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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So, Christina, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode.
Can you let us know what you're working on right now and we can dive into all of that.
I the best way to talk about how I focus on what I do is I spend my professional life
fueling the humans behind the startups.
That's what I'm really, really passionate about.
It's what we've been doing for quite a few years now.
Wow, very, very cool.
I mean, how did you get into that space and what's that journey look like for you?
I think like talking about how I became an entrepreneur the die was cast pretty early like
when I was little I say little I mean I was always quite tall but when I first
I was just like thinking about how I could make money.
I had like made myself a little face painting business.
Then I decided I would have a jewelry making business.
Like this is when I was like 14, 16.
First proper business was interior design.
I decided with an art and A level that that was something I could do, which in fairness,
it turns out I could.
And did did nearly a decade in the corporate world to kind of go and learn how big big
brands did it.
But it was always for me about coming back to that.
that drive to have true autonomy, to have freedom, to make things happen.
So early 2010, 2011, I kind of stepped back into the entrepreneurial world and I haven't
looked back since really and through various different ventures, small exit along the way.
It's just, yeah, I love that drive and I kind of wouldn't know what to do else.
No, I completely resonate with you on that.
And I think a lot of the entrepreneurs that I have in this show, when we talk about, you
know, when they were younger and what they're working on, they were always entrepreneurial
in just everything that they were always trying to work on or build out or do, even when,
you know, 14, 15, 16 as well, still trying to push for that.
So it's cool to hear that on your side as well.
There's really interesting studies about how actually there's a disproportionate effect of
if a founder has had some sort of entrepreneurial influence when they were a kid then they
are so much more likely to be a founder and that was the case for me it wasn't a parent it
was actually a friend's parent but the impact of just seeing the alternative view is kind
of exponential.
Yeah, it's interesting.
It's almost like you need to get some level of exposure just to know it's out there.
And I think some people just never have that exposure.
So they just never know it's out there until maybe it's a little bit too late and they're
their ways of their career on how they're to be working and everything like that.
But it's interesting you made that shift from corporate to then being an entrepreneur
again.
So what was that shift like for you?
Because 10 years in corporate is...
It's a long time and then making that shift into entrepreneurship is a big shift.
So how did you make that shift and from a mindset point of view, what did you have to work
through to get to that point?
I think in my head I always knew I wanted to go back to running my own thing.
I was always a bit of a fish out of water and then my hand was forced.
I think I was made redundant out of all three major corporate roles that I had.
It was just the time, the norm, innovation, which is what I was responsible for, just had
many waves and challenges through that time.
I just wanted to go and bring the skills that I'd learnt in the corporate world, which at
that time was innovation, launching new brands, branding, marketing.
bring it to startup brands.
And there was an element of like complete delusion there.
It's like they need my help.
like, there was some of that, but obviously corporate marketing is very different to
startup marketing.
And I learned that quickly, but I did it kind of organically.
Like I, I really believe that you should help people sort of coming up behind you.
And I did mentoring for free.
I did workshops for free to kind of
kind of put together this framework of how you do marketing for a startup which was really
really interesting back then and all of that I think was waiting to find my product.
I was a product marketer by trade.
Right, okay.
when my brilliant co-founder at the time came together as a pairing.
We came up with our first idea.
We launched that.
That was the one that had a small exit.
And then we kind of acted a bit like a startup studio then.
We're always playing around with different ideas, validating them would often have
multiple landing pages being tested at any given time.
And then the sort of the next one proved itself.
We ran that for a while.
Yeah, that one kind of became quite a big thing as well, had some very substantial clients
all around the world.
Very, very cool.
mean, like throughout that journey, so you mentioned the kind of the one that you and your
co-founder started, you didn't exit for a small amount as well.
I mean, talk me through that business a little bit more.
Like how did you come up with a product there?
Like what was the inspiration for that?
Because it's always interesting to learn where the inspiration comes from.
