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Fluorescent lights that softly hum. Magazines nobody reads. A television mounted in the corner playing cable news as a receptionist mispronounces my last name. I am at my first of several doctors appointments intentionally scheduled during the winter holiday season. Not because I’m sick. Because it’s the only week of the year when nothing work-related is fighting for my time. The office is closed. The investors aren’t emailing. The product update notifications have stopped. For seven days I can put my body first. So I schedule the bloodwork. The dermatologist. The physical I’ve been postponing since March. The dentist I keep rescheduling because there’s always a board meeting or a customer call or a crisis that feels more important than my teeth. I came to this ritual the hard way. I spent my entire career building venture-backed technology companies while ignoring what my body was telling me. I did everything right by founder standards. Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. Exercised when I could. I told myself the stress was temporary. I told myself I’d rest after the next milestone. My kidneys failed anyway. Twice: once in 2016 and once in 2025. End-stage renal disease. Two transplants. A decade of dialysis and hospitals taught me something simple: your body doesn’t negotiate. Listen to it while it’s still whispering. The culprit? Stress. Work-related stress that I knew was hurting me and still gave myself permission to ignore. I got a second (and third) chance. Not everyone does. I lost a close founder friend to suicide. He was brilliant and successful by every external measure. I noticed him pulling away. I gave him space, thinking that’s what he needed. I was wrong. We don’t talk enough about what this life actually costs. Research shows that founders are twice as likely to suffer from depression, three times more likely to struggle with substance abuse, and 72% report mental health issues. We celebrate the wins and go quiet about everything else. The founder who sold and can’t get out of bed. The one who shut down and disappeared. The one still building but running on empty. The physical toll hides in plain sight, too. Burnout isn’t exhaustion you recover from with a vacation. It’s an occupational phenomenon the World Health Organization recognized in 2019. For founders who delay or forgo health checks, it can show up as heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and a nervous system that forgets how to stand down. And the damage doesn’t stay contained. Research shows 57% of employees can read their founder’s stress through tone, energy, and body language. The same report shows teams led by highly stressed founders report lower well-being, higher burnout, and less psychological safety. When founders suffer, everyone around them absorbs it. Taking care of your health We defer our health because something always feels more urgent. If youre a founder, this is a 15-minute exercise to start listening to your body while it’s still whispering this holiday season. Minutes 05: List What’s Been Avoided Write down every health-related item that’s been put off. Appointments postponed. Symptoms ignored. Checkups overdue. Include everything. Minutes 510: Identify the Cost of Waiting For each item ask: What’s the risk of continuing to defer? What would a friend say about ignoring it? Mark the ones where waiting feels the most like avoidance. Minutes 1015: Schedule One Thing Pick the item that’s been waiting longest or carries the most risk. Open the calendar. Find a time in the next 30 days and book it. Not a reminder. The actual appointment. Why This Works We treat health as something we’ll get to when things calm down. Things don’t calm down. One appointment won’t fix everything. But it can break the pattern of deferral. How a founder is doing is the leading indicator of how their company will do. Not the pitch deck. Not the cap table. The person. It’s a core driver of investment ROI. Nobody talks about it that way. Instead, investors scrutinize market size, competitive moats, and unit economics. But the biggest risk in any portfolio isn’t the market. It’s the founder who burns out and starts making questionable decisions. Or walks away entirely. If either of those happens, every dollar invested to back them is on the line. Heres the truth: wellness isn’t a reward founders claim after the exit. By then, relationships are broken, bodies are compromised, and purpose is lost. Wellness is the foundation that makes the hard work of being a founder possible.
Category:
E-Commerce
To quote Vince Vaughn in Four Christmases: “You can’t spell families without lies.” That’s a cynical view, for sure, but when it comes to talking about one particular thing around the family dinner table at the holidays, it might be especially true. That thing? Work. According to a recent survey, young people are seriously bending the truth when it comes to talking to family members about their professional lives. The survey of 2,000 young U.S. adults (ages 21 to 35) from the digital skills course provider Elvtr found that a third have bailed on family events simply to avoid conversations about their jobs or career progress. Even more say they have stretched the truth: A staggering 58% of young professionals have lied about their jobs, whether that means downplaying or exaggerating their success. Interestingly, there’s a pretty big gender divide when it comes to how young people misrepresent their work life. Men were about twice as likely as women to inflate their success while talking to family. Women, meanwhile, downplayed their income, success, or responsibilities. Per the report, if a promotion or raise occurred, “some women reported understating their accomplishments around relatives, whereas men more often admitted to inflating theirs. Talking about jobs seems to get more stressful the more infrequently people see their families, which is why holiday visits can stir up so much anxiety. Those who spend time with family only once a year reported stress at a higher rate: 44% of those who saw their relatives annually said they were anxious about work chat, while only 25% of those who saw their families more regularly shared the concern. Roman Peskin, CEO of Elvtr, says that a big part of why people lie to their families about work over the holidays may have to do with sibling rivalry. All the sibling comparisons and proving to your grandma that youve made it in the big city add up fast. Whats striking is that the influence doesnt stop at the dinner table,” Peskin stated in a press release. About 55% of respondents report that such comparisons happen sometimes, and 19% say they happen frequently. The CEO also notes that young people allow the weight of family approval to dictate their work decisions at a surprisingly high rate. Nearly half (45%) have considered or made career changes due to family expectations. And 22% would actually sacrifice their dream job in favor of family approval. “So maybe skip the classic ‘Why arent you a doctor yet?’ or ‘Your cousin just got promoted’ lines this Christmas,” Peskin urges. “Well-meaning advice can push young adults down paths that arent theirs to take.” Likewise, the anxiety seems more intense for the youngest workers, perhaps because they are just starting out in their careers and feel more pressure to show their success. (Or maybe it’s because they’re the anxious generation.) Overall, 35% are very or somewhat stressed about the conversation, and 42% in their 20s are stressed. Only 29% of those in their 30s say the same; suggesting that the older one gets, the less inclined that person may be to care deeply about their family’s take on their job. While job questions can be stressful, young people can rest easy. Eventually, family members will switch to the dreaded “So, when are you giving us a grandbaby?”
