The Intersection of Hollywood and Flow: A Conversation with Steven Puri

There are people who watch movies and then there are people who help shape the stories that defiant entire generations. Today's guest has been inside the rooms where billion dollar franchises were built.Rooms where ideas were fought for, written, rewritten, resurrected, and sometimes saved at the very last second.He's seen writers hit breakthroughs at 3am Directors melt under pressure and entire films pivot because one of them had a moment of clarity, one moment of flow. And now he's teaching the rest of us how to access that same state of creative power. Stay tuned. I'm your host, Michael Hurst.Welcome to one more thing before you go. My guest today is Stephen Perry. He has lived a creative life that reads like a Hollywood montage.Newscaster, IBM software engineer, visual effects producer on Independence Day, which won the Academy Award for visual effects. He's the founder of a tech company he sold at 28, then studio side.He's a VP of Development and Production at 20th Century Fox, running some of my favorite movies and yours too. Die Hard, Wolverine franchises and later EVP at DreamWorks, working on Star Trek 2, Transformers 1 and 2, Eagle Eye and more.He's worked with the best writers in the world and he noticed something they all had in common, a way of entering a mental state where creativity becomes inevitable.After two failed startups, he rebuilt his life around that discovery and founded the Suka Company, a platform designed to help people enter flow states and build meaningful, productive work lives. Stephen, welcome to the table.

Michael, having listened to you introduce a number of people, you are so good introductions where at the end of it you're like, I am excited to be here. I don't know what I was thinking 10 seconds ago, but now I want.

To meet me hot damn as we say. There it is.

So yeah, I hope in this episode we can inspire, including you.And as you said, a lot of what I've studied the past 5, 10 years has been based upon seeing great engineers, great writers, great designers work and how they overcome the problems that I have with distraction and procrastination. And yeah, I understand flow states.

Yeah, I think we all share that. I think every one of us. If you're a human being, you. You procrastinate.If you're a human being, you have doubt and fears and struggles with trying to overcome that. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

And here's the funny thing is if you think incentives wise, I think it was wasn't Charlie Munger who said, show me the incentives in a system and I'll show you the outcome.

Right.

And if you think incentives wise, our generation has come up with some of the best distracting technology ever.

Right?

So it was hard enough maybe a hundred years ago to be like, oh, I'm procrastinating. I'm distracted by this.And now it's like, you have the best engineers, the best designers earning the biggest paychecks, working for companies whose business model is to steal your life, period. That's what they do.Listen to earnings calls, you know, so it's amazing to think about a world that's designed to distract you when you maybe have something great inside you and you want to get it out.

Yeah, that's amazing perspective from that. From that point of view. Because now I agree with you. You know, even in the movies we just watched, even Spielberg's disclosure. Disclosure way. Yeah.And, you know, he had several scenes in there where they had busloads of people and everybody had. I'm guilty of it too. Everybody was on their phone. There's a busload full of people. Every one of them are on their phone.

Yep.

Yeah.

It is crazy.It is funny to think about if you remember this, because I think I'm probably older than you are, Michael, but if you could remember life at that one. Ten, 15 years ago, Zuckerberg would be called to Congress to testify about some awful thing that Facebook had done, Right?And he would almost like an embarrassed way when he's asked again, what does Facebook do? It's like, oh, you know, we just help grandmothers see videos of their grandkids.You were here to connect people, like chairs, you know, that sort of thing. Now, if you listen to their earnings calls, there is no sense of shame. There's no sense of morality. It is straight up.Here are the techniques we deployed this quarter to steal as much of people's lives and attention as we can. And by the way, next quarter we have some new techniques to steal more.Because that attention, that people's lives, we refer to it as shareholder value. And that's what our stock price is based on.And it's insane when you have the biggest companies in the stock market reliant upon people doing nothing with their lives but scrolling and double tapping.

Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, when you reflect back upon that, and I'll say, yeah, you're probably older than me, but because it just happened that way. Right.I know that you've lived inside some of the most high pressure creative rooms in Hollywood. What brought you to that? You know, like, what would you want to do when you grow up?

You want a little background? Should we Start at zero.

Let's start at the. Every story starts at the beginning, right?

This is so true. So I'll tell you and I'll try to make this as concise as possible. Since people love talking about themselves, I will try to restrain myself.So I was raised back east. I am the son of two engineers at IBM. My mom was a software engineer writing code.My dad is a hardware engineer designing chips, large scale integrated circuits, largely like CPUs. Like computing chips, not memory chips.And when I was there, of course, it was like, no matter what you want to do in life, if your parents are great ice skaters, you're probably as a child going to learn to ice skate. So I learned to code. I went to the University of Southern California and I was studying business and journalism and, you know, stuff like that.But because I had gotten a Watson scholarship, I was guaranteed a job as a junior software engineer at IBM to make money during school, which was great. So they gave me a scholarship, they let me work.And I happened to be at usc, which is a fantastic cinema TV school, but I was not in the cinema TV school. Right, but it's a great cinema TV school. So a lot of my friends were in that. I was at USC in Los Angeles.When film went digital, suddenly computers were making movies. And I happened to sit at that very fortunate intersection of I could speak creative, but I could also speak engineering because I was an engineer.And there was a lot of demand for people who could go between talking to a director or a studio executive and then also talking to an engineer about how we would make this thing. Because it wasn't just now grips and DPs and production designers. Now it was a whole digital crew making movies.And that's how I got into film, Michael. I fell sort of ass backwards because I was there in the chorus line. And they're like, hey, you, peri, you know, engineering, you're kind of creative.Come here and help us with this. And that led to, yeah, working with Cameron on True lies, Fincher on 7 did the effects and the titles for Braveheart with Mel.And just a lot of amazing directors who needed people who could help with this new digital film. And then I had a moment. You're right. I produced the digital effects for Independence Day.Very fortunately, we won the Academy Award for the visual effects. And it takes a village. I mean, that is hundreds upon hundreds of people contributed to that. So I don't want to take credit for that.But hey, it sure does help your career when the last film that you produced, the Digital for won the Academy Award, right? So I become friends with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who are the director producer of the film.We set up a company together in my early to mid 20s. Sold that at 28. And then that's when I decided, ah, you know what? I think I've done enough digital. I spent most of my 20s doing digital effects.I was like, I want to see if I could become, like a studio executive and help make films. And that's kind of. It's kind of my journey. And then I met you.

