Being an entre­pre­neur, my life has always been thrilling and rich in vari­ety. While study­ing and after a few stunts as a work­ing stu­dent at Henkel, it was clear to me to become self-employed — I want­ed to be my own boss. Being an entre­pre­neur, I always have my curios­i­ty radar turned on — which sup­ports my Con­nect­ing the Dots — the Syn­chronic­i­ty Strategy.

I start­ed with Web 1.0, an online trav­el agency, a pure e‑commerce play. Then I moved into Web 2.0, build­ing a social news aggre­ga­tor. After that, it was time for mobile, and build­ing an app agency. Today, I‘ve arrived in Web 3.0, by build­ing an enter­prise blockchain solu­tions provider and by offer­ing a blockchain-based oper­at­ing sys­tem for dif­fer­ent indus­tries, such as real estate, sup­ply chain, and sus­tain­able cities. Does­n’t sound too bad, does it?

All my com­pa­nies have been quite dif­fer­ent out­fits, although all of them had soft­ware and inno­va­tion aspects in com­mon. Of course, sell­ing pre-packaged trips over the Web is dif­fer­ent from enabling fee-less, autonomous, auto­mat­ed trans­ac­tions on a Blockchain. How­ev­er, when cre­at­ing and devel­op­ing var­i­ous (soft­ware) busi­ness­es you need sim­i­lar skills and abilities.

Ideas Are Every­where — As Are Fas­ci­nat­ing, Inspir­ing People

From time to time, I‘m asked how I get all these dif­fer­ent ideas from and why I ded­i­cate years of my time to build total­ly dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies. Peo­ple say, they would not be able to do it in the same way. I doubt that. Au con­traire, I think that every­body could act in the same way, by cre­at­ing and devel­op­ing dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies or mov­ing for­ward on total­ly dif­fer­ent career paths in one or more com­pa­nies. It‘s only a ques­tion of con­fi­dence in oneself.

I have dubbed my strat­e­gy „con­nect­ing the dots“. In pure Pla­ton­ist tra­di­tion, I believe that peo­ple aren‘t inven­tors, but explor­ers. We don‘t invent or orig­i­nal­ly cre­ate stuff, but we explore the world with our sens­es and con­nect dif­fer­ent dots we have expe­ri­enced. In recent years, I have learned to trust in this process of con­nect­ing the dots. If I‘m curi­ous and open-minded, I‘ll meet inter­est­ing peo­ple and I have fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions and other expe­ri­ences. Then I read some­thing that fits into our last brain­storm­ing meet­ing. Or, dur­ing our team meet­ings, all at once it becomes clear that we could com­bine dif­fer­ent projects we are work­ing on to a new one. How­ev­er, if you spend enough time think­ing some­thing through, on your own, you will cre­ate your own idea about it.

Syn­chronic­i­ty

It‘s like life feels eas­i­er when I am fully aware of all things hap­pen­ing in my envi­ron­ment, lis­ten to exist­ing and new con­ver­sa­tion­al, part­ners, change my per­spec­tive from time to time, and find solu­tions for my busi­ness­es by putting numer­ous jig­saw puz­zle pieces togeth­er. You’ll expe­ri­ence coin­ci­dences, sit­u­a­tions that fit oth­ers, peo­ple you need con­tact you, devel­op­ment flow into each other, unex­pect­ed­ly. Ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Carl Gus­tav Jung called that state of mind syn­chronic­i­ty, An Acausal Con­nect­ing Prin­ci­ple.

Turn­ing The Curios­i­ty Radar On

Con­nect­ing the Dots hap­pens in the details: I often meet high­ly inter­est­ing peo­ple by chance. I then try to fos­ter con­tact with them since I love learn­ing from other peo­ple and inter­act­ing for mutu­al ben­e­fit. Often, I know imme­di­ate­ly if there are syn­er­getic effects with anoth­er per­son — then I try to build on that with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Some peo­ple might view this spon­ta­neous­ly cre­at­ed famil­iar­i­ty — or inti­ma­cy — as inap­pro­pri­ate or strange — but I don‘t mind that. Not every­body is or is required to be spontaneous.

How­ev­er, I encour­age you to try the Connect­ing the Dots, the Syn­chronic­i­ty Strat­e­gy. Turn your curios­i­ty radar on, be fully aware of your envi­ron­ment, act spon­ta­neous­ly, and with high inten­si­ty. That‘s what life is about, isn’t it?

awareness creative entrepreneurial spontaneous