Founder Coaching For High Performance Leadership

Become a more effective leader without feeling stressed, frustrated by your team, paralysed by hard decisions or feeling burnout.

Better leadership starts with self-leadership.

Better leadership starts with self-leadership.

A lot of founders and CEOs are unaware how their emotions, such as fear, anger and shame affect their decision-making and leadership capacity, and thus impact their business’ growth.

Founder therapy is a 1:1 client-led, person-centred coaching process similar to therapy for founders and CEOs to become more self-aware and expand their decision-making and leadership capacity. 

Founder Therapy is about clearing the obstacles to achieve 50% YoY growth for a multi-seven-figure company. How do I know? This happened for one of my clients.

What is Founder Therapy?

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Let’s See If We’re A Fit To Work Together

This is a 30-minute compatibility session. We will discuss your current friction points and see if my EQ framework aligns with your leadership style. No pitch, just a fit check.

Hi, I’m Dylan…

A lot of founders and CEOs are unaware how their emotions, such as fear, anger and shame affect their decision-making and leadership capacity, and thus impact their business’ growth. Founder therapy is a 1:1 client-led, person-centred coaching process similar to therapy for founders and CEOs to become more self-aware and expand their decision-making and leadership capacity. 

My approach is rooted in a humanistic belief: when you build greater self-awareness, you unlock the first domino in growth — the result is clearer decisions, healthier relationships, and stronger leadership.

I hold a postgraduate qualification in counselling and psychotherapy, and I’ve worked with founders and CEOs leading multi-seven companies and big teams. 

Alongside this, I’ve spent years inside businesses myself as both a marketer and a leader, so I understand the pressures and complexities of running and scaling a company.

In Founder Therapy, I help clients recognise how emotions such as fear, anger, and shame can quietly distort their decision-making and leadership capacity — and then support them in developing the awareness and resilience to lead with clarity.

If this is something you’re interested in you can schedule a call with me to learn more. 

A man with a beard sitting indoors in a casual setting, wearing a black shirt, with sunglasses hanging on his shirt collar, smiling slightly.

Client Reviews

“For those who are fans of the show Billions, Dylan is the Wendy Rhoades in our organisation. He has been such a secret weapon for my growth and my company’s growth”

— Amelia, Co-Founder & CEO, Old Quarter Coffee Merchants

“So much of my business growth and my own growth as an entrepreneur is because of my conversations with Dylan.”

— Donovan, Co-Founder, Currumbin Rhythm and Music School

“Dylan helped me work through stuff I felt stuck with. He’s been a great sounding board”

— Nirmal, Founder & CEO, WP Creative

Qualification

I hold a Graduate Diploma of Counselling from the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP) — an accredited program focused on evidence-based therapeutic practice, emotional intelligence, and self-awareness.


My counselling training gives the psychological understanding; my hands-on leadership in real businesses brings practical relevance. Together, they equip me to help founders work skilfully with fear, anger and shame — and make clearer decisions & lead teams

Diploma certificate from the Australian College of Applied Psychology awarded to Dylan Blackman for graduating with a Graduate Diploma of Counseling on March 17, 2017. The diploma has signatures of officials and a red seal at the bottom left.

FAQs

  • Founder Therapy is a form of executive coaching for founders and CEOs that focuses on the psychological side of leadership.

    It helps founders understand how emotions like stress, fear, anger, and self-doubt influence their decisions and relationships, and how to lead without those emotions distorting business outcomes.

  • Most executive coaching focuses on strategy, performance, or communication skills.

    Founder Therapy focuses on the emotional drivers underneath leadership behaviour.

    We work on:

    • decision-making under pressure

    • handling difficult conversations

    • reducing reactivity

    • imposter syndrome in leadership

    • managing stress as a founder

    It’s applied psychology for business leadership.


    It’s closer to therapy — a space to explore the emotional patterns, beliefs, and fears that shape how you lead and make decisions.


    You are the expert in your own experience; my role is to help you understand it, work with it, and move forward with greater awareness and clarity.

  • It sits between both.

    Founder Therapy is not clinical therapy.

    It is leadership-focused applied psychology.

    We focus specifically on:

    • improving leadership behaviour

    • strengthening team relationships

    • increasing clarity and decisiveness

    • reducing control and avoidance patterns

    Everything is tied to business outcomes.

  • Founders don’t need “more emotion.”

    They need awareness of how emotion is already influencing their leadership.

    Research consistently shows that emotional intelligence in leaders improves:

    • team trust

    • staff & customer retention

    • communication

    • decision quality

    Founder EQ helps prevent emotional leakage into business decisions.

  • Yes.

    Many founders experience imposter syndrome, fear of failure, or fear of being exposed as “not good enough.”

    These fears often show up as:

    • overworking

    • micromanaging

    • avoidance

    • indecision

    • second-guessing

    Founder Therapy helps you recognise these patterns early and lead from clarity rather than insecurity.

  • Most difficult conversations are not necessarily a skills problem, they are emotional regulation problems.

    Founder Therapy helps you:

    • recognise what fear or anger is activated

    • reduce cognitive distortions

    • choose aligned behaviour

    • protect trust while holding accountability

    This improves both performance and culture.

  • Yes.

    When stress rises, thinking narrows.

    Founder Therapy works on:

    • identifying emotional influence

    • reducing control or avoidance behaviours

    • improving clarity

    • maintaining long-term strategic coherence

    Better emotional awareness = better decisions.

  • No.

    Many high-performing founders use coaching not because they are failing — but because they want to prevent emotional blind spots from limiting growth.

    Founder Therapy is about leadership optimisation, not crisis intervention.

  • Most founders notice increased awareness within the first few sessions.

    Behavioural change typically follows once emotional triggers are identified and understood.

    The work compounds over time.

  • Yes.

    Founder Therapy provides a confidential space to think clearly about leadership challenges without risking team dynamics or board politics.

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