Ep 6: In conversation with Ally Fekaki

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Welcome to the All Is Wellness Podcast with me, Emma Naylor. Join us in open and honest conversations with wellness professionals and industry experts. Welcome back to the All Is Wellness Podcast. This week's guest is my wonderful friend, Ali Fikeacki. Ali is the founder of Juno, which is a new one of a kind employee wellbeing and benefits business that aims to give employees power and control over their own happiness at work. After a stint as a photographer and a string of startup jobs, Ali founded Juno in January 2019. Since then, he has grown Juno to over 28 countries worldwide, working with over 50 businesses to help their employees thrive in times like these.

Ali and I met around 13 years ago as we were both at school in the same area. However, we lost contact when we went to university. I recently reached back out to Ali around two years ago when I saw that he had created Juno and wanted to hear more about it. Ali, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast this week and I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about why you started Juno and how your story inspired you.

Thanks, Emma. Thanks for having me. Was it really 13 years ago?

Yeah, I was actually calculating it. It made me feel really old when I actually calculated it earlier today.

Okay, so. So, yeah, so thanks for having me and it's great to see what you're doing. I love the podcast. Thank you. So the reason why I started Juno is I've always felt like, you know, our experience at work has always been a quite fascinating thing to me. And I remember sort of leaving university and seeing all my friends, you know, and myself moving into the world of work and realizing how, you know, painful it can be sometimes people, you know, people complaining about stress, anxiety, burnout, but also, you know, culture at work. I think my personal experience was that businesses really, they wanted to do more. A lot of the businesses that I worked at, especially sort of the more progressive businesses, they really wanted to provide a level of care that was, you know, inclusive. They wanted to make sure that people were happy at work. They wanted to make sure that they were providing, you know, well being solutions, let's call them. The problem is that they were just like woefully underutilized. People kind of didn't really know what was on offer. It was a bit scattergun. It might be a bit. Yeah, A lot of it was about like coupons and discounts and free coffee at Cafe Nero. And like, I just thought, well, why, you know, that's not, first of all, that's not good enough. Like you know, we need to have something that can tailor and cater to all sorts of people, all sorts of ways of life, all sorts of, you know, circumstances, and not just appeal to, like, the yoga bunnies and stuff like that. So I set about kind of figuring out what it is that people needed and valued. And what I learned was that they needed and valued, like choice. And they needed and valued having power to kind of define what well being meant to them. And so for, you know, for young mums that might be getting childcare, for, you know, lonely, you know, singletons who are living at home and living alone in isolation, working from home, you know, it might be connecting with others. For people that are stressed out, it might be therapy on demand or whatever it might be. So we kind of connect all of those great providers directly to employees, and we allow them to kind of pick and choose what it is that matters to them. And then they get an allowance from their company every month to spend on Juno, which means that the company also has a massive peace of mind because all they have to do is pay a monthly subscription and that goes directly to the staff. And then I have to worry about providing everything that they could possibly need to provide to their staff.

Yeah, fine. Okay. I mean, it's so interesting to hear you talking about, you know, starting a job and kind of going into the working world. I think everyone, after they kind of leave university, they sort of have this path for themselves and they think that, you know, it's going to be a certain way. And I think when we actually go into the workplace, we start realizing how stressful it is, how little time we have. You know, these burnouts are really real. What do you think inspired you from your own journey to start something like Juno? Did you experience burnout? Did you experience stress?

Yeah, yeah, I did. So, I mean, look, if we zoom out all the way, I think that we have to really look at our system. I think coronavirus has really kind of shown that the system that we live in, I mean, I guess it wasn't just coronavirus on its own, but coronavirus has really kind of helped us realize that the system that we live in isn't really geared towards our humanity. You know, it's designed in a way that doesn't really give space for people's, you know, well, being mentally or physically quite often. And, you know, that's something that we have to change. I'm not going to sit here and say that I can change that. That's something that we all have to work towards changing and is a Bigger challenge. But in my specific example, the way I start is starting by work. And yeah, I did. You know, working in high intensity startups can be very rewarding, but also takes a lot out of you. And I think that there have been a number of times where I've been in organizations where, you know, I'm unbelievably under a lot of press pressure and stressed out and tired and because you put so much of yourself into these businesses that you, you know, there's not sometimes not very much left for you. So I remember having worked at a company, a really great, awesome company with a really great, awesome culture and a really amazing team, but it was a small company which meant that, you know, it was early on as well. I remember a lot, having a lot of responsibility and, you know, going through a potentially bad period for the business. You know, we weren't growing as much as we could have and it was all my responsibility. And I remember feeling super, super overwhelmed not just by that, but also by a lot of the stuff that was going on in my personal life. So I remember thinking, gosh, if I could really get like a lot of my personal life stuff sorted and organized, that would make my work life much better. And I probably feel a lot better about being productive and sort of rescuing the situation and feeling less stressed. So yeah, it was a personal experience.

