Warren Shaeffer is a 3x company co-founder, a 3x human co-founder, and a 1st generation American. He's currently the CEO and Co-founder of Knowable, a venture-backed audio platform whose mission is to unlock billions of hours of learning time in order to help more people achieve their potential. Warren joins The Audacity to Fail to discuss how he balances life and work, wins and losses, performance pressure, and how being kind to yourself is essential to avoiding burnout.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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(Below is a transcript of the episode. Too maintain the authenticity and flow of the conversation, it has only been lightly edited to help with content; however, because it was an unscripted conversation, grammatical errors will exist in the text.)

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JQ Sirls: We are back with The Audacity to Fail podcast, hosted by myself, JQ Sirls. The Audacity to Fail is a podcast about designing your life so that great things can happen in your career, in your business, in your family, and in your personal life despite failure. We got a special guest today. So, let’s get started.

You guys, we are here with The Audacity to Fail podcast, and I'm really excited today. We are interviewing someone who actually, I personally met, maybe like a month or two ago officially. You know how you just get somebody with a really good vibe? That's Warren. So, Warren, would you say... you always call yourself the co-founder of Knowable. Are you the CEO or just, you're just "co-founder" and keep it that way?

Warren Shaeffer: Both. Co-founder and CEO. 

JQ Sirls: Both. Okay. Founder and CEO of Knowable. Knowable is a first of its kind audio learning platform and library of original expert-led audio courses. It's an immersive screen-free learning experience that helps you get inspired, learn new things, and accomplish your personal and professional goals. You guys, Knowable is dope. I actually found out about Knowable long before I met Warren from the startup courses, which I actually still listen to.

I still go to and check in on it and I've even started other Knowable courses. And I still find myself halfway through going back to the startup one and not finishing the new ones. Cause it's just--it's that good. So I really appreciate it. Thanks for being on the show, man.

Warren Shaeffer: Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

JQ Sirls: Yeah, man.

Warren Shaeffer: I love the name of the podcast.

JQ Sirls: I appreciate that. I actually came up with the name Audacity to Fail because failure is actually one of the things I've been really passionate about in this space of 'the fear to start,' but sometimes, even if you talk about starting or going into a dream, the truth is that in every road, you're going to fail multiple times. It's inevitable. So really, you have to be okay with failure, more so than fearing starting. You're going to fail. It's going to happen. So are you okay with that? 

Warren Shaeffer: not failing, you're not doing something right.

JQ Sirls: Exactly. And, and also, I kind of wanted it to be the human side to hustle. That's what I really wanted to talk about, because a lot of times, if you've seen it lately, it almost makes you feel embarrassed if you're not trying hard enough, even if you're doing okay. Everybody on social media is if you're not hustling if you're not doing this, if you're not, if you're not, if you're not, if you're not, and next thing you know, you're getting burnt out before you try because you keep feeling like you're not enough.

So I kind of wanted this to be about that. I actually wanted to start off, just get straight to one of the questions, and that is. I wanted to know about you. Who was Warren?

What do you like doing? What is it that you do every day that's purely human? That doesn't involve work? That's a bunch of questions in one.

Warren Shaeffer: I mean, I think that's a great question, and I want to take some time to think about it. What do I do every day? That's human. That's not about work. You know, what I, the answer that comes to mind that I think is really human, is that I struggle every day to figure out what to prioritize and how to make the most of each day.

And I think that everyone does that, no matter where you are in life, you're still kind of trying to figure out your, I think so many people are making it up as they go on. So I know I am.

JQ Sirls: Yeah. They always say you, you can only they say you, you only know the steps backward, but you don't know the steps forward. Anyone who just thinks they just know what tomorrow brings or what today is going to bring is totally lying. Or they're an X-Men. 

Warren Shaeffer: Think That's right. Yeah. That makes sense. You can't control everything.

JQ Sirls:  So Knowable I read off Knowable. I did the whole bio of what you guys have online, but how would you describe it as the person who created it? What's your true passion underneath it? Where do you want to go with it?

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. I started Knowable to solve a personal problem, which was, I became a father and had less and less free time, but I wanted to keep learning. And when you have compressed time, you really want to hear the best thoughts from the smartest people, right? The people who can, who can have the biggest impact.

And so, unfortunately, I didn't have time for long video courses. There's a lot of great video of courses out there. But I wanted something that I could take with me through the world as I moved through the world. So doing dishes or going for a run, and, and really realized that there wasn't anything like that.

