I came to Shorombo because I was struggling to balance my business goals and personal life. It felt like I was constantly juggling without making any real progress.
Jerry de Waart
How Jerry went from a man with a million ideas but little focus to launching his own company
After years of carrying too much in his head, Jerry de Waart began looking for more structure, clearer direction and a way to manage pressure without losing momentum. What changed was not the ambition, but the way he organised it.
The original conversation was conducted in Dutch. Quotations have been translated into English for this article.
*Note: This account is AI generated using the script of the live interview
When Joey first approached me, he was standing at a familiar kind of crossroads.
He was preparing to start another company. He wanted to take it seriously, give it a real chance and avoid repeating patterns that had not served him well before. At the same time, he was still holding on to a belief that many ambitious people recognise: perhaps he should be able to figure it all out by himself.
“I really felt like I was at a point where I wanted to take more control of myself, my habits, my actions,” he told me. “I thought I could do it on my own, but then I realised that I’m always thinking that way, that I could do it on my own.”
Joey and I had met through the Amsterdam Founders Club. We already knew each other before we started working together, and I had seen some of the qualities that made him stand out. He was energetic, sociable and naturally good at building relationships. People seemed to want to help him, work with him and stay connected to him.
But those same strengths existed alongside a different reality. His mind moved quickly. There were always new ideas, competing priorities and things that felt urgent. He was balancing a full-time role, entrepreneurial ambitions and an active social life.
As he prepared to build a new company, he knew something had to change.
“I didn’t want it to go like the last one did,” he said. “I had to change something to be successful, and I wasn’t really sure what I had to do. I knew I had to do something.”
That was the starting point of our work.
The fear of becoming someone else
Joey did not enter coaching with simple optimism. There was excitement, but there was also anxiety.
One of his concerns was that becoming more structured would change his personality. He wondered whether getting his life in order would require him to become more rigid, serious or boring.
“I had almost an expectation that somehow my personality would change,” he said. “It was actually sort of a weird fear of mine that I would become a completely different person.”
That fear mattered because Joey did not want success at the cost of his identity. He enjoyed his social life. He liked being spontaneous, energetic and around people. He did not want structure to flatten those qualities.
“I didn’t think that I could continue to still enjoy my life and get my shit together,” he said.
This became one of the central tensions in his story.
The goal was never to turn Joey into a different person. It was to help him create enough structure and calm for his best qualities to work in his favour.
He did not need less energy. He needed to understand where to direct it.
Starting with the foundation
The first changes were not dramatic. We began with the foundations of how Joey lived and worked.
He started planning the following day in advance. Before that, he would often wake up without a clear idea of how the day should unfold.
“I just kind of woke up and it was like, ‘Ah,’” he said. “So that small shift there, just waking up and understanding what my day is going to look like.”
It sounds simple, but it gave him a point of orientation. Instead of beginning each morning by reacting, he began with a clearer sense of what mattered.
From there, we worked on prioritisation. Joey was used to doing several things at once. For a long time, he saw that as one of his strengths.
“I actually thought it was more of a superpower to do a million things at once,” he said.
He still has many ideas. That part has not disappeared, nor should it. The change is that he no longer treats every idea as something that needs immediate action.
“The best thing I was able to do is just really concentrate on what’s important and focus on that one thing,” he said. “Just do one thing at a time. It was something I never did.”
He learned to write ideas down rather than interrupt his current priority to pursue them.
“Those things are always bouncing in your head, right?” he said. “There’s always a million things, a million ideas, and you have to just shoo them away.”
That ability to pause was important. It created space between an impulse and a decision.
“Instead of trying to act on things immediately, just write it down, get to it later,” he said. “You don’t have to do everything immediately.”
Learning to work with his energy
Our work was not only about planning and productivity. We also looked at the conditions underneath Joey’s behaviour.
He began paying closer attention to his sleep, exercise, physical state and caffeine consumption. At one point, he was drinking between six and eight cups of coffee a day. He reduced that to two.
“Now I sleep like a normal person,” he said.
