The Dark Side of Startup Life: Inside the Startling Stats of Founder Stress

LinkedIn (00:00:49) - LinkedIn presents.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:01) - So we've all seen it and maybe even experienced it. The high-pressure workload of starting your own business, long hours, extreme stress, and the roller coaster of highs and lows and enduring these realities is almost sometimes celebrated in the entrepreneurial world, and rarely questioned when in almost any other setting, they would be a cause for alarm.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:25) - So why do entrepreneurs feel such pressure to hide their struggles and not be open about the challenges that they're facing? In contrast, what if being a successful entrepreneur didn't mean suffering in silence? Well, in today's episode of SPARKED, we're joined by a special guest, Yael Benjamin, for a raw look at powerful new research around the mental health struggles plaguing the business founder community. Anele is the founder of Startup Snapshot, a data sharing platform for the startup ecosystem. She is passionate about leveraging data to generate transparency in the venture industry, providing founders with the insights and benchmarks and data points that they need to accelerate their ventures forward. And over the past six months, she's focused on researching the toll of entrepreneurship on the founders mental health and wellbeing. Working to normalize this long taboo topic. The research has been focused everywhere from Forbes to Crunchbase and beyond and other leading news publications. And together we we question the assumptions about startup life having to be this nonstop, lonely thrill ride. I mean, could a culture shift within the venture capital and business world create more space for founders to be human? Are there lessons from the self care regimens of pro athletes that could build resilience for entrepreneurs? Imagine if every founder could share openly about their experience and still move forward with passion and beyond the venture backed founder community.

Jonathan Fields (00:02:56) - What about just everyday people who are trying to start their own endeavors? From private practices to solo practices to small businesses? What would it take to transform the entrepreneurial stress into strength? How can we reconnect founders to purpose and possibility? Despite the emotional roller coaster uncertainty, Yale provides a really rare glimpse into the humanity behind heady business metrics and million dollar valuations. So tune in as we really hear insights from entrepreneurs who have navigated these choppy waters to find smoother sailing. And if you're in a similar situation, we dive into some ideas around how we might be able to address these things that we all tend to move through. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, before we dive into today's show, you know, we've learned that a lot of our listeners are sort of at this moment where they're really exploring the notion of work in their lives and their next moves in their careers. And if you are in that place, we talk about the spark and the sparketypes a lot on this show, this body of work that we've developed to help you really identify what makes you come alive and how to apply that to the world of work.

Jonathan Fields (00:04:10) - We've heard from a lot of folks that they would also love some help along that journey. If you're curious, you can also find on our website a directory of Certified Sparketype Advisors who know this body of work and can really help coach and guide you through it. So we'll drop a link to the show notes in that right now. And if it feels interesting to you and you just like somebody to help guide you through this next part of your career or work journey, take a look and see if somebody resonates. It might be the perfect fit to help you along this next leg of your journey. Again, that link is in the show notes now.

LinkedIn (00:04:53) - 

Jonathan Fields (00:05:18) - I'm just really excited to dive into this topic with you because it's also personal for me.

Jonathan Fields (00:05:23) - I am somebody who is not of the tech world, but have started a number of different businesses and companies over two plus decades now, and been through the founders journey in a lot of different versions and iterations, and suffered through a lot of that journey as well. And there are amazing highs that go along with it. But often the reality of the circumstance is kind of just like tucked away, because it's the type of thing that we don't want to talk about. And you have basically gone out there and said, let's not only talk about this, but let's quantify this. So take me into why you decided that this was a moment in time where we have to really look at what is happening with the emotional lives and the well-being of people who decide to actually say, I want to start my own thing. Yeah.

Yael Benjamin (00:06:06) - So first of all, Jonathan, thank you so much for inviting me on. Amazing to talk about this, the data and the research that we're doing. So, you know, I have a research firm and we're focused on the startup ecosystem.