Because I think with a lot of the entrepreneurs that I know of who are quite young, they
kind of get into the business world without even thinking about product.
They're just like, I just want to make some money and that's it.
But like ultimately they get to a point where it's like, well, we need to actually build a
good product out and coming up with that idea for the product is the hardest bit to honest
with you.
So how did you come up with that idea and what did that look like for you guys?
You'll have to remind me because there's an even harder step in my opinion which is
validating that idea but I'll come on to that in second.
Honestly we made lots of mistakes and this one was kind of an idea that came out of my
head.
Actually Vitali, co-founder and I would each are responsible for the sort of nugget idea
that came out of the two main marketing tech businesses.
So I was the first one and this was all about, okay, I'd seen that startups actually
thrived of being able to help each other with their marketing, so to collaborate on
marketing, do an event together and then you get, you literally double your reach or
partner with a brand and do a campaign together, you're doubling your reach.
And we could see that this was happening organically.
So it's like, let's create a mini community that enables people to connect in this way.
We did it, we built it.
To be honest that bit didn't work but the community and the sense of connection that came
out of it was really powerful as was the platform that
we built in order to facilitate it.
So we end up with this beautiful, buoyant community of founders who were supporting each
other and also a product that is a platform, a very substantial software platform because
my co-founder was a very, very good techie.
It still is, I should say.
And what we ended up doing was running what we consider our heartland, so working and
supporting the startups and keeping that community buoyant.
But actually the only place that business made money was we licensed the software as
private online software to big brands.
that business ended up building in two very different directions.
But we learnt a huge amount along the way and it was eventually, as I said, both
sections kind of were passed on and were acquired in their different veins.
Yeah, definitely.
if I'm hearing that right, so you had the community where was the community free for the
startups then to join?
Yeah.
biggest mistake.
So I was like, oh, we'll just make it free to start.
Never ever being clear about when that free trial should be over.
And then we tried to go, oh, well, crikey, we probably need to get some people to pay for
this.
We didn't need it because we were already licensing the software at this point.
But to be able to grow within that entity, we need to monetize this and we just.
epically failed on that.
like don't make things free and then expect people to pay for it later.
It's not going to work.
Yeah.
I mean, there's that saying, isn't it?
It's where it's like, if you decrease the price, like you can't just increase it right
straight after, like you just can't do that.
And so that jump is very difficult to do.
And so, yeah, I think you're right there from that analysis that you made of that first
business is like, if you had that monetization piece, then maybe the exit could have been
even bigger because you had that monthly rate current revenue as well.
But it's cool that you managed to analyze that and figure out, okay, do know what?
That's where we went wrong here.
So I guess for the lessons you take from that, how have you applied it to the new things
that you're working on now and what are you working on right now and what does that look
like?
Well, I think I'll come, I'll link two different sections.
One is like lessons learned.
So the big one was around obviously pricing, but also customer validation.
And this is what I was going to say about, I think that's actually the hardest point.
So as founders, we come to the table going, I've got this great idea.
Oh, right.
I've got to go and validate it with some clients.
And that's the hardest thing to do.
And we don't do it enough.
Because it's hard, it's painful.
It's not just hard, it's actually painful.
To go and do proper customer development with proper mom test style interviews with
potential customers asking open questions and trying to understand what their pain is.
That stuff is a skill that needs to be developed.
It's also really painful because the second someone says, I hate that idea, that's not my
problem.
You're like, it's like a dagger through the heart.
like, my God.
Yeah.
it's broke and this is why we learned it.
Mmm.
So a lot of my, so I wear another little hat, which is I'm an associate professor at UCL.
I look after about 80 very early stage entrepreneurs who do a master's in
entrepreneurship.
And one of our biggest things is like, get out there, go and to have these conversations,
kill your idea, have another idea, kill your idea, have another idea.
And by the third, fourth, whatever number idea it is, you will have something that's
really validated.
Mmm.
And we very much did that with a later business idea where we went out, did interview
phases, did traction testing, and just came up with something much more viable, actually.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
mean, you just got to ask those questions, right?
