Sherry Walling Helps Us Keep Our Sh*t Together
Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. And today we have a guest. We have Sherry Walling with us to talk about her book and helping us keep our shit together overall.
Jordan Gal:Before we jump into that first, Sherry, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Happy to be here. Talk to you guys.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Welcome, Sherry. Great to have you on. It's it's just good to have a a guest on. I mean, I I was getting a little sick and tired of of Jordan, to be honest.
Brian Casel:You
Jordan Gal:know? Just kidding.
Brian Casel:Ouch. We need we
Speaker 2:need to talk about those guys. We need to express our feelings in productive ways?
Brian Casel:Exactly. We're gonna have a session here. I mean, it's great to be back. I know we've we've taken a couple of weeks off. We've had a lot of travel going on.
Brian Casel:Jordan, you've been basically circling the globe. Yes.
Speaker 2:That was a really big sigh.
Jordan Gal:It wasn't big enough. That was me pretending. No, it is so good to be back home. The trip was great. I went from Portland to Slovenia, spent a few days there with the tech team, met several new engineers that are on the team that I haven't met before in person, which is always fun.
Jordan Gal:We had a good time, a lot of whiteboarding planning sessions, and then came back and stopped in New York for a few days and did a bunch of meetings and saw a bunch of family. And then by the end, I was toast and then made it back to Portland and I'm too old for that many flights. And I missed my kids and the disruption. Usually I look at a trip like that and I say, that's going be a great time. I get to see people and talk and just feel the energy.
Jordan Gal:And this one was not. I had the worst case of jet lag I've ever had and it like ruined me. I never actually got over the jet lag in Slovenia. It was just come in, spend a day, try to go to bed at like 10PM and stare at the ceiling until like six or seven. I've never actually, usually it's a few hours of pain.
Jordan Gal:This was just don't sleep. Just Okay, it's 7AM. I guess I'll get up and shower now. And then, fortunately one of the guys let someone else, borrow an air mattress when they were moving apartments and they left it at the office. I would just walk over and faucet for half an hour on an air mattress and then get back up and keep working.
Jordan Gal:It was not pretty.
Brian Casel:Yep. Just a quick update on my end. Last week, I went up to Big Snow Tiny Conf in Vermont. That's the East version of that. That was a lot of fun.
Brian Casel:Just great group, you know, packed house, just a good mastermind session, basically. Sixth year, I believe, we've we've been doing that in Vermont, so that that was a lot of fun. Although the the conditions were really shitty. One one day was completely rained out, just more mastermind talks, basically. And then I'm home this week trying to hustle on some work, get some projects launched, and then next week I fly out to Colorado for another Big Snow Tiny comp, just attending that one out out in, Beaver Creek, Colorado.
Brian Casel:So, yeah, this whole period right now, I'm like in between these trips, I had Vermont, then Colorado, then after that my my wife and I are going to Belize for a few days, and so all this stuff is just breaking up. I'm trying to obviously launch a bunch of stuff as always, but it's just really breaking up all this progress and and making it tough to to plan and all that all that fun stuff. But
Speaker 2:Does it keep you from, like, having fun, enjoying skiing, and being on the beach?
Brian Casel:The Bix No Tiny accounts are great because it's it's basically just mastermind talks and and hanging out. And and the Vermont one is great because at least half of that group has been coming back the the last three or four years, so it's it's like a like an annual mastermind group, basically. We we kinda catch up on on what's been going on.
Speaker 2:It's like real legit work.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well, we're not really working. We're really just kind of talking. Any actual real work or my email inbox is basically on hold for the whole week, you know. I'm checking it, but it's there's there's not a lot of time between talks and dinners and going out to the mountain and all that.
Brian Casel:It really breaks up the year pretty nicely, and it's it's a great time of
Jordan Gal:the year to think about
Brian Casel:annual goals and recapping last year and that kind of stuff, so it's always a always a highlight.
Jordan Gal:How about you, Sherry? What what have you been up to?
Speaker 2:I'm, like, in major hustle. Well, part of why we're talking is because I have a book coming out in a couple weeks, and I haven't done this before. You know? I haven't marketed a product, and so I am, like, figuring out how to do that. So I'm writing a lot of emails and doing a lot of sort of figuring things out.
