Many years ago (on September 5th, 2020), I wrote the text below after a conversation with someone close to me who was struggling with #motivation and with turning ambitious #goals into reality.
Ten days after that conversation, the company was born.

Despite everything that happened afterward, it remains a company that this person can be proud of, and one that I am proud to have helped build.
At the time, I played the role of the strict parent. The realist. Sometimes even the pessimist. I was the one asking difficult questions, challenging assumptions, and delivering the occasional kick in the right direction.

Looking back, I realize that my approach to leadership and collaboration has not changed very much. I still believe that encouragement matters, but so does honest feedback. Real growth rarely comes from comfort alone.

Reading this again years later reminded me that while circumstances change, the principles behind building people, teams, and companies often do not.

I hope you find something useful in it, too.

I recently sat with a close person on a bench in a square in the center of the city, when I realized that he had switched his life entirely to the race for and with work. I had similar challenges during my career and life, so I wanted to share my experiences with him. Even though I didn’t do rocket science, sometimes it’s not wrong to sort things out and get back to the structure.

Exclude emotions from work. Work is a game. You gain and lose points. You have more spare lives in that game.

There is not one job and one direction in our lives. I worked as a professor of the social sciences when I was given the opportunity to work as the Minister of Finance’s right hand in his cabinet. Woohoo! It was a real opportunity, I thought. I love public sector. I know the law and circumstances in the country, I can make it. Why shouldn’t I? However, I quit that job after only a few days when I was unofficially told that the salary was low, but the other earning opportunities were significant. It simply wasn’t my style. I realized that I lost points here and needed to be prepared for the next jump. I was without a job for a while. So, don’t cry when you don’t get the client. Don’t dedicate your full self to one client either. Wipe away the tears, wash your face, and see what may be ahead.

We need to realize short-term vs. long-term goals. “Small victories” lead to the goal. We are not made to do big things all the time.

I started in school, right? But I didn’t want to be a teacher until the end of my life. I felt I could do more. As someone who does not believe there is an end in education and personal advancement, after a while, I was invited to work as a public relations adviser at the Supreme Commercial Court of the Republic of Serbia. I led a team of PR professionals in 17 regional courts, with whose assistance, as well as with the USAID, we managed to raise the transparency of commercial courts to the level that we received the prize for excellence in the implementation of the Law on Freedom of Information. After only a year, a new challenge emerged: to lay the foundations of external and internal communication in the largest national exporter at the time and, also, one of the largest pollutants – the petrochemical industry… However, you don’t need to have such goals as I did. My first husband’s goals were to teach in the school, to have a big family, to go fishing, to live a peaceful and boring life. I divorced him. But he made his goals with small victories like easy-Sundays, and I made my goals with the help of small victories that impacted the community. It would be best if you set yours, looking at your needs, looking at your soul. Someone’s “small” is significant for someone else. We are not the same.

Kill idols. Because you don’t need them. You are not somebody else. You have your own life.

This close person of mine who set on the bench with me was really overwhelming me and his social media channels with Elon Musk. I believe all of us have someone to blame for our elusive goals and someone to quote from time to time. However, I told him ― you are not Elon Musk, a merchant adventurer in the spaceship. He is doing amazingly crazy and successful things, indeed. But, you know, his father was South-African British gentleman who owned half-share in Zambian emerald mine. He can play harder than you can ever do. Your father worked hard to become a chief officer in the police fire brigade. Same as mine, who went from his village to the capital when he was 15. And both of us are in a much better position than our fathers were. Well, the only thing that I fuss about is my father got his big apartment for free, working in a public service of a former socialist country, and I had to buy an apartment. He treats the housing matter lightly, whereas I myself was never more serious. However, we both live much better than our parents, thanks to our own dreams, goals, and efforts and not thanks to our families’ emerald mines or by making idols along the way.

Be aware of your origin that you did not choose. Still, you made a lot of progress compared to your countrymen.

