New tools are coming that will help you value your time and the time of others

Well hello everyone and welcome to another episode of millennial in the middle I’m Connor Dehlin I’m back. Thanks for sticking with me.

I mentioned on my social media for those you that follow me that I had to take a little break. While the company that I started a few months ago was working on filing some patents and just decided it was best probably not to put any content out for the little bit for a little bit. And good news. For those of you that saw my company launched from a marketing standpoint this Monday, our website’s live the company is opt opt, you can check us out online at OptMe.com and our product will be ready in about four to six weeks.

And for those of you that follow me follow me on social media you saw in a minute and a half the other day I gave a little description of what the product is their problem that we’re trying to solve and you know what it’s all about. And one thank you so much for all the support.

It’s so cool to hear from so many of you that really have supported me and just been there and so many things that I’ve done over the last couple of years. But more importantly I got a lot of questions from some of you asking like you know, how did you come up with this idea? Or like, how did this all fall into place?

I didn’t even know you were doing something like this like how what’s the rundown? And so if what I put on social media the other day was like the force Connor to be brief in 90 seconds and explain a lot. This is the beauty of podcasting, which I love where we can be a little bit more long form and I can do what I do best. I can tell stories, I can tie it into history, and I can talk about some of the factors in a way to bring them together that maybe makes a little bit more sense of why I’m so excited about what I’m involved in right now.

Why I think frankly, it’s going to be something that makes a bit of a dent in the world. And I’m really, really excited to be a part of it and feel very fortunate to be and so today I’m going to kind of talk through what I feel the last couple years have been about for me personally, but then finding that what I’ve gone through personally really is what my generation and really our society has gone through and how it’s affected the way we communicate, how it’s affected our culture, how it’s affected our careers.

And it’s almost like you know, I love studying the social evolution of sorts, right? Like things are always changing. I think that’s why I’m so tied to generational theory because I love seeing how over time these different factors come together to create these circumstances and how we react as humans. And what this app that we’re about to release in six weeks is is really a culmination of a lot of different factors coming together. And I think a little bit of you know, Providence and kind of some things that have happened in place that I definitely couldn’t have planned all out but looking back now with you know, a little hindsight in this bid is pretty cool to see it all come together. So let’s do it.

Three factors I’m going to talk about today and like cultural trends and movements that have taken place over the last few years. And the first is COVID. The pandemic we can really look at that now almost as if it’s in the rearview mirror. Right. And I remember it was almost a year ago. Exactly. I just looked it up it was in May of 2021 that I had Jeff Calais on the show, and Jeff Calais we’ve called like our generational theory expert we labeled him are bitter Gen X or I love the guy from Florida like one of the most interesting and entertaining engaging guys I’ve ever talked to and especially on this show a lot of you say is your favorite guest. And we had this debate where we basically said How will the world remember what COVID did to society and to us as individuals. And of course we framed it in this mindset of generational theory. Now, just a little bit of review, Neil Strauss and William Howe were to Harvard professor professors that like 20 years ago, wrote this book and basically created this whole thought of generational theory.

They kind of labeled the cohorts within these 20 years and then what’s interesting about what they said and people debate this, you know, there isn’t necessarily a whole lot of empirical evidence for it. They’re just trying to look at trends in society. They basically say that it history and the cycles tend to repeat itself.

So they say that there’s a cycle with four cohorts within it. 20 years apiece all kind of equal the average lifespan of a human. So in one person’s life, all of a sudden, you have this whole, you know, like cycle that takes place and different generational cohorts being in different stages of life when these events happen. And they also go on to say that about every 20 years some sort of event or thing takes place that really, you know, puts us on the track of a change of mindset.

You know, so if we were to look back, it’s really easy as you know, we look back and say like, oh, the Great Depression, World War Two, the end of the Cold War The Challenger explodes, 911 and all these things. And then 20 years after 911, what takes place, the pandemic, we all knew as we were in it, that the pandemic would change things forever, that it would have an impact on not only the things that we do, but the way that we think in the way that we interact with each other. And so here was the debate. There are four different types of events that they name, the four different types of events that they name is that you have a high and awakening and unraveling and a crisis. And we pontificated in this episode, if COVID we would be remembered as an awakening, or a crisis.

