How Self-Managing Organizations Unlock 8-Figure Growth — Leon Van Der Laan | Why Founders Burn Out, Why Delegation Fails Without Structure, What Team Ownership Looks Like, How Mission Clarity Boosts Autonomy, How Self-man

How Self-Managing Organizations Unlock 8-Figure Growth — Leon Van Der Laan | Why Founders Burn Out, Why Delegation Fails Without Structure, What Team Ownership Looks Like, How Mission Clarity Boosts Speaker 3: This episode is sponsored by Ahrefs, the all-in-one marketing intelligence platform trusted by SEO professionals, content creators, and digital marketers around the world. Whether you're doing keyword research, checking backlinks, or analyzing competitors, Ahrefs gives you the tools to make smarter marketing decisions. Explore what Ahrefs can do at Ahrefs.com. Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to talk about growth. Growing an e-commerce brand is tough. Many founders switch grown out, feel stuck, running everything themselves. What is the secret to growth and what can you do about it? So today, we're diving into self-managing organizations to understand how they really work and how they can be the missing link to scaling a brand to eight figures and more. Joining me today is Leon Van Der Laan. He's a seasoned leader with over 25 years of experience in management and organizational growth. He began his career with 17 at H&M, eventually rising to C-level roles and overseeing teams up to 3,500 people. As a former CFO managing about 200 million euros on e-commerce budget and now as a coach and consultant, he has helped 30-plus founders with his remote framework and we want to learn more about this. So, let's welcome him to the show. Hi, Leon. How are you today? Speaker 2: Hi, Claus. I'm great. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: Let's start simple. How would you define a self-managing organization? Speaker 2: An organization that's not depending on the involvement of the founder. Speaker 1: Okay, so and how does that help with growth? Speaker 2: Well, let's start with the beginning, right? An e-commerce brand is, as we know, e-commerce is a very competitive environment. And I would say also the e-commerce founders are a particular type of entrepreneurs. They all have in common They enjoy the hustle. They're very competitive. They're very much achievers. They're very driven people, at least in my experience. And this is great. I call it the beast mode, right? So every brand out there that's successful right now went through this beast mode episode. So zero to 10 people, the first seven figures in revenue, it was just all hustle motors. Those founders are usually, well, they're not always very seasoned. They're usually younger people, and they don't have necessarily the experience of running a larger organization. So what they see happening is that they continue with these modes. Well into the eight figures, micromanaging a team of 50 people, yeah, doing a lot of revenue, but working themselves to death and being pretty much the bottleneck and the operator in their own organization. And that's not a sustainable recipe for the future. So when I come in, in the clients' organizations, My goal is to get the founder out of the organization and turn him into a leader of his organization so that his team and his people has the right direction, the right workflows, clarity, autonomy to go after the goals by themselves. And the founder can step back. And do what they are good at, and that's being the entrepreneur. Speaker 1: I can relate to that. And I know that a lot of listeners and also a lot of my friends have been in this situation. Some are still in this situation. And it's exciting it is to start a company and being in this mode because actually it's fun. It's stressful, but it's fun. Stepping back and reorganizing, and that's my experience with a lot of people that I spoke to, is a very, very complex and difficult process. So where do you start? Speaker 2: It all starts with clarity. So if we have real long-term clarity forward, so we're not just scaling what works, but we're scaling with purpose, the founder already gets peace of mind. Why? Because not knowing what the future will bring activates fear. Fear activates, let's work harder and more because then we will manage to keep up. But that's not a sustainable recipe, right? So we need to start building clarity towards the future. Who are we as a company? Not anymore as like a transactional I would say dropshipping-based e-commerce company, but we're becoming a brand. That means we need to build a company around the brand, right? What's the long-term vision? Why do we do this? Who are we? What do we want to achieve? And we translate that into mission vision values. There's a reason why all Fortune 500 companies have mission vision values. And they say, yeah, but that's very corporate. I hear a lot, right? Yeah, we're not a corporate. We want to stay startup-y. Yeah, but every Fortune 500 company one day was a startup. Facebook was a startup, right? Sure, they didn't have mission vision values at that stage because it wasn't important. You don't need mission vision values from zero to ten people because it's all about hustle, beast mode, getting things done fast, being faster than competition. But you scale to a certain glass ceiling