- il y a 5 semaines
Striking the Right Balance: Founders’ Mental Health
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00:00Bonjour tout le monde, bonjour tout le monde.
00:02Je m'appelle Martinino et je suis heureux de vous parler à VivaTech
00:06pour parler d'un sujet qui est très proche,
00:08qui est mental health for entrepreneurs.
00:11Je suis le chef entrepreneur-in-residence à Saint-Tec,
00:14qui est l'un des top 10 universités incubators dans le monde.
00:17Je suis aussi le chef de la board for Relief,
00:19qui est l'un des plus grands organisations du Canada pour mental health.
00:22Je me demande souvent pourquoi nous parlons de mental health
00:27et d'entrepreneurship ensemble.
00:28Et pour moi, la question est l'opposité,
00:31c'est pourquoi nous ne parlons plus de mental health
00:33et d'entrepreneurship ensemble.
00:37Out of curiosity,
00:40qui pensez que le succès de la start-up est le plus grand
00:44d'accomplissement de la start-up ?
00:46Qui pensez-vous que le succès est le plus grand metric ?
00:51No-one ?
00:53Christian ?
00:57La réalité est que beaucoup de ce que nous construisons dans le monde
01:01de start-ups et l'incubation de l'incubation de l'incubation.
01:06Et l'incubation de l'incubation de l'incubation est toujours
01:30de l'incubation de l'incubation de l'incubation de l'incubation.
01:59Et l'incubation de l'incubation de l'incubation.
02:12C'est un peu le plus grand d'incubation de l'incubation d'incubation de l'incubation.
02:18Et l'incubation de l'incubation du sommet de l'incubation
02:22et l'incubation de l'incubation.
02:24Descubation,
02:24un peu d'incubation d'incubation,
02:25c'est celle qui a été très bien.
02:26Coachella a couple of times. But doing that means that you have a lot of stress. And that stress
02:34followed me over the years of also being COO of C2 Montreal, which was named best conference in
02:42the world when I was chief operating officer of it, where we pushed business leaders to be their
02:48best creative self, to push them to think outside the box. Yes, suspend them in the air, to try to
02:55get them out of their usual way of thinking. And back in those years, I spent most of my days
03:04talking with
03:05global execs, global entrepreneurs, well-known, some of the top names you can know. And for me, that
03:12was what I represented as the main area of success, meaning that I was on TV, I was in the
03:20newspapers,
03:21I won awards, I was invited at the Met Gala, I was invited at the Emmys, like that was success.
03:28But the reality
03:29of that success was not always what it seemed to be. It's also when I worked with Felix and Paul's
03:38studio,
03:39where we sent actual cameras in the space station, we filmed for a full year, made an Emmy-winning
03:45documentary out of it, created a traveling exhibit out of it. I mean, I've worked with astronauts. I actually
03:51had access on TeamViewer to the International Space Station. I mean, it doesn't get cooler than that. You
03:57don't think of success differently than that when you read about it, about entrepreneurship. But the dark
04:03side of it is that it almost killed me. I was spending so much of my time in hospitals thinking
04:11I had art
04:11attacks, I had lung issues, art issues, always trying to find out what was wrong with me physically.
04:17For many, many years, I mean, it took 15 years of me visiting hospitals before someone mentioned the
04:25words mental illness to me. 15 years, I was diagnosed with art issues, lung issues, asthma.
04:32Why asthma? Because panic attacks mean sometimes you're struggling breathing. So they gave me a pump for
04:39for anxiety. It doesn't really make sense, but that's what it is. And I was afraid of talking publicly
04:47about it because why? Well, you're an entrepreneur. You need to be successful. You need to be strong.
04:52You're a white man. You're not allowed to feel pain. You're not allowed to tell people you're not doing
04:58well. And that anxiety led to suicidal thoughts, led to me actually making plans to commit suicide over the years.
