Finding Balance as a Therapist and Coach: Miriam Gunn's Insights on Entrepreneurship and Family

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Most Old man Weekly Podcast. Today I am thrilled to be talking with Miriam. She is a kindred soul, we love talking about family and she is the CEO and founder of Leave Better Coaching and Therapy. She herself has been married for 34 years and she has two adult children. Welcome to the show, miriam.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Oh my gosh Zaf, thanks so much. I'm really happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:37

As of my, as of my Very much, if you wouldn't mind sharing what your website is, just so others can find you Also, just talk to me about what was the genesis and the idea of starting Leave, better Coaching and Therapy, and who is it that you're trying to help?

Speaker 2: 0:51

Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. My website is LeaveBettercom. I want you to leave this interaction better, whatever the interaction is. And the genesis of my company started about 12 years ago maybe 13 now, I'd have to count.

Speaker 2: 1:10

I was helping a lot of students. I did. I was employed by a corporation that does a lot of mentoring university of university students, and I was helping them get a lot of therapy. A lot of times they'd ask me to go with so I was getting their therapy too and I went this is crazy, why don't I get this degree? So I got the degree, opened my private practice and loved it and worked primarily with trauma therapy and stuff like that and realized at a certain point in time wow, the people I like to work with the best are entrepreneurs, and I think it's because entrepreneurs know how to take action.

Speaker 2: 1:49

That's something that's in their DNA, and sometimes they're confused as to the action they need to take or sometimes they're in their own way, but in general, if they can get clarity, they're off to the races and they're taking action about I don't know, midway through the 13 years, six years ago or whatever I decided I still want to keep my therapy practice, but I want to move into primarily coaching, because that's where I'm going to get to work with entrepreneurs Now. Also, at that time I became an approved supervisor and I started hiring different therapists. So my therapy business is flourishing, but I actually am no longer really doing therapy. I am exclusively doing coaching with entrepreneurs of, I would say, small businesses in the K to several million space, five employees to 50 employees, that kind of space and what I like to help them do is find out where they're getting in the way of their business and where their business is getting in the way of their way of the life they really want.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Well, when you're working with this demographic, what do you find are some of the common problems that are getting in the way of their business and some of the common reasons why their business is getting in the way of the life that you'd like to live?

Speaker 2: 3:08

It's fascinating and, of course, these are generalizations, okay. So anybody listening, I don't want them to say I'm not that way at all, but what I have found is that younger entrepreneurs in the 28 to 35 year old range have a little bit more ego and a lot more magical thinking Like they're like I can make this happen, I can make these millions, I can do whatever and they know how to work hard. So they aren't necessarily as open to input or at least I have found that to be true but they're working hard 70, 80 hour work week sometimes and, unfortunately, what I see happening sometimes is it really messes up their personal relationship. If they have one. If they don't have one, they don't even have time to find anybody. But if they have one and they have young kids, there is this space of yeah, this makes me feel sad that I'm neglecting it, but I'll take care of it this weekend or I'll spend it's always pushed out there, a little bit out there, and, fascinatingly, entrepreneurial people tend not always, but tend to have entrepreneurial parents. So I have run into the situation where people have said my parents were never there. They were great at business, but they were never there, and I don't want to be like that. So there's this like space of. I don't want to be that way, but if I ask some questions, they are being that way Because people have a tendency to do what they've seen, not what they know.

Speaker 2: 4:46

It's very difficult to make a change from what you had modeled to you. In the older age groups, I think those people have been around the block a lot and they are much more open to where are they getting in their own way. I think life has beaten them up a little bit. I think sometimes they've gone through a couple marriages and they're interested in not screwing this one up. Or they have an estranged kid and they are interested in reconnecting. Sometimes people have been extraordinarily successful but they have been for lack of a better word selfish with their business and now they're looking for some way to be more philanthropic, more. How can I give back to something that's given to me so well? So it's different. It's not one size fits all with any entrepreneur or business. It's a little bit of a grab bag, which is why I like it so much. It's interesting and fun.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Now you could probably relate to a lot of these entrepreneurs to some degree, because you do have a family. Now you've been married 34 years, you have two adult children and you've started your own business. Now talk to me a little bit more about your family. Does your husband has your husband worked during this time as well? Are you both working, or are you working primarily?

