Timestamps
00:00:31 Episode Summary
00:01:08 Michael Gavin & BrainSprite
00:14:16 Perspective on Sleep and Rest from Gen Z
00:25:31 Strategies for Optimizing Your Sleep and Rest
00:35:54 Impact of Sleep on Entrepreneurs
00:45:21 Training BJJ and Wrestling
00:58:30 Michael Gavin Social Handles
Podcast Description
Welcome to the Work Hard Sleep Well Podcast with Kris Nowak, where we explore the million dollar question - how can we optimize our sleep for maximum performance, productivity, and success in our busy lives as entrepreneurs and working professionals? Join me as I document my journey of discovery in real time and share practical tips and tricks from successful entrepreneurs, working professionals and sleep doctors to help you achieve the best sleep possible.
As we explore different sleeping schedules, proven tricks, and changing relationships with sleep over time, this podcast is tailored for entrepreneurs and working professionals who want to improve their sleep quality, increase productivity, and perform at their best. We understand that you have a lot on your plate, and our aim is to help you manage stress and achieve a better work-life balance.
Through interviews with successful entrepreneurs and sleep experts, we provide unique insights and perspectives on sleep and rest, with a focus on productivity and performance. You can look forward to hearing from a diverse range of guests and answering intriguing questions that you won't find elsewhere. Join us on this journey to discover the secrets to unlocking your true potential through restful sleep.
Episode Transcript
Kris Nowak
Welcome to the Work Hard Sleep Well Podcast with Kris Nowak, where we explore the million dollar question - how can we optimize our sleep for maximum performance, productivity, and success in our busy lives as entrepreneurs and working professionals? Join me as I document my journey of discovery in real time and share practical tips and tricks from successful entrepreneurs, working professionals and sleep doctors to help you achieve the best sleep possible.
So welcome to episode five. Today I'm having a guest on my podcast, Michael Gavin of Brain Sprite. We're going to discuss the perspective of Gen Z on sleep and rest and some startup of his and mixed martial arts. So BJJ and wrestling, he trains that.
Kris Nowak
So I'm your host Kris Nowak and we're gonna get right into this. Okay, so Mike, welcome to my show. I'm super excited to have you on here. Why don't you introduce yourself? Who is Mike Gavin? Like tell us who is Mike Gavin. Tell us the story.
Michael Gavin
Absolutely.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, for sure. I'm on the younger side of things. That's why I believe Gen Z is a good conversation. I'm only 21, but I didn't take the traditional route of school or anything like that. I ended up dropping out actually of a pre-med program at Hofstra University, which is where I was also able to wrestle at the division one level. But from there I went and I got an internship at a product management firm with...
Michael Gavin
It was under my uncle, but then he eventually sifted off to do his own thing as well. And then got into the digital marketing sphere of things and then currently transferred to consulting. And then also working on brain sprite, as you had mentioned. So, yeah, I mean, very work oriented. But, you know, I think that's why I do like mixed martial arts more specifically, very disciplined sport. Something that I can
Michael Gavin
due to take my stress away because I'm beat after all the practices. Um, yeah.
Kris Nowak
Right.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, I mean, that's awesome. So you're only 21, so you're pretty young. I'm, you know, consider like myself, like young, I'm 28, but you're 21. So what actually like help you make a decision that like you want to drop out from school and pursue just business rather than like following this like traditional path?
Michael Gavin
Yeah. So no one really in my family has a very large business background. There's only one and it's really my uncle. That's it. And then everybody else kind of works like normal job. They're not, you know, high paying jobs or anything like that. Very, I guess you'd call it like blue collar workers. That's kind of where they're at. So I was in the pre-med program and it was very repetitive. I had to learn about.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
genealogy and evolution and then on the chemistry side, I was learning about organic compounds and stuff like that. Same thing, day by day. And I really sat down with myself and I thought, how can I make, because it's not all about money, it's also about differences and it's like, how many lives would I actually impact if I'm a doctor? And then also, how can I make a doctor's salary without having 10 to 12 years of it?
Michael Gavin
you know, schooling and then also 250 some thousand dollars in debts and all of that. And that kind of led me to the idea of like, OK, well, I don't want to go work like a job. So like minimum wage in Pennsylvania, 725. I was like, I want to work a minimum wage job in Pennsylvania. I don't also want to stay in New York at Hofstra and make 15 an hour. But I'm also struggling to survive because cost of living is so high. So I went the route of just sending.
Michael Gavin
you know, emails basically to companies saying like, hey, listen, like I'll do an internship. It could be free paid, doesn't matter. And then I sent the email to my uncle's colleague and then got in through there. So it was definitely a thing of how do I make this salary in a shorter amount of time? And then also how do I impact lives in a shorter amount of time? And the lives are different, obviously, because as a doctor you have patients, but
Michael Gavin
When you work with consulting and startups and stuff like that, you think of like users and business relationships and stuff like that. So I think that's really what drove it, were those two factors of relationships and then also monetary.
Kris Nowak
Mm hmm. That's amazing. I mean, it takes like a certain amount of courage for sure, to to make a decision like this and you know, decide like you're going to drop out of school. For me, personally, I was, I remember like at a point I was, I was somewhat like considering doing that but I did like finish my school, which I ended up not really like using it for anything anyway. So in hindsight, potentially, you know, if you're kind of considering this decision.
Kris Nowak
If you trust in yourself, I think it could work out really well for you. But ultimately everybody has to make this decision themselves. Okay. So that's pretty cool. So tell us about brain sprite. Like what is brain sprite? It's a new startup of yours, right?
Kris Nowak
Yeah, so what we're doing is we're trying to change, it's pretty much going to be an AI or it's going to be a software and we're trying to provide summarization for students using specific customization tools for the students so they can choose the compression, the weight, and the format of the summaries. That's how we're mainly differentiating ourselves between our competitors. We have eight currently, but.
