Coaching with Stefan
Founders & Entrepreneurs
When the business and the person carrying it become difficult to separate.
You may have built something from nothing. Other people may now depend on it — and on you.
From the outside, the business and the person running it can look like the same thing. From the inside, that can become a lot to carry.
You don’t need to arrive with a business problem to solve. Sometimes you simply need somewhere to hear what you are thinking when nobody else needs an answer from you.
Recognition before explanation
You might recognise…
- “The business is still in my head, even when I'm supposedly not working.”
- “I feel responsible for everyone and everything.”
- “I love creating and getting things moving. Running the same operation every day gives me less energy.”
- “As the business grows, I wonder whether my role needs to change too.”
- “I don't have anyone outside the business with whom I can think honestly.”
- “I'm making decisions I've never made before, but I feel as though I should already know the answers.”
- “I've built a successful company, but I haven't necessarily built personal financial security alongside it.”
- “What am I prepared to sacrifice for this business? What am I not prepared to sacrifice, and for how long?”
- “The business has become difficult to separate from my identity, my family or the rest of my life.”
The person carrying the business.
A business can become part of how you see yourself. It can shape family life, financial choices, friendships and the way you spend your attention.
You may be asking what the business needs from you now — and what you need from the business. Those are not always the same question.
There may be decisions to make. There may simply be things you have not had room to say out loud yet.
A lived connection
What I understand differently now.
Knowing my strengths
I built and ran my own company for more than a decade.
Much later, a Kolbe assessment identified me as a very high Quick Start. It helped me understand why I loved starting, creating, experimenting and getting things moving, but found far less energy in the repetitive day-to-day operation once the company was established.
Looking back, I think I could have designed my role differently and perhaps handed over much more of the running of the business. At the time, I was none the wiser.
Building security while building the company
Another lesson was financial. I now believe I should have deliberately saved and built personal and family financial security while the company was growing.
Success today does not guarantee that the rainy day will not eventually arrive.
That is something I understand from my own story.
I wish I’d found a mentor sooner.
I wish I had found an experienced business mentor earlier.
I entered entrepreneurship without extensive previous experience and largely tried to work things out myself. Pride played a part. Age played a part too — the feeling that I should be able to work it out for myself.
I remember what it felt like to be the person everyone expected to have answers while having very few places to think honestly about my own questions.
I didn’t know how to switch off.
There’s a photograph of me from when my daughter was a baby. She’s asleep on my chest. One arm is around her. My other hand is on my laptop.
At the time, I probably saw nothing unusual about it. I was building a business and raising a young family. I thought this was simply what you did.
The laptop isn’t really the point. Even when it wasn’t there, the business usually was. I could put the computer down, but I struggled to put the business down in my head.
It was my wife who helped me see that.
Looking back, one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that you need to be clear about what you want from building a business — what you’re prepared to sacrifice for it, what you’re not, and for how long.
I wasn’t clear enough about that at the time.
Those are some of the lessons I learned. Yours may be completely different.
Somewhere outside the business to think.
My experience gives me a connection to this territory. It does not mean your answers should be the same as mine.
Coaching is not business consultancy, and I’m not here to tell you how to run, grow or reshape your company.
Sometimes it helps to have someone outside the business with whom you can think while you are still in the middle of finding your own answers.
A conversation first
You don't need to have the business figured out before we talk.
A conversation with Stefan. Just somewhere to begin saying what you are carrying and hear yourself think.
An unhurried twenty-minute conversation. Nothing needs to be decided.