Bill Hudenko: Beyond the Exit: Insights from a Psychologist Turned Exited Founder

0:00One of the very important lessons I've learned about exiting is you should achieve closure prior to your exit not after. Bill Fudenko, a serial exited founder, clinical psychologist, university professor, self-taught programmer and musician. Bill joins us today to share his personal and professional insights on life after an exit. Each of Bill's businesses, past and present, has been driven by a mission to heal others rooted in a deep understanding of the human psyche. He's an incredibly warm, caring and captivating man who inspires and teaches us to be healthier and better people. It becomes threatening and easy to think of yourself as someone who can't lose.

0:41There are circumstances where it doesn't matter how hard you tried. It doesn't matter how good you are, how smart you are, how great the idea is. There's a market force that kills your opportunity. As long as you're being true to yourself, as long as you're being as transparent as you can be, that you're making the best choice that you can with the information that you have, there's really no rational reason to feel guilty. It's just an unfortunate outcome.

1:13Hi, Bill. Hello. Very happy to see you here. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. So what are the most important lessons you've learned from your exits? Probably achieving closure before the exit is the most important thing I learned. because you are by definition going to lose control of the outcome after the exit. And I think that's okay as long as you're aware that you're getting what you want out of that exit. So for me, that was a lesson hard learned because I had all these expectations about what would happen with the future of the company and the product that I had built that didn't meet my expectations.

1:55So learning to sort of be okay and have closure when the exit happens was probably the most important thing. Did money make you happy? You know, there's been so much research on this question about the link between happiness and money and really showing that for most people, money is not connected with happiness. It's not correlated beyond a subsistence living. That said, money is, to me, it's an enabler. It does allow me to do things that I love. I love traveling. I love building new things. So it does bring a certain amount of happiness. Certainly, I wouldn't say that it doesn't, but it is certainly not the thing that makes me happy.

2:39What keeps you up at night? Well, actually, I am an awesome sleeper. It's maybe one of my superpowers, so nothing really keeps me up at night. But if you want to know what I worry about, there are, of course, some macro things like climate change or even my own mortality that keep me up at night, so to speak, or that I might worry about. But I guess the factor that's maybe most unique to me and my experience is I actually worry a lot about technology and how it impacts people, which is funny because I'm in the tech world. I'm somebody who's built tech products. I continue to build them. But my concern with it is how they've been used and how ultimately I think a lot of technologies have made us grow farther apart from each other instead of becoming closer.

3:34That's a real priority for me is how do I help the world find a way to connect instead of disconnect? What gives you the most joy in life? I'm really lucky. I have a lot of things that bring me joy. You know, top among them all is strong and positive relationships with people. But many other things as well. I love playing music. I love, love learning. I love building things. I love traveling. I love discovery. So the list goes on. But there's just many, many things that I'm interested in, and that I like to approach life? Like it's my first day where I'm discovering things for the first time. And it's my last day simultaneously where, um, you know, if I was going to die tomorrow, what would I make sure to try to get in and do today that would make it a great day?

4:31Bill, who are you? Well, so that's a very big question, of course. Um, but I guess I'd answer it by saying that I am a unique person and I am no one or everyone at the same time. And so the way I answer that is, I think I'm unique because maybe I have a set of experiences or skills or knowledge that very few people may be fortunate to have amassed or just a set of skills that might make me unique. But on the other hand, I think maybe one of the very important lessons I've learned over the years, and particularly, you know, working with people through therapy, is that everyone has an amazing and unique story to tell.

5:19And certainly that through those stories, I've learned that there is so much more that connects us and that makes us similar than things that make us special. So I'm just like you. what's next for you well my current passion and the thing i'm working on right now is i intend to make a major impact on college students first and foremost and their experience around meaningful relationships so that's the thing i've taken on is i i will succeed with that that goal of helping them to connect and feel better about their relationships. So that's my current, where my mind is currently most focused is that objective.