And then. And. And we're both stars. It. It works. We're both rock stars. You know, it. It.

It.

I think a journey, as I said before we started this, you know, everybody loves movies, everybody loves storytelling. I mean, we weren't. Storytelling goes back ages and ages and ages ago.You know, started with paintings on the rocks and in carvings and things like this. Today, going from that to digital is like a huge step.My first filmmaking adventure literally was shooting it on 16 mil, well, 8 millimeter film as a kid.And then my first independent film was 16 millimeter, where you had to rank it down, you had to develop, have it develop, have it ranked down, then take it on big beta tapes and all that so that for you to get involved in. When it turned to digital, obviously an amazing moment in the movies, in the things you work with.Star Trek, Transformers, Die Hard, those are our favorite type of movies, Right? But from that, where did you learn storytelling from that perspective?

Well, I'll tell you, I have been very fortunate in that I've often been given the opportunity to work in a certain discipline around very smart people.And it is not that I entered the discipline as an expert or it was my field of study in college or my master's degree, but it is rather I knew enough to get in the room. And then when you're in the room with smart people, it's like playing tennis.You play tennis with people who are better than you are, your game improves. Right? So I give a lot of my story abilities the credit for those two.Alex Kurtzman and Bob Wurcy, who, when I was an executive vice president, DreamWorks.For them, that was the era of Transformers 1 and 2, Star Trek 11, Eagle Eye, the Proposal, Fringe, Transformers prime, the TV series, like that stuff, and working with them because they were masters, like they were at the top of their game, that was just an incredible opportunity for me to learn and grow and be paid to do so, you know.

Oh, and that's brilliant, actually. And, you know, a Screenplay, especially screenplay. Screenplays and screenwriting for film and tv, both scripts and. Or screenplays.It's an art in its form.But I think I had read something where you've watched top writers slip into something like a trance, a flow kind of a flow state right when the pressure was the highest.Because for those individuals out here that don't know, you know, scripts go through just like anything else, they go through a series of rewrites and a series of, you know, tightening and don't they. Yes, clean up and. But you're also on a major deadline.You know, if you're writing a novel, you have time to put the novel down, you have time to pick it up. And of course, unless you have a huge contract you got to fulfill. But typically with screenwriting, there's a deadline, you know, anytime I made it.So what did that look like from the inside out? How did you recognize the flow?

You know, the thing you're talking about is very dear to my heart.And just to set the table for everyone, because I know there's a section of your audience that are like flow state masters, and they're floating above their desk right now, you know, in Nirvana. And there was probably another set that are like, I've heard of it. I know it's in the Zeitgeist. What exactly is this?So let's just define it for a moment. Is that fair?

Absolutely. Okay.

So there was a Hungarian American psychologist, this guy Mihaly Cszentmihaly, and he had a thesis. It's like 40, 50 years ago now.He said, isn't it odd how you talk to high performers in very different disciplines, and they describe the concentrated state where they do the thing that makes them famous.They are athletes or artists or inventors or scientists, but the thing that they're known for, when they describe that state, they describe it in very similar terms, even though each of them does, is very different. He said, there's something there. And he was right. So he did the research, did the interviews, wrote the book Flow. It is the seminal work on this.It is why we call it a flow state. And he said the greatest thing I think he said, most of the people with whom I spoke, they have their word for this being in the zone.The muse is talking to me. He said.I chose flow because it was the most beautiful metaphor for what I found, which is, we are all on the river paddling to move ourselves forward. But if you align your boat with the current, it carries you, it magnifies your efforts. You go further and Faster.And that is what these high performers have figured out how to do and do it repeatably, that we can talk about and go more deeply on. Because I'm passionate about this. It's changed my life, has changed how I work. It's changed the life of a lot of friends.But that discovery was remarkable because it's been proven now. Now we benefit from the fact that number of people have spent the last 30, 40, 50 years going deep on different areas of flow.How does music affect it? What really happens neurochemically in the brain? How does electrical activity change?And some people have challenged and said, is this really a thing or is it just concentrating? And they've.They've even gone to the lengths of taking jazz musicians that report that at a certain point in, like an improv, in a trio, they kind of lose their sense of self and they become one with the music, one with the trio. And they've put them in FMRI machines, and there is a noticeable drop off in electrical activity in their prefrontal cortex.Like, a lot of your sense of self is held there, but behind your forehead when they report. That's when I felt like I was in flow. So there is something that happens to us. You specifically asked me.Now that we've set the table for a moment, I'm going to answer your question. You asked me, how did I come to understand this? And I didn't know what had happened to me. I was on a flight. You know, I live in Austin, Texas.Yeah, I was flying from here to San Francisco.The next day, I was meeting with my team, and I wanted to mock up an idea I had for a feature with my hacky figma skills to sort of say, hey, do we all like this? If so, we could build this, right? Got on the flight, captain's like, sorry, kids, wifi's out. You know, see at sfo. So we take off, I start working.Fifteen minutes later, we start descending, and I think, oh, we have an equipment problem. We're probably landing at DFW to swap out the aircraft or something.I looked down 2 hours and 40 minutes and gone by since I last looked at the clock.

Holy, folks.

We were in the Bay Area, descending across the bay, and I was like, what happened? My designs were done. I actually liked them. And I had prepared myself.Just so you know, I was in that mental state of like, I'll jump in the Uber, get to the hotel, grab a sandwich in the lobby, go up to the room, finish, and pass out in bed. I called a friend of mine from the Uber. I was like, dude, I have a free night in San Francisco. Do you want to have dinner?We went and had lobster rolls. It was awesome. That was when he told I described this to him, I was like, dude, I had the craziest experience on this flight.He's like, you were in flow state. And I of course was. The guy was like, what? He's like, let me explain to you.So that's how I encountered it and it has changed how I work now and I'm very passionate about sharing it.

That like that. That's amazing. That's brilliant. That's awesome. That's crazy cool. That's a good word.

Very fortunate. Although I'll tell you this, one of my first thoughts was very greedy. It was like, why didn't someone tell me about this in college?It would have changed my college experience.

What we know today we wish we could go back and do again with that knowledge. Is that old cliche, that old. That's the old movie thought, right? Get to go back and do what we want.

It's so true. And you know, I have a seven month old and you can bet when he's old enough to understand, I'm going to be like, let me tell you about flow state.

So you let me tell you. Sit down. Gary's got something to say.

Yeah. He's like, oh God, don't. It's not the flow state talk again, is it?

