00:01:42
I'm doing bureaucracy and paperwork, and while it's a great career, it wasn't the career for me, and I landed in a startup operations role and kind of learned it on the cuff, and after 10 years of doing that. I also went through an MBA and a hostile takeover and became one of the founders of that company. I had to learn burnout the absolute hard way, and right before COVID, the company had separated. I did not stay on, basically got Steve Jobs'd out of my own company, I like to say, and was in a really dark place and didn't know, you know, what was up and what was down, and I said, 'What does my next role look like? Am I going to become an HR person?
00:02:25
Which I never identified with, or am I going to stick with ops? Because I was always more drawn towards the people than all the other things necessarily that came to a company.' I didn't want to be behind a spreadsheet or do accounting or do a typical MBA, and I said, you know, okay, let me see what this looks like, dealing with the burnout, dealing with the depression, and two weeks later, COVID happened, and that break, that sabbatical was going to look wildly different. So. So while trying to battle my own mental health and my newfound unemployment, COVID happens, and everyone I knew who was a solopreneur, entrepreneur, startup, SMB, as I graduated into a recession several times over, most of my peers did, we were all entrepreneurs, and everyone called me and they're like, 'How did you handle remote employees?' You guys had several locations, and this was before we had all the fancy tech that we have now that's essentially came out of COVID.
00:03:25
In a lot of ways, the remote workplace access, I next thing you know, found myself consulting for startups, you know, get us through a raise, help us hire, help us build our culture remotely. So for the last four years, I've gone through 30 different startups, everything from handbooks to culture to, we have two co-founders who are at each other's throats, like, what does that look like for leadership for them? And I decided to do my PhD in organizational leadership. And a specific focus on mobility. That's completely breathtaking. So. And when it was first discussed, one, I was, I confused when you said that out loud. A deep changed my mind because I hadn't been to one of these conferences, but a few of my colleagues if I'd been to one of your conferences, like Yvonne's talk about empathy.
00:04:10
From what you said, dispensers, we always made treatments. But then, like you said, members, when you received the diaries of like, how does something change that tomorrow? Oh, yeah. Is necessary when you're a founder to some extent. Maybe not as Elon Musk as it would be, but to some extent, you need a little bit of that to essentially be an entrepreneur. And yeah, right now, I get different calls all the time. And it's everything from like, we need an HRIS system to, hey, we have 10 tech platforms, and I don't know which one we're using. And this is a founder saying that. And I'm like, okay, where are your documents? And they're like, I don't know. And I'm like, are you running this company?
00:04:56
Or is the company kind of just like running itself and like going in every direction? So the correlation and the connection between startups and suicide and just overstimulation from tech is really there. And I'm seeing it every single day in so many different facets. But that's kind of like what we're doing today and where we're at and where I'm at. And that's the nutshell, if you have it. And it's definitely impressive. I really like to listen to you about your journey regarding the burnout. So would you say from what you could see that there are, for example, more burnout seen in the startups than, for example, in the corporate world? Because like, we usually know that the burnout is like in nine to five when you're an employee and not lots of people actually speak about burnout when you're a founder, because I mean, you should be doing what you love, right?
00:05:51
Like, it should be full of fun. And you should be riding a unicorn and everything should be like full of sparkles. So do you see that there is like more burnout in the startup scene than, for example, in the traditional nine to five or it's different? It's different. It's in both places. I'm just checking my notes because there was actually a good New York Times article about startups and unicorns. And it was like a great title. I was like, oh, what was the name of that title? It's it's in both places. I think that in corporations, there may be more resources, meaning funding and people like HR, like, you know, other support staff. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's getting the attention in the eye in startups because they're smaller, because they have more media eyes on them sometimes because they're new and they're just getting this money.
00:06:47
Some of these things come to light faster. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean anyone is actually tackling it. You know, startups right now, they're like, oh, we're all about mental health and workplace behavior and all these things. And then they implement tech. OK, in your benefits, you're going to get a Calm dot com subscription. I'm like, well, that's great. But is anyone governing it? Are they going to that app? Are they seeking additional support or saying something as attractive in their offering or their job posting is saying unlimited PTO? Are people taking it? Are you? Are you monitoring it? Are you mandating a minimum? No, they're just using it to get those hires and then it's falling flat.
00:07:32
So this is why I say, like, while we have all this great tech, are we actually using it in the right way is the question. Recently, I had a CEO who was like, I want all the things, mental health in the workplace. I was like, OK, great. When I asked a lot of questions about just the overall business practices, and you know what does this look like or what does this department look like? He was like, don't worry about the business. Just worry about the people. OK, how can I take care of the people? One, I don't understand their roles, responsibilities. And if they're coming to me with a problem, how can I have that knowledge or, you know, biased, if you will, if I don't know like their actual responsibilities or like are they overworked?
