ZenFounder

In this episode Sherry talks with author, TEDx speaker, and storyteller Heather Chauvin about how she reshaped her outlook on life and how she wanted to show up as a mother after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. They talk about raising teens and some core concepts on parenting from her book “dying to be a good mother”.

Heather’s Book

Heather’s Podcast

A fellow psychologist, Dr. Steve Thayer joins the podcast this week. Steve also shares an interest in entrepreneur mental health and the new wave of research around how psychedelic science can help people who suffer from mental illness or want to optimize or improve performance.

Dr. Steve Thayer, Ph.D.

Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers

Sherry and Rob reveal their plans for their first course (FounderFamily: Date Night Bootcamp) and talk about some of the ups/downs and unique challenges entrepreneurial couples face.

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Episode Transcript

Rob: So the book The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your [beep] Together currently in the process of being converted to Kindle and we already obviously the manuscript’s finish. We got a proof of the book printed out, or you know, a full print copy. Cover looks great. Kindle is in the works. We already recorded the audio version. We can’t upload that until Amazon had ... this and that, so it just seems to be one more week waiting on something. During that time we are prepping our first course. It’s called Founder Family Date Night Bootcamp. I know you’re putting a ton of time into research and writing. We don’t have a landing page yet but if you’re interested in what is essentially gonna be a video course with other materials of Sherry and I talking through how to stay connected with your spouse, your significant other, through date nights and through being deliberate because as founders, if we’re not deliberate we can go months just thinking about our business, and not paying attention to the people around us, the people that matter. So, it’s gonna be a look at how to stay connected through date nights. We will send updates via the mailing list. If you’re not on it, zenfounder.com and you’ll see the cool little Drip widget in the upper right. Sherry: Yeah, you can tell I’m in deep work because my desk is a mess. Rob: It’s a train wreck. Sherry: I have piles of books. I have Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson. The Five Love Languages, of course. Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. I have like, 10 books on my desk and then I have four mugs, three water glasses, one martini glass, four takeaway coffee cups. It’s like a bar/library all on my desk. Rob: I was cleaning up the office this week and ... this weekend and tidying mine up, and I turned and looked at yours, and it was like a scene in a movie. The record skipped, and I just pretty much just backed out of the office. Just- Sherry: Just walk away, walk away man. Rob: Not gonna touch that. Sherry: I have read some people post things on social media that say that studies show that messy people are smart. Or like, messiness is correlated with intelligence, but I have not read the original research, so I probably should not be spreading pop culture lies. Rob: Right, you’re quoting the internet as your source. Sherry: I did that. I did that. Let the record reflect that I did that. So anyway, all these books and drinking glasses have meant that I’ve been thinking a lot about couple life. Particularly trying to think about the unique experiences that entrepreneurial couples face, and some of the unique challenges that make family life trickier for those of us who are starting and running our own businesses. I think, we know that there are some mental health uniqueness’s and some value and existential differences in the way that entrepreneur’s view their lives, and I do think there are also some significant defenses in family life. That’s where I’m trying to think through, and iron out, and I’m going back and listening to old interviews with couples that I’ve interviewed on the podcast and interviewed for other products. Of course, digging out the old books from graduate school and trying to really put together a course that is helpful. I thought maybe we would talk through some of these ideas today just as a good practice for us getting ourselves on the same page to do the course together. I think, as I’m sitting down, I think through this there’s a couple of different unique challenges that I think entrepreneurial couples face. One is that higher than average number of ups and downs that I think go along with entrepreneurial life. Financial ups and downs. Emotional ups and downs. The pressure of ramping up to where to launch the aftermath of that. The ups and downs that go along with the sale. There’s just a lot of life shift and change that I think goes along with entrepreneurship that’s a little bit different than my friends that work at law practices or hospitals, and have more stable career trajectories or more predictable career trajectories. Does that ring true for you? Rob: It does, it feels like there’s probably more resting on our shoulders as founders. Any job can be stressful and if you do work at a law practice you can think about work all the time, it’s totally possible. Or if you work as project manager or something, you can take that weight on but as a founder I feel like owning the company and feeling responsible for everyone’s well being, and feeling the weight of every customer that gets angry and feeling the weight of just all the ... there’s employee stuff, there’s co-founder stuff, there...

