What do you wish you had known 10 years ago?
Literally that it's going to take 10 years to build a truly successful business! When we started we thought we were ‘in it’ for 2-3 years and then would be able to retire by the pool. Overnight success is a myth.
What personal habit or behavior helped you accelerate your personal growth?
Reflecting on my mistakes or missteps - talking about them, reading and learning new strategies. If you are prepared to accept you are fallible, and model change, you will have a more resilient team when things get tough.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
To turn a successful product into a successful business and company. Everything flowed from customers using and loving our product. We want to achieve financial freedom by building our own business.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
Leadership is about showing the way for others to thrive - taking responsibility and accountability when things are going wrong, giving the team the credit when everything goes well.
If you bring ‘ego’ into leadership and make it about you, then you are building a cult, not a business.
What's a skill that we should pay more attention to in the workplace?
Decision making. It’s often mistaken for ‘opinions’ or ‘feedback’ or ‘collaboration’ but try to encourage your team to make good decisions (i.e. not just a mishmash of compromises).
What do you do to maintain balance in your life?
I am pretty ruthless about notifications on all my devices turned off - which means I am responding in ‘real time’ when I’m looking or checking, but I wont be interrupted if I focussed on something else. I think you have to be a good compartmentalizer generally - good boundaries!
What books do you recommend the most?
"Radical Candor", "Turn the Ship Around," and "Traction."
What’s an important belief / a guiding principle that informs the way you build and run your business?
Define your values (‘culture deck’) and reinforce it often - create rituals and statements that sum up your values and remind everyone why they are important. If people understand and trust how / why you run your business they are going to stay motivated.
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What do you wish you had known 10 years ago?
I always thought that my life can be balanced between personal, business, health, family, finances and love. In that sense how much energy I put in and get back. But with the years, I learned that life is imbalanced by nature. It's still a goal for me and I believe if all parts are some kind of balanced, this speaks of a highly valuable life, but accepting that there will always be a certain imbalance, helped me a lot.
What's the biggest insight you learned in recent years?
It’s always a good idea to be connected to your product – even if you have to deal with high-level topics, always remember the things you offer.
What personal habit helped you accelerate your personal growth?
In one of the hardest times of my life so far, I started journaling for 1-2h on Sundays. Not digital, but with paper and pen. Always answering the same questions related to self, social life and work. This brutally honest and regular reflection once a week helped me identify problems early and iterate fast.
When times are tough, who or what is an anchor for you?
My co-founders are my anchor in work-related topics. Having an environment where failure is welcomed with a helping hand and where weakness is valued as openness, once you are down those people will drag you up.