones that decided to commit and come back into the arena again and try to keep playing the game so they were, they were afraid that they would get sent back to that, that critical decision moment of like can I keep doing this or do I have to give up, or they were concerned they might end up there for the first time. And then the other piece that I really identify with is they expressed concern about feeling like in the early days they were the leader that had all the answers. And they could come up with a creative idea to solve the problem and they had tons of energy for solving problems, and they've gotten to a point which kind of looked like burnout but it was, it was kind of just burning out in the seat, where they just weren't the person that had the good ideas anymore they felt like they really struggled to get their team excited and motivated. I certainly felt that in the last kind of part of the decade of building my most successful company to a value of over $100 million. A company that I started by literally writing the software on a laptop on a futon in my college apartment, and then running it through my 20s and then selling it at age 30. And so these folks came in with a lot of energy and passion, and some of them completed these what we call plays inside of the app, things that support themselves psychologically. Some of them have completed 20, 25,000 of these over the five year study period. These are people that are really trying to support themselves and really show up as the best version of themselves every day.

Adam: Now I get, for example, you know, some of these really remarkable traits that want that people have, you know, things like, you know, obviously, workout consistency, all those things are fantastic, but we all know that. What were some of the more unique things or habits these individuals have done that were hacks that you reset them, things like that things that you hadn't thought of beforehand.

Aaron: I think one of the most interesting things from this data set was how much it differs from what you might see on like social media wellness influencers telling you that works. And even the things that have been most popular in kind of general, you know, I live in Boulder, so I see a lot of this, right? So, it's like, everybody says, you basically need to do breath work or cold plunge, or you need to meditate. And if you don't do all three of those things every day, perfectly, you know, what kind of high performer do you think you'll be? And I think a lot of that stuff gets pushed because there's cool products that influencers can sell behind it, right? Everyone that tells you that has more than 100,000 followers on social and tells you you need to cold plunge is selling a cold plunge. And it's not that there's anything wrong with that. It's that in our study, the category of mindfulness tools was dead last of the seven categories of what works for high pressure, high performers. And I think part of it is a lot of people that have minds that run really fast and push themselves really hard, just really struggle with how to sit down and be mindful. And so, and it's really difficult when you're not good at it already, and nobody's good at it already until they try it, until they really practice. And so, I think these are tools that everyone thinks that the highest performers in the world are using, and to some degree they are. But in terms of what was actually moving the dial for the 400 leaders that we followed for five years, it was these categories of mindset, movement, and connection. And it was not mindfulness. It was not focusing on our thoughts and trying to follow them in a way that would kind of align with typical mindfulness practices. Now, we did categorize breathwork activities as movement, which was, I think, a little controversial. Breathwork can be mindfulness. It also moves your body to some degree. So, I think breathwork was a pretty high winner. So, people using different breathing protocols like box breathing or 15-second breathing, some of these breath holds and structured timing with longer exhales than inhales, really popular across lots of different types in that category, and people saw good results. Simple movement practices were really, really big winners, too. There's one where you literally sit in your chair, and you put your arms out at a 90 degree, and you breathe in, and then you exhale as you bring your arms down, and then you do this really fast, 30 times. It's been named in our community of people, it's been named pumping because you're pumping your arms up and down. It kind of pumps you up. Like, that one is almost, it's ridiculously silly. If someone sees you doing it at your desk, they're probably going to call somebody to come round you up. But a lot of people use these little simple movement activities with breath and a little bit of movement around it to drive energy, to drive focus, to bring them into a calm state. So, that's probably my favorite. It's called pumping. You sit at your desk, you move your arms up and down, you breathe really fast, you do it 30 times, you're a little lightheaded at the end of it. And when I do it, it kind of shifts my mind state just a little bit. It shifts me into calm, shifts me into a little bit more focus. So, it was some of those little strange techniques that people shared. We collected over 3,000 of these. There's actually, we put it into a free app now that's in the app stores. If anybody wants to check it out, it's called Coach Dory, two words, and Dory is D-O-R-Y. Anybody can grab it and check it out, and it uses data from that study to make recommendations for exactly what any person needs in that exact moment. And it's been a lot of fun to see what people put in there. A lot of stuff is so boringly obvious, but I think it's helpful when you know it's got data behind it. It might be, hey, if you've got a dog, take your dog for a walk around the block and go for 10 minutes and then come back and sit down at your desk again. It might be, call a friend that always makes you laugh and catch up tonight on the phone. And, you know, take in that positivity and that feeling of connection from somebody that is always there for you in that way. And there's thousands of these, and it's been a lot of fun to see what works for people.

