Ep#5: Founders: Are you investing in Yourself? With Rachel Hamlin

Welcome to Method, where we decode what it really takes to build and scale startups. I'm Andy Walsh, founder and strategist. Each week we'll bring you actionable insights and real stories. Let's dive in. Welcome back to Startups Decoded. My guest today is Rachel Hamlin. Rachel and I met a few months ago. She's an amazing executive coach. I've been fortunate to have some mindset sessions with her as well. She'll talk more about that. Rachel, you're in Costa Rica at the moment. A little jealous of that with the New York cold here at the moment, but first and foremost, welcome.

Thank you so much, Andy. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I'm so excited to chat all things startup life.

Absolutely. So kicking off Costa Rica, how I assume it's sunny and beautiful there?

Yes, it is sunny and beautiful and I have no concept of winter. And I'll tell you, I do not miss it at all. I'm not sitting here pining for the gray skies of New York right now.

Yeah, last week we had day that maxed out at 15.

Yep.

Okay. That's what it is. But thankfully it's better at the moment. But we're not here to talk about the weather. So for you, Rachel, I'd love to be able to hear from yourself, just top level, what you're doing at the moment and the type of things that you're working with on your clients.

Yeah, amazing. Well, it's funny, I have to give another nod to Costa Rican living, though, because. Because the weather is so nice. What I'm doing a lot at the moment is playing.

Right.

Like I'm outside, I'm surfing. That's why I'm here with the black eye today. For anyone who's watching us on video, it's a little surf incident I had this week. And generally living as pleasurable and enjoyable and alive and active a life as possible. And work kind of fits in around that. Lucky to control my schedule, but with my clients, right. It's all about how do we, how do we create aliveness and well being in a much denser and busier schedule with a lot of obligation and a lot of pressure because I do work primarily with people who are in leadership positions. And so not only are their days very full with, with meetings and obligations for their time, there's also just the care and responsibility that they have for their teams.

Right.

Often solid headcount reporting to the people that I work with as well as family and then social obligations outside of that. So how do we optimize for their well being and their mindset capacity to show up to the job that they do so they can do it effectively and they can do it well and they can sustain it over time and have a positive impact on everyone around them.

Yeah, great. And for me it's so important and I've had my own story and I've met plenty of people in the startup world that have their own demons, I guess, of things that have happened in their life that quite often manifest at the worst time when you're under pressure through to just the actual sustaining the volume of work that you need to do and the pressure that you carry in a startup life as well. So I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people that can't wait to hear some of the things that you're doing, things that they can work on themselves. But a place I think that would make sense to start is for yourself looking back on your career. I've noticed there's a pattern of guests that I talk to that quite often they have career changes like, and they start in one lane and for whatever reason, whether it's an event, whether they don't have the passion anymore, but there's something that happens that changes their path. And as far as yourself, you've had quite an interesting background a lot of time in product, which I think is quite fascinating as far as the connection with what you're doing now. But I'll let you tell that story.

Yeah, I've had a couple of career hops both in terms of role and then also in terms of location, which was really expansive and important for me and becoming who I am today. But yeah, started out actually in brand strategy, which I think you and I connected over a bit because I used to absolutely love that world. And even back then as a strategist, my interest was in what motivates people and what, you know, what influences human behavior and how can we influence that. And I was kind of doing that on behalf of like deodorant brands and like brands that I wasn't very close to or didn't feel were very impactful necessarily. But I love thinking about what made humans tick. And then I evolved into working in product management and worked for a number of startups, first in the SaaS space and then ended my product career working for a really high growth blockchain startup between like 20. When did I leave that role? Like 2018 to 2020, something like that. And then at that point is when I started to realize that in order for me to live my sort of most actualized life, I was unfortunately going to have to be self employed and work for myself and seek even greater and more intimate sense of impact with humans one on one. And so I decided to delve into coaching around 2019 and began preparing for that career shift near the end of my product career. So yeah, it's been a journey. And then in that time I've also lived in New York City, in Berlin, Germany, in London, England, and then I did three years fully nomadic before arriving in Costa Rica. And all of that really shaped and informed how I show up as a, as an employee and as an entrepreneur as well.

Beautiful story. And I can relate. I've lived in London, in the US and obviously in Australia where I was born. But I think diverse perspectives in all facets of your life, from personal to travel to career, give you the ability to be able to see things from multiple points of view, stepping outside yourself and not being so myopic. And I think that we should definitely delve into that today. But as far as kicking off, I think one part of that that you touched on there that I'd love to be able to start with is your experience. Working on brand and product obviously gives you skills that a lot of coaches may not have, particularly in your area of expertise. Now where you're looking at mental health and mindset around that, is that from an experience perspective, given you a unique view and understanding of the clients that you work with. Not just on mindset, but understanding the challenge that they're going through very directly. Because a lot of people don't get that. Right.

Yeah, yeah. I do think that's helped me a lot just because I can empathize so deeply.

Right.

Brand strategy was, you know, agency life is stressful, right. Because you're sort of at the whim of your clients demands and there's a lot of, you know, the client says jump and you say how high in the agency world, which creates a lot of urgency and probably spikes in people's cortisol levels.

Right.

Which is a challenge to manage. But then in product in particular, I think is where I got the most empathy for the types of people that I work with today because I was somewhat responsible, even though I was even starting at a lower level.

