This Week in Startups - E1086: Supporting founder mental health at Freestyle Capital with Josh Felser, Caren Maio & Mani Kulasooriya

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Josh's Medium post on founder mental health: https://medium.com/@joshmedia/for-the-love-of-founders-d50b405f42a3 Hoffman Institute: https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/ Meru Health: https://www.meruhealth.com/ Check out Freestyle Capital: https://freestyle.vc/ Check out Funnel Leasing: https://funnelleasing.com/ Check out Codify: https://codify.ai/ Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

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to get started. And Republic. The team at Republic just announced the select sale for the Republic note, a profit-sharing security token which lets investors share upside of companies that raise on Republic. The token is now on sale to accredited investors at republic.com slash note. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week in startups. I'm your host, Jason Kalakanis. I'm an angel investor, entrepreneur, writer, and podcaster here in the Silicon Valley. And I've been doing that for, well, I've been an investor for just over a decade.

And a journalist for two solid decades in entrepreneur. And one of the things I've seen over my career is, The amazing effort it takes to become an entrepreneur, the amazing grit, and what needs to be overcome when you decide that you're going to go into a profession where 80% of startups are fully expected to fail. And failure is the norm. And we got used to that. But that does not mean that this failure is just something that easily rolls off

people's backs. We look at the numbers in aggregate and we say, well, if those 80 companies failed and 10 of them did okay or were a push and then the other 10 paid for all the failures, that feels like a great economic system. It feels like almost the perfect risk-taking machine. And in fact, it is. It's why America punches so far above its weight. That's why we have the greatest companies in the world that go from country to country, not. in decades, but in years. Whether it's Google, Uber, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tesla, we have American excellence because of this risk-taking. But I know these people personally, and I'm not just talking about the people whose companies went to zero. I'm talking about the

ones whose companies went to the moon. And it takes a psychological toll whether you win, lose or push. And we see this happening across the broader economy as well. As Americans and the Western world has seen things like longer life expectancy and we've seen shelter, food, and just the basics in Maslow's hierarchy of needs get filled, a lot of extra time emerges. and then a layer that we didn't expect a twist and a turn in the story and the narrative, which is with this extended life period, social media, and maybe the expectation that you are not doing as good as the other person. Maybe that Instagram account that you follow is showing your private jets and islands and guitar solos that you wish you had.

Maybe you feel just a little bit like, maybe I'm not as good as everybody else or maybe there's something better out there that I'm not experiencing. And you layer all these things together and what we've tragically come to or perhaps it's a good sign that the reason we die today is that sometimes it's at our own hands.

Suicide is increasing in the Western world. It's becoming one of the leading sources. of death of young people. It used to be we killed ourselves from drunk driving. We smoked cigarettes. And now we die most frequently from an abundance, an abundance of calories, sometimes an abundance of time. And mental illness is tough to talk about. And people are embarrassed by it. And sometimes people even look down on people who are suffering for mental illness as weak. Well, I can tell you, We've gotten really good at identifying different mental illnesses, different learning styles. And in fact, we're learning that some of these things that we classified as mental illness or a malady of some sort, in fact, might be some sort of superpower.

And then layered on top of that is that we look at young kids and we say, hmm, this one doesn't have executive function and won't sit in their seat. We need to give them a pill. We've run a grand experiment from Gen X on of giving pills to kids to make them sit and shut up and listen. And this is a topic that is worthy of discussion. Today we're going to have that discussion and we're going to have that discussion through the lens of entrepreneurship because this is a program called This Week in Startups. This doesn't mean that the wider discussion is not important. Of course it is. but we want to talk today specifically about founders and mental illness, mental challenges,

and the surrounding solutions and generally open up the conversation. Dave Moran came on the program to talk about depression and some of his struggles and some of the work he's done. And today, my good friend, Josh Felser, is going to come on the program. He's a venture capitalist like me. We invest in companies together. He's an old school entrepreneur. who has now spent his time and dedicated, you know, his second and third act in life to supporting

other founders. Welcome to the program, Josh. Thank you, Jason. You heard my introduction there. And what did I say in that introduction that you think is important to you to focus on in relation to the entrepreneurial community? And what did I say? I miss? Because I'm no expert on this. I was a psychology major and I actually thought that I would go on to get my graduate degree in forensic psychology or industrial organizational psychology. In fact, I thought I would be an FBI agent and profile people and be a detective or, because I come from a family with a lot of law enforcement and firefighters and then the like, where I thought maybe I would become an industrial organizational psychology and study why people make decisions in business and the like. But what did I miss and what have you experienced? and what are you doing? So first of all, when I was preparing for this program, I did a search on you and mental health, and I was delighted to see that you have been talking about this publicly

for quite a while. And before it was kind of more in vogue today to talk about. And so I didn't know that until a few days ago when I actually explored. I mean, how much time do you have? You've covered a lot. Well, let's start with you and the work you're doing today. And then maybe how you came to do that work.

I'll do that. And then I want to touch on one thing you brought up that I think is very important for us to capture is there is a higher incidence of mental health, mental illness, mental conditions, a higher instance among entrepreneurs versus the, the general population. And it's important to accept that and really understand what that means for those of us that have the power to help. And it does lead into what we've decided to do at

freestyle. But I wouldn't have chosen to direct freestyle in this way if I hadn't had my own personal experience with a mental health challenge. And I think that personal experience is what led me to really to urging freestyle to provide the support that we're providing today. And so I could, yeah, we should get into that because, you know, we, we're not like best friends. In fact, your partner, Dave, I'm definitely better friends than with you, but we see each other. We're associates. Right. And knowing you, we've hung dozens of times, we've been in the same conferences for decades, I would never perceive you as suffering in any way.

And so this is an important, I think, just pausing moment that we all have to have the empathy for each other to just know that the other might be suffering and to not make any assumptions. So to the extent that you're willing to, maybe you could share with us what your challenges have been. Sure. In fact, my challenges are why I'm an investor and not an entrepreneur anymore. So back when my second company that I did with Dave, it became known as Crackle. And it was the most stressful, challenging experience of my life. And I tried to hide it from everyone, including myself. And I didn't deal with it.

And at some point near the end, we sold the company, but at some point right around the sale, I started, I noticed that I wasn't sleeping at night. and I wasn't sleeping, I couldn't sleep for more than an hour. And no matter how many hours I slept, I couldn't stay asleep for more than an hour. And it went on and on. And even if I slept 12 hours, I still would wake up exhausted. And I had a sleep study done. And I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which was interesting because it just was a rapid onset kind of experience.

The short story is that I had to spend a year trying to cure myself. and eventually I was diagnosed as a, in a way that UCSF had not really seen anybody contract sleep-daping the way I did, and they actually said that somehow the stress, my mental health, had translated into a physical ailment. Well, this seems completely logical. I mean, the mind and the body are so interconnected, obviously. We like to think they're different, but we've seen too often that stress is the leading killer of men. That is just a statistical fact.