And I've always been a fan of audiobooks and, more recently, podcasts, but the idea was basically to take the best of podcasts and audiobooks, books, and e-learning platforms, and really reinvent how somebody can make the most of their audio time and actually learn something useful every day. Ideally, personal frustration, and I was lucky enough to team up with my co-founder and bring it to life.

JQ Sirls: Yeah, man. I gotta say Knowable has been quite life-changing for me. It actually helped me launch my startup, Pocketale. It actually helped me get started. I totally thank you because that was the confidence boost. With the Knowable course, it was so many people bringing their ideas, and it felt like I was, I felt like I was in a room with people who were on the journey with me, even though they've already been there and they're teaching you, it just, it felt more like a community that I was listening in on than it was that I was just listening to an audiobook. 

Did you always want to be an entrepreneur, and if not, when did you make that decision?

Warren Shaeffer: I had the classic kind of first business being a lemonade stand experience. But I didn't know. I didn't; I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. I've always been guilty of having more interest than time. And so it was, it was hard for me to kind of pick one, one path. But what I like about being an entrepreneur is that, you get to exercise so many different parts of your brain.

And, and so I spent some years after college, I studied political science in college. I spent some years working in finance and left that and I moved to LA to be closer to family. There were really two things that were, were most interesting to me. One was the idea of writing for TV. And the other one was to start my own company and did not go down the TV route. And here I am.

JQ Sirls: you still might, man. You still might. So I saw you did on how to another company will VidMe, but it seemed like everybody with Knowable was with VidMe. Like it's kind of the pivot.

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. Yeah. So my co-founder Alex and I, we started this company. He did me and that video platform, the scale to over 25 million monthly users. And. Yeah. And Giphy ended up acquiring that, but we, the team, didn't go to Giphy. We kind of worked as advisors, but Alex and I, and a couple of other people from, from VidMe started Knowable together.

JQ Sirls: That's cool, man. That's cool. Have you ever felt burnout and if so, how did you confront it?

Warren Shaeffer: Definitely. Yes. I have three kids, almost under four, and I've thrown up because [Knowable] is venture-backed, very high expectations. So yeah, I've definitely, definitely had periods of, you know, high enthusiasm and then periods where I felt like things weren't working and low on energy, and It's tough. It's really hard.

I think a lot of people try to sprint through life and that's not sustainable. Healthcare is so important and having routines is so important and it's easier said than done.

JQ Sirls: Yeah. How was, how was 2020 for you? Cause I mean, 2020 I felt was the burnout year and it happened for me. Honestly, the creation of this podcast is really the healing from burnout for me. How was 2020 for you?

Warren Shaeffer: How do you define burnout?

JQ Sirls: How do I define it? That's good. I define burnout as... When I start to feel robotic, when I start feeling less human, and you start to get angry at the idea of doing the things you love because it just, it feels too much, almost to the point of depression. It can get you there.

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah, for sure. That's good; I like the "when you become more of a robot than a human."

JQ Sirls: Yeah, yeah,

Warren Shaeffer: The best thing I did for myself or for my career so far is it's about 18 months ago. I started working with an executive coach, and I'm really lucky to be able to do that. I'm lucky that we're, we're a venture backed company and we can afford to pay somebody else to give me lessons.

But. Basically, I think it's the alcoholic anonymous, right? Like the first step is admitting that you have a problem. Admitting that, "Hey, I'm not doing this perfectly. And I could use some help." I think coaching is something that more and more people are going to do. It's why not? If you can. And my hope is that it becomes more accessible to more people because having someone on your side who's trying -- whose job it is to help you optimize your performance. It is really powerful.

JQ Sirls: Kind of career therapy. Occupational therapy.

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, athletes have coaches. Why shouldn't everyone else?

JQ Sirls: Yeah, that's actually really, I didn't even know that that was a thing until just now.

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. It's growing in popularity. 

JQ Sirls: Yeah, man. So tell us about any failures that you're comfortable to talk about as far as with. Maybe career, maybe what there's with life, the storms that you faced. The, one of the things I talked about in the first podcast, I mentioned that people should kind of go for their dreams, not the dream that they love the most, but the storm that they're willing to handle because every dream has a storm. And if you're not willing to handle what it takes to go through the storm of that dream, then maybe you shouldn't go into it because you'll stay in the storm. And so, when I think of Knowable, I think of something that definitely probably had its storms. Are there any that are okay to talk about in the space of others, listening to kind of grow from that journey that you faced?