Now a crisis they describe as an era of destruction, often involving war revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response. To a perceived threat to a nation survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression, expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. So we’re like okay, well, obviously like during 20 When I started this podcast, it felt like a crisis.

It felt like that division and this anger and this time was like at its height, right? And we’re like, maybe this is how this will be remembered. Maybe the response to COVID will be us coming together and being a group and rebuilding institutions in a way that will help the whole or almost the opposite, in a lot of ways. Would it be an awakening? And they define awakening as this, according to the theory and awakening is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy.

People suddenly tired of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of self awareness, spirituality and personal authenticity. This is from their book. And as I thought through that, you know, at that point a year ago, Jeff and I debated back and forth, and we’re like, what will it be? And I think we were leaning towards this is probably going to serve as an awakening.

And now more than two years removed from the start of the pandemic, and throughout this whole time I’ve had this podcast and had vulnerable conversations and thought through things and been a critical thinker and invited other people on to share different perspectives and backgrounds. And so many conversations that I’ve had outside this show that haven’t been recorded, a lot of them I wish were recorded to share with you. I feel like I can say my opinion. As someone who loves studying how we interact with each other.

I feel that COVID was an awakening for all of us. I know that it definitely was for me. Why? Because what did we have in the early stages of the pandemic? We had time on our hands off, frankly, we were kind of bored. A lot of the things that typically would dominate our time were gone, or were put on pause and we were doing things like sitting at home binge watching Tiger King remember those days right? Or like, I’m gonna go down to St. George for two weeks because why not like it was a really strange period of time. But for a lot of us, definitely me included.

By slowing down a little bit. It gave us the chance to reevaluate, to look at our priorities, to decide what mattered most in life, and to really evaluate our most valuable asset that we have in this life. And it’s time. What do we spend our time doing?

Who do we spend it with and what do we choose to do? And then having this realization that so much of what we spend our waking hours doing are things that if we had a choice, we wouldn’t necessarily do them. But why do we because we’re supposed to or there’s no other way and I got that’s just what’s gonna happen. Right. So phase one, is that you’re factor one that I talked about today is like this awakening that COVID All the sudden got people thinking a little bit differently, and definitely the effect was looking towards a self awareness and looking within to try to find you know, where you most authentic and what do you value most? Factor Number two, for me personally,
as the pandemic then started to wind down and people went back to work, and all of a sudden you know, we were back in the office and the days of binging Tiger King were over and it felt like we were getting back to in air quotes, the normal again or whatever the new normal is right. And I like a lot of people, especially in my generation, was just like, oh, I don’t love this like 10 hour a day job like I don’t love this whole thought of working for a corporation. I was doing sales primarily at the time and you know, a lot of what you do in sales isn’t something that really is that enjoyable.

Even if you love the product and love what you’re doing, which I did. I really enjoyed everything I did with the company I was with at the time. But coming out of the awakening that I experienced in the pandemic. I was like, Man Is there a better way? Is there a different way to do this? And some of you may not know this, but I actually had a year last year 2021 That was a little bit in limbo. I decided that I didn’t I had no reason to leave my company.

I enjoyed what I was doing, but I didn’t necessarily want it to be on salary, and having to show up at the office every morning at nine o’clock and I kind of made a big move and I said, You know what, I’ll go full commission. I’m still on board, but I value my time I value my flexibility, my freedom, my autonomy, and I can we create this in a way that you know, I don’t have any sort of sense of selling my hours for my, you know, my hours, my time in the day for money and that I can just be rewarded based on my efforts based on my results. And so that’s what I did. Luckily, I had a team that was awesome to work with.

That said absolutely like last thing we want to do is to lose you. So let’s do this. We work forward and finding all the sudden a little bit of this flexibility and autonomy that was now kind of as I was a little more self aware and allowed me because I loved it. In fact, I ate it up.

You know, in a 12 month period of time I visited four of the seven wonders of the world while keeping a day job right like things that would have never been thought of in the past. Suddenly were available and then things started getting floated around like remote work, flex hours, the gig economy people like getting paid for their own trade or their own talent and I was like, Whoa, we’re on to something like something’s happening. There’s a movement.