that way. And then founders lack the clarity. How are we going to move forward? And that is where it all starts. What are we going to try to achieve as an organization? Not anymore just my ambition as a founder, which is my ambition, which is good, okay, but what is the organization going to do? Why should it matter for them what we're going after? Speaker 1: I think clarity is very, very important, but I think the first step for me would be finding the right timing, basically knowing it's like, oh, now it's enough because a lot of founders run into burnouts and all this, everything that comes with this. And that's a very scary situation, not only for the founder, but also for the business. How do you determine or at what point do your clients come to you? When do they find out now it's the right point to get help? Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. And even though I have outliers of brands that come to me when they're doing already like 35 million or so, and I've had brands that come to me that do only 5 million, right, which is in the e-commerce world not that much. It's like almost product market fit. I would say the sweet spot lies around what I see the most happening is around 10 million ARR and around 10, 15 people in the team. Because that's when complexity really kicks in, right? If you're two people, two founders, you have one communication line. When you have four people, you already have six communication lines. At 10 people, this is 45 communication lines. So this grows exponentially, and that's why founders get smacked in the face almost. Why did everything work until three months ago, and now everything seems to be collapsing? It's because they have not been adjusting fast enough to that increasing organizational complexity. And that's at around 10-15 people mark, around 10 million in ARR. Speaker 1: Now, with this change, founders stepping back, concentrating on other things, a huge mind shift needs to happen also with the team because you managed micromanaging in the beginning and that has to do a lot with how you handle people and how the decision-making processes are flowing and so on and so forth. What's your experience and what's your approach to handling or doing this mind shift change not only in the founder but also in the team? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that the mindset shift needs to happen around what delegation is about. Because in the early stage of an organization, delegation is basically making sure that the tasks are offloaded to people who get it done ASAP, right? But the real delegation in a larger organization is not anymore about offloading tasks because that's very transactional, right? You deliver a task, I pay you for the task or you achieve a certain performance, you'll get a bonus for the performance you're doing. Very transactional. We need to shift from being transactional to being more purpose-driven and delegation is the key tool there. Because the real delegation is about raising ownership, creating ownership. Well, the early days, it was about offloading tasks. And I see that that's where founders need to make a mindset shift. I'm not here just to get things done. I'm here to get people to feel ownership in what they do. And that is like foundation of the self-managing aspect is when people feel ownership about something because they are involved, their opinion matters, they get the tools and resources needed to be successful, then they raise autonomy. And autonomy is the main ingredient of a self-managing organization. So I would say that that's the most important – there's one of the important mindsets shift. There are more. As a founder of e-commerce brand, I am driving the results. But when I have to become a leader of my organization, I need to build the environment in which the results are being driven. So that's a shift. Instead of me driving the results, and I see this in all my e-commerce clients, they are the ones who drive the results and are after people. But that's only scalable to a certain glass ceiling, and that's where the shift needs to come. I need to build a culture, an environment with leaders in place where those results that I want to see are coming out of. And that's the other shift that needs to happen in the founders. Speaker 1: For our listeners, rewind, listen to this twice. I think this is such an important aspect that you mentioned there. And that's very difficult specifically for first-time founders to get the idea right there. Now, I think fear, losing out on control might be something that holds them back. In your framework, how do you deal with this? How do you sort of coach your founder client to get into the right direction? Speaker 2: I have two trajects simultaneously, parallel to each other. One is the remote framework, which is helping founders get into a logic mode of thinking where you break down an inspiring purpose into a daily task. That is the consulting side of what I do. On the coaching side of things, I go one-on-one with the founder and teach him delegation framework. Why do you have fear of letting go of control? It's the same like, why is it scary to drive a car when you don't have a driver's license? Because you don't know how. It's just super scary to drive a car not knowing how it works. The gear