Yael Benjamin (00:06:17) - And all the research is based on data from really from our community of founders directly from the source themselves. And this was a topic that was coming up all the time, you know, kind of with what's happening economically now, the macroeconomic environment, the instability, uncertainty that the founders are going through. So the already difficult founder journey, which has so much uncertainty and so much, you know, kind of volatility, as you're saying, has gotten exponentially harder. And kind of feedback we were hearing from the founders was I'm under immense, immense stress and I don't know who to talk to. I don't know, you know, can I talk to my investors. How do I share these difficulties? And everyone was really going through the same thing, but no one was talking about it. And that's kind of the, you know, the driver for this kind of research to say, let's kind of collect the real facts, the data, what's happening to the founders on the journey and share those stats. And hopefully that's going to normalize the conversation a bit.

Jonathan Fields (00:07:11) - Yeah. Which I think is so important. I'm curious why. And we'll dive into some of the numbers and some of the things that you found out and hopefully maybe some some ideas that we might be able to explore around how to make some changes. But what's your sense on the why underneath? I mean, of course there's uncertainty built into starting a company. There's uncertainty built into the world we live in right now. There's not a whole lot we can do to change that. But what's your sense of why people are often so hesitant to share the experience and how it's affecting them?

Yael Benjamin (00:07:45) - Yeah, I think for founders, you know, you're kind of selling a dream that no one believes in. You're going against how everything's been done until today, and you're trying to sell an alternate reality and you're selling something that you don't even have yet. You know, you're raising kind of VC funding before you even have a product just based on an idea. So there's a lot of optimism in the psyche of a founder.

Yael Benjamin (00:08:05) - And I think it's very hard for them to say, you know, I have I have a problem kind of they're constantly selling, they're constantly optimistic. And to say I'm encountering difficulties on a personal level or on the company level, that's really hard for them. And that shows up in the data as well. You know, 81% of the founders said that they're not open about their stress, their challenges, kind of what they're going through. And that can be with a spouse. They're co-founders, even with the team members and with investors. So they're really it's a lonely journey.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:33) - Yeah. And it's interesting too, because, you know, the notion of starting your own business, usually people think, well, you know, there's a lot of mythology around their movies, their TV shows, and it's always a group of people, you know, it's a couple of people who get together. They have an idea and they're building it together. Rarely do you see the the story being told of like, well, there's that one person in isolation who's doing this thing.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:54) - And I almost wonder if because the mythology is there's a group of people who are working together and they all buy into the mission, and it's amazing that there might be an expectation that, well, if they're all kind of suffering in a similar way, then when it just makes sense that they were sharing that experience because it would help them through it. And yet what you've revealed is that it's kind of the exact opposite.

Yael Benjamin (00:09:15) - Definitely. I think it was really surprising for me, the stat that a large percent of the startup founders aren't even open with their co-founders. So even if you're going through this journey together, you're both kind of in the same place, but you're not. You're kind of selling the facade, or you're putting on this facade and not open with your teammates. I think that we've learned kind of through as you're seeing the movies and the stories, these war stories, these hero stories of, you know, I was up all night and working from the garage and kind of not going to social events, and that's kind of become the norm.

Yael Benjamin (00:09:45) - We're idolizing this kind of the suffering that founders are going through. And, you know, that's a huge, huge issue because in the end, it's not only their personal well-being that's being hurt. In the end, it's their ability to make rational decisions that are going to affect the well-being of the company. So everything in the end is intertwined. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields (00:10:03) - And that's where I think it gets really counterintuitive. Also, you know, yes, we want to feel, well, we don't want to live in a state where it's slowly eating away at literally destroying our health. But at the same time, if you say yes to devoting just an incredible amount. Of time and energy and often resources to making this dream real. And, you know, effectively, we need to be at our best when we're doing that. We need to show up as our best, most creative, most cognitive, most problem solving cells. And when we when we let the stress mount, it effectively shuts down all of the capacities, the capabilities that we need to do the very thing that we said we're here to do.