Right.

I was somewhat responsible for the success of a team within my organization. And also product just has so many demands on product managers time and focus. They have such a diverse array of responsibilities and a lot of responsibility. Indeed.

Right.

Like the kind of trope about product managers is that you're always receiving criticism and complaint and not often being elevated or celebrated because you're not contributing as directly as an engineer or a designer is. You're more so funneling problems and trying to grease all the wheels and communicate and make decisions. And there's definitely a lot of responsibility in that, but it can be a sort of unsung hero role and a lot of pressure, a lot of heaviness, and not a whole lot of celebration or recognition. So, yeah, that's a. That's a role that helped me to develop empathy for people who are at the sort of upper echelons of leadership in the CEO position or the C suite.

Yeah. Great. And I can relate from my side too, as far as being a founder and being in that situation where it's so easy just to be so focused on progress, and sometimes you don't even know whether you're making progress, if you're making by prioritizing the right things that actually will make a difference, how you get the right balance. And it's interesting, the connection and the guests that I've had so far have come from different backgrounds, but all work in the startup space in some fashion. And there's been some real themes that have come through, and one of those are the phases of a startup. So the. And you touched on it there a little bit. So the, the first phase was very much around that, that growth hacking. So basically you just testing and learning on everything in your business. You're trying to build a product, launch something, whatever you're doing, you have that as a focus. But then you also need to be able to sell, you need to be able to do marketing, you need to be able to manage your team. And the personality type that typically is hired or even becomes part of that are people that love that chaos. But the chaos is obviously not sustainable. And once you get into a second phase, which is where you've probably got product solution fit, you're getting some revenue momentum and you're starting to build it out. You need to get a bit more structure and rigor around that. So my question, I guess connecting those two, as far as the different mindsets that a founder needs and the things that they can focus on, let's start in that early stage where it feels like you're just in the deep end, you're drowning every day. What are the things that you typically see in your clients as far as blockers for them or common patterns of things that they're doing that is inhibiting their growth or success?

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I don't think I coach a lot of people who are in that early, early stage because they're pre even thinking about a coach.

Right.

It's just like one foot in front of another. Do we even have a viable product here? And am I going to be able to pay somebody for this and pay, pay some team for this?

Right.

And so hiring a coach is still in their future. But I would say it's a great time to be focused on installing healthy habits early because one thing that I think can create friction for founders as they start to mature and enter those more secure stages of building a company is they've become so habituated to being on the line personally for everything and being the one who needs to be getting their hands dirty all day and all night long.

Right.

And because of the way our brain works, like you establish some pretty deep grooves in that time period and your brain just starts to run along those same tracks of like, I am the doer, I am the one who's responsible for everything. I must be always available, I must be always working. These are all my problems to solve. And the more identified you become with that sort of thinking and the more you allow yourself to work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, the harder it's going to be later on for you to zoom out and maintain or even find perspective on the business in the first place, as well as to then build in more time for self care, honestly and to take care of yourself. So I would really encourage anyone at any stage, but including early stage, to build good habits early, which means taking a little bit of space here and there to actually zoom out and look at what you're doing, infinite things that you still need to be doing. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the theme in that one for me is all around culture. So obviously you're working hard and you're doing everything you can to try and make it into that next days where ultimately hitting product market fit and you've got some, I guess, momentum with what you're doing and also greater understanding of the things that you need to do to be able to be effective. So would you say then that if you're picking up clients and they're at product market fit and they've got issues within their business as far as how they move forward, if there's tension and stress, et cetera, are you having to sort of reverse engineer culture changes as well to be able to help them be the best version of themselves? Because ultimately I would assume Anyway, that if you're working with someone who's a founder or CEO of a company that you almost need to take on and inherit the wider team or let them have the skills to do that themselves.

Yeah, I definitely am focusing on the individual.

Right.

And my premise is that the founder or the executive that's in front of me is going to have a massive impact on the people around them and who are reporting to them. I mean, humans are not that far off from being herd animals and I think we can sense each other's emotions. And there's also obviously real implications for how your stress plays out when you're in conversation with your team or the way that you're responding to them on Slack, if you're not managing that well within yourself. But in terms of like broader cultural shift, that is something that I do think, you know, it there's, it's so, so multifactorial. What contributes to good culture. And the founder's well being is a pivotal one because the founder's well being is what dictates the founder's ability to think and be conscientious about the decisions they're making. When they're like determining and making explicit the company's values and when they're then using those values to hire people and when they're then communicating those values again and again through the hiring process and even through ongoing management and all hands meetings and things like that, where they're reminding people of what matters. It's like without some headspace and some perspective to tap into that yourself, it's really easy for culture to erode at any stage of the process.

Right.

Because you're kind of the flag, the flag bearer in terms of what matters in your company and how you want people to treat each other and how you want people to operate.

That makes a lot of sense and I think the sort of passive impact I'll call it then if I'm interpreting that in the right way. So as a leader, if you're focusing on mental health and you have a good balance, naturally you're going to be more positive, more decisive, more creative. There's a lot of upside that comes through having mental clarity. And you talked before around the hurt and you often mirror each other's stress. So if your CEO is walking around and they're angry and stressed out, et cetera, it's hard not to absorb and take that energy on as your own, hugely.

