Bill Hudenko. Psychologist-Turned-Exited Founder on Post - Exit Challenges
Episode - 13
Bill Hudenko. Psychologist-Turned-Exited Founder on Post - Exit Challenges
Bill Hudenko. 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 is an incredibly warm, caring, and captivating individual who inspires and teaches us to become healthier and better people.
What We Discussed:
00:00:08: Introduction to Bill Hudenko
00:01:25: Bill's key lessons from his exits
00:02:06: Connection between happiness and money
00:02:39: Discussing concerns and worries
00:03:43: Things that bring joy in life
00:04:35: Self-identity and uniqueness
00:05:34: Current passion and objective
00:06:11: Sense of purpose
00:06:51: Reflecting on personal legacy
00:07:10: Recognition of achievements and experiences
00:08:07: Motivation and driving factors
00:08:49: Early realization of purpose
00:10:03: Aligning service and earning
00:10:52: Positive upbringing and belief system
00:11:55: Discussing mental health issues among entrepreneurs
00:15:37: Role of mental health development in spiritual growth
00:19:53: Interconnecting purpose and business building
00:22:25: Building and choosing connections
00:24:18: Role of luck in success and life.
00:25:03: Discussion on the unpredictability of market forces
00:27:10: Importance of flexibility and adaptability in entrepreneurship
00:27:37: Lessons on humility in the entrepreneurial journey
00:30:42: Discussion on the imposter syndrome
00:33:03: Dealing with failure and guilt in entrepreneurship
00:34:47: Regrets related to past business decisions
00:35:45: Learning to achieve closure prior to business exits
00:38:34: How to manage your personal wealth
00:41:26: A broader perspective on success
00:43:42: Embracing big dreams and ambitious goals
00:47:12: Translating diverse experiences into new ventures
00:48:13: The birth of Everpage and the idea of legacy
00:49:15: The concept behind Everpage
00:51:06: Addressing student anxiety post-pandemic with the app Deep
00:53:12: Meaningful activities and interests in life
00:54:20: Developing compassion and overcoming selfishness
00:56:28: Roots and results of selfishness; importance of connections
00:57:29: Alignment with eastern philosophies, idea of oneness
00:58:50: Life purpose: to heal
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Bill Hudenko: [00:00:00 - 00:00:07]
One of the very important lessons I've learned about exiting is you should achieve closure prior to your exit, not after.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:08 - 00:00:35]
Bill Hudenko, 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.
Bill Hudenko: [00:00:35 - 00:01:12]
It becomes threatening and easy to think of yourself as someone who can't lose. 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. 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:13 - 00:01:14]
Hi, Bill.
Bill Hudenko: [00:01:15 - 00:01:15]
Hello.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:16 - 00:01:19]
Very happy to see you here. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Bill Hudenko: [00:01:20 - 00:01:21]
Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:21 - 00:01:25]
So what are the most important lessons you've learned from your exits?
Bill Hudenko: [00:01:25 - 00:02:04]
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. So learning to sort of be okay and have closure when the exit happens was probably the most important thing.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:06 - 00:02:07]
Did money make you happy?
Bill Hudenko: [00:02:08 - 00:02:39]
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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:39 - 00:02:40]
What keeps you up at night?
Bill Hudenko: [00:02:41 - 00:03:41]
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. That's a real priority for me, is how do I help the world find a way to connect instead of disconnect?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:43 - 00:03:46]
What gives you the most joy in life?
Bill Hudenko: [00:03:46 - 00:04:30]
I'm really lucky. I have a lot of things that bring me joy. Top among them all is strong and positive relationships with people, but many other things as well. I love playing music, I 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 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:31 - 00:04:33]
Bill, who are you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:04:35 - 00:05:31]
Well, so that's a very big question, of course, but I guess I'd answer it by saying that I'm 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 working with people through therapy, is that everyone has an amazing and unique story to tell. And 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:33 - 00:05:34]
What's next for you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:05:34 - 00:06:09]
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 will succeed with that goal of helping them to connect and feel better about their relationships. So that's where my mind is currently most focused. Is that objective? After that, we'll interview me again.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:09 - 00:06:11]
Do you have a sense of purpose?