Michael Gavin
The reason being is because the cost of an average research paper and its summary is $5 to $50. Students are already under financial constraints and struggles, so why are we asking them to continue paying for things? And then a leading statistic to that is that 60% of the student body within the United States has illegally accessed research papers and research summaries already. So, and then...
Michael Gavin
Another aspect we want to eliminate is the complexity of research papers. San Francisco State University says that it takes an average college student, regardless of major, 22 minutes to read one page of a research paper. So if we're targeting Harvard-like research papers that are hundreds of pages long, that's 2200 minutes that a student already doesn't have. They shouldn't be able to do it. We're working on partnerships to implement in two colleges to use with a fraction of their student body.
Michael Gavin
based off the hypothesis that BrainSprite will increase GPA, increase efficiency, and then increase overall wellbeing now that students don't have to stress their lives away over reading these 100-page research papers.
Kris Nowak
That's very interesting. I think anything that you want to basically like sell to the students, you really need to consider like how they're going to be able to afford that because as you mentioned, like students probably don't really have all that much disposable income. Right. So with the brain sprite. So how, how did you like come up with this idea for the brain. So like how did it start. So like you mentioned, you were like pre mad. So you had some exposure to these sort of papers yourself. Right.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, there's that. And then also just, I used to live in DC and then I moved back towards Northeastern Pennsylvania. And in Northeastern Pennsylvania, there's a lot of smaller colleges. To where the scope of work isn't very large, but it's also very more in depth because smaller classrooms and stuff like that, you have more of that relationship and kind of the aptitude of actually looking into things deeper. But...
Michael Gavin
A lot of the college students around me kind of bring up that complaint all the time. It's like, okay, I need to read specifically in like pre-med if they're physician assistant or like epidemiology like I was going into. It turns into, okay, well, I need to read this research paper. One, I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. Two, I'm not a graduate yet, so I don't really understand the jargon that's used within this research paper. And then three.
Michael Gavin
I now need to sparse out time from being a full-time student, probably working a part-time job. I might be traveling in between school and home and work and stuff like that. And then I have to fit, you know, I have to mold that around reading this research paper now. So there was that aspect. And then looking at some of the competitors, like ChatGPT is one of the largest ones, but we've identified.
Michael Gavin
I think it's around 10 to 12 loopholes in which ChatGPT fails to actually work as one of the best summarizing tools. Mainly, it's like lack of domain knowledge and stuff like that. But we've identified those loopholes, and that's what we're building upon, the flaws within the current market to accelerate as just a summarizer. That's the number one thing we're trying to focus on.
Kris Nowak
Very interesting. So you're trying to, are you going to integrate some sort of like AI API into this solution of yours? Or are you planning on building this from scratch? Like how is this going to work?
Michael Gavin
Yeah, so we might have just one endpoint API, and the one endpoint API just might be the intellectual property from one of the partner colleges that we use. And the main way that we're pitching it to these partner universities, which we have the discussions with UNC Chapel Hill is the biggest one, and then we have some of these local colleges to me, but they're at no risk because the only thing they give away is their intellectual property, but...
Michael Gavin
The way that we've explained it is that the students who already have access to these libraries could just email a PDF URL to their family member, thus you're giving away intellectual property right there. So it really runs no risk because something's already there in place that it already does run that risk hypothetically. But the Endpoint API would have access to all their research papers so then the AI could then learn the research papers, eliminate any of the jargon that it...
Michael Gavin
you know, needs to to make it more easily understandable. Identify certain sections in the article, because when we speak about weight adjustment and having a student adjust the weight, we're talking about certain sections because I can read about dinosaurs, but I want to know one specific dinosaur. I would need to identify that I want 100 percent from, you know, the T-Rex section, and then I can eliminate the rest of it. The you know, the software doesn't focus on the rest. So.
Michael Gavin
We would have one endpoint API, but then the rest is pretty much just the free flow software, a form pretty much with sliders that students can fill out and adjust accordingly to how they want their summaries presented to them.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, I mean, that sounds very, very in depth, very sophisticated to me. It's very interesting time we live in right now. We see like artificial intelligence being integrated basically into most of the apps that we use. And for the most part, I think people are starting to be aware, like, do you think this is just a fad or we just going to go deeper and deeper into this and everything is basically going to become so integrated, we won't be able to, to go back anymore at that point.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, I think it has to continue going further. And the only reason is because if we look at the history of AI technologies and kind of the research that has already been done, it's been something that's going on around 10, 20 years. So it's something that's already been done. It was just kind of like bound to happen that we've accelerated the technological advancements of the world.
Michael Gavin
From 2015 to 2020, we've probably made the most significant jump, but 2020 to 2025 is going to be even more significant in the fact that it's being implemented everywhere. Also, a lot of the aspects, it makes life easier. And that's what every successful invention ends up being in a history book is that it made someone's life easier, either by XYZ. So if AI is doing so, I feel that it's just going to become like the household, you know,
Michael Gavin
typical thing, like I have AI built into this one thing or this other thing and everyone ends up using it.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, it's very interesting. Like right now with these AI tools, if you have the know-how of how to utilize these tools, you can actually like shorten your workload, you can speed everything up, you can focus on executing elements that actually give you more value rather than just like doing like time consuming and like workload consuming kind of tasks, right? So definitely knowing how to use these tools to your advantage makes a huge difference. And...
Kris Nowak
I think that of itself is going to become a skill. Literally, if you know how to use different AI tools, you can arbitrage, basically, self-services to people that don't really know how to use these tools. So it's very interesting how we see. Some people are very concerned that AI is going to replace them entirely. And even though I think it could happen to some extent,
Kris Nowak
If you actually develop the skills on how to utilize these tools, you're going to be in a very good spot and like new positions and new jobs, new opportunities will be created for people that actually know how to use these tools.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, absolutely.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, okay. So let's let's shift the gears here a little bit. So you're a young guy, 21 years old, I find it inspiring. You know, like you dropped out of school, you're pursuing entrepreneurship. Can you tell me as a Gen Z, what's your perspective on sleep and rest based on what you understand now and experiences you you went through to this point?
