“Lead by example” | More strategic well-being tips for Founders by Founders.

As the heart and mind of a new start-up, a founder’s well-being will be reflected in the decisions they make, their leadership style, the culture of their company and ultimately, the success of their business. In my last post, Ben Lee, Co-Founder & CEO of InvertiGro, highlighted how your well-being approach needs to be tailored to what works for you.

Our featured Founder this week is Anastasia Volkova, CEO & Co-Founder of FluroSat — a company that uses deep spectral insight to deliver early, accurate and actionable information to agricultural stakeholders on crop health and nutrition.

About Anastasia

Anastasia founded FluroSat in November 2016. She was born in Ukraine and migrated here four years ago to complete her PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Sydney. FluroSat moved into Cicada Innovations Incubator in 2017 after graduating from Cicada’s agrifood tech accelerator program, GrowLab.

Fast-forward 2 years: FluroSat is now employing over 20 people and their products FluroSense and ProductionWise are currently being used by over 1000 customers in 7 countries. Pretty neat, right?

This year, Anastasia is prepping FluroSat to scale — working on finding the right people, systems and processes to do so. All this alongside planning to move her headquarters to the United States, the day-to-day management of geographically dispersed teams across three continents and managing the expectations of investors following funding rounds: no mean feat.

For Anastasia, taking on all of these challenges was a conscious decision and a result of her visionary nature. Her approach to personal wellbeing is similar: a driven, strategic element of her ambitious plans as a founder and entrepreneur.

Anastasia’s top tips for strategic well-being:

“Be better than yourself yesterday — every day.”

For Anastasia, bettering herself by up-skilling is a key part of her self-care regimen. As a founder of a startup, leading others in your vision is an essential part of everyday life. Anastasia practices what she preaches; she recently completed the eCornell course “Certificate in Women’s Entrepreneurship,” is reading the book “Principles” by Ray Dalio and is an advocate of CEO coaching (citing one of her CEO coaches, Matthew Pryor, an agtech veteran and a part of Cicada’s mentor network.)

“Schedule your personal time like it is an unmissable meeting!

As a busy founder, it is crucial to be protective of your time — part of this is by setting aside time for yourself and holding yourself to it. Use this time for reflective tasks such as deep dives, strategic thinking, exercise or just to chill out and give yourself a break. Anastasia states that this technique has allowed her to be more productive in her work and a more efficient leader. Her go-to tool for blocking out time is the Google calendar feature of goal setting.

“Let your team get their life in check before they come to work.”

Self-care doesn’t apply to just the founder or leaders - but to their team as well. A distracted or stressed out team member is not going to be productive. If an employee needs to take time to take care of a personal worry, let them! A good leader is one that has a finger on the pulse of their team, knows when something is out of sync and addresses it head on.

“Lead by example.”

Whether they mean it to or not, a founder’s behaviour, attitude and mindset feeds and informs the culture of their company. If your company policy states that employees can work remotely and flexible hours, but the CEO keeps rigid hours, this sends a conflicting message. Anastasia advises — your company policies are only as useful as they are adhered to and (verbally and non-verbally) communicated to staff.

“Pick the right mentors.”

The mentors you surround yourself with can make or break your ability to grow. Getting to know your prospective mentors and picking those that continually challenge you to grow, but will still be there to support you when you fall, are critical to growing your capabilities as a founder.

“Book rest periods for employees and stick to them, both during and after busy periods.”

Not all weeks are the same; start-ups have milestones and deliverables that may require extra hours to be put in. As much as you can emphasis well-being and balance, there are times when you just have to put in the extra hours. That being said, Anastasia warns against letting employees burn the candle at both ends. Factoring in breaks, even during these busy times, will result in a more productive and efficient team with fewer fatigue-induced mistakes. Also, encourage employees to take down time following busy periods to make sure they recoup both their energy and motivation.

Whether you are a founder or working in a startup environment or even in a fast-paced corporate job, these are tips that can be adapted to your own personal self-care strategy for 2019.

Check back in to see the final tips on strategic well-being from the Cicada Incubator’s standout Founders next week!