He also became more aware of how he felt when he woke up and what that might mean for the day ahead. Some mornings called for exercise. Others required stretching, a walk, more rest or a different pace.
“Just listening to your body,” he said. “Just being self-aware.”
Joey and I had previously spoken about characteristics associated with ADHD, although he has not been formally diagnosed. The label was less important than understanding the patterns he recognised in himself: impulsivity, distraction, mental overstimulation and difficulty deciding what deserved attention first.
When someone lives in a constant state of activation, it can become difficult to separate personality from stress. The speed begins to feel permanent. The chaos starts to feel like identity.
What I saw in Joey was that once some of that pressure reduced, a different quality became more visible. He did not become less dynamic. He became calmer and more deliberate.
He could still move fast, but he was increasingly able to choose where that speed was useful.
Structure without rigidity
Before we started, Joey expected the process to be strict.
“I think I expected it to be more regimented, like super strict on things,” he said. “I honestly wasn’t sure that I would enjoy it either.”
That was not how he ultimately experienced it.
The process gave him accountability, but it also left room for his own judgement. He was not following a system in which every missed action meant failure. The aim was to help him understand what worked for him and make decisions he could sustain.
“You make of it what you want to make of it,” he said. “It’s really at your own pace, and you do the things that you feel comfortable doing, you feel ready to do, while still holding
yourself somewhat accountable and being held accountable by you as well.”
For me, that balance is essential. Lasting change cannot depend entirely on someone else enforcing a set of rules. The person needs to engage with the process, test what works and make the lessons their own.
Joey described it as a combination of self-reflection, self-teaching and accountability.
“It’s not one of those things that you have to do X, Y, Z or you fail,” he said. “Listen to yourself and make the mature decision, make the right decision that you think will fit for you.”
Over time, the changes began to feel less like a programme and more like his normal way of operating.
That is often the point at which I know something has become sustainable. A person stops describing a habit as an intervention and starts speaking about it as something they simply do.
More space, clearer priorities
Joey is careful not to present his story as finished. He is still learning and adjusting.
“I’m still figuring it out,” he said.
But the practical benefits are clear in the way he now describes his life.
He says the company has developed well and that he is happy with its direction. His physical health has improved. He has more room to think and is better at deciding what deserves his attention.
“I’m much better at prioritising things,” he said. “I make more time for important relationships in my life.”
He has also learned to balance his full-time work with building a startup.
None of that means his life has become quiet or simple. He is still Joey: social, energetic, full of ideas and interested in many things.
The difference is that those parts of his life no longer have to compete in the same uncontrolled way.
“I realised that I could have a really active social life and have a lot of fun and still also be a high operator,” he said. “It was really hard for me to balance those things earlier.”
That may be the most meaningful outcome of his journey. He did not have to choose between enjoying his life and taking his ambitions seriously.
He learned that structure could protect his freedom rather than reduce it.
The shift does not require a milestone
When I asked Joey who he thought would benefit most from working with me, he described someone very similar to the person he had been at the beginning.
“The person who thinks they can handle it all on their own,” he said. Someone who believes that changing their life requires only “a little bit more effort,” even though they may already have been trying for some time.
He does not believe people need to be launching a company, leaving a job or reaching a dramatic turning point before asking for support.
“It doesn’t have to be like a milestone,” he said. “It just has to be a mindset.”
The relevant moment is when someone knows that something needs to change but is uncertain how to make that change meaningful and lasting.
“I want to be at my highest and best use as a person,” Joey said. “I want to improve my life, and I want to do it in a way that is structured, that is meaningful, and that’s long-term.”
When I look back at Joey’s journey, I do not see someone who became a different person.
I see someone who learned to work with himself more intelligently.
He still has the energy. He still has the ideas. He still values relationships, enjoyment and an active life. But he now has more ability to decide what matters, what can wait and where his attention should go next.
For anyone who recognises themselves in Joey’s starting point, the useful question may not be whether you are capable of doing everything alone.
It may be whether doing everything alone is still the best way to become the person you are trying to be.
When that question resonates, you are welcome to start a conversation with me.