I’m a psychologist who coaches entrepreneurs. Here’s why so many burn out and what I tell them to do instead

This blog is all about a woman I met over a long coffee on a rainy Tuesday in Brooklyn — a clinical psychologist who now coaches entrepreneurs.

We’d both ducked into a corner table at a quiet café after a founders’ breakfast I was covering. She ordered an Americano and a side of steamed greens like she’d done it a thousand times.

We started talking shop. Ten minutes in, she said, almost offhand, “I’m a psychologist who coaches entrepreneurs. Here’s why so many burn out and what I tell them to do instead.”

I asked her to keep going. What she shared hit like a clean squeeze of lemon over a heavy dish — bright, clarifying, no fluff.

I’ve kept her advice in my pocket ever since, and I’m passing it to you here, with my own take layered in from years working in kitchens and around founders.

How I met the psychologist behind the headline

We met after a panel where everyone looked polished and tired—the default founder look.

She introduced herself as Lena, a licensed psychologist who left a hospital position to work with early-stage founders and scrappy small-business owners.

Not the unicorn-chasing types only, but the folks carrying payroll on their backs and answering support emails at midnight.

Her read was simple: most of the entrepreneurs she sees don’t burn out because they’re weak. They burn out because the way they’re working guarantees it. “If a chef ran Saturday night service with no prep, no menu, and no cut-off time,” she said, “no one would be surprised when the team implodes.” Entrepreneurs do a version of that every week.

As someone who spent my twenties in luxury F&B, I felt the truth of that in my bones.

In a good kitchen, mise en place saves you. In a bad one, even the best ingredients can’t bail you out.

Burnout starts when identity eats the whole plate

“What if the problem isn’t your hours,” Lena asked, “but that your identity has no edges anymore?”

As noted by Christina Maslach, one of the foremost researchers on burnout, the issue is often a chronic mismatch between a person and their work environment — load, control, fairness, community, rewards, and values.

When those mismatch for long enough, your system tilts toward exhaustion and cynicism. I’ve watched founders take that personally, as if it proves they’re not cut out for it. It’s usually the opposite: their identity swallowed the whole plate, so there’s nothing left to buffer stress.

When your sense of self equals “my company,” every customer complaint is existential.

Every hiccup is a verdict.

That’s not resilience —that’s identity fusion. And identity fusion is rocket fuel for burnout.

The dopamine treadmill disguised as hustle

You know the feeling — you check metrics “for a quick hit of clarity,” and an hour later you’ve refreshed dashboards more times than you’ve spoken to another human.

Behaviorally, that’s a casino loop: variable rewards drive compulsive checking.

As addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke has noted, too much dopamine chasing makes normal life feel flat. In startup culture, we call that “hustle.” It’s really the brain begging for another ping.

You can’t out-discipline your own neurochemistry. You have to redesign the loop.

Here’s the trap: even wins don’t satisfy for long. Hit a revenue milestone and your brain immediately adjusts the target. That’s why chasing “more” as a mood regulation strategy never works.

It’s salt water — you drink and get thirstier.

When boundaries collapse, everything becomes urgent

Imagine opening a restaurant with no closing time. Staff would burn out, food quality would slide, and regulars would drift.

Yet founders regularly do this to themselves: no true off-hours, no device boundaries, no exit criteria for the day.

As Herbert Simon warned decades ago, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

If your calendar and inbox are an all-you-can-eat buffet, you will over-consume.

The fix isn’t more grit. It’s smaller plates.

Your body sets the ceiling for your business

I have never seen a kitchen produce great food on broken burners. Your body is the stove. Treat it like one.

Sleep isn’t a luxury prize for the productive — it’s the precondition.

Nutrition matters, too. If your day is built on caffeine and convenience, you end up like a pan that’s never deglazed—coated with sticky residue that affects everything after.

This is where my food brain gets loud: quality fuel, eaten consistently, stabilizes mood and energy. A plant-forward plate gives you fiber for satiety, complex carbs for steady fuel, and a broad spectrum of micronutrients.

Add protein, healthy fats, and enough water to keep the lights on. No heroics, just habits.

I’ve mentioned Rudá Iandê’s new book Laughing in the Face of Chaos before — and I recently read it cover to cover.

One line that stuck with me: “The body is not something to be feared or denied, but rather a sacred tool for spiritual growth and transformation.”

His insights nudged me to treat training, sleep, and food as non-negotiable infrastructure, not side quests.

