From NHS Doctor to Tech Startup Co-Founder: Dr Claire's inspiring journey

I've always been a very, very self motivated, you know, I graduated in the top 10% of my year at medical school. You know I'm an academic high flyer. Right?

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I'm not really feeling this, why can't I motivate myself? And that then led me to question the career choices I'd made. And ultimately I decided to leave that training program. I was three years into it, have a baby and become a gp. Yeah.

So while you're creating your content, you're trying to do NHS Clinical entrepreneur, you're exploring your options. Someone found your content online.

Yeah.

Not just everyone, not just someone in Cornwall or Bristol or London, someone wherever. But you found someone who is a software engineer, legit software engineer, working with Google, Google DeepMinds. I don't know anything about Google and all that, but basically she was founding a company and she reached out to you based on the content you put out online.

Yes.

And this is how you became a co founder. Yeah. So. But going out there and doing it, I think it's fantastic and it's been a great experience and I tend to think of it this way. You build something, you spend six months you invested in it. Dr. Claire Ashley, who started out, it's not possible to be the same person because you've expanded your mind, you're thinking about, you're talking about seed, proceed, venture, raising money and all that stuff is a bit beyond what we're taught in medical school.

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited too. Yes. Oh, great question. I, I don't know, but that, that doesn't mean that I'm not being strategic and I'm not being very, you know, everything is planned at the moment. So I've got maybe two or three months of, of not needing to worry too much about the money that's coming in.

So she went from being burnt out as a mental health tech company. How cool is that? Today on the Money Wise Doctor podcast, we are thrilled to welcome a remarkable guest whose journey from burnout to breakout would inspire you. After experiencing burnout from her NHS GP job, she began a new journey, co founding a mental health tech startup and partnering up with an ex Silicon Valley AI engineer to start something really special. Now tune in as she shares her wins, her losses, her blessings and her lessons. And there's a lot of invaluable insights along the way. Now, in case you're new to the channel and you're wondering what's going on, welcome to Money Wise Doctor podcast where we share valuable financial insights for doctors Dentists, nurses and healthcare professionals to help them thrive and take charge of their financial future. So if you're new here, dive in straight away, enjoy the video and don't forget to hit, hit that subscribe button. Alright then, let's go.

Yeah.

So, hello everyone, you're welcome back again to Money Wise Doctor. Today I've got someone really special in the house. It's usually most of the weeks it's me, me going on again and again droning on about how you need to take charge of your finances and giving you a lot of unsolicited financial advice there which you pretend is useful and go ahead, liking it. Today I've got someone who's got a different angle to things. She's going to share with us her experience. She's a medical doctor, a gp, fully trained GP with very good experience and background. But in addition to that, as you know, I usually bring people have got an interesting aspect to them. She's also been the CEO of a startup company, a software company that focused on therapy using AI. In addition to that, she's run several other things including being growing a brand online as a burnout gp. This is a subject which she has grown a lot of expertise and has a great following. So if you're ready for her, I'm ready to bring her on stage. I bring to you Dr. Claire Ashley.

Thank you, thank you so much for such a fantastic introduction. I think that's the best one I've ever had on a podcast.

In that case, let's make it a bit better. Now Claire, actually, as you can see, Claire is a gp. She's a gp. NHS gp, but she wears multiple hearts and I'm going to share some of that with you. I think you went to medical school in Bristol O2 to 08 so she's obviously got over 20 years of experience now in the medical field and I'll say over 15 as a GP. And while you were there, you got a BSc in neurosciences, which is fantastic and works nicely into what you're doing now with Burnout. In addition, you've also done a postgraduate diploma in public health, which obviously what you're doing is sort of like a public health education as well. And while you've been working as an NHS gp, you formed the company after going through your NHS clinical entrepreneurship training, you started their typical medical company. That's quite an interesting name. It seems you provide training and all that. And also much more recently you were the co founder of Bodychart, which is like an innovative way to use chat and AI to provide therapy at an affordable way. I suspect I've missed quite a few things, but I'm sure you're going to fill us in. Welcome, Claire.

Thank you. Yeah, that was a really lovely synopsis of my career so far, but I can, I can certainly talk you through some of the things that I've done and, and my experiences in a little bit more depth if that's something that you're, you would like me to do.

Tell me what I've list.

Yeah, I mean, you've got most of it, to be honest. I mean, I've had a very, very varied career actually. I, I not ended up where I thought I would be when I started medical school back in 2002, which is quite a long time ago now, longer than I care to remember. So I, I got into medical school and yeah, I went to medical school in Bristol and I intercalated in neuroscience. I loved doing neuroscience and I thought that everything that I learned in that year was absolutely fascinating and I had a brief kind of idea that I might become a psychiatrist. But actually what I really found that I loved during my training was anesthetics. I loved doing practical procedures and I loved intensive care. And so I graduated from medical school with a view to becoming an anesthetist. And that's what I did. I did, yeah, I did my foundation year training, I did ACCS anesthetics. But whilst I was doing that, I started to realize that, you know, at the time I was engaged, we were looking to settle down, I was thinking about having a family and I didn't really find that I was enjoying doing shift work in hospital. And I also found the emotional toll of working in intensive care in particular was quite, was quite difficult and I was struggling with it more than I thought I would have been, you know, than I anticipated. And I decided that I didn't want to carry on with anaesthetics. I basically started revising for the primary and I suddenly thought, oh my God, I don't, I find it, I found it very hard to sit down and to revise and I was like, I've never been in this position before. I've always been a very, very self motivated, you know, I graduated in the top 10% of my year at medical school. You know, I'm an academic high flyer, right?

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I'm not really feeling this. Why can't I motivate myself? And that then led me to question the career choices I'd made and ultimately I decided to leave that Training program. I was three years into it. Have a baby and become a gp. Yeah. So I decided to be a GP because, I mean, really, I wanted out of hospital, I wanted a better work life, balance. And there were lots of things about general practice that appealed to me, particularly the flexibility of general practice and having that control, that autonomy. But mostly I wanted my weekends back and I wanted to have a family life. And unfortunately, as we both know, general practice doesn't really offer that. It does offer flexibility, certainly, especially if you're lowcoming or if you've got a portfolio career, which is what I've created. But if you're a salary gp, if you're a partner, it's long days and it's like being on call every day you're in work, you know, in terms of the intensity of the workload, the complexity, the volume and the hours that you're doing as well. Yeah, Not. Not very compatible with, you know, with childcare, for instance. I've got two kids and, you know, the days were so long that I couldn't pick my kids up from school and things like that. And this mattered because my husband quite often works away. So I'm solo parent.

