“You're breathing 25,000 times a day. If you stop breathing, in a matter of minutes you'll die. Breath is the atomic unit of what we need to survive.” – Robbie Bent
Robbie Bent (@robbiebent1) is CEO and Co-Founder of Othership, a platform for breathwork, connection, and mental wellness. He previously worked in ecosystem development for Ethereum and was CEO/Co-Founder of INVI Energy. The first company he co-founded was Roamly, a virtual SIM Card marketplace.
To hear Robbie's full interview on curating peak experiences of belonging, click here.
Chapters
- Building trust with people quickly
- Excitement and validation
- Daily habits and routines
- Teslas and recommended books
- On failure, success, and gratitude
Links
Books Recommended in This Episode
- Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave by Ryan Holiday
- Nexus by Ramez Naam
- AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee
Transcript
Daniel Scrivner:
Robbie, I'm thrilled to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on 20-minute playbook.
Robbie Bent:
Yeah. Excited.
Daniel Scrivner:
This will be faster paced. So we'll go ahead and just dive in. And the first question we ask everyone is just to share something you've been fascinated about recently. And this can be as weird, as not weird as you want. What is something that you've been thinking about that you can't stop thinking about?
Robbie Bent:
I think about how people connect, like how do you build trust with somebody quickly? There was an amazing episode on the Huberman Lab Podcast, where he just talks about connection. And I actually spoke with a scientist who's been testing this in mice, from Stanford, [Rob Malanca 01:01:05]. And there's a number of pieces of research that combine behavioral research and how this works in animals. Some things we've learned is that when you change physiological state together, you build trust faster. And so they did these tests where people listened to the same story and found they had the same nervous system response with heart rates and emotional state. And as a result, when you go through a shared physiological experience, you're more likely to trust someone. So that leads me to believe that experience like skydiving or sporting or fitness or bathhouse like we're building is the first step to creating physiological trust. And then the second is specific questions. And so really trying to dive into what those questions are to create community connection in the shortest amount of time.
Daniel Scrivner:
On the question front, there's so many books like 50 book of questions. I don't know. That feel superficial. We'll be fascinating to learn what sorts of questions you learn. Because I feel like one of the challenges is there's questions that feel overtly like it's something like what is your favorite color? Where I'm like, "I don't really know if that gets us any closer together." I don't know if you have any thoughts on what questions actually elicit connection versus just asking questions in general, which seems to maybe do the opposite.
Robbie Bent:
I think you need trust and to build trust you need. And again, this isn't like research-backed, and to build trust you need empathy. And then to do empathy, it's better if... You need two-way connection. And so what we really like to do is have some, everybody share something they're struggling with. And when you share, when you're vulnerable, it proves you are trustworthy. And then on top of that, we like to share compliments and gratitude towards you so you feel seen. And so you'll share something and then somebody will share back to you to make you feel seen. So you both are vulnerable, you feel seen and you do that in a group. And that's what we found as the best way to create connection quickly, but it's really new for us. So we're experimenting every day.
Daniel Scrivner:
It's like questions with skin in the game. One of the things we always ask is if you can share your superpowers? And what we're really trying to ask there is I think all of us have gifts. What when you're going through your day, do you feel like you're especially good at, and then how do you utilize those skills? How do you harness those strengths?
Robbie Bent:
I like more than anyone I've ever met can tap into excitement for what I'm doing. And so if I sat with you for five minutes and told you about this new [inaudible 01:03:21] style breathwork concert we're building, you'd be like, "I fucking have to do this immediately." And I can harness so much and generate so much internal energy about what I'm excited about. I've been able to do it since I was a little kid, is like, when I get excited about something I get so... I can feel it's like a fire is like lightning bolt is burning in my body and it just explodes. And so I'm really good at talking to people and getting them excited about our company and what we're building, what I'm excited about. And so I just, I love like I can almost explode with energy.
Daniel Scrivner:
It's fascinating. I've never had someone give that particular superpower. But it definitely is true from my experiences just talking with you. On the flip side of that, what do you struggle with and how have you improved or worked around those things over time? And I know that's potentially a deep question with [crosstalk 01:04:07].