Michael Gavin
Yeah, mine personally is I'll leave that on the table first to kind of see where I'm coming from. But like I don't leave bed unless I have eight hours. Even though, you know, Huberman says that it's, you know, dictated on the frequency of your sleep. Like if you fell asleep at the same time, you're most likely get better rest than if you just slept nine hours every day. But it was at different times. But I usually don't get out.
Michael Gavin
unless it's eight hours of sleep and that's only because of functionality in terms of cognitive functions and just feeling better overall. But I do know in my generation specifically, there's this thing that there's there's actually two facets to it. One of them is that people, I forget the specific name of it, but there's something in psychology to where they make up the life that they miss within during the day at night. So that's why they tend to not sleep as
Michael Gavin
people from the ages of 18 to like 24 more so probably staying up to like three in the morning because they're trying to experience all the life that they didn't experience during the day, whether it be from school work, etc. stuff like that. And then another thing too is, you know, partying. Everybody has their college phase and partying and stuff like that that tends to happen at night. It's just how it is. Another thing I think is just social media is definitely a huge thing attention span like
Michael Gavin
There is probably so many people within that age group that I just mentioned that are like, oh, I'm gonna go to sleep at 10 at night. Okay, they get into bed to go to bed and everything like that. And then, you know, three hours later, they're still scrolling on TikTok or Instagram or something like that. And they're like, oh shit, I lost my, you know, I lost my time. But yeah, and then the other facet of it is that there's this work culture that, you know.
Michael Gavin
I won't sleep and tell them a millionaire type of situation, but I feel you just hurt yourself in the long run. But it is, it's like a toxic culture thing that we do have. I don't think it's going to go away. It's just people have to find their own happy medium in the sense of like, do you really think you can survive forever off of three hours of sleep every night and still be like super functional type of person? I'm not sure if that's how it works, but that's definitely a thing too. People think they need to stay up all night and day to work and never get sleep, so yeah.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, what I think also plays into this when you're younger, you know, I recall when I was younger, like you kind of think you're invincible and you think like you feel great, you're young, you know, you think you can get away without like sleeping well consistently. And meanwhile, like you may actually be able to like get away with it for some time in the long term, like sacrificing your sleep, sacrificing your well being, it's going to decrease your performance and productivity over long term, you're going to increase.
Kris Nowak
Incur sleep debt. So then like it actually does affect your productivity. And it's just something about that, you know, I used to literally pull these like all nighters go like couple days without like sleeping at all. And then like, you know, at the end of the second day, you feel so beat down. It's wild. I think it's changing though, even in terms of like this hostile mentality, like I personally really like the motivational type of videos.
Kris Nowak
They kind of like, you know, like I listen to them every now and then, and they just kind of like help me raise my frequency and whatnot. But I don't think it's realistic to constantly only work like all the time and don't do anything else. And the reason I say that is because I have to, I actually done this. I've done it. I work for years without really like hanging out with friends and without like, you know, watching television and just like sleep, work and eat.
Kris Nowak
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
Very minimum exercise and I didn't feel very good. I actually felt like pretty miserable. Definitely you don't feel like you lose productivity at some point. So with everything I understand now and based on my experience being an entrepreneur for over three years now, you actually are better off like adjusting things in a way where you have like a balance in your life, right? You need to definitely have different ways to manage stress. One of them.
Kris Nowak
Exercise, which we're going to get back to a little bit later in this podcast. But you know, structure your life in a way where you have things going on outside of work as well. Because like another big thing for entrepreneurs, when you just focus yourself entirely on a project and then as it often is in entrepreneurship, you're going to have to overcome obstacles. Like it's not just going to easily fall into your lap. You're going to actually have to overcome obstacles to make it happen.
Kris Nowak
So then how do you feel and like, how do you think of your project when it doesn't go the way you thought you start doing something and you're not getting the results that you want. If you only have work going on for yourself, you're going to feel pretty miserable because then like your personality is attached to that project and it's not going the way you want it. But if you can have other things going on in your life, you're hanging out, hanging out with friends with like-minded people, you do sports, you know, like you spend time with family, you do some recreation here and there.
Kris Nowak
Then you have a time to actually relax a little bit and let off that steam. And then when you're fresh, you regenerate yourself, you go back to the project, okay, it didn't work out the way I wanted the first time, but now I'm actually fresh again and I'm gonna go at it again until it works. This is the sort of mentality you actually need to succeed in business. Even if it doesn't work for you, you need to just keep on persevering and finding a solution to a way.
Kris Nowak
instead of, you know, just getting upset that it doesn't work for you, that's not going to get you anywhere.
Michael Gavin
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely that aspect of it. I think another thing too is that people kind of have to figure out is there's this thing of like, are you working hard or are you hardly working? I feel when you do end up working into those 16 hour days, if you really boil it down into like, how many hours of it could have been, you know, outsourced to something else. Like I'm a big fan of Alex Hormozi.
Michael Gavin
And he always discusses he's like the only time that you actually take a viable step in improving your entrepreneurship career is when you start outsourcing things that like you shouldn't spend time on doing. So like one of his examples for him is all of his social media content is done by, you know, freelancers and the social media team, because he shouldn't be the one editing his videos because he has other things to do. So I think it's just like a priority kind of thing. I'll work in time blocks instead of an, like a set amount of time.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
because chances are if you sat down for four hours and you had no distractions, you can get done what you, you know, you could get done in four hours what you're typically working in 16 hours to do. And then I think that's when people end up making that shift of like, okay, if I can just, you know, dedicate six hours broken down, it could be two hour, you know, sprints or whatever it may be and they break those down and they actually start doing stuff during those times. They'll see that they're in their efficiency
Michael Gavin
you know, performance improves so much more probably than just, you know, long hauling 16 hours a day and trying to fit in, you know, where do I do this thing or stuff like that.