Bill Hudenko: [00:06:11 - 00:06:48]
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think I mentioned before, I think my purpose for being here might be to heal and to help. I mean, I, 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:48 - 00:06:50]
How do you want to be remembered?
Bill Hudenko: [00:06:51 - 00:07:10]
That one is actually someone 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 slash Bill and you'll learn all about me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:10 - 00:07:30]
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. So how did that all happen?
Bill Hudenko: [00:07:30 - 00:08:07]
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 had worn so many hats 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'm an extremely curious person. I'm somebody who's, I'm actually fairly competitive. So that's helped in the entrepreneurial space and I love learning in general.
Bill Hudenko: [00:08:07 - 00:08:25]
If anything, I have a problem with limiting the scope of what I do as compared with finding too many things that interest me. So I've really wanted to maintain my academic position and skills. But also after I got the entrepreneurial bug, I think I couldn't stop.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:25 - 00:08:49]
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 satisfied that first need. How was it for you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:08:49 - 00:09:56]
I guess I was just lucky in that regard. Where I guess I found early on that the joy, my greatest joy, tends to be interpersonal, and it also tends to be around when I can have a positive impact on somebody else. So that is, I think what drove me to psychology originally was I thought, 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.
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. And so I've just been lucky to have those two things align at the very beginning.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:56 - 00:10:03]
Do you think it's morally acceptable to serve others while earning money in the process?
Bill Hudenko: [00:10:03 - 00:10:47]
Not only acceptable, but 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, 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 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, I didn't find it. I don't find it to be problematic.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:48 - 00:10:51]
What did your parents expect from you while you were growing up?
Bill Hudenko: [00:10:52 - 00:11:55]
It's another part of my life where I just feel so fortunate, because 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 my whole life been mentally healthy. And it was more because my parents were so great and loving that I derived this belief that I could do anything. It 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 limits on that. But I just am so grateful that I believed that and that I learned it. Because if you reach for the stars, even if you fall short, you usually will accomplish more than someone who never tries.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:55 - 00:12:25]
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. I 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?
Bill Hudenko: [00:12:25 - 00:15:03]
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. And 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 know, like Salvador Dali or other people, many of them had substantial mental illness, whether it was probably schizophrenia, like, you know, many, many artists, Picasso, many others struggled with depression or even bipolar disorder. And 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. Think about Nikola Tesla, who had 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. So 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 are going to do.
In terms of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, it's a hard, risk laden life. It's hard because oftentimes it's 10:00 p.m. And I'm on a call with somebody, and it's disruptive to my family. Or it's hard because your company's out of money next month, and what are you going to do? How are you going to find, 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:03 - 00:15:37]
So 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?
Bill Hudenko: [00:15:37 - 00:17:02]
Absolutely. I'd say address it before. I hope in my description prior, that I maybe am an example of somebody who's mentally healthy and can also achieve and succeed. But 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. To me, mental health is one of the most misunderstood and poorly addressed parts of health.
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. But my point is that 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:17:02 - 00:17:14]
Okay, so you would suggest somebody who sold a business realize that they have a mental health issue, actually spend time addressing it properly before they move on to whatever next quest is.
Bill Hudenko: [00:17:14 - 00:17:56]
Yeah, absolutely correct. And similar to what I said about a gym membership, oftentimes taking care of your mental health doesn't have to be a 7 hours a day for 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, so 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:17:56 - 00:18:06]
Talk to me about how you see the relationship between spirituality and mental health. And can spiritual growth help your mental health development.
Bill Hudenko: [00:18:06 - 00:19:41]
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're like, that's not my domain. I don't do religion. I don't do spirituality. At the same time, there's just a lot of research also showing that 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 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 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. So I think it's a great thing to spend some time on.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:41 - 00:19:53]
So tell me about your purpose and how that journey happened for you, and in particular, how building businesses is affected the way you think about your purpose.
Bill Hudenko: [00:19:53 - 00:22:17]
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, and 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. And 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? How do 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 your meaning? I think it's about health. I think it's about 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:17 - 00:22:25]
So that brings me to how you connect with other people and how you choose whom you want to spend time with.
Bill Hudenko: [00:22:25 - 00:24:18]
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 if I could be known for something and I could think about people, think about who I am, I hope they think of me as somebody who's compassionate. And 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 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 I am known at 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, because I want to really understand you. I want to connect with you. I want to be vulnerable myself and 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 what are your goals? Things like that. That's what drives me, and those are the best relationships I have in my life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:18 - 00:24:29]
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?
