Mental health — the next frontier SaaS founders are looking at. 

And when I say that, I don’t mean “founders starting mental health companies”.

No, I mean the personal aspect of mental health. It’s the next bridge we’re looking to cross as a society.

And since some SaaS founders are responsible for our advancement as a species, it makes sense that… well… founders are doing ok from a mental health point of view.

This article is meant to be the toolkit, the foundation, the bottom point to which SaaS founders should keep on coming back.

But why should they care about mental health? 

Because we need founders to make sure their mind is helping them, not hindering their path to success.

Here are 9 things someone should keep in mind — or rather, in some cases, outside their mind.

1. Remind yourself when it’s about the marathon, not the sprint — and vice-versa

Yes, we all know that it’s about running a marathon, not a sprint. “So put your marathon shoes on and…” — et cetera et cetera.

We like abstract advice because:

1. We can understand whatever we want out of it.
2. We’ll apply “whatever we want to understand” to our situation — when that’ll be.
3. We don’t have to apply it to a practical situation from the moment we hear it. In other words, we don’t have to face the “demons” at that very second.

The only problem with abstract advice given without practical implementations is that we may apply it to the wrong situation.

Let’s re-discuss this piece of advice.

When it’s not applied properly, it can instantly turn from “helpful advice” to “harmful advice”.

The idea that needs to stay inside a SaaS founders’ mind is that the marathon and sprint analogies are interchangeable and relative to the timeframe they’re thinking in.

It makes no sense to “put your marathon shoes” if you’re doing something like a call.

It does make sense for a SaaS founder to think about the long-term when having the bird’s eye view

In other words, if we’re talking about the business vision, the founder’s personal plans or an employee’s fit into the company for the following 18 months — then it makes sense to look through the marathon lens.

And that all sounds obvious. But the problem is when 3 minutes later, we’re taking 30 more minutes than we should, discussing a colour change on a virtually invisible page of a website.

No.

Sprint every day. And put the marathon goggles when you’re looking at the bigger picture. 

Stick to “only marathon shoes”, and you’ll get nowhere. Swap the two above, and you’ll get nowhere.

2. Stop telling yourself stories — or rather, start identifying them

Yes, I believe in the idea of “doing something where you love the day-to-day process”. That’s the sprint, let’s switch now to talking about the marathon.

Somewhere, deep within us, we believe that we’ll make it. That we’ll be successful— more on this in a further point.

Most people reading this article believe what I just wrote above, otherwise they wouldn’t imagine themselves in successful positions. As a consequence, they wouldn’t eventually start a company.

We, as humans, like to fall in love with the idea of “a better place”. Sometimes we love it more than “the place”.

What happens once we get “there”? We soon find out that it’s not really a better place (99% of the time) and that was it. Back to our usual schedule of looking for the next thing.

But hold on — what happened there? Where was that enthusiasm and “happiness” stemming from? Not from the “better place”?

No, it came from the idea of a better place. 

Take travelling for example.

Some don’t like travelling per se, they like the idea of “getting there”. What happens next?

The sun is too hot, the room is not perfect, “I’m not rich yet”— on and on and on.

But what happened to the enthusiasm coming from “I’m travelling soon!”? That, to me, proves that we get our positive emotions from the idea of a better future.

How that translates to starting a company

The same thing happens to SaaS founders as well with “I’ll be happy when I’ll be running a successful company”. Once again, stories.

The point here is not to try and mute or suppress these stories. That’s a hydra head — cut that off and 10 more stories will come out.

The point is to start identifying them and listening to them. The consequence can be found out by yourself right at this moment. It’s like the Scooby-Doo scene.

You’re unmasking the “monster” so it’s not a monster anymore. In fact, the Scooby-Doo analogy is a good representation of that.

Once the story of a villain/monster/ghost/etc. is blown away, that concept loses its power.

To which I may add: what power did it have in the first place? It was all virtual.

That is what “I’ll be happy when I’ll IPO” is. A mere thought with the mask of happiness.

Remember: start identifying stories and they’ll be unmasked, revealing their true nature: a simple thought structure

3. If you’re reading this, you’ve got everything you need in order to succeed

I’m taking now what I just wrote about at point two and making sure that we’re depleting every kind of story that might come up.

If you think an article with “types of mental stories” from the minds of SaaS founders is worth doing, let me know in the comments.

Yes, you’ve got everything you need in order to succeed since you can read this. With some exceptions, whatever else your mind tells you don’t have, it’s—once again—a story.

Unmask it and show to yourself what the true nature of this thought is.

“I missed an event where I could’ve met someone who might have changed the course of my company”

No, if it has to happen, it will happen. Whether you go to an event or not. More on this later.

“I’m not living in Silicon Valley where all the founders and investors are”

Take it this way: did someone else, in your position, manage to succeed?

