320: Dr. Jessica Gold - Emotional Resilience and Self-Care for Founders

Arvid Kahl
Today I'm talking to Doctor Jessica Gold. She's helping founders and creators have healthy and pleasurable relationships while building their impactful businesses. You'll find today's conversation to be a very personal and intimate exploration of the part of our founder lives that we often neglect to approach with the same scientific rigor that we apply to pricing or which tech stack we should use. So let's talk about sex, love, and the presence of our own selves from the founder perspective. This episode is sponsored by Acquire.com dot.

More on that later. Now here's Doctor Jessica Gold. Doctor Jessica, welcome to the show. Now on this podcast, I often talk to founders about strategies to overcoming challenges, that kind of stuff. And most of those are very cerebral, quite intellectual.

Today, I'm stoked to have an expert here who can speak to the much overlooked side of things, the emotional, work, relationships, sexuality, passion, that kind of stuff. I cannot wait to see what we can do for founders on that front today. Doctor Jessica, how are you doing today? I am so happy to be here with you and really excited for this. Thanks, Arvind.

Yeah, I'm very excited too. It's very rare I get to talk to experts on just the general side of mental health to begin with, and then to have them look into the relationship side, like the interpersonal side that is not just, you know, business exchange, but actually a more physical and more real thing to the experience of most people. I'm quite excited. So let me start with a product. Pretty popular question that is very much related to this relational topic that I often find in my dm's when people reach out to me with their questions about their business journey.

Entrepreneurial journey. Should I or should I not start a business with my life partner? Is my wife or my husband a good co founder? Excellent question. So I'll be honest.

Jessica Gold
Usually the answer to that is no. And that is because starting a business with your partner is going to amplify any issues that you already have in your relationship. And it could cause a lot more stress unless you're already in a really great place. You both have amazing communication skills, which you've practiced, and you've sat down and asked yourself some really hard questions about whether or not you should do that. In fact, the Wall Street Journal just came out with an article with nine questions you should ask a potential co founder before going into business together.

And you should at least ask those questions. Yeah. Probably even more intensely than anybody else. Right? I had this in my own experience.

Arvid Kahl
I co founded, very successfully, a business with my life partner, and we're still together. We live in the same house, so that's a pretty good sign. We exited the business together. We went through almost a traumatic event of loss and grief for a business as a couple would in other situations. So I know the rollercoaster of this whole situation to be in and how intense it can be to have to wear the head of a partner, of a life partner partner and a business partner, and how weird it is to be both at the same time.

We really, we already had, and thanks for pointing this out, a communication strategy between us for years prior to this, that really worked. Like, we could talk to each other, but most people might not. Do you have any? If people are in this situation, they have. They have their.

They're with their partner, maybe even just a family member, but somebody who they have a non just professional relationship with. Do you have steps or a framework for them to kind of facilitate better communication that is both honest and productive?

Jessica Gold
Yeah, I think I'm going to make these steps up right now in front of you because I haven't written them down before.

I usually do it really organically with whoever comes to see me very specific to the dynamic that's in front of me. So the first thing I would say is make sure that you have agreed on a north star. Like, what is the purpose? What are you both focused on in terms of what you're doing together? That way, if some impediment is coming up, you can say, hey, I think that this problem that you're having is preventing us from hitting our goal, from focusing on our north star together.

And you might need to go and address it that way instead of it coming across as criticism for the other person. It comes across as, okay, there's this thing, and we're both pointed at this goal together. Here's a challenge or an obstacle in the path, and it helps the other person say, okay, I'm going to go address this issue that's coming up.

So first, you would agree on a North Star together. Second, you would talk about how do you handle discord, how do you handle disagreements? And you would really need to test that and write down, okay, what are some ways of responding to each other when things get heated and challenging? Do I get defensive? Do I resort to giving advice?

Do I counter attack? Or am I able to take responsibility for my role in what's going on? So those are some really key things that you definitely need to have in place and you need to check for in terms of your communication skills together. The last thing would be, how do you handle uncomfortable emotions? And this is related to communication, because if you're angry or disappointed or scared and there's a lot of charge in your body and there's like a hot, tight feeling, it can cause us to lash out in our communication.

