How Bipolar and ADD Are Fueling the World's Most Successful Founders | Cameron Herold (Podcast 361)

We don't have to pretend we have our together. You know, it's okay to say I'm going to a therapist. Wow, what was that like? Or to talk about our feelings and say we're scared. Like, men are allowed to have feelings and we're allowed to actually express them and we're allowed to get help for it. And then realize that when you ask for help, it's kind of like this, can you help me? When the person comes in, it feels amazing, right? And we're also if you don't ask someone else for hug or for help, you're kind of robbing them of the chance to help you.

In this episode, we delve into the entrepreneur's Rollercoaster curve, exploring its nuances, highs, lows, and the crucial moments in between. The conversation navigates through stages like informed optimism, crisis of meaning, and informed pessimism. We touch upon how men and women handle these curves differently and why it's essential to share this journey with those close to us. I share my personal experience acknowledging the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship and how it affects our mental and emotional well being. We explore the stages of informed optimism and crisis of meaning, shedding light on the challenges entrepreneurs face. The conversation then shifts to the importance of social connections and the impact on relationships. The Entrepreneur's Roller Coaster Curve is portrayed as a powerful tool to understand and manage the tumultuous journey of building a business. The entrepreneur's roller coaster is not just a ride, it's a framework that shapes our professional and personal lives. Understanding its stages is key to maintaining balance and achieving long term success.

I want to talk about the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. I assume that's not a surprise since that's what we always talk about and what you sent me for the show. I read this a long time ago. Actually, I don't even know if I read it a long time ago. I think you told me about it a long time ago because I was at some point along this rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship and so was everyone else in the room. And I remember people going, it's like he knows me. What's going on? And that's when it became really obvious that this wasn't a cool infographic that you found online and decided to write an e book about. But like, this is a thing. This is a thing that happens to everybody who has a business. And I was thinking because our audience is so general in a way, this is a thing that probably applies to everyone, but also especially to entrepreneurs because we're all nuts.

The model that I will talk about definitely applies to entrepreneurs, because we're all nuts and we're bipolar. Most of us are bipolar. If you actually read the traits of bipolar disorder, most entrepreneurs would be clinically diagnosed as bipolar. And I have some data points on this. Other people ride the roller coaster, but not necessarily as high and low as most entrepreneurs do. And there is some clinical data there that show that entrepreneurs. There's only 3% of the population are entrepreneurs, and only 3% of the population are bipolar. That's kind of interesting, right? And then when you actually go through all the traits and realize that most entrepreneurs are bipolar, and a lot of individuals have signs, some signs, but not eight or nine of the 10 or 11. Right. They might have four or five.

Right. Yeah, I have the list. And I went, you said most people check off five things from this list. And I was like, let's see. And then I was like, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Oh, oh, at least five. This is at least five. Good, good, good.

And what were you. Right. Because I'm 10 through 11.

I think I was, well, we'll go through it. Because I actually, it's in my notes here.

The reason it's really important for every individual is individuals work for entrepreneurial companies. If you work for an entrepreneur or an entrepreneurial company, you're strapped to the back of that person. You know, we've all heard about Steve Jobs being hypomanic.

Yeah.

Right. And bipolar. So when he would go through these crazy ups and downs, everyone around him was affected by that and wouldn't have been interesting if they just knew. That's natural.

Right.

Instead of, he's crazy. Right. Two of the three founders of Netscape were bipolar. Clinically bipolar. Wouldn't it be cool if all their employees understood that or if their spouse understood that? Because when a spouse of an entrepreneur goes and talks to her friends or his friends, the other spouses are going, no, my husband's a lawyer. He's not like that. No, he's a little bit upset, but no, he's not like that. But spouses of entrepreneurs go, yeah, that's my husband, or that's my wife. Right. So I think the vast population is affected by it, not necessarily because they're bipolar, but because they're strapped to our back.

That's a good point. And I have heard in entrepreneur groups, people talk about things like this. But also, I think a lot of folks listening and watching right now are going to go, oh, that's why my supervisor, boss, the owner of the company, this, that, and the other thing, there's a lot of people who listen to and watch this that aren't entrepreneurs. But the idea that we're strapped to someone's back. Good point. Haven't thought of that. When you're married to somebody, you're definitely strapped to them. But the kids of entrepreneurs, and the.

Kids are for sure, right?

Brothers in laws and the fathers and parents and the colleagues and co workers, all of these people get affected. So we make these crazy ripple effects just by being our crazy selves.

Yeah, the butterfly effect is massive. Like, I grew up with a father that was an entrepreneur and two grandfathers that were entrepreneurs. And then my brother and sister and I are all entrepreneurs. So all we've ever really known is that entrepreneurial highs and lows. And so we've all lived it. So we kind of thought it was all pretty natural. And then when we started to uncover this model about 30 years ago to see and then apply it to all these other entrepreneurs, it became very real real fast.

Well, let's skip. Let's dive into this because to understand the roller coaster and to have people that we work with and live with understand it as well, it goes without saying that our attitudes what build company culture and family culture. And so I think it's important to note that even if you're not diagnosed as bipolar, this can still affect you. I, to my knowledge, I'm not bipolar, but I definitely have more poles and swings to those polls, I should say, than Jen does.

What if bipolar wasn't a disorder? What if it was actually a superpower? So I actually wrote this. I was at the TED conference this year. I go to the main TED every year and they were filming a lot of the attendees with some thought that we had. And my thought was, what if bipolar and attention deficit were superpowers and not disorders?

I mean, ADD has to be a superpower because too many people have it for it to be something that's wrong. And also it rocks for everything. But sitting down in school and taking notes in a frame, freaking English class.

Right.

So.

