E203: Dealing With Stress and Loneliness in Ecommerce

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about these two things on a podcast. In episode 192, you’ll recall that Dave and I went through our stress points as entrepreneurs. This time around we’ve invited an expert to shed more light on this topic from a medical standpoint.

Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist and the driving force behind Zen Founder, where she helps both up and coming entrepreneurs and established business owners navigate their own mental and emotional pain points.

Here are some takeaways from our discussion.

“The scarcity of time certainly causes a lot of stress and the misallocation of time can drive a lot of loneliness.”

Sherry references one of Sigmund Freud’s Defense Mechanisms. Sublimination is when we take our impulses and channel it into something entirely different, doing it in a way that's socially acceptable.

Entrepreneurs are disruptors. We ditched the cube and hacked the system. If we are successful, we get praised for it. If we fail, people call us foolish. Most of us develop a complicated relationship with risk, with rule-breaking and going against the flow. And these certainly play to some addictive tendencies, which can then lead to stress and feeling isolated.

“It’s okay to do the deep dive but know that you’re choosing that. Know that it comes with significant sacrifices in your relationships. Make sure you’re okay with that.”

Getting a bigger pile of money or hiring more employees requires devoting more time and energy to the business. This could mean making significant sacrifices in other aspects of life. Nothing wrong with that as long as we are fully aware that this is a choice we are making willingly.

“Are you going to build things that will outlast you? Or are you going to rest on your laurels and spend your money?”

We go through different stages of life. Sherry says that from our 20s to our 40s are what’s called the “deep building” years. It's the height of our professional and personal development. But at 40, there’s a shift that happens in terms of tasks and goals. Our wants and needs change.

“Some people talk about work-life balance as if it’s the equitable distribution across these different domains of our life and I don’t think that works for most of us. But I think it’s that sense of whatever you’re doing, be there. Do that fully.”

Having focus is important because it improves the quality of relationships and drives business growth too.

Listen to the entire podcast for more of the insightful interview that I had with Dr. Sherry Walling.

Registration to EcomCrew Premium is now closed but, you can still learn from us through our suite of free courses. There’s a total of 20 videos covering ecommerce topics like Importing from China and Building a 7-Figure Business. Find more information on the link below.

Free Video Courses

We’re also launching a giveaway during the holidays so like and follow our Facebook page for the latest updates.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Full Audio Transcript

Intro: This is Mike, and welcome to episode number 203 of the EcomCrew Podcast, so glad to have you along with us today. You can go to EcomCrew.com/203 to get to the show notes for this episode. And this might be the single weirdest introduction I've ever done on the podcast because I cannot say this person's name without the Apple Assistant that starts with an S thinking that I'm calling her name instead of saying the name of the person who's on the show. It's actually quite funny.

I ran into this when I was saying hello to her when doing the interview. And I just tested it again as I was trying to record this intro and the same thing happens. So you'll hear her name as the podcast comes to fruition here. I certainly don't mean any disrespect. I absolutely love this woman. It was great meeting her in person in Las Vegas at Rhodium Weekend a couple of months ago. We just hit it right off. She's just really smart, sweet, and it's something that was refreshing that came across my life at the time that I did because she's a therapist and goes over entrepreneurial issues and mindsets and things like this. She's also written a book, we get into all of that on the podcast.

And I also, as usual, just kind of open up my soul and talk about all my things as this goes along, because I do think it's important to talk about not just everything that's working right. You guys know this from listening to many years now of the EcomCrew Podcast, if you've been a longtime listener and much is full of fluff. I like to share everything, the good and the bad. And I think that she mentions this term, there's a shadow effect basically where the good always casts a shadow of bad or some other shadow of something, there's an opposite effect of everything.

And if you're always only talking about the good and everyone's kind of like always patting each other on the back, society for whatever reason, never wants to talk about the not so great stuff. So it's so much stuff that we talk about in here and things that I'm doing in my life to make those things better for me. And maybe you can relate and maybe you can't. If it's something that's not interesting to you, you can hit the forward button and listen to next week's episode. But I do think that you'll find it interesting that you can relate to this stuff.