Kris Nowak
So this is very interesting, definitely shifting gears a little bit towards productivity and performance at this point. But let me just reply to this. So I think there's definitely a correlation between how many hours you work and how much you get done, right? There definitely is. But at the same time, like you mentioned, organizing your workload and focusing on high
Kris Nowak
You can't outsource and have direct impact on your business, right? Cause it, you know, if you have like six hours of, of, uh, time that you want to spend working and you divide it into two hour blocks or however you want to divide it and you focus on executing on these important elements, then, then you're probably way better off than just like spending working 12 hours and like you don't really have a structure. You haven't really thought about what you want to accomplish for the day. And you're just all over the place.
Kris Nowak
And if you work like that, it may like no matter how much time you're going to spend every day, you're probably not going to accomplish a lot. So to start with, I think it really helps to before you even actually begin your day, ideally think about what you need to accomplish for the day that will move you towards your bigger goal. So what I like to do actually is start from the end sort of thing. So this is the goal I want to accomplish and I'll break it down into smaller goals.
Kris Nowak
Let's say this goal will take me one year to accomplish. I'll break it down into quarterly goals or maybe monthly goals, and then weekly goals, and then daily tasks. And then I just focus on executing one steps at the time, on executing things that actually have impact in my business. And this may change as your business evolves. Initially, you may need to just focus on activities that will generate your revenue. As you scale, you may need to focus on activities that will improve.
Kris Nowak
like relationships at the workplace and, you know, different things have to be adjusted for as you develop through your journey. But I think this is very good. Have you read a book called Deep Work by Kyle Newport, I believe?
Michael Gavin
I haven't read it in its entirety, same thing with, what is it? Is it called micro habits? Maybe it's called micro habits, but it discusses breaking everything down into smaller stages instead of this big overhead goal. It's like, what is the, there's another saying with it, is that a goal written down ends up becoming more functional than you just having a goal in mind.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
And then when you write it down, you could break it into, how am I going to get to this goal? And then it becomes actual reality when you start working towards it. Um, but yeah.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I listen to Jim run a lot on audible. You have like a huge library of Jim run recordings and he talks about it. You know, like if you have a problem, write it down on a piece of paper. And in general, just write stuff down on paper and then like, you can look at it. You can start, you know, writing the solutions. You can start breaking it down. I personally am a very visual person.
Kris Nowak
So this is, I always do this. I write it down and I start to, you know, just maybe write different solutions, different problems, and I visualize it. And for me, I find it works really well. So that's like a great ad there.
Kris Nowak
Okay, so let's shift the gear here a little bit. So how about sleep optimization strategies? I'm curious, do you have any strategies for optimizing your sleep and rest that you think are unique to you?
Michael Gavin
Um, the one thing is, uh, I kind of believe in the, uh, like red light, um, aspect of things, like if you have red light, uh, before like an hour of sleep, um, and it actually increases, I'm not sure what the specific, um, brain chemistry or body chemistry is, but it increases something that helps you fall asleep faster. Um, and then also another thing is like no distractions when you're sleeping. So.
Michael Gavin
Um, if you sleep, it's kind of hard not to do, but if you don't have a TV in your room, it actually is better for you than if you do have a TV or any other thing that could emit light. Um, so total darkness is something that I think helps. Um, I think it definitely helps with like circadian rhythm as well. Um, which is something that if a lot of people kind of got into that, it's difficult to get into circadian rhythm, um, but.
Michael Gavin
If people did do so, I would definitely recommend starting with a pitch black room because you'll wake up as soon as the sun rises because you see it peeping around the edges of the lights or the window. So so, yeah, I would say complete darkness and then kind of do like red lights. Another thing, another thing is like if you take a hot shower before sleep, it's more beneficial because your body's cooling down and that's what naturally happens when you fall asleep. So just small things like that.
Michael Gavin
I don't take melatonin or anything like that. I tend to find myself easier to sleep if I just do it in that natural flow of things.
Kris Nowak
I think when it comes to optimizing your sleep, realistically, a big, a huge part of it is actually being disciplined in the evening when you realize, okay, so now it's time to start winding down, as you mentioned, the red light. So I'm assuming this just means that, okay, so now it's time to start winding down. I'm not working anymore, I'm not checking my phone anymore, I'm just going to relax a little bit so I can ease into sleep at the proper time that I set for myself, right?
Michael Gavin
Yeah. Yeah, it becomes a there's everyone talks about it. Sometimes it's like if you notice that you can't spend like 10 minutes like without a phone or computer or something like that, it's kind of like you kind of have you have a bigger problem than what you think you do. But that's the number one thing before you go into sleep is like if you can just spend 10 to 20 minutes just no phone, no computer. It's just you really
Kris Nowak
Yeah.
Michael Gavin
just sitting there with your eyes closed. If you can do that, then you'd probably have better sleep than if you fall asleep scrolling on a phone.
Kris Nowak
So you're talking about meditation then, implementing meditation into like your evening routine. Do you meditate?
Michael Gavin
Um, I don't meditate exactly. Um, but I guess it could be considered meditation because you know, it is a, it's a form of silence and it's a form of, you know, stress relief, but, um, it doesn't have to be how we typically perceive meditation, I guess. Um, but yeah, I would definitely say it could be meditation. Just sit quiet. You could rethink your day or you could think about what needs to get done tomorrow. But, um, it's just you in the bed at that point. Um, there's no phone, no laptop.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Kris Nowak
desktop computer or no TV, nothing like that. You're just sitting and thinking and then you fall asleep faster that way than you would any other way I think.
Kris Nowak
Okay, I see. Yeah, meditation is definitely great. We live in such an interesting time, we have access to so much technology and apps and you know, all these different solutions. And meanwhile, they're great. They're amazing. And there are a lot of different opportunities that come with it and advantages. It also has a downside like the negative aspect to it. It's easier than ever to just be addicted to all of this. And it's actually designed to keep you on these platforms on these apps.
