Introduction: When leaders STRIVE their teams thrive

Welcome to the Bessemer Venture Partners' STRIVE, a program for entrepreneurs, leaders, and builders to give them the insights and practices they need to better lead their businesses. Cultivating a mind-body-and-spirit connection can empower you to feel your best in your life and leadership — and that’s our ultimate goal with this series.

We’ve partnered with the world’s most effective corporate wellness and performance coaching organization, Exos, which works with top athletes and Fortune 500 leaders. Together, our two teams have distilled the insights, perspectives, and habits across six areas of wellness to optimize your performance. We’ll discuss the newest research behind each area of focus and the wisdom for understanding your whole body system so you can perform your best no matter the stress.

STRIVE is an aspiration as well as an acronym that stands for sleep, training, regimen, intake, vision, and emotional health. These six pillars represent areas of focus to unlock peak performance. Think of this STRIVE series as a primer to what the top coaches and wellness practitioners at Exos have to offer. Knowledge is power, but application is where leaders see real transformation and growth. This program will offer guidance for both.

Willpower alone is not enough to become the best leader our teams need us to be. Despite all myths of executives sleeping just four hours per night and speed-reading hundreds of books each year, unbalanced behavior usually comes at a cost. Whereas nourishing your brain and body will give you more willpower and help you make cumulatively better decisions.

Willpower alone is not enough to become the best leader our teams need us to be.

At the beginning of 2024, we had nearly 100 CEOs participate in a survey on founder wellness and to be blunt, the data was concerning. What we learned might not surprise anyone in this group — CEOs today most often struggle with anxiety, sleeplessness, and stress due to their 60-80+-hour work weeks. And yet, a huge majority (70%) of those who took the survey, do not currently work with a coach or therapist to help them in different areas of their life. Many also suggested that they experience burnout and have seriously considered giving up the CEO job over it.

That’s why we see STRIVE as a foray into your wellness and leadership development — we care about the outcomes of the businesses we back and the people building them. It’s time rising leaders in technology and business understand that they are not the traditional executives of yesteryear, but sharp, mindful, and resilient who can also get the support they need.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in your line of work, you function similarly to a high-performance athlete, and there’s a lot you can learn from how they train. You too must hone your reactions and mental toughness. Especially since a professional athlete’s career may only last three to nine years, whereas yours will span decades.

Building a business is the ultimate endurance sport.

Building a business is the ultimate endurance sport.

Start by considering this belief: “I am an athlete”

We think of ultramarathoners as fast. But if you’ve ever followed one up a trail, it may surprise you how often they walk — every time they reach a slight incline. They aren’t trying to prove their strength. They’re calculating. They know that once they must lift their chin to see the next rise, they’re on a 15% or greater grade and they can walk as fast as run. So why waste the energy? These are people who’ve mastered their ego (I can push through it!) and have arrived at wisdom (I’m conserving my energy for that part that actually matters).

As every body and every human is different, we’ll avoid telling you specifically what to do in this STRIVE series. (And by the way, if it wasn’t obvious, be sure to always consult with your doctor or a licensed medical professional before making any significant changes.) But know that this series won’t be a list of “hacks.”

The STRIVE program is not about quick fixes, but a commitment to learning about what contributes to high performance and making personal improvements consistently over the long term. As you explore these topics, we encourage you to tune in and monitor your body. Notice the difference when you do something and then stop, and build self-knowledge.

We also encourage you to question everything, just as we ourselves question each new scientific study. It’s far too easy for something to “sound” like wisdom but not actually apply to you, aka the “rhyme as reason fallacy.” For instance, many studies sound like they’re for all humanity but rely on small samples of all-male college students. Different bodies respond to different regimens.

As you explore STRIVE, know that all the insights from this series are derived from scientifically backed evidence and the credentialed experts on high performance at Exos who have worked with a diverse population of athletes and leaders. The promise of Exos is to help you acquire the knowledge and develop the consistent routines you need to increase your performance, whether in the gym or the boardroom.

Most CEOs are working 60-80-hour weeks, according to our survey, and cannot afford false facts. They haven’t the luxury of spacious nights and weekends to recover, but as you’ll learn in the preceding lessons, learning how to recover is just as important as the investment and gains we strive to make. If you work with them directly, Exos will help us tailor any advice to your actual context.

We hope you find this series illuminating, and apply what you learn — for your sake, but also that of your company. You may not realize it, but the behavior you model is the biggest source of inspiration for others. When you find yourself caring for your mind, body, and spirit, others will as well, and that’ll show up in the values that ground your organization and your overall company performance.

We’ll end this introduction with a challenge: Are you ready to change your mind? Truly? And change your routine as a result?

With that in mind, welcome to STRIVE. If you’ve subscribed to the course, we’ll send you one lesson a week for the next six weeks.

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If you are a CEO or founder looking for 1:1 coaching with Exos, the world’s most elite health and wellness coaching institute, go to teamexos.com/bvpstrive to learn more and take advantage of preferred pricing for STRIVE participants. If you are a CEO or founder looking to deliver Exos High Performance Programming for your organization and teams, please reach out to stuart.poole@teamexos.com to learn more.