Every founder reaches a point where pressure stops feeling external and starts feeling personal.

High-pressure decisions do not expose weakness.
They expose the architecture behind a leader’s instinct.

Every founder and CEO builds a decision-making pattern early in their career. It helps them succeed.
It drives results.
But as the business grows, that same pattern begins making decisions for them.

This is where momentum slows.
Where clarity fades.
Where instinct becomes interference.

Today we release Part 2 of The Alchemist Within:

The Internal Pattern Driving Your Decisions Under Pressure

This instalment explores:

• why your strongest traits become constraints under pressure

• how internal architectures scale faster than businesses

• why clarity collapses as stakes rise

• how leaders separate identity from pattern to make better decisions

• the first real step from Good → Greater

If you lead through complexity, Part 2 will give you the language and the leverage to understand what is really happening beneath your decisions.

👉 Read Part 2

There is a point in every leader’s journey where their internal operating system becomes visible. Not because they slow down. But because the complexity around them speeds up.
Decisions become heavier.
Pressure sharpens.
The margin for error contracts, and in that moment, a founder or CEO begins to see the truth:
Your leadership identity is driving your decisions and scaling the business requires scaling that identity.

Today we launch a new 7-part series designed for founders and CEOs
who want clarity under pressure, stronger decision-making,
and the shift from Good to Greater.
THE ALCHEMIST WITHIN → Part 1 → The Moment Your Leadership Identity Becomes Visible
This series explores:
How internal patterns shape strategic decisions
Why leaders plateau before they break through
The discipline of Active Time Out
Identity as a performance system
How to think and decide with greater precision
If you are leading through complexity, this series is written for you.
👉 Read Part 1 here

THE SPACE THAT MOST LEADERS AVOID.
THE SPACE WHERE GREATER LEADERS ARE FORMED.

At The Alchemists, we see a pattern in leaders who are operating at the edge of performance.

They are not overwhelmed.
They are not lacking ambition.
They are not short of intelligence.

They are short of space.

Not physical space.
Cognitive space.
Emotional space.
Identity space.

The space where clarity returns and the invisible becomes visible.

This week we explore a concept that sits at the centre of high-performance leadership:

Level 5 Solitude → The Space Where Greater Leaders Are Forged

It is the place where:
• Pressure becomes perspective
• Noise becomes clarity
• Identity realigns
• Better decisions emerge
• The shift from good to greater begins

If you are a founder, Chief Executive, or Managing Director facing rising pressure or preparing for your next move, you will find deep resonance here.

👉 Read the full newsletter

Every leader has an origin story, a moment that shaped how they see pressure, performance, and purpose.
For The Alchemists, it began on a muddy rugby touchline, a father, a son, and a lesson that would become the foundation, for everything we now call The Discipline of Active Time Out → Of Practise
This is where it started.
👇 The Boy on the Touchline → How a word became a way of life

🔹The DNA of Greater
Even the strongest leaders reach a point where the pressure is constant.
It’s not weakness. It’s the weight of responsibility and proof that you’re still in the game.
That’s why The Alchemists exists.
🪞 Your Practice Field for Leaders Under Pressure Who Think Differently.
A place where solitude becomes strength, reflection becomes performance,
and every decision compounds into something greater.
You don’t need a new theory of leadership.
You need a place to practise the one you already believe in.
Because clarity isn’t trained, it’s gained, and once gained, it compounds.
🪞 Read the full issue → Even the Strong Need Somewhere to Practise

Pressure isn’t the problem.
It’s what happens when it stays unspoken.

Leaders know this instinctively — yet most still carry it alone.

That’s why Your Personal Board exists:
a confidential group of peers designed to help founders and CEOs turn pressure into performance through honest conversation, safe space, and trusted collaboration.

In our latest Alchemists Newsletter, we explore:
Why “Your Personal Board” Exists — The Space Between Pressure and Performance.

Because the best decisions don’t come from urgency —
they come from clarity, calm, and connection.

☕ Read the full article → [Newsletter link]

When the pressure builds at the top, clarity becomes clouded.
Not from a lack of ambition, but from isolation.

Every leader carries a mission. But even the best lose sight of it when the noise gets loud.
That’s why vision isn’t found in solitude, it’s sharpened in the company you keep.

In this week’s story, we explore how founders and CEOs regain clarity under pressure through Active Time Out, High Performance, Safe Space, and Collaboration.

👉 Read: “Sharpening the Vision: The Company You Keep” a reflection on pressure, perspective, and the power of trusted peers.