And you will see anxiety in mothers as opposed to fathers increase after a child enters the picture. These are just statistical. There are gender differences. And anxiety, when you think about what could cause anxiety in a person's life, being responsible for a child or being responsible for a startup, which many people will say is like being responsible for 50 children, not to infantilize your employees, but you do get this sense of massive responsibility. And was it that massive responsibility, that weight on your shoulders that you think disturbed your ability to sleep, which then, in fact, can have that

negative cycle where the stress causes a lack of sleep, the lack of sleep causes an inability to focus at work, which then causes more anxiety, et cetera. A hundred percent. It was the burden of being responsible for the employees, for my family, for our investors, you know, really feeling that at my core. And again, it translated into kind of constriction in my jaw, which translated into sleep apnea. And so no one could diagnose me that it took a year to figure this out. As the stress went away, my sleep apnea went away.

my sleep returned to normal, and I recovered. But it was such a lesson for me. You know, also the traditional medicine didn't really help me figure this out. Stanford diagnosed me as a classic sleep apnea case with a CPAP. And thankfully, the head of UCSF really got in there with me and figured it out. So they were looking at the smoke, the symptoms. Yes. They didn't look at the fire or the coals and where the smoke was coming from,

which was the anxiety, etc. So they're, they got a fan on the smoke or they're blowing water on smoke, but they didn't get to the fire. So don't assume that just because you're going to what I think is the preeminent institution in dealing with sleep, that they would have the right answer for you. You have to take, you know, control of your own life in this way because, you know, in my situation, if I hadn't, I would have to bring a CPAP at night and it wouldn't have solved the problem. All right. When we get back from this quick break, I want to talk to you about, how you recovered to the extent that you're willing to share that. I know it was very personal, but, you know, we did have a discussion about this before you came on the pod.

Yes. And you said you wanted to talk about it and you wanted to make it personal so that other people wouldn't, you know, feel ashamed it anyway. So we'll talk a little bit about how you recover from it. And then I want to ask you the question that I think a lot of people wonder, I certainly wonder, which is, are people who have mental, illness, mental challenges, mental uniqueness. I hate the word illness because I like the word, like they're just unique mentally because I mean, condition. A condition sounds slightly better than illness, right?

It's like, right. So we'll go with condition for now or uniqueness. Are they drawn to entrepreneurship in a larger proportion? Or does entrepreneurship cause people to have mental conditions when we get back on the Sweden start? Hey, do you have a great idea? Do you want to turn it into a beautiful website? This way, you can reach out to your customers and partners and basically change the world. Well, I just was thinking the other day, wow, you know, we're doing so much remote now. And there's all these demo days that can't occur in person. What if we had a remote demo day? And I checked to see if the domain was available and remote demoday.com was available. And then I said, hey, let's put up a Squarespace site. And my team rallied in a couple of hours. We wrote all the copy. We got a video made and we had a beautiful website up and running at Remote Demoday.com. This is what you can do with Squarespace. You can basically come up with an idea and start

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Squarespace. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right. Josh Felser is with us and we're going to actually bring in a couple of founders he works with a little bit into this segment, hopefully, to talk about mental conditions, illness, suffering and how to manage being a founder and the management of the stress and the management of the responsibility. Josh, the stress was causing the sleep disturbance and you started to get into that negative cycle. We all know. I've been pretty upfront about my own personal suffering during the pandemic, which is,

you know, I'm working twice as hard than I ever did. And everybody told me during the goddamn pandemic, I could take up a hobby. I mean, when? When am I going to take up a hobby? All my founders are suffering and calling me on the phone, some in tears, some laying people off like when does this hobby occur? It doesn't and I'm particularly unable to sleep and staying up with the doom scrolling because I'm a news junkie. I am a, you know, journalist at my heart or researcher. So I am having a problem sleeping some nights and it's definitely affecting my performance

at work. So feel in some ways like that pressure makes me great because I'm a product of pressure. So I'm not seeking help right now, but I'm acutely aware that I am under a different type of pressure than I was pre-pandemic. And I am aware that I have a sleep issue and I've been working on meditating before sleep, working out during the day and just forcing myself to put the – I literally put the phone in the other room the other night because I have no control over stopping myself from being on Twitter at 2 a.m. I don't know if this sounds familiar to anybody else. Yeah, right, right. Raise your hand if you're not doing this. Okay. So how did you get out of it?

Talk therapy, medication, running, exercise. I mean, I want to be all Tom Cruise, but it is true that exercise does help this tremendously. That is just proven. Right. 100% nutrient. But that isn't what did it for me. It's kind of simple. Therapy.

Therapy. I started going to therapy. Talk therapy, psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral. Do you have a... Pure psychotherapy. I just went in. I saw someone twice a week. I had to do some experimentation with different therapists.

I found the therapist that really started helping me. And just, you know, being in this room, freely, safely sharing whatever is on my mind, getting used to being vulnerable and not, you know, usually we're all terrified of being vulnerable for all the reasons that are instilled within us, you know, as entrepreneurs. We're worried it's a sign of weakness. Of course, it's not. It's a sign of strength. I mean, I know that now, but then I didn't.

And so it took a while to get used to being vulnerable and sharing my fears. And I just got, I found the right person. I got lucky. And that therapy really was the secret to me moving on from my debilitating sleep situation. So you get out of the therapy session and you feel like a weight is lifted. Yes. You feel like you've released. something. Yes. And then it gives you a little more space each time and then you can start to

lean into it because, hey, you know, I don't know if I want to cry. I don't know if I want to bring this up, but you kind of ease your way into it and a little bit gets released. And then the next time, hey, maybe I want that feeling, that cathartic feeling. But as an investor, if one of your founders came to you 10 years ago crying, you might wonder, oh my Lord, I just gave this person $3 million and they're a crybaby who can't handle life. That's how the world used to look. We used to, we used to optimize for toughness and grit in founders. If a founder came to you 10 years ago crying, how would you have looked at them and then

post your own struggles and recovery? How do you look at them now? So we all act out our anxieties in different ways, right? That's what I've learned. So someone might act out by crying, someone else might act out with anger, someone else might act out by retreating and, but the acting out is there. And there's no, it kind of is no, you know, no difference. You just have to recognize that we're all anxious, we're all going to act out and just be aware that we all act out in different ways. That was the big learning for me.

Fascinating, yeah. Jason, I figured out, I act out by seeking control. That's my tell. Yeah. And why do you do that? Do you think? What did you learn about why control works for you? Or was your defense mechanism?

It was your retreat. You know, most of these things come from your childhood. And so my parents were, they loved me, but they were not authority figures. They kind of couldn't control me. And so I had to take control in order to feel secure. And so that simple truth is part of me still today. I'm doing a better job, but it is a work in process to recognize that I act out and seeking control. And seeking control means you might grab the steering wheel from somebody else driving.

It might mean you slow down the process. You might make everybody else in the room anxious unnecessarily. Well, can I tell you that first example, you're so right in that, you know, Jessica Scorpio, my partner in the world, she and I were driving to Stinson Beach. We had a little bit of a scary drive, I'll be honest. It is. It is. That PCH. I mean, there's a, there's some places where there are no guard rails and people do go off the side. That is a whole, that is a whole other conversation. Yes. One day, talk to James Hong about. But anyway, so she was driving and I had a deadline to be in Stinson for a meeting, and there's no. all coverage between, and I kept in my head trying to grab the wheel. It was such a pure moment of like, holy shit, I'm doing the thing that I don't want to do, and I'm seeing it play out right in front of me, and at least this time I was able to recognize it and tell her about it, which then made me stop doing it. Interesting.

And in this case, we're literally talking about grabbing the steering wheel. In the case of a startup, you know, we've had to learn, or I know one of my leaks as an investor was in the early days, and I think it does relate to this control, which is perhaps something we share, I would look at a situation, and it would be very clear to me as a strategist and as somebody who studies strategy, you know, what I think maybe one of my superpowers is that ability to strategize with other people. And I would just say, well, I can see a solution. And then I would make bets on founders who were not great founders. I'll be totally honest. They were bad founders, but because I projected my strategy ability, and I'm not saying this to put myself up as a strategy.