Jordan Gal:This this is the the new press tour.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I guess so.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So the entrepreneur's guide to keeping your shit together. I love that name. It's title. It's exactly what it means, and and I know that that speaks to basically every founder out there for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm both, like, a little disturbed and proud because my our 11 year old son came up with the name for the like,
Brian Casel:why do
Speaker 2:you felt like keeping your shit together? And I was like, where do you know that language for oh, wait. I know who your parents are.
Brian Casel:That's actually a pretty good title. You know, what you just kinda alluded to, Sherry, I'm I'm kinda curious what it's been like for you. I guess it's been the past year or two years where you've gone from a career as a health professional just working with people one on one and in other settings to being an entrepreneur or founder yourself and getting out there and growing an audience and and all that. Like, can you tell us, like, what that's been like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So just by way of anybody who doesn't know me or have context for why I'm here. So I'm a clinical psychologist, and I'm also married to Rob Walling, who is, you know, founder of MicroConf and DRIP and other things. So he's been an entrepreneur for since, you know, probably the day he was born, but making his money that way for the last eighteen years. So I've been alongside his journey for a long time.
Speaker 2:But in my own professional life, I've had a very traditional kind of PhD psychology route, which is to have been an academic and then to have been working in very traditional therapy, running a clinic, teaching at a medical school, being doctor Walling in a very kind of traditional way. So part of what has happened as our lives have developed together is I get real jealous of some of Rob's freedoms. His like ability to work from anywhere, his ability to structure his day differently and not kind of have his day structured by appointments and things like that. So I've been watching him and thinking like, I would like a little bit more of that kind of freedom and space and flexibility in my life. I kinda jumped on the opportunity to make a transition toward that when Rob sold drip and we moved from California to Minneapolis and I was sort of like out of a job anyway.
Speaker 2:I can't run a I can't run a therapy clinic from across country. So that has been a really nice opportunity for me to kind of try my own entrepreneurial chops.
Brian Casel:Obviously, you've been alongside Rob for his whole journey. Anything you've learned about you experiencing it firsthand that, like, I don't know, like assumptions that you've had before that, like, now when you're actually doing it yourself? Yeah. I I wanna know how it's compared to what you were jealous of.
Speaker 2:What's funny is part of this transition for me is to launch this consulting practice where I I now spend a lot of my time talking with entrepreneurs. And I talk a lot about anxiety and fear and, you know, fear of failure, isolation. I talk about all of these things that are really common themes in the struggles that a lot of entrepreneurs face. And the thing that I keep, like, bumping up against is I'm not exempt from any of that. It's like being a psychologist doesn't doesn't help me parent tremendously differently.
Speaker 2:Like, I still feel the ups and downs of parenting regardless of what kind of training I have, and the same is true of being an entrepreneur. Like, I am sort of, like, scared shitless that nobody is gonna care about this book. And it will be like all of this work and all of this time and it won't matter at all. But that's like every other person who is an entrepreneur who's putting themselves out there, who's shipping something. So I don't get a pass just because I have all of these tools to help other people when it's me and I'm inside of it.
Speaker 2:Like, I still have to go through the ups and downs of it myself. So I'm a little bit less jealous than I used to
Brian Casel:be. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So you make the transition and then how do you make the decision that a book is something that you wanna do? It's a big undertaking. So how'd you decide on the book and then how'd you kind of decide on the topic? And then and then I guess we can really get into some of the actual actual topics.
Speaker 2:Every year, usually December, January, I take a personal retreat and kind of make a to do list for the year, set some goals, try to decide what I want to give my energy to. And a little bit to my embarrassment, I think a book has been on that list for like five years. And it's been a book about different kinds of topics. But this is the year that I had more, again, freedom in my schedule to actually parse out time to really write. In past years, I had a full clinical practice and little kids and, you know, it just it wasn't working in my life in that way.
Speaker 2:So a book has been on the bucket list and it's actually really I'm really satisfied to have finished it this year because this year was a pretty challenging year in our lives. So to, like, have been able to cross it off is really is significant.