When AI makes it easier than ever to get answers,
the real leadership advantage is knowing how to think.

At The Alchemists, we see a quiet danger emerging, leaders under pressure beginning to trust the machine more than their own mind.

That’s why our Serious Play Sessions are designed to keep the human brain awake.
To reconnect hands, heart, and head.
To ensure that AI becomes a thinking partner, not a thinking replacement.

Experiential Neuro-AI for Leaders is about bridging the real and the intelligent worlds without losing what makes leadership human: awareness, curiosity, and play.

Because the future won’t belong to those who move fastest.
It will belong to those who still know how to think.

Read more ↓

When the Pressure Outruns the Patience

In leadership, speed often feels like proof of progress.
But there’s a point where momentum turns to noise, where the drive to perform begins to drown out the very clarity we need most.

At The Alchemists, we’ve seen what happens when pressure outruns patience when reflection gives way to reaction and performance becomes fragility in disguise.

This reflection from our founder, Alan Branagh, traces the moment that shaped our mission, DNA, and guiding principles.
It’s a reminder that awareness under pressure isn’t weakness, it’s mastery.

This is the kind of conversation we hold inside The Alchemists, away from the noise, where pressure meets patience.

From one acorn → a living legacy. 🌱
The greatest transformations begin with something small.
An acorn in the soil.
A question in the mind.
A decision made under pressure.

In 1996, Sir John Whitmore reminded me: “We are more like an acorn which contains within it all the potential to be a magnificent oak tree.”

At The Alchemists, that truth lives at the heart of what we do. Within every founder, leader, or CEO lies the potential for greatness. It just needs to be unlocked and nurtured.

This story begins with an acorn and ends with a reminder that:
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
👉 Read the full reflection in our latest newsletter.

🏎️ The Corner Comes Fast

Business at the top feels like racing at 200mph.
Every quarter is a lap. Every board meeting a corner. Every decision a pit stop that can win or lose years of progress.

Formula 1 drivers train for this pressure with simulators, pit walls, resets, and recharge.
Most CEOs don’t.

👉 What would change if you treated your next five years like a high-performance race — with the same infrastructure champions use to win?

Our latest newsletter explores The 5 Musts — how lessons from elite sport map directly into the realities of founders and CEOs:

• Run the Simulator

• Prime Your Pit Wall

• Reset at Kick-Outs

• Sustain Focus with Variability

• Protect Active Time Out

Because your race is business. And every corner counts.

We’ve decided it’s time to make it official:

👉 Friday 19th September is the first ever “Ignore the F*ckers Day.”

Why? Because every founder, CEO and entrepreneur knows those people.
The ones who:

• Write 20 ways to say no before even trying yes.

• Love tick-boxes, programmes and “ologies” more than possibility.

• Confuse predictability with wisdom.

• Sit in the boardroom waiting to pounce with “But what if it fails?”

They don’t build. They block.
They don’t catch. They control.
They don’t get it.

So on the 19th, we’re creating an amnesty. A day where you mute the noise, calm the chimp, and get back to the business of building something worth your life’s energy.

🧡 Read the full newsletter here:
🧡 Share your “f*cker line” that you’ll be ignoring this year.

Because sometimes, the only way to go from good → greater is to laugh, shrug… and just ignore the f*ckers.

You’re in the room… but do you belong here?

Most founders and CEOs know the feeling.
From the outside, success looks obvious.
On the inside, it’s emptiness behind the smile.

• No real feedback.

• No straight talk.

• Endless second-guessing.

• That 3:48 AM voice whispering: “You’re not the real deal.”

Research shows imposter feelings cut decision quality, erode trust inside teams, and drain leaders cognitively, socially, and emotionally. The cost isn’t just internal it shows up on the balance sheet.

That’s why the next article in The Don’t F*ck Up What’s Next Path is live now:
👉 “You’re in the Room… But Do You Belong Here?”

Read the article →

Because the shift every founder must make is simple:
Outsider → Confident Leader.

If you’re the only engine, you’re already overheating.

Founders and CEOs don’t usually break because of the market.
They break because they’re carrying it all.

• Every decision flows through them.

• Every fire is theirs to put out.

• Every result feels like it rests on their shoulders.

At first, it feels noble.
But over time, it becomes the bottleneck.
And bottlenecks always break.

👉 That’s the third villain in The Don’t F*ck Up What’s Next Path: Atlas Syndrome.