05:09Thankfully, I'm still there. Thankfully, I managed to build networks around me. And I do want to say, if you
05:15do have
05:15suicidal thoughts, always reach out and ask for help. But my real story, the story that was behind the financial
05:23success of my businesses meant that I was killing myself more and more every day. And it led me to
05:32ask myself, do we have to
05:35really kill ourselves to build a successful business? Do we really have to push our health to the extreme
05:42limit when we're building a business? And honestly, I don't think you do. And I don't think all humans are
05:50made
05:51the same either. Some people don't have to sleep more than four hours a night. Some people do. If I
05:56don't sleep eight
05:57hours a night, I know I'm not well. And for years, I was proud of saying I was only sleeping
06:02a couple of hours
06:03a night. And I felt like shit about it constantly. But I was proud of saying I wasn't doing what
06:10was right for me.
06:11because you see those models in the valley claiming that sleeping two hours a night and getting up at 4am
06:17is the
06:18way to go. It was not the right model for me. Each one of you, each entrepreneur should always ask
06:27themselves, what is the model of my own entrepreneurship journey I want to build? What is what I want to
06:34create
06:35out of this? And it's clear for me that most people would not dare telling people around them if they're
06:46anxious or they're scared. And raise your hands everyone who felt utterly exhausted, utterly anxious
06:54and never told anyone about it. Like if you look around and see how many hands are raised, you understand
07:03that
07:03it's not something that only a few people feel. It's a thing that only a few people don't feel. Mental
07:12illness is
07:13present in entrepreneurship for pretty much every single entrepreneur in a different fashion. We need to break the taboo.
07:22We need to stop thinking that entrepreneurs are superheroes that are able to do everything to work 80 hours a
07:32week,
07:33not eat, not eat. I was proud of people making jokes of me being a robot for years because they
07:39never saw me sleep,
07:41they never saw me eat, they never saw me do anything to take care of myself. Why was I proud
07:47of that? It doesn't make sense.
07:50Yet in the world of entrepreneurs, people would applaud me in conference when I said that was my life. Why
07:56are we reinforced on such bad behaviors?
08:00And that's where I think we need to break that taboo of entrepreneurs being superheroes.
08:08A study that the research chair that I co-founded made across Canada for business owners asked how many of
08:18you felt depressed
08:19at least once a week. 62% of business owners said that they felt depressed once a week.
08:27Think about it for a minute. It means that out of this room, more than half of you feel depressed
08:35at least once a week.
08:37It doesn't make sense. And 66% report having issues with life balance and being able to take care of
08:45their family and build their business.
08:47I mean, does it make sense that we put that stress on ourselves? I mean, it can make sense. For
08:54some people it does, but does it have to make sense for everyone?
08:58I personally don't think so. We also found out that 40% of entrepreneurs in Canada said that their mental
09:09health was affected by their work.
09:1347% felt exhausted every week and 39% felt that they should accomplish more on a weekly basis.
09:22Meaning that it's not just a few people out there living with anxiety and depression.
09:30It means that the great majority of business owners feel the burden.
09:35And it doesn't have to be that way, and I keep saying it, but I think it takes a very
09:43drastically different approach to how we view mental health,
09:46so we can actually start talking about it differently.
09:50Michael Freeman, a researcher in Silicon Valley, did another survey in which he found some very incredible stats in which
10:0149% of entrepreneurs will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime.
10:06But what's worse is that entrepreneurs are two times more likely to suffer from depression.
10:15They're six times more likely to live with ADHD.
10:20They're ten times more likely to live with bipolar disorder.
10:24And they're three times more likely to suffer from substance abuse.
10:27So, in effect, what it means is that entrepreneurs are not superheroes.
10:34They live the stress of a superhero.
10:37I mean, we are the best at hurting ourselves and being proud of it.
10:43Our superpower is not being invincible.
10:47The superpower is pretending we are.
10:51And I don't think it has to be that way.
10:56And I'm curious, by raise of hands, how many of you know someone, an entrepreneur, who has faced anxiety, burnout,
11:03depression?
11:04Raise your hands.
11:09Again, why does it have to be that way?
11:12I think there is a different approach we can have about it.
11:18So, why do we suffer in silence?
11:20Well, the taboo is real.
11:22I mean, globally, in Canada, we have the luxury of being further ahead and talking only about mental health than
11:28many countries.
11:30But it's still a big taboo.
11:33And the only way to break a taboo is to speak openly about it.
11:38It's okay to speak openly about what you're going through.
11:42It's okay for me to say that I do live with chronic anxiety.
11:46I do live with chronic depression.
