Arvid Kahl: Hello, everyone and welcome to The Bootstrapped
Founder. My name is Arvid Kahl and I talk about bootstrapping,
entrepreneurship and building in public. Today, I'm talking to
Dr. Sherry Walling. She's a speaker, author, and
psychologist. Her work had a profound impact on my founder
journey. It was the book that I was reading her book, The
Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together, that really
helped me while preparing my own business for an exit. And it
materially changed my stress and anxiety levels for the better
after I was done reading it. Unsurprisingly, I wanted to talk
to Sherry about mental health topics that every founder
struggles with: burnout, impostor syndrome and just being
stressed out of our minds. We live through that every day.
There's a lot we have to deal with as entrepreneurs. And it's
very useful to have a mental health professional in our
ranks. And Sherry is that person for so many founders. Before we
get started with a conversation with Dr. Sherry Walling, let me
thank the sponsor for this show, acquire.com. Imagine this, your
founder who's built a solid SaaS product, you acquired customers
and the products generally consistent in its monthly
recurring revenue. The problem is you're not growing for
whatever reason, lack of focus or lack of skill or just plain
lack of interest and you feel stuck. What should you do? Well,
the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down
and somehow reignited the fire of get going and getting past
yourself and the cliches and then started working on your
business rather than just in the business. That would be great.
You start building an audience and you move out of your comfort
zone and do sales and marketing, all the things we don't like to
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reality isn't as simple as this. Situations may be different for
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go to acquire.com and see for yourself if this is the right
option for you. And now here is Dr. Sherry Walling.
Awhile ago, I asked my followers on Twitter if they ever
experienced burnout and 89% of them said that they have been
experiencing it in the past or that they are currently mid
burnout. That's 1 in 10 of my audience on Twitter. And I was
extremely surprised by this. If mental health is such an
incredibly common problem, 9 out of 10 people experience it. Why
do we so rarely talk about it in our communities? There's still a
taboo around it. What do you know about this lack of
communication about this very important topic?
Dr. Sherry Walling: I mean, I talk about it all day, every
day. It's the thing I dug about and there certainly are, I think
the conversation around mental health in the entrepreneur
community has really opened up quite a bit in the last 5 to 10
years. When I first started in this space, in like 2015-2016,
it was really quite unusual. I think one of the things that
makes it difficult to talk about is that there aren't as much as
we would like there to be these lovely clickbaity, five things
that you can do to solve burnout, they're harder than
that. And so burnout, prevention, burnout
identification, they're actually sort of complicated processes.
And they don't lend themselves super easily to a nice
clickbaity soundbite or a tweet. So to talk about mental health
in a really meaningful way, it's actually a pretty nuanced
conversation that sometimes founders don't have the time and
energy for, don't make the time and energy for.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I think it's a priority problem for many
people, right? They see so many other things that they need to
tackle that are more tangible, maybe. Maybe solutions are more
apparent to these problems. So they kind of dismiss the whole
conversation. It's unfortunate, I feel. I wish people would talk
about it more and feel to be more of a problem that they need
to actually address.
Dr. Sherry Walling: There's kind of like a normalization of
burnout. Like you just don't expect that if you're founder,
you're going to have burnout. And that's not correct. And it's
actually very problematic because burnout, which we can
get into in more detail if you want to, but burnout, true
burnout is actually brain damage. It's like, directly
observable on a functional MRI. And so for us to normalize, oh,
we just do this to ourselves. We just run our braids ragged,
that's just part of it, I think is a pretty unacceptable way to
operate.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, if it's something real and that's, I
usually compare this to something like imposter
syndrome, which isn't even a syndrome, right? It's the
imposter phenomenon for many people, at least apparently, in
the clinical world as much as I know it. So that is something
that also exists, but it's by far not as medically studied and
proven. And actually a problem like a mental health issue as
burnout is. And I sometimes wonder, people don't even go to
great lengths to talk to mental health or any medical
professionals about it. They self diagnose. That was the same
for me. Like, I think, I believe I've experienced burnout twice
in my life. I have no medical trail, like I never went to an
actual psychologist or just talk to anybody in the field. I just
thought, oh, this is bad. I need to take time away from this and
all that. So I kind of even then, knowing that I had a
problem, I struggled to seek medical help. Do you know why I
did that? Can you diagnose me right now?
Dr. Sherry Walling: I do think that people don't know that
burnout is a formal diagnoseable problem. And I will also say
that often the psychological or mental health community is not
super adept at dealing with burnout. We often misdiagnose it
as depression or we often just misdiagnose it as generalized
anxiety or something else. So I think there's a both and problem
when it comes to really getting good care for burnout when
people don't recognize that that would be helpful. And two, it's
harder than it should be to find mental health professionals or
medical professionals who really understand burnout, especially
the context that comes with a founder. To be honest, if you
looked at the psychological profile of most founders, they
look a little bit like somebody who's a little bit manic, has
maybe a little bipolar too going on, is a little bit obsessive
and then has these sort of fits of depression. And so I think
it's really easy for mental health professionals to
pathologize founders and not understand the context and the
amount of passion and drive and energy that goes into growing a
business. And I think that's where we miss each other a
little bit.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that was exactly what I was wondering
when I saw my 89% of people telling me and I think it was 10
ish or 20% that we're in burnout right now as per their self
diagnosis. And I was thinking, man, is that just an
entrepreneurial thing? Is that just the founder, kind of people
just have an easier time having a hard time? Does it hit
entrepreneurs harder than other groups have? Have you
experienced this?
