Russell Teale: The 'heart attack' that was actually a panic attack

0:00Welcome everyone to the Naked Founder podcast, the business podcast where nothing is hidden. This episode of the Naked Founder is sponsored by Financiale, the home of money for women. Our guest today is Russell Teale, founder and CEO of Vivify, which helps schools hire out facilities outside the normal teaching hours. He founded a business in 2020 because he had a young family to support. Today, Vivify employs 500 people, has given more than 10 million back to schools. is set to grow turnover from 8 million to 12 million this year and has raised 2 million pound in investment it's a big welcome to russell till thanks chris um russell we always start each episode of the nakeds founder podcast with the same question what didn't they tell you about

0:41Russell Teale:founding a business that you wish you'd known uh how hard it is i think for me it's been a it's been an absolute eye-opener you know i've been employed by reasonably sized businesses before done a quick start before but to kind of be thrown into that founder you know where essentially you once had a personal life and a professional life and the two now just are the same so just that feeling of dread happiness loneliness every single emotion you can ever imagine that you're experiencing on a daily basis but the highest of highs and the lowest of lows so unbelievable I think we're talking earlier you've got two children and I've got two grown-up kids as well and i think founding a business is much like being a parent whatever anyone tells you nothing can prepare you for it it is exactly that but like i say you know you have the most humbling of experiences every day uh and weirdly as you go through the stages of starting and scaling the the greatest of times were actually what often were the hardest of times as well yeah so yeah no i can i can relate to that russell i'm going to take you back uh before you launched vivify in 2020 so i'm going to take you to 2017 you just left total fitness you've been there for 10 years had a very senior position you'd risen up through the ranks to operations director you left with a few pound in your pocket and you co-founded a business called fitter described as the uber style health and fitness app what lessons did that teach you to be honest again like the word i'll use is humbling um you know back then wide-eyed bushy tail you know this vigor to go and take over the world.

2:15Russell Teale:I remember doing the projections and you've got this mother of all hockey sticks. Within a year, we expect it to be worldwide. And it was that sort of, you know, energy was unbelievable and we had that passion for it. But we just got browbeaten. You know, we went to speak to investors. It was, well, what traction have you got? And this word traction became like a swear word to us. And to be honest, at that time, we were almost couldn't believe it. It's like, why don't you believe us? This is a phenomenal, you know, this is an opportunity. it's going to work and I think it was a level of arrogance looking back now that you know just because it's my idea and and I still think genuinely that would work today in fact you know some businesses are starting to do it themselves so but it was just a humbling experience of you know you've got to genuinely solve a problem but whether you like it or not get to work get that tractions to convince somebody to give you their money to scale it it's just when you play back those conversations in your mind you can actually see now what they meant when those investors talk about have you got a minimum viable product have you got traction can you demonstrate you know growth etc etc and yet it's almost like an affront to you as this founder who's got this brilliant idea and you're going to change the world and if you don't if you don't see that opportunity i'll show somebody and i'll find somebody who will there's almost an apprentice dragon's den type element of it isn't there yeah um here's the irony right so you set you set up fitter which is this health and fitness app you left in 2019 effectively you run out of money and you got this pressure of having no money you've got a family to support it started to really impact on your own health didn't it tell us about that yeah i think you know it almost crept up on me i didn't realize it so we had my youngest daughter uh sorry my eldest daughter and then my wife was pregnant with my youngest and you know it's a bit like that weird psychology if you can see your money going down um you're not quite getting that traction you know you've done another investor meeting and I was just sat in my living room at home and what sounded like a knock at the door was this big thud in my chest which at that time I thought oh my god and I couldn't breathe how old would you been then then uh probably like early 30s something like that so yeah I just thought I'm having a heart attack.

4:29Russell Teale:My wife was sort of like, what should I do? Couldn't breathe. Managed to sort of gain my composure. Went to the hospital, got scans. I wore a heart monitor for two weeks and went to see a specialist. And he just said, yeah, that's absolutely fine. If anything, it's in great condition, which is obviously a relief. But then it suddenly dawned on me that I thought I was invincible. Despite my mum suffering from mental health and whatnot, I never really thought of it as anything. Was it a panic attack then? It was literally a panic attack. Never had one before? but then that obviously led to three four five a day and even still to this day now i still suffer with them from time to time so it was just a bit of a right okay and it was a it was literally my best friend who was my best man who said to me he'd also suffered he just said unfortunately it never goes away now i'll be honest at the time when he told me that really annoyed me yeah so i thought oh no it will go away yeah it'll just get better i'll make it go away yeah yeah and and it It just goes to show that none of us are bulletproof.

