78 — Rethinking Entrepreneurship for Mental Well-Being with Neil Seeman

Lenny: 00:00:00

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Hello, everybody. It’s Lenny Murphy with another edition of the GreenBook Podcast. Thank you so much taking time out of your busy day to share it with us. And as usual, by us, it is not my multiple personalities; we do have a guest. And I think we’re going to have a really interesting conversation today. So, my guest is Neil Seeman. Neil is the founder of RIWI, but that is actually not why we’re talking [laugh] today. So Neil, why don’t you give a quick introduction and we’ll dive into the actual topic.

Neil: 00:01:05

Yeah. Hey, thanks, Lenny. By way of context, yeah, I’m a founder of RIWI. Fell into the market research, research insights, business, big data, really by accident back in 2011. And Lenny, you were actually one of the first people I met who embraced me, despite the fact that I didn’t have a traditional insights background, which I was very grateful for. I don’t know if you remember that.

But I’m based here in Toronto. I’m a father, husband, a serial entrepreneur, both in for-profit and the nonprofit space, with a special passion and interest in promoting mental health awareness, destigmatization of mental health challenges, and most recently with my current book, Accelerated Minds zeroing in on the mental health demons of entrepreneurs, and why we need to talk about that and address that as a society because it’s really important for the future of prosperity.

Lenny: 00:02:11

Fantastic. And that’s a great segue. Now, before we do, for our audience. Yes, RIWI was one of the early winners of the Insight Innovation Competition that IIEX in Philadelphia, I think, one of the first ones.

Neil: 00:02:26

I remember it well. It was a very colorful experience being on stage and getting those questions from the audience and answering them. I think you can still catch it on video. I don’t know if you get the audience reaction, though [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:02:41

I’m not sure, but we have some of it. So, there’s some—and full transparency, I did actually recently—and thank you—assume a board role at RIWI. So, just so for transparency. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today, so I’m just putting that out there for transparency. When Neil reached out to me about launching his book and on this topic, and that’s what we’re going to talk about is mental health, and particularly the applications in, or the implications for entrepreneurs.

I thought, now that is a hell of a topic. That is something that deserves attention. And as a serial entrepreneur, I’ve certainly had my ups and downs, as many of us have. So, let’s dive into that. Let’s talk about what kind of drove you in this particular focus around mental health, and we’ll go from there.

Neil: 00:03:30

Yeah, thank you, Lenny. It was a double-barreled force inspiration. So, on one hand, I had my father pass away in January 2021: Philip Seeman. He was a world-acclaimed dopamine scientist, understanding how that natural chemical in the brain works to affect a whole range of mental health conditions and the drugs associated with it. Now, they can alleviate it and also sometimes cause harm.

And then, at the same time, I was seeing, you know, a whole range of mental health crises among fellow founders and entrepreneurs, some of whom I knew very, very well and some of whom I just, you know, read about in the media. You know, we know the famous ones like, you know, Kate Spade, Aaron Swartz, Tony Hsieh, like, a whole range of kind of famous entrepreneurs whose suicides made the news. But what we don’t hear about is, you know, heavy addiction, you know, three times the rate of heavy substance abuse, twice the rate of major depression, twice the rate of hospitalization for suicide, bipolar, anywhere from three to ten times as high, and ADHD, of course, is commonly known among entrepreneurs. And big picture, the condition that’s often associated with it is what people call ‘Overactive Brain Syndrome.’ It’s what I like to call it.

Lenny: 00:04:57

I’m thinking in my own experience as a serial entrepreneur, and also—and audience, I don’t talk about this very often, but as a person in recovery, I’m a recovering alcoholic; it was over 33 years—and I don’t think I’ve often made the connection between my entrepreneurial drive of chasing the highs as the same thing that I experienced during active addiction in my younger years with chemicals. But there is an analogy for there. And certainly, as you talk about the depression, I mean, some of the lowest points that I’ve had in my life outside of personal, you know, family member deaths and those types of things were because of business failures. I remember vividly two points of business challenge where I thought, I’m worth more dead than alive. And if not for family and those types of things, the outcome may have been—if I hadn’t already been in recovery—the outcome may have been very bad.

So, as you have explored these ideas—well, let’s talk about how did you research for the book? Let’s talk about that, kind of, you know, were you looking at stories, anecdotes from founders? Was there just a body of clinical research already available for you? Kind of, walk us through that process of how you synthesized this into your book?