There’s a feeling that you can feel throughout society right now. And then someone put a name to it. Not even know what the name is, you know, I don’t know who came up with this name. I don’t know what to name it. And they said what we’re experiencing right now is the great resignation. Now there have been some other names there to the great resignation, the great renegotiation, the great reshuffle the great rethink I love all of them, right.

But what ended up happening is that in the year 2021 40 million people left their jobs. Now many of them the industries that were affected more than anything else were retail and hospitality. And you had this group of people that were suddenly saying, No thanks. They weren’t necessarily mad, but they were taking back control and making a choice that they wanted to do things maybe a little bit differently. And, you know, it was interesting to see as that happens, because a lot of people sat back and watch that and said, that group is lazy.

They don’t want to work or they were labeled as people that you know, were really willing to go out and have ambition and do it. But I think many people just realized that this ambition that they had, was just a desire to want a little bit more that their values had changed, that the things that they desired. All of a sudden were a little different.

I read a quote once that said Gen Z looks at their day. Job as their part time job and living life their full time job. It’s like man, that’s kind of interesting to say, I mean, how many years in our country and in our society. If someone asked Tell me a little bit about yourself, the first thing you would respond with was your profession. Or what you did or where you worked. And all of a sudden that started to change.

Now, of course, I was interested in this because I love generational theory. Right? I have proudly called myself a millennial now for the last few years. And as I’ve done that, I have a lot of people that would say things to me, like, you know, why would you label yourself as a millennial? Like, I know you’ve done that on the show, but that word has such a negative connotation and it there’s nothing cool about being a millennial. We’re the selfie generation. We’re the lazy generation. We’re the ones that you know, haven’t figured it out and are sitting around on social media all day, right? And I didn’t necessarily know how to put a finger on it. But I was like, You know what, no, I don’t know if that’s the narrative here. Now, granted, I don’t think my generation has figured it out yet. But I think we’re on to something.

There’s an article that was put out by the New York Times recently where it’s actually titled, where are all of those quitters? They are at work, because what’s interesting is people resigned, and a lot of them didn’t have a plan. They didn’t necessarily know what to do or where to go from there, what that might look like. But at the end of the day, they still had to make money.

Now many people within the great resignation also realized that there was a work life balance trade off that happened to there, that maybe you don’t need to live as luxuriously or make as much money that maybe you could enjoy life more with a little less and work a whole lot less to do that. Like suddenly that became an option. And all the sudden, individuals took back power and rather than corporations and organizations and these big institutions that were suddenly able to tell people this is what you have to do because this is the only way and the only way to trade time for money is this thing called job.

My generation with the help of Gen Z I’ll give you some credit will say the quote unquote younger generations said I don’t know if it has to be that way. Maybe there’s a little different way to do it. And this isn’t going anywhere. If you’re active on LinkedIn, which I’ve been pretty active on LinkedIn lately, and I find it really interesting to hear about how these conversations affect our careers and affect us in the workplace. There is a huge movement and people are becoming more and more vocal now that are supporting this new style of work and our careers and how we balance those things.

Demanding flexibility, demanding autonomy, looking at countries like Europe that take the whole month of July off for vacation and saying how come that’s never been an option in America.

Well, why couldn’t it be? You want proof that there’s isn’t change happening right now from the New York Times this article came out less than a month ago, they reported that just 8% of Manhattan office workers are back in the office five days a week. Manhattan this city that you just picture being all these office workers coming in and out of these big sky rises. basically finding out that only 8% are back to full time nine to five, five days a week working a 40 plus hour a week job.

Now they’re probably still putting in the hours a lot of them but in a different way. So that’s factor two. Well now let’s talk about factor three. And again, I’ll tie this to me as well. Before I jumped into what I would kind of call my first dip into like corporate world, even though it was a startup I went worked for a company. You know for five years.

I as you know traveled the country as a speaker I worked for investment training company. We did real estate stock investment, all sorts of different things. And I spoke at their seminars, conferences, events all over the world. And in that period of time I spoke in 47 or 50 states in about 10 plus countries and twice a day I would have groups of people walk into these rooms, that we’re looking for financial independence that we’re looking for a better way, you know, at the core to it all was that whole mindset of like the American dream, right, like wanting multiple streams of income, wanting to not just be tied to a day job their entire life and then having to live the rest of their retirement out on a meager Social Security right.

