I left home at 19 and moved to another country with no money, no safety net, and no plan.
What I had was an inner certainty that I was meant to build something meaningful.

Since then, I have navigated reinvention many times, across leadership roles, entrepreneurship, personal loss, burnout, and rebuilding from scratch. Those experiences shaped how I lead, how I listen, and how I guide others through change.

Today, I work at the intersection of leadership, human dynamics, and artificial intelligence.

I help leaders and organizations navigate transformation without losing trust, clarity, or their humanity.

I am the CEO of APEK.ai, where we build secure, enterprise-grade Agentic AI and voice solutions that modernize operations while humanizing communication. My work focuses on helping organizations adopt AI in ways that feel intelligent, responsible, and deeply human.

With over 20 years in enterprise transformation, leadership strategy, and reinvention, I bring a perspective that blends technology, psychology, and real-world leadership experience.

⸻

Who I Work With

• Executives and boards navigating AI-driven change
• Leaders in transition who look successful on paper but feel misaligned inside
• Organizations ready to evolve beyond legacy thinking and systems
• Founders and senior leaders preparing for their next chapter of impact

People usually come to me when change stops being theoretical and becomes personal.

⸻

What I Believe

AI will not replace leadership.
But it will expose it.

The future belongs to leaders who can combine intelligence with clarity, technology with trust, and innovation with humanity.

If my work resonates, explore my writing, talks, and leadership resources.
Or reach out if you are looking for a trusted advisor, speaker, or strategic partner during moments of transformation.

Eva Karnaukh

We’re taught to make decisions based on what we can measure now.

👉 Money.
👉 Time.
👉 Efficiency.
👉 Speed.

But most decisions don’t cost us immediately.
They cost us later.

👉 In energy.
👉 In self-trust.
👉 In options we quietly close without noticing.

The real skill isn’t predicting the future.
It’s noticing what today’s choices are training you to tolerate.

What you normalize now becomes expensive later.
That’s the math most of us were never taught.
 
And it’s the one that changes everything.

➕ Follow Eva Karnaukh to lead in AI world

CEO, Executive Advisor | Decoding the Human Psychology Behind Decision-Making | Revealing Invisible Patterns that drive Business & Relationships | Speaker on the Future of Human-AI Synergy

When Everything Runs Through You, I Show You How to Step Back | 4× Exit Founder • PE Insider • Investor

Most founders do not feel stuck.
They feel needed everywhere.

The business moves, 
but only when they are in the middle of it.

Every decision.
Every exception.
Every "quick check."

Stepping back feels risky.
Not because the team is weak,
but because things slow or break without them.

This is not a personal failure.
It is what happens when success rewards speed and founder availability.

I know this pattern well.
I lived it as a founder.
And I later watched it repeat across hundreds of companies
from the private equity buy side.

I named it.
The Dependency Loop.

It is the silent structure where every decision and exception
routes back to the founder, not because they seek control, 
but because the system was built to rely on them.

After 35+ years, four exits, and more than 200 companies
evaluated from the private equity buy side, one pattern has 
repeated with absolute consistency:

Companies do not stall because of markets.
They stall because the founder becomes the operating system.

From the outside, everything can look strong.
Revenue up. 
Team capable. 
Dashboards clean.

Under pressure or due diligence, a different reality appears.

Momentum depends on one person.
Standards live in one mind.
Judgment cannot be transferred.

And the cost is not only operational.
It is human.

Quiet moments vanish.
Your world tightens around the business.
You show up everywhere, but feel present nowhere.

I developed the BUYER Method from decades in the rooms
where real decisions were made, shaped by patterns 
only visible to someone who has built, exited, and evaluated
companies at scale.

Its purpose is simple.
Break the Dependency Loop.

Replace it with an operating structure that makes the founder
optional without reducing influence or strategic clarity.

Optionality is not absence.
Optionality is altitude.

This shift is uncommon.
It marks the moment a business stands on its own 
and a founder leads with presence instead of pressure.

I work with a specific kind of founder.
The one who senses the next level will not come from 
more effort, but from different architecture.

Not everyone is ready for this.

But those who are recognize themselves
the moment they encounter this pattern.

They enter the world it points to quietly and deliberately, 
and the conversation begins there.

Martin Wirtschafter

No boss. No rules. No clock.

So why can’t you unplug - even for a day?

You built this business for freedom.
To never ask for time off again.
To stop building someone else’s dream.

But now it’s Wednesday,
and you still can’t take the day off.

Slack stays open.
Your phone stays near.
Even when nothing’s on fire 
your nervous system acts like it is.

