Venture Everywhere Podcast: Stephen Sokoler with Matthew Brimer
Matthew Brimer, Co-Founder of ZZ Driggs, Special Address, General Assembly, Daybreaker, and Everywhere Ventures, chats with Stephen Sokoler, Founder and CEO of Journey.
In episode 68 of Venture Everywhere, Matthew Brimer, Co-Founder of ZZ Driggs, Special Address, General Assembly, Daybreaker, and Everywhere Ventures, chats with Stephen Sokoler, Founder and CEO of Journey, the leading mental health platform for modern workplaces. Stephen shares Journey’s transformation from a consumer meditation app to a comprehensive, proactive mental health solution trusted by global enterprises. Matt and Stephen also discuss the challenges of modern work-life balance and emphasize the importance of prioritizing mental health needs and normalizing emotional self-care in today’s fast-paced work environments.
In this episode, you will hear:
Journey’s focus on combining clinical care and support for workplaces.
Reinvention of the EAP model as a proactive mental health tool.
“Busyness” is glorified as a sign of productivity and purpose, but is it?
Meditation, community, sleep, therapy and other tools to help sustain mental wellness.
Mental health isn’t just personal — it shapes how we show up in the world, influencing our relationships, workplaces, and the broader systems we live in.
By nurturing empathy, emotional regulation, and self-awareness, we lay the groundwork for healthier companies, communities, and societies.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere Podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Matthew: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Everywhere Ventures podcast. My name is Matthew Brimer and I'm here with Stephen Sokoler, who is an old friend of mine and I'm excited to have a great conversation together.
00:00:48 Matthew: So before you hear anything about me, I'm going to tell you about Stephen, who is a wide ranging and accomplished entrepreneur and wellness leader and has a lot of good stuff to share and to discuss.
00:01:00 Matthew: So Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of Journey, which is the leading mental health solution for modern companies, focused on proactive strategies to reduce burnout, decrease turnover, and ultimately empower employees to thrive.
00:01:11 Matthew: Journey is rooted in live group learning and peer support. They partner with major organizations, companies that you probably have heard of like Facebook and Disney and Nike and many others, as well as startups and nonprofits, really with the intention of making mental health as valued as physical health in a working environment and beyond.
00:01:29 Matthew: Stephen also is an author. And his book, The Mental Health Advantage, provides leaders with a roadmap to integrate mental wellbeing into business strategy, both important things.
00:01:40 Matthew: Stephen, I would say, is really committed to reshaping workplace wellness. He's been doing this for a while, and this is a passion personally and professionally for him. So he's all in on mental health, how it intersects with work.
00:01:51 Matthew: Stephen envisions a future where mental health is a key driver of both employee performance and also employee happiness, which I'm on board with. I fully agree. So that's Stephen. Anything I missed Stephen?
00:02:02 Stephen: Well, new dad, that's a big life change. My wife gave birth 17 months ago. So that's pretty amazing and challenging and beautiful and magical. I think you covered the work part pretty well.
00:02:13 Matthew: Awesome. Stephen and I have been friends for probably over a decade.
00:02:16 Stephen: That's actually what I was going to say. So I was going to say when you said I've been at this while. So Journey celebrated our 10 year anniversary, about two months ago. And it's pretty wild to think because you and I met when I was in that transition after I had sold my last company.
00:02:31 Stephen: And before I started Journey, when I was trying to figure out what to do, I basically met with all different interesting people that I knew. I told them my story, what are your thoughts and people shared all different things and then who do think I should meet with?
00:02:42 Stephen: And I forget who it was that connected us. And obviously our worlds have been very intertwined since then with all types of great stuff, but it was over a decade. It was probably 11 years ago that we got first connected. And I think we're at lunch, the first time we hung out.
00:02:54 Matthew: Yeah. Amazing.
00:02:55 Stephen: All right. So for those of you that don't know, Matthew Brimer is just a total rock star serial entrepreneur, awesome human being and much more. So currently co-founder and Chairman of ZZ Driggs. Full service tech enabled furnishing and design solution for the real estate and hospitality industry.
00:03:11 Stephen: Co-founder of Special Address, a boutique luxury hospitality company with a bunch of really beautiful, amazing short-term properties in upstate New York and in Jamaica, not Queens, but the island of Jamaica.
00:03:23 Stephen: Previously co-founded General Assembly, an education company that was acquired for over $400 million. And that was about social impact. Also founded Daybreaker, which if you haven't been, go do it. It's awesome. Really just beautiful and fun and connected.
