#540 From Burnout to Breakthroughs: Christina Richardson on Founder Resilience and High Performance

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Mehmet: Hello, and welcome back to an episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased. Joining me, Christina Richardson, she's the founder of Foundology. We're gonna talk today a lot about [00:01:00] many things related to founders, you know. A little bit about resilience also for founders and other topics also as well.

But before we do anything, and as the audience knows by now, what I like to start with always is to keep it to my guests to tell us a little bit more about themselves. So, Christina, little bit about you, your, your, your journey and what brought you to, to start, um, you know, Foundology, and then we're gonna start discussion from there.

So the floor is yours. 

Christina: Fantastic. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. Um, pleasure. I can't always get stuck into all the details. Um, I guess you call me a serial founder. Um, at, at, at many times a serial tech founder. I had a small exit, but in truth, what fuels my mission now, my mission to fuel the humans behind the startups is I push myself so hard as an entrepreneur that I woke up at 2:00 AM in the morning with chest pain so bad.

My husband thought I was having a heart attack. [00:02:00] 

Mehmet: Mm. 

Christina: And from there it starts a whole journey into human performance, psychology, understanding, um, what makes us different as founders, and that now fuels hundreds of founders all over the world with our founder circles. 

Mehmet: Great. And thank you Christina again for being here with me today.

So. Uh, you are a serial entrepreneur yourself, so, so you've built, as you said, like two startups before. So looking back what patterns of, of burnouts I would say, and, you know, probably maybe isolation did you observe in yourself, and then you start to see, oh, like this, this might be something that a lot of other founders might be, uh, facing as well.

Christina: Yeah. Well I think this is such a critical question. So when I look back, um, that heart attack at 2:00 AM in the morning incident, which wasn't a heart attack, and I will explain that in a minute. Sure, please. That started [00:03:00] in 2016. Um, but I had no idea what was causing that at the time. Ambulances were called.

Everything settled down. They went on their merry way. Nobody ever talked to me about panic attacks or in fact, unprompted panic attacks, which is what it actually was. And I had pushed myself at such a relentless rate, and I think this is where lots of founders in the audience will. Recognize this. Just push, push, push, tick, ticket off the to-do list.

Next item, ticket off the to-do list. Next item. It's just the pace at which we, um, we operate as founders. And of course, let's not forget that there's, uh, vast amounts of uncertainty. There is the emotional burden of being a founder. You don't wanna let your team down, your investors down, uh, your families down who maybe have made sacrifices.

You don't wanna let yourself down because a lot of what we do as founders is so driven to [00:04:00] achieve and make a difference. Um, and that just has this quite paradoxical, but very powerful, uh, driver to make us push ourselves incredibly hard. So that pressure builds and builds and builds. But, you know, go back to my personal story and it took us another 17 months before anybody helped piece this together.

And that actually it was me pushing myself so hard in my startup that was actually causing health issues. Um, right. And now we know, you know, that was just one story. But I did, um, initial research in 2019 to try and unpack this. Mm-hmm. Nine out of 10 founders are exactly the same. So there'll be other people in the audience who are thinking, yeah, I, I recognize that.

Like chronic procrastination, um, uh, migraines, uh, um, part palpitations, uh, digestion problems, um, constantly being irritable. Like we [00:05:00] can all identify with these and these are normal, uh, symptoms of when we push ourselves and we run our. Our body is on cortisol for an extreme period of time. Um, and the truth of the matter is it doesn't help us perform that well either.

So we don't, we, we don't lead our teams very well. When we do this. We are not able to look after ourselves that brilliantly. Um, and we kind of beat ourselves up. Those negative voices start coming into your mind. And it just doesn't help us perform, doesn't help us be confident and tackle the feelings of loneliness and failure that, uh, also go with 

Mehmet: right now, Christina, I mentioned a few things which, um, you know, although like it was part of, of the questions that I prepared, but uh, it triggered it really in the right time Now.

