Normalizing Entrepreneur Mental Health Differences with a Leading Researcher in the Field, Dr. Michael Freeman

Nearly 40% of entrepreneurs have one or more diagnosable mental health condition, 3% of entrepreneurs had made suicide attempts and 1.7% had a history of psychiatric hospitalization. It’s essential that we continue to destigmatize entrepreneur mental health vulnerabilities so that entrepreneurs feel less alone and that treatment options continue to grow.

This week on the show I’m honored to share with you my conversation with a leading researcher on the topic of entrepreneur mental health. Michael A. Freeman, M.D. is a psychiatrist, serial entrepreneur, entrepreneur mental health researcher, and founder of Econa. Econa is an entrepreneur mental health center of excellence that builds scalable mental health and wellbeing solutions for founders.

In this episode you’ll also learn that the very differences that make entrepreneurs more vulnerable to mental health challenges can also be part of their strengths, or according to Dr. Freeman, their “superpowers.” Caring for any mental health vulnerabilities is essential in order to ensure you can leverage these strengths and continue on in the marathon that is entrepreneur life.

In this conversation we cover a wide range of topics related to entrepreneur mental health including what makes the entrepreneur brain unique, for better or for worse, why having empirical research on entrepreneur mental health is so important for shifting the conversation in the larger startup ecosystem and allowing for the advancement of treatment options, and Dr. Freeman’s two step approach for entrepreneurs who want to make sure they’re prioritizing their own mental health and well-being.

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Find Dr. Freeman online:

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• Econa website: http://www.econa.net
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfreemanmd/

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Connect with your host, Dr. Melissa Parks, elsewhere:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissacparks/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissaparksphd

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissaparksphd/

Website: https://melissaparks.com/

Schedule a free 30 min. discovery call with Melissa to see if coaching with her would be a good fit: https://melissaparks.com/free-consultation-call/

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If you’d like additional support for your mental and emotional well-being as a founder please visit Melissa’s website for a list of resources to help you find a coach, therapist, or peer support.

Transcript

 Melissa  

All right, Dr. Freeman, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's just such a huge honor to have you here. And I'm really looking forward to diving into this conversation with you.

Dr. Freeman  

My pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Melissa  

Yeah. Well, my first question for most of my guests in the same question for you is, how did you get into the world of entrepreneurship?

Dr. Freeman  

I was born into it. I'm actually a fourth generation entrepreneur, everybody in my family as far back as we can trace was, was an entrepreneur, I'm going back to like, my great, great grandparents immigrated from Hungary. And it's been just one entrepreneur after the next ever since. So I grew up with entrepreneur, parents, and it was kind of in the DNA. Now, having said that, the other question might be, how did I get into being a psychiatrist. And I was always interested in mental health ever since I was in middle school. So I thought that was going to be my direction in life. But after I finished psychiatric training, I ended up working for a venture capital firm. Starting at that time, we were starting health insurance companies. And I would be like the founding chief medical officer. After doing that, for a while, I got the idea of starting my own business, and I co founded a company with a friend, which I was the CEO of that for 12 years. And at that time, a lot of our customers were entrepreneurs. With my psychiatric training, I could recognize the mental health issues among the founders I was working with. And so that's how it all kind of came together.

Melissa  

That's so interesting. And I'm so glad that you mentioned the part about where did the psychiatrist part come from? Because I think because I've met so many therapists and psychiatrist I think I've made the wrong assumption that, you know, that just happened. It's an interesting career. But it's, it's fascinating to hear how just the different kind of interests collided for you and brought you into the space.

Dr. Freeman  

Yeah, it's good. And after we sold that company, I was really curious about, are there actually mental health differences that characterize entrepreneurs? You know, pretty much anybody can hold the job. And some people can lead a team or an organization, but very, very few people can start and grow a business. So in that time, my curiosity is what is it about those people that that distinguishes them and makes it possible for them to do this, which hardly anybody else can. So I was fortunate enough to be on the faculty at UC San Francisco and Department of Psychiatry, and I was able to round up some of my research colleagues, we studied that issue for several years. In fact, we still have ongoing research. And we were able to determine that yeah, mental health issues are common among entrepreneurs. And that there is a mental health footprint, if you will, that distinguishes the founders, from everybody else. So it all really did has come together over the years. And it's part entrepreneur, part executive coach, part researcher, part mental health advocate as well.