Okay. And you kind of briefly touched on Covid. I know you said obviously there's been issues with mental health and the mental health system far before COVID was around, but how do you think Covid has had an effect, an impact on people's mental health over kind of the last year?

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think a pretty, pretty strong one. So they're like, I could go on about this for an hour and a half, but I'll try and keep it brief and be a bit concise. So first of all, you know, I touched on it earlier. I think the big problem that we have is that we don't have a system that's designed for life. It's designed for, you know, everyone knows that we have, you know, massive wealth inequality. We have, you know, serious power imbalance in our society. So, you know, from, from an economic and a societal perspective, there's a lot of work to be done. And so what Coronavirus has really highlighted is that, you know, our priorities potentially aren't necessarily in the right place. And on top of that, that, you know, what we deem as essential work has, has really been highlighted as something that we might not have considered prior. So there's that then the other thing is like, just from a very logistical perspective, you know, we've been confronted with the idea of, you know, as social people, as social animals, as people whose, you know, we, the way we kind of interact with each other is in person to kind of lose. That has been, you know, obviously epic in terms of its proportion. And I think that the shockwaves of will probably be felt for, for a walk for a while. And the way I kind of, you know, deem it is that the summer will be great, but I still think there'll be an underlying, you know, somewhere in the uk, especially when it reopens, when everyone can sort of see each other again and kind of reunite. But I still think there'll be very much an undercurrent that we really need to work on, which is that, you know, this isolation, especially for young people who so, so, so desperately, you know, rely on those connections, you know, it will have a, unfortunately, probably a long, a long standing effect on, on our mental health. But that being said, I think on top of that, you know, not to make it completely negative and really kind of depressing, I would argue that there's, there's some positive things to come out of it. So, you know, first and foremost, I think we've fast forwarded sort of about 10 years of workplace evolution in the space of a year. So we all knew that working from home was probably not a bad thing. And we, we all knew that flexibility in the workplace is something that was eventually what was going to come about, but it was just slow and it was. Unfortunately, the tastemakers were the senior leadership of large corporations that weren't necessarily motivated in the same way that everybody else is. And as a result that evolution, and as a result of COVID that evolution has been forced upon us and we've been able to actually really confront the idea that remote work and flexibility and autonomy economy is actually not a bad thing for business at all. And on top of that, you know, the amount of people that come to me and say, you know what? You know, as much as I hate being stuck at home, it's, it's so much better because I actually do get to spend time with my family. I don't have to travel so much, it's easier. I'm, I'm less genuinely actually less stressed. So, you know, there are a ton of positive things to come out of it. But I also think, you know, being, being someone who, you know, thinks about this 24 7, I think that there are some, you know, some pitfalls and worries that concern me. The kind of bubbling under the surface, you know, from, you know, the isolation as well as from a workplace perspective. I really hope that, you know, we can really take this into the future and think, okay, well, look, you know, I've seen like, Goldman Sachs say, we're gonna. We're gonna work from her. We're gonna. Sorry, work from the office for good. And. And that's that. But I really hope that we can look at this this last couple years, or this last year specifically with COVID and think, okay, well, actually, the world has changed and it's changed forever. We can deny it all we want, but actually we. We just have to, you know, adapt to the new world. And. And I hope that that means that that will give people more space to be human and make it less about the company and more about, you know, more about the. The individual.