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah, there are a lot. I mean, I think every startup goes through challenges and especially venture-backed ones where the goal is to basically go to the moon, right? 

JQ Sirls: Become a billion-dollar company in two years.

Warren Shaeffer: The bar is extremely high, right? And what some might view as a good business with a good outcome is a bad outcome for a venture business. Right. So, we have a really noble mission, right? We want to help more people build the habit of, of daily learning. What we're struggling with. Like a lot of startups has growth is how do we grow faster? Because we didn't build virality into the DNA of our product and looking back, honestly, that was a mistake. And, and it's something that we're, we're trying to address and trying to do it quickly, but under the banner of decreasing runway. Right. And so actually, something that I was public about in December was. I let go of half of my team. I over-hired. And I incorrectly forecast our growth and I had five really difficult conversations with people who didn't deserve to lose their jobs. Just a couple months ago.

JQ Sirls: Yeah. I actually saw that tweet and I thought that that was really powerful and I definitely felt for you, but then your transparency was also something that inspired me greatly. Because it's that transparency that I think even the team members who are gone can just be like, "He's not that person that just swept me under a rug, you know, you, you definitely acknowledged that I was part of the team." And then you mentioned kind of, you know, helping them maybe find other places that they can come to from that. So I thought that that was really strong. But that's, again, that's something, that's one of those kinds of inevitabilities you're going to there's some people you're just in a startup, it just may have to happen, unfortunately.

Warren Shaeffer: I mean, I don't think that one's an inevitable, I think too many startups. I think, you know, the mistake I made and I think a mistake that a lot of startups make is they hire in anticipation of growth, instead of hiring... you kind of want to hire when you almost after you think you have to. I

JQ Sirls: Like back being forced like you, you like, at this point you just kind of have to get somebody 

Warren Shaeffer: You have to do 

JQ Sirls: Somebody has to take on that load.

Warren Shaeffer: It looks, this is the, this is the tension between being a venture-backed company and maybe a bootstrap company is you're, you're really trying to stay ahead of competition and you're trying to define a market. And so there is that temptation to just hire and be an optimist. And look, sometimes that's the right strategy and sometimes it's not.

So I, I don't think we can make a hard and fast rule about it, but I think you can have a venture-backed startup and not go through layoffs. Certainly.

JQ Sirls: Of course, of course, of course. I think of it like you probably can get to that stage and, most shouldn't, you know, but it's one of those things that walking in, as we say, it's like walking in, things could happen and just, I would say, have the character to face it when it does.

And, and, and that's. Why I actually asked you to be on this podcast was because of the way that you faced. Like literally the way that you faced it, was something that I think people could learn from, because normally you want, like you hide from it and you faced it. 

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah, so many people like messaged me and said, wow, that was so brave. Right. And I think that's a real shame that that's a sign of bravery because because we're living in a society where people are being really fake. Right. Where people are saying or only sharing the good things that happen or the ups and not the downs, and that's hurtful to everyone. And, you know, part of the reason why I'm so excited about Knowable is, is we're a company whose mission is to basically help more people share their knowledge. And the truest knowledge is the knowledge of both the ups and the downs. And so my attempt in that tweet and that, that thread and talking about it publicly now is, you know, look, everyone. Every entrepreneur has their struggles and whether it's burnout or not hitting growth targets or whatever it might be. There's a long list of issues that happen to pretty much every startup. You need to know that's okay. And success. Isn't just about outcomes. It's about how do you handle adversity, and another founder friend who runs another venture-backed startup told me. "I feel like a loser," because his startup wasn't growing fast enough. And I thought I look at this person from the outside. I think this person has done multiple startups. They've been successful. They're an interesting person. And I think so many people carry around this sense of failure because they tie so much of it to outcome.

And, just because you aren't "successful today" doesn't mean that you're not on the path to success. And I think that really what defines success is how you do you get back up from setbacks and do you learn from them? And do you keep trying?

JQ Sirls: It's interesting when you say success because I've been thinking about this, somebody wants, and it was in a Facebook post, but he said I'm more successful than you. And when I thought about that sentence, I think that it's impossible for someone to be more successful than the other. You can have more money, you can have more contacts, but success is so personally attainable. It's a personal goal. So, I mean, I think about it, it is the journey of how far you've come. So I experienced success every single day from, you know, my son learning new words from, designing a new mock for my startup.