And as I was kind of mentioning earlier, a lot of people are entrepreneurs, but slightly
younger, right?
They don't understand that.
to be for me as well, it was only like the last year and half, I was like, maybe I should
actually speak to these potential clients before I build this thing out.
And it seems so obvious, but it's not in the moment, I think, especially when you're
starting out.
especially when you're so desperate to get on like most founders are so driven to do to
act so I don't want to go and talk to people because that's gonna delay me I just want to
it out there
I think that's one of the biggest things so you're constantly fighting against your
instinct as a founder to slow yourself down to go and do it.
The other thing I think that comes out is customer development can be rolled out at any
point so you know whenever you're having, whenever you have the opportunity to just have a
sit down with a customer or client like treating it like a customer development
conversation and like so what else could we do for you what would help what would be
helpful what's the problem at the moment and I try and get myself to do those
conversations
a lot because that's often the stuff that really matters and throws up the next really
helpful area.
Yeah, you know, I completely agree.
And I think, cause I was having this conversation actually recently with another guest and
we're talking about feedback loops.
Like how can you add in at every stage of the service delivery that you're doing, you have
some type of feedback loop to figure out what you can iterate on for that phase of it.
Because you know, lot of services, might be so many different steps that you do.
It's hard to figure out, how do we get feedback on all of it?
But if you chunk it down into like milestones or whatever, and for me being in the
marketing agency world, it's so much easier to do that because we have clear phases of the
work that we're doing.
is having that feedback loop at each of those endpoints for the phase.
So we figure out, what went well, what didn't go well?
Do we need to improve this, do we not?
But it's just having those systems in place first is so critical just so you know what you
have to improve instead of just guessing all the time of what you think the customer
needs.
And now you actually know, which is what you want.
Yeah.
also asked me about my journey which is going to take us in a totally different direction
because in essence I push myself so hard as an entrepreneur that I woke up at 2am in the
morning and my husband thought I was having a heart attack.
That's the reality of where we actually got to and that started an entirely divergent
route where I am
as well as fixing myself went out to understand human performance psychology and really
get under the skin of like what is going on in our ecosystem and how on earth can I help.
Mmm.
Yeah, no, definitely.
mean, talk me through that experience, right?
So, I mean, there's a lot there to unpack.
I guess leading up to this from a mindset point of view, what you kind of going through,
like how was the business affecting that?
I guess, what was your day to day, which was, I guess, adding to this pressure that you
eventually came upon you that night.
Perhaps the really scary bit was until that night and actually until up and after it, I
still had no idea.
So this is going back to 2016 time.
we were running our second proper marketing tech startup.
We'd just been named as one of the hottest mad tech startups in the world.
You know, those brilliant kind of titles that you get given as a startup.
But the one benefit was we'd had been given free exhibition space at Olympia at this
massive conference.
Mm.
by end of day one we'd managed to pull together all of our limited start-up resources to
have our stand, I talked on the panel and overall it'd been a good day.
It'd been a busy day, a heavy day but you know it had been a good day and that's when I
woke up at 2am in the morning with searing chest pain.
an ambulance was called.
We actually ended up with two ambulances outside our house and a living room full of
paramedics drinking tea, chatting to my husband while I'm hooked up to a mobile ECG
machine with the needle bouncing all over the place.
And the reason I said it wasn't clear was I knew I was pushing myself, but up until that
point, I had no idea that it could have this level of impact.
And even after nobody mentioned panic attacks, nobody mentioned mental health, there was
no
transparency or no light bulb moment even at that point that I was pushing myself so hard
that you could have this impact on yourself.
and that's actually really scary when you think about it.
It actually went on for another 17 months before the adults were connected but by that
point the situation had got so bad that I could be calmly walking the dog or sat down
reading a book and then all of a sudden I would be having like palpitations, unable to
breathe properly and so these were unprompted panic attacks.
Hmm.
