When babies change your perspective

Taking up running in 2010, spending every free moment outdoors and repeating mantras about good times did not mean my company was thriving. My handful of employees and I were trapped in everyday work, keeping financially afloat. They were good, very good, but years of ups and downs had drained my energy, confidence and, above all, vision. Like horses in blinkers, we delivered projects without noticing that we had stopped developing. I was so buried in tasks that I could not even see it. When you are fighting for survival, the present consumes you and the bigger picture disappears.

Staying on the right path can be difficult, as an athlete and an entrepreneur.

As a novice runner, I did not have that problem. My goal was clear: I wanted to know how far my feet could carry me. Easier said than done. Teaching myself, I took a hard and often lonely path, addressing physical weaknesses and learning mental techniques. I read books, discovered visualisation and put the UTMB elevation profile on the fridge when running it was only a vague idea. I learned to interrupt negative spirals with an internal STOP. Mental training prepared me for ultra-running crises and helped me escape them. I recommend it because it reduces problems and challenges to what they really are. Recognising the essence makes finding a solution easier.

I could not immediately transfer sporting progress into my career. As an entrepreneur, I was not addressing the company’s weaknesses. Like a startup 2.0, we stayed afloat through major customers while drifting down a river whose direction we did not know.

Julia and I are proud parents to Anton and Anna, born in November 2017. They marked another turning point, professionally too. New life makes you think about wishes, dreams and goals. Considering their future made me look at my own actions. My eyes opened. Technology keeps developing, our customers keep developing, but we are standing still. If we carry on like this, we will almost certainly disappear soon, I thought.

Such thoughts drive decisions, especially when more than your own existence is involved. I could bury my company and change careers. Or I could build on what we had created and improve the business and its offering. A few tweaks and new packaging would not suffice. We needed to demolish a crumbling building and construct a new skyscraper on values such as persistence, enjoyment and family: startup 3.0.

I looked inward. Our vision had not changed: making customers love our work. But just as I had worked hard on myself as a runner for eight years, I needed to work on myself as an entrepreneur again. I had to rediscover passion, innovation and the willingness to learn. And I did.

For almost a year, Anton and Anna have been the centre of our lives. What I do is for my wife and twins, employees and customers. What I choose not to do is for them too. When the first teeth arrived in summer 2018 and the children were particularly unsettled, I skipped Switzerland’s Eiger101. It was not easy; it would have been excellent UTMB preparation. But reason told me staying home was right: supporting my wife and witnessing a milestone in our babies’ lives. I also want to be there for their first steps and words.

I look forward to that as much as, or more than, my company’s next steps. It has outgrown its infancy. Our many new ideas suggest adolescence, but our clear view of the future suggests a young adult already.