Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing my experiences as an entrepreneur here every Friday.
When I founded the company more than 20 years ago, I had one goal:
to build something that lasts, with a team I can trust and
clients I work with as equals.
So we scaled. Out of Munich and across the DACH region.
More mandates, more visibility and, of course, a lot more responsibility.
For a few years, everything went to plan. I was proud. We were established. Processes ran smoothly, I had a good team of 30 people, and I was often on the road: London, Zurich, Frankfurt.
From the outside, a solid success story.
But inside, I realised that this was exactly what no longer fulfilled me.
I was no longer as free in my decisions. There was more and more coordination and less and less conversation, more structure and less room to shape things. I was no longer close enough to revenue, to my clients and candidates. I spent more time managing than doing what I’m really good at and enjoy.
I still remember sitting on the terrace with my partners on a mild summer evening in 2015, glass of wine in hand, asking ourselves:
do we want to carry on like this?
Or do we want to get closer again, to people, to the topics, to the actual business?
We realised we had drifted too far from our entrepreneurial core.
So we made a decision, out of entrepreneurial clarity.
We wanted to steer things ourselves again: not just administer structures, but take responsibility where it really matters.
So we deliberately scaled back. Less complexity, more freedom.
A smaller team, more personal responsibility. Fewer processes, more closeness.
An environment that makes entrepreneurship possible again, even on a small scale.
Today we work directly with our clients again. We listen and support them ourselves.
And for me, that’s exactly what makes the difference.
When I talk to young entrepreneurs today, I tell them:
scaling isn’t compulsory. Ask yourself early on: what’s it all for?
Especially when something changes, in the business or in your own life, these questions become central:
does the model still suit you? And what life do you really want to live?