Speaker 2: 6:06

Yeah, no, he also is working in a completely different field when I made the decision to start my own business and everybody makes these choices right and not one is right or more correct, or I just made choices that I could live with that would allow me to sleep. So one thing that allows me to sleep is knowing that I'm not putting my family in jeopardy financially, and so everything that I put into my business I made the business earn. And when my kids were little, I made the decision to only work while they were in school, and so when they were not in school, I just turned it off and I was there with them, just being a full-time mom. And I'm not judging anybody who does anything else. I'm just saying those are the decisions I made. And whenever it was a high ticket item that needed to be purchased whether that was an educational thing or whether that was a physical thing I made my business pay for it.

Speaker 2: 7:05

And if my business? Just today, somebody offered me something and it was a really nice offer, and they said pay for it when you want, and I responded and said, hey, this was a great offer and I appreciate it. However, I don't spend money I don't have because it allows me to sleep at night and I love you guys and I love what you're doing and I'm interested in your product. And give me a little bit of time, I can create that money and then I'll purchase from you.

Speaker 2: 7:35

But I wasn't going to do it the other way around. Now I know other people who have done it the other way around. It's been a gamble and they have succeeded and their business has grown quite a bit faster than mine. That's a viable business model. I also know people who've done it the other way around and they've lost their shirt and they've gone into bankruptcy and they have a ton of stress and lost their marriage, etc. I think you have to understand your edges as far as risk goes and what are you actually risking and then work within that space so that you don't end up purchasing more risk than your nervous system can work with.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Know thyself, and so while you're building this business it's one of the things that any relationship has there's a lot of relationship stressors and running a company, I think you would say, can be stressful. Starting to me, there's risks involved, there's pressures involved, and then there's just the normal marriage friction, just from being human and interacting with another human. So talk to me first off, what did you find was your experience running a company or starting a company and being in a relationship and having children? So what were some of the stressors that you I guess the greatest stressors you experienced that you had to handle or work through yourself during that kind of a startup phase? And then maybe you could talk about what was startup life and what is it that you currently deal with.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Sure, I think that it very much depends on your relationship, and not only the relationship you have with your spouse, but the kind of human being your spouse is. And some people are quite interested in the business whatever it is, and they want to be integrally involved. Other people actually don't want to have anything to do with it, but they want to know what's going on, and other people don't actually want to know what's going on or be involved, and all of those options are fine. I found within my own relationship some of the places that we got a little bit hung up on. There are a lot of details that happen within a business, like lots of details, and I think at one point my husband was feeling like, wow, you spend a lot of time in your office and what are you doing? Not in an accusatory way, but I just don't understand. And so I brought out, I created really quickly, a tiny sheet that had these categories of things that I was doing and under one of them I listed all of the steps. It was like 25 steps, and I went out and I said, if you're interested, here's what it is. Do you see all these things that are listed? Here's one that I mapped out these 25 steps and I can tell you what the others are too. They also have 25 or 30 steps, if you're interested.

Speaker 2: 10:26

And by the time I had even just explained the one bullet point, he was like oh my gosh, I don't want to know all of this. It was just too much. But it made sense to him. Then how do you fill an eight hour day easily and never have to easily fill an eight hour day? What is it that you're doing? And it's very difficult if you're not in the guts of the business to understand all the moving pieces.

Speaker 2: 10:53

I think the other thing that has been a little bit difficult for my family is that they know I am my own boss and therefore I create my own schedule, and it is not uncommon for someone to ask me to do something and I'll say I can do that Saturday and then they'll say, yeah, but why can't you do it now?