Yeah.

And then I qualified. I had a lovely training experience in Bristol. I qualified as a GP at the end of 2018 and then went immediately into a Health Inequalities fellowship, which. During which I did this public health qualification, which was really interesting. And I ended up working in a surgery where the patient demand was next level. And in fact, they had a. They were using a piece of software. And this isn't like. This is not a lie, by the way. I've seen the data. So the software is a piece of software that is used nationally now. And we were the practice, we were. We were an outlier. We were the practice with the highest patient demand in the entire country. And I know this because, yeah, the team came to our surgery and showed us the graphs and we had, by far and away, the highest patient demand in the country. And unfortunately, I then really started to struggle with managing the workload. This is something that had never been a problem. You know, I hadn't had any mental health problems during medical school, during my postgraduate training, all of this sort of stuff, but it took me six short months working in this surgery to completely unravel and I ended up having a mental health burnout crisis about six months after I started that job. And at the time, I didn't know what was happening to me. I had, you know, burnout had never been mentioned or Stress management for that matter. Never been mentioned during my time at medical school or in my postgraduate training. I didn't even know it was a name. I didn't know it was a. It had, it was a thing. And what happened after that was I. I've ended up going on a very kind of convoluted journey of first of all trying to make my work work for me so, you know, making sure that I'm working in a way that sustains my recovery and doesn't jeopardize it. Yeah.

So.

And I've ended up creating a very much a portfolio career and going on kind of. It's been more like a. It's a squiggly career basically. It's been an evolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. An evolution.

Use that word to describe my squiggly career.

Yes, definitely.

Very interesting. Like a varied career. I've gone from first of all being a medical doctor. You're an academic high flyer. You got a distinction in your, you got a distinction in your B.S. obviously you graduated top of your class and then you work on it. I didn't real. I didn't know you did that bit. I didn't know you worked in the hospital. You worked on anesthesia and then you ended up as a jp. But obviously he sort of like ended up in this practice and like many practices I've worked as a salary Jeep in the past before I went out to work for myself. Working as a Jeep can be quite demanding. Most people don't realize but, but you've gone up to do so many things and I see like a kind of like a trajectory where, or rather sort of a pattern where you start something, you think this is not working for me and you've got a self awareness to say, look, I'm not just going to hang in there and just continue to become an aesthetics consultant and then I'm going to moan about it and get stuck for the rest of my life. You are willing to sort of like switch roles and then do something else. And obviously at the point where you are, then you're managing different portfolio, which we've talked about in the past. Yeah. So that sounds interesting.

Yeah, I mean certainly interesting is a word you can definitely describe my, my career for sure. But basically, yeah, I mean the reason why it ended up being as squiggly as it was was survival. To be honest, I needed my career to work for me because it had so negatively impacted my mental health and mental well being. The thing about burnout is if you, if you hit a burnout crisis, it's an average of one to three years to recover. That's what the data tells us. But also you have to make really significant changes to how you work. And one of the problems with working in the NHS is that the pressures that cause people to burn out are universal and they are pervasive and they're not getting better. And what I kind of ended up doing, and it wasn't necessarily intentional, but I was trying to find ways of working that reduced my exposure to those particular stressors that had caused me to end up like this while still staying in clinical medicine as I could. And I basically tried a number of different things trying to make it work for me and including setting up businesses outside of the NHS as well and working for myself. And, you know, I've done some really interesting things as a result of that. You know, as a locum GP during the pandemic, I ended up working in a field hospital outside a hospital that had closed for two weeks because. Yeah, so it was literally like built outside the A E entrance because the hospital was completely closed and they needed GPS to run it. So I volunteered for it and it was, was super interesting. Yeah, I've done some out of hours gp, I've done in hours locum. I've worked as a tutor for medical students. You know, I've done a fair number of things, but really what kind of my passion was, I ended up talking about, you know, my burnout experience on social media, largely because I was really lonely, really isolated, very angry that it had happened to me. And I was like, I can't be the only person that this has happened to. And at that time five years ago, no one on social media was talking about how medicine can be stressful and how it can harm you. And so I got a lot of traction on social media based off the back of that. And the more traction I got, the more I needed to know about the subject. So I did a lot of additional reading. I did a really deep dive into the literature and really educated myself on the evidence base behind effective prevention and recovery of burnout. And I built a very strong presence and personal brand around this particular issue. And then I started to kind of think, you know, I wanted more than what clinical medicine was giving me. I wanted to really make a mark on the world. I wanted to take this huge problem of burnout and try to fix it. And so I created an evidence based burnout recovery program that I wanted. The vision was to take it to the NHS and to get it as a free Offering for staff. And as a result, yeah, as a result of creating that, I ended up on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Scheme. I joined that this time last year and I started the scheme, obviously, with this idea, this intention of taking my. What I'd created to the nhs. Yeah. But a couple of things happened very early on that made me kind of. That changed the direction of my career. So the first thing was I. I saw what some of the other entrepreneurs were doing. There's an amazing entrepreneur called Lou. She is a researcher who's created the most incredible AI device that can detect cardiovascular disease 10, 15 years before you get any symptoms. And I saw her pitch and my jaw was on the floor and I was like, oh, my God. I was like, I've come here with a PowerPoint presentation. I was like, oh. I was like, wow. I was like, I'm with the big boys now. I've got to. I've got to do better.

Look at the way I look at it. I think you've come to a. A gunfight in a knife.

Yeah.

The number of times that's happened to me.

Oh, my gosh.

Amazing. I think that was about the time we became friends on LinkedIn. I think you made a post about the NHS entrepreneur stuff. You went to London and I said, oh, yeah, it's too far from me, I live in C, I don't care about making trips. And then you said, I live in the west country also. Yeah. This from Bristol.

Yes, that's right.

Tell me more about nhs, your experience going to the nhs. Entrepreneurship.