And what I realized is I did that is one while we’re all so different as people and I learned you know the regionality of our country, and the different types of people in the way we think, look, speak dress, what we value in our core, we all had some very, very similar beliefs and convictions of just wanting to be able to provide in a way that allowed us more freedom, more flexibility, more autonomy, and doing it in a way that was actually feasible.

That didn’t feel like you were the lazy surfer bum that didn’t feel like you were the low life that was going to live off the government like how could we find a better way to do that? And I ran into these people day after day after day after day after day. And what I realized is that the ones that made it, the ones that did find a different way to go about it. They did a couple things. One, they figured out what they were good at, because most of us have a skill or something that we are exceptional at right something that we are way better than most of the population at and then realizing how do we then make money off of that?

And that’s where a lot of people were able to make that next step. They had something they were good at, and often what they were good at is also what they loved and whether we’re passionate about right and that makes sense because we as people like being good at things. So usually what we’re good at and what we love doing tend to collide.

But where we struggled is not everyone was able to find a way to make money off of those things that we were good at. And more than anything else, not only our talents or our skills are our expertise, but our time. We all value time. Right? But trying to find a way to get what we feel is our fair value, or frankly just as much value and when I’m saying value here, money out of the time that we put into anything that we do, that suddenly became the task. So factor one COVID the Great Awakening factor to the great resignation. 40 million people leaving their jobs, including me, myself and I and then number three, this whole thought of people trying to find what they’re good at and monetizing on it monetizing on their talent, trying to maximize their skills, their expertise.

So now here’s where a little bit of Providence, sir, you know, some divine who knows, like the way it fell into place I can’t even describe at this point, but toward the end of last year, when I basically made the step the decision that I was going to step away I had to find a better way I didn’t know what it was going to look like I was kind of resigning without a plan. Something fell in my lap. I met an amazing gentleman named Jason Peterson, who I’m going to have on the show here in the next few weeks.

You’re gonna love talking to him. I have learned so much from this guy in the last six months. I can’t even tell you and he came to me with this idea around monetizing a meeting. I was like, Oh, what do you mean by that? He’s like, well think about it since COVID. meeting requests and like zoom meetings have gone through the roof. Like yeah, you’re right. You know, think about it. Think about how many zoom meetings or Google meet or video calls you had in 2019 compared to the day. Heck, I met with my doctor the other day on Zoom.

Like when would that have ever been an opportunity before but now it’s become really commonplace for us to from home, connect with experts in their field or do things in a more efficient way without having to drive across the valley or travel somewhere and connect with people and do it through technology and meet with people on a video call. And yeah, while we you know, while we were able to do that all sudden, we realized that we could be more efficient in the time that we had.

We could get more value out of our time. But then we all started suffering from zoom fatigue. Right? That was a real thing. Why? Because we were used to and we had a day job and we sat in the office all day long. We had to be there for eight hours. So we weren’t all that protective of our time. We had to be there anyway.

So you got to have some lame meetings along the way to fill the time. And let’s be real like meeting suck. No one likes meetings, right? I even say that word. And as I’ve now talked to so many people over the last few months, interviewing them and surveying them about this idea.

No one likes meetings. But for so many of us. It’s like the main way that we either get paid fairly for what we do or able to share what we have, and we have to have it. But how do we find a way to make it so our meetings aren’t awful. And what’s interesting about this meeting problem is there’s two sides of the spectrum. There’s the one side of people that are always getting hit up.

For example, when I worked at gig the company that I left last year, I worked with a lot of social media influencers, right, a lot of social media influencers that they made money off monetizing their brand and connecting with other companies or products that wanted to work with them. And as you can imagine, most of these influencers have completely full DM requests. So like in the messages if they’re not your friend, you know how they go to like the hidden requests. So many of them I would meet I would click on that and they would literally have 1000s of messages, right?

And what did all of these people want, they wanted a piece of them. They wanted some of their time they wanted a chance to pitch their product or see if there was a you know, a chance for a partnership and all these different things. And the result was most of them never even got opened. Why? Because there was no way to sift through them all. Or maybe you experienced that of every salesperson that you know reaches out to you and have all these requests for your time and your slack and most of them just find their way directly into the trash. Or how many of you have had the awkward conversation around Hey, can I pick your brain on this? Or you meet someone from high school that you haven’t seen or heard from in five to 10 years and they call you up and want to take you to lunch? I mean seriously when you hear that every alarm bell in your head starts to go up the leg. Yeah, this is fishy. What are they trying to sell me? Right.