Dr. Sherry Walling: So it's a little bit tricky because I
think burnout is also a nice phrase to describe a number of
different things. So sometimes people will say, I think I'm
burned out and then you dig into their life and their situation.
And it's like, oh, you are in very significant grief. Or
sometimes people will say, I'm burned out and I dig a little
bit and I'm like, oh, wait, actually you're like clinically
depressed like, just textbook depression. But burnout is an
easier term to talk about even though it is still stigmatized.
It's maybe less stigmatized than some other things. So that's one
of the problems that I think is happening. There was an
interesting study that came out relatively recently that
suggested that entrepreneurs actually have less burnout than
your nine to five employee. And some of that is because there
are these key things that drive burnout. Some of them are better
for founders, like, one of the drivers of burnout is the
mismatch between what you think is important and how you spend
your time. So at least entrepreneurs are choosing,
right? They are deciding what business they want to build.
They are giving their time and energy towards something that
they're choosing. They're not out of control. They're very
much in control. So that's a protective factor that helps
prevent burnout that's not present in you know, our
brothers and sisters who are working in a cubicle coding for
a large company where they don't have choice or control.
Arvid Kahl: That's such a great point. Because as now, after
selling a business, I'm very much in control of what I'm
doing. And I am my own boss, really. And I'm telling myself
that I'm gonna do this and if it's too much for me, I'm just
gonna step back a little bit. I have nobody who's kind of
conflating this for me or telling me to do stuff I don't
want to do so I feel extremely at ease in what I do even
though, you know, being an introvert, having conversations
with people is not like the most enjoyable thing really, like I
think hanging out with my puppy is a more enjoyable thing.
Dr. Sherry Walling: That's a relationship for you.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, really, it really is. Because the puppy
doesn't challenge me, you know. She does but in different ways.
But I know, obviously, that having a conversation with you
is an important part of what I can do to help other people. So
I know that there's meaning to this. And it's what I want to
do, right? It's not the mismatch between I don't wanna go with
this, but I actually want to do this, so I get it. But I do
wonder sometimes with founders in particular, who are building
their first business, people who still have something to prove if
that is a phrase that we should ever use in terms of building a
business. They often follow what I would describe as hustle
culture or the grind set, right? This kind of put all your energy
and all your time into your business or else you'll never
make it. And that seems very disjointed from this I have
control over my destiny conversation we're currently
having.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah, sometimes we say, oh, good,
you're an entrepreneur. You can choose to work whichever 20
hours in a day you'd like. Like you get control and choose.
Yeah, I mean, hustle porn, hustle culture much of it is
based on a real sort of limited understanding of how our brains
actually work. And so a little bit of a scratch into some
basic, like neuroscience 101. And I think most people will
come away feeling like, oh, that's not the right strategy.
There's a difference between doing a lot of work and doing
our best work. And I think sometimes that's where founders
make maybe a less than ideal trade is this sense that hours
logged leads directly to outcomes. And, you know, there
are days when that's true, but generally speaking, the quality
of your work time is a much better predictor of your
creative thought and of your ability to implement a new or
novel idea than just sort of putting in the hours. And I do
think that it is sort of hustle culture, hustle porn that is the
allure to believe that burnout is not only normal, but like a
badge of honor, like sort of like if you're not burnt out,
what are you doing with yourself? You must not care
about your company. You must not be motivated. And of course,
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it often comes from comparison, right? You
compare yourself to other people's stellar performance,
those things are not true.
the things they choose to share, and you see all these founders
crushing it, a phrase that I personally hate a lot because
it's obviously just a reflection on what they want to portray.
It's not the reality of their lives, because no business is
ever without problems or setbacks or anything like it.
And I wonder, I think it's human nature to compare yourselves to
your peers to see where you stand, because we want to see
that the social context in which we operate, and if we're
conforming with the what people expect us to be and you know,
there are many layers to this but how can people avoid
comparing themselves to the wrong people and then following
these hustle culture evangelists who themselves probably even
operate in the way that they give advice.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Right? I think one of the really helpful
place of comparison is maybe not the word that I would use. But a
helpful way to learn from and be on the journey with other people
is to be in a mastermind group, or something where you get a
deeper look into how another business is truly functioning. I
think another way to do that is to have a mentor, I mean, maybe
even someone that you pay, maybe they're a business coach, but a
mentor who has truly done it before, and you get the deep
dive gritty look into how they function and how they work. So
anybody who is selling you something, or anybody who is
proclaiming the benefits of their strategies on social
media, you're just not getting a deep enough dive into who they
are and how their business works to know if it's at all relevant
to you. And relevancy is a really key businesses are
different different sort of, you know, industries and customer
bases are really different. And so having a sounding board with
other founders that's tailored and specific is most helpful to
you.