00:03:37 Stephen: And then co-founder of Everywhere Ventures, which is the podcast that has us here today. So investing in early stage companies, I want to say originally in New York, but I know now all over the world, hence the everywhere part.
00:03:49 Matthew: There we go. Pretty great. I live in Brooklyn, spent my time between New York and California and some upstate, keeping busy.
00:03:57 Stephen: Nice. I'm glad I covered most of your illustrious background, which doesn't even say what a top quality human you are.
00:04:02 Matthew: Thank you. Awesome. I want to start on the personal front. So 17 months ago, had your kid, your first, right?
00:04:09 Stephen: Yep.
00:04:09 Matthew: Well, first off, how has that been? What are some couple of learnings that you've had in the year and a half?
00:04:14 Stephen: First year was really challenging. The whole postpartum depression thing is a real thing. Not for me, but my wife really struggled and it's her story to share, but she's open about me sharing it. And it's also the most wild miracle. You're looking at this little beautiful, tiny alien thing that comes out and you're like, "Oh my God." Life creating life is so other worldly.
00:04:38 Stephen: For me, it was the closest I've ever come to the divine, just watching him sleep and watching him and couldn't do anything. And now 17 months, he's walking, he's talking, he's there.
00:04:49 Stephen: He looks at you and you see that he's there with you. It's just awesome. So it's been all of the things. It's been really everything from really painful and hard and lots of challenging nights and days to the highest highs.
00:05:02 Matthew: Amazing. You mentioned your wife has been really going through it, which is totally understandable. But how has your mental health been balancing family life as a father and running a company?
00:05:12 Stephen: Oh, it's been good. Honestly, I think the hardest part is, and you can probably appreciate this, my wife is my best friend. So if any close person, especially somebody like that is struggling, that hurts me. That's hard.
00:05:24 Stephen: But I feel very fortunate in that I have a lot of practices like my daily meditation practice and being able to go to the gym and stuff like that. Now, it all comes unraveled quickly. When you're up in the middle of the night, and you can't sleep.
00:05:36 Stephen: And then it's hard to wake up in the morning and say, "Oh, I'm going to meditate." You're like, "I'll just sleep in," or you don't have energy to go to the gym. Or for me, eating is one of those things where I'll just start eating unhealthy.
00:05:46 Stephen: But for the most part, because I have those foundational practices, because I have a pretty good community, both my friends and also therapists and couples therapists and stuff like that, I feel like I have some good padding and armor that helps.
00:05:58 Stephen: So I'd say my mental health is pretty good, but I can see there were times when it was really sliding and I was really, really struggling. And then I had to bounce back. And in the spirit of sharing fully, one of the other things was really challenging was at some point I got COVID.
00:06:14 Stephen:I mean, I've got COVID a few times, which I think probably most of us have at this point, but I started suffering from really bad brain fog and for probably six months, I just couldn't remember things.
00:06:25 Stephen: Like you hear a song from high school or childhood and you're like, "Wait, I've heard that song before." It would be like that for normal stuff. I would have dinner with my wife tonight and I'd be like, "I was on a podcast with an old friend, but who was it?" Crazy. It was very unsettling.
00:06:41 Stephen: So thankfully that's mainly lifted. I'd say I'm probably 95% myself, but that was something that I went through that was really challenging throughout the whole thing, through being a CEO, through being a husband, a father, et cetera.
00:06:54 Matthew: Wow. Yeah, I know it certainly impacts a meaningful subset of people that get COVID, which is crazy. Did you find any behavior, anything you ate, any practices? Do you seem to be effective at lifting the brain fog or was it just giving it time and letting it fade? And anything effective at bringing your brain back to full thrusters?
00:07:14 Stephen: So I was trying a bunch of stuff and it was May 1st, and I know that because that was my wife's birthday and we were having this really beautiful breakfast, which we never get to do. And I was super sad, which is not an experience that I'm used to.
00:07:26 Stephen: And I knew everything was fine. And yet there was this overwhelming sadness. And then my wife was like, "Look, you got to do something." That was the other part of it.
00:07:32 Stephen: Besides the brain fog, my emotions were very all over the place in a way that again, I was just not used to. And so I went and I saw a guy that you may know, Dr. Frank Lipman, South African doctor who does a lot on gut health and other things like that.