So if you unpack Attention deficit disorder in the entrepreneurial world. Yeah, it's actually dispersed focus which allows us to see everything. If I'm an entrepreneur, I want to know what's happening with my customer and the market and the economy and suppliers and finances. But I don't want to get too hyper focused on one thing because I'll miss all the rest of the details. So the fact that I see everything means that I'm actually very tuned into the whole thing. But a teacher or an engineer or a doctor, a lawyer wants you to be super focused. They would be terrible entrepreneurs. Yeah, bipolar is very similar. So the superpower side of bipolar disorder is that the mania, the excitement and the energy is why people, people follow us. The stress and depression is simply us course correcting and needing to plug in and recharge. But most entrepreneurs feel bad about that. Or even on individuals, you think about a high performance athlete that operates at their peak. They need to relax and de stress. Right. Right now we're in the middle of the the basketball NBA playoffs. Right. The Toronto Raptors just won game one. So we've got this. Everyone in completely manic from last night. We need a couple more days to recharge before game two on Sunday. That's natural. But we don't think that's a problem for them to have to recharge. Right. Entrepreneurs who are struggling with bipolar disorder, if they realize it's not a disorder and it's a superpower, then they're okay with taking time off. They're okay with taking off in the middle of the day and telling your team, by the way, I'm going to go for a massage. And your employees go, great, because you were a stress case this morning. Yeah.

Good. Nobody wants you here. See you later, boss. Have a great weekend. Finally we can relax. Everybody Unclench. Yeah, I think we all work with people like that. And what I don't like even working with myself when I'm like that half the time. Sometimes I feel like a pinball where I'll be like, it's such a great day. I get to drive to San Francisco. I'm gonna hang out with my friend Cam. We're gonna do a show and then eat some food, walk around. So nice out. And then I'll get an email from another friend who's like, hey, I just sold my company for $200 million. My first reaction is, God, that's awesome. I love this guy. He's so smart. And then I go, crap, I didn't sell my company for 200 million. I'm a failure. What? I mean, I like what I'm doing, but I'm just never going to be successful. But I'm as smart as David. What's my problem? Why didn't I do that? I'm a failure. I should just go home and dive into a book about how I can do the same thing so I can prove to myself or whatever the psychology is. And it's just like, up, down, up, down, up, down. And God forbid you Wake up with anxiety because that just Fs up the whole day. There's not enough coffee in my kitchen.

Employees. It screws up your team. It screws up yourself. Right? Yeah. So here's a reason why bipolar is different in the entrepreneur than it is in the rest of the population. Most of the rest of the population can talk to someone about their stress, about their fears, about their anxieties, because they can talk to a coworker. But as the CEO of a company, you can't tell your VPs that you're stressed or worried or depressed because it might freak them out. And you can't tell you're bored because that'll freak out of your board. So you live in this very lonely place of one. And maybe you have a coach or maybe you're in a Mastermind group like we were. We met at Mastermind talks. And you're in a community of other people that go, oh, my God, I'm just as crazy as you. Maybe I'm not crazy.

Right?

Right. Until you get into that space, you feel very, very locked up by yourself. I was identified very young as being bipolar and add. I was in grade school, in grade six, and I was sitting outside the principal's office, and my dad was inside the principal's office. It was the only time I'd ever been. And I remember my dad inside, and I could hear through the door saying, there's nothing wrong with my kid. The problem is the school system. The problem is the medical system. My kid doesn't have a disorder. He's just like me. He didn't say he's just an entrepreneur. He said, he's just like me.

Right.

And my dad walked out. He goes, come on, we're leaving. I'm like, what's wrong? He they want me to put you on medication because they think you're too up and down all the time. Right. They think you're too wild in the classroom. But he didn't want to medicate me. He wanted to give me an outlet to go do that.

Sure. When I first split from the other company, I talked about this on another show called Impact Theory, where I felt all this anxiety. But what it was was not just anxiety because of for anxiety's sake. It was. I was like a blender that was going, and the top was off. And what I needed to do was take some action, rebuild my business, do something, instead of. Because everyone else's advice. Non entrepreneurs were like, jordan, go to Hawaii for, like, two weeks. Just relax de stress, look at the future, think about what you want to do. And I was just thinking, this is a person who's wired much differently than myself. Because the last thing I wanted to do was be away from the phone, the Internet, and what I needed to do to get moving again. The last place I wanted to be was on a beach, going yolo.

Yeah.

You know, that was not it. But the idea was take that blunder with the top off energy and focus it like a laser beam on something. And that was what worked for me.

The only time we should take the time off, and we often don't, is when they're at kind of the bottom of the curve. Right. So when you get to the bottom of this. This roller coaster, you can't think clearly. Right. You're too stressed, you're too kind of myopic on issues. You're worried. The adrenaline's running, it's fear. And I don't know what the medical terms are, but you need to get out. Okay. You need to go to the beach. You need to go walk around on the grass within your bare feet. You need to just take some time off.

Right.

And it's hard for us to do that because we're so hardwired to just keep trying harder. But if we keep trying harder, we often end up like that fly trying to get out the window. That's just. And then they end up dead. Right, Right.

They're dead in between the two panes of glass.

Yeah.

We'll get into each of the phases of this entrepreneurial roller coaster. But I did get to the. I found the piece where it says most entrepreneurs say yes to at least five of the following questions. Are you filled with energy?

Yes.

Does your mind get flooded with ideas? Yes. Are you driven, restless and unable to keep still? Yes. Do you often work on little sleep? Well, no. I very consciously go to bed early and make sure to get enough sleep. That's pretty new for me, though. Wasn't always the case, so I didn't highlight that one. But 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago, I certainly could have.

Well, I'll tell you me, on the sleep one, I'm working on little sleep because I thought it would be really cool if I sleep with the blinds open because I have this view of the mountains and the ocean, so I can wake up with sunrise, But I'm waking up at a time when the earth is telling me to wake up, not when my body's ready. So I am working on little sleep. Frustrating.