5:27So how does a panic attack manifest itself? Is it always heart palpitations? How does it manifest itself in you?

5:33Russell Teale:Yeah, it pretty much is that. It's almost like all of a sudden you feel that surge of energy inside it. And yet what used to last days for me when I first started suffering with them, I can overcome in minutes now. And it's a weird thing. It's almost like, okay, I can see what it is. Let it come. And then just as quick as it comes, it passes. So, yeah, I've had it, you know, in board meetings in the past where actually I've had them and never said anything out loud. But it just happens. So thankfully now, yeah, it's one of those things that's a bit more controllable. That's the thing with the Naked Founder podcast.

6:04You know, there's a lot of people listening and watching this can relate to it, but they almost feel they can't talk about it because it's almost seen as a sign of weakness. And it goes back to that imposter syndrome element. And I always think with founding a business and life in general, there's these sliding doors moments. You had one. You landed a job as head of operations at a company called School Letting Solutions. You were one of nearly a thousand people who eventually made redundant at that company when it went into liquidation. Very bruising time in your career. So, you know, you've left Total Fitness.

6:33You started a health and well-being fitness app, which is, you know, which you've left as well. Then you get another job at School Letting Solutions. You get made redundant. You must start to think to yourself, is it me?

6:45Russell Teale:well i suppose yeah it's just one of those things you i don't know and i've learned this a lot more as i've got older it does it's done you can't do anything about it so i've always sort of had that mindset there's absolutely no point looking backwards but now at that time again it was bruising yeah um it was a phenomenal idea and it was a great business and it was founded all on the right principles but you know essentially i've been brought in because of my experience at total fitness where I was a established operator I knew how to operate you know delivering great great best-in-class service but fundamentally you could see where some of the issues were so for me at the time it was a case of I learned a lot during that so then what can I utilize now when it comes to fit to vivify to actually you know do something that can be sustainable which isn't relying on investment and actually we can create something that can last hundreds of years So that's what I learned from that business.

7:40The hardest moments in my life I've learned the most. Genuinely, I have. I look back and I think I wouldn't want to go through that again, but I'm glad I went through it because it makes you realize your own resilience, what you can cope with and what you accept and what you don't accept. So in 2020, the age of 37, you were one of three co-founders of Vivify, which is the current business. What problem were you trying to fix back then?

8:04Russell Teale:Yeah, I mean, in essence, you know, it's, you know, School Letting Solutions were trying to do something similar. You know, you've got schools that are sat there empty evenings, weekends and school holidays. And, you know, you'd have to be, you know, living under a rock somewhere to not see that this is just becoming a phenomenal challenge for schools every single day now with the reforms that have come through for the SEND education recently. You know, they're just not getting enough funding, but they are sat on phenomenal assets. And it's, you know, 70 % of what we do is sport. So it's giving access to communities to come and play sport, sports halls, artificial grass pitches, grass pitches, dance, drama, theatre.

8:41Russell Teale:But 30 % of it is outside of that. It's the Women's Institute. It's cookery. It's sing-outs, choirs, church groups, language schools. So they've just got phenomenal facilities sat there. And you can take it right down into the micro in Trafford as an example. They've got fantastic grammar schools. But parents are able to get tuition. so you've got tuition businesses taking you know what was next on altering them high street putting desks in it to try and run tuition classes when in reality schools have got thousands of classrooms which are just left dormant and what we recognized was software was the real blocker because you know ultimately trying to book a badminton court or a classroom you have to phone the school they're already stretched they didn't get back to you so for me it was about creating this sustainable circular economy where if Vivify comes in we open up that school it generates income we create three or four jobs in doing it for people to open and close the school facilities those people are obviously paid for by the money that the community spend in there so what you end up with is this lovely circular economy that isn't relying on government funding or sport england that's what really Vivify is about where did the name Vivify come from I'd love to say it was you know it just came to us but it didn't we looked at it was thinking what do we want to call it and we'd We worked with a really good agency who gave us a list of, I want to say, about 500 names.

