Lesson: Burnout shows up when effort outpaces resources, not ambition.

Most people think burnout hits you all at once. A crash. A breakdown. A dramatic moment that forces you to stop. But that’s not how it happens when you’re building something from scratch, with no capital cushion, no inherited network, no built-in team. Burnout shows up in the quiet parts long before it explodes. You just don’t notice it at first because you’re too busy trying to keep the whole thing moving.

My first real moment wasn’t dramatic. It was subtle. I started stacking small wins with Jivati, seeing the potential, feeling the momentum, but every next step required capital I didn’t have and a team I couldn’t afford. I was doing everything alone. Formulation. Compliance. Packaging. Ops. Marketing. Sales. Fundraising. All with a runway that couldn’t support the vision I was trying to build. It wasn’t the work that broke me. It was the gap between what I knew was possible and what I could realistically execute alone.

Looking back, my mistake wasn’t pace; I wasn’t sprinting or chasing loud momentum. My mistake was thinking clarity could outrun exhaustion. I made sharp decisions with the information I had. But clarity has limits when every function sits on your plate. Eventually, the weight outruns the logic.

My early signals were small. The quality of my sleep dropped. I was up, but not rested. I found myself irritated when people gave surface-level advice disguised as insight. My inbox felt like a wall of noise, full of ideas, offers, and suggestions that led nowhere, and some days I avoided it because I didn’t have the energy to sift through the clutter. And when I hit real wins, I didn’t feel much. Not because I wasn’t grateful, but because the vision was bigger than the milestone. The distance between here and there felt heavier than the progress.

One of the biggest lessons came from something simple: launching with four flavors. Other brands were doing it, so I did too. But I should’ve started with one or two. Simple scales. Simple saves energy. Simple protects you from burning time and money you don’t even realize you’re losing. I moved like I had a team behind me when I didn’t, and that mismatch cost more than any formulation mistake ever could.

Along the way, I learned something else: removing one draining task frees up more energy than adding five productive ones. It’s the quiet delete that creates space, not the new system or routine. Writing things down helped too, not for structure, but to stop carrying tasks in my head that didn’t belong there. And when I finally brought in an advisor I trusted, decisions got lighter. Not easier, just less lonely.

The real pressure of being a founder isn’t proving you’re not falling behind. For me, it was making decisions while tired and pretending I wasn’t. It was carrying the weight of being right when I didn’t have room to be wrong. That’s a different kind of exhaustion, the kind that builds slowly.

Here’s what I finally understand about pace: Pace isn’t about working slower or harder. It’s about clarity and being honest about where you are, not where everyone else is. It’s knowing conviction matters, but capacity does too. And when those drift apart, burnout becomes inevitable.

I still push myself. It’s who I am. But I’m learning the goal isn’t to run faster. It’s to move in a way that doesn’t put everything I’ve built at risk.

Closing Thought

You don’t outrun burnout. You outgrow the weight. The founders who last don’t move slower; they move smarter.

Stick around. I’m just warming up.

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