#8 Building a startup after burnout while growing a family and fighting cancer
Lessons on managing stress and anxiety in high-pressure jobs, illnesses and transitions; on how to go after what you really want, not away from what you don’t want; on how to back yourself to make a successful transition; and much more!
Greg talks to Gareth Fryer, the co-Founder and co-CEO of Fika, the up-and-coming mental fitness app and start-up.
Gareth’ burn-out led him to quit his job as a partner in a consultancy and give up an earn-out. He learnt to manage stress and anxiety by building emotional literacy. He followed his purpose by building a startup that focuses on solving the root-causes of mental health issues. While growing a family and his young startup, he fought back stage 3C Melanoma cancer.
Listen to the full story here or on your usual podcast player or read the key learnings below.
Key Learnings
How to manage the stress of cancer, high-pressure jobs and transitions before it manages you
“The inevitable challenges of life happened to me through my career and struggling with anxiety and fear, making myself feel all the time like, "why are you stressed? Why are you anxious? You're under so much pressure, but just don't be stressed, just don't be anxious!" And taking on more and more as we built the company and getting to the point where I just had to walk away from it all, to be honest, I didn't recognize it as burnout at the time. I just knew I was done and I had to leave and do something else. I was just at a point where I felt like I just didn't want to do that anymore. Irrespective of the financial benefit or the great things we were doing as a team. It just got to a point for me where my own state of my mental well-being was something that I'd never really paid attention to. As a typical bloke, I'd always just been, oh, I'm fine. Feeling anxious and stress wasn't the problem. It was not being able to understand how to classify those emotions and not having the right toolkit to manage them and being a bit illiterate in my own understanding of mental fitness to be honest. That led me to need to leave and seek different avenues and do something more meaningful.”
“The stress comes from how you take those challenges and then are able to either prioritize them or put them into opportunities. And for me, it obviously sounds really easy to say now, but that's been a long period of reflection and to recognize that.”
“"Fear is a waste of a perfectly good imagination." You could put the fear on what if it doesn't work, the reality is, I backed myself. If it didn't work, I'd do something else. So much that you train your mind to not focus on that output and put your energies instead into “How are we going to make it work?”
“My job was literally thinking about what could happen, what might happen from what could go wrong. What if with multiple spinning plates? How do they all connect? So I always felt really anxious because I always saw all of the things that could be done and all of the things that could happen, what I now know. And what I've learned is that anxiety is nothing bad. That anxiety was, I was manifesting it badly, but anxiety is part of your limbic nervous system. It's how you think about consequences and plan for the future. So actually I've recognized that perceived weakness has a direct line to what actually is one of my biggest strengths. I'm no more or less anxious. The framing of it, the volume of it is completely turned down because it doesn't, it isn't a negative emotion for me anymore. It's an acceptance of, an emotion that I've flipped into a positive because it is a key driver that helps me do what I do, but that's the journey that, the Fika journey that I've been on. And it sounds again, easy to say now, but it's been five years from the point of leaving to now to really go on that emotional journey to learn these things for myself.”
Greg: ”What advice would you give to people who want to make a change, but are afraid of making the steps to change?” Gareth: “When we're facing any period of challenge or transition, we feel anxious. We're supposed to, it's an evolutionary response, thinking about the consequences of what might happen, that's normal. And that's actually nothing bad. Worrying about what might happen is a completely normal evolutionary response. It doesn't mean anyone is ill. It just means we're planning for what might happen. We feel a bit stressed because that's our performance mechanism kicking in, helping us get ready to face the challenge. And it's that difference between positive and negative stress, and chronic and acute anxiety. And actually when we are in a state of positive stress, it's as if we have the tools and resources to overcome or to do the things that we think are facing us. And that's positive stress, it's the motivator. And one of the best ways to focus on those positive stress is by looking back on previous situations. So we, we typically we are tuned to focus on the negative, to think about the worst that could possibly happen. That's our brains. And actually most of the time, things turn out better than we expect. That's what the science shows us. So we are tuned to be negative, even though generally things turn out better than we expect them to generally. In those periods of transition, you cannot predict what's going to happen. It's physically impossible, or you can do is look at the things that. Where have you experienced this situation or similar situations before? Where have you faced at the unknown? Where, how, and actually, how did you react in those situations? Because the chances are, that's how you'll react again.”