00:08:20
If there are other people on their team that are, you know not doing the right thing. So he wanted a 360 review put in. I was like, OK, great. We can do this. We looked at the HR software at that point. They had a plug-in. Great culture values, all the things, how we're going to measure them. But we didn't take into account. I did that all of these staff. It was their first job. This is a new startup. It was run by young people in their 20s. Most of them had never had jobs. Straight out of college. Is this a good metric for them? Right. Is this 360 actually going to evaluate everything because it's not taken into consideration? We're judging them on first-time everything's right.
00:09:08
So this burnout, you know, coming back to it, it's it's are you doing the right things and are you using the right tech to avoid it? Or are you just adding to it? Yeah, I mean, we've seen over the years a lot of very successful founders take on suicide. Right. Because everything is on you. You don't have someone to call. You know, you're going to sleep every night with the whole weight of the world on your shoulders. And it's very heavy. And that's what got me is that sometimes I'd be up against a lot of people. And I'd be like, oh, my God, I'm a problem. And there was just no one that could help me. Right. I was going to lawyers and I was getting advice or I was seeking guidance from maybe an older family member who also ran a company.
00:10:03
And I was like, help. Anybody can help. And nobody was helping me. So that is a lot of pressure on a person. And, you know, leads to massive depression, lack of sleep. You know, you're being you're up all the time. Everyone's like, oh, postpartum and new moms. And I'm like, yes, this is a major topic we need to talk about. But I had 40 kids. I had 40 employees who were looking to me. I'm like, that's a lot of responsibility. And if you are coming straight out of college and you're going to this company and someone's handed you all this money and you have a great idea and maybe you can go to market or it's already in the market. How are you managing all of this stress? Right.
00:10:48
So for me, it was I cared so much about the kids. I didn’t take care of myself. And that led to a gross amount of overweight and just not taking care of myself, not eating right, not sleeping right. I was going to sleep with my phone in my hand, like mid-text to a lawyer, and then waking up in the morning. And there would it would just be horrible. I was like, please do not let there be nine hundred missed calls from some insane scenario. And sure enough, I’d open one eye, just like really terrified. And there would be 90 texts, employees calling out. The lawyers are like, call me. And you’re like, what rock can I crawl under? Because I can’t get my job done and manage all the people.
00:11:34
And because we were a smaller operation and I was all things ops, all things people. There was just no additional support and I was burnt out, burnt out. It's a really big problem. I also could feel it. Last week I was in Portugal, with our team and I brought them together with me. It was our first time when we get a stand in Portugal, in Lisbon at the Web Summit. And I took with me five people from our crew. And I was like, yeah, we will have a fun like five tech enthusiasts together in Lisbon. It will be a really cool experience. But I didn't realize how really draining energy it will be because I put myself outside of comfort zone.
00:12:18
But being the CEO and founder and driving the sales, and where we are going, what we are going to do, you have to delegate the people everybody is coming to because you are the main point of contact. You need to also make sure that the return of investment is there. So you are all the time like nonstop, like trying to also like coach your people, like looking if everything is set up, etc. It was really overwhelming for me that then I got sick after that because I got really out of my comfort zone. I was telling like it was great experience, but I didn't know how to do it. I really needed a person in the middle between me and the other people because I felt that everything was just running my way.
00:13:00
And there was really missing like project manager or someone who would be delegating the people on the floor. And you, as a founder and CEO, you don't usually realize this until you're in that situation. And this was just our exhibition. It wasn't, for example, launching of the platform or something immense. So I can just imagine if you really are, after college, you don't have experience with the team, then you get, for example, millions of euros handed over to you, the responsibility behind it. And then like 40 people like running, you don't know how to establish the boundaries. So this is just really impressive what you are telling to us here. So what the person should do when, for example, you are a CEO and founder and you want to avoid these kinds of things.
00:13:50
And I'm sure that also somebody from our team is going to be able to do that. So I'm sure that also somebody from our audience who are now watching us or listening to us, they want to also know how they can prepare themselves to avoid this kind of experience ahead of actually the experience is happening because we all, I think, know that it's like, yeah, I can do it. I can do it alone. But then we are appearing in that moment and we are like, wow, like what should I do? There is like missing something, someone, and I cannot just go back, you know? So like, what the person should do when, um, he or she is launching, um, the business, like how is, uh, what are the best strategies to avoid the burnout?
00:14:30
Oh, the first thing I ever did that I said was, and I didn't even know I did it, you know, was kind of, it was like an unconscious decision; that we had a great salesperson who had more skills than being a salesperson. Um, all things from marketing just to like, she thought like me. Um, and I was like, I need you, like you have to be doing more. Like you're just too smart to just be doing this one aspect of our job. So she kind of got like unknowingly installed as like a chief of staff, executive assistant, all things like Liz. Um, and she actually ended up moving in with me, which was very self-serving for me. Um, and I was terrified that she would leave me before my husband would leave me.
00:15:16
And her name was Maya, and she was my right hand. And during COVID, they did not actually renew her visa. I cried all the way to JFK when I drove her there, uh, to drop her off the first time. So that would be the first thing is, I went and got somebody who thought like me. So I could say, take some of my brain, take some of these responsibilities. So whether it's an executive assistant, chief of staff, co-founder, just an assistant, an ops person, just somebody, but they must think in a strategy that you do, because when you're first deploying this, you don't have the ability to explain what you want. You kind of need someone who's like more skilled than you, or at least thinks like you, right?