You mentioned about this, uh, responsibility that we feel towards, you know, first ourselves maybe. Right? And, and then the [00:06:00] family, uh, friends who believed in US, investors and so on, and what. I have seen, especially in the tech industry, startups in the tech, I, I mean, it can be in anything, but maybe because I'm, I'm more exposed to the, to the tech, um, startup ecosystem.

So we hear this a lot that, hey, like, you know what, you're gonna grind harder. 

Christina: Mm-hmm. 

Mehmet: You're gonna go all in hustling, and there's a kind of a glorification out there, right. Um. So how much that, in your opinion, also like, put us as founders, and by the way, this happens as if we are a founder, or if you are maybe just in doing your job as in a company, but you have this, you know, uh, push that, yeah, I need to deliver the best, you know, I, I need to do this.

How much that plays a role. I mean. Society, [00:07:00] you want to call it, you want to call it the surrounding. Tell me about your opinion about this. 

Christina: Such a huge impact. So it is a, a really, really, um, productive question because what I call ecosystem bravado is a huge part in, um. Building this sense of like, I just gotta keep on working.

I've gotta do 20 hour days, I've gotta work six days a week. Or let's not, let's face it, 9, 9 6, which is the, the current, uh, fad that's going round. Um, and a big part of my role, my world is helping people see that that is not. The way, certainly not the only way. And actually all the performance psychology and, um, performance science tells us it's not the way to perform.

Um, because on a physiological basis, you just don't work in that way. Um, just to give you one tiny snippet of this, our brains. Don't [00:08:00] problem solve in the moment. And they certainly don't problem solve under stress. So, um, there's a part of our brain called the default mode network, which I like to call, is, it's almost like a little, having a little dude in your head who does all the filing.

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Christina: And that little dude in your head only comes online when you stop thinking about a problem. And you have to be in such a state where you're not like bashing yourself at the, at, at a desk or, or trying to fix the coding problem. You actually need to just remove yourself from that situation. Um, that is the only way that your brain will be able to put the pieces together and get that light bulb moment that we're also familiar with.

And. Intuitively, we all know that. You know you, that old adage of you get your best ideas in the shower, that is the default mode network working for you. But we don't use that as evidence that the way in which we operate and the conditions in which we perform our best are actually rooted around performance recovery, performance recovery, and the [00:09:00] balance between those two things.

So this whole hustle culture is frankly just, well, I won't swear, misguided. 

Mehmet: Uh, yeah, so I, I tell people sometimes, you know, our problem and I think maybe it's a human nature, so we always seek something to believe in, right? And. I am not sure if I should say fortunately or unfortunately, because maybe it worked for someone.

Right. I tell people like, look, when you see someone, especially now in the age of social media and scrolling and you know, fast attention grabbing, so you see someone who's talking like, Hey, like I. Did this, I did that. And they look like the super experts and people start to write about them and say, Hey, look like how successful they are.

They must have, you know, grinded all the time. They have must done this. And you know what? I'm [00:10:00] happy that we are living in the digital age where actually you can go and search for everyone. And guess what, like, I was surprised by some of the names. I don't want to mention that. Listen. Like they were actually, you know, they, they come from, from like good family, I mean.

Financially stable families. They didn't actually struggle the way they, people, they think about it, they had very good jobs, right? And then, yeah, they felt that they, they want to do something different, but the way they, you know, introduce it to people, oh, like we need to be doing this 24 by seven. Like, we need to spend sleepless nights.

And I tell people, you know what, by the way, I, because I felt in this trap also Christina, so I can. Share. But, but actually it's completely different. And I'm with you on this Now, I want to come a little bit to, to, to, to mention about the, the, the search, uh, the research. What surprised you the most about the resilience of, of the founders, right.

Um, because, you know, [00:11:00] sometime I hear this a lot. Few things data cannot uncover. Were there something like this in, in, or, or maybe the opposite, maybe a myth that everyone thought about it, but your research with the data debunked that myth. I, I would love to hear, you know, uh, some of the insights. 

Christina: Hmm. So, um, so there's a couple of different research studies he ended up doing one in 2019, which is like lifting the lid on how hard we push ourselves.