Sherry talks about trying to regain some real meaning through all the holiday “hype” and what it means to feel true joy.

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Inspired by his blog post about depression, Sherry interviews Zach Holman about life as a founder struggling with mental illness. They talk about what depression felt like and how he finally recognized the severity of his situation. Zach also shares about what has helped him recover.

ZachHolman.com

Episode Transcript

Sherry: Woo-hoo, next Wednesday is the big day. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Together. How to Run Your Business Without Letting it Run You is coming out on the 21st, next Wednesday. So Zen Founder listeners, please, please, if you go and buy the book, it would be fantastic if you would leave a review on Amazon. We are wanting to put this book in as many hands as possible because we are really hopeful that it’s helpful. We’ve put together some of our most helpful tips and tried and true strategies to mitigate some of the emotional challenge that goes along with being a founder. And we’ve tried to package that all in a book that’s easy to read and easy to use. Today’s episode is an interview that I did a while back with Zach Holman. He is a solo founder and previously worked at GitHub, so he has had quite a life in the tech world. Last October, he wrote a blog on his website, ZachHolman.com, called The Depression Thing. And I came across it and found it to be one of the better descriptions of the depression experience that I have read online. And I was really glad that he took the time to talk to me about it. And stories like Zach’s are the why behind why we do what we do at Zen Founder. We want to normalize conversations about mental illness. We want to let founders know that it is totally normal to struggle. That’s typical. And that there are lots of things that can be done to help. So the podcast, the book, my consulting work, all of that is designed to let founders know that there are resources and support available for the emotional and mental ups and downs that inherently go along with the challenge of starting and running a business. I hope Zach’s story gives you an opportunity for commiseration, but also some ideas about how you can keep your own mental game song. If you like what we’re doing or you have suggestions for episodes or topics you’d like us to tackle, then feel free to be in touch. You can reach out to me, [email protected]. That’s Sherry like the wine. S-H-E-R-R-Y. Thanks so much for listening. Sherry: Well thanks, Zach, for taking the time to talk with me today. I came across your recent post about depression I think while I was on vacation in Mexico. And it was just one of those things that I stopped what I was doing and read it, and read it again, and read it really carefully. Because it was such a great description of the play-by-play of how you A) had to figure out what was happening to you, and gave it a label, and then tried to figure out what to do about it. So I think that kind of candor is pretty rare in the tech world, and I really appreciate you being willing to put it out there, because we know that a lot of people who are entrepreneurs or people in the tech world are experiencing it, but not a lot of folk are talking about it. Zach: Thanks, and thanks for having me on. Pretty excited to talk about this, ironically enough, I guess. If you can be excited about talking about depression. Sherry: I think you can, because it’s important. It’s meaningful. It’s a meaningful conversation. Zach: Yeah. Sherry: So let’s maybe just cut right to it. What was the moment that you realized, I am not okay? Zach: I mentioned this in the post, but there was the moment where after drinking with a good friend, I broke a wine glass or something like that. And that was weird for me because I’m never ... I don’t act that way when I’m drunk, ever. And I knew that I had been dealing with a lot of feelings and things that ... I think I would have agreed that I would have been depressed for a year or two before that, but that was the tipping point where I was like, oh man, this is not me. This is not where I want to be. And that was just a very strange realization for me, ’cause ... Before, it was always just like, oh yeah, I’m depressed and that’s how things go. And I can deal with it because that’s how I deal with it. But once I realized, oh, this is different, that was a jolt and I was like, okay ... It gave me a kick in the butt to make some changes, I guess. Sherry: It was just so atypical for you that you didn’t really recognize it. Zach: Yeah. And once you start recognizing a couple of those things, you go back and say, oh, this thing is different. This is different. This is not ... You start recognizing signs that you normally would have just bypassed and not really thought much about. Sherry: What did depression feel like for you? How would you desc...