No, absolutely. And I think what, what you just said then, about having space to be more human, I think that a lot of people have really realized that they spent. You know, we were talking previously before this podcast about, you know, people commuting. People spend an hour, hour and a half, you know, each way commuting up to three hours a day kind of commuting into town. And I think that having that time back, you know, not just kind of dead time of sitting on the tube, but actually having that time back and being able to work out, being able to read, spend time with our families, walk our animals, I think that's going to be a really, really hard thing for people who haven't been commuting to kind of get used to that again. You know, I know that having worked at home for nearly the last year, I've loved being here because it's given me that time. You know, when it gets to sort of the evening, afternoon, I think I could carry on doing a little bit more work. But I know that even if I finish slightly later, I still have the time to do the things that I want to do. You know, the side projects, the hobbies. And I think that unfortunately there will be companies, like you said, maybe some of the larger banks who are just going to go, no business as usual. Let's get back to the office. However, I think that a lot of startup companies, I think a lot of really kind of progressive businesses are going to go actually, we can see flexible working as a massive, massive benefit in order to kind of attract the best talent. So I'm hoping that everything that's happened over the last year, we don't kind of forget and we're actually able to kind of use that to our best advantage and that businesses who are forward thinking are going to be able to sort of hire the best candidates for the role, regardless of whether they can come in five days a week or.

If they, well, on top of that, like, you know, the banks can, that can, can say what they want and that's completely their prerogative. And you know what, you know, I respect that because that company can say, look, this is how we're doing it and these are the kinds of candidates that, that will apply and you know, end of story. But that being said, I think that we also have to really pay attention to the fact that we have to, you know, every business has to adapt to the market from a, from a candidate perspective. If people want to, you know, if, if people want to acquire the best talent, you know, make sure that their business is kind of forward thinking and, and, and bringing on, you know, the, the top talent, they're gonna have to adapt to the market needs. You know, if the market is, is asking for, you know, if a candidate is asking to, to work remotely or even if the best, you know, talent is, you know, whether that's in, in different countries or continents, you know, it's up to you to decide what's best for your company. But it kind of makes more sense if a business is open to, to the way. To being, you know, to being more. To more. Being more international, being more.

Yeah, no, and I, I think something I've seen quite a lot and it would be great to kind of hear your opinion on this is I think a lot of people during this pandemic, you know, over the last year have either started their own companies or have realized that they want to kind of do things on the side. Do you think that obviously there's been so many catastrophic and awful things that have happened during this pandemic, but do you think that we're going to kind of see a boom of new businesses and people kind of wanting to work for themselves after this pandemic is over?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a hangover from the furlough, you know, for a lot of people. Furloughs and redundancies, you know, frankly, made people think, well, great. I just, you know, given my time, my life or my, you know, a few years of my life at least to this company. And look, you know, just in the space of a couple of weeks, I've been, you know, made redundant or been furloughed. And look, this is no knock or judge on. On the business themselves, you know, business. As a business owner, I know how difficult it is to make those decisions. But, you know, in. In. In sort of equal. Equal measure, I think the people that have been on the receiving end, through no fault of the business, have realized, you know, oh, wow, okay, well, I am actually not in control of our. Yeah, I'm not in control of the destiny of. Of our business. And I'm not able to really kind of, you know, take control of. Of. Of the. The destiny of the path of my life, which is to say, like, if I was working for, you know, a bank or if I was working for a consultancy or if I was working for a company and they told me that I was made redundant or I was being furloughed, I think, you know, that that's quite a traumatic. It can be quite a traumatic experience. And as a result, you kind of ask yourself, okay, well, what is it that I'm doing here? You know, if it's. If my life has become. Or do I really want to put my life in the hands of an employer that will kind of cast me asunder when things get tough? And obviously, through no fault of their own, the business has to do what they have to do. And so starting your own business is not necessarily the most certain route, but it definitely gives the person signed the business more control. I suppose if you fail, you fail on your own terms. But on the. On the sort of. The flip side of that is potentially a lot of people deciding that actually a corporate lifestyle is not for them. There is a lot of excitement and a lot of allure to starting your own business. As a business owner, I can say that a lot of it is nonsense. You know, it is not fun. You do it because. You do it because it's. It's, you know, in my case at least, you know, first of all, it was an idea that had me. I didn't have the idea. You know, it felt very much as though I needed to, you know, to. To do it because I thought of the idea and I could see how I could build it. And I had a very strong vision. And as a result, I felt like, you know, I had to just. It was a duty almost, you know. So as a result, I think, yeah, you know, there is a lot of sexiness when it comes to starting your own career. You know, it's a way that people can kind of cope with the, I don't know, let's call it trauma of, you know, you know, being made redundant or being made, you know, furloughed. I think that's their way of saying, essentially I'm gonna take control of my life and you know, it'll be really fun because I'll build my own business. That was a very long way of saying like yes, yes to your answer. Yes.

