James Black (00:00):
Welcome back to The Exchange for Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm your host, James Black, and this week I'm pleased to welcome back Neil Seeman, a Canadian educator, internet entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and author. In fact, he's just authored a new book called Accelerated Minds that dives into the brain science of why entrepreneurs do what they do and take the risks that they take.
(00:20):
Now on this episode, we really get into the role of dopamine and how it dictates entrepreneurial behavior. Hint, it may be everything. And we also talk about what unhealthy and healthy entrepreneurial behavior looks like. And we also address how does society have a role in supporting entrepreneurship, and specifically the ways that we can help entrepreneurial mental health. It's a fascinating conversation and juxtaposition amongst many of the other conversations we have with entrepreneurs. You start to understand the science and frankly, the compulsion that leads many of these entrepreneurs to do what they do, when really it's coming from them.
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It's not coming from anywhere else, it's coming from them and their desire for a certain thing that we'll talk about more on this show. So without further ado, my conversation with Neil Seeman here on The Exchange for Entrepreneurs podcast.
(01:08):
Today I am thrilled to be rejoined by Neil Seeman. Neil is a Canadian writer, internet entrepreneur, and mental health advocate, and he's also an author. He has a new book coming out called Accelerated Minds, unlocking the fascinating, inspiring, and often destructive impulses that drive the entrepreneurial brain. There's a mouthful. It's published by Sutherland House. Neil, welcome to the show. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff today, but just first, how you doing and how you feeling after writing a book because I know they're not easy things to do.
Neil Seeman (01:40):
Thanks, James. Hey, I'm feeling great. Writing a book as my publisher Ken likes to say, it's the journey. So you kind of start off thinking about one thing and then you really parrot down into the crucible of what you want to say.
James Black (01:57):
Yeah, absolutely. And as the book title clearly exemplifies, there's a lot that you do want to say. And so today we're going to encapsulate this discussion around entrepreneurship and mental health. Those will be sort of the key points of discussion today. Often our listeners, whether they're watching on LinkedIn or YouTube, I usually think it's either an investor or someone running a company. So you're the perfect guy to talk to.
(02:19):
We've also worked with each other, yourself as a public company CEO, and I'll maybe ask you to reflect on that experience at one point. But let's all start off with some very basic table setters. So your definition of entrepreneurship, I think it's important that before we talk about the book and anything in it, we need to first discuss your definition of entrepreneurship because it might not line up with what common vernacular or what common definitions of entrepreneurship are. So give us first an insight as to what you think that word really means.
Neil Seeman (02:50):
Yeah, thank James. So an entrepreneur for me is someone who's trying to solve old problems, sometimes new problems with new solutions. But more important and more differentiating than that it's someone who's trying to build something of lasting value for your community, your loved ones, and ultimately potentially for the world.
James Black (03:14):
And community, I actually was thinking about that word, community could be your neighborhood, it could be locally or it could be online, it could be something more macro, it could be something more virtual. Do you agree with that?
Neil Seeman (03:27):
Oh, absolutely. And increasingly so. And we see this in the data. I mean, the number of jobs and organizations started by entrepreneurs are spiking across North America, across the world, and it's in large part thanks to those small enterprises.
James Black (03:46):
So an entrepreneur isn't just a guy in a hooded sweatshirt in Silicon Valley, cranking out code trying to build the next piece of software to solve some problem. It's any of us really. And now entrepreneurs are driven by something very particular. And so for the second part of this conversation to support your definition of entrepreneurship, and we're going to go with this, is dopamine.
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Dopamine is a receptor. Now, I'm going to let you do more of the description of this, but dopamine is basically what drives a lot of our decisions as entrepreneurs and our motivations. And can you again just describe what dopamine is and what you describe as it being your family business growing up? I believe even I heard you say somewhere, it was one of the first words you ever learned. So why is dopamine important to you and who you are and what you do and what you're talking about?
Neil Seeman (04:31):
Yeah. I grew up with my parents scientists talking about dopamine as I was a young child. Briefly, dopamine is a naturally occurring chemical. It's also a neurotransmitter and a receptor, so that means it receives the dopamine, the chemical. So my dad had discovered the way these early antipsychotic medications in the fifties and sixties when he was at Rockefeller were blocking or being received at the dopamine receptor site. And that led to all sorts of amazing discoveries for mental health drugs.
