Thread by @aaronwhoughton

The founder is commoditized in the high-risk capital stack.

Thousands sign up for this psychological torture every day and investors put them in shark tanks on TV as entertainment.

Founder #mentalwellness will never be a priority because it isn’t necessary.

Here’s why👇

If one founder burns out there are ten more lined up behind them to take their job.

And don’t think that success will protect you. The investment world is happy to replace even the most successful founders with a seasoned hired operator. In fact they’re salivating for it.

So then, what can founders do to break out of this highly oppressive system?

The answer is to measure and track our psychological health alongside our business health.

The amount of mental health degradation we’re willing to trade for success is different for each of us.

But we can only take back the power we need to protect our mental health if we know where we stand and have drawn a line in the sand for how much we’re willing to sacrifice.

Just like in business, we can only improve what we can measure.

Where you draw the line is a very personal decision. But you must draw a line, otherwise you are on a path for destruction.

And not just destruction of your life. Maybe that’s cheap enough. I’m taking about destruction of the lives of all the people who love you.

Here are some places you could draw the line in your life as a founder right now.

Level 1) The eyelid twitch

Stress is impacting you, there’s no denying. Long term stress has the same impact on your cardio system as smoking 5 cigs a day. So now you’re a smoker without smoking.

Level 2) Emotional outbursts

You go to ten on the anger scale in two seconds when something triggers you, or you lose your patience with people in an instant, then bring the funk home with you.

You’re now on the path to losing your spouse and most of your friends. Being alone.

Level 3) Can’t sleep well anymore

Your physiology is so gripped by the dynamism of the startup experience that you can no longer turn it off when you must.

Your mind is racing at night and your body is producing energy with adrenaline, taxing your nervous system at its core.

You might notice your voice start to quiver a bit in intense conversations. You might notice your hand start to shake when you pick up a drink. Your reckless lifestyle is damaging your central nervous system and creating brain inflammation that is linked to early onset dementia.

Hope it’s a fun ride because it sure isn’t going to be a long one.

In a world where so many intelligent founders eat healthy, exercise regularly and try every new supplement on the market, we still bathe our brains in deadly stress hormones all day long acting like it’s nothing.

Level 4) The first panic attack

I chuckle while writing this. I got here way too early in my startup career. It scared me so of course I ignored it. Massive mistake. I would give anything now to have changed course at that moment. But I didn’t understand how much I was losing.

You’re giving a presentation in front of your team, or you’re sitting in front of your desk thinking about a current challenge. And suddenly your heart rate starts to spin up and go out of control. It’s terrifying. You completely shut down. Maybe you race to the Emergency Room.

When you get there the ER doctor incorrectly misses the stress disorder diagnosis. Statistically ER docs do this 95% of the time. Even your primary care physician will miss it 80% of the time. These are the real stats from leading panic disorder psychiatrist Reid Conrad.

Armed with confusing instructions from the discharging doc you return later for advanced heart testing that proves there’s nothing wrong with your heart. That’s great news, right? Sure, if “not having heart failure” is where you draw your line. You still have a problem.

Immediately your new problem is avoiding the scenario in which you had a panic attack. You stop giving presentations. You stop traveling. You stop driving. You have fundamentally limited every part of your life because of how hard you’re pushing yourself at work.

Pushing hard isn’t the problem, in fact it’s pretty easy to solve for. The problem is you’re a marathon runner who runs 24 hours a day every day and you’re not taking the time required to rest and recover. You’ve fallen victim to your own passion and dreams.

If you were soldier you would’ve already been discharged. If you were an Olympic athlete you would’ve been kicked off the team. If you were a pro athlete you’d be sitting on the bench.

But you’re a founder, so your investors and Gary V tell you to keep hustling harder.

Level 5) Psychological breakdown

At this level even the most basic things in life become hard. Getting out of bed. Going out in public. Basic self care.

Decision making is compromised. Your wild and erratic behavior has broken down the majority of your personal relationships.

Addiction or substance abuse are common unhealthy coping mechanisms yet they undermine your self-confidence and push even more people away. A vicious downward spiral begins. The problem is now so severe that it will take years to undo the damage.

You miss two weeks of work. You tell everyone you had the flu. You didn’t have the flu.

You stop returning phone calls and delete emails without reading them. You pull back from everyone.

You’re still in charge of your company. So the only person able to fix it is compromised.

I will stop at level five because as a serial 12x entrepreneur, not a psychologist, I’m not qualified to talk about what happens next.

And I hope in my heart that level five feels bad enough we can all agree it should be vigorously avoided. But we know it can get worse.

These five levels are the secret experiences of millions of entrepreneurs.

The investment world looks the other way because we as founders are infinitely replaceable. Just look at the new accelerator class from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and tomorrow too.

Investors don’t need to solve this problem. Their founder pipeline is rich and endless.

We, the founders, must solve this problem. We must tell other founders this story and we must take a stand to keep ourselves safe. We can only do this if we do this together.

So, will YOU tell this story? Retweet the first post in this thread if you’re with us.

And if you’re ready to take a stand to protect your #mentalhealth now too, tell the world what level you’re willing to sacrifice to be successful.

Level 1 through 5? There’s no wrong answer.

Personally, after having a huge exit in 2012 I’m only willing to sacrifice to Level 1 but no farther now.

In my 20s I was willing to sacrifice to level 3 and accidentally went to level 4+. That mistake is probably my biggest regret in life. I still haven’t undone the damage.

If you want an easy way to measure your mental wellness and always know where you stand, I’d love it if you joined me with a free membership in Founders First, the mental wellness community I created for high-performers.

It’s all in the app: app.founders-first.com