Adam: On the mindset piece, I think that's an easy-to-understand concept, but putting it in practice is difficult, whether it's intrusive thoughts, insecurities, whatever, like baseline. And especially for, you know, world litigation where your adversary is absolutely not trying to help you. In fact, they are trying to show you are not a matter, that you're not going to succeed. And not that different in the business world where you've got multiple competitors out there and it's going to evolve and someone's trying to always take your block off. So from a mindset perspective, to me, especially after a decade into whatever you're doing, at that point, two things tell me, you've probably done 10,000 hours in a decade. And you probably got a skill set, but now it's also like lacing up the shoes every day and getting after it in that same vigor. So on the mindset piece, what are things you do to lace them up every day in a way that makes you be able to contribute?

Aaron: For me, it falls into a couple of categories. And I think this is probably across most people that we work with. It's positivity, it's gratitude, and it's future visualization. I think those are the top categories. And sometimes those overlap, right? You might do a positive visualization where you sit down and visualize the most positive version of the outcome. I love to play around with that one with people. And I say, how is this likely to go? How's the way it could go really, really well? And we visualize the whole process again. And then we go one step further and we say, what is the most insanely, unbelievably incredible outcome that you could possibly have for this to go, right? So in the litigation world, I don't know what that looks like. But in the startup world, that's like this deal, instead of just closing this partner that we think is going to be worth $100,000, they actually tell us, well, we haven't been honest with you. We're actually part of a multibillion-dollar global conglomerate. And all of our 400 partner companies are also going to buy this. And it's going to be worth $10 million a year. And, oh, by the way, is it possible for us to pay you for 10 years in advance up front in cash? Would that be okay, right? So just make this as bombastic or ridiculous as you could possibly imagine it. And really stretch out the other side of it. Because I think our minds often, the reason why we get good at what we do in high-pressure situations is because we're constantly covering our butts trying to figure out how it's going to go wrong and trying to patch those holes. And this brings us back into the other side of that, of instead of worrying about all the things that can go wrong, what about surprising things that could go right? Like, let's be honest with ourselves. If we're going to play the game of how are all the ways this could accidentally go bad, let's also play the game of how are all the ways this could accidentally go amazing. And let's hold both sides of that instead of trying to kind of sandbag ourselves as we come into this situation. And so, yeah, visualization is huge. Really priming our mind with positive thoughts in general. What is, you know, what are the traits that are fantastic about me? What are the things that I like about myself? One of them can be as simple as when you enter a room of people saying to yourself inside your head three nice things about yourself. Like, giving yourself compliments as you walk into the room. Now, if you say it out loud, it could be a little awkward. You do it inside your head. And you've primed yourself with some positivity as you come into the room and you remind yourself what you're good at, why you're allowed into this room, why these people want to talk to you, why you're the person delivering the message, whatever it might be. And the gratitude side of it, I think, is huge, too. Just taking a moment to pause and understanding all of the things that have had to go right for us to get to this place where we are, to have this opportunity. I have a peer group that I meet with of entrepreneurs that has been saying recently that pressure is privilege. So I have an opportunity to be in this room and to be scared out of my mind right now to go try and pitch this deal or pitch this case or pitch this version of what I think happened and try and get everybody to see that that is, in fact, the truth. Or this version of my vision of where this is going to go. And it could be terrifying. In fact, oftentimes it is. I feel scared in professional pursuits all the time. I'm going to screw this up. I'm going to come out looking like an idiot. I'm going to come out looking like I wasn't genuinely behind this all along and trying to be that version of it. If I can bring a little extra positivity and sort of get my mind into that right state, it just goes a long way for actually delivering the best version of myself that I want to be in the moment.

Adam: Talking a little bit more, the company you've been talking about, that's Founders First, correct?

