Leadership Coaching + Therapy for Founders in Los Angeles

📊 Strategy and Execution

How to build your team, raise capital, develop product-market fit, scale operations, optimize processes. These are critical skills, but they assume you're psychologically equipped to implement the advice.

✅ Accountability and Goal-Setting

Coaches help you define objectives, break them into actionable steps, and hold you accountable. But if anxiety, depression, or trauma are sabotaging your follow-through, accountability alone doesn't address root causes.

🎯 Skills and Frameworks

Leadership frameworks, communication models, decision-making processes. These tools are valuable but ineffective if underlying psychological issues—imposter syndrome, attachment patterns, unresolved trauma—prevent you from using them.

📈 Performance Optimization

How to be more productive, effective, and successful. But what if your relationship with achievement itself is dysfunctional? What if you're already burned out and need healing, not optimization?

🎯 Limited Business Context

Most therapists have never built a company, raised capital, managed rapid scaling, or faced the specific pressures of founder life. They can't provide contextually relevant guidance about leadership challenges.

🏥 Focus on Pathology

Therapy traditionally addresses what's wrong—anxiety, depression, trauma. It's less focused on optimizing what's already working or developing leadership capabilities beyond baseline mental health.

⏱️ Pace Misaligned

Traditional therapy moves at a reflective, exploratory pace. Founders often need rapid intervention on time-sensitive leadership challenges while simultaneously addressing deeper psychological patterns.

📋 Minimal Accountability

Therapy creates insight and emotional processing but often lacks the structured accountability of coaching for implementing changes in professional contexts.

🧠 Clinical Psychological Expertise

Licensed psychologist who can diagnose and treat anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health conditions affecting your functioning as a founder. This isn't life coaching pretending to be therapy—it's actual clinical intervention when needed.

💼 Business & Leadership Knowledge

Deep understanding of founder challenges—fundraising stress, scaling anxiety, co-founder conflicts, exit decisions, board dynamics. Your therapist comprehends business contexts from extensive work with founders, not just textbooks.

📈 Performance Optimization Mindset

Beyond treating pathology to baseline health, focus on optimizing leadership effectiveness, decision-making quality, and professional performance. You're not just "fixing problems"—you're developing capabilities.

⚡ Strategic Intervention

When you're facing a co-founder conflict, difficult board conversation, or strategic decision, your sessions address these situations directly—combining psychological insight with practical strategy.

✅ Accountability & Skill-Building

Like coaching, you set specific leadership goals and receive accountability for implementation. Like therapy, you also process the emotions, fears, and patterns that might sabotage execution.

🔄 Flexibility Between Modes

Some sessions focus more on tactical leadership challenges; others on deeper psychological patterns. The approach adapts to your current needs rather than rigidly adhering to pure coaching or pure therapy models.

1. Check-in on Current Challenges (5-10 minutes)

What's happening in your business and life this week? What feels most urgent or difficult? This grounds the session in your current reality.

2. Deep Work on Primary Issue (30-40 minutes)

This could be:

• Processing anxiety about an upcoming board meeting (therapy)
• Strategizing a difficult conversation with your co-founder (coaching)
• Exploring why you avoid delegating despite intellectual knowing you should (therapeutic exploration + coaching on delegation frameworks)
• Working through grief about pivoting away from your original vision (therapy)
• Developing a decision-making framework for a strategic choice (coaching)

3. Skill-Building or Homework (5-10 minutes)

Specific actions to take before next session—might be therapeutic exercises (journaling, self-compassion practice) or coaching assignments (having a specific conversation, implementing a new process).

🎭 Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt

The challenge: Despite external success—funding raised, revenue growing, team expanding—you feel like a fraud waiting to be exposed as incompetent or undeserving.

Coaching alone would: Provide confidence-building exercises, reframe negative thoughts, encourage you to "fake it till you make it." This helps somewhat but doesn't address root causes.

Therapy alone would: Explore childhood origins, attachment patterns, and internalized beliefs about worthiness. Valuable insight but might not provide practical tools for managing self-doubt during tomorrow's investor pitch.

Integrated approach: Understand psychological roots of imposter syndrome while simultaneously developing practical confidence-building strategies, reframing self-talk patterns, and preparing for specific high-stakes situations with both insight and skills.

🔥 Burnout and Exhaustion

The challenge: Chronic exhaustion, reduced effectiveness, cynicism about work you once loved, physical symptoms from stress. You're operating on empty but feel unable to slow down.

Coaching alone would: Help you optimize systems, delegate better, improve time management. But if burnout stems from trauma-driven overwork, identity fusion with achievement, or inability to rest without guilt, tactical changes won't heal core issues.

Therapy alone would: Process underlying patterns driving overwork, address perfectionism and self-worth issues. But without practical strategies for delegation and operational changes, insight doesn't translate to actual rest.

Integrated approach: Therapeutic work on psychological patterns maintaining burnout while coaching on practical delegation frameworks, team development, and operational changes allowing sustainable pace.

🤝 Co-Founder Relationship Conflicts

The challenge: Increasing tension with co-founder, communication breakdowns, resentment building, considering separation but afraid of implications.

Coaching alone would: Provide communication frameworks, conflict resolution strategies, decision-making processes for potential separation. Valuable tools but won't address emotional undercurrents.

Therapy alone would: Process emotions, explore your contributions to dynamics, work through attachment and abandonment fears. Therapeutic but might not provide practical frameworks for difficult conversations.

