If I were

to ask you what is the single greatest cost and starting a company, what would you say? And not just the biggest, but the hardest to quantify the hardest to justify? Is it staffing, cost, capital cost, opportunity cost? I think it's actually emotional cost, and that's what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the start of therapy podcast. Everybody, I'm Ryan Rutan from startups dot com here with my partner, Wil Schroder, to bring you another episode of the start of therapy podcast. Well, in your 25 years of entrepreneurship across nine start up companies, several of those being venture funded. Would it be fair to say that you've spent a minute's worth of emotion?

Probably spent 10 lifetimes worth of emotion through time and capital was the easy part. By comparison, I mean, the the emotional cost is brutal. People talk about their scars from building a start up company, and everyone does. They don't talk about that one time they're raised capital or they don't talk about that one time that a customer canceled on them. Maybe that's part of the story. What they're really talking about is the emotional cost of what happened. Oh, absolutely.

Particularly when you talk about raising capital right because that when you hear stories about people going on raising capital, there's the elation when it's over, right we did it and how exciting that was More common. It's about how many times they get punched in the face by the V. C. S or Angels or whoever it is that they're talking thio and what they're really saying again, it's It's the emotional bruising that they took away from that.

Yeah, and it's a very singular experience if you're fortunate enough to have ah, partner, co founder or spouse. In some cases, that's willing to help shoulder the emotional burden. That's great. That's fantastic. You know what kind of rare this is a very lonely business when it comes right down to it.

Absolutely. And sometimes sadly, it's easier to be alone because in you know, the converse of having a partner or or a spouse or a friend. Who you can share this with is that and and get support from is that they actually provide the opposite. They continuously question you. They no wonder about your motivations. They they ask why you're doing this, and so that can actually have a Della teary ISS effect instead of a support role. So how does it sound? Sometimes being alone is easier.

There's not really a typical support system. There's not ah, generally understood kind of high five system for being a founder. Conversely, in almost every other path, let's say it's through academia. When we were kids and we're growing up, we're getting good grades. Everyone knew that was a high five. They knew if you got an A, you did your best. You're the best. You moved on to a job if you got a good salary. If you get a good job, he was considered the best. When you start a company, there's no great Asian.

There's no way to find out whether you're the best. There is no way for your friends to tell. The difference between you are absolutely insane, and this is a terrible idea, and you're gonna be the next billionaire. They're calibrated. So when your friends and loved ones around you, it's really hard for them to understand. If things were even going well and because you don't get that kind of feedback, it's hard for you to understand that.

Yeah, It's like somebody watching a sport that they've never played, and they don't understand that. Sort of like Like, you know, first time soccer parents all they could do is shout, kick it, kick it right. It's, you know, they just don't have the context for what counts as a win. So the bar is set arbitrarily and unreasonably high, like, Hey, look, you know, we had this great thing happened.

You know, we we've dropped our customer acquisition costs a really reasonable level. And your friend is like, Okay, cool. So you're gonna sell for a $1,000,000,000 now, right? No, not yet. Oh, call me back when that happened. Right there. Just like, OK, so you're not successful yet? Well, and we are just all

the way yet. It's really hard to bring that information home to your spouse, for example. You know, when I go home and I talked to my wife who's been through the startup game with me for a very long time so she actually gets it. But in the early days, when I'd come back toward and I would say, Hey, we just sold our first product or hey, We just got our customer acquisition costs down or some other start up nerdy thing that only founders would tell their wives. She got it. But at the same time, I'm telling her and we're losing tons of money, so you finish up with that. It's kind of hard to kind of get the high five now again, going into this other universe. If I were a law student and I said,

Hey, I'm racking up tons and tons of debt, mice, classes, air killing me. But I'm gonna get a lot of great. I'm gonna become a lawyer. Everyone would understand that every single person back. Well, you know what? You stick with it. We get it working hard, good grades. Get the law degree. You're gonna win. We don't get that. As founders

rise, you're a certainty of path, right, Andy? The outcomes air so amorphous and so uncertain that there isn't the sense that if I just keep doing this, I certainly get something. The only thing that you certainly get if you keep it up is older, and that's not necessarily a

win. Absolutely. And I think this puts us in a tough spot at work we're alone, Right? Chances are unless we maybe have a cofounder, all the folks around us are relying on us to pay their check. Right? So there's a lot of frustrating things that you really can't share openly and frankly, probably shouldn't, right? If I'm sitting there walking into into the office saying, My God, like, I have no idea if I'm gonna be able to make payroll next month, You may feel that way. Probably not the best thing to share with everyone else, right? Yeah, There's a

lot of burdens that gets singularly shouldered in the outer space.

