Team,

I want to reflect clearly and directly on what 2025 required, what it revealed, and what it changed for me as a leader and, as a consequence, us as a company.

It was personally one of the hardest years I have experienced. Earlier, I pushed through illness and exhaustion longer than I should have. At the time, it felt responsible, so I could uphold promises. In fact, it felt like a commitment and part of my identity. In reality, it created a larger health issue later that forced me to stop more abruptly and with far less control than I would have chosen, and it introduced issues I will have to manage for the foreseeable future.

I once heard a mentor say, “The difference between humans and animals is that humans can learn from the mistakes of others; animals have to learn for themselves.” This memo is my attempt to make sure you can learn from mine, rather than having to learn the hard way yourselves.

What follows are five shifts in 2025, each with a lesson and an apparent behavior change going forward.

There were moments when resting felt uncomfortably close to quitting. Not because I doubted the mission or the work at all, but because exhaustion distorts perspective.

That experience reinforced something essential for me: most people don’t quit because the work is wrong. They quit because they are depleted.

Physical overtraining is widely understood. Cognitive and emotional overtraining are often mislabeled as weakness. Elite athletes are coached to rest as part of training. High performers in business are taught to feel guilty for it. In sports, rest is called recovery. In business, it’s often mistaken for laziness, especially by people who confuse activity with progress.

Fatigue degrades judgment long before it reduces effort. When you’re tired, problems feel permanent. When you’re rested, those same problems are usually manageable.

Lesson:
Quitting while depleted does not bring clarity. It allows exhaustion to make decisions that should be made with a clear head. The most expensive mistake is not slowing down; it’s walking away when recovery would have changed the outcome. 

Behavior Going Forward

At the same time I was learning this personally, the company was growing at one of the fastest rates in its history. We more than doubled the team in 2025, and in the last quarter alone, we hired 41 people (which is fantastic).

However, this means that how I must operate changed, VERY fast. 

In the early stages, proximity, speed, and personal involvement were advantages. Over time, those same traits became constraints to growth. I became too many of the systems because it was faster than hiring, documenting, and building correctly. Under pressure, that created fragility for the business and for me.

Lesson:
What limited us early in 2025 was not talent or effort. It was infrastructure. Clear decision rights. Reliable data. Leaders having leverage. Operating cadences. Any organization that depends on one person’s presence, judgment, or energy is fragile.

Behavior Going Forward

When I had surgery and was out for an extended period, this lesson became unavoidable. I cut more meetings than ever before. I became more deliberate with my time and attention.

Not because I cared less, but because I had to, and surprisingly, I learned something I wouldn’t have otherwise: constant availability does not create strong organizations. Strong cadence does. I saw the ‘problems’ and meetings that once felt dire were simply out of habit, ritual, or because other companies say these are good things to do. By eliminating many of them and becoming less available, I saw how much more I could get done for this company. I finally had time and mental capacity to work on the 3-year vision, strategic bets, and big decisions that far outweigh anything else I could possibly do.

Lesson:
Leaders do not owe everyone access to them. They owe the organization clarity, decisions, and direction. Constant availability creates dependency. It teaches others that they are unable to navigate problems, situations, and issues on their own. 

Predictable cadence creates capability. When people know how and when decisions are made, escalation decreases and ownership increases. Being always reachable can feel responsive, but it trains the organization to bypass preparation, judgment, and accountability.

Strong leaders are not hard to reach; they are predictable, prepared, and decisive at the right moments. Availability creates bottlenecks and task doers. Cadence builds leaders. 

Behavior Going Forward

Late in 2024, we faced leadership challenges that caused significant disruption. Some people were hired or promoted into roles they weren’t right for at the time.

Avoiding that discomfort would have been easier, especially for me (lol). But that would have been nice, not kind.

Lesson:
Niceness avoids discomfort and delays truth. Kindness requires honesty, timely feedback, and decisions that protect the organization's long-term health. And over time, what you are essentially teaching those around you is, “I don’t trust you can handle the truth, therefore I won’t tell it to you.” These situations quickly exposed that withholding feedback does not preserve relationships; it taxes the system through confusion, misalignment, and repeated mistakes. 

Withholding clarity to spare feelings may feel compassionate in the moment, but it erodes trust over time. 

People sense uncertainty even when it is not named. Kindness respects people enough to be clear from the start. Niceness assumes they cannot handle the truth. High standards delivered with respect create stability. Avoidance creates instability.

As we grow, culture is not shaped by intent. It is shaped by what leaders are willing to say out loud, early, and consistently. The kindest leaders do not protect comfort. They protect clarity, dignity, and the team's future.

Behavior Going Forward

There was a time when working longer was an advantage for me. I spent all of 2022-2024 focused there. That time has passed. The mentors I worked with this year tried to tell me, loudly and bluntly, but I didn’t truly learn it until my health forced it.

At this stage, the company depends less on raw effort and more on judgment.

Lesson:
What I have learned is that at this stage, the company depends less on stamina and more on judgment. Protecting cognitive bandwidth is no longer optional because decision quality now carries more weight than raw output for me as CEO. One poor decision costs this company more than a week of my hard work can make up for.

Judgment compounds over time. Fatigue degrades it long before it affects visible productivity. Emotional regulation is not a soft skill at this level anymore, and soon won’t be for many of you.

It is a requirement for clear thinking, conflict resolution, and sound decisions. Work creates progress. Judgment creates direction. At this stage, exhaustion is not a badge of honor; it is a risk factor.

Behavior Going Forward

Through all of this, one thing became clear: The business still skyrocketed. Standards were maintained and elevated. Progress continued. We broke a damn world record, because of you!

You didn’t wait to be told what to do. You didn’t escalate unnecessarily. You solved problems, made trade-offs, and protected the company's long-term health, even when it would have been much easier not to.

That is what authentic leadership looks like, regardless of title :) 

These are not just lessons. They are tools:

This is how durable organizations are built, how high performers sustain themselves, and how others grow.

Thank you for how you showed up for the business and, more importantly, for each other. I am proud of this team, confident in where we are going, and deeply committed to what comes next.

More to come 🙂

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