Robbie Bent:
No, I mean there's two. And so like self-love and needing validation. So even now, kind of achieve my financial goals. I have this awesome company, my product. I'm like, "I love my product so much." And I'm still like, "Oh, it needs to be more." So let's maybe call that enough. And it stems from not enough self-love. I've been working on this for seven or eight years. I have amazing family. My wife is incredible. And so it's just this idea of enough. Okay. And because enough is a driver and this is like a... I think it's in Ryan Holiday's book is one of the chapters. And it's like you talk to billionaires and they're like, "Oh, it's still not... It just will never be enough." And as a result of that, I'm not balanced because I'm pushing so hard. And so I've been struggling with enough and then as a result balance, just having time to myself.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. On the habits and routine side, and you could be somebody that has a immaculate routine you follow every single day. You can be someone that doesn't have any routine at all. Where are you on that spectrum and what sorts of habits or routines do you try to instill somewhat regularly, whether that's daily, weekly or otherwise.
Robbie Bent:
I've been into this stuff for 10 years and I've been like four-hour morning routine. Carrying around a bag of broccoli in my pocket so that I'm eating my exact macros. And then I've been crushing pizzas and just working 12 hours a day, smoking a nicotine vape and a coffee. And so I've been both. And I think the real answer is somewhere in-between and having self-love when you don't. And so for me, some type of meditation or space, at least 10 minutes a day, some breathwork after to start my day, some breathwork after when I'm done work to move from sympathetic to parasympathetic, to rest and digest nervous system state where I can relax, good sleep hygiene, completely dark room at a reasonable time with no TV at night during the weekdays. As long as I have that. And then I do three, four sauna ice baths a week and then probably two to three exercise weight lifts. That is plenty for me now. And so that's kind of the 80/20 of like, even if I'm busy, I can commit to 15 to 20 minutes of some type of mindfulness as I mentioned with breathwork and then a couple workouts. And then my social time is usually at the bathhouse. So it's healthy.
Daniel Scrivner:
And no more broccoli in your pocket I'm guessing.
Robbie Bent:
No. I honestly, haven't been super strict about my diet for the last year and a half. And so I might try to change that this year, but been more like, if I'm going to go for pasta, I'm going to go for pasta.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. On the fitness side, you talked about a lot of things, whether it's diet, whether it's altern between doing the sauna and ice bath and exercising. How do you generally think about your approach to diet, exercise and sleep? And then if you can just talk a little bit about how those things have evolved over time. And obviously you've spent a lot of time, I think, on the exercise ice bath sauna piece. And I'd be curious just for your take on does ice bath sauna replace exercise? Is that a compliment to exercise? How do you think about those two things?
Robbie Bent:
So a compliment and why I like it is because I can do it at 9:00, 10:00 PM as a social thing. So if I'm looking to meet somebody instead of on Zoom, I'm like, "Hey, come, let's do a sauna together and hang out." And so it's really a social piece. It doesn't replace exercise at all. Although it is a medic where your heart rate increases and improves circulatory system. But I think exercise is essential. And so for me, I'm 37. I'm not trying to win any strength awards. I don't want to get injured. And so two things I do is just compound weightlifting. So squats, deadlifts, stuff like that, not super heavy weight at this time. And then I will row in the mornings couple days a week. So I have a rower, which is super easy. I'll just do 2000 meters. Takes like, whatever, eight minutes or something like that.
Robbie Bent:
And then between that, that's pretty good. And then I love to stretch. So I have another app called ROMWOD, which I actually like to use. We were watching a lot of TV last it to decompress. And so we've unplugged our TV and our nighttime, my wife and I, we throw on a ROMWOD. We stretch for 20 minutes. We share about our day and that's how we decompress. We finish off with the breathwork and then go to bed. So I think with three, four stretches a week, two to three weight lifts and then a bit of rowing in the morning and that's perfect.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. It's a ton of varied activity. This is a new question and so we'll see how it goes. But one of the questions I wanted to ask was around a recent purchase. So all of us have things that we're trying and have little things we might buy that might be the silliest thing in the world, but that we really enjoy. Is there something that you've purchased recently and this can be a hundred dollars or less. This can just be like, no, I bought this rower. It's somewhat expensive, but I love it. What is something that you've spent money on that you just absolutely love that you would recommend to others?
Robbie Bent:
So many things. So I had no money. I was fully broke for a really long time. And I haven't had a car in 12 years. I also wear the same outfit every day, legit, a baggy hoodie sweater and track pants every single day. I don't leave my house, I work remote. I don't care. I'm like a bum. And so I go, I'm like, okay, I'm going to get some new clothes. And so I end up going to the mall. I'm looking at new clothes. I look over and I see the Tesla store. I'm like, "Oh, I wonder what this is about." And so, I go and I test drive the Tesla and funny, I went to the mall to get some new clothes and I ended up coming home with just a new car. And so I bought the Model Y. It was my first splurge since I did well in crypto. And I just like, I never spend money on myself. I never... It's so fucking cool. It's like you're in the future. The navigation, the seats, the way it drives, the regenerative breaking. Everything about it, I love. So if you are looking at... It's pretty affordable also. And so if you're looking for a new car, that's something that brought me a lot of joy after not having a car for 10 years.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. Do you have a favorite feature or a favorite thing in the car?
