Over four weeks, you will learn to transform The IntensityThe Intensity (n.) — the pressure underneath everything. An agitation that persists whether you succeed or fail. from something to escape into something to use. Instead of reacting to Fate — chasing one outcome over another — you train to preference State, reclaiming power and discovering purpose.
FOUNDERSTATE
DIRECTED·STEADY·STRONG·HELPFUL
This is not another optimization protocol.
It is evergreen wisdomEvergreen wisdom (n.) — what human beings keep discovering about living well. Different centuries, different places, no contact between them, and the same recognitions arrive each time. Older than the market. Still true., rigorously applied to modern pressure.
From a man who’s lived at the heights, endured collapse, and rebuilt different.
Circumstance shifts — they shift with it. The market turns — their
mood turns. The relationship ends — they collapse. The deal closes —
they inflate.
Their inner condition is downstream of what happens to them.
Founderstate is the opposite.
A state — not a feeling, not a mood, not a passing high — that holds
independent of circumstance.
Four qualities define it:
Directed
Clear on what's yours to do. Not drifting.
Steady
Grounded when pressure hits. Not needing to escape.
Strong
Capable of bearing what needs bearing. Not collapsing.
Helpful
Channeling energy toward service. Not self-obsession.
State over Fate.
Men in Founderstate become more serious, but live lighter.
Definition · 02
What is a FounderStatesman?
Founderstate is the destination. The FounderStatesman is the man who
lives there.
It starts with being a Founder.
Not the ruthless startup or endless hustle kind. These alone are
limitations, corruptions.
A different kind of Founder. One who works with body, mind, soul and
Spirit — to tend a life of his choosing, aligned with the totality of
what he is and can become.
Most often, men adopt a life. A job, a story, a set of needs and expectations,
hopes and fears. They become trapped inside it.
Founderstate Training is for men who realize this way of living
is no good anymore.
The system you were born into — we call it The Market.
It reduces you to metrics. To optimize. Everything you are, measured
and signaled by your capacity. To produce. And acquire.
Nothing wrong with producing and acquiring.
Except The Market requires more. Always. A ceaseless wanting — for
something other, to do more, have more, be more.
The pressure of that wanting, lived as the ground of every day. That’s The Intensity.
The Market’s Game has you chasing external circumstance, some great
fate. Then! That will solve it. But it doesn’t. And it won’t.
This is training to play a different game.
The Three Disciplines
What You Train
Wisdomship.
Reconnecting to what was severed. The Market took most of what you are — reducing body to productivity, mind to optimization, denying soul, dismissing Spirit. Wisdomship is the work of restoration across all four. Once whole, you have power that doesn't depend on outcomes.
Workmanship.
Once you have that power, choose your aim well. Give yourself fully to work that helps. The wisdom to want well — not the absence of wanting, but wanting in service of what matters and held lightly enough that the work itself, not its results, is what feeds you.
Foundership.
Wisdomship and Workmanship merged. Power and purpose together. This is how you play through The Intensity, rather than seeking always some way to escape it. State over Fate, lived. The result is Founderstate. Directed, steady, strong, helpful.
01 / Power
Wisdomship
Your power.
The capacity to face what is in front of you. To stay directed,
steady, strong — regardless of what life throws at you.
02 / Purpose
Workmanship
Your purpose.
Power put into meaningful work. Skill developed in service of
others. Right Livelihood — work that helps and does not harm.
03 / Integration
Foundership
Power plus purpose.
Wisdomship and Workmanship integrated. Every path here is founding — founding your work, founding your life.
Wisdomship without Workmanship — power with no purpose.
Workmanship without Wisdomship — purpose with no power.
Your approach to work lies at the center of everything that follows.
The pressure of your work — the setbacks, the conflict, the thing you cared about that didn't land — is not the cost of the work. It is the curriculum.
Most men wait for the pressure to lift before they can be steady. We train the opposite: steadiness inside the pressure. The work is the ground. Your state is what gets built on it.
For both the man still striving and the successful man left wanting, the opportunity arcs along the founder’s path: founding something that is his.
Founding is the deep end — maximum stakes, maximum conflict, everything on the line at once. That’s not the warning. It’s the draw.
This is true wherever you stand — the pressure of real work, well discerned and fully owned, used to train state instead of chase fate.
The Structure
How It Works
Four weeks. Daily audio modules — short, under 10 minutes, but dense. You'll listen multiple times.
Weekly live calls. A guide. Five other men.
Perspectives and practices, drawn from sources older than any of us.
A Founderstack Library of supporting materials: to read, to listen, to practice.
Week One
Free
Five modules. Daily audio. Ten to twelve minutes. Listen on the
walk, at the gym, before bed.