The energy of that emotion has taken us over. And so you need to both commit to having emotional regulation skills so that you're not just taking out the charge on each other. Yeah, this is something that, it sounds like communication 101, but obviously it's much more nuanced than that, right? Because you're in a high pressure situation together, and the old rules that you may have had for your relationship before may not work anymore. And what this reminds me of in a lot of consulting calls that I had with founders, and of course, I'm not a psychologist, I cannot, and I'm not a therapist either, help people with these issues.

Arvid Kahl
But I hear them, right? I hear them complain about things like emotional regulation and them struggling with it both. Even if they don't have a business with a life partner, if they have a business with somebody else, this emotional tension spills over into their personal life in very significant ways. And I think that might be, that is your field, right? Understanding the connection between these things.

And I would like to ask you what you have found in your work with entrepreneurs, with founders. What problems exist in the emotional underregulation inside the business and then the overreaction into the personal life or maybe lack of emotional regulation in the personal realm? So actually, what I find is that a lot of powerful founders tend to be able to do some kind of emotional regulation when it comes to business, interestingly. But when it comes to their intimate relationship with their wife or their partner back home, that's when it goes sideways. And, you know, a lot of times then you can end up feeling like an imposter.

Jessica Gold
I've had, you know, very powerful men say this to me. They say, I'm really sought after in business. I'm very successful. I'm great at what I do. Everyone wants to talk to me.

But then when I get home, my partner, it's like an ice cave, you know, there's no connection there. And I just want to feel connected. I want to love deeply and connect. Deeply that honestly, I've had that in the past personally, myself, that there's this overwhelming respect and authority that you command in your professional life and then kind of a very different presence in your personal life. Why is that?

Arvid Kahl
Why is there such a strong difference there? Well, it's a great question. A question so pertinent to our times. One of the answers that I think about is that it's laudable, it's commendable. It's acceptable to study business and to be good at business and to make mistakes in business, even, like, it's normal that something won't go right or a business will fail and you'll start over or that your marketing won't work and you have to go back to the drawing board and think, okay, what could I do differently here?

Jessica Gold
But all of those same reflexes and things that we get rewarded for in business, we get shamed for when it comes to personal relating. So it's really still considered uncouth. Like, it's just not done. You shouldn't have to study anything about relating romantically. It should just be natural.

You should just be able to figure it out all by yourself. And asking for help is like, oh, something's really wrong. That's very shameful. And we haven't come out of that yet. There isn't yet permission to be nerds and study relating with as much intensity as we study business.

And I wish that was different. I'm on a mission to make that difference. Yeah, I can tell. I love that. And it's so weird because it's a taboo for some reason.

Arvid Kahl
And I guess there's, like, a religious connotation to this or to kind of keep it in the family unit and to kind of not expose this as a vulnerability into the wider world. That's kind of where I come from. My upbringing was that, like, you don't talk about personal business. You don't talk about business to begin with. I'm like, I'm an east of east german descent, which is kind of a soviet controlled, kind of post war Germany.

There was a lot of weird stuff going on, but that is part of it, too. Like, a lot of tall puppy syndrome. Like, you just don't stand out. You don't talk about things that everybody else doesn't talk about, and personal relationship was part of this. So I'm still kind of exploring that space myself.

And what you just said, I relate to this a lot. Like, I. Let's just say I struggle romantically. That is sometimes a problem that, for me, romance conceptually is hard to grasp. And honestly, I don't feel I have enough people to talk about this particular problem.

And that can help me with this. And I would like to. And I don't want this to turn into a therapy session, but I might just as well be open and vulnerable. Here, because, again, it's my podcast. I can do whatever I want.

Right. So might just as well, like, share these little things, maybe hopefully helping other people to be open about this, too. What can I do in a situation like this? What should I do? Oh, such a great question.

Jessica Gold
And thank you for your openness. I'm totally here for it. I mean, I talk about this all day with everyone, so I'm used to it. And just to be clear, everybody, I came to this work from making all the mistakes myself, so it's not like I was walking a blessed path in this world. I had, you know, I also had a very challenging marriage and divorce and dating life, so.

Well, you're saying, what can you do to have more romance in your intimate relationship? Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so here's the deal. If it requires, I would say for most of us, a total reorientation to how we relate to our day to day, moment to moment experience of life.

And if you're really driven and you're working really hard and listen, I know what that's like. I went to MIT. I have a PhD in organic chemistry. I was very, very driven. And it was like, okay, after I reach this, then I can relax.