Bill Hudenko: [00:24:30 - 00:25:03]
Well, I guess I don't really believe in the concept of luck exactly. I believe a lot in deterministic principles of the motion of how events are kind of determined and linked. That said, 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.
Bill Hudenko: [00:25:03 - 00:26:27]
And that is, 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. 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.
Could happen completely outside of my control. So, part, 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. And this is very much the case with my current business. I mean, we started out at 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, no, it's a great idea. Everybody should love it, too. That is usually a formula for failure.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:27 - 00:26:38]
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?
Bill Hudenko: [00:26:38 - 00:27:09]
Yeah, 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.
Bill Hudenko: [00:27:10 - 00:27:37]
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. The 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:37 - 00:27:42]
So have you learned lessons of humility in your entrepreneurial journey?
Bill Hudenko: [00:27:43 - 00:29:08]
Of course. I think we all do. It becomes threatening and easy to think of yourself as someone who can't lose. 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.
So it's easy to say, well, it's because I'm so great. Yes, that's why I think, obviously there's the lucky part of that, but there's also getting a big, quote ego about this or thinking that 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. That you can't ever expect that success is going to come easily, is a 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:08 - 00:29:16]
Do you think too much of humility may actually be a problem for the progress and achieving your purpose?
Bill Hudenko: [00:29:16 - 00:29:50]
I've only seen it a little bit with maybe, like, for example, some founders, some other founders who I know who are very humble and they might get in a situation, let's say, where they're fundraising. And 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:50 - 00:29:53]
Okay. Do you ever feel guilty about your success?
Bill Hudenko: [00:29:53 - 00:30:42]
I don't think so. 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 maybe should have gotten a better exit, or maybe it's because your company succeeded, another one failed because of the just marketplace competition. 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 in so far 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:42 - 00:30:47]
So many exited founders experience impostor syndrome. Did it happen to you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:30:47 - 00:31:51]
Well, it happens to me in so far as people like you might say, I've had an incredible career, that I am so impactful. Maybe that's because I want to favor humility. But impostor syndrome is typically an interaction between what someone else's belief is versus what your own belief is about you. And for me, there's not a lot of impostor 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 think because I maybe have a strong sense of who I believe I am or what I think I do, I've not really felt that conflict significantly.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:51 - 00:31:59]
But I guess it also comes down to whether you feel your success is well deserved or not, don't you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:31:59 - 00:32:56]
Yeah, I guess well deserved in so far as where I don't feel the imposter syndrome, in so far as it takes so much work, it's so much sacrifice in so many ways, that when you do have success, it feels more like relief than anything. It's like, okay, this actually worked. I guess the guilty parts and the parts that really feel bad are when you feel like you're letting other people down. And I think many entrepreneurs have had this, and I've had it in a whole bunch of different types of instances where you don't give a return back to your investors. Right, or a company fails, and therefore, this thing that you built is no longer going to serve the world.
There's a lot of ways where you can feel that failure and feel like you don't have the impact that you want. So I certainly identify with that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:56 - 00:33:03]
So what would your recommendation be for people who do suffer from that problem? As a psychologist?
Bill Hudenko: [00:33:03 - 00:34:47]
Yeah, great question. Well, usually when we feel those really strong feelings, the thinking that's associated, I think, is often about an excessive amount of responsibility for the reason that things failed. And as I already mentioned, sometimes, and often even, it's just out of your control. Like I said, the pandemic, there's something that happens, and despite all of your best work and belief and intention, you just couldn't save it. And that goes from micro decisions like, I have to fire these five people because we're just not making enough profit and we thought we would to macro things like the company failed.
So usually when people feel so guilty and bad about that, it's because they're heaping all of this responsibility that ultimately I could have done something that I didn't do. And of course, hindsight is 2020. So we look back and we say, oh, why did I make that product choice? Or why did I focus on this market, or why did I do this? And ultimately, if you had, of course, known that at the time, you wouldn't have made that choice.
So I think of it as the only thing that maybe you want to feel bad about is if you willingly and knowingly deceived people. 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.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:47 - 00:34:51]
Do you ever regret selling any of the businesses?