Aaron: Yeah, we've changed the name now. It's called Dory. It started as Founders First just for entrepreneurs. And so the brand name now is Dory, and it's for anybody who's in high-pressure situations in their life.

Adam: Very good. And you said there's an app. What are the other resources?

Aaron: Yeah, so we have peer groups that meet, and we dig into making sure everybody's working at their optimal pace and that they're calculating it and then finding the people that are under the highest pressure and that are having to push harder than their optimal pace. And we try and break through that bottleneck for them as a group. These are peer groups that meet once a week virtually, and they're executives and leaders and CEO. They're pharmaceutical executives launching massive, life-changing drugs. They're builders of software companies, and they're all around the country. And those groups allow them to share knowledge with each other so they understand what's working, and they can learn quickly.

Adam: And as far as these group settings, is this something that you had done when you were scaling some of your largest businesses or something you learned afterwards?

Aaron: It's something I learned afterwards. The framework of being able to figure out where bottlenecks are by who is getting pushed past their optimal pace and how much pressure they're under has been a tool that I've built post-building software companies in my life. And I'm bringing this to other folks because it's something that I wish I had in that moment. Now, I've been able to bring this to some incredibly massive personal challenges in my life in recent years, and even building this business as well. This is a company that is powered by software as well, but it's been used by leaders in massive companies all around the country over the last five years since I put these tools to market. And they're connecting with each other in these groups and breaking through bottlenecks in a way that is really precise and really rapid. Somebody can run into a challenge on a Tuesday, meet with their group on Wednesday, figure out what's wrong, retool where they're going, adjust their pace, and be back in the saddle again the next day doing things the right way.

Adam: Speaking of scaling up for executives, to me right now, AI seems like it's an invitation to scale faster, bigger, and avoid decision fatigue. So I see net positives, especially if you've already built a core set and you can use it as an augmentation tool rather than something that is either a distraction or a hindrance. But I'm curious, are you bullish on AI for executives and leadership development, or what is your take on that?

Aaron: It's huge as a thought partner. It's now becoming a tool builder as well if we look at the software side. I've been writing code for about 25 years. I took about five years off until about six months ago when I started writing code with AI and realizing that it turns me into a 25x developer where I can build tools, bring them to market, and test them in a matter of hours instead of a matter of weeks and months as it was before. So I think it's an incredible thought partner. AI is an incredible builder. And it's going to be replacing a lot of really simple repetitive tasks, for sure, that don't involve a lot of strategy. So I think people that are sitting in a seat where they can lead teams and drive strategy and think about strategy are going to be increasingly using AI tools to simplify the execution of those strategies once they've figured them out. And I think AI is a great thought partner in strategy just to help us make sure we're not missing an idea. It's right now not a great strategy evaluator, to be honest, in my opinion. I think it's lying a little bit too much. And it's being a little bit too agreeable with whatever biases we put forward into it. But I'm eager to see where that goes. I have an investment where I'm a lead investor in an AI voice company. And I'm a big believer right now that a lot of software interfaces are going to be replaced by voice because of AI technology in the next few years. And I think about, as a simple example, when I want to order food on DoorDash or something, it's really, really fast. But you know what it's not faster than? Just telling the person at the restaurant what I want to order. It's still way faster. Now, calling on the phone is annoying. And waiting for somebody to pick up and all the background noise, it's a challenge. But AI can do this better than people in restaurants can now. So if I want to order my favorite meal from a restaurant, I can say, you know, I'd like to order the same thing I ordered last Tuesday. Like, how long did that take? And how long would that take in an app like DoorDash? It might only take two and a half, three minutes. But we're all trying to optimize on time these days. And I think that example is going to play out in all sorts of different areas where right now I might want to design something in a certain way or build a logo for something or build a visual representation of something. And I have to communicate that back and forth through multiple iterations to somebody that's on a different schedule. And we're kind of asynchronous back and forth. And by the time it gets done, it's maybe not even quite right. And I need to make a few more revisions to it. To be able to shorten that down into a two-minute conversation where we discover all the challenges and fix them in a live back and forth with an AI agent that's doing something instead is really going to cut down the time from thinking to the gap between thinking and delivering. And that's been shrinking constantly. And AI is just collapsing that to the matter of minutes now, I think.