Brian Casel:I've been reviewing, the book a bit, looking at the the table of contents, it it it really looks pretty exhaustive. Like, it it looks like you cover a whole spectrum of mental issues that we all face every single day. Is the book aligned with certain stages of the entrepreneurial journey, like just starting up for your first time, starting your second or third business, growing a business, managing a team? How does the mental framework change? I'm sure it's different from person to person, but
Speaker 2:A lot of the content from the book is based on the podcast that Rob and I host together, Zen founder. It's kind of material that we've been developing over the last three years since we've been doing the podcast. And we really try to prioritize the things that are the most consistent pain points that we see in entrepreneurs, in our friends, in our, you know, in my clients, and and in people who write in and talk to us about material on the podcast. And it's not really organized from a developmental perspective. Like, we don't sort of start like early years, mid years, late years.
Speaker 2:And part of that is because, at least in our experience, a lot of the challenges that we face on an kind of individual emotional level are kind of cyclical, especially if you're a serial founder or somebody who is, like, always scaling up. You're always kind of cycling back to some of the same challenges just on a different level.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So it never actually gets better.
Speaker 2:Yes, Jordan. It never gets better.
Jordan Gal:No. Mean, that's that's the pessimistic way to look at it. But there is a sense Brian and I have both been doing the entrepreneurial thing for a long time. I definitely feel more resilient now with the emotions than let's say ten years ago. It's almost like you recognize it like, oh, I'm in a downward spiral.
Jordan Gal:All right. Hang on.
Speaker 2:I've seen this before.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, it'll be a few days. You'll come back up. Just wait for some random email that is good fortune. It'll come. Just give it a minute.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's true. It's interesting that resilience because the hard times don't go away. Throughout every single year, there are always going to be periods that are super stressful, unexpected turns happen, and they're still hard every single year. It's like we're getting, more used to, like, just going going through that, and it's
Speaker 2:Kind of habituate to it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. At a certain point, sometimes I I feel like it's things have been a little bit too calm, and it's like, why are things going okay? Am I doing something wrong? I'm supposed to have a a stressful month here, and maybe I'm not working hard enough. Like, you know, I guess that that probably gets into, like, pushing myself too hard or trying to be overambitious.
Brian Casel:What are some of, like, the the common characteristics that you're finding specifically in in entrepreneurs that people are dealing with?
Speaker 2:A lot of us have challenges staying motivated when we're in the middle of a slog, especially if we have a lot of items on our to do list that are not in the sweet spot of what we really love or what's really interesting to us. So that's a big kind of like, how do I stay engaged? How do I stay motivated? That comes up a lot. Certainly, dealing with negative feedback, dealing with discouragement, dealing with no's, dealing with customer complaints, like kind of the mental game of like, how do you still keep confidence in yourself and in your in your product or in your business when when you're like trying to work through haters or or legitimate negative feedback?
Jordan Gal:That one is an enigma. I feel like the only thing I found is like this weird split personality where if when we get negative feedback, I acknowledge it. I don't ignore it. But then the next minute I have a call with a VC and I'm boom, forget the negativity. It's tricky because you're not lying.
Jordan Gal:You're almost lying to yourself a little bit on which pieces of information you'd like to focus on right now. You have all of this information that you have to kind of sit with and let's do, but
Brian Casel:you Does have compartmentalize to them?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. Like I have a pitch today. There's like some like investor event thing with the startups, the incubator that we're in. So regardless of what happens today at 5PM today, I'm boom, I'm on and confident.
Jordan Gal:You find that that's a common thing that people have to kind of deal with like, or is that really what you mean by dealing with the negativity?
Speaker 2:I think those are a lot of the skills that we talk about in the book is how to how to filter well, like how to parse your thoughts and decide when you wanna give time and energy to certain kinds of feedback and when you don't. So, obviously, like, the two of you are exemplars. You've been doing this a long time. You've you're successful. You have some of these skills under kind of under your belt or, like, in process.
Speaker 2:But, you know, a lot of people really struggle to contain their thoughts in in an effective way.
Brian Casel:Just this morning, I got a customer support email from somebody on OpsCalendar, my software product, kind of confused about how a feature works, and followed it up by saying, This thing feels clunky. I'm like, Oh, we've spent a year building this thing. It shouldn't feel clunky. But at the same time, it's like, Well, somebody is actually trying to use this product, so they're not satisfied and it's not totally working for them, but how lucky am I to have somebody actually trying to use it and email me and
Jordan Gal:ask me a question about it? I feel like that right there, that's the habit that takes ten years.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What drives me into kind of a rut or like a circular like down world spiral is staying within my own office, within my own head and not getting enough outside feedback from customers, from advisors, masterminds. The more that I can get it out there, even if it's not perfect because it'll never be perfect, the more I can get it out there and get feedback, positive or negative, that's helpful to move forward. But it doesn't make it any less frustrating knowing that, yeah, we have a 100 bugs in the list that we have to fix, and I don't have the resources or the time to get them done anytime soon. So it's it's frustrating.
