Ariana (00:00:07) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of business operations, one episode at a time. I'm your host, Ariana Cofone, and today's guest is Sean O'Connor, Chief of Staff at BlockNative. Sean, welcome to Secret Ops. I'm so grateful to have you on the show today.

Sean (00:00:23) - Thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here.

Ariana (00:00:26) - I wanna kick off by talking about your journey and your career. Where did you start and how did you get to where you are today?

Sean (00:00:33) - I grew up in a family business. My parents own and operate restaurant still do. So at the age of 12 I started getting paid to work there, but growing up was always sort of in the mix. And then went to college, studied finance, had dreams of being an investment banker and started going down that path and realized that I actually kind of hated the work around hedge fund finance, et cetera, and got exposed to startups, through two professors during my undergrad. And that kind of opened my eyes, and have spent my entire career in and around early stage technology startups, often the first employee or first handful...building and scaling, taking ideas from zero to one. And that's kind of how I got here today.

Ariana (00:01:16) - So that's a particular niche, which is like early stage tech startups and especially since you started your career, you've seen a lot progress in that time. Just in general, how has it been navigating that landscape as it's changing so quickly?

Sean (00:01:31) - Yeah, I think I love early stage startups because being at this sort of cutting edge of taking new ideas and putting them out into the world and it's obviously a very risky portion of the ecosystem to play. And I've always just kind of found myself drawn to new and emergent technologies. When I was in a senior in 2012 in college, was building an e-commerce startup out of my dorm room and we started accepting Bitcoin because it was new and weird and wild and like why wouldn't we play around with that technology? And then fast forward after the Ethereum, my CEO started hearing a lot about that new technology dug into the white paper. It was like, oh, this rhymes with Bitcoin but it is actually a tech that could be usable for applications. And pretty quickly found my way working deeply in that space.

Ariana (00:02:23) - Oh my gosh. So not only were you in the technology realm, but you were in at the forefront of all emerging technology with when it comes to crypto and when it comes to integrating that into a larger business context.

Sean (00:02:36) - Yeah, and before I was in crypto, I was working in education technology. After graduating from college I did a Fulbright and spent a year teaching English in Sri Lanka and came back, had the opportunity to work with Seth Godin, launched an EdTech platform and then from there just really was dialed into learning technology and built some stuff in the K-12 world for a few years, then built some stuff in the higher-ed world and we were taking a lot of, at that time just best practices from consumer-facing technology and applying them into education, which is a bit of a laggard market. So it was sort of taking stuff that had been proven in other markets and trying to apply it into the education world where we thought we could make an impact for students.

Ariana (00:03:22) - So that's actually where our paths crossed a bit cause I was in technology education as well. But within businesses. Do you think that having that foundation in education has made there be a transition into your role today? Being a chief of staff? Like I find that a lot of part of operations is learning how to distill in information to people and education really is, I don't know, it's like a playground of figuring out how to do that in different ways.

Sean (00:03:48) - Oh, totally. And we're still like being a Chief of Staff, you're figuring out how to run and educate a team of about 45 humans across nine countries in seven time zones. So how do you keep all those people in sync working on the same page and taking a step back. When I got into web three, a lot of what I was doing was helping bridge the gap for this new emergent technology and make it really accessible. I worked with a few universities and colleges to structure web three events and programming and even at Block Native where we're doing really deep sort of esoteric tech working at the core of the Ethereum ecosystem, people generally view our blog as one of the most friendly and accessible in the ecosystem. And I think, that tension of being at the cutting edge and building the next generation, but also having a lot of content marketing that makes it easy, accessible and digestible has been a really great approach for our business and has helped open up a lot of doors.

Ariana (00:04:51) - Well, and then I guess this transitions nicely because web three is something I believe most people hear about and really don't have any sort of idea what it is, especially how it ties into the crypto world, just in the general business world. So before we dive more into your role as a chief of staff, can we talk about what Web three is and do you mind just demystifying that for us?

Sean (00:05:14) - Yeah.