Category:
E-Commerce
This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday. On a recent evening, I had a mild panic after trying to call my wife and repeatedly getting the same error: Your call could not be completed as dialed. She was supposed to come home late that night from an out-of-town trip with some old friends, but I hadnt heard from her that day and couldnt recall the timing of her flight. If her phone was merely in Airplane mode, my calls should have gone to voicemail instead of failing to connect outright. In the end, it was just a random network connectivity glitch, solved by a reboot after my wife got off the plane. But as a member of the in-law family group chat was quick to point out, I could have avoided this brief feeling of unease by simply tracking my wifes location through her phone. Of course, Im well aware of the location-sharing features that smartphones offer. Apple and Google both make it easy to let friends and family track your whereabouts, which in turn gives those companies valuable location data (and, in Apples case, reinforces the social pressure to have an iPhone). My wife and I have just never wanted to track each other this way, having agreed that itd be creepy for either of us to do so. This weekends travel blip did not change our minds. Part of the problem is that to enable these features, your phones mapping app must check your location constantly, not just when youre looking up a business or getting directions. But the bigger concern is simply about personal privacy, and being able to go somewhere without it becoming anyone elses businesseven people you know and trust. I can see the other side of the argument: Youd regret not having this feature when you really need it, and its not like you have anything to hide. True, but thats always the kind of argument tech companies use when a product erodes personal freedoms. As a result, you can no longer walk down the street without being monitored through neighbors doorbell cams, and pretty soon you might be recorded by anyone wearing a pair of sunglasses. Meanwhile, the entire ad-supported tech economy revolves around being so invasive that it feels like your phone is recording you, which it turns out people find unsettling even when theyve done nothing wrong. While I cant control those larger dynamics, I can at least second-guess whether my own fears justify yet another layer of surveillance. No judgment if you come to a different conclusion, but Im not ready to make that leap even after some momentary nervousness. (Ask me again about this in couple years, though, when my kids have smartphones and are old enough to get into actual trouble.) How to see whos tracking your location Location sharing between iPhone users: To find out who can see your location, open Apples Find My app and head to the People tab. Turn off location sharing by tapping a persons name and selecting Stop sharing. If you do want to share your whereabouts with another iPhone user, there are several places to do so: In the Find My app: Under the People tab, tap the + button, select Share My Location, then select one or more contacts. Via iMessage: Tap + in any chat window, select Location, and choose how long to share. In the Family Sharing menu: Youll find this under Settings > Family > Location Sharing. Selecting a person here will also share the location of all your Find My-compatible devices, including Apple Watches, iPads, and AirPods. In Apple Maps: Swipe down and select Share Location. This only shares your current location and does not automatically update. Location sharing is indefinite when enabled through the Family Sharing menu. Note that once youve shared a location with someone, they can set up notifications for each time you leave an area, arrive at a place, or fail to show up at a location during a set schedule. Your approval is only needed for recurring alerts, not one-time notifications. As an alternative to sharing your location indefinitely, consider sharing for just one hour or the rest of the day. You can choose this option in the Find My app or iMessage, but not the Family Sharing menu. Location sharing for Android and Google Maps users: The Location Sharing menu in Google Maps. Google has its own location sharing system that works across Android and iOS. If you have an iPhone and arent sharing through Apples Find My app, you ay still be sharing through Google Maps instead. Heres how to see who can track you via Google Maps: In the Google Maps app (iOS and Android): Tap on your profile picture, then select Location Sharing. (Those youve shared with in the Find Hub app will also appear here.) In the Find Hub app (Android only): Just look under the People tab. (Those youve shared with in Google Maps will also appear here.) Location sharing in the Find Hub app for Android. If you do want to share your location with others, you can do so by hitting the + button in the menus above. Both allow you to share for one hour, the rest of the day, or indefinitely, while the Find Hub app has an additional option to share for a limited number of hours. As with Apples system, anyone who can see your whereabouts can also set up alerts for when you leave or arrive at a location. Youll get an email when this happens, but the only way to disable it is to stop sharing entirely. This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jareds weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday.
Category:
E-Commerce
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