Before jumping into this week's episode, I want to mention something that's pretty cool that we're doing. We're going to be giving away one year of EcomCrew Premium for free. Just go over to EcomCrew.com/giveaway to enter the giveaway. It's actually the exact same thing that we do with ColorIt and Tactical, and all the other things that we do. You'll give us your email and you'll have a chance to win. We’ll pick a winner later this month and will be emailing about that. So EcomCrew.com/premium, it's a $1,500 value, and we look forward to picking a winner and having them be on the inside of EcomCrew Premium. All right, enough about all that, let's head into today's episode.

Mike: Hey you, welcome to the EcomCrew Podcast.

Sherry: Well, it’s a really informal greeting.

Mike: You'll have to say your name because when I say your name, a certain assistant for Apple thinks I'm saying that name instead and keeps on taking over my — it's weird. It's like when that pops up, it interferes with Skype and won't let me use my microphone anymore after that. So if you don't mind saying your name.

Sherry: I will introduce myself.

Mike: Introduce yourself.

Sherry: So my name is Sherry Walling, Dr. Sherry Walling, sometimes confused with Siri which creates some interesting technological problem.

Mike: It does. Luckily, you said that and it's in my ear buds not — it didn't come through because like everything thought I was saying that, my computer, my phone, and my watch all at the same time were just like all trying to compete with the question I was about to ask.

Sherry: Does it creep you out that she’s always listening?

Mike: Yeah, it's definitely a little bit weird but…

Sherry: I’m not creepy like that; I just want your guests to know.

Mike: You're definitely not creepy.

Sherry: I’m a good listener but not in a creepy way.

Mike: I think by profession you have to be a good listener, so that definitely helps, but let's just tell people your background. I first met you; I went to Rhodium Weekend where you were also at. You were kind of the hostess there and the MC which was awesome and you also hosted a round table about some just entrepreneurial struggles, I guess we'll leave it at that and I thought it was fascinating. I also found out that you're going to be speaking at Ecommerce Fuel Live which I'll be speaking at as well. So I'm excited to see you there again. But I just thought immediately, this is a topic we have to get on the podcast because I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with a lot of things. So I thank you so much for coming and doing this.

Sherry: Hey, my pleasure. And it's like a deep privilege to be able to talk about entrepreneurial mental health, entrepreneurial relationships. So I'm really glad to be able to talk with you about it today.

Mike: Yeah, so I mean, I'll throw myself under the bus just so you don't reveal a bunch of stuff about other people. But I've noticed this myself, I noticed it because I've done a good job now getting in masterminds and talking to other people about it. And also, because we run EcomCrew Premium, there's a lot of people that will mention this stuff to me directly. But the things I think that entrepreneurs struggle with the most, is time.

They're spending too much time in their business; they get to sucked into it, which has repercussions for relationships and things like that. And then also having to deal with the stress of running a business takes its toll, and there's no one else to really talk about those things. So those are probably a couple of topics I thought would be fun to talk about on the podcast today. And then if you have anything else you think is valuable, we can throw that in as well.

Sherry: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you've nailed the two that I probably spend a lot of time talking about is stress and loneliness. And I think the time factor comes into both of those. The scarcity of time certainly causes a lot of stress and the misallocation of time can drive a lot of loneliness. So I think the people that you're talking to, the conversations you're having sound like they're pretty in line with some of the conversations that I have in a regular basis.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. Let me I guess, just again, throw myself under the bus. The thing that I've come to realize and I've been talking about it actually on this podcast a little bit lately, but I actually think that entrepreneurship at least in the form that I experience it is an addiction. But it's like one of these addictions that society praises you for. I don't know how certain things become bad addictions, and certain things are good addictions. Like if you're a heroin addict or something, people look down at you, but if you work too much, then you're a hard worker and you're successful right? So I think society helps contribute to that some as well.

