The Morning After

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]This is now becoming an unboxing video.

[00:00:03]Hello YouTube.

[00:00:07]Do you remember your first subscriber, your hundth or your thousand subscriber?

[00:00:12]We are proud to honor your impressive milestone of reaching 100,000 subscribers.

[00:00:18]Thank you guys.

[00:00:20]I really appreciate this. This means a lot.

[00:00:27]You closed the round. You hit that milestone, you did that big thing and the next morning you wake up and you feel nothing. And if that sounds a little bit familiar, this video might be for you. And it's not the video that you might think it is. Stay with me for the next 10 12 minutes and we unpack together what causes this empty feeling, why it is not a personal failing, but it's still makes you a worse CEO, and the four things you can do this quarter to fix it. This isn't a video about gratitude. It's a video about the operational cost of never really letting a win count. and what to do about it because this could cost you the next round. I work with founders post product market fit somewhere around round A 15 to 45 people the kind of founders who by all external measures are winning. I want to talk about something that almost nobody is saying out loud and almost all of them are feeling it. The morning after that big win, the empty one. You raced around. You you find that customer. You hit that number and your inbox is lit up. And you hear from people that haven't talked with you in two years.

[00:02:06]and congrats everywhere and your team is posting about it on LinkedIn. Deep inside, somewhere under the surface of the performance of celebration, there's this quiet, slightly hollow feeling. You know what I'm talking about. You went through the motions. You smiled at the right places.

[00:02:30]You took the photo. You did the post.

[00:02:34]And then you go home and maybe the buzz is still there. Maybe from the three glasses of champagne you had or the big dinner with your with your team, but the next morning the latest, there it is. There's that feeling or the absence of that feeling. You think you should feel in a certain way, but you don't. If anything, you might actually feel more anxious than ever before. This is one of the most common things for scaling CEOs.

[00:03:14]Nobody really wants to talk about it because it feels weird. So, let me talk about it, right? There is this thing that that emptiness.

[00:03:26]I want to talk about it. What is actually causing it? but more importantly what it is costing you because it is actually costing you a lot if it goes unchecked.

[00:03:38]Here's the part that most people get totally wrong about founder wins. They think that the win is the moment signing that massive customer or getting that investment or getting that super cool hire that they've been negotiating with for months.

[00:04:01]The win is not the moment. What's actually happening is a long chain of cliffhers of anxiety shaped wins that do not feel like wins because every yes has a butt attached to it. Yes, we raised the round but we have to deploy it without screwing it up. Yes, the hireer said yes, but now we have to make sure that they don't quit in the next 6 months. Yes, we hit that number, but the next number is bigger and now the runway is shorter. Yes, but so you're not celebrating wins. You are surviving cliffhers and everyone that ends, the next one has already started.

[00:04:55]The thing that nobody is telling you when you set out to become a founder is that when you grow, the goalpost isn't moving. There isn't one. There is no goalpost. It does not exist. There is no finish line that you've been denied.

[00:05:11]There is more of a fog, a flat unending fog in which the next thing matters already so much more than the big thing you just did. I call it gold fog. And once you're looking for it, you see it throughout your entire week. You're not ungrateful. You're definitely not broken. And you are not failing some test of presence that some Instagram post is talking about. You are stuck in a fork that was somewhat helpful pre-product market fit, but now it is slowly hollowing you out. And it's not a private problem.

[00:06:01]And that is the part I want you to hear.

[00:06:04]If you stop registering wins, big ones and small ones, three things happen. And they don't happen all at once. They sort of drift in over months. One, you never get to rest. Not properly. I mean, even the weekends have this undercurrent hum of what's next. Your nervous system never gets that signal that it's safe to stand down. So the bandwidth that you need for strategic thinking, the sort of thinking that requires a calm room and it requires you to be cool, calm, and collected doesn't really have a chance because it gets eaten up by that undercurrent of background anxiety.

[00:06:55]Two, you start feeling a little bit like a fraud because you don't really feel what people expect you to feel at that moment. And you're standing in the room and you feel that you start pretending. You feel that you're performing. You feel that what you see in the movies doesn't happen in real life. and you're somewhat disconnected not only from the expectations but from the room around you because you're scanning for the next thing. You're not even here anymore. You're already one or two steps ahead. So the praise feels misplaced, embarrassing almost, and you deflect.

[00:07:44]People congratulate you and you say something like, "Thank you." But the real work starts now. And you feel that you're being humble, but you're not.

[00:07:55]You're probably more likely to be avoidant.

[00:07:59]And that's a massive difference. And three, and I really would love you to hear this and to sit with that for a little bit. Three is that you stop bringing that energy into the company. You're still showing up obviously and you're still doing a great job, but you're not bringing that energy anymore that you used to bring in the early days. You're going through the motions and you hope that nobody is noticing it and maybe they don't, but there is something missing and it is costing the company and now your energy is no longer a private thing.

[00:08:50]It's a thing on the balance sheet.

[00:08:54]When you had four people, you could fake it for a week. Nobody would notice because everybody is so frantically busy. Everybody is in the trenches. The energy was distributed. Post product market fit. Everything is different. You have new hires and they look at you trying to work out what kind of company they joined. You have a board calibrating their confidence depending on how you walk into the room. You have tier one customers, investors, hey, maybe even press, and they're all scanning you for signal.