You kind of touched on it briefly. Obviously you think, you know, you've mentioned that. I think a lot of people, when they say I want to start my own business, you know, they think of it's a very, you know, sexy thing to do. It's very fun, it's exciting, it's freedom. But I think that, you know, as you mentioned, I think having employee well being and employee benefits, you know, going to work for yourself, you don't have any of that, you know, you don't have anyone to kind of check in with. You don't have anyone who's able to kind of support you and you don't get any benefits. So how do you think people, you know, who are A, for people who are thinking about starting their own business and B, for people who are working in companies where that they don't have the benefits like that, how do you think people moving forward can sort of look after their mental health when things go back to normal?

Question. I mean, in terms of from an individual perspective, I suppose we have to really kind of define our own boundaries. I remember someone speaking to me and saying, yeah, you know, we'll see what they, you know, we'll see what the company decides. When I asked her what she, you know, what her plan was about going back to work, meaning her employer. And I was thinking about that and I kind of couldn't stop thinking about that. And I was like, actually what she, what I wanted to hear or what, what would be better to hear I suppose is I'm going to tell my employer that this is what, you know, this is what I'm doing. Now, obviously it's not easy to do that and I'm kind of being extremely, you know, bold here by saying that. And I'm sure a lot of people are like, get real. I can't go up to my CEO or my head of HR and say, I am going to work like this and this is how you can deal with it. But actually, you know, I, I think that people should, you know, we should as a collective be okay with, with, with basically, you know, putting boundaries in place and saying I'm, this is how, this is how I would like to work and realizing that actually that that will probably be respected. And if it's not respected. There will be plenty of companies that you could work for that will respect that. And then in terms of the business themselves, you know, look, obviously I'm going to say this, but, and it's no surprise there, but I really strongly feel as though it's all about flexibility and it's all about autonomy. Um, it's, it's, you know, we're living in a world now where we're a very individualized society. You know, throughout every strata of our world, it's about us and what we want and there are pitfalls and there are benefits to that. But one of the things to bear in mind is like, you know, being able to give people the power to choose how they work, what benefits they get, how they look after themselves.

Yeah.

Whilst also giving them a collective umbrella under which they can feel empowered. Like, you know, a team, you know, a team of people. A company will thrive if, you know, if we can, you know, come together and, and build something together, but equally have the boundaries in place and the power to kind of say, well, look, I'm actually going to work from home or I'm going to leave at 3 or I'm going to start work at this time, or I'm going to work four days a week and have, you know, a respectful relationship between the two things so that we can kind of strike a balance.

No, no, I completely agree and I think that as you mentioned, I think autonomy is so important and actually trusting your employees because unfortunately I think there is a, you know, I think something that employers really struggled with was are people going to work as hard at home as they do in the office? And you know, my view in previous companies that I've worked at and have seen suggested working from home is you either trust your employees or you don't trust them. And you know, I think in, in jobs like sales and target driven roles, it's much easier to say to someone, look, I can see you're putting in the hours, you know, when it's not such a target driven role, of course, it's a little bit harder to manage. But I think fundamentally it comes down to A, what works best for the employee. Because at the end of the day, if you have happy employees, they're going to want to work well. And B, does the company fundamentally trust what their employees are doing at home? And if you can't trust your employees and they shouldn't be having access to kind of your, you know, your data, you shouldn't have access to the company information and quite frankly, they're not going to be the person that's driving the company forward if you kind of feel like you have to micromanage. So I think that this whole sort of going back to normal, as we said before, I think it's going to completely, completely change. It's just sort of. To what, to what level is that going to change? And also, how are companies after this pandemic actually going to realize people don't want to just work from home because they like working from home. People want to work from home for either health reasons, physical or mental health. They want to be around their family, they want to do dog walks, or quite frankly, they just want to have an hour longer in bed to make sure that they're more productive while they're working. So I think it's going to be really interesting to kind of see what the new normal is going to look like. You know, as a business owner in kind of the well being space. What would you, what would you like to see as the new normal in workplace?