There you go. So we all do this. Can you be euphoric I don't even. I'm not sure. So I didn't highlight that one. Probably, but not as near, not nearly as often as I would like. Are you easily irritated by minor obstacles? What do you think? Am I easily irritated by minor obstacles? That's like her chief. Her cheap thing is. Are you kidding me? You're upset about that? It's like, there's nothing so trivial that I can find an exaggeration. No, like, it can be.

I just watched this.

This glass door, there's fingerprints on it right now. I mean, it could be anything, but.

You would be the only employee that would notice that kind of stuff. Most employees would be like, there's a fingerprint. But we're like, no, that's a part of my brand. Yeah, right. It reflects on me. Like, right now, there's marks on the wall here. They drive me nuts.

Yeah.

Like, no one else would actually care that there's marks on the wall from the chairs. But I would. Like, can't we just paint this once in a while?

There are things like typos and emails where I just go, I can't believe it. Everyone thinks I'm an idiot now.

Look at.

Someone read that and went, jordan doesn't know how to spell.

I had an argument with somebody online about that the other day. They said it's okay for people to spell incorrectly. I'm like, no. She goes, yeah, but we're dyslexic. I'm like, you can be dyslexic and still give a. It's their spell check.

Yeah. Look, you're not writing a note to your friend on the phone. This is a business thing. There's spell check. You can ask someone or it's a Facebook post.

Like, yeah, it does actually ref. Really? I knew. Like, even if it was just me.

Yeah, that's. That's a good point. It does. And is it fair? No. Does that matter in life generally also? No.

No.

Can you burn out periodically? Yeah. Okay. Do you act out sexually? No.

That's also flirting. Heavy flirting.

I'm good.

Okay.

Right.

Jen, she's like, you better be. If that was one I highlighted, I would never admit it right now. Do you feel persecuted by those who do not accept your vision? This one I had a question about. What does that actually mean?

Do you kind of get defensive if someone disagrees with your idea or your vision on something?

Oh, I used to. Now nobody goes. Podcasting is not going to be a thing. That's.

I mean, I think you should do X or. I don't think you should do that.

Oh, that happens all the time. I mean, even when people are like, I don't really like the music and the new thing, I'm like, I write back what I want to say is right. But what I write back is I'm not concerned about people's impressions right now. You'll get used to the music. It's fine.

Okay, so you're actually good on that one.

I remember when I was 28, 27. 28. And I started the company, people would go, you're teaching social skills. Nobody gives a crap about that. Or, you're 27, who's going to listen to you? And I remember thinking, I want to kill you in your sleep. I'm going to make a bunch of money just so that one day you see me getting into a nice car and you go, crap.

You're driven, restless, and unable to keep still. As three. As one. Those are three different ones. Oh, so I don't know if that's a typo the way the book was outlined, but.

So it actually comes on one line.

Yeah, so those are three. Those are three separate. So it would actually come out with.

A yes, yes and yes.

Yeah. So you're probably nine for 11. Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Wait, hold on. Yeah, seven on here. But that doesn't count seven.

So then eight, nine. So you're nine for 11. So according to the medical community, those are the clinical diagnose traits for bipolar disorder. If you say yes to 5, you're on the spectrum. If you say yes to 10 or 11, you'd be clinically diagnosed and medicated. You're on the cusp of medication and. But if you read those. If you read those traits to teachers, no. If you read those traits to accountants, no. Yeah.

It's funny because I do think about this. When people write in, the hardest questions for me on things like Feedback Friday are when people go, man, I just. I'm not motivated. And I go, what's that?

What's that mean?

Yeah, and I get it sort of object, like academically, and I have to reach out to someone else and be like, what do you think this means?

Like, I have the. I'm not motivated on like a Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever because I'm depressed or sad from the huge burnout phase of like, I did three speaking events in three days and I'm going hard and then I'm just like tired.

Sure.

But lack of motivation for more than like a 24 hour period. I don't even understand what that would mean.

Yeah, exactly. The whole, like, how do you motivate yourself every day?

And it's like, yeah, I'm like a perpetual motion machine. I just got to keep going.

Yeah. So that's a problem. I don't. And does your mind get flooded with ideas? And I was thinking, of course. Doesn't everyone's? And the answer is not really.

Yeah, Mine gets flooded with ideas on how to do things, not new ideas on businesses. So I got. My dad was very entrepreneurial and he would have, like, a new business idea every hour. For real. I don't think I've ever had a new business idea, but I have ideas on perfecting or optimizing or faster or marketing ideas. Like, to the point where I'm like, I can't talk out loud to my team.

No. It drives them insane.

They can't do all this stuff this quickly.

Hey, Jen, how often do I go, hey, we should do this totally different initiative? Like, how many times per day?

Always a lot.

I did it in the car on the way here. I was like, you know this Quora thing, if we answered all these questions, and she's like, who's going to do that?

Yeah, I was sending myself notes, and then when I actually was looking at the notes later, I'm like, I'll delete that one before I even try to delegate it, because it was a good idea. And then 20 minutes later, I was like, that's a dumb idea. ISMR was like, I'm going to get somebody to go through my entire Facebook list and message everyone on my list that everyone in their company should buy every copy of Meeting Suck. I'm like, that's a dumb idea. Yeah, it was a good idea for like 12 seconds.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. It's just like when I told Jen, how quickly are we going through those 3,700 pending LinkedIn connections? And she goes, oh, yeah, Top of my list, buddy. So they call it the CEO disease, and it makes sense.

Bipolar disorder is nicknamed by the medical community as a CEO disease, right?

Yeah. That's telling. You have an interesting way of diagnosing friends going through, maybe a downswing. You said CEOs notes on blogs, Their status updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn will commonly include comments such as these. And the examples are things like, I can't sleep. It's only when my body can't go on any longer. I haven't been able to accomplish anything so far this week. I know what it needs to be done. I just don't have what it Takes today. I wish I'd kept in touch with my friends instead of being such a workaholic. Something needs to change pretty soon or I'm not going to be able to crawl out from under this rock. This is not a good day. I hope tomorrow is better. I think people see this and then go, oh, this person's just having a down day.