After I get that done, then I can relax. And the days just went by, and I was hyper focused on my to do list, and they just went by in a blur. And all of a sudden, a whole decade had gone by. And we kind of think of taking care of our body or our emotions or our sexual life as, like, secondary or maybe a little bit weak or not even just not something you should pay attention to. But I want you to reorient and consider that those things massively support your ability to be productive and be successful in a way that doesn't kill your soul.

Arvid Kahl
That would be good. Yeah, because so many businessmen tell me, yes, I created a $40 million business, but it just ate my soul, and I was completely unhappy at that level. I had access to everyone and everything, and I was still totally lonely. So we need to take care of. We need to blend in, weave in the.

Jessica Gold
Tending to our erotic life, our romantic life, while we're founding. And here's how you do it. It's not about grand gestures. It doesn't take a lot of time. What it is is a change in your moment to moment attitude toward life.

Right? So when you get up from your chair after a meeting, you, like, stretch your toes out, feel your feet on the earth, undulate your spine, take a deep inhale, and just, like, receive pleasure from all five senses. This, as a man, is so important. It's gonna light you up, fill you up, make you radiate, and make your female partner go, oh, what is he doing? Like, when you're letting yourself fill your own cup through your five senses, it's so simple.

So, like, put things in your room that are beautiful to your eyes, make it smell lovely around you. Or, you know, I like to use little perfumes or, you know, little burn, little bits of things that smell nice. So make it smell lovely, make it feel good. Like, have some delicious fabrics around that feel great on your skin, these sorts of things to fill your pleasure cup on your own. So you're already getting lit up when I talk about it.

And when you eat, like, savor the taste of what you're eating until it just goes away and you don't know when the taste ended and the infinite began in your mouth. So it's like that attitude that you carry through your day. Part of that, too, is like these little micro moments. So when you pass your partner in the hallway, like you're on the way to get a snack and she's on the way to the bathroom, do you, like, whisper a sweet nothing in her ear and then just smile and carry on? Right?

Or do you twirl her hair just the way that she likes it and then go about your business? Just before this call, I went up to my partner in the kitchen and I said, I need a hug. And so he just, like, crushed me in his arms for 1020 seconds, a good long time. And we breathe until I could feel the charge drain out of my body. So it's those little things that fill your cup throughout the day.

And this is also scientifically shown that this helps the female nervous system relax open, and it allows our desire to grow a little bit. How's that land for you so far? You expressed this in a really, really wonderful way. Like, really visually descriptive. And that's how I resonate as well.

Arvid Kahl
That's how I take things in. What I hear is just be present in a way that involves not just intellectual presence, not just being cognitively there, but being sensually there or sensitively there in all the senses. And I like this. It's funny because I had a couple experience over the last couple of days that really resonate with this one was just yesterday. We live in Ontario here and southern Ontario, where it gets quite nice and warm in the summer and it's super cold in the winter.

And now is the time when the sun comes back out and I yesterday caught myself just standing outside on our little porch that we have here, and our puppy was laying down in the sun. And I decided to lay next to her and just take in the sun, like, feel myself in the birdsong in the air, the presence of the warmth of the sun on my face. And I started laughing just almost uncontrollably, sitting next to my puppy, like Daniel was inside. She was probably wondering what I was doing. But I kind of came to realize that I live in this moment and I get to enjoy it.

And that feeling has been with me ever since. And it's made me happier. It's made me more willing to put away my work for a minute and just be there with myself and others. So this is what resonates with me here. Like, my personal experience there.

Also. Just want to point out how smart the dog must be to just gravitate to this automatically, right? Like, aren't they the smartest animals they are in the moment at all times? They get this right? They get these kind of moments.

I really appreciate this. Thank you for making it so clear. I feel like I'm on the path. It's just often I reprioritize my work over this. Like, there comes the moment where I come back into my little den here in the basement where my studio is and where I work, where I write my code, and where I read my books, and where I write my books, and where all this head stuff happens.

And even though I made this a nice place that I like, I have a nice couch that feels good, I have plants in here, I have my weird nerd posters on the wall that I enjoy to look at, and all that I still retract into myself. And it becomes this kind of cognitive, isolated loop. And I focus too much on work. How can I keep being productive? And this is.