Arvid Kahl: That's great. That's why I'm such a big fan of
building and public because people who Build in public and
share the ups and the downs with a focus on the failures and the
struggle, the mistakes and the learning set they have, they
paint a much more realistic picture of what the business is
like and surrounding ourselves with people who are honest
enough to build in public also creates relationships with
honest people who will give you their honest feedback. If you're
doing something you should probably not be doing it. That's
why I'm a big fan of this. And I guess a mastermind is privatize
building public group, if that makes sense. You know, like a
little, little group of that where people keep it to
themselves, but do share with each other. And I think it's a
great step for people to start. Do you have any ideas how people
can easily find them? Because I've always found not maybe not
easily but reliably find good mastermind groups? Because
personally, I've always had trouble as an introvert, again,
talking to people to even get into the door, right to get my
foot into the door, that always was a challenge to overcome this
person. I don't know them. Why would they talk to me? Like, I
would assume that a lot of founders, particularly the ones
coming from a technical background, have a little bit of
introversion in them. So how can they overcome that particular
self blocking device?
Dr. Sherry Walling: I mean, not to like promote by husband stuff
but MicroConf does have a mastermind matching service at
this point. There's also another one, that I'm not sure if it's
still going. But mastermind jam was a service that a friend can
did for many years, I'm not totally sure if that's still
happening. But the MicroConf one is for sure. I think it's a
good, it's a good thing to even crowdsource right to put out to
Twitter and to try to connect with some people who are
interested in a mastermind, I do find more value in ones that are
like externally organized and have maybe a nominal or a
minimal fee, because that puts skin in the game. The worst
thing is getting into a mastermind group with people who
say they're committed and then they don't show up, you know,
and it's, you're just chasing them to get on their calendar
that it that's not good for anybody. So some kind of like
base level of commitment is really important in a mastermind
group.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, yeah. skin in the game, I think is for any
relationship that has a business connotation is an important
part. I love that. And by the way, I give you blanket
permission to advertise whatever your husband does. family
business, because honestly, if it wasn't for MicroConf, I
probably wouldn't be here. Right. MicroConf gave me the
first stage quite literally, for what I had to say when I was
there in 2019 in Dubrovnik with Danielle, we talked about having
sold our business on stage as an attendee talk. And that was
essentially my foray into talking about entrepreneurship.
And from there, all the way up. So it's evening, it's due to
Rob, that is funny, because you are also connected to our sale
in the way and I'll tell you in a second, it's for Rob's
conference that I got my Twitter situation going. But it was
mostly for you a book, the first the first book that I ever read
of you, the entrepreneurs guide to keeping a shit together. I
read this while we were selling our business. And I was and that
was mid 2019. And that was in my my own memory, which is kind of,
you know, a bit spotty, because it was a weird and very intense
time. Intense time, right? It was incredibly intense. even
thinking about it is a heart rate increasing endeavor. For me
at this point, it really is I'm noticing a physical sensation
right now. I was either at the verge off or mid burnout, I
don't really know. It was it was a strong I had high anxiety
levels, I was extremely stressed, trouble sleeping,
physical reactions, gut health was off. Like all of that kind
of stuff happened to me at the time. It's one of the reasons
that we actually sold the business at that point was
because I just couldn't really handle all the responsibility of
being one of two people in a business, Danielle and I never
hired anybody. And being the only technical person in that
business, being tasked with solving all the problems of our
five and a half 1000 customer base. It was a lot. And your
book, I remember this still very, very visually gave me a
lot of solace and hope for being able to, to weather this time
and find the greener grass on the other side of this eye. It
may not be as eloquent, eloquently expressed as I would
like it to be. But I think reading a book from somebody's
perspective, who understands how stress and anxiety works in a
person and what it makes you do and not do, just knowing that
I'm not alone, and that there is a way out of this was incredibly
helpful. So thank you so much for enabling me to go through
this process and holding my hand a little bit right through the
magic of authorship throughout this stressful time and enabling
me to just get rid of the my own self inflicted and external
pressure and make my life better. I'm happy at this point,
because in large part to your guidance for this book,
Dr. Sherry Walling: Well, there's no kind of words you
could give an author to say your book mattered to me, not into my
life. So I'm very, very delighted to hear that and glad
that it was a useful touch point and sort of guidepost when you
were trying to sort out how you needed to move on from your
business.