Kris Nowak
depending on which app you use. So just have to be aware of it. And coming back to the discipline, are you comfortable enough to just turn it all off and just sit with yourself in silence and just listen to your thoughts? That's probably a first step. Discipline. And then just disciplining yourself, it's time to wind down. And now I'm not using these apps anymore, I'm just going to read a little bit, maybe do some...
Kris Nowak
like meditation, some light stretching, because honestly, like the biggest thing, and it's sort of like the easiest and the hardest thing that you could do is just to be disciplined, to stick to a consistent schedule. And it's time to go to sleep, you go to sleep, and you sleep about the same amount of hours every night, and you wake up at the same time, and you fall into that like natural circadian rhythm. And meanwhile, it may be a little bit hard to do this at first, but once you do this,
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
Once you start waking up like 15 minutes before your alarm, if you wake up with alarm, and then you just feel amazing in the morning, it really is a result of just being disciplined enough to stick to consistent schedule.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, one of the first practices that I was taught is that if you can, like, the initial step is to just sit down for 10 minutes and stare at a wall. That's it. Because it kind of breaks, it kind of gives you a gauge of like, okay, can I go longer without a phone or am I anxious because I don't have a phone on me? I'm not checking something, I might be missing a text or something.
Michael Gavin
So that's the first thing, definitely for sure. And then as you mentioned, like discipline of falling asleep at the same time, waking up at the same time too is something that's really important. Don't hit the snooze button because then you just ruin that. But yeah, I would definitely agree those consistency is probably bigger than anything in terms of getting to sleep.
Kris Nowak
Yeah. Do you implement like these practices yourself? Would you typically go to sleep at the same time and try to wake up at the same time or how does it work for you?
Michael Gavin
Yeah, the sleeping time is kind of like, it's probably like within a 30 minute span. It's nothing dramatic in the sense of like, it's like a three hour difference or not. But it tends to be like a 30 minute span. And then, yeah, I do wake up at the same time every day. Sometimes I end up waking up earlier than that. And I'm fine waking up earlier than that because I woke up without an alarm. I end up feeling better than I do with an alarm. But.
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, I definitely wake up same time, try to go to sleep same time, and then the same morning routine as well. I think that kinda helps a little bit. So yeah, all those things I tend to do on a day-to-day basis.
Kris Nowak
Cool, that's really good. What's your morning routine like? Like after you wake up, you know, the first couple hours, how do you like to spend them?
Michael Gavin
outside. And then obviously, you know, you go you do your stuff, you know, bathroom, brush your teeth, etc. I don't eat first thing when I wake up. I don't know if it's like, I just don't. I know a lot of people don't. But number one thing is get I am a coffee guy. So I drink coffee, and then I'll go outside. Only because I feel sunlight might wake me up a little more than like a computer screen. But
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
Uh, realistically, yeah, realistically, I don't cut my morning routine into like multiple hours because, um, another thing that I do believe is that if you have things to get done, it's easier to do them right when you wake up because it's, you're knocking them out of the way first, and then you have the rest of your day for, you know, whatever. So like, if I have work to get done, I'll spend 30 minutes, um, in the morning to like getting ready for my day and then.
Kris Nowak
Definitely.
Michael Gavin
after that 30 minutes to 45 minutes, whatever it is, I'm like right to work from there because, you know, that's my most, you know, that's my best time to actually work and everything. I'm not hungry, I'm not tired. I'm nothing at that point, I'm just like awake. So yeah, that'd be a typical morning routine.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, that's pretty cool. So I do something very similar. I don't like to eat in the morning. I actually don't even eat to like one or 2pm. That's when I have my first meal. And then like the first thing in the morning, obviously, like use the wash and brush my teeth. But then I also like meditate first thing in the morning every single day. I've been doing this for years now. I think it's a really good way to set your day and you know, set yourself in a certain direction for the day, rather than just like no checking your phones first thing. And then just like being stressed.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
cortisol spike, you know, maybe you read some email, something happened. Like all of this can actually wait. I like to spend 10 minutes every day, every morning, you know, just get on the frequency that I like to be on. And then like, I close my eyes, my silence myself. And after that, I'm ready to start my day and it feels great. It feels amazing. And I'm really happy that I got to the point where I'm able to do this consistently because, you know, a few years back, I actually wasn't living like that. And then I always felt like I was in the rush everywhere.
Kris Nowak
Like just like waking up, I have to go, go, go, go. And like never really have time for yourself. So I really encourage everybody. It's a really great way to start your day. Meditation in the morning, 10 minutes, doesn't take much. Silence your thoughts, set the frequency for the day, and then you're ready to tackle the day.
Kris Nowak
Okay, so then like, let's shift the gear here again. So obviously, like the impact of sleep on entrepreneurship is massive, the list of things that actually get affected when you don't sleep well consistently, it just goes on and on and on your memory, cognitive function, your mood, your motivation, you know, from a few things right off the top of my head. So what do you think, like, obviously, like you understand the importance of sleep on entrepreneurship?
Kris Nowak
But has it always been this way for you? And what do you think like the sleep of impact on entrepreneurship is personally? How do you perceive it?
Michael Gavin
I wouldn't say that it's always been like that. Like I used to have the mindset of like, I can work until two in the morning and then I have to wake up at six in the morning to get back to work. So like I've had that cycle going on. And then when you're in it, you don't realize that like you're being negatively affected. But then when you actually start changing it, you kind of see differences. One of them being just overall performance in general, you know, by the time like,
Michael Gavin
three in the afternoon came around and I was only working on four hours of sleep, you'd already be depleted pretty much. And you're like, okay, well, I have four more calls but I'm not gonna pay attention to them because I'm tired. I'm just gonna nod through them. But then when you change that sleep schedule, you're not, you end up getting tired around the time that you're usually supposed to go to sleep. And then, yeah, I think it was just overall performance. I think mood as well. You're tired, your nerves are pretty much shot at that point and you're just kind of...
