When folks interview with me, I’m pretty candid that beehiiv is an environment filled with A-players. I would also say that if you want to thrive in this type of environment, you need an innate, intrinsic motivation to build things. It’s why people gravitate towards startups – high visibility and impact. At beehiiv, the energy is palpable. I’ve had new hires remark on how exciting it is to join a company that actually feels energized to work. If they’re drinking our Kool-Aid, it sounds like we’re making some good ass Kool-Aid.

I often joke around that joining a startup is basically admitting that you’re a bit of a masochist. You sign up for pain – you know it’s going to be chaotic, possibly underresourced, learning curves galore, and yet it feels better than a traditional 9-5. According to Claude, we’re just “startup-brained” people.

I’m not here to glorify hustle culture – there’s already enough of that - but I am here to spotlight a unique perk beehiiv offers that even took me aback when I first joined.

There’s no doubt that folks are grinding; again, this is what we signed up for voluntarily. And while we offer unlimited PTO, there’s something encouraging/motivating/powerful about having a dedicated monthly wellness day. Yep, you heard that right. Wellness Days are on the third Friday of every month (except November and December, when we have Thanksgiving and Winter break). Wellness Days are exactly that – a day that you can use to recoup outside of the traditional weekend break. Not PTO, not a sick day. Just a day to focus on your wellness (whatever that might be).

Having never experienced a Wellness Day, I welcomed these with open arms. What do you mean, I get a day that’s not PTO that I can use to just… exist? Suffice to say, I’ve used my Wellness Days to mostly get shit done and, by shit, it usually means doing laundry and cleaning up my apartment. I can't express how much it benefits my mental health to run errands and do chores on days other than the weekend, aka closing my laptop.

I wish I could take credit for creating this perk. The truth is that these days have been consistent and existent for a long time before I got here. Which, I actually think, is a great signal on how leadership thinks about performance. If we’re saying that a strong performance means strong outputs, I would argue that finding time to recharge is a great output with long-term halo effects. The reality is that feelings and moods are contagious – it’s the saying that one bad apple spoils the bunch. Inversely, you can say that one good apple could…enrich the others? I’m making that up; the internet says that the opposite of a bad apple is a good egg, so do with that what you will. The point remains that rest/wellness is integral to performance.

So, what does this mean for our startup brains? This is the core tension, honestly. Because rest doesn't come naturally to startup-brained people, it has to be relearned. Not gonna therapize you, because I’m sure there are lots of reasons why rest may feel unproductive and blah blah, but there is something to note: we have to see rest and wellness as part of a system of performance. There’s a hyperfocus then on being rather than doing that can cause anxiety, and the challenge is being able to accept that anxiety as that. From a macro perspective, having a Wellness day doesn’t exactly erase systemic pressures and societal expectations, but at least on a personal level, they are pretty helpful.

Your company and/or leadership might not see the benefit of a Wellness Day, and that’s fine; it’s not for everyone. But even in the early stages, I think it’s important to look at performance as a system and figure out which pieces you need to make it work. Or, at the very least, understand what wellness might mean and how the company could integrate into your company culture.

So, to recap:

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