I went to a Miami coffee shop on Monday with one goal, product ideation for the next chapter of Extenteam. I wanted to think about the big picture, about where we’re heading in this rapidly shifting AI landscape. No meetings. No Slack. Just strategic work.

Within an hour, I was managing website issues and trying to keep a fast-moving team member motivated while explaining why QA matters before production deployment.

I was back in the office. Putting out fires. Exactly what I’d tried to escape.

The Time-Hack Hypothesis

That’s when the idea hit me. What if I just left? Not metaphorically. Physically.

If I flew to Europe, I’d have an entire workday where the US team was asleep. No messages. No Slack notifications. No self created emergencies that only I could handle. A forced buffer created by time zones rather than willpower.

I booked a mileage ticket that night. Seventy-two hours later, I’m writing this from a train between Paris and Andermatt, Switzerland.

The hypothesis worked.

What Actually Happens When You Slow Down

We talk about ambitious growth goals constantly at Extenteam. I push our team to hit or exceed targets. ARR matters. Gross Revenue Retention matters. Financial metrics drive decisions.

But I spent the last few days in Paris doing something different. Having deep, authentic conversations with people I value. Walking without checking my phone every three minutes. Sitting in cafés without calculating when the next Zoom call starts.

This is where innovation actually happens.

Not in back-to-back meetings. Not while context-switching between five urgent issues. Not while operating in pure reactive mode.

Innovation requires space. It requires presence. It requires the mental bandwidth to see patterns instead of just responding to the next fire.

The Operational Trap Pattern

Here’s what I’ve observed across hundreds of operators managing distributed teams and complex systems, we confuse motion with progress.

You’re in Slack all day. You’re responding to emails within minutes. You’re available for every question, every decision, every minor crisis. You feel productive because you’re constantly doing something.

But you’re not building. You’re maintaining.

The big picture work -the strategic thinking, the architectural decisions, the product innovation -gets perpetually deferred. Not because you don’t value it. Because the urgent always displaces the important when you remain accessible to the urgent.

The operational trap is thinking you can do both simultaneously. You cannot.

Importing 20% of Europe

One of my new best friends, Claude, told me I should bring 20% of Europe back to the office, back to Miami. Not literally- but the mindset. The walking. The café culture. The slower pace. The focused deep work. The change of scenery that creates creative headspace.

This isn’t about romanticizing European lifestyle over American hustle. It’s about recognizing that different operational modes serve different purposes.

Reactive mode keeps the system running. Reflective mode improves it. You need both. Most operators default to 90% reactive, 10% reflective. That ratio produces incremental optimization, never paradigm shifts.

The Strategic Disconnect

I’m heading to Switzerland for product ideation sessions, then meeting our Lead Engineer in Zurich and Head of Revenue in London, followed by strategic marketing and PR work with our agency.

These meetings matter more than any operational fire I could put out this week. But successful operators know strategic work matters more, they just never create the conditions that make it possible. They wait for a gap in the operational chaos. The gap never comes.

You

have to force the gap into existence.

For me, that meant a transatlantic flight. For you, it might mean blocking three days with no meetings and defending that boundary, working from a location where your team cannot interrupt you, or building systems that reduce your operational necessity.

The specific mechanism matters less than the commitment to creating protected space for strategic work.

The Beginning and The End

You stumble into an opportunity. You recognize a pattern others missed. You happen to have the right skills at the right moment.

The end is mostly choices:

• Do you stay trapped in operational mode because it feels productive? Or create space for strategic work that compounds over time?

• Do you optimize the current system incrementally? Or step back far enough to see the system itself needs replacement?

• Do you remain accessible to every urgent issue? Or build infrastructure that reduces issues requiring your direct intervention?

These choices determine whether you’re still putting out the same fires five years from now, or whether you’ve built something that operates without your constant presence.

What This Means for You

Examine how much of your time operates in reactive mode versus reflective mode.

If you’re spending 90% of your time responding to immediate operational needs, you’re not building the future. You’re maintaining the present.

Maintenance work matters. Systems collapse without it. But maintenance alone never produces transformation.

You need protected time for strategic thinking. Not aspirationally. Not when things calm down. Structurally. Built into your operational rhythm as a non-negotiable requirement.

The alternative is confusing activity with progress while big picture work remains perpetually deferred.

The Real Question

Take care of the big picture and yourself. It’s the same goal.

You cannot do strategic work in constant reactive mode. You cannot see patterns while drowning in tactical execution. You cannot build the future while trapped in the present.

What would it take to create 48 hours of completely protected strategic time in the next two weeks?

If that feels impossible, you’ve identified your real constraint: the operational architecture that makes you indispensable to every decision.

Fix that architecture. Then use the space it creates to build what comes next.

Don’t forget to take care of the big picture, but also yourself.

Remember, the beginning is mostly luck. The end is mostly choices.

It’s been a stressful past two weeks to say the least. I did not expect how much stimuli I get from being on a computer and being back “in the office”. I am not the type of person who would totally disconnect, but past 2.5 months in Europe and on the go I was in “maintain” and “visionary” mode – as opposed to “doer” mode. Being back in the US – at home, triggered the doer mode in me.

My company is going through a transformation where we are pivoting our identity, switching from a professional services company to a tech company – and it requires tough decisions to be made.

And I started to operate from a point of fear instead of joy.

• What if the transition is not successful?

• What if we fail at change management?

• What if the revenues dip – due to me taking a bet to switch who we are and what we do?

  
  
  Which didn’t bring the best out of me. High stress, sleepless nights, This video is a good one to watch.

I couldn’t sleep on Monday night, so I went for a jog late in the night – and when I came back, I looked at some old photos and videos, courtesy of my icloud.

My support circle told me to meditate, go for a run, even one suggested a sound bath – basically slow down and take care of myself first.

