Why Calm Wins — And How I Train It
A founder’s advantage hidden in plain sight.
People often say the same thing to me, usually when things are tough in business:
“You’re so calm.”
It happens in board meetings when a deal’s on the line.
In rooms when the pressure’s through the roof.
In product meltdowns. Team friction. Live negotiations.
Even in boxing, when adrenaline’s peaking and the other guy’s swinging.
For a while, I assumed it was just my personality. “Resilience.”
Now I know better.
Calm is something I train. On purpose.
The Hidden Value of Calm
In business, we measure everything:
Revenue
Speed
Efficiency
Growth
But barely anyone talks about internal state.
And yet, your state is what drives all of it.
Calm lets you think clearly when others panic. It helps you hold the room when things get heated. It gives you space to make better calls, the ones that actually move the needle.
It’s not a soft trait.
It’s an edge.
What Calm Actually Looks Like
I’m not talking about monk-mode stillness.
I mean grounded. Present. Steady.
The ability to hold multiple tensions without crumbling:
Team pressure vs personal doubt
Growth ambition vs nervous system fatigue
Investor demands vs product reality
Calm isn’t pretending nothing’s wrong.
It’s having the capacity to carry what is, without letting it wreck your clarity.
Where I Learned It
The hard way.
I spent over a decade sprinting:
Built ContentCal from scratch
Raised millions
Co-Founded Kindred
Advising businesses
Doing business during Covid
Running out of runway
Growing a team
Selling to Adobe
Then spent three years across London and Silicon Valley on billion-dollar product strategy inside Adobe’s machine
From the outside, it looked like I’d won.
But inside? I was stretched thin.
My calendar was chaos.
My mind was noisy.
I was running fast, but couldn’t hear myself think.
That’s when it hit me:
I’d optimised everything. Except my own operating system.
What I Changed
Here’s what I changed that made all the difference.
1. I Rewired My Week
Time blocks became energy blocks.
Mornings? Sacred. No calls. No distractions.
Midday? Walks, training, recovery, thinking time.
Meetings? Batched and grouped, no death by context switching.
White space? Protected like equity.
I call it the Clarity Calendar.
It helps me manage more than my diary, it keeps my mind clear.
2. I Trained My Nervous System
Waiting for calm to “arrive” doesn’t work. You have to build it.
My foundation now includes:
Lifting 2–3x/week
Boxing for intensity + control
Sauna for reset
Daily walking (10–15k steps minimum)
Breathwork to downshift
This isn’t lifestyle content. It’s infrastructure.
If my body’s wired and wild, my leadership is too.
3. I Cut the Noise
Calm isn’t just about the body. It’s about what’s not allowed to hijack your attention.
So I cut the emotional clutter:
Left WhatsApp groups that drained me
Said no faster, without guilt
Blocked time for deep thinking
Dropped people-pleasing reflexes
One quote I’ve carried since 2016, from Derek Sivers’ Anything You Want:
“When you say no to most things, you leave room to throw yourself into what makes you say hell yes.”
That’s what calm creates: room for what matters.
4. I Built Teams That Didn’t Need Me
A lot of founders confuse calm with absence.
But calm comes from leverage.
At JAAQ, I’ve focused on building teams and systems that run well, without me needing to carry it all.
Operators, not followers
Clear rhythms and cadences
Decisions documented, not stuck in my head
Empowered autonomy baked into every team
If your business breaks when you take a break, it’s not calm. It’s fragile.
Why Calm Wins
Being a founder means riding waves:
Legal issues
Product failures
Fundraising uncertainty
Disagreements
Cashflow risk
If you don’t have calm, you become reactive.
If you’re reactive, you lose control.
But when you train calm:
You lead better — because you’re grounded
You raise better — because you’re clear
You hire better — because you can listen
You live better — because you’re not constantly braced
The best founders I’ve met have this trait.
The worst ones fake it and then explode.
Calm ≠ No Pressure. Calm = Capacity for Pressure.
Some of my best decisions were made at moments that felt most intense.
What made them possible?
I wasn’t scrambled. I could see.
Calm doesn’t mean nothing’s happening.
It means your system can handle it.
How I Train Calm (Every Week)
🧠 Nervous System
Thinking time and breathwork
Sauna in the evenings
Resistance + cardio
Walking daily
🛌 Sleep
Cool, dark room
Mouth tape + nasal breathing
Magnesium
📱 Digital
No notifications
🗓 Calendar
No calls before 10 where possible
Deep thinking time = sacred
Weekly review Sunday night
Meetings batched, not scattered
💭 Mindset
“If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”
“Systems over chaos.”
“Calm is a choice I train.”
Final Thought
We celebrate high output, high speed, high ambition.
But the real edge? It’s calm.
Not by luck. Not by accident.
By design.
So train it like a founder would train anything else — systematically.
Because in this game, the person who stays clear the longest wins.