Founder Psychology and Resilience

"It's like when their fundamental functions, when their core behaviors of diet, exercise, playfulness, socialization, sleep, when those things get disrupted, it's a sign that there is something going on here that you need to take a look at. ... If your sleep always sucks, if your relationships are constantly strained or frequently strained, if your physical health is failing, there's so many ways that that can be measured."

"I learned very early on that if I wanted to feel good, I needed to achieve, and that if I wanted to love myself and be considered lovable by others, I needed to achieve. That pulled me out of a darkness that I was in for several years as a kid, and I'm glad that it did, and it led to an excellent experience in high school, in college, and then well into my 20s, but eventually, those emotional wounds are going to come to the surface."

"One of the things that I used to try to do with my kids all the time was mental time travel, which is actually a very good decision tool. So they would be really upset about something and it could be something that happened at school or it could be like they were grounded for something or whatever. And the thing is when you're in the moment, it just feels like so big."

"If you don't trust what you see and you don't run at it, then you're just not going to be good. And it's hard to get CEOs not to hesitate. But look, the thing that does help is they look at it and I look at it and I confirm, 'No, that is as it appears.'"

"There has to be this irrational intention to keep going even when the world tells you it's not working and you feel completely defeated. And you likely have to go through this many times and have these near-death experiences. And then you get lucky and then you look like an overnight success."

"When superheroes discover what their superpowers actually are, they wreak havoc and they make a mess, and it's uncomfortable. And even Superman tries to get rid of his superpowers. It's hard to know what you're really great at."

"Being in an uncomfortable situation, being in a position where you feel like, hey, do I really know how to do this, I'm not prepared for it, kind of coincides with the fastest and most intense periods of growth in one's career. I started to realize, well maybe it's not so much of a bad thing. Maybe if I constantly putting myself in this situation where I haven't seen this problem before, that's also what's going to push me to grow and learn."

"The last question is, do you need to grow? We all have heard the phrase, 'If you're not growing, you're dying.' Is that true or is that the kind of thing that investors use to make founders try to grow even when they shouldn't?"

"And so, the equation is practical skills plus radical self-inquiry plus shared experiences, that is the process of actually talking about the craziness that goes on in your head equals greater leadership."

"What's radical, a radical question to ask is, and what will that do for you? What is it that you believe being "successful" will do for you? How do you define success? Where does that come from?"

"What most people try to do is they try to stop it, and that doesn't work very well. I think the best way to work with the voice in the head is to pick an experiment every day and respond to the voice in the head in a new way every day."

"We make decisions in the emotional center of our brain. We use logic to try to figure out how we're going to feel."

"Whatever emotion that you're trying to avoid, you are inviting into your life in exactly the way that you're trying to avoid it."

"Second one is a pleaser CEO. This is the person who is far more concerned with being liked than running a business, so they can't tell anyone hard news. They can't break ties, they want a consensus on everything, and that's not possible."

"We like to joke that more companies die from suicide than homicide, and it's grim, but also if the two or three people in charge of the business can't get along, nothing else matters. It's all going to break apart."

"Ideally, you want to notice when it's the feather and then make adjustments or shift then and not have to wait until you experience the full-blown pain of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experience burnout for the first time."

"So instead of trying to change the story or trying to fix something or trying to solve something, which is what most people do by default, myself included in the past, if you change your state first, then there's a cascading effect which changes your thoughts and your feelings."

"And I started to realize, well, maybe it's not so much of a bad thing. Right? Maybe if I am constantly putting myself in a situation where I haven't seen this problem before, that's also what's going to push me to grow and learn. Right?"

"Complaints are great inspiration. Every complaint implies a dream. Let me envision a better future. Let me think about what's an effective way to actually move towards that."

"I don't know how to articulate that- that feeling, but that flutter in your stomach that you wake up with in the morning of just anxiety and stress and- and worry. Um, being a CEO or founder makes it slightly harder, uh, in some ways, because you still have to put on this mask. You have to put on this space of confidence externally and- and internally as well, where people need to trust you. You also don't want to subject them to the same anxiety that you're feeling and be a 100% transparent."

"Some people are like, 'Oh, Scott, I mean, I have more conviction. All that I've learned, all the validation I've received from customers, we just haven't figured it out yet. And for those people, I'm like, 'You know what? You're just in the messy middle.' Stick with it."

"The journey is really hard and complex and long and so you have to be in love in order to go into this journey because otherwise it's not going to be successful. You really want to be passionate. If you're not passionate about the problem, even though that the problem might be real and big and significant, there is not enough drive, there is not enough internal drive to take you through the hardship of the journey, and so you need to be passionate."

"You need to kind of be irrationally optimistic that what you're going to do is going to be differentially important. Because otherwise, why would you go out and do what you're doing? And if it's obvious, then a bigger company would've already done it, right? But then you also need to be really, really realistic because most ideas that are, I guess, non-conventional are usually bad ideas, right?"