Mm-hmm. Uh, bravado point. And I also get frustrated with the, uh, the, the social media hype of like doing this, doing that. It's like, actually you'll discover that they still take an hour every day to go to the gym or some other such recovery item, um, because that is the only way that they can, but I just think it's wholly unhealthy to.

Push this one dimensional picture. So it's much love, it's much more helpful to look at the, the nuances [00:12:00] within this, which the research helps us do. Um, so 2019 lifted the lid on the problem 2024, the Founder Resilience Research, which you can find on our, uh, website, Foundology.org is all about asking this question of how do you build it.

So in the 2019 research. Founders said, now the most important trait, not communication skills, not not sales skills, not problem solving skills, resilience, like, 

Mehmet: yeah, 

Christina: cool, but what actually builds it? And that's what the sort of hypothesis, what the ultimate question was for 2014, how is founder resilience different and how on earth do you build it?

And um. For, I, I still remember a moment where I made a key decision about this research and it allowed me to segment nearly 400 founders who took the study into high resilience, [00:13:00] normal resilience, low resilience. And this was using a validated, uh, tool that has been, you know, academically validated. So, you know, it's a sound, um, methodology.

And then as soon as you have that. You can see what the impact of having low resilience is quite a lot on more unhealthy psychologically, um, uh, challenged many more blockers like anxiety, overwhelm, stress, and twice as more likely to, um, want to quit. Versus high resilience founders, what are they doing differently?

And that's where all the duty stuff is. So maybe if I could put it into four buckets. Um, the first one is they are proactively tuning into their stress. So they are keeping a measure of where they are, which is actually quite hard to do as humans. We're not very good at that. We're not very good identifying what our early warning signs are.

And this is something I do with founders, like, what is your early warning sign? Is it that [00:14:00] you lose your neck? Is it that you stop breathing properly? Is it that you, uh, start procrastinating and jump in between tabs? So identifying your. Early warning signs is the thing that unlocks everything else. So that's number one.

Mm-hmm. Early warning signs that allow you to then intervene. Um, number two is around performance habits. So some people might call these wellbeing habits or taking rest, I call them performance habits because they are what unlock our ability to perform. And I'm not talking about taking holidays, I'm talking about.

10 minute, half an hour breaks in your average day. So I very much approach performance, founder performance as thinking how do you get yourself into the flow state and then pull yourself out to recover so that you can get back to flow state later? And it is that navigation between those two things that allows you to do your best work and do your best work sustainably and not burnout.

[00:15:00] So in, I was amazed by how. Um. Basically all of the resilient founders ruthlessly protected their performance habits. Most of them is exercise. Some of them it was like their sleep routine. Some of them was making sure that they have, um, outside time in the middle of the day. Like there was always something that they anchor their recovery round in their day so they don't get lost in like, go, go, go.

I must keep on going like I did. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Christina: They integrate some form of, um. Uh, performance, um, ritual or habit, 

Mehmet: right? 

Uh, 

Christina: third one is they work on resilient thinking, which is such a fascinating thing from a psychology point of view. So this is, um. They might have negative thoughts that might eat away at their confidence or impost or imposter syndrome signs or [00:16:00] even guilt.

This is linking the last one and this one guilt that, oh no, I must keep on working. Not go and do my half an hour in the gym. And actually, what are resilient founders in the data tell us and show us is they will tackle that head on. It's like, no, I will. Ignore that guilt. I'll reframe it, remind myself that my performance habits are there for a reason and I will go and do my, um, uh, exercise anyway.

So it's a lovely example of the two. They're going together where that is how, um, resilient founders are acting and behaving. They're actually tackling those negative thoughts that start to undermine our performance and turn it around right. And then number four is support, which I think will, we'll probably get onto loneliness 'cause you mentioned it earlier and how toxic that can be.

Mehmet: Uh, I'm happy because you mentioned about the early science 'cause I was about to ask you and, and I'm happy you answered this. Um, now. [00:17:00] Of course, maybe the audience knows by now the reason I spend time asking about the problem and the cause of the problem, because I want to relate to, you know, a solution right now.

