Welcome back to another episode of the start of therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as Ever by Wil Schroder, my partner and the CEO of startups dot com will. Today we are going to unpack a big 11 that everybody has faced at one point or another. And I think a lot of founders struggle with this kind of throughout their careers, and that's that much like everybody else in the population. We are flawed creatures, But when is it okay to talk about her flaws as the start of founder? When is it okay to show some vulnerability and to be ableto kind of put it out there for the people to see And to be honest about what? What's the story here,

Bring it back a little bit. Let's go back 10 20 years. It wasn't okay to bring up your flaws. I can't think of any time. Let's say during my Leo healthy on years of the nineties, where it was okay to just say, This is how I'm feeling. Let's share it. If I sat in a board meeting, if I sat in a company meeting, if I said I said at lunch with you. And we're like, Ryan, I've got some serious issues you'd like you dude up. You should be telling anybody this. Yeah,

keep it. Keep it quiet, man. Somebody might be listening.

There is no high five moment. I mean, it's just different times, you know, And it wasn't that long ago. It shows a sign of progress, you know, as a society, I think in an air of social media where, you know, as a group, we've we've definitely exposed everything at this point, you know what I mean. And so I think all of our our high points and many of our low points have become a common discussion thread online. And to be fair, it didn't start with call it CEOs, founders or high profile people,

necessarily in the past, those were the people who had the microphone or the camera on them, right there on the cover of a magazine, talking about their flaws. If they were, it started with just the every person out there kind of sharing what was wrong with them. And then all of a sudden, that started bubble up a little bit. And then it started to become more of a discussion point. Thankfully, by the way, I'm again. I'm I'm being thankful for this. This is me being critical. I'm just saying, if we had this topic 20 years ago, is it okay to admit your flaws? I think just be no stopping it,

would it would have been a very early podcast. Would have it would have been the shortest broadcast ever. Is it OK? No,

it And just to be fair, like, we wouldn't be having this podcast if I wouldn't. I wasn't so excited that we could even talk about this. And if you listen to the start of therapy podcasts, you know that a hallmark of what we do is talk about being vulnerable, right? And what kind of messed up creatures were? We've come a long way, baby. And this podcast is really a testament to life in times of what founders actually get to share, which is where our problem begins. Because we don't have a long history of kind of how to do this, Right? Right. So I think today's

this is all new

for us. Yeah, uh, get him off. And I think one of the things we get to do today and I'm really excited about it is not only talk about, you know, as founders as executive what our flaws might be, but how to talk to them in a method where we can understand there's consequence to talking about these flaws. Because if I'm just some random college student and I'm on Facebook and I want to talk about my depression issues where I want to talk about my anxiety issues, I don't have any flaw that I have, right. I'm in a fairly consequence free environment, right? I probably have loving people around me, and they just want to help me. And that's awesome. Yeah,

Emoji for anything you might be feeling

at this point. So, yeah, I'm good. I'm covered. I'm in a safe place, I think. But if I'm the CEO of a company, I don't quite get the same latitude. Why? But I'm still a regular person. But my words have true consequence, right? Our stock price could change based on what I just shared. Our employee morale could change. Ah, Venture fund might not,

you know, invest in our company. There are there are real consequences to showing your flaws, things, daytime drinking, thing that I can't seem to get under control, you know, and and really, for example, mental health has been brought to the forefront of the of the startup. Discussion and narrative is incredibly powerful. You know, I for what? A huge proponent of people getting in front of it. A lot of stuff we've talked about on this show has been about how mental health is a very real thing. Physical health.

You, Ryan, unite. The whole show is dedicated to terrible or help has become over over this start up stuff and we get a lot of fan mail. You know, people could say to us they say, Hey, thank you for

talking about that, because thanks for bringing it out, right? Yeah, I think it's it's interesting to, you know, we've always been called crazy, right as entrepreneurs in this fast. But now we get to be more specific about exactly why. And I think that that Sze really

powerful we get to talking about the meds that go with it in love. Rick, this is a part. Pardon my language here. This is a fucked up experience that we go through, right? This is a crazy traumatic experience. We go through his founders. There's no cool version of it. There's some highs. There's mainly lows, and it usually ends poorly. Yeah, right. And I just I want to point that out because it exposes all of our flaws. You know, all of the things that that were challenged with the most are so drawn out of us and almost impossible to ignore as startup founders.