But that's just one piece. This this whole game, this whole journey of starting a company is just nothing but one impossible task after the next. And because of that, because you can't share how frustrating this is with the very people that you're around all day long. If he comes this painful, lonely existence and that starts to really burn away at what I call emotional capital,

it does. And you've got the you know, the fact that you're not sharing these emotional lows and challenges with other people and all these things that are dragging you down often leads people to form the opinion that you're just so emotionally stalwart that they can dump anything they want on you and right, So from the from the downward direction you've got the people that you know you're responsible for see you as being incredibly strong and, you know, being incredibly emotionally fit. And so they do share their problems with you. And you are responsible for supporting them emotionally while also supporting yourself emotionally without the same benefit. And it just can really tear you down over time. Sometimes doesn't even take much time. It can happen really fast.

Yeah, And there are certain instances were you're really almost not allowed to be able to share how you're feeling or what's going through your head because you have a responsibility toe actually pull people through. If you and I were to go to our kids and say, Boy, I don't really know if I'm gonna be able to keep you safe for what's gonna happen to you in the future or how things were gonna go to be terrified. E. I

use that technique to get you to do if I'm honest,

you in bio means, even if that's true, there is a time and a place to be able to share that. However, sticking with that analogy, if you talk to other parents, you can talk about that all day long. Similarly, what I was recommended have Founder's talkto other founders. There's nothing more cathartic than being a room full of other founders. Finally, be able to pour your heart out to talk about what's actually bothering you and every other person that room go. Wow, I thought I was the only person that had that feeling. It's amazing.

Yeah, just just the fact that you no longer feel completely isolated alone, even without getting into and unpacking the issues. Just knowing the other people are going through the same thing helps a ton.

You know, we've done this for a long time. We've informally, wherever I have been, whether I've been in the Midwest on the West Coast, et cetera, I would get a group of about 12 to 15 founders together, incidentally, most that had never met each other before, and we'd always go into a place to make my living room or something like that. We would all sit around a table and have one conversation, meaning kind of think of campfire style, where everybody's talking about one thing one the conversation and 12 cocktails. Remember, I remember the first half of some of these meetings. They always end the same. And so what happens,

though, is we kind of go through the same cadence. But it's always magical in its own right. We just ask folks, we say, Okay, we're gonna sit here. All you gotta say is, Here's what I'm working on. And for what it's worth, here's what I could use help with. Invariably, the first person that goes doesn't matter if they've ever been to one before. Doesn't matter how they know the other people in the room. Well, say some version of I'm pulling my hair out,

trying to make insert problem happen. I am drowning. I'm just at a point now where things were just so intense. I don't know what the hell's to d'oh! And for the first time they look around the room and every single person is nodding their head. Yeah, right in it. And then they're thinking, I thought I was the only person that felt that way, and it's such a reflection of what a lonely journey. This is so

I think that knowing that you're not alone in all of this is a huge benefit. But I think another challenge may be the next challenge that the founders faces wondering. OK, when

will all this end? Right? And I think from my standpoint, you know, I've been through this a whole bunch of times and so have you, Ryan and so some cereal founders. But I think the problem most founders have is they've never done it before. They've never been through the process of starting up, so they don't know how long it takes. Right? So they're thinking, Well, I started up. It's been a year. Why aren't we rich up right? And I don't really feel like that. But they want to see some sort of positive reinforcement,

and there is not right, if anything, for the first few years. It's small winds with giant losses, right? It's Hey, we got that one accustomed to acquire, but we just lost $10,000 this month. At first you can withstand some of those. But, boy, as time goes on, starts to wear on you.

