My early childhood memories are those of being born into a family of business. There was no normal 9 to 5 in our household. There was a beautiful intermixture of work and business with family life and recreational life. I say beautiful because it always felt that we children were part of the team and in it together with my parents.
I started a catering business when I was 18 and bought 25 apartments when I was 21. And then for the next 20 years I have been buying multi-family houses and apartment complexes in the Rhein-Main-Area of Germany. Now we own a large portfolio and run a property management company.
On the ministry side, we opened up some coffee shops, bought a hotel and a refugee home, took over a Youth Center, developed an Urban mission / church organization, and started a non-profit against sex trafficking. I love to create new enterprises.
I remember the first time I needed help with a difficult business situation.
I had to manage a riot of about a 150 African workers ready to stone me on a construction site in Nairobi, Kenya. If the police hadn’t shown up with machine guns, this could have quickly turned sour.
A few months earlier, I had boarded a plane for my African adventure. Just after finishing high school I wanted to intern and get some business exposure. My uncle received me as a young volunteer in his African construction business. When he saw my enthusiasm and work ethic, he put me in charge of operations and management. For a few months I took care of buying building materials, negotiations of labour contracts, doing payroll with piles of cash on Fridays, and other stuff that an 18 year old kid normally does. Just kidding. I was in way over my head.
All went well, until it didn’t. All of a sudden I had a riot on my hand. And I had no clue what do.
I called my uncle in South Africa and he got on a plane. When he landed, we got into a board room and for the next couple of hours I saw him work magic. He developed a strategy to deal with the problem. It was not just the solution that impressed me, but the whole process of thinking through various options as well as some out-of-the-box entrepreneurial moves.
And we solved the problem.
That’s when I decided to invest into my thinking and became a strategist for myself and the problems I get handed.
In my mid 20s, I started going to the fitness studio in the mornings. My role model for this has always been my grandfather. He is turning 90 in a couple of years and he still hits the gym every weekday. We have a family saying that only 50% of the benefit of physical exercise is actually physical. The other 50% of the benefit is mental. Physical exercise just helps in managing the stress of life and business.
But it was only last year that someone suggested me hiring a personal coach to monitor and increase my exercise.
7:30am sharp, Esther and I now start the training.
It’s challenging. It’s exhausting. It’s fun.
We are using some of the same machines and weights that I have been using all these years. But we have added different exercises, new technics and more discipline to the routine. I am totally surprised how much you can improve your core strength and personal performance if you hire someone professional.
I do the same for entrepreneurs and business owners. I don’t coach people one on one or by the hour. I have created medicilegacy.com where I train in courses, master minds and inner circles. Personal and business development is my area of expertise. I only work with leaders who believe that the growth of their organization happens through their own improvement.
My vision is to coach and train 10,000 entrepreneurs and business owners to create a 300 year legacy beyond themselves. That excites me. That has impact.