00:15:58
So that you have less to explain. Like I would just be able to say, here's the problem. I couldn't, I couldn't walk her through everything because I didn't have the time or effort. And I hear this a lot. They're like, 'I need an executive assistant or CSO,' but I just don't have the time. And I'm like, 'Stop before you hyperscale before your growth, while you're going through a raise, stop, evaluate as much as you can.' Do you have too many? Do you have too many people, API plugins, tech, and start to just streamline this? If you start adding in people like, oh, we want to grow our head count times two by the end of the year. Great.
00:16:38
But before you add 20 more voices and attitudes and demands to your plate and your team's plate, it's like, look at the things that they are going to need. You know, is the HR in place? Are the CRMs in place? This company scaled; they took on 20 people and they had two different CRMs. And there was just like a lack of communication. And I'm like, this seems like a simple no-brainer. It's like, we need to vote on which platform works best for the people. And, you know, it's less is more kind of thing, right? You know, we're, we're always in like, okay, we got money. What can we add? What can we add? And it's like, but are you adding the right things? And this is a business scorecard.
00:17:24
Are you evaluating each of those aspects? Is it costing you too much? Are you paying for 30 seats in GitHub when you only have three engineers? Or, you know, do you have five culture survey apps plugged into your HRIS? And you're like, 'My employees don't handle, don't do the surveys.' And I'm like, 'Is this effective?' So before you add, it's like, evaluate as much as you can. The second thing after all that evaluation, would be getting a mentor. So if you are doing, if you have a board, if you're getting a VC or a private equity company, great. Sometimes we've got to take money from the devil. And like, we don't know, you know, if this person is going to be a good match for us, but if you can look for someone that has empathy, this board is great.
00:18:11
They're going to bring you resources, but if they can bring you a lot of emotional resources, because this is going to be emotional time for you as you grow and scale this company, possibly sell it, possibly also get fired, which no CEO founder ever thinks is going to happen to them. And more times than not, it does. Can this venture capital offer you X, you know, is that mentoring meeting with you, or are they just going to say, here's a chunk of money? Don't do it right. It's like RuPaul would say, but if you can find, you know, when you're building that board, someone who's like, 'you're just like my son.' And he's really interested in this.
00:18:49
If you can find like a commonality or a way someone's actually going to look at you in like a very holistic and human-centric way and say, 'I don't want them to just make money. I want them to succeed. And I want them to do it in the healthiest way possible.' You're surrounding yourself with people who are going to actually look after you, right? They're going to call and say, 'You were not active on that meeting. What's going on? You know, where are you? What can I do for you?' And they're not just going to read the quarterly reports and say like, 'Great, we're giving you funding or no, we're not, you know, because you're putting these people inside your house and your mind.
00:19:23
So make sure they're also taking care of your house and your mind. All right. So it will be, so then get your assistant, get your mentor and get all of the systems set up like CRM, HR, so that everything has its own place. So this is the prescription for the happy startup that has less risk of having burnout. And speaking about some technology, because you said many times that there are also like lots of startups that come to you and they ask you that they want to have all of these like tech fancy stuff for the wellbeing of their employees, et cetera. So what are currently the most known tech platforms or tech things in wellbeing industry for the startups? Oh God, there are so many.
00:20:22
It is a flooded market when you go on to any HRIS, like their marketplace app, and you want to type in, you know, culture and wellbeing, you will get hundreds of API plugins, or, you know, we do games and we do remote surveys and we do, there's a good one called Hopin, H-O-P-I-N, and they're actually like top rated for internal culture right now. They're a startup, but they do virtual events for companies. So like, you’re not just like, oh, we’re going to have a team building wine and sip and talk night. It’s like, no, they’ve really thoughtfully planned out how they’re going to build that remote culture. But again, if you’re going and saying, I want this for my company because it looks good, or it looks good to the investors, or like, we want to be rated top 10 places to work, but is that for your audience, right?
00:21:19
So our audience in this one particular company was young and they were all engineers, different cultures, different backgrounds. Are you taking into consideration if you’re doing a wine night and half of your staff, half of your engineers are in Africa, they might be from the Muslim population. Do they drink? You know, those little social nuances, not little, but all means, are where we lose this gap of like, let's employ or deploy really cool, tech-friendly, tech-friendly, make cool culture. But again, it goes back to auditing. Is that for your audience? Is that what they want? If you're dealing with 19-and 20-year-old tech engineers who've never been inside of a nine-to-five, have no corporate knowledge or, you know, or the formalities,
00:22:09
maybe this time is better spent served, like why you need to be on camera or, you know, what is the benefit of attending these meetings or what other like business acumen, maybe they're lacking on like professional training or just straight up having an open conversation and saying like, we don't want notion anymore. We need this because this is a better tech platform for us. So while there is really good tech out there, there's so many, I could recommend a billion for all different things. I think one of the biggest things right now that we don't have a lot of, for many reasons, not to be, you know, very political, about it is benefits and resources for the transgender community in the workplace.