It does, and I think that you know. The typical defense mechanism against that is to celebrate the small winds, right? Like every little step along the way. And so you get these ebbs and flows. I don't want to paint the picture that it's just at an emotional downhill from the minute you start the company until the end, whatever the end might be. But it is certainly a roller coaster, and I think that, uh, it's really important to be able to celebrate those little winds as you go is that it tends to be what refills the ah, the emotional bank a little bit along the way. And there isn't a single answer to how long is this gonna take? Right? It takes is long as it takes is the answer, which is a non answer, but it kind of close.

We can get a look. It takes 10 years to build a successful company. Can you do it unless hopefully. But if it takes you 10 years, that's not unreasonable. At the rate we're burning through emotional capital, staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. Every night, wondering how the hell we got ourselves into this mess. To do that for 10 years to do for 10 days is brutal. To do it for 10 years, I don't think people really understand perfectly. People have never done this before. What a hell of a slug that ISS. However, here's the flip side to it when you actually settle in. When you actually calibrate to the fact that this takes a long time, it actually takes a little bit of weight off your shoulders.

I know it has for May, because once I started to learn that building, something valuable is going to take a lot of time building something shitty could be done very quickly, right? You know, you can half ass a lot of things quickly, but to build something of quality of subsidence, of true value takes a long time, and that's okay, But you have to know that going in, I just I don't hear enough founders talk about Lynn Jeh Vitti. I don't hear enough founders talk about Hey, I want to build this thing. It's gonna be amazing. I'd love it to be done sooner. I'd love it to be successful sooner, but I do understand that it's gonna probably take me a decade to get this right. I pretty much sure that never and yet it's universally true.

The pressure there's increased by your own expectations. It's increased by external expectations. For example, if you take on Capitol, that's a really hard conversation to have you like Oh, yeah, guys, you know, I know you want to I peel within five years. But, hey, I was thinking, like maybe just take 10 years to ride this out and enjoy ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. Always met fantastic feedback from your investors. And so I think I think you're right.

To some degree, it's a matter of giving yourself permission. And it's something I talk about a lot. There's giving yourself permission or understanding that it's okay that these things kind of take is as long as they do, and that most of this urgency it's fairly self created, and it actually has a negative impact. You know, the tend to be like, the more we hurry up and try to get things done, them or we have fast. In the short term, the more debt were accumulating both on the emotional side and just on the on the quality of what we're building, and then that costs you more in the long run, right? It won't work. You don't stick around for the long run, right? As you said, we need to have more conversations around. Longevity?

Absolutely. And I think the problem with burning all this emotional stamina quickly on the front end. I mean, let's talk about the 1st 6 months. 12 months, 18 months, two years. Dude, if you're burnt out by year two, which isn't unusual, by the way, you have eight years to go, right? That's like hopping on the bench and you've got 10 reps to do. You do tune, right? I'm all done here. It's

sound

like my work here. Yeah, too. But realistically, this is something where you have to be able to pace yourself. But you could on Lee pace yourself if you know what the pace is. Well, that's

what I was gonna ask, and I I don't have a good answer for this for myself yet. I'm trying to go back through time and really reflect on how I've handled this. But I have admitted that things take longer. I'm not sure that that's changed. How I spend my emotions right. I think it's made me more aware of when I have depleted my emotional bank and that I need to give myself a little time to recover rather than just continuing well past the point of burn and keep it going. Do you feel like it's the same for you? Do you feel like you've actually changed how much emotion you put into something and how quickly you burn it or you just Yeah, we're aware that you're burnt and

you need to do something 1000% when I first started. I've been at this now 25 years. When I first started, I was 19 and I was full guns. I wanted everything done. Yesterday. I felt like all I need to do is spend more hours to get more output, and some of that wasn't the wrong approach for that moment of my life. Later on, in my life had become a little bit more experienced and had been through this process numerous times. I started to realize I can't fire all of my bullets, you know, beat my emotion is my energy, my cash, everything every single day, right, Like at some point you could only hit Turbo for so long,