Yeah, yeah. So that was the first thing that happened to me. I was like, my God, I've got to, like, like, really think outside the box here and think bigger than what I had already created. And then the second thing was, I went to the first event, which was held in London. Yes. I went all the way from Bristol.

Yeah.

And it was. The room was full. I mean, there 100 plus people in the room. The energy was incredible. And I just had this moment where I was sat there and I thought, this is the biggest opportunity I've had in my career, hands down. And it has come at exactly the right time. Like, I was recovered enough to make the most of it. And I just made a promise on that first day. I was like, if I don't push myself, I will. Will regret it forever. And so I made myself do a couple of scary things on that day. I asked a question of one of the speakers, which doesn't sound scary, actually, but I was shaking, I was so nervous and I couldn't write down the answer to the question because my hands were shaking so much.

Do you remember the question?

Yes, I think I asked. So this is. This was an investor who, who works a lot with the government and runs like the Barclays Eagle Labs program. So they help entrepreneurs and it's all government funded and all this. He was, he was talking about the Lean startup and having a startup, basically. And I. The question I asked was, how do you build the right team and what skills do you need? And then there are three. There are three types of people that you need in your startup to make it a success, basically, with different skill sets and there are different names for them. So one of them is like the hipster. There are two other names as well. I can't remember the answer, but I remember the question, probably because I was shaking too much to write the answer.

I think what matters. Remembering the question you asked is cool. Remembering the answer is also great. But what matters is that you actually ask the question. Because sometimes doesn't really matter whether whatever it is you ask about, but actually having that courage to really stand out in a room, especially as doctors, we are taught to just sort of like, just go ahead, you know, there's no need to stand out. You don't want to be. Yeah, that's an interesting journey.

Yes. And I did. I did another thing as well. I went up to the professor that heads the program and had a chat with him as well. And I came away feeling that I'd. Yeah, that it was a real confidence boost, basically. You know, I was like, I've done something really scary today. And I. And it felt good. And I was like, I want a bit more of this. I like how this feels. Especially after such a long period of, you know, going through. I was severely depressed at the height of my burnout. Yep. I didn't feel joy or motivation for a long time. Even though I'm still working during this. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't take any time off, actually, which was a mistake. And it, it took a very, very long time for me to get back to. To feeling well emotionally. And my confidence was the very last thing to come back. And this thing accelerated that. And then off the back of it because I was like, right, I've got to make the most of this opportunity. You know, I, I can't. I can't just sit here and do and. And be. And be small.

I have to think, yeah, beyond your PowerPoint. Something a bit more.

Yes, beyond the PowerPoint. Um, and so I was talking. I Knew I wanted to be in the mental health space and I wanted to be an advocate for other people that, that were experiencing the sort of problem that I had. And off the back of me being very loud and noisy about this, primarily on social media, I was approached by the person that went on to become my co founder. So she was Formerly of Google DeepMind, she was a research scientist. Her background was generative AI, large language models, and she was creating something that. So she. Basically the aim of what she was creating was to make talking therapies more accessible using this very deep and personalized model of AI that she had created.

I'm going to jump in there, Claire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you've mentioned it a bit casually. I didn't want the listeners to miss this bit. So basically you were creating content about burnout based on your experience. You've made some really amazing videos and I know one of them hits over a million, obviously after I started your Bobby Chat. So while you're creating your content, you're trying to do NHS clinical entrepreneur. You exploited your options. Someone found your content online. Yeah, not just every, not just someone in Cornwall or Bristol or London, someone wherever, but you found someone who is a software engineer, legit software engineer, working with Google, Google DeepMinds. I don't know anything about Google and all that, but basically she was founding a company and she reached out to you based on the content you put out online.

Yes.

And this is how you became a co founder, correct?

Yeah, that's exactly.

Tell me a bit about that meeting. That sounds really interesting. I didn't want, I didn't want this enough to miss that beat because you've made it very humble and very, very, very casual. Tell me, I want to know a bit about that meeting because basically you're approached by a startup founder basically to ask for your ideas and then that's how you go on the team.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. So she, I think she sent me a message on LinkedIn, she found my Facebook group and then she messaged me on LinkedIn asking for some advice, basically. And I was really intrigued by the message that she sent me about what she was in, what she was creating. And we started having this call and she was asking me a few questions about burnout and she, she was very keen to create a product at that time focused on prevention of burnout, basically and stress management. And about halfway through this call I had this realization that, that what we would, what we were planning to do, you know, I was looking for a tech solution to burn out at this point. And I suddenly was like, she's one. I was like, I have to work with her. And I thought that what we could do together could be incredible. And about halfway through the call I just said to her, are you looking for a co founder? Because I'd like to be it. Which, you know, Andy, honestly is really not my character. But I just was like, I've got to go for it. I was taking that, that, you know, that, that thing that I've had from the nhs. Yes. That boldness and going. Don't ask, you don't get. I think she's a little bit taken. Yeah, she's a bit like. I wasn't expecting that but actually she was, she was open to it. She was looking for a co founder. She'd already spoken to a few other people and hadn't really clicked or got on with them or they weren't aligned with the missions and the values of the, of the company. And so we worked on a few projects together. We, we started kind of building out the mvp, the minimum viable product a little bit more and we worked well together and we did then agree to go on and co found, which was really cool and not, not what I was expecting, but I really recognized it as a unique opportunity. You know, I'm not technical and so most startups are technical, particularly when it comes to getting investment and all of this sort of stuff. You know, that's not something I can offer with the skill set I have.

So I see. Yeah, you're not technically as in you don't write code and all that, but you've got some technical expertise, you're an expert in the burnout area. Just like for instance, moneywisedoctor.com I started it based on my own experience of investing and financial. I didn't have to go to become an accountant or anything like that, but based on practical experience. That's part of why I resonated. So you are an expert in burnout yourself because you've experienced it, you've written a lot about it. I didn't even realize there were stages of burnout. And I've been to medical school, I've worked in psych and all. I didn't realize. So while we say this thing and doctors, most times we think, well, we can't write code, we might not be able to raise money. But leveraging on your brand, your technical expertise at that point was that this is subject. You understood, you build a brand along that line. If someone were to ask me about a bonnet GP I knew it was Claire Ashley and that in itself is a technical expertise. But I understand your point about not being able to write code or go to Silicon Valley to raise money, but we clearly had a lot to offer to that.