shifter, the brake, it all creates fear and it's like, okay, I'd rather not drive. This thing is delegation. If you don't know how to let go in such a way that you still get what you need, then you would rather do it yourself. There are three reasons why people don't delegate. One, control. I don't trust others that they do it in the way I want. Two, perfectionism. I can do it better and faster. And three, they don't understand what's expected from them. Lack of clarity. But all three are related back to the founder. So I coach them on this to give them a framework and delegation based on four levels, four styles of delegation. It's not just one style. There are four styles of delegation. And every person in the organization needs a tailored delegation style because they're all on different development levels. One has a higher competence, one has a lower competence, the other one is more committed, the other one is less committed, and you need to adjust your delegation style towards them. And what I see with my clients, when they get that concept, letting go becomes a lot easier for them because they feel like they have a driver's license and they know how to operate the car. Speaker 3: Let's take a moment to thank Ahrefs for their free web analytics tool, a free privacy-first analytics platform. It gives you a clear picture of your website activity, doesn't use cookies and won't weight down your pages. It's incredible fast, easy to set up and built by the same team behind one of the most trusted SEO tools in the world. Best of all, it's completely free and included in Ahrefs' webmaster tools plan. Head over to ahrefs.com slash awt to sign up. You will find the link also in the show notes. Speaker 1: Delegation is very, very difficult. I've been through this process and delegating, and I noticed from a lot of startup friends that I have, same problem. Letting go, that's probably the most difficult part of this whole process. Now, when a founder is ready to start working with you, is there any kind of homework they need to do before they get started or how does it work? Talk me through it. Speaker 2: No, the homework will happen throughout the process. So, I guide them in workshops and in one-on-one coaching sessions on what we are building step-by-step. It's a whole process worked out over 12 weeks where we start basically with the beginning. Why do we exist? Mission, vision, values. Then we go into what I call BIG, big goals, bold, inspiring, guiding goals. Which are four goals over four different categories and goals should be frames because people don't respond to facts, people respond to frames. That's why speeches from presidents all over the world are rehearsed and written out up front because they are frames. That's what people respond to. So goals should be frames too. Large, super ambitious, smart goals don't work very well in an organization. They work for you as a person maybe, but not in organizations. So, we set goals, then we move to objectives and key results, then we build a RACI matrix where we divide accountability and responsibility really clearly over the organization, and we're going to also look into what are the organizational KPIs that are important for us, what defines success for us as a company as a whole. And that's like a foundation, right? That's the basis of every organization. What do we want to achieve? Why we don't want to achieve that? How are we going to do that? Who do we need to get there, right? So that's what every organization should be able to answer. And then parallel to that, I coach the person on the leader mind. It's literally called leader mind coaching because Leaders are not born. Leaders are not grown. Leaders are awakened. Everybody has a leader in them, but it needs to be shaken up, like wake up. And in the one-on-one coaching, this is what I help them, overcoming limiting beliefs that they have as a founder that prevents them from becoming a leader. And parallel to the remote framework, this helps to initiate the transformation. Speaker 1: I want to touch back on the beast mode, being in startup mode, working 24 hours, 70 days, following your dream, following your idea, growing your brand, and then you're growing to six, seven figures, and your goal is eight, nine figures. It's a little bit, again, on the topic of timing. When your founder is ready, they might have excuses. They might say, I don't know how to work on this. What's their time investment? You said it's a 12-week program. How much time do they set apart? Are there any changes between someone who's in his early 20s, first startup, and somebody who is probably something older, coming from a corporate career and starting as a business? Speaker 2: The time investment is around five to six hours per week. So the question is, what will it cost not to invest in this time? It is, compared to what you get back, stepping out of the organization and having 80%, 90% of your time available to work on long-term vision, long-term connections, long-term goals without, of course, losing track of the day-to-day operation. I had today a session with a client who said, like, I've been on the helicopter motors now for a few weeks, but things started to break on the ground. And he felt a little bit bad that he had to go down there and go in that