Sherry: Yeah, I think so there's this old school term like old school like I love Freud called sublimination, which is where we take our defense mechanisms and we find a way to live them out in a way that society praises. So if you're a fighter, you're super aggressive, then you become a boxer, and you get praised for that, you get accolades for that. And I do think that entrepreneurship has some similarities to that because the basic level we're sort of disruptors. We’re people who did not, would not, could not follow the well trodden paths that were laid out for us. We couldn't work in the queue. We couldn't climb the academic ladder; we couldn't or didn't want to do the things that everyone else was doing.

And so we carved our own path we found our own way, we hacked the system, we did something different, which if we're successful society praises, if we aren't successful, society is quick to sort of say how foolish we were, and how audacious we were that we thought that we could go our own way. So I do think there's an element of the vast majority of entrepreneurs that I know have a complicated relationship with risk, they have a complicated relationship with sort of isolation or rule breaking or going against the flow of what society is telling them to do. And I think those can certainly play into some addictive tendencies to do one last thing or one more thing or see if you can push it the next level.

Mike: Yeah, and I think that just like any other addiction, when you first experience something, it feels really good, but you need more the next time. You can't use the same amount the second time of that drug, or with that addiction or whatever it is. It has to be more audacious or a bigger head or a bigger dose or whatever. And I think I've definitely experienced that. And especially because my last business, or not the exact last one, but a couple of businesses before this was so successful from a monetary point of view, we did really well financially. Now the numbers really seem jaded. So it's a level that I know we’ll probably never get back to. It was like this one magic moment in time, and now we have to operate a business in a normal world. And it's hard to get back to those levels.

Sherry: Yeah, I think I've had conversations with people where they've been really clear about, I've said like, what do you want? What is it that you're after? And they'll say, more. More what? Just more. I mean, there's this sort of drive to see how big a pile of money you can get or how many employees you can have, but not often a lot of thought or intention about why you need or want more of the thing?

Mike: Yeah, I mean I can tell you again from personal experience, I don't know what it was. I think it's just subliminal what society especially in the United States where it just you want more, you want more, you want more. So I definitely spent the first 30 plus years of my life in that mode, it was never enough. I had to get a bigger house [inaudible 00:10:23] for two, three months and then be like man I wish I had a bigger house or a second house or a third house or a nicer car, more diamonds on my watch, whatever it is, you always wants something more. And the reality is that if you're in that mindset, it's never going to be enough number one, and number two, that stuff, the old saying money doesn't buy happiness is definitely true.

And for me, I started reading a lot of psychology stuff about the money to happiness quotient and hell basically after — it depends on where you live in the country, but after 120,000, 150,000, whatever the number is in annual earnings, every dollar past that is nowhere near as effective in making you happy because you got all your basic needs covered and you're just basically buying a nicer car or a nicer house but you still already have a roof over your head. And anything that you want, you can pretty much get just more elaborate more or more crazy. And once I started thinking at that level, the thing for me is it's been way less about money and more about experiences and doing things and being in a better mindset.

Sherry: And I'm curious about how that's changed how you run your business, because when we don't operate from scarcity I feel like there's all other manner of creativity or risk or like we're operating from a different place that can sometimes lead to a thriving business for a very different reason than more and more and more.

Mike: Yeah, I can tell you like since I've had this, I haven't had the mind shift like super recently but I've gone through like a second revolution of it where I feel like now I'm completely cured or whatever that I realize that this is the most important thing is just the experience stuff. And quite frankly, it's had a pretty adverse effect I think on our business because the time that our businesses that I've run over the years have thrived the most has been when I've been at my most obsessive all in phase, which is not healthy for anyone else around me.

It's great for the business but it's really detrimental to my personal health and my relationships with my wife or my friends because I'm so consumed by my business. And that's why I've been able to equate it to an addiction because it's so powerful, like first thing when I wake up, first thing I'm thinking about, last thing when I go to bed, at a dinner with friends, whatever it might be and I basically want to spend every waking moment working on that business component because that's just how I'm wired or how I was wired, certainly not that way anymore.

