Make Your Business Work for You: Albert Banks on Ditching the Hero Complex

Albert Banks built and sold service firms for over two decades. His argument: most founders are solving the wrong problem. They chase revenue and headcount, when what actually needs to change is how much of the business depends on them personally. He calls the fix "who, not how": instead of learning to solve a problem yourself, find someone who already knows how to solve it.

In this conversation with Adam Weil, Albert explains the difference between delegation and abdication: delegation means you hand off the task but stay on the hook for it, abdication means someone else fully owns it. He also gets into why unclear expectations backfire on founders, in his words, "unexpressed or unagreed expectations are planned resentment." And he describes the coverage plans he built so leadership, himself included, could actually take a vacation without the business falling apart. The point of all of it, he says, is figuring out what "enough" looks like for you, not for whoever you're comparing yourself to.

Albert Banks is the principal of Apertus, an advisory practice that helps service businesses hit operational and financial excellence, stronger employee engagement, or a clean sale and acquisition. He spent over two decades founding and leading service firms, including Myjive, Union, and Valtech, working his way from technical director to CEO along the way. In 2022, he led the post-merger integration when Union combined into Valtech.

His focus now is helping founders mature a business instead of just growing it, building the delegation, culture, and systems that let an owner step back without things falling apart. He works from a simple standard: clarity and candor over comfort.

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