department and fix stuff to get the performance back up. And I said, congratulations. This is amazing that you're able to do that. Because three months ago, four months ago, you were not able to do that. You wouldn't be able to jump from here to there and fix stuff. But now, because you're out of the organization, you can land your helicopter wherever you want and wherever it's necessary. And once things are fixed and back rolling again, you take off again and you see the whole battlefield. You see the whole play field in front of you. So, this is what you get. So, you get from 16-hour days – you can still work 16-hour days, but you don't have to keep the organization running. You can do it to brainstorm about your future, hire key A players, build connections, and not having to – I had this client this week, potential client who considers to work with me right now. I said, so if you would step out of your business, what would break or nothing would break? Okay. But if you would step out of your business for two weeks, then everything would break. So if you have to step out of your organization and things start to break, that's where you need to work on your leadership, on structuring your organization, intrinsic motivation on the team. This is your signal. You can't step out of your organization if that starts with you. The reason you can't step out of your organization is you. Speaker 1: No, totally. And if you have a long-term goal, an exit strategy, build to sell, I think is the key word there. And then you need to build a business that will run without you. And I've been in my professional career, plenty of stages where me or my business partners were in that situation. And so what's your take on this? And what like a practical thing is, what's your take on not only managing and delegating, but also physically stepping away? So not being in the office, working remote, and what's your take on that? Speaker 2: All my clients are remote, by the way, so I haven't worked with a single e-commerce brand that has an office. So stepping physically away hasn't been specifically an issue. What I do see in clients is that they feel a little bit guilty in the beginning, like, okay, I'm lying on the beach while my organization is working. Yeah, but I always take this analogy. Look, the fact that you're 10 plus million or even mid-age figures, that says something about you. You are a business athlete, okay? You're an Olympic business athlete because that's the level you're playing at. What do all athletes have in common? Well, they're very disciplined. They're very consistent in their trainings. They train really hard when they train. But what do they also? They recover really well. They are really good at recovery. Why? The better I recover today, the higher chance I have on a peak performance tomorrow. And the more peak performances I stack on top of each other, the higher chance I have to winning the gold Olympic medal, right? So that is the mindset that I think most of the founders that I work with have benefited so much from because they realize like if I'm on the beach with my notebook, That's growth for my business because tomorrow I show up actually a lot more energized, excited, sharp to get going and do the things that actually move the needle rather than just spinning the wheel. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think for a lot of starters, it's like working from a beach. That's like the glorious version. It's like that should be the outcome. Then when they're coming closer, they feel guilty of actually working from the beach. It's kind of a conundrum there. Who's your perfect customer? What kind of brands do you work with? Speaker 2: Well, DTC, brands, not dropshipping, although I have a client right now who is in the dropshipping mainly, but moving towards a brand. Because a dropshipping business, I believe the nature of a dropshipping business is to be very transactional in the beginning, right? So it's brand, DTC, around 10, 15 people in the team, younger founders. The oldest founders I worked with were probably like 35. Because I think that you, Claus, you have seen the problems in an organization. And even though it would be good to have a sparring partner for more senior people like yourself, I think I add the most value to the younger generation. So I'm super personally driven. By being a person for them that I would have loved to have when I was in my early leadership career. At age 23, I was running a warehouse of 250 people for H&M, being a logistic director, and I made so many mistakes. You can't imagine, painful mistakes, and I paid it with burnouts, like severe burnouts. I just love to be that person for them and to just help them prevent those burnouts and just feel excited about their business. I think it's also because cultivating leaders like that is in the end also contributing to the greater good because all the people in all the organizations I've worked with now in the past six, seven years that are probably hundreds and hundreds of people, they all feel a little bit more fulfilled. They all feel a little bit more motivated, more engaged. Because they work in an organization that understands leadership and that really cares about people in the organization. And that really drives me. That's really