Emotions of Selling a Business

Today we’ll be talking to Dr. Sherry Walling. A clinical psychologist, Sherry has a ridiculous amount of education and is incredibly smart. She has some great insights into us as entrepreneurs and how we operate and balance our businesses and families. Today we’re going to talk about her education and her work with entrepreneurs and startups. She’ll share some insights on what makes us tick and how we can look at ourselves differently. We’ll also talk about questions to ask yourself before a transition and how we can balance the way we interact with our businesses and how we interact with our kids.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• Information about Sherry’s education and how she translates this into working with entrepreneurs, which is a world with few guidelines.
• Some of the problems that Sherry sees with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurism and how she addresses these issues.
• The four main values that entrepreneurs use to decide how to spend their time and what to focus on, as well as some of the liabilities of those values.
• How entrepreneurs really feel about their businesses.
• Tips on how to diversify your passions and not focus too much on your business to the detriment of other things in your life.
• Ways to keep in touch with yourself through deep breathing, journaling, and self-assessment.
• Thoughts on planning for bad things that might happen.
• How opening a second or subsequent business changes an entrepreneur’s mindset.
• Some of the topics that Sherry and her husband talk about on their podcast.

Takeaways:

1. You just have to sit down and figure out what’s important to you and what you’re getting out of the business in terms of passion, purpose, and satisfaction. It takes real work; diversifying isn’t always fun at first, but it’s necessary.
2. You might need to have a “funeral” for your business and mourn for it if you want to be at peace with what you want to do next in life.
3. It’s vital to take time to take a deep breath, meditate, go to the gym, or whatever it takes to self-reflect and take yourself outside of the day-to-day “doing.”

Links and Resources:

The Value Vantage

ZenFounder Podcast

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your S**t Together

Wait But Why – The Tail End

About Sherry Walling:

Dr. Sherry Walling is a licensed clinical psychologist and the co-host of the ZenFounder podcast. Her life’s work is to help high-performing professionals meet their potential and also enjoy personal well-being, life satisfaction, and a sense of meaning. She consults regularly with entrepreneurs, freelancers, and executives and helps with burnout, anxiety, existential angst, conflicts, major transitions, and personal balance.

Sherry is a graduate of the University of California, Davis and Fuller School of Psychology. She has a PhD in clinical psychology and two master’s degrees. In addition, she completed year-long residential research fellowships at Yale University School of Medicine and the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder affiliated with Boston University School of Medicine. She has held faculty appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, at the California School of Professional Psychology, and Fresno Pacific University.

Married to a serial tech entrepreneur, Sherry has a unique combination of psychological expertise and 17 years of experience in the trenches of the startup world. She loves bringing these two worlds together on the podcast, in her consulting work, and as a conference speaker.

When she’s not in the consulting room or hopping conferences, Sherry can be found on her paddleboard, in the yoga studio, or ushering her kids through an art museum in some fabulous city.

She can also be found at ZenFounder.com, SherryWalling.com, or on Twitter as @ZenFounder.