Dad. Dad. Father of two wonderful, intelligent, beautiful young women.So I understand obviously they were babies and then grew up from that into what they are today. But they still come is still a phone call. Daddy, Daddy.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's a lifetime thing. That's a lifetime commitment.

That is amazing. I have a question for you, Michael.

Sure.

Which is we've spoken before this podcast and you've talked about things that you would like to do which require focus. You know, I'm not talking about like sorting the mail, doing laundry, but like you have some big things that are focus related activities.Have you contemplated like developing a flow state practice so you can execute those, you can actually make those manifest?

You know, I, I, I actually, I'm usually a very organized individual. I will say that first and foremost because I try to organize things in a very methodical way. But sometimes I fall back into.Because I was in the military early, then I'm a career in law enforcement Sergeant. You know, you do things this way. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I don't know if you really call that flow state. I think you, you call that procedure.

Okay. Fair enough.

Set down procedure. So working from the flow state is something that I think that I need to learn. I need to understand and I want to understand.The desire is, especially after I started learning more, prior to us having this conversation is something I think my soul is saying. Yes, I need it.

Okay, then let's, let's get deep. Let's go. I'm here. This is your time.

Well, you know, let's talk about what happens when your life suddenly becomes part of the foe. Um, you know, what do you do? How do you start that? When do you recognize it? Do you.

Very good question.Okay, and let me, before I say anything here, say if I say anything smart or helpful on this pod, it is because many people have spent their lives studying this and I'm just bringing information forth. Okay, so I'm not the smart person here, but I'm the person who's done the research, done the reading, right?So when Mihaly wrote about this, he said, let me tell you the characteristics that seem to go across all of these high performers when they're in the flow state. They describe losing their sense of self and becoming more one with the work, right?So there's a lack of self consciousness, there's a loss of track of time. Like you're not staring at the clock wondering if it's time for lunch. Distractions become uninteresting, they kind of fall away.Like you're not continuously going, oh, I wonder who whatsapped me or TikTok or you know, and you do your best work faster than you think possible. At the end you can often feel a sense of uplift, of joy rather than depletion, rather than just like, oh my God, I'm so tired for getting that done.You can feel like, wow, that was great. I love the blog post I wrote, the thing I designed, the code I wrote and I'm ready to go do something else, you know. So these things are remarkable.When you think so much of what we're taught about doing great things is they're going to wear you out. You're going to be burned out. You're going to take all day and all night and you know, at 4:00am Be burning the midnight oil.It's kind of interesting that there's this state where you can do your best work and feel good about it. So that I think is really attractive. And we can talk of course on research on how to get into a flow state, how to develop a flow state practice.But the state itself is, is kind of cool. Once you first experience it, you know.

That I think that maybe there are times I feel that my. I naturally fell into that flow. I just didn't recognize it as that. Like you were on the plane and you really didn't recognize it.

I didn't know the name listing.

Yeah, exactly. So there I. When you look back on things, you kind of go, oh, I think. Yeah, I think I was there.I think your methodologies and what you teach and what you bring to the table are the methodologies that allow us to put ourselves within that flow state. Correct.

That is very much it. And you said something very true.I just want to hang on to on which is once I had had this explained to me and then I started doing the googling and doing the research.I did see the pattern in the past of like, oh, wow, I've been fortunate to work with some of the best action screenwriters working, you know, and to operate that million, $2 million of script level. You can't really be, you know, a slough off like you deliver. There's a reason why your name is on three studio films a year.

Yep.

And I saw the patterns of. Oh, this is what they do. And no one had ever called it a flow state.Maybe internally they thought of it that way, but I saw it's like, oh, that's how David works. Oh yeah, that's how Billy. Oh, right. Interesting.

Well, and I think that from a perspective of life in general, I think whether we're creators, whether we're a writer or a producer or a filmmaker, we can take the same type of flow thought patterns to help organize our lives too, can't we?

Very much so. And talking about the conditions, precedent, that sort of get you into flow.There's something that Csz Mihalyi wrote that touches deeply on something I believe. And what that is is I believe that all of us have something great inside and it can be the next great American novel.It could be a screenplay, it could be a restaurant concept, it could be how to teach music, whatever it is. But all of us have some greatness. And the question of this lifetime is not do you have it?It is rather, are you going to release the thing inside you that is great and it's sad like you and I touched upon at the beginning that so much of modern technology is about, please don't do that. Don't work on the thing that is great inside you just scroll and double tap.You know, Mark Zuckerberg does not get another 450 foot yacht unless you are 80 years old. Scrolling and double tapping on the sofa.Talk about how you could have written the screenplay, you could have written the book, you could have opened the restaurant or taught music or whatever, Right?So when Mihaly says this, he says one of the conditions that all of these people said was necessary for them to get into flow is they had to believe what they're doing was meaningful.

Right.

Even high flow state people don't get into flow if they're like, yeah, I'm folding the laundry or I'm writing a stupid email that's going to go nowhere. That's not flow. But it is the thing of saying, I have had this screenplay like you and I were talking about this screenplay idea inside me for years.You know what? I'm going to break it down into manageable chunks. Today I'm going to work on the outline, tomorrow I'm going to work on more character stuff.Then we're going to budget out how many pages do I write a day to do a first draft. And as you said, the first draft is just the first draft. There'll be many rewrites as you polish it.But that kind of thinking that says this is meaningful to me, which is a really important part of getting into flow and we can talk about some other aspects of it.

But no, I, I, I, I think it's a brilliant approach to what we're doing because sometimes we, we get the distraction is intense. As you mentioned, Doherty, we've talked about several times from the beginning of this tv I gotta watch my show.But your show can be recorded, you know, you could watch it.

And it is not to say we must all live like monks. I mean we certain stimuli and input to make our life interesting. Like every morning I budget a certain amount of time simply to read the news.Not that it affects me directly, but I want to be the kind of person who says, oh yes, I do understand, the G7 summit just happened. And these are some of the issues we're being wrestled with on the world stage. I have no influence over it and its influence over me is indirect.But you know, sometimes you need to budget time to say I'm going to watch this TV show because there's just some way in which they tell the story there that just tickles me.

Exactly, exactly.And we're parents, we're parents for grandparents where we have husbands, we have wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, you know, we have to, we have to make sure we manage time within all those aspects.But I think when you, when you look at it from a perspective of everybody wants to take that first step Everybody says, I'm afraid to take that first step. I'm afraid of what's going to happen. I'm afraid I'm going to miss something. You. You yourself, you left Hollywood to build a tech company.You had two of them. Not many people talk about a journey like that. You weren't afraid to take the failures.