And then the flip side of this meeting problem is there’s a certain group of people that all they want in life are the one is the one thing that everyone is so desperately trying to avoid. No, it’s that meetings. And who are those people? Salespeople How do I know? Because I was one like I had I love teams of them. Right? And you especially in this time of COVID like we were trying to scale at my company gig that I was with trying to scale software sales in the worst time ever to do it like right in March of 2020 When everyone shuts down, and we were just one of the crowd, sending out hundreds of emails a day, asking people to give us 15 minutes asking people to listen to you know, hear us out and listen to our demo.

And what did we spend all our time doing, trying to convince people to meet with us? But if we added our way, we would have just spent the whole day in good meetings with people. And all of a sudden that’s where this conversation is. I started to narrow this idea down with Jason and his man he has an amazing skill of just like finding like getting to the root of the problem really fast. We said look, everyone values time. That’s not the issue. But rarely do we put a value on our time.

And how do we put a value on anything in society? Well, it’s the whole reason that we invented currency. Several episodes ago I had Bridger Pennington such a stud by the way on this show, and we talked about the history of currency that basically became a way for people to value assets and to have a similar language and a similar way to look at it like how do we value something? And while we figured that out for almost everything out there, every commodity every product, every asset you could find, we struggled putting a value on our time, our most valuable asset and the one that we all have a limited supply of and no matter who you are, there’s a high demand on and what you choose to do with it. is really, really important.

So we said okay, well what if we create a tool that helps people do just that put a value on time? And how did we do that?

Well, we built up for those either saw the video ops just an easy way to pay someone to meet with you, or to get paid to meet with someone else. So say you’re one of those influencers. Or say you’re a coach, a psychic, a business expert, a consultant, you name it a golf pro, like my dad, and someone calls you up and says hey, can I pick your brain or can I get a lesson or can you advise me on this?

That’s an easy response. And you can say Sure, I’d love to but I value my time. I also value yours I charge $100 for an hour and then the balls in their court.

You don’t have to have that awkward conversation around trying to charge and that you know, well of course if you want to pick the brain and want time of someone that you value enough to do that.

Uber created a way to make you feel comfortable getting in a stranger’s car and having them take you to the other side of the valley. If that’s crazy, this is even weirder. Airbnb made it so people would let strangers come live in their house for a certain amount of time, trusting them that they would get paid and they wouldn’t ruin their house along the way.

Why? Because they had a safe and an easy way to do it. And they had a third party that was going to make sure both sides upheld their end. of the bargain. And we said, man, there’s something like this for everything but there isn’t anything like that for time and meetings. Why not? Well, because COVID All of a sudden made video meetings a thing like all of a sudden this is here.

Now. This that like the timing for this, all of a sudden we just felt all of these movements were coming together for this moment to create this. And so that’s what we did. We built it and as you can tell, I’m a little passionate about it. Why because all of a sudden it was a way hopefully, that we built it you know, by the way we’ll make it free so anyone can just use it like a Venmo or an Airbnb.

Sure, there might be some transaction costs and things that come along the way but if price of doing business, but the way you then create that is to make it easier for people to value, their talents, their energy, their expertise, and most importantly, their time. I have learned so so much in the last four or five months, I feel like I have been just like in a accelerated business, product development, marketing like everything, you name it in the startup world. It can be overwhelming because you wear a lot of hats. And up to this point, it really just has been me and one of my partners Jason doing this. We have now put together an amazing team of founders that are helping push this product forward guys that have been around the block with some experience to kind of guide this in the right direction.

And I don’t know what’s going to come with this but I’m really really excited to share it and I do this today because all of you that listen to this episode like heck, this is episode 85 or whatever it is, like I appreciate you being around this journey with me. I started this podcast and called it millennial in the middle. And I realized while it started at the beginning of being like I’m against extremism, and I don’t like contention, and I want to bring people together to the middle and have these conversations and that then I found it.