right? sure. Some point you have to be able to kind of settle down for a longer game. And I think for founders and friends of mine who are serial founders, they've done this a few more times. They're further along in their careers. They get it now. Okay, listen, the steps could be hard. I'm gonna want to be able to do it quickly. I can still get stepped on quickly without always burning all of my emotional energy to get there

right? Well, let's let's talk about another issue that comes along hand in hand with this. As you start to realize, this is a long game and you're ready to play the long game and you're ready to balance your emotional spending against that, that long time. There are other things. They get depleted along the way. Right? You're just your energy levels, the amount of financial stamina you have to continue with this. And what happens when those things start to break down,

right? I mean, we're talking about the cost of going broke. Think what happens when I have no energy and I have no money, right? Because to your point, these things tend to go hand in hand. The differences. Money tends to be a little bit more finite, weaken kid ourselves and having a little bit more emotional stamina. But money is fairly binder. It's it's either there it's not,

and and the benefit is you could borrow money. You can't borrow emotion

great, and the cost of going broke actually follows a little bit of the same timeline as faras being unrealistic now. It doesn't change much, by the way, but But bear with me, let's say that I would were to say, It's gonna take you seven years before your startup turns a profit going into it. I had this weird crystal ball that I could just tell you. It's because gonna be exactly seven years. You would be able to look at your finances and say, That's cool. I got 18 months tops of runway. I'm never going to make it, But that's not how a startup start. No one tells you that it's gonna take seven years for you to come around in your mind. You build your first income statement, your first pro forma you make your first forecast.

You said man, we can get this thing profitable in nine months. It never happens, but but spreadsheets are like people. If you torture them long enough, they'll tell you anything you want here. And so you could absolutely make that true on a spreadsheet, however time in reality set in in 18 months, 36 months and beyond. Your just burning through all of your cash and in the not too distant future, the startups never as far along as you thought it would be. But you're far broker than you thought you would be. And that's brutal at so many levels.

Yeah, and that this is where you want to talk about you. Even if you did have a support structure in place, you did have a good partner and either life or in business, family and friends supporting you at the point where your finances start to be on public display because they're starting to fall apart, that support in turn around really quickly. And instead of people bolstering, you threw that. You get a lot of opinion that you should start changing your plans. You should do something different. You should dump this thing now, and it's brutal from an emotional standpoint for the founder because you have invested so much, it's not just the money right again that hidden costs. I think this is one of the biggest issues is that the emotional cost is completely hidden from everybody else. They don't see it, but that cost is right there along with the time, the money,

the energy that you've spent on this and again, that's that burden you have to bear alone. So they're you know, they're making these great logical, practical arguments and you're going. But I have poured myself into this thing, and I've already admitted to myself, This is gonna take a long time and yet it still makes that decision to keep going at that point. So absolutely just agonizing

right, which is why you don't want to be in a position where you're going to run out of money. Now nobody wants to run out of money. But when we talked to founders, particularly young founders, when we asked them, how do you plan on keeping the lights on personally, not for the business, but for yourself, personally. Beyond whatever funding you may have raised or whatever savings you may have etcetera, there's almost never an answer. Every now and again. And I love this every now and again. I'll get an entrepreneur that says, Yeah, you know,

honest, have a have a part time job or I did design websites on the side or I do something else that's going to kind of keep things going while I continue to have to feed this business. And more often than not, that's the right answer, right? People think, Well, if I'm not fully dedicated to start up, it's not gonna work. You're not wrong. But if you run out of money in the process, what does it matter?

It also stops right. At that point, it just ends. Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of the like, a service proxy or some other way that you can actually be living in your business but still surviving, right so you can find ways to to generate income, that air still related to the thing that you want to build. If you want to build some sort of scalable product, awesome, launch a service component to that so you could be making money as you go until you get the product to where it needs to be, and that gives you essentially unlimited runway related to that. This was something I wrote the first time I heard this. And I've heard it a few times, typically from younger first time founders and typically folks, always folks who are seeking capital. I heard this phrase our target burn rate.