Speaker 2:But you're also choosing your feedback loop. Like, you're choosing your masterminds. You're choosing to have customers give you feedback. Like, you are going out and and getting, like, feedback that you trust from people that you trust to counterbalance, like, words like clunky, which is like painful and not super helpful.
Jordan Gal:This is like an example of something relatively common, right? Dealing with negativity and how to balance it out so you're not just feeling negative all the time, but you can kind of keep going and focus on the right things. What does it look like when these things are effectively dealt with? I know it's not just keeping it to yourself and just eating it because that doesn't seem to turn out very well in these types of things. Look, let's say negativity or I don't know what another common one is, self doubt or fear of failure.
Jordan Gal:Like what does it look like to effectively deal with something? Is it talking to people? Is it having being honest? It's a strange thing. It gets lonely, especially when you have employees that you don't want to reveal all of your stress to.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Jordan Gal:So what what does it look like when someone's doing this the right way and and dealing with it effectively? Yeah.
Brian Casel:And just on that note, I noticed one of your chapters, where was it? Feeling lonely when you're surrounded by people, something like that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The isolation.
Speaker 2:That's a really big issue, especially like you said, when you have a team that's looking to you to to lead them. You can't be like, oh, we got this email. I'm so stressed about it. This customer doesn't let you know. Like, that's not helpful to anybody.
Speaker 2:There are like a variety of strategies that you can use to deal with negative thoughts or negative feedback. And I think a multipronged approach is probably the best. It is really helpful to write those things down, to write down like the shit people say, and let it sit there on a piece of paper in front of you so that it's no longer in your head. It's not like sticking to you, but you you kind of like physically are removing it from your mental space when you write it down, and you can look at it objectively. And then you do use that, like, super smart cognitive brain that you have to begin to, like, look at this thought or this idea and say, like, is this true?
Speaker 2:What's the evidence for this? What's the evidence against this? How can this thought or this critical feedback, how is this helpful to me? And how is it disrupting me? And so you begin to interact with a piece of negative feedback as if it's separate from you.
Speaker 2:Part of that process of, like, putting it in context or putting it in balance is talking to other people. It's talking to your folks in your mastermind. It's talking to peers and saying like, hey. Do people say this kind of stuff to you? And a little commiseration.
Speaker 2:It's helpful to have some, like, emotional support around those kinds of things because they they are hard and they do hurt, and nobody wants their product to be called clunky or their, you know, whatever. And, yeah, it's a simple word, but over time, those things can really erode our confidence in ourselves if we let them too deeply inside of us.
Jordan Gal:Commiseration, which ends up being synonymous with friendship with founders, that that's effective. It's almost like a gallows humor. So I know here in Portland, we actually have a microconf meetup once a month in Portland. So between five and twelve people.
Brian Casel:And all the cool people live in Portland.
Speaker 2:What's happening? Everybody cool lives in Portland.
Jordan Gal:What are you into? What are you into? Just saying. So when we get together, it does feel, it's like commiserating and some like, Oh, I did this thing that works. What you're commiserating about, here's what I did and it kinda worked.
Jordan Gal:So that's, that's got to be effective, right? That's almost like what feels best when I walk away from those lunches. I'm like happier that I got all the stuff out.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's like oxygen. It's like ideas that you can just go go home and and think about.
Speaker 2:And that some of the psychological process behind that is is normalizing. I mean, honestly, all of us are sort of afraid that we're that we're crazy or that we're fooling ourselves or that we're like, however you wanna finish that sentence. Like, we all live in our own isolated mind. And when we get together with our friends and are like, oh my god. Did people say this stuff to you?
Speaker 2:Oh my god. They do. Like and you you throw those ideas around, and you begin in that conversation to make them less important when you sort of share, you know, this example of, like, negative customer feedback. You share that example, and other people are like, yeah. Me too.