Yael Benjamin (00:10:42) - Definitely, definitely. I think it affects decision making, which is so, you know, calm, rational decision making, which is super important in today's economic environment. It's always important, but especially today. And I think it's important for founders to understand that it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. So if you're living under these, you know, situation of extreme stress, which is going to affect your decision making, that's not kind of viable for the long term. It's, you know, usually a 7 to 10 year journey. So you can't stay under that level of stress. You know, every high performer needs some level of, you know, variation of rest after high levels of stress. And founders need to be much more aware of that.

Jonathan Fields (00:11:18) - Yeah. I mean, you describe the situation as you sort of call it the stress paradox, where on the one hand you've got these incredible thrills going on. And but on the other hand, this extreme stress and isolation and they kind of coexist.

Jonathan Fields (00:11:32) - I think the stat that you, you reported was 72% of founders experience some kind of mental health challenge.

Yael Benjamin (00:11:41) - Yeah. You know, kind of as a result of being an entrepreneur, of starting their own venture, 72% said that they had some sort of mental health deterioration or negative impact. And it could be high anxiety, high stress, panic attacks, burnout, which is really, really, you know, really scary numbers. And I'm sure that, you know, even in reality, it's much higher. So that's that's really difficult to see.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:04) - Yeah. In addition to that, it's interesting, one of the mythologies also is, you know, like, oh, we'll, we'll, we'll sleep when we're there, whether there is an exit or a funding round or, you know, like we finally like become profitable or something like that. And again, it's almost worn as a badge of honor. You know, I sleep three hours a night and I work seven days a week, which is in any other context.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:27) - If you said that people would basically be like, you need to get help, definitely. Yet for somebody who's starting a business, it's often framed as the exact opposite.

Yael Benjamin (00:12:36) - Definitely. And I think that's the even more worrying stat that on the flip side, you know, 72% said that it impacted their mental health entrepreneurial journey, but only 23% were getting some sort of help. And that could be, on the one hand, a psychologist or even a coach, an executive coach. So those numbers, you know, there's such a huge difference between those numbers. And it's definitely in the end, it's hurting the performance of the company. You know, if we're looking at I spoke to a lot of performance coaches for the NBA for different high performing athletes, and there's a very well known process protocol training regimen for for high achievers. And I think it should, you know, we should bring that same kind of regimen or protocol to the startup world as well. Yeah. Where there's high levels of stress.

Yael Benjamin (00:13:17) - We also have rest in recovery. You're looking after your well-being, your nutrition, you know, your social relationships, the whole the whole package.

Jonathan Fields (00:13:25) - So tell me more about some of those protocols from from other domains where you saw like this is sort of like the standard way that we know how to be able to perform at your absolute best.

Yael Benjamin (00:13:36) - I think some interesting kind of research that I came across was with Navy Seals and kind of it looked at the way that they were viewing the stress. And that's the main issue, not the amount of stress that you're having, but the way that you view the stress. If you see stress as kind of enabling and as something that's going to help give you kind of the environment to take risks, to get higher performance, then it's great. Stress can motivate you and it could be really a performance enhancer. But if you're looking at it as I just have to get through this tough period, and for startup founders, this tough period could be a few years, then that's really that's the place that it's going to hurt you.

Jonathan Fields (00:14:11) - Yeah. So part of it is about a reframe. Then it's not necessarily changing external circumstances, but reframing what it actually is.

Yael Benjamin (00:14:18) - Definitely reframing kind of the way that you look at stress, but then also understanding that you need to have a balance around that. So if you're having peak periods of stress, you need to have the rest and recovery around that. You need to take that vacation because in the end, it's going to help the performance of your company. You know, you need to be more open and develop those social circles around you, because as you're more open, as you share what you're going through, you know it's going to help you be calmer. It's going to give you perspective and make better decisions.

Jonathan Fields (00:14:43) - So I want to talk about some of what you just said. But the first part of it, the rest in recovery. And I think that is a built in part of any high performance protocol is, you know, there's sort of like there's the in-season, there's the when you're competing, when you're heading into the playoffs or like you, you prepare for a particular window or season or moment to be at your absolute best.