11:48It does mean that some days I get up and I feel like shit.
11:53It means that there's days I show up for work and I'm completely unable to work.
12:01Does it mean that I'm a bad entrepreneur?
12:04Does it mean I'm a bad executive?
12:06No.
12:07It just means that I have to live my life differently.
12:10And the first thing I encourage you to do is start speaking with the people around you about what you're
12:17living and what they're living regarding their mental health.
12:23And when we talk about entrepreneurship, we need to think about where the money comes from.
12:28And the reality is, when we ask ourselves, would we tell our investors or bank if we're anxious or depressed,
12:35the answer is typically, clearly, no.
12:40Why?
12:41Why?
12:41Well, because we want to show the best version of ourselves to those people funding us.
12:47But the reality is, wouldn't an investor, a good investor, be smart enough to understand the stats that I showed
12:54before and understand that they need to invest in the well-being of entrepreneurs if they want the entrepreneurs to
13:01be successful?
13:02So, personally, I think that, yes, you should be able to talk about mental health to your investors.
13:08Yes, you should talk to your bank about it.
13:11You should not ask them to support you about it.
13:13That's a different thing.
13:14But if they're afraid of investing in an entrepreneur that lives with mental illness, well, then run away and don't
13:22take their money.
13:23I personally think that it's a way that we can change things is to get people with the money to
13:32understand that it's becoming their responsibility as well to drive change.
13:37So, mental health is important, but is it really a business issue?
13:43Is there a way to attach financial KPI to it?
13:47That's become one of my obsessions over the last 15 years of understanding how do you track financial KPIs to
13:54mental well-being.
13:56And at first, so many people called me crazy for even thinking that was possible because mental health was something
14:03you were supposed to live at home.
14:04And when you show up to work, you're supposed to pretend that you're fine.
14:08So, how do you start attaching those KPIs?
14:10Well, I think the first thing you need to do is knowing that those KPIs are as important on the
14:19mental well-being of yourself and your employees than the KPIs you're attaching to financial success.
14:25We'll get back about this, but you need to put mental health at the same level of priority than everything
14:34else that's happening in your business.
14:37On the economic side of things, BDC, the Bank of Development in Canada, does national yearly surveys and evaluated that
14:47the costs, the financial burden of mental illness for businesses in Canada is $51 billion a year.
14:55Globally, the World Health Organization estimates it's a trillion dollars a year that it costs the global economy because we
15:05don't tackle it well.
15:06And if you're building a business that's becoming larger, you realize that 70% of the insurance cost for disability
15:16for your employees is related to their mental health.
15:21Well, if you invest in mental health in a business, the return is between $1.62 to $2.18, and
15:29it can even get up to $4 per dollar invested.
15:32But the worst investment you can make in mental health is not invest at all.
15:38In every scenario they've calculated, if you invested a dollar, it was always better than zero.
15:46Zero always costed more at the end of the year than investing a dollar.
15:51And they actually spend quite a bit of time on this because it's hard to accept this, that spending money
15:59costs less than not spending money.
16:02But mental health becomes such a big financial burden in businesses that the second you start investing, you start seeing
16:09returns, you're saving more money than investing almost overnight.
16:14And at the heart of it, I mean, we're still not managing robots.
16:19I think Nvidia is trying to convince us that that's coming soon.
16:23But the reality is that it will be coming, but we're still humans at the heart of businesses.
16:30And healthy humans are more productive.
16:34Healthy humans generate better value.
16:37And healthy entrepreneurs stop making the dumb decisions we make when we're exhausted.
16:43Because we don't make smart decisions when we're exhausted.
16:48And being healthy, taking the time to invest in yourself to be the healthier version of yourself,
16:55will always help you make smarter, more creative decisions.
17:01It's not just a wellness issue.
17:03It's a strategic lever to bring your business to another level.
17:08If you think that by doing yoga sessions in your business you're solving the issue,
17:14then you're only solving the wellness part of the issue.
17:17You're not actually doing anything within your business operation that will affect the outcome.
17:24If you start digging inside your operation, you realize that a lot of the things you do
17:30are dumb for the well-being of employees.
17:33It amazes me when you look at larger corporations
17:36and you start reading the booklets of rules that employees follow,
17:41that they say that if your husband or wife or partner dies,
17:46you get four days off and you need to be back to work.