what makes me continue to want to do this. Speaker 1: I think the notion of giving back and I can completely agree with that. Joining you on this thought is very, very important. When I started in 2001, it was a SaaS business. We were lucky to have a business partner, well, not a business partner, a business angel who was helping us more with his experience and expertise than with his money. And that helped us, as you said. I probably also have done every mistake in the book. White hair, you know, where it comes from, burnout, yeah, LOL, old friends, so I know all of this. But to a certain degree, you can avoid this when you have the right person helping you, coaching you through the process and helping you in preventing making stupid mistakes because other people have been there, so you don't necessarily need to make every mistake in the book. Tell me about the onboarding process and tell me how much it is to work with you. Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's very bespoke because not every organization is created the same, but everything starts with an audit. So I've developed this audit, which is like two times 19 minutes deep questioning session with me on a call together with the founders team. You can add your senior manager there if you like as well. And it's like 36 statements that we walk through one by one. We give a score from 1 to 10 as a founder. And this is where we understand where's misalignment between the founders, what's well-developed in the organization, what needs focus. I'm looking for flow and I'm looking for friction. And then there's a dashboard. You can see very clearly in graphs where we see friction in the organization and where we see flow. And then based on that, I tailor our program. And with an amount of sessions and with the pieces of the remote framework, what's most important, where we start with, where we follow up with, and then it's usually three to six months. So the remote framework in itself is like three months length. That's two times per week a workshop with me one-on-one. And that's also with one time per week, a one-on-one coaching session. So you're basically as a founder, twice per week, three times per week on a call with me. It's really intense, but really transformative. After these three months, you do not recognize yourself and your organization back. But that's like the first phase. And then it's really deeply embedding it into the organization. And I call it remote mastery, becoming masters at it. And that's another three months where we scale down a little bit to speed and intensity, but go really into tackling all the challenges and the friction that comes out of the organization. You know, implementation of the ClickUp workflows that we have built together, because that's what I also do. I mainly work with ClickUp. I have a ClickUp pro in my team who helps my clients to build out an awesome high-performance workspace in ClickUp. Everybody, you know, is held accountable. Yeah, so in the three months, we really make sure that everyone in the organization gets that. And then with some clients, even after those six months, we continue on the next leadership level. That's where I start to coach, let's say, the middle management, the head of media buying, or the head of creative, right? I also coach them then one-on-one, which is like the next level. And that leads me to have some clients with whom I've been working for two years even. Because the company keeps growing. One client, really one of my most interesting clients ever, was actually an agency. I do work also with DTC agencies. They're German actually. You might know them, Ecom House, Daniel Bittman. Yes, I worked with them for two years. Why? Because they were like four people in the beginning. And now they're like an eight-figure, 50-people company. So they have been going through all the stages of organizational and leadership growth. And I was honored to be their guide on all those levels. So if you want a long-term commitment, I'm there as well. Speaker 1: Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there one final thought that you want to leave our listeners with? Speaker 2: Yeah. Every number you're looking at, whether this is revenue, profit, ROAS, mare percentage, you name it, all the numbers there is brains of people behind. So take care of people and the numbers will take care of itself. Speaker 1: Okay. Very good takeaway there. Leon, thanks so much for your time today. Where can people go and find out more about you? Speaker 2: LinkedIn is my go-to, actually, and this is where you can also reach out to me if you want an audit. There are links on there on my page. I'm also on Instagram. It's very hard to find me on Instagram, I guess, but you can also contact me there. Speaker 1: Okay. I will put the links in the show notes as always and you just click away. For our listeners, if you have the feeling you have too many things on your plate, your business is growing, but you hit some kind of limit there, then a coach, a guide will be the right solution for you and then reach out to Leon now. You will have a good communication with him to get your business growing. Thanks so much for your time today. Speaker 2: Thanks, Lars. It was a pleasure. 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