What I'd done was run my body on cortisol for such a long time that I effectively rewired
my brain, sort of the oldest part of the brain, the part of the brain that is responsible
for danger identification.
I kind of trained it to be on high alert all of the time.
And that is what had resulted in effectively a rewiring of the brain.
If you talk about neuroplasticity, I'd rewired my brain to think that everything
even the thought about a negative email that could come in could be a force 10 catastrophe
and that's how my body was responding.
But it took a long time to connect the dots and I don't think I was a very good leader in
that time.
I don't think I was a very good manager in that time.
I certainly wasn't a very good founder in that time.
I could have been doing far better for my business.
and that was the point where I was like I don't think I'm the only one this is happening
to.
Yeah, definitely.
It's interesting you say that.
It's like, for such a long time, you're in, I would say that fight and flight mode, But
constantly.
So cortisol is high.
as you said, right, you get an email, you get a notification on your phone, and you know,
your heart might drop a little bit, you feel that little movement in your chest, and you
pick up, read it, and it's fine.
But at the same time, as you said, you're always in that high alert, and you can't sustain
that for a long period of time.
And I completely agree.
I think there's so many entrepreneurs, even myself, I've definitely
been through that and I think still going through that to some degree as well.
Especially when you're kind of scaling a business and you're doing really well, like
anything can kind of topple you down, right?
And so you're really worried about the notification that, this isn't going to work and
this isn't going to work.
So mean, talk me through then like, what was the remedy for that?
Right?
What did you find that works to figure that one out for you and your community?
For me, I had to understand the why, which was a huge sort psycho-educational journey.
It did include talking therapy.
There were elements of my history that forced me, that drive me to work that hard.
But actually you have to be able to reset the physiology and this is something I've become
really passionate about now.
People think that breathwork is fluffy, it's not, actually the only way you can reset your
physiology.
So from a psycho-biological perspective it's the most amazing gift that you have with you
all of the time and maybe we can cover that a little bit later, I could even show you how
to do it.
So there was that journey, there was just a recognition that I can't just keep ignoring
this.
I actually am not doing very well here.
And that then led into this thinking of like, I don't think I'm alone.
Maybe I can fix this for other people.
And this is so much bigger than mental health.
Whenever I talk to founders about mental health, which I don't do very often, this is the
kind of thing that we're trying to avoid, but actually you talk to a founder on a
day-to-day basis.
He's like, yeah, I'll do it.
I know it's hard work, but I'm really passionate about it.
This is the passion paradox that we talk about.
We are so driven to do what we do that mental health implications or health implications
is a tomorrow you problem.
Yeah.
But actually if we really think about it, it's a today you problem or let's make it a
today you problem because if you are running on cortisol, there are so many different
elements of your body and your mind that just don't work properly.
So.
we think about problem-solving here's something that every founder implicitly knows that
they do need every single day like the job of being a founder is a problem-solving job all
of the time and we love it really it's like team member comes to you I've got this problem
cool let me fix that for you like that is just what we are driven to do.
Your brain can't do it if it's running on cortisol.
End of story.
So there is a part of the brain that is entirely responsible, well not entirely
responsible, but is hugely responsible for doing the creativity.
So often this word creativity gets misinterpreted.
So we think creativity, creative founder.
I'm not a creative founder.
I often think that.
But actually creativity is about problem solving and on entire life is about problem
solving as a founder.
and your brain can't do it unless you give it space to do it.
there's through neuroscience over the last two decades there's an increasing proof that we
don't learn in the real moment, we don't solve problems in the real moment, our brains
actually sort of think about it like they gather information.
and then it's the process of not thinking about that information when you solve the
problem.
So I like to think of it as having a little dude in your head who is like doing all the
filing.
So you work really really hard, you're doing all your reading, you're doing your writing,
you're doing all your computer stuff and then maybe you start getting stuck and you're
like why can't I fix this?
Why can't I write this copy?
Why can't I come up with a solution?