So for me it's become, to answer your question, it's difficult because I'm trying to take a more balanced approach or not make the business the number one priority, but maybe it's the number three priority in my life. And I'm still dealing with how to run a successful business in that environment. So that's my current project I'm working on.

Sherry: Does it make you, like are you happier?

Mike: Yes. Yeah, for sure.

Sherry: Okay. So like, there's personal payoff, but the business payoff isn't maybe all the way there.

Mike: 100% yeah. And then of course that does have, it does have a negative effect on me emotionally because I still identify myself a lot with the business. And also because we're still public with everything we do with EcomCrew and I speak a lot obviously, and these are kind of the measuring sticks of “success.” You go, say I'm an eight figure seller versus a seven figure seller. Obviously, you're more prestigious just because it sounds cool. But no one ever talks about, well, how much money did you actually make from that? Or what's the actual net profit or the things that are probably more important, or like how much — like did you actually go to your kid’s baseball game? Are you missing the important things in life, or what actually is more important?

So again, those outside factors make it even more difficult. But I'm at a point where, and I've always been like this where I just don't necessarily care what others think. But it's still easy to get sucked into that whether you realize it or not.

Sherry: I think so much of the challenge for any of us as individual humans to really like get really honest with ourselves about what we want because there are I'm sure are people who are listening who are like no, like screw the baseball game maybe not exactly, but I want to be successful. I want to make a pile of money, I want to have a game changing business, I want to create a business that is really disruptive in my market, and they’re ambitious like that. And I want to say that that's okay too, but just know that you're choosing that. And if you're choosing that, maybe don't have four kids unless you've chosen a spouse that is also on board with that worldview and that ambition.

So I think it's not like there's only one way and I think this whole sort of conversation about work-life balance is also very skewed and hard, and most of us like you who are trying to do multiple things well, ultimately end up like we're failing a little bit everything. We’re sort of that 70% capacity at all of our things and it is okay to do the deep dive. But know that you're choosing that and know that that comes with some significant sacrifices in your relationships. Make sure you're okay with that.

Mike: Yeah, and I definitely agree there are definitely people that — I just did the Mixergy Podcast with Andrew and I highly recommend go and check it out. It was an interesting interview and I was mentioning some of this to him, and I was like I'm less concerned about money and more concerned about being happy and what I'm doing with my time and experiences and being able to do things that help fulfill me in other ways. And he's like what's wrong with making more money? And there's nothing wrong in making more money, but you just articulated perfectly, there's a counter balance to that right. I mean you're giving up something else in almost every situation unless you've hit the lottery or something along those lines where you're one of the few lucky ones. But typically making more money usually ends up meaning you're putting more time into something.

Sherry: It's funny you bring up Andrew. Andrew was actually the one who said that to me.

Mike: Is that right? That’s funny.

Sherry: What are you after; it’s like more of everything, more money. And then I was on Mixergy like six or nine months after the initial interview that I did with him, and he sort of changed his story a little bit.

Mike: Interesting.

Sherry: So, I also think that there are different phases to our career and to the life of our business. In my early years as a psychologist, as an academic, as a professional, I said yes to everything. I worked a ton, and that's what I was into, that's what I wanted at that point. Now, I just turned 40, I’m like life — I wanted to get a little more wide, I just want to relax more. And that's a different phase of my development as a human and the development of my career and I'm good with those cost benefits.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, I also recently turned 40, maybe a year before…

Sherry: Welcome to the club sir.

Mike: Yeah, I'm actually 42 now, but I definitely think that that has a ton to do with it. I look back at my 20s when I was working 18 hours a day and same thing in parts of my 30s, and I don't know what it is, things have definitely shifted. First of all, some of it has been life experiences. One of the big ones was living in a third world country for three years. And it definitely made me realize firsthand that money is not everything. The way I really realized that was these people around me were making $600 a month and were way happier than I was. So it couldn't have been the money, it was just a situation where you realize definitively that money isn't the thing that is going to make you happier.

