About this site

I'm Raoul. Dutch, based near Amsterdam, married, four kids, seven years into running an e-commerce ads
agency.

This is the honest version of that. No hype, no playbook, none of the clean-office, morning-routine, "I was broke and now I'm rich" stuff.

Just the actual work: building a business, marketing without the
nonsense, leading a small team, and trying not to be a terrible dad in the process.

Most of what gets written about running a company is the curated version, the wins and the revenue screenshots.

The Real Account is the other one. The week everything happened at once.

The client who was drowning while the numbers looked fine. The customers who never came back. The stuff that's actually true on a Wednesday night.

One idea runs through most of it: the loudest problem is rarely the real one.

Whether it's a marketing account or a founder running on empty, the thing actually holding it back is usually quiet, sitting one layer down, waiting for someone to look.

Finding that one thing is most of my job, and most of what I
write about here.

You'll get one email, most weeks.

Short, direct, honest. If you run a business, lead a team, or just like watching someone think out loud about the real version of this work, you'll feel at home.

When I'm not writing, I help founder-led brands find the one constraint holding their marketing back.

That lives at heerdenco.com, if you ever need it.

Subscribe below. I'd rather have a small list of people who actually read than a big one that doesn't.

• Raoul