00:07:44 Stephen: And he prescribed me a whole bunch of different pills that I just started taking. And then I also said, "I need to prioritize my sleep," which I usually do. But this was like, "I need to sleep as long as my body needs me to sleep."
00:07:56 Stephen: Which again, I'm not running on like five hours or four hours or three hours of sleep. I usually get six, seven, eight hours of sleep, but maybe I need nine hours. Maybe I need ten hours. So that was one.
00:08:06 Stephen: And then the other was cutting out sugar from my diet. And then the other was trying to go to the gym to do cardio for 30 plus minutes a day. I have no idea. Maybe I could have done nothing and just eaten McDonald's and candy bars and just taking the pills and I would have felt better. But I think the combination of all those things led to me feeling pretty good.
00:08:24 Stephen: But it's interesting because I did a lot of reading on COVID and we still have no idea what a lot of the effects are, a lot of the long-term effects and things like that. But I did a variety of things to try to get back to being me.
00:08:33 Matthew: It's hard to tease apart, especially with multiple inputs, the exact cause and effect.
00:08:37 Stephen: Exactly.
00:08:38 Matthew: There's correlations to be found. But, all of those things are fundamentally positive for overall physical and mental health. So you're doing good by your body and mind regardless.
00:08:47 Matthew: Shifting a little bit to think about Journey and what you're seeing in large workplaces. I'm curious, what practices do you find are the hardest for employees to wrangle?
00:08:58 Matthew: I feel like the common mental wellness cannon, mental health cannon, we all know getting enough sleep, regular exercise, eating well, meditating, holding meaningful relationships with family and friends and colleagues.
00:09:10 Matthew: These are all core principles that I feel like most people know, yes, these are objectively positive things for your mental health. Some of them easier to develop a practice and regularity than others.
00:09:20 Matthew: What are some areas that you find are the hardest for people to kind of stick to, habituate to, and make an ongoing life change around?
00:09:27 Stephen: I mean, all the above, but I think the most is sleep. Honestly, I think it's one of those things that is totally misunderstood and underappreciated societally. So we support a really wide range of companies. So we have folks that work in finance, we have folks that work in retail, we have folks that work in rural areas, et cetera.
00:09:46 Stephen: And I would say the consistent threat is nobody's getting enough sleep. And people are consistently feeling tired and probably not able to show up at their best for themselves, their families, their communities, their company.
00:09:59 Stephen: So I would say that's the one because you do find pockets of people that are really healthy and eating really well or going to the gym. But people are just working a lot and running themselves pretty thin and not really prioritizing sleep. That's a pretty consistent one.
00:10:14 Matthew: Yeah, I believe that. I remember having a conversation with someone a little while back and we were catching up. I hadn't seen him for a while. It's like, "Hey, how's it going? How are you doing?" And I think both of us responded to that question saying like, "I'm really busy." And it's such a default answer, I feel like in modern professional life.
00:10:31 Matthew: "What's going on? How are you doing?" "Really busy." And everyone's like, "Yeah, I felt really busy for years. I don't actually remember the time that I didn't feel really busy." Which is just funny to think about. And we kind of say that maybe as something of a defense mechanism upon reflection.
00:10:46 Matthew: But also I think, because we have this collective idea that being busy is a good thing. And you're proving to whoever you're interacting with that you're working hard, that you're a productive member of society, that you're not slacking off. You're not being lazy. That you're on a mission. You're doing something important or any of these considerations.
00:11:03 Matthew: But then I thought about it and I realized, I actually would aspire to be just as productive, just as much working, striving toward a mission, striving toward happiness and fulfillment and health and all this. But I'd actually prefer to be less busy.
00:11:18 Matthew: Being busy in and of itself, it's not something I want to be doing. It's something you have to be. And once, when someone says they're busy, then you kind of assume. The other person's like, "Oh, I'm really busy too." And everyone up busies each other and it's this never ending cycle.
00:11:31 Matthew: So how do we even normalize and acclimatize to being less busy? Because I think if we could feel like busyness wasn't such an aspiration, we'd probably get more sleep. We'd probably value sleep and rest more. Being busy is the opposite of sleep.
00:11:47 Stephen: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's the whole idea of us being human beings, not human doings. And you may have heard the expression work expands to fill time. If you give somebody a half hour task or you yourself have it, but you have two hours – and I've never said this before, but I think life expands to fill time.