So if we have to bottle it up, if we have to hide those flaws all the time and where this kind of mask, if you will, of perfection, I don't think it ends well, Force, I think, personally as a founder. Over the last 10 years, I've been able to be far more open about the challenges that I have. Life's gotten dramatically better, but I've also learned that it comes with consequence, and it comes with a certain amount attack that you have to employ in order to be able to share.

Sure, yeah, how you take the top off that bottle matters a lot. I think great would put end and, you know, win and where now that happens, how it happens. It's really tough because on one hand, you want to able to be as honest as you can about it, but not all forms of honesty or create equal right like it's it's a lot of this comes down to how you say it and maybe to who and when you release the information right. I think that there are places where it's definitely okay to be just absolutely, brutally honest. You know, we see some of this stuff happen at the founder dinners that we d'oh and that, you know, there are points there where everybody's in that environment. They feel safe.

They know they're surrounded by peers. They all operate on the assumption that this is going to stay within these four walls for that evening and forever. And so you can see people kind of crack the shell open, open the armor and let go. And that's an okay place to do that, right? Twitter, On the other hand, maybe not the right place for the full on brutal, unfiltered honesty again, depending on what it is, I think the other thing it's always interesting to think about for me is why Why am I? Why am I releasing this one? My just my letting go for the sake of letting go. If that's the case, does it really matter what the audience is right?

Am I seeking help? If so, am I seeking it in in a healthy way? Or am I just throwing it out there? Because I'm afraid to be specific about it, and I just want to kind of throw it against the wall and see what sticks. So it's always interesting to me as I think about when I want to make my own personal elevations. Why am I doing it and write why? In the way that I'm doing it? I think there's there's a lot to unpack there, and I think it tells you a lot about the issue itself in terms of how you decide to

put that out there for people. Yeah, and I think that let's let's set the stage here, you know, maybe right. Why don't we talk about just go in full on admission mode about what some of our flaws are Just so we can talk about historically how we've talked about them, you know, t l d r. And that it worked out pretty well, you know, I think so I'll bring this up to you to kick it off. A couple months ago, I was dealing with this this huge issue. We did a whole episode on this where he had this this really weird, bizarre condition called trigeminal neuralgia, which is a nerve issue. It's It's considered one of the most painful afflictions you can have. And I'm here to tell you that's

true. Second only to starting

a company. Yeah, second only starting company. It's, ah, condition where a nerve fires inappropriately in your head and makes you feel like your head's going to explode all the time.

Wait, is this trigeminal neuralgia or is this starting a company I love?

It's actually exactly the same and kind of hard not to bring up right. I mean, you can't see it right? Unless you see me wincing in pain and crying on the floor, right? That part, you'll notice what you have, what you have, but where I get anxious where I was anxious when this first all started happening years ago is I didn't want that to be a distraction. I didn't want it to be like, Hey, we got a whole team of people that are relying on me for a paycheck. I don't want them distracted by whether or not the CEO is going to curl up in the fetal position and cried not do his job. Is that the right answer? Probably not, but that was what was going through my head. I mean,

I didn't realize you could open up about your issues. I just thought you you talk that way down. You don't talk about it, and you go figure it out at home. Yeah. And And I would by which you mean by yourself at home? Yeah, exactly. And I would come to learn later. That was that. It was an old truth. You know, I think that used to maybe be the case and was probably flawed back then, too. But we live in an environment where there's far more acceptance. Not all the time,

but I think more so than ever in history. Right when I brought it to you and Elliot, you know, the different staff members at the time I got full support, but more importantly, everyone started to understand. Hey, there's gonna be some challenges this Mr Points were Well, can't talk, and we won't tell him, but we're actually like that part. Yeah, well,

I want to touch on something. You said that because I think it's I think there's an important kind of secondary factor here. And it's, you know, you said that we were in a kind of a more tolerant environment now, and it's okay to talk about it. I think that one of the challenges in the past was because there wasn't enough information about any of these topics in general. Even if you brought it up, the person on the other side of the table could do no more than maybe listen and not even have a good understanding what you're talking about. So I think great point, because we're in the information age now, for better for worse, we have access to a lot more of it. Were armed with discussion points, were armed with some knowledge hopefully, so I think it's easier to find somebody who can actually listen and then and then respond in a more meaningful way, right,

if you have no contexts for for what that person's talking about, even if you wanted to help, the most you could do is listen and I know we all. We all know that listening can be a good thing, and sometimes people do seem to get things off their chest. However, when you're exposing an issue and you really do need help or perspective or feedback, if the person is how the table has no context, the information, it's really, really hard to be helpful.