Yes. And actually the. Our team was really good because she brought all of her technical knowledge, which actually is. Was very, very niche and expert. You know, very few people can do what. She can do it globally. But also, I guess from my personal branding point of view, my niche and my expertise, again, there's not many people that do it and have the level of experience and knowledge that I have. So we were very unique team and we had a lot of strengths. So, yeah, that's. That's how it all started.

That's amazing. You know, sometimes I tend to put out content online and someone sent me a message, someone who had worked with me on my team in the past and said, you might need to start selling something or people might think you're an ngo, a charity that following. And I thought about it, I thought, well, I put out content not for small bucket opportunities where I can sell a course to be nice, if. If I were to get like a co founder, someone who was building out software in terms of financial software that people could use. So what you described to me is like a dream scenario where you get someone who you can actually go for something big, you know, and in. I tend to think about it as a big swing. If it works out, it's going to be fantastic. If it doesn't work out, you're going to have a great story. Either way is a fantastic experience and I'm quite impressed at how it started off. First by come you come up on your burnout experience, then you go to this event where there's a lot of bright people obviously in the room. You feel, well, I've come with a PowerPoint presentation when people are coming with software, but that's not going to stop me. I'm going to ask a question and then I'm going to talk to whoever I think that was. Is that Tony? Is that his name? Tony who was.

Yeah, it was Tony with an I. Is a woman, Antonio.

Yeah, yeah. Not Tony Creswell, your co founder. I meant Professor Young.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Tony Young. Yep, that's right.

Yeah, yeah. So that was quite like a big, bold step leading to another big, bold step and you saw an opportunity, you went for it. You were like thinking, oh, I'm just going to. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to work in this startup. Because you haven't worked in startup world before. That was your first time?

Yes. Yeah.

Excellent. So what was it like working in this startup? Obviously startup is crazy. How do you make it work with your job? Did you have to quit your job? What did you have to do for money? How did you read any financing? What are some of the crazy experiences or things you felt like you never knew about startups? You thought it was glamorous. I'm sure.

Not glamorous at all. Yeah. So there's two questions there, isn't it? The first one is about the company and how that was run and how we funded that. And then the second one is about how I funded it on a personal level, isn't it? Yeah, let's talk about how. Let's do the company first and then I'll talk about how we did it personally. So we, the process was we started doing a few little projects together and building out the mvp. And then because we were having conversations with investors and because there were a couple where we came very, very close to getting investment, we had to formalize the arrangement. And so we, we did all of that paperwork and then.

Table. And all of that.

Table. Yeah, exactly. And all of the legal stuff, which honestly like thing about being a co founder is that you, you have to be, you have to be able to get stuck into every aspect of the business, particularly when there's only two of you. So you have to do everything right from product development, customer validation, getting your product market fit, doing the go to market strategy. You also have to do accounting, legals, all of the boring stuff that you don't want to do, you have to do it. Yeah. And there aren't enough hours in the day to do all of it. But the way that we, generally speaking we ran it was we very much took the principles of the Lean Startup, which is a, which is a book and a methodology about setting up a startup business where you go through this cycle where you basically build a little bit, get customer feedback, validate it, make improvements, then you go back and you get the feedback, make improvements. Exactly, yeah. Until you get that product market fit and you move quickly. So we moved very fast, very much had that kind of Silicon Valley tech startup vibe where everything had. Yeah. Where everything had to be at a pace and decisions were made very quickly. And so I mean the bit that I enjoyed the most was building out the product. So the way that it worked was we'd role play scenarios or skills that we wanted to teach people using the AI. And then Tony would Go away. And she'd do some coding, bring it back, and then we'd go through it again and troubleshoot it and then she'd go back, do a bit more coding, then we troubleshoot and that was, that was really good fun. I really enjoyed applying my clinical skills and my lived experience in that way.

Exactly. That was where your technical expertise comes in. Because there are some nuances that are not going to be obvious. Someone writing code. Yeah.

And the other big responsibility I had, that actually was my sole responsibility really because I couldn't do the coding, was building, you know, taking, you know, building an audience and getting testers on board. Building strategic relationships. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like having conversations with potential collaborators, partners, all of that sort of stuff. And actually I really enjoyed that and I was very, very good and very successful at building the brand and getting people to the app. Now the way that this was funded was unfortunately we were not successful at getting pre seed funding. So we were trying to raise, yeah, we were trying to raise a pre seed seed round and there were several reasons why we were not successful. The primary one being that the market is bleak right now and starts to jump in.

How much are you trying to raise?

Well, we started off asking for 1.5 to 2 million. And then as we ended up having conversations with investors, that amount got less and less because we realized that the market was very, very difficult, very tight.

I'll confess to something great. So while, while this was starting up, I sent a message to, to you and I sent a message to your co founder and I was thinking in my mind because I've done a bit of startup like little part of investing. Most of my investment has been in stock market companies have been established. I, I'm only a fundamental investor where I look at numbers and I look at your traffic, I look at any. So, but I sometimes do prospective startup investment and I thought this might be a good company to invest in, but I don't think I have enough, deep enough pockets. I'm sure they're probably getting funded. I, I felt in my mind that you're probably being rushed off your feet with funding, people trying to give you money. And this is the problem with a startup. Right when you're starting out, you're thinking, people looking at you think, well, you've got all you need and you have to tell that story like you're building something successful, but at the same time you need all the help you, you, you can get. You need the funding, you need the collaborators, you need servers, you need software, you need engineers. And all that, but a lot of times you're working with very limited resources. So 1.5 million, that doesn't seem like a crazy amount. I can't remember what Uber, Uber's precede round. Uber and Facebook, I know they had a precede round. I wasn't that mad. Some of them were raising about 250 or there. But you probably know this thing better than me.

Yes, I, I did. I did personally feel it was too much of an Ask the 1.5. 1.5. But having come from Google, DeepMind, my co founder was very confident that we would be able to raise that, that level of funding. But it became very apparent quite quickly that that was not going to be possible. We.

