Leadership Journeys [65] - Gerbert Vandenberghe - "The bigger the company grows, the less I am involved."

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other's stories - of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.

Gerbert is the COO & co-founder of Venly.io based in Belgium. In the interview, we spoke about the importance of culture when working remotely. Gerbert shares the lessons they learnt when they went fully remote and the practical things they do to listen, share, and strengthen human relationships, even when they have employees from 15 different countries. We also talk the most difficult time for them when they had almost ran out of money, and how they persevered and come out on the other side of the struggle.

You can find Gerbert at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerbertvandenberghe/

In the interview, Gerbert shares

• So we ran out of money while still building a company. We worked like nine months without any salary.
• it was quite painful because after working two years together with these people, we were very close to them. We were fond of them. We went together on skiing trips. Um, so yeah, that was quite painful 
• if you believe in your vision and you have some proof of the market that, that your product fits the market, I think you just have to keep going and pushing and not give up because of some setback
•  I used to be involved in every aspect of the business. Um, I used to be much closer to technology and to product while I'm not really involved on that anymore. So the bigger the company grows, they're less involved in every, um, department in nitty gritty detail.
• my goal is to make me myself obsolete in the company,
• I make sure I have enough sleep, so I'm well rested and I love to go to the golf club and hit some balls.