Linnea Butler is a psychotherapist and trainer who has operated a clinical practice for 15 years. She provides individual and group therapy services to adults and couples with complex mental health needs.

She is the founder of Bay Area Mental Health, a private practice that offers cutting-edge treatments such as ketamine psychotherapy for trauma and PTSD. Linnea also writes frequently on Substack under the title "How Healing Happens."

We met through a wisdom group that we’ve been part of, and both frequently write about our career perspectives on Substack. One topic comes through a lot for each of us…Entrepreneurship tears down your ego and builds up character.

Here are a few things we discuss:

·      Behind the scenes of building, growing and selling a therapy business

·      How Entrepreneurship accelerates our personal growth

·      Why selling your business can be the best way to continue growing as a person

Relevant Links:

Linnea Butler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linneabutler/

How Healing Happens: https://linneabutler.substack.com/

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

Welcome back to The Workaround. I’m Bob 👋

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

The other day, I looked back at my journal from a couple of years ago, right in the middle of startup craziness. Highlights of a normal week included:

* The $300k contract a client verbally agreed to was cut.

* We had a great hire on the goal line, but they decided to stay at their current company.

* A client lead I personally pulled in kept ghosting me.

* I poured my heart out into a blog post, and ten people unsubscribed.

Yup, we got our ass kicked that week…

But since you’re reading these words now, I survived. Our company, too, made it through these and much more bad news that came our way.

Back then, I felt a lot of stress about “bad news.” But by the time we finished selling our company, I discovered that labeling events as either “good” or “bad” was distracting and wasteful. Today, I see all news is good...Here are the four mental shifts to help you get there, too:

Have you ever discovered that something you thought was a key to your success was actually wrong?

Something that worked out in the end, but it took years to see how it created so much suffering along the way?

An idea that you taught to many others, and maybe caused them pain and suffering?

Well, I awoke to something like this in my own life last week.

I realized a core “shortcut to success” I had promoted in this very Substack had created years of pain for myself and others. It worked…but at great cost.

Now I see the truth, and a better way to work.

Relevant links:

“Have You Been Productively Paranoid Lately?” https://theworkaround.substack.com/p/have-you-been-productively-paranoid

“My competitive advantage is I’m having fun.” https://jayalto.substack.com/p/my-competitive-advantage-is-im-having

Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory: https://a.co/d/0dSrdAQm

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

This is a short story about a word that touches millions of lives each day…

Take a left instead of a right at the restrooms behind the sports bar at a certain vacation resort, and you will come across one of the most meaningful corporate messages I’ve ever seen:

“We are all Heartists”

Here’s why I love this—and why we all should create our own version for the companies we lead.

Relevant links:

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

Sometimes, the best way to find yourself is to get a little lost.

We can choose to let go of what’s comfortable, leave the map of expectations behind, and walk into the darkness—trusting that we can handle this.

I’ve recently returned from such a trip. Traveling alone across six cities in two weeks, I found parts of me that had been hiding for 50 years. Among many revelations, I gained insights into what really, really drove me to become an entrepreneur, and why selling my startup hit me so hard.

It took joining the company of strangers in a strange land, ego naked and afraid, to uncover and encounter fears that were holding me back.

This post is going beyond my usual business stories. I’m taking a leap of faith that, by sharing who I am and how I’ve changed, I might inspire a few of you to uncover something new about yourself, too.

Relevant links:

Meghan French Dunbar on Joy Trips: https://meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com/p/i-just-want-to-remember-what-it-feels

Douglas Rushkoff’s Retreat: https://rushkoff.substack.com/p/just-die

Heather Havrilesky on Attuning to Social Cues: https://www.ask-polly.com/p/attuning-to-social-cues-can-be-empowering

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

I think one of the challenges of building company culture is that it feels so “big”.

It’s not the stuff we’re taught in business school, and not what we practice enough for the muscle memory it takes to feel confident. Consultants must be brought in, and while they can be helpful, culture building mostly happens when they’ve left the building.

But it doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be. Sometimes, just one silly idea, practiced with an open heart, can break the ice that freezes the flow between employees. And it’s the employees who create the culture, mostly when the CEO is not around.

This is the story of one little practice that worked for me, and later revealed something fundamental about human connection in my life.

Relevant links:

Tim Freke on Substack: https://www.youtube.com/user/timfreke

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

It’s another Bob’s Bites, where every couple of weeks, I share a handful of short stories and lessons…Today:

1. Sell Your Shares—separating your money from your mind

2. “Clients went feral after COVID”—is this why client success has gotten harder?

3. What Happens When People Don’t Want More Stuff?—a preview of life to come?

Relevant links:

Netflix Co-founder on why to sell your shares: https://marcrandolph.substack.com/p/betting-everything-on-your-company

Why Japanese People Don't "Want" Things Anymore”: https://substack.com/@jameslucasit/note/c-202186114

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

I’ve got a list of hundreds of “true business stories with a life lesson” from my career. I think now’s a good time to tell a really special one.

After all, it’s our 30th anniversary in a few days.

Not long after I met Steph, I wanted her to be my life partner. I didn’t know I would be getting a priceless business partner in the process.

This is the story of how her belief in me helped me believe in myself and go on to have the career of my dreams.

Relevant links:

Bob’s Substack: https://theworkaround.substack.com/

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

Businesses spend nearly $1 trillion each year on advertising their brands, taglines, and other handfuls of words in hopes that their customers remember something pleasant about them when it’s time to buy.

Words are portable thoughts, after all. And the more memorable the words, the more likely the thoughts are to spread and stick.

While advertising has been a well-known tool for millennia, very few leaders similarly understand the power of their words within their businesses.

By carefully crafting and promoting the words that communicate your strategic choices and areas of focus among employees, you can lead thousands of them to harmonize in ways that drive remarkable success.

Relevant links:

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/

~Michael Prince was removed from the team.

Alas, another sign of our times…^^^

Last week brought me two examples of someone leaving an organization and its leader pretending they never existed. No announcement. No clue what happened. Just a Teams message that they were removed.

Of course, we all eventually figured it out by speaking with the person. Truth finds a way.

This is one of the countless little tests—or tells—of how evolved a leader is, both on the outside and on the inside.

I should know, because I failed this test several times.

This is a story about finally passing, by getting past my own fears.

Relevant links:

How a Company Motto Affects Change (our story of turning culture into a competitive advantage): https://theworkaround.substack.com/p/how-a-company-motto-affects-change

Schedule Office Hours with Bob: https://calendly.com/bob-gilbreath/bob-gilbreath-office-hours

Fleet: https://fleetholdingco.com/