Sean (00:05:16) - Everyone has heard of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency and the news loves to talk about the price of Bitcoin. It was at 60,000, now it's at 16,000. And nobody really talks about the fact that Bitcoin, capital B, the cryptocurrency runs on bitcoin, lowercase b, the blockchain. And it turns out the most interesting thing about bitcoin, the blockchain isn't the price of Bitcoin, the crypto, it's what you can actually do and build on it. So you can issue digital certificates on bitcoin, the blockchain, there's now the idea of smart contracts and there are projects like stacks that are actually building smart contract layers that are tied to bitcoin, the blockchain. And with blockchains you can build applications and with smart contracts you can design trustless systems that enable new forms of communication, new forms of transacting.

Ariana (00:06:09) - I mean, in the last I guess four years watching Bitcoin go all over the place, Ethereum, all these different types of cryptocurrencies. Just to echo back, the real interesting part outside of the news is actually the technology underpinning it because all of a sudden it starts to open up all these different possibilities within a business context, because of how you can store records and that's why there's not just, conversation on how it's changing the financial world, but in other parts of the business world as well.

Sean (00:06:38) - Absolutely, and it sort of reminds me when I was a kid, I was 9 or 10 years old when my parents got their first website for their business. And this was a restaurant in New Jersey. And uh, couple people were like, why are you bothering with this? Like, do you really need a website? And it turned out that, you know, from the nineties into the two thousands, the vast majority of the world went from offline to online and having a website now imagine a restaurant without a website, it like you're kind of crazy. And today the vast majority of the world is off chain and you might send a wire or two a month, you probably get some ACH payments. They're really annoying and clunky and you don't do it all that often because it's hard and it's a shitty user experience. And the vast majority of the world, I believe in five or 10 years will be on chain. And the velocity of transactions you make in your life will exponentially increase. And we're at, we're sort of in the middle of this technological shift and technology shifts our cultures in net new ways. So I think it's important for people to think about blockchains as the next wave of technology that will shape how we interact with each other and with the world.

Ariana (00:07:50) - Now, is that where the name Web three comes from, meaning this new generation of how we're gonna be engaging with each other?

Sean (00:07:55) - Exactly. If you think about Web one was the internet, web two was sort of the social right revolution. Web three is the idea of the decentralized web. And in web two, all these walled gardens were created like your Twitter profile or your Facebook profile, all of the interactions with your friends, you have all of your posts, all of your photos are locked into that platform. And there's now social platforms that are being built on Web three that have the idea of interoperability where if you don't like what's going on with Twitter, you can take all of your historical tweets, your friend graph, etc, and move to a different social graph.

Ariana (00:08:33) - Yeah, I mean we could dive down the ownership of your own data and all these different things, but I wanna pivot back to your role as a chief of staff, cuz I think we've got two things here. Web three, which is a new concept for some, and also Chief of Staff, which is becoming a more regular role that I've seen within startups especially, but that can be new to other people. So do you mind just bringing us into your world a a little bit? What is a day in the life of a chief of staff? What does that look like for you?

Sean (00:08:59) - Yeah, taking a step back, the Chief of Staff title comes from politics and it was something that started to really break into the web really over the last five years. And it's starting to become a pretty common role. And it is different inside of every single organization. I know a lot of Chief of Staffs and I'm in network-for-peer learning and every Chief of Staff sort of has a different role depending upon the relationship with their principal. I report to our CEO Matt Cutler, who's a sees an entrepreneur and someone I deeply respect and admire. And my role when I describe it is sort of attach co-processor to him. And over the last four years at Block Native, my role has evolved a lot in every sort of three to six months, it has turned into something different as the business has evolved and as we've grown as a team. So a year and change ago I was running most of our, people ops and most of our marketing. And then over the last year we've hired a CMO, a VP of people, a VP of finance, a VP of sales, and a lot of my role has focused on enabling them, empowering them, helping them grow at their team, and ensuring we're all aligned and working on the same, like walking in the same direction.

Ariana (00:10:15) - Definitely. This is interesting because there's such a nimbleness that you have to have within this role in within operations in general because typically you're overseeing so many different pieces. Is this part of the draw in this role, which is like, ooh, I'm learning new, something new all the time. Your your brain is always working new muscles. Is that also part of the challenge where you're always kind of learning a new job every six months to a year? How does that fall for you?