Neil: 00:06:18

Yeah, thank you, Lenny. You know, first off, let me thank you for sharing your vulnerability about your challenges. I mean, one of the things as entrepreneurs that we value most in other people is vulnerability, and yet at the same time, we’re often very resistant to talking about our mental health demons. And because there’s so many incentives not to, right? We’re portrayed as stoic superheroes, unflappable, investors often get worried if we talk about those challenges. So, it takes a lot to open up, so thank you.

In terms of the research process, I was fortunate with respect to my father’s papers that he had collected and shared with me, that in each of his papers, he summarized the finding, the key finding, of the study in the actual title. So, that was relatively easy. I had access to all his students who were very helpful, his dopamine research students across the world, many of whom are now acclaimed dopamine researchers studying this topic. I also had access to the family members who had reached out to my dad because my dad, like my mom who specialized in mental health for women, the family members were very grateful to my parents’ research because when they embarked on this in the ’60s and ’70s, in New York at Rockefeller, you know, very few people were understanding of this kind of concept and they thought that mental health conditions were owing to the mothers’ fault, you know, poor child rearing, when we know that that’s not accurate.

So, I had access to this, and then I also had access to a range of really eclectic researchers in different fields, in economics, in psychiatry, in business. I did that research on my own. The challenge with the study of dopamine—and many fields of research—is that it’s important to understand it from different perspectives, and yet the scientific community often doesn’t talk to, you know, those who study economics and business and all that. So, it was the constellation of all those processes that led me down this path of research.

Lenny: 00:08:22

Yeah, it’s fascinating you’re being an entrepreneur, but also having this family background. It seems like almost a no-brainer synthesis of your own experience, as well as the legacy of your parents. Is that fair, that that kind of came together with those two factors, to an extent, to drive the interest in exploring this?

Neil: 00:08:40

Yeah. You know, Lenny, it’s really interesting the way you ask that question because it aligns with how I define entrepreneurship, too. Like, it’s often this evidence-based process that twins different forces that leads to a kind of, you know, Eureka moment, or combinatory force. And—because that’s [unintelligible] actually what’s happened in my entrepreneurial ventures, you know? You see sort of two things aligning. And I think that is what was going on.

Originally, I was going to write this book as a scientific history book, but it really was very important to me to write this as an accessible book for a general audience. And I’m really glad I did that because it’s had all sorts of, you know, positive effects in terms of, you know, there’s been some people who have contacted me and said, “Hey, look, you’ve saved my marriage. You know, you helped explain through the data that you revealed, just how I’m not alone.” And interestingly enough, to my surprise, a lot of scientists themselves were able—just because when you write something accessible—it’s always hard to write an accessible book on a complex topic, and certainly if it’s, you know, shorter, it’s harder—it was helpful and just getting it out. And now I have—I was stunned to get an invitation, I’m speaking in two weeks in Bethesda at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and National Institute on Aging, giving a special annual lecture. And you know, I’ve had a really rich and diverse conversation as a result of this path.

Lenny: 00:10:13

That is so cool. It’s neat. I think the destigmatization of mental health as a whole is certainly something that our society needs to be healthy overall. And exploring all the different factors, and particularly—again, I have maybe a biased view because, you know, I think, for myself, like, while I was a, you know, drug addict, alcoholic, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have achieved the levels of success that I’ve achieved in my own life.

So, I get a little kind of rah, rah of like, “Come on, let’s, let’s [laugh] let’s hear it for the people that we think of as screw-ups,” right? The folks that have had these challenges of, like, no, you, you know, once you can address those issues, can make massive impacts in the world. And obviously, based upon everything you shared earlier about some of the challenges that do face so many entrepreneurs in terms of, you know, chemical dependency, depression, et cetera, et cetera, that there’s this misconception that mental health is a barrier. But it seems as if, actually, what we think of as this kind of out-of-whack mental health, in many ways, is the imperative, for striving for success. Is that a finding of this, we must achieve? We must achieve because you’re chasing the dopamine hit that comes from that?

Neil: 00:11:30

Yeah. So, there’s definitely some connectivity. It’s nuanced and, in some cases, controversial. So, you know, in my own case, look, my family escaped Nazi Holocaust because we had members of my family who were bipolar and they shoved my mother and others on a train that was otherwise going to go to Auschwitz and it went elsewhere. And that bipolar meant a whole range of activities was neuro-protective and evolutionarily protective.