Oh God, so many things. This is like, do you have four hours? So I'll keep it brief. I'm not very good at keeping things brief, but I'll try and keep it brief. So obviously, autonomy and flexibility. Let's give people their peopleness back. Yeah, okay. It's. I hated the, the feeling of, of a company being the parent and all the employees being the children. Like here, you know, have these crap benefits that no one uses here. You know, we're going to let you take, you know, an hour off work on a Friday, you know, in the summer. It's like, no, companies should not be prescribing anything. They should give people the, the framework. They should give people the, the culture, the mission, buy and buy, you know, and really kind of keep repeating their culture and their vision and their mission and being progressive and having a psychologically safe place to work. But I don't, you know, I don't envisage, or at least I wouldn't want to envisage a world where companies kind of take on this paternal role where they kind of, or maternal role where they kind of just prescribe everything to their company and say, staff and say, right, these are your benefits, these are our hours. Because actually, frankly, you know, that's just, you know, in the larger scheme, I really want this to be a world where we treat people, you know, to, to with it, with respect. We treat people with, with equal respect and we don't kind of patronize or condescend and give people, you know, the chance to Just say, I'm doing this, this is how I'm going to work. And thanks. You know, the other thing is. Yeah, I can see that. You know, you make a good point earlier. You made a good point earlier, which was around, you know, letting people decide or at least give putting their boundaries down and not kind of, you know, letting companies. What's the word, like overbear on. On other people. I think that that's something that kind of ties into it and that. That that's cornerstone of why envisage equally. I think smaller businesses will. Will want to start thinking more about having a more structured culture thing in place. Because a lot of small businesses that I speak to go, well, we don't really need to do anything from an HR and culture perspective because, like, we're such a small team that we are the culture. And I think that that's something that even us at Juno at the early stages felt. And I think that I've experienced that. But that's just subjective. I think that then small companies need to bear in mind that having a structure in place, even if it's a little something, will really help because you might think, or half of you might think that you've got a great culture because you're so small and so, you know, such great friends or whatever, but actually that might not be shared by everybody else. And then I think, you know, hiring beyond borders will be something that I hope to see more of. Companies like Oyster hr, which is one of our clients, and Teamed Global, which is another one of our clients, they are, you know, pioneering in the sense that they're helping companies hire great talent from all sorts of different countries, which I think is really a beneficial thing for everybody. Not only globally does it mean that we're giving opportunities to people that we wouldn't have, you know, given otherwise, you know, people in perhaps developed developing countries or in places where they wouldn't have necessarily known about our businesses. But also, you know, is great because it means that we can start pioneering in the sense of building a really global community of employees. And I think, you know, we're not going to get it right first time. This is something that we choose. It came about because of, you know, a virus. So it will be a process and it will be something that we, you know, that we will iterate on and build on, and it will be something that we will improve and get better over time. But I think that ultimately, you know, it's kind of opening things up, being more open to sort of flexibility and trying new things and Being progressive is the way. That was such a long answer. I really waffle so much.

No, I think, no, I think, look, it's, look Ali, it's so clear how passionate you are about the well being and kind of benefit space. It's, you know, it's one of those things that I think as you mentioned before, it wasn't. You didn't think of this idea because you wanted to start a business. You thought of this idea kind of came to you and you knew you had a duty to execute on it. And I think it's so, it's so amazing to hear, you know, that people don't want the classic 9 to 5. They don't want to have, you know, the hour lunch break, the 20 days holiday, want to have autonomy. And I think that, I think as you said, you know, Covid has fast forwarded things so quickly and so rapidly to the point where I think there's a lot of companies out there that are probably quite scared about the change that has been enforced because lots of the big corporate companies, you know, a lot of startups, scale ups, every kind of business is so used to sort of making decisions based on what they want, whereas now the kind of decisions have been taken out of their hands. And I think that now that we've experienced this, you know, flexibility and we've experienced this autonomy, it's going to be very difficult to try and kind of get people to go back because people are going to go, hey, no, listen, I actually really liked it that way. I sort of want to keep it this way. So I guess it's going to be really, really interesting over the next kind of, you know, months, years, however long to kind of see what is the new normal and how existing big corporate companies adapt to that, but also how these new businesses are going to kind of pave the way with of the benefits that you kind of spoke about. So yeah, it's going to be a really, really interesting time I think just to sort of finish off. What would be your one piece of advice? Whether it's business advice, you know, well, being advice for anyone who's listening.