Jonathan Fields (00:15:06) - And then you know that it's 100% not sustainable psychologically. The physiology. So you pull back and recover. Is there do you think that there's actually a way from a practical standpoint? To build that into the journey of a founder, because I don't think I've ever actually seen that done.

Yael Benjamin (00:15:25) - Yeah, it's you know, it's a really big question and it's something that has to it has to be a much bigger kind of mental shift. I think throughout the ecosystem. It's not always something that can be done on an individual level because, you know, if an individual founder really kind of understands the need for this and they're communicating it to their investors and saying, you know, guys, listen, I need now a two, two week vacation after every kind of sprint that I go through, it's hard for everyone to kind of, you know, kind of accept that. And we're seeing that in the data also that I think it was around only 10% of founders are open in some way about their stress to their investors.

Yael Benjamin (00:16:00) - So they they're always, you know, seeing them as they might take part in the next round. I have to keep selling to them. I have to sell this perfect story. And they're not telling them kind of the real facts as they are of I need rest, I need some sort of balance in my life so I can keep going.

Jonathan Fields (00:16:15) - Yeah. So if founders are not open about the level of stress that they're going to with their investors, if, as you're describing, a lot of them also aren't even telling their employees or even their their co-founders, right? Are they telling anyone?

Yael Benjamin (00:16:33) - So what we're seeing is that a large percent, you know, a large percent report that they're not open, but if they are open, it's with their spouse and those that are closest to them. And that offers a very specific type of support. You know, it's a warm shoulder to lean on. It's kind of the support that you need when you're coming home from work. But it's also taking a huge toll on the relationships, the marriages of the entrepreneurs themselves.

Yael Benjamin (00:16:55) - 72% have anxiety, stress, panic, and they're bringing that home and sharing it with their spouse. And that's a huge, you know, a huge issue because in the end, a spouse the spouse is kind of a silent investor or a silent partner in the venture. They're along for the ride. A lot of times they're not really aware of what they signed up for. And they're they're kind of the biggest support network as we're seeing it today of the founders.

Jonathan Fields (00:17:19) - Yeah, that resonates so strongly. You know, I'm incredibly fortunate, blessed to be in business with my wife. And we have been for a number of years. But in the earlier part of our relationship, I was the one who was an entrepreneur and we and so we went through these journeys where I would start something and it was high risk, and it was physical locations in New York City. And, and we had, you know, a young family and you could see the toll that it takes, not just on the person who's in the business, but the person who's in the relationship with the person who's in the business, and on just the quality of the relationship.

Jonathan Fields (00:17:57) - And it's just so easy for that to start to fray on every conceivable edge, especially because, like you said, the partner is like this silent investor, but they have less direct experience of what's going on and probably a sense of less control. That's part of the conversations that we would have, especially back then.

Yael Benjamin (00:18:16) - Definitely. And there's a lot of research, you know, that kind of shows the toll on the spouse as well. And the use of different anxiety medicines, medications, sleep medications goes up significantly in the spouses of founders since they're starting the journey. So that's really yeah, really, really worrying statistics. And kind of the upside to that is that we are seeing some funds, some accelerators, kind of the ecosystem starting to take a more active role in that and offering them support. So, you know, Intel Ignite, Intel Startup accelerator, they're a strong partner of ours. And with that data, they're kind of putting together a group for the spouses of the partners themselves. So we're starting to see some sort of they're just one example, but we are starting to see that as kind of a bigger trend in the ecosystem.

Jonathan Fields (00:18:59) - Yeah. Because I mean, I think beyond the effect of the partner, I also feel like if the relationship, if you can create a dynamic where you're genuinely going through it together and you're open and vulnerable and honest with each other, that it can turn from something there where you're sharing in a way where it doesn't necessarily make the entrepreneurial journey easier, but it makes it makes it so that it becomes an experience that actually deepens rather than separates the relationship that's outside of the entrepreneurial journey.