You didn’t choose the 9–5.
You chose freedom.
Control. Autonomy. Ownership.

But now?
You can’t step away.
You can’t stop without things falling behind.

You walked away from a system you didn’t believe in
and accidentally built a new one that runs on you.

At some point, without realizing it
you stopped being the owner
and started being the system.

Every decision runs through you.
Every approval waits on you.
Everything that moves 
moves because you’re pushing it.

That slow, quiet trap?
It has a name:

The Dependency Loop.

It doesn’t show up all at once.
It shows up in patterns.

One more email at dinner.
One more yes to something only you can do.
One more vacation where you “just check in.”

Until one day you realize:
You don’t answer to a boss
but you still can’t rest.

Because your business
is running on your presence.
Not your systems.

And the hardest part?
You did everything right.

You showed up.
You sacrificed.
You carried it all.

That’s how the loop got stronger.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

The only way out
is one loop at a time.

That’s why I started the Wednesday Ritual.
Not as a productivity hack 
as a weekly act of rebellion.

One dependency removed.
Every week.
Same day.
Same time.

Not just to delegate.
To retrain your business to stop needing you.
To retrain your nervous system
to feel safe when you're not there.

Because real freedom
isn’t the ability to set your own schedule.
It’s the ability to change it 
without guilt, logistics, or fallout.

To wake up and say:
“I’m taking today off.”
And mean it.

Not because nothing needs doing.
But because you built something
that keeps going without you.

Can you take this Wednesday off
without everything stalling?
If not  - start there.

Your brain deleted the old you.

And it did it to survive the life you built.

Not metaphorically.
Literally.

Every time you chose work over the gym →
Weakened the "I prioritize health" pathway.

Every time you said "one more email" at dinner →
Strengthened the "I'm always on call" pathway.

Every time you canceled plans for a crisis →
Taught your brain "emergencies define me."

The person who had hobbies?
Who could rest without guilt?
Who felt whole without achievement?

Your brain systematically dismantled them.
To make room for dependency.

This is neuroplasticity.

Your brain adapted 
to the environment you built.

An environment that required you
to delete yourself.

But here's the thing:

That version of you isn't gone.
They're dormant.

Those neural pathways didn’t die.
They just weakened from lack of use.

Which means:
You can rebuild them.

This is how you rewire:
One small system shift,
every single week.

You're not just delegating.
You're retraining your brain
to remember who you were.

Each boundary you enforce
rebuilds a neural path.

Each offloaded decision
teaches your nervous system:
you exist outside of work.

The before photo of you isn’t lost.

But recovering it starts with this truth:

You didn’t lose yourself by accident.
You neurologically rewired yourself into survival mode.

Now it’s time
to rewire yourself back.

What part of “before you” are you trying to recover?

YOU are the most important business you'll ever build.

Not your company.
Not your revenue.
Not the version of you that shows up indispensable.

YOU.

And like any business worth building
it won't scale cleanly.

You'll miss dependencies.
Rebuild guardrails.
Slip back into old patterns.

That’s not failure.
That’s learning.

You don’t have to get it right the first time.
Or the tenth.

You just have to keep coming back
with honesty, intention,
and a willingness to redesign.

Autonomy doesn’t require perfection.
It requires participation.

One dependency removed.
One week at a time.

You've got this.

I used to sleep through the night.

Then I scaled from 7 figures to 8.

Teams across 3 continents.
5 time zones.
24/7 messages.

But 0 rest.

There was always a message.
A decision.
A fire to weigh in on.

No one expected me to be everywhere.
But I’d made myself available to everyone.

Seoul. 3 AM. Couldn’t sleep.

I wandered into a café in Gangnam.

And sitting there, 10,500 km from my office,
it finally hit me:

I was the problem.

I’d built a business that needed me to breathe.

Every decision.
Every approval.
Every timezone.

So I fired myself.

If you're stretched across time zones
and can’t disconnect:

Stop being the answer for every region.
Stop making yourself the bottleneck across continents.

Build frameworks that carry your judgment
without requiring you in every timezone.

8 months of removing myself → sold for 7.2x.
Buyer’s first comment:
“Love that you're not operationally involved.”

Lesson?

Your biggest breakthrough won’t come
from being more available.

It’ll come from becoming optional.

You wanted 2026 to feel different.

But this morning already feels familiar.

You sat down.
Opened Slack.
Checked your calendar.

And felt the weight settle back in.

The year changed.
But the loop didn’t.

Everyone is replaceable in business.

