Who you would be working with.

I am not an artist and I have never run a school. What I can do is look at what you make or teach, work out who pays for it, and help you get from one to the other.

Why I understand being stuck

In 2018 I quit a startup job after four years. I had enough money and was tired of that life, so I went travelling. I enjoyed two weeks of it. After that I felt lost.

That lasted about a year. I jumped between projects, started partnerships mostly to have something to do, and finished very little. I moved abroad to work with someone and that did not work out. I was still lost when the pandemic started.

Having options is not the same as knowing what to do with them.

What got me out was not a better idea. It was choosing one thing, DailyNata, a language-learning business, and working on it in small steps every week until it existed. That is the method I use with clients now: one task at a time, written down, and someone checking whether it happened.

Background

I grew up in Iran and have lived in France, Malaysia, the UK, Spain, Poland, Japan, Peru and Portugal. I now live in Amsterdam.

I have a degree in IT and a master's in business innovation, and I qualified as a coach in 2017, while I was still at the startup. Before that I worked in cafes, hostels and hotels, and ran the web side of an ice cream business. Since 2018 I have been building my own things.

How I work

I listen, then I repeat back what you said and point out where two things cannot both be true. I also point out what is going well that you no longer count. Most people find that the most useful part.

I ask direct questions, including the ones you would rather skip. For example: what did you earn last year, divided by the hours you worked?

And I follow up. Every session ends with one task, and I check in before the next one to see whether it happened.