Go make yourself a cup of tea.
guaranteed within about five minutes you're like oh I've got the idea that is the little
dude in your head
he's been there doing the filing in your in your mind going I'll put this together with
this and this together with this I'll put that in here and have to cha-ching it's the
reason why you get so frustrated with busy procrastination like trying to like bang your
head against a wall when you're trying to fix something but you can't do it and then why
if you you have all your best ideas in the shower
Hmm, definitely
like, we intrinsically know that both of those statements is true.
We recognize that sort of frustration and we recognize that we all have our best ideas in
the shower.
What those stories do is just illuminate to us the truth of neuroscience and action.
So we have to give our brains the space to come up with the solutions.
You are useless at thinking unless you create that space.
Yeah.
it doesn't come online if you're running on Cortisol.
So that's the brain bit.
But I mean, that's in addition to you can't...
You can't recover because you can't sleep properly, you can't refuel because your
digestion doesn't work properly, you can't even think properly because when you're in
fight or flight mode actually your even your eyesight kind of gets highly focused on one
point.
You lose the capacity to see strategically.
Increasing amount of evidence that proves all of these things.
So you can't even make good business decisions because you can't see the bigger picture.
So there's a really strong rationale that this is, you know, it is a today us problem but
it's not something we need to do huge amounts of things about we just need to integrate it
into our day-to-day lives and that can be really empowering as a founder actually.
Yeah, it's so interesting where, you know, less is more sometimes.
And I think it's so difficult for entrepreneurs or founders is because maybe in the
beginning, you know, all that action did give us that positive feedback coming back,
right?
It gave us that results that push forward, We're getting achieving whatever we're
achieving.
But again, like you can only do that for certain seasons, I think.
I've been trying to work in seasons, right?
So maybe for quarters, like, you know, this quarter is going to be...
all out, we're doing as many calls as we can, we're doing whatever, then the next quarter
is way less of that.
But everything's so difficult as a founder to not sit around and do nothing, but in a way
sit and do nothing, right?
Where you've done a load of inputs, right?
And you need to give it that space to breathe.
And so those things can come to you, but figure out, okay, what do you do in the meantime?
Right?
Whilst you know that you have to have that space, like how do you fill that time?
And what does that look like for you as an individual?
when you're wired to to keep doing these inputs all the time.
And unfortunately the neuroscience also works against you.
So the little dopamine hit that you get from ticking something, let's face it, relatively
insignificant off your to-do list, it becomes a massive distraction from you leaning into
and giving space to actually that big strategic thinking project.
So it becomes this really complex interplay between...
blocking time for strategic stuff and defending that time and working against these kind
of instincts to go I just want to take it off the list.
I must say it's really important there's no one size fits all it's just there's lots of
smaller strategies and most importantly an awareness of self like tuning in to the
thoughts
that are driving you but also your body a little bit more.
So we're talking about metacognition so being aware of the thoughts that are either
helping or hindering you and...
your physiological signals back to you that are telling you like actually yeah I'm really
in I should really follow my energy to do this or I'm feeling really my gut is telling me
a particular thing that I should go after.
It's just tuning in a little bit more which then allows you to act better.
Definitely.
And then I guess the other side of this is like resilience, right?
So within entrepreneurs, you need to have that grit, that resilience to sometimes keep
pushing and keep working when you don't want to work, right?
So it's kind of the other side of this.
So what is resilience to you and like, what have you seen within the people that you work
with?
Like how do they create resilience within themselves, but also give them this space as
well and kind of kind of balance that lifestyle a little bit more, I would say.
I guess I've missed a bit of a piece of the puzzle, is back when all that stuff happened
to me, I did some really early research on founder mental health.
That's where I came out with this really frankly awful statistic that nine out of 10
founders have mental health strain, which nobody wants to be.
But it is really easy to kind of build on the now.
Yeah, but founders just need to work hard.