One thing that I came to conclusion is if I do not make the changes myself, then I will let others’ to sit at the helm of by boat – and steer it to where they want to go to, not where I want to go to. No matter how many therapists, business coaches, somatic practitioners, EOS facilitators, mentors I have – I need to own my decisions.

While I feel I am very fortunate and all of my problems could be considered 1^st world / rich world problems – I realized that the amount of joy in my life did not go up lately – or to be more b Isn’t the purpose of life to leave a meaningful life, a “happy” one – that we are in flow – and enjoy ourselves?

Often times people think it’s easy to start and run a business – but I believe it’s super important for people to know their true why – before starting or scaling a business. It requires tough skin and grit.

May all of you find your true why – and find a little bit of joy, despite all the craziness happening out there.

The highlight of the day was me being escorted to the wrong Green room, where I crashed booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel - and he almost got offended that I did not know who he was. I only recognized who he is after him being on stage right after us.

Leadership Styles of Glenn Fogel and Brian Chesky

And what stuck with me is his leadership style vs Brian Chesky’s - which was right after Glenn’s keynote. To me it felt like Glenn was almost in denial mode, diverting the difficult questions such as why they are lagging on booking volume in the US - whereas Brian made himself vulnerable. Brian sounded authentic ( I cannot judge whether that was real or fake, but it felt like he was being who he is). He admitted that Airbnb should be growing faster, but most importantly he recognized that AI creates a lot of unknowns, even for Airbnb - but not only for Airbnb - and the entire ecosystem is going to ride the change.

The difference in the leadership styles of both leaders were totally opposite, and I feel like authenticity and being truthful to oneself is a great trait to build trust with your team.

Team Composition

As any business grows, the needs of the business changes.
"The only constant is change" as an ancient aphorism goes, famously attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

The increased revenue brings a new set of challenges. And some leaders are in denial (or simply never been there) about the changing landscape of their business.

Perhaps the team members that were hired to do the job are no longer the right fit, especially if they are stuck in the past, and not adapting to the current day and age, but sticking their heads into the sand- and doing what they used to do 2-3-4 years ago.

Last week at the hotel gym, I had a conversation with a fellow founder and CEO of a successful proptech company.

As a founder, you start asking yourself - do people who helped me get here can also be the ones to get me to the next stage. Deep inside, as a founder, you would know who can - and who probably won’t - but often times founders drag the inevitable. Either because of loyalty. Or because they are afraid to have the difficult conversation. Or they have 99 other things on their plate and changing a leader will add another cumbersome task to their plate.

The hidden cost of this is much higher than one anticipates it in my opinion. It’s not just the salary, but the drag in the business. The plateau of progress. The motivation stagnates.

I believe everyone at a company is replacable, including the founder/ceo - including myself.

I think a lot of people wait for an external triggering event to take action on a lot of things. But I believe it’s best to do a course correction / or substitute “players” - not when you are in panic mode, but when things are stable.

Every person on the team is helping your company grow, or slowing you down. And I believe it’s in every founders fiduciary duty to themselves ( and investors if they have any) to figure out who has an elastic mindset, who is flexible, who is willing to adapt and grow with the company.

If

• the skill gap is huge

• they are avoiding the hard parts of the job - and focusing on the fluff - or things they are comfortable doing, as opposed to rolling up their sleeves and trying to sort out things

• they constantly seek validation or need guidance

• they are coming up with excuses instead of solutions

• cannot move the KPIs to the right direction

I think it’s time to do both parties a favor - and part ways.

At the end, we only live once and life is meant to be fun and enjoyable.

I’m off to my flight now, greetings from JFK.

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I’m starting this Substack to share the messy, honest lessons of scaling a company from 1 to 10 and beyond. My hope is that some of what I’ve learned, through both failures and successes, will resonate with other founders navigating similar challenges.

I’ll write about systems, team structure, culture, performance management, and sometimes random things that inspire me along the way.

Right now, I’m on a flight back to the US from Mexico City after two months in Europe (France, UK, Turkey, Portugal, Greece, and Spain to be exact). The trip ended with GuestyVal, one of the best tradeshows of my entire career.

Mexico City was the perfect segue before heading back to the US. It reminded me of when Extenteam was tiny, about 22 people - and I was sitting in a hotel patio in CDMX during COVID, doing payroll myself. Looking back, I can see how far we’ve come, and how much I’ve grown in the past five years.

I’m usually a realist, someone who doesn’t look at the world through rose-colored glasses or believe in butterflies and unicorns. Being in Europe – Turkey in particular – makes me question where I belong, I enjoy the long dinners accompanied by some too many alcoholic beverages and live music – the contrast of the greenery and the blue waters – but I also take great pride and enjoy being in the US – where I call home since 2008. I like the hustle culture, building and growing my company Extenteam.

What started as a side hustle in late 2019 has become a nearly 500-person, eight-figure ARR company that I’m proud to lead. Starting a company isn’t the hard part, it’s scaling that tests you. Finding product-market fit and going from 0 to 1 is tough, but scaling from 1 to 10, or from 10 to 100 million ARR (or whatever your North Star is) is even harder.

This Substack is about 14 months late, but better late than never. I’d like to thank the people who’ve inspired me:

My mom, for always supporting me and raising my brother and me to be independent.

Matt Landau, for challenging me to step outside my comfort zone and take bold risks.

Rida, my somatic practitioner and therapist, for helping me live not only in my head but also in my body.

Valerie Gangas, who convinced me just two days ago to finally launch this.

My friends, the Extenteam family, and the alumni who helped us get to where we are today.

What topics would you like me to cover most?
Let me know.

Greetings from American Airlines 505, 35000 feet - somewhere between Mexico City and Miami.

Ari