Bill Hudenko: [00:34:51 - 00:35:54]
My last company trust. Again, it was a hard choice to sell because I was more interested in impact than I was on the monetary gain. But what ended up happening is the company took me on as their head of mental health and then took on the product to try to scale it. And again, due to market forces outside of their control, the tech industry took a real dive. They couldn't focus on therapy.
They had to stay focused on the primary care that they were doing. That kind of put us on ice for a long period of time and ultimately ended up cutting therapy altogether. So to me, it was a very sad outcome because I had worked so hard, I was so invested and excited about growing and scaling this thing. And so, yes, there was regret associated with that. I kind of wished that I had held onto the company or sold to someone else.
That said, one of the very important lessons I've learned about exiting is you should achieve closure prior to your exit, not after.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:35:55 - 00:35:55]
Okay?
Bill Hudenko: [00:35:55 - 00:36:33]
And to me, that means recognizing that you will lose control after you exit and holding on to this belief or desire about the outcome, which is, who knows what will actually happen with it is likely to just lead you to heartache. So I didn't know that until after I had done my last exit. And now that I've learned it well, I've since gotten closure with that and I've thought, okay, I now have other amazing opportunities and I'm going to pursue those and it's fine, but it's a hard thing to be prepared for.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:33 - 00:36:35]
What other lessons you learned from your exits?
Bill Hudenko: [00:36:35 - 00:37:42]
I mean, I guess a part of it, too, is sort of going back to a lot of these great questions you ask about meaning and purpose and what you want to try to achieve and build next with every exit that you have it does allow more opportunity going forward, especially if there's a positive monetary outcome to it. What that allows me to do is to build more and to have more freedom on pursuing what I really love and what I want to do. And so that is great. I don't feel like I have to have a certain job or make a choice that has to be linked with my survival, which is really great.
So that freedom, I think, has been really a lesson learned. That is great. I also think that the closure thing is probably the most important lesson that I learned. And I think that it really helps you to consider what are the biggest areas of impact that you want to have. Right.
And so going forward, how do you get yourself in a position to be able to achieve that if you are successful?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:42 - 00:37:46]
How did your exits change the way you think about money?
Bill Hudenko: [00:37:46 - 00:38:31]
Honestly, not a ton, just because of my motivation originally. But there's no doubt that it's nice to not have to worry about it as much. I'm now in a position where I don't have to worry as much. If I make a bad choice monetarily or if there's something that I want to replace, I can just do it and I don't have to really worry so much. So to me, money is more than anything, it's an enabler.
It enables you to do things, to go places, to travel, to do other things that I find joyful. So I'm not somebody who's going to say, oh, money doesn't matter, but I am going to say that it doesn't matter most.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:31 - 00:38:34]
True. How do you manage your personal wealth now?
Bill Hudenko: [00:38:34 - 00:39:22]
Well, I did smartly get a financial advisor after I had any significant capital. And I say smartly not because I think my financial advisor is going to beat the market more, so because I don't like thinking about money a lot and what do I want to invest in and how I want to allocate funds and all that. So having a good financial advisor helps me to, at least on some regular interval, think about, okay, where do we allocate funds? What part of the money are we giving back to other people? What part do we want to make sure we have for XYZ purpose?
So I think that is and was a good choice. And so I let him think a lot about those things that I don't want to spend much time on.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:39:22 - 00:39:25]
How did you go about finding that person?
Bill Hudenko: [00:39:25 - 00:39:50]
Well, luckily he was actually one of the investors in trust in my prior company, and he had an amazing background in Merrill Lynch. So he was like somebody who basically retired himself because he did so well, but just loved being in the financial services industry and so wanted to help some other folks. And he was local, so it was just luck. Back to luck.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:39:50 - 00:40:00]
How do you say no to requests for money without breaking the relationship? And I'm thinking of family members or close friends.
Bill Hudenko: [00:40:00 - 00:41:22]
Well, for one thing, if at all possible, I think it's nice not to talk a lot about money and really make it a big part of your Persona, because then it draws people's attention to it and starts to make, whether it's jealousy or they're going to seek to get money from you and so on. But obviously, friends and family will know that you've had an exit and that you are now a lot more financially secure. So I guess the first answer to the question is, I'm very interested in being generous because I don't want money to get in the way of relationships. So there have already been a couple of situations where I've helped some family members or done something that I wouldn't have been in a position to do before, and I'm just happy to do it. It's fine.
