Brooke is BACK on The Founder Hotline, Yee-Haw! She asked what strategy actually is, why I picked it as my thing, and how a plan that makes sense on paper falls apart the moment it touches a team.

We got into:

• Why strategy is the most abused word in business

• The efficient engine hitting the gas pedal in neutral

• Why knowing what to do doesn’t mean you’ll do it

• The moment I realized my superpower isn’t the plan. It’s finding the one thing in the way of the plan.

• The line Brooke dropped that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: “have to vs want to”

Somewhere in your company, “want to” quietly turned into “have to.” This episode is about what that costs.

Listen on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

His answer: “Me and ChatGPT are working on that.”

That’s where this episode starts.

Brooke Sherwood joins The Founder Hotline for the first time. We met at a retreat in Germany, and we haven’t stopped arguing about AI since.

This one gets into: why building with AI feels like progress but isn’t. The ADHD trap of instant dopamine through shipping things nobody asked for. What happens when AI takes all the easy work and your entire day becomes hard decisions. And why I stopped going to AI first and started calling my co-founder Dennis instead.

The deal at the end: next time you want to prompt a decision, call someone instead.

Links:

• Join the Scan invite list → thescan.kommodoor.be

• Subscribe to The Founder’s Brief

• Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rubendhooghe

I can start a 10km run, and around 5km I’ll think: “why not just quit now?” I like to call that my little ADHD voice. The one that needs novelty.As soon as that novelty is gone, I want something else. As soon as I’ve told everyone about my challenge, the novelty is gone.

So when no one is around to applaud what I’m doing, does it even matter? That question is why I started doing 75 Hard.

The rules

For 75 days straight, you will:

• Workout twice a day, for at least 45 minutes. One of them has to be outside.

• Drink a gallon of water.

• Follow a strict diet of your own choice, that aligns with your goals.

• Read 10 pages in a book.

• Take a progress picture.

Miss one? Day 1. Back to zero, the very beginning. These rules are set in stone. But the hard part is what’s NOT in the rules. You can’t drink alcohol. Why? Because that’s doing the hard thing. You won’t stay up past your bedtime. Why? Because that’s doing the hard thing.

And this challenge starts easy. It’s easy to show up for yourself in the beginning. But after a while, it gets tough. Because no one understands why you do this. And after a while, you start looking for a break. You want to release, you want to do easy stuff.

The negotiation table

Here’s what happens at 6am on a treadmill when you have ADHD and 10km ahead of you. Your brain cannot hold “10km” as a concept. It’s too far. Too boring. So it starts negotiating.

- “5km is good enough, right?”
- “This is really going to take a while.”
- “We’re only at 5 minutes?!”

Every fiber wants to quit. Negotiation table: left corner, myself. Right corner, also myself. So I start doing fraction math. I’m at 1/8 of the distance. How many minutes is 1/8? Ok. I’ll run to the next 1/8. Nothing more than that. Then the next one. And the next. And eventually, numb from calculating, I hit 10km before I realize it.

If you run a company, you know this voice. It’s the same negotiation. The annual plan is too big. The hard conversation keeps getting pushed. The price increase you’ve been “thinking about” since Q1 is still sitting there in Q3. Your brain isn’t resisting because it’s hard. It’s resisting because it’s boring, uncomfortable, and there’s always something more urgent to hide behind.

Contrast over balance

I’m not looking for big lessons with 75 Hard. But I am looking to toughen my mind. To teach myself that quitting this challenge means quitting is always an option. And to teach myself that consistency will ALWAYS outperform discipline.

This challenge, for me, is doing the boring stuff consistently. But there’s another reason I keep coming back to it: balance. I’m very bad at it. And that usually goes in my favor. I’m a hell yeah or hell no type of person. Either all in or all out. That also means I can get very strict with myself. It starts small, by not going out for a drink to catch that workout. Then it turns into not doing anything, out of fear to miss any workout.

And then the other side of the coin: one evening of “having fun” turns into a summer of taking it easy. Of being nice to myself, and not putting in the work needed to grow. And then I end up missing the goals I’ve set for myself. But that feels fine, because “I can take it easy sometimes.”

Balance feels like a fast-clicking metronome. Stressed out because it always needs to tick in the middle. That uses up a LOT of mental energy. I’ve chosen contrast over balance. Bigger swings. More time on each side. But the average of the swinging is still the middle.

Three months of Spartan living. Then comes release. A month of taking it easier. Not too easy, but easier. Want to have a drink with friends? Go ahead, and enjoy it fully. Want to go out for a dance? Go ahead, and do it well.