Robbie Bent:
I love, and this is going to be so silly to people, but the main reason I wanted it was because I kept getting groceries and it was really annoying to get them in an Uber and stuff. And so personally I love the convenience of just, that's why I got it, but what I love the most about it, it just opens automatically. And so you come up to the, car door opens. And I don't know if other cars maybe do this now, since I owned a car they definitely didn't. So you don't even have a key, it's just your phone. And then you walk away. It locks automatically. And that to me is just so sick. You don't have to pull anything out, you just get in, you press a button just on and off. And it's like, whoa, like that. And it sounds super simple, but it just gives me joy every single time I open it and go in it.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. It's always those incredibly small details, but I love, that one's really just considerate and wonderful. For favorite books, we talked obviously in your long-form interview around Breath by James Nestor, which I would recommend to people here. Because it's related to Othership and the company that you're working on now, the breathwork app that people can download in the app stores. Are there other books that you either find yourself rereading or thinking about or recommend to other people that have just had a big impact on you?
Robbie Bent:
So this book, particularly, it's not one where it's like, oh, some crazy... That one that came to mind is anything by Ryan Holiday. There's a specific one he wrote recently that's just amazing. And it's like stories of Tiger Woods and... Do you know which one I'm talking about?
Daniel Scrivner:
I know The Obstacle Is the Way. I don't know if it's that one. Yeah.
Robbie Bent:
It's not that, it's the newest one. So anyway, we can find it put in the show notes. But so that's a book where it's like, oh, I'm reading it and I'm growing. But that's not what I'm going to recommend. I'm going to recommend a fun book, but it's fun, it's a trilogy. It's called Nexus by Ramez Naam. And it's a book set about 40 years in the future. And you can take this. It's almost like a drug and it's these nanobots that connect to your brain stem. And as a result, you can communicate brain to brain. Imagine Neurolink in the future as something you drink and it creates a combination of a psychedelic experience, but it paints a world where, what would it be like if a mother and child could communicate via thoughts? And so there's all these, there's a scene in it where there's a hundred monks meditating and it's detailing what it would be like to link with a hundred calm minds.
Robbie Bent:
And so, because I'm so obsessed with loneliness, connection, this idea that imagine sitting and a hundred people come in that are lonely and you can almost reach out and tell their minds it's going to be okay. So this idea of mind-to-mind communication and the way they describe, it's also an action thriller. The government doesn't want it to happen of course. And so it's super exciting. And the guy was futurist at Microsoft. So it's all built on technology that could exist someday. So it's just awesome weekend read where you're like, whoa. And you'll be happy about, it's not boring. So it's a really good one.
Daniel Scrivner:
That's incredible. I'm going to download that as soon as we finish. I love, there's one I've been listening to recently on Audiobook that's AI 2041, which is different. It's basically, it's similar in that it's all stuff that's practical. That's either in application today or is headed there. And it basically is 10 little vignettes of how AI could show up in the future. But I love those project forward. And I don't know, just think about crazy trippy experiences that could be every day, say 20 years, 30 years, 40 years from now.
Daniel Scrivner:
On the success personal growth aside, we always start on the failure side. And the question I always like to ask for a bunch of reasons is if you can share a favorite failure. And what we're trying to get at there, I think is something that it's a project, obviously, that you were incredibly excited about. It didn't work out for whatever reason. And that ended up being a positive thing. It either moved you in a better place, you took away a really valuable experience. And it can be anything. It can be professional, not professional. Does that ring any bells for you? And is there a favorite failure that comes to mind that you can share?
Robbie Bent:
Yeah. So we talked about it on the podcast. And it's just a really big one. It was my first company. And there was just a ton of lessons. And so just to get at what is one of the lessons, it's that failure itself is not tenable. And what I mean by that is you may fail, but you won't continue to fail. And so when you fail at one startup, you're building up network skills, experience, all these different things that are going to be helpful and the entire time why the startup is scary, it's like, I'm going to fail. Once you fail once you realize that failure's done, two weeks later you can have a new idea and then there's hope again. And so there's this juxtaposition between fear of failure and no hope. And then instantly having hope. And that's a really interesting thing with startups is like, they're not meant to be your whole life. And so when people think about failure, the failure itself is usually not as scary as the fear of failure. And so it's just like, get it done, fail and then find hope again. And so that was a lesson is that failure is not tenable. It doesn't last.