It'll pass, but it's magnified, though. So again, our down day as a CEO, if we're stressed and really worried about our business, we can't tell anyone. We can't tell our employees. So let's say that we are leveraged. We borrowed money against our house, we maxed out our credit line, we personally signed on all of our loans. We just recruited that a new VP to come join our company. Even though we're worried we're going bankrupt. We recruited him away from his job and promised him the dream of where we're going. And then we're also not quite sure we're even going to get there. We're not drawing a salary. We haven't told our wife for the last three months that we haven't paid ourselves back our expenses. And we got to turn to everybody and go, we got this. That's really stressful.

Yeah, right.

Extraordinarily stressful. You have this massive amount of pressure that kind of comes under, which is very different from a normal person who's having a bad day or a bad week or a bad month.

Well, it sounds like what you're saying is somebody who's having a bad day because they're having a bad day and they spilled coffee on their pants and they're late and they know their boss is going to go, hey, you're late. It's different than somebody whose life is stands to run.

Yeah. I mean, if you could still hate your boss and be having a bad day or hate your company or hate your job or not be, but you're not mortgage to the hilt because of that. You might be mortgage to the hilt because of other bad decisions you made, but not because of this one company. Whereas entrepreneurs have everything, everything on that one line. Their identity. Right. Most people don't have their identity attached to their job. Whereas us, if we fail, it's our entire world all of a sudden just collapsed around us. Right. And we recruited all these people and we go, there's people out there who I've told we're going to be successful, who don't know that. I don't know how we're going to meet payroll in two Days.

Yeah, right.

We had to borrow when we were building Monet got junk. We had to borrow $417,000 one morning to pay payroll the next day on Thursday, we borrowed it from the founder's mother because the bank wouldn't loan against us. We were that close. And we were $100 million company at the time.

What?

So, wow. So when you're. We can't tell those now. We've told it since. But you can't walk around the company going, yeah, Brian's mom just lent us 400 grand to meet payroll people like, what the. I'm out of here.

Yeah, okay, cool. I'm not coming in tomorrow.

That's not a normal amount of stress. So that's kind of where this bipolar gets magnified. And we already have those signs, but it's not a disorder. And I keep kind of saying it, but I haven't explained it. The mania is why people follow us. It's the dream, it's the passion, it's the irrational exuberance. It's the, hell, yeah, I'll come join your new startup. Right? You can't get someone to come join a startup unless you have that manic side to you, that amazing dream. You sell the vision and then when they join, they go, wow, it's not even really there yet. Okay, I'll buckle down and I'll help you build it. That's where mania is powerful. Talking to the media, talking to the press, doing pep rallies, talking to your sales team, you know, marketing. Anything outward facing is when you use all that manic side.

Yeah. This is key because the transition curve of the emotional roller coaster of entrepreneurship or business, you start off up and then you sort of crest come down and then back up, or you crash and burn. And I think what's key is knowing what to do at each phase of that curve. Uninformed optimism. That's kind of the mania you're talking about right now.

Yeah, that's like if you're going up a physical roller coaster, it's almost when you get to the top, right. When you just are almost at the very top, you're excited, you're enthusiastic, you're not even really sure what's coming yet, but you're just full of that pith and vinegar. In the entrepreneurial world, this could be like a long term of a year, or it could be just in the course of a week. It's the irrational exuberance, right? It's the pure optimism. It's the excitement and the passion. You know, I just landed this massive new client. I don't know how we're going to integrate them yet, but I'm super excited. I got them, right? Or I just started this. Or I just bought all this new equipment. I just bought this new ad campaign. Right. But we haven't kind of gone over the top yet to see what the results are like.

Sure. So this can be scary because it's uninformed. Optimism is right. Adrenaline mania. Nervous energy. Excitement. Energy, passion. You don't need to get coffee. You don't need to shake yourself out of bed.

You're going 100 miles an hour.

Everything's awesome. What could go wrong? What should we be doing in this phase and what shouldn't we be doing?

So when. Yeah, because each, each stage is a natural, good and bad. Right. If you're manic, you should talk to the media, you should talk to your invest, you should talk to your employees. You should do recruiting, you should do marketing, but you should not make any buying decisions. Right. You shouldn't buy a new building. You shouldn't buy the million dollar ad campaign for the Super Bowl. You should wait until you're a little more pessimistic to make purchasing decisions or to make hiring decisions. So you should do recruiting, but not hiring. Right. You should do sales, but not purchasing. Right. You should do marketing using your voice and kind of anything. Using your social feeds, but not using any purchasing.

Interesting. Right? So we want to be kind of super outgoing, but then when it comes to signing on the dotted line for a purchase, it's like, maybe somebody with some sanity should check this over.

It's where you'll hear entrepreneurs go, I don't know what I was thinking at the time. Well, you weren't thinking at the time. You were so irrationally exuberant. Right. Or I was like so into it, I didn't even see it. Well, yeah, you, because you were running 100 miles an hour around here.

There's a lot of, I don't know if you can call them urban legends. They're mostly rumors that are for sure true about, hey, I spotted insert double A list, entrepreneur, celebrity at this restaurant. And he was. And then a list of things that only crazy people do, like, oh, for sure. Double fisting $5,000 bottles of champagne and like throwing them on people. And you're just like, what drugs are you on? And they're like, none. I drove him there. We'd had one cocktail beforehand.

Yeah. I had a $19,000 credit card bill one night when we actually sold the company for 60 million and then three months later, when the stock market crashed. This was 19 years ago. When the stock market crashed, we lost the $64 million valuation.

No.

Yeah. We were sold at a $22.45, and when the transaction closed, it was worth $2.15. So we lost about $59 million of valuation.

No.

True story. We sold the company three days before Steve Ballmer said there was an Internet bubble. March 15, 2000.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, we lost a lot. I was sitting with the CEO that day. We were up on the top floor of the building when we knew the market had crashed and we lost everything. He said, it sucks. We're only on the fourth floor. And I was like, why is that? Because if we jump, we'll only break our legs.

