Melissa Glick is the Founder of Peak CEO. Prior to business consulting and coaching, she was the former owner and CEO of an IT company. While scaling her thriving technology company over more than a decade, Melissa hid her struggles with depression, anxiety and food addiction. She felt she had to maintain an unwavering mental toughness to be an effective leader for her ambitious team and a source of strength for community. She ignored the dark spots of her world and told herself the story that if she continued being successful in business, people wouldn't see her weakness. In an effort to mask the emptiness she felt, as accolades poured in for all her accomplishments, she took on more and more responsibilities in the form of helping others.
She helped everyone and put herself last.
For small business owners and entrepreneurs, scaling a business is more demanding than simply working a nine to five job. Sacrifices need to be made in one form or another and for Melissa it was her mental and physical health. Struggling with perfectionism and feelings of failure, she worked around the clock to prove herself. She suffered in silence and her mental and physical health crumbled. She thought taking on more and more responsibilities would give her a sense of worth, but the stress piled on and she became very unhealthy, mentally and physically. She turned to food as a way to find comfort and numb the unpleasant emotions she was experiencing. She gained 100 lbs., many obesity related illnesses and was miserable.
Melissa finally took action, and through a complete revamp of her life, she was able to shed the weight, embrace fitness on a daily basis, and find the tools that helped her live a more balanced and healthy life while scaling her business.
By being open in sharing her own health struggles, she has found that it gives others the grace to share in return, be kinder to themselves and conquer depression and overwhelm as entrepreneurs. Being a successful entrepreneur and effective leader isn't just about inspiring, mobilizing, empowering and building, it's self leadership at it's core.
People always ask her, how were you able to achieve all that while battling depression.
"CEOs and owners have huge responsibilities to their customers, their employees, their shareholders, and their communities and they can't just quit on themselves or their business. They shouldn't have to. But tackling self leadership and bringing more meaning and balance to your life will allow you to reach your highest potential and not lose sight of your health," she says.
Today, Melissa has a genuine curiosity, a thirst for knowledge and a commitment to continually acquire knowledge and skills, especially in an environment that is changing. She takes an evergreen approach to learning, coaching and, most importantly, she puts self leadership front and center.
Her motto and life philosophy is first......lead as CEO of your life.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.