Especially because your team is going to look to you as something of their. I actually like liken the a person's boss to their attachment figure at work. Are you familiar with attachment theory and attachment figures?

I'm actually not, so I'd love to. Love to hear, really.

Okay, so, like, an attachment figure is just terminology for it's basically your primary caregivers when you're small, typically a person's parents, but not always. And it's basically where a young child, an infant, is sourcing safety and is learning how to exist in the world and is always looking and checking to see, like, am I okay? Am I safe? The attachment figure does a ton of imprinting on a young being to establish their sense of security in the world. And we still kind of orient to other people in our lives as attachment figures, even as adults. And so as adults, like, your primary attachment figure replacement is usually your romantic partner. They're, like, your greatest source of security and safety in the world. But then I sort of extrapolate out, and I look at a person's boss or manager as a secondary attachment figure, too. It's like a person that you're kind of unconsciously checking, how's their mood? How am I performing? What does that mean about me and our relationship? Are we okay? Am I okay? That's like a background process that I think is running for a lot of people. And so, yeah, as a founder or as anyone in a leadership position, you're again, right. Like, you have an outsized influence on your team's sense of safety and security in their roles, and along with that, their ability to. To perform and to be creative and to feel safe taking risks.

Right.

And doing all the things that you actually really want them to do.

That's fascinating. And as far as defining culture, that is a great example about the positive and negative effects that you can have on yourself. So being able to focus on you and set the right culture across the business, that people pick up the positive energy, the excited energy, and they're attached to that side rather than worrying about all the things that are probably going on that you're not putting your head in the sand, but you're acknowledging that, you know, things are challenges that you have to overcome, but they can be overcome.

Yeah.

I think stress also really erodes your connection to what you love about what you do and what you love in general.

Right.

The more time you spend in a state of agitation or fear or resentment, however, stress is being flavored for you in any given moment or any given stage of your company. The less desire you feel to be doing it.

Right.

The less you remember why you started in the first place. And you might mentally remember, you might be like, okay, cool, we wrote our mission statement, we're here to solve X problem for Y people. It's great, we care, but like it's robotic. At some point you know that you care and you know what you're doing, but you don't feel that you care and you don't feel the excitement, you don't feel the passion. And that's just stress having sort of a dulling effect and numbing effect on your ability to feel the good stuff. And so it's another point in favor of having headspace, having perspective and having well being so that you can actually in a felt sense juice up on the purpose on the mission and what got you there in the first place.

Yeah, the purpose is a big part. And in brand strategy, obviously setting the right foundations for a company from your brand perspective applies to internal and external culture as well. So what you stand for, what you're building, how you want to help people, how you want to grow a community around, that is very purpose led. And I always tell any of my clients on brand strategy that you need to make sure that your internal culture and purpose resonates and is shared at large to your customers as well, because that's what they connect to. So having that positivity and energy around that is so powerful.

Well, I think too, right, Like I've written lots of brand strategy documents, as I'm sure you have, and I have such respect for great copywriters because they can put that spark in you, right? They can give you that aliveness through really good word choice and really good writing. And that's the purpose of a strategy doc, right? Is to capture something that's really meaningful on paper. But in this current world that we live in, like there is just so much distraction and people are being taken, their focus is being taken in so many different directions. In a startup, it's almost guaranteed that any given member of your team has more work than they can possibly do at any given moment. And so like having a written mission statement is not enough.

Right.

You need to be, especially in leadership, a sort of living embodiment of that purpose and of that excitement or that passion. In order for people to feel it viscerally on a regular basis, they'll forget about it if it's just written on the wall somewhere.

Yeah, it feels very like sporting team college having slogans on the wall in that sense. And it means nothing if you're not actually living and breathing what's written on the wall. So it has to be A foundation of how you operate and something you covered there. And I think it's really important. There's a great author, Johann Hari, who I assume you know, but he's written, I think, maybe three books and he always researches so much and talks to so many people in different perspectives. And one of the quotes he talked about that stuck with me and it was someone else's research and the numbers are going to be slightly off, but pretty close. And what he said was that in a normal day, humans spend 60% thinking about the past, 30% in the future, and only 10% being present. And if you think about in a normal day, how ineffective that makes you, if you're dwelling on things that have happened that you can't change, or worrying about something in the future that hasn't happened yet, then all of a sudden your energy, mental energy effectiveness is completely gone. You're only getting 10% effectiveness out of your brain. And that just sat with me so much. So the ability to be grounded and focused on what you're doing and, and change that 10% number feels like a big opportunity.

Do you meditate, Andy? I can't remember what your practices are.

Yeah. So, yeah, in the morning I start my day every day with a cup of herbal tea. I meditate and I stretch and it's sort of probably about a 30, 40 minute routine to be able to just ground myself. And I'm fortunate that I have a large window and I watch the sun come up at the same time that I'm doing that.

Yeah. So good. So there you are instilling like a good force of habit.

Right.

Every morning for 30 to 40 minutes, you're getting a glimpse of that state of being which you can then actually toggle back into with greater ease throughout your day. Presence is just a state of being.

Right.

