Naomi Shah | Keeping Your Mental Health on Track When Your Career is in Hyperdrive | Founder of Meet Cute
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Negative news about what's happening around the world can make us feel anxious and afraid. In this episode, 26-year-old founder Naomi Shah talks about how her business helps fight anxiety, and how she takes care of her own and her team's mental health. Stay tuned and get a glimpse of what it's like to be an entrepreneur.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
How listening to stories can help you relax
Two things you can do to stay grounded in your business
Change your perspective on social media
The importance of taking care of your team's mental health
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
About Naomi Shah
Naomi Shah is the founder and CEO of Meet Cute, a venture-backed media company that has produced over 300 original light-hearted romantic comedies in podcast form. The company celebrates human connection and the full spectrum of love with a core mission: having every person feel like they are reflected in Meet Cute stories.
Since inception, the podcast already has over 2 million listens across over 150 countries and has been featured in the top 10 of Fiction on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Connect with Naomi
Website: www.meetcute.com
Instagram: @meetcute
Twitter: @listenmeetcute
Facebook: Meet Cute
If you are struggling with feeling overworked or overwhelmed, access the Top 10 Stress Management Tips for the Overworked free right now.
Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people awaken to their ultimate potential. She is a wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, Physician Assistant, & Reiki Master with the goal of empowering others to live their best lives!
Follow her on:
Instagram: @livegreatly_co
Clubhouse: @livegreatly
LinkedIn: Kristel Bauer
Youtube: Live Greatly, Kristel Bauer
To learn more about Live Greatly's transformative online courses for personal development and self-improvement, to discuss collaborations and partnerships, or to book Kristel as a speaker or consultant, click here.
Episode Transcript
Naomi (Teaser)
Really helped me shift the way I thought about building and innovating, where you come to work every single day, because you're excited about how you're going to build something. Not how you're going to measure up against a number or a goal that you had.
Kristel ( Guest Introduction)
If you are looking to excel in your career and optimize your wellbeing while also getting some great time management tips.
You're going to gain a ton of value from today's episode with Naomi Shah. Naomi is the Founder and CEO of Meet Cute, which is a venture backed media company that produces light-hearted romantic comedies. They currently have over 2 million listeners and I had such an incredible conversation with Naomi. We talked about something that you might be doing, which could be draining your energy, and you might not even realize it.
We talked about how to navigate social media and build connection personally and professionally, we also talked about how Naomi supports herself as a founder, as a CEO, and what she's doing, which is really innovative to support her employees’ mental health. Naomi is also going to give some great tips into time blocking and how to increase your thinking.
I'm so excited to share this with you. So let's jump right into it and welcome Naomi Shah to the show.
Naomi:
It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kristel:
My pleasure. So I would love to just start by hearing a little bit of the backstory, you know, how did you get started with this?
What inspires you? And if you could just share a little bit about what's currently going on in your life.
Naomi:
Definitely. So I run a company called Meet Cute. It's an entertainment brand and we make hundreds of romantic comedy stories all in audio. Really what inspired the start of meet cute is seeing that there is so much, so much of a need for creative content for stories that people can escape into and lose themselves into.
But there isn’t that much volume of that content. It's scarce and people want more of it because we have all these negative headlines in the news and we have so much stress at work and we have to take care of kids and manage our relationships. And it's so nice to pause for a few minutes a day and just decompress and relax into something.
And if that thing is a meditation or a story, or going on a walk and listening to something, we want Meet Cute to be that creative outlet for people. And so we started working on it a year and a half ago, and now we have over 300 romantic comedies in our library and we keep putting up new ones every week.
And it's been this amazing journey of learning how to run a business, mixing the creative and business side of my brain. Um, to answer your question about what inspires me, I think seeing our listeners react to the stories and our creators be so proud of the stories that we put out there that definitely inspires me every day.
Um, I got a lot of inspiration from my family and my parents. I saw them run a business when I was younger and could kind of see what that path looked like for me. And then I just get energy from the team that we're building at Meet cute. And I feel like we all take care of each other and really are dedicated to working on this mission.