And they were also working longer hours in a much rougher environment than I ever had to deal with, running a Boston hour and a half each way to work and just living 10 people in a house and stuff that just not the same standards that you are used to in the United States. So that was a big eye opener. So the combination of that plus I think age makes a difference. I mean, I do not have the same energy level and stamina that I did when I was in my 20s, and I also look back at the kind of the waste. I mean, it wasn't a waste of my time because, I mean, I enjoyed that experience. But I feel like just like I take on any other new challenge, I feel like I want the challenge of how can I spend less time on this and more time on other things? And that's kind of where I’m at.

Sherry: I think — so there's this psychological theorist named Eric Erickson who's one of the few people, he was sort of a contemporary for it, so old school. But he's one of the few people to really write about and think about adult development. I mean, a lot of developmental psychologist sort of stop at age 21 or whenever puberty is done. But he thought a lot about adult development. And he talked about like in your 20s and you're really developing a sense of identity in your 30s, you're usually developing intimacy like you're choosing your key relationships, your tribe, your spouse, if you get married. So those first sort of 20 to 40 are these deep building years of forming yourself as a professional and as a person in relationships.

But then usually around 40, there's this shift where you're looking for, he called it this phase of generativity versus stagnation. Like, are you going to build things that outlast you or are you going to kind of rest on your laurels and spend your money? And it's an interesting shift that most people do experience somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 that the priorities and the tasks and the things that matter to them are different certainly than they were than when they were 25 or 30 or even 35 at some points. So we're right on task. We're right on task.

Mike: Nice. So what happens when I get to be 50? Let's get a fast forward to that.

Sherry: Well, according to Ericsson at least, you're still going to be making sure that you are living your life in the ways that are most meaningful to you. And then it's not really until like 65 or when our bodies become a little bit more fragile that we start looking inward a little bit more and asking ourselves if we've lived to the way that we wanted to. And that last phase of Erickson's development is called ego integrity versus despair.

Mike: Interesting. I think the thing that started me down this track is talk about like the body getting more fragile. I mean, certainly I'm 40, I'm in good shape and everything but I can feel the difference. And I think for the first time in my life, you can actually, you can tell the difference between 40 and 20. And you think of all the things that people when you were 20 would tell you and you would just like brush off, and now when I go on a four day hike, I'm not ready to go on another four day hike the next day. I need a couple of days to recover because I'm physically just shot. Or when I go play tennis, my knee hurts, or when I drink too much my head hurts more than it used to. All these different things that you can start to actually feel the difference. And it's a pretty big wake up call.

Sherry: Yeah. And I think it can lead to some depression and this sense of grief about what you used to be able to do and what you can't do anymore. But I also think it can be this invitation to iterate like to change too. So, I used to be a runner. I met my husband on the track team. I was this pretty fairly talented runner. And there was a point and my body is like, no, we're not doing that anymore. But right around the time I turned — well I guess I was like 38 and a half, 39, I started doing a lot of circus stuff because it's low impact. I'm not landing or pounding on my knees the way that I was when I was running.

So and now I really love doing aerial and all this like circus acrobat nonsense. But it's really fun and it totally works for my 40 year old body, and there are things that don't work for my 40 year old body. And so the creativity of figuring out okay, like what do I need to learn to do now that I'm in a different place in my life or my business as the case may be.

Mike: Switch to a roller blades and ice skates, and bicycles instead of running right?

Sherry: Right, things that require helmets.

Mike: Yeah exactly, cool. So we're on maybe like two thirds of the way through this. I think we've had some really interesting conversations so far. But let's switch gears to something else. Let's let you bring up a topic, something that you see coming up a lot that you think would be really helpful to the audience.