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For dopamine in particular, everyone's affected by it. It's the chemical of risk and reward, often called the risk and reward center in the brain. But for entrepreneurs, those people who are trying to build something of lasting value, they tend, again along a spectrum to react differently to the highs and lows of dopamine release.
James Black (05:29):
And what is that reaction? Why is it different from people who aren't so entrepreneurial inclined?
Neil Seeman (05:37):
The reason being is that entrepreneurialism is often like an addiction. So you're often trying to chase that very early high that you had when you first started talking to your friends and family about a new initiative for-profit nonprofit that you wanted to build. That's sort of the ultimate high. You love that. That's your rock, that's your mission, that's the problem you're trying to solve.
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And then you get really excitable, and that's the top. And then a lot of folks say, you get those high highs and low lows on any given day as you go further along your entrepreneurial mission, building a team around you, reaching different milestones that you want to reach. But during that period, no matter how you define success, that dopamine release is going to wax and wane, and you've got to learn how to manage it as an entrepreneur. And it's really hard.
James Black (06:31):
And I'm going to jump ahead to a question here, but the destructive impulse, I was thinking about the destructive impulse of this dopamine rush that people are trying to get. And I think about people like Elon Musk who I'm trying to figure out, are they making bigger and bigger swings and more severe decisions based on the fact they're trying to create that for themselves? Buying something like Twitter, there's sort of a game to it for him that can't be achieved through any other means in his current companies. Do you see this in the media perhaps, that we've kind of encouraged this kind of destructive behavior that is being driven by this impulse?
Neil Seeman (07:10):
So I mean, one thing the media really are increasingly getting right, and I'm talking about the financial media today, is I think there's a growing appreciation that the future of prosperity in Canada and North America, across the world really depends on entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized businesses. And that's in the data. And I think we're starting to talk about that.
(07:31):
I think what the media often get wrong, is well, I mean there's an omission. There's the fact that they're not talking about this, as you say, this kind of gaming impulse that affects a lot of folks. Just like gambling it can be a really very severe dopamine rush. That gaming impulse can have these destructive impulses where you reach beyond your grasp, you reach beyond your grasp too quickly, and then you just run fast, move fast and break things. And so that's the danger that we're at, especially if we promote what's often called short-termism.
James Black (08:13):
And there's a lot of good examples of entrepreneurs out there, but obviously some bad ones or because you did something great as an entrepreneur in one instance, doesn't mean you're going to have a success again or even apply the same behavior because you might have learned some bad habits or become overconfident or whatever. But yeah, it's a fascinating place to think about how this impacts everyone.
(08:34):
And so I was thinking about an article that you wrote recently in the Toronto Star. It was called Hidden Burnout, the Work Life Balance Struggles of Entrepreneurs, and it's available online. I'll put a link down below. But my reading of this was that we've sort of glorified entrepreneurship and all these things about seven-day work weeks and misaligned the term entrepreneurship with success as far as wealth, financially.
(09:02):
A lot of these people, they're out there working really hard. They may lose everything still in their pursuit of this goal. And so what I'm wondering is just reflecting on the article, what do we have to do to help the mental health of these entrepreneurs who are on this roller coaster? Because as you said, the data bears out that these are incredibly important people to the economy, but what can we do collectively to help support them mentally? Because to me, for a lot of these folks, it just seems like it's a very risky mental exercise they're going through amongst other things.
Neil Seeman (09:37):
Yeah, thanks James. Mean we need to embrace risk and I don't want to change that. And entrepreneurs always have, always will work really hard seven days a week. That's not going to change. That's the entrepreneurial impulse as it can and should be. I think what we need to change, there's some pretty really low hanging fruit. So at sort of an ecosystem level, I think we need to change the pre entrepreneurial messaging and really emphasize that entrepreneurship is inherently about failure. It's inherently economically irrational.
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Most entrepreneurs would have an easier and wealthier economic climb if they stick to a traditional career path. So we need to message it properly and say, "Hey, you're young, take a risk. That's great, but understand the consequences." Second, we need to talk about it both at a social level, which I'm starting to do. And that's a big part of the reason for this book, and we need to talk about it at a company level, internally with the board, with investors. I mean, really in terms of due diligence, when you invest in a company, the most important thing that you are investing in, especially in the early stages, is the mental health stability and ingenuity of that entrepreneur. How do we as investors keep that in check? And I think there are potentially some things we can do at the board governance level around that, because if you're not talking to your board, which you often have a disincentive to do, about your mental health frailties then there's that disconnect.