There's plenty of things they suck at. I would actually project into the moment. Anybody could strategize this. Come on. We can do it. But then they couldn't. And as you know, as an investor, people think, oh, the investors are controlling these companies. Oh, contrary. We actually have very little control over the founders. Right. We have the ability to fund them and then to maybe stand next to them. But, you know, we're investing in very strong personalities. And this, for a person who has control issues and you move to the investor, how have you dealt

with that where you don't get to sit in the cockpit anymore? You're not in the pilot seat. You're in the jump seat or maybe you're sitting in first class or maybe you're even down in air traffic control is probably the better metaphor here. How do you deal with that when a founder is doing something and you know it's the wrong thing? How do you get over that control issue? You know, it's an ongoing challenge. But I would say that I remind I had the luxury of choosing this career in venture capital after I was an entrepreneur.

And I remind myself why I chose it. You know, I chose it. Yes, of course, to stay close to tech to help those founders that today that that that those peers of mine today and have the life balance that I really need it. And so I remind myself about how I got here and that really does do the trick.

I think most of my founders would say that I don't act out with them seeking control. I think they would say that. But it is a constant reminder. And just the act of telling yourself I chose this position. I chose to be in air traffic

controller, I'm no longer the pilot. Therefore, since I chose this, why would I be upset that I'm not? And also, at any point in time, I can choose to be a founder again. You have the credibility, obviously, to go raise money. You have your own money to go start a company. If you choose to be a pilot, and that's still there, you have that choice. And this is one of the things that I have to remind people about is the sense of agency that gets lost sometimes. And, and, you know, If people act with this fear and I say, well, you chose to start the company, right? Why did you choose to start the company? Let's go back to that for a second.

And can we talk about why he chose to start this company? Great. Do you still want to run this company? Because if you don't want to run this company anymore, there's an off ramp. There's many, many examples of people who ran companies who then just gave themselves the promotion to executive chairperson or board member and they found somebody to run the business. No harm in that. Right, right, right.

I mean, something you brought up before that we won't have time to cover today, but it's fascinating, is entrepreneurs are a really unique group of humans. And in fact, entrepreneurs have more in common with each other than most ethnicities, races. I mean, if you look at the traits that cut across all entrepreneurs, It's a really interesting study that, and there's a guy that I'm working with, I'm volunteering to help with a company called ICANA. And it's, I'm an advisor, but again, I have no financial affiliation. And this guy, Michael Freeman, has done probably the most research on entrepreneurship and

mental health. And he has written extensively about the character traits, the mental health issues that are really in every entrepreneur and that you may sidestep it through your process, but eventually most entrepreneurs are triggered and these conditions that are in them are brought out. And instead of hiding from it, we should just embrace it. And in some cases, like you look at someone like Howard Hughes, right, he had many mental health issues yet. Yes. He was wildly successful. And so understanding how to... That was my question, too, before the... the break when I had said, you know, do founders, do people with, you know, mental conditions,

mental uniqueness get drawn to entrepreneurship or does entrepreneurship actually drive people to mental conditions or illness? What are your thoughts there? And what are the traits, either direction in terms of cause and correlation? So about half, this is kind of science, not my conjecture, about half of the conditions that entrepreneurs experience as entrepreneurs are genetic. So half of the influence on their mental health is genetic. So I would say that really they're drawn. There's a certain kind of person that's drawn to entrepreneurship.

Somebody with something to prove somebody who has leadership or narcissism or aspirin. You know, like, we see so many archetypes, ADHD for sure, because you get to bounce around as the CEO. Right. From the sales department to the product department, to the customer's department, to the customers, to board, department, to investors to press. I mean, it is definitely ADHD, ADD, seems like a superpower. But then we also. Dyslexia. Dyslexia.

I mean, look at our governor's dyslexic. You're dyslexic. There's a way you've had to compensate for your dyslexia that has made, that is probably in there as part of what has made you a success. It's definitely in the mix. Yeah. Well, you know what I think? else it's humbling for me to mispronounce words sometimes and then have to study harder. And then people read my book and they go, that's one of the best business books I ever read.

And I'm like, how did I get there? You know? And I realized what it was was I figured out a writing style that worked for me, which was I wasn't trying to emulate anybody else's writing style. I just had heard that somebody said, write down what you say. and so then I started recording conversations that I would have in fact the podcast and then I would transcribe it

and then I would use that as the framework for when I would write something and then people say I hear your voice and your blog posts and it's like the reason you hear my voice and my blog posts is because I transcribed my voice and then polish that.

That's really smart. It was just like oh well it was just like you and this is one of the things where the superpower you can turn any I believe turn any of these things into a superpower. Asperger's people can't make eye contact who can focus and they're at dinner and you're like,

hello, where are you? And, you know, they're just off in space solving some math problem while everybody else is talking. And you're like, yeah, that's my friend blank and my other friend blank and this other friend. How many people do we know, I mean, do we know who are on the spectrum? And even I think, you know, like inappropriately like, you know, like they make front of Zuckerberg for being on the spectrum on Saturday Night Live. It's a little bit cruel, I think. Yeah, it is.

And whether it's accurate or not, it likely is, but it's a little bit cruel. He was born that. I mean, he was born that way, whatever, you know, whatever you're, you know, here's one staff that's kind of fascinating. And this is what you're doing and what the show is doing. What we're all trying to do is shine a light on these conditions because it allows us to meet these talented entrepreneurs where they are versus trying to force them to be something they're not.

And so, you know, this way, this statistic, I'm looking at it now, I found it today. 38% of entrepreneurs have reported a diagnosable mental health condition that includes depression, ADHD, bipolar, anxiety, and addiction, right? So 38% of entrepreneurs. And the addiction part, we see all the time, like, you watch all these VCs going up and down Sandor Road on those road bikes, and they become mental. Right. Taking their bikes and riding to Stinson Beach and back in Tahoe and then they become triathletes.

It's almost comical that the addiction can apply to, you know, kite surfing. Like how many of our friends do we see become addicted to kite surfing and they can't stop? Right. And you're like, you know, you are the co-founder of Google. You're going to need to get off the kite board at some point and get back to the office, you know? And like, it's the addiction. I mean, thankfully, it's not drugs or alcohol, which are, you know, negative addictions. But if you get addicted to kiteboarding or whatever, you want to ski 30 days a year.

Right. Like, not a problem. Like a healthy channeling, like you're saying, when we get back, I want to know what you decided to do. Because you decided to not just talk about it. You decided it was time for action. And you decided to use your own personal resources, money that you could put. in your pocket and instead you invested it in your founders. I want to know what freestyle, which is for me, you know, just pound for pound, one of the top seed firms in the history

of Silicon Valley, you and your partner worked closely with both of you. And when I send a founder to somebody, I take notes on what they say when they come back. And amongst the elite feedback I get is when a founder meets with you and your partner, Dave. And I want to know, and it's not like a coincidence because I'm not talking about like a sample size of one or two founders. I'm talking sample size of dozens of founders at this point. When we get back, I want to know what you're writing the check for when we get back on this week at startups. Hey everybody, I'm going to start with the call to action here. Zendesk is giving startup six months of Zendesk for free. You heard that right. If you've got under 50 employees, you can go right now to Zendesk.com slash twist and they will give

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You know his co-founder, Dave Samuel. Of course, Jenny Lefcourt, who I don't have as a deep as a personal relationship. When did she join you guys on the firm? I think it was with Fun 3, about six years ago. Yeah, and I would definitely include her in that group, which she has been just a tremendous supporter of founders. She speaks at a lot of our events. And, you know, I have to walk in the room and stop the Q&A, you know, because she

she won't, she won't leave. She'll just sit there and answer every single founder's question. I'm like, the lights got to go off here. They're closing the building. And so that shout out Jenny for always being there for founders. But you decided, you reached out to me to talk about it. And we had a little private chat about it. And I said, yeah, this sounds like a good idea.