Arvid Kahl: It was surprised at that point that your work was, I
guess, the only book I could find on this whole issue. I
mean, good positioning, I guess for you, right? You get all the
sales, but in a way, it was surprising. And it it still
feels surprising to me how few works there are in the field,
intersecting the lives of founders with the lives of
regular people, right, like having regular people problems,
that that seems to be such a rare thing to find. And I'm glad
you you took the time and effort and actually codified it into a
book because I think I've been recommending this for every
single founder that has asked me about dealing with mental health
issues, or just stress and anxiety in this whole process of
building and mostly exiting a business, that my experience
kind of with this book has helped me recommend it to other
people. And, yes, I think there's, I don't want you to
have more competitors in your field, obviously. But I think
there should be more helping people get different
perspectives on the same issue, right?
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah. And, yeah, I think I do think it's a
conversation that happens, people don't always call it
mental health, sometimes they call it mindset, sometimes they
call it you know, they kind of package it under other things.
There aren't a lot of formally trained mental health
professionals at this space, which I think is a problem.
There's a lot of founders that have ideas about it, which is
super, super valid. But I do think that the professional
training is pretty helpful in some of these conversations. So
and I think my next book is going to be about exiting your
business. So perfect, maybe a little late for your first
round. But
Arvid Kahl: honestly, it's, I would rather have you write it
now than never write it. You know, like, my whole mission
ever since I sold the business was to kind of pay it forward.
So I feel whatever didn't exist when I was dead. That's why I
wrote my first book, because I would have liked to read it when
I needed it. And it's kind of the the approach that I have to
media now. And let's talk about the book that you just released,
maybe because while I haven't read it, what I've seen, in your
very touching, really touching marketing materials around it
has been something that I can relate to, even though I haven't
read the book, and maybe I will, I will give you the opportunity
to explain first what the book is about. And then I will kind
of integrate my actual story into this.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah. So the book is called touching two
worlds. And it is part memoir and then part analysis as a
psychologist into the world of grief. So the book was kind of
an accidental book, in that it was written, I lost my dad to
esophageal cancer and my brother to suicide within six months of
each other. That was in 2018, 2019. And so a big part of my
just personal process around working through those
experiences was to write about them, and was to begin talking
to people about grief. And I think what's so interesting with
those of us who are founders are high performing professionals
are, you know, we're the people who are on the go the movers and
the shakers of the world, we often don't give ourselves much
space for grief. You know, it feels like I'm busy creating a
world I'm not going to mourn the things that aren't around
anymore. And I really found that to be a problem, especially in
entrepreneurs and in founders, as they have, in many cases,
these really unprocessed losses that shape them in ways that are
unexpected, but yet quite powerful. So writing about it is
my attempt to work through it myself and to sort of offer
offer some notes and guidance to people who are coming after me
who've had similar losses.
Arvid Kahl: It's and that is why I intersect with that story
because I think on Process loss is something that I have
struggled with without knowing for decades. At this point, I
lost my mother when I was 18, to suicide as well. And that was a
for an 18 year old and an processable moment, I feel I
remember that it was just a fact I dealt with. And I then very
slowly, like a background process, the height, everything
else I was doing, dealt with it for the next decade. And it was
around 28, when I started to actually become a programmer
before that, I was just like hanging around University in
Germany, because it's paid for by the Government. So might just
as well, I had a great time I learned stuff, and I was coding
on the site. And but I really only became a professional
software engineer 10 years after that, and it took me that long,
I recognize that now being yet another 10 years older, that
that was the time that because I had no help, I had to deal with
it, and chunks, I had to just deal with all the emotional
baggage of how it affected other people around me how it affected
my life and my studies. And, you know, essentially what was still
somewhat of a child growing into an adult. All of this had to be
done kind of by figuring stuff out. And I had really no
guidance there and no help. And that impacted how long it took
me to even be able to effectively work as a beat as a
human being right, it took me a decade, which is like if I
hadn't had the support of the country I lived in and the
people around me, that would have been very troublesome for
me. So I definitely understand not dealing with stuff for a
long time. And it's a problem, right? It's a problem that
affected me for again, a decade, and it shouldn't have. So I'm
very grateful that you reflect on this in in public with what
the book is. And I love the idea that this book is also memoir
slash self reflection method for you. I think writing is such a
powerful tool to come to, to your own thoughts and understand
your own thinking. That is that is one way that I I feel very
strongly for the topic. And I'm grateful that you wrote about
it. And the other one is now entrepreneurship related. And
that is something that I might want to touch on. Because the
idea of grief, to me was always, from my own experience, a very
person related thing, right? You grieve a person, and you grieve
the loss of a person. But when we sold the business, and I'm
trying to be very careful here, the business is not a person,
right? The business is a thing. It's an entity you create, and
you set up and it runs and you're operated. It's almost
more of a machine. But we felt a very strong sense of grief when
we handed over the keys to the business. Something we did never
expect. Even though my my partner and I Danielle and I we
were life partners and business partners at the same time. We
joked about it being our baby, right? It's it wasn't obviously
because it doesn't love you back babies do. But the business was
something that we gave over and felt this incredibly intense and
mind altering state of grief. And I think I would have liked
to be prepared for this. No, that's why I'm
Dr. Sherry Walling: writing my next book about exits. Because
your experience is not unusual. And just to sort of clarify from
even, you know, the professional psychologists perspective, grief
is the emotional reaction to loss and loss has many forms. So
we think about it maybe most often in reaction to the loss of
life. But I mean, I think the the pandemic was so interesting,
because it created so much grief around our loss of plans, our
loss of mobility, our loss of travel, you know, these things
that are not human, but yet were very significant things to lose,
and the loss of a business. You know, you say your business is
not your baby, and I get it, it's not. But there's a there's
a really interesting study that looks at fMRI of entrepreneurs
brains when they're thinking about their businesses. And the
activation in the brain is very, very similar to the brain
activity that is in play when a parent is thinking about their
child. So there is a deep level of attachment and identification
with your business that is undeniably this form of bonding.