Yeah, that sucks. It's funny now because it's a funny comment, but back then, it's like you do all that work and you're just waiting for that outcome, and then you got the outcome. It's not like you.

Yeah, we got the outcome and it.

Slipped through your fingers. There's no fault of your own.

Yeah.

Damn.

I actually was about to send him an email this morning. He's president of a public company today. But, yeah, it's. And that, again, is different. Right. He'd given years of his life. I'd given years of my life. I'd moved from Canada down to the US for this. We sold some of our stock right away to pay the taxes. Held it for, I think, six months. You only paid 25% tax. If you sold within six months, you paid 35%. We at least sold ours and paid the 35%. Other people didn't. They tried to hold it, and they ended up owing more money in tax than they actually had in value.

Oh, that's so.

Because they ex all the options.

What do you even do when that happens?

You declare bankruptcy.

You could basically get really rich and immediately end up bankrupt. Didn't sell your stock. That hardly seems fair, but I suppose that's one of those side effects of the way that this stuff works.

Yeah, it's when an employee talks about tax the rich, they don't understand how hard it is to get to be rich as well.

The other key is to recognize that this sort of enthusiasm, the optimism won't last. It's not something that's going to be forever. And I think in a way, at the time, you recognize that. Right. But you have to internalize it. You can't just go, well, look, it might not last forever, but then again, it might. It's like, no, no, no, it will change.

We know it'll change. But we're not there yet to discuss that because we're so manic. It's hard to slow that person down to say, you realize it is going to change. We'd be like, oh, yeah, you're right. But when you are flying manic like that, it's hard to know. Right. Because it's just so exciting. You feel like you're going to take over the world. That's what's scary to spouses. His spouses will hear us be so excited, so passionate, like, we're going to take over the world. This is amazing. And they. They're like, finally, because we've been, like, driving so hard, and then two days later, you're worried that you're going to go bankrupt and one of your employees just quit and you just got a customer who bailed on you, and you're in bed with your duvet over your head, and they're going, oh, my God, what's going on?

Yeah.

And you don't want to talk to them yet. So they're like, what's happened to my spouse who was so excited and now so down.

Yeah, that's. Jen's like that with me a lot.

Because she's like, what's just a normal week?

Yeah. Yeah, it is. She's like, I don't understand why you have these things and they happen for seemingly no reason. It's not like something happened. And then I'm overreacting. It's. Nothing happened since last night, but now I'm totally different person.

Yeah. And this, by the way, is bipolar. You're on the spectrum, but it's not a disorder.

Yeah.

See, again, if we were told as a kid that bipolar was a superpower, that attention deficit was a superpower, that even Tourette's is a superpower. Right. As long as you're not so far on the edge of the spectrum with it. Tourette's is thinking out loud. So the reason that can be a superpower is you don't overthink your thoughts. So you come off as very real. Because people just know that someone's going.

To write it and be like, that is not what Tourette's is. But I'm not an expert, so I don't know.

It's on the spectrum for Tourette. Sure.

Gotcha. Okay.

It also is nervous ticks.

Yeah. A lot of. And a lot of cursing from people.

Who don't normally do it, which is there's the words coming out and you can almost sense it.

There has to be something to it because of what you said before, where there's a certain small percentage of the population that has these, but they. The overlap is much higher than it would normally be.

Right, exactly. And we're just. The reason that it's a disorder is the medical community doesn't understand us because they're not wired like us. So when they see something so different from them, we must be a problem. It's like redheads. If you're a redhead, you should be a problem. Right? Because there's only like whatever one. Maybe they're the disorder. Right?

Yeah, sure.

You know what I mean? Like, well, maybe there's nothing wrong with them at all.

Well, also, I think medical professionals only see it when it's so extreme and so dysfunctional that someone's going, yeah, I can't hold a relationship or a job and I can't get out of bed most days because, sure, so far nobody's going to the doctor. And going. Some days I wake up and I just don't really feel like working. And then other days I'm really happy. And the doctor goes, yeah, join the club.

Be surprised. And again, that's why the medical community calls it the CEO disease, is because they actually do see it much more frequently and they do medicate. Not because we're going to kill ourselves or because we're going to jump off buildings, but because it is so different than the average person. The same as Attention Deficit Disorder. Why are so many kids given medication for add? Because the teachers can't control them in the classroom. Maybe they shouldn't be in the classroom in the first place. But if there's no other place for these kids, we need to get them to conform so we give them medication so they fit in like everybody else.

That is itself a controversial topic that I don't fully understand. I do know that I had ADD when I was a kid and as an adult, and now as an adult it's fine. I get more done in a week than most people do in an entire.

Month, by the way. Hyperfocus is part of attention Deficit disorder. If you read the traits of bipolar or the traits of ADD and the strengths of add. Hyperfocus is part of Attention Deficit disorder, but it's usually in 20 to 30 minute bursts. Then we. Our brain kind of twigs out and we need to like move, change seats, change rooms or do something.

That sounds about right. That checks out. Stage two, informed pessimism. So this is kind of where we have crested the wave. A Little bit.

Yeah. It's when you go over top of the curve and you kind of say, oh, for the first time, you go, whoa, okay, this is harder than I thought. I just hired this amazing new guy. I'm super excited. I got this VP joining me. Oh, he's 20,000amonth plus benefits. How are we going to pay for that? How am I going to onboard? And what do other people really think? Jeez. We call it that oh, moment.

So you focus more on shortcomings of your business. The flaws. The glass is a little half empty, maybe instead of half full.

Yeah. You start seeing the stuff that's going to go wrong or a little bit harder, a little bit more difficult, a little bit more challenging. You start noticing stuff that you hadn't really thought through that clearly before and.

Then beat yourself up and thereby go further down the curve.

