TULSA, Okla. — Inside the 36 Degrees North shared workspace for entrepreneurs on the 5th floor of Tulsa City Hall, BillionMinds co-founders Paul Slater and Ryan Tubbs launched their behavioral software.
Slater was living in Seattle, Tubbs in Raleigh, when the two developed their software during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When they were looking for an investor, Atento Capital, the capital funding arm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa, invited the two here for a visit.
“Suddenly, we found this opportunity to be co-located in one place,” Slater said. “In a place where we can both afford to live, a great place to bring up our families and a place that kind of matched with the overall value that BillionMinds has. We’ve certainly noticed that Tulsa is a place where people care about their jobs, they care about being productive but they care about that in the context of their broader lives and that feels like the right context for BillionMinds to exist.”
Slater and Tubbs previously worked for Microsoft and say they had great jobs but they weren’t satisfied and experienced burnout like so many other people.
“We were at a point at this time that it’s very difficult to start the work day with excitement because you never really left it the day before,” Slater said.
Ryan found they certainly weren’t alone.
“We started asking around, people of all walks of life. From CEO’s to stay-at-home dads about how they’re feeling over the course of their day. Just unanimously everyone’s feeling overwhelmed like they’re losing it a little bit,” said Tubbs.
They interviewed a thousand people and did a deep investigation into the most effective people. Finding out the books they’re reading, the technology they’re using which led to the creation of, BillionMinds. It’s a software platform that focuses on helping people develop a set of skills to be more effective on a daily basis.
“We’ve distilled that down to what we call four elements of effectiveness,” Tubbs said. “Those four elements are actions, outcomes, spaces and changes. And with those ingredients you can really, anybody, no matter what they do, no matter what their job function is, no matter what walk of life they’re in, they can be effective.”
They showed FOX23 what the spaces look like on the computer screen. There are boxes with categories to help you categorize and prioritize your day.
Slater says, “The way we allow people to zoom in and zoom out they’ve now got these various aspects of their lives. Each of these actions you’re performing, they’re connected to these outcomes you’re looking to drive.”
Everyone is adding to their to-do list in their heads, according to Slater.
“That’s what’s leading to the stress we’re talking about here. The term we came up with is cognitive tax. In other words, it’s the tax you pay in your head trying to manage this crazy life all in here,” said Slater.
Tubbs’ previous job caused him so much stress he suffered migraines regularly.
Work related stress costs companies billions of dollars a year in health care costs, absences and poor performances.
Work related stress leads to 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
BillionMinds client Renee Curtis describes how the software is helping her.
“Instead of your mind kind of having this thought up here about what’s next, what’s next, what’s next and the 8,000 things I have to do, you can put those down on paper or put them down on the app and free your mind to really get into some deep work,” Curtis said.
Curtis works for Pfizer in Seattle but has to juggle meetings in different time zones. She also balances out time for her husband, her dog and her ice hockey team. She’s going through the BillionMinds 90-day experience now, with personal coaching, and says the program is much more than just an organizer.
“I think it’s different because it gets down to why am I doing this and if you don’t have a good reason why, maybe you completely dump that task. Hey wait maybe I’m not the one who needs to do this, I can have someone to delegate this to and have them do it instead,” said Curtis. “Maybe I have more money than I have time so maybe I pay someone to do this for me. And you start realizing your time is valuable and you don’t have the time in the day to do everything.”
Slater says BillionMinds started to help people, “go from just trying to survive everyday to thriving in the day.”
Tubbs says when they started to observe that it’s making people purely feel better.
“It’s almost like productivity therapy. And much cheaper than therapy,” said Tubbs.
Their goal is for their software to go global helping a billion people around the world. They’re excited to start in Tulsa.
Slater hopes people can say, “Hey, those Tulsans have it figured out. You know they got this work, life thing figured out.”
Right now, BillionMinds is geared toward companies to help them start retraining select work groups.
They’re also launching individual programs.
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