Speaker 2:I just write all those things down and I shred them and then I move on with my day. You share strategies, but more importantly, you're sharing like an emotional connection where over and over and over the theme of the conversation is like, yeah, me too. You're not alone.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So that concept, that normalizing concept from a psychological point of view, is there like a reason we do that? We end up doing the worst thing possible. I am particularly terrible and everyone else is doing particularly well. Is there like a evolutionary reason for that?
Brian Casel:It's like this this constant like impostor syndrome that everybody is feeling all the time. Like my business is just like strung together with Scotch tape or then it's not really what it seems to be or like, who am I to put, like, am I to be the expert on this? And there's a lot of that,
Jordan Gal:but, But it gets paired with looking at other people and saying, oh, they're you know, I'm so envious of this thing or this other person's situation or they're doing so much better. They know what they're doing. The the the pairing of the two seems particularly bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think some of the the trouble is that, like, we are biologically kind of a social species. Like, we are interdependent on other people. And one of the ways that that's developed into sort of our modern existence is we do do a lot of social referencing. We're looking to other founders and, oh, is there growth like my growth is?
Speaker 2:Is there is there revenue like my revenue is? I mean, we're we're trying to evaluate our own selves in contrast to another person. That's our reference point. And often, that's not the best reference point. Right?
Brian Casel:I've got a group of friends that I've known for almost my entire life. Like, I've I've been really close with my group of friends that I grew up with, my hometown. We still stay in touch and see each other a couple times a year now, family members too. Most of that group are not entrepreneurs. Most of them have typical jobs and families and all that.
Brian Casel:Then I have my friends who are entrepreneurs, Jordan and Sherry and everyone else who we meet up with at MicroConf and at Big Snow Tiny Comps and all these places online. To me, there's a striking difference between these people and how we interact with each other. My friends from my hometown, obviously, we go back and we share some common experiences, but in a lot of ways, we are so much more closed off to one another. Guys that I've known for thirty plus years, we don't talk about we're not nearly as open with just last week, I'm up in Big Snow Tiny Conf. Half of the people there I met for the very first time.
Brian Casel:Literally, I've never even talked to them before. Spent three days in a cabin together on the slopes, and we are just opening everything up. Like, these are my struggles. These are the things that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. These are my frustrations, just talking about life and everything, and total strangers, almost total strangers, you know?
Brian Casel:There's something about to me, there's something about the founders. Entrepreneurs are it's like once you start connecting with one another and actually get out of your bubble, go talk to people, meet people, befriend other founders. It's like it's like there's this bond where we all know we're in this, like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing struggle, and and and, like, we just use that energy to to try to help each other get through it. That that's what I found. And and whereas it's it's not like that with, non entrepreneur friends.
Speaker 2:It's like your your brothers and sisters in the trenches. Like, you're in the midst of something that's intense, and that marks you. It changes you. And if you can find other people that have similar intensity fueled experiences, then yeah, that there is this sort of kindred connection, brothers and sisters. I mean, it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but sort of like you experienced in the military, being in the military together.
Jordan Gal:I also think it's just being open about vulnerability creates a dynamic where closeness is is much easier. One of the biggest things about this incubator here, when we get together, there's very little pretending. Everyone immediately goes, here's my vulnerability. And it creates like this bond. And it's hard to identify with that with someone who just doesn't have the same struggles.
Jordan Gal:If anything, terms of like, what would you give advice to someone younger, just starting out? Finding other people in the same struggle will make you feel will give that normalization.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it's that that combination of having people who are right there with you, like at the same level of you as you, and then also having access to people who've been around a little longer and have seen these cycles play out over time.
Brian Casel:One of the things that I've been struggling with for many years now, and I think I've gotten a little bit better but I still very much struggle with it, is just personal health, like physical health, nutrition, exercise. My body is getting older, so I don't naturally keep the pounds off when I was younger, and I'm very much a rollercoaster type of person. Two, three weeks, super healthy. Two, three weeks, super unhealthy. It's like a paradox.
Brian Casel:It's like, you know, when I am healthy, when I am exercising and eating healthy, I am much more effective at work. But then my work kind of crosses a line and it overtakes all that, It makes me deprioritize the health stuff to try to get more work done because I don't have time to work out or I don't have time to cook a healthy meal, and then I get into an unproductive few weeks of work. It's it's like how do how do any tips for for helping folks just stay personally healthy in life and work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think the roller coaster phenomenon is really tough. It's the big swings that can be tough, And I think smaller increments of change are usually easier to maintain. So rather than, like, you know, starting like a CrossFit boot camp, not not saying that that's what you do, but, like, rather than starting some, like, big intense, like, is the time that I'm going to reset everything. Like, start with something that's really easy for you to do, like reasonable.