Now, with respect to dopamine and its connection to addiction, unquestionably there is a connection it with addiction. There’s the impulse to chase that first high, right, and it’s elusive, you never get that high. With entrepreneurship, what we’ve now found—Helen Pushkarskaya’s research at Yale has been really instrumental here—where entrepreneurs tend to… evidence, sort of evidence hypomania, and that hypomania and drive tends to be most intense at the early stages when you’re first telling your friends and family, you’re first trying to raise financing for your venture. It’s like, wow, you know, you’re on that running streak, right? And that is obviously hard to win back.

And so there’s, you know, a lot of what my book is, I hope, is sort of the message of hope because I do feel that there are things we can do, both on an individual level, community level, media level, even, you know, structural governance level that can help, let’s just say, keep us in check.

Lenny: 00:13:15

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So, let’s talk about that. So, we’re talking to, kind of, high level. Obviously, you get into some recommendations. So, let’s think about it a hypothetical case study, someone like me, right? Walk us through the process of helping somebody through your findings to achieve more balance and greater mental health.

And understanding, you know, certainly it’s a systemic thing. I totally get that. But ultimately, there is an individual component of that. So, what does that look like? How do you help the individual entrepreneur or founder find greater balance through your findings in your book?

Neil: 00:14:17

Yeah, thanks, Lenny. So, the first step is to recognize that you’re not alone, right? And so, in my book, I prosecute an argument, basically, that there’s a spectrum of entrepreneurs. And on one level, you have the fast-money entrepreneurs, often do egregious things. And there’s, you know, streaming videos about them and they’re household names, right?

And then on the other side, you have actually most entrepreneurs who are what I call values-based entrepreneurs. We create a business for ourselves, for community, and for lasting meaning, right, not just to make money; money is a good positive derivative benefit. So, it’s important to mention that spectrum because of values-based entrepreneurs tend to be entrepreneurs who take things really personally, especially when there’s things that happen outside of their control, right? Like, you know, something happens and everything happens, right? Like twice in one day, right, you know?

Lenny: 00:15:16

[laugh] .

Neil: 00:15:16

And so, even if the business may look beautiful from the outside, it’s like, what I call a [Straznicky] on the inside—that’s a character in Catcher in the Rye; it’s long story, but Holden’s roommate—but yeah, so you recognize you’re not alone, you know the data, um, it’s like, okay, from the start, I think you need to know about being very transparent with your significant others about why you’re embarking on the vision that you are. One of the messages I’m really talking about here is no matter whether your venture is tremendously successful or a complete bomb, right, if you haven’t been transparent, all sorts of bad things can happen, and schisms in relationships can happen. So transparency.

Then secondly, sort of surrounding yourself with what I call a phalanx of people who are supporting of you. They may be other founders; they may be a co-founder—it’s really good to have people from outside of your industry—people who just get it. This is like a community that you can go back and talk to. Then you know, as you go down the line, you know, those people can help you recognize when you’re skidding off course, like, when your eyes aren’t on the prize, when you’re being too reactive, you’re personalizing things too much. So, they’re people you trust and people who can point that out to you.

And then if you are going off track, and even before that, there’s a number of what are called neuro-modulation techniques that you can use. And I talk about that. Essentially we know that the brain is neuroplastic or, you know, can heal itself, so to speak, and so there’s a number of things we can do that puts ourselves in check. So, there are hacks that people talk about, right? Like there’s—I mean, for some people [laugh] , you know, these [Eric Windoff] ice baths really work. I’m not a pitchman for him, but you know—like, you know.

And journaling. That’s been evidenced to be very successful. I’m a big fan of journaling, in that journaling process, really channeling, okay, why did you embark on the vision you embarked on? What have you accomplished that day that maps against that vision? A whole range of what’s often referred to as cognitive behavioral therapy techniques where you can write down, okay, worst case scenarios and then, you know, after things have been resolved, you write down physically okay, what happened? What was the consequence of that?

And then there are some, you know, funnier ones like the Seinfeld technique. I don’t know if you remember that one where George Costanza does the opposite. So like, quite literally, that is a neuromodulation technique. Like, he gets the girl, he gets the job, the dream job [laugh] , you know, all of that, when he does the opposite, orders the opposite sandwich and all that stuff, right? So, you know, there’s a range of things, but I think what’s most important is to recognize that you’re not alone, and especially if you’re a values-based entrepreneur, just try to surround yourself with others.

You know, there are words that you need to be wary of when you’re an entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur, you often have this fusillade of other forces that are affecting your mental health. So, a word that I try to expunge from my vocabulary is spelled E-X-I-T, right? That’s [crosstalk] —

Lenny: 00:18:35

[laugh] .