Adam: Do you think that AI is going to get to the spot in the near term where it can give you honest, objective feedback about your leadership, probably honest feedback that nobody else in the room is willing to give you?

Aaron: It needs to get rid of its agreeableness, right, before it can get there. And so I don't, I mean, I would imagine that's a huge initiative among the LLMs and the models right now is to try and make the AI, you know, I saw a funny meme the other day where somebody said, Hey, AI, is this, is this a poisonous mushroom? And AI says, no, it's not. And so the person eats it and dies. And then their, their spirit says, hey, it's a poisonous mushroom. Their, their spirit says, Hey, AI, I died when I ate that mushroom. And AI goes, yes, oh, you're right. That was a poisonous mushroom. Would you like to learn more about poisonous mushrooms? Right? So that's the problem right now is that it's just like, yeah, it tells us something's true. And then it immediately backs off of it when we tell it it's not true. And so both sides of that are a problem, right? It might, we might not have been right. And it might not have been right on the front side. So can it give more objective feedback than humans? You know, it can break through the discomfort of giving feedback that humans often have that makes us not want to be as honest when our boss says like, Hey, have I been a great boss to you? And you go, oh yeah, thanks boss. You're the best. But it's still going to lack. It's still going to lack a bit for a while. I don't know. I think it's getting a lot better. I think, again, that's kind of like, as a thought partner, if you're using it yourself, like, I think it would be great to generate ideas. Like, what are five ways that I could improve my leadership style? I've had a couple of people have AI listen to all of their conversations for an entire week or two, and then ask it for feedback on their communication style. And whether it's right or wrong, I think it does a good job of producing a lot of ideas for us to consider. So will it become something that we can ultimately trust to tell us the truth? I don't know if I had that answer, I'd be a billionaire.

Adam: I want to talk a little bit more about leadership and focus on a different piece, because I think for litigators, we are driven by a desire to succeed, but also by anxiety. And part of that is thinking about all the wrong things to get to the right outcome. And so whether it's little anxiety or big anxiety, what are some of the techniques you've learned on that front? Because ultimately, if you're going to get bigger, better, and you're going to handle all these responsibilities, the A's come in one way or the other. But how do you tackle that A rather than just let it drive you?

Aaron: Research into flow tells us that anxiety or some type of trigger that gets our attention is critical to being creative, and it's critical to being productive and being maximally productive. So yeah, there's this magical level of anxiety that motivates us. It calls us to attention, and it reminds us to get up on time to catch our flight or finish the presentation before we go in to pitch something. And that's the superpower behind anxiety. And the data around this shows that if you were going to put this on a 1 to 10 scale, and 10 is crippling anxiety, and 0 is completely calm and collected, the optimal performance zone is probably between 1 and 3 when it comes to anxiety. So people will say, like, hey, isn't a little bit of stress good, or isn't a little bit of anxiety good? And I just made that point. Yes, it's good. But the answer behind that is not very much is good. And so that kind of like 1 to 3 of like, it's enough to get me out of my chair, it's enough to get me motivated, and it's enough to get my focus drawn into the right thing that I need to work on. But any more than that, and performance starts to drop. And so a practice that I have used in my life for almost 10 years now, and it became the app that I mentioned earlier called Coach Dory, D-O-R-Y, which is in the app stores. But it started as a Google spreadsheet for myself that I started creating, or that I created. And every single day, one of the things I measured was how, what was the maximum level of anxiety that I felt like I felt on that day on that same 1 to 10 scale that I was talking about? And then after months and years of working with experts and digging through the research on this, I realized that there is an optimal range on many of these factors, anxiety being one of them. That's kind of in that, if 10 is the maximum and 0 is nothing, it's kind of in that 1 to 3 range. So it's pretty low. That's where I'm optimal. And so I would measure that about myself every single day. And I would watch trends. I would see, all right, I've taken on too much at work because anxiety has been between a 5 and a 7 recently, multiple times. So I need to try and slide back down into that optimal productivity zone of 1 to 3. And occasionally, I think for somebody like me, that's really driven, I rarely find myself off the bottom end of that range and the 0 to 1 where I need more motivation. Maybe I've been there once or twice in a couple of decades, but sometimes we need to slide the other way too. I think a lot of people actually do need to slide the other way where they've found themselves into something that is so predictable and so safe that they're lacking that little push that gets them over the line into really creating and really finding out what they're capable of at their maximum level. And then I think there's another category of people. Oftentimes, these people end up in our programs at Dory, which is they are anywhere on that range, and they're just scared of what happens if they push harder. They are worried because they've seen people around them completely throw up their hands and have to walk away from the whole initiative because they just can't take it anymore. They're worried because they felt themselves about to cross that line before, that mysterious line where they don't quite know where it is, and they're worried if they get anywhere close to it, they'll cross it. And so they pull back significantly and they hang out in the safe zone. And so I think there's something really magical about tracking ourselves to understand where we are. That's been a big discipline in my life over the last decade.