That's a really good point, man. And if no one that shared their flaws before, yeah, and you haven't seen a successful full, you know, go around of I shared my flaws. Everyone was cool about it. Okay, maybe I can share my flaws, too. Then nobody's gonna step in the ring first. That's three. Incentive is definitely not there. And the reward, if you can call it that nobody's ever seen it before,

right? You don't know whether there will be a reward. You're you're literally jumping off into the abyss and you you have no idea if you're gonna land soft or land it all, or just to be ridiculed. Yes, I think that we're in an environment now where it still takes bravery to do these things. But I think that the barrier that you have to cross is significantly lowered. At this

point, my list goes on infinitely. But I'd be curious as to what comes to mind when you think about some of the flaws your may be hesitant to bring up, but did and whether that work

for you. Yeah, so, you know, And I I shared a small anecdote a couple of couple of podcasts ago on this where it was pointed out to me that I was far too critical of other people and that I was far too hard and pushing people far, far, far too hard and that I was justifying that by saying, Yeah, but I'm pushing myself harder, and that just really didn't matter at all. Right? The fact that I was holding myself to a higher standard didn't mean that I was I was holding them to a fair standard. This is an interesting case study, because then as I took the information in about this, it opened up another flaw, which is at that time, I was not good at taking feedback,

right? And so, you know, I'm hearing about one of my flaws, but I'm incapable of absorbing information in the right way because I wasn't used to taking feedback in a constructive way, and in doing something with it, I would I would become defensive in some cases exactly in this case when when my coach came to me and said, Hey, you're pushing the rest of the team too hard all right? My response was attacked to defend. Yeah, but I'm pushing myself harder, right? And so they're sort of you know, I guess you could probably pull that out. Of the three different flaws,

one I was being, too, are another's, too. I was unwilling to it to take feedback for myself and three wind faced with feedback rather than absorb that I was I was attacking to defend, which I would I would even throw in a separate separate Flom. It was the 2nd 1 of those right, which was the ability at some point to absorb the feedback, and I realized that there were still points where I would attack to defend. Despite that, I would at least take the feedback to heart and sometimes would take months or a year or Maur to really do anything about the feedback. But it was there, right? I didn't completely let it let it roll off. I didn't I didn't put on the Teflon and just completely ignore the feedback. But those were some big ones.

And I remember going to a couple of early early mentors, one of my college professors who turned out to be an excellent mentor for me and asking like, How can I be better at receiving the feedback? And she gave an excellent piece of advice, which was Take it to heart. But take it for what it is, right? They're not attacking you. They're not trying to prove you wrong. They're not trying to denigrate you in any way. They're probably trying to help you, right? Even if that isn't their intention, you can take it that way. And that was really powerful for me to hear that And that really helped me get past that one. And so I just started to look at those pieces of feedback,

whether they were delivered well or not as gold nuggets that I could use to improve myself improve. My process is Andi. I think I'm much better at it now. There's still times, you know, we're like, already having a bad day, and then somebody, somebody says something about you know, something you've done or something you haven't done, and you can take it the wrong way. But I think I'm far better now. It kind of leading back and taking that feedback. And what a game changer that iss. Great. Because if the Onley feedback you ever get is from the echo chamber in your own head,

Good luck. All right. I'm never gonna be smart enough to figure it all out, right? That's what the rest of the world is here

to help me with. You know, I think what? Something interesting about what you said the Ryan, how you responded to that feedback, how you responded to how you present your flaw, so to speak is so characteristic of whether or not this is gonna work well for you. For example, if I present my flaw and I've got this mentality that how dare you question my flaw, right? You know, I'm gonna present it. I'm gonna express my vulnerability. But if you even for a second don't respond in the way I expect you to shame on you. You can't attack people with your flaws, right? I have crippling anxiety right in Ryan,

you've dealt with me for so long. It's a total joy, right? But everything freaks me out all the time as and it has moments, right? If I admit that to you, I have to for a second. It's very evident. But if I would admit that to you, right? And you were to say, Well, you really do something about it in my response was some version of Well, you know, again, Pardon my French.

Go fuck yourself. Like Ryan. How dare you attack? Look, that is the wrong way to admit your flaws,

right? Cities, man, all you have to do in that moment is have a panic attack. I'll never bring it up again. And she's just don't trigger him, okay? Doubling back and leave Mountain Dew on the table. Yeah, I'll be fine.

