Moment 8 - Julian Hearn on How He Avoided Burnout Whilst Building Huel

Steven Bartlett (0:05)

One of the big things in our society at the moment is the topic of mental health. And founders and entrepreneurs go through very high pressure journeys in order to try and achieve this objective. How do you protect your own mental health? And what have you learnt over the last couple of years about keeping your mental well-being in check?

Julian Hearn (0:30)

If you go too mad in terms of hours, it's going to catch up with you eventually. So you will get yourself burned out if you're not careful. I'm a lot older than you, so I'm probably going to get burned out easier. You could probably go harder than what I can for longer. But you do need to take into account that when you see it coming, you've got to try and take the foot off the accelerator a little bit. But ultimately, somebody asked me a question, a place of a doubt. There is no way around it. You're going to have to put the graft in. You're going to have to put the hours in. It's going to have to be for a sustained period of time to make these things work.

But try and keep an eye on yourself because if you start... I don't know, I probably started going out too much. You know, like in the evening, you're trying to make up for... Because you think it's like a reward mechanism, I suppose. You think, I've put all these hours in, what am I getting back out of it? I'm not just going to sit at home. So I probably burnt a candle at both ends, went out a bit too much. And midweek, weekends, and you just think, yeah, you can do it, you're indestructible. You keep going, but eventually it will catch up with you. If you're not careful.

Steven Bartlett (1:27)

Did it catch up with you?

Julian Hearn (1:30)

Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett (1:32)

And what were the symptoms of that? I'm asking for myself here because, do you know what? What you said there is very accurate. I, at one stage, thought I was indestructible. When I was like 18, 19, I thought I can just, I don't need sleep. I can just speak to a human being. I can just hammer it away. And then, you know, I'd look at other people and think like, ha ha ha. And then people would say to me all the time, you're going to burn yourself out. And I never believed a word of it.

Julian Hearn (1:55)

I never believed it either until I started to get super tired. Right. So I just thought, I'm like, you know, like there was, I'll tell you what the signal was when I stopped going to work. There was a couple of times when I just get up in the morning, get on the sofa and didn't go in. And that was not me. So, yeah. And then like stop going to the gym and stuff like that. And just like going to the gym, you should look forward to it because it gives you a bit of a lift, a bit of a buzz. And then I go to the gym and I dread going, because I know I'm going to be even more tired when I come out of it. And it wouldn't do that. And so I think I went and saw a doctor, the doctor said chronic fatigue syndrome.

And then obviously the problem with that is it's not clearly defined as being an actual thing. There's no clearly defined sort of medication. Basically said like you need to change your, you know, like sleep patterns and stuff like that and sort yourself out, take some time off. And I said, I can't take too much time off of stuff to do. So it was just a case of, and this was probably 18 months, two years ago. So I think I'm sort of back to normal now, but it does take a long time. And some of those days were like, yeah, you just fucked in terms of, you know, your ability to get stuff done. So luckily the team's a lot bigger now. So we've brought people in, I gave up the CEO role. And so all those things have contributed to put me back on an even keel.

Steven Bartlett (3:17)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, what did he say the doctors say about that? Sounds like something that I need to do my very best to avoid.

Julian Hearn (3:26)

Yes, indeed. I think that some people, there is no, I don't think it's even a clear, I think it's one of these one really quite a wooly ones. People say it's not even a thing. But for me, it was like very clear that I was not the same as what I was previously. And so yeah, I think it probably was burning the candle at both ends. And you know, like I'd go, I'd do a day's work, go out in the evening, get up in the morning, go to the gym, do a hard session, go to work, do it again. And like that was a bit too extreme because of this sort of feeling like I could do anything. And eventually that does catch up with you. But I think it's just, you've just try and, in the early days of a startup, it's a sprint for sure. You could die the following day, basically, if the company, if you don't do certain work, the company could fail. So you are scared of failure in terms of this baby you've created. It needs nurturing. You've got to try and nurture that baby as best as you can. And if you don't feed that baby that second, it could die. So you keep feeding. And then eventually the baby becomes a toddler and it's more self-sufficient. And I think that at that stage, you can take the foot of the accelerator and that you need to try and get to that point and notice that point and then do take your foot off the accelerator. Because if you try and keep going full pace, full pace, it turns from a sprint to a marathon. So we're in that sort of marathon stage now. We sort of can see the future of being, I've got this, you know, it's not another year's time. It's another three or four years' time. And if you're at full pace with number three or fours, you're really going to struggle.