Michael Gavin
And I don't know, you're very susceptible to just being upset at that time.
Kris Nowak
Definitely makes a huge difference. Like even in terms of, I think Iris Hormonzi had a video about this, like how he realized when he wasn't sleeping well consistently, he would snap at people. Like he would literally like flip and then like somebody literally like mentioned it to him and he started like realizing he connected it. There's so many different things that like actually get affected. Once you start sleeping well consistently and you actually like realize how well you can feel on a daily basis.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
It's almost like addicting and then like if you don't get it, it's like you have a benchmark, the bench line and you compare like, okay, so like I slept this way today, but I, you know, I could have slept way better. So the first step is probably like realizing that, you know, you can implement so many different things to sleep well consistently and it has a massive impact on your performance. It has. And then like if you actually take into consideration,
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
that entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint. And it actually is, you may, every now and then, you may actually find an opportunity where you hop on it and it's just going to take off and, you know, just kind of sort of comes easily to you. But for the most part, no, this is going to take long time and long effort. And, you know, you're going to have to pace yourself so you can actually sustain this.
Kris Nowak
So if you're gonna burn out yourself and not gonna sleep consistently well, it's going to be harder for you based on what I understand from my experience now.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, it's definitely the small things count more than anything. So, um, like Mike Tyson says that, you know, working or success is like doing the things you hate, but doing them as you love them. Um, so like nobody realistically who does want to wake up, you know, right in the morning and then spend, you know, X amount of time working on this one thing, because it's the same thing every day. That's just building to something else.
Michael Gavin
You know, who realistically does want to be sitting through 12 meetings in a day? No one really, but you have to do so in order to get to wherever you want to go. Um, same thing with the gym and everything like that, especially when you pair it with entrepreneurship, like, you know, okay, I just worked X amount of time or I did X amount of things today. You know, I really don't feel like going to roll today. Well, you know, you kind of have to, in order to like clear your brain and
Michael Gavin
keep your body in, you know, it's peak performance that you want it to be in. So yeah, I would definitely say that that's a big piece of it is just doing things that you don't want to do. One of them could be sleep. You don't want to go to bed early or you don't want to wake up, but realistically those are things that end up benefiting you in the long run. And that's what ends up building your goals out are the small things.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, definitely. I personally used to be this way. I like whenever it was time to start winding down and just like, you know, like relaxing and going to sleep. I just had this urge. I wanted to keep going. I just don't want to like go to sleep now. But then I realized like the huge impact it has in long-term, it's just so much better to sleep well consistently. You just feel better. Everything gets better. Also to add to whatever you just mentioned now. So, you know, I work...
Kris Nowak
every single day, basically six days a week, I try to take a day off, like in a week. But after work day, I'm actually looking forward to practicing. I practice mixed martial arts, try to get in five days a week, I also run or do like little calisthenics, like calisthenics in the morning just to like wake up. And so the way I actually look at things right now, rather than thinking I have to do something.
Kris Nowak
I like to think that I get to do something. I get to go to the practice after work and it's helping me to relax. I'm developing a useful skill. I'm really in the best shape I ever been in my life because I'm actually been consistently going to the practices and so many people out there are not even able to do these sort of things. And we humans are really weird. We don't really appreciate things for the most part until we lose it.
Kris Nowak
You know, what do you have? It's very interesting when whenever you feel sort of, okay, you're like a steady level, you don't really think about how healthy you are, right? But then like the second you lose your health, you actually have a, now you can compare it to how well you felt and now you start to regret it and now you actually miss it. So it's very weird how it works.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that saying I get to instead of like I have to. I think one of the things that happens is that life runs up on people very quick. So like me being 21 years old, you know, I in a blink of an eye, you know, I could go have three kids and like have a house that I have to pay mortgage on and stuff like that. And then all of those things that I used to be able to do in terms of.
Michael Gavin
you know, relaxation or improving myself in terms of jujitsu and stuff like that. Kind of, uh, they're not as available now because I have different responsibilities and, you know, uh, priorities that I have to put first. But, um, yeah, I would say that's also pretty much, uh, similar to what you said. Like we don't appreciate things for the now that we have, um,
Michael Gavin
Cause like I mentioned, you could tie that back to sleep as well. I could have kids, you know, within two years, and then I'm up at three in the morning, taking care of a crying baby and stuff like that to where now I can sleep peacefully from, you know, 10, 11 at night to six in the morning. So yeah, definitely something that people don't look at as in-depth as maybe they should.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, supposedly having kids has like a really like initially the first few years, you're going to lose a lot of sleep because kids, they just tend to wake up a lot and they cry and now you have to get up and just, you know, help them out and just take care of them. Otherwise, they will just continue on crying. Right. So I think, you know, like, no matter where you are right now, actually, like appreciating what you have and coming from a perspective that you've been grateful for what you have.
Kris Nowak
And the practice of doing that itself, it just for some reason, I don't, I don't claim to understand why it is this way, but when we actually tend to appreciate things and we being grateful and we manifest that gratefulness, we actually somehow attract more of that, which we were being grateful for. So I think that's like a really good starting point, right? So, you know, you're healthy now.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
you have opportunity to build a company, maybe things aren't exactly the way you wish them to be yet. And you're looking into the future to that point where, you know, like you think you're gonna arrive at when you build your company to one million doors a year, 10 million doors a year. You know, you think of that point in the future as your destination, but realistically, it's actually the journey of becoming the person that is able to...
Kris Nowak
pull this off, that's the reward here. It's not that point at which you actually have this company that's generating so much revenue or whatever else goal it is that you set for yourself. It's actually the journey that's the reward. It's so easy to get caught up in just wanting to arrive at a destination. And meanwhile, yeah, it's going to be great when you have a company that's generating millions of dollars or whatever different goal it is for you, right?