I'm very happy to share that wealth with people who need it now more than I do. So that's one way to deal with it. And then for other people where it's just going to be a barrier to the relationship or it's not going to help. Sometimes it does reveal the true connection and motivation of why people seek you out. And of course, then that's probably not a great relationship anyway, and maybe one that you move on from.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:22 - 00:41:26]
So how did your success in business affect your relationships?
Bill Hudenko: [00:41:26 - 00:43:23]
It has a positive and negative side to it. I think. On the positive side, I think it elevates the sense of credibility that you have and people's, I guess, admiration of who you are and what you've accomplished, which it's nice I mean, it's nice to have people admire something that you've done or admire who you are for any number of reasons. So I think that's a good part of success.
On the other side, it, of course, elevates you in a way that is unrealistic or in a way that creates a false image of who you really are. And so I think one thing that everybody knows who has had some measure of success, and whether that's you're a celebrity or you've been successful in business or whatever it is, what you learn when you interact with other people who are highly successful is surprise. They are people. They have fears, they have dreams, and they have relationship problems, and they have mental health issues, and they are just people.
We are all just people. And whether or not you have money or influence or fame will not change that fundamental fact. So it can be a barrier in the fact that people start to have a belief about you, this idealized vision of why you were successful. Right? Oh, it's because he's so smart, or it's because he got his PhD or because XYZ.
And so if they want to emulate that success, we're always thinking about, what was it that was so successful in that person? And as I mentioned before, it could have been luck, or it could be that you have just a constellation of characteristics that lead more likely towards success. But the danger, of course, is that people really misrepresent you.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:23 - 00:43:27]
Absolutely. What is success for you?
Bill Hudenko: [00:43:27 - 00:43:36]
I can tell you what failure is. To me, failure is falling down and not getting back up. That's what failure is.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:36 - 00:43:37]
Everything else is success.
Bill Hudenko: [00:43:38 - 00:43:40]
So maybe everything else is success.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:41 - 00:43:42]
That's convincing.
Bill Hudenko: [00:43:42 - 00:44:54]
Yeah. Well, success, the concept and the word and the whole idea of success is that you have a goal and you have achieved it. Right? Now, if you think about it, every person has successes every day. Success is like, I got out of bed, I brushed my teeth today.
And for some people, and many people who I've worked with professionally in mental health, that is a major success. When you are extremely depressed and you can barely get out of bed, to make your bed and to brush your teeth is a monumental achievement, and you should be extremely proud of that success. And so if we think about it, along those terms, which is how I think about it. I think I'm an extremely successful person. And it's not because I've built and sold companies.
It's not because I'm a professor, an academic. It's because the little things and the big things I can remember to appreciate, and I do not stay down.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:54 - 00:45:05]
So if you define success as these very simple, small successes in life, do you think there is a danger that you'll be less ambitious, less driven for bigger successes?
Bill Hudenko: [00:45:05 - 00:46:34]
Well, you're only limited by your imagination and the scope of what you think is possible. So I dream big, and that is a characteristic of a lot of entrepreneurs and of myself. That doesn't mean that I'm more successful than someone who doesn't dream big, because some of my very favorite people don't dream big. There are people I've met who work in a grocery store, and they are very well balanced and they're extremely compassionate, and they are so willing to be vulnerable, and they are such a success, just amazing people. And so they just don't have the dream or ambition or scope of changing things in the same way that I do.
But I still very much admire them. And so maybe the difference is I'm foolish enough to believe that one person can change everything and that the dream and the scope I have about things like I will impact mental health in a global level. That's ridiculous. It's crazy ambition. But I'm foolish enough or maybe excitable enough or believe in myself enough or any of those factors to say, I will do it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:35 - 00:46:40]
That's so beautiful. So do you think for you, building your businesses was worth it?
Bill Hudenko: [00:46:40 - 00:47:33]
Oh, totally. Yeah. When I first started this story, I talked about I was foolhardy to get into it. And the thing is, because of my real interest in learning and my curiosity and my love for those types of things, it has made me grow in a way that I never would have anticipated and be more valuable to more people and to help in other ways. So in addition to the company that I run now, I consult for a lot of other companies because of the expertise I've developed.
