Founders don't just build companies. They export themselves into them. An insecure founder builds an insecure company. A generous one builds a generous one. Whatever the founder hasn't dealt with personally, the business inherits.
Ezekiel Vicente
Know what matters.
Know what matters.
Move accordingly.
Writing and private counsel for founders, owners and leaders when something important is happening and the right move isn't obvious.
How I see the world
The first explanation is rarely the useful one.
An org chart shows structural power—who's allowed to decide. It rarely shows actual power—who really moves things. The gap between those two is where most of the interesting problems live.
Every good decision has a bill somewhere. The promotion that costs the marriage. The move that protects the business and quietly costs the team's trust. Nothing is free—the real work is knowing what you're actually paying.
The first explanation is rarely the useful one. “We have a hiring problem.” “We have a performance problem.” “We have a communication problem.” Maybe. But those are often descriptions of where the problem became visible, not what caused it.
Where my work tends to begin
Something important is happening. The accepted explanation isn't enough.
The work starts with situations, not services.
Organizational drag
The company has gotten harder to move.
↗Founder/company divergence
The founder and the company are working from different maps.
↗Misdiagnosis
Something isn't adding up. The accepted explanation doesn't actually explain what's happening.
↗Consequential decision
A senior hire. A partnership. Succession. A sale. The room can't afford to read this one wrong.
↗Neutral judgment
Everyone with the context also has a stake in the answer.
↗Selected writing
The Era of Avoidant Hiring Is Here
Candidates have gotten skeptical of employers, and everyone's calling it entitlement. It isn't. It's people doing risk math after watching companies discard loyal employees. The companies that win aren't the ones with the best culture pitch—they're the ones with the clearest terms.
Read ↗Your Company Has More Hands. But Still One Brain.
Headcount grew. So why is the company still slow?
Read ↗When Discipline Starts Being the Problem That Keeps You Stuck
The thing that got you here can be the exact thing keeping you from what's next.
Read ↗The Dumbest Thing You Can Do When Things Go Wrong
Doing ten different things to fix the problem feels productive. It rarely is.
Read ↗
Experience beneath the judgment
I learned organizations by helping operate one while it changed underneath me.
Roughly a decade inside Mindvalley, in senior executive roles spanning people, organization, leadership, and operations—including CHRO/GM responsibility and interim COO scope.
During those years, the company grew from roughly $20M to $80M in annual revenue while expanding to 400+ people across 40+ nationalities.
Advisory work since, alongside founders and CEOs across a range of industries—including Teal Swan, SunnyStep, and Soma Breath—much of it now inside real disruption: AI-driven transformation, and succession in legacy and family businesses.
10Years inside
400+People
40+Nationalities
$20M–$80MRevenue growth era
“Ezekiel quickly got through to the essence of who I am to find the best course of action that truly felt right for me and my personal ambitions—not just what the business needed.”Traci Fenton — Founder & CEO, WorldBlu
“He has an intuitive knack for reading the pulse of any organization to find the real challenges in leadership. It is almost magic how quickly he can see what is wrong and what needs to change.”Vishen Lakhiani — Founder & CEO, Mindvalley
During the Mindvalley years, the company received sustained workplace recognition from WorldBlu, Great Place to Work, and Inc. Magazine.
Current work
Private advisory
Working directly with founders and leadership teams on the situation in front of them.
Impact & Integrity
A team of former leaders, each running things in their own industry, for companies stuck in the scaling stage.
Chaos & Cadence
Long-form writing on business, leadership, and the gap between what looks like the problem and what actually is.
Something significant is in front of you.
Tell me what's happening.