"Every Day, I Have to Force Myself to Get Out of Bed"

Because our core group of business owners has been talking to each other pretty much every week since before the pandemic, we’ve gotten to know each other. We’ve come to trust each other. And as a result, our conversations sometimes take unexpected turns. This week, our conversation takes an unexpectedly dark turn. We start out talking about Laura Zander’s efforts to manage personnel conflicts and Dana White’s visits to potential salon sites on military bases and Jay Goltz’s bizarre battle with his phone company, and we think we know what we’re talking about. But we keep talking until we realize that some of the issues we are discussing are more complicated and more painful than we’d understood, as is often the case with matters of mental health. You should know this conversation contains frank discussion of depression and suicide. For listeners, this may be surprising—not because anyone would think that entrepreneurs are immune to the afflictions that plague us all, but because there aren’t many public forums where people confront those afflictions openly and genuinely and in real time. For us, this conversation was a strong reminder that we often don’t really know what others are experiencing, whether they be friends, colleagues, or family.