How Good Human Work Takes Care of the Mental, Emotional, and Relational Health of Founders, and Investors with Shelly Smith

How Good Human Work Takes Care of The Mental, Emotional, and Relational Health of Founders, and Investors With Shelly Smith

[00:00:00] John Cordray: Have you ever wondered or thought about what goes on behind the scenes of a mental health company? And maybe not. Maybe that's not something that you thought of, but did you know that there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and especially with the. Leaders and, and the founders and investors, a lot goes into it.

[00:00:21] John Cordray: And not only that, there's a lot of stress, which causes a lot of other issues as well, because they're humans too. And so today we're gonna be talking about how good human work takes care of the mental emotional in relational health of founders and investors. With Shelly Smith coming right. 

[00:00:44] John Cordray: Welcome to the Mental Health Today Show. My name is John Cordray and I am a licensed therapist and the host of this show, and I am so happy that you are here, that you made a decision to listen to the show in this episode. I appreciate you so. Don't forget, you can [00:01:00] go to mental health today show.com and you can read the blogs.

[00:01:05] John Cordray: You can listen to all the past episodes and much more. Love to have you visit that. That's Mental Health Today show.com. Well, today I have a special guest and I cannot wait to introduce her. Her name is Shelly Smith and she's a a licensed therapist and the co-founder of a company called Good Human Work.

[00:01:25] John Cordray: I just love that. In addition to providing an individual couple and family therapy, Shelly and her team of licensed therapists and business consultants deliver what's called team therapy to organizations. So Shelly, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:43] Shelly Smith: Thanks, John. I'm really excited to be here, especially to talk about a topic I'm so passionate about.

[00:01:48] John Cordray: Yeah. So I, I definitely want to get to that. But first I would love to know a little bit about your story. Who is Shelly Smith? What's the person behind [00:02:00] the curtain, so to speak? . 

[00:02:03] Shelly Smith: Yeah, so gosh, where to start? So in another lifetime, I was actually an English teacher. I'll just mention that right off the bat.

[00:02:12] Shelly Smith: Becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist was the second career for me. I went into it mainly because I was seeing so many people hurting in so many ways and couldn't figure out how to appropriately help from the roles that I was in and wanted to make a bigger impact. So, Went back, got my master's, became a licensed marriage and family therapist to work with families, work with couples, adolescence, kind of, you know, had this idea of what I wanted to do with it.

[00:02:40] Shelly Smith: And very quickly into my career, I met Jen Langowski, who is my co-founder. She and I started a tiny little private practice back in 20 12, 20 13. And at the time we didn't really know each. We just [00:03:00] found each other through our clinical supervisor who said, I think you two need to talk. He obviously knew more than we did about how well this was gonna work out.

[00:03:08] Shelly Smith: But, but then we just started talking. We started growing this business and we realized that our relationship was something we felt was unique, something really special. We had a lot of alignment in our values and even just as importantly, a lot of alignment and kind of our vision and our passions. And so from around 2013, Still present and ongoing.

[00:03:34] Shelly Smith: We have been co-founders. Initially it started as United Counseling and Wellness. We ended up rebranding, you know, a few years back. And our vision has always been to try to provide healing and support to the people who don't seem to be getting it in in our world, right? And really try to figure out how we can help the most people possible while at the same time [00:04:00] taking good, good, good care if the providers who are working for us and really.

[00:04:05] Shelly Smith: Entirety of everyone who interacts with us. And so we really have gone out of our way to make sure that we are taking care of, of the people who work with us and for us to make sure that they can take good care of their clients. And then beyond that, you know, anyone who we interact with is just sort of the way in which we walk through the world.

[00:04:27] Shelly Smith: And, and I kind of mentioned some of that backstory about Jen and myself because. As we're talking about founders, it's not an easy journey, and having someone along the ride for you with you is incredibly helpful, but also as this difficult rollercoaster of a journey, you know, we, we don't always get along.

[00:04:51] Shelly Smith: We have to work at some of that stuff, right? And at the end of the day, it's really helpful to know that, that I've got her by my side during that. [00:05:00] That whole. 

[00:05:02] John Cordray: Well, you really bring up a very good point because so many of us, if we're not in leadership, we don't realize that, and it could be any company, but the higher up you go, usually it's the lonelier you are because you.