Can I just ask a question again? Just because I'm interested in startups and every now and then when, when you're trying to raise 1.5 million, how much of the company were you going to give away for 1.5 million?

Well, we didn't get to that point unfortunately. I mean I think for pre seed you would normally aim at around kind of 10%, that's my understanding anyway.

But you're going to raise more rounds and you're going to raise the seed, you're going to raise your venture at some point.

Exactly.

It's quite difficult to raise money. I think it's because of the environment, isn't it? The current environment where the people are holding their post strings, they are a bit more tighter. If it was during any other time when everyone was building out everything and investors were throwing money at startups, I suspect you might have been able to raise the money.

Yeah, I mean it's difficult. I mean I can look back and I can see where we made mistakes. You know, we were able to get some angel investments so we had three angels on board, which was really great, but we weren't able to get the bigger rounds. And unfortunately because the company was a tech company, the expenses were high and we needed expensive people to help us build up this product and to. And we, we just couldn't afford it and we, we eventually unfortunately got to the end of 2023 and decided to call it a day at that point because we weren't able to bootstrap it. So bootstrapping is, you know, obviously when you, you build it organically. Yeah, but we, the company wasn't set up to, to be able to do that unfortunately. So yeah, it was, it was a sad decision and obviously been on like this wild ride of building something very quickly and being wholly invested in it from an emotional point of view, not just, you know, from a financial point of view, but the passion that we had in the mission. I absolutely 100 bought into it and I cared a lot. So it was, it was definitely hard when it, you know, when we made the decision to start to stop it, but it was the right decision.

I was very sad. I was very sad when you sort of like mentioned that you had to stop it and when you posted online. But I'm sure you guys made the right decisions. But I feel like I really admire what you've done and what you've done as a, as a team, because it's easy to sit on the couch and talk about this thing. But from my experience building anything at all, most people underestimate the amount of sacrifice, price and investment you have to put into it. And there's something you haven't mentioned. I know you, you mentioned the financing of the company, you were successful, the products you were building, people wanted it. You made videos that it's millions. But the thing is that you needed money to scale, which is part of what most times, most people don't realize. When you're building stuff, the money is just as important because as you're scaling, you're needing more money. You're needing more money for servers, you needed more money for software engineering. At some point, they're going to need people to deal with customer care and all that. So you get to the point where you either get bought or you get like venture, or you can take secondaries to take money off the table, or you get to the point where sometimes people go public. Yeah. So. But going out there and doing it, I think it's fantastic and it's been a great experience. And I tend to think of it this way. You've built something, you spent six months, you invested in it. The Dr. Claire Ashley who started out, it's not possible to be the same person because you've expanded your mind. You're thinking about, you're talking about seed, proceed, venture, raising money and all that stuff is a bit beyond what we're taught in medical school, I think.

Yeah, I agree very much. It was a, it was an entirely different world to anything that I had ever been exposed to previously. And it's a very steep learning curve because when you're in it, you just have to get on with it and learn as you go. I think with medics, and I'm sure you've experienced this yourself, is the way that we learn is that, you know, you study something and then you might do it under supervision. And then you have to sit some exams and prove yourself and then get signed off as being competent to do something before you go out and do it. But in startups, that doesn't work. You just have to get your hands dirty. And sometimes it does really mean stepping out of your comfort zone. But you learn as you go. And it gave me so much confidence that I could work in that way and really helped me to unlearn some of the habits that I got into as a medic. Particularly now thinking about, you know, what, what do I do next? Those skills are now is going to be invaluable for me moving forward 100%.

Absolutely. Move fast and break things. I think that was the Facebook and that's what you guys were doing. Move fast and break things. I think about it now that you brought up that aspect as medics, I think part of your experience, you've been a doctor. Doctor. You were like a real committed medical student, then a doctor and then a jp. Then you went up this path, this pathway. For myself, a little bit different. I started as an investor, then I built my first business and my second business on campus. So I'd always like been ready to try out stuff and take breaks from medicine and come back. I think, well, I can replace my income. But you've sort of hit something really important that we discussed in the past. Your audience and obviously lots of people, the word, they want to try out the stuff, they want to go out for six months and do stuff. But they're thinking about, first of all, medicine. You don't want to make a mistake, you're not trying to make mistakes because people can die. In startups, you make mistakes. That's how you grow. You make mistakes, you learn stuff. You're not making enough mistakes. You're gonna die. You have to try things. And secondly, talked about financing. So medicine, you have a secure income as a doctor, you have a secure income as a healthcare professional. Boy startup. That's the part we're going to get into. You didn't have a salary. You obviously, from what you described, you're working at the startup with breakneck speed. So there was no funding, there was no salary and you weren't definitely working on your medical job at that point, is that. Is that correct?

Yeah, so I, when we started working together, I was still doing out of hours primarily. And I, yeah, I was working for the University of Bristol as well. So I was teaching medical students. Then we decided to go all in and so I didn't. From the autumn of 2023. I didn't do any clinical work. Luckily, and you'll understand this as well, I got enough to get myself signed off for my appraisal because that's really important. But we had the financial flexibility between myself and my husband to be able to afford for me to do that. But obviously we were expecting to get funding at which point I would have been able to take a salary. So I very much kind of went into it thinking, oh, this will only be like, you know, two or three months of, you know, not taking any money and actually it didn't turn out to be like that at all. So it was. Yeah, it's, it's been quite tough to, from a personal point of view to see like my savings basically take a massive hit. Yes. But the, the good thing is that, you know, being a LOCOMG GP is, you know, you can pick up shifts.

Yeah.

I mean it's harder now with the ARRS scheme to pick up locum work, but you can still get shifts, you know, and.