Look in from from my standpoint, when I present a flaw, what I want to do is I want to show vulnerability and I want to show honesty. People generally don't lie about their flaws. We lie about everything else. Everything else gets exaggerated, but our flow and keep pretty close to the vest.

I may have lied about my pool shooting capabilities more than once in a bar

in some money. But, yeah, you're a hustler, right? So when I look at the ability and advantage, let's say to share our flaws. Here's how I look at it, Number one. I think it's one of the most powerful ways you can connect other humans, Right for sure, I don't think that the old school Gordon Gekko version, where I'm supposed to show everyone how I'm perfect at everything, and I'm kind of you know, that the master of the universe, those days are gone, right?

If you're trying to pretend you're that person, people don't even believe you anymore, right? The world is gone past that now. That doesn't mean we have to go into full therapy mode with our entire staff. Right was showing everything, but I think there's a lot of benefit and being able to show the folks around you that you have got some challenges to write. I don't need to put on this perfect persona. I'm dealing with crazy stuff every day. I think opening up is a powerful dialogue because here's here's what it is. You run, you not talk about this, and I love this part. It gives other people permission toe open the kimono as well.

Boom! It's started with the big piece, right? Right. And I think that that's you know, it's It's even even we're not talking about deep character flaws, like even just meeting small mistakes like, Oh, well, I made the wrong decision here. I went the wrong direction with this. I didn't think about that. And I should have that gives everybody else permission to make mistakes because regardless of whether we give them permission or not, they're going to make mistakes, right? The difference between having permission to make mistakes, the permission to be flawed and not is simply how they'll feel about Erica's.

They're gonna then have to feel like they hide him. They're gonna bottle them up, they're gonna push it down. It's going to affect their performance. Is going to impact their relationship with you with the rest of their colleagues. And it's gonna close the door on honest conversations that you could have had to help them improve their performance and or in the worst case, where they're actually gonna hide things from you that may be critical to understand, in order to you know, run the company or had them perform the way they should.

How about this? So I've been very explicit about my my anxiety. I've got a DHD, which triggers anxiety, which just simply means I freak out all the time about everything. Ah, and puts me in kind of red alert mode all the time. Not awesome, By the way, there was a time in a place where it was kind of like, Nice, like it gave me a superpower kind of founder thing. And now, just as a parent, it's just not paying any kind of dividends home. And we'll talk a little bit later about not just how I handle it, but how I explain in Show the progression for that flawed and why that you know that's important.

But here's what's interesting. Ever since I kind of got front and center on that and you know, I've written articles about it, Ryan, we've we've done, I think, a show about it. Here's what happened. Our staff comes to me now and they say, Hey, man, uh, I gotta say, I've just been doing some crazy anxiety and this year, so it's awesome. They know that I understand.

Yeah. I'll say it explicitly, buddy. If I were to go back 10 20 years, no one would have come to me with that, right? No. 1 20 years ago at Blue Diesel, the agency would have said, Hey, will, can we sit down? I'm having a really tough time getting this client worked on X, my anxieties just firing like mad. And it would have been true. And I could have helped them at so many levels.

And it would have never come up because I did never established an environment where we can talk about her flaws. So it actually worked through, which I think kind of brings us to the next point, Ryan, which is? How do we talk about how we're working through them? Sharing your flaws is the easy part relative to it, how you share them in the path you used to say. And here's how I deal with it is kind of the more important part of this, and I think that's the heart of the discussion. Sure, and

I think this is the heart of discussion. This is the most critical piece because if all you do is expose the flow, and then you don't talk about doing anything about it. I mean, the worst thing to do would be to say nothing, all right. I think you can also overdo it and just become manic about it, right. But I think that you do have to address the fact that, you know, here's here's what I'm doing to solve this or here's what I did to solve it right and certainly we can. We can look to some of our flaws and say, Hey, we're actually on the other side of this now and that's great. But there's certainly flaws that that we that we still go through. I still have flaws, patients being one of them.

Although it's been a much, much better with Children. I have so many more opportunities to practice it, and the cost of getting it wrong is so much higher. Yeah, and you s Oh, yeah, this is This is an absolutely critical piece of this. So what's worked for you in terms of getting the conversation right? What's enough?

