What personal habit helped you accelerate your personal growth?
Balancing reflection & silence (= listening to my soul), exchanging perspectives (= learning from others) and doing (= taking risks).
What do you do to maintain balance in your life?
Doing things that ground me: spending time in nature, playing football. And the most important one: being close with my family.
What book do you recommend the most?
“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. It helped me cultivate some of what I consider to be the most important habits in life and business.
What's your secret sauce for building a great team?
Cultivating continuous appreciative feedback.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur / leader?
Building the home I want to live in, with my hands and my heart.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
You can’t manage other people, unless you manage yourself first.
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Here’s More, From Other Founders Around the World
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.
What's a mistake that you're happy you've made?
When I was 16 (way before the internet) I founded a travel-partner agency to connect people from different backgrounds seeking travel companions. After a year, I had to close the agency due to a lack of customers and the confusion some callers had regarding the nature of the “service.” Despite this setback, I gained invaluable insights into sales, communication and people’s needs, solidifying my desire to run a business that helps people.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
After graduating, I worked for an extremely well-paying automotive company. But I always had the feeling that there was more out there. So I quit and went into research with the aim of becoming a founder.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
There are no overnight miracles, it's very hard work: both physically and emotionally. Requires resilience, grit, strategic approach and grind.