And I just remember, like, leaning back and thinking. Did you just tell me that you have a goal in mind? That's how much money you're gonna be losing every month. You might be thinking of this, Ryan. I get I get the purpose for it. I'm being a little glib here. But it was such a foreign thought to me that I wouldn't be aiming to be solving, like, the entire way now being realistic about It's great. But seeing it like, yeah, we need to do is get a $1,000,000 then we can burn 200 a month for, you know,

for five months and then, of course, will be profitable at the end of that. Okay. Awesome. Call

me when you've done well, and we're talking about your longevity financially. Right? We're saying that Look, if you know, it's gonna take best case 3 to 5 years for the company to get some sort of footing whereby I could actually pay you. Then you have to be able to deliberately make up that Delta. It really doesn't matter how. Right? It doesn't matter how you make up the delta, whether you're moving back in with your parents or whether you're getting a bartending job or, you know, whether you're designing websites, whatever right. What matters is that you got a deliberate path to keep the lights on and you know no shame in the game, right? Like whatever you have to do to keep the lights on, do it and be proud of it.

Have an unlimited runway. That's exactly what you should be aiming. Absolutely. It will completely change your emotional state. It will change your ability to keep things going. It'll change your decision making, because when that pressure starts to come, when you can see the end of the runway coming, you only have one choice. That's to pull Oppa's hard as you can, and the reality is that rarely ends well,

right exactly where this starts to culminate, and I think this is worth getting into. Is your now burning all of your emotional capital. You're now burning all of your actual capital, and everything around you starts to get more and more intense. Your relationships at home, your relationships with your co workers, everyone right, because there's almost no version. When you get into a startup where you're not just a giant ball of freakish anxiety, right, it's not happy. Good times, you know, it's it's not. It's not high fives all around, right. And there's no version where being in that cold drin of stress isn't gonna severely impact all of your other relationships. And I think that's where things start to really come to a head. Yeah, it's sort

of like the last category of spending right and not always there plenty of ways to ruin relationships before you get to the dire straits that we're talking about now. But certainly if you still have good relationships at this point, you will start to lean on them. You will start to do things that are counter to health within those relationships,

right? Exactly, and you see this in so many different capacities, right? You see this manifest in so many different ways. It's you're not there for your kid's soccer game, right, That's brutal, right? I mean, you're working in state hours and not suggesting that startup founders have, ah, monopoly and working insane hours and missing soccer games. But for you, this is your reason why you are, and you can feel it. You know that you're not there.

Your kid can feel that they know you're not there. Your spouse can feel they know that you're not there. And when that starts to build up, not just one of 50 things this starts really drain you at a very deep personal level. In a way, a business breaking down doesn't have the same effect. There's no version where a marriage counselor says it would be great for this marriage. One of you should start a startup, and in turn it it is a tire exploding ball of emotion. Right? No one would ever say that. This is a terrible idea when it comes to building relationships.

Absolutely. And and I think that you raised an interesting point and that you said, you know, start companies don't have a monopoly on these types of issues, but I think that there is a difference, and I don't think that it's it's subtle. And that's to say that you know, if you're if you're a corporate raider, you're working within in some corporate structure. When you're making the decision to go, be it the kid's soccer game or put in those two or three extra hours of work, you're really talking about a truly personal choice. It will only cost you right as the employees not being there might cost you. Your bonus might cost you. Your next promotion might cost you some capital with you're the people that you work with, but that's it right, and you can make that trade as a startup founder.