[00:05:18] John Cordray: You get to a point where you may wanna talk to others about your struggle, but probably doesn't seem real appropriate to talk to your employee. Exactly. And who else are you gonna talk to? And, and that's something that it can be a big struggle and not just the emotional part, but the amount of time. And energy and blood, sweat and tears that goes into being a founder and we don't really think about that.

[00:05:46] John Cordray: There's a lot of, of sight unseen, so to speak. And you saw that. You see that, and that's why you started good human work, correct? Mm-hmm. . 

[00:05:56] Shelly Smith: That's exactly right. And so as, as [00:06:00] we went through this journey of being founders ourselves and like growing and trying to figure out how do we scale a company, And trying to figure out, you know, the best ways in which to do that.

[00:06:12] Shelly Smith: It became really apparent that we were getting advice from all sides, that we were, you know, having to hit metrics that didn't always seem realistic, , that the timeline never felt like it was long enough. Everything was having to happen too quickly. You know, there was never enough time and so we had to like, just like churn, you know, all those hours in order to feel like we were trying to make progress.

[00:06:36] Shelly Smith: I mean, it's, it's a hard road to take, but having someone along with you, especially if you have a healthy relationship that you're working on, I can't even begin to, to tell you how valuable that 

[00:06:49] John Cordray: is. Yeah. And someone to come alongside you and to encourage you and, and maybe even kick you in a pants if you need it.

[00:06:56] Shelly Smith: Absolutely. We do not always get along [00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] John Cordray: some of the cry on the shoulder on. I think that's good. So, Tell us a little bit about what, what exactly does a founder do on, on a company? Like what are, what's the role of a founder? Sure. Well, 

[00:07:12] Shelly Smith: early on, I mean, early on you're kind of wearing all the hats, right? And the early stages you, you may be.

[00:07:20] Shelly Smith: You know, doing business development. You may be doing sales, you may be trying to figure out some marketing plays. You're also product development. You are, you know, your own finance team. You are, you're, you're really trying to do it all and figure out how am I gonna fund this? How can we make money?

[00:07:37] Shelly Smith: How is this even gonna happen? And, you know, who is it? In our case in particular, who is it that we're trying to take care? Right, because we're not just selling a product, right? We're providing a service in the hope that we can help people make change and make their lives better. And so we're, we're really then trying to figure out how do we, you know, take good care of people and hit revenue [00:08:00] and do these things that we need to do.

[00:08:02] Shelly Smith: And so you're kind of throwing on these different hats, different points, right? And figuring out at the end of the day, who can I trust with this? And so, Building the team is always kind of a really important piece. Fairly early on trying to figure out how you're gonna fund this is a pretty important piece.

[00:08:18] Shelly Smith: I mean, there's just some fundamentals early on. And then the more that you grow, you end up kind of handing off some roles. I was, I've been joking with a lot of people this last year in, after all of the years that we've been doing, We have finally hired a cfo, . And so that for me was just, I can't even tell you, I cried tears of joy

[00:08:42] Shelly Smith: I was so relieved to not even have to, I've been, you know, taking our accounting team and our bookkeeping team, like, and everybody and asking all these novice questions, right, to try to fulfill a role that I'm not trained to fill. I often use that, that example as kind of one of the ways in which founders have [00:09:00] to like throw on this hat, learn everything, and they possibly can do that on top of everything else, right?

[00:09:06] Shelly Smith: I mean, as a founder you're typically the face of the business, you know, ex externally and trying to drive business and figure out what partnerships you need to make and what connections you need to make and, and. There's a lot that goes into that. But then if you're trying to also take care of what's happening in the business, right?

[00:09:26] Shelly Smith: Finding customers, making sure the demand is met and, and trying to balance the books or do whatever else it is, I mean, you're really throwing on whatever hat you can at the time to just make it happen. And that's part of where a lot of that lack of sleep comes from, the lack of balance in life, just the, the overall stress and pressure and intensity that founders often feel in the early stages.

[00:09:52] Shelly Smith: There's just a lot of hours spent trying to figure out how to gain traction. And then over time, as that team is [00:10:00] brought on, or as they get funders or as they start to hit revenue marks, then it becomes a lot easier to, you know, hand off some of those things. But then there's questions around who can I trust and are these the right people and do we all get along and what is it gonna look like and how do we iterate along with pressures that often come from some of those other stakeholders around.

