“During the pandemic, you kind of had to face your mind.” COVID-19 was certainly a strain on all of us in one way or another and forced us to reckon with the importance of mental health. This re-evaluation was particularly prevalent in the transitioning workplace. Rayne Steinberg, Co-Founder and CEO of digital asset investment firm Arca, joins Jenn to talk about his own mental fitness journey as well as his team’s approach to fostering a company culture that emphasizes clear communication, ownership and an open awareness of the evolving ways to support employee wellness.
:49 Rayne shares a little bit of background about himself and his business and family
1:50 Rayne’s definition of “mental fitness” in relation to ARCA
3:44 Rayne discusses that being part of a well-known family sometimes affected his mental wellness
7:26 Rayne explains how he implements mental fitness as a leader, how mass media and popular sentiment skew the realities of leadership, and how a public family controversy helped him to deal with internal struggles
12:57 Rayne discusses that his team has strategized and evolved with the society and the shift to promoting mental health in the workplace
15:07 Rayne outlines his company’s culture, where people feel like owners
17:55 Jenn and Rayne stress the importance of and value of clear communication at the workplace
20:24 At Arca, Slack and email are limited to informal messages, fostering clearer conversations
22:57 Rayne gives his view of the future of mental fitness/mental wellness in the workplace and details the successful company culture at ARCA
26:23 Rayne shares how taking distance from work to let the mind regenerate benefits his company
31:20 Rayne shares encouraging words for the masses, “its okay”
Books Mentioned:
Marc Randolph – That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QLL7N7D/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005BSQWVM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1
Quotes Mentioned:
“Mental wellness is really a very pliable, healthy mind, that helps you deal with a very changeable world. A well balanced healthy mind is able to cope with adversity.”
“Flexibility and optionality are super important in this world and you can’t do that without a healthy mind”.
“During the pandemic, you kind of had to face your mind”.
“Everyone is having their own human experience”
“..In an increasingly optic-driven society, where we have a lot of exposure to success stories. We only get to hear the books of those who made it, so there’s a real survivorship bias on these things. People don’t realize how much good fortune and luck goes into these things. ”
“With the way I was raised in this very public way, one of the most helpful things is that we had a disintegration of that, very publicly as well, and that was no longer a pressure that was on you… I was forced to face what was going on internally and have people see very bad things going on, and it wasn’t fatal.”
“Be comfortable with things that weren’t as great, but not letting them be paralyzing.”
“Skills and aptitude’s are different, not necessarily better than the other”
“It hard to understand how much human interaction goes on in the workplace…. It’s hard to quantify, but you feel it in its absence.”
“The less context you have in interactions, the more you’re able to fill in on your own”
“You have to understand what’s going on, on the other side of that keyboard”
“Communication is a two way street. Whatever you say doesn’t matter, you’re looking to communicate something on the receiving end.”
“This virtual world has made the labor pool fluid and almost infinite…. But there’s also an incredibly broad pool for the applicant…”
“Find something that works for you, that you see the good results in, and be honest with it.”