Speaker 2:Thirty minutes, three times a week. Do it with someone else. Any kind of change that you're making in your life, again, we're social creatures. We do much better when we have social reinforcement and support. So if you, like, make plans to walk with a friend once a week, like, you're not gonna ditch that person, and that will keep you accountable to, you know, getting some some movement time in.
Brian Casel:Can I walk with my dog?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, maybe those, like, sad little eyes of not like, pleasing me for a walk will be motivating to you. I think there's also this. We see it a lot in more traditional psychiatry practice where, you know, someone will be really, really suffering with some really significant depression, and then they work with psychiatrists and they find a medic a medicine that works for them. And they'll begin to feel better, and they'll begin to feel better.
Speaker 2:And they'll be like, now I don't need this medicine anymore. And sometimes that's true. But sometimes it's the medicine working that is what gives us the fuel to feel good. And I think the same can be true with health practices, especially in work, because the more engaged and excited and motivated you are in your work, often that correlates with taking better care of your body. So it's like you have all this energy because you are fueling your body well.
Speaker 2:And so the very thing that's giving you the power to do the tough work is the thing that goes away when you're like, oh, I'm feeling I'm too busy. I'm I'm so engaged in work. I don't have time for this other thing anymore. But really the other thing was a superpower that was driving the great productivity anyway.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I want to chime in a little bit on the physical thing. My experience has been, I was never able to consistently exercise since college. And this past year is the first time that I was and the way I did it was I removed motivation as a factor. I just said it so that all of my physical exercise is at a certain time, like with a class or with a trainer.
Jordan Gal:And that's the only thing that's worked for me. So 7AM on Tuesdays and 06:30AM on Fridays, it's just like, I don't know that I have no choice. That's like an appointment I just have to go to. So that removed it.
Brian Casel:And I've I've never really tried that route. I I really have to do that, whether it's a trainer or just have an appointment that you have to go to. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think when you pay for it too, you know, like I pay to go to this gym, and if I don't go, and well, not even the gym, but a specific class, like a pay to go to a class. And if I don't show up for the class, 6AM, just like you Jordan, like I pay for it anyway, which pisses me off. Like I don't like wasting money.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Same here. So that's I I do the exact same thing. Now here's the thing though. Even if you paid for it at 05:45AM, it's really easy to justify just paying for it and just not going.
Jordan Gal:The secondary effect that I've had from the physical exercise is something that my buddy Joe Rogan talks about And that's your like conquering your inner bitch. Because at 05:45 a. M. This morning, I convinced myself I shouldn't go. I need to sleep.
Jordan Gal:And I just conquered my inner bitch and just got up and did it. And that confrontation with resistance and then overcoming it is what you it's the same thing today. I have to write a really uncomfortable email to a customer that we screwed something up that cost them a thousand bucks. And the resistance that I encounter to just getting into my email, opening, hitting compose, writing it out and hitting send, it's resistance. But getting used to overcoming that resistance with the physical exercise is very, very similar to overcoming the resistance on doing something that you don't want to do at work.
Jordan Gal:The benefits aren't just physical. It's also the mental exercise of just coming up against resistance. I don't want to do this. I don't want to go for an hour and do high knees and like weird exercises. But the act of encountering it, overcoming it and then feeling better afterward, it sets up that habit of like resistance, overcoming and then all of a sudden that jolt of happiness that comes after.
Jordan Gal:And it's the same thing with work.
Speaker 2:And I think in a lot of ways that's that's what you get when you've been an entrepreneur for lots of years. Like you just have practice at doing hard things, at talking yourself into writing the hard email, getting up at 05:45, like you you conquer your inner bitch and you get you get used to that and you practice that and you take that with you in other domains of your life.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It turns into a character in the play of your life. You're like, I know that guy. That's my bitch. Like this thing sounds really hard and someone asked me to talk and that's going be uncomfortable and you just look at them right in the eye and say, alright buddy, I'm just gonna do it again.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. And you know, it's like having that that tough email that you have to write or there's a client complaint or something like that. My thing is I I tend to and this is one of those disruptions. I know you have a whole section in the book all about, mastering disruptions, but I tend to want to get those out of my inbox as fast as possible.
