01
Before anyone told me who to be
I was always about building over playing.
My favourite toy was LEGO. It was rare, hard to come by behind the Iron Curtain, and we didn't have much money. I don't know how much of any of these limitations factored into it, but I loved building LEGO sets. Every step of it.
We put all our LEGO sets into one large bin. Finding the right bricks, understanding the instructions. Building the set from the instructions. Eventually, I ended up building something new. Using the same bricks that everyone could use to create something that didn't exist before.
I tried to build sets that I didn't have. Or buildings for the tale I had visualized in my head. To me, the building blocks were just that. Building blocks. I didn't see them as mandatory pieces of a set; I saw them as steps to imagination. Tools like paint and a brush for a painter.
Around the age of 8, I created new fire station sets, detached houses, rearranged the roads and built new cars. I drove my sister crazy by demolishing what I built just a few hours later to create space and bricks for something new.
This devotion to building and creating has stuck with me ever since.
02
The Magician
My next life-changing memory was the meeting with a book called The Hero and the Outlaw by Carol S. Pearson. It is about the concept of applying Jungian archetypes to marketing. At that point, I was struggling to define the positioning for an innovation framework, and this book and the archetypes helped me understand a lot about myself, founder-led companies and my life up to that point.
I always wanted to learn. I needed a reason to learn, and I still need a reason to learn. That reason, to me, is to understand more about the world. Why has something happened and why not something else? Or why do I get drowsy before the start of a rowing race? Why are we doing one type of training and not something else?
I was trying to understand the difference between aerobic and anaerobic capacity and training methods when I was 16. To get better at rowing. If you can explain to me, I can execute. If you don't explain it to me, I will never make the effort to execute it.
The book showed me that I am a Magician in the old sense of the word: someone who understands the hidden laws of how things work, and uses them to change what is possible.
In coaching, in building startups or in bringing innovations to market. That is my curse and superpower.
In business, that meant looking at a tangled problem and finding the structure underneath it. Recognizing problem patterns and applying solutions from a distant field that had the same problem pattern.
Add to that that I used to be an extremely fast thinker.
It looked as if I got to a correct conclusion in just one step. It looks like magic from the outside. A conclusion appears from nowhere. Then it is explained, and Watson, from Doyle's Sherlock Holmes says what everyone says:
"How absurdly simple!" ... "Quite so! Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you." The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The reasoner's effect "seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction." Everything is simple once the right details are in the right place.
Seeing something others fail to recognize comes with the responsibility to not only tell them the solution, but the rules and dynamics that are invisible but shape the outcome. Find the missing detail, put it in the right place, and let the person see what was always there.
03
Why I teach now
Father first. Everything else second.
I had a hard take about startups. I always told founders that a startup founder puts business first and family second.
I used to be that person, but then I got magicked by the birth of my son. Fathers say it can take years for true fatherhood to kick in. For me, it was instant.
I was always torn between running the innovation consulting business and coaching. I had my fair share of magical moments where I could see a butterfly emerge from the chrysalis. In the end, innovation and coaching have a lot in common. It is about change, uncharted territories and building on your strengths while overcoming your weaknesses.
Finding your way to reach a goal or find tranquillity and peace with yourself.
25 years playing piano and you could never play in front of a large audience? 40 minutes with me, and you are playing in front of a 60+ crowd in a restaurant.
I built and rebuilt companies for more than fourteen years. I do not build companies that demand extended hours anymore. A flourishing life, for me, means being to my son what I was to other founders: the person who tells him the hidden laws and supports his transformation.
What I want him to take from me is simple. Learn. Adapt. And understand that communication is everything. If he masters communication and keeps a learning habit, the rest is not a problem.
The long game is getting back to teaching, coaching. Whether it is a job, leading a team, or running an actual coaching business, or writing and promoting a book, it doesn't matter to me.
04
Why me
Holmes versus me. Holmes kept playing the "wow" card and kept his secrets to himself.
"You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all." A Study in Scarlet
A magician protects the trick because the mystery is the product. I, on the other hand, want to share the knowledge with anyone interested in it. The explanation is the product, and the proof that it works is that you can do it next time without me.
Unfortunately, most people want instant, baked solutions instead of the rules that create outcomes.
In 2010 I flew to Philadelphia with no appointment to ask a Wharton professor whether the model I had been building was nonsense. I had written to thirty-two professors and almost none answered. A taxi driver called Watson drove me there, and the professor was named Holmes. She heard me out and said: "Continue." I opened my laptop in a Starbucks and wrote to my friends, "I did it."
Then I lost the US company. I was denied entry at the border after investing more than a hundred thousand dollars, and I sank into a depression that lasted from 2011 into 2012. I did the El Camino de Santiago to find my way back, rebuilt the company in Europe, and then rebuilt my life in Canada when our son was four months old.
That is why I explain things instead of delivering solutions. And yet, that led me to understand that people buy solutions, products and not the path. This tension is what is walking beside me like a shadow. Sometimes unseen, but always there.
I want to talk about the path, the rules, the thought process, and I know that only a handful of people are interested in that. The rest are here for solutions.
The most important rule - communication is everything
Humans always create conflicts and usually no formal way for resolution. Compared to computer code, where you have to account for conflict resolution or your code breaks.
People inherently create conflict, and the ability to resolve it, or to keep communicating through it, is what separates the people who move forward from the people who stall.
Sales, marketing, family, leadership: all of it is communication, and communication is conflict management in a caring way.
I started making voice notes for my son in case I might not be able to pass on these important rules to life. The first was about the importance to resolve conflicts through communication.