Smarter Business: Start Running!

Gasping, I stopped, sank to my knees and sat on the ground. It was 6 March 2010, and I was finished. Cash at my IT company, and in managing director Grasel’s own accounts, was heading dramatically towards zero. Bankruptcy seemed only days or weeks away.

Get out of the hamster wheel you built yourself, I told myself. Do something different to clear your head! That Saturday lunchtime, I decided to go for a run. I laced up old trainers and set out from home towards the nearby woods.

6 March 2010: my first run.

4,500 metres later, at an average pace of 6:26 min/km and a heart rate of 163, I reached the edge of the woods completely exhausted. Anger, disappointment, bitterness and astonishment welled up. I had attended a sports-focused secondary school. Perhaps some buried arrogance had led me to assume fitness would last forever. I realised I had spent years abusing my body through endless working days and constant stress. Of course I was overweight, with a belly and full cheeks I did not want, or could not manage, to hide behind a beard. Health and work-life balance had not mattered. I was more than 100% focused on my job.

When I told my fellow shareholders that I was not interested in their property projects in Croatia and elsewhere, and wanted a small team delivering value to customers rather than a huge corporation, they were naturally unenthusiastic. But the numbers supported me. My part of the business was profitable; the others were less so, or not at all. We separated reasonably peacefully. My path involved restructuring the company and continuing financial trouble: paying out my partners and returning state grants.

I rebuilt the company. Instead of expensive offices in Vienna and Sarajevo, I operated from Wiener Neustadt. Instead of 20 employees, I had four. At the same time, I set a second goal: getting fitter, invoking the familiar “mens sana in corpore sano”, a healthy mind in a healthy body.

On 6 March 2010, my thoughts were held hostage by an uncertain professional future. My body was a mass of bones and fat that, for the sake of my circulation, was best kept away from sudden movement. I was at the end physically as well as financially. How had it come to this? Sitting on the forest floor, I thought about myself, my life and my problems. I surprised myself by considering things beyond day-to-day business. You have not done that in a long time, I told myself, feeling a little happy and proud.

Walking slowly home, I understood step by step what had been missing: a view of my company’s bigger picture, and care for my own physical and mental health. I resolved to work on both.

When the mist begins to clear…