Balancing High Performance and Mental Health for Sales Leaders

Rajees Unnan is a high-performance sales leader. He is building Gloat in APAC, which is an AI-powered talent marketplace. Today, you're going to learn how to deal with stress as a high-performance executive while balancing your family, your mental health. And we are going to learn so much in this conversation. So let's dive right in. Rajees, thank you for joining this call today.

My pleasure. I really appreciate the invite.

Fantastic. So tell me about your journey into leadership in SaaS. What's brought you till today here?

I'm not sure. You probably get different variations of this story, and I think mine might be typical of that. It's never a linear thing, is it? I started life as a recruiter, actually. You and I have talked about this, but I was in your game for probably about the first 8 years of my career. It probably lends itself to the black t-shirts that we've got on, I think. So we didn't— we shared the memo. But I started life as a sales recruiter recruiting tech salespeople. Very similar sort of origin story. And I always had a very strong interest and passion for leveraging technology in recruiting, even back then. In fact, I was the first person I recall on my desk as a headhunter that brought to work a PDA that had that PDA on his desk. And this is, I'm going to date myself now. This is back in the day when we were still faxing resumes and shortlists to people. And there was a line behind those fax machines. But so that was an interesting start. I think that when I reflect back on that, what it gave me was significant exposure to so many different industry sectors and Enabled me to gain a significant amount of kind of commercial acumen because I was— it was how things started. And I progressed over time to becoming the managing director of that business. So I gained leadership responsibility fairly early in my career.

Wow.

And then I went out on my own. I thought, okay, I think I can do this for myself. Created my own search business. But that wasn't enough. I always had this kind of aspiration to do something in technology. And I, in 2006, I founded what was described as Australia's first social recruiting platform. So I discovered LinkedIn around 2006. And I was like, wow, this thing's going to revolutionize the way that talent acquisition executes. All of a sudden, social graph is like visible to everyone. And what we used to do is call a bunch of people and say, hey, I'm trying to hire for this role. Do you know anyone? And that's the way that we navigated around. And I'm sure that still happens today, but I thought, how about if we bring that process online and actually leverage social networks and really drive kind of automation of that referral process, reward it, monetize it, et cetera, et cetera. And do that with LinkedIn, do that with Facebook, do that with Twitter. This is back in 2006, And I'm like, yeah, I looked at all the tech founders and thought, I want to be one of those. So I naively went about investing a lot of my personal wealth into a startup. So that's like my first foray into SaaS and what that really taught me. We were leveraging Amazon S3 back then. We had an outsourced development firm in India working with us, but by the time we Wanted to bring the first iteration of the platform to market, it was September of 2008. So right in the heart of the GFC. And at the time, it was, it didn't matter how innovative your solution was for recruiting, and it was an online referral recruiting solution. No, nobody was interested in doing anything of that nature. It was the most expensive MBA.

Fantastic. Wow. So you've had some real skin in the game. And I can only imagine. You have all my sympathies as an agency recruitment owner with the jagged spikes that we live through in the tech industry. It's not for the faint-hearted. So, if people only knew what it takes to keep standing. But tell me more. So, you've worked for some iconic companies, you've worked with some innovative companies, but you have great clarity about the space that you bring Tremendous value. And so tell me a bit more about the subsequent chapters of your journey.

I think a lot of what I've wanted to do and subsequently been able to do has been shaped by the kind of early stages of my life, not necessarily my career. So I was born in Baghdad, in Iraq, and we Escaped the Iraq-Iran War in the '70s and were fortunate enough to be able to come to Australia as refugees back in 1976. So I grew up in the south of Fairfield and Bonnyrigg and Liverpool, which if any of your listeners are aware of those areas, aren't the most affluent places. And having said that, it left a significant imprint on my work ethic, my desire to change my circumstances. And still today, fortunately or unfortunately, I have this tremendous fear of failure, which is one of the main drivers of the level of kind of resilience that I have to just keep pushing forward. That's really shaped things. And because of that, I've always looked for companies that have been very purpose-driven. So when you come from an environment like that, and you're fortunate enough to move social structures and change your circumstances, you— that upbringing never leaves you. So you come away with that, with a certain value system that is about doing something that is purposeful. And thankfully, I've been very fortunate, particularly over the last 15 years or so, to work for some fantastic companies that have all been purpose-driven companies like Avature and Workday. And then fast forward to now, a company that I'm— I've been with called Gloat, which has been a great experience so far.

Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you so much. I think that behind every person that we see, there's always— people get to see the persona, the person on LinkedIn, or the person that they meet at the Gartner event, or the person that you cross paths with. But behind that, there is a story and why people are the way they are, why they have a certain work ethic, or why things that have shaped their worldview and what they bring their whole selves into a role. And that's a story with a significant origin story. Thank you. What As a sales leader building an innovative company, what is the most challenging part of your job?

How long do you have is the question. There's many. I think I've always gravitated to opportunities where I've been either the first person on the ground for a global SaaS vendor that are wanting to grow their business in the APJ region. So I've gravitated to that type of opportunity and also gravitated to companies that are wanting to create a new category or help organizations solve a problem in a very different way. That has happened with Avature, which was the creator of customer relationship management software for recruiting. Recruiting is very much sales and marketing, but There was no purpose-built application for recruiting back then. My experience prior to working with Avature was having to customize Salesforce to leverage for a recruiting business. So, that's an example. Gloat has created a new category within HR technology. So, we created the category of the internal talent marketplace. And again, a very transformative way of applying marketplace dynamics to people problems. And at Workday, it was creating a medium enterprise business for a business that had historically been very much focused on an enterprise go-to-market or an enterprise motion. I've always really gravitated to those types of opportunities, which, circling back to your question, brings significant challenges. Those challenges are identifying people, that innovators that have a significant appetite for risk that are willing to trust you to come on this journey to really solve problems in very unique ways. And there's not a lot of those people around. I think what happens is, as you gain those early customers, then the market starts to mature. But doing that brings a lot of challenges. So you have to be particularly resilient and very focused on What does the future look like? And if you can see that future and paint that picture of that future with some of those early people that are coming on that journey with you, and you get these little wins along the way, that helps you maintain your kind of energy and your focus ultimately.

Understood. Okay, so you have built a career working for some iconic innovative companies, you're building teams and businesses across the region, you're having success, you've got a terrific work ethic, you've got this absolute strong desire to succeed and make a difference. There is a cost which is building up potentially from a stress point of view in terms of carrying the weight of it all. So tell me a little bit more about what some of the symptoms and signs of burnout and carrying that for a while or running that fast. What does that start feeling like, looking like?

Yeah. Look, it's been a pretty intense 4 years here at GLOZ. As I say, creating it and creating awareness of a completely new operating model and a way to do things, it's a marathon. And unfortunately or unfortunately, I don't know any other pace other than to throw myself into something completely. And that has impacts on other aspects of Anyone's life. For me, I found myself, and I think what triggered this conversation was a LinkedIn post that I wrote a couple of months ago, but what I found myself becoming much more irritable and I wasn't sleeping particularly well. I was becoming a little bit impetuous, probably making decisions that I normally wouldn't make. And that started to become apparent to me. And that was when I was like, okay, something's got to give here. You need to acknowledge that this is happening and actually be proactive about doing something about it. And that initial step for me was, hey, take a couple of days off, take a 4-day-long weekend and put your phone down. Don't think about Gloat for a few days. Be present in your family environment and just do quote unquote some normal things, right? Make lunches, do pickups, do all of those things. And I had this kind of revelation, I must admit. I was like, man, there's a world out there that's turning, that's spinning. And it's not all about you being head down into this thing that you're trying to build. And it was super refreshing, right? Those signs were certainly evident for me.

Yes, I saw that post and it was amazing. And I know, I, on a daily basis, speak to sales leaders trying to do hard things, right? From hard-fought losses to celebrated wins and everything that gets lost in between. There's so much that builds up. So, seeing that post with you, I think it was with your kids, and you've had a A couple of other posts that were— it was so refreshing because I know that the same thing when people don't do it, it takes a toll on people if you don't recognize the signs of stress and running that fast. So that's why I wanted for you to come on and share this with us. But tell me, what are some of the things that you have done in general to look after yourself, to put your oxygen mask on so that you're good for everyone else? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I've been very focused on health and fitness all of my life. So I studied health science at university. I actually, before having to get a job, I wanted to be a professional footballer. So I played soccer for a large part of my life in the early days growing up in the southwest of Sydney. That's, that was what you did and grew up around some amazing footballers at the time. But so I've always exercised. In fact, one of my first jobs was Believe it or not, I was a personal trainer, and my first sales job was I sold health club memberships before I got into recruiting. I have to exercise. I have to do something every day, whether that— definitely I spend a lot of time practicing yoga. I run, I strength train, I meditate. So there are a number of things that kind of happen on a cycle that keep me focused and in a reasonable place physically, but more importantly, mentally. Like, it's got to the point if I don't do something on a day, I feel it in my mood. I feel it in just general kind of mental clarity and focus and so on. So I try and stay especially active. My latest kind of addiction is sleep. So I've got one of these Whoop bands that tracks your sleep. So now I'm into all of this kind of human optimization. I'm really focused on how many hours of sleep I get. So I was at a dinner with some customers in Brisbane on Tuesday and we were chuckling that I was like, look, we finished dinner and I think dinner finished at about 9 o'clock. So I was like very excited to get back to my hotel room and make sure that I'm in bed by 10 PM. So how life's changed, right? But yeah, so I try and focus on all of those things regularly.