Do we have this thing called the internet where you can get connected to someone in… Silicon Valley or London/Qatar/Taipei? Then you’ve got it.

Oh, if we look at the story of “I’m not in Silicon Valley” as a shield against “I can’t make it”, then we’re going two levels deeper.

Sometimes, stories are piling up, and that’s why we, as founders, might shy away from poking at them— we’re afraid of what these stories guard.

What I wrote in point #2 makes sense and sounds easy. The problem is when we get to century-old-structures in our minds. And I truly mean century-old-structures—some come from our parents’ parents.

Poking at a house of cards that might fall and take down with it 95% of what you consider “yourself” is scary. Indeed, it’s all we are (or have been) — stories.

But it’s also deadwood and it needs to go away. Deadwood, for a founder, can mean the “not in Silicon Valley” excuse.

Or the “I’m not funded properly”. Or “I wasn’t born with coding skills”.

Destroy them and you’ll be 5% of what you were. But you’ll be the true, pure 5%.

4. Your purpose in life as a founder

Once those “house of cards” story-structures are gone— which can take a lifetime by the way—we can deal with even tougher questions.

Purpose in life. Disclaimer: 

1. It’s not the purpose of life and 
2. I can’t know what your purpose in life is.

But I can tell you what it brings you, once you have an idea of what it might be —and that’s all you have to ever get to: an idea of what it might be. You’ll never know what it is. More on this later.

Finding a glimpse of what your purpose in life might be will:

1. Keep you away from suicidal thoughts.
2. Prevent you every now and then (maybe all the time) from short-term patches/vices like alcohol, drugs or whatnot. Even compulsive eating or over-bragging in front of your friends about how many millions you’ll do in revenue this year.
3. Prevent you every now and then from bad short-term decisions or obsessions: with the way your body looks, the way other founders look at you, what she thought about how you laughed etc, what the investor you pitched was thinking.
4. In other words, keep you away from stories— since points the previous 3 points in this list are stories.
5. Make the word “bored” disappear from your dictionary
6. Give you reasons to wake up and, in turn, not want to go to sleep so early, since you want to do more of your “purpose in life”.

Those are just a couple of them— there’s more to it, but I felt the burning sensation of having to say… how to find it.

And the answer is:

You don’t.

All you’d have to do is listen to the things around you. Which brings me to the next point

5. Listen to the pointers you’re given in life

This is not a religious discussion. Everyone believes in whatever they want to— or in nothing at all.

Whether you believe in free will, determinism or anywhere in-between on that spectrum, this can work.

What I’m saying with point #5 is that sometimes we get “pointers” as we live our life. Just like on a highway — go this way for this destination.

All we need to do is listen to them.

And, spoiler alert, once stories are starting to be cleared out of the way, you can start seeing more of these pointers.

If a VC investment round doesn’t go through — it might not be about you. It might be about the fact that you’ll get double that in a couple of months.

If your CTO leaves the company and leaves you butt-naked in the middle of nowhere, it might not be about your “leader skills” — it might be about the next person that will come to replace him. And she might change the course of your career.

We can go on and on with examples, but I’m sure you can think of them. 

Careful now! You might be tempted to craft future stories. The extreme opposite of this piece of advice would be starting to craft stories for yourself as you’re navigating your path to a valuable company!

They’re called “blessings in disguise”, and I’m sure you’ve had the feeling before.

I said “what is given” in the heading of this list item. Again, I don’t know what you believe in. But pointers in life can come through anything.

Grab tight to some of them or don’t — they’ll keep on coming anyway. You can ignore them your whole life but then you might find yourself throwing your fist at the sky and blaming someone up there.

Or listen to the pointers, even when it doesn’t make complete sense.

6. Comparing yourself to other fellow founders

“Yes but by this age, Travis Kalanick had already…”

“Wow Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started, what am I doing now at …”

“Jeez, Craig’s company has been doing $180m last year”

I understand how I’m repeating myself with the idea of “stories inside your head”. In truth, all I’m saying revolving around that: our mind telling us tales.

Comparing ourselves to other founders is no exception. Whether it’s about age, how much someone has raised or how much their company is doing— it’s the same thing all over again.

And look, I’m not saying stories are bad. They give you some purpose in life: comparing yourself to other founders is not a boring thing to do.

It definitely fuels some emotions so it’s far from boredom. At the same time, it won’t be the thing that will enable you to do better — for yourself, for your family and, hopefully, for the human species.

The only thing that it can do is: slow you down. You might want that from time to time — but obviously, there are better ways to slow down and unwind.

7. Loneliness as a SaaS founder

If you manage to get to that place where you can:

• Run a marathon and a sprint (applying both to the right relative timeframe)
• Find pleasure in the day to day activity, not in the “better future point in time”
• Start being aware of stories existing in your head and “unmasking” them
• Use the three above as a positive feedback loop for both company and individual growth

Then you’ve got pretty much all you need to exist happily. Whether alone or with people, you’ll be okay.

