How Therapy Helped Me Train My Intuition to Make Decisions Quickly "It was a powerful forum for me to discover my potential," Andrew Blackmon says.

I run a company of 400 people. It's only possible because of a decision I made soon after we launched — even though it had nothing to do with business: I decided to see a therapist.

I hadn't set out to be an entrepreneur; I was an English major in college, busy reading Dostoevsky and philosophy. Then I rented a tuxedo to get married, and it was an atrocious process. There must be a better way, I thought. My groomsman, Patrick Coyne (who had the same experience), agreed, and we cofounded The Black Tux in 2013 with the plan to rent well-fitting, high-quality suits and tuxes online — which turned out to be operationally complicated and immediately popular.

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By age 28, I was leading a fast-growing business and feeling very outmatched. People needed me to make decisions quickly, and at times I found it hard to rise to the occasion. I realized that, to grow this company at such a rapid pace, I needed to grow too. One day I asked an employee how he was so calm and centered, and he gave me the phone number of a therapist. I'd never seen one but decided to try.

My psychologist's name is Dr. Thuy Bui, and she helped me understand how my past was impacting my leadership. For example, I had a strict upbringing. Therapy showed me how I'd internalized some of those ideas in an unhealthy way that had led me to doubt my own intuition and interests. I didn't trust my own internal compass. I wasn't sure of my own voice.

Once I became an entrepreneur, it all hit me hard and fast. Before therapy, I didn't know how to rely on my gut or how to look to myself to make important decisions without delay. My internal confusion also meant that I often was too fearful to tell people when they did something wrong or when I needed more out of them. This impacted their performance. I realized I needed to shift in order to create more trust within the organization.

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My relationship in therapy gave me the courage to listen to my own voice, enabling me to make decisions and communicate directly. It was a powerful forum for me to discover my potential, and I now enjoy a fuller version of myself. I feel free to be more curious, and to do everything to the best of my ability without having to control the outcome.

This process also helped me turn The Black Tux into a thriving, profitable company, along the way raising $70 million, opening five of our own stores plus 30 more with Nordstrom, navigating through the challenging times of COVID, designing our own line of men's tailored clothing, and acquiring a wedding-band company called Marke. I truly don't think I would have been able to grow like this without Dr. Bui.

We often grow up with the expectation that we have to be a certain way. It takes a lot of courage to examine that, and to make decisions more aligned with who we want to be. I think that for a lot of founders, starting a company is an attempt to try to work that out. Entrepreneurship, like therapy, pushes us into new, uncomfortable zones where we must keep growing and learning more about ourselves. For me, that has been the greatest and most unexpected opportunity of all.

Related: This Founder Wanted to Rethink Therapy. When Coronavirus Hit, She Rethought Her Business Model.