When you make these decisions to be somewhere else and to take time away from the start up, you can potentially be costing a lot more, right? The people who count on your clients, your customers, your employees, your partners. And so I think that when you start, if you're the type of person who considers, you know, kind of the holistic picture and most started founders tend to do that, there's a lot more gravity to that decision. It's the same decision at the end of the day be here, be there, but I think that the amount of emotional drain that one faces is significantly higher as

a started founder. Yeah, absolutely. And it's It's so binary, right? I can either be at the soccer game or I can be at work. I sort of can't do both. And again, parents face this all the time. This isn't unique to founders, but to your point, you know that the moment you leave the office and now you're at soccer game, all the shit that's not happening back at the office may make it so you may not have an office to come back to every day. The found the founders wrestling with this balance, right? And I was think about it in terms of having a certain amount in the bank with each of your relationship speeds to be for myself, my friends,

my wife, you know, my my family, etcetera. And I feel like just start up by definition because it's so all consumptive just drains those balances as fast as possible. It almost feels exponentially so, And every time I talk to other founders who have been through other careers before, so maybe they were previously attorneys, or maybe they worked in banking or they worked in some other field. They said, Man, that was tough, like, there's no question that was a tough in history. But this is a whole other thing, and I think Ryan,

part of what you were saying, we're talking about, you know, taking away from the business. You created this from scratch. This doesn't feel like a job. This feels like something that's a part of you that's that that's at risk, right? Not just

that we already analogize this to parenting and having Children, and there's a reason for that. I mean, you and I are both parents, and so it's an easy analogy for us to draw on. But there's a ton of parallels to this in terms of the type of commitment that you make, and we talked about making a commitment for 10 years with the startup company. You got at least 18 years with the kids, right? But state. But it's the same kind of thing. Good point. And I think that's I think, that there's there's some big parallels

here. Yeah, and I think if there were ever a crash course right, if there were ever a startup 101 that could be delivered. A potential founders and someone to the best of their ability could say, Look, here's a handful of things that going into this, you're gonna pretty much have to give up. You're gonna have to come to terms with, right? Any money. You have saved this case a goodbye. You're never gonna see it again, right? All those trips you wanted to go on, cancel. Not gonna happen,

right? And and kind of go down the line. And as part of that little pep talk, if you can call it that, it would be in all of those times you said you would be there. You won't be there. Now, I'm not advocating that. I'm not saying that's a good thing or that you shouldn't try to do your best to get around it. I'm saying people have talked to thousands of founders for decades. I've yet to see a lot of people get around this issue. I'd love to, but I've yet to see it. Yeah,

I think. And you're absolutely right in the same way that we said you need to be realistic about things like that when we're gonna be profitable or How long is this gonna take? Or you know, when will all this end? We need to be really realistic about the true cost of this issue and how pervasive it is and how many other places it touches on. And I think that you brought up, um, interesting point a minute ago when you were talking about the fact that it starts to feel exponential. And, you know, as we've gone through this discussion today, we've taken it fairly sequentially, Right? Was starting with being alone and then and then talking about you know what? You kind of make peace with that. Then you have to make peace with the fact that this could last a long time. And then there's the,

you know, the long race that we run drains a lot of other resource is at the same time. And then we sort of like the last of those being this cost relationships. I think at that point because you're really calm, pounding a number of issues, it truly has gotten exponential. And I think that, you know, the further you get into this, the more grounded unstable you really have to be, is a founder, not to let this go off the rails because it happens so much faster. The further you get into anything, it's a little counterintuitive. You might think that, like early on,

when I don't really know, you know which direction to go with. This rocket ship would be a lot easier to go off the rails. I think the truth is that, you know, once you really have to find a clear path, it's actually harder to stay on that path on because of these exponential building costs.

Yeah, I think we tend to rationalize that if we just make it past this one milestone. If we just get launched, if we just get the next version of the product out, if we could just get our marketing work, we just hired this one person. Then we'll be on Easy Street and the problem with that mentality, and it's a survival instinct. We needed to keep itself stain. The problem is, when we start toe relay that to the people around us, and we make basically promises we can't keep. Hey, you know, I'm no, I'm working crazy hours now, but when we just get this one thing out,

things will slow down. You tell that to your life until you tell your wife t her husband would have you and they believe it because as far as they're concerned, that's what you told them. And then time and time again, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, these issues keep on cropping up. I think what we're talking about is setting expectations with yourself to say, Hey, this is a long, kind of grueling process and then setting expectations with the people around you so that they have a better buffer, a better platform to be able, understand? We're going through it also understand. Hey, you're gonna miss some events.