00:22:58
So we have a ton for neurodiverse in the workplace, you know, whether it's more time or AI that, you know, helps with speech and recognition and all the things, ADD, as you can tell. What are we offering the transgender community as far as workplace accommodations or empathy or just training or something like that? I don't know. Rather than just hosting, you know, a once a month D and I sensitivity class, it's like, okay, you've given them benefits, but do these benefits actually work for them? Probably not. Are they in a state that you've now given the benefits to that those doctors do not, you know, to handle them or, you know, they can't get their services. So that's something I've been kind of looking into because I think it's, I don't think, I know that it's an overlooked, underlooked resource.
00:23:54
Thanks for my dyslexia there. You know, we're not paying attention to what we're offering. A lot of companies, especially startups like, oh, great. Pick us a benefits package. I'm like, OK, great. Everyone on your team is under 26. So they're still on their parents' insurance. They're like, oh, I don't care. And I'm like, OK, but again, you are just signing people up for things that don't matter. You know, evaluate it. Look at what you're actually doing. But we're so quick to hyper growth and we're so quick to learn on the curve. And I'm guilty of it myself. But when you're a young founder, it's like, oh, here's a tech that solves a problem. Great. I'm all for solving the problem. But did you go back in six months and say, did it work for us?
00:24:40
Was there an outcome? Did my team use it? Did it make sense? Is there something cheaper, cheaper, better, faster, better socioeconomic region-wise? And that's the thing is we're not going back and re-evaluating because we're just scale, scale, scale, grow, grow, grow, add, add, add, you know, work very much consumers. But no one's going back and saying, do I actually need this? Like we clean our closets six times a year. We're like, oh, purge. But that's only because we have to bring something else in. It's not a purge because we're evaluating and saying, is this a good piece of tech around me? Is it helpful? Is it doing its thing. It's really interesting. I also have in mind, because for example, myself, I use a lot of different tech for my wellbeing.
00:25:29
So I have like Aura, I use application for nutrition. So like sleep tracking, exercise, drinking, tracking, like, but it's also my individual decision to track the things that I know that are helping me. In our team, like we have also like a different kind of perspectives on like somebody prefer, like watches, somebody would not be able to track, for example, different aspects of their wellbeing because it would make them stress. So isn't it maybe also more of an individual decision than based on the each team member, what they want to do, et cetera, because for example, in our case is that we do a lot of partnerships with the different tech companies. So then if somebody from our team would like to have aura or, or watches, etc., we are always able to like find out some like discounts and things like this, how we can like secure it for our team members.
00:26:28
But it's not necessarily that everybody is freak like me into the health. So do you maybe also have this kind of, when you were looking at the retrospective of the startups, if they, if the employees were using it or not, was it at the end, like usually successful among the employees or it was, Indeed, like rather the individual basis of Overall, I would say a majority of the employees that I've come across over the last four years, specifically for all these tech startups that range from, you know, 20 employees to a hundred employees, it's overstimulation. They are really happy about one of ten API plugins or partnerships or, you know, mental health benefit. But the other nine of them, they're like, I'm not using it. The boss is going to be upset with me.
00:27:24
My team leader said I didn't track my steps, not knowing that this person has, you know, an eating disorder or psychological aspect to their steps and then become stressful. So again, it goes back to that audit and that change management and that business scorecard. Like, do they need it? Do they want it? Did anybody say, 'Like, you have to do this?' Or did anybody say, 'Do you want to do this?' Um, so to your point is like, yes, make an offering of like, do you want the ring or do you want the watch? Or do you just like not want to be bothered because you want to just do your job and you don't want to be, in addition to being graded on your performance in the workplace and the job and all the social metrics that are on this, you know, 360, and your performance review and your net score, you're now going to also be graded on how many steps you took in the office.
00:28:16
And it's like, whoa, that's too much for a person. Sometimes they cannot. And we already have a problem with, you know, going home and unplugging because a lot of times we are home. Um, and it’s like, where's, where's the difference? It’s that six degrees separation. It’s like, this watch is tracking my steps for work, for mental health, but at six o'clock, I want to take this watch off, but I can’t because I want to beat my coworker. I want to be best on, on the steps. And you’re just like, do I take it off? And then you’re sitting there for 30 minutes, deliberating this. And it’s like, you’re not getting, you’re not getting paid for that. It’s mentally exhausting.
00:28:52
So again, it's tech that has, you know, a positive negative, uh, outcome. And it's like all that founder needed to do was just say at the lunch table in a meeting, in a casual sense, who is for this? Is anybody have a wild no against this or just standing around and looking and saying like, everyone is only using this CRM. We're not, we're paying for this and we're not using it guys. Should we get rid of this? Hands up. Okay, great. Didn't, it didn't require a survey. It didn't require six months of auditing. It required one question. This obviously for certain size companies. Um, but sometimes we don't have to overthink it. Right. But it's just like, go to the human centric aspect. And this is why I always say I'm not HR.
