Episode 211: Calm over Crazy with Jason Fried

Sherry interviews Jason Fried of Basecamp, about some of the ways his remote company helps team members connect with each other. They also discuss other topics including burnout, sleep, what does calm mean to him, and how he has maintained a long term business partnership. Love this conversation? Check out Jason’s latest book. It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. Want more content like this? Check out our book. Episode transcript: Rob Walling: In this week’s episode of ZenFounder, Sherry interviews none other than Jason Fried of Basecamp. It’s a really good interview. Sherry talks to Jason about all manner of things ranging from family life, to building a company slowly and deliberately. One thing that I really like about Jason is just how genuine he is. He really doesn’t have anything to hide. I met him for the first time in person at MicroConf just a few months ago. And I was struck by just how normal he is given his amazing success with Basecamp and his numerous New York Times bestsellers and everything he’s accomplished in his life. We just had a conversation about life, and about kids and family, and where we lived and just normal day to day things. And I liked that he was real and that carried on to the stage. I hosted a moderated Q&A where I asked him questions about his history in growing Basecamp and what he thinks of bootstrapping today, and all kinds of stuff. And he just answered the questions. That sounds so simple, but so much of the time when you are around people who have had success, especially in certain circles, I’ll say startup circles are notorious for this. People are puffing up their chests and they’re saying things that make them look good, or they come up with this, you know, a theory so that they can name it after themselves or something. Or you see someone on a panel and you know that their business isn’t doing great and they’re saying all these things like they know everything. That’s not what MicroConf is about, and B, that’s not what Jason was about at all. He was just about talking from his experience, and that’s something that I really respect about him and others who I know who are successful, but they let their success talk for them. They don’t sit there and trumpet it themselves. And so with that, let’s get started with the interview. I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. Sherry Walling: Welcome to the ZenFounder podcast. This is a place where we have conversations about mental health and entrepreneurship. We have a pretty broad conceptualization of what mental health means. Sometimes depression, anxiety, sometimes relationships or physical health. The goal here is to bring some calm into the crazy rollercoaster of ups and downs that is life for many entrepreneurs. I’m your host, I’m Dr. Sherry walling. I’m a clinical psychologist and an entrepreneur, married to an entrepreneur, live in the world of entrepreneurs, and I’m so pleased that you have joined us for this conversation. Sherry Walling: So, I gave a talk at a conference about a year ago and at the end of the conference people were sharing their take home and they were like, “What did you get out of these two days of content? And it made me feel good, but a number of people were like, “Sherry’s talk about sleep is the thing I’m going to take home from this $2,500 conference that I invested in for my business.” And I spent 20 minutes talking about the importance of sleep for having a sound mind that works well at work.