Neil: 00:18:36

Right. That’s the word that, let’s just say the financial community, Wall Street, you know, sort of a lot of us [unintelligible] entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators, venture capitalists, investors like to talk about. And what’s the problem with that word? Well, it signifies short-termism, right? If you’re a values-based entrepreneur, you’re trying to build something for longevity, you’re trying to build it for a long term.

You know, I have a friend who says that his E-X-I-T plan is death, right? And that’s because he’s building something for the long term, right? So like, so that’s why I say you need that phalanx of individuals. They need to remind you what’s going on here. And it’s very tough when you have all these forces saying that E-X-I-T is in the plan.

Lenny: 00:19:29

It’s a dirty word, right? I mean, that’s just fascinating. So, I’m thinking from my own experience, again, kind of equating it to—I don’t want to get too far into this, but I found sobriety recovery through a 12-step program and go into meetings and those type of things, and I’m hearing the same principles. There’s an established set of wisdom here, right, on having a mentor, or in my experience, a sponsor, you know? An individual that would slap you upside the head and say, “Yeah, but you need to rethink this,” right, hold you accountable while also being someone to listen to, or the power of a group, you know, of been able to share with other folks that are struggling with that, too, and that sense of I’m not alone, the connection and empathy that occurs there.

And whether it occurs through, you know, a self-help group or just a peer group or something that’s more informal, just thinking of those parallels. And most importantly, I remember vividly my sponsor—I was about five years sober—I’ll share this [unintelligible] too far—I wasn’t an entrepreneur, yet; I was just a kid and I’m trying to, you know, just not—just [laugh] not go back to drinking and doing drugs—and [laugh] saying, you know, “Now, you just need to do the opposite of everything you ever thought was the right thing to do. Now, you do the opposite.”

Neil: 00:20:50

[laugh] .

Lenny: 00:20:51

“And if you do that—because obviously what you did didn’t work.” [laugh] . It got you here. So—and at the time, like, “That’s just stupid. What do you—” you know? “No.” So, I did, right, and then somehow life changed, right?

And so, that the power of that wisdom is what I’m trying to get to. It’s just really interesting that no matter which angles we look at, right, we can arrive, it’s interesting to me personally that you arrive at the same conclusions by coming from a very different direction, right, looking at the kinds of clinical studies of your parents and all of those places, that the same fundamentals are, you know, find the support group, help folks to keep you accountable and point you in the right direction when you go off, and be open to change, ultimately, being teachable. And those are challenging concepts for anybody, I think, particularly for folks because there’s a certain level of ego that drives entrepreneurs as well, right? At least for me. And I think that [laugh] humility is not something that comes naturally.

And ultimately, that’s the kind of the value or principle I hear us talking about, right? There’s a level of humility there. In my experiences, if I’m not humble, I will get humbled. The universe just has a way of making sure that [laugh] I get the message one way or the other. But to embrace that, embrace that as part of this process of growth and success is just a really interesting and almost alien concept of so many. So, does that resonate for you, or are you thinking, “Lenny, what the hell are you talking about?”

Neil: 00:22:29

A hundred percent. I should say, by the way, you’re manifesting one of the best neuromodulation techniques, which is laughter. You know, that some people recommend 15 minutes of forced laughter every day; it can have a triggering biochemical effect. You know, at AA and the 12-step program, that whole model is really instructive—and in fact, I dedicate part of my book to it—because it draws on the work of Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, the psychiatrist who wrote about the camps and those who were able to survive it. And I tie that into some of the thinking around AA and the writing of Václav Havel, who talks about hope and the concept of hope.

And hope is different than sort of optimism, right? Like, so entrepreneurs are often unbridled optimism—we need to be optimistic—but hope is different. Hope is about things making sense, like, things make sense in the universe. And I like the AA model, to the extent I understand it because when you have hope, that’s the first step toward sort of climbing yourself from out from the very, very bottom. And, yeah, like, I’ve been connecting with a lot of people who have been through those programs and they tell me, “Yeah, Neil, a lot of what you’re saying is very analogous.” It does make sense to me. And now, yeah, on the ego side, you know, narcissism, definitely it manifests itself in many fields. I daresay that there’s another field—politics—where it’s probably more—

Lenny: 00:24:10

[laugh] . Entertainment?

Neil: 00:24:11

More [crosstalk] .