Melissa  

Yes, yeah. You've certainly worn, well, you certainly wear today, a lot of different hats within this within this specific niche. Well, so the research that's that's how I first came across you was the research that you've done about the mental health kind of tendencies that that exist amongst entrepreneurs, you have a paper. Now, I think this is the same paper that originally it was called entrepreneurs touched with fire. Am I remembering it correctly? Is that what it's?

Dr. Freeman  

Yeah, that was that was the original one. And then a peer reviewed version of that paper was published in one of the academic journals. And the title of that one is the prevalence and co-occurrence of mental health issues among entrepreneurs and their families. And that has, I think, both versions of that paper, were very widely circulated and have begun to raise awareness about this issue in the field.

Melissa  

Yeah, I mean, I've seen it. I've seen that paper cited in multiple outlets for like that focus on the entrepreneur world. And I know whenever I've shared some of the statistics from that people just are blown away by how much at how high the prevalence rates are. I'm just curious, were you surprised about that? I mean, it sounds like you already suspected right from your work that, that the prevalence rates were quite high.

Dr. Freeman  

What surprised me was the range of mental health issues that we discovered among the entrepreneurs, when I first got started, my impression was that a lot of entrepreneurs might be in the bipolar spectrum somewhere, because like a lot of hypomania really kind of jumped out at me. Enthusiasm, elevated mood, kind of charisma, great communication skills, visionary creative out of the box thinking inspirations. And when we did the research, what we discovered was that, that turns out to be true, the incidence was significantly higher than in a general population. But we also discovered that a lot of entrepreneurs have ADHD, for example, was quite elevated, and there's some tendency towards addiction. And then we found that there are base rates of anxiety and depression, they're not too much different from the rest of the world. So it's a wide range of mental health conditions. And in many cases, they co occur. What that means is, if you have ADHD, it's wouldn't be surprising if you also had anxiety or depression or some other mental health condition at the same time. So it's been a journey and the prevalence prevalence rates are, are pretty high. We've done several studies, the one you cited, the sample was a convenience sample, which means that the people that we studied were people who wanted to be studied. We did another study after that, that with the Gallup organization, then this was funded by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation. And this was not a convenience sample, this was called the National probability sample, which means that it's truly reflective of self employed people across the United States. And in that one, we found that 38%, so almost 40% of entrepreneurs have one or more diagnosable mental health conditions. Why I decided to try to become an advocate for mental health, is because we found that 3% of entrepreneurs had made suicide attempts and 1.7% had a history of psychiatric hospitalization. So it's, it's a concern. It's a concern. We all know that. If you weren't stressed out to begin with, just start a company and it won't take too long before you're subject to a huge amount of stress. So they won't vulnerability has something to do with what the what you bring to the party and what the party brings to you. And that's kind of what got me to, to where we are today.

Melissa  

Yeah. And I know that's

Dr. Freeman  

The other problem, you know, is that there is one thing there, there, there is no mental health safety net for entrepreneurs. If you're employed, if you have a job, you have employer sponsored health insurance, if you are unemployed, or if you're have a severe and persistent mental illness, there's Medicaid. If you're entrepreneur, there's nothing. If you're if you create jobs for 10, 20, 30 people, they all have health insurance. And if an unemployment insurance, if your company goes out of business, they all get the unemployment insurance, but you don't know where they don't get they have like a, you know, a mental health safety net, and you don't. So I think it's very important for us to begin building a safety net and mental health safety net for entrepreneurs. The downside and the upside, it's also important to help founders recognize that they have superpowers associated with these mental health differences. And to learn how to kind of enhance those strengths and use those were effectively.

Melissa  

Yeah, okay, I have so many, so many questions about what you just said. Well, what I was gonna say, and I heard just so listeners make sure that they hear it. What I heard you saying is that it's not just that entrepreneurs might have a greater likelihood to have a mental health issue or it's not just that the the world of entrepreneurship, you know, is that that terrible emotional roller coaster? It's really when those two kind of come together that we see even more problems. Is that Is that what I understood?

Dr. Freeman  

Yes. entrepreneurship can trigger underlying mental health issues. Think about having epilepsy. If you're someone with epilepsy, you don't have seizures every single day. But if you were to go into a disco with a strobe light that would trigger seizures. So if you're an entrepreneur with some underlying mental health issues, starting a company is kind of like going into a disco, you're going to be triggered and getting triggered quite a bit.