Integrated approach: Emotional processing of resentment and fear alongside practical communication frameworks, role clarification strategies, and guidance on navigating separation if necessary—addressing both psychological and tactical dimensions.

😰 Decision Paralysis

The challenge: Facing major decisions—pivot vs. persevere, take funding vs. bootstrap, fire someone vs. give another chance—but frozen by anxiety, catastrophizing every option.

Coaching alone would: Provide decision-making frameworks, help analyze pros/cons, encourage action. But if anxiety or trauma is driving paralysis, frameworks won't overcome psychological blocks.

Therapy alone would: Address anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure underlying paralysis. Insight helps but might not provide structured decision-making support for time-sensitive business choices.

Integrated approach: Therapeutic work on anxiety and perfectionism while coaching on decision frameworks, risk assessment, and action planning—addressing both the psychological blocks and the practical decision.

💔 Work-Life Destruction

The challenge: Relationships suffering, missing important family moments, partner threatening to leave, feeling like you're failing both business and personal life.

Coaching alone would: Help establish boundaries, time management strategies, delegation to free up personal time. But if guilt, identity fusion with work, or relationship patterns are driving the problem, tactics won't be enough.

Therapy alone would: Process relationship dynamics, attachment issues, identity questions. Valuable but might not provide practical frameworks for actually restructuring work demands.

Integrated approach: Therapeutic work on identity, guilt, and relationship patterns while coaching on delegation strategies, operational changes, and leadership development enabling sustainable work-life integration.

🚪 Exit Planning and Identity Crisis

The challenge: Considering acquisition or succession but experiencing existential crisis. Your identity is fused with being a founder—who are you without this company?

Coaching alone would: Help navigate exit logistics, succession planning, next career moves. But won't address identity crisis, grief about letting go, or fear about purpose after exit.

Therapy alone would: Process identity issues, grief, existential questions about meaning. Essential work but might not provide practical guidance on actual exit logistics and decision-making.

Integrated approach: Deep therapeutic work on identity, grief, and meaning while coaching on practical exit planning, succession strategy, and next chapter exploration—addressing both existential and tactical dimensions of transition.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Evidence-based treatment for anxiety, depression, and performance optimization. Identifies thought patterns maintaining distress—catastrophizing, perfectionism, all-or-nothing thinking—and systematically replaces them with functional cognitions. Particularly effective for founders who respond well to structured, goal-oriented approaches.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Helps clarify values beyond professional achievement, builds psychological flexibility to move toward what matters despite discomfort. Powerful for identity issues, burnout, and navigating major transitions like exits or pivots.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Explores how early experiences, attachment patterns, and unconscious processes affect current leadership and relationships. Essential for understanding self-sabotage, relationship conflicts, and patterns that resist surface-level intervention.

Leadership Psychology & Coaching

Practical frameworks for decision-making, communication, delegation, conflict resolution, team development. Based on research in organizational psychology and leadership effectiveness.

Reach out

Schedule free 15-minute phone consultation

Initial consultation

Discuss challenges, goals, whether this approach fits

Begin work

Most clients start within 24-48 hours of initial contact

✅ Better Decision-Making

One improved strategic decision can generate returns far exceeding therapy costs. Reduced anxiety-driven mistakes or impulsive choices protects significant value.

✅ Improved Leadership Effectiveness

Better team retention, more effective delegation, stronger culture—all flow from improved leadership capabilities and mental health.

✅ Avoided Burnout

Preventing founder burnout requiring extended leave preserves business continuity and value. The cost of a founder checking out psychologically is enormous.

✅ Relationship Preservation

Founders often sacrifice personal relationships to business demands. Integrated work helps maintain both, preventing divorce costs and personal devastation.

✅ Mental Health Recovery

Treating anxiety, depression, or trauma improves quality of life beyond business metrics. You build a successful company AND enjoy your life.

Is this coaching or therapy?

It's both, integrated. Sessions incorporate clinical psychology (diagnosing and treating mental health conditions) and leadership development (practical skills and strategies). The approach adapts to your needs rather than artificially separating domains.

Can you help with business strategy?

We provide psychological perspective on strategic decisions and help develop decision-making frameworks, but we're not business consultants. If you need pure business strategy consulting, we can recommend resources while we address the psychological and leadership dimensions.

Will you tell me what to do with my business?

No. We help you develop clarity, process emotions, recognize patterns, and build skills—but ultimately, business decisions are yours. We provide framework and support, not directives.

What if I just need coaching, not therapy?

Many founders believe this initially, then discover psychological issues underlying leadership challenges. We meet you where you are—if you want to start with leadership focus, we can, but we're prepared to address mental health needs when they emerge.

Do I need to have diagnosed mental illness?

No. Many founders work with us for performance optimization, leadership development, and navigating challenges without any diagnosable condition. We support a spectrum from clinical treatment to high-performance coaching.

How long does this work take?

Variable. Some founders address acute challenges in 8-12 sessions. Others engage in longer-term development work over 6-12+ months. We discuss expected timeline based on your specific goals.

Dr. Benjamin Rosen, PsyD

Dr. Benjamin Rosen is a licensed clinical psychologist at Cerevity specializing in integrated leadership therapy for founders and entrepreneurs throughout Los Angeles and California. He combines clinical psychology expertise with deep understanding of startup ecosystems, providing evidence-based treatment for mental health conditions alongside practical leadership development. Dr. Rosen holds a doctorate in clinical psychology (PsyD) and maintains a California psychology license.