And let’s make sure we’re not missing the mark here. When I say “ loneliness”, I don’t mean the state of not being with people.

I’m addressing the state of “I’m alone” and the thoughts that come with the… you guessed it— story.

If you’re in a place where you truly want to hang out with people, by all means: go and meet them. Whether you already know them or you’ll use an online tool or engage in small talk at the supermarket to meet new people, it’s all fine.

What I’m addressing is the “I want to meet people so as to patch my internal negative feeling. What I’ve got now is not enough”.

And that negative feeling is the hydra I talked about earlier. Fix that “I want to meet new people” and 10 other problems will come with it once you tick it off your to-do list.

No, these are band-aids, just like alcohol or a cigarette. Yes, all of the aforementioned can also be perfectly fine activities — smoking, drinking or meeting friends.

You will know deep down inside whether you’re doing it as a band-aid or as a genuine activity. Especially when you start developing an eye for stories.

When your purpose in life has a glimpse of light and the 4 bullet-point list items noted above are on their way to manifesting, you won’t need band-aids anymore.

8. Fear of not delivering perfection

There are multiple written pieces that do a better job than I can at the moment at explaining one specific concept:

The idea of shipping and reiterating faster, rather than pursuing instant perfection.

All I have to add here is that “It’s not perfect yet” is a voice inside a SaaS founder’s head that prevents her from putting something out.

It’s something we’ve seen before and have associated with success: yes, they’ve made it because their product is almost perfect.

Why? Because just like the Instagram effect, we’re not looking at “work in progress” moments. We’re looking at the highlight reel, which is closer to perfection.

Silencing that voice would imply having the ability to tweak, adjust and ship faster and at a higher rate. 

Here’s what I’d love to add. Dealing with stories such as this one, which is an internal problem (“It’s not perfect yet so I won’t put it out”) leads to the most beautiful thing ever: it’s taking you to 90% completion of dealing with external problems.

By external problems I mean, for example, truly not listening to other people’s opinions when you choose to. Or peer pressure or the need for adhering to trends.

Dealing with these external issues becomes a breeze when the internal thoughts are dealt with.

I’m not a big fan of quotes, but some stay with me because they hit home. Here’s a relevant one that sums it up:

When the enemies inside are dealt with, the enemies outside have no power.

Fear of perfection is something SaaS founders truly have to overcome, sooner or later. The beautiful part is that by solving that, it becomes easy to get to a point where the “enemies outside” are silenced.

9. Either enjoy, accept or stop. Nothing else.

Yes, sometimes you have to discuss taxes, or maybe legal/compliance topics — a certain amount of tasks have to be done and there’s no escape.

But the real point here is that you know when you’re doing something:

1. You don’t want to do.
2. That you don’t truly have to do.

I fully understand why, even though you don’t have to, you will want to entertain doing these errands: you’re afraid something might go wrong if you skip it.

Or maybe there’s a heavy internal critic that envisions your world destroyed because of that thing you overlooked — “I told you so”.

Every situation must be broken down in three ways: 

1. Either you enjoy doing it — it’s pretty obvious what you should do here.
2. You accept the situation — and stop adding unnecessary baggage that only slows you down and adds to the realm of stories, which consequently puts you into a negative feedback loop.
3. You stop doing it.

And, yet again, for the millionth time in this written piece, the #1 thing you need to remember is that it’s all about the stories in your head.

Day to day activity of creating and improving: they fall under “enjoy”.

Legal/tax tasks that 100% have to be done: they fall under “accept”.

As for activities that fall under “stop”… you will know what those are.

Conclusion

Stories are not bad. In fact, we should be grateful for them. If it wasn’t for that one single story that made think about starting a company, you’d probably be in a totally different landscape.

But any tool angled in a certain way becomes a weapon.

And the source of tales inside your head is angled in that very sharp and pointy way when it’s putting out variations of outcomes that will lead to your demise.

I’m not saying “become delusional and never imagine bad scenarios” — it’s a pragmatic thing to do, and, for some, a philosophy (see: stoicism).

All I’m saying is: you know when the line should be drawn between a pragmatic bad scenario and unnecessary extra thoughts.

Draw that line slowly. Don’t let it turn into a meta-story by drawing up another tale of “You’ve read that article and now you’re not applying it properly”.

It’s like a skill — it takes time and you only get better by starting to do it.

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About Ch Daniel

I’ve updated this signature in July 2020, so older mentions of the signature might not make sense.

I currently don’t write on this blog anymore. I wrote daily for 9 months on this very blog, but now I’m focused on building the CH Group.

If you want to follow my newer articles, check out the CH Group’s blog.

See everything I do here: Chdaniel.com