LinkedIn Presents

I'm Maura Aronsmeli and this is the Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges,

how they fell down, how they pick

themselves up, and how they hope work will change in the future.

We're told again and again in the business world that the way to be successful is to

follow your passion, do what you love, and be authentic.

Jill Smokler is someone who did just that. She created the blog Scary Mommy in 2008 as a way to talk about her own journey as a mom with small children, her very imperfect journey,

and along the way she built a community for other moms who were thinking, this stuff is messy.

The main takeaway from her blog was, you don't have to be perfect.

But still, the acceptance of imperfection is hard.

And as Jill sold her company and faced some dramatic personal challenges, she felt

desolation and depression.

She actually reached out to me about talking to talk about how hard it was in the aftermath

of selling the company she built from a little personal blog into a big media company and

how her mental health challenges impacted the decision she made

and how she felt along the way.

Entrepreneurship is so idolized in a lot of our cultures.

And the exit is supposed to be the icing on the cake,

the feeling you've made it.

But the exit for many of us is actually only the beginning of what can be a

painful new phase. It was so hard for me to find honest conversations with founders who left

...