Called Disabled as a Boy, He Built Companies to Prove Them Wrong

As a boy, Peter Rahal overheard his teachers talking to his parents about him. Because he had dyslexia and could not read well, he had been labeled disabled, and he remembers hearing them ask, in effect, if Peter was stupid.

Rahal, who built the RXBAR protein bar company and now runs David Protein, says those conversations broke him in a way that left an intrinsic motivation to prove the label wrong.

School took him ten times the effort to earn C's and D's. He says his "survival strategy as a child was to" decide the adults were wrong. All you teachers are wrong, he told himself. The whole system is broken. That stance left him contrarian toward authority by nature, something he describes as deep in his personality.

He still wakes up with resentment and anger. If he does not harness it through physical exertion and company building, he becomes a bad person or starts to not be happy. He calls the resentment tattooed in him after trying psychedelics and therapy.

He seeks out suffering on purpose. When he exercises, he picks the most painful exercises. When he takes his young son out, he refuses the stroller and carries the boy instead. There is something spiritual about suffering that he finds "gratifying once you get through it," he says. Building a company is the harder version, emotional suffering through tough conversations, and he has learned to lean into it because growth sits on the other side.

That is why a stint as an investor after RXBAR left him deeply unhappy. Reporting on a portfolio put him on the sideline, where he could not direct his anger toward a result. He is not a cheerleader. The outlet is winning, a way to prove he is not what that early label said he was.

He now looks for that same wound in other people. Experience is valuable, but experienced hires reason by analogy and stop asking dumb questions. He prefers people with good reasoning skills, some inexperience, and some damage. He wants people with a chip on the shoulder, something difficult in childhood that left them with something to prove and unable to give up.

One employee stands out, a young man who did not have a comfortable life and who will die before he fails. Rahal cannot compete with that kind of drive. He wants many of those intense strivers, balanced with rational, pragmatic, and more conservative people so the team does not break.

At 40, he still talks about loving the fight and seeking healthy conflict. Pain tolerance lets him take a punch to the stomach and stay calm over the long haul, but he does not want to go numb. He still has that response if things are not right.