Tell us what your idea was and how it's gone. And then we'll bring in some of your founders. Great. So we looked at all the obstacles that have gone into making, mental health solutions not part of the founder mentality. And it's stigma and cost and scarcity of quality therapists and the time that it takes. And some founders doubt effectiveness.

And so we tried to come up with a couple of options out of the gate that were more cathartic, get the process started, and really introduce founders to this whole world of mental health. health help. And so we chose carefully. And so we chose two solutions. One is Maroo Health, which is a three-month platform. It's a hybrid of therapy, CBT, biofeedback. CBT being cognitive behavioral therapy, which was what I studied in school. And there was the paradigm of therapy I thought was the most instructive to me, which is the thinking about thinking, how you frame things, how you interpret the world, how do you speak to yourself?

CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. Maybe you could speak just for a moment about why that is so effective for founders, because I do think that that is, I don't want to say a silver bullet, but it certainly is in some way I hear it coming up over and over again with founders. It's a constant, I think of it as a constant reminder. a constant reminder that you're going to be okay. Now, it's represented in many ways, but it's the continuity of CBT that I really believe creates the effectiveness

versus being in therapy where it's just once a week, you go to therapy, it's very helpful, but between sessions, what happens? Nothing, right? Typically. But with CBT, especially when it's paired with therapy, you have this homework that's helping you remember why you're in therapy, what your goals are, reminding you that you're okay and reminding you that you are a good person.

And I'm giving you kind of a qualitative high level. It's way more complicated than that. Yeah, of course. We could talk. We could do CBT for like there's somewhere out there are seven podcasts about just this subject. But you yourself said you reminded yourself and you were able with your partner. in life to say, oh, I'm trying to grab the steering wheel right now. Isn't that something I'm working on? It's like, yeah, you're working on that. You're a good person for working on that. That's an example. The example I give people is, um, and I had to unpack this in myself, because people kept telling me how delusional I was

early in my career. And I unpacked it. And I understood why people thought I was delusional. It was because I attributed bad things to random chance for outsiders and being unimportant. And I attributed the good things that happened in my life to my explicit efforts. That's interesting. And it was not true. Right. But if I got pulled over by a police officer, I didn't, I never blame myself for going a hundred. Well, anyway, I wouldn't say, but I never blame myself for going very fast on highways. I just said, oh, you know what? These cars are so fast you don't even feel the speed. That's what I told myself.

Yeah, you drive a Mercedes-Rat Tesla. That car just drives too fast. It's too tight on the road. And you know what? Everybody else was driving the same speeds. I'm just unlucky. And you know what? Everybody gets to take it once a year.

So if you just divide the $250 bucks, it's like not even a dollar a year. Not my fault. When in fact, it is explicitly my fault. My foot is on the accelerator. right right and that's what cognitive behavior let me unpack is to for me to understand hey where do I attribute this stuff and sometimes people I don't know if you do this or you've seen this in founders they hit a bad beat and they just internalize it and I'm like it's not your fault that Microsoft decided to develop the same product and make it free for everybody that one wasn't your fault

the pandemic hitting is not your fault but what you do have control over is how you respond to those moments, right? That's why I think CBT is. So this program cost money, thousands of dollars, I'm assuming. Yes. Who pays for it? Well, we pay for it. It's, you know, it's about, I think the commercial rate is about $1,100 for the program. Yeah. So it's a beautiful, and that it's more affordable than therapy, which is why it works. It scales therapists, right? In a way, I think 7X. So you can have, which is, which is also important. So any founder you invest in, can have this and you'll pick up the tab. Correct.

I mean, we just, I think everybody to pause for a second and think about that, you know, capitalism, you know, and venture capital specifically, it's easy to attack and make fun of on TV shows and Twitter. But we are,

we actually think about these things. And we actually take action. And specifically, you're taking action. Now, what's the second thing you do? It's called the Hoffman Institute. Okay. And both Dave, Jenny, and I have all experienced it.

It's a week-long, intensive tear yourself down to your studs kind of experience where the sole purpose is to break the patterns that you that started in your childhood

that are impacting you today as an adult and sounds intense it's true if I almost left after the first day it was so intense but I fortunately I stayed and it had a profound experience and we have Karen Mayo here on the podcast So I'd like to welcome Karen into the discussion.

And Karen, I just, it's not easy for people to talk about these kind of experiences, but you have agreed to. So welcome to the program, Karen. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. So you're an entrepreneur? I am, yes. I started a company, NESTEO, now called Funnel, based out of New York City that Josh, Jenny and Dave invested in 2014. Great.

And tell me about your journey. was there something that led to you wanting to do this experience? Remind me the name of the experience again, Hoffman Institute. What appealed to you about doing this? Was there an acute episode or moment where you said, I need help? Or was it more like, hey, this is something that could be accretive to me as a founder, so I'm going to give it a shot? It's a good question.

Probably a little bit of both, but I do think that there was sort of an impetus, something going on in my personal life. where I felt an enormous amount of stress, aside from the stress I was already experiencing as a founder, and Jenny Leffcourt, who's my lead partner over at Freestyle, she and I have monthly coaching calls, and she sensed it in me. And she said, let's talk about what's not being talked about, what's going on.

And I gave her kind of a glimpse into what was going on in my life and just how stressed I was. And she suggested it. And, yeah. And so you said, I got nothing to lose here. I am, I am, and this is, I think, the part that people don't sometimes fully appreciate. There is a massive stress on these founders because the clock is ticking. You, you at some point have somewhere between zero months and, you know, 20 months of runway to figure out whatever problem.

You've convinced everybody to get on a ship and go to the new world. And you could all starve and the ship can sink. and that's what happens 80% of the time. So you're feeling that inherent stress that every startup founder has to go through and then another one in your personal life, whatever it is, those compounding can break a person.

And I think that typically is when people seem to ask for help or sadly in some cases don't ask for help and have breakdowns or worse. So she senses it in this coaching call. She suggests that you go what happens the first day?

Oh man. Like Josh, I thought I wanted to leave after the first day, but I also have a lot of Italian guilt. So being that freestyle I was funding this, I wasn't really going to go anywhere. Oh, yeah. Is it Italian Catholic guilt specifically? I think so, yeah.

Yeah, I got that Irish Catholic. It's kind of like parallel to... Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, the first day was her. He paid for it. You're going to throw the money away? Exactly. What are you doing?

Do you know how much a gallon of milk costs You left the gallon of milk on the counter. Now it's spoiled. That cost a dollar 99. There was half a gallon left. You threw a dollar away. You know what a dollar buys when I was a kid? A dollar bought eight loaves of bread.

You got no respect, kid. I'm sorry, I don't mean to trigger anybody. Exactly. Yeah, right. My grandmother, my grandmother got rest of soul, you know, grew up so poor. We would go to the diner and she'd take the first loaf of bread. She would look over her shoulders. and she'd sweep it into her purse with the butter packets and then say, can we get some more bread?