00:12:03 Stephen: You hear these stories of people who retired, even somebody who sold their business or something and maybe he's on break and they're like, "Oh, I just want nothing to do." And all of a sudden their whole life is filled and they're just as busy.
00:12:14 Stephen: And they're like, "I don't know what happened." You cut the lawn, you do the laundry, you do this. And all of a sudden, where'd the time go? I thought I was going to be relaxing.
00:12:21 Stephen: I think part of it, it's innate, I think, aside from the societal part, which we can talk about, like being in New York in particular, whether that's Brooklyn or Manhattan or anywhere else. There's a certain energy to the place.
00:12:32 Stephen: I had a buddy who lived in Sydney, and he used to come to New York and we'd see each other all the time. And now he lives in New York and we never see each other. And he says, "I never appreciated how over scheduled people here are."
00:12:41 Stephen: But it's one of those things that even now for me, with a wife, with a baby, with work, I still find I'm just overly committed to things that I'm trying to say no to, but it's hard.
00:12:53 Matthew: Yeah. Do you ever worry that you'd get bored if there wasn't enough to do, if there wasn't enough opportunities and things to do, people to see, stuff to work on, things to create, activities, family, whatever?
00:13:06 Matthew: That's what I worry about sometimes, like, well, if I just clear my plate too great of an extent. I'll get bored. And my mind is very curious and I like being stimulated. I like being active and whatnot. Do you ever worry about that?
00:13:18 Stephen: Yeah, for sure. We're currently closing around. Actually, technically we closed the first part yesterday.
00:13:23 Matthew: Congrats.
00:13:24 Stephen: Thanks.
00:13:24 Matthew: Amazing.
00:13:25 Stephen: Huge weight lifted off my shoulders and we're closing the rest of the end of the month. But because we did the first part, I'm not worried about the second. And I mentioned that because one of the questions people ask is, "Oh, so what are your goals?" And I talk about how mission driven the company is and why I started it.
00:13:38 Stephen: And when they asked me what's next, I'm like, "Honestly, I just want to sit on a beach and relax with my wife. I just really want space. And I don't mean going on a short-term vacation. I mean having real, real space.
00:13:52 Stephen: And then the other part of me knows that by day three, I'll be like, "Okay, two days of piña coladas and toes in the sand and playing in the ocean is fun, but I just have that desire to create and build and be challenged and stuff like that." So it's funny you ask that.
00:14:07 Matthew: Yeah. You start to get itchy.
00:14:08 Stephen: Yeah.
00:14:08 Matthew: You start to get itchy. I want something to do. There's a point of too much vacation. I’ve certainly hit that at moments. I don't think I've ever in my life taken a month off. But then at some point, I don't know if it's some deeper underlying level of guilt for being away from normal routine, or if it's an aspect of wondering if I'm not as thoroughly enjoying the vacation or the time off experience as much as I should.
00:14:31 Matthew: Because as busy human beings, entrepreneurs especially, you only get so much time that you can allocate for non-working life, weekends and evenings aside. And I've always felt I really want to savor the time that I have away and really make sure I'm thoroughly enjoying it and that it's additive to my soul.
00:14:49 Matthew: And so sometimes I feel like if I'm away for too long that I start to not enjoy it as much as I feel like I should. And maybe that's just optimizing how and when to take time off.
00:14:59 Matthew: There's probably some happy medium so that you enjoy the time off and it's good for you, but you don't overextending it where like, "Ah, I just had five days at the beach. Do I really want a sixth?" Whereas if I get some cute beach days in the middle of winter later on a different trip, that'd be much more savored.
00:15:14 Stephen: Well, there's an interesting question around that because you've been an entrepreneur and a creator for at least as long as I've known you and probably 10 years before that. So let's call it 20 years. And how much of it is what we want and how much of it is just hardwired?
00:15:28 Stephen: We've trained ourselves that we're on the grind. We're building, we're creating, we're doing things. And having that 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th day is not actually gluttonous, but is actually an important part of unlearning the fact that there is a different way to live and move through the world.
00:15:44 Stephen: I'm the worst example of this. I barely take off one day on the weekend. And when I do, I'll probably take one full day off once every two months. And I'm like, "This is great. I gotta do this more." But then I'm like, "There's just so much to do. So much work to do."
00:15:56 Stephen: And it's exciting, especially on the weekend when I can do like thinking work. It's different than the weekdays when it's meeting, meeting, meeting. Maybe I'm projecting or maybe I'm trying to manifest something here for myself in terms of rethinking about work-life harmony and integration.
