Permission with Dr. Sherry Walling

Upon returning from MicroConf 2017, Rob and Sherry talk about their experience with the conference as well as strategies you can use to get the most out of conferences.

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Sherry and Rob talk about the downside of good things. Sherry uses the example of founders experiencing growth and success in their businesses but it also causing disruptions. They talk openly about the reality that even really good things can still cause stress and what to do, and how to prepare.

Sherry and Rob talk about the downside of good things. Sherry uses the example of founders experiencing growth and success in their businesses but it also causing disruptions. They talk openly about the reality that even really good things can still cause stress and what to do, and how to prepare.

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Episode Transcript

Sherry Walling:

Hi there.

Rob Walling:

Hey. How are you?

Sherry Walling:

Good. How is the sound and all that stuff.

Rob Walling:

Yeah. I think we’re good although I’m hearing your nose breathing.

Sherry Walling:

That cannot be. I have no nose and I am not breathing.

Rob Walling:

This seems like an odd error then. I guess it’s a feature, not a bug. Much better.

Sherry Walling:

I’ve stopped breathing.

Rob Walling:

Good. That was the proper solution to that. Like when you go to the doctor and says, “It hurts when I do this” and he says, “Stop doing that.”

Sherry Walling:

Breathing?

Rob Walling:

Yeah. That’s how we roll here. This is the ZenFounder comedy hour.

Sherry Walling:

Okay. In all honesty though, I just had a bad experience.

Rob Walling:

What was it?

Sherry Walling:

I was really thirsty so I grabbed the glass of water on my dresser next to my bed and took a big old gulp. And it turns out it was actually the gin and tonic that you made me yesterday that I forgot about.

Rob Walling:

Nice and all the ice had melted so it was crystal clear and you just took a swig of gin and tonic right before we record ZenFounder?

Sherry Walling:

Day old, lukewarm, totally flat gin and tonic. It was so bad.

Rob Walling:

I bet it was. How do you feel though?

Sherry Walling:

I feel like I spit it out in the sink. I’m not that into day drinking unless the drinks are really good and I’m on vacation.

Rob Walling:

Oh man. Yeah. I guess it’ll be an interesting episode. Oh, if you spit it out, there’s going to be no fun impact. See, if you already tasted it, it was in your mouth, you might as well just swallow it at that point.

Sherry Walling:

I’m going to leave that alone and just transition into the topic at hand.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. So gin and tonic’s are good when they’re chilled and fresh and not so good when they’re left out for 12 hours and then consumed by surprise. Yeah. What else is going on? Any other funny stories to tell, Rob Walling?

Rob Walling:

Not at the moment. Not completely right off the cuff without any preparation. We are leaving for Microconf in a couple days. I suppose by the time this airs, it will either be the week of or the week after Microconf. Hopefully we were able to connect with you, our listener, if you also made it to either growth or started edition.

Sherry Walling:

Yeah. Please come and say hi to me. Everybody says hi to Rob. Say hi to me if you listen to ZenFounder. Rob, I don’t know, I know you aren’t on Twitter that much these days, but I

Sherry talks with Ed Finkler, CTO at Graph Story and chairman of Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI) about his mission to help raise awareness, educating, and providing resources to support mental health in the tech community both for employees and employers.

Sherry talks with Ed Finkler, CTO at Graph Story and chairman of Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI) about his mission to help raise awareness, educate, and provide resources to support mental health in the tech community both for employees and employers.

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OSMI.Org

OSMI on Twitter

OSMI on Facebook

Sherry and Rob talk about ADD/ADHD and its prevalence in the founder community. They help inform people on what it looks it and when its considered a disorder versus just a behavioral profile.

Sherry and Rob talk about ADD/ADHD and its prevalence in the founder community. They help inform people on what it looks it and when its considered a disorder versus just a behavioral profile.

ADD Symptoms:

Careless mistakes, difficulty attending to details

Problems with sustained attention

Difficulty following through on instructions

Does not seem to listen

Difficulty organizing tasks

Often loses things

Forgetful in daily activities

ADHD Symptoms:

Fidgets

Leaves seat in situations where remaining in seat is expected

Restless movement

Difficulty being quiet

“On the go” “driven by a motor”

Talks excessively

Blurts out an answer before a question has been completed

Difficulty taking turns

Often interrupts or intrudes on others

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MicroConf

Episode Transcript

Sherry Walling:

How are you doing? How’s your Monday treating you?