That we can actually practice and anchor into our systems and return to even when we're in a stressful moment. So I love that you highlight that because it's actually not out of as out of reach as I think people think that it is. And sure, okay, right now people are saying I don't have 30 or 40 minutes in the morning to sit and meditate and drink my tea. But I've tried to create hacks in my own practice to help people touch base with a state of presence faster and with greater ease in order to cultivate that skill as well. Because presence, just like the overwork or the constantly being wed to your business, being busy habit that I spoke to earlier is a habit.

Right.

So the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more familiar it becomes and the wider your range of like, okay, now I'm at like 12% focus and useful time today. Now I'm at 15% focus and useful time today, and so on and so forth.

Yeah. And the not I don't want to get stuck on this, but it's a fact that I always like to share whenever I get a chance is the impact of social media. And you talked before a little bit about external stimuli that are distracting. And again, some of the research that I've read is like, college students in America can only concentrate for just over a minute on one task and as soon as they get distracted, it can take up to 25 minutes to refocus on what they're doing.

Yep.

And like, just that alone as a stat, just continue. Every time I say it out loud, I almost blow my own mind in the sense of that is so significant. So being able to ground yourself and focus and not get distracted by external things in a world where everyone's competing for your attention, it is tough.

Yeah. There's such a war on our focus. And I think if I were to speak to myself like five or six years ago, the person who was still working in the startup world, living in a city, living a very fast, fast paced life, I at that time would not have even been able to notice the impact that social media was having on my attention and my focus because I was just living in a constant state of being in a hurry, effectively, and being scattered and always thinking about the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. One of the gifts of my life here in Costa Rica is, I mean, my goodness, the first year I was here, I went through an insane, like, boredom portal where I learned to be bored. I stayed here in a low season and I didn't travel and I lived the exact same routine that I'd been living for the past six months prior with like zero energy around me because almost no one was here. Nothing was happening. And as someone who has spent, you know, the past 10 years traveling and hopping from country to country and changing jobs and living in major cities with lots of speed and hustle, that was so foreign to me and so uncomfortable and not enjoyable. But on the other side of it now there is a much greater, and this might sound negative, but I just don't have a better word for it. A much greater sensitivity to stimuli. So because I've gotten used to having an emptier headspace, moving a little slower, being bored, if you will, I can Actually viscerally feel the effect in the morning when I first look at my phone. Like the Moment I open WhatsApp, which is usually the first thing I look at, my brain goes from like peaceful to just like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like lights up like a ping ball machine. And it's chaotic and it does not feel good. And I feel like there went my bubble of peace.

Right.

And so the stark difference in those two states of like not being hooked into the Internet and all the notifications and there I am in the flow of the Internet and the, and the communications again is like, yeah, it's gives me more motivation to manage my focus well and to manage my phone time well so that I can spend more time in that state of being that is present and clear and calm and creative. It's just, it's the quality of time is so much better there.

Yeah. And it's. I've got a daughter who's nearly 11 and I encourage her regularly to try and be bored. And when they're looking for something to do and it's sort of, it's like, okay, we'll just sit and be bored. And you have to get over a little bit of a hump first. Where your brain slows down, you don't have the overwhelming stimuli. You're able just to sort of get into your own sort of flow state where nothing happening is a good thing. And if you think about creativity and problem solving and learning, your brain needs time to be able to process that and build the neural pathways to, to recall things, learn things, and come up with things that ultimately help you in your life, personally and professionally.

Yep. That's like one of the number one things I'm an advocate for in my business is having space. Having space to either do something pleasurable or do nothing and just have unstructured time. Because what you'll find is like, yet the boredom. Something important to name about that is like, I think people conceive of boredom, I used to anyway, as being sort of numb or dull or flat. But actually what you'll notice is the next time you're bored, there's actually a great amount of agitation in it. Like you instead you actually feel like fidgety and like maybe a little upset or like you're just like not sure what to do with yourself because there's all this energy still running in your system. And this typically correlates with people who are high performers or high achievers. They spend a lot of time actually in attack mode, which is a State of arousal, actually. And so it's like deconditioning from the need to be in attack mode and adapting to, like not taking in any stimulus for a little while and coming into a more natural state of being requires you to go through first that, that gradual fade out of agitation. Because boredom is not just nothingness. Boredom is illness. Boredom is actually a sense of agitation. At first.

Yeah. And even then, just from a delivery standpoint, the way that you talk to me, if you're frantic and have a stress in your voice, then I can't help but absorb it. But you had a moment there where you sort of. You slowed down deliberately because you were being very considered. And for me that's calming. And we've done meditation sessions together and just being able to change pace.

Yeah.

It's amazing how your brain loves that and it finds thinking and energy in the gap. So when you're talking, being able to take a pause and it might feel like a million years if you're talking and presenting where you might have two second pause between something, but the ability for you to then connect with others and think about what you're doing, it's. It's quite enlightening, but very confronting.

Yeah, we're all varying degrees of suggestible. Most of us are suggestible to some degree. So the moment I start to slow down my voice and just draw my words a little more slowly and lean back and regulate my own system, the more relaxed likely you are to feel, which I think you spoke to. And that's something that I lean on a lot. Even the prosody of my voice when I'm taking people through guided hypnosis or in breathwork sessions present a lot differently than when I'm on a podcast. And I'm like really excited because I want to talk about all my ideas. We're having a back and forth and it's very intellectual. And you're a New Yorker, so you can keep up, I hope.