Kris Nowak
It's going to be nice, but ultimately it's the journey of becoming the person that can pull this off that's the ultimate reward. It's you building your character.
Michael Gavin
Yeah. What is it? The person who likes walking makes it further than the person who likes a destination.
Kris Nowak
Right, I haven't heard that one before, but it basically hits like the same concept here, right? Okay, so let's shift the gear here. So balancing sleep and physical fitness. So I know, so you mentioned to me, you train BJJ and wrestling, right?
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
Tell me more about it, like when did you start training it?
Michael Gavin
Yeah, so wrestling is about.
Michael Gavin
13 years now Jiu-Jitsu is still in its youth a little bit. It's four years, but still working towards things but uh, yeah wrestling was Obviously first in what I started doing I really liked that. It was just a one-on-one kind of sport I didn't have to rely on a team so, you know I could have a good day and win all my matches and it's me who's winning and Instead of me having a good day in our team
Kris Nowak
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gavin
Lost even though there is team scores in wrestling it's just it's very much different um in terms of end goal but um i also like the environment of i guess um kind of combat sport like rooms and stuff um just because everyone's there to achieve the same goal but everyone kind of keeps to themselves in the sense that that's how they're disciplined um like I'm sure there's
Michael Gavin
probably so many accounts of, you know, people in a jujitsu room that, you know, they don't talk a lot. They're just very about what they're there to do. So they spend an hour grappling, like that's what they're there to do. There's nothing much before or after or anything like that. I do appreciate that a lot in terms of both wrestling and jujitsu. But yeah, mostly now I compete in jujitsu more than I do wrestling now. Only because I'm not.
Michael Gavin
In that college setting anymore. So I've been having some success with tournaments and stuff like that, but definitely something that helps me stay sane, I would say. Like instead of sitting in doing work all day, I now have that one to two hours to actually just go and roll and get tired through physical activity instead of tired through work. So yeah, I would.
Michael Gavin
Definitely say I'm very thankful for those two things in that sense.
Kris Nowak
That's amazing. Do you do gi or no gi?
Michael Gavin
I'm no-gi. I prefer not to do D. The only reason is because when I first started, I got choked out by my own gi. And some guy choked me out with my own gi. And I was like, that's super disrespectful. But then coming from the wrestling background, no-gi is so much easier, transitioning from one sport to another. So yeah, because I don't need to worry about now getting choked by my...
Kris Nowak
and I'll be.
Kris Nowak
Oh, yeah.
Michael Gavin
you know, Gi or anything. So yeah, definitely more so no Gi. That's what I prefer.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, I train no gi as well. For those of you listening, they're wondering like what is gi? It's basically the outfit that guys that train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and different combat sports. It's that certain type of outfit that they wear and it's typically like very thick. So from what I've noticed guys that train in gi like they sweat like a lot, right?
Michael Gavin
Yep. Yeah.
Kris Nowak
I do know Gi, which is more, it has more like a street fighting application. I find it's just more realistic when you fight with somebody on the street or whatever like situation arise, you won't have a Gi on. So the placement is a little bit different, you know, personally, I love mixed martial arts. I love everything about mixed martial arts. Um, starting from the type of people that train mixed martial arts, for the most part,
Kris Nowak
They're very dedicated and goal oriented. And it's all about building yourself up and becoming the best version of yourself. The way I actually see entrepreneurship from my perspective being an entrepreneur for three years now, it's actually a journey of becoming the best version of yourself. And depending on the goals you set for yourself, you're actually going to have to level up in every aspect of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales.
Kris Nowak
Human relationships, everything you're going to have to improve. So that's for business side of things, being an entrepreneur, but for mixed martial arts, it's basically like that, but for your body and for your mentality, depending on the gym that you join guys that train mixed martial arts, there really are very disciplined, very masculine. It's about becoming a better version of yourself. You're learning a valuable skill.
Kris Nowak
To defend yourself as a valuable skill. You feel confident, you change the way you walk, you walk more confident. The list just goes on and on. I'm so biased, so I try to train five days a week now, Monday to Friday. I train my thigh, been training at the current gym for one year, which is like stance, it's kind of like kickboxing. And then I've been training BJJ for over three months at this gym as well, just because I want to become.
Kris Nowak
Like a well-rounded fighter where I have stance and groundwork. Because prior to me doing BJJ, if I was to actually get to the ground, I would have absolutely no clue what to do. But now I'm starting to actually understand how to position myself and have some confidence, even with guys that are like way bigger than me, only weighed 170 pounds. But oftentimes I roll with guys that are like well over 200 pounds, which is like a significant difference. And now if it was ever to get to that.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
Me being in that situation, I feel confident that I'll know how to position myself.
Michael Gavin
Yeah, absolutely.
Kris Nowak
So honestly, how did you, so because you started very young, like you became an athlete at a very young age. So in the United States, wrestling is much more popular than in Canada, from what I heard. Like wrestling is quite popular in the United States, right?
Michael Gavin
Yeah. I would.
Kris Nowak
How did you like start on that? Was it like, yeah?
Michael Gavin
It was kind of just going to the like CYC and wrestling from there. It didn't start off as anything serious, I would say, because like my brother also wrestled. So it was more so like we would wrestle around the house. But then it turned into, you know, you're not going to keep breaking the kitchen table or the dining room table or anything like that. You might as well go like wrestle somewhere to where they're actually wrestling instead of doing that. So that's kind of where it came from or like originated.
Michael Gavin
And from there, just kind of took off, you kind of get into the habit of, you know, you kind of start, you enjoy learning, you enjoy losing five pounds of water weight, and then you end up enjoying trying to make weights and you enjoy just like getting beat down every single day by this other person or other people. And then you just kind of, um, it's, um, it's the least rewarding, I'll say of sports.