I would start from the methodology you have built, which you call it the founder circles, right? Uh, as a structured space, uh, for peer support. Now, tell us Christina, like how, because you know. And I don't want anyone to, to, to misunderstand me because I'm not saying this is right, this is wrong because I had like different opinions on the show, and this is why I like about doing this because I have different perspectives.

Now, some people they say, Hey, like you should have a coach. Some people they say like, okay, when when you feel stuck. I don't do this from, from your perspective and what you have done with, you know, the, the founder circles, how have, how have you built it, like how you came up with it and [00:18:00] how can people understand that it's different from even a therapy?

Because, you know, sometimes they would tell you, Hey, like, go to a therapist. Tell me more about that. 

Christina: Yeah. Okay. So it really love, it really ties back to your question around, for me, the ecosystem bravado that we talked about earlier. So when the whole world is saying, oh yeah, I'm killing it. This is a, I'm working 9, 9, 6, and everything's going brilliantly, and that's all you see in the media and on social media.

Every other founder is feeling like, geez, why am I, am I the only one finding this hard? Which of course, again, I'm not gonna swear, is total rubbish. Um, and. Now again, going back to the first wave of research, nine out 10 founders feel lonely as founders. Everyone thinks that loneliness is just an emotion.

Like yeah, whatever. It's toxic. It completely [00:19:00] undermines your confidence, your ability to make decisions. Um, it, uh, leaves you procrastinating. Like it has a direct correlation. I mean, that's said before, even before we get to the health stuff, as a direct correlation on your behavior, not your ability to act as a leader.

So really it was that nugget of information that made me go, okay, how do we create social support then? How do we create this notion of support, but do it in a way that founders feel like they're still action orientated, able to progress push forward because you are never gonna be able to convince a founder to spend time.

Like chilling out and like just relaxing for two hours. It's like, it needs to be still progressing towards their ultimate goal, which is moving their startup forward. And that's really where, um, founder circles came from. Um, so it's like, imagine having the support and shared intelligence of another nine founders who are in your group.

Mm-hmm. And your founder coach who are there [00:20:00] every month to work on. Whatever, challenge, worry, opportunity, decision is like front of mind for you at ev, at EV at any given point. And so it's really orientated around helping you move faster, make better decisions, but making sure that you've got that boost of confidence and resilience as a result.

Um. And that's really where it's come, come from. Um, we started with our first one not long after the original research. Um, we now have hundreds of founders all over the world who are all in their individual founder circle groups. So groups of 10. Um, they're all online so it's super easy to get access to, um, and put it all together.

And you have this huge community of people. Other founders who are in it, who get it, and who sort of cross pollinate information as well. It's just, it's a wonderful thing to see. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now I gotta ask you something, Christina. Uh, the hard part is the [00:21:00] start, right? I'm, I'm reading now, uh, a book called the the Cold Start Problem.

Um. And this is, I've seen it. You know, I, I think I've been long enough to see and read about startups. So any pro, even projects at the beginning, they are messy, you know? And probably if they are lucky enough, they, they, they are on the right track. They will. You know, find product market fit, they'll start to see some, uh, let's, let's call it the, the light at the end of the tunnel.

But actually the work starts there because now as founder, you need to think about scaling and all of the new topics is how to scale yourself as you scale your business. Yeah. So. In practice, from your opinion, how this can be done? Because still, yes, we get something, but still we have a long way, you know, to, to, to go through and we have high pressure again, like it's because yeah.

You know, [00:22:00] clients now investors, et cetera. 

Christina: Yeah. Um. One, one aspect of what I do professionally, we haven't actually mentioned, but it plays to this, um, question quite nicely when you mentioned early stage founders. So I also work with University College London. I'm a, um, associate professor there and I teach a particular module, um, called Building High Impact Founders.