You'Ve got some other skills as well, which we're going to go into. You've got some other skills on things you can actually. Because a lot of times I see Dr. They're hoping to get like a clear plan before they go. But your experience in the startup world has taught you how to go first, just figure out one or two things and then go. So part of it is like you haven't got like a clear financial plan or income but you know that well, you've got skills, you can pick up shifts here as a local dot com, you get an income, you do this social media branding as well, which was really helpful the last time we talked. He showed me something I wasn't thinking about, that there's a lot of stock photos on my website so I'm depicting, I'm replacing it with my own photos. And then you also obviously you deliver teaching to corporate settings. So if you're a company owner, you've got a business, you're listening to this especially. I've got some people in my audience that are doctors who've got businesses. Reach out to Claire actually on LinkedIn, she can come to talk to your staff about burnout and all that. She's really good. You can look at her free stuff first. You find out that she's a subject matter expert. Right. So you've got all these things you're doing. Let's get back to before you took that two to three months break, obviously you had some savings because I, I come across a scary number of doctors who are living the high life and they haven't got saviors. They all assume that they're going to be able to have an income. Part of why you're able to leave your job and work on this for six months. Part of why I was able to launch moneywise doctor.com. i've gotten to one year. So this is one year last week. Part of why we're able to do that. I know, hey. Part of why we're able to do that. I think we should have like a drum roll or something for one year.

Yeah. Birthday cake.

Part of doing all that was because we had some. And I like how you elegantly put it, financial flexibility. Yeah. Part of that is that you had some money in savings. You either you cut down on your expenses or you increase your income or your. You had savings. That's what helped you to go for it. And I think if you look back maybe 20 years back, if you didn't take that opportunity, I suspect you might have regretted it, irrespective of how it turned out. So how did you get to that point where you're able to have that financial buffer to be able to go for it?

Yeah. So part of the reason why we were able to do it is it was a conscious decision that my husband and I had made some years previously that was completely unrelated to the startup and me having a different career direction. But basically the, the slight. I don't want to talk about this too much because it's a long story, but basically my husband and I, we've been together nearly 20 years. When we got together, I was a medical student, he had a job that was not very well paid, to be honest with you. And then he decided to retrain. And so when I started working as a doctor and I supported him through that period, that took years to retrain. And then when he started working, his income, his income is very much feast or famine. And at the start of his career, he'd go long periods without earning. And so the way that we set up our finances was that we were only ever dependent on one income. So we spent like we were a single income household rather than a dual income household. And what that means is it's hard, especially now, but what that means is we haven't got an unaffordable mortgage, we don't have the top of the range cars, but that's okay. We don't have super fancy holidays. Like occasionally we'll splurge, but mostly we stay in the UK and we go camping and all this Sort of stuff. So we, we don't live a very extravagant life. And as a result of that, since the pandemic ended, his career has really taken off and he's now the one that is having the regular income. And so because we set up. Yeah, because we set up our finances to basically be dependent on one person only we could afford for me to take a step back. So, yeah, so there was that. Yeah, fantastic.

I mean, I never thought about that. Sort of assume you have one income, depend on one income and whatever it is, as long as there's that understanding goes as surplus and that gives you that margin that you can play with.

Yeah. My dad told me when I was younger that I must always have six months worth of savings in my bank account. And he was like, don't even think about investing in anything or doing anything else unless you've got that those six months. And I really took that to heart. And so I, I locomed loads, I scrimped and I saved to get that money in the bank so that we had that buffer as well. So, you know, but this is, this took place over. This took place over years before we got to this point. So it was, was done in like six months. This was done over like 20 years, basically. Yeah, they took a long time.

You mentioned your dad. I don't hear too many people say, my dad told me to keep six months or whatever I think that might be. Was your dad like a banker or an entrepreneur, an investor? It might not have been a doctor. It was money wise.

No, my dad, he, he was in the military and then he was a commercial airline pilot. He's only just retired. Yeah.

Wow, that's excellent advice. I'll tell you something, when we did our video shots about an emergency fund, we had so much engagement on it and I was thinking, surely it can't be the first time people are hearing about this thing. But believe it or not, you've been to medical school. I've been to medical school. You've done more trainings after medical school? I've done more training, masters, all that. No one ever really teaches you as a doctor. These are basic principles. But an emergency fund, savings, Cut your coat according to. What's the English say? They cut your quote according to your size or something. This is only my third language, but basically, like, just go for what you can afford. Yeah, just having those basic principles. I think that's what has given you the opportunity to have this sort of like amazing experience, which I think, to my perspective, I think is an investment. I've had businesses on the part that didn't do well. I had business that I thought was just something that was going to be fine for a few months, and then it turned out to be really, really financially rewarding. And most of it, most of the time, it turns out that the experience you get from one ends up in the other one. And it's helpful. So this is amazing. You had an emergency fund. You're keeping your. I'm drawing out the lessons. You had an emergency fund. Six months worth of expenses.

Yeah.

So this is really cool. Quite key for the audience since most of expenses. You didn't have a fancy car. Obviously, if you make several hundred millions and you wanted to buy the newest Tesla or Lamborghini, of course, go for it. But, yeah, you ain't going crazy on a car because you knew that as long as your car works. You know, I've been doing a bit of traveling. Last week I was outside the country. This week I was. As long as my car can get me to the airport and all that. And I don't need to have the newest one. It's still a nice car. You had a mod gauge, but it wasn't something crazy. But all this part of it was because you had to depend on one income, but you also had the right money mindset to give you that Runway, because you had like six months Runway.

Yes. And that's. That's the process that we did basically was worked out how long I could take off with the money that was coming in and what we had in the bank and, um. And without a hundred, you know, even with that, that buffer there, we have pulled back on a lot of things, you know, you know, holidays, days out, eating out, all of that sort of stuff. We have definitely been more careful about that over this time period. And it does. It does make me nervous not having as much of a. Of a buffer, if I'm being totally honest. But what I have learned and gained out of the last six months with will hopefully put me in a much better position going forward to make more money in the long run. And that's really exciting. So I'm glad that I did it. I wanted. Actually, one of the things I'm thinking about is founding again, but I can't afford it right now, so I need to go make some bank, get myself into a better position financially, and then I can think about going again. So it's not, you know, it's not all straightforward and it still does keep me up at night. I'm not going to lie. Like, I Think money does keep a lot of people up at night. Doesn't hit.

But most people think about it from the point of they think it's easy, but you have to figure out things as you go and all that.

Yeah.

And thank you so much for sharing. So honestly, I'm being so open about it because lots of times people make it look like it's all rosy, but it's not all rosy as we know. A lot of times we have to work at things and keep things up.