Michael Gavin
It definitely is. There's really like you can go Olympics and stuff like that. But then like percentage of Olympic wrestlers and stuff like that, that end up getting gold from the United States is so so much low. It's like very low. So it's very it's least rewarding. But at the end of the day, like it's like, as you mentioned with BJJ, like you do walk a little more confident and you kind of like, well, I always attach it to like certain obstacles in life.
Kris Nowak
A lot more confident, I would say. A lot more.
Michael Gavin
Yeah. Yeah, I end up I always tied to certain situations in life like obstacles like okay, if like, why could I get through, you know, seven people destroying me and you know, what we would do is they'd be like flurry. So like, you'd have one minute increments, one person stays in for five other people. So you're wrestling for five minutes straight, and you're getting five different looks. So or like,
Michael Gavin
Some people call them hammers or something like that. It's like, okay, well, why can I get through this? But like, oh, my stomach hurts today. Like, why wouldn't I be able to get through that if I've been through worse already? Like, I've physically been beaten down. Why can't I get through any of like the other aspects of it? And it absolutely adds a mental edge as well because chances are either sport you do wrestling BJJ, Muay Thai is probably another one as well.
Michael Gavin
There has to be one time or another that you may have been like, Oh, well, do I really want to keep doing this? Like, do I really want to come in here and get my ass beat every day? No. But you continue doing it. It's the same thing with, like I said, real life obstacles. If life's beating you down, you just know that, you know, I've already been through the ringer. I can I can go around again and, you know, be fine. I'll leave unfazed.
Kris Nowak
Yeah, 100%. Like you fight, you spar with guys that are bigger than you, they're more experienced than you. And like just simply said, like they just going to beat you down, right? And he just going to take it and what that does for your mentality is, okay, so it delays the gratification to start with. Because when you go to practice after one practice, you don't get better. You put entire effort into the practice, but after one practice, you don't get better. But over time, as you continue on doing that,
Kris Nowak
You're getting stronger, you're getting leaner. You know, your mindset is actually getting stronger. And then eventually one day you look back and like, yeah, I'm a fighter now. Now I feel confident that I know actually how to fight. And I actually learned something here. And it's applicable to life as well. Like running your business, you know, what do you do when shit goes wrong? Like not always you gonna like have stuff work out your way. You're gonna have to take it and you're gonna have to pick yourself up.
Kris Nowak
and start again fresh. And just to add to that, think a big part of being a successful entrepreneur. So you have to decide on the direction that you want to go. Okay, so, you know, I'm starting this company and rather than just looking at somebody else's grass, the grass is always greener on the other side as the saying goes, you make a irrevocable decision that this is what you're going to pursue.
Michael Gavin
Yeah.
Kris Nowak
come hell or high water, I'm doing this, I will find a solution to make this work. Because you can actually any kind of business, obviously there are like a certain types of businesses, they're better than other types of businesses, but any business you can succeed and scale and take it to the heights where you're the best at it. But you can't just quit and just look for another opportunity, right?
Michael Gavin
Yeah. There's it's kind of like how you mentioned it's I'm either going to do it or the way that I always thought about it is that if I don't know the answer now, I'll have the answer tomorrow and I'll work from there. But same thing like you mentioned in any of these combat sports. That's how it is. Like, OK, I may have been beaten today, but I'll go back to the drawing board and I'll figure it out tomorrow. And I'm not going to lose again by the same thing. It's all a learning curve. And
Michael Gavin
Yeah, I mean, it's very applicable that I think it's everything. Realistically, it just ends up becoming applicable to. But yeah, definitely say if you're looking to get into business, entrepreneurship or anything, just you might as well just tie them both together and join a jiu jitsu gym or any kind of combat sport gym and just start doing that as well.
Kris Nowak
And if you haven't actually started doing it yet, it's definitely, it's never too late. Like just start doing it. Just start training already. Level up your fitness, your physique, because your physical health will actually correlate to your results in business. And as you mentioned earlier, it's just something to do. At the end of the day, you work hard. And so now you have an outlet for the stress accumulated. I had a previous podcast episode, I talked about different practical ways to manage stress.
Kris Nowak
So you may want to check it out. It's just filled with practical tips on how to manage stress. I know a lot of people struggle with stress and anxiety, but at the end of the day, you know, like, yes, like you could work an hour or two hours longer for the day, but long-term, it's not going to be good for you because what you suppress will manifest itself. So if you have a lot of stress coming at you because you're running a business, you need to have outlets to let go of that. And combat sports are a great way to do that.
Kris Nowak
great way, like I literally tried to get in five times a week, which is every day, basically except weekends, at very minimum four times a week. And yeah, at the end of the day, I just go to the practice. You know, I enjoyed the ride there. I enjoyed the practice, the guys building relationships with these guys. It's amazing. So I really encourage everybody to get into that.
Kris Nowak
Okay. Okay. So where can people find Michael Gavin? Like, are there like any like social handles that you would like people to follow you if they want to learn more about you?
Michael Gavin
Yeah, um, LinkedIn is probably the most active on LinkedIn now, um, more than I've ever been. It's just Michael Gavin Jr. Um, another one is Instagram. It's Michael Gavin dot jr. Um, those are the main two. Um, they can also check out brain sprites website. It's just www.brainsprite.com. Um, and then other than that, not really, I'm a pretty low key type of person. Um, sticking to my own and getting done what needs to get done.
Kris Nowak
Okay, that's amazing, guys. So yeah, if you want to check out brainspride.com, it can help you read research papers in a way more organized and faster way compared to if you were just trying to read them manually, the way it, more basically everybody would read them until now we have these tools available, right? Okay, Mike, so thank you very much for being a guest on this podcast. I really did have a lot of fun talking to you and good luck with BrainSprite and we're gonna stay in touch.
Michael Gavin
Absolutely, sounds good to me. Thanks for having me.
Kris Nowak
Okay, bye now.
Michael Gavin
All right, I'll see you.