6:06After that, we'll interview me again. Do you have a sense of purpose? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think I mentioned before my, I think my purpose for being here might be to heal and to help. I mean, I really do feel like from the earliest part of my career to where I am today, the biggest pleasure and joy that I derive from the work that I do is my ability to have hopefully a positive impact on other people. And so ultimately for me, that's going to mean success is just around a net positive that what we've done, what I've built, what I share with the world has a good impact. How do you want to be remembered?

6:51That one is actually, you know, somewhat easy in that because of some of the work I did earlier, I wrote my Ever page, which is really about that. It's about how do I want to be known? How do I want to be remembered? So if anybody has interest in that, you can go to ever.page forward slash Bill, and you'll learn all about me. Bill, you're a completely unique person for me in the sense that you are an experienced clinical psychologist. You're a super successful entrepreneur. You actually had several businesses and several successful exits. You continued your academic career even after your exits, and you're still very young.

7:29So how did that all happen? Well, first of all, you're probably being a little bit too gracious, especially on the young part, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I think the reason that I've, I've had worn so many hats and, and maybe achieved what I have achieved to date is just because I have a certain set of personality characteristics that drive me to it. And I think part of that is that I, I'm extremely curious person. I'm somebody who's, I'm actually fairly competitive. So that's helped in the entrepreneurial space. and I absolutely love, I love learning in general. And so if anything, I have a problem with limiting the scope of what I do as compared with finding too many things that interest me.

8:14So I've really wanted to maintain my academic position and skills, but also after I got the entrepreneurial bug, I just, I think I couldn't stop. Where does this motivation for impact come from and how early in your life you really started feeling it? Because most people I meet, they first are very driven by money in their first business. So the need for impact and purpose, non-monetary purpose, usually happens only after they satisfy that first need. How was it for you? I guess I was just lucky in that regard where, you know, I guess I found early on that the joy, that my greatest joy tends to be interpersonal and it also tends to be around when I can have a positive impact on somebody else.

9:05So that is, I think, what drove me to psychology originally was I thought, you know, I want to do a career. I want to do something with my life that it's such a big part of our lives, right? Our career, what we do. I wanted to do something that allowed me to give back, but I still made money doing it. And so that never changed from the very beginning. And I've always found it to be very fulfilling. So across every step, whether it's teaching, and hopefully what I give back to students and the impact I have on them, whether it's psychotherapy and the impact I can have on clients, whether it's building a business, and hopefully the positive impact I have on the world for consumers or the people who use my products, that is what I love.

9:52And so I've just been lucky to have those two things aligned at the very beginning. Do you think it's morally acceptable to serve others while earning money in the process? Not only acceptable, it's probably necessary. Because if you think about it, there are very few people who have the luxury of serving other people without any monetary gain. as in, you know, maybe if you are a post-exit founder and now money is not really a concern for you anymore, you can just give back with philanthropy in a way that's not reciprocal. But, you know, to me, to position myself to where I was working in a way that gave back, but also providing a very valuable service for people that they valued enough to provide their money in exchange.

10:43I didn't think it, I didn't, I didn't find it. I don't find it to be problematic. What did your parents expect from you while you were growing up? You know, it's another part of my life where I just feel so fortunate because, you know, actually many people I think who go into psychology ultimately get there because of some trauma or some difficult thing they've had in their life, maybe a depression they've struggled with on their own. I was actually very mentally healthy. I've pretty much the whole, my whole life been mentally healthy. And it was, it was more because my parents were so great and loving that I, I derived this belief that I could do anything.

11:27It was probably the greatest gift that they gave me, I think was this belief that as long as I believed in myself and I worked extremely hard that I could achieve anything. And obviously, there's, you know, limits on that. But I just am so grateful that I believe that and that I learned it. Because, you know, if you reach for the stars, even if you fall short, you usually will accomplish more than someone who never tries. Absolutely. This reminds me of this research I've seen lately, that entrepreneurs are twice as likely to commit suicide in their lifetime and twice as likely to be hospitalized for mental health.