Oh God, that's quite a broad question. I'll just, I'll like kind of mold your question into what I want to say. So to businesses that want to learn more about how to keep. If a business asked me how do I keep everyone in my company happy, I would say don't bother, come and work with us and we will do all of that for you because you're never going to get it Right. It's no knock on you as a business. It's more that when you deal with the fact that there's so much complexity. You and I are quite similar in age, we're quite similar in background, we're quite similar in our interests. But equally, I would not know what would make you happy and I would not know what would make you feel well. And so as a result, you know, you deal with 100 person company or 20 person company, or even a five person company, that's enough complexity to make your job so much harder. So I would say if you're worrying about how do I keep my staff happy and what do I provide for my staff to make them happy, I would say don't bother, find a partner to do it. And obviously that partner is us. And then from a personal perspective, you know, if, if you are an employee and you are kind of wondering how you can navigate and, and kind of build a better, a better lifestyle for yourself at work, don't be afraid to, to put your foot down and put your boundaries down. Actually, I would, as you know, in my experience, and I know it takes courage, actually putting down your boundaries is actually something that really kind of earns a lot of respect. You know, don't be afraid to say, well, that's not how I'm gonna work. And then the third one is, to anyone who wants to start a business, just, just start. One of the things that I, I do get asked quite a lot now, even though I'm not like Jeff Bezos or anything, but I still get asked quite a lot by like people saying I want to start a business. And frankly like, they really get, they really get excited by, or some, some of them get excited by like the, the, the business plan part and like the, the idea stage. And the fact is, like, and you know me because you've been involved in the early stages of Juno, like you just have to start. So you just got to make sure that what you're building is actually needed and that you constantly validating your idea and constantly validating that you've got a community of people that are willing to engage with what you're doing and then try and build it in the cheapest way possible. Like so many people say things like, oh, yeah, well I would do it if only I had 50 to build the app. And then you think, no, you could literally use, you could literally create a free Instagram page to build your community of people that you're supposedly helping. So my advice is just, you know, do your due diligence make sure that there's people that will actually, you know, be involved and be engaged and you're actually solving a problem with. With what you're doing. But equally speaking, just start and do it in the cheapest way possible. Like, all of these things, like, if only I could afford it and if only I could do this. These are all just limiting, limiting thoughts and ways that you can basically convince yourself not to do something. I'm only saying that because I've done that and I finally kind of just plucked up the courage. There's never, you know, they always say you're never ready. Like, you know, when they say about kids and stuff like that, like, oh, you know, you'll be ready when you're ready. Actually, the truth is you're never ready. Like, you just have to throw yourself into the deep end and, you know, see if you can do it or not and not be too hard on yourself if you can't. Thankfully. Maybe that's me being like, survivorship bias and saying that. But equally like, you know, obviously my worst nightmare is for the company to not succeed. But equally speaking, you know, I have to tell myself that, you know what? You know, you give it your best shot. You're kind of. You kind of. You're meant to fail in a way. Like, the whole idea is that you. You learn something. Not to sound cheesy, but you learn something along the way. So I suppose, you know, that's. That's my advice. God, I'm so long winded today, it's crazy.

No, as I said before, I love how passionately you speak. And as I said, always say this, I could just literally talk to you for hours and hours, which you should take as a compliment because I don't like to talk to people for that long. But, Ali, thank you so much for being our guest this week on the All Is Wellness podcast. You can head over to Juno's Instagram, which is with Underscore Juno, to find out a little bit more about how you can work with the company and how you can get some amazing benefits for your business. Again, Ali, thank you so much, and I can't wait to see where Juno goes.

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