This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amy Errett, the founder and CEO of Madison Reed. Errett is based in Northern California and founded the hair care company in 2013. Since then, Madison Reed has grown to 90 locations across the country. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
Life as a CEO is busy, and I start my days early with exercise, meditation, and a strong cup of coffee, before I jump into a morning of back-to-back meetings.
I’m very disciplined about how I work and communicate, but I try to keep time for thinking and being outside, especially at the end of the week.
In the evenings, I slow down with family, simple rituals, and sleep, so I can do it all again the next day.
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I wake up between 5:30 and 6 every day, even on weekends.
The first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone to make sure nothing urgent happened overnight, especially since I’m on the West Coast.
My wife, Claire, is a professional artist and also a professional chef. I’m lucky — I get a home-cooked meal almost every night. That’s also why I have to weigh myself every morning before I exercise or drink anything. I also track my sleep and stress using an Oura Ring.
Within about 45 minutes of waking up, I work out at home using my Peloton and Tonal. Five days a week, I do 30 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of strength training.
Afterward, I meditate for about 10 minutes using Henry Shukman’s app, The Way.
By around 7:15 a.m., I’m in the shower and getting ready. Once I’m dressed, I spend a little time with my dog, London, before heading outside.
I travel a lot, but for three days, I work from home. At my home in Marin County, I work from a small pod, a 110-square-foot room in my backyard — made in Canada — that is my private workspace. I’m a nature person, and being surrounded by grass and trees is like getting plugged into an energy source.
I also have a condo in San Francisco, which I go back and forth between.
Before I start work, I make a coffee with two regular shots and two decaf and bring it with me, along with water.
From 7:30 a.m. to noon, I’m in back-to-back meetings.
My workdays are highly structured. I have weekly one-on-one meetings with everyone who reports directly to me, always at the same time each week. Those blocks are fixed, and everything else gets scheduled around them.
My assistant, Christina, is essential to keeping my schedule running. We meet three times a week and plan weeks in advance.
My meetings include internal check-ins, conversations with the PR team, and external meetings. I also mentor other women investors. I’ve been on the board of my alma mater, Wharton, so there are sometimes external board meetings, and my own board meetings.
I also personally interview every hire at the level of store general manager or above for 15 minutes before they receive an offer.
These interviews are focused entirely on cultural fit. I always ask one question: “Tell me about something that didn’t go well in your life, and what you learned from it.”
I’m looking for resilience, grit, honesty, love, and passion. Some of the answers I hear — about loss, hardship, or perseverance — stop me in my tracks and tell me who someone really is. I’ve had people tell me they are homeless and worked their way up to being a general manager somewhere else. That 15-minute process adds up, but it’s incredibly important to me.
I have a block at lunch that I can actually eat — and breathe.
I’m a protein loader, especially since losing a significant amount of weight. I aim to eat about 90 to 100 grams of protein a day. Cottage cheese is my best friend — it’s high in protein, relatively low in calories, and keeps me full.
My go-to meal is a bowl of cottage cheese topped with a poached egg and a slice of gluten-free toast. I also allow myself one small indulgence: three days a week, I have a mini Coke Zero in the afternoon.
The afternoon goes hard.
I’ve tried to work with my assistant to carve out blocks of uninterrupted thinking time, but the truth is, I don’t get much of it.
Most days are packed back-to-back. I do, however, protect Fridays: I don’t take meetings after 1 p.m., and that’s when I catch up and think more freely.
My best thinking happens outside. I live near Marin, so I hike often.
On Fridays, I’ll often leave right at 1 p.m. and drive to my boat alone. I don’t talk to anyone — I just cruise, sit with my thoughts, and enjoy the scenery. Sometimes a close friend will join me, but most of the time it’s solo.
During the rest of the week, though, I’m extremely disciplined about communication.
My inbox is always at zero, and I respond quickly across email, Slack, text, and phone. I actually like calling people, even though most people don’t — I think there’s a lost art in picking up the phone and having a real conversation.
It’s not always easy to stay on track — especially with such a tight schedule.
This work is personal to me. I’m putting my energy into it, and so are more than 1,100 other people. When something doesn’t feel good — we didn’t do right by someone, or we got turned down — I feel it deeply.
I’ve gotten better at handling those moments over time. I work with an executive coach over Zoom twice a week. That’s helped me understand what triggers me and how to recover more quickly. I still have emotional reactions — I’m very human — but I don’t stay stuck in them the way I used to.
When I feel overwhelmed now, I step outside and take a walk or just pause and take a breath. That reset helps me come back grounded.
It took a long time to get there, but it works.
I try to wrap up by 6 p.m.
Most evenings, I like to unwind by watching sports. I follow several teams, record every game, and have access to all the streaming platforms, so there’s almost always something on.
Dinner is an important part of my evening. My wife, Claire, and I sit down to eat together every night, usually around 6:15 pm. Before we eat, we say a blessing, and then we do “roses and thorns,” where we each share one good thing and one hard thing from the day. We’ve kept that tradition going since our daughter, Madison, who I named the company after, was young.
After dinner, we’ll usually watch something together. I tend to gravitate toward sports and thrillers, while Claire and our daughter have different tastes. Our dog, London, is usually right by my side.
I try to be in bed by 10 p.m. and asleep by 10:30. I use a Hatch sound machine and an Eight Sleep mattress — both are game changers.
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