[00:10:21] Shelly Smith: What are the metrics I have to hit and it ultimately becomes kind of a pressure cooker situation. There's just so much pressure, so much expectation from everyone around. And so the founder may end up working as, you know, co-founder and coo, or co-founder and c e o or, or you know, something like that, or bis dev or things.

[00:10:42] Shelly Smith: But they're, they're ultimately needing to still play multiple roles, but also at the end of the day, the ones who are. Charged with, with holding it all in their shoulders. Right? I mean, ultimately where, where the buck [00:11:00] stops, the responsibility falls if this doesn't work. And there's a lot of lives and a lot of dollars at 

[00:11:05] John Cordray: stake at some point.

[00:11:06] John Cordray: Yes. Yeah. And exactly. And so the burden is pretty heavy and the expectations are very high. Somebody might start being a founder and they're really passionate, very excited, and that can wear off after a while. Then it's, it's, instead of working on the business, it's working on you. Right? And, and then you, you take it on and then all of a sudden you're working through the night and you're not sleeping, like you mentioned, and it probably interferes with relationships.

[00:11:39] John Cordray: So many things can happen. We don't see. We don't see the, the behind the scenes of what's going on. We see the outside of a company, but we don't see what's going on inside in what's happening with a founder. But you don't just work with founders. Correct. You, you also work with investors and tell us a [00:12:00] little bit about that side and what role does an investor have?

[00:12:04] Shelly Smith: Well, I think that that is where, I mean, when we're talking about the entire startup ecosystem, right, and the different people that either support in various ways the, the founders and their teams working on the business. I mean, when we're talking about, you know, investors, they're often, it can look a lot of different ways, but typically, of course, funding to some degree.

[00:12:30] Shelly Smith: And then sometimes there's some operational rules in there. Sometimes there's board rules in there, or depending on what that, that arrangement looks like. But at the end of the day, I mean, there's a significant stake in the company that, that they're hoping that certain things will come out of that. And it's a big risk, right?

[00:12:50] Shelly Smith: It's a big risk to take on a founder. It's a big risk to take on a team or to participate in some of that. And so there are expectations, there are metrics that [00:13:00] have to be met. There are, you know, ultimately dollars that, that are going to be made, hopefully. And so there's just a lot of pressure, there's a lot of stress just all around in the entire ecosystem.

[00:13:11] Shelly Smith: And I think some of what we're seeing in our field in, in. The mental health field. It's been, as you know John, really interesting the last couple of years as we've realized like, you know, technology can play a significant role. There's a lot more money being put into the mental health industry in different ways to figure out how to meet the demand that's out there.

[00:13:35] Shelly Smith: And at the end of the day, people are just trying to figure out, how do we do this? Well, how do we take care of all the people? But it. A lot of pressure and a lot of expectation, and a lot of stress for everyone involved and, and what I end up seeing is the way that that stress kind of spreads across the board to everyone who's involved to some degree.

[00:13:59] Shelly Smith: And then at the [00:14:00] same time for I think everyone involved also. Unfortunately, and, and not everyone likes me describing it this way, but I feel like so many people get dehumanized in the ecosystem and in the situation. I mean, founders certainly do. They often take on a mantle of like, I have to be a superhuman to make this happen, right?

[00:14:21] Shelly Smith: I need to, you know, go all out and give up everything in my life and live, eat, breathe this thing and tie it to my identity and that we know. Dehumanizes them. They can't be a real human. They can't have a weakness or a day off or an appropriate amount of sleep. And I feel like the same thing is true for other people, like investors who are.

[00:14:43] Shelly Smith: We're held to some sort of standard or some sort of expectation that in order to hit these marks or in order to be part of this, we can't be looking just at the impact on people and the, the health or taking good care, but, but we somehow need to like, [00:15:00] hold back our empathy or we need to hold back the, the humanizing.

[00:15:05] Shelly Smith: Those relationships and, and a lot of people are, are certainly doing it really, really well. But then there's others who I feel like struggle with some of that. And, and how does my humanity show up here and how is it, you know, how can I just really be me and not have to put on some sort of a mantle or a mask to be 

[00:15:24] John Cordray: part of it?