Sherry: Well, I think one of the things that we touched on a little bit that might be good to come back to is the shifts that we experience in our day, like the times in our day when we're all in on work, the times in our day when we're all in on relationships. And some people talk about work-life balance as if it's this sort of equitable distribution across these different domains of our life, and I don't think that works for most of us.

But I think maybe it's that sense in which whatever you're doing, be there. Do that fully. Like when you are working, when you are checking email, be fully focused on that. But when you're hanging with your family or your friends, put the phone away, turn the notifications off, don't give in to that pole to be divided or distracted. So psychologically speaking, that focus is super helpful for our brains but it also is really important in our relationships. I think it helps us in our businesses too.

Mike: Yeah, I agree. And I've been — this is something I've been working on a lot personally like over the last year especially. I think back to a time, we're all at the age, and probably most people listening to this I guess, at least if you're in your 30s or 40s, we’re all at an age where there was time in our life when this wasn't even possible, you would not have a phone in your pocket or notifications nonstop. And I think there's a lot of cool things that have come out of technology, but the reality is just evaluating myself and being honest, I was way the hell happier when I didn't have that instant dopamine hit nonstop.

And often I'll find myself looking at my phone without any purpose, it's just become like another addiction where you're looking at something just because you have a free moment and your brain can't sit still for a split second. And definitely been trying to do a lot more of that type of thing where if I'm out with friends or with my wife or doing something that is away from work, having that be a separation time. I mean, like there is nothing in your business that can't wait a couple of hours. And if that's the case, then you've done something wrong with your business, or you got every now and then obviously there's something that comes up. I'm talking about like just the normal course of a month or a year, there's very few times where you like really need to be looking at something every couple of minutes to get that dopamine hit.

Sherry: Yeah, I think it's Pascal the philosopher said something to the effect of like all of humanity's problems stem from an inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And I feel like I could say that about entrepreneurs specifically, very specifically. Our businesses would be stronger, our mental health would be better if we cultivated our ability to sit quietly in a room alone to be with our own thoughts, to have a sense of our own inner life without constant stimulation from the environment around us or from the web specifically.

Mike: Yeah, I mean it's insane how many stimulators are out there at this point, and it's hard to imagine that it's going to just continue getting worse but it will. I mean like we’ll have implants probably not too long from our contacts that are like computers that will just be like seeing through our computer’s eyes basically. And I mean it's insane to me how normal this has become.

Sherry: And I do think it's an important conversation for those of us who live in the tech world to realize that the robots work for us. And if you talk to or you read interviews about Bill Gates and their use of technology in their family, their kids use the computer in the kitchen for homework only. I think those of us who are able to kind of pull back the curtain and see how the tech works can also choose to say, we're not going to do so much. We're going to create spaces in our lives and in our families to say that enough is enough. I don't want more, I don't need more simulation. I don't need more interaction. I don't need more notifications. I want to be strategic about what I hear and see, and I want to own the real estate in my own head.

Mike: Yeah, that's definitely good advice. So, one last question I want to throw at you that I had written down here, we talked about this in Vegas at Rhodium Weekend, but obviously the whole podcast audience wasn't there to listen to it. So, I work with my wife, she's a part of the business. And the thing that's been difficult for us is that there's like, there is no separation. I mean, we're at the office together all day; we're at home all night together. And the business ends up taking a life of its own. It's almost like another person or entity or thing, and it's hard to separate out things in that nature. And it's also very difficult because it's not the traditional relationship where the spouse is separate for the day to go to their own jobs, or go do their own thing, and then come back home and have a few hours at home at night. So what's your top couple of pieces of advice to deal with those situations?

Sherry: I think first of all, honor that the business is a separate thing. It is like a child, it has its own life that you and your wife are both responsible for curating and protecting, you’re sort of feeding it, you're tending it but it is separate from either of you as individuals, and it is separate from you as a couple. If we were talking about you having a child who was very demanding and required a lot of your emotional energy and time, we would say absolutely go all in on your child to be a great parent, be a great business owner, but also carve out a separate space and time for you as a human and for your relationship with your wife, your significant other.