Speaker 2: 11:13

Like, you make your own schedule, you can do whatever you want, and I'm like yes and no, I can change the order around and I can do whatever I want, but also these things need to get done and I wouldn't say in the middle of your work day. Hey, would you like to take I don't know a half day away and help me with X, like I wouldn't do that to you on your job, and it's the same thing. So I do have a ton of flexibility and if I've been given notice ahead of time I'll clear out my schedule for anybody, or for my kids or for family coming in. But in general, I'm, my butt is in the chair and I'm doing the work of a CEO, because that's what it takes, right.

Speaker 1: 11:57

Yeah, yeah, and so you mentioned a couple of things here. I live unpack and one is, I think one of the difficulties that I'm sure you've seen this with some of your clients with entrepreneurs is the concept of I manage my own time, and that freedom can be both liberating, but it also can become an albatross around the entrepreneur's neck, and a lot of people talk about time blocking priority events. What are some of the beliefs that get in entrepreneurs way when they think about time and how they use it? What has been your experience about yourself personally and perhaps what you've seen in some of your clients and general trends?

Speaker 2: 12:43

Yeah, I think, as an early entrepreneur, the urgent would crowd in over the important. Or if there was something that seemed hard, it was easy to do the easier things and you can excuse them by saying they need to be done, but they aren't the thing that will actually move your business forward, and I, for sure, was guilty of that in the early years. Oh, I didn't know how to do this. How about if I just redo some of my website copy? Or how about if I redo that email or something I knew how to do? Or how about if I clean my house? And though, none of those things move the machine of my business forward, something that I see more than I thought I would Entrepreneurs, their self image coming from their childhood, coming from something.

Speaker 2: 13:35

Many of them have these really good servant hearts and they find themselves not being able to say no to certain people like customers or whatever, and if they worked a normal nine to five job, they even still they would be caught with. Let me just stay after and fix this for this one person. But as the business owner, they are almost trapped by this thing because the other person knows that they have, that they run their own time schedule and they want to do what's helpful, and so they're in the middle of this. And if they could just learn how to say no, if they could learn how to say, to be honest, I'm only a human being and I've already worked 60 hours this week and I'm sorry I'm going to have to tell you no, but they have this thinking of it's just one more whatever. It's just one more person, it's just one more hour, it's just one more job, it's just one more dinner, and you do that repeatedly. And that's how you end up in the middle of a divorce and with grown children that you've never met because it's easy to take.

Speaker 2: 14:41

Instead of rising above and seeing the global situation of that, you get caught in the individualness of it. So that doesn't exactly answer your question about time blocking, but it is something that I've seen. I see people work with time blocking and if you are very disciplined and it can happen, so that it's a habit, time blocking is awesome. I do find for a lot of people it works for two or three weeks and then they need something a little bit different because their brain hasn't yet held on to the idea that there truly is a difference between the types of activities. And if you don't really believe there's a difference like deep in your viscera, that's all on the to-do list then and I just work the list. But if you believe that these activities actually have different weights, then you have to slide over the list and you say what is the most important thing I can do today that will move my business forward.

Speaker 1: 15:43

One of the things that I've experienced as a podcast host, as an entrepreneur, as a father is it is difficult to change the root beliefs that lead to our habits, that lead to our actions. I think part of that difficulty is unveiling those beliefs because they're so foundational. It's almost ironic because they're so foundational yet can be so transparent to us, we don't see them, we see through them. What have been some of the foundational beliefs that you feel like really get into entrepreneurs ways, and have you ever seen or have you ever had to wrestle with some of those foundational beliefs that you've had to change yourself in the course of your own running your own business and managing your family relationships?