[00:15:25] John Cordray: Yeah. And, and I really like how you described it really well. The founders and even the investors themselves, they're, they're humans, they're people, they're wives, they're husbands, they're, you know, they have struggles themselves and they might have family members that have a mental illness themselves.

[00:15:44] John Cordray: And, and they're hurting in a lot of ways. And I like how you really kind of painted that picture that they're humans and because they're humans, they can have some weakness. And the very fact of them thinking that they shouldn't [00:16:00] have a weakness is a weakness. Right? And, and feel like they have to be the superhuman that you mentioned.

[00:16:06] John Cordray: And everything is dependent upon me. And then the imposter syndrome tends to creep in and they look at other companies, well, they are making it, and why am I, why I'm not making it? And it's really easy to fall into that tempt. And it's also easy for those of us who are not inside in the inner workings of the C-suite of a company.

[00:16:30] John Cordray: And you mentioned mental health tech companies, and that is something that has really exploded over the last several years. And we've seen companies grow really fast, and we've also seen companies also laying off their employees very fast, and it's gonna kind of all over the place for various reasons.

[00:16:48] John Cordray: And, and I, I would think that one of the, the biggest things that founders and investors are thinking is sustain sustainability, if I can say that. We wanna make sure it's [00:17:00] sustainable, the business themselves, but investors, we need to talk to the investors for a moment and realize that our founders need to be sustainable as well.

[00:17:08] Shelly Smith: Yes. Because ultimately, I mean, at the end of the day, if we see, if we see fractures or, or full on breaks in a co-founder or in even in the co-founding team, right? Or in the leadership team. I mean, if those relationships aren't healthy and solid, I mean ultimately, The organization isn't gonna be able to scale the way that anyone wants it to.

[00:17:33] Shelly Smith: They're not going to be able to make progress, and at worst it's gonna crumble. I mean, we need to be taking care of the people and allowing them to be human and having some realistic expectation around it while at the same time supporting them so that they can scale the company the way everyone wants it to be.

[00:17:52] Shelly Smith: Right? 

[00:17:52] John Cordray: Yeah. I mean it's, it's everybody involved needs to work on their emotional. And that's really important. So, alright, you, [00:18:00] you alluded to it with good human work. Can you tell us a little bit more specifics of what you do for founders, for companies like, I don't know, start with the beginning. Like, how does a company reach out to you or how do you reach out to them?

[00:18:14] John Cordray: How does that work? And then what kind of, walk us through what you do. Yeah, 

[00:18:20] Shelly Smith: absolutely. So, So like good human work, go to good human work.com certainly to find out some of that information. But good human work companies, honestly. For the most part, find us through word of mouth at this point. I mean, we, we certainly reach out to people when we hear that there might be a pain point, or when we find, you know, a, a company founder, accelerator investor, whomever, may understand that there is a need for support to be proactive rather than just reactive.

[00:18:50] Shelly Smith: And we certainly work on both sides of that. The sooner you've put things in play, right? We know the healthier people will be all along. And so it's always [00:19:00] easier to be proactive than reactive in these situations. But so we either end up kind of finding companies because we're hearing about things that they might need, or people certainly are reaching out to us all the time for this sort of thing.

[00:19:14] Shelly Smith: For larger organizations, we do everything. Providing therapy and bulks and dedicated availability, our therapists for employees and things like that. But really what I'm here to talk about and, and what helps the most is ultimately what we call business therapy, right? Team therapy and our business therapy services are for working on at first relationships between people, leaders, teams, co-founder.

[00:19:48] Shelly Smith: Even between people sometimes at different levels. Frequently it's people around the same level, whether that's internal, external or whatnot. But we really work with [00:20:00] them to stabilize the relationship, the space between them and we work then, you know, to support them in whatever it is that they need to be kind of encouraged to do, to take care of themselves.

[00:20:13] Shelly Smith: So an easy example of that is you. A pair of co-founders I was working with fairly recently, we were realizing that the, the burnout from getting their Series A funding and getting down to this point where they, they had just been churning for years and not taking any time off, and, and they were really successful.