Yeah. And. And the ability to do both is really hard. And, and with work, you. You have an urgency and there's always something to get done or needs to get done and slowing down, there's this sense that you're actually not doing something and you're missing out an opportunity to do it. But ultimately you're helping yourself because you're getting clarity of thought. You're grounding yourself in a way that. To be more effective for the thing that you take on next. But it feels counterintuitive for some reason.

No, you're always gaining when you slow down, you're gaining so much. It's just challenging because it requires you to have faith in something that you can't yet see or actualize. And I have always resonated with the analogy of like a bow and arrow. If you're to imagine pulling the bow back, pulling the string back and building the tension, right? And it feels like not a lot is happening because you're kind of slowing the arrow down and pulling it even backwards from where it's going. But then the moment you let go, it slings forward and it gains so much momentum and so much ground that if there weren't that pause or that slow space, it would never, it would never trace. So I think that's a really helpful analogy for the benefit of slowing down.

I love analogies and I love frameworks, so we'll get into that. But going into some more practical application of the type of work that you're doing through that cycle, as far as stages of mental health, that happens sometimes even in contradiction to where you're at. So if you're sprinting on a product launch, you've got progress, you get product market fit, maybe you get an investor come in, but then all of a sudden you just hit a wall and you feel like that you can't go on anymore because there's been so much energy and sort of expectation that comes with that phase. Are there stages in that growth part of a startup that you start to see typical trends of behavior or things where people are not in a good headspace?

It's a great question. You know, journeys are actually fairly variable. But what I can say is that nobody escapes ample lows in their journey. There's no founder, there's no person, despite what you see on the Internet, who's winning all the time. You can definitely have a hot streak, you can definitely accrue a lot of success in business. You can definitely build something that feels like it's suddenly so much bigger than you, faster than you ever thought it would be. And there's going to be wobbles within that.

Right?

Like self doubt is going to happen. You're going to have an awkward interaction with an investor. You're not going to know how to handle a request from an employee.

Right?

Like there's just going to be little things, little and little and big things that rock your confidence and can completely affect your experience of your work and of your business. So. But I would, if you. Would you like me to continue to try to shape this into like, what are some common, like mindset issues that I see people face or no, because I have somewhere I want to go with, but let me turn it over to you since it's not a very satisfaction.

Yeah, absolutely. If, if it's an important part of what you're doing, then yeah, definitely dig deeper. Otherwise we can go on to something else for sure.

I just want to coach people and encourage people. Like, this is easier said than done. But it's so imperative that if you're going to do big things in this world and take any risks, whether that's starting a company or even just being part of a fast moving startup, is to truly adopt a belief that the lows and the challenges are as good for you and as lovable as the highs and the winds.

Right?

And they produce totally different hormones in your body. They create a whole response in your nervous system around threat when you feel like, oh my God, am I gonna make payroll?

Right?

That's not fun on a physiological level or mental level. And yet you can still somewhere choose this belief that this is growing me and this is actually exactly what I need. And in fact, if I didn't have these healthy insertions of adrenaline every so often, then this would be boring.

Right?

Because let's all be honest, the types of people who are attracted to startup life actually do like challenge. They do like thrill. That's part of what makes it appealing. They like the chance of a big reward as well, which comes with risk. But you have to really love and trust those parts of the journey. And one way that you can do that when it's hard, when you're really in it and you're facing something bigger than you've ever faced before, is just to look back at where you've come from and really take account of all the places in the past where you've been fearful or you haven't known what to do about something, or you thought like you were at the end of the road or whatever, every time you face challenge and had to find your grit in the past or find faith in the past turn out okay. Yeah. And that won't do everything. That won't completely shut off the part of your brain that worries and tries to find solutions right. For the future. But over time, you really can make this mindset of a way of life and just be almost impervious to the highs and lows. And as you become more comfortable with the lows, that's when you start to be able to really hold more responsibility as a leader. That's when you're going to be able to actually double your headcount effectively. That's when you're going to be able to be visible on a much bigger stage or talk to people and be rubbing elbows in a room with much bigger investors than you were previously. It's because you're able to hold and handle all of the distress, the threat and the risk inherent in that.

Yeah. The one that you mentioned there that I can relate to is that self doubt. And, and for me, like a few years ago, going through therapy to sort of overcome things at a personal level, self doubt was definitely one of those. And my therapist did an amazing job to make me look back and look at some of the achievements of things that I'd done. And I'm from a tiny little place in Tasmania, Australia, and to be here and do what I'm doing now took a lot of hard work, a lot of risk, a lot of sacrifice. And everyone goes through that in their life. But we're notoriously bad at looking back and going, okay, we, we achieved that. We take it for granted, but it gives you a level of confidence to go, okay. I've navigated a lot of things in my life. My practical brain is going, okay. If I think about that and use that as inspiration to problem solve rather than dwell on the problem, then all of a sudden your solution's focused and you're not getting caught up on what's happened. You're looking at the ability to move forward and not dwell on the past.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right. The past can be handy when you're looking at the places that you've succeeded when you thought you might fail. And I think you can actually turn this into something of.

Right.