Adam: And then finishing up, control is a real issue for litigators, and I'll give you sort of the answer for why it's a problem. So associates, as you start as an attorney, you're basically in charge of one facet of the case, and then you roll up a little bit and you get a little bit more responsibility. And then as you move forward, at some point, you're going to be responsible for everything, and then you become a partner. And now you're expected to just magically give up control after you've had 100% control, and you've been in your lane perfectly, and you get rewarded for being in your lane. So you have this unique toggle where we absolutely reward being in your lane, doing a great job, being a specialist in your thing. And then we say, surprise, we really want you to manage people and give up all the control that made you so successful. So what are techniques to give up control in a way that allows the product, the service to still flourish, but at the same time allow you to take a step back from the day to day?

Aaron: I learned this in my most successful business in trying to figure out how to go from being on the executive team and leading the executive team to then being on the board of directors. I think that for me was a similar transition where I'm just completely responsible for outcomes now, but almost entirely detached from the individual projects, where they stand, how they're going, if they're going to be a winner, if they're going to be a loser. What I came to in that time was trying to figure out, and this was really difficult, what is the shortest list of things that I can measure that are really important, that will indicate to me or predict the likelihood of the outcomes that I want to create? So in our business, that was continuing to make sure that we had a good ratio of customer acquisition cost to lifetime value. So we're paying a lot less to get a customer than they're going to pay us over the lifetime, that people were satisfied with our product, that our product was competitively positioned, and then a couple of key initiatives that we were working on for strategy to make sure those things were on track. And I started with too big of a list, to be honest. I started with probably 10 to 12 things that I said, I need to know the answers to all of these things, and I whittled it down to like 4 or 5. And I don't think they're universal in ways that other people could use them in their businesses. But for me, those were the 3, 4, 5 things that I found if I just knew the answers to those questions. And sometimes I needed to know the answers like weekly, not daily at that level. I had a couple hundred people on the team at that point, but I needed to know them more than monthly and more than quarterly, which was when board meetings happened. And so I needed to be able to get ahead of some things with a little bit more capacity to understand where they were going so that I could be influential to help line up resources appropriately. It was frustrating. I tell you, I have tried in my own businesses to, as much as possible, not promote our best salesperson to head of sales. And as you've mentioned, that's a very standard path in the legal industry, and it's a standard path, I think, in a lot of industries, right? And it's also an expected path in a lot of industries. A long time ago, somebody shared with me a model that I think works in some cases, and it probably doesn't work in many, which is that what would happen if you compensated your best salesperson better than your best sales manager? Because oftentimes people want to move to that next tier of something that they have to completely relearn and have an efficiency around just because the higher recognition and the higher compensation. So, inside of business teams, I've tried to stretch that. I think that the highest performing software developer should be able to be paid a multiple of 2x what the highest performing team lead for a software team might be paid if they're really that productive in producing. So, then you look at career paths where people are expected to make that transition, and they have to make that transition. And that's what I had to do. I probably maybe should have stayed as a product manager or something like that in the company. That's my core skill set is figuring out what product to build and making sure it's great. But instead, here I go to CEO, which kind of always was my title, but I was really the product guy building things. And now I'm CEO of a team, and then I'm chair of the board of directors. And so, for me, it was just trying to figure out the fewest number of things that I could bother people to get information about in order to know that things are on track and then get out of everybody's way. If those numbers are good, I'm going to trust them. If I find later on that I can't trust them, then we're going to dig in on that. We're going to change the numbers. We're going to figure out why I wasn't getting correct information. And that was my process, just living inside that little tiny loop of here are my five things. Give me answers on them. Wow, everything looks great. I'll be back in touch in a couple of weeks, or send me the Monday update next week again if everything looks good. Things are off track, digging in, trying to figure out how to fix them. We'll stand out everybody's way. That was my goal.