10:01Russell Teale:And Vivify was one of the ones which actually my co-founder, Elaine, sort of picked out and was like, and its meaning is to breathe life into. And it just felt right. That's what we're trying to do. So that's where it came from. I'm going to talk to you about something very personal to you and completely unconnected with work. But I think what it shows is how difficult it is sometimes to compartmentalise your home life and your work life. So 2021, the business is just 12 months, 15 months old, and you're going through a lot of change within the business. And your mum, Janice, unfortunately, takes ill.

10:32Single mum. She took two jobs when you were younger. I think she was your hero. She had a penchant for rehoming stray cats, I was told as well. Just tell us, because she died, unfortunately. Just tell us about your mum and what happened and how that impacted on you as a startup founder.

10:50Russell Teale:yeah I mean you know you've you've alluded to it my mum was somebody that always put herself in front of others and I know everyone says that but I'm reading you know we'd be always put others in front of herself did I say the other way around yeah yeah she's so selfish exactly so yeah put others before herself you know and I mean literally you know we'd have 10 pound left and you know someone would come on my mum would speak to someone and she'd lend it to them as an example and then the electric would come off yeah like that's who it was so I think for me she just instilled in me from a very very young age what resilience really is but obviously i didn't know so for me now as an adult and reflecting on it you know that's what she taught me but you're right at the time obviously we just started vivify it was covid it's really hard to remember back to those times isn't it yeah you know we were still remote working business wasn't off the ground yet you know we'd started to build the team up because we've got a bit of traction and then yeah and at that time it yeah nothing really can prepare you for that can it literally took everything out of me but you you're leading a team of people you're leading a business you're trying to still scale a business from scratch during covid yeah what else could i have done she died of blood cancer on new year's day 2022 she's only 56 years of age as well um and it's you mentioned about the resilience that she taught you that lives on through you today as well but how hard is it to compartmentalize that personal trauma at the same time as dealing with covid at the same time as starting a business at the same time as having a wife and two young kids how do you manage yeah to be honest uh alcohol no joke it's it's just you you don't is the honest answer um you don't manage but you just recognize and that's what i said before I think again it comes down to maybe those almost subliminal messages and learnings that I was taken from watching my mum growing up I think it was a case of well what else are you going to do you know you could just sit at home what would your mum tell you to do just get on and sort it like I say you don't sit there and lick your wounds you just get on with it you just have to get out of bed solve problems speak to people and I think that's just what's been instilled in me and that's what we did you um a lot of businesses start with a founder co-founder more than more than one co-founder you had three and and as often happens you know two other co-founders left the business you're the only founder left within the business as well you bootstrap the business until 2022 when you raised a million quid from a ret a liverpool-based investor which saw bill curry and former tasco ceo sir terry leahy come on board as investors two questions what's your advice when it comes of choosing the right investor.

13:34And second question, what's it like dealing with the likes of like Doyens, like Terry Leahy and Bill Curry, having them on board as a startup?

13:43Russell Teale:Yeah, I think in terms of choosing an investor, for me, what's been literally life-changing and pivotal is, and I think a lot of people say, but it is the people you're going to work with. I think that level of trust that you've got to have with them, but also that professional distance in the sense of you've got to expect that they're going to behave like an investor as well and what i mean by that is that they're not giving it you out of charity they're giving it to you because you know they see the potential in the business so i think that level of you know that relationship and rapport that you're going to have with them very early doors and what's been phenomenal for me and for vivify is in a rette and the william curry group they're very normal people very very normal people that have come from working class backgrounds that get you know what is really really important in any business around work ethic around you know driving everything that you've possibly got but also seeing you as a human being i can't praise them enough for that but then like you say so terry lee thankfully or not i don't you know i don't deal a lot with so terry as you can imagine but um it's a full circle moment for me in the sense of when i was 16 my first job was in tesco when he will have been the CEO.