What's what's too much in my mind? I try to get to the point, and I sometimes even lead with this, which is Hey, you know, let me tell you about something I wrestle with all the time. But for what it's worth, let me tell you about the hack that I use to get past it. Here's how I manage it right again. I spent a lot of time over the years talking about anxiety, mainly because every single founder has it, and it's one of those topics were A lot of people are afraid to talk about it, but it's like I already know you have it. So let's talk about what to do with that. Yeah, it's got impossible not to. Here's how I like to frame these things again.

I'm gonna go back to the article that I wrote. How a harness, my insane startup anxiety. Think about what that article implies, How I harness it in this case, the article. You can Google it or you can look at one of our past podcasts talks about. I have insane a DHD like off the charts bad. However, there are actually some advantages to that. It also puts me in modes where I have, like, super power mode, where I can get through huge problems really quickly blood it comes at the expense of being up at four in the morning, working on a problem that doesn't actually matter like a lot. And so I talk about all the different methods I use to manage that anxiety.

Everything from some of the supplements I've taken that have actually kind of made it go away to the extent that it can, which has been amazing and life changing to some of just the mental models. I used to kind of like compartmentalize anxiety in a good way to say is this is this problem really this big? What's the rubric? I'm gonna run it through. Thio decides the problem before I artificially freak out about it.

I think I went years with with anxiety and I was calling it something else. I think even just like give you gotta put the right finger on it helps a ton. So for me, it was I was over analytical, right? I was after analytical. I wasn't worrying. That wasn't it, wasn't it? It was an anxious no, of course not. I was over analytical, and I work to solve that particular problem, I think, and I started calling it Anxiety might have been a bit easier then I could have it could have found help faster. But for me, it was It was something what you described,

right? There were some mental models that I used, and they were pretty basic, right? I would find myself up at night rethinking this same problem for the 4th 5th 6th time share. And I would finally what finally just ended up working for me was I would I would say. Okay, look. 1st 1st decision. Is this really a problem or not? If, yes, am I actually going to do something about it or not? Right, These air, just binary gates,

and I'm having this conversation with myself. So of course I can I can lie to myself, and I can I can continue to worry about it, but for me, it worked pretty well. I would go through this little, little, little routine. Is this really a problem? Yes. Okay. Am I actually willing to put in the time to do something about it, or am I just gonna spend my wheels worrying about The answer was yes. Then what am I gonna do about it? And then the thing that I found was just writing it down is grab a notebook beside the bed right down here, the steps I'm gonna take to solve this problem.

And then and then somehow, that sort of just put a bow on it, and I no longer needed to feel that anxious about it. Of course, mileage. Various certain issues will come back and haunt you. But it's simple things like that that that have kind of gotten me through some of these bigger issues. The solutions were actually quite small for

it's not just the fact that you have the solution, which is awesome. It's the fact that you can communicate it, because here's the thing. I I think there's two parts of what you just said. I think the first part is admitting that there is an issue, a sense of self awareness, right, if you're just a complete jerk to your employees and you showed no sense of contrition or self awareness, right, that is so painful, right? If you were to say, Hey, you know, sometimes I'm probably a little bit much to deal with. I tend to get over analytical. That's part one. At least your people can see okay, like by the way everyone else already sees it. Everyone else

has already prescribed. That's the thing, right? That is absolutely the thing.

What matters, especially as leadership, is that you prescribe it right, you know, on your own volition. So I think the admission goes a long way to making people say Okay, Good. They've got a little bit of self awareness here. Cool. The second part is that you're actually willing to do something about it. It's one thing to say Hey, guys, I know I have this huge problem, But if if the follow up is just deal with it, that's not exactly what people want to hear. If you say, Hey,

I've got this huge problem. I know what affects you would show some empathy. I know it affects you, and here's what I'm doing about it. Let me give you an example of where somebody didn't do this about 15 years ago. I get a call from an employee good guy, and he said to me, he said, Hey, will, uh, can't come in today And I said, I mean, you're doing okay and he said, Yeah, you know,

some time to time, I'm just kind of not feeling it. And, uh, I just don't like to work. Wait, What? Fervent. I Okay, uh,

that he thought he was living in 2020.