I'm not sure if there is an answer other than, well, you have to figure it out. But how can I keep focusing on my work while also allowing myself to step away from it, particularly when the work that I do as a software engineer is so flow state based, which takes me so long to get into, and then I hope to stay in there for as much as I can without interruption, that those little moments often feel like an intrusion for me.

Jessica Gold
Yeah, I love that point about flow state. I mean, flow state is a great state to be in. So ultimately, it comes down to choosing. And, you know, you have to ask yourself the question, when you're on your deathbed and you look back at your life, are you going to say, damn, I wish I had worked harder. Basically, nobody ever says that.

I mean, we know this from, if you just think about it, when you look back on your life, what will have been most important. And yes, founding a successful company is supremely important, but you just need to choose what do you want your life to be and give yourself permission. Like, if you're like, today, I'm just going to be in flow state in my cave all day, and that is what I'm choosing. That is perfectly fine, but is that what you want your everyday to look like? And, you know, for me, it was a huge shift to give myself permission to have pleasure.

Now, it was scary because I'd been taught that pleasure was frivolous, that pleasure will lead you to the devil. Even that pleasure was a waste of time. And I was like, I remember because I'm super driven and I would just work, work all day. And the first time when I realized, oh, wait, I could take a nap. Now.

Or I could go get in the hot tub for 15 minutes before my next call, oh, my gosh, radical. And yet, I cherish those moments. They are the, they are the ways I savor life and they profoundly support me. To be happier and show up even better for my clients. Yeah, it doesn't have to be hedonism, right?

Arvid Kahl
Like, it can still just be the occasional indulgence. Yeah. Yeah. Or I could take a walk in the sun and smell the trees and look at the ocean. It was radical.

Jessica Gold
And yet now those are woven into my day and I would never give them up. Do you actively make time for these? Do you schedule? And I know this sounds hilarious, probably, but do you set times for these moments to happen, or do you organically allow space for them? How would you do this for somebody who is so bound to a schedule, or so bound to going through the list and doing as much as they can in a day to give this enough priority to find time for these little moments.

I know that being very scheduled is popular, and I am quite an organic scheduler, and you have to find what works for you. I know that after holding space for someone's really deep relationship struggles, it doesn't serve me and it doesn't serve my clients to go back to, back into the next session. So I keep space in my calendar and there's often organically space anyway, just because of how the scheduling works. They'll pop up a free 30 minutes here or there sometimes. So just do what's best for you.

But I do recommend scheduling at least five minutes where you can check in with, okay, what does my body want right now? And if I could be in pleasure now, what would that look like? Even right now as I'm talking to you, though, I'm doing it. So I actually am not wearing shoes because I hate wearing shoes. And we have wood floors and real wood feels like, ugh, on my feet.

So I'm, like, rubbing my foot against the wood floor and it just feels so good and even the way I breathe. So I'm inhaling all the way down to my pelvic floor and, like, saying hello to, like, my full torso as I'm talking to you, because for me, that's pleasurable and also powerful. I feel, like, grounded and present and, like, my whole body's online. And I love that feeling. And what I've noticed, even in my most recalcitrant or skeptical clients, that once they get a taste of how good this feels, they naturally orient toward it and they don't have to think about it or schedule it in.

They're just like, oh, no, no, I'm going to do that. And it just becomes automatic. I love this focus on, like, the bodily sensation. Like, I'm just going to take a little step back in time. I think ten years ago or 15 years ago, when I was, you know, not a kid anymore, but pretty young, like, in my twenties somewhere, I would have never, ever thought about, like, breathing exercises or meditation or relaxation as a means to be productive.

Arvid Kahl
I would have called this, I don't know, like, esoteric stuff, and I would have dismissed it completely. I am honestly, I'm glad I met Danielle because she introduced me through the lens of a scientific perspective to this kind of stuff. And all of a sudden I noticed, oh, deep breath. Like pelvic floor breathing. That actually relaxes much more than what you think a breath can do.

Like, it relaxes you on a level that you may not ever have relaxed before because you never actively did this. Like, I've been trying to figure out, like, meditation, meditation for, or yoga, these kind of things, things that I would have completely dismissed in the past now feel like almost a cheat code to finding your own bodily awareness. So it's funny because I'm sitting here without shoes, like, noticing the what? I have carpet down here. And I've been noticing, as you said it, that I've been, like, slowly stroking my foot over the carpet for the exact same reason.

