Does your startup have cancer?

Cancer starts small and can go unnoticed for years. Then, suddenly, symptoms appear. Sometimes big ones, seemingly out of nowhere. That's when you investigate and find out your prognosis.

Sometimes it's too late. The cancer has spread too far.

This happens in our companies, too, in the form of tolerations. Small and big things that you let grow unchecked until they become too big to ignore.

What are you tolerating right now?

Over 26+ years working with founders, I’ve noticed these common tolerations, amongst others:

People

• Is your sales leader who got you to $5M revenue the person who'll get you to $50M?
• Are you still coaching that VP you should have replaced two quarters ago?
• Is there a person on your team that everyone works around, but no one will name in a 1:1? What else are they not saying? What’s that costing you?

Energy & Time

• How many meetings on your calendar this week did you actually WANT and NEED to be in?
• Is your phone the first thing you touch in the morning and the last thing you touch at night?
• Is there a workout, a hobby, a friendship you've put on ice "until the next milestone"? How long have you been postponing that?

Money

• What is your real burn, not the number on the deck, the number based on what you need to spend to win?
• Is there a customer paying half what new customers pay because you're afraid to have the awkward conversation?
• Are you raising more money to avoid a pricing decision you should have made last year?

Product & Operations

• How much of your engineering velocity is going to features versus paying interest on decisions made when you were 8 people?
• If your Head of Ops left tomorrow, how many critical processes would leave with them?

Yourself

• What's the story you tell yourself about why you can't do the thing you know you need to do? What is really, authentically true?
• Is there a conversation you've rehearsed in your head fifty times but still haven't had? How much energy is that costing you?
• If a friend described your life back to you, would you envy it, or would you tell them to make changes?

Each of these is a slow drain. Individually, manageable. Together, they metastasize. Eventually, they are fatal.

All these tolerations drain the thing that you need most: energy. There is a direct correlation between your energy and your company's outcome. You set the pace for the entire company.

As Naval Ravikant puts it, Startups don't die when they run out of cash; startups die when the founders run out of energy.

I used to abuse my energy

When I was CFO at FreshBooks, I never shut off. I’d have nightmares about my work so often that I even coined a word for it: “Freshmares” (FreshBooks nightmares).

I would solve issues when I was supposed to be sleeping. It was so common that I kept a notepad by my bed. If I didn’t write down the conclusion from the Freshmare, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Needless to say, that sleep was fresh, but not restorative. Over time, it became increasingly difficult for me to perform.

Solve for energy first

Most founders put the company first and themselves last. It sounds noble, but it costs you everything.

Think about the safety demonstration before a flight. They tell you to put your own mask on first. If someone is relying on you to get the mask, then you had better not run out of oxygen. If you are the key, put your mask on first. And founders are key to their companies. All the biggest outcomes are founder-led.

Start with sleep. Everything you want to achieve today depends on how you slept last night. Most founders sacrifice sleep to get more done. The math doesn't work. Better sleep gives you more energy, faster decisions, and sharper clarity than any extra hour at the laptop.

From there, add movement. Even a walk. Get the blood flowing. Think of yourself as a mental athlete. Elite athletes prioritize recovery so they can deliver elite performance. You are no different.

The Tolerations exercise

Each quarter, open a Google Doc (here is a template you can copy) and dump everything that is good, not great. People, time, money, product, culture, yourself. Everything.

Just getting it out of your head is liberating. But the power is in what you do next.

When you identify and remove a toleration, your energy rises. You move faster. You feel lighter. The more you do this, the faster your company goes.

Make it cultural

In a startup, speed is everything. Your job as CEO is to find and remove friction. Every single day.

Tolerations are friction. And friction compounds just like cancer does.

Make this part of how your company operates. Empower every team member to name tolerations. Assign them, then act on them. The people closest to a problem are usually the best ones to fix it.

Do this consistently, and you create a self-healing company. One that moves fast without grinding itself down.

One reflection before you go

What's one toleration on your list that you've been avoiding for more than 90 days?

Reply to me in this email. I would love to know what you are struggling with.

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