14:53Russell Teale:So weirdly, having that out-of-body experience pitching to him at the very start was a bit like that. But great. Like I say, I genuinely can't thank him enough. I think a lot of people hear so many horror stories about investors, but we've been really lucky in the sense that they've both been so supportive of the business. How ever tempted to go on Dragon's Den? No, probably not, no. I think it's a phenomenal show, isn't it? And there's elements of it when you watch it. I still watch bits of it now, which is absolutely true in real life. But it's also not, isn't it? Yeah, you see that. You see that.

15:27You go in there offering like 4 % of your business for£100 ,000, despite the fact you've got zero traction. And then they say, I'll offer you the£100 ,000 for 35 % of your business. You think, don't do it. But that's what it's meant for. It's meant to, you know, create those feelings. How different is the role of founder compared to the role of a CEO?

15:47Russell Teale:So yeah, very different. And it's hard because they're not completely exclusive of each other. So founding a business, like I said before, I think some of the greatest times I had was at the start. Selling to schools myself was brilliant. I loved it. I felt I got real energy and passion when I got my first yes from Orchard High School in Enfield. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, like I said, the highest of highs. Now as a CEO, it's not just me. I've got a senior team. you know you know steph potts really well so i've got phenomenal people in the business which is out of this world but it's so hard to not let that passion uh overspill in that sense as a founder and i think one of the hardest things i've found is people take everything you say literally so sometimes you might want to say something to evoke a maybe a challenge or a you know a different thought in somebody but they literally take it so and that's been sort of the hardest thing for me so it's understanding the impact that you can have both in a positive and negative way I mean you see a lot of founders step away from a business or step away from a CEO because their skill set was in founding the business not necessarily in running it and growing it as well you still feel you've got a bit of room to go as a CEO but you can see that it's a different skill set required to do both jobs yeah and I think the the time I spent at Total Fitness you know i started there in my sort of early 20s and rose through the ranks worked at pretty much every level and you know i operated a 40 going towards 50 million turnover business that generated five six million of ebitda i think i learned a lot there and so therefore i think when you think about the jobs that i've done since starting vivify we're only probably 40 of the way through what i've kind of done already in a previous life so it feels like you're right there's some way to go but you know i'm sure one day i'll be sat there and i'll think hang on a minute you know you know if if vivify gets to the levels we all think it can do then maybe maybe we'll outgrow me how big do you think vivify can get to i mean listen there's 27 000 schools in the uk but the education system isn't exclusive to just the uk you know it's the same all over the all over the world so if you think about the us as an example we all know about college basketball and just the phenomenal facilities that exist in the US.