James Black (11:14):
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I obviously work for a company and we have a board, and I don't think I've seen that yet on the checklist. But I also tend to agree with you, entrepreneurs have this, they can't not work. But at the same time, we're learning more and more about the value of rest and the value of taking mental breaks. And I just wonder how much we need to teach ourselves as entrepreneurs to take those breaks even if they're not part of our nature. And if in your research or what you've seen in other studies, how important rest is and whether we need to almost mandate it or just find a way to really encourage it. Because I have a hard time taking vacations myself, but do you see anything in your research or anything that you've observed where mandating or at least really encouraging rest for entrepreneurs is going to help them long-term? Or do you just let them go?
Neil Seeman (12:01):
Yeah, I'm a big fan of letting them go with an important caveat. So what the research bears out, it's not about taking these extended holidays, taking a month for your birthday, a mandatory vacation, but what it is about, and this comes from the research of people like Victor Frankel, Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, and the nature of logotherapy, it's about deliberate daily philosophic contemplation about what the purpose was of you building what you're building because that really is your rock. So you have to work that into your daily schedule, I think.
(12:38):
So that mental philosophic, stoic contemplation is really important. And then beyond that, you're often generally lonely as an entrepreneur. So really talking to people, getting an ecosystem of fellow travelers in whom you can invest some trust and talking about this. Because it's really tough to drive and sacrifice and often have your colleagues, your employees, others in your community not really understand you. And entrepreneurs are at risk. I mean, we have much higher rates of suicide, suicidal feeling, ADHD, severe depression, severe anxiety and risk of addiction to substances. And so all of these things are reasons why we need support.
James Black (13:37):
Yeah, no, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Now, I was thinking about your definition again, of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, and something kind of occurred to me is that is this nature or a nurture thing too? Because I wonder how much of us just come out of the womb ready to build the next company or do something. Or this is something that, as you said, community and being exposed to it like you were at a very young age is what contributes to your entrepreneurial instincts. So I'm just curious if you have any sense of how much of this is learned behavior and how much of this is just inherent and maybe a little harder to put your fingers on as to where it comes from.
Neil Seeman (14:20):
Yeah, thanks, James. I mean, I'm in the 70/30 camp with my dad, who was a dopamine scientist, dopamine entrepreneur, scientific entrepreneur. I gathered all his early research findings. People laughed at him for 15 years until he established his thesis, which is why they accepted from the private sector. So 70/30, so 70 inherited, 30% environmental, but that 30%, anyone can fall into that 30%, right?
(14:52):
But what I would say is that if you're that individual who say comes from an entrepreneurial family, has that intense desire to what Steve Jobs says, "dent the universe," you got to do that. You got to do that at some point in your life because otherwise you're always holding on onto it. You're regretting not having taken that chance. So that's where the pre entrepreneurial messaging comes in. It's kind of like, okay, this is going to be a risk, financial risk and potentially a mental health risk. But at the same time, if you've got that itch, go for it and here's why.
James Black (15:31):
Yeah, absolutely. Now, dopamine is not just something that entrepreneurs are trading amongst each other themselves. It's something an investor would have as well. It's in all of us. And thinking about your experiences, a public company CEO, and just in other realms of your life, you've had to deal with investors and their rush for dopamine. And I wonder if you just have any kind of observations about how that's impacted you as a company operator and how you've been trying to rationalize how investors work, knowing everything that you know about dopamine.
Neil Seeman (16:08):
Yeah, I find investors fascinating, and what I learned is that it's an ecosystem. They call it an investor ecosystem, and it's a great word because there's so many different types of investors. There's your patient capital, long-term value oriented investors, there's your short-term investors, retail, institutional, a whole range with different business models, venture capital, private equity. And what I actually really enjoy is understanding the psychology of different investors and respecting their investment model. I mean, one of the things I loved learning as a public company CEO, was just what motivates those different types of investors? And I should say I also started a nonprofit as well prior to having started a for-profit company. And it's kind of the same thing actually. We had government investment, we had private sector investment at the university, and again, all those different types of incentives.