Rob Walling:

So far, so good.

Sherry Walling:

Despite starting the day with water dripping down the ceiling of our kitchen?

Rob Walling:

Yeah.

Sherry Walling:

Or pouring. Pouring, I should say.

Rob Walling:

Out of a light, a can light. It was just coming right between the bulb, so you’re waiting for something to start sparking but it never did. Yeah. There was that. There was dropping of my car at the mechanic to get the side mirror fixed because it got smacked by a car when it was parked on the street. And then so far, so good today with our email queues. Monday mornings are always the trickiest days because a lot of sending happens, and so far we’re holding up well. So some pluses and some minuses, I’d say.

Sherry Walling:

Hey. Good deal, man. At least no one was injured in the kitchen flood of 2017.

Rob Walling:

I know. And the nice part is I walk in the door from dropping one of our kids off at essentially science, math … it’s like a STEM program before school. And I walk back in, and you’re at yoga, and our six-year-old who was here with your parents, but he had seen the water come down and had grabbed a bowl and had put it underneath it. And I was really proud of him for his kind of quick thinking and doing the right thing. He didn’t just let water pour all over the wood floor. It’s pretty cool.

Sherry Walling:

He’s a smart kid. I think we should keep him.

Rob Walling:

Yeah. Indeed.

Sherry Walling:

So I thought we might talk about ADHD today. How do you feel about that?

In this episode Rob talks about why you should find a crew, how to find a crew, and why it is critical to your success as an entrepreneur. He shares how he has met his crew throughout the years and divides them into 3 different roles.

In this episode Rob talks about why you should find a crew, how to find a crew, and why it is critical to your success as an entrepreneur. He shares how he has met his crew throughout the years and divides them into 3 different roles.

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Episode Transcript

Rob Walling:

If you enjoy the Zen Founder podcast and feel like you get some value out of it we’d love a five star review in iTunes or Stitcher or Downcast or whichever podcatcher you use and even more, we’d love it if you’d head on over to support zenfounder.com and pledging even $1 or $2 an episode is a huge help towards keeping us on the air and keeping the show at the highest quality possible.

 

I’m flying solo again this week I received some positive feedback about the episode playing long ball that I recorded a couple of weeks ago, Sherry’s at south … By South West this week in Austin, Texas, meeting up with some important folks and exploring opportunities and doing fancy business type things and so here I am, sitting in a closet that’s turned into an office just recording for you.

 

This week I’m gonna be talking about finding your crew, how to find your crew, why you should find your crew and how critical it is to your success.

 

So I’m actually enjoying these solo episodes and it’s not often I get to sit and kind of diatribe for 14, 15 minutes, but it’s funny how many detailed thoughts like this that have occurred to me over the years that I’ve always wanted to put into a blog post and just don’t have the time to spend the two or three hours, well I should say two to eight hours for me to actually get it published and the quality that I want, so here I am someday maybe these will become blog posts but for now these are kind of off the top of my head types things I am putting together outlines and following on them so that there is a decent flow to the episode, but these are things that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

 

This week I wanna talk about finding your crew and what I mean by that, you know when I saw your crew, what I mean is like three to five people who are really going to be all in with you on your entrepreneurial journey so this is not your spouse, it’s not your kids, it’s very, very unlikely that it’s anyone in even in your extended family, that’s a possibility but I would doubt it. These are three to five people who are gonna support you, who are gonna be either a mentor, a peer or in the long run, a mentee and it’s a small group of people and that’s why I call it a crew, you know there’s this concept that Seth Godin talks about where it’s find your tribe and I do think you need to find your tribe and you probably define your tribe first before you go try to find your crew ’cause your crew’s probably gonna come out of that tribe.

 

When Seth Godin talks about it he’s basically saying, “Find the people who are doing the same thing you are and love the same things you do and have the same aspirations that you do.”. But what I found is that finding your tribe doesn’t tend to be enough, the tribe is just too big and it’s just too impersonal and I think as I said you’re gonna need to find your tribe and then dig into it and try to find that handful of people who are really gonna be all in with you and this is why you know I’ve long valued mastermind groups as far as I know, the first person to really dig into mastermind groups in the

Sherry talks with Karim Marucchi, CEO of Crowd Favorite, about the pains of ending a client relationship and how it can be an emotional challenge. Karim shares some past experiences ending a relationship with a client, how it felt, and his philosophies.