12:10I think when it comes to bipolar disorders or addiction, it's even worse. They are three times more likely to develop that. And I think for depression, it's also two or three times as likely as normal people. Why do you think that is? Well, I think it's probably two main factors. One factor is selection bias of the people who are drawn towards entrepreneur and entrepreneurial life. I think the second factor is probably that it's a very stressful thing to choose to do. So on the first side, if you think about perhaps some of the greatest artists that have ever lived, like Salvador Dali or other people, many of them had substantial mental illness, whether it was probably schizophrenia like Dali or many, many artists, Picasso, many others struggle with depression or even bipolar disorder.

13:06And there's been a lot of writing and people who talk about this intersection between some types of mental illness and creativity. And this idea of your brain works a little differently, which allows you to see the world differently and to create and to be inspired and to be motivated in ways that other people are not. Even if it's other things like obsessive compulsive disorder, you know, right? Like think about Nikola Tesla who had OCD. I mean, this was a man who was obsessed with electricity and look at what he accomplished. I mean, we thank him for the electric motor and so many other things.

13:44So that's the first part is I think entrepreneurs often look at things differently and have motivations that are really very helpful for creating and building and being obsessed with something that they're going to do. In terms of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, you know, I mean, it's a hard risk-laden life. It's hard because, you know, oftentimes it's 10 p.m. and I'm on a call with somebody and it's disruptive to my family or it's hard because

14:20your company's out of money next month. And what are you going to do? Are you going to fire people? Are you just going to shut the doors? The best description of being an entrepreneur that I recall is the idea of being dropped out of an airplane with some materials and you have to build your parachute before you hit the ground. That's kind of what it's like. So obviously, add people who have selection bias for things like depression or bipolar disorder, then you have a very, very stressful occupation that has so many challenges associated with it. It is not surprising to me that you see higher than normal suicide rates.

15:03So lots of people, in my observation, only fully realize they have mental health issues after they sell their company because finally they have the luxury of time and money to properly think about it. What would you suggest these people do? Should they actually try to cure the problem or should they embrace the different mindset that it's a superpower that actually got them where they are now, they should accept it, develop it, and keep using it for the good of the planet? Absolutely. I'd say address it before. I mean, I hope in my description prior that I maybe am an example of somebody who's mentally healthy and can also achieve and succeed.

15:51But I think that so often people suffer unnecessarily and put themselves at risk for things like suicide because they don't address a lot of issues that are worthwhile. while. And to me, you know, mental health is one of the most misunderstood and poorly addressed parts of health. And in fact, if we think about it, it should just be health, not mental health. It's part, what are we without our brain and our ability to think and reason and feel? I mean, people so often ignore it and don't spend time on it. And yet, they're much more willing to do things like get a gym membership and try to stay physically active, which of course does help mental health as well.

16:38But my point is that we, having increased awareness, being willing to carve out the time to make sure that you're maintaining mental health and understanding how your prior experiences are impacting your future course, I think it will actually only make you a better entrepreneur and more likely to succeed. Okay. So you would suggest somebody who sold the business realize that they have a mental health issue, actually spend time addressing it properly before they move on to whatever next quest is. Yeah, absolutely. And similar to what I said about a gym membership, oftentimes taking care of your mental health doesn't have to be a, you know, seven hours a day for, you know, five months type of affair, it can often be something like, I'm taking 30 minutes out of my day to make sure that I exercise or do things that I love doing or maintain relationships or work on XYZ.

17:40So that just like that gym membership, you're just keeping a cleaner mind. And of course, if you get to the point as an entrepreneur where you are so depressed, you're not able to function. Obviously, it's not a benefit to anyone. Talk to me about how you see the relationship between spirituality and mental health and can spiritual growth help your mental health development? You know, it's really interesting because in the field of psychology, we're typically pretty agnostic around spirituality and religion in general. It's sort of like we often, you know, And we're like, that's not my domain.

18:20I don't do religion. I don't do spirituality. At the same time, there's just a lot of research also showing that, you know, spirituality and or religiosity is a very, very important thing for people and can have very positive beneficial effects and impacts things like connection. So, you know, in that regard, I guess I would frame it most as the concept of purpose and meaning for people, whether you want to call it spirituality or religiosity or however you fulfill that meaning or that need is, I think, the human motivation that is most critical. and I again maybe I'm odd or lucky but I feel like I was thinking about those questions at a very young age and spent so many years focused and thinking about spirituality and what does it mean to me and what is my bigger purpose and meaning and so on and so I think that that journey and making sure that you also try to find time for asking those bigger questions and trying to understand what it means to you, the bigger purpose of being here, your spiritual drive, what organized or non-organized religion helps you to fulfill that need is, of course, maybe one of the most important parts of being human.