I have this really interesting, I think, set of skills between psychology, business and tech. That's pretty rare. So I think it's totally worthwhile. It was a great opportunity, great moves, and I've benefited in just a whole number of ways, including meeting amazing other people who I never would have met.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:33 - 00:47:41]
So how did all that diverse experience you've had so far brought you to starting the business you're building now? Which is deep.
Bill Hudenko: [00:47:41 - 00:48:13]
Well, so that's a funny story in that after my last exit, I took some time to think about my next move and what I wanted to build and what impact I wanted to have. I had felt pretty, quote, successful in the impact that I had had in the field of mental health and what I wanted to accomplish. But with that, I guess, entrepreneurial bug, I wasn't done, and I wanted to think about the next impact. So the idea has morphed tremendously from where it started.
Bill Hudenko: [00:48:13 - 00:49:15]
And in fact, the name of my company is Everpage. The reason for that is my current co-founder, Kevin McCurdy and I, we were spending a lot of time, he's also a post exit founder, and we were spending a lot of time together. And one of the real questions that we kept thinking about was legacy. And it was about how do we want to be known? And ultimately, we were kind of shocked at this concept.
Know, in a thousand years, no one will probably ever know who I was. Like, I'll just be a little cliff note in history. So how do we get known long term? And so Kevin and I started thinking about, why doesn't everybody on the planet have a Wikipedia page? Because our digital footprint is probably the most likely part of us to persist for 1000 or 2000 or 10,000 years though, however long humans are around.
Bill Hudenko: [00:49:15 - 00:51:06]
So everpage was actually a company we started out of interest and love of the concept of giving everyone in the world a voice. We really wanted to democratize the idea of people expressing who they were. So we started this site called everpage.com. It's still actually up today. And I have my own everpage about how I want to be known.
But what we found is it was difficult as a company or as a business, because once you did it, it was kind of like one and done, I'm done. I have my ever page. Okay. And what started happening is we started thinking about using artificial intelligence, which was also really rising up in 2022. And we built these really cool tools that fulfilled another driveline, which was to connect people meaningfully together.
And so the whole focus and mission of our company became, how do we enable meaningful, deep connections with other people? And so we started to see that there were actually some girls from the Colby soccer team who were using these AI tools we had built after they had made profiles to connect with each other. We thought, well, isn't that interesting? So as an entrepreneur following the fast water, we started exploring college students and their meaningful connections. And what we had covered, there was actually a whole wealth of anxiety that especially post pandemic students were just off the charts from prior experience on just super high anxiety, and actually a lot of in person anxiety that was even greater than before, probably because of developmentally, the pandemic.
Bill Hudenko: [00:51:06 - 00:51:48]
So what started off was this idea to represent ourselves. Ultimately, we pivoted and changed and then built this app called deep. And the whole concept behind deep was how can we enable college students to reduce anxiety and improve in person connections, meaningful relationships with each other? So that was the idea. And what I pivoted to was wanting to have a huge impact in mental health around reduction of anxiety, but also helping other people to form meaningful connections.
So that's how I got to deep.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:48 - 00:52:20]
Fantastic. In Everpage, I noticed that not only you can find kindred spirits among people that live today, but you can also find them among people who are no longer with us. And for example, yours is Nikola Tesla. Right? This is not about meaningful connections, but rather probably about explaining to the world who you really are through whom you associate yourself with as kindred spirits.
Do I understand it correctly?
Bill Hudenko: [00:52:20 - 00:52:55]
Yeah. So there were two parts to it. One is you can add kindred spirits, which are people that you feel for some reason you have some affiliation or connection with who represent who you are. Like you said for me, Nikola Tesla, but you can also do it with any other person on the platform. So the idea, know any living person as well, you can be kindred spirit with them.
And so we built tools to sort of think about conversations that you might have with that other person or ways that you might connect with them that are unique. But yeah, it was the idea about connection.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:52:55 - 00:53:10]
When I saw it, I thought that it's very helpful for AI to be able to process all of this and figure out who is who, depending on who they think their kindred spirits are. That's brilliant. I really enjoyed it.