This doesn’t mean I’ll have a month of binging. But it means I can enjoy the contrast. Do a lot of the hard stuff. Then do a lot of the easy stuff. It’s easier on the decision-making, and the net effect is the same.

Why this matters if you run a company

Founders live on that stressed-out metronome. Every single day, trying to be strategic AND operational AND available AND focused AND delegating AND doing. The balance myth says you should be all of those things, evenly, all the time.

That’s not balance. That’s a slow burnout with good PR.

The founders I work with who are actually thriving? They do contrast. Sprint periods where they’re deep in one thing. Then recovery. Then a different sprint. They don’t try to be a balanced leader every Tuesday. They’re fully in the room when they’re in the room, and fully out when they’re out.

The 75 Hard version: you don’t negotiate with the workout. It happens. Then it’s done. You don’t negotiate with the diet. It’s decided. The decision was made on day 1, and every day after that is just execution.

The founder version: the hard conversation isn’t something you “find the right moment” for. It’s in the calendar. The price increase isn’t something you “think about.” It’s decided, communicated, done. The system beats the person. Every time.

Shared suffering

I’m nearing the end of my current 75 Hard. And what sticks with me most is the joy of shared suffering.

I took on this challenge with a friend who also wanted to challenge themselves. And the shared suffering, but also the shared wins, made this challenge 10 times more fun.

I’m one week out for a sports competition. The going is really tough right now. I’m longing for a break, for the ability to “not show up for once.” But I’m also looking forward to the next one.

The next round

Starting May 1st. 75 days of making the hard decisions again. Daily workouts. Meal prep. Managing my time to do the things that matter.

And I want to do it with others this time. With likeminded people.

If you’re a founder, someone who runs a company and recognizes that negotiation voice, let me know. I’ll create a WhatsApp group. I don’t want to build a community, a product or a program. I just want to create a place to share the wins and the daily suffering. To reach out when making the right decision feels impossible.

Let’s suffer together. Let’s show up for ourselves.
DM me if you want in.

PS: And it feels weird having to say this: this is not a product, or a service. This is free.

This episode is about the thought every founder has but won’t say out loud. “They just don’t get it. They’re not as good as I am.” And what’s actually behind that thought.

Why you delegate your process instead of the outcome. Why you rewrote their email before they sent it. And why the real fear isn’t that they’ll mess it up. It’s that they’ll do it differently. And it’ll work.

Also: four years of going to the gym with no results, why being busy is your favorite trophy, and a little ADHD tangent because that’s how my brain works.

Links:

• Join the Scan invite list → thescan.kommodoor.be

• Subscribe to The Founder’s Brief

• Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rubendhooghe

Last week I spent five days at Area X, a creative retreat organized by Jonathan Courtney in the German countryside. No phones. No laptops. 20 strangers. Just play.

In this episode:

• Why I went to a creativity retreat (and what it did to me)

• Laura’s compliment that wrecked me: “because you were so fully yourself, I felt safe enough to be myself too”

• The volume button: why founders keep dimming themselves

• The athlete story: have you ever seen a football player train like a cyclist?

• The handler concept: why every founder needs someone in their earbud

• Why I’m switching everything to English

Links:

• Join the Scan invite list → thescan.kommodoor.be

• Connect on LinkedIn

Why the person who built the company is usually the one holding it back.

You built this thing from nothing.

Late nights. Weekend work. Every decision running through you because (let's be honest) nobody else was going to make them. You were the salesperson, the strategist, the firefighter, the HR department. You were the whole damn machine.

And it worked. For a while.

But now you're sitting at the head of a company that's growing, and something feels off. Not dramatically off. Not falling-apart off. Just stuck.

Here's what I hear from founders, almost word for word:

"It feels like the company is growing around me. Over me. And I'm just staying in place."

I’ve seen a lot of so-called coaches coin catchy terms for this. But this is the founder bottleneck.

What it actually looks like

It looks like this: you're the decision maker for everything. You have a competent team, but you’ve never created a system where that team doesn’t need you.

Every question routes through you. An escalation lands on your desk. Every client conversation, every hire, every strategy pivot, it’s all on you.

One founder told me: "Almost all the logical thinking time I have, I'm investing in just keeping the lights on."

Read that again. All of his brainpower. Just keeping things running. Not building. Not leading. Not thinking about where this thing is going. Just the maintenance.

Another one: "I kept a company alive for a week. But what did I build? The answer to that is sometimes genuinely embarrassing."