Lenny: 00:24:12

Yes. Politics and entertainment. I don’t think you can—you can’t do that unless you’re a narcissist, I think, so, you know [laugh] .

Neil: 00:24:20

Well, there you go. Like, it’s an evolutionarily adaptive, I suppose. That being said, I’m not really sure if the history of politics was always [unintelligible] .

Lenny: 00:24:27

[laugh] . But I got to say I never ever, ever, ever expected to have a conversation on this podcast with—professionally to talk about this topic and just how wonderful it is. So, thank you, Neil, for being brave enough to—and being inspired enough—to address this. Truly, I’m thrilled. And for the audience, I promise you no future podcasts are not going to turn into, you know, self-help group sessions.

Well, unless you want us to. Maybe that’s something we should do. I don’t know. So, let’s step back, now. We’ve talked a lot about people who have gone on this journey and have struggled.s is there a way to proactively build some mechanisms to help prevent some of these challenges that may come? And what does that look like?

Neil: 00:25:15

Yeah, thanks. So, I should say, I’m not alone in my prescriptions. In particular, Michael Freeman at University of California and I [laugh] really emphasize this, which is being very accurate about pre-entrepreneurial messaging. So, you know, we have this narrative now—it didn’t used to exist, in my opinion, before the dotcom world—that entrepreneurship is all about, you know, the fast E-X-I-T and glory and things and stuff and it’s about moving fast and breaking things. I mean, even Mark Zuckerberg actually sort of corrected his view on that because it’s empirically false.

And so, we need to be very direct in our pre-entrepreneurial messaging at the, you know, at the college level, at certainly within the media as well. You know, the media tend to—you know, they love to talk about entrepreneurship, when it's meteoric success or a meteoric failure, right? So, the those messages of what it’s truly like, that it’s like, you know, high highs and low lows twice in one day, as Ben Horowitz likes to say, right. So, we need to be accurate and we need to tell people early on that there are tools and techniques to reach out for and that there’s entrepreneurial ecosystems that you can rely on.

You know, at the investor level, I’ve had some really interesting conversations with, you know, household name investors who talk about how they actually don’t like to be on boards because they’re often worried that they’re not going to get—of companies they invest in, rather—because they’re not going to get that free range communication when that founder is really in trouble, and they need that because they need to help them if they’re a seasoned investor. And so, I feel outside of the formal governance mechanisms of a company, there can be channels of communication, safe and secure communication, around talking about these issues.

I think, you know, once you get beyond that, and you know, tools and tips—and I should say on the tools and systems and the data, having access to the data and feeling that you’re not alone, you know, securities exchanges have been very receptive to my ideas around this, a whole range of investor groups have been very, very excited about these ideas that I’m talking about, but I think that’s going to come. But when we get further down the path and things are, you know, really skidding off course, you need to have quick access, right? And this is where—quick access to services when you need it. And this is where stigmatization is the real issue we need to battle. And when I talk about mental health stigma, I’m being very simple here. I just feel that mental health needs to be put on the same plane as physical health. That’s it, right? Human health. That’s all.

And so, if you can have that access, I do believe that on top of access and pre-entrepreneurial messaging, the leaders within any organization need to preach that and live that. We’ve seen that, right? Like, we’ve seen it during the early years, the pandemic. Like, the people that employees invested the most trust in in small businesses were leaders who manifest and demonstrated empathy and recognition of mental health concerns, either of their employees or family members, children, and elderly people. So, you know, this is a range, this is a polyglot of solutions. This is a complex and complex dynamic problem, as my colleague, Diane [Findhood] likes to say.

Lenny: 00:28:52

Yeah. So, I want to be conscious of your time and our listeners’ because I think we could go so many different directions with this. And I want to go ahead and put it out there; I would like to have you come back at some point and talk about kind of this next question a little more in-depth. And that is, to your point, there’s a lot that needs to be done. What does the future look like for you? What is your hope in helping to build that new vision of support and health, not just within the entrepreneurial community, I assume, but across the board for everybody? What are you aspiring for now?

Neil: 00:29:26

What I’m aspiring for now is something that people have been pushing me in a direction to talk about I never imagined myself doing which is talking about the future of capitalism. So, we have invested a level of short-termism in capitalism that was beyond the scope, and frankly, I think Ayn Rand would turn in horror in her grave if she saw some of the short-termism that has been attached to capitalism. So, I’m getting in those conversations. Like, in terms of the benchmarks of success that I wanted for this book, I’ve achieved them in the sense of, people are talking about it—wow, you know—and having this conversation and it’s happening at the boardrooms and at the securities exchanges and a whole range of other places, and there are banks interested in this and talking about it. So, that’s great.