18:03Russell Teale:And if you look at most governments across the world, they're not all able to invest phenomenal amounts of income into health and leisure infrastructures, nor education. So Vivify can solve those problems outside of the UK. It's fundamentally a tech business, isn't it? It's underpinned by technology, which makes it scalable. So you've got 500 staff, you're set to hit 12 million turnover this year, and you've turned a profit last year, I think. What are your do's and don'ts for scaling a business? yeah wow uh you know definitely don'ts are just lose sight of cash i think that that's the key thing whether we like it or not and again that's back to the first question you asked me what the what the lessons they never teach you uh for founding a business is just the sheer panic you've always got around making sure there's cash in the business how often do you look at your bank account well with steph potts now at cfo not as often as i used to uh but no obviously back in the day was a you know almost like a three four times a day um you mentioned steph potts obviously i i know very well super super talented person as well and if she's listening i'll deny having said that but no but she absolutely is but that role of an fd in a business watching the cash flow is business critical isn't it yeah and i think i've been really lucky you know i think back to working at total fitness i had andy meller who i co-founded women fight with so i've worked with Andy a few times I saw then what a commercial FD or CFO is like so somebody that genuinely understands the business the mechanics the customer and how it works and then how how therefore translates into the cash at bank and Steph is cut from that exact same cloth so that is I would say for anyone that's at that stage of business where you're thinking about bringing on an FD CFO a head of finance having that commercial brain is so so important to be to connect the two yeah no it brings me on to hiring have you got an approach to hiring what's your experience to hiring i mean people talk about you know um hire slowly fire quickly i mean what's your approach to hiring i think for me you know that we did a big exercise about values at vivify and with the team and one of the key words that or two words that came across were passion and pride given what we do um and the social purpose that sits behind it but that's kind of what what you're looking for in people anyway is for us there's a like I said we're about getting people healthy getting people spending time in their community with each other so really that's what I'm looking for somebody that genuinely lights up when you see that and I think I've done both I've hired for skill set and not necessarily had that fire there and you know it's not worked out whereas in reality with the attitude with that approach and that passion for what the cause of what we're trying to do with some experience that for me is really really key and you can just see it and that's one of the been the biggest challenge in scaling a business you can train you can train skill you can't train attitude and that's uh that's something that a lot of founders talk about you were a northern finalist in the 2025 ey entrepreneur of the year awards as well as being a business cloud northern leader winner and i know you said to me that was the proudest moment of your life even above having children um you might not have said those exact words but that's what you meant how important is your network and how important is it to speak to other founders because it can be incredibly lonely being a founder yeah that i think that is one of the been the hardest thing i left um tf with no network i'd put all of my life and soul into total fitness yeah yeah and so therefore when i came out of it and i was suddenly i had to go and get a job or start a business i didn't have anything i sort of had little bits of it and yeah over the past 12 24 months i really genuinely have realized that and built such a strong network and i didn't know or understand the real power of what that could be not only kind of professionally in terms of opening doors for vivify but just personally i've been able to spend time with people people who've been through things and the ey program as an example was great the northern leaders event i was sat on a table of people you know where you've got kind of chancellors of universities all the way through to people that started a business from scratch and i think having that ability just to spend time with those has been yeah really important over the last two do you have any mentors um so my chair was my ceo at total fitness richard millman and so that's the relationship i've got with richard he was our first actual investor by the way he gave us his cold hard cash on day one when we were all locked down and couldn't hug each other as an example so he's been that relationship i have of him every tuesday without fail at 8 30 we have that call and uh that's very much what that's about so he's been really key to that but you know outside of that there's i've started to kind of get those people you know louise stevenson is another one there's people in the kind of greater manchester community that have almost become that those soundboards, those people to speak to.

22:53Yeah, and I think it's people who've got no skin in the game and you know they're only telling you for the right reasons as well. I say, are there any founders you particularly admire?

23:04Russell Teale:There's loads. I think you get to meet them on these programmes and I think it's when we work really closely with Steve Perry as an example, who's the former Olympic bronze medalist. I'm sure he wants me to say that. But no, I think going and seeing other people that have just got that same energy, enthusiasm and passion. I think what I've also seen is the opposite of where you sort of, I don't know, it's very ego-led. It's about them. And I sat when I did Fitter and saw these people on the panel and thought, oh, you know, almost back to feeling a bit unfair. But now the people who respect the most are people that have been through it and are genuinely trying to solve a problem.

23:45Russell Teale:And I think if you do that, you do end up with a successful business. Yeah, no, I think you work out very quickly if you want to spend any time with a person, especially as you get older as well. And there are some people who you don't spend any time with. And you work that out as well. The Naked Founder podcast always ends with the same question. And there's a tradition in the US where the outgoing president writes a letter to their successor. So if you were writing a letter of advice to yourself on day one of being a founder, what would you say to yourself? And this works really well for other people who are thinking about founding a business.

24:17Russell Teale:what would your letter say for me i think it would be go easy on yourself i think i wouldn't listen to it by the way just so clear but uh it would be that it would be don't be so bloody hard on yourself i think that's it i think you know when you're at that point and you're frustrated you're tired you're upset you know you've got the wins i think it's that thing of just being a bit kind it to yourself, I think is really, really important because as we've talked about, you know, there was times where I was at the lowest of lows and probably didn't cut myself enough slack at the time. So I think just that sort of just go easy on yourself.

24:56Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think there's generally anybody who I know in my network who's got a bad word to say about you as well. And I think that's why people are always happy to help. So massive thank you to Russell Till, the founder and CEO of Vivify, great business. And thank you to our sponsors, Financial, shell the home of money for women that's all for this episode of the naked founded podcast if you've liked it tell your friends and family and press that subscriber my name as always it's chris mcguire