Brian Casel:If I know that there's an issue that requires me to respond to, if I leave it there and say, I'll deal with it later, it's just going to weigh on my mind, and I don't want to start the next day with it being there. Rightly or wrongly, I'll write that email maybe at the end of the day or even at night when I shouldn't even be looking at email just so that I get it out of the inbox. Sometimes it feels good to get it out, but at the same time I'm not in the right state of mind at that point to respond to it, so it's always a struggle.
Jordan Gal:Sherry, what I was gonna ask was everyone has their own individual mix of toxic stuff that's in in their little petri dish. Right? I have my envy of other people feeling bad about procrastination and like some other thing.
Speaker 2:We're all special snowflakes in that particular way.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Everyone's got their cocktail. But what what are some of the things that you've come across working with individual people and hearing from other people? What are like these big things that can make a big impact? Like talking things out instead of keeping them in, keeping a circle of other entrepreneurs in your life that can normalize these feelings, speaking to a professional if you get you know, genuinely depressed.
Jordan Gal:Like what are these things that regardless of what your petri dish is made of, that all of us can kind of look at and say, these things will help regardless of what my cocktail contains.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would I would echo the ones that you just said. And then add one that I I guess is like a little bit more meta level, but like figuring out how to be self reflective, like how to be able to pause the runaway train of your feelings and your thoughts and be able to parse things and say, I'm thinking this, I'm feeling this, here's what this is about. And not just kind of acting blindly on feelings and thoughts without having a process of self examination or self reflection.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Is that what people do with journaling or going to a coffee shop on the weekend for an hour by themselves and thinking through things like rituals of self reflection?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it doesn't even have to be a practice as much as a sense of awareness and how you're thinking in your own mind. It's noticing when you begin to be upset or anxious or tired or lonely, and being able to catch those feelings before they shape the kinds of decisions and choices that you make.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I just really like that concept of of stepping back and thinking or working on your thoughts and on your thought patterns. It's like getting sucked into working in your business versus actually stepping back and working on your business and why things are working a certain way or not working. I guess that kind of relates into meditation. I know that a lot of entrepreneurs really commit to that as a practice, and it helps.
Brian Casel:I've tried starting a meditation practice several times, for me it just has never really stuck. Can you speak a bit to that?
Speaker 2:So meditation is a fantastic tool, but the underlying tool that probably has the most bang for the buck is the ability to take really slow, deep, intentional breaths. And it sounds super simple, but it's one thing that helps you regain some mastery over your body, which then creates space for your thoughts to slow down.
Jordan Gal:So I do that and and my wife and my employees make fun of me for it. But is that is that what I'm what I'm doing? I don't notice that I'm doing it. I just know when I when I get stressed, I just just big exhales. Breathe it out.
Jordan Gal:Breathe it out. Is that like what my body's doing there? It's just saying, alright, big breath, relax.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is. When you hold your breath or when you begin to breathe fast and shallow, like hyperventilate or breathe from your chest, those are your body's first signals that, like, all is not well. That is what kicks your sympathetic nervous system into action to say, like, oh, something's not right. I gotta I gotta get ready to deal with a stressor or a threat.
Speaker 2:So when we can take really deep, slow breaths, we are we're tricking our bodies out of that emergency response.
Brian Casel:So, I mean, that that's a really good tool. Like, there other little tactical things that founders can think about, things that you've just seen have worked across the board many founders have found success with it, whether it's tweaking their schedule or tweaking their mind frameworks and things. Any little tips and tricks, tools, hacks?
Speaker 2:I think some of, like, my favorite little, like, tools in my toolbox are the practice of slow deep breaths. Like I said, keeping a, like, high low record every day, just two sentences, high point of the day, low point of the day, keeping that over time, reviewing it periodically, that is that's a really, powerful practice because it gives you some great data about yourself, about the kind of tasks that are, like, exciting and life giving to you, about the kind of tasks that are, like, sucking life away from you. And that data over time is really powerful in helping you make decisions. So that's another, like, standard thing I often have people do. And then, of course, as as we talked a little bit about earlier, really giving attention to the physical body and making the connection between how well we're functioning at work and how well we're taking care of our bodies.