Speaker 2: 16:35

Yeah, so I will answer what I've seen and then come back to what I've experienced. One belief that is I'm going to go with, almost pervasive with the entrepreneurs I have interacted with personally. It's not conscious until it becomes conscious If I am not busy, if I am not working, if I am not producing, I'm bad or deficient or broken or worthless or I suck. And you don't find it initially when there is business, that all the little things that you're doing the entrepreneur wears many hats and they just know they're working too much. But they also feel good. There's a lot of endorphins that come from all of that stuff. When their company is about ready to take that first scaling space and they start hiring the first hire and then the next hire and then the next hire and there is this moment, before they've actually scaled, where the entrepreneur has nothing to do and they don't know what to do about it and they feel like crap. And then they start like reinventing stuff. Sometimes they fire people, Sometimes they create chaos so that they're busy again and what they don't realize is this is some sort of really deeply held, fundamental belief and they've got to work through it or they'll never be able to scale.

Speaker 2: 18:03

I saw in my own life something that is interesting, that would not show up at an intellectual level, but at a visceral level for sure. It shows up If I connect really well with an entrepreneur and we go through a process of doing some coaching and it's helpful and it's valuable, and I can tell that I've helped them. And then I might make a proposal and they might be like can't do it. Now what I want to believe and I'm getting better and better at believing is that's about them. It's not the right time, they don't have the resources in the moment. That it isn't about me. But sometimes on my bad days I will think, oh, if I was a better coach, if I was a better this, if I was a better that.

Speaker 2: 18:51

When I make it personal and it isn't personal it is really those people in that moment are not ready for what I have to offer, not in a good or a bad way. It's just not the right time. And I think that if you're a service-based entrepreneur, that's something that people struggle with. It's just not taking it personally. A know is not about you, meaning me. A know is about them and where they are in life, as is a yes. A yes, is also about them and where they are in their life. So trying to learn that emotional detachment from that space is always part of my growth journey.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Now you said something here I want to touch on. The name of the podcast is the Emotional man, and one of the themes I always like to touch on is how can we, in a healthy manner, process or harness our emotions? And the reason why I like to bring this up is because, from my own personal story, I went up through my parents separated a lot from each other growing up, and from an early age I would suppress a lot of negative emotion and it took me a long time to learn how to process that emotion versus just throwing into the vault and walking the key, and I was I'll figure that out some other time. And there's also a lot of just these general themes of stoicism, masculine stoicism, where you don't you know to be a man, you don't have to feel emotions, or just the emotions don't belong in the workplace.

Speaker 1: 20:26

But the fact is we all experience emotions and we ought to deal with them. And so, as a mother, as a spouse, as a business owner, what were some of the emotional challenges that you face? And, at the end of the day, when you go to, like, connect with family, how do you deal with the emotional burden that that's been loaded on? As because you're a therapist and you're a coach, so you've experienced that at a very deep or consistent level, working with other people's emotions and your own. So what have you learned from bearing that emotional burden in such a way that it doesn't become a detriment to your own mental and emotional well-being or adding to the kind of emotional stress of your family?

Speaker 2: 21:12

I would say, as a young therapist, all of that emotion from my clients, I did wear it, I did bring it home. It did make it made me really tired, just exhausting, holding that over time. It's like lifting weights. You get better and better at it. And especially with the therapy, there was always the HIPAA confidentiality thing. So I never discussed it with my family. I mean, coaching is similar. There isn't a legal law in place, but in general I don't talk about any of what I go through with my coaching clients with my family.

Speaker 2: 21:53

The downside for my family then they would say this tongue in cheek is that it's pretty hard to turn off my coaching. I try really hard not to coach them, but I don't know. It's pretty hard when I see something that could be changed by a new habit or looking at it differently, and so in fact I have a big note right here that says no coaching my daughter ever unless she asks. So I think that's like a little bit of a job hazard. Another thing that is a little bit strange about basically swimming in people's emotions all the time is that it's pretty hard to shock me, it's pretty hard to impact me by your story and I have compassion and I have empathy, but I don't carry it like I would have 10 or 15 years ago. But by the same token, and I don't know, I guess you would have to ask my family if it's a detriment for them. When they're super upset, I'm super calm and I think sometimes they want me to get upset with them. Like, why aren't you outraged about this too?