17:49I mean, how do they expect you to be fine and back to work five days after your partner dies?
17:55I mean, that makes no sense and that's a more extreme example.
17:59But even in startups, if you look at your day-to-day operation,
18:02you'll find so many things you do that are affecting negatively your own mental health
18:08or the mental health of your employees.
18:10So, we need to start transforming our mindset from creating burnout to actually creating productivity.
18:21We need to start understanding that feeling good, feeling rested,
18:28is more important than doing 80 hours of work.
18:32I personally achieve a lot more when I work 40 hours a week than when I work 80 hours a
18:39week.
18:39Why? Because the more I work, the dumber I get.
18:44And especially with AI nowadays, there's so many things when you take a step back and ask yourself,
18:50is there a smarter way of doing this?
18:54You're actually going to save more time.
18:57And the way the human brain works is that your creative self,
19:01the version of yourself that brings out innovation, that brings out creativity,
19:07is only there when you're rested, when you're well, when you're happy,
19:12when your personal life goes well.
19:14The more rested you are, the happier you are, the more creative you are,
19:18the more creative ideas generate value in your business.
19:21And it's not in a boardroom meeting that you generally create the most value for a business
19:29from a creative standpoint.
19:35We need to break the silence.
19:36I said it before and I'm saying it again.
19:38we need to speak more openly and freely about mental health.
19:44We need to stop thinking of it in the view of a stigma.
19:48We need to start thinking of it as a business issues.
19:53As founders, I encourage you to lead and be more vulnerable and open about yourself.
20:02Since I started talking about mental health, what I thought was going to happen
20:07is that people were going to see me as weak.
20:10In reality, people see me as stronger and I do attract more people wanting to work with me
20:16because of my involvement in mental health.
20:19Both for your employees and yourself, it's always going to be an added value.
20:25And in a business, employees rarely do, especially in a startup,
20:30the employees, the early employees would not do something the founders don't do.
20:35So if they don't see the founders taking care of themselves,
20:38they're not going to allow themselves to take care of themselves either.
20:42So it's important to bring your mindset to a different level so they bring their mindset to a different level.
20:49You need to think about breaks and holidays and productivity as an important KPI.
20:58You shouldn't obsess about how many hours people work if they're at work at 6 a.m. until 8 p
21:04.m.
21:04If they're answering their emails at midnight.
21:06Those are not the right KPI.
21:08You should focus on the productive aspect of their work.
21:13You should understand the value of them doing more work by doing less work.
21:20And for that, you need to start having different types of discussions with your teams.
21:26You need to have a culture that's open.
21:29It's okay if you show up to work and say, you know what, today is a bad day.
21:34I know I'm not going to be the most productive, so I'll do things that are less productive,
21:40but I'll be sure that tomorrow I'm back to myself.
21:44It's fine if a woman at the time of the month were...
21:51French and English in my brain.
21:53A woman, when they get a menstruation...
21:58Oh my God, I'm going to get to it.
22:01Periods, thank you.
22:05That they may not feel productive that day.
22:08It's fine.
22:11Why should we hide that from businesses?
22:15So, having an open culture, an open way of communicating in a team
22:22doesn't mean that you have to take care of the mental health of the team member.
22:26If someone's feeling bad at work every single day, then fire them.
22:33Like, taking care of people's mental health doesn't mean that you need to become
22:37a non-for-profit keeping everyone that's not productive at all times.
22:42But humans go up and down.
22:46We have good days, we have bad days.
22:48We have good months, we have bad months.
22:51A couple of years ago, my mother passed away...
22:55Well, she passed away a couple of years ago, so it's been more than a couple of years ago.
22:58I was diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia.
23:02It was really, really terrible for me and my family to live around that.
23:08I was not the best version of myself.
23:11If I pretended I was, then I was just adding more pressure on myself to do the same things that
23:18I used to do.
23:18And family, life, kids, there's always things that make your days more or less productive.
23:25It's fine.
23:26Just understand it and, as I said, make sure that in the continuum of a year, an employee and yourself
23:34feel more productive.
23:36It's also important to understand the effect of proper schedules in a team.