[00:20:35] Shelly Smith: They're doing incredible work. But the burnout was significant and they were each starting to have a lot of tension in their relationship that had always been stable before, and it was, you know, trying to lead their team was getting increasingly complex cause of the state that they were in. And so, you know, through our work, we identify just some of the things that they needed to do in [00:21:00] order for each of them to just give themselves permission to drop some of the guilt that they don't have to work on the company 24 7.

[00:21:07] Shelly Smith: It's okay to take a little bit of time off, right? Your team will support you if you have a great team that you can trust them, right? Just some basic elements and working on the relationship between them to make sure that that was stabilized and. Because I don't know if you've seen these statistics, but 65% of startups fail due to co-founder conflict or interpersonal conflict at the top level.

[00:21:32] Shelly Smith: And so protecting that is essential to making sure that a startup can really succeed. And so that's why we tend to go in and not just work on people's like mental and emotional health, but really prioritizing the relationship. And I mean, as that's where I get most passionate, to be honest. I mean, let's talk about this all the time to people.

[00:21:55] Shelly Smith: And that's part of what's been driven out of my relationship with [00:22:00] Jen that I talked about at the beginning, is really this work around we need to take care of each other. We need to take care of ourselves, and we need to take care of our relationship because that relationship is what sustains us when it gets hard, right?

[00:22:13] Shelly Smith: So leaders of any kind at the top levels, if they're able to have a healthy. Professional relationship. It allows them to support each other. It allows them to know that somebody has their back, that if they need to take a minute to deal with, you know, something going on in their personal life or they're just exhausted and, and need a couple of days.

[00:22:35] Shelly Smith: Or, you know, to go to the doctor for goodness sakes, which founders don't do nearly enough, right? Taking care of just their own physical. That we can do that because we're supported. We're not alone in this. It helps break through the loneliness. That helps break through the guilt when we have a solid and healthy relationship.

[00:22:54] Shelly Smith: I 

[00:22:54] John Cordray: really love that. And you're, you look at this from a relational standpoint [00:23:00] and realize that without the relationship, you don't really have a company because a company is made up of people and people are made up of relationships, right. So you have to go there and you have to look at that and, and I'm really, really very happy to know what good human work is doing and realizing that for the greater good, I guess you can say.

[00:23:24] John Cordray: Cuz a lot of what you do goes unnoticed by the general public. Oh, of course. And yet, without your service, a lot of these founders, investors, companies, will, would not be able to function the way they. And you provide a very good service, but it doesn't, I'm sure it doesn't get a lot of accolades, like, like probably some of the companies you work with.

[00:23:47] Shelly Smith: That's exactly right. We do. Yeah, we do. We do The hidden work Behind the hidden work. . . 

[00:23:53] John Cordray: Right. So you're, you're literally the, the people behind the curtain, like in, come on, what is that? [00:24:00] All right. It's some famous. Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Wizard of Oz. Thank you. You, you won the quiz.

[00:24:07] Shelly Smith: excellent. I passed . Yes. 

[00:24:10] John Cordray: Yeah. So, but it's such an important work and I just wanna really thank you for the work that you do, and I'm sure you, you get a lot of thanks from the, the companies and founders that you work with, but I just want to publicly thank you for what you. Keep doing what you're doing cuz it's so needed.

[00:24:30] John Cordray: We just don't realize what's going on behind the scenes and I'm really thankful that good human work realizes that and they, they're doing a lot of good work. 

[00:24:41] Shelly Smith: Thank you John. That means 

[00:24:42] John Cordray: a lot. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So keep doing what you're doing and, and if you are, are listening to this and you are a founder or a co-founder or an investor, or maybe you're thinking about starting a company, this is something you need to think.

[00:24:56] John Cordray: There's a lot of other business stuff you have to think about, [00:25:00] but there's also a lot of the emotional, relational issues to be thinking about. And this is something you can't put off. You can't bury it, you can't pretend you can't put it off because it's gonna, it's gonna affect you in some way or another.

[00:25:15] John Cordray: And I know that in any company, it starts with the leaders. And if the leader is unhealthy, it trickles down and we're gonna see. And so it's important to get the leaders healthy so the rest of the company can be healthy. And when the rest of the company is healthy, then we can help other people be healthy.