Speaker 1: 23:06

Jumping the pole at me.

Speaker 2: 23:07

Yes, and I think that's something that I really struggle to do because it's just I've practiced for so long navigating this space. Ask me your question again, because I feel like I've missed half of it.

Speaker 1: 23:21

I know, I knew it was a rather complicated question. So the question was what were the challenges you faced with bearing the emotional burden of work? Because that's the big thing that entrepreneurs come home, they're tired, they're mostly rung out from whatever was happening in the workplace, and how do they interact with their family when there's emotional needs there as well?

Speaker 2: 23:42

Yeah, yeah. So I feel like I answered that at least in part. I think sometimes this is not something that I've experienced within my family, but I have seen it with the entrepreneurs that I've coached. Money is a really weird entity and in business you can run up that bill pretty quickly and it is not that uncommon to say I'm investing all of this and it will pay itself back later. It's like buying a bunch of seed and planting it in the field and you know the harvest is going to come later. It depends on how this plays out.

Speaker 2: 24:23

But if you have gotten a venture capital type investment from your own family members and say you've gotten two or three years worth of runway, and now it's not just you trying to provide for your family, but you have a team of people and you're trying to make this business pay for them, and you have a team of investors, some of whom are your wife's parents or whoever. They're all people that are connected to you, who are all relying on you. That is a heavy burden and, depending on how it plays out, if it works perfectly it's a big cash out for everybody. If it doesn't work perfectly, everybody loses and I think sometimes entrepreneurs are in that space where they're not sure how it's going to play out and it's a heavy load. And I always like to say, if you're in a situation like that, get in with a coach or get in with a therapist, because sometimes you can get despairing and nothing is worth your life. But sometimes people get to that space where they're like, how about I just end it all, because then at least we'll have the insurance money, which isn't even true. It doesn't work out that way and everybody loses. I tell people again be aware of your ability for risk.

Speaker 2: 25:41

I had a good friend. We were in a mastermind and he was growing his company. He had no problem putting 30 or 40 or $50,000 on his credit card. He knew eventually it would pay out and he was fine with that. I tried for one month living with a balance and I was like a wreck because I pay my credit card off. The second I use it I just don't spend money I don't have. I think that knowing what are the things that get your fight or flight in ramped up, that deep part in your brain, in the amygdala, there's certain things that do that. If there are aspects of your company that activate that part of your brain. You have to find ways to deal with it. Or you're going to bring it home and you're going to unload on your spouse or your kids, or you're going to withdraw. It's just not going to be good for anybody. I think that's some of the stuff I work with my clients knowing what gets them ramped up, and let's work with that so that you're not continually activating those places in your brain.

Speaker 1: 26:45

One of the final questions I always like to explore. The two final questions I'd like to explore with you as we near the end of the time here. Obviously, you're a company that has both the title therapy and coaching in it. I think a lot of people understand what therapy is. It's a little more well known, but some people may ask why do you need therapy and coaching? How would you describe the difference between the two?

Speaker 2: 27:12

Sure, I would say. In general, it's pretty rare to put those together in a title. I just didn't want to go through the hassle of creating two separate companies. I actually have a third company that's got its own LLC and it's been a huge hassle to create all this separateness and I'm dreading tax time For all of you who are wondering why are those in together. It was like it just made the money and the taxes and everything easier.

Speaker 2: 27:44

The difference in my mind is that, in general, therapy is something happened to me that left me in a subpar, subnormal space, whatever it was. Something traumatized me in some way and I need help getting from negative 10 to zero. Moving back to who I would be or could be or should be. Coaching in my mind is I am here and I want to go there. Maybe I'm at 10 and I want to go to 50. What are the things that need to happen to enable me to do those? There's a lot of overlap and as a therapist I was very coachy and as a coach, I don't mind at all utilizing what I learned in therapy, because I think there's a place for that particular dance.