Yeah. I got it a couple years ago where I got a major tax bill for $420,000 more than I owed. And I'm like, whoa, what the hell? And then I realized I did all this revenue that I forgot to actually think through. This was like three years ago. And then I'm like, ah. And then you start planning and thinking through it. But that was a pretty big oh, moment.

Yeah. What do you do about that? Call the irl. Call the Canadian.

I went down to crisis and meaning I actually started to really freak out and panic and my ex wife was getting all worried for me as. Or about us as well because she didn't understand how to deal with it. I took some friends who were entrepreneurs and we went for a hike. Went and hiked a camel back together. So I went out with Joe Polish and David Berg and Gordy Buffon and we were hiking camelback. And on the hike, on the way down, we talked our way through it and it was basically go home and make a plan of all the things you can cut and all the ways you can increase gross margin and all the ways you can increase revenue and execute the plan. So I just did that. I still have the list on my laptop.

Just needed a quick 420,000.

It was about 80 things that I had to do and I just did all of them as manic as I could.

Oh, my goodness.

And within three months it was done. But it was a scary open, right?

Yeah. Not a three months you want to repeat.

No.

I would imagine.

No. Yeah. So now I put the plans in place to counter for that.

Sure. Stage 3 Crisis of Meaning that you just mentioned. This is where things get quote unquote, interesting. In a bad way for most of us.

Crisis of meaning is when you're at a stage where you're completely panicked, unable to do anything, unable to think. You know, Brian, who is the CEO of 1-800-GOT junk, is. Is bipolar as well, and wickedly ADD as well. And we were best friends, and this was around 17, 18 years ago. We were probably about 8 million in revenue at the time, so still pretty small. And he called me one morning and he said, just lie to the leadership team. Tell them whatever you need to tell them. I'm okay, but I just need to stay at home today. I'm on the floor in the basement, lying on the floor in the dark. I just need to detach. That's clearly like a crisis of meaning.

Yeah, that's a bad sign.

But we understood each other well enough that we had each other's back, you know, that it could say, okay, go talk to a counselor and take some time off, and I got your back. But most people don't understand that, or they don't understand that it's okay to get there, because that's purely the counterbalance for all that mania. So as an example, I've done speaking events all over the world. I've done like 600 paid events in 26 countries. And I'll give it all for 90 minutes on stage. Then I come off stage. I'm good for about a half hour, and then my energy starts dropping and dropping and dropping. About two hours to the minute after I come off a stage, you don't want to talk to me. I'm grumpy. I'm kind of negative. I really don't want to talk to you. I probably just want to have a drink or go for a run or do something, but I just don't want to be around people. God forbid I have to sit beside a human being on a plane.

Oh, that's the worst.

Because I have three hours and they want to chat or they recognize you. Oh, it's so good to see you. I'm like, I don't want to talk to you.

Yeah. Oh, I'm not in the mood.

So that is just a pure course correction for massive mania. Right. And you do that day in and day out. It just wears on you.

This is where you can either you either pull the plane up above or you crash right into the mountain. Right. So, yeah, stage four, which. Like four with an asterisk because it's optional.

Right.

Crash and crash and burn. And I came very close to this when I had the split with the Former company. But I avoided it by calling 100 people. I think you were the first or second one that I called.

I remember I was sitting in an airport talking to you. Yeah.

So I was wondering if I was going to be able to avoid this. And I remember. I know the curve exists because we've talked about it years and years ago. And ever since, you know, if I just wake up in a crummy mood, I go, this is the curve. If I'm really stoked about something, I go, this is the curve. Enjoy it while it lasts. Right. But when you're really feeling down, it's.

Hard to get out of it.

It's hard to go. This is part of the curve.

Yeah. So I hit a point a couple years ago where I was really down. And I started drinking at nights as a way to relax and fall asleep. I didn't understand that alcohol was a depressant. So I was getting more depressed and more tired, and I'd wake up in the morning kind of tired and anxious and wouldn't go work, wouldn't get any exercise, so created this doom loop for myself with all the pressure. And a friend of mine said, you know, I think you're depressed. And I was like, oh, yeah. And it had been a longer period than I was used to. Normally. It'll be like a day or two. This had gone for a few months.

Yeah, That's a long time.

Yeah. It was a hard. It was a really extraordinarily hard, hard stage. And I did everything to course correct. I started doing work with a shaman. I did nine sessions with this woman, Cheryl Netzke. I did 52 sessions with a therapist. I'd never done any counseling or therapy. And I did 52 sessions with this woman, Patty Ann. I went to six group sessions. I started doing yoga four days a week. I started meditation. I started smudging myself in the morning. But all of that stuff started to help. Then talking to friends became the next one. And I never knew I could do that in a safe place. And I could do it with groups of entrepreneurs, but not just other friends. And then I realized that by talking to them about my business worries or my personal worries, all of a sudden I had a connection that helped me out of that space. But, yeah, when you're in that crisis of meaning, it's really, really hard to come out of.

And the crash and burn is sort of like you mentioned in the book. 85% of all solo businesses fail within the first year. 85%. And that's just solo businesses.

And of the ones that succeed, 85% of those fail within the next two or next five.

I mean, that's terrifying. I don't know how you do those stacked percentages.

Math wise, it's like a 5% success rate.

Yeah, it's bad news.

Most businesses are like the three to six hundred thousand dollars, you know, five, six employees. We think of big businesses with like lots of employees, but that's much more.

Rare whenever I think business. I mean, the smallest company I ever worked for, aside from the movie theater I worked for as a kid, had 500 lawyers and support. And that was the smallest company. And we were a small firm. They call it mid size because it doesn't have one guy in it or two guys, you know, as lawyers. But it also doesn't have 3,000.

Right. Those are not normal size. Those are big companies or medium enterprise.