And so it's been really fun to grow our team and find people that care a lot about storytelling.
Kristel:
That's incredible. And the fact that you have grown it to where it is now, and it's only been a year and a half definitely says something about your drive and your mission, and also the need for this. Because I can say personally, like I'm all about romantic comedies these days, and that has not always been the case.
Like I've always enjoyed them, but I find myself now whenever we're sitting my husband and I sit down at night and we're looking for something I'm like, I want comedy. I want comedy and we've gone through like all of them. It's searching for things that are lighthearted and fun and funny and feel good because I totally agree there's such a need for that, you know, and I really try and avoid scrolling and looking at the news and everything going on right now is heavy. And I think sometimes people don't realize that that can significantly impact how you feel. And if you're scrolling and you're seeing all these headlines, which are meant to create fear that actually can cause this fight or flight response within yourself, it's like you have this stress response, even though in that moment you’re safe.
Nothing's happening around you. So I would love to hear a little bit about your journey as an entrepreneur so far and how that's gone and how you've been able to handle all of the different, um, things that come your way when you're starting a business.
Naomi:
Absolutely. And I have felt that exact same fear and anxiety when you wake up.
And the first thing you see is 10 notifications of the news. What happened around the world? And they're all very scary, create they're meant to create some feeling of anxiety or, fear to your point. And I think that is something that we don't realize how much it affects us in that moment. But as you go through your day by 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM, you feel so drained and a big reason for that as you have all these like subliminal messages come to you that are like,Okay, you need to be worried about this and you need to be worried about this, and don't forget this and you have to take care of this. And so going through the Workday or going through the school day or wherever you are in life means that you have to overcome all these small little messages and, you know, either study or do your job or take care of your kids or whatever it is. And so I'm a strong believer in the power of stories to pull us out of that. I think there's such a things like that, that it's almost like an escape valve when you sit down to watch a comedy or romantic comedy or something of that sort, you let some of the steam out because you're completely immersed in a new world.
And I think that people often look at podcasts and books as a way to learn something, which is awesome. And I always recommend fiction books to people because I, I tell them that you can learn so much about yourself and the world through fiction because at the end of the day, Fiction is just a reflection of the real world in some alternate reality. So I love thinking about it that way.
When it comes to my everyday, I have found ways to try and avoid, you know, going down rabbit holes with anxiety written news or getting stressed about work, honestly, which is really hard in a CEO position. And this is my first time as an entrepreneur, first time in a role where honestly it feels like your neck is on the chopping block every day.
And you have to come up with ways to prevent that from getting in the way of getting your work done. And so, I really like forming routines. So my morning is generally some sort of routine that allows me to feel relaxed. It's consistent, and it can be as simple as like making your bed, making a cup of coffee, not checking the news right before you start working, blocking out time to respond to emails and slack messages.
And that type of structure really helps me get through those first couple of hours. So I feel ready for the rest of the day. But balancing the idea of like founding a company with just being a person in the world. Definitely not something that anyone trains you for. And it's like something to work on every single day of being a founder.
So I've had to find resources and people to help me guide me through that. And that's been a really fun and incredibly growth filled journey for me in the last year and a half.
Kristel:
That's amazing. And along the way, you know, when you're growing something big, it is inevitable that setbacks will happen.
And it's something that I discovered early on. And I went into my journey. I left clinical practice to start Live Greatly. And I was like, I had this vision of exactly what it was going to be like, and it was going to happen right away. It was gonna be super, you know, everything was going to fall into place.
It's going to be perfect. And then reality was like, well, that's not exactly how things go. And you know things that happen that aren't what you planned and then you learn and you grow and you shift. And I, I found for myself, it's really helped me build resiliency and also recognize the importance of staying grounded and really taking the time for those self-care practices.
So I don't get sucked into the worry and the overwhelm and you know, all of this stuff that can come with the responsibility of owning your company. So you said that in the morning, you have your quiet time, right. Are there any other things that you do that you find help you stay grounded in your mission and in what's important to you and also support your health well-being.
