A Founder's Diary | Takeover from Dallas Barnes (Reya Health)

Welcome to A Founder’s Diary! Every night, I grab a cup of peppermint tea, light a candle, and journal about my day. This newsletter is a summary of those thoughts and pages.

My goal is to demystify entrepreneurship by showing the behind the scenes of being a founder along with lessons learned, strategies, health and wellness tips, resources, and much more.

This week we have a takeover from Dallas Barnes , founder of Reya Health !

Hey everyone!

I’m Dallas, founder of Reya Health - digital platform for personalized reproductive, hormonal and sexual health support. A little more about me:

• I helped to establish the HPV Prevention Advocacy Coalition, we are working to extend Ontario health coverage to include the HPV vaccine free for everyone up to age 27
• I am the Chair of the Board for StartOut Canada, an organization on a mission to support 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs in Canada
• I was recognized as one of North America's Top Femtech Personalities

I’m typically based in London, Ontario, on a small farm with my pet chickens and other furry companions. Lately though, I’ve been travelling with my wonderful girlfriend, adventuring together as we navigate working remotely on various timezones!

What I've Been Working On ??

Earlier this month we launched a new platform - a mobile app that provides personalized contraceptive counselling and hormonal symptom tracking with curated insights given. This has certainly been a labour of sweat, tears and a whole lot of love!

Anyone can now download the app (check it out on Android and iOS!) but our main channels are through health benefit plans and other health product groups/orgs, supporting members with family planning and hormonal symptom management.

This week, I’m onboarding a new CTO which I could not be more thrilled about. I’m a solo founder and it’s lonely at times. I’m looking forward to having that technical counterpart to bounce ideas off and fill in the more techy knowledge gaps!

My Learnings ??

As intense as this will make me sound… I live by my calendar. I’m obsessed with it. I structure my days by the .25 hour, this helps to ensure I commit to daily exercise, proper meals, calling a loved one or getting outside. Without this focused structure, I find myself getting caught up in the “fluffy” to do’s that might seem pressing at the time or something quick I can just get done for the team in between calls. It helps me prioritize my time and focus on the things that will actually drive the business forward and that I can do better than anyone else. It’s my best attempt at not getting pulled in a million directions each day.

I suppose my learning here has been understanding how important it is to re-commit to the priorities and goals each day, and that it’s ok to say no to some tasks or batch the smaller tasks into a block of time on a Monday afternoon for example.

Mental Health & Wellness ??

A similar grain to the above learning, I’m prioritizing wellness activities everyday that give me joy and I’m booking it in. I will literally make myself an event in my calendar so I can better commit to taking care of myself. For instance, when I’m at home I will block out time in my day to get outside and just spend quality time in the barn with my animals.

Also, spending time nurturing friendships. In today’s world, I have friends dispersed across multiple continents. It takes time and effort to nurture this kind of remote relationship, but these things are important for our health and staying connected to my community brings me so much joy.

Personal Life ??

My partner and I both work demanding jobs. We work remote together but our home bases are different so at times we are managing long distance. I’m learning to focus on the time we have together, not the time we spend apart.

When we are together, we’ve been sharing time after work walking on the beach, debriefing our days and swimming as the sun goes down.

I love fresh flowers in the house and try to keep them around even while on the road.

Lately, I’ve been craving so much fruit and I’m leaning into this, having fresh full fruits every day. Yum.

Journalling has been the best tool for me in my mental health practice for as long as I can remember (I first started journalling at age 7) and continues to be so. I’m grateful for the pencil to paper thoughts, connections and emotions that help ground me.

What I've Been Consuming ??

I bought myself Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition by Willow Defebaugh as a Christmas gift. Nature is my place of worship and I believe in a deep interconnection with nature and spirituality. This book brings me peace.

Resources

Dr. Thara Vayali is someone I learn a ton from. She frequently shares her medical perspective on Linkedin (definitely check out her profile). I recommend listening to any podcast she is a guest on! She is a refreshing voice in the health space.

I utilize a lot of different Slack and WhatsApp communities for tangible support. Some are broad for tech founders around the world and others are more niche like one group I’m in for lesbian tech business owners in Canada. These are great for quick perspectives and sharing resources. My advice would be to find your communities! There truly is something for everyone.

Outside of that, I’m a podcast listener. Some I love are:

• Queer Collective helps me stay culturally in-tune
• Femtech Focus keeps me in the know on women’s health innovations
• Financial Feminist is a personal fav

That’s all from me! I hope this is valuable for folks, if nothing else I hope the takeaway is that we get to design our own lives and life is short. What do you want yours to look like? ?

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