I'm sorry, let me make it super clear. It is not that I have had a series of successes.I've had some successes that people love to talk about because they're the fun stuff, but I'm super open about. Like, I started two companies, raised about roughly 3 million for each that didn't work. And, man, was that embarrassing and painful.Like, when I left Fox to go start a tech company, I raised about 3.1. And our idea was very much like, Instagram was new at the time. And we thought, what if Instagram were collaborative?What if you built, like, an Instagram that was not just selfies shouting selfishly. Selfies like, look at me, look at me, look at me. What if it was?You could see a photo and share back and forth, which ultimately, Snapchat Stories did very well, right? They'd meet us. We have about 60,000 monthly actives.And I'll tell you this, at the time in which I left film to get into tech, it was not a very popular thing to do. Film still seemed robust at the time.And for a senior executive at one of the major studios to leave and get into tech, it was like, what is Puri doing? What is he thinking? It's crazy. And I knew everyone was watching me to be like, he left the tribe to go off into San Francisco.

What?

And when that didn't work, Michael, I can't tell you, like, the sense of shame that I had. Like, I hated bumping into friends at the dry cleaners because they're like, how's.

It going with your company?

And you're like, actually terrible. I'm probably closing it. I feel like a failure.

How are you doing?

You know, it's like, I moved to New York for two years just to get out. I needed to say, okay, I failed. I need to go figure out what I want to do next.

Had you known Flo at that time?

No, no, it was. It was the next company where I had that experience on the plane.And it was thanks to a friend of mine who asked me to help him with his company that I started participating in that. And then that turned into that conversation about, like, you just experienced a flow state.And me thinking, why didn't Anyone tell me in college this was helpful from that perspective?

Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting. And trying to understand the neuroscience of flow, we. You kind of touched on it a little bit.I think every breakthrough that you ever witnessed, what was the moment that kind of clicked more, more thoroughly with you to say, yeah, I, I need to do this myself, implement myself and then teach other people. Because you have, you have the voice, you have the look, you've got the, the, the experience behind you to teach us, you know, kind of a thing.I, I would like to go a little more deeper into, into that.

If I pick up on something you just said before we move on is, I'll tell you, of all the blog posts I've ever written, the most popular one by traffic is the one I wrote about this. I called it the. The magic and science of flow states.And it just said, let me lay out for you, like, kind of like how I learned about this and like what it is that one gets.I can give you the URL if you want to put it in the show notes, but that one gets passed around more than anything else because people are like, hold on, how do I get some of that for myself?

Yeah, I think that that in itself is, well, like I said, it calls to my soul. When I first did my research on you, not a background investigation. Four way.

Right, Exactly. Nothing happened in Thailand. That's all off limits.

I get it, I get it. Left all the secrets alone.You know, it kind of intrigued me to a point that's like, you know, this is gonna be a really good conversation because I think we all need to understand and respect the flow. And it sound kind of fun. So how do you.

First time you were in flow, the first time you looked up, you're like, wow, I lost track of time. Like, I did great work. I feel good. Like, do you remember the first time that happened with you?

I actually do. The first time I ever wrote a screenplay.

Oh, wow. Okay. So because you thought that was a meaningful activity, right? As Chin Sagmahai rights. He's like, you gotta enjoy what you're doing. Yeah.

How.

How long. What was the. Where were you? What was the environment like?

Believe it or not, I. This is. Let me see. Would be. Oh, been about 15 years.

Be funny if you're like, it was Tuesday.

It could have been a Tuesday. It was a dark and stormy night.

Thank you, Charles Schultz.

Thank you, Charles Schultz. Basically, I got this idea and I got it while I was sitting in a patrol car before I retired. And I thought I want to write this. I want to write this.And then after I did my first two film festivals and then Script magazine and. And I created the Las Vegas screenwriting conferences after the third one. So that would be 2004. So probably 2004, I pitched it to the guy that.One of the producers from American Pie. We're going to get off track here. Producer, the guy from American Pie. And he said, I want to hear that. Write it. Right. So it inspired me to.To write it, because I want to see that. So I delved off into it and. And I knocked it out probably in a week.

Wow. So it was a very personal story. Right. It was something you knew firsthand.

It was actually something that I created in my mind from some of my experiences.

Okay, right.

Yeah.

Very often, like, the early work that we do comes from that. I know the truth of this situation.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's hard, I'll tell you.

Start off writing abstract stuff. Yeah.

When we get off air, I'll share it with you and tell you more in depth. But, yeah, it took me, but I wrote it very quickly. It really surprised me because I had the. As you said earlier, you brought up motivation.You have the desire, the motivation, the incentive.

Yeah.

Because, like, wow, you know, this guy really wants to see this, and he thought it was a good idea. So I want to.

Which is super cool. Now, I did ask you about an environment. Like, do you remember. Where did you write it? Did you write it at home? Was that.

Oh, I wrote it. I wrote it at home. And I can say this now because my lieutenant's way retired. Some of it I wrote in the briefing room, of course. Yeah.

Which is amazing. You could focus in a communal space like that.

Well, it. You know, I had. Because I was a sergeant, I. I had my own desk in my own office. So that was. Yeah, that was an advantage.

Do you. I mean, remember listening to music? Was there any sound that helped you get there?

To be honest with you, I can. You're going to make me really think about this, aren't you?

Hey, we're not here to waste people's time. Like, this is interesting.

Well, I'll tell you, back then, we didn't have, like, our iPhones or Apple music or Amazon Music and those kind of things. So. So from that perspective, I think there was. I probably might have had a radio on inside the.Inside my office because, you know, typically when I was coming in anyway, I would turn the radio on, so I would say I was listening to music on a low, you know, a Low net. I still have my radio on because obviously if I got a call or something, but my, my, my hair is radio.

Is there a kind of music you generally listen to when you want to write or do something thoughtful?

Believe it or not, I like jazz. I like Smile with jazz.

I don't believe that.

Yeah, smooth jazz.

That's interesting.

Although I did get into.One of the guys we had out to the conference said that when he wrote A Knight's Tale and he got stuck and he said, listen to Queen and you know, we will, we will.

Brian Helgeland wrote that, right? I'm sorry, didn't Brian Helgeland write that?