00:16:09 Matthew: Yeah. These are good questions. Not easy answers, but good questions. I find real joy when I'm able to most easily get into flow state working. It's sometimes during the work day, but oftentimes the work day feels like so much context switching so rapidly and manning the command station, especially being an entrepreneur, being a founder. Just so much flows in.
00:16:30 Matthew: You have to be such a generalist like, "All right. I'm going to dive into this spreadsheet and work on a financial model. And now I'm going to work on this deal. And now I'm going to put myself into creative mode for 30 minutes and work on something design related or whatnot.
00:16:41 Matthew: Now I need to think about our customers and marketing and write some copy. And I need to get back to my lawyer." And all these different things. And it's a lot of quick switching between a bunch of different tasks as they come in. And I think a very real situation in the modern world is dedicating enough time and space for deep work.
00:16:59 Matthew: And I think deep work is harder to come by these days. Before the immediately modern era where you were constantly peppered notifications and things that like you had more time and space for deep work. And now I think deep work is hard to find.
00:17:10 Matthew: And so I find nights that I'm working late is between 7 PM and 1 AM. Not that I work those hours all the time, but certain evenings I'll do it. And that's the time when I feel like anything is possible. I can just flow. Time goes away. I don't need to worry about when my next call is, my next meeting is.
00:17:31 Matthew: Time just goes away and I can just get in the zone and do whatever or what needs to be done or whatever I want to do. And I don't have to worry about when it needs to end or when I need to pull back out. I find that's very satisfying.
00:17:41 Matthew: And from other entrepreneurs I've talked to, it's that nighttime zone when the notifications generally stop and you can just get into flow, get into deep work mode, this unencumbered. Or it's like early morning for the morning people out there who wake up really early and can be in that liminal flow state before the official work day begins and emails, Slacks and texts and everything start coming in.
00:18:03 Stephen: For sure. For the evening stuff, do you drink anything? Do you take anything, anything to enhance your ability to work and think creatively and flow?
00:18:12 Matthew: Not with any regularity. I've generally toned down my caffeine consumption a few years ago. And so I feel just smoother because that's not so spiky energy wise. What about you? Do you find anything is really helpful?
00:18:24 Stephen: Yeah, for me, so I love working at night, but nowadays my life is pretty geared towards the mornings. So I block out the first up, until noon, I block out what used to be called priority one, which meant the most important thing for me to work on.
00:18:37 Stephen: I've changed it to now actually priority two, because it's helpful for me to remember my first priority is my wife and my son. Not that I ever forget that, but it's just that work can be so all consuming. So it makes me smile every morning when I see it, but I try not to book meetings.
00:18:50 Stephen: Now, the truth is I'd say that time is protected half of the days of the week, but the weekends in the morning is really when I can do that. Just take time. I write a state of the company that is just for my own internal thing. And it includes personal and leadership.
00:19:04 Stephen: So it touches company stuff, but also how I'm showing up in the world. And that's to me when the time disappears, when all of sudden it's like, "Oh my God. It's two o'clock in the afternoon." I started at seven and it's like, "What's going on here?" So I love that.
00:19:14 Stephen: But to your point, whether it's morning or evenings, and I don't drink anything at that point. I don't usually drink coffee till later in the day or take anything, but those mornings are really precious.
00:19:23 Matthew: Yeah. Whether unencumbered mornings or unencumbered nights, whichever fits with one's lifestyle and circadian rhythms. I think it's still the same idea. In some ways, it's like when we can get away from the busy-ness that we can do a different work that we can get in more flow where time goes away.
00:19:40 Matthew: And like you said, you started cranking at seven, and it's two. You probably thought, "Wow, I was super productive," but in an unencumbered focused way in the quote unquote "attention economy" where so many things are vying for your attention. It's so valuable to have that time and space.
00:19:55 Matthew: I'm curious. I'm not a father yet. Certainly aspire to be and looking forward to that. But other fathers that I speak with, especially who are entrepreneurs, and maybe you can relate to this, have described that as an entrepreneur, they were working so much all the time.
00:20:08 Matthew: And then they had a kid and by definition, having a kid just sapped, took away meaningful chunks of their time. And so it kind of compressed their working hours to a more constrained time periods because more responsibilities. You have a family.