There's also this sort of selection bias that we have as entrepreneurs. Now we're talking about this pre show where you go, well, shoot. My friend Noel Kagan, he's got appsumo that's got like 20 some employees, Cam. I mean, he's working for 1-800-got junk. That place had, you know, back in the day, 3,000 employees. And, you know, it's a franchise, so it's a little different, but. And then I'm advising Himalaya, and this is a room full of people and they got an office in China that's 10 times as large as this. And you just don't have a realistic compare. So you're comparing like your revenue of your work from home business with a quote unquote big company that's capitalized at $100 million. And you're doing this apples to oranges.

Most entrepreneurs are these small businesses, right? Which they would be. And you have no employees or maybe a couple freelance people and you're strapping together a few hundred grand a year and paying yourself 80. That is a real business with real risk and real threats and no guaranteed paycheck and no health care and, you know, all those expenses. And then you find out that a customer just quit. Like when I first started coaching CEOs. So I left Wendy Thunder got junk. 12 years ago, I started coaching these entrepreneurs around the world. I had one of my clients paying me 120,000 a year to coach him. And then after 12 months, he goes, yeah, we're good. We're not going to renew. I'm like $120,000 on one person. That's not a normal job. You don't lose a Third of your pay that day. Right. Because somebody's happy. They're like, yeah, we learned everything. We're good. I'm like, what?

Yeah, you did your job really well. We're going to penalize you by cutting your income.

Yeah. We don't need you anymore because taught us. Yeah. So crisis of meaning is all about being a little bit vulnerable, being okay with talking to other people, realizing that it's not the end of the world, and being okay with recharging our batteries. We've been telling a lot of people tell themselves a lie that they're going to catch up. I'm going to work tonight to catch up. I'll work this weekend to catch up.

Yeah, that's me.

You actually won't catch up. And you need to stop that habit before your child is born, because you'll never catch up. You'll just have bigger goals.

Well, what's been happening is I either do a bunch of stuff, and then there's always more you built, you add more goals.

You another project.

Or I just go, oh, I needed to do all this stuff today, but I can't. I just need to plug in my Xbox and, like, play for a couple hours or go for a walk, hit the gym. And then I come back and I go, man, I have not had a productive day. And Jen goes, no, first of all, you have. And second of all, it's freaking Saturday, right?

You need to actually be good. So we as entrepreneurs need to be better with unplugging and feeling good about that, because no one's going to praise us for taking time off except ourselves. And we have to think of ourselves as pro athletes. There's no way Pro athletes work 80 hours a week. They just don't do it. They're on their game for maybe a couple hours a week, then they're in practice Mode for maybe 40 hours a week, and then they're disconnected for the rest. And as CEOs and entrepreneurs, we need to be way better with taking that time off. And I mean, like, not reading a business book for fun. Yeah. I mean, like, not checking your email 12 times a day on a weekend. Like, I mean, unplugged.

It is hard to do that. I mean, even tomorrow, I have a whole bunch of stuff to do, and I'm like, okay, maybe I need to.

Like, no, it's Saturday. You shouldn't do anything. You won't catch up. It's like the horizon. You're going to be happy when you get to the horizon. You can't sneak up on it at night while it's asleep. Right. It keeps moving on you. You just won't catch up. And I think what happens with the burnout? I was written up in the Wall Street Journal 19 years ago for crashing and burning, for having a nervous breakdown in an elevator because of stress.

Really.

So it was two and a half months after the market had crashed. We lost everything. My mom was dying, I quit my job. My wife was pregnant. I was moving from Seattle back to Vancouver. They ran a stress test on me and I had a 98% chance of a heart attack. I was clinically redlining. So I had this chemical secretion being caused by stress. And I could almost have like this metallic taste in the back of my neck.

Oh, my God.

That was. The doctor was saying it's a chemical secretion. Like, it's telling you to slow down. I'm like, no, I'm good. I can keep going. Right. I weighed 35 pounds more than I do today. I was drinking constantly. I wasn't getting any exercise. I was a disaster.

That's crazy.

But I was like, no, I'll just work this weekend to catch up and I'll work at night to catch up. Up. I had no fun. I had no friends. And I wasn't doing anything that was enjoyable.

Horrible.

Yeah.

It's like stressful hearing about that. But I feel you, the people that get through and avoid the crash and burn, you note, are the people that actually recognize they're starting to have these feelings and then quickly turn for support.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of us don't do that.

They turn to support. They turn to some of their passions. Like they actually like yoga for fun. You know, they play tennis for the sake of playing tennis. They just want to play. They want to be 13 year olds again. And they don't make an excuse for that. They recognize that at the end of the day, actually, none of this really matters anyway because we're going to die.

Right.

We may as well have fun along the way. And as soon as they embrace that balance, truly. And they read books for fun that have nothing to do with anything other than it's fun. And they go on vacations and they have hobbies and they meet with friends that aren't entrepreneurs or they meet with other entrepreneurs, but they never talk about each other's business. That's actually cool.

I like meeting with other entrepreneurs and then not talking about business because it's like they get it. And then they also value the fact that you're there spending the time.

And I'VE had to learn that, like, I actually have to try to not talk about business. And I'll say, can we not talk about business? I'll be like, oh, yeah, great, good call. But otherwise, for me, it was always my natural, you know, I'd slide back into that.

Stage five is informed optimism slash hopeful realization. So this is good, but also a little scary because it's kind of like. And we're going back up roller coaster curve.

This is kind of the little engine that could. This is the. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. The danger part is that if you get too optimistic too quickly without fixing the problem, that got you to that stressful place before. Right. So if you don't understand that, you're merely going back up and getting ready to crash again, sooner or later one of those crashes can actually be pretty detrimental to your health. Right. Or to your family or to your business.

Right. That's when you see, oops, overdose, or oh, he had a stroke, or I.

Screamed at somebody and said the wrong thing.

Yeah, right.

I overreacted on something because I'm so stressed out and I can't respond. I can only react or I pack it all in when I was like a day away from being successful.

I like the idea that at each stage you can leverage the feelings and the energies, so you leverage the optimism. And then when you kind of are headed downward, you can look at and re examine some of your strategies.