Sean (00:10:42) - Yeah, I think that's, I love the role because it's so dynamic and it gets me so much exposure. We just closed a new round of financing, which will be announced soon, and I got really deep into that process and learned a ton along the way. And the ability to context-shift is really important in this role as is the ability to sort of re-evaluate and ensure you're working on the right things. And I often spend a lot of my time working with my principal and looking at the things that are on his plate that frankly the CEO shouldn't be doing and figure out how do we hire into that structure at create processes around it or otherwise enable him to go do the things that only a CEO can do.

Ariana (00:11:29) - So this I think, gets to how we define operations. So in your day-to-day life, what does a day look like for you? So you wake up, you hop online, maybe you don't, you're in person. How does it start to manifest? Are you constantly in meetings? Are you more on the quieter side writing things, implementing technology? How does it look for you?

Sean (00:11:51) - It's a mix. I am generally pretty meeting-heavy as a fully remote company. We have to invest a lot in keeping people in sync and on the same page. So that is a mix of meetings, asynchronous documents. One thing I encourage every single operations lead to do is to do an inventory of all of your meetings and the cadence and figure out the stakeholders for those meetings. So that rhythm of every single Monday, we have a team all hands in that what's the purpose? To drive alignment and ensure everybody's on the same page and information share. We have our leadership team meeting directly before it, so we can actually align on what's top of mind and priorities for the business. And one-on-ones with functional areas to keep a pulse of problems, to spot trends and to ensure our folks are on the same page. And then, you know, quarterly cadence, board meetings, investor updates, bi-annually in-person, company-wide retreats to get everybody together, work, shoulder to shoulder, enjoy a meal, get to know each other on a human level while we also set the vision in direction for the next six months.

Ariana (00:13:05) - Definitely. Well it’s interesting too, because if we think about how, how much of our days are spent with meetings, there's also a huge amount of effort that goes into meeting planning, agenda, creating all that sort of jazz. So the more that you can make meetings reoccurring or have similar themes or agendas, the more that people just get into a cadence where they can expect what's coming. There's less of a mental overhead that you need to have to plan these things. And it's, you can predict the touch bases, which is a way of bonding as well.

Sean (00:13:34) - Exactly. And then also evaluating, do these meetings still make sense for us? Are they good use and encouraging people. Hey, if this meeting is not a good use of your time, leave, like, you can get notes or information asynchronously after and like figuring out what those information sharing looks like. And also just by virtue of where our, our team's very geographically distributed. So we have to be really, really disciplined about documentation, knowledge bases, knowledge sharing, because asynchronous work is crucial.

Ariana (00:14:04) - And I wanna come back to that in a second because asynchronous is the word of the year , which is how do you grow and, and build a beautifully functioning asynchronous team. If we take a step back though, and we look at operations and we, and we break it down, like I had said before in previous episodes, the easiest way I have found to define operations is people, process and technology working in harmony with a side of data too, bringing some some goodness into that mix. So when it comes to the technology side of things, because a lot of your product is technology, how do you go about balancing what needs to be digital versus what needs to be human within your operational role? Because I think as a Chief of Staff, you are really at the intersection of those two things.

Sean (00:14:53) - Yeah, I will caveat this by saying we have a phenomenal product organization and I do not work- I work closely with them, but I'm not in the day-to-day of the operations of our product managers who are actually and project manager who are actually like building the cards and working on that. But the way their process works is the sales marketing team go out, understand customer lifecycle or work with the product manager to define technical specs and understand the Ethereum roadmap. And then we go and spec out what we need to build and break it down into weekly sprint cycles and actually implement the work. And we have a bias towards shipping and trying to get customer feedback as early as possible. And we have also benefited really deeply from working with sort of the top tier in the industry. So, if you've used Meta Mask or Curve or Zapper or Synthetic, some of the largest protocols in wallets in the space, they use our products. And because we're working with people who are at the bleeding edge, who are giving us feedback on our product roadmap and lifecycle, it really helps us to build some of the best infrastructure in Web three.