It's really high pressure and they just need to have grit.
within that original research, pretty much all founders, 92%, came back and said,
resilience is the number one trait that you need to be successful as a founder.
So not problem solving skills, not communication skills, not selling skills, resilience.
whilst that was hugely illuminating and the whole piece of research did a massive amount
to lift the lid on the silence of fundamental health.
It started the Foundology journey, but it kind of still left me with this question of
like, is resilience?
And more importantly, through the lens of Founderhood, what does it actually look like?
And that then resulted in the research that...
I've not long published which is around entirely around how you fuel yourself as a founder
and what founder resilience actually is.
And this was quite a major quant study it's like the biggest piece on founder resilience
ever done to date I'm sure somebody will come and redo it but what it sort of tells us not
only is it a snapshot on founder mental health which unfortunately has not improved there
is a
really the crux of it is resilience really does matter.
Like it's one thing founders say it's the most important thing but now we can see that
resilience has an exponential impact on a founder's health.
founder's psychological state so that resilient founders feel much more high performing
they feel four times less overwhelmed significantly less stressed so these are all
day-to-day feelings that are actually delivering against performance or lack of
performance.
We also know that a founder with low resilience is twice as likely to want to quit
compared to a high resilience founder.
So we really do now know that resilience is a critical trait.
But then that still leaves us with the question of like, yeah, but how do you build
resilience?
So as part of this research, we divided the whole cohort, nearly 400 founders took the
research into.
those who scored highly for resilience, those who scored normal in accordance with a
validated academic tool and those who scored as low resilience.
And as soon as you've got that categorization we can start to say okay that...
group of founders who we can identify as highly resilient what do they do differently and
this is where we get to very practical steps that founders can take because they do three
things they proactively work on thinking differently which is where we come back to that
metacognition skill they defend their time for themselves ruthlessly
And those two are intrinsically linked, which I'll explain in a second.
And then also they have a really strong support infrastructure, which obviously I'm biased
about because Foundology is all about combining founder coaching with an epic community of
people.
So this idea of founder support has run through everything that I've done ever since 2019.
So all of a sudden you have this...
toolkit if you like of like recommendations from 400 odd founders that says this is
actually what the most resilient founders are doing and by the way there's a really strong
correlation between high resilience and high performing so you could almost interchange
it's like when I say the most resilient founders do x y and z you may as well say the most
high performing founders do x y and z.
It's just been such a fascinating study and a big part of what I'm doing now is like
bringing that
podcasts and just spreading this so that we can help founders just give themselves that
space you were talking about earlier because it is it's the hardest thing we always put
ourselves at the bottom of the to-do list and what we need to do is think we are actually
one of the most if not the most important asset in the business so we've got to start
thinking like it.
Athletes do!
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's so funny because when we look at our business, you know, always thinking about
how can we make this a little bit more efficient?
How can we do this?
How can we do that?
When the biggest thing we could probably do is give ourselves a space to figure out what
we actually need to be working on.
Right.
Give ourselves that space.
But we're so drawn into that day to day of just actually all the time.
And I love what you said there about defending your time ruthlessly because it's so easy.
when you have a business right is everyone wants your attention, whether it's clients,
whether it's team members, whether it's just more work you need to do.
Everything demands your time all the time, every single day.
And so how do people start doing that right?
How do people start defending their time in the way that you're mentioning that?
I would say it starts with the tuning in.
Perhaps from a different lens, what is it that gives you the headspace?
So for me, it's exercise, exercise and yoga, actually.
But my non-negotiables are exercise.
And actually, that's probably about six out of 10 founders.
The first first layer of defense is our exercise.
Like one of our founders, Dan, he goes to the gym three days a week.
Nobody will override that.
So it's blocked in his diary.
He will not allow anybody to go over it unless he's on
holiday obviously which is also equally fine and just making sure that that is defended.
Now in my case honestly I'm not quite as good at defending it as he is but I all might
move it around but of six sessions that are in my diary I'll do five.
Mm.
So it's about knowing where your line lies but knowing what your first line of defence is.
