I spent 25 years carrying a number. Then I went and studied what it does to people.

I've been in sales for 25 years. Twenty-two of those years I carried a quota, and in 16 of them I finished at 100% or better. I bring sales experience across industries, mostly in B2B and enterprise technology, plus entrepreneurial experience through the founding and exit of my own technology company. That taught me more about pressure than any quota ever did.

Along the way I watched good salespeople quietly come apart. Not the ones who couldn't sell. The ones who could. They hit the number, took two days off, and started the climb again from zero. Last quarter's win buys you about 12 minutes of relief.

So I went and studied it. I earned a doctorate in business administration researching salespeople's wellbeing, motivation, stress, and the leadership that shapes all three. It turned out most of what we experience in this job has been documented in peer- reviewed journals for decades. Nobody was translating it for the people living it.

That's what this practice is. Not motivation. Not a framework I made up on a plane. The field experience to know what your week actually looks like, and the research to know why it feels the way it does.