Ariana (00:16:07) - How are you distilling or how is the team distilling product strategy into the internal team way of working? Is that something that you have to work intimately with? Trying to translate those things in?

Sean (00:16:21) - Our CEO is extremely technical and really works with our CTO to help set a lot of the product strategy and mission and vision. And at our last offsite, the entire purpose of the offsite was to set the vision for the next six months. So get everyone in person around tables together and talk about the next six months of the business, what we're working on, what we need to ship, and get everybody aligned on what they need to do to actually help the business reach our KPIs over that time period. And that mix of deep work in person, really drove a lot of focus and alignment. It was the people side that makes some of the technology and operations side much easier because everybody's on the same page.

Ariana (00:17:07) - Well, this springboards nicely into the people side of things. So you are clearly, the traffic controller of a lot of things. What would you say are some things that you've learned as a Chief of Staff that are tips that other people could use in how you manage teams and how you communicate with teams, especially through that lens of being asynchronous where you have team members globally that you're working with? What are some things that you've learned along the way?

Sean (00:17:32) - Yeah, you have to be really empathetic to your team and to your people and clear, concise communication, repeated often is sort of the secret to getting things to stick. Again, going back to our earlier conversation around education and teaching, distilling concepts down, making it really simple, making information really easy to surface and find. And then on the people side, as a rapidly growing startup, onboarding is key. And getting people aligned and in tune with the vision their first week, making sure they have all of the resources they need, making sure they have the support they need to be successful is key because those people don't have the historical context that all your other team members do. And if you're growing rapidly, you're gonna double your team every 6, 12, 24 months, whatever that cadence. But there will be a lot of new people around the table very often.

Ariana (00:18:30) - Wow, that is a great point. I find that onboarding team members is one of the most important things that I do and it's also one of the most exhausting things that I do because you're right, you're trying to take your brain and bottle it up into something that's engaging, that is easy to transcribe and is also something that people can grasp and start to do their job because you've got the education background too. Have you had any tips for us on that, particularly ? Have you found a platform that you like or a certain structure for onboarding that seems to work well?

Sean (00:19:01) - I will say we are always trying to improve our ways of working, but what's working for us right now is a few things. During the interview process, we spend a lot of time educating people, sending them blog posts. Our recruiters have actually some stock templates of like, Hey, ahead of your engineering interview, look at this GitHub repo, read this or listen to this podcast, read these posts to help understand our product and our life cycle. And that one helps us vet candidates and make sure they actually grok what we do deeply, which we need. And two, helps them really understand where we're at in the ecosystem before they come on board. So it starts with the interview process. And then during the interview and offer stage, we encourage every single candidate to take a minimum week off in between leaving their old role and joining ours.

Sean (00:19:52) - We want them to decompress, take a deep breath, like, working in web three can be pretty intense and burnout is a real thing. So we want them to come in refreshed and hungry. And then first day of work, you'll get a Slack message with, Hey, introduce yourself in the team channel, here's a template for how to do that. And here's our welcome to the team Notion onboarding. There's a lot of information there and we expect you over your first three days to go through everything by yourself, read the documentation and then you'll have an hour long onboarding call where we'll talk about mission, vision, strategy, ways of working, cultural norms, and then you're off to the races. Your hiring manager also will have a work plan scheduled for you. So you actually have your first, call it 30-ish days, sort of defined what you need to do, what you need to read in on. And then myself and the VP of people will schedule one-on-ones both with us to check in at about a week in and with relevant team members. So you get that networking and cultural human to human relationship.

Ariana (00:20:58) - In hearing all those aspects, there are so many different angles that you have to think about when you're onboarding

Sean (00:21:03) - Vision, mission, strategy, like they have to see the big picture, but they also have to know the in-the-weeds tools that they'll actually need to use. And whether that's how to like set up your local dev environment or how to get into our content management system. It varies a lot from functional role and then you need to know the people. Like it's kind of weird just to send somebody a Slack message that you've never met before and be like, Hey, I need this thing. Can you help? Instead set up a call, let them get to know each other as people. So when they need help they kind of have some shared understanding and context.