It's a grounding thing. It's a physical sensation I enjoy. Right. And it gives me strength to have a wonderful conversation about a topic that I might not feel innately comfortable discussing. So there's all of that and I can actively do this.

That's what I'm feeling right now, which is really, really cool. So thank you for mirroring this in a way that makes it accessible. You're so welcome. My pleasure. And that's what it is, right?

It is quite literally pleasure. It's something very physical, very connected to a part that we, like you said, very often dismiss because it's not, I don't know, in fashion, to talk about non intellectual things with the same fervor as we would do about academic achievements or business entrepreneurial achievements. I would like to ask you about the flip side of what we just talked about, because we talked about the kind of tension and stress in a business and that impacting your personal life. How does the opposite of this look? How does a stressful and maybe unorganized and conflict ridden personal sex life or erotic life, just a relational life, how does that impact our capacity to be entrepreneurial, to be good founders, good makers, product makers like that?

Jessica Gold
So how does not having a supportive relationship or having an intimacy desert at home and how does that kind of. Yeah, how does that impact our capacity to build something of meaning and of impact for others? Yeah, I think it has a profound impact based on everyone I've spoken to. You know, when at home you don't feel desired, you don't feel respected, you don't feel deeply connected. There's this low level stress or anxiety of, am I good enough?

Is this going to work? You're totally stressed out at home. It's not a place where you can recharge and relax and just feel loved up and grounded and all those yummy things. When you don't have that, then you go to work and you're already on a short fuse. So, you know, if you've just had a fight with your wife or you're feeling super frustrated and your energy's all pent up because you haven't had sex in six months, then that's going to come out in you.

You know, how many bad decisions are you going to be making about how you're using your money? That could end up costing you millions of dollars. Yeah, obviously. Like it's an energy transfer, transference kind of situation, right, where you cannot look at one side without looking at the other. You cannot have the professional and the personal without them being massively connected on the energy level.

Arvid Kahl
That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, exactly. And how are you going to treat your coworkers if you're just a tight ball of stress inside or you're secretly on the verge of tears or feeling rejected or lonely, it might also make you make decisions around stepping outside of your relationship, like sneaking around and having relationships that have really unforeseen consequences at the office or in your business. So it can have a lot of detrimental effects. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, here's the thing. I know that you actively help men out of this right now, right? You have this coaching group program for men in tech and finance. Can you talk more about this, like, how you actually help people out of this? Yeah, that's a great question.

Jessica Gold
Everyone, you know, in this world, we're all like, I want to know the how. How does this work?

And the thing is that. So right now, what I love to do is I'm actually refocusing on my one on ones. So I help men, just one on one or in couples. I love working with couples, too, over zoom, so I can work with you from anywhere in the world.

So the secret is that it's not about convincing yourself to be better. It's not about using the logic of your mind to change this. If that worked, you would have already done it, because you're already really good at logic. And this is the thing about this world. Like, I didn't believe in it.

I was really suspicious of this world. But actually, there's plenty of science, there's plenty of studies these days to show the importance of nonverbal, nonlinear, like, the right hemisphere and somatic processes that are essential and key in our healing. So, actually, we know that subconsciously we have a lot of paradigms playing out in our mind that we're unaware of, for example. And so simply becoming aware of those blind spots and instead choosing intentionally how we want to show up is one of the first things that we do. But then it's really about asking your body.

So I will watch you as you talk to me, or we'll do a process, and I will watch what's going on in your body, and then we will turn toward what's happening with curiosity and acceptance. It's not about, oh, I shouldn't feel angry, or I shouldn't feel sad, or I should only be happy. There's no shoulds and there's no perfect, there's no ideal where I work through the process of radical acceptance of the truth of your moment to moment experience of life. And we get curious about that. And it might sound way out of left field, but the men that I work with are totally down, and they do it, and we talk to what's going on in your body.

And there's lots of different ways to do this. Sometimes you hear it called psychodrama. Sometimes you hear it called parts work. You know, there's process work. There's all kinds of different names for this at this point, point.