Speaker 2: 28:38

In general, when I'm working with entrepreneurs, our focus is on your business and where are you right now? Where do you want to be? What is in between here and there that we can work on? But sometimes my people say, hey, can we talk about my marriage today? Can we talk about my relationship with my kids today? Totally, absolutely. That's why I bring both skill sets to that space.

Speaker 2: 29:03

In general also and I'm sad that it is this way and maybe it's changing but there is this notion and maybe this is because of insurance companies If you're in therapy, there's something wrong with you. Now, I don't believe that at all. I just think. In my opinion, it would be like I want to optimize my health, so I'm going to go to someone who can help me fix whatever is off and optimize. I think there is this space of somehow I'm broken and I want to fix it. A lot of entrepreneurs don't like that mindset at all. Coaching is very different. It is the answers are with you. Let's help you find them and let's run hard toward that end line that you want to reach. Again, those are generalizations, but that's how I would answer that question.

Speaker 1: 29:56

Thank you, I always. Yeah, I've heard other therapists and coaches talking about how therapy looks past the present and coaching looks present to the future. Is that, does that hold any bearing for you?

Speaker 2: 30:10

I would say I like that definition. I would definitely agree with that. Of course, both dabble in the other side. Therapy for sure looks at where you want to go, and coaching for sure looks at where you've been. But in general, yes.

Speaker 1: 30:26

The last question we always ask on this show is identifying how to measure success in your family, because in the business world we have tons of key metrics KPIs, okrs. It runs the gambit very easily to see the bottom lines, whether or not you're successful in playing the game as a business. How would you say you could take the same principles to your family? Because I think a lot of times a business owner or business leader comes home and they're having a thriving business, but they feel like they're struggling or failing their family and a lot of times, part of it. If you ask them what does success look like in your family? They can't define it. They don't know how to define a family except for whatever reason, they don't look like the Jones's next door or they're not doing everything the mommy Instagrammers are doing on Instagram. So in your own personal life. So two parts in your own personal life. How would you define success for your family? And then, secondly, how have you broached that question or that kind of topic with your clients?

Speaker 2: 31:34

With my own family. I consider success to be that I have a vibrant friendship with each member of my family as well. They're my family. I love them. Of course, that goes without saying with all the history. But do I have a friendship? Would they choose to spend time with me if it wasn't a holiday? Would they choose to call me without any provocation or whatever? And I have adult kids and it's different when they're not under your roof. I love the fact that my kids consider me to be one of their best friends, even though they have lots of friends of their own age. They call me all the time to ask my opinion about stuff and they invite me to do things, and I love that.

Speaker 2: 32:25

There is this dynamic friendship between us, and success for me is that the friendship, the open communication.

Speaker 2: 32:35

I also want the freedom, and this is where success in business and family, in my mind, are very interconnected. Success to me is the freedom to do what you feel is the right thing, and so if the right thing for me is to shut down my business for a week and go fly to Seattle to be with my daughter because X has happened, I'm going to do that and I'm going to design my business so that I have the ability to do that? And yeah, I don't know if I've answered that question. I guess you just want to be together. I want them to want to be with us, to want to play games or to want to go camping or to the lake or whatever, and not any sort of what's that word where you just are like obligated. They look at their phone and they go, oh, mom is calling again. I just don't want any of that. And so success to me is when they're like, oh my gosh, my mom's calling, hang on, and they're in the middle of whatever they're doing, but they answer because Love that, love that.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Thank you so much. This is again Maryam Gunn, founder CEO of Leave Better Coaching and Therapy, and again her website is leavebettercom. Are there any other ways that people can learn more about you or how they could perhaps work with you?

Speaker 2: 33:58

Oh, zev, thanks. I have an Instagram at Leave Better. You can email me directly. Miriam at Leave Better Would love to have a conversation and love to see if I can be useful in your life or your business.

Speaker 1: 34:12

Thank you everyone and thank you Maryam.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Thank you.