00:29:38
HR is where you go when you're hired, you're fired, and shit is on fire. Right. That being said, if you do talent, DNI, recruiting, org psych, org behavior, all the things human centric, right? You don't need HR, right? Sure. We need compliance. We need all the things fair and all the things accessible. But if you come at it from this human centric side first, you're going to have a lot less hired, fired, and shits on fire problems, right? Because we looked at the person first, right? Um, with autism, we don't say, oh, that person has, that's an autistic person. You say, no, that is a person. With autism, right? Person first. Why are we not putting the same thing in a company?
00:30:27
What do you, what do you, what are you deploying for these people and how are you going to make it best for them long-term? Is it also more difficult with startups that are, for example, opting more for outsourcing? Uh, they are more and more, um, like trend nowadays to outsource different services. Lots of people, they think, twice if they actually want to proceed with employees where you then speak more about the well-being because, uh, you need to pay, uh, their, for example, social, uh, health and social security, et cetera. But when it's coming to outsourcing, it's a bit, uh, discusable. I'm also having trouble with my language, but, uh, but, uh, here, like, uh, for example, uh, because like outsourcing on a Fiverr, when you outsource, uh, guys, you're not going to be able to, you're a guy from a Fiverr.
00:31:21
Of course, you will not think about like how many steps that guy make, uh, when, uh, he's, uh, doing, uh, your website. But for example, if you have a long-term, uh, contract with a freelancer who is working with you already for five years and, uh, you already have like really a contact with that freelancer on daily basis, but, um, the hours are changing. So it's not part-time or full-time. It's a really like, uh, uh, depending on the schedule. So it's you rely on to some extent, but it's still outsourcing, but you have bigger relation with that person. It's not your employee that it would be built in the, in the base of your startup. But on the other hand, it's also not, uh, the random guy from the Fiverr.
00:32:06
So how does this work, uh, at the startup, uh, board? Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's definitely an issue, right? It's like, okay, let's outsource. It'll be cheaper. It'll be more effective. This population has more people in tech or people in this particular field, maybe the medical field. And while that's great and you're effectively saving the company money. Then again, it brings it back to the culture, right? Okay. They're not attending the meetings or their camera off, or they're in a different time zone, or, um, we can't do pay transparency because, you know, we're paying them $20,000 in their country, but we have two similar roles here in the U. S. and we're paying them $25,000. We're going to have a quick issue. What does that look like?
00:32:51
How are we explaining that? And, you know, while pay transparency let's start that again, pay transparency. Well, dyslexia is so wild. It's so rare, but it's like, when it gets you, you're just like a transparency, you know, it's, it's, it's becoming a thing. It's we need it, but it's gray area. And it's like, it's got to be deployed with a lot of sensitivity and a lot of data. Um, how do you explain that? How do you explain how John in the US as an engineer is worth two 50, but Igbal in South Asia is only worth $20,000. Now, sure, cost of living all the things, but the scales are there. How do you respect somebody? And then, you know, I like to say, and it's not necessarily always the nicest thing to say is like engineers are like basement nerds.
00:33:47
They're gamers. They don’t want to be on camera. And like, we’re not penalizing them for it because it’s part of their culture. And that’s part of like how they mentally do their thing. Right. They love graph paper. It’s so wild as a person with ADD and dyslexia, I can’t do graph paper. I need to send them graph paper. Right. So while they’re in a meeting, they just like, want to be writing down their code and all their things. And like a team might teammate might be like, why aren’t you paying attention? Why aren’t you on, you know, a camera? And it’s like, this is their process and this is how they operate. We can’t penalize them for that. You're in sales.
00:34:24
You're used to being camera-on this, something that's more familiar and comfortable for you. So when you're building into these culture apps or games, whatever you're implementing, are you taking into consideration that a majority or a population isn't going to get down with this game or isn't going to be comfortable in it? Now you have two sides. Oh, we're here to do things together, but like, they’re not going to participate in the way that the game was meant for, you know, and you have to take into consideration, obviously all of like the ADA compliance is like, is this person going to be able to do the team hike? And, you know, maybe we have a person who can’t and the CEO is like, well, they’ll just sit out.
00:35:08
And I’m like, they’re not just going to sit out. We have to have something else for them to do, but maybe also pair them with somebody else so that they’re not just being penalized. Because they can’t do the team hike on the team outing, but like they still have an opportunity to add to the team or build to the team. Maybe there’s two people who just like bugs aren’t my thing. I don’t want to do it. Hike. It’s not that they can’t. Great. Now we’re going to have two activities. Let’s split this up. So again, goes back to just auditing it, you know, and looking at your audience and saying, is this the right thing to deploy or is it cheap?
