5:30 AM. Every single morning. Out the door before the house woke up. Before his kids padded down the hallway. Before his wife had made coffee. Before any of the people he was supposedly building all of this for had even opened their eyes.
Esteban didn’t just tolerate the grind. He loved it. “I’ve always been someone who loved being the first person in the office.”
That sentence sounds like pride. And for a long time, it was. Being first was proof of something — commitment, seriousness, the kind of work ethic that separates the ones who make it from the ones who don’t. He wore it like armor. What he didn’t see yet was that the armor had become a cage.
Twelve-hour days in a culture that rewarded suffering. Micromanagement from the top down. A role that had slowly drained the color out of the work he used to love. And underneath all of it, something he couldn’t quite name for a while...
The creeping realization that he was performing dedication for an audience that didn’t include his family.
“If I’m leaving the house at 5:30 AM every day, I’m not seeing my family at all — and that matters more now.”
That “now” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. There was a “before” — a version of Esteban who knew it mattered and filed it away anyway. Who kept moving, kept producing, kept arriving first, while the life he actually wanted kept getting quietly rescheduled to later.
The first thing that shifts in this work isn’t a strategy or a plan. It’s perspective.
“I feel like the game is slowing down... and I’m able to see things in front of me and make better decisions.” Any athlete knows that feeling. When you’ve been playing too fast — reacting, scrambling, just trying to keep up — the moment the game slows down isn’t about effort. It’s about clarity. That space is where everything changed for Esteban.
He traded the 5:30 AM sprint for something that looked almost embarrassingly simple. Coffee. Quiet. Stillness before the day started pulling at him. “That moment of clarity in the morning — just coffee and quiet — changes how the entire day unfolds.”
Esteban had been running on a belief that his value lived in his presence everywhere — every deal, every decision, every problem. It felt like responsibility. It was actually exhaustion wearing responsibility’s clothes.
“I’ve realized there aren’t enough hours in the day to manage every deal... that’s why I have a team.”
“That shift from addition to multiplication has been a big realization for me.”
When a leader is adding, they’re inserting themselves into every equation. When a leader is multiplying, they’re building people who can solve equations you haven’t even seen yet. “Before, I had a bias for action — I would jump straight into doing. Now I realize the thinking has to happen first.”
And then there’s the thing that matters most. He started coaching his daughter’s softball team. Not a metaphor. He is physically, actually, showing up on a softball field for his kid. The man who used to leave at 5:30 AM before his family was awake is now the one holding a clipboard on a Tuesday evening, watching his daughter round third base. That’s not a productivity win. That’s a life reclaimed.
Esteban is now CRO at Nuqleous, the analytics platform behind Unilever, Mars, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Diageo, Ghirardelli, Del Monte.
“This whole process taught me that a lot of the change starts internally — how you choose to think and show up.”
There’s a version of Esteban who keeps arriving at 5:30 AM forever. He’s not that man anymore.