Bill Hudenko: [00:53:11 - 00:53:11]
Thanks.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:12 - 00:53:22]
So best of luck with deep. It's an important problem to solve. So what activities, besides doing business, you find meaningful in your life?
Bill Hudenko: [00:53:23 - 00:54:20]
Well, I guess relationships is top of the list. But secondarily, I'm somebody who has so many more hobbies and interests, and I have time that it's never difficult for me to find joy and define meaning in what I do. So generally in the different types of meaning, I think typically things with social interests have the highest meaning for me, which is doing something that is of value to someone else, not just myself. But there are many things also just personally that bring me joy. Like, I love playing music.
I absolutely love outdoor hiking and canoeing, and just spending time in nature. I love playing sports. I even like painting. So there's many, many things that I find myself doing and finding joy and potentially meaning from as well.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:20 - 00:54:34]
So for you, compassion seems to come naturally. But there are lots of people out there who wish they were less selfish and more compassionate and more selfless. What would you suggest they could do about it?
Bill Hudenko: [00:54:34 - 00:56:28]
That's a great question. Well, one of the things that I think I've learned about human beings as a psychologist is that most of us are, and I'd say the vast, vast majority of us, are innately driven to connect with each other, just a part of our physiology as human beings, to affiliate and connect with other people. And many of us, through life experiences, end up getting hurt. And when we get hurt, sometimes, often that hurt is interpersonal in the form of a rejection or in the form of a belief that we aren't loved or that we aren't connected with other people. And that ultimately creates a shell around us where we stop seeking or we start believing that relationships are only transactional, that it's a give and take.
I give you something, you give me back. And that is where a lot of psychopathology and sadness and isolation and even depression creep in for people, and where you lose sight of the joy of really loving and connecting with other people. And so to you, to someone, I would say you're probably going to have to take a little dive into your hurt and to understand where and why that happened. And then to see if you have the fortitude and the courage to open your heart to other people and to believe that not everyone will hurt you, that there are actually people out there who will be by your side and who you can depend on and who do care. And if you do that, you will improve your ability to be compassionate.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:28 - 00:56:30]
So you think selfishness comes from trauma?
Bill Hudenko: [00:56:30 - 00:57:01]
Not necessarily completely trauma, but it's a big factor. And I think selfishness also. We can be taught to be selfish, too, right? We can learn from other people that our own needs are more important than others and to only focus on ourselves. It's just that usually if you learn that message, you find out over time that you're not happy, because that innate desire and fulfillment that we get from connecting.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:01 - 00:57:29]
So, in indian vedic scriptures, there is this idea that you become more fulfilled as you become less selfish, and you grow less selfish by growing out of yourself towards loving your family and bigger society, your country, and then the whole universe. What do you think about it, given that you have your interest in oriental philosophies as well?
Bill Hudenko: [00:57:29 - 00:58:42]
Yeah, I really align again with a lot of those type of eastern philosophies that, in fact, spiritually there may be a very good connection or a very good reason to believe that the whole concept of being a self and being discreet is foolish, that perhaps there is a oneness that's actually the truth. And if I go back to when I explained or talked about my own philosophy, sort of about the Gaia hypothesis, that feels right to me. This idea that our sense of self may actually be largely an illusion. If I'm a brain cell, you're a brain cell too. We're actually connected, even though I don't understand that.
So to me it sounds very plausible, it sounds reasonable. And I think that losing that fierce independent side of yourself and getting to a place where you find peace and you find harmony and connection with all things, not just even other people, it's a beautiful way to live, and most people, I think, find more satisfaction out of it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:42 - 00:58:46]
What do you think you were sent to this planet to do?
Bill Hudenko: [00:58:46 - 00:58:47]
To dominate.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:48 - 00:58:49]
No, not you.
Bill Hudenko: [00:58:50 - 00:59:00]
Just in, like, the easiest way, I guess, going back to what I said previously, I guess to heal. That's maybe why I'm here.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:01 - 00:59:11]
How beautiful, Bill. Thank you. So I really, really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for opening up and being vulnerable and being very honest. I really appreciate it very much.
Bill Hudenko: [00:59:12 - 00:59:17]
Well, thank you so much for the opportunity and the interest in me, and I hope this helps someone as well.
