I was the engine. That was the problem.

I was pulling every cart. A new client, a new idea, a project that needed to start: I set it in motion, and I pulled it too.

At first that was a choice. I wanted control. If I did it myself, I knew it would turn out fine.

Somewhere along the way that changed. I no longer wanted to depend on anyone. Not wait for someone to pick something up, not hope it would work out. I’d just do it myself.

The strange thing is: that’s exactly what made everyone depend on me.

When I stopped, the company stopped

If I was away for a few days, things waited until I got back. I hadn’t built a company. I had built a job, with myself as the one person who could never be missing.

Even when I wasn’t working, it kept running in my head. I’d be at the dinner table at home, thinking about a proposal that still had to go out.

Dutch business coach Tibor Olgers puts it like this: profit isn’t only money. It’s also time, health, relationships and direction. On money I scored fine. On the rest, I didn’t.

Letting go isn’t a decision

I thought I could simply decide to let go. It doesn’t work like that. Doing something yourself is faster than explaining it. And honestly: it feels good to be needed.

But every time I pick something up myself, I teach the team that I’ll pick it up.

Fewer carts, clearer boundaries

At Apperium the team now gets boundaries, and within them they decide. Mistakes are part of it. Taking things back is not.

Work that comes back every week, like chasing invoices or keeping the inbox up to date, goes into a system. Nobody needs to pull that cart.

And I work with Jarvis, an AI assistant that reads my email and calendar and prepares things for me. He sends nothing without me. I wrote a separate letter about that.

Why I write this down

I don’t have the answer yet. I’m in the middle of it. In these letters I keep track of what I hand over and what it brings, also when it disappoints.

Herbert