And so to lose that attachment to lose that connection, whether
it's by a sale or by a financial crisis, implosion that results
in the closing of the business. Grief is a really important part
of that process. And I think people forget about that,
especially with an exit you know that it's supposed to be the
happy story. It's supposed to be your cry Passing the finish
line, it's everything you've been working for, and people
expect that it's going to be, you know, you're the envio. But
in reality, it's very emotionally complicated. I think
maybe a fair comparison is sort of what it feels like for
parents who are sending children off to college, or out of when
they're launching their kids. It's like everything you've been
working for, and everything that you, you know, are ready for.
But then when you're walking by their empty bedroom, it's
there's a desperate amount of grief, it's very painful.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it's something that I'm not a parent, so I did
not expect it in the slightest. Like, I've never, never
experienced anything like it. If I felt like my, my source of
passion was drained away from me, I get that that was the
perception that I had, I was doing this, not because it made
us money. But that was great. But that was not the reason we
built the business. We wanted to help these people. And in our
case, it was online English teachers. And these people still
existed after we sold the business. And I still wanted to
help them because that was what I found so much joy and passion
and purpose, mostly purpose in as well. And with giving away
the business, the purpose of what my day was about, was not
something that I had any kind of connection anymore. I was so
connected with the business that it was kind of I was tethered to
it, that rupturing the tether that had backlash. It was there
was a kind of tension
Unknown: artery. Yeah, exactly.
Arvid Kahl: And sometimes I think that entrepreneurship is
all about balancing two extremes. And this is one of
those examples to me, you have the extreme connection that you
have with your business. And then something that that I have
experienced myself, and that I see so many other founders
experience, you have a lack of connection with the people
around you that don't understand what you're doing. That to me,
is a big, big entrepreneurial problem as well. And I want to
talk to you about it, because there's the story that a fellow
founder Dagoba Renouf, he tells this, I think it's in his
Twitter bio as well, that his father in law did not want him
to start the business with his wife, right? The story is that
it didn't understand or condone that the couple, the newly
married couple would start a bootstrap business together, he
was not a fan of this. And that must be super stressful. If the
people you need to support you the most are disconnected from
you, because they just do not, they don't support you, they
don't understand you. And at the same time, you're building this
very intimate connection with this inanimate being that is
your business, right? It kind of pulls you to both sides, you
want to connect here, but there's no response. And you you
do connect here, there's also no response. Entrepreneurship is
hard, right? It's just such a such a struggle. What do you
think about this? What do you think about like family support,
when it doesn't exist? When people don't understand what
you're doing? How can you deal with this as a founder,
Dr. Sherry Walling: you don't think it's the, it's the lot in
life for many creatives and money. You know, I had dinner
with somebody last night, who's a professional circus artist,
and she was like, Yeah, my family cut me off. When I
decided to be a circus artist, they were like, if you're gonna
do that, you're doing it by yourself. And anytime that
someone is taking big risks that feel scary and difficult to
understand, for those who love them, there's a level of
distancing that happens, and it happens fairly commonly. And
it's, in some ways your families attempt to protect themselves
from the downside from your failure, which is not pleasant
right into it. It's sort of abandoning you and the risk. But
um, I think it's important. It's tricky. And entrepreneurship,
because again, it is the center of your world, and it's the
center of your life. But there's also an argument to be made for
the fact that it can be kind of a job. And you can have
relationships with people who don't get it, they don't
understand. I mean, there were times in Rob's professional life
when I really didn't quite understand what he did. Like,
I'm not technical. I was just like, I don't know what your
what are you doing all day? Are you typing zeros and ones like
what is what is? So I'm at but yet I loved him no matter what,
like I loved him, despite not really being able to understand
similarly in my life as a clinical psychologist, you know,
early on, I worked with post traumatic stress disorder and
recently returned veterans and he was like, that's a whole
other world. Like, I'd never I couldn't think about how I would
do that. You know, it was just the separateness was tolerable.