00:35:41
And it's just accessible. And like, I got to solve a problem quick. Um, I really surprised that, uh, you are saying that people are getting, uh, penalized, uh, because of not having camera on, because I never saw this. Like I had, um, maybe like one client in the past where it was, uh, really like hierarchy. And they usually like, if you didn't turn on the camera, the hierarchy from the top started to question, like, 'Marie, are you there? We don't see you.' And like really weird questions. They started to ask you, uh, during the meeting, which was a bit like humiliating, but never really like, uh, penalizing that somebody had like camera off. Sometimes like people just excuse themselves, like, uh, sorry, I'm sick.
00:36:28
Or I, uh, just have like a camera issue or, uh, some, um, clients. Uh, I even have clients which have a culture that no cameras at all, like, uh, never like, uh, it's, uh, really interesting. And, uh, it just works, uh, that, uh, you just have it without camera. Of course, when you have a camera, you have to have a camera. So, uh, I think that's a really good internal team or with your like direct manager, then you like, uh, switch it on. But, uh, usually like the company culture is, uh, no cameras. Uh, so it's, uh, really also, I would say even more, uh, like, uh, it's refreshing that, uh, you don't need to be all the time really in the position, like, uh, uh, free stand up, be centered.
00:37:09
And sometimes, uh, they are like meetings where you need to be present, but, uh, you are usually doing your meetings. Uh, while, uh, having the meeting, which, uh, it's a really refreshing. And I think that also people should be more open-minded about it. Uh, like it's, uh, not always that, uh, like if depending on the context, uh, and I think that you, if you have, uh, the emotional intelligence to some extent can also assess if, uh, this meeting is really important for you to show your face there, but, uh, not necessarily all the time, or it's maybe cultural that here in Europe, it's slightly different, but um, that client that I mentioned, uh, that has camera of is actually Americans. I mean, I'm all for it.
00:37:54
You know, again, as long as you look at your audience and you say, what do they want and what's best, and you're not, you know, forcing a square peg into a round hole, um, people always want me on camera and they're like, you know, let's say we're doing leadership training. Of course I have to be on camera. Like you need to see my reaction, my body language. I need to see yours because this is how you're going to emulate it to your team. But sometimes at the end of the day, when someone's booked a session and it's 9 PM Eastern, and I've had 12 Zooms and I've had everything from crying CEOs to an employee who just like, can't get their Adderall prescription. And I've called 29 pharmacies for them.
00:38:35
I don't want to be on camera, but it's exhausting and I have to do it. And I do it. And then the next day I'm shot and I'm canceling meetings because I'm emotionally drained. And we don't take that into consideration is that what is it doing on their next day? You know, what is it doing for them at home or where they need to be? Or like, are they late to a doctor's appointment because they had to be on camera versus in the car, taking the call that they're probably not even presenting on. And they could have been driving and not missed that doctor's appointment. So it's those like little things that like are happening. I mean, I've had CEOs who definitely just like emotionally, emotionally disconnected from really great employees because they didn't attempt attend game night, game night, half of your company are gamers.
00:39:25
The other half aren't. And maybe they just like want to go home on a Friday. And while it's great to build company culture, you've now mentally written them off because they didn't want to attend game night where they had to sit there for three hours and it wasn't their thing. And they could have been doing their personal stuff. So again, while that's culture and it's building, are you using it in the right way? And you can't penalize them for it. And you might say like, 'I need to do something to interest them every other week to bring them in and make it less self-serving because you're interested in gaming or something like that.' What was the question? We've got so far left. Yes, I think that you have definitely answered it great.
00:40:14
But at the moment, it's like the game nights are really like something that you also can do remote. So I really like it that you can also strengthen the team culture together. And doesn't it also like sometimes spark maybe some negative habits because like gaming is a great to relax, but when it's in an excessive amount, it can even be also a really bad habit at some point that you are spending your free time. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think So what is your perspective on this? If it's a healthy outlet for you, and this is how you blow off steam, I'm all for it. You know, with some people are audio books, some people are go for a walk.
00:41:03
Obviously, I'm always going to say, you know, being outside and like doing the workout is probably better for a majority of the people. But if this is causing more overstimulation because you've looked at this gaming screen for six hours and you've played all night, and now the last thing you want to do is open up your laptop and do work, then I would say you have to evaluate, you know that this is probably not a healthy outlet for you. Yeah, I'm asking because recently I have realized that I have a bad habit of watching trashy TV shows, and it was actually like going on for two years. And I just had it there when I was eating, I was just watching uh these TV shows, and I just liked it to follow it.
00:41:48
But then as when it starts to be like really your daily habit for like some time, and it's like you don't eat for long right like it's maybe like one and a half hour per day, but then when you start to like think about it how much time you're spending with this and it's also gossiping and Also, emotions and stuff like this start to project into your decision making and into how you are prioritizing your tasks in your daily life. I did a really radical shift this weekend, and it was that I said, 'Stop, I'm not going to watch anymore these trashy TV shows because I just I like it, but it's just like I want to switch my mindset from there.' And it was really interesting how, like, automatically I was navigating to the brow to the browser to actually like every time watch that trashy TV that it was like really easy accessible for me to just like do the three clicks and go to my favorite TV show.