That's the bottleneck. You're so busy being the engine that you forgot you were supposed to be the driver.

The trap nobody talks about

Here's the part that stings.

Most founders I work with are working 60-70 hour weeks. Some more. They're exhausted. Their bodies are giving out: headaches, sleep problems, the whole package. One founder flat out said: "My body is giving up on me."

And the cruel irony? Working harder is making it worse. Not better. Worse.

Every hour you spend inside the machine is an hour you're not spending on the thing that actually matters: figuring out where this company needs to go.

"I never have time to stop and think about it. Because something always needs to happen. So we're just running behind the facts."

Running behind the facts. That's the perfect description of what it feels like to be a founder who's become their own bottleneck. You're not leading. You're reacting. All day. Every day.

Why you can't think your way out of this

Here's what makes this tricky.

You know you're the bottleneck. Every founder I've ever worked with knows this. It's not a secret. It's not a revelation.

One of them said it perfectly: "I know exactly what I need to do. But it just doesn't happen."

The gap between knowing and doing: that's where founders live. And no amount of strategic workshops, planning sessions, or OKR frameworks is going to close that gap. Because the gap isn't about knowledge. It's about something deeper.

It's about the fact that your identity is wired to being the person who handles everything. You built this company by being indispensable. And now indispensability is the cage.

You can't delegate because you've never trusted anyone to care as much as you do. You can't step back because the last time you stepped back, things fell apart. You can't hire your replacement because (let’s be honest) you don't even know what your actual job is anymore.

The question that changes things

When I sit with founders, there's one question that usually cracks things open:

"If you had ten million euros in the bank tomorrow, what would you change about how this company runs?"

The answers are always revealing. Because they're obvious.

"I'd find someone who can take over the things I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing. So I can go back to doing what I'm actually good at."

They already know. They've always known.

The bottleneck isn't about the company. It's about you. It's about what you're holding onto, why you're holding onto it, and what it would take for you to let go.

What actually helps

I'm not going to give you a five-step framework. That's not how this works.

But I'll tell you what I've seen work, across dozens of founders in the same spot:

Start with what's actually going on. Not what's going on in the spreadsheet. What's going on in the room. Between you and your co-founder. Between you and your team. The things nobody's saying out loud. The tension everybody feels but nobody names.

Because here's the thing I've learned: every system you try to implement: EOS, Scaling Up, OKRs, whatever; will fail if the relational foundation isn't there. The system isn't the problem. The fact that nobody feels safe enough to tell the truth? That's the problem.

Safety first. Then truth. Then direction.

In that order.

The real shift

The founder bottleneck isn't solved by working smarter, hiring better, or reading another business book.

It's solved by confronting something uncomfortable: the company you built needs a different version of you than the one who built it.

The builder needs to become the leader. And that's not an upgrade, it's a completely different job. Different skills. Different rhythms. Different relationship with control.

Most founders resist this. Not because they don't understand it intellectually. But because letting go of what made them successful feels like letting go of who they are.

It's not. It's becoming who you need to be.

But nobody said that was easy.

I'm Ruben D’Hooghe. I work with founders who are stuck, usually because they're the reason they're stuck. I don't coach. I facilitate. I get in the room, dive into the chaos, and help people see what they already know but can't say out loud.

If any of this sounded familiar, you're not alone. And you're not broken. You're just in a phase that requires something different from you.

More on that in the next piece.

Ik heb lang getwijfeld of ik dit zou doen. Maar als ADHD het operating system is van hoe ik denk, werk en onderneem; dan kan ik er niet omheen.

In deze episode:

• Waarom ADHD geen superpower is. En ook geen stoornis. Het is een gegeven, en het is jouw job om ermee om te gaan.

• Het Formule 1-brein: keihard gas geven, maar met fietsremmen proberen te stoppen. Spoiler: dat werkt niet.

• Waarom je ook gewoon een fucking kamerplant bent. Slaap, beweging, voeding — 80% van je functioneren zit daar.

• Mijn tocht met medicatie: van Rilatine die mijn spark uitzette tot lisdexamfetamine die mijn dag teruggaf.

• De kernreactor in je hoofd: waarom emotieregulatie de controlestaaf is die je nodig hebt.

Ook: waarom “ik ben een nachtmens” waarschijnlijk bullshit is. En waarom je slechtste dagen eigenlijk je pitstops zijn.

