Most entrepreneurs worship at the altar of hustle—80-hour weeks, no sleep, burnout badges of honor. I think they’ve got it completely backwards. The biggest advantage I brought from Division I golf wasn’t work ethic. It was knowing when to slow down.
I recently spoke with Octopus Intelligence about how elite sports discipline shaped my approach to building multiple seven-figure companies. The conversation went places I wasn’t expecting.
We talked about the transition nobody saw coming. After college, autoimmune issues ended my golf career. I was physically exhausted and emotionally devastated in Spain, telling myself I’d make up for it somehow. That promise became everything. But first, I had to lose a lot of money and almost give up entirely.
“I was very close to giving up and working at my dad’s bakery,” I admitted in the interview. The difference between athletes and most entrepreneurs? We’re trained to process failure as data, not identity. One bad round doesn’t define your career. You analyze what went wrong, adjust, and tee up for the next tournament.
That athletic mindset led to my most contrarian business decision: running multiple projects simultaneously. While every guru preaches “focus on one thing,” I built my comeback on the opposite strategy. If you focus on just one venture and it fails, you start from zero. If you have three and one fails, the other two keep you moving forward.
Then there’s the meditation practice most CEOs would dismiss as wasted time. Every morning before I pay employees, before emails, before the chaos—I meditate. It’s not spiritual fluff. It’s a competitive advantage. Peace allows you to see long-term while everyone else is blinded by fear. During market downturns, I make strategic choices in moments of clarity, not chaos.
If you’ve ever wondered how athletic discipline translates to business success, or why some entrepreneurs thrive under pressure while others crumble, this conversation breaks it down completely.
Read the full piece on Octopus Intelligence to see how staying small long enough helped me become big enough—and why I believe we’ll soon see the first billionaire running an entire company solo with AI.
The best athletes don’t just work harder. They work smarter, stay calm under pressure, and know exactly when to push and when to pause.