19:37So I think it's a great thing to spend some time on. So tell me about your purpose and how that journey happened for you and in particular, how building business is affected, the way you think about your purpose? I guess the easiest answer to that question comes from how I ended up thinking about my spiritual path and sort of the world and humanity and everything I'd learned from psychology. So early on, I actually became an adherent of a belief system around the Gaia hypothesis, largely so for those not familiar the Gaia hypothesis essentially says that you could imagine the earth as sort of like a living being in and of itself where by abstraction you could think of human beings as like a brain cell in a larger organism and if you think about that we have brain cells that are actually living kind of units right that they function on their own They have their own life.

20:44And yet they have no clue about who you are as an individual. They live in darkness for the entire time that those cells exist. And it's only through this larger connection with your other networks in your brain that they can make meaning of this larger world, right? So anyway, with that kind of belief system that I formed about humans call us nerve cells and deer or say blood cells in this larger organism of the earth, I can't possibly know what the purpose is of the earth and what my purpose is as the quote brain cell in this organism. But the one thing that feels very right to me is part of my purpose is to make it healthier, that I don't want to be a cancer or a virus on this planet.

21:34And through that lens of what can I do to make this a healthier place? Part of it is how do I maintain my own health and make sure that I'm as healthy as I can be? And another piece of it is how do I help other people? you know I help them to be the healthiest versions of themselves in this larger purpose whatever it is so I think that maybe is the easiest answer to your question which of course is a complex one what is your purpose what are you meaning I think it's about health I think it's about like how can I make a better healthier world because I think there's many connections that we're unaware of and probably will never be aware of.

22:17So that brings me to how you connect with other people and how you choose whom you want to spend time with. Yeah, so actually I think part of my earlier life experience around spirituality was actually very influential to how I think about connecting with other people and what it means to me because I would say probably one of my biggest goals in life was impacted by Eastern philosophy and thought, which I just tend to align better with, I think, which is really about the ultimate value of compassion. So, you know, if I could be known for something and I could think about, you know, people think about who I am, I hope they think of me as somebody who's compassionate.

23:02And that is because it is really one of my goals to truly understand other people and to connect with them. And so I think that that thread runs through most of my life, whether it's professionally or interpersonally. And so I'm actually one of these people who when I meet someone, I very much value vulnerability in myself and other people. So, you know, I've known it sort of like asking you questions that might make you uncomfortable. And if somebody is not willing to go there to talk about those things and to be real and they're too defended, I'm probably not going to be a great friend for you or the right match.

23:50Because I want to really understand you. I want to connect with you. I want to be vulnerable myself and to have you be vulnerable with me. so if you're not willing to talk about what you're afraid of or if you don't want to talk about what relationships are hard in your life right now or you know what what are you what are your goals you know things like that that's what drives me and that's those are the best relationships I have in my life you've mentioned luck before and the role of luck in building a business and success can we talk more about that how you see the role of luck in your life so far well I guess I don't really believe in in the concept of luck exactly i mean i i i am i believe in a lot in deterministic principles of the motion of how how events are are kind of determined and late that said um we'll never know there's just way too much variability and too many variables to know how things could possibly go in our lives either as individuals or at a macro level so ultimately that leads us to a place where we will be impacted by forces over which we have no control.

25:03And that is, you know, I think, again, the pandemic is a very good example of that, where no one would have predicted that that happened and the length of it or the impact that it had on everyone. And the same is true with market forces in business. You know, is there a competitor that's out there right now who has a better version of what I'm doing? Very well could be. Is it the case that there's some change where all of a sudden this product is no longer useful? Absolutely can happen completely outside of my control. So art, I guess, part of the way I think about that is being a good entrepreneur is very much following what some people refer to as the fast water.