00:42:51
That even like I said to myself Stop and even like this, I was like going every time and I was eating to that browser to uh that exact website and it's uh really interesting that until you acknowledge it you don't actually realize it that it's for example some of your bad habits and I have nothing against watching a really nice movie on Netflix or like having chill uh chill days and uh when it's really something repetitive uh that you do something on daily basis or even many times per day uh then I think it should be probably something that adds some meaning to what you are doing because then it's the exact habit, I mean if you are game game developer probably.
00:43:33
like gaming is part of your daily life because it adds also the creativity into your life etc if you are a founder i can also imagine like uh uh gaming can add us gamification uh also like uh problem solving and analytical analytical skills so uh it's definitely not that i would be uh in a controlled in a controlled amount though right you can watch your you can watch your trashy shows i'm more than guilty of the trashy shows but at the same point set a limit and say okay i'm not going to sit here for six hours and veg out or game i'm going to do you know one show but then i'm going to do another show
00:44:13
it's got to go outside it's got to Be you, or I'm going to cook, or I'm going to paint, or do something that's you know anything but what you do all day long we know that um people who spend more than six hours a day uh in front of screens have like a 66 percent uh higher rate of going uh suicidal ideation right so if you're doing nine hours of work and then you're going home and spending another six hours what is now your risk right uh going back to suicide and saying you know the thoughts and the overstimulation and the anxiety and the social pressures it's like you might not have depression but
00:44:52
if you're spending six hours a day at your computer thinking about If you're good or bad, or like did your boss email you and then you're going home and watching six hours of TikTok videos of people bitching and moaning, excuse my French, about their job or their boss it compounds and it compounds and next thing you know you're thinking about this right because we mirror and we take on other people's, you know, emotions and empathy. I'm a big candidate for that like if someone is crying, I feel it; I'm gonna wear it all day long. This is why when I hit the end of the day, I am like I'm wearing everybody's, and I had to learn how to like separate that out and some days I'm better at it and some days I'm not.
00:45:34
So good at it, but like physically just had to take a shower had to take a shower and say I can't take this with me to the next space that I'm walking whether it's my bed or going to the movies with my friends or going to dinner I can't take this with me because it's going to compound and then it's going to turn into something that I don't want it to turn into. I also got one question from the audience and it's regarding what we have discussed earlier about the inclusivity, so for example, about the LGBTQ+, but also beyond, and we might know that lots of startups often struggle with inclusivity and I think it's important to get diversity.
00:46:14
and inclusion due to limited resources and time especially like when for example the startups are launched by a specific founder so like usually they naturally go for other people based on the age race and gender and not necessarily at the beginning looking at the diversity and inclusion so what would be your advice for embedding inclusivity into the foundation of a startup so how to really like from the beginning be inclusive and diverse god we could go so high tech with this where like you literally implement like a chart and they're all these amazing you know features inside of hr's uh systems like lattice and Lucid and all these great software that are like, 'Are you hitting your diversity metrics, you know?
00:47:06
And they're scaling and they're did you hire 22 women this year and all these things, great, but when you're starting out, you don't even need to go that high-tech. Get a piece of paper, write down a bunch of demographics, write down a bunch of people who are being overlooked and underserved, are you? Are you checking those boxes? Did we hire 12 people who are white men from all the same school? Okay, we're not doing our job! Like, literally when you go on LinkedIn to most companies it'll quickly identify by school or by state or by some other. Metric I forget what it's called, but it'll quickly identify by school or by state or by some other
00:47:43
what it is off the top of my head region or something if you can see 20 of anything and then you know 50 you're like, okay, we're not checking all the boxes so by just a simple assessment of like men versus women you're just like, okay, we're not we're not doing the right thing or just like are you looking around take a team picture I love these team pictures I was on a law firm's website maybe like six months ago and it had some terrible slogan of like, you know the future and we're here for people and diversity and community it was like 30 white men and one woman, white woman, and I think an Asian woman. I'm like, you shouldn't have put that picture up there because someone is going to blow up your spot!
00:48:30
Like, that picture was a quick identifier show that picture to somebody else, like again! This is why your board and your VC should have like a pulse on you, because they're the ones who are also going to say you're going to market you're going to be in the Times, you're going to be in a big press article, and you're going to put a team picture. Why do we, why did Prada and Gucci and all these major labels get in trouble for putting some horrible picture or logo? Or something that was not politically correct on an item and that item went to market because the people in the room did not have an opportunity there wasn't people in the room to have an opportunity to say that that's not the right thing to do and they're not going to, that is not a politically correct symbol; so going back to it saying it's like looking around, do I have enough different voices?
00:49:22
Hire people that are opposite of you, hire people in every shape or form that are going to bring something to your table. It's the constant question of like, culture ad versus culture fit; no, we don't want fit. This is not. A cult, right? I don't want a bunch of people who can work together. I want a bunch of people who can work together. I want people who can add something to each other so we all grow. Right? And you can look at this. We can change that sentence a hundred ways to sound great. But all things should be adding right. All things should be growing um so you know if you're a new team and you're a new company and you're like I gotta hire, I gotta scale quick.
