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I often get the question from friends and family asking me what I do exactly. My purpose is to help leaders build meaningful lives and organizations. I have developed a program surrounding my whole experience as a CEO and transforming my organization while also transforming myself. I’ve combined everything that I’ve been through into the program called Leading Authentically in Digital Times.
This program helps leaders build a meaningful life, have more impact, better deal with all the changes while also helping their team and organization. The goal is to change the mindset of the people and change the culture of the organization. When I started my online business, I really wanted to make a difference. In the past two and a half years I have learned my wins and my struggles being a leader of an online start-up.
Wins As A Leader
1 | Purpose Over Profit
When starting my online business, I was coming from an organization where my shareholders only cared about short-term profits. I truly believe that when you serve your customer with all your heart, and when you have that purpose, then the money will follow, and profit will follow after. I share a lot of tips and tricks on this podcast, webinars, free courses & social media as I really want to transform leaders whether you decide to buy from me or not.
I have calculated that I only need 1% of people in my audience to buy from me to be able to help a hundred percent of the people that follow me. I built my business around the business model purpose over profit. Launching my business this way also means that I can work anywhere and have a meaningful life where I’m present for my family, friends, customers, and myself.
2 | Move Despite Imperfections
My business and my market are constantly evolving, and the classic way of planning doesn’t work anymore. No longer can you make a detailed plan before implementation. When I decided to launch my online program, I created a structure for the program and thought about the transformation that I wanted to offer to customers and built only one of the modules out of the six. With the structure created, only one module ready, and a sales page to give information I made over 23,000 euros in sales!
When I first started creating videos, I had a friend give feedback that was really disheartening. Whatever people are telling you, just continue to become better. The first people to buy my course were listening to what I was saying as I was authentic, even if my videos were far from perfect. Just start today as it is all about starting and moving even when it’s not perfect. If you get feedback that it’s not good enough, just pick yourself up and continue to get where you want to be!
3 | Energy Over Time
I measure my return on time to be sure that I feel good about how my time is spent. I work only about five to six hours per day and by managing my beliefs and my energy over time, this allows me to be more creative & successful. I also hire to keep my energy level up so that I can delegate and collaborate for all the things that I don’t like doing or that cost me energy.
Something that is crucial to my business and that gives me energy is “learning”. I spend on average about one-hour everyday learning. I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, watch YouTube videos, do online courses, and go to conferences. It’s what helps me keep my business up to date in terms of content. It allows me to stay up to date regarding the content that I share with you, regarding online marketing and how to build an online business.
Struggles As A Leader
1 | Always Comparing Myself with the Best
I’m very ambitious and am always looking at people that have done things before me, which is great of course on one side as it gives me the energy that it is possible for others to do well. On the other side, it costs me a lot of energy because I always compare myself to the best that can be ten years ahead of me. I constantly have this tension between what I see that is possible and where I am today. That’s really something I have to work on, and I should stop comparing myself to the best. Instead, I should only compare myself to myself to see the progress that I have made.
2 | I Am Very Result Oriented
I believe that being result-oriented in this fast digital world is not the way anymore. We still need to know what we want of course, but I believe now that there needs to be a focus on the process over the result. When launching my YouTube, I had almost nobody watching my videos. Since I’m so oriented on the results, when I don’t get the results that I want, I feel like a failure. I often teach my participants that you need to have a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset is when you don’t focus on the results, that’s when you focus on the process, and you only see results as results instead of failure. Or you see a bad result as feedback. I try to focus on the process and to enjoy the process because by improving the process, the results will follow.
3 | I Am Impatient
I have always been impatient. I love new things and starting new projects or setting up a new campaign or program. When I don’t see the results that I want immediately or not fast enough, I get impatient and struggle with consistency. Instead of looking for fast and instant gratification, I should instead just enjoy the process and really focus and trust that it will come.