This article is about the hidden cost of carrying the weight alone and the shift from Indispensable Hero → Confident Leader.

The new piece is live now:
“If You’re the Only Engine, You’re Already Overheating.”

Read the article →

Because strength isn’t proven by carrying it all.
It’s proven by building something that lasts.

When everyone says you’re right > that’s the problem.

Most founders don’t get derailed by the market.
They get derailed by silence.

• No pushback.

• No challenge.

• Just polite nods around the table.

That’s the echo chamber.
And it kills clarity, confidence, and creativity faster than any competitor ever will.

👉 That’s why I wrote the next article in The Don’t F*ck Up What’s Next Path.

It’s about the villain of the echo chamber — and the shift from Lone Pioneer → Confident Leader.

The article’s live now:
“When Everyone Says You’re Right — That’s the Problem.”

Read the article →

Because what you don’t hear… can break you.

“The Market Won’t Break You. 3:48 AM Will.”

Most founders don’t get beaten by the market.
They get beaten by 3:48 AM.

Not cashflow.
Not strategy.
Not even the board.

It’s isolation.
The silence at the top that kills clarity, confidence, and creativity.

That’s why we’ve launched a new series:
👉 The Don’t F*ck Up What’s Next Path 👈

Five villains that sabotage leaders.
And the shift from Lone Pioneer → Confident Leader.

The first one’s live now: “You’re Not Alone. It Just Feels That Way.”
Read the article

Because the real risk isn’t out there.
It’s in your head at 3:48 AM.

🛑 Stop chasing unicorns.

They don’t exist. Not in the wild. Not in the real world.
And not in your business or your life.

Yet leaders get sold the myth every day, the perfect growth story, the flawless exit, the next magical move that makes everything fall into place without cost, risk, or sacrifice.

The reality?

• Only 0.00006% of businesses ever become unicorns (CB Insights).

• Even those who “make it” often report burnout, broken relationships, and identity loss (HBR).

• Many exited founders describe what comes next as an emotional crash, not a victory lap (First Round Review).

You don’t need to become a unicorn.
You need to become undeniably you the leader who grows from Good to Greater without f*cking up what’s next.

That’s what this week’s Alchemists newsletter is about:
🐴 There’s a Reason Unicorns Don’t Exist (As People or Businesses)

🦊You scaled it.
You systemised it.
You brought in the “right people.”

And now you’re quietly wondering if you’ve just f*cked up everything that’s next.

That advisor.
That investor.
That scaling partner who cared more about margins than mission.
That senior leader who talked culture while killing it.
That team member who stopped making eye contact… but kept saying all the right things.

There’s a fox in the henhouse.
And you let them in.

You didn’t mean to.
You thought you were protecting the business.
Future-proofing it.
Doing what every playbook told you to.

But now?

The thing you built doesn’t feel like yours anymore.
You’re still the founder.
Still in the room.
But somehow… no longer in power.

This isn’t about blame.
This is about not fcking it up again.*

🧥 This week’s post is for you:
👇
The Fox in the Henhouse
A founder-to-founder invitation to take back your clarity, your power, and your next move.

Freedom From. Freedom To. And the Pressure in the Space Between.

You’ve made it.
You got out.
You built. You survived. You succeeded.

So why does it still feel so unclear?

At The Alchemists, we work with founders and CEOs who’ve earned their Freedom From…
but are now facing the far harder task:

Figuring out what their Freedom To is really for.

That space in between?
It’s heavy. Lonely. Sacred.

It’s also where everything meaningful begins again, if you’re brave enough to sit in it.

👇 This new piece explores the pressure, identity, and power of being in that space and why so many leaders quietly get stuck there.

If you don’t want to f*ck up what’s next… read this.

You’ve built something real. Something good.

But when you’re the one leading it,
the pressure to get the next part right is intense.
The questions get bigger.
The stakes get higher.
And the old way, being the one with all the answers, staying in control, starts to crack.

What if the edge you’ve been missing isn’t more hustle…
…but space4change?

Space to think.
Space to let go.
Space for your people to step up.

That shift, from being the expert to becoming the environment

is what we call Leader as a Performance Coach.

It’s not soft.
It’s not passive.
It’s presence.
It’s clarity.
It’s trust, in yourself and in others.

🟠 This new article explores what happens when you stop pushing for performance…
and start removing the interference instead.

👇 If you’re asking what comes next, this might be it:
What if shifting to Leader as a Performance Coach was the edge that stops you f*ing up what’s next?**