[00:09:38]Everyone is watching you. And humans are so good at clocking fake. When you perform celebration, but don't feel it, your team will.

[00:09:53]They feel that the energy is shrinking and with the energy shrinking the story of the company is shrinking and going through the motion having PR exercises and LinkedIn posts and all that crap all that artificial thing doesn't replace you bringing the real energy in and it costs you and it costs the company and that's expensive. It compounds. So, how do you actually get back to feeling something?

[00:10:31]And here I want to be really careful because this is the part where a lot of videos get a little soft. You don't fix it with gratitude practice or with journaling.

[00:10:46]You fix it by treating your emotional state as an operational input, just like team morale or runway. Sounds a little bit cold, but stick with me. From the top of my head, there's about four things you can do. Um, number one, say it out loud. Not in a journal or in a LinkedIn post, but actually saying it out loud. When you drive home, you know, switch off the radio and say it out loud. Say it out loud in the shower. I won. We did this thing. Say it out loud.

[00:11:21]Say it privately out loud before you say it publicly. It feels stupid. Do it anyway. And it's not an affirmation of some sorts. It is closing a loop in your nervous system. Your nervous system was waiting for you to acknowledge the win properly out loud. Number two is acknowledge the thing with your team properly without pivoting straight away to the next thing. Let it sit for a moment. You know, you know this saying, stop and smell the roses that celebrate and talk about the next thing a little bit later. Number three would be if you don't feel it, don't fake it. I know we got very far by, you know, fake it till you make it, but this is not one of those. Don't fake that you're happy when you're not. You know, tell people, hey, this is amazing. It hasn't quite landed for me yet. Give me a moment. I need to catch up. That's okay. Your team will respect you so much more for honesty than for some performance.

[00:12:41]and so will your friends and so will your partner. And four, if it's a big win, take the time off. The whole team together. This is the one most founders won't do. So, let me spend a minute on this one. After a real win, a big win, take a long weekend. Take the Friday off, take the Monday off, the whole company, a real celebration. Yes, skeleton crew, blah, blah, blah. Of course, but let the company feel that they've won. Take some time off and celebrate by doing nothing. And you're probably thinking that that feels a little reckless. You know, our customers need us and we need to do that thing and so on and so on. Sure.

[00:13:34]But if you plan it properly, you inform everybody, you have your skeletons crew together, and you know, you have your escalation lines ready. Do it and actually rest. Not just the CEO, not just you, because that feels a little bit unfair and also performative. No, the whole crew take a few days off. See, the logistics are not the hard part.

[00:14:01]Giving yourself and your company the permission while your investors and the board are watching. That's the trick.

[00:14:11]And if you want to be slightly less corporate about it, um, put a present on every desk. Not something big and extravagant. Maybe something little, something personal, a handwritten note or a book that you actually cared about, a good bottle, something that shows that you paid attention, that we were all in this together and that you've noticed that you know that that person was part of that win. And here's a little a little gesture, a little thank you. I see you. And what you're actually doing when the whole company stops and you spend 20 bucks on a thoughtful gift per person is three things in one. You're letting your nervous system register that the win was real. You are investing in the next sprint because a team that slowed down for a minute and rested will perform better in the next sprint. And the third is that you're sending a very clear signal that the company values everybody's input. That the company is actually noticing what everybody contributes to the win.

[00:15:43]And not only notices it, it also rewards it. And if you've ever worked in a company where that didn't happen, where you've been taken for granted, you know exactly what I mean. It goes such a long way to be seen, to be heard, and to feel valued. It will reap interest for a long time to come. This is what what cementss a team together.

[00:16:14]And here's the human part, which is also the operational part. You are allowed to feel good about what you've built. And that's not just because the wellness people said so. It's because you are a human being who worked incredibly hard for years to build something meaningful.

[00:16:37]And the human being who never stops to register the winds becomes flat.

[00:16:43]then resentful and then checks out. Your partner will probably notice it first because they know you really well. Then your friendships get a little smaller.

[00:16:57]Your weekends get a little duller and eventually your company gets a CEO who is physically there but emotionally somewhere else. And that's not the CEO you want to be. That's not the CEO your team needs. And that's not the CEO that closes the next round. The version of you that lets wins land, even smaller ones, even imperfect ones, is a much better operator. You're more present, steady energy, and real vision instead of performed vision. And the team will notice and they feel that and they will copy and match your energy. So if you had a bad morning after a big win, you're not alone and you're not broken.

[00:17:54]You're in gold fog. It's a normal response to a company that never stops moving. It serves you in the early days, but now it's quietly costing you. Let the winds land. Tell the truth about how you actually truly feel. Stop performing celebrations if you don't feel them. And stop dismissing celebrations that you do feel. And take some time off. Give it to the team. Your team will notice, your partner will notice, you will notice eventually. And the company you are building gets the CEO they actually need. the one who's still in there underneath all those cliffhers.

[00:18:42]And in that spirit, I got this parcel.

[00:18:50]This is now becoming an unboxing video.

[00:18:54]Hello YouTube.

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[00:20:06]Thank you guys.

[00:20:08]I really appreciate this. This means this means a lot.

[00:20:17]All right. I think going forward that will stand somewhere in the background.

[00:20:29]Thank you. Have a good week.

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