And it is, I at the moment, in fact, I have a room of 70 budding entrepreneurs or. Wanna be entrepreneurs or people who are really early stages and just actually instilling this culture of, um, developing yourself, having a growth mindset, building your resilience, being aware of yourself, how are you a good leader, all those things.

Even before they really get started. So I feel like it's a, a bit of almost like a part of the mission to help them as they get started. But your question about that scaling process and how you scale [00:23:00] yourself, um, there was some really interesting stuff in the research. Um, there is, as. Yet broadly unpublished around what makes the role of founder Hood.

So the job of leading as a founder different to other forms of leadership and what skills you have to develop, at what points on the journey. And this was fascinating. And as I say, we're still unpacking it. Um, 'cause there's.

So one overarching point is just the pace at which you need to develop. So it is kind of intuitive, the fact the startup work, uh, grows quickly, so you have to grow quickly. But the problem with leadership skills or sometimes called soft skills, which I is never a term I appreciate, um, is they do have a lag.

Like, because it's behavioral change, you are asking people to change. So it's hard. And this, I think is one reason why [00:24:00] sometimes we see. VCs, for example, pushing out the founder. And maybe it's because they haven't been able to quickly enough develop the leadership skills that they need. But some of the ones that come out at different phases of the startup roads map is one is about the sort of early stages.

It's the managing people delegating, but later the truly empowering autonomous team. So actually that comes down to learning, uh. A coaching skillset. So as a leader, learning how to empower others and, and take a coaching style, which incidentally is what we also do within founder circles. You're always using coaching skills, so then when you go back to your team, you will have more of a coaching style to help empower your team.

Um, but then another aspect is what, um, came through again and again in the data was equanimity. So your ability to tune into self and just be calm and [00:25:00] collected and elevate yourself above the problem. Zoom out, what does this problem need of me? What does this person need of me? And I think that's one of the later stage awareness points where.

You realize that you are almost a conductor of a 50 person, a hundred person team, and your job becomes not meddling, which is what we all want to do as founders. We want to solve problems and meddle a bit. Actually, you need that equanimity to sit back and challenge yourself like, I will not meddle. I must allow this person, and what does this person need of me now?

Do they need me to help resolve a conflict? Do they need to, um, rant at me about the problem and then come to me with a, um, uh, recommendation Or do they need me to coach them through the problem and and so that they can move on? And there's just, yeah, lots of really interesting data points for leading as a founder within that.

Mehmet: Great. I'm happy you mentioned VCs and investors now. [00:26:00] I gotta ask you, I'm sorry for this, but I have to ask you kind of a loaded question, um, because I've seen something on, on the website also, and this what brought, uh, me to combine kind of these, actually it was like two questions or three questions. I'm combining them in one now.

And feel free to, to answer it, you know, in, in the proper order because I'm, I, I tried my best to, you know, uh, get it in, into like something that's meaningful. I'll do it. Yeah, sure. Now. We understand Christina, like, I think by this time, anyone who's listening to us, they understood that, you know, the wellbeing, let's call it the resilience, call it whatever you want of the founder is important of course, for health and for the business.

So no doubt on this. Now we talked about, you know, the pressure that comes from, you know, multiple sources and. [00:27:00] Of course clients probably, we know we can handle this. If we have a team that is trained to handle customer requests and all this in a proper way, that's fine. But, but, but still, when they are startups, so they have investors, they have like, uh, maybe operators, working with them, advisors, and so on Now.

I've seen on the website you work also with, uh, ecosystem builders and investors too, and I expected that. I think I'm right to bring them up to speed also as well, because look, if, if, if I am, if I am an investor and I have no clue what these guys are, you know, going through now, of course what would probably happen.

If I'm thinking just about, oh, I have invested in these guys. Where are my returns? Hey, hello. What are you doing? Start to put pressure, why you're not delivering. But if someone explained to [00:28:00] me, you know, time ahead, like this is how it gonna looks like these are the things that could happen. Uh, so we need the founder and everyone on the team actually to stay sane, quote or code, and not, not push them into this.