Speaker 2:Just simple movement, sleeping well, nutrition, those are the kinds of things that help make that sort of like the soil that helps us cultivate our our best possible growth because without taking care of our bodies well, we really are are not using our full the full assets of our person. So those are some of the, like, the real simple starting points. And then the book is full of lots of other tricks and tools.
Brian Casel:It's all about getting back to being present, I just feel like I'm never present. I'm always thinking about what's coming up, what's coming up, where we're going to be next week, next month, next year, and anything that I can do to get my mind back into the here and now, whatever hack that is. I've tried meditation. One thing that has actually worked for me is getting back to exercise is biking outside and snowboarding, doing things that are kind of high speed, good workout, but if my mind is going elsewhere, I'm going to hit a tree or
Jordan Gal:a car or something.
Brian Casel:You're going to die. Yeah, the stakes
Speaker 2:are high.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that's been insanely helpful though. Mean, for a half an hour, an hour out there, it gets my mind out of that constant thinking in the future and gets back to the here and now. It's good. That's been working.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm sure all of us have a spouse and kids and being present is can be a challenge. I almost feel like I take that compartmentalization from work and I move it over and I use the same strategies for family. And that's all wrong. Now I'm like real cool headed and analyzing what's happening while the kids are screaming and my wife's like in there trying to help and I'm just real
Speaker 2:laid back. Our ability to be fully present in whatever it is we're doing is, you know, it's it's sort of like a a Jedi master skill that we just develop over the course of our lives, but it's it's really helpful in both work and family life and play if we can cultivate the ability to be all in. I mean, Cal Newport talks about it as deep work. Other people talk about deep play. And then, of course, there's nothing that's more satisfying in a relationship than talking to somebody who's, like, really listening to you.
Speaker 2:And that when you can be fully present with your partner, with your kids, those are the moments. Those are the skills that really bind us to other people. So think all of us as founders live in this kinda like frenetic existence. We got lots of different things going on. We're responding to this and growing that and thinking about that and planning for this thing that's gonna happen in nine months.
Speaker 2:But the ability to, like, really shift between the different activities that go into our lives and really be fully in them, think is a really powerful skill and one that makes our lives more satisfying. And hopefully it makes us better at our at our work too.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely. It's it's an ongoing struggle. I don't think anybody really has a handle on it. If if there's one theme from this episode that that's coming from this is, we all deal with these things in different ways, some sometimes in the same ways, and it there there are tools that we could use, and and I think with time and experience, get better at recognizing the things that that are going on, but the things still go on.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're all in process.
Jordan Gal:Yep. It's funny that modern life conspires against exactly that, about being able to keep focus and attention on one thing at a time and going deep on whether it's work or play. Yeah, attention is like the superpower, Is it's that from deep work? That is that I think I've read at least part of that book. I don't know if it's that or if it's a Jason Fried thing, cultivating that power of attention seems to be the trick these days.
Jordan Gal:If you can focus on things like writing, things like your relationship, things like your health without being scattered by interruptions of modern life. You're ahead. And it's not like ahead comparatively to other people. It's like you're ahead on your own struggle with just being satisfied and healthy overall.
Speaker 2:Neurologically, brain is working better. I mean, distraction, multitasking, all of that, we we think we're, like, doing a lot of things at once, but really we're, like, we're fragmenting the neuronal paths in our brains. So it's, like, you know, socially not helpful. It's not helpful in terms of work, and it's really, really bad for our our physical brain. And I think that that idea of attention as superpower is so powerful because it's the challenge that we're experiencing now.
Speaker 2:That's the the downside of modern culture as you've identified.
Jordan Gal:Excellent. Sherry, when when is this thing coming out? Is the book out?
Speaker 2:February 21. Wow. Nice. That's big day.
Brian Casel:Awesome. That's that's coming up, probably just about two weeks from this episode. So, yeah, looking forward to it.
Jordan Gal:Awesome. Sherry, thanks very much for coming on and sharing this stuff with us. As we said, this is ongoing, but it's nice to kind of take a time out and and reflect on it.
Brian Casel:And of course, the, the website is zenfounder.com. That's where you'll find all all the info about this. Sherry's blog, Sherry's book, the podcast is is really great. Rob and Sherry. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Sherry, thanks for coming on.
Jordan Gal:This has this has been awesome.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, you guys. Always great to talk to both of you. Great.
Jordan Gal:Cheers.