Even the founder who works weekends.
The one who answers Slack at midnight.
The one quietly holding it all together
so nothing falls apart.

📌 Reminder for your first Monday of the year:

Security isn’t built through self-sacrifice.
It’s built through systems, clarity,
and decisions that don’t require you to disappear.

Your effort isn’t the problem.
Your dependency is.

You’re not exhausted because you’re incapable.
You’re exhausted because you built a business
that only works if you overwork.

The founder who:
• Eats lunch at their desk
• Cancels plans for “just one more thing”
• Misses moments they swore they’d protect

That’s you, stuck in the Dependency Loop.

A pattern where the business needs you to be essential
and you’ve convinced yourself that makes you valuable.

But here’s what reflection makes visible:

Being needed everywhere doesn’t make you irreplaceable.
It makes you trapped.

If 2026 is going to feel different,
you can’t keep proving your worth
by disappearing inside your business.

You can’t keep trading your presence
for a sense of control 
that being essential will never give you.

Change doesn’t start by working harder.
It starts by seeing clearly:

The business that requires your sacrifice is fragile.
The one that runs without you is valuable.

Make yourself optional.
Not absent.
Optional.

The founders who scale
aren’t the ones who carry everything.

They’re the ones who built systems
so they don’t have to.

Being needed wiped 40% off my third exit.
I fixed that on my fourth.
Got 7.2x.

It wasn’t the market.
It wasn’t the team.

It was me.

I was still in the middle of everything.

Final approvals.
Hiring decisions.
Offer tweaks.
Campaign reviews.

Even during the exit,
things still routed through me.

The business was strong.
But it wasn’t self-sufficient.

And when a company can’t run without the founder,
buyers adjust for that risk.

They cut the number.
Hard.

That’s when I realized the real problem.

It wasn’t operations.
It was dependence.

I had systems.
But they all assumed I’d be there.

That pattern,
where everything routes through the founder
has a name.

I call it the Dependency Loop.

It looks like leadership.
It feels like being essential.
But it keeps you stuck.
And it kills exit value.

So I did something different.

Every week, I removed myself from one decision path.

Not by handing it off.
By designing guardrails
that carried my judgment
without requiring my presence.

Twelve weeks later:
85% fewer decisions routed through me.

The business ran.
Without me at the centre.

Lesson?

Being needed doesn’t make you valuable.
It makes you a liability.

You don’t scale by being in every room.
You scale by building a company that runs
when you’re not.

P.S. I still remove one dependency every week.
It protects the freedom I worked hard to earn 
and gives me room to focus on what matters most.

The founder I admired most built a $650M empire.

And lost everything that mattered.

We sat down over coffee, and his eyes said more than his words.
He told me what scaling had really cost him.
And I realized I was walking the same path.

I was building the exact same way.
And I was starting to lose the same things.

Every question still routed to me.
Every decision still passed through my hands.

So I stopped reacting and started reviewing.
Twenty past decisions.
Patterns appeared.
Blind spots surfaced.

I turned them into frameworks.
Guardrails the team could move within.

But frameworks weren’t enough.
They needed to think how I thought.
To see what "good enough" looked like.
To know where the line was and why it existed.

So I opened the curtain.
I let them into my brain.

And when they understood that,
they stopped waiting.
They stopped second-guessing.

They started building with confidence, not permission.

That’s when I realized something I couldn’t ignore.
The more the business relied on me,
the more I became its risk.

Being essential didn’t make me valuable.
It made me replaceable at the wrong moment.

So I built differently.
One decision path removed at a time.
Until the company moved with confidence without me.
And my family didn’t have to wait either.

Looking back, I didn’t just want his success.
I wanted my presence back.

Because the truth is,
I was following someone else’s definition of success.
And I finally realized
I didn’t want his ending.

The hardest part isn’t building the company. 
It’s remembering who you said you were building it for.

I used to manage 118 tasks a week.

Decades of being the answer to everything.
Pricing. Hiring. Exceptions. Approvals.
Every path led back to me.

But 0 time to think strategically.

Turns out, I wasn’t alone.

CEOs average 139 tasks per week.
Attend 37 meetings.
Make 50% of decisions in under 9 minutes.
Only 1 in 10 get real thinking time.

And most decisions don’t happen with perfect dashboards.
They happen in meetings.
Under pressure.
With fragments of context.

You don’t drown from one decision.
You drown from carrying all of them.

I wasn’t leading.
I was just reacting on repeat.

I couldn’t see the business from altitude.
Only the next question waiting in my DMs.

So I did something different.

I started removing myself
from one decision path every week.