Yael Benjamin (00:19:35) - I'm just going to add that I think it's a question. You know, there's the question of how do you do that, of how do you share in the right way, you know, do you expect them to do share all the details with them? You know, if a huge client pulls out or an investor pulls out a term sheet while you're stressed and you're kind of within in the stress and in the panic, do you share at that moment? Are there some sort of best practices to say, you know, I'm going to be open, I'm going to share, it's going to deepen our relationship, but I'm going to share, let's say, after I've calmed down or I'm not going to expect, I'm not going to expect them to help me come up with a solution.

Yael Benjamin (00:20:05) - But I'm just going to share and be open about what I'm going through. I think that there are a lot of ways, and we really need to raise some sort of awareness for that. On how how do you bring the spouse into this journey? Yeah, that's a big question.

Jonathan Fields (00:20:17) - Have you seen best practices? Are there as you're researching this, did you see things that were uncovering or maybe seeing patterns where you said, oh, this looks like this would be a really interesting, healthy thing to explore?

Yael Benjamin (00:20:30) - I think that, you know, we interviewed a lot of psychologists kind of around these issues after we came out with a data point. So we interviewed a lot of them to see what, you know, what can founders do now. So different marriage counselors. Number one, the biggest tip was you should seek help, which is independent of your marriage. So this 23% of founders that go to psychologist, it's a shame there's trained professionals that could really help you carry that weight. And it doesn't have to be all in the spouse.

Yael Benjamin (00:20:55) - And then when you are sharing with the spouse, it's less about bringing that stress home and more about, okay, after you process it, be open. Tell them about what you're going through, but don't really bring that big panic home.

Jonathan Fields (00:21:08) - Yeah, which is easier said than done. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like if, if like so much of your waking experience is stress and uncertainty and high stakes, it's it's not always the easiest thing to say. I'm going to leave that at the door. Like when, when I finally get home at 10:00 at night, which often is like the early entrepreneur's journey, I'm going to close the door and just be like, I'm going to leave it at the door. To the extent that it makes sense to do that, I wonder if I often think that having a window of transition, whether you're working in a regular job, whether you're working, starting your own business, but having some sort of ritual to transition from work to home was really effective for me, even for whether it was driving home from location or walking, you know, ten blocks home in New York City, that that was time where I would consciously drop into a shifting mindset mode.

Jonathan Fields (00:22:03) - I wonder if you saw any kind of patterns like that.

Yael Benjamin (00:22:06) - So that's super interesting, you know, and and that I think has to do a lot even beyond just the spouse, to say, as an entrepreneur, what we're seeing a lot is that a lot of entrepreneurs really kind of conflate their identity with their business, and you become really intertwined. Who are you as a person and who are you as a founder? You know, it's all it's becoming the same kind of the amount of hours that you're putting in and the dedication. So as you're saying, you know, taking a walk or saying, I love to run, I have a hobby, I swim, I'm, you know, I'm cooking with my wife, I'm going to the movies kind of to develop those small hobbies and time out things that you love to do outside of work that can be really strong in building resilience for founders and really helping them, you know, get out of this loop of fear of failure, which we're seeing is one of the main fears that's driving our kind of forces, that's driving entrepreneurs.

Jonathan Fields (00:22:53) - That's interesting to me, especially because I think a lot of the research that you're doing was around venture backed entrepreneurship. And within that community, there's often this ethos that says, you know, like failure is basically an acceptable phenomenon. Whereas most entrepreneurship outside of VC backed domain, that's actually not the thing. If you're bootstrapped and it's your own money, failure is painful. But in the venture backed area, oftentimes it's like, well, like this didn't work. We'll go out with a new idea and we'll raise some more money for that idea. And so it's interesting that there's such a you saw in the research, such a high level of fear of failure in that community.

Yael Benjamin (00:23:32) - Definitely. It was around 40 something percent, 42%, I think a founders really said that that was the main kind of force or fear that was managing their decisions and kind of managing their day to day, and that really declines that. This is super interesting point that it declines with the founders age. So as you're saying, you know, founders that have been through this before have maybe failed and seen that, okay, I can get back up there.

Yael Benjamin (00:23:55) - I can kind of start a new venture. Maybe I'll raise more money for that. It puts everything in perspective. And the younger founders are really the ones that are very stressed and and the fear is really managing them.

