It’s All About Me

My great grandfather was a Swedish farmer, who ruined his back trying to support a hungry family of eleven. I believe he would have been disgraced if he saw me today, as I was struggling with a potato-patch close to our summer house. I had no idea where they were hiding.

A quote from a surprised foreign friend, who visited Sweden for the first time this weekend.

This weekend an old friend and business partner is getting married, and I’m flying back to Sweden for three days of celebration. The occasion made me remember the startup we both were involved in setting up - Ljungskile Fasardrenovering. In English, I guess the name would translate to something like “Chesterfields Carpenters”. We specialized in painting and renovating old houses on the Swedish west-coast.

I learned two things from this experience. First of all, I realized that I’m completely retarded when it comes using my hands. I can’t even paint a simple wall without messing it up, or falling down, or getting abnormally tired. My business partners realized this even earlier than I did, so after 3 weeks we parted.

I also realized that there’s a huge demand for cheap professional services, which is far from being met by the current suppliers, at least on the west-coast of Sweden. These kind of business are safe bets for any entrepreneur (who likes to work REALLY hard) not only because of the untapped market, but also since you’re not up against Internet super stars from all over the world.

I attach the flyer we used to get our business. For one day, we drove around in my fathers Volvo, pushing these down any mailboxes we could find. We did say upfront that we used unqualified students as labour (=ourselves), but that didn’t stop people from contacting us. Ljungskile Fasadrenovering HB was booked for the whole summer, and made a healthy profit. I didn’t see much of it though, since I was chilling on the beach.

As I was explaining the concept of midsummer to my South African colleagues a few days ago, I found myself staring in disbelief at a few video clips from YouTube. The clips showed hundreds of Swedish men and women jumping around a maypole, pretending to be little frogs.

Hundreds of sober and mentally sane men and women, pretending to be little frogs, making loud frog noises.

“What’s up with that”, they asked. “Why do you pretend to be little frogs”?

I have absolutely no clue why. Do we look like little frogs?

Swedish men

Little frog

(Emailed to me from a friend, who took the wrong turn with his motorcycle)

Yesterday I spent some time with Alexander, who is 3 years old. I don’t spend much time with kids normally, so I was unprepared for the raw energy he puts into whatever he does. There were no hesitation, no fear, just a frontal attack on life.

Equally impressive was Alexander’s mother. Even as Alexander smashed his nose into a heavy iron gate, and he started crying as if the world was about to end, she remained cool and made sure he got the attention he needed.

To me, this seems to be the biggest challenge of parenthood - how can you avoid worrying too much, when you know how dangerous the world is to a kid growing up?

I guess you just have to accept that these are lessons for life - painful, but useful. (And since the day I smashed my own head open on an iron gate when I was five, I’ve been quite good at avoiding them.)

I’m just about to leave my hotel in Portugal, and return back to London for work. But I love this place. I urge you to go here, eat fish, drink wine, and get smacked in the head by big waves.

(one of the many pretty spots around here)

The guys in the picture below have been drilling outside our office for three days straight. The noise is slowly breaking us down. I think it’s one of our competitors trying to eliminate us, by using their own version of Chinese Water Torture. But we will not give in, of course.

New York, July 2007, Gramercy Park

London, May 2008, Holland Park

With hotdogs, beers, and four smelly friends.