There's all these things that quantify success every single day also a failure. To say I'm not successful enough. I feel like it's disrespecting your journey. Like it's literally disrespecting how far you've come, because it's like, are you, you're literally putting down this entire journey to learn what you've learned, and it's just like, no, "I'm not there yet." And it's like, what?

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. 

JQ Sirls: You know, You have to appreciate it.

Warren Shaeffer: I completely agree. JQ. I think that really the best thing to do is just focus on measuring yourself relative to yourself, right? As are you progressing as a person and stop looking at everyone else.

JQ Sirls: Oh my goodness.

Warren Shaeffer: It's a recipe for disaster, right? It's hard to, it's hard to not do, though. Right? It's so easy to get caught up in the scrolling of success feeds and compare yourself and...

JQ Sirls: That's the next point I was actually going to get to was hustle fatigue. In 2020, I started to feel it. And that's honestly what led to my burnout. There was a post that was going through social media. It said that in 2020, if you didn't, if you didn't create a new company and take advantage of that time, that you weren't a hustler. You saw that post? It was going around. It was, it was, it went viral for awhile. And that made me so angry. Because I was thinking about all the people who are just trying to maintain their sanity.

Now they're reading this post and then now saying "Oh, that break that you took from your startup or from your dream to take care of your mom or to take care of your family or to deal with COVID... [to themselves] now I'm not a hustler now I'm not good enough?" And then you had people like, I'm not going to call them out, but you had these influential people who people look up to sharing the same thing.

For me, it affected me. Then it made me upset. And I was like, I wonder how many people are going to look at this and go, "I'm not good enough." Immediately, just, "I'm not good enough" and stop. And, and I thought about that. 

And now I look at clubhouse. I actually have a clubhouse membership and actually paused clubhouse for a while because clubhouse became that. It was just kind of like this, this, you know, you're not successful. And then you're in this room that you can't even raise your hand in and talking, you're just listening to these famous, wealthy people, tell you what their hustle was.

Warren Shaeffer: How they made. How their inheritance helped them. 

JQ Sirls: And how rich they are, and they're giving away money. And then you're going, what, and you immediately, I started to feel like... As a listener in the room "I probably would never get to the point where I talk in this room and..."

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah,

JQ Sirls: It was a deep 'keeping up with the Joneses' to where I deleted the clubhouse app, I had to delete it for me. I mean, I think it's okay. But it was unhealthy for me at the time where I was like, okay. I started to feel like I'm not good enough and things. I was like, okay, let me back out. What do I, what do you think about hustle fatigue as I was getting to, it was like your, your thoughts on that exact same kind of process. Do you see it?

Warren Shaeffer: Totally. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I got, I had somebody, some founder, DM me who was like 24 and you just felt like a total failure. He was like, I feel, I mean, I could just hear the depression and the tweet on the DM. It was just like, "I feel like I'm a total failure because I'm not going to return my investors money."

And I was like, Oh, You have to go easy on yourself. And I, I think a word every year I started this practice, I don't know, five or six years ago. And it's so helpful to me because in, in 2020 that my word for the year was kind, and the etymology of that, the root of that is kindred or friend.

And the idea was I wanted to treat more people who I interacted with as friends and especially to treat myself as a friend, because I think a lot of people, especially ambitious people, they have a persona inside their head, which is a critic and someone who's basically telling them you're not good enough.

And that's what drives them and drives their ambition. And in some ways that's great. And in other ways it can be extremely disruptive. And so you have to find that balance. And there's this distinction between being nice and being kind right. And I think nice is short-term pleasant, don't think that's what you want to be.

I think you want to be kind to yourself, right? So it doesn't mean, Hey, here's a bag of Cheetos and you know, go binge Netflix. It's, "Hey, I know what you're capable of, but you also human and you need to take care of yourself." That's what a friend would do, right? And a friend would say, "Hey, maybe you haven't met your definition of success yet. But that doesn't mean that you're a failure." That's what a friend would say. So talking to yourself like a friend is such a great way to shift your internal dialogue to be not just gentler to yourself and healthier, but also more productive.

JQ Sirls: Yeah, that's great. Being kind. That is going to be the tweet from this episode. I saw a lot of tweets from you where you talk about having the hesitation to send like you and me. Like, I wrote this whole thing, I wrote this other thing and I have the hesitation to send. How did you overcome that courage?

Right. Right. And then are there any tweets that you actually did delete, like right after you hit send, you were like, okay, no, no, no, not this one.

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely did delete it.