We haven't even ordered the appetizers. The water hasn't hit the table. And then we go to her house and you want a buttered roll? I got a butter roll. Can I make you a butter roll? And she just, the butter rolls come out. She had a bag of butter patties. I mean, these span, the butter patty span four presidents.

I'm not kidding. Like one of them had Nixon's picture on it. It was that acute, the guilt. wasting food. So now you don't want to waste the money that they spent on this. And then you make some breakthroughs there? Is it a lot of talk therapy? Is it group stuff?

What is it? It's a lot of experiences and more sort of interactive sort of therapy. There's talk therapy. But it's really putting yourself, it's just continuing to put yourself in these situations that just push you over your comfort zone, right? Where you're incredibly uncomfortable. you're insanely vulnerable and you're looking at stuff

that's really ugly in some instances, things that you just push down. Right. Yeah. So the first thing is terrifying. It's terrifying, right, because the goal here, Josh,

in this kind of therapy is to actually get you to that point, to get you to confront something that's a demon that is ugly, that is you haven't actually maybe looked at before, open a box that maybe has been sealed? They have figured out how to break you down. And until you can't help but release those demons and confront them and share them with the people that you're going on this journey with. I mean, it is, I'm sure Karen will share her experience like that, but that is what they are, they are really good at that.

Yeah, I mean, I often call it therapy on steroids because you're packing in really years of therapy into a week-long program. I cried every day, at least a couple times a day, and I wasn't even the biggest cryer, not by a long shot. You're breaking yourself down. You're not supposed to cry. I mean, at a funeral, yes, you're supposed to cry a lot at a funeral. Exactly. But no other time in between that. In fact, it was a theme in the Sopranos that Tony couldn't bear the fact that he cried because his ducks didn't come back one season, right? Like, that was, if I'm remembering correctly, like, that's what sent them into therapy.

I mean, yeah, I mean, like my grandmother used to tell me, don't you cry. Don't you dare cry? Like, that's the worst thing that could happen. But yeah, no, you're breaking yourself down and sitting in some ugly shit. And you're looking at it. And you push through it. And the whole program is really designed. It's very much a cycle to address those issues, sit in them, and then learn new behavior.

Really, figure out what those patterns are, right? Or those maybe preexisting conditions or uniqueness. right, how they manifest themselves in patterns and then figuring out tools and new skills to address those patterns, break them down and learn new ones. All right. When we get back from this break, if you're willing to share one of your own or just a composite of the type of patterns, both Josh and Karen and will bring Moni into this discussion as well. When we get back from this quick break, I want to actually know some of those patterns,

either ones that you've experienced or that you've seen or that are archetypal, and then the breaking of them and the new pattern and the, and the new pattern. the new habit and the new loop being instituted and how that actually works when we get back. What I think is a very important episode of this week's starters. Hey, everybody, I want to tell you about Republic's new product. It's really exciting. You know Republic because a lot of the companies I invest in will go and do an equity crowdfunding raise on Republic. And I know Ken over there and Chuck over there.

We've invested in a ton of companies together. And they have something new. It's called Note. And it's the Republic Note. and you can see that at republic.co slash note. Now, as I've said many times, I believe that angel investing is a great thing for society and that everybody should have at least the opportunity to do that. And the team at Republic has launched this new, very unique profit sharing security token.

Okay. And this lets investors share in the upside of companies that raise money on Republic. And Republic has over 700,000 members now. So, when a company chooses to raise money on the Republic platform, Republic receives an investment, basically upside potential in that company. We all know how that works, or you should. Well, if they do have an exit, then they're going to distribute some or all of that cash to the Republic core.

That's the technology hub of Republic. And they're going to give that back to the holders of the Republic note. Well, more than 200 companies have already raised money on Republic using regulation crowdfunding. And one of our companies balloon, which went through our accelerator and that we syndicated and we put money in, Republic fell in love with that company as well. And they put some money in. So we've done business with them before. And we love the team over there. They're really in it for the right reasons. And right now on the accredited side, they've raised money for companies like Robin Hood, Carter, and Relativity Space, right? These are names you've heard of. For now,

it's only accredited investors, but non-accredited investors can also, right now make a reservation and reserve their spot for, you know, if they are able to do a public sale of these using Regulation A, which I have a sense that they're going to do at some point. So whether you're accredited or non-accredited, I think it's worth checking out at at republic.com slash note. And as always, terms and conditions do apply. Congratulations to Chuck and Ken. I know you worked really hard on this for a couple of years now. And it's great to see it come to fruition. And I'm always super open to new ways to fund these companies and new ways for people to participate in the funding of companies. And so, a great job getting it launched. And I will be

participating and you should check it out. I can't tell you to participate, but I can tell you, you should check it out and get educated. Republic.com slash note. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. Welcome back to this week. And start-up, Josh Felser is with us from Freestyle Capital. also Karen Mayo is with us and uh Karen is the CEO of funnel leasing which is funnel leasing.com. Am I correct? Correct. And, um, also with us is Moni Kula Soria. Kula.

You got it. Got it. You got it. You're Sri Lankan like my friend Pallah, Chimoth Polyhapatia. That's correct, yes. What is it about Sri Lungan? Is the education system they're very good, or is it just happened to be that this tiny little country produces such dynamic individuals?

Are they over-indexing for entrepreneurial spirit there like Australia does? I'm not sure if you can say the education system is better. It's very different. I had this conversation with one of my kids the other day, and she was complaining about kids sharing grades in her school. And I told her, well, in Sri Lanka, where I grew up, at the end of every semester, I had 42 students in my class that list out number one through 42. So just like there's a number one guy, there's a number 42 guy.

Wow, can't wait to get to your mental challenges. Oh, my Lord. God almighty, that is, that is sadistic to a level. in education that is you know I'm almost thinking I'd take the corporal punishment

that I got where the teachers hit us I was the last generation to get struck in a classroom I think in the 80s I would totally take getting hit in the back of the head

by brother Warren then being listed as in the low in the high 40s which is where I would have been Moni did you go also through any of these programs

I did I went through Meru Health as a program. But to give you a little bit of context as to how I got there, I was up until maybe a couple of years ago, a firm believer that mental health is a sign of weakness. This is the third time that I'm doing a startup. And in hindsight, I know that I went through the same stress and anxiety situations consistently

and continuously, but it didn't manifest in any way other than. And, you know, just I'm tired or, you know, sleepless. And my thinking about it is you got to get over it. You know, you pick this job. Exactly. Suck it up. This is what you need to go. There's no crying in startups.

That's correct. And I truly believe that. Trust me, there's a lot of crying in startups. And I was, it also made me a bad manager and a CEO because I expected that off my team as well. Right. You expected them to suck it up. That's exactly right.

Did you put a sign on the wall at the end of every quarter with everybody's ranking as an employee? You know, I removed this. I had that general pattern famous saying, now I don't even remember it because I took it off. I decided it's not appropriate. It's like a plan executed today or action executed today is better than a plan for tomorrow. So I was like everybody, we just need to like, you know, pummel through it. And that was my management style. And that's the way I treated myself.

And then I had an experience very similar to Josh's where I did have a physical manifestation. And this was just about two years ago. I was working inside of Stanford research and I got chest pains. And so then it started getting worse. I Google it. Well, I'm having a heart attack. What are the symptoms? How old are you at the time?