You hear about gratitude practices a lot, where you should sit and you should make a list of 10 things every morning that you're grateful for and it puts you in this high vibration state and then more great things happen and whatever. But if you're someone who's stuck in that sort of high performer trap or high achiever trap of really doubting yourself, not feel, feeling like you're contributing enough, not feeling like you're making fast enough progress, however it's manifesting for you through your work, that can be a really nice daily exercise, is just to take stock of some of your past wins, some of the things you've accomplished, some of the ways that you've grown, even when it was hard, even in the face of failure, and actually try to tune into feelings of pride around that and actually feel it, not just think it, you know what I mean? With gratitude. You have to feel it. Not just be like, thank you for the beautiful sunrise today. Thank you. I love coffee, right? You have to be like, oh, I really, the sun is so beautiful. I'm so moved that I get to see the sunrise. And this cough coffee, it's liquid gold. It's there for me every morning, anywhere I go in the world. I can have this gorgeous treasure. Like, I love it so much.

Right?

You have to feel these things sincerely in order for them to take root within you. So as a daily practice, you could try that if you're looking at your results and not feeling good enough or feeling doubtful.

So let, let's go a bit further on that one as well. So in a daily routine, I gave you a, a bit of a peek at what I do, but from a practical technique perspective, what are some of the things that you can do if you're feeling overwhelmed or even proactively starting to get routines in place that allow you to separate from work, clear your mind, and then be more effective? What, what kind of things could you pick up and adopt in your daily routine?

Yeah, I think the first thing I like to equip people with is just like a micro action, which is a stress interrupt tool. So no one is, no one is above needing to move their body, get sunlight, eat nutritious, nutritious foods, and sleep well. Okay. Like every single person, especially founders and executives and people who carry a lot of responsibility and need to use their brains very heavily each day need to do those things. And the reason that they won't is not because they don't understand the importance. It's because there's unconscious resistance to doing so and stepping away from what they're doing and breaking the force of habit around working, working, working, working, working, being responsive. So if you were to go into the moment where you say, okay, it's 4:00pm, it's time for me to go to that class at the gym. I've been saying I was going to go to this class for the past four weeks and I haven't made it yet. And you touch base with how you feel in that moment, right? You're probably in your inbox or putting out a fire, whatever, managing something. And you think about now stepping away to do your commitment to yourself, you'll feel something. You're gonna notice like a sense of, like a dog on a leash being tugged and not wanting to go in that direction. Or like stress maybe over what you're, what you're answering to in your email. You might feel frantic or Something like, you just can't even think about the gym. There's probably a little bit of elevated stress in your body in that moment, and that's hijacking you and is gonna make it very hard for you to reroute yourself to anything else, even something that you know is important. So in that moment, what you can do is start to break up and interrupt that stress response in your brain. And so I'll just equip you with, like, one really simple technique right now, which is to grab an object, any object that you can comfortably hold in your two hands, and you just have to pass it back and forth in front of you from left to right, right to left. And I'm just passing my water bottle back and forth, and it's going across the midline of my body. And as you do this, it's called bilateral stimulation. You're basically lighting up both sides, both hemispheres of your brain. And this is important because when you're in a pocket of stress or anxiety, that stress or anxiety is typically only in one little cluster of the brain. And so the moment you light up both sides of the brain, you're effectively interrupting that pocket of stress and anxiety and diminishing its hold over you and rerouting your brain in another direction and helping to actually break down the neural network that is associated with whatever has got you so stressed at work. So, really simply, like, anywhere throughout your day, you could practice that when you're having acute stress, but it's the first step to being able to then have a moment of, like, clarity and lucidity and, like, wait a second. The gym is important to me. I'm gonna get a lot. If I go and take space from this problem and get in my body and get those endorphins going is to interrupt the stress response. And that's one way that you can do it that's fairly accessible to. To most people in the middle of.

The gym, it's great. And it's so easy to do that. It's not like you have to have any expensive equipment. It's literally whatever is in front of you right now. And it's the technique and, like itself is easy, but it's how you manage to dedicate time. And it could be a moment where you feel overwhelmed and you just need to intervene. And I think intervention is obviously a buildup, typically, of a series of things that happen. So the proactive part means you need to have that balance. And there was a. A commercial that I remember back in Australia, and they talked about 2:30. Itis to me that I resonate with and it was that point where you've had lunch, maybe you're sort of starting to slow down a little bit and go into a little bit of sleep mode after a big lunch and you start to sort of dwell on things and not be very effective. And for me I relate to it and that's a window that I love to be able to just get up and move around. And obviously it's quite cold in New York at the moment, not exactly walking weather, but still try and go outside and just some fresh air and change of scenery and not staring at your computer can just reset. It only takes 10, 15 minutes for me.

Yeah, that's so good. I mean, you have to recognize that there's diminishing returns at some point. And I like that you actually go out and change your environment and do something that's energizing to you. Because the tandem advice I would give to interrupting the stress response when you're in it and you feel hooked, like you can't walk away is like when you do get time away, try to fill that with like peak experiences. Try to find wonder and try to find awe. Like if you go out into nature and you have an absolutely blissful moment just watching the clouds overhead in the sky and get totally lost in daydreams and start to feel a sense of wonder and start to feel a sense of gratitude for where you are in your life and start to connect ideas about what you're doing next in your business from a place of inspiration and resource. Like you're going to have more, you're going to have more mo to go do that again in the future.