And so I think it's important for entrepreneurs to recognize
you need a posse of people that do get it you need that
mastermind you need that community you need some people
that you can really talk shop with. But you are not so special
in your life as a business owner, that it's not also
important for you to have meaningful and deep connections
with people who aren't entrepreneurs, and just don't
care what you do during the day. So those are also really
important relationships. And I think sometimes entrepreneurs
sacrifice those relationships, because they are so attached to
their business, that it's so painful that they aren't
understood as an entrepreneur, and it shouldn't be it's just a
part of you.
Arvid Kahl: Balance, right, you need to balance the, the the
people who are on your level. And I mean, there's not as a,
you know, ranking system, but who aren't you frequency maybe
who vibe with what you do. And you still need to have the
external, different the other another group of people who are
different from you. So you can kind of see, Am I overreacting?
Am I spending too much time with this. And I think like lots of
founders, particularly solopreneurs have this problem,
where they focus so much on the business and they see the
opportunity, they see the potential, right, they see oh,
wow, if I keep growing this, this kind of harkens back to the
whole grain set thing from earlier, if I spend more time
doing marketing, reach out to more people get this going, then
this will be the wealth generating thing that I want it
to be, and then I can finally retire and buy a house for my
parents, right? They have this dream that involves other
people, but the process does not. And I think that's what
that's such a dangerous thing to to consider. But it's also
apparently something that many people assume to be the right
way, and that they don't need help they have trouble asking
for help. Is do you see this in entrepreneurs? Is this a founder
thing that they are taught that they can do and should do
everything by themselves and don't ask for help. And that
kind of transforms into the self inflicted loneliness.
Dr. Sherry Walling: I mean, most of us have a family story that
necessitates that, I mean, you with the loss of your mom, are
really used to doing things yourself and figuring out how to
do it by yourself. I mean, I grew up with parents that had
really significant physical medical problems, my mom was
disabled in a wheelchair. And so that was part of my story to
just I needed to figure things out myself, if I needed to get
something I need to get up and go get it like there's nobody
going to do it for you. And a lot of entrepreneurs have
stories like that, it's sort of what qualifies us to believe I
can do that. So it's a it's a strength, in a lot of ways. And
often, it's a way that we've made sense of difficult
experiences in our lives. But of course, the downside is the
isolation. And we believe that just because, you know, someone
else isn't in the nitty gritty of our business and isn't
pushing the business forward the way that we are, we sort of
believe that they can't understand or that they can't
care about us. And that's the that's the isolationist mistake
that we make.
Arvid Kahl: How do we pull ourselves out of this? Like, how
do we open up our lives? So we can have these people in it
without risking not focusing on up on on our business? Like,
where? Where do we balanced us?
Dr. Sherry Walling: You know, one of the things that I think
is really, really helpful is to have a hobby, where you have a
coach. So if you follow me on social media at all, you know
that I have a funny hobby, which is, I'm a circus artist. And I
came into that late in life, I was 40 when I started. But it's
been a really, really important part of life. For many of these
reasons. I regularly train with other people, I regularly train
with a coach. So I get practice being helped, being taught
listening, following directions, going when somebody tells me to
go. And then I hang out with this whole community of people
who does not care what my monthly revenue is, or what my
churn was, or you know, they just don't care. They just care
if I show up and do my stretches and come on time and like, do
the thing. So having a hobby is something that I think is a
really lovely offset to the stresses of entrepreneurship,
especially if it gets you in your body and sort of out of
your desk chair not looking at your laptop, it just varies the
way that you're using your time and your energy that can be
super, super valuable to our neurological health. And then
we're also mixing up the relationship dynamics. Like it's
really good for me to not be the boss sometimes. You know, I'm
the boss of my kids, sort of. I'm the boss of my team. I'm the
boss of my business. Yes. And so to go somewhere and just be a
student, and be a learner is really, it's really good.
Arvid Kahl: How you bring you bring to mind something that I
just read. This week in Wired magazine, I have a print
subscription to Wired Magazine. That's how old I am. I read
things in print. And then there was a writing letter to Wired
magazine was somebody asked the column, this advice columnist.
I'm not ready to pay for therapy. But I see these mental
health apps, these mindfulness apps all the time, right? Is
this useful? That was the question. And the answer was,
right, mental health apps. Yeah, they're not a replacement for
therapy, definitely not. And what they actually are, are like
a digitized version of self help books or self the self help
approach. That was what it said. And it had it ended with the
phrase, I don't want to talk about the whole art whole
article, I'm gonna put it in the show notes, because I think it's
on the web as well. But what it ended with was, Hey, you are
when you use these apps, you try to control your breathing, and
you track your pulse, and you start this kind of biohacking,
try to interpret every single data point from your body, you
don't want to get on the couch, you need to get off the couch,
you need to actually hang out with other people. Because if
you hang out with other people, if you do collective sports, or
you engage in conversations with other people, then you're not
focused on breathing anymore, because your body is capable of
breathing all by itself, that was kind of the answer to this
was stop focusing so much on optimizing yourself, right and
self help self self care is important. But it's not the
solution to all of your problems, the underlying problem
might just as well that you don't have enough exposure to
other people to put put you back into the social context that you
live in. And I love this idea, like do stuff with people and
your body will keep breathing, just trust it to keep breathing.