“We all think we have to be confident before we do. The science is the exact opposite. You only get confident as a result of going through those transition periods and the more you do it, the more your self efficacy builds, the more confident you feel, and the more then you push on from that. But so this whole thing of confidence before action. Is not the way that we work. We have to go through the challenge. We do the challenge, and then we feel more confident. So drawing back on previous experiences where you've gone through those challenges probably ended up better than you expected, because most of the time they do and use that as your motivator to go through those challenges.”
Greg: “transforming stress from an inhibitor to a motivator. How do you do this?” Gareth: “I'm not a psychologist. We work with psychologists and our platform is the place where you get this training. I think part of it is a it's about awareness of what stress is and where stress comes from and how we are so attuned in our society that we are told so regularly that stress is bad and it can be as simple as, starting to think that actually, if you're understand what stress is: your mind trying to get you ready to perform effectively. That's what stress is. So if you then think about that, it is energy. It is momentum and energy that your mind is creating to point you in a direction to perform. You can point that stress any way you like. And the other thing that is the was one of the key drivers for me, again, I'm not the scientist. So I, I tend to use quite simple frameworks because I'm a simple person. But my biggest problem was I used to feel like all of these things were like blaming the things for happening to me. So I'm stressed because I've got too much work. I'm stressed because these people said something at X point, which did Y which may, there's just so much in it. I'm stressed because of all of these things that are happening. Yet if you compare that to the physical space, we tune our feelings of poor fitness onto ourselves. We don't blame the Mars bar for as eating it. We blame ourselves for eating the Mars bar. Yet in the physical space, we blame the external driver for impacting our stress. Both of those things are our own responses to external stimuli. So when it comes to stress it's, the, these factors are happening. Your body has become aware of them. Your mind is thinking and getting you ready, anxiety kicking in thinking of all the consequences, stress is there to help you like attack them. It takes work. And there are exercises and practices that you can do to just work on channeling that stress. Really simple tasks like don't do lists. Like we're always so focused on our to-do list. Here's the list of all the things, million things I've got to do. And my God, the list is getting longer and longer and longer. Really simple flip on that is just focused on the things you're not going to do, because if you really focus your mind on the things I'm not going to do, you can then start to clear some of that prioritization and workload. And none of these things are complicated. Solution-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, sports psychology, positive psychology, they're all rooted in generally basic or simple constructs that if we practice those constructs regularly, we have positive outcomes. The problem is we assume it's time to expect quick fixes it's like saying I'm going to go to the gym once and lose three stone. Then we're like, mental fitness is as hard as physical fitness. You have to work on it all the time. So yeah, I think the answer to your question is there reason to quick way to do that. It is a way of framing your mindset over a period of time and continual reinforcement and continual reflection to remind yourself because we're also fighting nature. We have to remember, we're fighting our own evolutionary nature that evolved for a situation that humans are not now in. So that obviously isn't something, a switch you can just flick because you have to tune it.”