Melissa  

Yeah. I love that comparison. I don't I think a lot of people, like as entrepreneurs would say, I can say as a as a business owner. It's not always a disco I understand what you're saying. It's not always fun. Yes. Yeah. 

Dr. Freeman  

Well, and then that fun parts of it are some of the triggering situations. Yes. You have a great company going. And you only have another nine months of runway in the bank. And people are signing up to for the next funding round. It's not fun. It raises a lot of anxiety. Alarm.

Melissa  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's and things can change so quickly to for the worst sometimes. And that's just

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, that's exactly right. You're operating a big retail business, and all of a sudden, there's a pandemic, you know? Oh, and by the way, there's no such thing as having business insurance for pandemics. So, again, yes, things can. Things can change very quickly and abruptly and be quite emotionally impactful.

Melissa  

Yeah. And I find that so fascinating. Going back to what you were saying about the safety net, because I heard you speak about that. I'm at the event, the Founders Mental Health Pledge event. And it was the first time I think I've heard somebody speaking about that. I don't know is this, tell me more about it? Like, what do you how do you foresee us creating this safety net?

Dr. Freeman  

I think the ecosystem has to want the safety net to exist. What would that look like? I mean, typically, what a mental health safety net looks like is that there's some kind of payer like an insurance vehicle. There's some kind of delivery system like an employee assistance program or provider network. There's some type of research capability so that there's a bunch of researchers focused on studying entrepreneur mental health. There's some kinds of quality assurance measures and metrics to study outcomes over the long run. There's some kinds of training programs so that clinicians like you actually get trained in how to provide appropriate and effective outcome oriented evidence based care to entrepreneurs. None of that exists right now. So there are many opportunities to jump in for anybody that wants to try to build something that will address this issue.

Melissa  

So anybody listening, right? Take that as a call to action.

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, my team is working on a screening instrument. What we're trying to do is an eye right now I work with three research assistants, and a bunch of consultants and colleagues. We're trying to create to validate a screening instrument that we've been developing over the last two years, so that we can screen large numbers of entrepreneurs and identify those who are at highest risk to try to channel them into you know, getting care before it's too late. Those those really high high risk people that I mentioned before. And it has not been easy to get support for a project like that, which is obviously going to benefit the entire ecosystem. This is all public domain open source that we're building. It's not proprietary. But what we found is that there are a lot of stakeholders, but they all have their own self narrow self interest. And it's In order to solve in order to really create the safety net, people have to come together for the common interest of the entire innovation ecosystem.

Melissa  

Yeah, it sounds so challenging to me because I do think in general in our country, mental health, right is it has so many areas to improve, the system is broken in a lot of ways. Do you feel more hopeful about the the possibility of mental health for entrepreneurs, making some changes and us coming together as an ecosystem?

Dr. Freeman  

I do believe that they the there's movement in the right direction, I think, since that paper came out, there have been more and more and more stories in the media. There have been more and more podcasts, there have been more conferences and retreats and workshops that have something to do with mental health. So I do believe that destigmatization is happening and normalization of entrepreneur mental health differences is happening more, whether it jumps from that level to actually building something, I don't know, several small companies have have entered the space trying to, you know, offer mental health solutions for entrepreneurs. And they've either all of them have either failed, or else they have not succeeded. They're, you know, they kind of putter along, but they don't grow. So I do, I do think there's going to be need to be some kind of external stimulus, either a government is going to get interested in this, or a foundation is going to get interested in this. But without that, unless there unless there's some strong leaders from within stakeholder groups, I'm, I'm not sure how it's going to come to life.

Melissa  

Yeah, yeah. And I suppose it was a really big question to ask you. Do you have hope? Of course, you have hope. Right? Because you're working on this. And you're

Dr. Freeman  

Oh sure, I keep doing it every day. So yeah. Yeah. I believe I believe that the system can continue to get better one way or another, whether or not we have a breakthrough? I don't know. We'll see.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, that's how I feel with the podcast to rightly just like, keep going. And I mentioned to you before we press record, you know, some of the positive feedback I've received from listeners and guests. And that's what keeps me going to write because this is really, at this point, a sort of passion project for me, but it's something I'm very passionate about. And I do think, yeah, we just have to keep trudging along, we'll say and as more people join the movement, we hopefully we continuously changes. And we need, we need this research and these, like the screening tool you mentioned, that's, that's just so exciting to hear about that development happening.