Naomi:
Definitely. So I would say there are two big things that I'm working on right now. One of them is finding kind of like large blocks of time on my calendar where I can go into deep work. Thinking. And I think that something that I wasn't very good at when I started as the CEO of Meet Cute, is I would get pulled into all of these tasks where I would be working on one thing and then get pulled into something else.
And I felt like a slave to my calendar where I couldn't actually zoom out and focus on the big picture thinking where do we want to be in six months? Where do we want to be in two years? And it took you know feedback cycles and me realizing that I was really exhausted at the end of the day, but I didn't feel like I was really getting to that next step of thinking as a, as an entire company for me to step back and say, okay, how do I create a calendar that actually supports me to be the best CEO possible.
So I'll have all of my meetings, but then I want to have like 60 to 90 minute work blocks that allow me to go heads down on our marketing strategy or allow me to think about what do we want partnerships to look like? Okay. Those have been really helpful in grounding me and allowing me to spend time going big picture before I get sucked into the details.
And I think that that's really, really helpful for me. The other thing that I think has really helped from like a perspective change is not focusing on the outcome, but focusing on the process. And that sounds really cliche. But it's so easy to just look at the output of something and say, that's not how I want it to look.
Why isn't that, you know, following what I think it should follow and getting really frustrated by that. And then just kind of like beating your head against the wall and trying to figure out how it works. The alternative to that is looking at the process. And how are we thinking about it and getting to a place where we're really proud of the processes that we're building out to create these stories and to put these stories out in the world.
And kind of gauging our success based on how well we're executing on that and how innovative we're being there. And as soon as that shift kind of happened for me, and I started thinking about things in slightly different ways, I just found that we were so much more aligned as a company because we were aligning on the inputs, which we could control rather than the outputs, which we couldn't control.
So that really helped me kind of shift the way I thought about building and innovating where you come to work every single day, because you're excited about how you're going to build something. Not how you're going to measure up against a number or a goal that you had.
Kristel:
That's great advice. And I love the time-blocking, say, think you may have heard, like, are you being busy or productive?
You know, at the end of the day, there are some days right. I felt like I did a lot but I felt like I got nothing done. What are they, what are they doing all day? I was busy, but it was like little tasks versus their other days specifically like working on my book or those bigger things where I feel like I was super productive, you know, it feels really good.
So I love that you're making an effort to really carve out that time so that you feel really fulfilled. You're moving towards where you want to go. And one of the things I've noticed is that social media is one of those things where I can feel, I can kind of feel yeah. Myself in certain ways that I'm being productive, but a lot of the time it's, I, it feels more like I'm just being busy.
So what was so helpful for me was when I was able to, um, hire people to help me with that, you know, for social. So I'm curious, like, what's your relationship like with social media and how do you navigate that? Because I think there's you know, it there's ways to do it where I think it can be wonderful. It can be supportive of a brand sharing a great message, but if not done correctly, it also can be draining and negatively impactful being too. So love your thoughts on that.
Naomi:
I would say that my relationship with social media has changed a lot in the last four to five years. I think in my earlier twenties, I was definitely on it more and I just spent more time on it because that's where I felt like my peers were.
And the last couple of years, especially I've pulled back on my personal social media a little bit where I actually don't overshare there as much, and I don't spend as much time scrolling or as much time, you know, just posting and waiting for people to comment or like, and it's not because I don't like social media cause I actually really do like it, it helps me keep in touch with my friends. It helps me stay updated with where people are in life.
What I have found is I've kind of tried to reorient my personal life, especially into really deeper relationships with fewer people instead of having and I think that, you know, before I had a much wider range of people and kind of stayed connected to them in less of like a deep, insignificant way in my mind.
And so I've kind of like shifted my attention to that a little bit more where I'd rather go grab a two hour dinner with someone after work then like go back and forth with them on messaging or on unpack. So I, I have pulled back there a little bit.
The thing that has changed though, is the CEO of Meet Cute is we have such a large social presence for the brand, and it's such an important way for us to start building a community around something like romantic comedies and creating this like vertical media brand that we're excited about building there.