Yeah, and he got stuck and he listened to that and it pumped him up. And that's how they ended up in the movie, actually. So then I started listening to Queen.

Oh, there you go. And when you are focused on doing something, what are the distractions that pull you away?Are there things in particular you're like, ah, I picked up my phone or.

Oh, well, back then, a different situation. Because number one, I was on call all the time and I was a cop.I always had to be able to have my pager or I had to have my phone for those reasons on my radio. Since then, my distractions are typically the TV or the phone.When I say the phone, I mean my iPhone and I mean Instagram and Facebook and everything we talked about earlier where they suck your life away. Absolutely, yeah, Every one of those.And then I would, to be honest with you, I would say there's a little bit of self doubt, a little bit of confidence in there because, you know, I'm building some stuff at the moment. I'm in the process of, of finishing up courses that I'm. That I'm building. So you, you know, there's always. That is a good enough thought.Those kind of things, I guess, are my distractions.

That, that is a real, that is a real thing. I, I will tell you something. When we were talking about music and jazz and you said, you know, you won't believe this, but jazz.So as you know, when we were building the Suka, the. The Blue State website, did a lot of reading on what do people use orally? A U orally, you know, to drop in. And there is a sweet spot for most people.This is not true for you.But for most people there is a sweet spot of music that is 60 to 90 beats per minute, that is non vocal, that is long repeating melodic passages, certain key signatures more than others, like D minor for some reason, which interesting stuff. So I happen to have a bunch of friends who are film composers from my old days, right. Who have time on their hands.So when we started the website, I said, you know, hey, guys, here are kind of the specs. Most of the researchers agree, like, this is the middle of the road. Best flow music. Could you write a ton of music that is like this?So we launched with hundreds of hours of original music that's kind of that, right? In the course of doing this, I learned a couple things. I'll tell you, this is funny. Like, didn't see this coming.Buddy of mine who is a sound mixer for LucasArts does the star wars games, right? He called me up one day. He said, listen, I just got back from Nepal. It was his son's high school graduation present.I guess he did very well, got into good college, and what do you want? He's like, I'd like to go to Nepal with you. So they went to Nepal.So Julian said while we were there, one day in Kathmandu, it rained so hard we couldn't go out. And he said it was this lush, delicious, pouring, warm rain. And he had some of his sound equipment there.He said, so I recorded, like, two hours of rain in Nepal. I got back, I realized, I'll probably never use this in a Star wars game. Do you want it? And I was like, for free?

Sure.

Let's do an experiment.

Free's good.

Free's good. Free's good, right? And Julian's a great friend.So we put in the middle of the playlists in Suka, there's a, you know, lo Fi playlist, and, you know, up tempo and down tempo and stuff like that. In the middle, we just dropped one quietly called Himalayan Dream Reign. And it was not music.It was just this recording he had made of Rain in Kathmandu. It became, with no promotion, the third most popular playlist we have. And I was like, wtf?We spent all this time and energy and money on these beautiful original scores, and rain is beating out most of the playlists, right?

That's funny.

Here's what's interesting. So, you know, I run the platform, so I know people's email addresses. So I emailed some people that I saw. Listen to that a lot.I was like, hey, would you mind going on zoom for, like, five or 10 minutes? I would just love to understand if you boiled down every one of the people with whom I spoke, this is what they said. And you.This may ring true for you, is they essentially said, oh, you know what it is about rain? It's a trigger that Brings me back to a period of time in my life when I had to study and it would rain out.I was raised by my grandmother in Georgia and around finals it would always pour rain. My family had a lake house in somewhere in northern, like Michigan.And I was like, so it's this mental thing around, oh, I'm inside, I have to buckle down, do this thing for finals, for book report, whatever it was. And it brings people right back there, Right?

Very cool.

Now, do you want the. And there's a little bit more to the story. It's a little bit more.

I love the. And that's the one more thing before you go, right?

And it is one more thing before you go.

Exactly.

Don't go yet. So I think, oh, what a great discovery. Rain is this amazing trigger. So what do I do? Hey, find a bunch of other naturescapes. We call them a stream.In Japan, someone had recorded the surf in Cyprus, a lake, Emerald Lake in Canada, where I guess there's some indigenous bird that sounds put them up. I'll be blunt, not hips. They sort of sat there in the playlist list. Not like the rain. I was like, oh, I guess it was really rain.However, one of our members who's a writer, she's a kind of well known blogger in the uk, she reached out and said, hey, Stephen, I see that you're experimenting with these non musical playlists. So I think it gave me the opportunity to ask you a question. Would you ever consider a request? And I was like, I am all ears.Like the platform becomes better because people ask for stuff. What is it? She goes, well, people think of me because her blog is pretty well known as she's like a coffee shop kind of like cool artist.She said, what people don't know is I had a baby during the pandemic, so I can't really go to the coffee shop. I used to write in with like a one year old. You know, I'd be like, cool artists. She said, but I missed that.Is there any chance you could put up a playlist that's just the sounds of a coffee shop?

A coffee shop. That's interesting.

And I was like, huh. Looked around, Found a guy in Vienna, Austria who had recorded his local coffee shop.All the like, you know, little espresso machines and the clatter plates and the murmur people put it up there, became super popular. And I was like, wow, okay. So there's something about these little triggers of like when you were talking about working in the station.For some people that trigger is, oh, I'm in a coffee shop. I'm here with my MacBook. This is where I write my screenplay or my blog or whatever that thing is.And I think that kind of stuff is fascinating when you understand how we work.

Like, for me, that's crazy cool.

It is straight up, Straight up. If there are vocals, I will end up trying to sing along with them, so I can't do that.

Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Yeah, it's interesting because I don't know how this would differ. When I meditate and when I. Because I meditate quite a bit.It helps me with many things. And when I meditate, I have a track that is Rainforest Rainstorm. It's a rainstorm in a rainforest. So it's not like boom, boom, boom, thunder.But it's a nice gentle, right. And. And I sleep to it, I meditate to it. But I never thought about using it while I'm writing or I'm creating.

I want to. When you try it, I want to know how it goes.

Hopefully it won't put me to sleep.

I'm the snake. There's actually a great. I'm not affiliated with this, but there is a great, great site called. I think it's a. A soft murmur.I think it's the name of it that is all it does is you can kind of dial up and down, like how much lightning you want in the sound, how much rain, how much thunder. Or not lightnings, you can't hear lightning, how much thunder, how much rain, things like that.It's kind of a cool site if you want to tune exactly the kind of rain you want.

