Peter Sorgenfrei walks through how a client named Martin lost himself chasing startup success, then rebuilt his life by reordering priorities: health and happiness first, then partner and father, then CEO. Martin cut ties with a co-founder, slowed growth, and added exercise and meditation back in.
Many of my clients have tried and failed, and then they keep going and they start a new company, but they still don't quite know how to balance their personal and professional lives. And Martin was a great example of that. Martin had started two companies before we started working together when he was in the process of building company number three. He was stressed out of his mind. Didn't feel like he was adequately present at home or adequately present at work, had a calendar that looked like a nightmare. You know, one of those things where you have back-to-back-to-back meetings all day long. He missed his children's practices. He had stopped having date nights with his wife. His health was suffering because he wasn't exercising. I mean, all these things that he enjoyed doing, he was no longer doing. So the first thing we started to talk about was saying, what is it that you want to be? How is it that you want to go through life? What kind of human being, what kind of man, what kind of partner, what kind of father do you want to be? And obviously, most people, and so did Martin, have a very clear image of that. And once we've defined what that was, to Martin, as an example, it was happy and healthy first, great partner second, fantastic father third, and then effective CEO as fourth. So, we essentially designed a schedule around that and prioritize that in that order. We Put in blocks for his exercise. We put in blocks for meditation, something he hadn't done before. But we but most of my clients end up working on that, and then essentially build out his schedule to reflect his his four priorities in that order. And then he started living it, and of course he failed again. Right? Of course he had weeks when he struggled, but little by little he got back into the cadence and the habit of. focusing on the things that matter to him. And within a few months, life was quote unquote back to normal. He made some hard choices in the business along the way. One of the ones were to essentially part ways with a co-founder that wasn't working out. He also decided to not scale as fast as his investors had kind of pushed for, but essentially tried to regain control of his professional and personal life. Which helped him tremendously. So I'm telling this story today because I think many of you who are listening to this, watching this, might have elements of that in your life, might have gotten to a place where you don't really feel as if you are the person you want to be. And my hope is by sharing this story and by sharing Martin's example, that you can sit down, look at what your priorities are, and then design your life around it. As always, if I can be of any assistance in any way, an informal chat, if you want me to write about something, record videos, whatever it might be, just let me know in the comments of where you're getting this, in return email or on any social channel, and I'd be happy to, to try and assist you.