Yeah, right. No, it was It was I was so taken aback by it. I mean, I've had thousands of employees. I I've I've had a lot of shots and boldness that hadn't had in that one before. Now again, bear with me on this. The backstory is he actually had severe depression issues. I was not aware of it, Just sort of the point here. Later on, we'd come to come to kind of impact this a bit. I kind of leaned, didn't said, Hey,

man, if there's something you're dealing with, let's work on it together. And eventually he opened up. He felt really good about it, and we got to a great place. But here's why. It broke. He had an absolutely legitimate reason for not coming to work. But if you don't present it as such, right? If you just present the outcome, had something coming to work in his mind, he just assumed I understood why, like, yeah,

he assumed I understood the flawed, and we just put the pieces together. Clearly I didn't. And so I'm just gonna respond as wow, that's a really irresponsible thing to say. What the hell just happened as founders, as managers, executives would have you? We have the same responsibility. Write me and I'll be reporting upto a boss, so to speak. But we had the same responsibility. It's incumbent on us to be able to say, Hey, I'm acting a certain way or I see a certain outcome that's being driven by me, man,

that's on me. I'm I'm kind of shitty at this. But not only just admitting it, meaning it's kind of the easy part right here. Here's what I do about it. One of things. Often that I I tell you, No, you Elliot or anybody else's. If I get to this point, run a signal flare up. Tell me Hey, well, like I think you're kind of going crazy town right now, right? Like settled out.

And that's a checkpoint for May. It's admitting my flaw, giving the people around me a safety valve, right? A safe word. People say it was a Yeah, it puts us all in a great position. It allows me to get my flaws out in front of me to kind of create my own guidelines and allows the people around me to feel safe, to operate an environment where my flaws aren't just this nuclear attack.

All right, so we've given a lot of context around wind and how and why we should share these things. But is there a point? This is my chance to speak French now. Is there a point where we should just shut the fuck

up? Yeah, there is. Actually, it may be the future that we're living in now, but there is still a time and a place for all of this. So let's let's kind of Mac that out a little bit because I don't want this to turn into Hey Will. And Ryan said, It's a good idea for every founder to just kind of, like, puke at the mouth. Every flaw that they've ever had. It's not always a good time.

Yours I don't want I don't want to get that email from anybody. So, uh, listen to the podcast went to our board meeting and, uh, yeah, they've

They've removed me. Well, actually, I love that scenario because let's say that that scenario exists in it. I mean, I'm gonna and I'm gonna bring in a bit of a tricky problem to address. Let's say kind like that. The employees that I was talking about before as a CEO, I've got a serious, serious depression issue. Right? Deal. Long time, I've kind of maybe I've may have mastered a little bit up to here, and it's kind of, you know, welling up inside and I've got a board meeting.

I got venture investors, and during the board meeting, you slide 10. I bring up. Listen, guys, just something I want to get off my chest. I've been dealing with some pretty crippling the depression, and I really just want you guys to understand they're with me on this. There is a chance that it goes totally well that you have these really well meaning really well, understanding board members and they sit down with you said, Hey, we get it. That's not the way to do it right. What you don't want to do is present this in kind of this big fanfare, if you will, not knowing how people might react, expecting them to react exactly the way you want them to? Yeah,

You're sort of forcing them into a particular reaction, whether they want it or not, which is in that moment, they're going to have to kind of swallow it right. And I don't think that's ever a good position to put people. And because they may not feel like they can be as honest as they want to in that moment. Exactly. Yeah, Not healthy for anybody.

People may not react the way you want them to, but you have to consider the moment of delivery. If I want to deliver that same message, I'll pull each board member aside one at a time. When you explain it to them. I won't throw it as a hand grenade into the room and hope it goes well, right?

Well, this may seem obvious, but if you are reaching out and wanting to be honest, would you not want to do that in an environment where the person you're presenting this, to be honest in return and if you're not? Then I would go back and ask yourself, Why the hell are you doing this in the first place? It doesn't make any sense of that

point absolutely. You know, the same goes with putting on social media. That might not be the best way to present it. Well, your board members, I mean, I just like you're not coming in today. Cheers. And honestly, I see that a fair amount. I see people like, kind of, you know, come out so to speak, with whatever issue they've got on social media and just kind of just shotgunned into the air and say, Hey, let's see how this goes

now. So it's Hang on, hold on that one for a second because I think there's there's there's some interesting stuff there. Why do you suppose they're they're doing that? Do you think that the supposition is that by putting it on social media, I'm getting it out there? But I'm also buffering it a little bit that this softens it somehow that you know people will be kinder if I do it here as opposed to doing it one on one. Is it that we're trying to force a particular reaction again? Is that why they're doing that?