“If you take founding a startup, COVID stage 3C melanoma diagnosis halfway just before the pandemic started. So a year into getting a startup off the ground, my cancer diagnosis. I was doing okay before that, but ironically that diagnosis, which has been the most difficult period for me in my entire life. When you Google it and the stats are like 25% chance of seeing your daughter turn 10. Like being alive in 10 years time, pre lots of fantastic new treatments that exist. You can't help, but take an even deeper reflective state on how you manage, and what's important to you because I've had that a bit before, but then that was a real different mindset shift that only happens in that kind of unique situation. Actually what I practice is now as a result of what is the biggest predictor of our long-term mental health status, according to the WHO. According to the world health organization, if you are literate in your mental health, if you have literacy, you are healthier in the longterm, just because you practice healthier habits and you understand how it works. So you know how I live it myself. I make sure I take the time to reflect. I know the tools that work for me for my area. So I know that like meditation, mindfulness has never been a thing that works for me. It's just not, it's not something that I find useful. That's okay. But to manage my anxiety, like gratitude. I'll give you the real simple articulation of that: the fear of that diagnosis. The fear of not seeing my daughter grow up, the fear of not being there for my wife, not being there for my family is the worst fear. I hope - touch wood - I hope that is the worst fear I ever experienced because God forbid anything to my wife or my daughter, et cetera. That is the most negative thing. But if we understand the root cause of fear being a driver of anxiety to protect the things that we have, that we care about. And then having that much fear, not seeing my daughter grow up, not being around for my life, not my family, my friends, et cetera. Those are all amazing things. Those are things that I have that I'm afraid of losing. So again, it's just that mindset shift that you can flip that fear into a positive emotion, by understanding that fear is a manifestation of what we have to lose. So the being afraid of losing it, isn't going to change whether you're going to lose it or not. So possibly focusing and practicing and being grateful on the ability to have those things while you have them is huge. And that, again, sounds so, so easy to do, but it's really hard. I'm a stoic northerner. The first time people talked to me about gratitude practices, like whatever. And the first time we try and do it, it's really hard. It's a practice. Like everything. Once you get into it, it takes time, but it has real benefits if those are the sorts of exercises that work for you as an individual, because everyone's different.”
“That [the stage 3C Melanoma diagnosis] was like a sledgehammer through my entire life. It was like the biggest bomb you could ever drop. That was such a moment. Something that seismic in your life just causes a series of chain reactions that just keep going and going. That just drove me to be really focused on why we're doing what we were doing and practicing what we preach. Cause my whole, our whole thing, is around training for life before it happens. So almost proving a bit of a use case through myself that while you've been doing this for a year and a half, what things have you got in your armory to help you deal with this thing? That really actually, if anything, sharpened my ability, because I had to, with COVID, with the diagnosis, with the business I had to yeah, had to keep going because we have people that work for us. I care about those people greatly, we've got an amazing team, family, et cetera, but it was just a factor of necessity. It was no, there's no like great kind of philosophical moment or anything. It was just like, I'm an action orientated person. So we could sit, I could sit and still, or I could just keep going. And my approaches is keep going and use what tools I've got around me to keep going as best as I can. But yeah, it was, yeah, it's impossible to describe how much of a change that was. But at the same time, I've always, I always feel after these things, like there is always someone worse off than me as well. There are plenty of stories that were a lot worse than mine, and I don't share these stories for sympathy. They're just, I think measures of, life has its ways of getting into all of those positive and negatively throughout all this journey that we're all on. And we can help people prepare for it better so that they can cope with it when it happens.”
“We talk about it as the startup roller coaster, because it's highs and lows and highs and lows, and you've just got to take the highs and bank them while they're there.”
“"The only run you regret is the one you don't do." I'm training for the London marathon and I'm running it for cancer research. If you're maintaining that optimistic mindset, if you have the right mindset, you can't really make a wrong choice. You've got to back yourself to make the most. It's like back to that acceptance and commitment. It's once you've made a decision, you've made the decision and then you have to make the most out of that decision. I definitely don't think it's right to say to someone: "you should definitely leave and set up something and do it all by yourself!" because that is definitely the individual's call to make. I think what we do and what I was definitely really guilty of was letting that desire to want to do something impact what I did every single day as a negative driver, like being unhappy because I want to work for myself. Carrying that sort of negative harboring through your life, isn't healthy for anyone. If anyone did anything: "don't waste time thinking about what decision you're going to make, make a decision commit to that decision, and then say, I'm going to review that decision in a month's time, but then don't let yourself be beaten up by that decision for the next month."
Go after what you want, not away from what you don’t want!
“I am inherently competitive as a person. I'm an only child. So the worst thing is I've only ever competed with myself, which is horrendous because you can't win. And so I've always felt this burning desire that I wanted to do something for myself. But I lacked the confidence, but I then found myself always frustrated. I felt like quite naively, I just needed to be my own boss because I felt like I just, that was what I wanted to do for myself now with some reflection and hindsight, and actually my ability to manage my emotions better, actually the thing that I have always wanted isn't to be my own boss. It's about being in control of the problems. I like having that ultimate accountability and responsibility for the problems, because then I can decide how we treat those problems or pass on those problems. I'm not, so it's actually not about the glory and the success and all of those things.”