Right.

It's like when we get so stressed and rushed and clamped down and stuck in on our work all the time that we forget what else is out there and what else is available. So the more potent those experiences outside of work can be, the more likely you are to want to return to it.

Right.

The more you're, the more impact they're going to have on your knowing that it's good for you. Does that make sense?

Of course, yeah. And I think that there's different things that I do too and like to build on that. My background have a business that was in audio branding and another one in music therapy. And for me both of those things are amazing. And the music therapy business works a lot with dementia patients and music is such an amazing trigger to open up memory. So if you have someone that can't remember particularly short term memory to be Able to play music and just get them to come alive and start talking about things that happen. For me, music is a happy place. And there's songs that we would all have that are soundtracks to our life, like key moments from graduation to getting married. Maybe it was a holiday soundtrack. A road trip is always a classic as well. But curating music for me to be able to just stop, put music on and listen, close my eyes, and just take my brain. Because your neural pathways, again, the way that memories are accessed through music as a trigger, is different to you just sitting there trying to recall something. So, again, you're activating different parts of your brain that allows you to be able to think about things in a new way, which for me, I find in critical thinking and innovation. Really important skill.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so emotive. And it's part of why I serve breathwork, actually, as an offer to my clients.

Right.

So you. Andy, I'm actually really curious how you cultivated your meditation practice. Because I won't typically advise people to do meditation. Sometimes I'll speak against it. It's just too hard and too inaccessible for most people to just go sit into stillness and drop into a meditative state.

Right.

Like, that takes hours and hours and hours of practice. So unless you can access a meditative state through some kind of really pleasurable peak experience first, you're not going to even know that it's worth doing. But if you take some really emotive or evocative music and you pair it with a breathwork practice where you're almost guaranteed change your state, and then you're feeling all these glorious feelings, so the music is bringing it up in you. Then you're like, whoa, like, I want more of that. I have all these ideas flowing through me. It was so worth taking this time out for my business. And so, yeah, I really resonate with that. Using music as a tool to just bring. Yeah. Memories to the surface, but also feelings and inspiration and to cut through the noise of the day without having to sit in stillness and silence for like a thousand hours before meditating feels worthwhile to you? Did you have an amazing meditation teacher or experience? How did you.

And mine's a combination. So I found it hard to get going like most people, because it's. It's hard to sort of completely lean into it and step out of what. Where you're at and what you're doing to really get that effect. And I've been doing it for at least five years now. I would say maybe more. And I was doing 20 to 30 minutes a day, so I'm not sure how many hours that is. I'm not going to try and do the math, but. But it's a long time. And even now I use a guided meditation at home, which helps. But then also I've worked on walking meditation, too. If I go somewhere quiet and I don't have any stimulus, like from a music perspective, I'm going somewhere and I'm very engaged sort of with where I am and the things around me and finding that place. And then the third one for me was yoga as well. And yoga is a great way to not only get the benefits of stretch and mobility, but also just to be in the moment and being present. And I think it takes a lot of time, as you said. But for me, I have the ability now, if I do get worked up, just to intervene for myself and have a few moments, to primarily do breath work just to overcome my physiological response and reset to be able to move forward and not get caught up in my own emotions. Because, as you know, the worst thing about worrying about worrying is that you fuel the emotion. Right. So being able to accept that feeling and say, okay, I feel stressed or I feel worried or I'm angry, acknowledging that and then moving forward allows it to sort of get put away. And you can always move on instantly. Sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, you can. Again, it's testament to the fact that the more you practice these things, the easier it is to toggle into.

Right.

Like a state of presence or a state of calm.

Yeah. So I. I feel I've been fortunate. And my. My journey started when I was nine years in my first startup, I think, and coming out of that, I realized the negative impact that it had on me. And when you're in the moment, you just fight through and you do the late nights and you do all the martyr behavior of thinking that you have to do everything and not having a good balance. And it took me a lot of exploration to be able to get to a point where I found the things that helped me get back to being a better human. And when I say a better human, as in socially active, being around friends and family, seeking out experiences and doing those things, I kind of shut down a little bit and I was in my head so much. So not to sort of unpack me today, but what I'd love to do, because we're coming close to time, if someone is thinking about proactive work that they might want to do, or if they've got some common behavior, they're seeing like to come to you. What, what sort of, sort of things would you typically ask that person and, and suggest how you may be able to help?

I will usually just, let's start with what someone wants, right? Like, usually just start with what a person's goal is. And, and, and often people come to me because they actually want to be more effective leaders. Like, they want to have a greater sense of impact and confidence and efficacy in what they're doing so that the company can reach greater goals. And at the same time, I'm usually talking with people who don't want to give up on their recreational life. They'd like to bring some of that back into their world if it's gone missing. So I kind of will just probe around, like, what is the goal? And then what is going on that makes you afraid that you can't have that, which is usually easy for most people to identify. It's like, but what if I embarrass myself on stage, right? Or what if, like, like what if I'm not good enough?

Right?