That's what it reminded me of, because you said you're the boss
of your family, your business, you're also the boss of
yourself, right of your own physical being. And if you start
micromanaging your physical process of breathing of, you
know, when do I do this? When do I do that? I don't think that's
necessarily a good way to deal with with problems that you may
be having
Dr. Sherry Walling: was sort of dissecting us into too many
different parts, I actually think breathwork is very
helpful, and I practice it, I have an app that I really like.
I think meditation is helpful yoga is helpful, like these
practices do teach us the capacity to regulate our bodies,
which many of us have sort of lost those skills, but they
aren't the end result, like I do breath work, so that I can
perform well on a flying trapeze. You know, it's it gets
me where I'd like to go in my life where I do meditation so
that I can prepare to give a talk in front of hundreds of
people, and feel grounded and connected to myself. So those
tools are tools and having a bunch of them is great, but
don't glorify them as the outcome or as the end all be all
of self care. I like a hobby because it's about joy and play,
and lightheartedness and laughter and connection. And
those are really good, juicy parts of life that don't need to
be hacked or optimized, but they do need time to take place.
Arvid Kahl: Does that is a really nice and very nuanced
position on this. Because I also I have found through Danielle,
thankfully, that meditation and journaling and mindfulness and
breathing work is actually helpful to me, I consider these
things in the past to be purely esoteric, that to me was an
adult that was meant as an insult at that point, right. And
now I consider them surprisingly useful, which is something I've
tried it out I actually, again, MicroConf story, the day that
Danielle and I were giving the talk in Dubrovnik in Croatia
back in 2019. I was very excited. First time I would ever
stand on stage in front of my fellow founders, many of which,
at that conference I had have been admiring for years, and
sharing a story that I with my imposter syndrome at the time.
And it never really went away thought I was just lucky to even
be in this place at this time having done all these things,
standing on the shoulders of giants really. And I was sitting
there in the morning of that day in our little hotel room looking
at the Adriatic Sea, beautiful place. And I was I was feeling
my anxiety. And what I did was I just journaled for half an hour
I did a stream of consciousness journaling, which I think is
called Morning pages by some other people. Well, you just
Yep, exactly. And it was the morning so it was adequately
described as morning pages, but just me stream of consciousness
whatever was on my mind, I put it on paper, and then I just
kind of threw it away. I never looked at it again. It was not
meant to be read it was meant to be written. So So I could take
those thoughts out of my mind, give my mind the, the
understanding that it was noticed somewhere. And now you
don't have to keep running through the ideas. And in real
time, you could just put it in the background and worked super
well. For me, it was such a surprising thing. And I've been
doing it before that too. So I knew it was going to work, which
is why I did it, that Danielle introduced me to these concepts
while I was dealing with the whole business side, right, the
burnout in feedback panda before we sold it. And it really helped
me ground myself. And I never thought before I met Danielle,
and with her had the opportunities of a lifetime
building and selling your business, which is great, she's
awesome. I never thought that I would be the person that could
employ these techniques. So now that we are talking about it,
how can technical people who don't believe in this and
engineering backgrounds solopreneurs approach these soft
topics like meditation and mindfulness?
Dr. Sherry Walling: I'm sorry, I just love the like soft topic
quotation, because we have very robust research from very
mainstream places like Harvard Medical School, to really
understand what's happening in our bodies, when we engage,
meditation, breathwork, or journaling, let's just use those
as three. They're widely accessible, they're available,
and they both have very significant scientific support.
One of the things that I think has happened to us as modern
humans is that we've really separated our minds from our
bodies, and especially as technical workers, we, we'd love
a big juicy mind. Like we like being able to solve problems and
code and very nuanced ways to stay focused for long periods of
time. But we've forgotten that everything that happens in that
organ, is part of a larger body system. And we do much better
when we can integrate our physiological well being into
our neurological well being, we're doing it all the time,
it's not a choice, it's how our brain works. But things like
meditation, journaling breath work, are very, very helpful to
keeping our physiological system regulated, so that it can
optimize the functioning of our brains. And so I would, anybody
who like doesn't believe in this science, like, just do it, just
do a little lit review on a medical journal, or like Google
it. And, you know, I think it's fairly undebatable at this
point. And the good thing is that these tools are very,
they're really accessible. Like, you can do a five minute
breathwork practice and sort of reset your body for a while, or
you can do a little meditation app. And it's not a replacement
for exercise. It's not a replacement for therapy. It's
not a replacement for friendship, but it is a strategy
to help nourish your brain and calm your body down when you
need to perform at a high level.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, and that's why I kind of put it in quotes too,
because it is obviously working. Right. And it's obviously also
like, scientifically, not just described, but proven and
integrated. I mean, if calm, the app has such a wide range. And
honestly, if it has so much success as a business, it must
be doing something right. Right. Like even for, for somebody who
only wants to think in technical terms, this is a very logical
conclusion that you have to come to. And I'm kind of I'm talking
from a current perspective to the person that I used to be
when I didn't believe in it. So that's kind of where my phrasing
is coming from. But I still feel a lot of people have trouble
with the way it is presented. You know, like the way that
solutions to mental health problems are presented for many
people are, I don't really know, the let me think about this. How
would I phrase this in a very wishy washy kind of way? Is that
a phrase that translates from German? Because, you know, like,
people want like very discreet methods. People want the quick
hack, that is the right people want.