So I'm 48 today. I was 46 then. Got it. A little bit of an early age for a heart attack. Exactly. So I was like, okay, this is. nothing. This is going to go away. I'm driving home and I'm on Sandhill and I still get chest pain. So I call my wife and I say, look, I'm just going to go into Stanford ER, check myself in,

get this checked out. It's probably nothing. And you walk in with chest pains. You know, they have a protocol. They go through the test. And one of the things that they test for is levels of troponin. If it's elevated, that means you're having a heart attack. And my troponin levels are mildly elevated. So the guy's like, well, we think you had a heart attack. We're going to check you in. We're going to keep you overnight. So that was an absolute shocker, right? Yeah. So. That's stressful in and of itself. Yes. You may have had some minor heart attack. Exactly. And the next day, the cardiology shows up. We looked at your reports. You had a heart attack. We're going to do. And I went through, you know, CT scans, an invasive angiogram, a thing called,

a nuclear stress test where they like, you know, pump like this blue liquid. But they couldn't find any blockages or anything that would really create a heart attack, but I kept having these chest pains. So a year later, I figured out what it was. And I worked very closely with the doctors at Stanford. I also worked closely with, you know, my primary care physician. But I really wanted to get to the bottom of it. And I couldn't believe that I have any kind of a cardiac issue. And I found out what I was having is a thing called coronary artery vaso spasm. It's the spasming of the arteries due to stress. Interesting. So it mimics a heart attack. That's correct. Or it's the same, yeah, it's similar to a heart attack just with a different cause. Yes, it's, it could be dangerous, but it's typically

not because it only limits blood flow into the heart for a limited period of time. Because it's just when the spasms happening. Got it. And you come back. And then if you dig into the science of why that is, is, you know, we have a sympathetic nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system is there for a reason. It's to basically say, okay, you got to run.

There's something happening. This is dangerous. You've got to go. And for founders, I think that happens all the time. Every day. Every day. Every single day, right? The job of a founder often is to hire 100 smart people.

people, and then they bring you as a reward every day, the five problems they couldn't solve, the five biggest, most challenging thing. So literally your month is somewhere between 25 and 100 problems that the smartest people you could hire couldn't fix. That's correct. And all the things that would engage the parasympathetic nervous system, the founders, they don't get to have, which is stability, startups inherently unstable, existential threat, whether it is Microsoft with their free product or a new competitor or an incumbent in the industry trying to crush you, your best engineer leaving, like there are so many things that happens every single month, every single quarter that you feel like it's going to kill me.

Or the ability to plan. We all plan. We come up with whatever quarterly plans, et cetera, but by the time you get into the six, six weeks into it, that plan's wrong. You've got to start all over again. So all of those are things that would otherwise encourage the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps you calm down and relax. And most founders don't get to do that. And that's, I believe, a big driver of mental health. Karen, you were talking a little bit about the loops. So you've gone into the deep, deep, deep waters.

Moni, it seems like you've done the CBT stuff. You started to think about your thinking and becoming a better manager. Karen, let's swing back to you and the deep stuff for a second. What was that like to go deep? What were some of the patterns that you needed to unbundle, unbreak, and reconstitute? Yeah, you know, I mean, I think for me, similarly to Josh, control was a big one when I get scared. and listen, running and operating a company, it's freaking scary, right? So when I get scared, I seek out control.

So it was constantly seeking out control to kind of own more than frankly I should have and impeding progress. That's sort of how it manifested itself in my work life. And self-victimization. Things happen, like life happened to me, never the other way around. So something goes wrong, you attribute it to yourself. Yes. And that would, you know, self-sendipend.

sabotaging and just kind of negative self-talk, right? Yeah. The voice in your head, hey, you fuck this up. Hey, you got to take this project away from this person you hired. Now you got an extra project now instead of doing two projects with 50% of your time. You're doing three projects, 33% of your time. And you're blaming yourself of them all failing. So you're literally working against your own best interest now.

It's just a death spiral, right? Just like Josh's death spiral, right? Yeah. And we all go into them sometimes where we, we apply the exact wrong technique. Exactly. Best of intentions, but wrong technique. And by the way, we're not, we're not the crazy, we're all on this on your podcast, Jason, we're not unique, right? This is pervasive throughout our entire industry. We're just talking it openly. It's the norm. Right. It's the norm. And the more we talk about it, I don't know how many, we're 52 minutes in right now. You know, I get a little time check.

here on my, my, uh, my, uh, my, uh, you know,

we're 52 minutes into it and we're literally scratching the surface. And it's so familiar, the four of us, you know, two of which, and you know,

you three know each other well and, and Josh and I know each other well. It's just all head nodding. Like, yep, been there. It happens every time where you get scared. And then you, your fear drives you to make a choice

out of fear. and you know I hate to like bring up pop culture but you look at like being a Jedi and I talk to founders about like the Jedi philosophy or the samurai philosophy sometimes I think this is why people perceive like VCs as a little kooky is I tell them like you have to remain calm and you cannot give into your fear and you cannot give into your anger because it leads you to the dark side you must remain calm and if you remain calm then all the people are you to be able to be calm then all the people around you remain calm and you can actually make intelligent decisions. Karen and I are laughing. I'll let Karen talk about that word you just used because it's it's

something we're both familiar with. Go ahead, Karen. I actually just email Josh right before this to talk about how not letting my dark side drive the conversation. You know, the dark side is exactly kind of what you talked about, right? All that negative self-talk, right? And that spiral that if you continue to make those choices live in those patterns, that road and that that that side of yourself, right, that tells you that that's all there is, right? Right. And it's one thing that, you know, I mean, that you guys were saying that kind of stuck with me, I don't think it's about being fearless, right?

I think for the longest time I thought, man, I'm gripped in fear and it's driving these decisions. I need to learn to be fearless. I think it's learning how to manage that fear and understanding when it comes up, working through it, and then moving through it. which was a lot of what Hoffman was designed to do. And Josh, I'll let you jump in, fill in any gaps. No, I think you said it.

I mean, Hoffman, you have to confront your dark side. And that's what's so scary about Hoffman. We've been using other words for it. But it's we are, you are there to confront your dark side so that you can put it in a place that you're aware of it, but you shine a light on it. But it allows you to divert that dark side energy into the good path.

You know, your right road, they call it, your right road. The righteous. I think that is what Hoffman does. It shines a light on the dark sides. You can recognize it, deal with it, rewire your brain, and then focus on, you know, the right path. Yeah. And there's that great scene when Luke goes to Dagobot and he says, hey, you have to go into the cave now. And Luke grabs his weapons.

He says, your weapons, you will not need them. That's not the point of going into this cave. You're not going to fight your way. You're going to give into it. Right. And then sometimes the path is going through something very difficult, not fighting something very difficult. The reason I think stoicism as a philosophy has become trendy is that, and I'm not endorsing it in any way. But there is an exercise that Tim Ferriss talked about at some point that was an unlock for him, which is, let me imagine me losing what is important to me. So for a founder, their company is important to them. Their reputation as a founder is important to them. Success is important to them.

What if the company goes away? What if the world sees them as a failure? What happens now? And actually, when you go through that, exercise as a founder, what I've seen universally is you realize that that's actually not that bad. If the company goes away, it's venture capital, Josh told me 80%, Jenny told me 80% fail. All we care about is if that you worked hard and take a year off and then tell me your next best idea so we can give you the first check. And once you go through the mental exercise of, oh, wait a second, everybody is going into this with an 80% chance of failure.