Daniel Scrivner:
That's fascinating. On the flip side of that coin, when you think about success, what does success mean to you now? And how has that definition changed over time?
Robbie Bent:
So I today, honestly, I watched this video I shared with you which we can put in the show notes. And it's three years. And we created this concept from scratch. We combined elements of bathhouse and therapy and psychology and music and experience design and fitness and all these different things that I love. You mentioned it was like a Wim Hof and Soho house and berries come together and we made this, we created it. It's novel, it's unique. We made, we scripted everything. And so I've been working on it for three years through COVID. People are like, "You're insane. You can never open a physical business. Now's not the time." And we stuck with it because we were passionate and we opened on Sunday like our dream. We'd been to 70 bathhouses, we'd done thousands and thousands of underground sessions in a garage. And so we opened the space and it's perfect. We literally, every founder on the team wrote out a 10-page, 15-star Airbnb, Brian Chesky style experience. And we made exactly that.
Robbie Bent:
And so to videotape the people in the video, the inclusivity, the accessibility of the space, all in the environment, seeing this thing come to life with the music. I just watched it and I was almost in tears. This is so fucking cool. This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I want to be in this space. I can't believe I made this from nothing with my team. And I just felt proud, excited, how many people were going to help, how cool. I guess you would watch this about another brand when you're young and be like, wow. And now I'm watching it about my own thing. And it just felt like it's today. That's my day of like, wow, I feel successful today. This moment just before I talk to you, I'm just so excited about this video.
Daniel Scrivner:
And we'll link to it in the show notes. But this is specifically the flagship location in Toronto, I believe right. Which is the first in real IRL location for Othership.
Robbie Bent:
Yeah. And I could share one other moment quickly if we got time. I don't know. So I was like, I had this startup that failed, which I mentioned. And I was in Toronto and I was just kind of wanted to be in tech. But I started in finance. I had no engineering background. I would read these books about Andreessen Horowitz, and Ycombinator and Lean Startup and Product Hunt. And I was like, "Oh fuck. How do I get it there?" And I just felt like a failure. I would have these nightmares of being a failure and fast forward now this week we launched our app, which we built on Product Hunt and won product of the day. And I had Ryan Hoover, personal message and Twitter about this is the calm for breathwork.
Robbie Bent:
And that feeling like my body was like almost shaking, which is joy of, man, you did it. You're not a fa... Even though I don't feel that way anymore, it was just such a icing on the cake, I'm six years sober and I just felt... I looked, we had a thousand upvotes for a wellness product. It's crazy. So I looked at that and just felt so like gratitude of like, fuck yeah, man. No matter what happens, you did it. Canadian guy, you got this product of the day. It felt it was really [crosstalk 01:16:56].
Daniel Scrivner:
After three years of work on a concept, the [inaudible 01:16:59] dissed or look down on, or I don't know [inaudible 01:17:00], it's fascinating. And we will link to that Product Hunt as well, too. And again, I highly recommend people download and try the Othership app. I think calm for breathing is a perfect way to think about it. Last question, maybe a similar answer. What are you most grateful for in this phase of your life?
Robbie Bent:
I'm most grateful for my wife. My wife is everything. When I came back from psychedelics, I've seen a lot of people fall back into their old habits. And because of her, she taught me about the sauna. It was our first date. Our second date was at a bath house. And then I proposed was to her in the sauna in a ice ball. The ring was inside and she's giving me a massage and it melted into her hand. And so we built this business together. It's like a husband, wife and best friend business. And so she's everything to me. And the only reason I feel, I'm manic person, I get these like lows and nervous. And I just know that no matter what this person loves me. And that's by far the most important thing in my life.
Daniel Scrivner:
That's a beautiful note to end on. So for anyone listening, I highly encourage you to listen to the long-form interview that we did. That's around an hour where we dive into what Robbie is building at Othership. It's basically half IRL bathhouse meets sauna, half digital you can do it anywhere, basically breathwork to take yourself up, get yourself ramped up, get yourself down, and then be able to explore different emotional states. You can download Othership in any app store. You can also visit Othership.us, and then you can follow Robbie on Twitter at @robbiebent. Thank you so much for the time, Robbie. I appreciate it.
Robbie Bent:
Yeah, me too. That was super fun.
On Outlier Academy, Daniel Scrivner explores the tactics, routines, and habits of world-class performers working at the edge—in business, investing, entertainment, and more. In each episode, he decodes what they've mastered and what they've learned along the way. Start learning from the world’s best today.
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