Ariana (00:21:40) - That's a really good point because I feel like especially, you know, you lived in New York, I live in New York, we're very down to business, that's kind of the vibe of the East coast but you need to develop those relationships, especially beforehand, especially if you're fully remote, so that you have that context of being able to support each other even though you aren't in the same room. It's a lot easier when you're just constantly together, but when you're not, you have to make that effort.

Sean (00:22:05) - It is. But in this industry, there's no way we could have an office with everyone together. Like hiring talent is hard enough when you're looking globally, let alone looking in one geographical area.

Ariana (00:22:17) - Oh, absolutely. So this tip goes nicely into the process side of what you do. So clearly every sort of work stream has to have some sort of process and based on the work stream, it has its own vibe. What again, are some things that you have learned over the years that help operations to thrive when it comes to establishing processes?

Sean (00:22:39) - Yeah, one of the best things I, and I learned this from my boss when he started to have me do this, is let the person who's actually going to be running and implementing have a really strong say in the process and how it's designed. So for example, we were looking at implementing an applicant tracking system and I did a bunch of research, narrowed it down, had my top two choices, presented it to my CEO, and he said, well, you choose which one you think because you're gonna be the one who's actually on the hook and responsible for implementing it. And I don't want you to say in a month that we, like...you forced me into this. And it was a bad decision. This is your choice, you own it from end-to-end lifecycle. And working with functional teams actually do that is huge. Even down to like designing OKRs, which we're in the process of doing right now, the top level objectives are set by leadership, but then individual functional areas like our CMO is working with his team to actually define the key results that will drive the objective because we want every member of that team bought into what's actually the work that needs to be done to drive things forward. If you just shove things down people’s throats, it's like good luck.

Ariana (00:23:55) - It's true. You have to, and I have had I think both where I've like gotten the OKRs and here you go, like figure it out. But also when you can contribute and have those conversations up front, you can also poke holes into things. You can make something a little bit more realistic. You can also, have I think a better cross pollination of information like to make these OKRs and and to make these goals you have to have a lot of people contributing thoughts around it too.

Sean (00:24:23) - You do. And it comes down to enrollment. You need people bought into the mission, the vision and the journey. And if somebody just wants a job where they show up and do what they're told, like you can go flip hamburgers at McDonald's and follow the playbook and working at the cutting edge of technology, there is no playbook, there is no like, here's the thing and here's what you need to do. You need to find people that are self-motivated, that have a growth mindset and that are open to the ambiguity of working in a rapidly emergent and constantly changing ecosystem.

Ariana (00:25:00) - Oh, definitely. A and that's not for everyone too. I think same with the startup world. It's not for everybody.

Sean (00:25:06) - Startups in general are not for everyone and crypto specifically is definitely not for everyone. You need a combination of a lot of risk appetite and also if you're not like genuinely stoked about the mission of web three and the ability to transform, the entire global financial sector, then this industry is not for you. It's too rapidly moving, too complex. The rapid hole is both wide and deep and constantly getting wider and deeper.

Ariana (00:25:41) - I feel like if I learn just even a tiny bit, it's like as, as soon as you learn something, you realize how much you don't know because all of a sudden it's like your knowledge base grows and you're like, oh my God, I don't even know where to go. And especially in something that's evolving so quickly, that's also gotta be something to to constantly pace with.

Sean (00:26:00) - Yeah. And it takes a certain amount of like, you have to be really comfortable with a lot of unknowns and also getting people comfortable with saying, Hey, I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you. Or like, Hey, I don't know. And this isn't relevant to what I do so...pass a friend was just asking me about who are the leaders in the self-sovereign identity space, which is a niche of web three. And I said to him, I have not looked in two or three years. I have no idea. I can connect you with a friend who I think might know, but this is totally outside of my wheelhouse.

Ariana (00:26:37) - Yeah, well it's impossible to know all of the things. Right? That's the truth of it. Okay, moving on to the next part of Secret Ops. We're gonna give folks the inside scoop onto your role and talk more about like the nitty gritty of it in particular starting out with what do you think people get wrong about operations and particularly what do you think people get wrong about the role of a Chief of Staff?