Jonathan Fields (00:24:06) - What are you seeing people turn to as ways to, I mean, to the extent that they are turning to anything at all, acknowledging the fact that this is really brutal, this can't be okay for me. I need to be doing something. What were the different things that you would see people actually turn to?

Yael Benjamin (00:24:24) - Yeah, I think, you know, peer support groups or peers in general. That's kind of the number one outlet for, for a lot of the founders. So it could be different organizations like why. Or EO or different organizations like that, where there's other founders that are like you and going through the same kind of challenges, but they don't have a vested interest in your company. So you could be much more open and kind of share what you're going through without worrying about this is an investor.

Yael Benjamin (00:24:51) - Will they invest again or are they connected in some way in the ecosystem. So I think that's a great place for them to kind of unload the worries and be much more open. That's what I'm seeing with a lot of founders.

Jonathan Fields (00:25:01) - Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense to me. Have you seen people also basically forming their own micro versions of that? I know that's something that's become really helpful for me over the years, is that I have 2 or 3 small groups of 3 to 5 people. We all have our own businesses, you know, we're building our own things, but we have a commitment to meet with each other about every month, every month and a half, you know, ostensibly to talk about business, but it always really ends up being about like, what's going on with us internally. Were you seeing it all sort of like people creating their own mini versions of that experience?

Yael Benjamin (00:25:35) - Yeah, I think, you know, it depends on the ecosystem that you're within. It depends how many other similar companies like you or organizations there are, you know, around you.

Yael Benjamin (00:25:44) - I guess the answer really depends what you prefer. But there's a lot of founders finding their own little mixes, and Cruz and a lot of founders going to accelerators or different kind of startup groups and things like that.

Jonathan Fields (00:25:55) - Yeah, I guess anything that really normalizes the experience is just even if it doesn't change the level of of the circumstance, it changes the way you experience it. And I think that really helps.

Yael Benjamin (00:26:07) - Definitely. I think when you see that, yeah, everyone's going through the same thing as you. In the end, the fears are across the board. The stress that you're going through is similar to everyone else. You know, when the downturn now hit everyone's it's you know, they're seeing kind of okay, demand is softening up. It's not just me. It's not just hard for my company today. It's across the board. You can gain some perspective that way.

Jonathan Fields (00:26:27) - What did you see in regards to people being willing to access professional help? Qualified mental health providers? You know, because in different domains and different realms, you'd like to think across society, the stigma that used to be attached to it has largely fallen away.

Jonathan Fields (00:26:42) - That's not necessarily true depending who you are and what community you're in. But what did you see in the entrepreneurial community around that?

Yael Benjamin (00:26:48) - Yeah, so the stigma around professional support is still unfortunately, really, really high. More than 50% of founders said that they're seeing, you know, or that they feel some sort of a stigma around getting help. And that stigma is much higher for younger founders, which, again, it's similar to what we were talking about before with the fear of failure, which to me was, you know, very surprising. If I'm looking, let's say, at my generation compared to my parents or their generation were much more open to getting help. And we're much more everyone has, you know, like a couples counselor and a professional kind of meditation coach and a professional coach. And with founders, that's really not the case. And we're seeing that same trend across genders, across across geographies and locations.

Jonathan Fields (00:27:33) - Yeah. And you bring up gender also, which which begs the question when you're looking at and I know you teased out or their gender differences in the way that people experience the stress of entrepreneurship.

Yael Benjamin (00:27:45) - So we're seeing in terms of the stigma we just spoke about, we're seeing a high stigma for men and women. But what's interesting is that, you know, for for men, the stigma is higher than women, but the percent that actually goes and gets professional support is the same. It's almost 1 to 1, kind of the same percent of founders. So it's really interesting that men think that there's a much bigger stigma. But it's not that women end up, you know, getting much more help in the end. And I don't know if that's because of the lack of time that they have or what are the factors that are kind of leading to that.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:17) - Yeah, you look more broadly also just the experience of people in entrepreneurship across gender. What distinctions did you see there?