If you’re buried in decisions:

Stop giving answers without documenting why.
Stop being the fastest path to every outcome.

Build one framework per week
that carries your judgment
without needing your presence.

I called it my Wednesday Ritual.

12 weeks later
From 118 tasks to just 19.

And for the first time in years,
I had space to think again.

Lesson?

The Wednesday Ritual doesn’t just free your time.
It breaks the Dependency Loop
one decision at a time.

Your business doesn’t need more of your answers.
It needs systems that answer without you.

P.S. I still do this every week.
Because when you’ve spent decades being the answer,
it takes discipline to stop stepping back in.

I started a book in 2019.

Finished it last week.

Six years.
Same bookmark on page 47.

Every night: “I’ll read after I handle this one thing.”

One thing became twelve.
Twelve became tomorrow.
Tomorrow became six years.

My daughter was 19 when I started that book.
She’s 26 now.
Married.

Six years of “I’ll have more time later.”
Later never came.
She just grew up and built her own life.

Two weeks ago, I read 126 pages.
Three days later, I’d finally closed the cover.

My wife smiled when she saw the closed cover.
“You finally finished it?”

Yeah.
“Wanna read it?”

I've got a bookcase full of unfinished books.

Now, every Saturday, I disconnect.
No laptop.
No calls.
No electronic distractions.

One book. Every week.
Been doing it for months now.

Regaining the perspective I thought I’d lost.

I talk about the books with my wife and kids.
Not just what they said
but what they made me feel.

I share the lessons,
the moments,
the lines that stayed with me.

Giving back the time and insight
I should have shared years ago.

Somewhere along the way,
I realized it was never about time.

It was about design.

I had built a system where everything still depended on me
and I called that leadership.

It wasn’t leadership.
It was control disguised as responsibility.

That pattern has a name.

I named it The Dependency Loop.

The Dependency Loop doesn’t just steal your time.
It steals “later.”

And later is where everything you actually care about lives.

I didn’t finish that book because I had more hours.
I finished it because the business stopped needing those hours.

Now I read.
I think.
I listen.

The business runs.
And I’m finally here.

This is what presence feels like.
Not someday.
Now.

Freedom isn’t something you reach.

It’s something you design.

For years, I chased freedom I couldn’t define.

More revenue.
More autonomy.
More control.

But every next level came with more dependencies.

Freedom isn’t on the other side of growth.
It’s designed into how you grow.

Most founders build for escape.

They want the exit.
The liquidity event.
The end game.

But there is no “out.”

There’s only the architecture of what you’ve built
and whether it traps you or frees you.

We don’t lose freedom because of the business.
We lose it because we built the business around us.

Every layer of control feels like security
until it becomes confinement.

Freedom isn’t having no responsibilities.
It’s having no dependencies.

Freedom isn’t stepping away from everything.
It’s being able to step away from anything.

Optionality isn’t the reward.
It’s the design.

Liberation doesn’t begin at the exit.
It begins when you stop building for escape
and start building for endurance.

The long game isn’t scaling yourself out.
It’s scaling something that grows without you.

Freedom stops being a milestone.
Becomes a system.

The ultimate exit isn’t from the business.
It’s from the dependency you built into it.

The hardest identity to outgrow

is the one that made you successful.

I used to believe leadership meant being everywhere.

Every meeting.
Every decision.
Every late-night call.

I was proud to be essential.
Needed.
In control.

The business didn’t move without me.
And I told myself that meant I was doing it right.

But what I didn’t see was what that belief was really building:

A system where I was the bottleneck.
A culture where my availability was required.
An identity built entirely around being needed.

That wasn’t leadership.
It was dependency disguised as importance.

At some point, I stopped asking,
“How do I grow the company?”
and started asking,
“Why does the company still need me?”

That question changed everything.

I stopped showing up as the Operator.
Started designing like an Architect.

Instead of answering questions
 → I designed frameworks.

Instead of approving decisions
 → I defined boundaries.

Instead of managing people
 → I built systems that managed themselves.

And the company didn’t just survive without me.
It grew.

I’d stopped being the Founder who ran everything.
And became the Founder who built something that doesn’t need me to run.

I used to think strength meant being essential.
Now I know it means being optional.

Because when you’re no longer trapped
inside the business,
you can finally step back, 
and design what it becomes.

Operator → Architect → Optional.

That’s not a business strategy.
That’s an identity shift.

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The Battle

Eva Karnaukh

Martin Wirtschafter

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The Battle

Eva Karnaukh

Martin Wirtschafter

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Eva Karnaukh's LinkedIn Performance

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