00:20:25 Matthew: From what they've told me is that it's forced them to be even more efficient and very judicious with their time. And they don't necessarily feel less productive, even though they have less working time.
00:20:37 Matthew: It's just that they've been forced to really prioritize what to do when and to decide, "Okay, what's going to rise to the top and what's the best use of my time," due to that familially generated design constraint on one's time. I'm curious if you've experienced the same.
00:20:54 Stephen: Yeah. For sure. I don't feel more efficient per se in the things that I'm doing, which is a thing that happens. It's not like I can now do an hour's worth of work in 45 minutes or something like that. I'm more discerning. So if I cut out the extra random 30-minute meeting that I don't really need to do with a colleague and we can do it over Slack or we can do it over voice notes.
00:21:13 Stephen: Or like "Hey, can you talk to my friend? My friend would like to talk to you about so-and-so." And you want to be helpful, You want to pay things forward and whatever, but I also want to be there for my son.
00:21:21 Stephen: Happy to take a handful of those, but I can't do two, three, four of them a week anymore and stuff like that. So I think that's been a good forcing function of, "Do I really need to do this? Is this really going to move the needle?" So, yeah. It helps in that regard into helping clarify and crystallize what actually matters.
00:21:40 Matthew: Yeah. Tying back into Journey, for the larger enterprise that you work with, would you say the things that we're talking about tend to correlate pretty closely to the employee experiences of working life at say a Facebook, Disney, Nike, et cetera, or do they have different challenges? How unique to entrepreneurship is what we're talking about compared to the working experience of a large company employee from what you see?
00:22:05 Stephen: Yeah, I think everything we're talking about, is really about life. Whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a middle manager or whether this is your first job out of school or whether you're an executive, we have these demands. Some of it is what we put on ourselves. Some of it is what society puts on us. Some of it is what our families put on us.
00:22:22 Stephen: And human beings, we want a lot. And it's hard. It's an interesting experience being a human in many beautiful ways, in many challenging ways. And so you probably don't know this actually, because you and I haven't caught up in a minute, but we've expanded the offering quite a lot.
00:22:36 Stephen: So when we started, we started as a consumer meditation company, because meditation is the practice that changed my life. And then we added a whole bunch of other subclinical things like journaling and breathwork. Then we moved to B2B. That was a long time ago.
00:22:50 Stephen: It was about three years ago that we launched the clinical product that includes all the subclinical stuff. So how do we help people to build healthy habits and shift their behavior in a way that's just healthier and better for them?
00:23:03 Stephen: And we provide great clinical care. So, hey, those times when you do need a therapist, whether it's for yourself or a teenager, or you're taking care of an older parent or anything like that. And so the product range is really broad. Pet care, things like that.
00:23:18 Stephen: And we basically took this really old product called an EAP, an employee assistance program, which basically every company has. And we turned it on its head from being this reactive tool that sits on the internet and clicks deep to a proactive tool.
00:23:34 Stephen: In fact, the product is called Journey Proactive EAP as a first of its kind EAP that's designed to engage every employee every day, help people build healthy habits, shift the culture. And then when they need clinical care, it's there.
00:23:45 Stephen: So I say all this, one because, obviously, we've talked a little bit about work. But two is like all the stuff that you and I are talking about, it's just true to modern Western civilization, human experience. Family and work and stress and sleep and so many of those things. So I'd say we see that pretty much across the board.
00:24:04 Stephen: Now it looks different in different companies and for different people based on their life stage, their age, their race, their gender, their communities. But many of the things we're touching on are just part of the human experience.
00:24:16 Matthew: Totally. And then you have these different levels of the mental health experience that people are dealing with today. Sometimes I'll zoom out and really think about it. It's just wild to think about how much is stacked depending on different levels of how far you zoom out and consider it.
00:24:30 Matthew: You have your own immediate personal health, physical health, mental health, right? Then your familial well-being is another layer. Maybe your social context, social well-being. And then maybe your company. That's another stressor, another concern, especially as a leader.
00:24:46 Matthew: As a founder over the years, there's always this existential mantle, I think that a founder wears. You're ultimately responsible. You're responsible for the company, responsible to your shareholders and investors, responsible to your employees, you're responsible to your customers, et cetera.
00:24:58 Matthew: You want to keep it alive. You want to keep it going. And it's not always clear that it will stay alive. And that is a deep existential stress that just is always there, is always just smoldering in the background. And I think that is the blessing and the curse that we put ourselves through as founders.