Could be a number of reasons. Sometimes people do because it's convenient, given example like, uh, when I had to go in for my fourth surgery for this trigeminal neuralgia issue. I posted it on Facebook Ah, couple months ago, mainly because by that point I had been dealing with for so long. I figured most people already knew what I was going through. And for all our staff members and stuff, they kind of knew what was going on. And I had mentioned it in on multiple occasions. But, like, I was just like this. Just be an easier way to

cut. You definitely assumed that people had some context because what you said was brain surgery tomorrow. See you later. It was That implies some understanding.

Yeah, yeah. Um but to be fair, in retrospect, what? I've posted that again, Maybe maybe not. There happen to be a weird silver lining to that. It turned out like three or four of my friends had the same condition, which is so bizarre because it's such a rare condition. And I actually helped a couple of them get treatment that they needed for, like, what's essentially a debilitating condition. So, you know, silver lining. But that said in that case I had already communicated to the stakeholders that I needed to communicate to that I was concerned about.

And so this wasn't like a hey, Ryan Elliot, rest of management team, By the way, I may never talk again. Like, Oh, I read it on social media. Not appropriate by that point. I had long conversations for years with the entire staff. So kind of people knew what was up and anybody that was learning for the first time, it was okay if they didn't actually know. But let me give you different context. I'm crazy. Stressed out, Let's say two years in companies almost out of money I don't know if I could make payroll and I decide to share my stress at lunch with my co workers.

Guys, I gotta tell you, I am so stressed out, I have no idea if we're gonna make payroll again. Totally true. Totally honest. Probably not. Probably got 10. Hi, I'd

like to buy my lunch that I have already. Max, my personal cards are not planning on paying any of us next week.

I got to tell you, it's This isn't about being dishonest. It's about being appropriate, right? We have to understand that that as leaders oven organization it is incumbent on us to find the right time, place and presentation of our flaws in a way that other people could understand, respond to you know it inter in a reasonable manner and work through with us. We can't just say I'm feeling it today. Everybody here it Let's see what happens right now. It's

so end with yes, of the follow under that is, have a point, right? This was This was something that I learned watching planes, trains and automobiles. Steve Martin points this out to John Candice, Um, point in a very nice way. But he's, like, you know, have have a point until the story have a point. And so I think that, you know, this is this is critical as founders that, you know,

if we're just going to dump this out there going back to the examples you give really right, if your this is impacting their work or if they're having to deal with you as being an aggressive boss or a depressed boss or super anxious boss or somewhere, this manifests for them as as a negative, right there, having to deal with with some manifestation of this problem, been talking about. It makes sense, right? If you're just looking for feedback, that's okay, too. But think about what you're gonna do with the feedback. Why? And whether they're the right audience to seek it from, or not. Have a point.

Understand? What? At least you think the endgame is before you begin this conversation about staying over, analyze it and make sure and game it so that it comes out the way you want it. But at least have some idea of what you hope the outcome to be. We don't have the conversation yet.

Correct in from my standpoint, I straddle this land. Ryan, when I talk about this subject with founders, because on the one hand, I don't want to prevent people from sharing issues, especially if there's something you know really bubbling up. You know, we get in mental health issues. Sometimes these things take a dark turn, and I don't like anything that would prevent people from sharing earliest that they kind of get older. They need right. So that's on one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum is I just don't really consider some of the responsibilities that I have, and I just kind of getting puke everything on social media and assume that's just gonna be okay. And it should figure itself out. The world's just not that simple.

It doesn't work quite that easily where possible. I like this measured approach in between. I like being vulnerable. I like sharing my flaws. I like the honesty that comes with this, but I like it in a package where I'm delivering it to people to show that I've got a responsible manner, that I'm dealing with these flaws. That's a wrap

for this episode of the start of therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan on behalf of my partner, Wil Schroder, and all the startups dot com family thanking you for joining us, and we hope you'll continue to join us. Be sure to subscribe rate and comment on iTunes or wherever you love to listen. To start up there, you can find all of our episodes at startups dot com slash podcast. If you're looking for Maura, amazing resource is tow launch or grow your startup. Be sure it ahead to start ups dot com and check out startups Unlimited. It's everything we have to offer from our online university to our amazing community of experts and founders and even all the tools we've built, like his plan fungible in launch rock. It's everything of founder needs. Visit startups dot com slash begin that startups dot com slash b e g i n. You'll thank me later.