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, and it has to be scientifically validated. There. One of the problems with mental health, as you know, is that it means different things to different people. And so, you know, coming from UC San Francisco, academic background, I have really always tried to emphasize evidence based approaches. And that's the that's the approach we're taking with this, as well.

Melissa  

Yeah, well, if I can just imagine some of the conflict you might experience with with the entrepreneur world, because I mentioned to you, my husband, was previously a startup founder. And he was doing that while I was doing my dissertation. And we would always get in these arguments about like him saying, No, you know, you need to just, you know, you know, launch it and iterate and just fail fast. And like, that's not how research works. The research is much more slow and thoughtful. So do you have anything to say about that?

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, I do. I think that for most companies, and for most product development, that's the way to go. But you wouldn't launch a new medication and fail fast. This is life and death. And so you have to be very careful about validating anything that you do when it comes to health care, be it medication or therapy, or assessment. And so, I think your husband is, by and large, right? For most entrepreneurs, but not when it that when you can't afford to make a mistake. So I think, in this realm, you really can't afford to make a mistake. If we let's say we screen a population. Let's say you're in Seattle. Let's say that we screen everybody in the Seattle YPO, you know, Young Presidents Organization or EO it's another network. And we're just iterating along and we fail to detect somebody who is actually quite depressed, and then they go on to make a suicide attempt. That would be a defective product. So I think in this realm, we can't really afford to have defective products.

Melissa  

Yeah, well, yeah, coming from my background, I completely relate and understand to later I'll make sure my husband listens to the podcast as well. So okay, that's mostly right. He will, like like hearing that as well. But I also want to want to circle back to something you said earlier about those superpowers that entrepreneurs have. Can you tell us more about that? Yes.

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, that's why God created entrepreneurs. The thing about that's unique about entrepreneurs is that 80% of net new jobs come from companies that are less than five years old. So that means if we want to have full employment, we need entrepreneurs. Those big old companies that are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, are doing their best to lay off as many people as possible downsize, right size, outsource the growth, is coming at the ground level from these smaller businesses that are trying new things. Why is it that only a very small number of people can come up with ideas to test for growing a new company. And it's because of those superpowers. Entrepreneurs are sociable, they're energized, they're motivated, they're creative. They are enthusiastic, they are open minded, they are intelligent. They, they bring together all kinds of knowledge bases that usually don't live in the same person. And they see opportunities where other people don't. So it's that ability to operate to recognize opportunities, the motivation to exploit an opportunity once you see it, the strengths and skills and capabilities, you need to create value that are all superpowers. And that's really the the main point is, is the strengths and superpowers the mental health issues are just kind of come along for the ride and need to be managed properly. But it's the the differences are all about the strengths and superpowers. It's the secret sauce.

Melissa  

Yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah, loved strengths based kind of work and focusing on those things. It's very easy to get bogged down when we hear some of these statistics, right, like, oh, gosh, it's, there's there's so many problems and challenges. But I think I like the way you put it just it's along for the ride, those things are along for the ride, and they don't have to dictate the story of entrepreneurship.

Dr. Freeman  

And the statistics, you can you can listen to them through different filters. So you know, I just said that almost 40% of entrepreneurs have mental health issue. That means 60% don't, the significant majority of entrepreneurs don't have any mental health issues. Yeah. But they do have a lot of strengths and superpowers. Yeah. That's what as a coach, you really need to understand that.

Melissa  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm curious to know to do you run into I don't know if with your work with clients, or just in the conversations you've had, do you run into problems with entrepreneurs who do not want to get treatment or do not want to get support because they're worried about losing their edge can give you I spoke with somebody on the podcast. Yeah, who was who had struggled with bipolar before, and that was a kind of a concern about when I treat the bipolar. And they got to a point where it wasn't, you know, the concept, the downsides were, you know, overriding that the edge that they were getting, and so treatment was was the obvious choice, but that's something I've heard from people, even with anxiety sometimes like, oh, I don't know if I really want to work on it, because it's really what drives me.

