Interview with Carly Stockdale
Carly Stockdale is the CEO of BestLife, a healthy aging and longevity company.
Do Not Go Gentle
Contents
Max Raskin: For someone who works in the field of longevity and senescence, I’m curious what you do for personal exercise?
Carly Stockdale: I do high interval intensive training three times a week including significant weight bearing exercise.
I’m someone who enjoys variety, and my workouts are one of the few places in my life where I completely submit. I try to go to a class and have someone yell at me for an hour and they push me to go harder than I would on my own.
MR: Do you do these boot camp classes?
CS: I do boot camps. Well, with COVID things have changed – I just got a Tonal, which I'm a very big fan of.
MR: What’s that?
CS: It's a digital smart home gym with a personal trainer on your wall. It supports a ton of weight – far more than I need. When you first start it tests your personal weight limits and then automatically applies those limits to all of your exercises and then intelligently increases the weight from there.
MR: What about eating? Do you snack during the day?
CS: I eat a lot of small meals throughout the day. When I was pregnant, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. And when you get gestational diabetes, you are essentially given a notice – a notice that a lot of doctors fail to tell the patients, by the way - you get a notice that you have 50% likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes over the next 5 years. So over the last four years since I had my daughter, I got very, very serious about not eating excess sugar.
MR: Do you cook, or do you order in?
CS: I enjoy cooking, but it's a luxury now that is associated with time. I just got a June Oven – you could call that one of my life hacks. I make a lot of protein and vegetables with some salt and pepper and olive oil and just set it and forget it on days when I don’t order in. Unfortunately, to a certain extent when you're an entrepreneur and you have a kid, everything's about streamlining and daily cooking for pleasure didn’t make the cut.
My attitude towards food is totally different than exercise. With food I'm very comfortable with consistency. I don't get bored when I have healthy and consistent food day after day. Whereas with exercise, if I'm doing the same thing, I lose the element of surprise, which ultimately keeps me engaged in the workout.
MR: What restaurant do you order in most from?
CS: I recently transplanted to San Diego and one of the best things about San Diego food is our authentic border town Mexican food. And shockingly, some of the best is out of gas stations – or at least so I think. My husband, who's Welsh, was really grossed out when I would try to take us to gas station Mexican food, but I've since converted him.
MR: If you're coming to New York and you only go to one restaurant, where are you going?
CS: Minca. The places that I go in New York are not necessarily ranked because they're the best food, it's the vibe that reminds me of living in New York. Next would be Supper. I still pine for my old Alphabet City hood.
Superhuman
MR: I want to ask you about streamlining things on your phone. This is a very, very personal question: what’s your average daily screen time on your phone?
CS: It’s terrible. It's over five hours
MR: Do you have any productivity apps that you use or any email clients?
CS: Superhuman.
MR: What were your top three played songs on Spotify last year?
CS: “When You're Lonely” by Sons of Maria, “Ooh Ahh” by Grits, and “You Were Right” by Rüfüs Du Sol.
MR: Do you keep your kid away from the phone?
CS: I do. I'm strict. I'm overly conscious of two things with my kid: technology usage and sugar consumption.
MR: Are you religious?
CS: No. I'm half Jewish and half Catholic. A cashew.
MR: Who's which?
CS: My mother is Jewish. My father was Catholic.
I think my mother wanted to take me to synagogue or my father to church –and the other one responded that they want to do both. But neither of them were motivated to spend the whole weekend going to religious ceremonies. So my family landed on a strong golden rule philosophy in my house growing up.
MR: Are you raising your child with any religion?
CS: We're raising her with a really strong value system.
MR: But no dogma or a liturgy?
CS: We're not raising her in a particular religion though she is exposed to all the Jewish and Catholic traditions and rituals.
MR: Do you do any meditation?
CS: Yes. Transcendental Meditation.
MR: How often do you do it?
CS: TM is amazing. You sign up for a $500 course. And then you get access, and you can go in there anytime. I practice, or try to practice, twice a day for 20 minutes a day.
MR: And then do you use an app to maintain that?
CS: I have a few. Insight Timer is the one I use and more recently Othership for breathing exercises.
Entrepreneuress
MR: Do you think about being a woman entrepreneur? Are you a member of any of these groups?
CS: I don't necessarily seek out the female entrepreneur community. That may be more of a function of the fact that I've limited time. I'm in Young President’s Organization — it’s a membership-based organization for CEOs — my chapter is male dominated. I do invest personal capital in a high proportion of female entrepreneurs and make myself available to think through problems or make connections whether I’m investing or not.
MR: What do you think about this cult of entrepreneurship and this cult of entrepreneurism?
