Like many entrepreneurs, I’m wired to constantly operate at full throttle.
Growing up, I played quarterback. From fifth grade through my senior year of college, my coaches gave me the same feedback: I threw passes too hard. They wanted more touch on the ball, especially on short distance routes. My receivers usually agreed—not every throw needed all of my mustard.
Looking back, football wasn’t the only place I exhibited this tendency.
When I played piano competitively, I practiced for hours until every note was perfect. When I wanted an A in a class, I studied relentlessly until I earned it. When I trained for a race or fitness event, I worked until I reached my goal, even if my lower back or shoulders gave out.
Once I set a goal, I become singularly focused on achieving it, no matter what stands in the way. I love to succeed at things that matter to me, and over the past 12 years I’ve approached building my company in the same manner.
My intense drive has been one of my greatest strengths as a founder. It has supported my team in pushing to rebuild the mental healthcare system for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), allowing us to set a new standard for delivering specialty care to people with severe, complex mental health conditions.
It’s also been one of my biggest personal weaknesses.
Building a company isn’t just an all-out sprint. It’s more like sprinting a marathon. You need the ability to push forward at 110%, but you also need the endurance to keep showing up day after day, year after year. For someone wired to move only at full speed, like me, doing both simultaneously doesn’t happen naturally—it’s something I have to work on consistently.
I learned this through moments of failure, when I felt like I was burning out. As someone who lives with OCD, it’s not a great place to be.
Some situations in the early days of building my company arose from our struggles finding product-market fit. Others in the later stages came from managing a large board of directors and growing a team aligned with our values, all while solving problems and operating profitably.
Over time, I began realizing that my feelings of fatigue and burnout detrimentally influenced my mood and my decision-making, requiring me to build a reliable system to get back on track and endure through the toughest moments.
I’d like to let you in on it.
When I feel burnout creeping in, it’s usually a sign that one of three things has happened: I’ve stopped taking care of my personal health, my focus has become scattered, or I’ve lost sight of the specific goal I’m working toward. Sometimes I notice that two or three are happening simultaneously.
When that occurs, I take swift action to ground myself and reset.
For one week, I focus almost entirely on three fundamentals: sleep, exercise, and nutrition. I’m in bed before 10 p.m. every night. I exercise for at least an hour, five days that week. And instead of grabbing whatever is easiest between meetings, I eat balanced meals—healthy carbohydrates, lean protein, and healthy fats. I even use ChatGPT to make sure I’m striking the right balance.
None of these habits are revolutionary, but I’ve learned that when those three things slip, everything else usually follows. I spend so much time trying to optimize my calendar, my organization, and my team that I forget about the person making the decisions.
Once I feel grounded again, I turn to my calendar. I rate every commitment on a scale from one to ten. If something scores below a nine, I pause it—but I don’t eliminate it.
That distinction matters. When everything feels urgent, it’s difficult to know what actually deserves your attention. Giving myself permission to pause instead of permanently cancel helps create enough distance for me to evaluate my priorities more objectively. I’m always surprised by how many “important” things stop feeling so important after a week or two.
The last step is making sure I know exactly what I’m working toward. I ask myself one question: What’s the single most important goal I’m trying to accomplish right now?
I write that goal in the Notes app on my phone and look at it throughout the day. It reminds me that leadership isn’t about doing the most things—it’s about making sure the right things make it across the finish line.
I’ve shared my specific framework with my team recently. Not because I think everyone should work the way I do—everyone is wired differently—but in hopes that this could inspire them to create their own systems for understanding when they need to rest and reset.
Today I’m still wired to operate at 110%. That hasn’t changed.
What has changed is I’ve learned that sprinting a marathon requires discipline, habits, and systems that allow you—and the people you lead—to succeed. But it also requires a foundation of rest and self-care in order to make the entire system sustainable.