“When Nick's best friend Ben died by suicide, that was a real driving force for Nick to start thinking about this space. I'd always been passionate about this space, but I didn't have that trigger at that time because this was a couple of years before. So Nick had been thinking about ideas, approaches things that could happen. And we both then decided to leave and ended up, available. What we actually did first was we set up a design consultancy business. So the two of us set up a design consultancy. We had clients, we had friends, we had contacts and actually in six months, that was going really well. We, we'd got some contracts, we were doing some work, but Nick had this thing on the side that was the real passion. We talked about it a lot. It was something that I was really passionate about doing as well, because it's a meaningful goal. And so as a result, what we decided to do was slowly wind down the consultancy business. I kept working in the consultancy business with some of our clients to enter the end of those contracts whilst putting that money from that into Fika to help us get Fika off the ground, to help us create our investment case, to get our first seed funding. So what we did was create a new business, but very quickly decided that we were just doing the same thing that we'd both always done and that wasn't thing that we wanted to do, even though it was going well and then decided to wind that down, but use the proceeds from it to invest it into bringing Fika up to the same level so that we could kick on and raise seed.”
“When I was deciding what it was that I wanted to do next, there was obviously the driving thing of, I want to do something that we get well renumerated for, because I have a family and I want to provide for the family like everyone does, but then it wasn't taking me of the boxes of the Ikigai around doing something that the world needs, et cetera. And actually to be honest, the problem is it's probably not going to tick the financial one for a long time. And that's going to be difficult for myself, for the family, but do I believe that the long-term investment will catch up.”
“I wanted to feel like I was in control. I wanted to be in control of the surroundings that we were in. As a strategist, it's about controlling the controllables, planning for them. So anything that therefore was outside of my control, I had a real problem. With the left-field things, because I just didn't have that frame of reference of how to manage that anxiety mechanisms. So the real driver was more that I'm never going to be happy unless I'm in control of all the controllables. That isn't true. That was nonsense. If I was back in that role now with what I know now, I wouldn't feel like that because I have a better way of managing those emotions. It was the right outcome, but driven from completely the wrong place. It sounds so arrogant to say it now. I can do it differently. I've got a plan. I want to do it like this. I think every person who starts from business will say they have a drive of how they think they want things to be. It was really manifesting for me as a desire to get away from things that I thought I didn't like. Whereas now, I understand this. There's nothing to do with getting away from things that I thought I didn't like. It was actually about the things that I, how I want to work and how I wanted to work. I thought I had to be in “control” inverted commas to feel like that. That's just not true. I have the benefit of hindsight of learning that now.”
Greg: “You said earlier you stepped out of a business where you were a partner because it was just too much and it was a burnout that you would not have recognized then. How did you take that decision to step out? Can you just share a little more about this because that's stressful as well to just step out and you missed on an earn-out you mentioned earlier.” Gareth: “I left partway through that, which was a big thing. I was the only person that left partway through that. I'm not going to say that was planned. It wasn't, the intention was always to try to stay through the earn-out, see where it went. There were lots of opportunities there. None of this is a reflection on the organization. It was more reflection on me and my management of myself which I now know. And it wasn't a conscious decision of right now is the right time. It was, it's gotta be now. It was a, it just reached a point with workload and things happening and how I felt and what was going on in life. And it was just one day where I just went home and said to my wife "I'm not doing this anymore." And I resigned the next day. There's a series of things that happened. It's easy to say the straw that broke the camel's back. it was just one of those things where there was just a collection of things that happened over a period of time. That got to a point where I just made the decision that I was unhappy. I was unhappy in my own mind, more so than anything else. And whilst I could have carried on being fine in inverted commerce and doing well. I wasn't feeling well. I was just tired and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And so there was no great strategy or plan. I'd always wanted to do something different and do something for myself, but I'd never felt brave enough to take the leap. And then one day it was just time. And I just decided that that was time.”