So in that respect, I've actually become more in touch with social media and what it means to have a brand that sounds like a human. That sounds like a person. And I think that has been a really fun creative challenge for me, which is. You know, Meet Cute on Instagram, I actually really like when we can come across, like someone's best friend compared to just a brand, trying to promote something, because at the end of the day, we're not selling anything.
We just want people to come and enjoy our stories. And so I have found that I really love the social and marketing sides of Meet Cute and am constantly promoting and re promoting, Meet Cute stuff on my feeds. I like to say that like everyone on our team is the biggest brand ambassador for our company because they've dedicated all of their time to working on it.
So in that respect, I've spent a lot more time learning about social media, learning about how people react to social media. What makes people interested in something versus scroll past it. And that's been really fun for me. And I never had thought about that stuff when I was just, you know, personally on Instagram and Twitter and Tik TOK, right?
Kristel:
Yeah. You know, for me, I didn't, I wasn't on Instagram or LinkedIn or anything personally before I started my company. So getting into it in the beginning, I think I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. Like I need to post this often. I need to keep up with it. And it felt like it was just too much because I didn't have help yet.
So then I got to the point where then I was able to get help and now it's so much. It's fun because I've taken that pressure off of myself and it's more about, okay, what do I want to share that's going to bring value and how can I really build that community? But for me, it was a lot about that perspective of not feeling like I have to, but instead I really want to, and I'm excited to share this, you know, that perspective shift we made all the difference.
Naomi:
I think that people can also tell when that happens and they can tell that, you know, contents not going out because it has to go out. But because you are excited about sharing something and that will bring value to your users and your audience. I completely believe that wholeheartedly. I think that today people are so wary of spending a lot of time on social media and spending a lot of time scrolling in doom scrolling with the news.
And you know, all the negative headlines. And so I think we do as creators. And as people who have content that other people can consume, we do have to be so intentional about what we're putting out there because people have such limited time. And that's part of the reason why we only make 15 minute shows because we're like, what if people don't want to listen to something for two hours or eight hours?
What if people have things to do. We want to give them these bite sized stories that fit in anywhere in their day. We call them like pocket fictions. And I think being really intentional about what you're posting and what you're sharing with people. And honestly, curating the content really carefully is, is something that like will keep people around more and we'll increase retention because people can tell when it's not genuine. And I think that's important.
Kristel:
Yes. Yeah. Great insight. And I would love to segue a little bit into your company culture. And you had shared that you have mental health days, and I think that that's so important and especially with the pandemic and, you know, there's been so much stress on people and, you know, there's so many shifts, whether it's remote working or in person and all of the rest of it.
I love that you're making your employees will being a priority. So I hoping you can share a little bit about that and what you're doing to promote mental wellness and wellbeing.
Naomi:
Yes, absolutely. So when COVID hit last March, we had just launched a month ago. Um, and we had to quickly pivot into what it meant to run a, an entertainment brand remotely.
And that took a lot of contingency planning, a lot of remapping of how we were going to do our production. But the thing that I kept coming back to, and what kept me up at night is I want to make sure that this team is happy and continues to be excited about our mission, the vision we're working to creating stories for people.
And so it started out with small things like we set up daily water coolers for 15 minutes where people would just jump online to chat with each other. Sometimes we would have a topic other times it was just what you did the night before, what you ate for dinner, but you did that morning. And it was really an opportunity for people to feel less isolated because some people were working alone in their apartments.
Some people didn't have their family and friends around.People were doing long distance relationships. And so it was just a way for us to have human contact and see everyone, even if it was remotely on zoom and then over time, it didn't. COVID continue, we stayed remote, months are ticking by and. I realized that a lot of people were, you know, hitting some sort of block where it was like, you know, I'm just in this work from home routine and get up, start work, check my laptop.
And like, there was not that much separation between where work ended and where your evening started. And so we came up with this idea of mental health days, which basically was whenever a month didn't have a long weekend, we would make a long weekend. And part of the reason that I came up with dedicated days for this, rather than just giving people extra vacation days is because in COVID no one was taking their vacation days.
