A room for founders
You want to keep building something big, and stop paying for it with your sleep, your body and the people you love.
A small group. Two live calls a month with me, and the two weeks in between, which is where the real work happens.
The group isn't open yet.
Put your name down and you'll hear from me first. When it starts, what it costs, how to get in.
You're on the list.
You're proud of what you've built, and you should be.
You're also tired in a way a holiday doesn't fix.
Inside the room
You're in the right place if
You don't want to slow down. You want to stop being run by it.
Why none of it has worked yet
Your whole life, the way through a problem has been your mind. Read more, understand it better, find the person who can explain it. That's how you built everything you have. And it's why this one is still here.
So you can understand your loop completely and still run it. I work with people who can name exactly what they're doing while they're doing it, and they keep doing it.
Awareness is great. On its own it doesn't do anything.
Nothing is your fault. And everything is your responsibility.
The plan
01
When the pressure spikes, the old move doesn't run.
Most founders try to think their way out of the pressure, so the moment it spikes, the thinking goes with it and the old move runs.
Instead, we start with steadiness. A small set of things you can do in five seconds, in two minutes, and in the middle of an argument, drilled when you're calm so they're there when you're not.
02
You find out what it's getting you, and what it's costing.
Going after the behaviour on its own, with willpower, a rule or a digital detox, is a reliable way to swap one habit for another.
We go underneath it. What you actually do, the way a camera would see it. What you get out of it, because you'd have dropped it years ago if it gave you nothing. What it's costing you and who else is paying. Understanding is where most work stops. Here it's the halfway point.
03
You do something different, with a date on it.
The old thing gets to finish, in the body and not just in your head. Then you take it into your life. A breakthrough on a call is worth nothing until you do something different with it.
So every month ends with one move in the real world, with a date on it. Asking for what you want. Saying no. The conversation you've been avoiding for three years. And then you build from there, from who you are underneath it rather than from what was driving you.
Then you do it again, one level deeper. It doesn't finish. That's the point.
How we'll do it together
The first fortnight
You catch it once while it's happening, instead of the next morning. That's where everything else starts.
The first three months
You build the ground and pull your first threads, on whatever is costing you most right now. You start measuring the gap: how long it takes you to notice, and how long from noticing to doing something useful. That gap getting shorter is the progress.
After that
The asks, the no's, the boundaries, the clean-ups. Then your partner, your co-founder, your team, your kids, and what changes at home when you're actually there.
You, then the people around you, then building from who you are underneath it rather than from what was driving you. You join wherever it is and work it on your own thread. Then it goes round again, one level deeper.
Alongside all of it, the unglamorous floor most of this industry skips: sleep, movement, what you're actually running on.
What a session looks like
The first call opens the month: new members get thirty minutes to find their feet, then everyone lays out what's actually going on and picks the thread for the month. The second goes deep on one thing.
01
02
You feel it rather than agree with it.
03
04
05
In front of everyone. I choose who based on what’s live that day.
06
The thing everyone goes and does before next time.
You'll get more from watching somebody else's turn than you expect. One person goes all the way through something in front of everyone, and it opens something in the people watching. That isn't a nice side effect. It's the reason the format works.
I'm here to serve you, not to please you.
What I actually think happens
The loop loses its grip rather than disappearing. You keep the parts that were useful, because some of what built your company came from there.
That's smaller than what you're usually promised. It's also the only version that survives you having a bad year.
Why me
I got sick at twelve. Chronic, on my skin, and the doctors had no answer, so I went looking myself. Left school at fifteen. Left the country at eighteen. Homeless at nineteen. India, the Amazon, two retreat centres, a decade of teaching.
Then I met Judith Johnson. Fifty years in this work. On her table, something that had been running me since I was a boy finished. Not in my head. I trained under her for three years and lived in her house for three months recording her entire life's work.
I've burned out twice myself. This isn't theory for me.
And I've watched people have the biggest moment of their life on a call and change nothing afterwards. That isn't a failure of the moment. It's a failure of what came next, and what comes next is what this is for.
You're a founder who is good under pressure and knows what it's costing.
You've already tried understanding it, and you're ready to do something different about it.
You'll show up, do the thing between sessions, and tell us whether you did it.
People in the middle of something acute.
People who want to consume it rather than do it.
People who are already where they want to be. I don't make clients out of people who don't need one.
And if you can already catch it mid-flight and change course, you're past this.
Three hours a month live, plus a practice that takes five seconds or two minutes a day. If you take a partner or a small group, thirty minutes a week. If that’s more than you have, this isn’t the right season for it.
Then you come back to the next call, and the recordings are there. Falling off is part of the loop, so we work with it.
The teaching is recorded. You’ll get less out of it, because the practice happens live and a recording doesn’t practise with you.
No. This is educational and coaching work. It isn’t medical, psychological or psychiatric treatment and it isn’t a substitute for professional care. If something needs that, I’ll say so and point you somewhere.
No. Nobody in here is asking you to want less. We’re working on what it costs you to get it.
It might be. Tell me what you’ve done and I’ll give you a straight answer, including if the answer is no.
The list hears first: the start date, what it costs, and how to get in. Put your name down and you’ll get all three from me before anyone else.
No substances, no ceremony, and nothing you have to believe.
Jakob
You're on the list.
This is educational and coaching work. It isn't medical, psychological or psychiatric treatment, and it isn't a substitute for professional care.