So another of our founders Tasha, she will do an hour long walk every morning religiously.
She never doesn't do it.
it actually gives her it gets her outside in nature there's lots of studies that prove
that when you're outside you can connect to those thoughts much more effectively it gets
her moving and it just separates her and allows her because she's not she's not going
through her phone in there she's not listening to a podcast sorry she's just she's just
allowing herself to be
And that's allowing the little dude in your head to go, okay, morning, you're right.
What's today?
What did we learn yesterday?
And what are the most important things?
So she starts her working day going, right, I know exactly what my three big rocks are
today.
It's another habit that we talk about a lot in Foundology is like three things for your
week, three things for your day and everything else has to go.
It's like one of the most important three things on your month, your week and your day.
And it's kind of rooted in
Covey's Big Rocks methodology or ideas and just...
having that clarity of thought allows you to go well that's not the most important thing
because it's not one of my three rocks and because a lot of it is about the resilient
thinking and being able to say no like that is not more important than my exercise time or
doing that lot list of admin tasks is not more important than me thinking about the
strategic direction of our sales campaign.
that clarity of thought comes from the habits that you set yourself up with.
So that's why I say these two things are intrinsically linked.
The performance habits, whether it's walks, exercise, yoga, whatever it is that gives you
the headspace is what then fuels your brain to be able to have the energy.
It's like a bank account resilience.
It gives you the energy to then be able to respond.
in a much better way when somebody bites your head off or in a better way when a customer,
when something goes wrong or in a better way when you've got to sort of step up and lead
and inspire people.
Yeah, I think one of my biggest takeaways from that is the skill of prioritization, right?
It's rewiring what we think about when it comes to prioritization is like, look, these are
priorities, whether we like or not, you know, what are those non-negotiables that we want
to do on a weekly basis or daily basis?
And making sure in the priority scale, it is at the very top.
Because I think it's so easy, right?
When it comes to like fitness or whatever, when you're on a season of being busy, it's
like, it's fine, like, we'll pick this up later.
But then later whenever come and as we said, right, that's your first line of defense to
not get burnt out and not go through that, I guess that period of not being at your peak
performance, right?
And then being at the bottom there.
So I think prioritization is one of those skills that you do need to really develop as a
founder, but not on that basic level, on this level where we're talking about, you know,
the things that are actually gonna drive you forward and create that peak performance
within you.
What are those priorities and how can you figure that one out?
Yeah.
When you use the word priorities, it reminds me of one of our founders, Eric, who the
first thing he will say when we talk about this is actually sleep, defending his sleep
routine.
And, you know, it's one of those really tricky ones.
as founders in 2019, was 68 % of founders have sleep problems.
Now it's more like 50%, probably not statistically significant difference.
We all know that we're supposed to sleep.
But actually doing the things that change it is a big thing.
actually our activity trackers can be a powerful enabler for this.
Although I hesitate to say no, don't get obsessed with them.
But actually they help remind us that sleep is what sets us up for the day after.
Sleep is what is helping the little dude in our head to do all that filing, coming back
online with performance and energy tomorrow, offer the solutions.
thinking about having rules like well there's absolutely no screen time the hour before
emails get shut off and on never notifications on your phone no like not none of that
after I know 7 p.m.
and your rules are your rules but
being able to gently introduce things like this and then keep a track on how much better
you feel and what is and isn't working.
Not everything will work.
And that's why I get quite frustrated when I hear, you must do this.
It's like, we are all different.
There is a physiology and a biology that is unique, that is the same for everybody.
But the things that work for your brain will be different to things that work for others.
Yeah, I completely agree.
know, it's, you know, put my marketing out on, it's like, you've got to test these
different things.
If you're going to introduce doing a different action or a different, you know, sleep
routine or whatever that's going to be, right, test out, figure out, is this actually
impacting how I'm feeling, the results, whatever.
And then you can iterate on that and start moving forward.