00:50:02
Let me go to my direct resources which is probably your school or your VC or Y Combinator, Techstars or whoever you know, have incubated through. But make sure when you're pulling from these audiences that you're just hitting different boxes don't just pick all men or all women make sure it's like it's a rotation okay we just hired a man gotta get a woman okay we just hired a woman gotta get somebody uh gender neutral whatever um just make sure it's a rotation simple no tech no tech needed just be a human my favorite answer to this is uh whenever i'm in a situation where i'm in a situation where i'm in a situation where
00:50:43
i'm asking like startups or even like companies that are already developed on the market uh by uh for example they have all the time director men or by uh the hierarchy looks really like uh the top Is the, uh, old bald white man and, uh, at the bottom there is a woman young so, and when I'm like then like challenging them or asking them a question they are usually telling me but Marie. This is not about gender or race or age; it's about competence. We really tried hard to find a woman, but we didn't, and uh, I'm usually like, uh, really like just speechless because uh, it's uh, then you are probably not looking uh enough if uh, it's about the competence, yeah, I mean there's a million people, billion people unemployed; like they're out there, you are just looking in the same place.
00:51:38
It's, it's the same problem with dating apps, you know. People are like, 'Oh, I didn't find anybody. You're looking in the same dating app right? You're looking for a husband, but you're on this site which doesn't necessarily promote marriage, um, you know it's like, change the place that you're looking so that you can have a different audience and a different uh candidate experience, yes, that's a really interesting um comparison. It just triggered in me right now that uh, uh also a bit interesting stuff about me, it's like I have a Bumble, I would like to use other dating apps but I'm blocked on Tinder so I would like to use others, but sometimes also the different uh different uh online Spaces don't allow you to go where you would like to, it was just a really funny story behind it.
00:52:26
But about this probably in some another episode and I have my last question would be about if you could give one piece of advice to a founder uh on uh on the on the brink of giving up what would it be so if somebody would for example uh want to if uh so if you would be able to give one piece of advice to a founder who would like to like give up right now like because they are burned out that they don't know like uh how to continue because it's overwhelming for them, the exact case that we discussed before, like that you are young founder who just Got a lot of resources, there is a lot of employees, everybody is coming your way, and you just want to shut down your computer, phone, and probably go to 9 to 5.
00:53:15
What would be one piece of advice uh uh to that founder from you? It's so unconventional like everyone's like expecting like the cheerleader moment here, like the 'put your own mask on first' and 'don't give up and don't quit on a bad day and all those clichés. I wish someone would have told me: it's okay to quit; it's okay to walk away from your own company; it's okay to restart because if you're pushing through your own company and in such an unhealthy and toxic manner. to the staff, to the company, to the team, and to the VCs and all the people, it's going to be disastrous for a long time. Sometimes quitting, pausing like could have been like a better, quicker scenario. And like not that you can uh you know come back from burnout in like two seconds.
00:54:08
It takes I'm now on year three of recovering from burnout and I still like feel sensitive about it, but it's okay to quit. I could have restarted my company faster and cheaper than paying those lawyers to continue in this hostile takeover that I was involved in had I walked away, I could have been far more successful and effective than Battling it and crying on the bathroom floor in the courtroom, and like losing seven pounds in a day because I was just so stressed out. It's okay to quit; it's okay sometimes we have to. You've got to save your own self. Now you know that you feel better, you go back at it, you can build it faster, better, more effective. You have a different perspective when you are constantly trying to tread water while something great can come through.
00:54:59
And I'm all for the people that persevered and you know I did it; I made it; I'm great for that. But there are sometimes like you just have to take a break and walk away, and it's okay; it's really revealing. What you just said is totally fine, it's your life, you can choose any time what you want to do uh as uh in your profession if you want to continue and uh continue to fight then go for it if uh you decided that this is not a debate then you can always uh also rethink your career I think that you are definitely a good person to have uh the podcast about the burning out uh because like how busy you are, it's really incredible so and that's a wrap up for today's episode of Create the Future now I hope you enjoyed the conversation and gained some valuable insights into the startup world, how to deal with the burnout, and even how to prevent.
00:56:01
yourself from having one as always we are here to help you navigate the evolving digital landscape and create an impactful future with technology if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me and i'll see you in the if you loved today episode don't forget to subscribe leave us a review and share it with others who are also excited about innovation or even the startup world you can also follow innovatology on social media for more updates tips and behind the scenes content my favorite is linkedin so definitely get in touch with us either with me or also elizabeth is on linkedin so if you would like To have some consultation with her about your startup or how to manage, for example, uh different, uh different well-being applications, etc she's the person to, uh, get an advice from. Thank you again to Elizabeth for joining us today and sharing your expertise, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. I will be really excited to again see you next time. Thank you, thank you.