CS: To be an entrepreneur, you have to have the ability to suspend reality or act in ways that are contrary to all or many of the signals that you're getting. Otherwise you’d give up.
My husband is an entrepreneur. Our last two fundraises - we've been fundraising at the same time – I’ll share that it's incredibly helpful to have someone who’s going through a similar tunnel.
MR: What I’m asking is that most entrepreneurs just are — they don’t read about being entrepreneurs, right?
CS: Sure — people make it an identity. There is definitely some application of “people that can do, do - and people that can’t, talk (or teach).”
But there's this phenomena where entrepreneurs are in some ways deploying a time or world response reality suspense function and I am a believer – it feels superhuman.
MR: Where do you get the news?
CS: I talk to my team in the mornings about what they're experiencing and seeing, I often filter the news through people - something Tim Ferris’ writing originally encouraged me to do. I supplement that perspective with industry news specific to healthcare and tech.
Date Night
MR: I want to ask a little bit about being a husband-and-wife entrepreneur team. How do you and your husband schedule things together?
CS: We have a shared virtual assistant, which is extremely important.
If he's traveling or wants to do something, he'll send me a calendar invite so I know not to schedule travel. Every Friday night we go on a date, and we just have standing babysitting so that we can do that.
MR: Where was your last date night?
CS: A restaurant called The Switchboard and then there's this new jazz club across the street, the Jazzy Wishbone.
MR: Will you turn your phones off?
CS: I give my phone to Tom and he keeps both of them in his pocket on silent. We're not religious, but we do try to take a technology shabbat on Friday nights.
MR: How tall are you?
CS: 5’4’’.
MR: Do you wish you were taller?
CS: If I could take extra inches, I probably would.
MR: Would you take five IQ points for one inch?
CS: Zero chance. No.
MR: Really?
CS: I don't even have to think about it. I would consider getting shorter for the IQ points.
MR: I think IQ probably stands in the way of a certain kind of success.
CS: I think that my success to date, and I don't want to overstate it, has had very little to do with my IQ.
MR: That's what I'm saying.
CS: And if I had more, I think it would only help me.
MR: I think anxiety would increase with another IQ point.
Accentuate the Positive (Psychology)
MR: Do you go to therapy?
CS: Yes. I believe in therapy. It’s like going to the gym and it’s great.
MR: Do you go now?
CS: Yes. I found a therapist that has a somewhat unique philosophy where you meet one on one in order to discover what's broken and then you're put into a group to work on those things in a group setting. It’s hard work.
MR: What's the first book that comes to mind right now? What are you reading right now?
CS: Right now I'm reading No Red Lights by Alan Patricof. Alan is an observer on my board and one of my investors and I'm really enjoying his writing. I really like biographies.
The first book that comes to mind is The Nine.
MR: Do you play any games? Or do any mental exercises?
CS: I do a lot of negative visualization.
MR: What's negative visualization?
CS: Generally it is the practice of living out worst-case scenarios. It's a surprisingly comforting thing to do. I think it relates to my working practice of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
MR: Does it get exhausting though?
CS: I don’t think so, but it probably takes a toll and has some inadvertent impact.
I have high expectations of myself and the words I use are often reflective of that. They don't reflect the same empathy that I have or aspire to have with others so it’s something I am working to change – not necessarily as part of the negative visualization work, but as a personal development effort.
MR: What is some negative thinking you thought about either this interview or today?
CS: An example negative visualization would be losing my family or my business facing some catastrophic loss, so those are more macro. With this interview – you know, I'm so focused on my company and my family, I'm not sure I have anything that's very interesting for anyone to learn outside of that – so worst case I share information that no one cares anything about, and we move on. Some mild negative visualization as it relates to this conversation with you.
Generally I use negative visualization to reinforce a feeling that there’s nothing left to lose. To put all my cards on the table and do the best I can because anything can happen and this is all we got.
Rebel With a Cause
MR: You went to Yale and were probably a straight-A student, right?
CS: I wasn’t always a straight-A student. To your point regarding IQ, it doesn’t get you everything. I don't take no for an answer, which is a both blessing and a curse.
MR: What's the most rebellious thing you've ever done?
CS: I think it would be embarrassing because it probably wouldn't be that rebellious.
MR: Have you ever done anything that really disappointed your parents?
CS: I'm sure I have.
MR: Have you done anything really rebellious?
CS: I don’t think the Internet needs to know the answer to that.
MR: Let me rephrase it: Do you consider yourself a by-the-book person?
CS: I walk the line. For me, the personal journey I’ve experienced - I know that if I try my hardest – put everything on the field - and do what I believe is right, it is anywhere from acceptable to imperative to take the risk of failure. And that’s rarely by-the-book. But there’s plenty of peace to that conviction. Peace in rebellion.