Yeah, I think as well, just to add to that, I think that I was to going, gonna. Oh, what was I gonna say? Sorry, it's falling out of my head. Yeah. I was gonna say with the cost of living crisis, I think it, it means that people need to upskill themselves on financial literacy. It's even more of a hair on fire problem than it ever has been and especially for medics because our salaries have kind of proportionally decreased over the past few years. You know, there hasn't followed inflation like that. Gap, gap has dropped. We're not, yes, we're above average earners, but we're not where we used to be in society. And so I think there's a couple of things there. First of all, like, you do need to be educated on how to manage your finances so that you can make it work on a medic salary. Right. The second thing. Yeah, the second thing I've learned is you can't achieve financial freedom. For me, that means retiring early. You can't achieve that on a, on a medic salary. These days, even though the NHS pension is, it's very, very good, you can't afford to open it early. So if you want financial freedom, you've got to think outside the box. You've got to either found a startup or have a business or side hustle or have investments outside of it. And also you need to work out your appetite for risk and uncertainty as well. Like I'm quite happy sitting with risk, but some people, that's not going to be the right thing for them. And so you've got to do what works for you and your particular situation. Yeah, absolutely.

Wow. That's very useful nugget. That's come out of the blue, but that's really fantastic. Money wise stuff. One medics. Our income has fallen. A lot of medics, if you're working a salary job because of what, what we do, because of what I do at Money wise Doctor will come across doctors who are trying to invest money, they're trying to get their money right. But you also come across a lot of people who have fallen on hard times.

Yeah.

And they're really quite struggling when at some point we are speaking to a charity that helps Dr. To see if you might be able to support them. But what you said is actually really true and it's quite crucial now much more than ever, doctors need to start understanding how money works. Right. Data credit card. I have a business credit card being offered to me that is 101% charge on the credit card. I'm thinking it's mine because I could get air miles, but I also have to make sure that I'm paying off the. All this stuff. I don't have to. Yeah. I pay it up in full. Understanding things like getting better mortgage, not just getting the biggest mortgage you can get, understanding how you can invest your money because like you said, nobody can really retire early on just salary. You've got to invest. You've got to either start a business or invest in a business or have a side hustle or even if you can. I've seen people, whoever, who have just continued investing consistently over 20 years. They have a plan and they just kept investing till they got to, you know, they got to that number. But that's really very useful. Powerful nuggets. Thank you for sharing those. Square. Yeah. So your journey has been quite a wild ride from being a doctor to burnout experts. And yeah, there's this thing about social media you've been doing. I see, like you mentioned on your wall, that you could help doctors or whoever was interested in building their social media brand. This is something you've done quite well yourself. I. After I saw your video hit 1 million on TikTok, I thought maybe I might finally get on Tick Tock. But I can't twerk or dance or do anything. She's just talking calmly about burnout. Yeah. So I started thinking, oh, maybe I can get on TikTok. Not quite there yet, but I might get there. Tell me a bit about your social media experience, how you got into all of it, how your strategy for getting all done.

So when I first started talking about burnout on social media, there was no strategy, there was no plan, there was no goal. I was just really angry and I had spent so long kind of not being truthful to myself and talking about the problems I was experiencing as a doctor because I was so worried that it might have implications for me in my career and I'd gone past that point. Point when I started talking about this on social media because I was like, I don't care what happens, actually, because this job has actively harmed me and now, now I don't care. That's a very liberating place to be. And so, yeah, I started putting stuff out on social media and I, and I grew my con. You know, I got a lot of people joining my audience and then I decided that I wanted to was I had, you know, kind of a really nice community that I wanted to try to use the expertise that I got off the back of that to try to start making some money. So I've already explained how I created this burnout recovery plan. I also supported a few people with like coaching and mentoring who had experienced burnout and then with having created that really effective personal brand. You know, if you'd seen, you know, over the past year, if you see me on LinkedIn, I have repeatedly talked about the same things over and over.

Yeah.

And I'm very, very consistent with my messaging, my tone, my voice, putting out stuff there that is in alignment with my values and also talking to camera because that makes a difference as well. So people feel like they connect with you as a person and acting the same in every single situation. So what you see of me online is exactly what you get in person as well. Although I might be a little bit more sweary in real life than I am online.

Very authentic. And I think people can see authenticity. It always shines through.

Yes. Authenticity, yes. That's the word of the sway.

Maybe you might get a bit of the sway.

Maybe. So, yeah, so I built up this, this brand and it's brought me opportunities. You know, I, I have had some incredible opportunities come my way. I was interviewed by the Lancet, for instance, for their 200 year anniversary edition, talking about mental health. They filmed me. It was incredible. I can technically say I've been in the Lancet, like peak medicine, goals achieved. Right.

Wow. Without having to write a paper.

No, exactly. Thank God I'm a gp. We don't do that. We don't do that. And then the end of last year, I was featured in Lab Bible. It's got me in front of some really like, it's open door. Yes. Lab Bible is pretty cool.

I didn't know. I love this. That is amazing. That is quite huge.

Yeah. I didn't even know that they picked it up. One of the school mums texted me and she was like, claire, is this you? It looks a little bit like you. And I was like, oh my God, yes, that is me, number one. And secondly, I was like, I really wish I'd put on a bit of makeup before I did that video because I look terrible.

But it's Love Bible, we don't mind.