Yael Benjamin (00:28:26) - I think, you know, in the end, women are a small percent of the general founder community, and we're still seeing a lot more challenges and difficulties for women. There's obviously the big, you know, gender gap in fundraising that a really small percent of total fundraising goes to women.

Yael Benjamin (00:28:42) - And that's adding a huge layer of stress. If today we're seeing really fundraising is one of the big issues for for startups, you know, a huge percent is closing down because of the lack of funding in the market today. And if women get such a small percent of that, that's adding a whole other layer of stress to, you know, to what they're going through.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:00) - Yeah. So zooming the lens out, if we acknowledge the fact that entrepreneurship can be incredible, there are incredible opportunities and thrills and just the sense of possibility and creativity goes along with it, I think is what draws so many of us to it. And yet at the same time, as you highlight, your research is showing that the stress levels can be incredibly high, even though you may be surrounded by people, including those who are your co-founders, your closest team, you can still feel incredibly isolated, and there's often a resistance to acknowledge that, to share it, and to seek help for it or do things. Things about it.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:35) - What would you say is a healthy response to this? Like, because when you put a piece of research out into the marketplace like this, to a certain extent it's validating the internal experience of a lot of people, but you're actually giving language and data to it. But the next question is always, what do we do about this? So I'll pose that to you.

Yael Benjamin (00:29:59) - Definitely. That's the, you know, the million dollar question here. But I think one of the big changes that needs to come has to come from the venture community. You know, I don't know what what's the best way to go about doing that. But there needs to be some sort of a change where they're more accepting of what the founders are going through and to say, you know what a lot of the a lot of the VCs were founders before. It's in their interests that the startup kind of succeeds in the end. Obviously, everyone's aligned on that interest. So as they support their founders more, it's going to be a win win for everyone.

Yael Benjamin (00:30:27) - So I think the big kind of change needs to come from investors on the one hand, and then that's going to also trickle down and kind of reach the founders in the end. Also, who are going to be more open about sharing what they're going through and to say, I need a vacation out, I need to spend some family time. And that's going to be okay.

Jonathan Fields (00:30:42) - Yeah, no, that makes so much sense to me. I wonder sometimes whether there's really interesting corollaries between this startup world and the world of medicine, especially doctors who are really young and in residency and being trained to go out into the world and extreme hours, extreme stress, life and death stakes and the old way of doing it, medicine was basically like you worked insane hours, you barely ever took breaks. You were exhausted and just chronically depleted and stressed and very often suffering on profound levels for years at a time. And research started to come out that compared, well, what if we actually do this in more humane way and start to see that the outcomes were actually a lot better when you built a lot more humanity into the process, you know, the patient outcomes were better, the experience was better.

Jonathan Fields (00:31:33) - The bottom line ended up being better because mistakes were being made a lot less, and the training was actually a lot better. I wonder if a lot of those lessons could be applied to the world of entrepreneurship.

Yael Benjamin (00:31:45) - Amazing. I think, I think.

Yael Benjamin (00:31:46) - Definitely.

Yael Benjamin (00:31:47) - And I think.

Yael Benjamin (00:31:48) - That the more parallels we draw, you know, as we said before, with professional athletes or as you're saying in the field of medicine, the more parallels we draw to other fields, that's that's that's the way the ecosystem is going to develop.

Jonathan Fields (00:32:00) - Yeah. So fascinating. Well so appreciate it. It was just so interesting diving into the research. And so I appreciate you coming and sharing your insights with us.

Yael Benjamin (00:32:09) - Thank you. Thank you Jonathan.

Jonathan Fields (00:32:11) - Yeah. My pleasure. And for everybody else tuning in we'll see you here next week on SPARKED. Take care. Hey. So I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you.

Jonathan Fields (00:32:29) - And if you'd love to share your own moment and question with us, we would love to hear from you. Just go ahead and click on the submissions link in the show notes to get the details on how to do that. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life, take the time to discover your own personal sparketype for free. At sparkeype.com, it'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.