You meet The Intensity. You learn what it is. You begin a practice.
No card. No commitment. No pressure.
The Gate
End of Week One. You decide.
Continue, or close the tab.
If you continue, you and Leo settle a commitment that fits where you are.
Weeks Two through Four
The full curriculum. Nineteen more modules. Live calls with Leo.
Five other men in your cohort — The Six.
Weekly practices. Daily contact with the work.
End of Week Four — Declaration. You build something real and put it in the world. A website. A business plan. A pitch. A body of work. Whatever form fits your path — made in your own voice. The Six witnesses.
You leave in Founderstate — directed, steady, strong, helpful — and
with a clearer line on what you are here to do.
The man striving but struggling. He hasn't arrived yet and the road seems to be getting longer. The promise that hard work leads to security and meaning is thinning.
The man who "made it" but left wanting. He achieved and The Intensity didn't care. Success did not solve the thing success was supposed to solve — the hum of something wrong remains.
Different stories. Same pressure. Same recognition: the old way isn't working anymore, and the fix was never going to come from outside.
If you want a container that turns that recognition into capacity — wherever you're standing — this is for you.
Not For
Who This Is Not For
Men in active addiction. Men in untreated mental health crisis. Men
looking for rescue. Men collecting another framework to feel ahead of other men.
This is training, not treatment.
If that is where you are — there are better resources for you right
now. Come back when you are ready.
The Guide
Leo
Theologian · Entrepreneur · FounderStatesman
Two resets taught one thing. The theology gave it a name.
A Master's in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the
Graduate Theological Union. Then fifteen years founding companies. One
launched an industry and sold for over a hundred million. Another powers
The Sphere in Las Vegas. A third — a non-profit — has helped over 100,000
children walk who could not before.
The Intensity was there in the success the same way it had been
there in the struggle.
Scars plus study. This training.
Leo still meets The Intensity. Most mornings. Before anything has happened to cause it. It hasn't gone anywhere. He stopped waiting for it to.
He built this training inside it — not after. Under real pressure. He isn't teaching you something he finished. He's teaching you something he uses.
A small group of men committed to the same work in the same window.
Live calls. Real contact.
Chosen — not first come. Some have built something and found it empty. Some are still working for the first real foothold. You get paired with a man standing somewhere different than you. Your helping him helps you.
Six Seats
Your Cohort
Forming Now
Apply at the gate after completing Week One. Six spots only.
FAQ
Questions
About the Experience
One audio module — under ten minutes. Listen on the walk, at the gym, before bed. Listen multiple times. Then a daily practice, chosen from a list of nine – do as many as you can. They're also short. The training is designed to make your life feel more full, not more busy.
Yes. The Six works because every man is present. Camera on, voice on. That's part of the commitment.
The modules stay available. But the cohort moves together — the live calls follow the weekly arc. The structure matters.
About Fit
Foundership here means founding your life. Some men in the training are building businesses. Some are wiring houses. Some are leaving careers that hollowed them out. Some are just searching. The work path varies. The training is the same.
That's half of who this is built for. The Intensity doesn't care about your resume. If success didn't solve the thing success was supposed to solve, the training addresses exactly that.
No. The training draws on wisdom traditions — Eastern, Western, Indigenous — but requires no belief. You won't be asked to adhere to any specific tradition, or adopt any particular faith. The word for this is perennial: what human beings keep discovering about living well, independent of any single religion.
No. Therapy processes what happened to you. This builds capacity to function regardless of what's happening to you. Both matter. They do different things. If you're in active crisis, therapy comes first.
About Cost and Commitment
Week One is free — five modules, no card, no commitment. If you continue past the gate, you and Leo agree on a financial arrangement that fits your circumstances — not a sticker price.
Complete the four weeks and make your Declaration of Foundership, and the commitment you made becomes your payment. If you do the full work and the Declaration isn't there — if you do the work and it didn't land — you're refunded. Show up, do it all, and you risk nothing.
Graduates are invited into the FounderStatesmen Guild — an ongoing community where the path continues. But the training is designed to hand you capacity you own.
About the Guide and Format
Theology degree. Fifteen years founding companies — one sold for over a hundred million, another powers The Sphere in Las Vegas. Then it collapsed. He built this training inside The Intensity, not after it. He's not teaching something he finished. He's teaching something he uses. More at leoraderman.com.
The training is designed to meet you inside your day, not pull you out of it. Audio goes where you go — the commute, the walk, the gym. You absorb differently when your body is moving and your eyes aren't locked to a screen.
Six is small enough that every man matters and large enough to build real brotherhood. You're not anonymous. You're not performing for a crowd. You're known, and you're accountable to five other men doing the same work.