Dr. Freeman  

The answer is that if any of these symptoms are preventing you from living up to your potential, causing disabilities, adversely affecting loved ones, interfering with your ability to lead your company, then you definitely should take care of that. The challenge is that there's a different approach to psychopharmacology for entrepreneurs than there is in the general population. And very few psychiatrists have experience with managing psycho farm for founder's. So for example, with the the people you just mentioned, I have worked with plenty of entrepreneurs with bipolar disorder, the problem for them is much more related to depression than it is to the at least the low grade mania the hypomania. Elevated levels of mania can also be quite problematic. But there are a wide range of medications that can be applied in different ways at different times of the year, to manage to help people manage their moods in a way that doesn't interfere with the creativity and the motivation and the energy and the enthusiasm that helps them with being you know, really good entrepreneurs. That so one of these days, I'm gonna teach a course on psychopharm for psychiatrists to understand. Yeah, how to help entrepreneurs. But with anxiety, it's a good thing, but too much of a good thing is a bad thing. And there are ways to both educate founders about anxiety and to manage the extremes that still don't interfere with them getting the motivation kick that they need to keep pushing forward.

Melissa  

Yeah, I love that. And please do that course. I'm really, that would be fantastic. It is such a niche area. And it's I hadn't heard that before about there being kind of different ways to manage those medications for founders.

Dr. Freeman  

Psychopharm with entrepreneurs is very nuanced. Yeah.

Melissa  

Wow. Okay. Well, I have a few more questions for you. One of the big ones that, you know, I think we can run into in this is, you were saying we really need like the ecosystem to all kind of come together? What do we do about investors? Right? Because we do. And that's what I hear from a lot of people, they don't want to even people guess invite in the show that like, I don't want to share my story just yet. Because you know, I'm going in for an investment round, or I don't know what my investors will say, or I've got to be careful about what I say, what do we need investors to hear about mental health treatment?

Dr. Freeman  

You will have better total portfolio returns, if the founders in your portfolio, have access to mental health services. Yeah, investors are very interested in ROI. And what has not really surfaced in the investor community yet is that relationship between business outcomes and founder mental health, but we definitely see that in the research. So I think that is the most likely to succeed, strategy for communicating with investors. One thing when I talk to investors, we're talking about venture capitalists in this instance, not banks who make loans or private equity who buys companies that are already working, but with the venture capital people, their business model is predicated on the assumption that 80% of their companies that they invest in are going to just flat out fail. And 10% are won't succeed, but they won't exactly fail either. They call that group the living dead thing, you know, it's a viable business, but it doesn't grow. Why is it that those 80% Fail? Do you think mental health might have something to do with that? And what would it do to your portfolio if only 70% failed? I think that's the conversation to have with investors. And I do have that conversation with investors.

Melissa  

I think it's challenging because what, uh, what I was just saying about how founders, sometimes they don't feel comfortable sharing their story, or they maybe they don't open up to their investors. I think there is a conversation, like a larger conversation that needs to happen to like you were just describing, you know, just open up your mind to the fact that maybe mental health stuff is happening, because when I've spoken with some investors, they've told me, my founders, they don't they don't talk about that stuff with me. So I don't I don't know what's going on. And I don't know if it's just I'm biased by the VCs I've spoken with. Because the founders I speak with that was statistics show 

Dr. Freeman  

That was studied recently by a woman named Dr. L. Benjamin, in Tel Aviv, she published an article through a media outlet called Startup snapshots, you can find it on the internet, about entrepreneur mental health. And what she found was that she one of her questions was, who do you open up to about your mental health issues like rank order, and out of, you know, like, five or six options of who you can talk with, the last person that anybody wanted to talk to you was investors. Talk to loved ones, friends, family members, co founders, therapist, their peer support their their founder, peer support group, but they don't want to talk to investors, for the reason that you managed with investors. They feel like they need to manage the way they're perceived. And they're worried that the investors that investors have a negative attitude about mental health, which they should, because in the world of entrepreneurship, people with mental health issues, certain mental health issues, in particular, tend to get the best business outcomes. But they do. And so. We, the investors are often the last people to hear about this, but they should know that it's out there. And many investors were entrepreneurs themselves. And so they know from their experiences, entrepreneurs with the mental health issues are

Melissa  

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's why it's sometimes surprises me when I've spoken with VCs, and they're like, oh, no, I haven't heard about this. And I think well, didn't you experience it? You were you were a founder yourself. So I think it's just, we're, there's been so much progress in this field. But I think we're still scraping the surface of what we're, what we have the potential for, right, just in being more vulnerable, and being able to show up as a founder, capable founder and a human at the same time, I think that's the conversation we still need to have.