Dr. Sherry Walling: That's kind of where I started in our
conversation, right? Like, why isn't why aren't more people
talking about this? And I'll tell you, because the honest to
God, truth is that there's not a lot of like, click Beatty,
things that you can say that are going to make a big impact.
Because I can tell you and I can show you research studies that
say if you meditate for 20 minutes a day, you're going to
improve your focus and creativity and overall brain
health. But there's a whole lot of complexity behind how you
create space for something like that. What gets in the way of
you sort of disciplining yourself to do that, do you
value wit, do you even really care if your brain is I mean,
that's where we get pretty complicated. So the problem
isn't so much whether or not these tools work, the problem is
our human complexity around implementing them effectively.
Arvid Kahl: Certain educational problem too, like you think this
should be way more front and center in the way we teach
people to be people.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah. Again, I think we've segmented the
brain and the body, or the mind and the body. And that's, that's
a kickback from Decart. Like, these are long held beliefs that
are that are fundamentally incorrect.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, to me, it reminds me of this division that
we have between knowledge work, and non knowledge work. Like as
if the person doing the knowledge work wouldn't have a
human body that is acting physically, it's often confuses
me to think like, just because I'm not moving stuff around. I'm
still physically, like burning energy to fuel the brain that
controls these things.
Dr. Sherry Walling: We got lots of work to do with our
conversations around mental health. But I'm glad we're
having this one.
Arvid Kahl: I am very glad we were having this one too. And I
think I just wish it was easier to talk about it in our
communities, I feel a lot of people have this kind of notion
that if they share anything that is potentially showing that they
are not at peak physical and mental health, they're
vulnerable. And they're not worthy of being surrounded by
all these other high performers. I think that's such a such a bad
situation to start with. I
Dr. Sherry Walling: just think that's increasingly not true.
Like we've had people like Gary Vander Chuck talking about
depression, you know, within our own technical people like Steli
Efti, in his podcast about inner work, like, being quite open
about things that he's learning and trying about his own inner
world. Most MicroConf, for example, have some element of
mental health or mindset present, if I'm not doing it,
somebody else's. But
Arvid Kahl: maybe the next one. I know somebody who might be
there talking about these topics. Yeah, it's it's, it's,
it's, I'm glad that this happens. Because with every
conversation that we have around the topic, we show other people
that it's Okay to have a conversation about this topic.
Yeah. Right. That's, that's just, which is why I'm, let me
bring this to a close, which is why I'm so happy that you're
here today, and had this conversation with me right now.
Because I hope that a lot of people who are listening to this
will not just take something out of it, but also encourage other
people around them who they see struggling or not struggling
doesn't matter, you often don't see people struggle, right? Even
though they do to, to listen to it and find encouragement to
talk about these things themselves. And to learn from
you again, like I'm, I'm not going to push anything here, but
people should really read your work. Because it was it was
quite really, yeah, they should. It was quite helpful.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah, a couple of books. I have a
podcast, I just did a TEDx talk.
Arvid Kahl: Where can people find you? Maybe let's let's
codify it like this? Where do you want people to find you?
Dr. Sherry Walling: My professional work is mostly on
Zen founder.com, which is also the name of my podcast. And you
can see links and descriptions of the books that I've written,
or the retreats or events that I'm hosting. And then you can
also follow me on social media. If you're curious about how a
psychologist also was a circus artist, I do a lot of that on on
Instagram, and Twitter and LinkedIn. So
Arvid Kahl: I highly recommend that follow because it might
like if you're listening to this, and you think, yeah, I
think I need to deal with a couple of issues that I haven't
thought about much, following Sherry's a very good idea. And
it will be it will make your journey easier, and you'll come
out as a better person with a better understanding of
yourself. So thank you so much for being on today and talking
to me about all these complicated and often heavy
things. It was a real eye opening conversation. Thank you
so much.
Dr. Sherry Walling: Yeah, thank you!
Arvid Kahl: And that's it for today. Thank you for listening
to The Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter
@arvidkahl. You'll find my books and my Twitter course there as
well. If you want to support me and the show, please subscribe
to my YouTube channel and get the podcast in your podcast
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going to (http://ratethispodcast.com/founder).
Any of this will truly help to show. So thank you so much for
listening and have a wonderful day. Bye bye