So I guess moving forward then, like looking into the work that you're doing right now,
you know, what are the plans for the business?
Like how are you going to get this message out there even more?
And what does that look like for 2025 and beyond?
I guess this all goes back to 2019 when I did the original research and I'm like, whoa,
okay, there's definitely a problem here.
But I also could see that nobody wants to talk about mental health.
And I had this wacky idea that if we could all just create these small groups where
founders could talk.
openly and just be honest and help each other.
That's what I would have wanted because I was completely convinced that under all of my
pressures I was the only one having any problems.
Hmm.
part of that is driven by the start of ecosystem bravado.
You know, there's a lot of like, we're killing it.
Always in the media is like, this is going so well.
We've raised this, we've done this, we've hired this person.
We need to have that public profile.
I've had arguments with people and like, well, we just need founders to be more open.
I'm like, no, because we have an impression that we have to maintain.
we are in a world where we are invested in and that means that active impression
management, another psychology term, has to be active almost all of the time.
So anyway my mad idea was like if we could just create a safe space and now that's a bit
of a cliched term but to for founders to have these conversations and work through their
challenges.
What we could do then is tap into this notion called social support in psychology, really
underpins pretty much any treatment structure.
So if I just go through a clinical lens for a second, if you're treating depression or
anxiety or alcohol abuse, for example, all of them either don't work or
work so much better if somebody's treatment plan is adjoined with social support.
So some they have a strong support network at home or if they are brought into a group to
have people who are like-minded and who are also working on the same thing around them.
I read about this, this is quite powerful, let's use that.
Fast forward, what are we six years, five years, I can't even add.
Now we have hundreds of these groups all over the world.
And this is all about combining a sort of a method, our Founder Circle method, which is
group coaching designed just for like action orientated, impatient founders, let's be
honest.
As one, I can say that.
With like an epic community of founders and all of these individual like 10 person groups
are matched by stage.
by ambition so the people that you're in the room with that you meet every month with for
two hours along with your founder coach you know that they're living the same stuff that
you're living so it's all about connecting and making sure that a founder can well I dealt
with that problem like this and they can challenge they can support they can provide
intelligence that you know wouldn't necessarily be flowing between founders unless you
were able to have a forum where you can talk about these challenges and are really open on
this
way.
So it's like these closed groups where you can talk about anything, how you're feeling,
how the business is struggling, how you've had an argument with your co-founder, all of
these things you can just work out in real time with the support and shared intelligence
of people who are there with you.
Yeah, that's so cool because some of my closest friends in business where we do have these
conversations, right?
It took a long time to even find those people that are on that same wavelength that are at
the same stage in the business or whatever that looks like.
so because you've cultivated that from the community that you have, people can join that
and they have that straight away, which is really cool to see.
It's definitely needed within the space.
So that's very cool.
Where can people find that information if they wanna?
learn more about it or even join something like this, like how can they find out all.
Thank you.
So foundology.org is our domain and you'll find it really quickly straight from the home
page.
basically foundology.org forward slash founder fuel is where you'll find all the
information about founder circles.
And we have two cohorts a year, but we can always find space for new people who want to
join straight away.
Amazing.
So one of the final questions we always ask guests on this show is if you can go back to
your 18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's a mindset tip,
some philosophical things, or some technical knowledge, what would those three lessons be?
And what would it be those three things?
Oh man, I love how you didn't warn me for that one.
So mindset, shit will always go wrong.
It's how you respond to it that matters.
Straight through to resilience there.
Trust in yourself because it's never as bad as you think it is.
And surround yourself with like-minded people as a result of that.
And from a, I'll go for a pure business one.
think about the product and think about your clients or customers.
They are the most important thing in your business.
If you don't have customers, you just have a really expensive hobby.
So put your beneficiaries or clients or customers, whatever you want to call them, users,
at the core of everything that you do.
Amazing, amazing, yeah, there's some great lessons there.
So thank you so much for taking the time to jump on today's episode.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you very much.