00:25:13 Matthew: But then on top of that, especially in today's world, you have existential concerns of our current political climate and the strife that we're all experiencing and being dragged through there.
00:25:26 Matthew: Literally today, especially, tariff Palooza. Every few hours, it's something different and it's also hard to know. And it feels like this existential crisis of what's going to happen with the economy. Is it going to be okay? It's not going to be okay.
00:25:37 Matthew: If it's not going to be okay, how quickly is it not going to be okay? That's a whole other existential stressor. And then you have the environmental crisis. You have AI concerns.
00:25:46 Matthew: You have questions a lot of people are facing now, but is Western civilization and democracy and our whole kind of way of doing this and capitalism as a system like, is that under threat? Is that the best system? Is that going to survive? And what ways?
00:25:59 Matthew: And so there's all of these layers of existential stress on us and as humans, we're not built to consider and have to deal with so many different factors at such different scales from the intimately personal to the super, super macro civilization wide concerns.
00:26:16 Matthew: But I think those are the inputs that we're being fed and that we interface with every single day. And it's a lot to handle. I mean, I'm impressed with humanity's tenacity to not all just be constantly freaked out all the time due to all of these threats and concerns and stresses and anxieties.
00:26:34 Matthew: That we can still love each other, that we can still smile, we can still find joy, that we can still dance, that we can still enjoy simple moments, that we can continue in the day to day and keep plotting along and not all be depressed and anxious all the time. I think there's something in our souls and our spirits and in our biology that allows us to keep going despite all the craziness happening around us.
00:26:54 Stephen: I think that's right. Going back to what I said before, I think it's an interesting experience being a human being dealing with all the external factors, wars all over the place and lots of uncertainty around everything.
00:27:08 Stephen: No matter what side of the aisle you're on, whether it's the environment or it's these people are after you or the world is so polarized or you turn on your phone and I'm not even on social media and all of sudden you're getting fed, "Here's a video of a teenager getting run over by a train." And you're like, "Wait, what? Like what? I just wanted to see what the score of the Knicks game was. What's going on here?"
00:27:25 Stephen: And then on top of it, you have the internal thing of just being a human, of being tired, of being sad, of having to deal with all the things that go with that experience. Plus your genetics, however you're wired. That's why for me, meditation has been so game-changing because it's allowed me to have a little bit more clarity about my experience.
00:27:44 Stephen: People often think about meditation as a thing to calm you down, which it can do, and it does help you with that. But for me, it was really about actually almost like waking up where I had more clarity. I was able to live life more fully to see things more clearly and colorfully.
00:28:03 Stephen: And I think it doesn't really matter whether it's meditation or prayer or being in nature or, something that I know you're obviously super passionate about, being in community. But having some type of reflecting practice, those are the things that should be taught in school.
00:28:20 Stephen: Maybe they are nowadays. But I know when you and I went to school, you have to memorize the planets and the dinosaurs. And cool. Great. But how do I work with this funky biology that I was given? How do I compassionately show up for other people as well as myself? How do I love myself fully?
00:28:37 Stephen: So meditation and other contemplative practices like that have really taught me a lot of that stuff, which is why I'm so passionate about it, which is why, like for me, making Goldman Sachs more profitable doesn't really list highly on my life goals.
00:28:50 Stephen: But helping a dad at Goldman Sachs to show up to be more present for his kids or the mom to have less shame around working while being a mom. That's pretty cool. That inspires me.
00:29:01 Stephen: And then because we're able to do that, then of course, what comes out of that is people are better at work. They make better decisions. They're happier. They're more efficient. They're more effective. They're more productive. And so the byproduct is the companies are well served. But really, it's the how do we help people to navigate life a little bit better?
00:29:19 Matthew: And it's a beautiful thing. And ultimately, we think about it, the macro kerfuffles and seemingly insurmountable challenges that we deal with as a country, as a world, a species, at the end of the day, they all really come down to how we interact and interface with ourselves and with each other.
00:29:39 Matthew: And so at the end the day, the more that we can exude empathy and warmth and kindness and love to everyone that we interact with as a default, including ourselves, if we all had better treatment of ourselves and each other, I think a lot of these macro problems would not be as problematic and would be alleviated.
00:29:58 Matthew: It all boils down to those really personal elements of how we're showing up, how we're managing or regulating our emotions or behaviors and attitudes and how those interact. That's ultimately what creates society and the economy and companies and politics, all of it.