Dr. Freeman  

Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna give you a link. In chat, you can maybe post this for your listeners, a survey, where in that survey, they talk about how much they don't want to talk to their founder to their investors. But yes, showing up as a human. Well, that's a that's a little bit nuanced. But I think not having shame and stigma, about being different. Everybody knows entrepreneurs are different. That's why nobody, that's why most people don't get the crazy idea of starting companies. You know, everybody knows that if you start a business, it's if you start a business, the odds are greater than 5050, it's gonna fail. But if you start a venture backed business, the odds are like, 80%, that it's going to fail. So everybody knows that, that entrepreneurs are willing to take the kind of risk that most people wouldn't take. So they're different. And that's good. Because otherwise we wouldn't have all those new jobs. We wouldn't have prosperity, we wouldn't have new products and services. But it it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that there's a little bit of kind of mental health issues that go along with that, too.

Melissa  

Yeah. Yeah. I love what you're saying. Yeah, removing the stigma and the shame, right? That it's just it's part of the package, and it doesn't have to be a negative thing.

Dr. Freeman  

Exactly. Yeah.

Melissa  

So what about if you for the for the founders who are listening? You know, they were saying that there might be some baggage, right? There might be some mental health stuff going on? What do they need to do to manage the risk to take care of themselves and make sure that they, you know, maybe if they have this coming up, that they that bit of prioritizing, taking care of their well being?

Dr. Freeman  

I say two things. One is prevention, and the other is treatment. Prevention has to do with reducing your risk factors. Everybody has risk factors that make them more vulnerable to experiencing a mental health episode. And so if you can do everything possible to reduce your risk factors, then it's just less likely you're going to have a mental health problem. What does that look like? Get regular sleep, make sure that's a priority. Make sure that you have good relationships, deep supportive relationships with friends and loved ones that are just unrelated to work. Regular exercise, pleasurable activities, outdoor nature, exposure, basic wellness kinds of principles apply even more so to entrepreneurs. So reduce your risk factors have a kind of wellness oriented prevention oriented lifestyle. And then treatment is if you have a mental health issues, you deal with it. Like if you experience panic attacks, if you get social anxiety when you're making a pitch. If you experience depression, and don't feel like going to work one day, if you have a drug or alcohol problem that to the point where you have a hangover in the morning, then just don't pretend things are good when they really aren't. These are just basic mental health issues. Very common among entrepreneurs, all treatable, usually good outcomes. So that would be my two step approach.

Melissa  

I love how you've yet you put it into two categories. I think that that's fantastic. I have to say what I've seen, and maybe you've seen it as well, prevention doesn't seem to do it often. Like I will have founders like second time founders come to me and say, you know, I did everything wrong the first time I burnt out. And now I want to now I'm ready for the prevention, let's say. And, but it sounds like are you tell me more about that? Like, are you seeing any, any efforts to help change the conversation around that to increase prevention efforts?

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, if you go on the internet, look up entrepreneur, entrepreneur mental health, most of what you find is related to wellness. So there's more and more content available with respect to that. With free, you know, with respect to anything more service oriented than free downloadable content, again, that requires a budget. And it's pretty hard to monetize that kind of service. So you'll find workshops here and there, you'll find individuals, you know, probably like yourself, who will lead a weekend retreat or something of that nature. But in terms of bigger population scale. No, I haven't seen that yet.

Melissa  

And is that I didn't ask you in advance how to pronounce your company's Econa? Or am I pronouncing it correctly? Econa?

Dr. Freeman  

Yeah, it stands for the personality traits of entrepreneurs, the extraversion and openness to experience, conscientiousness, they either see in the Oh, and then entrepreneurs have low levels of neuroticism, and sort of average levels of agreeableness. But there are five basic personality traits. These are genetically transmitted. And there's a clear personality profile or footprint for entrepreneurs.

Melissa  

Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't know the story behind the name. And and what types of services? I mean, it sounds like you've touched on some of that, right? That's where the some of that the Screening Questionnaire is coming out of there. Is that correct?

Dr. Freeman  

Yes, yes. Correct.

Melissa  

And what else are you providing?

Dr. Freeman  

We've led workshops, we've have created streaming videos. And we've done support groups, I can still go on retreats and do mental health programs for entrepreneurs and, you know, CEO retreat sponsored by venture capital firms. But the main thing that we're focused on is developing population scale, evidence based instruments to really kind of reach a lot of people, a lot of founders in a very efficient way.

Melissa  

Oh, great. Well, I'm just looking forward to 

Dr. Freeman  

Anybody who's listening is yeah, if anybody who's listening is interested in supporting that kind of initiative, you know, just reach out. I'll tell you more.