Next steps for me are to demonstrate it, right? Like I want to live it. And there’s others who are living it, too. Like, here, like, demonstrate it. So, any entrepreneurial ventures that I do—I’m doing both on the nonprofit, I do for-profit stuff as well—we demonstrate through success, through long-term ism.

And, you know th— [laugh] , this is stuff that, you know, many seasoned innovators, I mean, Clayton Christensen talked about, right? It’s like, once you stick to a strategy and you deliver on that strategy, and you keep to that cadence and deliver, then people pay attention, right? We have lived in a moment of history, a moment of history, which is a moment—and that moment fell in love with moving really, really fast and celebrating things really, really quickly. And I think we need to—and we are—stepping into a new path. And that’s the next step: just thinking about I’m a capitalist, but I shudder often at how capitalism is interpreted in sub-sectors of the investor community and the financial community. And the media community, I should say.

Lenny: 00:31:23

I—yes, we could definitely have much longer conversation about that. I agree. I actually was talking to my son-in-law and daughter on that very topic yesterday, on the difference between well, the damn capitalism, and no, you know, values-based, benign capitalism as a force for good. And that’s certainly how I’ve tried to live my life. I mean, I’m by [laugh] no means a, you know, a venture capitalist and any of those things, but you know, investing in the future, things that build value over time for many people, rather than just for the individual. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Neil, this has just been absolutely fascinating conversation and I want to thank you for addressing this topic and helping to raise awareness and bring this out as something that’s much needed. And. Sounds like you were the right person at the right time, based on your family history. And by the way, my [condolences] on your father—

Neil: 00:32:21

Thank you, Lenny. Thank you.

Lenny: 00:32:22

Sorry, it’s not, “By the way.” That’s not like a—

Neil: 00:32:24

Yeah. No, I understand. Look, it was a book that I had to write, you know? And I’m writing another book, by the way [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:32:32

Okay. Cool.

Neil: 00:32:33

I’m going to have many things I’m doing right now. It’s actually really exciting. It’s about a subset of international corporate crime. But putting that aside, yeah, look, it was a book that had to be written, and it's a moment in time. And there’s other people with me on this journey, right? So, I’m not alone and that’s what’s really exciting.

Lenny: 00:32:48

Very cool. Where can people find you? Where can people find your book? You know, go ahead, pitch.

Neil: 00:32:53

Yeah, you know, I—yeah, I’m supposed to say, so I got a website. It’s just my name. Neilseeman.com. You can Google me bu—and the book is everywhere. It’s in physical bookstores, online bookstores, one big one that starts with an A [laugh] , everywhere. And yeah, it’s called Accelerated Minds, and you can learn all about it. And ping me with your feelings about it. And it’s been really interesting to get that feedback.

Lenny: 00:33:18

Great. Do you have a social media presence?

Neil: 00:33:20

You know, for my own mental health, I’ve been trying to— [laugh] I’ve been trying to mitigate that. But I am pretty active on LinkedIn. I do have a Twitter presence, but then I discovered—or X—that, like, half my followers—because I resurrected my account—are robots [crosstalk] —

Lenny: 00:33:34

[laugh] .

Neil: 00:33:36

Not evil robots. [crosstalk] robots. So, I don’t know what’s going on there. But yeah. I mean, I’m there but I don’t use Facebook and I just have limited headspace there [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:33:47

I am also—I am three years Facebook sober. So [laugh] —

Neil: 00:33:52

[laugh] . [crosstalk] .

Lenny: 00:33:53

Yeah [crosstalk] .

Neil: 00:33:53

Good for you, yeah. [crosstalk] .

Lenny: 00:33:54

Boy, absolutely. All right. Neil, thank you so much. Thank you to our listeners. We will definitely continue this conversation at another time. This is great. I also need to give a good big shout-out to our producer, Natalie, or editor, James, our sponsor, Dig, and of course, to our listeners because without you, it would just be Neil and I chatting, which would be great and fun, but it wouldn’t be nearly as gratifying to think—hope, maybe we’re helping some people as well. So, thank you.

Neil: 00:34:21

Thank you, Lenny, thank you to the team, and thank you to all your listeners around the world. A really empowering discussion. Thanks, Lenny.

Lenny: 00:34:28

Thank you. All right, everybody. Take care.