But obviously that sort of stuff doesn't pay the bills, does it? But what it has done is it's allowed me, particularly with this. With probably chat coming to an end and now thinking about what I'm going to do with my career, it's opened a lot of doors. So I'm now getting freelance work. You know, I'm doing a lot of corporate work, webinars, you know, in person presentations, all of this sort of stuff based on my burnout experience and niche. And I've also got a couple of other opportunities, you know, content creation and all this sort of stuff that has come off of the back of building this personal brand. And it's also really helped. Yeah, it's also really helped because I am. I. I still haven't decided if I'm going to take a job with a health tech company at the moment. It. The market is very difficult and I'm getting enough paid work at the moment to not need. I don't need a job right now. We'll see what happens. I can be flexible. Yeah. I can wait for the right opportunity to come up and see whether or not I take it. But again, it's about your network. And what my personal branding and my use of social media media has done is allowed me to get meetings with the right people and to find out what's out there. And also because I'm known for what I do and my niche and because people feel like they know me and they connect with me already, it's done half the work for me already. I'm getting those meetings really easily because people know who I am. And then. Yeah, there's one other thing as well, which is I'm now talking about the fact that I'm transitioning out of clinical medicine and people are going crazy, crazy for it. Like, my audience, especially on Instagram, is so invested into this and I'm bringing them on this journey with me and that also is creating more opportunities. So it's. If you. The thing about social media is if you use it in the right way, it can be an incredible force for career opportunities for you. When it's done in the wrong way, it could potentially be harmful and it's very stressful. Yes. Like it can. It can become consuming. I do periodically have breaks off of social media. I've had extended breaks. I've had shorter breaks as well. It's really important that if you are thinking about building A personal brand, that you do it in a way that is healthy for you, it's sustainable and that you are sharing. Obviously, being doctors, we have to think about what we share on social media anyway, because the GMC is. We have to. Yes. Yeah. We've got a license to practice. We have to put ourselves away. So. Not put ourselves away. We have to conduct ourselves in a certain way.

That does not bring disrepute to the problem.

Yes. You can't. We cannot bring the profession into disrepute. Absolutely. So you have to fit those guidelines. But you can still show personality, you can still be yourself. What I found helpful was work. I was going to say was working out what my main. What the main things are that I talk about and then talking about them consistently and cementing focus on that niche. You just.

Just go ahead and focus on that niche. Absolutely.

Don't be too scattered.

I. Yeah, I don't do very much on Instagram and everywhere else, but I talk in some doctor groups where any posts I may get like 100, 200 groups, like close doctor groups. But then I don't put out very much on my general Facebook because I've got, like, people from my high school who are not very interested in what I'm doing and maybe they might like my picture. And I've done a cool spot stuff. But. Yeah. So knowing where your audience is and going there. And recently I've started writing on LinkedIn as well. I think a few months ago I decided that I'll show up at least every week on LinkedIn to write. And there's also a different audience. There is understanding the tone. Yeah. So I think you've done really quite well and obviously your brand has opened the door. There's a saying about. If I see you in different platforms and I hear what you're saying seven times, or if I spend a number of hours with you, I feel like I already know you, I know your message, I know what you say. So that way you're not introducing yourself again. I don't know how much more time you've got. I was going to ask you about a typical medical company and I was going to ask you.

I've got time. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, good. That's good for you.

I was gonna say I've got about. Yeah, I've got about 15 minutes, Andy, so that's fine.

10 minutes is great. That's just about enough to go into a typical medical company and tell us your next steps, what you're going to do. And you've given us Sort of like a mini master class on how a doctor can build a brand on social media. That's what you did, I suspect, might have another opportunity to unpack it in a bit more detail along the line. But today I just want to know a bit more about the typical company you founded. It was that last two years, 2022.

Yeah, I do know. I don't remember when I founded it. I think I founded it when I was thinking about, like, creating a business around burnout and I called it the Atypical Medical. Because I felt like I was doing something. Yes. For medics. Like medics understand it, they get it because I'm doing something that is off the beaten track. It's not going the usual way, you know, it's a squiggly career, it's doing something, it's doing things in a different way, presenting in a different way to the norm and all of that sort of stuff. So that's. That's how I ended up naming it what it was. The company kind of got a bit abandoned when I did Bobby Chat and obviously, actually I haven't been successful in getting my burnout program into the nhs, although actually I do have a couple of ways that it might get into some other offerings. But I was hoping to kind of use that company to kind of, you know, to be the. To be the company that brought the burnout education to the masses and support to the masses. But what it is primarily useful now is again, there is still some burnout stuff. So all of the corporate stuff goes through that company.

Yeah.

I also had a subscription box business, an E commerce business that went through that, which I stopped to concentrate full time on Bobby Chat that was making a small profit when I. When I abandoned it and I had plans to scale it up and I knew exactly what I was going to do, but I didn't get to that point of scaling because unfortunately. Well, not unfortunately, but fortunately I had Poppy Chat and I was like, I can't do that, do the two things at once. And now I think it's going to be used for doctor education, basically. So what I'm. What I'm finding is I'm getting a lot of. A lot of activity in my dms. My Instagram account now is getting a lot of traction from doctors and other healthcare professionals. Me talking about this journey that I'm going on after the startup of leaving clinical medicine and there's so much need out there, so many people are disillusioned with working in medicine and also thinking quite cleverly and Being very savvy, realizing that actually their job, it's not going to get them the financial freedom that they want as well and looking for ways of firstly diversifying their career so that they get career satisfaction and longevity but also about making more money so that they've got financial flexibility and freedom and whatever way that means for them. And so I'm getting a lot of signals from that. So I'm going to be creating content and packages and all of this sort of stuff. I'm starting to offer one to one support for people who are going through this journey as well. Possibly some coaching as well. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a company that I think, I mean I, I even had a conversation with my accountant when I was working for Bobby Chat and he was like, oh, do we must ball this company? I was like, yeah, we put, probably will do it. But now obviously Bobby Chat hasn't, hasn't worked out so I'm, I'm back to using that one. But that's, yeah, it's, that is amazing.

I mean you've got like a rapper you can used to do is a rapper for what, Whatever you're working on at the moment. I like the way you branded your experience. Yeah. You're not sort of like saying I'm the expert that's transitioning from medicine. You're like, I'm going on a journey. And boy, we do like, we do like a journey. We like, like to follow people on a journey, like to follow people, see what they're doing. So I'm signed up for that journey as well. I'm saying like what's Claire going to do? I'm pulling her journey and we're all rooting for you, whatever you decide to do. I'm sure lots of people just are in this space as well. It's funny, I talk about personal finance but I get invited more on podcast to talk about how doctors can sort of have side hustles and they portfolio career. And at some point I'm like this is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about personal finance. But there's clearly a need there. And the last podcast I was invited to this was the question was about how to build a portfolio career, how to build alternative income. So I, I think you're, you're quite in, how do you say, not resonance. I'm looking for the word. You're in tandem with your audience. You're going in the right direction and I'm quite interested to see how that.

Goes right yeah, I'm excited, too. Yes, great question. I don't know, but that doesn't mean that I'm not being strategic and everything is planned at the moment.