No one, no one had places to go, people to go see. And so. By forcing everyone to take a day off. It meant that one, everyone was offline at the same time, so that if one person took a day off, they wouldn't come back to like an insane number of slacks and emails and feel behind. But two, it kind of shifted the company thinking to, oh, these are days that I'm supposed to just like go for extra long walks, listen to music.
Go think, go hang out with friends and family. And like and that was something that I think really helped, um, just shift the conversation around what it meant to take a break during COVID and then something else that we've been working on is being really open about how everyone's doing checking in with people as soon as, you know, some of the teams started putting a block for therapy on their calendar.
We saw that more people were open to that and more people talked about it openly. And that was something that generally in most workplaces, they think has a stigma around it, but it shouldn't because it's such a, the same way that you work out at the gym. This is a way to work out with your mind and so just with those like small shifts and leading by action, rather than just saying something, I think we saw that our team was able to get through those 15 months of COVID, but the work doesn't really stop now because I do think that there's a lot of emotional baggage that comes with transitioning out of COVID.
And I'm super cognizant to the fact that we can't just like snap our fingers and go back to normal in that the transition is going to take a lot of thought and intentional planning to take care of all of our people, because they think that's one of the most important parts of organizational health.
So I spend a lot of my time thinking about that and definitely want, as our team grows, to be mindful of that and not lose sight of that.
Kristel:
I love that that's so very important. And everyone who was working with Meet Cute is very lucky to have you as the CEO, as I can tell you truly care, you know, so that's incredible.
And we, at this point are getting close to the wellness lightning round. So I'm going to ask you a few quick questions before we do that. Anything else you'd like to share about Meet Cute? I will put a link in the episode details so people can take listen and if they want to hear some light-hearted romantic comedies, but anything else that you'd like to share now would be a great time.
Naomi:
I would say, yeah, definitely listened to our stories. I think one of the most interesting things about what we've built is that we work with over 500 creators around the world. And that means that we just have so many voices and so much diversity in these stories. So when you hear a story you like or resonate with the character, definitely go follow our creators.
They're tagged in a lot of our posts and in all the show notes, um, it's just really fun to be building a network like that, of people who care about stories, so would love for people to come in and listen and be a part of our community.
Kristel:
Amazing. Okay, fantastic. So now we're going to jump into the wellness lightning round.
Are you ready? Are we ready? All right, let's do it. So the first question I have for you is what is a book that you have listened to or read recently that really resonated with you that you'd like to share?
Naomi:
That's a great question. I really like the book by fish don't exist by Lulu Miller. Um, she's an she's a NPR host.
It's semi biography, semi science research, but it was probably one of those books that made me think the most. And she's just an intensely curious person.
Kristel:
Interesting. The title is interesting. I'm like curious, like what's that all about? Okay. So second question is what is a self care routine that is a non-negotiable for you.
Naomi:
In the mornings. I have to make my bed every morning, as you can tell. It helps me feel grounded. It keeps me off of my phone for a few minutes, like making my bed and making my coffee are non-negotiables at the start of my day.
Kristel:
Awesome. And I'm curious, what kind of coffee do you drink? That's not one of the questions. It's just a side note.
Naomi:
I got an espresso machine as a house warming gift when I moved into this apartment. And so I take my time finally ground espresso, add some oatmeal, add a couple ice cubes. And I just like milk that all morning.
Kristel:
That sounds delicious. Okay. Last question, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Naomi:
I would say. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I think that there is a pressure on young woman, especially like in an entrepreneurial seat or in a CEO or founder seat to be the perfect version of themselves. And I have made so many friends in this the last 15 months with people who feel the same way, they feel those pressures.
But I think that some of the biggest growth periods in the last couple of years has been when I've asked for help and ask for feedback and people lean in, people lean in because they want to help and they genuinely care about you. So that is probably the thing that I would say to myself 10 years ago.
Kristel:
Yes, that's such incredible advice. And this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for taking time with me today. And I'm really excited to listen to some of these episodes and going on a little getaway with my husband coming up and I'm thinking that would be perfect to listen to you on the plane.
Naomi:
Absolutely. So this was so fun, Kristel. Thanks for having me.