And this is not the beach at Normandy. This is not an actual war. But it feels like a war. So then you associate it with death, the inevitability of death, the finality of death. There's no success like failure in our business. That is where success comes from, is that failure. Uber was Travis's third company, you know, and the struggle is the success. Once you accept that fear, now you're free because you can just look at it and say, yeah,

I am meant to struggle. I am meant to have this fear because I've picked the path not taken and it requires a bold person, and not to be fearless, but to accept the outcome that could drive fear, which is failure. Failure does suck. It sucks, but I mean, here's what I've learned, Josh. You know my career. I'm frustrated. I mean, so many failures.

And, you know, people don't remember anything, but whatever you did, that was a win. It's not the end. It's not the end game. It's just a step in the journey. Yes. When you experience it, it sucks. it's not the end. And that's what I think, you know, there's a next and a next and a next. And that is what I think the healthy mind is able to focus on. Yes. Have that perspective, which is what you're

talking about. And, you know, and in Jedi work, sometimes you lose a limb. Yeah. You know, and Darth Vader lost three at once, you know, Luke Skierrecha lost one. Like, it's kind of, I think they put that in there to show like, you know, this is serious work. Um, Monnie, when you look at your, when you look at the bad body manager, you know, like when you managed, like you were managed as a student in Sri Lanka with a level of pressure that's unnecessary, how do you manage now? How do you manage now? And then how does it feel to go to work every day in the morning and every night when you put your head on the pillow when you've changed your management style? Yeah, so I learned three primary things coming out of this. The first is it's actually about me. And I work much better when I see results. I like to measure everything.

So inside of the Meru app, and before that I was working with another CBT therapist and the biofeedback component where you're looking at your heart rate variability and how to improve your heart rate variability doing the different exercises was something that allowed me to believe in therapy and the benefits of the therapy. If that didn't exist, frankly, I probably wouldn't have gotten over the stigma related to therapy myself personally. So once I got through that, the second thing that I learned, and I'm still learning and I'm still trying to improve is trying to keep everything bottled up is not a sign of strength. So being able to freely talk about it, and you can't talk about everything with everybody, but being

able to, I incredibly appreciate the weekly one-on-ones I have with Josh, the ability, of course, to speak with my co-founders, one of whom is the third-time co-founder with me and I have a very close relationship. And even my family members, that has actually helped me significantly. And then the third component is, you know, therefore, what's my management style towards everybody else? So we're still a young startup and we're still a small team. but I feel like I have now a lot more understanding of what people potentially could be going through,

even if they're not talking about it, and a lot more empathy towards that. And I'll give you an example, like three weeks ago, Josh and I went on a one-on-one, and I said, I am just extremely proud of how the team has come together in the last two months in this pandemic environment. The particular industry that we're in got completely decimated. And the team has been doing incredibly great. but I was fearful that we're going to burn out, right? And after a quick conversation, we decided, you know what, let's give everybody a mandatory week off.

And the same day I said, I got on Slack, I told everybody, look, whether you like it or not, everybody's going to take a week off. Hold on a second, Manu, didn't you just tell me earlier that if it can be done today, it should be done today, not tomorrow? If you take a week off, now you're saying it's got to be done next week, but we could have done it this week. you're evolving and for people who don't know you're the CEO and co-founder of codify which is C-O-D-I-F-Y dot AI and you provide machine learning to increase the efficiency of the food supply chain which is particularly important. However, I'm going to guess your customers had more important things to focus on than their machine learning efforts and picking up the phone during the first couple of months of that pandemic when every single product was not, you know,

not left on the shelves. And by the way, by the way, Moni and Jason, I have several hundred dollars of products from Codify that are sitting actually cut and dry as the brand name, sitting outside in my driveway. They were just delivered.

They were just delivered, seriously, during this podcast. Perfect. So in the old days, you would have just told everybody suck it up. That's it. How do you feel when somebody doesn't perform you're a performance-based person I am as well Mani and I think

Josh is a control person we heard that I think almost everybody who's a founder you know expects performance I just want to go around the horn now with how do you deal with low performers who are not going to work out or who are just not cut out to be part of your team today money and how did you deal with them previously yeah so I actually think that performance well-measured is going to very clearly show you, is it a performance issue because of a lack of capability or lack of will, or is it a performance issue because the person is either being managed incorrectly or being given the wrong tasks? In that latter category, you know, it's a matter of, you know, replacement, retraining, or just helping the manager

and manage better. In that earlier case, you need to find a fair way of, you know, letting that individual go. How did you used to deal with a low performer in that previous group? So quite aggressively, actually, you know, you heard the term, you know, higher slow, fire, fast. I believed in it. And to some extent, you know, I still do. But I don't make rash decisions around that fire fast. So you were a fire somebody on the spot, like just get the hell out of here, or just chew them out or maybe just be too aggressive with them? Like, what's wrong with you? I was always very diplomatic about it. I would not come across as aggressive or mean in any way. I'll find a very, you know, easy way to do it. And I've let go plenty of people with whom, you know, I've continued to have a relationship and a friendship. But yes, I would be very quick to make the decision.

Yeah. And Karen, how about yourself as a manager of people, which is, Just one of the critically important skills we have. We have to demand excellence. We have to demand performance because a startup is almost universally in a race against the clock and or competitors. How do you demand excellence without breaking people and without taking their work away and saying, I'll just do it myself because that seemed to be in your game? Of course, of course. I don't know if this is necessarily a pre- or post-Huffman thing. I think this is more just early days of being a founder to learning and learning from those mistakes and not making them again.

Early, early days, I had the opposite approach as Manny. I tried to save people, realized very quickly that the best thing I could do for them is deliver them open and honest feedback and give them very clear expectations. And, you know, I don't know if this is necessarily something to be happy about or proud of, but I've never had to part ways with an individual. who's ever said to me, I never saw this coming. They always said, well, you know, you're very clear from the get-go. We had open and honest conversations. I knew I wasn't performing. And the time in which those conversation occurred were wildly truncated from early on. Is there always room for improvement? Yes. But I do think that deploying that level of candor with someone and being very open and very clear about expectations serves everyone, even if it's not the outcome of the person staying.

Yeah, being the hero in trying to save a person is not doing anybody a favor. If it's not a match, it's better they be in a place that's a match. Exactly. And the experience you'll have, if you have that leak in your game like you did, where you try to be the savior and you try to do this, I did it at times, is that when you finally do come to your senses, the person goes, yeah, I mean, I can't believe you didn't fire me three weeks ago or three months ago. or I can't believe you let this fester for so long.

I've been looking. I've been looking for a job for six months. You've just haven't found one yet. And it is the hard work of a founder building a team and those dysfunctional relationships build up. And candidly, they make you not want to go to work as the founder because you've got people on the team who you're no longer rooting for. It creates more stress, not less, right?

So it actually has the exact opposite impact of what you're going for. Yeah, the way I say Josh to folks is, You know, when they call me, and I'm sure you get this call a lot, which is I can't make it work with this person or I'm trying. What do I do? I just tell them, like, are you rooting for them to succeed? Are you rooting for them to fail? Which I had read in an article by Dr. Mark Goulston, who's just a really smart psychologist down in Los Angeles who became friends with. He was actually in the, who's an expert witness in the OJ trial famously.

And he just said to me at someone, Jason, are you rooting for this person? or not. And I was like, kind of rooting for them to fuck up so I can fire them. And he's like, I think you need to get them out now because that is really crazy. Right. How were you, when you hear this discussion of management of people and talent and resources, how, what did you do well and wrong as a control freak? I'll just use the clinical term.