25:50It's like, you know, and this is very much the case with my current business. I mean, we started out in a very, very different place than where we are today. And it is because not only you learn, but sometimes market forces change or different things happen in the world that impact people's attention and what they're interested in. And so you have to pivot and really focus and follow on that to maintain success. And the more rigid you are where you're like, I love this and know it's a great idea. Everybody should love it too. That is usually a formula for failure. So would you say that success generally is attributed to the person's action and in particular, entrepreneurial success is largely due to the entrepreneur himself or herself?

26:38Yeah, I'd say that it's all about proportion. There are circumstances where it doesn't matter how hard you tried. It doesn't matter how good you are, how smart you are, how great the idea is. there's a market force that kills your opportunity. And again, you could think of like the pandemic being a great example. Amazing businesses were happening at that time, great things, but there were no more customers because no one was out anymore. There's just nothing you can do. Those are, of course, statistically very rare events that you can't pivot to something else in your business that allows you to maintain a healthy business.

27:19The other part of it, which is usually the bigger part, is how you can be flexible and adapt. How, yes, there are lucky elements. Something happens that you then capitalize on. And that's where sort of like being aware and monitoring and figuring out how to shift is really critical. So have you learned lessons of humility in your entrepreneurial journey? Oh, of course. I think we all do. It becomes threatening and easy to think of yourself as someone who can't lose. I mean, if we want to say luck, I've been lucky insofar as I haven't really had any negative business outcomes yet from the companies I've been involved with.

28:07So it's easy to say, well, it's because I'm so great. Yes, that's why. You know, I think, yeah, obviously, there's the lucky part of that. But there's also that, you know, getting a big, quote, ego about this or thinking that, you know, you're infallible is another recipe for disaster, because it makes you complacent. It makes you think, I don't need to work hard to raise money, or I don't need hard to work hard to do this idea, because I know what I'm doing. Now, some of the confidence is good, but staying humble, realizing that you have to work extremely, extremely hard, that it's the 99 % perspiration, right?

28:49That, you know, you can't ever expect that success is going to come easily is a very, very important thing. And generally, I think it just makes you a better person. If you can maintain that humility and recognize that you're not better than anyone, you just happen to do things maybe differently. Do you think too much of humility may actually be a problem for further progress and achieving your purpose? I've only seen it a little bit with maybe like, you know, for example, some founders, some other founders who I know who are very humble. And, you know, they might get in a situation, let's say where they're fundraising.

29:28And I'm like, look, you need to remind people of all the amazing things you've done. because being humble is great, but there are times when you need to make sure that you're using that to establish credibility. So I think that there's times where perhaps too much humility could be bad, but for the most part, it's a small number of times. Okay, okay. Do you ever feel guilty about your success? I don't think so. Yeah, I mean, I guess there are always times or situations where your positive outcome isn't necessarily a positive outcome for someone else. Right. And whether that's somebody in your company, you know, maybe should have gotten a better exit, or maybe it's because your company succeeded, another one failed because of the just marketplace competition.

30:23You know, I think it's unfortunate that that happens. And I try to, or want to try to protect against it. But I don't feel guilt insofar as that I should have done something differently or that these things aren't just a natural part of the process of being an entrepreneur. So many exited founders experience imposter syndrome. Did it happen to you? Well, it happens to me insofar as people like you might say I've had an incredible career that I, you know, am so impactful. Maybe that's because I want to favor humility. But, you know, imposter syndrome is, you know, typically an interaction between what someone else's belief is versus what your own belief is about you.

31:13And for me, there's not a lot of imposter syndrome there, because even if somebody has a very misaligned view with how I see myself, like they think I'm some amazing person who's accomplished XYZ, I just think of it as I have a good sense, I think, of how I understand myself and who I am. and so there's always going to be misalignments between your belief about yourself and what other people think whether they think you're the worst person in the world or the best person in the world though i i just i think because i maybe have a strong sense of who i believe i am or what i think i do i i've not i've not really felt that conflict significantly but i guess it also uh comes down to whether you feel your success is well deserved or not don't you think yeah i i I guess I well-deserved insofar as where I don't feel the imposter syndrome insofar as it takes so much work.