Adam: Last question to wrap up here. What sleep hacks, if any, have you used that were highly successful?

Aaron: Oh, this one's fun. I've dug in on this a lot. And one of the things I haven't mentioned yet today was that after I sold my business in 2012, I ran another startup for five years. That one got pretty close to burning me out. I threw up my hands on that one. It was like, I'm out. And I went out and spent $100,000 of my own money hiring all of the experts around the world to teach me different topics. One of them was a sleep expert that I had to fly into Colorado. A couple of these folks were like, I'll come share my expertise with you, but you have to pick me up on a private jet. And so in more than one case, me and a couple of buddies actually sent a jet to pick someone up and bring them in and teach us these things. And so sleep hacks was one of them. So I know a little bit about this. Let me see if I can remember all of the tools I heard. And I'll tell you the ones that I actually use. So, I mean, just getting down to very simple, tactical things. Cold sleep environment, 65 to 67 degrees in the bedroom, absolute dark, blackout shades, absolute quiet, sound machine, humidifier, something running to create a little bit of white noise works really, really well for me. CBD supplements actually has been somewhat helpful for me from time to time. No exercise within two hours before bedtime. I have not gone as far as blue light blocking glasses. I actually own some, but I've never put them on. That's a big one, right? Trying to keep off devices and screens in the immediate time before bed. I break that rule sometimes. I'm an Instagram scroller in the 30 minutes before bed, and it's a bad habit. But trying to drop that habit, keeping no exercise or big meals within two hours of bedtime. And magnesium glycinate, 400 milligrams an hour to two hours before bedtime seems to be another popular thing that a lot of people are using. And then allow yourself enough time to sleep. I try and have a block of 8 to 10 hours every night, and I don't always sleep that long. Today I got up at 4.30. I was super excited and motivated. I usually get up around 7, but I just popped out of bed and I was ready to go. Other days I'll sleep it all the way until 7, and I'll use the extra window. So, carving out that time is probably the biggest mistake that I see people make is going to bed at 11 when you know you have to get up at 4.30. This is not enough time to get a good night's sleep and to get refreshed. And I think the last piece of it I'll share is that there's a myth that no matter how hard you push yourself, as long as you get a good night's sleep, you'll wake up at 100%. And we've tested this in our study, and we looked at what the mental reserve levels were of people of these high stress, high pressure leaders when they show up every morning. And on average, they show up at 72% resourced out of 100% in the morning. So, on average, it doesn't even matter if you get a good night's sleep or not, you might show up at 75, 80% on a great day, 85%. It takes a lot and it's not just sleep to get you back to a full cup from a mental capacity standpoint. It takes a lot of those things we've talked about before, mindset, movement, connection time, really engaging with our communities, really engaging with ourselves, laying the groundwork inside of our minds for being at peak performance. You do that and add that to a full night's sleep, you can start your day at 100%.

Adam: Well, Aaron, you filled my cup and you're an absolute animal. So, I appreciate you carrying this torch and don't stop. And I can't wait to see what you find out next and what I can learn from you.

Aaron: Thanks, Adam. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing a little window into what litigators see in the high pressure, high stress world that you guys operate in. It's been fun to compare that to my last 25 years trying to not burn myself out as an entrepreneur.

Adam: Well, thank you.

Outro: Disputes in Perspective is a Reed Smith production. This podcast was produced by Shannon Ryan and edited by Julian Baughman. For more information about Reed Smith's litigation and dispute resolution practice, please email [email protected]. You can find our podcast on podcast streaming platforms, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts at ReedSmithLLP.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.

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