'It's a marathon, not a sprint': Finding a healthy pace in founder life

It's easy to be allured by the stories of founders who are seemingly bulletproof and working 24/7, says Elliot Taylor. But the founder and CEO of ThroughLine likens building a lasting business to running a marathon.

“If you're running a marathon, you have to pace yourself; you don't start out of the blocks sprinting. Success in the long run comes from keeping a consistent pace.”

Through its flagship Find A Helpline product – the world’s largest verified network of crisis hotlines and helplines – and integrations with platforms like Google and Grammarly, ThroughLine connects people in crisis globally with the best support for them. 

On Wednesday, Taylor was among the speakers at Sunrise Aotearoa talking about how to bake impact into your startup from day one. But being a founder can also impact your mental and physical wellbeing – for Taylor, primarily because work is always on his mind. 

“One of the things I've found the most challenging is your brain is always in some way thinking about it. Especially for the work we do – we're supporting people in an emotional crisis – it's something that I'm deeply passionate about. I know if we do well in our work, then quite literally, people's lives are saved.” 

Taylor runs ThroughLine from rural Taranaki, where he lives on a 15-acre property. He talks to Caffeine about his take on his keeping well, and five things he does to make that happen. 

‍‍

1. Find your rhythm

I'm an organism, I'm not a machine; I can't be plugged into the wall 24/7. My body needs a rhythm in order to sustain itself and perform consistently. So probably the biggest thing for me is having a very strong daily rhythm of life and work. 

When I think of my daily rhythm, I actually don't think about it as something that starts at the start of the day. My daily rhythm, in a sense, starts when I go to sleep. I've struggled with insomnia quite a bit so sleep is one of the main areas I've worked on to try and improve. I've learnt a lot about how to optimise for good sleep and I'm still learning, but the most important thing for me is keeping an incredibly strict sleep rhythm.

I go to bed at the same time every single night, almost without fail. I do that on the weekends as well. And my rhythm to go to bed every night is exactly the same. For me what that looks like: I shower at night as opposed to the morning…and then I'll read for 20 minutes or half an hour and then when I go to bed, I listen to a sleep meditation every night. 

If I sleep well, it means I'm able to get up at the same time, exercise in the morning, make sure I've had breakfast, spend some time with my wife, then get into work. I take a good lunch break – I don't sit at my desk and eat – and continue to work through until dinner. I seldom work past 7pm, and then I have some wind down time.

If I do that every day, then it means that the time that I'm at work, I'm optimising for the best version of me – my best energy, my best thinking, my best emotional presence. 

‍‍

2. Disconnect

Running a startup is very strategic and there’s a lot of analytical and creative work. There's a lot of relational work in there as well with your team. So I find it helpful on the weekends to engage a completely different part of my brain. I connect with the term ‘active rest’ because I know that my brain will default into thinking about work if I don't engage all my senses in something else. 

A big part of that for me is living on this piece of land, and my wife and I have an old villa that we're restoring slowly, so my weekends are often involved in doing something on the house or the property. I put on my headphones and listen to a podcast. I used to listen to a lot of startup stuff, but to be honest recently I've just been listening to funny, bantery podcasts.

I find it really useful to change the context because running a startup, there's this component of physical tiredness, but there's another important piece, which is the mental or emotional tiredness. I think that's important to take into account because sometimes with founders we think, if I'm not physically tired, I can just keep going.

I find it useful to be able to disconnect so I can remember that I'm not just a founder, that I'm also Elliot and there are other things in my world and that also means when I come back into work, I'm excited to get back into it. If you just work continually without taking those breaks, you might physically be able to survive that, but emotionally, I think you would become quite numb because you just become a person that is fulfilling a function as opposed to being present to yourself, your emotions and other relationships that are important to you. 

‍‍

3. Make the most of new experiences when travelling

I was in the US for three months this year and I'm in Auckland every six weeks or so for about a week. So I do travel and that has an impact. Sleep for me becomes the number one thing to keep consistent, and I give a bit more grace to myself when I travel. There's often meetings or relational things or events that are happening that make it more difficult to keep the same level of output ... but it's recognising that a day with new people or events can count as real work as well. 

Also, because I live so rurally I find the times when I travel quite energising. I enjoy getting into the city, being able to see our team and friends. I make sure I go out and eat some good food that I normally don't get to eat where I am. And I also enjoy being able to add additional experiences to those times. It's going ‘okay, I'm in a new city’... and lean into having an experience that I haven't had before, because that can make those trips more interesting and add to your wellbeing. 

I spent 10 days in New York for work… For example, I had someone who advises our work, and we went out to a comedy show together. That's a great memory, you know? 

‍‍

4. Create a minimum viable wellness plan

You know how when you're building a product, you might have your minimum viable product? I've actually recently built a minimal viable wellness plan. 

Life is demanding. I think it's important to recognise that. I've heard it said that as a founder, you can have one other thing in life, and I've certainly seen that play out a number of times where something else will happen in life and it makes life very difficult: a family member might be sick or there might be someone in your life who's going through a hard time and you're supporting them, or there might be some sort of life element that's really urgent. 

I've been surprised that when something else comes in it can be really easy for me to slip below a level of minimum viable wellness. So this is my base-level commitment – naming those things, and being aware of them and doing everything I can to make sure that I remain committed to those things. Because I know if I remain committed to those things, then I'm going to be able to get through whatever difficult time I'm going through.

There are various sections – sleep, eat, exercise etc – and those also have specific time allotments attached to them. For example, a large amount of my weekend is spent on the property, on the house, and I find that really life giving, but it can also be a point of frustration. So I make sure that I try to stick to that limit. I also have a section that's called ‘blob’, where I find it useful to engage my mind in something else – like at the moment I'm following the Rugby World Cup. 

‍‍

5. Do what you can, not what you can't

I have this line that I tell myself in my work and other parts of life, which is ‘do what you can, not what you can't’. There's a lot you can do, but there are also things you can't. You can't work 14, 18 hours a day consistently forever. Your body is not built for that. 

And the things you find you're coming up against in your work, things that are challenging, there are things you can do, and things you can't do. And recognising the stuff you can't do helps you have more radical acceptance of that. Again, it's an area I need to do more work on, but it's something that I try to lean into.

‍‍

As told to Caitlin Sykes