Podcast · ~50 min listen (full transcript linked)

Depression and Entrepreneurship (Jerry Colonna in conversation with Rand Fishkin)

Jerry Colonna (Reboot) with Rand Fishkin (Moz) · Reboot.io Free Intermediate

This is the canonical first-hand account of exactly what you are describing. Rand Fishkin walks through his 'long, ugly year' of depression after years of scaling Moz, and Jerry Colonna, the coach founders go to when they crash, names the mechanism: your identity got fused to the company, and the numbness is the bill coming due. The episode opens with a room of VC-backed CEOs asked who struggles with serious depression, and nearly every hand goes up. It reframes numbness as a common late-stage founder state, not a personal defect, and models the radical self-inquiry that starts the recovery.

• The emotional flatness after years of hustle is common among founders and tied to fusing your self-worth to the company, not to laziness.
• You cannot think or grind your way out; recovery starts with honest self-inquiry into why you kept riding the tiger.
• Saying it out loud to even one other founder breaks the isolation that keeps the numbness in place.