Sean (00:27:04) - Yeah. this might be taboo, but sometimes I bias towards not over-baking ideas in operations, like getting the minimum viable process in place and just hitting it- with the caveat that generally within a startup, whatever you do will stick for six to 12 months and then need to be torn down and rebuilt as the company scales. But like being okay with good enough for this stage of the business and not spending a ton of time future-proofing because the business is going to change so rapidly and so much so being really dialed into where are there are leverage points that I can influence and actually drive the trajectory of the business forward and then figure out the rest later.

Ariana (00:27:52) - And I think that, that for me was a hard lesson to learn and it took me many, many years cuz I definitely am a recovering perfectionist, but you're a hundred percent right. It's absolutely not about perfection. It's getting something out the door, trying it because you're gonna evolve it over time, you're gonna sculpt it and the more you let it sit in your brain versus getting it out to the users, which are typically people inside your business, the less you're gonna learn.

Sean (00:28:15) - Yeah. Internally, we really beat the drum of zero to one, one to ten, ten to a hundred. If you try and go from zero to a hundred in one shot, you're gonna run into a wall or you'll never ship anything. And getting the team to be really honest, is this a zero to one problem? Like, are we doing something net new for the first time? And if we are like, cool, let's figure out how to make this as simple and as easy as possible. And then like, okay, is there traction here? Is this working? Great. How do we actually polish this, take this to the next level and then do that one or two times and suddenly you're at a thousand X of where you started, but you're gaining data along the way.

Ariana (00:28:55) - What do you think is the hardest part of your job?

Sean (00:28:58) - Yeah, I think given how much the role evolves and changes, ensuring you're actually working on the highest leverage thing can be really hard. And structuring the time in your week to actually reflect on the top priorities, what's going well, what's not going well, where do you need to spend more time can be really hard because your schedule's pretty slammed and it is something I don't do enough. Thinking about the areas where I need to spend more time and also where I could develop more professionally.

Ariana (00:29:32) - The prioritization. It’s interesting prioritizing what is the most important thing you could, you could do sometimes changes on an hour to hour basis with operations. That's I think the most difficult part is that you're constantly reorienting yourself into what the new situation is and and it never stops like that just never stops.

Sean (00:29:51) - Yeah. And the balance between long-term planning and short-term execution is a challenge. And like it never stops in being really comfortable that like the, the process is the fun and like the work, getting joy out of that chaos can be a mental shift that I think can help unlock a lot of joy in day-to-day operations. Don't look at the challenges and the fires as problems. Look at them as opportunities to learn as long as you know, you're not firefighting every single day.

Ariana (00:30:25) - Well, this gets perfectly to the next question, which is what do you think is the best part? What is the cherry on top of being an operations and being a chief of staff?

Sean (00:30:32) - Oh, the exposure has been like incredible. I think I've developed more in the last two years than in the last 10 years of my career. And I'm really, really lucky to have a great CEO to work with and learn from. And I've feel like my career is 10Xd.

Ariana (00:30:51) - Wow. It's amazing when you work with good leaders, how much it allows you to, to really thrive there. There's a big difference there, especially because you're working so closely with one too.

Sean (00:31:02) - Yeah. And it also, working with leaders that you both respect, but who are open to changing and growing themselves is really fun.

Ariana (00:31:12) - You're getting me jazzed now. I'm like, let's do it. Yeah. Let's just change the world.

Sean (00:31:15) - Yeah. I mean like all things in life, everything comes down to people. It's all about the people you're working with and like there's the market's gonna go up, the market's gonna go down. Are you working with people who you're learning from, who you enjoy on a human level and who you think are, you know, highly competent, highly ethical folks? Like if you could check all those boxes, like hell yeah. People often ask me why I've been at one company for four years in web three when the average tenure I think is nine months in enroll. And it comes down to the people like working on really cool stuff with really cool people at the cutting edge of technology checks all the boxes. Why would I leave?

Ariana (00:31:58) - Yeah, you gotta enjoy it. That's, that's what people thrive to find and you found it, which is amazing. Last question in this particular bit, which is, if somebody's listening to us and they're saying, oh my gosh, web three Chief of Staff operations I want in what piece of advice would you give them to start their own journey into that world?