Melissa  

Yeah. And we'll make sure to have all those links. Just to connect with you and everything in the show notes, but I did want to ask, what about your own experience as a founder? Any challenges? Well, I shouldn't say any challenges. Are there anything particular that comes to mind about challenges you've faced yourself and anything you've learned that really helps you in terms of self care?

Dr. Freeman  

I faced all the challenges everybody else has faced, it's the roller coaster. It's the crisis of the day. It's the, you know, breakthrough, fabulous, positive signals from the marketplace. The unanticipated new technologies that make everything you do obsolete, the competition coming out of left field, key employees decide to go somewhere else, you name it, I've experienced it, too. And so I have a lot of empathy for everybody else is going through the same thing. What have I learned, it helps with your own self care, don't take everything so seriously. It's just an enterprise, you know, going into it, the odds are greater than 50/50, it's going to fail. And its founders tend to overly identify with their businesses. It's not a child, it's not a person. It's just an enterprise. And an enterprise is an idea that is based on hypotheses that you keep testing. And that's it. So if you can get a little bit of distance between who you are as a person, remember that your self worth is not contingent upon your net worth, then it becomes a lot easier.

Melissa  

Oh, yeah. I hope that people are listening to that part. It's so important. And it's interesting how you said, it's not a child, because I do often hear people talk about their businesses being their babies. And so it's, it's so important to not not be in that headspace.

Dr. Freeman  

And some neuroscientists in Finland studied that exact question. And they compared the the brain scans of entrepreneurs who lost a business with parents who lost a child. And what they discovered was that it's the same that entrepreneurs have the equal intensity of grief, about losing a business as parents, who, who lose, lose a child. Which is a shame, because it's really not comfortable. But they, but they do get so invested. It becomes not only their entire life, but a manifestation of who they are as people in the world. It's like losing part of yourself. Yeah, so I think it's important to be on guard against that from the very beginning.

Melissa  

I'm thinking about in terms of what you said, prevention and treatment, right, like, don't do that, right. Don't Don't get so entwined in it. And then also for the people who are already, they're just having a lot of compassion for themselves that, that it the grief of losing a business can be really, really powerful. I mean, that that study really speaks to it.

Dr. Freeman  

Yes. And reframe your criteria for success. If your company is in business for more than five years, let's say if your if your business fails, after six years, your results are above average. That was an above average business outcome. So keep it in perspective.

Melissa  

I love that. Well, so I asked all my guests a question at the end. Let's see if you have something to share, because you've already shared a lot of wisdom. But the question is, if we could go back in time, when you were first starting your entrepreneur journey, would you have any advice or encouraging words to say to yourself?

Dr. Freeman  

Well, I'm thinking about this one company where I was the CEO for 12 years. What I would say to myself, at this point is don't grow. That growth isn't everything. There was a stage in the lifecycle of that business, where we were actually optimized. And then we lost our optimization to product market fit as we started to grow. So that would be like from my own personal experience with respect to that business that I was building. That would be what, what my advice would be,

Melissa  

yeah, well, I'm sure there's so many people listening who can benefit from that advice as well, because I do think that there's this temptation, right, which is, it sounds like the temptation that you fell into to just keep scaling. And it's not always the answer.

Dr. Freeman  

That's what the investors are looking for. But this was not an investor back business. This was, you know, three, three friends and we each kicked in like 30 grand. And then we were in business for 12 years after that, and we ended up with For, like 54 employees and millions of dollars a year in revenue, and everything was great. But we, we grew really rapidly and we kind of got the idea that we should always keep rolling. Whereas at a certain point, there was there is an optimization around product market fit. And once you get that, that's the sweet spot, at least that that was for us the experience.

Melissa  

Yeah. Well, it's so wonderful. Thank you for sharing that experience. And now the question of course, is where can people learn more about you and your company and connect with you?

Dr. Freeman  

Www.econa.net  And I would just encourage everyone who is listening to this, first of all, thanks for taking the time to focus on this topic. Second, if you know, an entrepreneur who is struggling, give them some moral support and encourage them to make it a priority to you know, get the care or the self care that they need. And then finally, let's destigmatize all this, just accept that mental health issues are normal for entrepreneurs.

Melissa  

I love that great, great ending words and Dr. Freeman again, thank you so much for being here. I've loved this conversation, and I just can't wait to get it out in the world and share with everyone.

Dr. Freeman  

My pleasure, thanks again for producing the podcast and for inviting me to be a guest.