It’s just being about being in the middle of life and everything that we’re thrown at and doing that as a millennial, that’s a product of a new way of thinking that’s living in this time right now reacting and responding to the trends to the culture and trying to figure out a way to understand the changes that are happening to adapt to them as they take place but not just adapt and like survive, but actually to thrive to crush it. I love my generation and I love Gen Z I think they’ll be even better, right?

Because we’ve taken tools like social media, like YouTube, these different ways to be able to get creative and make money and value your time in a way that other generations would have probably frowned upon for a minute, but we go Why would we frown on that?

What if we’re just coming up with a more creative, cool way? So we’re not creating a movement here. It’s simply recognizing the movement that’s taking place and trying to build a tool that hopefully will empower those along the way to ride the wave and to do it well and to help other people along the way. And try to have conversations that bring us together rather than tear us apart. And hopefully as we become more self aware, we become better to other people.

You know, the argument that could be made for this awakening, you know, the difference between the awakening and the crisis is the reaction of awakening is that we look within and we value our you know, our personal autonomy and respect in our spirituality and these different things. And the respect of a crisis is all of a sudden it becomes about the collective. Right.

I believe strong communities are made up of strong individuals that decide what they want to do and then they go out and do it and they find people that they relate with and they have real authentic relationships. And as they do that, you know, they find some magic along the way.

So why OPT?

Well, when this idea came to play, so actually, maybe a little behind the scenes, we haven’t really talked about this, but Jason had a name that he was like he kind of filed the corporation under and he’d be totally okay then I’m teasing this right now because it’s our joke. Now like all we knew the name of the company was lean meat, L E A N N E T.

And I knew I was going to be able to work with Jason when and one of the first conversations I said I had with him I’m like Jason, that name is really bad. How do you feel about it? Of course, I said at a much more diplomatic way, because we didn’t necessarily know each other all that well at that, at that first beginning. And he’s like, Oh, well, I’m open to change. And all of a sudden, the two of us sat down and we said, well, what encapsulates this.

I wanted it to be short. I wanted to be something that you could remember I wanted to be able to turn it into a verb like Yahoo, like Google like Venmo, you know, Venmo me, right? But none of those are actual words. But we actually found one that was opt. And what is opt mean?

Opt literally is defined is to make a choice from a range of possibilities. What do we have more choices, to do? More choices involved in what we do with our time? They’re infinite. There’s so much that we can do or choose to not to the power lies in the choosing. And when it comes to our time, our most valuable asset I hope people choose wisely, and they feel like they have a choice and they’re empowered to have a choice.

And so all the sudden opt then encapsulated this feeling of this movement that was taking place of groups of individuals acting together and never doing things they feel like if they had a choice they wouldn’t choose to do valuing the right things, valuing each other and as that happens, all of a sudden, you know, the best type of not just meetings, but interactions and relationships and jobs and professions and money making opportunities. All of it comes to play.

Guys, I’m doing this podcast with you like the week of our marketing launch. We just put our website up this week. Our product doesn’t even come out for four weeks. But it kind of takes a vulnerability to do that right? To put yourself out there and say, Hey, I think this is going to be something big. B

ut hey, that’s what it takes in life, right? To put yourself out there and say I’m doing something big and who wants to jump on and be a part of this ride with me is you’re curious to learn a little bit more go to optme.com  Opt me like Venmo me OPT me.com

There’s a survey on there where we can learn a little bit more about how you might see yourself using this product, and more importantly, who you might think could really benefit from this. I love having these conversations where people say Oh, I would use it for that. But this would be great for my daughter who’s an interior designer and my sister who is a you know, a life coach and all these different things like tell them about it and hopefully this is a way that empowers them to value their time and do it in a smooth way.

And we’re really, really excited to be a part of this ride. I’m gonna be sharing some of my experiences in being like fully, you know, all in on a startup. It’s fun. I’ve never done it. I’ve never done it like this before. And I’m going to share some of this journey with you and I’m going to share some interviews where we learn and we talk about these concepts, and we see how all of these factors come together. And hopefully we learn a lot as we do it and we get a lot out of it and it’s a value of your time.

Time is important and I appreciate you giving me the time to listen to not just this episode. But any episode you’ve listened to in the past. I truly, truly do appreciate it. I hope that you gain something along the way.

Thanks so much.