Dr Angela Lim: Seven countries in seven weeks

Dr Angela Lim will have plenty of scope to pursue one of her hobbies – capturing photos that capture the essence and magic of travel – over the Christmas and New Year period; the CEO and co-founder of Clearhead will be taking almost two months off to travel around the Middle East.

Founded in 2018, Clearhead’s big goal is to create a digital therapist that can provide support on par to a human psychologist “so that in the next 10 years, high quality mental healthcare will truly be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere”. 

While the capital-raising environment was a challenge in 2023, Lim is looking forward to scaling the company internationally in 2024. 

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How long are you taking off over the Christmas/New Year break?

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I'm taking seven weeks off. We're gearing up for the next phase of growth in the business, so I want to make sure that I'm really energised and excited about that. It’s been four years since I had a big holiday, and I just need a proper break to switch off, so that I can come back and be creative and strategic again.

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Where are you planning to go?

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I'm going to visit seven different countries in the Middle East: UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and an island called Socotra, which is part of Yemen. I'm a really avid traveller, and the Middle East has been at the top of my bucket list for a while. 

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How do you plan to keep the business going while you're away?

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It’s all about empowering people. I've got a great team and I've never been someone who would try to micromanage. Instead I’ve always hired really great leaders and made sure that they have the team and resources they need to execute strongly in the areas of the business they are leading.

My role is to ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction and I did quite a bit of planning with my leadership team to ensure that they know what are the focus areas for us to work on as we close out the year and kick start 2024.

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How often will you take calls or check emails?

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I will definitely keep on top of my emails; it would be stressful to completely switch off for seven weeks, and come back to a mountain of them. We have a lot of exciting things going on, so I want to make sure we keep that momentum up, but generally the plan is not to do the day to day but just check in on things for an hour a day.

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In previous years have your holidays been disrupted?

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The company is five years old now, and because we bootstrapped while experiencing high growth, it felt like the company was constantly levelling up without the necessary resources. So there was a lot that I had to do as a founder to plug the gaps, which often meant not being able to take large breaks as the team was still reliant on me.

But we’ve finally got to a place where we've got the right people on the team, and we've put the right processes in place, and most of it is documented. We also automate a lot of things in order for us to run a very globally scaled business without me having to be the thing that keeps it going.

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What was your biggest headache or problem at work in 2023? 

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The biggest challenge was the capital-raising environment. We had much loftier growth ambitions that we had to scale down and instead hit profitability first. So that's what we achieved this year.

We're now in the position where we have investors knocking on our door and we will decide if they are the right investors for us or not. Clearhead’s goal is to be the number-one global mental health brand and we are willing to hold out for the right investor that can actually help us turn our potential into a reality.

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What’s one thing that you want to achieve in 2024?

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We want to be the number-one Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) provider in Australia by the end of 2024. We have solidified our position as the premium best-in-class EAP provider in New Zealand … so we are laser focused on wanting to also occupy that top-end position in Australia.

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Angela Lim’s answers are part of a two-week series Break from Business as Usual Caffeine is running leading up to and during the Xmas break, featuring startup founders and ecosystem players.

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As told to Caitlin Sykes

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