What we were just mentioning about the grinding and you know, the hustle culture and all this, because things can go south. They might ask you, Christina, fine, bring us up to speed, but also how we can measure this. 

Christina: Yeah. 

Mehmet: Like, right, so I, I know like I loaded little bit the question, but you know, in a nutshell the role of the ecosystem builders and VCs, investors, whoever, and how we can measure this.

Christina: Yeah. So you are right to, um, I I'm very impressed you very much did your homework. Um, you're absolutely right. We work with lots of brilliant VCs and accelerators, and the way in which we do that is broadly [00:29:00] by plugging in our. Support services to their existing programs. So if it's an accelerator, we plug in a, uh, six month series of founder circles, one a month to run alongside or after often for alumni after their accelerator program works brilliantly.

And those that see it, recognize that, well, we don't have the skills to have these conversations and honestly, some. Some, um, ecosystem system partners have come to us saying, like, I'm getting concerned about some of the conversations that founders are coming to me about. I'm not trained to deal with this.

This is really uncomfortable. So really, we're. When we are doing that, we're providing a, um, a backup option so that they're not getting themselves in that situation, which is incredibly uncomfortable and I empathize with hugely, whilst also covering this whole human dimension side of founder hood so that they know that that part of their program [00:30:00] is done and.

On the VCs that might be with their portfolio. So they, um, invest in founder circles to run indefinitely for their founders. Um, or it might be, um, having, uh, anonymous clinics where their founders can just book in and have a, a one-to-one time with a coach. Mostly it's the founder circle route. Um, but the measurement question is, is like the elephant in the room here, right?

So, um, I believe that there are. Maybe this is very opinionated. There are probably three, um, categories within the ecosystem. There are those who are very forward thinking 100% get that their founders are useless unless they look after their performance side at the human performance. Um, and therefore they are, um, able, willing, unable, and get the problem and they can do something about it.

Um. Everybody is able, and I completely respect that. And we'll always [00:31:00] work with, um, partners to integrate some level of support that is needed. Um, then of course there's some in the middle who maybe want to signal that they're doing it, but not really do it. Um, there was a phase, particularly after 2019 where there was lots of people coming on panels and talking about it.

But then when you say, okay, what you gonna do about it? The silence, there's, um. A set at the end, which may talk about it, may not talk about it, but really want to create measurements, um, in order for them to make better investment decisions. And I understand the motive, of course, their entire. Reason for being in the working world and their sphere is to make sure that their investments pay back.

Like I completely understand it, but I've been asked many a time to come and do an assessment of a founder so that they can do that. And that is not the world that we are here for. We can [00:32:00] do measurement, but that will be a measurement with the founder. And the founder will deal with the results and they can act on it the way they want to.

But there is an iron wall between, um, what information gets passed back, um, for those ecosystem builders who partner with us on founder circles, you know. Months, sometimes years worth of data. We can tell them, Hey, we're seeing this hot topic come up. Mm-hmm. Or this hot topic come up and they can respond to that and many of them do, um, maybe for their annual retreats or something.

But um, yeah, this idea of taking one founder and assessing them and measuring them and seeing how that can, um. Uh, influence their investment decisions. That's, that's not one for me. And that is a choice that our organization is founder first. Um, and we can't do what we do and represent our community of founders unless we are founder first.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And thank you for, for, for, you know, mentioning this like in, [00:33:00] in this way, Christina. Now, um, on, on the point of, uh, of the founders, right? Um. You, you've worked with a lot of them, I'm sure. Uh, we hear it a lot. Like sometimes you, you we hear like, Hey, entrepreneurship or being a founder is not for everyone.

And they, it's not like to scare them, but just, you know, to, to, to see or like, just to prepare them maybe, or to ask them, Hey, are you sure you're gonna want to do this? Uh, are you sure you want to pass by? Maybe some of the stress, some of the uncertainties. I'd say curiosity question. You're out of curiosity.

That just popped in my mind. Have you seen anything common between the people who. Can cross, I want to call it a chasm, right? Because they're, they're, they're [00:34:00] passing through difficulties versus the ones who, who can do it. And there's nothing wrong of not being able to do it because maybe this is how, you know, their personality, the way they were raised.