“I look back on it from a position now with hindsight and think that actually, that was just emotionally immature in terms of the understanding of those drivers and the emotions, the reasons why everything is the way that they are. Yeah, it drove me to a decision, but the decision wasn't driven from a healthy place or the right reasons at the time. And if I was the person that I am now, I probably wouldn't have left to be honest. You can say whether that's a positive thing or a negative thing, I don't know.”
As you prepare for a transition, back yourself! That will give you the peace of mind to see and seize more opportunities!
“I didn't leave knowing what I was going to do. I left because I've always backed myself in any situation that if something comes up, I'll make the best of it. And I left, didn't know what I wanted to do and decided I would see what opportunities came my way. And, Fika presented itself as an opportunity between Nick and I. It ticked a lot of boxes. Something that I'm really passionate about and, the rest is history.”
“So at the time I just got married and obviously my wife and I were talking about starting a family, et cetera, but I knew I wanted to leave. So we actually said, let's not start a family yet, because that was me about unlocking my own motivation that I knew that if we then did decide to start a family, it would make leaving so much harder because the idea of walking away from the income and the salary, all of the safety that comes from that, I probably wouldn't have done it, if that had been something that we were doing at the time. The planning to get there had been something that I was always going to do. It was just a figure of when I did it.”
“We'd sold the company I was in previously. I made some money out of that, but I walked away from the remainder of the earn out, but my discussion with my wife and with my friends was that modest amount of money I could put into savings and ISAs. Or I could invest that money in paying my salary for 18 months. So as an investment in a future where I backed myself to turn that money into something more meaningful and more valuable. So it's a bit of an easy thing to say, but I didn't have the risk associated with necessarily with the financials side of it. Cause I had a bit of a cushion to give me that confidence to, to take that leap, which is always a massive motivator for people. So we shouldn't take that lightly. But it was a very conscious decision that was an investment. So it was that money that had been made from lots of years of effort before was invested in paying ourselves to get this off the ground. That's what I mean by a decision not taken lightly because you can look at years of effort to get some money through business sale to then turn it around and put it straight back into doing something else.”
Other bits of wisdom
Innovation and setting up a startup: “If you look at who really owns ideas and where ideas come from. I co-founded Fika with Nick. Fika is a concept for something that Nick had been thinking about for some time. And we talked about it as friends, and that became something that we decided to found together. Anyone who's worked in innovation and product creation, you can have all the ideas in the world, the ideas, aren't the thing that make it work. Because actually the idea you think is the right answer usually isn't the right answer. Anyway, it's the how, your approach to the learning and the innovation.”
How to have a successful career: “There's some great research from Shawn Achor, which looks at the three things that predict 75% of our career successes. Only 25% predicted by our IQ. Those three things are your ability to use stress as a motivator rather than inhibitor. In those periods of transition, can you channel that stress into a positive motivator, the ability to maintain an optimistic mindset. So use that anxiety, but harness it positively as actually, I'm going to turn this challenge into a positive driver for me. And then the third one is the ability to build a strong support network around you? Who can you call on? Who can you draw on? Who has expertise? What are the positive influences that you can put around you to give yourself that buffer through the transition period? And if you do that naturally, and this is all scientifically evidenced stuff, that is how you can build your self efficacy, your self confidence, your self belief through that transition.”
On the positive impact of purpose, meaning and positivity on one’s self-efficacy: “Meaning can be quite an abstract term. People when you say meaning, think "what's the meaning of life?". That's not what we mean by meaningful. Meaning is really about finding the value in everything that you're trying to do that relates to what your values are, how you want to act, where you want to see yourself, where you want to be. Meaning is linked into positivity because, if you're able to maintain your optimism, your positivity, you find more meaning in the things that you're doing. You're able to maintain that optimistic mindset. Ultimately our evidence base is around building self-efficacy. If you're able to find the meaning in the things that you're doing, it then does help towards those measures of self-efficacy because you're reinforcing to yourself that you're layering on additional bills towards the values, the goals, the things that you want to achieve with your life. It's really just the way of thinking about decisions and actions.”