It's usually some flavor, like just not being good enough, frankly. But then I also want to look at when you get to the goal and you have the thing you want, which is, let's say, like twice the revenue or something like that, or twice the headcount for your team, what are you giving up in order to be there? Like, what does it cost you to actually obtain what you want? And that's where some of the more interesting beliefs and unconscious resistance gets exposed. Because it's like, actually, I'm afraid that if I hire more team and I get more removal from the business, then one day down the line, something's gonna pop and completely destroy us. And because I wasn't there and on top of it, it's my fault, and the business just implodes.

Right?

So those are the things that you're not necessarily conscious of when you're putting off hiring for that next position, but that are there. And that's something that we can resolve through the type of mindset work that I do to get you out of your own way.

Great advice. So to wind up today, I'd love to. To give you the chance to talk about yourself, how people reach out to you. I'll definitely include your contact details in the show notes and in some LinkedIn content where you can see and hear this as well. But as far as the type of thing that you would offer at a high level and how they reach out, good chance to talk about your services.

Yeah, amazing. I. I'D love to connect with anyone who resonated with this episode on LinkedIn. First of all, you can find me there, Rachel Hamlin. And if you really like what I have to say, then get my newsletter as well. Come into your inbox once a week. And those are usually more intimate and more, more detailed descriptions and expansion on what I talk about on LinkedIn. And then for founders and folks who are in senior leadership positions, I do work with folks one on one ongoing coaching partnerships. And so you can always explore that with me by booking a conversation right through the top button on my LinkedIn page. It's called a leadership assessment and I do those for free. And that's a place where you can get some, some, some good listening.

Right.

Which is actually not that common when you're the one who's responsible for everybody else. And a bit of a diagnosis on what some of the underlying beliefs or emotional resistance might be for you that's making work feel heavier or harder than it, than it needs to.

Perfect. Lots of great stuff in there. And I can highly endorse the meditation. Rachel did a guided meditation with us and it was so impactful. And one of the people on my team, for whatever reason, they checked their heart rate at the start of the session and then at the end and it had dropped something like 15 beats per minute, which is so significant for them to be able to come into a situation wired in one way and then come out the other end completely, you know, zenned out. That's a big drop. So for me, that's one small example, but definitely helps. And I've been on my journey. So, Rachel, we could talk for hours. I so passionate about mental health, having had my own negative experience and I think what you're doing is so important. So thank you for joining me and talking about this today. It's been a real treat.

Thank you, Andy. Yeah, thank you for giving me the space. And to everyone out there who's listening and taking their own mental health seriously, it matters. It makes a big impact.

Great. So thank you for joining Startups Decoded. My name is Andy Walsh. Please subscribe, share with your friends. Give me a positive rating. It all helps. I'm going to keep doing this every week. I love these conversations. So look forward to joining you on the next episode. And thank you again.

This would be boring, right? Because let's all be honest, the types of people who are attracted to startup life actually do like challenge. They do like thrill. That's part of what makes it appealing. They like the chance of a big reward as well, which comes with risk. But you have to really love and trust those parts of the journey. And one way that you can do that when it's hard, when you're really in it and you're facing something bigger than you've ever faced before, is just to look back at where you've come from and really take account of all the places in the past where you've been fearful, fault or you haven't known what to do about something or you thought like you were at the end of the road or whatever. Every time you face challenge and had to find your grit in the past or find faith in the past turn out okay. Yeah. And that won't do everything that won't completely shut off the part of your brain that worries and tries to find solutions Right. For the future. But over time, you really can make this mindset of a way of life and just be almost impervious to the highs and lows. And as you become more comfortable with the lows, that's when you start to be able to really hold more responsibility as a leader. That's when you're going to be able to actually double your headcount effectively. That's when you're going to be able to be visible on a much bigger stage or talk to people and be rubbing elbows in a room with much bigger investors than you were previously. It's because you're able to hold and handle all of the distress, the threat and the risk inherent in that.

Yeah. The one that you mentioned there that I can relate to is that self doubt. And for me, like a few years ago, going through therapy to sort of overcome things at a personal level, self doubt was definitely one of those. And my therapist did an amazing job to make me look back and look at some of the achievements of things that I'd done. And I'm from a tiny little place in Tasmania, Australia, and to be here and do what I'm doing now took a lot of hard work, a lot of risk, a lot of sacrifice and everyone goes through that in their life. But we're notoriously bad at looking back and going, okay, we, we achieved that. We take it for granted, but it gives you a level of confidence to go, okay, I've navigated a lot of things in my life. My practical brain is going, okay, if I think about that and use that as inspiration to problem solve rather than dwell on the problem, then all of a sudden your solutions focused and you're not getting caught up on what's happened, you're looking at the ability to move forward and not dwell on the past.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right. The past can be handy when you're looking at the places that you've succeeded when you thought you might fail. And I think you can actually turn this into something of.

Right.

You hear about gratitude practices a lot, where you should sit and you should make a list of 10 things every morning that you're grateful for and it puts you in this high vibration state and then more great things happen and whatever. But if you're someone who's stuck in that sort of high performer trap or high achiever trap of really doubting your feeling like you're contributing enough, not feeling like you're making fast enough progress, however it's manifesting for you through your work, that can be a really nice daily exercise, is just to take stock of some of your past wins, some of the things you've accomplished, some of the ways that you've grown, even when it was hard, even in the face of failure, and actually try to tune into feelings of pride around that and actually feel it.