I don't know. So have you seen any traits? Maybe yes, maybe No. I don't know. 

Christina: I mean, there is. Uh, an extreme action bias that sits at the core of every founder I know, um, often manifests in utter impatience, which makes us very annoying for many people. Um, the love of problem solving is absolutely a, um. A correlation that I see across all founders and always gets a laugh when I say, well, we just love problem solving.

They're like, yeah, okay. As a result, we meddle. Yeah. Um, but

at the end of the day, the decision to actually go on and do something, the sort of [00:35:00] use of self efficacy to actually deliver on that. It is a delicate mix, isn't it? And it's often a very personal choice about where you are in your life, what risks and comforts you've got used to. And on the other side of the weighing scales, how driven you are to make a difference.

Because every founder will say, why'd you do this while I'm here to make a difference? And that will, there will also be a, a, a driver for freedom more often than not, and a driver to achieve. So there's a personal need to do, um, and to, to make a difference, but also a sense of mission and that very, uh, visionary perspective of like, that's what I'm trying to fix.

And for me it's a bit like weighing scales, the risks and the. Uh, the downsides at some point. For those that act and do it, the vision and the drivers to do will outweigh [00:36:00] the negatives. But not withstanding, a lot of people step into the world, realize it's hard and step out, and that's okay. They may go, you know what?

I realize that. My weighing, I got my weighing scales, um, mismatched and I'm, where I'm best is actually working the scale up, for example. Um, or do you know what? It's not right for me right now. I put my toe in the water, I will go and build some skills and build some more, whatever they've identified they need and come back to it later.

And lot do. And I actually see that a lot with my super early stage founders who goes through UCL, who, um, they'll dip a toe in the water. 'cause our entire course is really like an incubator. Um, they go through the process of trying and trying and trying again. Some of them will carry on and then some of them will pause and say, I'll come back to this later.

And a lot of them do. [00:37:00] 

Mehmet: And this is the resilience as its best I would call it. Yes. Like coming back, accepting, uh, I learned it the hard way. Of course. Accepting, um, go back to what you were doing before, but don't drop the idea. Don't drop. You know, the dream. Say, Hey, as you said Christina, maybe it's not the right time.

It's not like because I have something wrong with me because maybe the market conditions aren't like really fit to what I'm trying to build now. So, okay, let's wait and see another time. And by the way, I've seen it a lot with other people when they start the next time, maybe they are starting in something.

Not completely different, but I would say different. And they do very well and they say, you know what? It's good. Like, I, I did, it didn't work out for me the first time. 'cause if it did, you know, the market crashed in that business. And, you know, I would be like now in, in, in disparate mode. Right. So sometimes just believe like the time comes, if, [00:38:00] if it's fit for you.

Now I can't. Skip the topic of ai. Christina and I would ask you about the AI in this sense. How much AI made this culture thing that we were discussing at the beginning worse, or maybe it made, it, made it better? I, I, I'm not sure, you know, I have mixed feelings toward ai, although I'm a tech guy, uh, come from technology background.

I use ai. Uh, but to your point, and because I was. Also just, uh, going over the latest discussions, which I had on the podcast about ai, the authenticity and how people, they have the urge maybe sometime to use the ai. What are you seeing in that space? 

Christina: Mm. It's really, it's such an interesting one, isn't it?

The, um, you linked it to the bravado, the sort of the media impression. Of course, the hype and of course, a big driver behind 9, 9 6 has been the pace at [00:39:00] which an AI. Um, company needs to grow, needs to accelerate and, and build. Um, so without shadow of doubt, it's made that side of it worse. But of course, on the ground, in terms of.

Day-to-day operations, I speak to our founders and everybody is finding ingenious ways to integrate AI in order that they, their sales process is streamlined, their contracts are better. Their, even their sales proposals are written for them. Um, and it's difficult not to. Be very impressed by obviously how quickly founders pick these things up, but also how much quicker that is making us all move.