And as a reformed control freak, what do you do now? I think the main way that I counter being controlling is to be authentic. And when I'm authentic, my anxiety drops. And if I'm trying to hide my anxiety, you're fraud, right? You know you're anxious about something. You're not sharing it. And so you're presenting a different situation. And so I think what I do now is I'm just, and I have been doing this for years,

is I just seek to be more authentic, even when it's hard to say or maybe hard for the person to hear. And it's a constant process for me is to really remember that by being authentic, I'm reducing my anxiety and therefore I'm less controlling. So it's a whole ecosystem for me. Yeah. And it's hard to say to a founder what you authentically feel because you place the bet on them and you're in business with them. and what is the fallout going to be, right?

You have to think that through. Like if you authentically say to somebody, I'm really disappointed in what's happened here, which I had to say to a founder recently, and they said, you are like my hero, and I am devastated that I've lost, you've lost faith in me.

And I said, well, here's the two reasons why I lost faith. So Jason, what I would be curious, so you use the word disappointing. right that puts you in a parent role yeah yeah right right and so what i try and do is i say hey can i be direct with you that's my that's my line much better framing right much better framing and then they they take responsibility for saying yes they say yes and then we have a conversation i definitely say disappointing also i try not to what i say it i know that it sets up the kind of role

that i don't want right it's not a good role to be in yeah and it's i still do it but i try not to you There's a great scene in, and it is obviously a father-son theme, but in the film Gladiator, you know, the king says to the son, your failure as a child is my failure as a father, right? And don't beat yourself up so much. And then what I said to the founder was, you know, like, I didn't, I feel like I didn't make it clear enough to you what you, that this was going to be an inevitable. if you kept doing the same pattern over and over again that this was going to sink the company. And I should have been, I should have rang the alarm louder to you. I should have said it, you know, more clearly, more authentically, right, to use your word. And this is a very weird dynamic where, you know, as we get old, Josh, you and I are becoming, and it's much, I don't know if it's a weird feeling for you now to be an elder statesman in a lot of these situations when we were the kids. And it feels like it was yesterday. We were the, right. We were the wonder. kids, you know, that these old guys were writing checks to. And now we're the check riders and people look at us as old. And it's like, I don't feel old, but okay. You actually have to become self-aware of that, that your words are being taken differently when you, you know, hit 50, 40, whatever than when you were the 20-something or the 30-something. By the way,

Moni's right there. He's almost there at 50. Almost right there. Yeah, he's about to, he said, I'm 49, so I'm almost right there. I mean, after this pandemic, I feel like I'm 64. This has been hard. Well, let's wrap on that on a note about how we've all evolved, you know, due to the pandemic. I like to think that there is a silver lining to this, this great pause, you know, in reevaluating what we're all doing and surviving through it. Mania, when you look at the pandemic and the struggles you've gone through, what makes you hopeful and keeps you coming to work? Right now, frankly, the team. The team has really stepped up. We've actually, I mean, without getting into the details specific to the company, we've turned around and found a brand new

demand site for our business. And we're moving into Q3 with a lot of strength in an environment that is still quite chaotic. So the team inspires. It keeps you as the leader. When you see the team perform well, that fills your bucket. That gets the end. energy back in your system. Absolutely. That's my parasympathetic nervous system kicking right there, thankful to the team. Yeah. I have that feeling, too, actually.

I was telling my team, like, I could have been more proud of you the other day. And I hate giving too much praise because I don't want anybody getting a little bit ahead of their skis. I want to keep everybody sharp and working hard. But I tell them, I said, I just got to tell you guys and gals, like, folks, this has been an incredible performance. and Karen, how about you when you're going through this cataclysmic black swan? I don't know if you're one of the lucky businesses that surges during it, goes sideways or buckles,

but independent of that, what gives you hope for the future, what keeps you grinding? Yeah, I mean, absolutely the team, I'd say also the mission, right? We set out to create a massive impact on the real estate industry. So the fact that we have amazing, devoted, talented individuals who believe in that mission to join us, that's been huge. And we've definitely overcommunicated or I really don't think it's over communication. We're communicating openly, honestly, frequently with those team members. And their response to that has been nothing short of incredible. So absolutely that.

It is one of the things you learn, Josh, along the way is you got to enjoy every sandwich. and you got to enjoy the people you work with. And nothing is more satisfying than a team that is rallying in that fourth quarter or fighting that good fight. Independent of the outcome, a team putting in the effort is just such a reward in and of itself and being part of that team, let alone having the privilege of leading that team, Josh, as we hopefully start to figure this pandemic out. and hopefully our country follows the lead of the countries that have defeated it.

What makes you hopeful for the future? I'm on a task force with Bill Trenchard working for the state. And so I get to see, and the task force sole mission is to find private company's solutions to many of the problems that we're facing because of the crisis. I've been able to see, you know, our peers rise up to the occasion and really get involved in ways that I would never have thought before. And so I think that that spirit of, hey, that we're all in this together, we must solve this together, not just our governor, not just our, you know, those who work in the state,

but all of us, the private sector, public sector, come together. And it won't be solved unless we do. But seeing how that's happening gives me hope that we will actually get through this in a way. It will be hard. And there are people who are impacted in ways that none of us have to deal. with. But I do have hope that we will all come together and find a way out. Awesome. Josh, you know, I really appreciate the, I always appreciate you and the work you do, but I continue to be impressed, especially with this effort to really do something proactively

for founders. And to any founder out there who's listening, if you're struggling, if you're feeling despair, raise your hand and talk to people. That's the, That's the message, right, Josh? If you're feeling despair, that is not uncommon. You are just like everybody else. You've got that imposter syndrome. You're feeling stress. You're feeling anxiety.

You're not sleeping at night. Go talk to your investors. Go talk to your family and friends and get help. That's it, right, Josh? You're not alone. And the fact that, Jason, you chose to spend this entire podcast talking mental health is a huge gift to the community. I hope that it does resonate with people.

And they do seek help and realize that it's not, there's no stigma. It's actually a sign of strength to raise your hand and ask for help. I mean, there is no stigma in somebody who is climbing a mountain to at a moment when they look down, feel some fear. Or for somebody who's fighting in a war to think this might not end well. You know, it is the natural state of affairs. Get comfortable with it. And the way to get comfortable with it is, I think, talking it out. And look, we talk for 70 minutes.

And I think we all come out of this conversation, just the four of us, let alone, you know, the two, three, four hundred thousand people who will eventually consume this content. You can feel the cathartic effect of just talking about it. In this limited, you know, like I feel like I just want to give each of you a hug, Karen. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. and sharing what you've learned. Everybody check out funnel leasing.com. And so thank you, Karen. Thanks, Jason.

Thank you, Josh. Thank you. And Moni continued success with codify.aI and for fighting the great fight and for sharing your struggles and the shame and the fact that you didn't want to believe in this and you thought it was weak and now you realize it's actually the weakness to not recognize that we're all human, right? I went through a little bit of that myself. I thought, you know, you got to be a tough guy.

And you got through, didn't, Yamani? I did. And thank you very much for having me and giving us this time to talk about it. All right. And you got to stay healthy, okay? You promise, all right? Stick with us. I don't want to lose anybody.

And Josh, you know, we've been at this for a while. And like I said, when I was starting the, wrap-up process. I continue to be impressed by you as a human being. You've got such great intent and you could retire. You made your money already. But you're out there doing really good work in the world. And I work with everybody and I have everybody on the podcast and I can tell you you're a fine human being. And I don't say that lightly. So great job. I'm very proud. Thank you, Jason. Thank you for using your platform. Okay. We'll see you all on this week. It's right next time. Bye-bye.