Hey, you know, you're not always gonna be in the best of spirits, but they understand why. Yeah, and

I think the understanding why is really important and not just the why. Oh, because you're doing this thing. It's It's the why you're doing that thing right? I think that some people find themselves in trouble, and I know I have. In the past, when it wasn't clear to people around me truly, why I wasn't gonna be that I don't mean right. I'm gonna be not gonna be there because I'm gonna be doing this other work. It's why would I be doing that work? And I think that's something that's hard for people to understand when they're not in it is that we're doing that work most times because we want to be right. It's It is a conscious trade. It doesn't always seem fair. It may not always be healthy, but I think very rarely and this is it. This is an interesting,

you know, and this is where the corporate life and the start of life really break from each other. There've been few times where I've been truly compelled to do something in the course of a startup that somewhere deep down I didn't want to be doing right, all right. It may not have always happened the way I wanted to. I may not have wanted to do it when I was doing it right. For example, if it's at the same time as a soccer game, I'd probably rather be at the soccer game, right. But I still wanted to be doing that for every point. I think that that's a huge difference between what you see in a lot of jobs. I I know there are people out there who absolutely love their jobs, but I don't think it's the same level of attachment. I don't think that they could say they always feel the same way about making this trades. And that was something important that I wasn't communicating to.

People like, Yeah, but, you know, this is costing. You're missing out on this. You're missing out on that Missing. Yeah, but for me, do you know how enjoyable going into my business and solving a problem that I've been working on for weeks or months or years is right That's so crucial to who I am as a person? It's in the same way that, like you want to be there when your kid takes the first steps and you want to have been part of that process. Same thing happens with each little step. The company takes two, and it's just really hard for people to understand that. And I've tried to find ways to communicate more clearly,

and I think you know, the closer the relationship, the easier it is. It's easy for me to explain to my wife. Now, look, this is how me doing this particular thing is gonna make me feel. And so for me, it's

an okay, Trey, that's great. It's a with if I would leave folks with one thing, it would be Don't go this alone, because the real emotional pain that folks are feeling comes from doing this alone, you know, And by alone, in this case, I'm not just talking about co founder, spouse, et cetera. I'm talking about other founders I've seen in every case when I sit down with founders and we just talk about the emotional side of it which, incidentally, is like 90% of the discussions that I have is the emotional side, not necessarily the business side. Everyone feels so much better about it.

You've gotta have an outlet to be able to get this stuff off your shoulders by sitting across from someone that actually does the same thing and so kind of finding Ah, little bit of a support group in that is life changing. And I watched it over and over and over, and it sort of is the answer, helping cope with some of this

totally agree. And so I would say, like if you're sitting somewhere standing somewhere running, doing whatever you're doing right. And you're listening to to this discussion. I would say that there were some great takeaways in this discussion, but if I was gonna hand people one thing from today's discussion, it's not the value of the discussion that we just had. And I'm just echoing what you said. Well, it's to find that support structure and go have this discussion yourself. I think that the real value in this type of discussion isn't repeating it over and over and over again with the founders that, you know, with your with your support group, whoever they might be and hashing this out for yourself. All right. I don't think that you can take enough away from hearing other people talk about this.

You just go. Okay, Cool. I feel better back to it. You've got to get this stuff off your travel and you have to have these discussions yourself. Absolute well, we've reached the end of this segment of the startup therapy podcast, but in the meantime, if you love what we're doing, head overto iTunes and subscribe and comment, if you want to connect with us directly, we're super easy to reach. Just email us at therapy at startups dot com. Will and I take time to respond to every e mail that comes in. So please don't be hesitant. Don't be shy.

Ask away. Let us know how we're doing. We love the feedback. We live on the feedback. What we shared today is a tiny fraction of the help that you can get from startups dot com. Whether you need to learn how a startup gets built, where to find a mentor, how to raise capital? How can I find new customers really anything that your startup company needs you could get access to. Thousands of Resource is on exactly those topics on startups dot com. With that, let's all get back to building something amazing. This is Ryan Rue Tan for my partner, Wil Schroder in the entire startups dot com community. Saying goodbye for now,