“Self-made” is one of the most seductive stories in the culture of achievement.
It feels like strength. It sounds like pride. And it costs more than almost any other belief a person can carry.
The Walls You Call Independence
There’s a version of holding your idea close that looks like protection. You don’t share it because someone might steal it. You don’t ask for help because then you’d have to share the credit or profit. You don’t let people in because if it fails, at least you can’t blame anyone but yourself.
Those aren’t boundaries. Those are walls.
And here’s the part worth naming directly: the same people who claim to be self-made are often the first to point fingers when things fall apart. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be self-made in the wins and collaborative in the losses. Pick one.
The brain weasels love the walls. They dress them up as self-reliance, as discipline, as not needing anyone. What they’re actually protecting is the fear underneath, that needing help means you weren’t enough on your own.
The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Let’s prove the point.
You want to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Simple. Humble. Something a child can do.
Start with the peanuts. Someone farmed them. Someone else ran the roasting facility. Someone manufactured the machine that roasted them, and the machine that ground them, and the plastic container that holds the result. Someone designed that container. Someone made the mold. Someone shipped the raw material, and someone drove the truck and someone unloaded the dock.
Now the bread. Wheat farmers. A mill. A bakery. The yeast. The bag. The twist tie. The shelf it sat on in the store where someone stocked it before you arrived.
The jelly. More farmers. A different facility. More trucks. More hands.
And if you’re having a crispy pickle on the side, go ahead, it’s your meal, just know you’re adding an entire other supply chain to the list.
By the time you sit down with that sandwich, thousands of people have contributed to the meal you are about to eat alone. And you made it. You assembled it. That’s real. Nobody is taking that from you.
But you didn’t make it alone. Nobody does.
There is a proverb, widely cited as African in origin, that says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The exact source is disputed. The idea isn’t.
Building With People vs. Using Them
Here’s the distinction that matters.
Using people to build a thing is different from building teams and systems to build a thing. One treats people as a resource to be consumed. The other treats them as the architecture of something sustainable.
A coach isn’t someone who does the thing for you. They’re part of the system you build to do it better, faster, and with more clarity. I know this from both sides of the table.
The VALADD Insight Deck, the card set built for introspection, for surfacing what’s been invisible, took longer to bring to market than it needed to. I waited. I held it close. I tried to carry more of it alone than made sense. The thing that now helps others find clarity was itself delayed by the impulse to do it alone.
I asked for help. I built something worth having.
Community and connection are not weaknesses. They are the mechanism. We are communal beings. The stovepipe operation, the one where everything runs through you, where no one else has eyes on the work, where asking feels like losing, that’s not strength. That’s a bottleneck with a good story about itself.
The Close
If at the end of our coaching engagement you feel you are self-made, I’m okay with that.
I’ll be your cheerleader.
But if you’re ready to stop going it alone, let’s start with a real conversation. No script. No pitch. Just clarity about where you are, where you want to go, and whether this is the right fit to get you there.
The Insight Deck is a good place to start if you’re not ready for a conversation yet. It was built by someone who waited too long to ask for help, and it shows you exactly where to begin.
LaSchwann Killens is an ICF-trained life and executive coach and the founder of VALADD Coaching. He works with people who are ready to stop going it alone and start going somewhere.