Oh, Rajesh, I'm getting far more twin vibes than just the black t-shirt. Had a significant shakeout in the industry and everyone was impacted. Very few— and we've just seen so many people lose jobs. I was— my own team, we had to make very hard decisions and scale back helping others get roles. And thankfully, everyone impacted had roles within 4 weeks. But I found my blood pressure absolutely out of control. I found myself clenching my teeth, sighing often during the day, and I knew that I had to do something. Waking up at 4 and 5 in the morning thinking about the things that were on top of my mind, challenges, right? And long story short, this year for me has been one of resetting. And I was really impacted by Atomic Habits, which we've all seen and heard.

Right.

But it was talking about, yep, having an identity change. I am not doing exercise. I am a healthy person. When I'm a healthy person, then all the other things come along with that. And the other one was around building systems and not setting goals. So, for me, for example, I know on a Monday evening at 5 o'clock, I'm going to yoga. And I've roped 2 buddies who were having the same issues. But we're better dads as a result, right? We do yoga on Mondays. I've gotten back into strength training on Tuesdays and Fridays. And then on the other days, I bought a Peloton bike and I will ride my bike. So, how times have changed. And I've got a set bed. And I've got a set bedtime, which—

Yeah, I know. It's sad, mate. We've got to that age, unfortunately, that those things matter. But it's super important. We have a lot of demands, both personally and professionally, and a lot of responsibility. And I think it's— I don't know, I consider it like being an athlete, right? You have to be in the best possible condition to perform. And As a sales leader, your energy and focus is critical to the way that you interact with your team, the way that you interact with your customers. Like all of those things matter. And I feel it when I have maybe a big night once a quarter with my mates and we'll be out and have a couple of beers, for example. It takes me 2 or 3 days to like really recover. And so.

Yeah.

You have to minimize those sessions these days, which happens as you get older. So, yeah, these are the things that we need to cater for.

Yeah. And look, I think that from everything that you've said, again, what stands out to me is that you've got to treat yourself like an athlete. You've got to treat your mind and your body with the importance that it deserves and keep that as part of your consideration before the task that you— because often you get consumed in the tasks. And you forget the rest of that. Tell me, as we start wrapping up, tell me what are some of the things that you are doing, will do, and have done, just practical things that are helping you reset and being the best that you can for both personally and professionally.

Yeah, I would break those up into a few areas. I think nutrition is particularly important. I'm not obsessive, but I'm conscious of my nutrition, exercise in general, just moving, as we've talked about, whether that's strength training, or I run a bit or yoga, whatever that is, is super helpful. And then it's spending time actually, like, I like to meditate and kind of show gratitude through journaling sometimes. So I can just really focus on the things that really matter. Now, these are all things that I probably wouldn't have been very comfortable talking about 5, 7 years ago, for example. But they're things that I would absolutely have conversations about these items with my team. And anyone around me knows that I'm a huge proponent of investing in yourself in those areas, because you cannot be good for anyone, whether that's professionally or in your personal life, if you don't practice a bit of, you hear the term self-care, but just be slightly selfish around those things so that you can be better for everyone that's around you. And if my partner, my girlfriend Chloe's listening to this, she probably thinks that I practice a bit too much of self-care because I do like my own space and I'm very fortunate I have my own autonomy and I do a bunch of things on my own with working from cafes and travel trips and so on. But look, in all sincerity, that keeps me Being able to be the best that I can possibly be for people around me. And that then helps you be empathetic in many different situations, patient, much more focused and clear and so on and so forth. So that's what I'd say.

Amazing. 2 points. I'm going to ask you to give us some ideas on the first, and I'll share some ideas on the second before we wrap up. What advice do you have on someone who wants to get a bit more into mindfulness? What are some practical— if we were just— what advice can you give me on how do I get more into mindfulness and meditation? Is it—

I started with some of the apps. Actually, recently at Gloat, we had in October, it was a Mental Health Awareness Month. And so there was a range of things that we did during that month that was really helpful just to encourage the importance of mental health. And one of those things was getting access to the Headspace app. And the beauty of it was not only did we get access to it as employees, but we got 5 extra subscriptions for family members to also come on the journey.