JQ Sirls: Okay. So, tell me about that process, right? Like when you're just, when you're fighting yourself, is it, is it about judgment potentially, or is it about embarrassment or what, what is it?

Warren Shaeffer: Yeah. I mean, I think the best tweets, the tweets that I liked the best. They really... what I, what I think is so powerful about Twitter, is you can kind of tell when somebody is saying something to promote themselves, or when somebody is saying something to be genuinely helpful. Right. And the past tweets, I think, are the ones where you share some genuine knowledge and you're, it's really, you're just giving right. You're not... there's no ask.

It's just, "here's this thing that's going to be useful to somebody else." So those are the tweets that I find are easiest to give, to press on. The hardest ones that I have are where I feel like I'm making an ask or being self-promotional. Those are harder for me, or just, or I think, I think certainly there's the impulse to try to be like negative or snarky or quippy. And I think those, those things are just... those don't add a lot of value, so I try to stay away from  

JQ Sirls: I look at some of the things that you've done and there's things that you have done where they might be promotional that I've seen, but look at what you're promoting. You were still promoting help. You created something that is helping people. So every time you promote it, it is help, man. It is. I got three more questions. So the first of the three, what is your personal, why? Like right. I mean, it, it may deal with things with Knowable, but I know that you also have kids, so there may be a legacy you want to leave for them, maybe with your wife. Like, what's your why?

Warren Shaeffer: I think everyone. Has a certain amount of potential. And my goal is to realize mine, right? I feel very fortunate. I've been very lucky in many ways. And I think it's still evolving, but when I think of what legacy I want to leave is that I help other people realize their potential too. And. Realize that people have more potential than they often think that they do in any given moment.

So that, that for me is really important is to think about how to lift up others and collectively, and that part of that's, you know, the knowledge sharing the idea of sharing knowledge. The idea of being honest about vulnerabilities is this idea of helping people realize that they have a lot of potentials. And even if there are setbacks and failures or "failures" that, that it's often just a stepping stone on the path to greater success and greater realization of one's potential

JQ Sirls: Yeah, I like that, man. What is your favorite Knowable course?

Warren Shaeffer: I listened to a course recently Narrative Fundamentals by Jose Older. And it's just a one hour course, but he's, he's a writer and he's written several, several books and It was just such a great distillation of storytelling. And I loved everything about that course. You know, the idea of how do you create a story and, and when you think of your own life as a story, it, it helps you make decisions better too.

So I liked that course, but I've learned a lot from a lot of courses. And, you know, actually the reason why I started being more public on Twitter is I took a course called Branding for Founders. And there was a big insight from that one, which is that people care more about following people than they do about following brands. And that was when I made a decision to be more personal, to put myself out there and share more of my story. So there, there were a lot.

JQ Sirls: Yeah, w we're definitely gonna put that into the newsletter. So we'll send the newsletter, I'll put all the links out, and I also want to put your top five books. So you guys head over to theaudacitytofail.com, and it'll be a transcript of this conversation and also a few links to his favorite courses and my favorite courses. I actually have a course on Knowable coming and Make Better Picture Books and that's going to be fun. And and that way you guys can kind of check it out and then take some courses. So the last thing, the very last question that I have, what are some really good resources that you have found personally to deal with the fear of failure? It could be a book. It could be a podcast. It could be a TV show.

Warren Shaeffer: Honestly, the thing that I most grateful for is when other people share their stories of failure, when other people who seem successful humanized the fact that they have failed time and time again, and that that's not what they're known for. Right. They're known for the thing that they were successful in.

So in that, you see that happen. I mean, I think even things like celebrities who admit that they've had depression or challenges. Just even that is so helpful to the world, right? Because it taking away the veneer and the Photoshopping and exposing people as just real humans as is what makes us better. I mean, books, books have always also been the source of the greatest fount of knowledge. So I'm a big reader and bibliophile, and I love books.

JQ Sirls: So it's kind of like figuring out that this person who you look up to is part of the same community that you're in. 

Warren Shaeffer: Totally. We're all human. We're all just figuring it out as we go, yeah. You know, more luck and a little bit better systems and, yeah.

JQ Sirls: I have a friend who's a music producer, and he's, and he said that he got to be in the studio with a very famous producer, like music producer and he, and he watched this famous music producer who he admired make the worst beat he's ever heard. And when he did it, he was like, Oh my goodness. He said, "I was so inspired because I make bad beats all the time."