23:41If you're asking your employees to work until 6 and they have kids and they need to pick up their
23:47kids at daycare by 5pm,
23:49then they're always going to be stressed.
23:51Their kids are always going to be unhappy because they show late to pick them up.
23:54Dinner is never going to be ready.
23:56If you tell them to stop working at 3.30 and do the extra hours at another time in the
24:01evening or the weekend,
24:02they'll typically be a lot more productive than they were when they were trying to follow your schedule until 6pm.
24:10Learn more about what we call self-management support.
24:14Relief the organization I'm sharing has brought that concept forward almost 20 years ago
24:19in which you need to understand that mental illness is a shared responsibility.
24:24You need to understand that you need to have the tools yourself to take care of your mental health
24:31and you need to do so by working with professionals teaching you those tools.
24:41Plan time to recharge. Plan time in which in the week you know that you're not going to be working.
24:51It's fine to have weekends off. It's fine to say I work one weekend out of two and I make
24:56sure that one of the two weekends is protected.
24:58It's fine to say that three out of five evenings in a week or five out of the five evenings
25:03in a week I don't work.
25:05Personally, I prefer a schedule where I start early in the evening and work until 6, 6.30
25:12and do 11 hours or so days, five days a week but I try to protect my evenings and my
25:17weekends
25:17and that's what makes me the most productive.
25:19Find the best schedule for you and build a plan of how you're going to be following that schedule and
25:27that plan.
25:27Make sure that in your day you ask yourself, have I slept enough? Do I feel exhausted? Have I felt
25:35exhausted every single day?
25:37Start journaling what you're going through so you can start tracking it.
25:42If you start writing down for a couple weeks every moment where you feel anxious or depressed, not writing about
25:50it for half an hour just saying,
25:51Hey, I felt like this after this. You're going to see a pattern and you can actually change things in
25:57your schedule to change that pattern.
25:59And monitor those metrics. Don't just do it as I'm going to the gym twice and that's fine for the
26:05year.
26:06Understand that those metrics need to be part of your day to day life moving forward.
26:11And make sure that you do set boundaries and delegate in your teams because a successful entrepreneur is not an
26:20entrepreneur who does the job better than everyone in their team.
26:23A successful entrepreneur or executive is someone that's able to have the best team around them that do a better
26:32job than they do at specific tasks.
26:35You need to be a general guiding your troops, not being every single job there is in the team. And
26:44do take time off.
26:45The best way to teach a team about delegation is to disappear for a couple weeks without the phone and
26:53emails and letting them figure it out.
26:56Worst thing that happens is that you fix a couple problems when you're back and you let them keep the
27:02task they took over when you were away.
27:04That's always the best way to delegate because when they don't have a way to reach you, then they use
27:11their creative self to find solutions they wouldn't have found otherwise.
27:16And you're not alone. Most entrepreneurs I speak to feel that mental health is something that has been a struggle.
27:25So make sure that you do reach out to the people around you.
27:30And finally, please treat your mental health as a work priority. Attach KPIs to it.
27:38When you have an executive meeting, make sure that you do track the well-being of yourself, your co-founders
27:43and your employees.
27:44Make sure that you do go the extra mile to be able to track it.
27:50Mental health is clearly a strategic level to push your business forward.
27:56It's a strategic level to scale up your business, but you need to view it that way.
28:01You shouldn't see it as a wellness issue. You should see it as a strategic way to push your business
28:07forward.
28:08And I could tell you, always reach out when you need support, but the reality is I know most entrepreneurs
28:15will not.
28:17Why? Because you're entrepreneurs and you always think you're going to find a way out of what you're going through
28:23at that point.
28:23What I'll tell you instead is just reach out at any point, even when you don't think you need to
28:29reach out.
28:30Just make it a priority for yourself to speak with the people around you and to make sure that you
28:36don't isolate yourself
28:37and think that you're the only one living something where everyone around you is probably living the same.
28:45So please do invest in yourself. Please do think about yourself. And I'm happy to answer any questions.
29:03So raise your hand if you have a question.
29:09Thank you for your talk. It's very important. It's an important subject and an important matter.
29:15I have a question regarding your experience. So you are or you were a successful entrepreneur.
29:21What would you have done to keep your mental health but succeed in the same way that you have done?