That's interesting as well. That's pretty cool actually. So how did you come up with the name Suka?

You know a funny thing, we had a working title when we were developing this going I think the world is going to be ready for a flow state app. It's going to allow people to be happier, work better, blah, blah, right? So we had beta members. We're being all cool and Laura and I got married.Now Laura I met in yoga. We have a daily yoga practice. I married the girl on the mat to my left in yoga in New York.When I was having my post failed company moment, I was like all depressed. That's when I met her. So when we got married. Where do you go when you do a ton of yoga? We went to Bali, right?So on the way there, I'm talking to her and I said, you know, the thing that's bothering me so much is like Amazon is such a cool name for a Company because it's not called, like, online bookstore boring, right? Like, Nike is such a cool name for a company. It's not called, like, the shoe company. It's like winged goddess of victory, you know?And I said, I'm still struggling.I've done all the exercises with writing whiteboards full of related terms, and I have every bad name for this Flow State app on the whiteboard, and I hate all of them. So Laura, being lovely, said, you know what? The next two weeks, no one from the office is going to bug you.You're going to have something bubble out of your unconscious mind. It's going to be the perfect thing. Just relax into it, right? So we get to Bali, we get to the hotel, and I said to her, you know what? You're right.I think what would seed my imagination so something does bubble up in the next two weeks is, do you mind if I talk to a couple of our early members and just ask them, what's your favorite thing? And maybe that turns into something. She's like, I'm going to the pool, but I will see you at dinner. Have fun.

Right?

So I dropped in the group chat. I was like, who is a couple in this chat? Three people said, yes. I was talking to the third guy. Easy question.It was just like, hey, Michael, what's your. Do you love the music? Do you love the little, you know, AI assistant, keeps you off, you know, your phone? Like, what do you love?Third guy, eight minutes in, I was like, I really appreciate your time. I want to respect it. I said, 10 minutes, so we should wrap up and go. And he said to me, steven, you asked the wrong questions.And I was like, okay, guy that I don't know that well, what was the right question? He said, you should have asked me why I pay you. I was like, we charge less than a dollar a day. It's not that much, but okay, fair enough.Why do you pay me? He said, the last year, I find I have two kinds of days. At 3 o', clock, I'm playing with my kids. They're currently 2 and 4.Or at 6 o', clock, I'm like, where did the day go? He said, the difference is, did I hit play in your website that morning? So I pay you because my kids are not going to be 2 and 4 forever.And I was like, you won that round. That is such a better question to answer than any stupid thing I asked you. I'm so sorry I wasted your time. I tell this to Laura at dinner.She's like, you should hire that Guy like, he's smarter than you are. Like, that's really good, right? So we're brushing our teeth like cute little honeymooners in our little spa robes the first night of our honeymoon.And she looks at me with a mouth full of, you know, toothpaste, and she goes, you know, in yoga we hear all these Sanskrit terms like your life force, your prana and your karma and your dharma. She said, that guy described you sukha, that feeling of happiness when you are in your lane doing what you're meant to do.You're good at it, you're in control. You can do it with ease because you're good at it. She's like, you should call it the Suga Company. I'm going to bed.And I looked on my phone, the Suka company was available, the website for 14. And I bought it and I went to bed. And that is why we're called the Suka Company.

That's profound, actually. But it's got a distinct connection. That's the ironic part about it. The universe presented that to you at the right time, the right place.

Here is known as Laura and one of our members. Because I couldn't figure it out on my own.

Exactly. Their muses were talking in their ears and then they related to you.

However it worked, I'm grateful. And by the way, SEO wise, not a lot of people use suka unless you're a yoga studio, so we're pretty easy to find.

Well, I think there's a correlation between that yoga and meditation and mind, body, soul connection to allow us to be able to get into that flow.I know that if I can ask, do you think that for someone listening right now or watching, who feels like overwhelmed, distracted, burned out, help us understand what does.I think we've kind of talked about and we touched upon it, but can you really kind of describe for us and tell us what does a flow state really feel like when you're in it? How do you recognize that? Should we recognize it or should we just go with the flow? Well, here's two questions.

Yeah, it generally takes at least 15, up to 23 minutes to drop in for your brain activity to change into this state when you're in that state, it's true, you kind of lose a sense of self. You're not staring at the clock and you're not thinking about, oh, should I go over to YouTube and watch that video or should I pick up TikTok?Or, you know, like those things fall away because you're in it. Like Michael Jordan has that famous Quote about when I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball. It's like everything else kind of falls away.It's not about the spectators. It's not about the clock in that moment. It's about him controlling the ball in a way that 30 years later, people still watch highlights, right?So how you feel.It is that feeling of almost like being in a happy trance where you are one with the work, like, you are writing the, you know, first act of your screenplay, and you were there with the characters. There's a great. When I got into film, when I was like, a Young Turk, just, like, at a very low level.One of the famous screenwriters at the time was this guy, Ron Bass. Rain Man, My Best Friend's Wedding, like, a bunch of stuff, right? And he was famous, maybe infamous, for not talking to his family in the morning.He said, I'm not the dad who's gonna be like, who wants pancakes? You know, like, who needs a ride to school?He's like, I can't talk to you because as soon as we talk, I can't hear my character's voices in my head anymore.So he would get up, not even say good morning to his wife, go to his office and write from like, 4 or 5am to like, 9, 10 in the morning and write characters that, again, like, it's hard to get Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman say yes to a script. He wrote characters at that level where they would go, yeah, I'm going to take my spring and say the words that Ron wrote, right?So that sense of being aware when you need to be in this state, the chronotype is specifically what he was talking about is, you know, there are times a day you're better at certain kinds of things. Like, that sense of saying, oh, in the morning is when I can really go into that state.And I'm there with my characters, listening to them talk, and I'm just writing it down. The muses are speaking, and I am taking their dictation, right? That is an amazing feeling. And it can happen if you're writing code.I'm creating a new feature for my app. I am writing a blog post. I am designing a building. You know, like, it is that feeling of being in the throes of creation. That is amazing.And then once you've done it once, you want to do it again.

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty. That's cool. It's. I'm excited to give this a shot. I'm excited to really get involved and. And Kind of move it forward.

Where's the screenplays? Right.

I'll go back to my screenplay, actually. Yeah. I actually got invited to France to work on it with a group of individuals, and I passed it up, and I regret that.

