If you're reading this, you are early.

If you're reading this, you are early.

There is a competitive advantage that the majority of the market hasn't acknowledged yet, because it isn't "mainstream". But then again, most market disruptions aren't mainstream, until they are…

Right?

In 2007, Nokia alone controlled about 37.8% of the entire global handset or "mobile phone" market.

Then Apple, a predominantly "computer" company with zero history manufacturing phones essentially said:

"Hey guys! Just so you know…We're going to remove almost every button, put a giant touchscreen on it, charge around $500+, and reinvent the mobile phone industry."

And everyone collectively thought "yeah okay buddy, see you in bankruptcy".

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously said before the launch of the iPhone:

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

And well…I don't really need to explain to you how abundantly wrong Mr. Ballmer was.

The same kind of thing happened in the last decade to the fitness and business industry.

A little while before COVID, your average founder was drinking 8 coffees and smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

And going to the gym plus getting 8 hours of sleep?

Not even an afterthought to them.

Fitness and physical health had no place in business.

But now?

The average founder you meet is more likely to be sauna, cold plunge, hyrox, hybrid athlete "coded" than an actual athlete.

Now, this drastic shift in prioritizing health wasn't because founders suddenly discovered how "fun" working out is, or because they suddenly "wanted" to be fit.

It was because the market began to understand:

"My ability to perform in business, is a direct byproduct of the level of energy I have and how I actually feel while running the business"

They realized that increased energy and feeling better meant increased performance.

And what did increased performance mean? More money.

Prioritizing health as a founder suddenly shifted from "an afterthought" to the most important lever to pull to optimize business performance.

Today, health and wellness is a 6 trillion dollar industry. That is over 6% of the entire world's GDP.

Oura rings, WHOOPs, run clubs, etc.

It's all bred into founder culture now.

Some fortune 500 companies even have CHO's now - Chief Health Officers - as full time members of staff.

But I'm not writing this memo to talk about the physical health industry.

I'm writing it because I see another monumental shift happening in our industry…

One that will provide one of the most significant competitive advantages to early adopters that we have seen in our lifetime.

And that is…

The importance of understanding the founder's mental programming.

Performance psychology directly implemented into business leadership.

Your business is a macro system, made up of a bunch of individual micro systems.

And the performance of a business, over long periods, is largely contingent on the quality of those systems.

As James Clear says in Atomic Habits:

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

Now I'm usually against recommending that book just because I think most people treat its strategies as temporary solutions to long term problems, but that quote is incredibly "on the money".

What most people fail to observe, is that those macro and micro systems that run your business are all downstream from one thing. One very important thing.

You.

An average founder focuses on and optimizes downstream systems. Naturally, right? Those are the revenue producing cogs in the money making machine.

But the truth is - the quality of the business simply cannot be separated from the quality of the operator.

A founder decides what deserves attention. A founder decides what problems need solving. A founder interprets external information. A founder decides when to persist versus pivot. A founder chooses who to trust and who to hire. A founder determines how much uncertainty they can tolerate.

But what happens if the founder:

Allows their emotional state to influence decisions? Allows their fear to affect what risks they're willing to take? Allows their level of confidence to affect what moves they make? Allows bad months to impact their ability to lead?

Well, let's just say the downstream impact of a founder who doesn't understand their mental programming, can be quite significant.

And the irony is that, the more you scale the more important this becomes.

Because leverage amplifies psychology.

At $10k/month, a founder's psychological patterns may only affect themselves and maybe one other person.

At $100k/month, they begin to affect employees and possibly also clients.

At $1M/month, they affect executives, customers, capital allocation, hiring decisions, and culture.

In dollars and cents:

A fear-based decision at $20k/month might cost you $2,000.

A fear-based decision while managing a $50M company will cost you millions.

The greater the founder's leverage, the more expensive their internal patterns become.

But on the flipside…the more valuable psychological mastery also becomes.

The internal capacity of the founder is the one lever that unlocks the movement of each and every one of the cogs inside the business.

When a business wants to go from seven figures to nine figures the person at the helm may need to increase their ability to: make decisions without complete information, delegate control, lead people smarter than them, emotionally detach from short-term outcomes, and maintain clarity through volatility.

And what do you notice about each one of those things?

They aren't funnel problems.

They're human performance requirements.

Every level of business growth you desire to achieve will create a new level of psychological demand on you.

Now if that still doesn't resonate with you, then think about it this way…

An athlete would never say:

"I performed well at the regional level, therefore the exact same physical and psychological preparation should carry me through the Olympics."

That is absolutely ludicrous…and would only ever lead to failure.

A founder who wants a nine-figure exit can't only ask themselves the question: "What does the company need to become?"

They will almost certainly have to ask: "Who does the operator of that company need to become?"

Okay, enough blabbering on about the semantics, I'm sure you understand at this point.

And surely you agree as well. If not, I'm not sure what you've been reading.

The reason this opportunity exists right now is because it hasn't become obvious yet.

Most founders currently categorize psychological work alongside: self-help, mindset, therapy, motivational content, spirituality, etc.

Which is all true…but it's simply a matter of time that the perception changes.

What is about to happen is a categorical reframe:

Psychology → business performance infrastructure.

Exactly like what happened to the fitness and business industry before:

Fitness → business performance infrastructure.

And the founders who recognize this shift before it becomes obvious are going to have an advantage that compounds for years.

Because if YOU spend the next five years building your business alongside intentionally focusing on your ability to: make better decisions under pressure, regulate your emotions when things go wrong, lead larger teams, separate your identity from short-term outcomes, and understand your own biases before they influence major decisions…

You will have been building a fundamentally better operating system.

Which is exactly where the leverage you have becomes almost unfair.

Performance psychology isn't just another business skill, it is the compounding amplifier that improves the person applying every other business skill they've learned over the years.

Better judgment leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to better hires. Better hires create better systems. Better systems create more leverage.

And this is my prediction:

Over the next five to ten years, deliberately training your psychology will become completely normal amongst elite founders.

In the same way founders now obsess over sleep, fitness, nutrition, recovery, Oura Rings and WHOOPs…

Which is exactly why I believe understanding and training your own subconscious, dissecting your individual psychology TODAY…

Is one of the highest-leverage investments a founder can make.

In both time, and financial resources.

Not because they're broken.

Not because they need to "fix their mindset."

But because if they genuinely intend on building something extraordinary…the person building it is probably worth optimizing too.

Naturally, the market will catch up…

And mental performance psychology will eventually become another accepted pillar of business performance in the same way physical health did before it.

And five or ten years from now, people will look back and say: "Of course understanding my mental programming is something I focus on. It affects the performance of my company."

It will seem obvious.

Most disruptions do…once they're mainstream.

But if you're reading this now?

You have the luxury of understanding it before everyone else does.