00:30:13 Matthew: And so fixing some of those innermost levers is obviously the solution to a lot of this. We have to do that if we want to succeed as a species and a civilization. We have to continually work on and develop and make progress in our deepest inner mental workings.
00:30:31 Stephen: Yeah. Amen. Absolutely.
00:30:33 Matthew: There's a few final questions in a speed round that is highly traditional here on the Venture Everywhere podcast. So, first off, a book, newsletter, podcast that you love.
00:30:43 Stephen: The book that I really, really love is The Untethered Soul. I recommend that to everybody. I've read it multiple times. I probably should read it again. It's just beautiful and super duper helpful.
00:30:53 Matthew: Beautiful. Yes. Great rec. And if you could live anywhere in the world for a year, beach or no beach, where would it be?
00:31:00 Stephen: Oh, man. I want to move to Hawaii. I just want to live in the middle of nowhere with my wife and my son, maybe a dog or something. I don't know. It sounds fun, but Hawaii all day, every day.
00:31:09 Matthew: Amazing. Good choice. Favorite productivity hack.
00:31:12 Stephen: Hack is an interesting term, but I'll go with what I said before, blocking out a lot of time for the most important thing. I found that to be very, very helpful, even when sometimes it gets cut into having that block, especially in the morning, to do creative thinking. That's money, or at night, if that's where your energy goes.
00:31:29 Matthew: Right. Yeah. I think given our conversation hack, it feels like breaking the system. Everything we're talking about is healing the system and breathing life into areas that deserve love and attention in terms of our mental and physical wellbeing.
00:31:41 Stephen: Yeah. And I would say, to your point, break it. How do you live in harmony and flow with it versus do this jagged thing?
00:31:48 Matthew: Totally. More of that mentality, especially in tech, especially in the working world is a good thing. How do you unwind when stressed?
00:31:55 Stephen: Yeah. I cuddle with my wife. For me, physical touch. I'm not talking sexual. I'm just talking just physical human touch. I feel everything just calms down from like, "I'm all in my head, a million things, decisions, Slack messages this, text, WhatsApp, blah, blah." And all of sudden everything's just quiet. It's like, oh. So that's my go-to.
00:32:15 Matthew: Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Sometimes, just nonverbal closeness and touch is worth so many words. You could have a whole hour long conversation about something, but just physically being close to something, deeply, deeply human about that, that I think our souls need. And then last, where can listeners find you?
00:32:33 Stephen: I'm in the West Village. It's funny. I'm so bad on social media. Although my team has been encouraging me to post much more on LinkedIn. So I know that's such a boring corporate answer, but I don't have a Substack or anything cool like that, but I'm on LinkedIn.
00:32:46 Stephen: I do have a podcast called The Mental Health Advantage, same name as the book, where I'm interviewing really thoughtful HR leaders on how they're supporting their employees and themselves. I write for Forbes. I write a piece like once every month or two, mainly about mental health and mental health in the workplace. So I'd say those are the main places.
00:33:04 Matthew: Cool. That's great. And those are Stephen with P-H and Sokoler is S-O-K-O-L-E-R.
00:33:11 Stephen: Yes. And the name of the company is Journey, which is not to be confused with the band. And the website is journey.live. L-I-V-E.
00:33:19 Matthew: Very good. And folks, you can find me. I'd say largely Instagram and LinkedIn would be the two main places. On LinkedIn, you can just search. But I think my username is M-O Brimer, M-O-B-R-I-M-E-R. And on Instagram, it's just Brimer, B-R-I-M-E-R. I try to get better by posting on those platforms, but it takes some work sometimes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
00:33:39 Stephen: I would think you have a good Instagram. I know this is just audio, but you have really excellent taste in art and eclectic style. And I would think your Instagram would be a fun place for inspiration and bringing moments of joy to people.
00:33:51 Matthew: Thank you. I think so. Amazing. Well, Stephen, this is a pleasure. I think we could talk for hours, but this is a great convo. So we'd love to do it again sometime.
00:33:59 Stephen: Yeah.
00:34:00 Matthew: All best to you. Well, thanks everyone for listening and we will see you again soon.
00:34:04 Stephen: Thanks, everybody.
00:34:05 Matthew: All right. Thanks, Stephen. Talk soon.
00:34:07 Stephen: Thanks, Matt. All right. Bye.
00:34:09 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.
Read more from Stephen Sokoler in Founders Everywhere.