Lots of modalities. But it's about listening to what's going on in your body with the assumption that your body is wise and it's acting the way it's acting because it's trying to tell you something. There's a message there that you haven't been able to hear because you've been too busy shoving it away and trying to own up to some imagined ideal of how you're supposed to be. I guess that is particularly easy in a world of social media where there are a lot of ideals being peddled. Right.

Arvid Kahl
A lot of just very, very reductive ways of how a man in particular, but anybody really should be and what makes them great, what makes them powerful, what makes them strong, and that often very likely overloads people's self perception that they should be having with somebody else's perception that they make money off. That's a problem. Right. Like, there's a lot of very, very toxic advice around this in the community. It's so toxic.

Jessica Gold
It's so bad out there. I mean, it's just gone wild and gone to some very challenging extremes on the Internet. Yeah. With the pop psychology advice. That's really what it is.

Arvid Kahl
Yeah. I mean, and you're making a strong case for actually talking to a credentialed expert in the field, to somebody who knows not just what they think they should know, but who actually went through the process of being certified to be able to help people in a way like, therapy is still a taboo for many people. I've recently started doing this myself because I'm like, it's about time to have a weekly or bi weekly therapy check in. And it's been one of the most liberating things for me to have somebody to talk to because I don't have many friends. I moved from Germany to Canada.

I left a lot of people behind just geographically. And it's not the same right to communicate with people in an asynchronous way than sitting with somebody, having a beverage of some sort and just communicating about deeply relatable but still very personal topics. Therapy facilitates that, and I've been very skeptical in the beginning, and then I saw people around me use it. Use it. That's the how, again, you're talking to a maker.

You're talking to an engineer, right? Like, it always becomes a tool. But, hey, if that's what I need, then it is a tool, and it's a tool to greater self awareness and to allowing new things in. I've actively worked on finding more time for things that are not work for building a calm business instead of a crazy, chaotic business that is all intentional. To be able to be there for Danielle and for the family and for the people around me that I care about.

And therapy and working with experts like yourself unlocks this for me. So thank you a lot, just even for making it clear what the direction is to go, because most people struggle even making the choice that they want to go into that direction. The taboo, the kind of the self flagellation around this is still super strong. Do you notice that as well? Do you see this hesitation in people who come to you?

Jessica Gold
I do see it sometimes, but usually things have gotten to a point where it's so severe that, like, they're just at a breaking point. And I wish that people would come a lot sooner. I think having a coach or a therapist, like you're building a business, it's normal to get a business coach, right? I mean, the sooner you can have one, the better. It's such a laudable thing.

I have so much respect for any man who's in therapy. I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's a man I can trust. I can have a real conversation with him. You know, we can really go deep. I really respect that a lot.

So, I mean, I live in California, so I think the stigma is a lot less. And yet still in the entrepreneurial world, it persists, but I think it's one of the most commendable things you can do as a founder. It will help you almost more than anything else because you cannot see your own blind spots. You know, what I like to say is, in terms of, it's like we're all testing our relational code in production. Yeah.

As a software engineer. As a software engineer, if you test your code in production, you get fired. When you test your relational code, the first time you test it is in your marriage, then you get divorced.

Arvid Kahl
That super resonates with me because I actually did this, like, last week, just before this comes out, I tried something and I tested it in production, and it broke. You know what I did? I just rolled it back and it was no problem. But that doesn't work with relationships, right? Like, people.

You can't roll back people. That does not work. Yeah. Right. So when you think of it that way, it's just normal.

Jessica Gold
Oh, of course. I would, like, go and test my relational code with a coach or a therapist before, like, betting my entire rest of my life on it. That's wonderful. That. That makes a lot of sense.

Arvid Kahl
I think this is maybe the perfect analogy for people to understand, like, how dangerous it is to just, like, kind of wing it in that regard. And you said that people come to you at a point where it's almost like a breaking point. Do you have any early warning signs that people may not be aware of where they should be starting to look into this before it is too late?

Jessica Gold
It depends on what you're talking about. If you're talking about dating or an established relationship, but I think that.

So one of the things to look out for in dating is don't get together with someone who's a project. Like, don't get together. That maybe sounds worse than I meant it. Don't get together thinking the other person will change into what you want them to be. That is one of the most common mistakes that I see.