Working with different nations, cultures, and religions has made me a better and more open person. Working in various industries, in different markets, in unequally developed economies, with the day-to-day running of remote teams, has made me a manager who can adapt and deliver almost any business goal without difficulty. However, both of us are born in a small country in South-Eastern Europe. And we can always talk on nationality as (un)conscious bias. Indeed, it is real, it is ubiquitous, and it is addressable. Whether we are aware of it or not, every one of these biases will affect someone’s career, development, relationships, and ultimately entire life. Let’s try with the first step, which is quite simple – make the unconscious conscious. You finished your Urbanism Master studies in Barcelona, speak English, German, and Hungarian fluently, on top of Serbo-Croatian. I finalized my Ph.D. studies, wrote a book, wrote for global Forbes, but I am still Orthodox Serbian with only a residence permit in Germany. How lucky are we? Well, it is less easy than, i.e., being a Dutch, as my late uncle was. It was much easier for him to travel, to educate himself, even to smoke a pot, or to be a “man of the world.” The Netherlands was a global colonial force, after all. Serbia was under the Ottoman Empire for five centuries. I know that YOU don’t fit this stereotype about an ex-communist country or an ex-imperial colony. But we still have South-Eastern European “…ic” surnames that cannot help us to be easily hired and accepted to most of the western markets. Even though, don’t forget you’ve made a lot more progress than most people from our countries (if we ignore Nikola Tesla or Novak Djokovic). 

You must not miss other opportunities due to your commitment to a job you don’t like.

With so many potential paths, how do you pick and pursue an enjoyable, fulfilling career? By dropping things that you don’t like or enjoy, I’d say. And I’d also say it’s not easy. Sometimes you have existential issues, or, in your specific case, you want to fulfill the material expectations of employees in your company or expectations of your teenager son. I saw you were working as a subcontractor for some to-say-successful firm which consists of a Hitler-style micromanager and a couple of dependent people. Did you want to be one of them? You didn’t. Because you worked better and much earlier some of the things they are just trying to. Drop it. Don’t make yourself miserable, fat, and tired. I was at some point. Not fat, but tiny and miserable, by having a manager who was deeply involved in politics, corrupted, and who was waving his sword during the business meetings; and his deputy, not so well educated but influential and ambitious lady who was a real bully. I left. It wasn’t easy. It was really challenging at some point when I left. I had a surgery caused by that kind of an environment. If I stayed, I would not be able to establish my own small business back then or to jump into my first role in the global company. In your 40s, you still have the strength to learn and explore, carrying your experience as an asset, not a burden.

Don’t sink but swim.

Don’t let some To-do items in your life or work stay open for too long and drown you down. It is better to close and discard them than to carry them on your back to exhaustion. Such things are taking energy which could be more useful at some other place. I am grateful because of my job in one of the biggest IT companies in the world. That matrix organization and fast-paced environment taught me how to move on and how to be super productive. To not sink but to swim. And to have my own life, after all. Maybe I am too fast for your taste, but what the hell is that bathroom that you are designing longer than I was writing a book!?

Understand who your audience is for everything you do (put yourself in the other person’s flip flops).

You know, we should be humble when trying to understand what other people are thinking and feeling. Applied to the business, if you don’t understand your customers, you will not work on so many projects. Apart from the fact I am thoroughly enjoying my small backyard gardening activities, my audience for gardening is my neighborhood. I cannot do the same thing for them and for my peers in the company. To not talk about my father, who still thinks I live a totally inappropriate life, marrying and divorcing, without kids and working in a weird way – at least 10 hours per day without entering the office… He is another audience. I need to understand him, his age, his desires, and his needs because I want him to be a happy oldman.

Put yourself in someone else’s flip flops and think. If you want to dedicate your time in any way to that person, cause, or project, you need to understand what it needs. And what it needs in the most relaxed state of mind.

My bosses are saying I have an attitude of a journalist. Good or bad, I don’t know, but it’s true. I need to know everything to be able to assess the situation and to act finding the best piece for the story, case, or business goal. I am considering all the angles and sometimes it could appear as I am not a member of the team. But, to do the best for the team, I need to put myself in external shoes and to be analytical, curious, fearless, passionate. Yes, sometimes I do have to wear flip flops and to be more relaxed, so I could completely comprehend.

The best way to genuinely understand somebody is to ask direct questions, but to find out when you need to be diplomatic as well. It doesn’t mean to stay silent so others can stay comfortable. If people can’t read each other’s minds, then we need to use our words. So, yeah, that artificial wooden pattern may not be acceptable for you, but your client is in love with that plastic-fantastic façade he wants. And it’s cheap. So, make him happy. Make yourself happy. Life is better in flip flops.

One day you'll realize you never had, and never will have, a better friend. 
I wish you fair winds, open roads, and distant horizons.