This is crazy talk.

Yeah, I regret it. I regret it so much.

Okay, well, let's make up for that.

We will.Speaking of stuff like that, where some of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to focus or be productive as a father and a husband, especially in my job, in my old job, I couldn't have done that.It would have been difficult for me because obviously, I want to make sure I say to my family before I leave for work, because it's sometimes, knock on wood, you have individuals that walk out the door and they don't come home in those kind of jobs. But as we as individuals, what are some of the biggest mistakes we make in trying to focus and be productive? How can we fix them? I guess two.Two or three things maybe that we might be able to do.

Yeah. Very simply. And I. I'm speaking from mistakes that I make. So I'm not standing on high going, let me tell you people how to do this.This is stuff I wrestle with. I find a problem is when I'm working, I'm not in a flow state, and I hit something hard, like maybe I'm writing a blog post.I read the last two paragraphs, and I'm like, oh, this is terrible. This is mediocre writing.

Right.

Where I'm coding something and the build keeps failing. That brain of mine has been trained now to go, you know what? There's instant dopamine. If you just pick up your phone. It's right here.You can just see messages from your friends or scroll something, Right? And it's zero. As Huberman did a great episode on this. That's right. It's zero effort dopamine.So that's a really, really hard thing when you're saying, oh, the point in time, which I'm doing something meaningful and it gets hard. My brain has been trained to go like, oh, but there's just easy dopamine sitting right there next to you. Right. So phone is a big one. I'll tell you.The way I solved it for myself is like when I'm in Suka, there's a little assistant, like a little extremely, you know, friendly robot voice who watches if I pick up my phone. He or she. There's a female version too, says, hey, I see you on your phone. Is that helping? And that's all I Need it.Just like if you were sitting next to me as a friend and you knew I was working on my term paper, doing whatever, and you see me pick up and get open Instagram and you're like, stephen, come on man, like, we gotta get outta here, we gotta do this. I'd be like, oh, you're totally right, Michael. I put that down, right?And I didn't really like the feeling of we are supposed to be prisoners and we're bad people and like, I'm gonna lock your phone and you're not gonna use it for 45 minutes. I didn't like that negativity. What I wanted, that feeling was just, hey, man, is that helping you? And you're like, no, no it's not.I do want to finish this thing because I'd rather at 3 o' clock as, you know, be playing with my 7 month old than I would at 6 o' clock to be like, where did the day go? Oh, I'll get up early tomorrow and try and finish what I didn't do today. Right. So that's a big one is. Yeah.Distractions, especially the dopamine pull. Big, big one. But maybe if you treat yourself with some sort of friendly grace, you can pull yourself back on track.Music we talked about another really nice one for just like starting to block out the world and find your jam. Whether it is rain, coffee shop, you know, jazz, lo fi, upbeat down tempo, whatever that is. Like, find your thing. And here's another one.This touches upon Mihaly's work. She sent me. Hi. Izzy said to stay in flow, you need some sort of immediate feedback. You need to know how you're doing. And this is one where.And maybe I'm a little bit too much of a productivity nerd, right? I might have gone down that road, but with Suka, I really love that as I work, it records.Like when I got distracted when I was really focused and I can look at a little graph and sort of like scroll on graph and go, oh yeah, I was working hard there. Oh yeah, I lost some points. That's when I was opening up Amazon because I thought I should go order whatever stupid thing in the middle of working.You know, Amazon's a bad one for me.

You have to have it.

I need to order trash bags and I will stop what I'm doing, go open house, order trash bags, come back. And when you get out of flow, it takes you another 15 to 23 minutes to get back in flow.So that sense of feedback that, you know, Mihaly's research on, like, you need to be able to see how you're doing so you can improve and stay in flow. Like, that's another one. So a lot of this is what guided us, you know, to build Suga.Obviously you're saying, like, hey, let's take the best research we can, but it's simple stuff. You can do it on your own. Like, you don't need to use our app.You just need to understand here are some things that make it easier to do because ultimately you're either going to release the great thing you have inside, are you going to take it to your grave? And that's a tragedy.

Yeah, I agree with that. That's something.I think that especially if you have a passion for something, you have a love for something and you want to be heard or seen or felt, it needs to come out in such a way that is brilliant. And the only way to do that is to find a way to focus and find a way to kind of. And I think this is a beautiful opportunity for that to take place.If someone wanted to start right now, this afternoon, what's the simplest, most accessible way to begin building a flow Friendly workday?

Oh, number one, have a clear goal and an achievable goal like it is not. I'm going to write the great American novel today before dinner, right? Okay.No, it is saying, here is something I can accomplish in a reasonable period of time that I think is meaningful.So if it is about writing a novel, maybe to saying, today I want to spend an hour just thinking deeply about who is the hero of a story that I am passionate to write. What is the change externally and internally they're going to undergo?And let me write that out for an hour with the knowledge that I will revise it as I go. But that'll be an amazing achievement.I go to dinner and say, I know I'm going to write a story that is about this girl or this guy or this robot or whatever it may be. So, number one, have an achievable task you think is meaningful.Number two, set up your environment like we talked about, whether it is oral environment, ears, you know, your physical environment around you. Like, have a place where when you go to that place, you think, this is where I'm working.It may not be sitting on the sofa with your laptop or sitting in the kitchen, which are full of distractions.You might want to have a place like your office or, I don't know, your briefing room or something, but a place where you go where your brain sort of Settles in and says, ah, this is where I go to do that thing.

Right.

So set your environment properly and then as you work, find a way to measure and see your progress, whether it is being able to go back and reread what you wrote, test your code and see if it actually creates the feature you want. You know, look at the design, stand back and admire it.So that at the end of that hour, two hours of focus, you say, wow, this is, this moves my life forward much more than the feeling of guilt and shame. And you're like, oh, I, I opened Instagram for five minutes and it was two hours and now it's time for dinner and I'll have to work after dinner.I mean, I've done that. And that kind of, that feeling of shame and guilt is. No, no bueno.

Yeah, I guess it just, that makes ourselves disappointed with, to. With ourselves, I think. And that. And then that just kind of pounds upon each other. And it's true, you know, each time that you do it and so forth.Yeah, I think that. What? What again? Opportunity. I love the word opportunity. I think opportunity. We should all have the opportunity. We call it voice in life.So we have an opportunity to, to make a choice to, to learn how to do and how to incorporate suka and the flow within ourselves.