Wow.

So sometimes if you're just new to meditation, guided meditation through one of the apps like Headspace is actually a really great place to start. So I would encourage people to take that first step. I've been practicing yoga now for, I don't know, probably 8 years or so. And I'm still as stiff as I was probably 8 years ago, don't worry. So I still feel like a bundle of stress. But that to me has been a savior. So I generally would practice like first thing in the morning. And so for me, I think Yoga, super helpful. Guided meditation through an app is super helpful as well. But the beauty of meditation is you can just be anywhere, right? And you just need to have some quiet space. And, but for people that are really busy in their mind, it's difficult. I found it super difficult in the early days because I ended up planning my day in my head. My mind was drifting on what I need to do next, et cetera, et cetera. So. It's not an easy thing, but I found that fast forward to today, some of the most creative things for me happen in that deep state of meditation. So that would be my advice.

And do you have a set time that you do it?

Yeah, it's morning for me. I need to do all of my activity, whether that's exercise, Meditation, yoga, etc. In the morning, I have got a bit obsessive about these things. I have a routine now, and now I try and execute that routine on most days. So I'm not—I'm far from perfect. Don't get me wrong. There's a bit of cold water exposure first thing in the morning. There's meditation for twenty minutes. There's whether it's a yoga class or then I'll whether it's running on the treadmill. I'm Getting back into running, kind of road running. A mate of mine and I just did the Melbourne Half Marathon in October, and silly us, like literally 48 hours ago we registered to do the full marathon. Why? I don't know. I think we're certainly we're entering our 50th year. So I'm I would say 7:30-ish at 8 o'clock on a late day. I'm done with all of my stuff, and then everything else is about. Kiddies and getting started with work activities.

Amazing. I could talk about this for hours because you can see I've got this big smile on this face, but it has been a game changer for me. I'll throw one last bit in here. Journaling has been absolutely the most private and cheapest form of self-therapy. Yeah. And for— there are 2 types of journaling that I would recommend to anyone who wants to. That's— this is just the bonus section. But number one is obviously there are lots of prompts that you can just— and you respond to that and write it out. Number 2 is something called morning pages, which was made really popular by Julia Cameron. And she has been the coach or the advisor or the inspiration between many blockbuster Hollywood screenwriters and films and artists. And basically, it's you wake up in the morning and you just write a couple of pages of whatever is on your mind, whatever's bothering you, write about it. And it's amazing how you can go from being on the runway to 30,000 feet. And you've got clarity, you've got a sense of direction, you've got a sense of you've had some breakthroughs. And from whether it's a situation with one of my teenagers, to a situation with an employee or a client or something that I'm struggling with, It is amazing. With that said, what's your take on journaling? And then we'll wrap up.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I try and keep it reasonably simple. I haven't got into the kind of like flow of consciousness, write everything yet. But I basically have 3 things that I'm grateful for per day. And then I'll have 3 to 5 things of what did I learn today. And I think for me that It's just a reflection upon, if you're going back to Atomic Habits, it's love the process, right? And if you love the process, then I think that those bite-sized chunks enable you to feel like you're moving in a direction other than being overwhelmed, getting anxious about this kind of big goal that you're trying to head towards. In my case, it's very immersed in my professional life. There are Massive opportunities ahead of us. So I need to feel like we're incrementally getting better at all of the things. The leader here at Glota, a guy by the name of Brian McCarthy, I always hear this voice in the back of his head is, we got better today. He's from Denver in Colorado. He's, fam, we got better today. Just think about what are the incremental things that you do to get better every day.

Please, thank you so much. This has been a goldmine and I know From fact, I get contacted all the time that this is going to be so helpful to people who, like you, are time poor, under pressure, trying to do big things, and yet dealing with hard-fought losses to and working towards big wins. You have my utmost gratitude. Thank you so much.

Absolute pleasure. And for anyone listening, it's okay not to be okay. So, it's okay to have hard days. And I think we collectively as leaders, business leaders, need to encourage those conversations and actually lead our people to be able to be transparent with the way that they're feeling. And I think if we can do that, we're making a better impact on people, on their lives, and ultimately the world. So, thank you. Awesome to chat with you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the memo, the black t-shirt. Love that. Same skin complexion and everything. I really appreciate you spending the time with me. Hopefully it's an interesting conversation for you.

Fantastic. If you've been watching this and got some actionable insights, go ahead and subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on the amazing guests that we keep bringing onto this show. Thank you very much. That was awesome.