When the show outgrows the lead role

Things get difficult when personal versatility becomes the business model. Then it is about more than ideas, concepts, architecture, or strategy. It is also about invoices, deadlines, commercial structure, priorities, and ongoing responsibility — all the things that rarely look spectacular until they are missing.

When a company depends too heavily on one person, it may still look like a show from the front. Backstage, the scenery is already rattling.

I did not learn that from a startup bible, a pitch deck, or a framework with three English buzzwords and an arrow diagram. I learned it during a period when it became painfully clear that my existing model no longer worked. Too much had been built around me. Too much became difficult as soon as the work touched the areas I only ever dealt with reluctantly.

There were plenty of reasons at the time to scale back and keep our heads down. A lot of people in that situation would probably have tried to break as little as possible and simply get through it.

We did the opposite.

We built a new company, moved to a new location, bought a house, and turned it into a new way of working. This was not some romantic fresh start with a sunrise and a string quartet. It was a pretty pragmatic move. The old setup no longer worked, so we built a better one. This time with roles based on more than hope.

Petra was not a supporting character in this, and she was not the person backstage bringing coffee while someone out front waved around big ideas — although Petra does make very good coffee. She took on exactly the functions without which the new model would never have become stable: commercial structure, organizational grounding, customer contact, and reliability.

A big show depends on having the right people in the right places. On not having every role played by the same person. On one person being strong exactly where someone else regularly drops the ball.

To this day, that remains one of the most important business lessons I have learned. Your own weaknesses stop being private once other people, customers, projects, or larger ventures depend on them. At that point, they become part of the architecture. You can ignore them, downplay them, or drown them out with energy — or you can take them seriously and design roles around them.

I need to know where I am strong. I need to know just as clearly where I regularly mess things up. Only then can I look for people who are steady where I become scattered. People who hold on while my mind is already three rooms ahead and who ask how something is actually going to be implemented, financed, organized, and sustained.

That is exactly why I like the line: if I am the best person in the room, I am in the wrong room.

It can sound arrogant. To me, it means almost the opposite. I am not looking for rooms where everyone nods. I am looking for rooms where other people are better than I am at different things, where disagreement is not treated as disruption, and where complementing each other matters more than ego.

Part of that is because my profile is not especially linear. On a traditional resume, it can look like a moving box that ended up in the wrong room. In practice, it is more like a toolbox. Some of it is specialized equipment, some improvised, and some of it other people never use because they would never think to connect those things in the first place.

I know I am pretty good at making those connections. Probably better than most. I can translate between worlds, see patterns before anyone has properly labeled them, and build a working model out of loose material.

And that is exactly why role clarity matters so much.

The more you can do, the longer you can convince yourself that somehow it will be enough. For a while, it is. Until the whole thing gets bigger and reliability matters more than brilliance at exactly the right moment. Until talent has to become a system.

That was the real point of our restart: rebuilding. The one-man show had to become something that still worked when one person was not simultaneously playing the lead, directing, doing the books, handling technology, sales, dramaturgy, and crisis management.

To me, that is still the core of being a founder: recognizing what system needs to be built, which roles are missing, which people are stronger in those roles, and how to bring them together.

I can do a lot of things. Some of them considerably better than most people.

The better show still does not emerge when one person simply takes on one more role. It emerges when the cast is right.