Chasing possibilities at the edge of your ability
John Rainey starts before sunrise. In an October 2018 Men’s Health profile, the then–PayPal CFO described a pre-dawn workout that set the tone for his day. Today, as Walmart’s CFO at the Fortune 1 company, he says he brings a better version of himself to work when he’s balanced—when he can exercise. It isn’t about glorifying dawn; it’s about sequence: set your state, then set your strategy.
That idea keeps proving true. In 2024, Fast Company reported that 94% of women in the C-suite played sports growing up. Harvard Business School found that 80% of female Fortune 500 CEOs were athletes in their formative years. Sport doesn’t just build skills; it builds capacity—pacing, resilience, recovery, and team dynamics. In the modern C-suite, capacity is a competitive advantage. Especially for CFOs, whose remit now extends well beyond stewardship to enterprise value creation—strategy, commercial outcomes, and cross-functional partnership.
So what is a corporate athlete? A leader who treats performance as a trainable system—not a personality trait. Like competitive athletes, corporate athletes:
Train capacity alongside craft—physical, mental, and emotional conditioning, not just technical expertise.
· Organize intensity—periods of deep focus and deliberate collaboration instead of constant middle-gear grind.
· Practice recovery—short, daily resets rather than waiting for a vacation to fix chronic overload.
· Debrief—turning every rep into a learning loop so the next one is better.
Different arena, same principles: preparation, execution, recovery—repeated.
I learned this viscerally on the trail.
After 25+ years in triathlon, I moved to ultra trail running to test myself at the edge of my ability in environments that demand my best. My first 50K delivered an age-group win, but I didn’t experience it as a “success.” I did two things well. I also left with 34 improvements: pacing on exposed climbs, fueling earlier, descending form when fatigued, shoe choice on technical terrain, pain management when quads are on fire, and how I talk to myself when a time goal slips.
The moment that crystallized it came at mile 25. I took a hard spill—dirt in my teeth, blood on my knee, quads screaming. I stood up, checked the damage, and kept running. The trail didn’t care that I fell. The course kept going. So did I. That’s sport’s honest lesson: the terrain won’t meet you halfway. You adjust your plan, your pace, your mind—and you keep moving.
Business is the same—only the course is hidden. For CFOs, the switchbacks and false flats show up as:
· Macroeconomic uncertainty and rate regimes
· Technology disruption and the GenAI platform shift
· Stakeholder and regulatory velocity
You can’t wish those away. The leaders who expand what’s possible aren’t the ones who log the most hours; they’re the ones who train for the work.
Here’s the reality: unlike competitive athletes, corporate athletes don’t have an off-season. There’s no built-in time to rebuild between races. Earnings, board cycles, transformations, investor days—our events overlap. That’s not an argument for grind; it’s an argument for craft. If we don’t get a recovery season, we must learn to recover in the day. If we can’t step away for practice blocks, we have to weave practice into how we work.
There’s another truth I can’t shake: the silent suffering inside high-performance cultures. Executives—and their teams—are quietly struggling in one or more of the three core domains: physical, mental, or emotional. Sleep debt that never gets paid down. Anxiety managed alone. Emotional reserves stretched thin. The people carrying the most weight often feel least able to ask for help. The highest-performing leaders I know aren’t superhuman; they’re systematic. They make health a leadership choice, not a side project.
“Physiology sets the ceiling for leadership.”
That insight helped shape Ambitious Venture, the executive coaching company I am about to launch for finance leaders who want to operate at their edge. It’s built to help CFOs and their teams create enterprise value without burning out. We sharpen the craft—strategic and commercial acumen, true business partnering, and value creation—and we level up leadership at three levels: self, team, and tech-enabled. We anchor it all on a high-performance and wellness pillar inspired by Rainey’s example and the broader truth of sport: physiology sets the ceiling for leadership. Build human capacity, and you can scale enterprise capacity.
You don’t have to run ultras to claim the identity of a corporate athlete. You do have to practice it. Practice looks like small, repeatable moves that compound across quarters—moves that expand your capacity so your craft can scale.
Actions to put this into play:
· Beginner’s mindset and the “Be Better” list: Commit to lifelong learning by operating at your edge weekly. After meaningful reps (presentations, negotiations, project milestones), capture a be-better list: two things you did well and 3–5 specifics to improve next time. Curiosity over ego.
· Daily micro-recovery (do all three, every workday if you can):
o Mindfulness: 8 minutes of guided or unguided attention training to reset focus.
o Sleep intention: protect consistency and quality; keep bedtime/wake within a 60-minute window and meet your sleep needs.
o Box breathing: 4-count inhale, 4 hold, 4 exhale, 4 hold; repeat for 2–3 minutes to downshift stress.
· Pre-inbox priming: Before investor calls and email, set your state with at least 30 minutes of movement, clarify your intention, and define your top priority. Energy before decisions.
· Nail nutrition: Align caloric needs, macros, timing, and choices with the day’s demands. Protein at each meal, carbs around high-cognitive or high-intensity blocks, hydration early; make timing and quality deliberate.
· Train confidence: Challenge your self-talk in the moment. Ask, “Is that a fact or a feeling?” Move forward on facts. Let feelings inform, not decide.
Small, deliberate moves. Compounded over time. That’s how corporate athletes win—at work, and in life.