$38 billion Twilio CEO wakes at 4:30 a.m., works Sundays, and runs laps around his house between meetings to blow off steam

EXCLUSIVE: Forget work-life balance .

Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler starts checking his emails at 4:30 a.m, is on the job until 9 p.m. and runs laps around the house to blow off steam in between.

“The gap that I allow for me to not think about work is six to eight hours on Saturdays,” the Gen X boss told Fortune .

He credits that discipline with making him CFO of a multi-billion-dollar at just 31 and now CEO of a $38 billion tech giant, insisting that sacrifice is what separates leaders and everyone else.

For most 20-something-year-olds fresh out of college, 4:30 a.m. is when the night ends, after a night of partying.

For Twilio’s CEO, Khozema Shipchandler, it’s the beginning of his day.

The 51-year-old exec says he’s always been a morning person—on weekdays, at least—and that starting his day while others slept is why he got ahead faster than most.

“I was kind of built that way,” he told Fortune last summer, adding you set “benchmarks based on your life experiences.” “My parents were the classic immigrant success story, and as with many immigrant parents, they wanted their kids to do better than them and to create the opportunities for them,” he reflected on his family, who moved to the U.S. from Mumbai.

“They really pushed working hard and playing hard—which, by the way, I do play hard when I’m not working—so that was the goal,” he added.

Shipchandler graduated from Indiana University—Bloomington in 1996 and that summer began his career at the industrial conglomerate.

And that drive paid off early.

By the time he was 31, Shipchandler was already CFO of a multi-billion-dollar GE business.

“If you were willing to put in the effort, they were willing to give you the opportunity,” he added.

“So I got a lot of opportunities there.” While Gen Z and millennial workers are rewriting the rules of corporate life—demanding flexibility , autonomy, and strict boundaries around “ me time ”—Shipchandler isn’t convinced you can reach the C-suite without long hours and sacrifice.