So he said, he said if by hearing this guy make a bad beat, that means that if he can make a bad beat, as bad as I make them, then I can make a good beat as good as he makes them. And when he said that my jaw hit the ground, I was like, that's a really great way to look at that.

Warren Shaeffer: I love that.

JQ Sirls: Yeah. I thought that was great, man.

To the listeners listening to who are afraid to start, who are consumed with worry, consumed with everything that can get in their way to start? What would you say to them as a person going through it and a person who's also seen the other side a couple of times?

Warren Shaeffer: The thing that people will regret most in their life as to things that they didn't do, right. When they knew... when their gut was telling them, "This is what you want, this is your dream. Your dream is on the other side of this fear," and they didn't go for it. That is what is going to haunt you. Not whether you tried and didn't get it.

I think just understanding that. Setbacks and adversities are normal. And that, that's how you learn; that the learning is in the doing, not in the reading or the hearing, the clubhouse stories. Right. 

JQ Sirls: The journey is really where the success is. The journey is really where it is and if, and I would even say, if you're dealing with something and you're saying, everything could go wrong.

I would say it like this. Imagine everything hasn't gone wrong. It went wrong. Everything could go wrong. It's going, let's say, just it's going to happen and say, you know what, I'm going to start this dream and everything that could possibly go wrong, it's going to happen. What that really says to everyone is that you can survive the fall.

Imagine yourself falling and know that you're going to get right back up and keep it going. And then that space, all you did was learn something that you can take for the next dream or continue the dream you're on.

Warren Shaeffer: Totally, totally. I think the fact that you can learn from an experience and then pick yourself back up and apply it going forward is what a lot of people forget, right? That your first time surfing, you're going to look like a fool, but you're gonna, you're going to get better and better. And people mistake their kind of day, one experience for their day three 65 experience. And I think that's a big fallacy,

JQ Sirls: Being married. I'm like, I always think as a husband, I fail all the time because I've never done this before. I've never had a marriage before, so everything I'm gonna do right now, I mean, I probably way more than I do good because I don't have a preexisting experience. My son, he's my firstborn.

I'm pretty sure I screw up a lot, and I hope he's not jacked up by the time he's an adult. I really... I believe in my wife, I believe in this marriage, I believe in my son. So, fail forward. Hopefully, he remembers the good things versus the bad things.

Warren Shaeffer: I'm sure. You know, it's so much about how you handle the bad things too, right? Then do you admit mistakes and just own it and not try to pretend that you're infallible because no one is perfect.

JQ Sirls: I think that's probably the biggest fallacy, right. Is pretending that the failures didn't happen. Pretending that nothing happened, then there's nothing to learn. It's not a professor at that point.

Warren Shaeffer: It was boring. Boring. If you do everything right?

JQ Sirls: That's true. That's true.

Warren Shaeffer: Quote from this race car driver that, "If things seem to be under control, you're, you're just not going fast enough." So, yeah. Okay. It's okay to make mistakes and learn. And no one is perfect and, you know, marriages and parenting, but that's another area where it's really easy to compare your, your firsthand experience with someone else's, you know, the outside experiences of what you're seeing from someone else.

And every relationship has its challenges. Well, that doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong, you know.

JQ Sirls: Probably massive fights that are, that are near divorce and happened to the best couples you've ever seen. And you find out that they were so close.

Warren Shaeffer: Especially with kids. So I think everyone could, you know, it's okay to be kind to yourself.

JQ Sirls: Kindness. That's the word? Kindness. So. Warren, thank you so much for being on this episode. I'm really hoping that a lot of people can get something from it. And you guys, again, head over to theaudacitytofail.com. They're going, gonna have a transcript. It's going to be a bunch of links again. And you guys, I have a course coming on Knowable too. So there will be a link in there. I'm really excited about that now before I end, do you have any questions for me?

Warren Shaeffer: No. Just thank you so much for having me on the show. I have to hop, unfortunately. Sorry. I would love to talk with you more. But I will. We'll talk more over email.

JQ Sirls: Have a good one, man. Thank you so much

Warren Shaeffer: Thank you. Thanks for the chat. 

JQ Sirls: Later.

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Warren’s Recommended Books

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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Autobiography of Ben Franklin by Ben Franklin

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning

Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

Recommended Knowable Course

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Narrative Fundamentals

Branding for Founders

Make Better Picture Books

Business Coaching 

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High Rise

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Notes from Warren

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What if you replaced your inner critic with an inner friend?  Also, Knowable is launching free cohort based lessons starting next week. So it's a great time to join! https://knowable.fyi