[00:25:37] John Cordray: It trickles down, so. Wonderful. Well, Shelly, thank you so much. I just wanted to ask if there's anything else that you are that you would like to leave my audience with before we end our episode today? 

[00:25:52] Shelly Smith: Good question. I mean, I think, John, my hope really for, for as we're talking about founders, investors, whomever else is kinda [00:26:00] in that ecosystem that we can name.

[00:26:02] Shelly Smith: I think what I'm really hoping for is that, you know, as we reduce mental health stigma as a whole, And as we encourage more transparency and, and just realness in the way that people show up as humans with each other, that that'll start to, to affect that entire ecosystem because that's been a place where people haven't really been able to show up as their true selves.

[00:26:26] Shelly Smith: And I think. Allows far more hurt and in a far un situation than we could have. And so I'm just encouraging everyone I talk to, to allow them to just be transparent, find their community. I mean, if their founders. Who are building communities of founders so that they're not as alone, right? So that there is more transparency so that they're supporting one another.

[00:26:52] Shelly Smith: And those sorts of practices, I think, are going to go a long way toward reducing the stigma and just making everyone healthier all 

[00:26:58] John Cordray: around. [00:27:00] Yeah. Thank you. I, I love that. That is so, so good. So if somebody wanted to reach out to you, I know you mentioned the website. Can you mention that again and is that the main way that people can reach out to you?

[00:27:12] John Cordray: I mean, the best 

[00:27:13] Shelly Smith: way to reach out really is to go to Good Human work.com. You can pretty much find everything there that you wanna find. I'm also on LinkedIn, but there may also be a lot of Shelly Smith's on LinkedIn. So if you go into. Yeah, the perils of a common name. So if you go to good human work on LinkedIn, you can certainly find us there and you can find me directly through there If anybody wants to connect, always happy to do that.

[00:27:36] Shelly Smith: It's all about the people and the relationships and the connections. I mean, my world is all about relationships at the course, so always happy to build more of those. Yeah, I'd love for people to reach out in any way. 

[00:27:49] John Cordray: Fantastic. So go to good human work.com. I'll also have this in the show notes, so if you forget what we just said, go to the show notes, it'll be right there and you just click on it [00:28:00] and take it right there.

[00:28:01] John Cordray: Well, Shelly, before I let you go, it's something I ask all my guests and I talk a lot about self-care. Tell us what are some things that you do for self-care for. 

[00:28:13] Shelly Smith: You know, John, that has been something I have actively been in increasing in the last year. Cause it was a struggle as a founder and then going through the pandemic and all of that.

[00:28:23] Shelly Smith: But I think, you know, right now my things are laughing as much as possible because I realize for, for a good long time I wasn't laughing. And so I've been trying to. Humor and laughter. Wherever I can seek it out. I make sure to try to exercise, nothing lofty, but exercise fairly regularly cause that's essential for her mental health.

[00:28:46] Shelly Smith: And really spend more time with my people because I feel like I've, I've lost a lot of that over the years and trying to build our company and, and. Being a therapist or a pandemic and all the things, and so I'm trying [00:29:00] to really reengage with, with friends and family and rebuild some of what I feel like I've just lost.

[00:29:07] John Cordray: Hmm, that's so good. I think a lot of people can relate to that. We can get so caught up in life. And the busyness of life. And then, then there's a pandemic and there's a lot of other things that distract us. And so getting back to our roots and getting back to the relationships is so important. So thank you for the reminder.

[00:29:27] John Cordray: All right. Well thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate you taking some time and talking to my audience. I think this is a great topic to, to be talking about something that we don't really think about as often, but something that's very important. And so again, thank you for what you do and thank you so much for coming on the show.

[00:29:44] John Cordray: Well, thank you for 

[00:29:44] Shelly Smith: having me. I'm so glad you're providing a platform for mental health and just for all of these, these things as we're all struggling. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed. 

[00:29:53] John Cordray: Well, thank you, I, I appreciate that and I wanna talk to all of you who are listening. And again, I just really appreciate [00:30:00] you and some of you may have stumbled upon this for the first time, and maybe you're just now listening.

[00:30:05] John Cordray: Others of you have been listening for years and I just really appreciate you and I want you to continue to work on your mental health. And as always, I want you to remember that the Mental Health Today Show has been championing your mental health since 2015.