Yeah, it doesn't even have to be related to what I offer people, but it is just a sense of, hey man, don't fall victim to these trillion dollar companies that just want to take your life and sell it to advertisers. Find the thing you want to do and do it. You may fail.I've failed multiple times in my life and felt embarrassed and shamed and lost a lot of money, but that's what got me to this kind of success.

And I'll tell you this, Bruce, I believe in Bruce Lee's philosophy and I'm sure other people have said the same.

Talk about that. You talk about that on the Spencer Miles one.

It helped me get out of a wheelchair. Every failure is a stepping stone to success.

It's a learning lesson.

Yeah, it's a learning lesson and you have to. Can't be afraid to fail because you know you can't fail if you don't try.

I know. I, I definitely learned in failure. I thought about it more than other people. I was like, everyone's thinking about me.No, everything about their own life. You know, you failed. They heard about it, they moved on with, oh, I'll have the pasta tonight.

You know what I mean?

So Brady realized that, you know, Just move forward, Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That's the only way to go. Well, I have to ask you this question. I ask it out of everybody. It's called my almost question.When you look back at your life, Hollywood's, the startups, the reinventions. What was the moment you almost walked away from it all? And what stopped you?

I'll tell you, it's more than almost definitely around Die Hard 5.At Fox, I had that moment of like, everything my boss, the chairman of Fox Films Entertainment, wanted to make on my slate was a sequel, a prequel, a remake, a spin off, you know, And I was just. As much as people from the outside were like, oh, my God, you're a senior executive, the studio. It's so great.The reality of it is you're the guy sitting in the chair who's charged with overseeing the remake and the sequel. And you know what I mean? And I was like, I'm not gonna wake up, be like 40, 50, 60 years old. Like, making Die Hard 9. This is.Oh, this is just not inspiring. It's not something that I'm to go, hey, kids, guess what daddy did? He made Die Hard 9 in the retirement home. That's really great.You know, like, I was like, no. And I failed twice after that, before this. But those failures I had agency, had control over. So it wasn't almost.I did walk away, and it was hard for a couple years. I felt embarrassed.

And look where you're at now. And the achievement has made you a better person. It makes other people better people.So from that perspective, you're not only giving back to yourself, you're giving back to the community and to other individuals. So I'm grateful.

I appreciate you're seeing that. When my children are old enough to understand that Daddy had a job, this is the thing I'll tell them I did more than any of the film stuff.

It's brilliant, actually. I mean, kudos for all the film stuff too. But obviously, you know, our lives, when you look back on them, are a legacy within themselves.We just have to recognize the achievements and the failures that we've had. And those achievements and failures have made us who we are and how we carry that forward within our family and within ourselves.So I think that you've done that already within yourself, and you given something, you know, that you can carry forward in a legacy. For those listening and watching and thinking, I need more focus. I need this in my life. And how can I find it?Let's tell them how to get in Touch with you.

Oh, well, if you want to try getting into a flow state, we make an app that helps you get there. It's one of many options you have, but it's really simple. It's free for three days. Try it as much as you want, see if it works for you.It's on the web, the Sukha, which means, you know, the happiness. So T h e S u k h a co for company. So the Sukha Company. T H e S u k H a co And I'll make sure that.

That's in the show notes as well. My board's locked up. Good thing for digital editing, right?I'll make sure that everything's in the show notes so that they can have a, you know, just click and make an easy way to get there. I think it's a. Again, it's an opportunity for you as an individual, as a human being to kind of get a better focus within yourself. And.And I wholeheartedly believe in it. I'm going to do it. So if I'm going to do it, you have to do it.

I think I'll send you a link to that blog post about flow states. It's kind of a. It's kind of, kind of fun one.

That would be great. I would appreciate that. And the. I have one more thing. It's always, obviously, this is one more thing before you go. Right, yeah, I'm ready.

Everybody springing on me.

Let me mark that. This is one more thing before you go.So before we go, I like to ask you some words of wisdom for anybody that's trying to achieve this journey within them, within themselves, whether it be life or whether it be their creative aspect of what they're doing. What would you tell them?

Do not die with that thing inside you.

Those are profound words of wisdom. I mean, those are brilliant. That's a brilliant statement.

It is easy each day to let the thing just lie there and think, I'll do it tomorrow. There is no thing as tomorrow. Tomorrow doesn't exist. You only do it today or you'll never do it.

That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Life can change in an instant. You never know.

Haven't seen that.

Yeah, I've seen it firsthand. So, yeah, that's brilliant. Words of wisdom. Steven, I could talk for like another three hours.

I know. This is super fun. Thank you for having me on.

Oh, absolutely. We're going to have to have another one of these conversations.

I'd be delighted.

Yeah. I think you have some incredible information, wisdom, experience that we can continue to share with people.I think you've got an opportunity for us as individuals to be able to grow within ourselves. And yeah, I'd love to have you back on.

That'll be great. And we have more fun Hollywood stories.

That would be fantastic. In the meantime, I want to thank you.

Thanks to everyone who listened and thank you for having me.

You know, as I sit here with Stephen, I'm struck by something bigger than Hollywood, bigger than blockbusters, bigger than the pressure cooker rooms where stories are fought for and saved.What stays with me is the reminder that creativity isn't born from certainty, is born from chaos, from pressure, from the moments when everything feels like it might fall apart and somehow something inside you refuses to quit. I've been there. You all know that Stephen has lived through the highs and the massive successes and the lows of starting over not once but twice.And yet through all of it, there's a thread of that never broke the belief that there is a state inside of all of us where clarity returns, where ideas flow, and where the noise quiets down and the work becomes inevitable. That's what he found in those Hollywood rooms. That's what he rediscovered after failure. And that's what he's giving back to us now.A way for the rest of us to find our way back to ourselves. That's Sukha. Maybe the real lesson today is the flow isn't just a tool. It's for writers, for filmmakers.But it's also a lifeline, a compass, a way to rebuild when the story you're living no longer makes sense. So if Steven's journey teaches us anything, it's that the moment you almost walk away might be the moment right before everything changes.That's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you found inspiration, motivation, and a few new perspectives to take with you.If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to like subscribe and follow us and stay connected. You can find us on Apple, Spotify or your favorite listening platform and you can head over to YouTube and catch the full video version.Have a great day, have a great week and thank you for being part of this community.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One More Thing before youe Go.Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com youm can find us as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.