Yeah, I try to leverage the feelings, but I also try to understand the feelings. So I try to remember if I'm feeling that crazy exuberance and energy, take it back a little bit. So even if I'm going on stage to speak now, I try to get into that manic stage, and then I try to take it back 15%. Because if I go on stage completely manic, I'm all over the place. I'm scattered. I swear, too much I say stuff I shouldn't say. I go off on these tangents. But if I temper it back, then I've got enough good enthusiasm coming in and I can stay really focused. Or if I'm stressed or depressed, I'm like, wow, I really need to decompress.

Yeah, yeah. It's like gravity. You said you can't fight the feelings and energy. It's like working against gravity.

Yeah.

So just sort of accept where you are on the curve and then go, all right, this is where I'm at on the curve.

And breathe and be okay with that. It's like, okay, I'm Having a bad day. All right, let me feel that. Let me take some time off and feel good about taking time off because I actually run my own company and I can. Right, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. Enjoy the fact that you built it in the first place. Relax. So don't spend money when you're doing that uninformed optimism and that upward curve. Don't spend any money. Don't hire anyone.

Yeah, do.

Do some media, go online, do your guerrilla marketing, talk to investors, make some new clients, make a couple sales. But yeah, don't be working on the budget. Don't be doing any long term business planning.

Yeah, when you go over the curve and you're at that informed pessimism stage, that's when you want to budget. That's when you want to make buying decisions. Because you're cautious. You're cautious. You're a little bit more informed. Right. You're thinking through it a little more clearly.

I like the idea that you should, should not plan at certain points. And then when you're also feeling bad, it's a good time to plan because it'll help snap you out of that, first of all, because you start to get more maybe excited about your long term growth. But also you aren't sitting there exposing yourself and creating a bunch of.

You see it on Shark Tank all the time where these guys come in and they're like way overly optimistic. And the sharks kind of. Okay, wait, wait, let's bring this back down a bit. And all of a sudden they've like, they brought them down to reality and then it's like, okay, now we can talk.

Talk in the crisis of meaning. I meant to ask this before. Men and women seem to handle this differently. And you note this in double.

Double. Yeah, women are really good at talking and sharing and communicating. And I don't know whether it's that. That old story that we've heard that, you know, 10,000 years ago, the women were out gathering and they would be communicating and talking and sharing with each other. And men had to be very quiet and stoic because we were trying to hunt an animal. And if we were out talking and sharing, we'd scare them all away. So men were always inside and women were always communicating and sharing. And that kept the animals away. Right? It protected them. I don't know if that's true, but.

Sounds good.

But women tend to.

Someone's gonna write in and tell us.

Women tend to share. Like, women talk to each other and they communicate about their fears and their worries and their insecurities and their frustrations and they kind of work through it all and then they come back into their relationships. Guys need to tap into that a little bit more and be okay with that. I think it's starting more. It feels to me like it's starting more or maybe I'm just opening up to it more, but. But it feels like men are more than we were maybe back in the 50s, in our parents generation or 60s. We don't have to pretend we have our together. You know, it's okay to say, I'm going to a therapist. Wow, what was that like? Or to talk about our feelings and say we're scared. Like, men are allowed to have feelings and we're allowed to actually express them and we're allowed to get help for it. And then realize that when you ask for help, it's kind of like this, can you help me? When the person comes in and it feels amazing. Right. And we're also. If you don't ask someone else for help, you're kind of robbing them of the chance to help you. Right.

It's a good point. Yeah. Well, we already know that men are terrible at making friends, especially adult males. We just don't do it and we don't share. So that's a big problem for those of us that are going to be bipolar. ADHD on the entrepreneur roller coaster curve, because that's what we need most, our support. So. So if you're female and you're listening to this, you probably have more social connections and support, but not necessarily.

I think so. I'll talk to CEOs that I coach. I noticed that the women tend to have a better social network than the men do. And the men tend to be more workaholics than the women are. Women tend to disconnect and spend time and take care of themselves, take care of family, take care of friends and relationships. They tend to be much better at compartmentalizing their business. And men tend to, I think, make it their everything, which is to their detriment.

Yeah, I think you're right. I prioritize the show, the business over everything. And it took me a while to be like, I need to focus on social connections. I mean, that's what I teach and do now, but for years I didn't. Yeah, it's important to let your significant other know about this curve because it's.

Important to let your significant other know about it. Your kids know about it and your employees know about it because your significant other, if they did not grow up in an entrepreneurial Family first, they've been terrified of your roller coaster that they're strapped to, and they ride it silently. Secondly, they're just unaware of it. So they might not even know that it's happening. But when you expose them to it, they go, whoa, you're just an entrepreneur. I get this. Because they'll so heavily associate you with these curves. Very similar to wife Jordan of Marcelo, the CEO of Sprint. She noticed him and notice all these traits, actually walked them through this diagram and was. She was blown away by it. She's like, that's exactly him. Now I realize he doesn't have a problem. This is his superpower.

Yeah. Yeah. I think if you're listening or watching this right now and you're going, this is me, then the key thing for you to do is get this show and probably the curve and. Or the book double, double at least, or this chapter of the book into the hands of those people so they can go, ah, got it. The person on the curve might not think, oh, on the downward slope, I should reach out for support. If you're anything like me, Jen will have to go, hey, you're doing this right now and you should do that. And I have to go, oh, yeah, you're right. I don't always notice it as soon as she does.

Yep. I would even say versus double, double. I cover this in the book the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs that Hal Elrod and I co authored together. The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs covers this in even more detail and is probably better applicable for anyone listening or watching today.

Ken, thanks so much.

You're welcome, buddy.

To be a really good CEO, you have to be good at operations. You have to be good at basic company systems.

Right?

That's the exact thing you don't want to do as a CEO. What I would suggest for anyone who wants to have the seat is to say, can you give up the control of being the one who decides how things are done and just start saying, here's what I want to happen?