ISSUE 81
8 APRIL 2026 | READ ONLINE
Hi Reader,
I’m trying to build a 10x company. This past weekend, I pulled weeds.
Not as a metaphor. Actual weeds. In an actual garden that had been completely taken over by ivy, which apparently decided the fence was just a suggestion.
I cleared out old plastic containers that had sat there for a couple of years. I cut back what had overgrown. I threw things away. And then yesterday, I went to the nursery and bought lettuce and arugula.
Not because I suddenly had spare time. Not because the business was running itself.
Because I needed to do something where I could see the result by the end of the afternoon.
Here’s what nobody tells you about the identity shift from executive to entrepreneur.
When you’re an executive, there is always a structure holding you. A title. A team. A reporting line. A budget cycle that tells you what quarter it is and what you’re supposed to be focused on. You are, in the best sense, on top of the work. You direct. You decide. You delegate.
When you’re building something from scratch, you are inside the work. All of it. The strategy and the spreadsheet. The vision and the invoice. The keynote and the email follow-up that you keep forgetting to send.
I know who I am becoming. I can see her clearly. She is running something that genuinely changes how leaders lead. She is building an organization that matters.
Right now, though, I am also the person who just spent forty minutes trying to fix a broken link on a landing page.
That gap between who you’re becoming and what you’re currently doing is one of the most disorienting places to live. I see it constantly in the people I coach. They are smart, capable, and ambitious. They have a vision that is completely real. And they are also, right now, deep in the weeds of building it.
Most of them think something has gone wrong.
Nothing has gone wrong.
Here’s what the research actually says about this.
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that psychological detachment from work (genuinely switching off during non-work time) is one of the strongest predictors of employee wellbeing. Not a nice-to-have. A predictor. The researchers called it “Detach to Thrive.”
And a 2025 review published in Discover Public Health found that gardening specifically restores the cognitive resources depleted by work that demands prolonged focus or constant decision-making. The mechanism is called Attention Restoration Theory, and it holds that natural environments replenish directed attention in ways that structured work simply cannot.
In other words, pulling weeds wasn’t a waste of a Saturday afternoon.
It was rebuilding the very capacity I need to do the work that matters.
The reframe I want to offer you today is this.
You do not have to be operating at 10x to be building toward 10x.
The vision and the current reality can coexist. In fact, they have to. Because if you wait until everything feels aligned before you act, you’ll wait forever. The gap is not a sign that you’re behind. It’s a sign that you’re mid-build.
And mid-build is supposed to feel like this.
What the weekend taught me is that sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is go and do something small. Something you can see the result of. Something that reminds you that you are capable of finishing things, even while the big things are still in progress.
I planted arugula (as well as the lettuce). It will be ready in about three weeks.
The company will take longer. But it’s growing too.
A Small Experiment for This Week
Option A: Find your lettuce
What is one small, tangible thing you could do this week that has a visible result? Not a task from your to-do list. Something that feels like yours. Something where you can stand back at the end and see that it’s done.
Do that thing. Notice what it gives you.
Option B: The two-column audit
Draw a line down the middle of a page.
On the left: who you are right now (what you’re actually doing, what your days look like, where you’re spending your energy).
On the right: who you’re becoming (the version of you that’s six or twelve months ahead).
Look at both columns without judgment. Then ask: what’s one thing I can do this week that belongs in both columns at once?
That’s your next move.
See you next week,
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