Um, and you know, a big part of. Cracking this sort of equation is working out at what point it is useful and what point it is not. Um, so we have ways of [00:40:00] using it, um, within our business operations, but of course caught in all the hype. There is a part of me that was debating with our team, like, should we be building an AI coaching bot?

And very quickly, as long as we reversed outta that hype cycle. Well, no, because the absolute core of what we do is human connection. Um, that's fantastic. So our, our core product will never be ai, but how it allows us to accelerate and deliver more content and, uh, more tools for our founders. Great. 

Mehmet: I am happy you mentioned this, uh, because all the studies, all the books, uh, I tried of course, as much as I have time to read about the topic of the future and, you know, uh, what's get, what, what, what will be important, what's not.

Uh, so human connection is, is one of the most important aspect. [00:41:00] And you know, everyone is saying that if anything gonna stay are the roles where you have to talk, where a human would be talking to a human, right? 

Christina: Mm-hmm. 

Mehmet: Uh, and this is not coming from me, it's coming from AI experts, by the way, you know?

Discussing the future of, you know, how machines gonna take war. But us as humans, even me, as I was telling you, I'm a tech guy. I still prefer to talk the human when I have, you know, problems. Right. So I, I, I feel the connection to, to your point, crist as we are almost coming to the end, tell me what's next for Foundology.

Christina: Oh, well that's a, um, very, very well timed because we are about to launch our Founder Fuel Gauge, which will be a free online tool for any founder to, uh, see what small changes that they can make to improve their performance day-to-day. So it will give you a, a, a, a measure on how you are doing against the Founder Fuel, uh, sorry, founder [00:42:00] Resilience Research.

And give you like practical tips on how you can improve your mental fuel, your social fuel. So, um. Your audience can sign up for early access to that, um, depending on when they listen, so Sure. Uh, just go to Foundology.org and it's really easy to, uh, sign up for that. So that's a big part of what we will be doing over the coming, uh, months.

Mehmet: That's great. And, uh, final question, Christina, where people can, can get in touch and find more. 

Christina: Amazing. So obviously you can find me on, um, LinkedIn, Christina Richardson. Um, uh, Foundology.org is our website. If you are interested in joining a founder, circle one of our 10 person groups, then, um, Foundology.org/founder Fuel.

And also if you wanna join the free community, where we often have lots of, uh, sort of honest and raw conversations with other founders about the journey rather than the hype. To your point, um, you wanna dig out the, um, founder fuel channel as well and just sign up to [00:43:00] that. That's free. 

Mehmet: That's great. Uh, Christina, thank you very, very much for, you know, your time today here.

Uh, I really enjoyed the discussion. It's, it's in my op in my opinion. It's a very hot topic, very important topic that everyone should be talking about. It's not like just, Hey, yeah, like, it's just another thing that we can discuss about founders because. At the end of the day, it's about the wellbeing of, of us as humans first before being a found, uh, being founders.

And you know, this is if the audience follows. I have multiple episodes covering the same topic and similar topics. And this is how I add my episodes usually. This is for the audience. The links that Christina mentioned, they will be available in the show notes. So if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, you find them in the show notes.

If you're watching on YouTube, you'll find them in description. And if you just discovered this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed If you did, so please give me a favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues. We are trying to do an impact and get the message of all of our guests to as many [00:44:00] people as possible.

And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, thank you for your lu Loyality. Thank you for the support. I'm repeating this. Maybe it's boring by now, but because of you, the podcast is performing extremely well this year. So every episode I end the same way saying that I'm finding out that we are trending in a new country in the top 200 po uh, apple Podcast chart, which makes me happy.

Honored, humbled by all the support. 'cause I can't do this without you. Just, I'm waiting for my friend, especially in North America to see the podcast somewhere there. We did it in the UK before. We did it in, in, in multiple countries, in Europe, in Australia, in the Middle East. So I'm waiting for my American France and Canadian France.

And as I say, always stay tuned for the episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye. 

Christina: Thank you. 

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