29:29Or is it possible?
29:31I do think it's possible. I spent many years thinking that no one could work as well as I did.
29:37That no one had the technical skills that I did.
29:40The reality is maybe that's true but that's irrelevant.
29:44By taking a step back and building teams that had more leeway and the ability to think more creatively
29:50would have grown my businesses faster because I was constantly the blocker that made my businesses grow slower.
29:59While you're in the middle of it you always think that oh my god I need to work more, I
30:03need to work more hours and if I don't I'm not going to be able to succeed.
30:07And when you look at it a few years later you realize that you were the roadblock that made your
30:13business unable to grow faster.
30:24Thank you very much for the nice thoughts. I just have a question regarding imagine you are in a company
30:29where the CEO you see that he's clearly under stress.
30:34And how can you tackle that point and tackle that point so that I mean you do what's necessary for
30:41the company to make the CEO understand that it's something that you need to talk and get help.
30:48You said when an employee clearly has issues?
30:52No, the employee sees that the CEO, the entrepreneur has issues.
30:55Oh, the CEO has issues, okay.
30:56Yes.
30:57Well, first of all the employees should be comfortable telling the CEO what they see and should be able to
31:05be comfortable enough to tell the CEO that they feel is not doing well.
31:08But they should not take the responsibility of having the CEO change.
31:13Everyone needs to take their own decisions in seeking help.
31:17You can only tell them that there is help, you can't push them towards that.
31:21But if a CEO after the employees rapidly say hey it's fine to tell us you're not doing well, it's
31:27fine that we can help you and he doesn't then I tell the employees find another job, it's a bad
31:33CEO.
31:35It's also being a bad CEO if you're unable to recognize your own mental issues and it's being a bad
31:42CEO if you're not doing anything to empower your team to work differently around it.
31:49Great presentation.
31:51Thank you for bringing on the table a subject that sometimes is not, you know, talked that much.
31:57Based on your experience, do you feel the investors are ready to hear about mental health?
32:04Are they ready? No. Is it stupid? Yes.
32:08I think investors see more and more that their investments really fail for other reasons that they don't quite understand.
32:17They don't dig enough for the real reasons why their investments fail.
32:21So I think more and more investors are starting to understand that hey we're humans, hey entrepreneurs if their better
32:29version of themselves will bring more value.
32:32So I think it's starting to change but it's still a long way off and that's why I think we
32:37need to talk more about it.
32:46I really enjoyed the talk but it's obviously a complete contrast to what you're seeing on LinkedIn from VCs like
32:5320VC who are saying that the only way for Europe to compete with the U.S.
32:57In the U.S. you've got all these 18, 21 year olds fueled by Red Bull working with Cursor AI
33:02and Lovable working around the clock.
33:04So the only way that Europe can keep up is if you've got your entrepreneurs working seven days a week
33:09and not taking any time off.
33:11So how would you say that you encourage founders to compete with the U.S. but also survive?
33:18What would you say to that?
33:21I don't think the U.S. is a model these days.
33:25I think we need to recognize that they have their own way of doing things and we don't necessarily have
33:30to compete in the same way.
33:32As consumers we can also decide to take services from companies that are not American based simply if we feel
33:42that goes against our value.
33:43And I feel that instead of saying that let's copy what they do and that works for them, let's create
33:52our own version of success, our own version of how we build startups that is better linked with what we
33:59do in Canada, what we do in Europe, what we do in Asia, that takes our local culture in consideration,
34:05our way of doing things.
34:06And instead of seeing it as a competition, seeing it that let's build something different that will have different value,
34:15better value for Europe or Canada, for example, but that will not directly compete with the U.S. model.
34:23And the U.S. model is when you look at it, the VC model in the U.S. is about
34:29spending and wasting a ton of money, hoping that sometimes good business come out of it.
34:35I think we're in the era of not just throwing money away nonstop until you find a good model.
34:43I don't think any government should just waste money and waste money and waste money until a good startup comes
34:48out of it.
34:49So I think there is a better way to create startups than the American model outside of America.
34:55And for America, their model works for them, so it's good for them.
35:02Well, thank you very much, everyone. It was an honor and a pleasure being here with you today.
35:08Thank you.
35:09Thank you.
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