(17:16):
So when we think about investors, I think we need to think about them expansively and all of them are individuals. I actually really enjoyed that, getting to know investors, what makes you tick. It started actually giving me a wonderful appreciation for inspirational investors like Warren Buffett. I actually didn't really understand Warren Buffett's model at all until I learned about it. And that's just fascinating because I think part of what makes Warren Buffett so special is that he also wanted to get inside the mind of the entrepreneurs and get to know them. And there's that beautiful mind meld. And I think when you have that, that's when both of you can make money.
James Black (18:00):
Yeah, and he is an entrepreneur. I mean, people would say, "Ah, a stodgy investor."
Neil Seeman (18:04):
Oh, absolutely. I mean a hundred percent.
James Black (18:07):
But he made these value investing decisions, but also applied contrarian thinking. And also when you buy Coca-Cola, it's not like it seems risky at the time, it's not, but he saw the vision of where the company could go back when he bought his position in it. And there's lots of other great examples of that.
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So again, the book is called Accelerated Minds, unlocking the fascinating, inspiring, and often destructive impulses that drive the entrepreneurial brain, which we've learned that we all have entrepreneurial brains, we're all seeking out dopamine. Aa you say it can be destructive, but I want you to reflect on the positive impulses of the entrepreneurial mind.
(18:48):
What are some of the things that we can all tap into that... When I think about my conversation I had last week on this show, and a gentleman, Quawntay Adams, who was in solitary confinement, he was in prison and he broke out, he learned to represent himself in court, and he went through all this. He went through the entrepreneurial journey himself, but he tapped into some positive impulses I think. He was a great example of that. And I just want you to maybe to share, reflect on maybe where you've had some positive impulses or things where you go like, yes, this is the power of my brain at work, and something that I let it do for me because it's wired for good. Maybe a few examples there, Neil, if you got them.
Neil Seeman (19:27):
Yeah, I mean, look, that's a great example you gave of that gentleman. I mean, the statistical odds of escaping and then just moving up and representing himself. And I mean, that is really tough. And so that's a good example because it's hope. It's hope, right? So dopamine gives you hope and the ability to latch onto that dopamine as an entrepreneur and be driven by it. So inspiration, hope.
(19:48):
It also gives you the exuberance to motivate others, right? Because at the end of the day, you need a team around you and people who believe in you. So inspiring others and aligning them to the vision, mission, and values that you have, that's what dopamine can give you if you receive it, manage it, understand it better.
James Black (20:10):
Awesome. I'm all for it. Neil, this book, when it comes out, what kind of conversations do you want it to start?
Neil Seeman (20:17):
So we're having that conversation already, which is really exciting, James, you and I. I want us to talk about all of us being at risk of just too intense dopamine, it sort of flocks and we need to manage that. Most importantly though, I want us to talk about how the future of our prosperity is dependent on the mental health of entrepreneurs and all of those who love them, including their investors, their community, their colleagues.
(20:52):
And so as we appreciate that, as we focus the media on them, and the diversity of those entrepreneurs, as you said, like a very tiny minority or these tech Wonder Kids are doing code in Silicon Valley. As we appreciate the diversity of those, especially the quiet entrepreneurs who are driving quietly to drive out these fascinating new solutions to problems, I think we can appreciate, we can engage them and we can run an exciting course to innovation and prosperity for all.
James Black (21:23):
Wonderful. That's a worthwhile conversation, and I think I can't wait to read the book. I think it's going to be full of great insights if today was just a sample of that. Neil, thanks for joining us on the show The Exchange for Entrepreneurs. I am your host, James Black. Neil, we'll see you very soon.
Neil Seeman (21:36):
You bet. Thanks, James. Thank you.
James Black (21:38):
Thanks so much. Bye.
Neil Seeman (21:39):
Bye-bye.
James Black (21:42):
Thank you again for listening to The Exchange for Entrepreneurs Podcast, a proud presentation from CNSX Markets, Inc. Operator of the Canadian Securities Exchange. As a reminder, the viewpoints on this show do not reflect those of The Exchange and are solely those of the guests and do not constitute investment advice. For more information about The Exchange it's services and listed companies, please visit ww.thecse.com. Until the next show thank you for listening, and don't forget to hit the like or subscribe button on your favorite listening platform. Thank you so much.