Links:

• Ted-Talk Aisha Cortoos over slaap

Schalen is niet slecht. Maar niemand weet precies wat ‘t betekent.
Ze willen groeien, en da’s iets volledig anders.

In deze aflevering:

• Het échte verschil tussen groeien en schalen (hint: input & output)

• Waarom een servicebedrijf niet schaalt zoals een SaaS bedrijf

• De twee mogelijkheden: capacity first vs revenue first (en de kost van de keuze)

• Waarom de meeste bedrijven pas groeien als’t al pijn doet

Plus: waarom lezen als onderdeel van 75-hard mij geen windeieren legt.

Ik ben benieuwd wat ‘t groeidoel is van uw bedrijf dit jaar. Stuur ‘t mij via Substack of in de comments. (www.focushotline.be)

En hun founder?
Gas aan’t geven gelijk op Francorchamps.

Mismatch.

In deze episode:

• Wartime vs Peacetime - welke ben jij?

• Waarom peacetime tactieken niet werken in wartime (en vice versa)

• Het gevaar van te lang in eerste versnelling blijven

• Hoe je weet wat je business NU nodig heeft

Ook: ik ben een slechte peacetime CEO.

Geen idee welk van de twee jij zelf bent: boek een diagnose. We kaarten het uit.

Ik zou morgen een AI-marketing boite kunnen starten en binnen de drie maand een half miljoen omzet draaien. De markt schreeuwt erom, en ik kan het, en ‘t zou financieel een mega logische zet zijn. En toch kies ik ervoor om dat absoluut niet te doen.

Nog beter, ik gooi mijn ganse strategie voor 2026 om naar iets dat op papier echt nergens op slaat. Luister even, voordat je denkt dat’k zot ben geworden. (am I?)

In deze aflevering denk ik luidop na over:

• waarom forceren mij verder van mijn werk bracht

• hoe bouwen soms een manier is om niet te moeten vertrouwen

• en waarom spreken (zonder plan) mij telkens terug in mijn zone brengt

Geen gast deze keer, structuur was er ook niet bij.
Gewoon even op zoek naar ‘t gevoel waar mijn werk ontstaat.

• Een ondernemer die vastzit in formats, variatie, en geen lijn ziet in haar werkweek.

• Hoe je van “ik doe 20 dingen” gaat naar “dit zijn mijn drie tredes”

• Waarom je geen rust krijgt zonder plan

• En het moment waarop alles helder werd:

“Ik wil vooral mijn bereik vergroten én één creatieve dag per week terugwinnen.”

Eén gesprek kan je kompas resetten. Één vraag kan je richting veranderen. Één plan kan je chaos kalmeren.

Voelt voor mij als thuiskomen. Want dit doe ik ‘t liefste. Dit is mijn eigen zone of genius.

Luister mee, of herken jezelf in de poppetjes die allemaal iets anders van je willen.

Ciao,
Ruben

In deze aflevering:
– Hoe ik de laatste weken mijn nagels kapotbeet en mijn ogen uit heb gebleit.
– Waarom goed bezig zijn niet hetzelfde is als goed gaan.
– En hoe één gesprek mijn vuurtje weer in gang stak.

Misschien mijn meest chaotische én heldere aflevering tegelijk.
(Nuja… tot binnen twee weken toch.)

Luister mee (of voel, en herken uzelf).

Ciao!
Ruben

PS: Jij mee in die Zone of Genius Jam?
👉 https://tally.so/r/w4eDlY

• You’re probably not a founder, but the operator

• I share what I learned from Jonathan Courtney, about promoting vs operating (and how it changed my business)

• And some reflection on what type of founder I want to be

First time ever I heard my own voice while recording. And yes, I did an hour of ASMR jokes right after finishing this recording.

• A story on what made me feel lonely in the past, and how I realized neglecting my feelings was the biggest reason.

• On how being a very practical man leaves me no time to connect with other people, and how I plan on reconnecting.

• But mostly, a very unstructured and unfocused me, wandering through my thoughts on practicality versus loneliness.

The one thing that I would want myself to take away from this pod: be less practical, be less strict on yourself. Loneliness comes from disconnecting with yourself first.

Cheers!

Ruben

• Wat er kapot is aan reclame en wat misschien wél kan werken

• Psychologie achter beïnvloeden in communities en waarom influencers iets raars is

• Een volledig sidetrack over design sprint into validatie into innovatie

En een héél klein deeltje over ‘t waarom van deze podcast.

Szia 🤟
Ruben

PS je kan reageren op www.ongefocusteleider.be, ik lees alles.