And also, don't rush in mistaking chemistry for compatibility. Take your time and see how she reacts when things don't go her way, when you have a fight, when she's stressed out, you know, assess for emotional intelligence. This is going to be key to your happiness together over the long term in a marriage. If there's a lot of you always, you never. You definitely want to come in at the first sign of that happening, or if she seems really disconnected from you and is always in hyper productive mode and stressed all the time, and you don't ever see a way for you to connect, there's definitely some underlying issues that it's better to address now as opposed to later, when there's a huge pile of hurts that have built up.

Arvid Kahl
So what I hear is lack of connection, lack of honesty, lack of clarity. And if any of these are present, or if you feel like you have to change somebody, like you have to constantly work on them instead of having them work on themselves. That's a pretty strong signal. Wow. I have one more also.

Jessica Gold
If when you share what's true for you, and not in an attacking way, but in like a. I'm really feeling sad right now about this dynamic, and if all you get is defensiveness in return, then you need to address that early rather than waiting for it to pile up for years or decades. Yeah, that sounds like something that can nest very deeply in your soul and destroy it from the inside out being that dismissive and defensive. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. I hope that everybody who listens here today is on a little bit higher alert and internally to feel these things and hear them when they're trying to call out from their deeply suppressed psyche somewhere.

Arvid Kahl
I really appreciate everything you shared with me here today. I think it was nice to hear just how wonderfully present one can be to be more present with others. I think it starts with an internal thing and then turns into an external thing. And I really appreciate you sharing your insights from your practice as well. So if people wanted to talk to you, find you somewhere, find you on the Internet, find you on social media, where would you want them to go to reach out to you?

Jessica Gold
So you can go to jessicagold.com. It's spelled gold, jessicagold.com. And you can find out how to contact me there. And I will also say I am also a founder. So I founded a tech company with my partner.

So I am doing that thing that I told you probably you shouldn't too. I mean, come on, we both founded something with our partners. What are we going to say, right? Yeah. But we did talk about it very seriously beforehand, so I understand the founder journey in addition to being a scientist myself.

So you can find me@jessicagold.com I would recommend you friend me on Facebook. I'm Jessicagold and bliss science. I post a lot of interesting things on Facebook. I do have an instagram.

Those are my faves. Wonderful. I'm going to put them all in the show notes. And I think we should have another conversation about the founder side of things in the future. I really appreciate that you shared all your psychological expertise with me today, but I really want to see where that project of yours goes.

Arvid Kahl
It's an AI project, right? Yes. I'm looking forward to having you back on the podcast to talk about that in particular, because that would be wonderful if you're up for it, obviously. But I would like to. Oh, absolutely.

Jessica Gold
And yeah, can I say one teaser about that? Oh, yeah, throw it in. I asked my partner to clone me, and that's how it all started. So that's a great way of teasing. And I'm looking forward to having that chat and bring you in on the show.

Arvid Kahl
Thank you so much, Doctor Jessica, it was absolutely spectacular to have you on today. My pleasure. Anytime. Best of luck to you. And that's it for today.

I will now briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue. That's the dream of every SaaS founder, right?

Problem is, you're not growing for whatever reason. Maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or apply in lack of interest. You don't know. You just feel stuck in your business, with your business. What should you do?

Well, the story that I would like. To hear is that you buckled down. You reignited the fire, and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach, they really helped you to go down this road. Six months down the road making all that money, you tripled your revenue and you have this hyper successful business.

That is the dream. The reality, unfortunately, is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who is facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time.

Arvid Kahl
Is the story that here just ends. Up being one of inaction and stagnation because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything. So if you find yourself here already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option. And that is selling your business on acquire.com because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything.

And acquire.com is free to list. They've helped hundreds of founders already. Just go check it out at try dot acquire.com arvid and see for yourself if this is the right option for you your business at this time. You might just want to wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out.

It's always good to be in the know. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder today. I really appreciate that you can find me on twitter at avedkar a r v eddie Kahl and you find my books and my twitter course tattoo. If you want to support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be.

Arvid Kahl
Do let me know. Would be interesting to see and leave a rating and a review by going to ratethispodcast.com founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds and that's I think where we all would like it to be, just helping other people learn and see and understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day, and bye.

320: Dr. Jessica Gold - Emotional Resilience and Self-Care for Founders

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1: Introduction

2: The Challenge of Relationships in Business

3: Strategies for Emotional Resilience

4: Practical Advice for Founders

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