What she tells entrepreneurs to do instead

Lena’s playbook is practical. I’ve adopted a bunch of it, and it works because it’s boring-on-purpose.

She calls one framework her M.E.N.U. — a little corny, a lot effective.

• Mise en place (for your week). Take 60 minutes every Sunday to prep your “station.” Decide your two most important outcomes for the week. Then define the three inputs that will actually drive them.
• Eliminate and emphasize. Kill half the to-dos on your list. I know that sounds dramatic. Do it anyway. Then choose one metric to emphasize for the next two weeks and ignore the rest.
• Nervous system care. Stress isn’t the enemy; stuck stress is. Build tiny release valves into your day: five slow breaths before calls, a ten-minute walk after lunch, one no-headphones commute. “Palate cleansers,” Lena calls them, because they reset your taste for the work. If you can, stack a short strength session or yoga flow three times a week.
• Unplug with boundaries you can say out loud. Pick office hours. Pick a device drop zone. Pick one night a week that is strictly off-grid. Not “less screen time.” Actual off. Tell your team and your closest people what those boundaries are so they can help you hold the line. The first week will feel itchy. By week three, you’ll wonder why you ever allowed pings into dinner.

Finally, decide what “enough” means for the next 90 days.

Write a simple sentence: “For Q4, enough means shipping X, keeping Y margin, and being home for dinner five nights a week.”

Without a temporary definition of enough, you will never feel done—because, technically, you never are.

Food rules that make founders harder to break

I’m not going to pitch a miracle diet. I’m going to give you the handful of rules I’ve seen keep energy stable in the real world—kitchens, co-working spaces, and those half-lit coffee shops where deals actually get done.

• Front-load your day with fiber and protein. Oats with chia and berries. A tofu scramble with greens. Leftover lentil stew. You’re building a base layer that won’t crack at 11 a.m.
• Use a lunch blueprint, not a menu. Grain + legumes + a pile of veg + a flavorful fat + something crunchy. Quinoa, black beans, roasted broccoli, avocado, toasted seeds. Swap parts, keep the pattern. You never have to “decide” lunch again.
• Bracket your caffeine. No coffee until at least 60–90 minutes after waking, and cut it by 2 p.m. Your afternoon brain will thank you; your sleep will, too.
• Hydrate like it’s your job. Because it is. Most “afternoon slumps” are thirst wearing a trench coat. Keep a bottle within arm’s reach and drink between tasks, not during.
• Cook once, eat three times. Sunday tray bakes and big pots are your friend. Roast a sheet of vegetables, cook a pot of grains, make a sauce with a strong personality—chimichurri, tahini, salsa verde—and you can assemble actual meals in five minutes on Wednesday when life is happening.
• Make dinner earlier and lighter than you think. You don’t need a food coma at 9 p.m. Aim for satisfying, not heavy, and leave a runway to wind down. A herbal tea ritual is corny until it works.

The quiet skill that saves careers: pacing

Ambition is great. But like any good kitchen, you need a fire-to-rest ratio.

Chefs pull steaks off the heat so the juices redistribute. Runners schedule deload weeks. Musicians rest measures so the chorus lands.

Entrepreneurs need the same cadence: push, plateau, recover. If every week is a sprint, none of them are.

Try this for a quarter: run two “monk mode” sprints of 10–14 days each with tight guardrails and zero meetings before noon. Follow each sprint with a decompression week—shorter days, admin catch-up, more walks, early dinners. You’ll get more done in a quarter than you do in three frantic ones because your system will stop fighting you.

If you build this cadence into the calendar, you don’t have to white-knuckle your way out of burnout later. You avoid it by design.

The bottom line

Burnout isn’t proof you’re not cut out for entrepreneurship. It’s a signal that the kitchen you’re running — your routines, boundaries, and recovery—needs a redesign.

The psychologist who sparked this piece wasn’t handing out hacks. She was describing a craft. Craft requires prep, heat, rest, and taste. It’s not as sexy as “rise and grind,” but it’s sustainable.

I’ll add this: reading Laughing in the Face of Chaos by Rudá Iandê (founder of The Vessel) recently nudged me to work from a more honest place. The book inspired me to question the stories I tell myself about “enough” and to show up with less performance and more presence—small shifts that make sustainable work actually possible.

Do the unglamorous things that make the glamorous things possible. Prep your week. Protect your inputs. Feed your body like you want it to last. Close the kitchen at a reasonable hour.

And remember: you don’t have to be everything, all the time, to build something worth serving.