Sean (00:32:19) - Yeah, I would say if you want to get into a Chief of Staff role, a lot of it comes down to networking. You could join professional communities like On Deck to learn more and they have access to job boards and unique candidate flow and all that jazz. If you wanna work in web three, like go down the rabbit hole yourself. So read the Bitcoin white paper, read the Ethereum white paper. They're not long. You could read them in an hour each go like actually start using defi protocols and like start contributing to the ecosystem because if you want to like get in, you need to...no one's gonna give you permission. So it's on you to actually do the work to orient yourself around the ecosystem. And it, it can be a little intimidating, but like podcasts like Bankless are great to help you get started and you need to do the work first before you can go do the work professionally.

Ariana (00:33:14) - Hmm. The curiosity. I, think in the last 10 years that I've been in operations, the thing that has literally kept me on track is the curiosity to learn something. Because what I had, you know, 10 years ago is not how we function 10 years later.

Sean (00:33:30) - No, it's constantly changing and also like keeping a pulse and listening to podcasts like this is great. My buddy Taylor Pearson runs a really good newsletter that has phenomenal bits on operations. He also writes a lot about finance, which I personally find is great, but like his operation tidbits give me a lot of room for reflection and pause that then I can go and implement with my team.

Ariana (00:33:55) - All right. We are almost at the end of our journey here, and so I gotta throw you some rapid fire questions. We gotta learn about you. I can't wait. All right. So kicking off, what morning rituals do you start your day with every day you wake up? What do you gotta do to get your day started?

Sean (00:34:10) - Yeah, wake up 6:30 doing this thing now where I try not to look at my phone for the first half hour of the day. I would say mild to moderate success there. Usually make a cup of coffee. Now that it's cold and snowy in Denver. Flip the fireplace on, sit by that, maybe read a little bit or journal in the morning, then at the gym at 7:30, home by 8:30, shower and online by 9. And that's my routine Monday through Friday.

Ariana (00:34:40) - Winding down at the end of the day. How do you take the stress of the day off? How do you get ready to relax? What do you do?

Sean (00:34:47) - Yeah, I am not always great at unwinding and it's something I'm working on. The things that like consistently help os hot shower to sort of contact shift and like move into a new space. Usually at the end of most days, my husband and I are pretty shot, so we'll just crash on the couch and watch an episode or two of something and then go to bed. Pretty consistently in bed I have a really like good sleep hygiene that I've dialed in that helps me get a solid eight hours every day, which helps make me really productive the next

Ariana (00:35:24) - On to the next. What book are you currently reading?

Sean (00:35:27) - I'm currently reading Ryan Holliday's new book on stoicism and I'm blanking on the name of it, but it, it's a fun one.

Ariana (00:35:36) - What about your favorite quote?

Sean (00:35:38) - Hmm. What is my favorite quote? I don't have a snap reaction to this, which is telling at the moment. Oh, my favorite quote is from Kurt Vonnegut. “So it goes”.

Ariana (00:35:52) - Hmm. Love that. What do you think is the most important lesson you've learned so far in your life?

Sean (00:36:02) - Everything in life is a game. Some games are infinite, some games are finite. Understand what you're playing and what the purpose is. Some games you play to win some games, you play to play.

Ariana (00:36:14) - Hmm. Last question, which is, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Sean (00:36:19) - Oh, uh, I wanna be a ski bum

Ariana (00:36:23) - Well, that sounds fabulous. Alright, Sean, thank you so much. If people wanted to find you, where's the best place for them to find you?

Sean (00:36:33) - Yeah, I would say you can go to my personal website, SeanOConn.org. You can find me on Twitter for as long as that dumpster fire is out and running at ASEOConnor.

Ariana (00:36:44) - Beautiful. Sean, thank you again for your time and for sharing your knowledge.

Sean (00:36:49) - Thank you. This was fun.

Ariana (00:36:51) - A major thanks to our audience as well for listening to Secret Ops. Please follow us wherever you find your podcast and check us out at secret-ops.com. We'll see you next time.