And I do think there is something to longing, there's something to missing your significant other and seeing them again at the end of the day. Obviously you're not doing that on the rhythm of your day every day, but maybe sometimes you do. Sometimes you go work in a co working space, she goes to a coffee shop. Or maybe sometimes you go on a backpacking trip for a week by yourself, and you get the opportunity to be in the world without her so that you can also get that great dopamine rush of seeing her again and reuniting with her after some time away.

So, I think it's wonderful to have a great working relationship with your spouse. And if you can do that well, you are one of the few people who's found a great sort of keys to the universe. But don't underestimate the value of going and coming back, and of her being able to go and come back, and that the longing and the reuniting is important psychologically and probably centrally and in lots of other ways too.

Mike: Yeah, I mean for us personally in our situation, it's been 14 yearsish basically of not having that because we've been pretty much day or night with a few exceptions of a like I said, a week of hiking was actually one of the things I did do last year without her, but they're pretty rare. And I agree that having that separation is definitely good to have, so definitely good advice. Unfortunately though, we are running out of time and I want to leave a minute, I can't say your name. I want to say thank you and say your name, so I won't do that. But thank you for coming on and doing this. But if people wanted to get a hold of you, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Sherry: Yeah, so you will also be a guest on my podcast. But I have a podcast called Zen Founder, Z-E-N Founder where I talk about all things related to mental health and entrepreneurship. So I live on the internet Zenfounder.com. My Twitter handle is @Zenfounder, and I'm also on Facebook under Sherry Walling. So, I'm easy to connect with on the internet and I love talking to entrepreneurs. I love being helpful. I have a book called The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your Stuff Together.

Mike: With an asterisk in the middle of it.

Sherry: Yep, which is kind of a quick handy dandy guide to entrepreneur mental health, and my husband Robin and I just came out or are coming out probably by the time this podcast is live with a video course that is a date night boot camp for founders. So it's six short videos to send you on six dates where you have great conversations that are unique to the challenges that entrepreneurs and their families face. And that is at Zenfounder.com backslash or slash or whatever date night.

Mike: Awesome, very cool. I think I can get away with saying thank you very much Mrs. Walling, that's not going to flip any switches for coming on.

Sherry: Oh it’s doctor, it’s doctor.

Mike: Doctor, sorry Dr. Walling.

Sherry: [inaudible 00:32:40].

Mike: You did way more years of school than I did to get that signification in front of your name. Was it like eight years total?

Sherry: Something like that, yeah.

Mike: Hey man, I was already — I already bought and sold my first business by the time you were out of school.

Sherry: You arguably made the better financial investment.

Mike: I don't know, I don’t know. You're using your degree. You're one of the few people that actually right now use their degree in their life and their business. So I give you props for that for sure.

Sherry: Yeah. Hey, it's been a pleasure. Thanks Mike for having me.

Mike: Thanks so much.

And that is a wrap folks. I want to thank the lady who starts with an S that I cannot say otherwise for coming on the podcast today. I cannot wait to see her again in person in January at EcomCrew — I'm sorry Ecommerce Fuel Live. You’re just going to kill me, at Ecommerce Fuel Live in January. I'm going to be speaking there and so is she. She's going to be doing a keynote and I'll be doing a breakout session, and definitely looking forward to hearing her keynote because I think again, she's a brilliant woman that can help a lot of people, so looking forward to that.

Again, EcomCrew.com/203 for today's show notes. If you have any comments or want to relay your stories about any of the stuff that we talked about today, I’d love to hear from you. And besides that, don't forget again, EcomCrew.com/giveaways to enter to be in the running for a free year of EcomCrew Premium membership. It's a pretty awesome opportunity to get 1500 bucks worth of free stuff in that regard. So as always everyone, to end the episode, I'm going to sign off with saying, happy selling, and we'll talk to you soon.