Strategic Clarity Meets AI: Loic Potjes' Next-Generation Coaching Framework

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Of success with your brand amplified. The ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host Anika Jackson and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. For my very first interview in the new year, I am thrilled to be able to have Loic Patjas on. We've been trying to schedule this episode for quite a while, but you're also around the world from me, so it has sometimes that creates difficulties, but we are here today finally and I'm very excited to have you on again. It is my first recording of the new year and Loic, you have great advice for what you do. I love first of all, the name of your organization, Disruptive Leap and the fact that you are coaching scale up CEOs and entrepreneurs. So first of all, welcome to the show.

Thank you Anika and thank you for having me. Great to be here and very much looking forward to our conversation today.

Likewise. And you have had an incredible journey from being a corporate and scale up CEO yourself to a tech investor. Now you've coached over 65 CEOs across 25 countries. So what was it about business leadership that excited you and sparked your interest?

So it was for me a natural flow. I would say. I've always kind of strived towards that. Like not by design but more by default, like becoming something like a president of the Students at university, or it attracted me for some reason. And it was more of a. When you have the DNA or the inclination and the natural flow that speaks to it, then you venture into that. The analogy that comes to mind is the. That of a race horse and you put them on a race track, you don't have to give them much instructions. They. They meant to do that and they gallop. And so it's really something. I go very often or in fact all the time when I. I coach CEOs, it's to find their flow. What are they naturally great at, what they would do seamlessly, what's their great talent naturally, and then help them to flow and then get the right team around them and all of that. But so I'm a strong believer in that. So the answer to your question is really that it's not by design, but more like by life happening naturally?

I think yes. By people being attracted to the innate talents that you had and the skill set and you saying yes to opportunities. It sounds like obviously there's design in there. But I do find when we are doing what we're best at and in that state, with that flow state, and I haven't had this conversation on the podcast for quite a while, but things do start appearing when you're not pushing against something that you're not supposed to be doing. Right. When you're actually accepting and going in that flow state, then new opportunities seem to come a lot more easily. Right? Money comes a lot more easily into businesses, attracting the right people.

Absolutely and completely. I'm a very firm believer of that. In fact, I was talking about it this afternoon with my acupuncture therapist. And so he does the whole thing about Chinese medicine and has a master's in it. And whilst he was. So my shoulder is a bit stuck whilst he was needling me, we were just talking. And by going deeper in the conversation, well, he mentioned about the state of your mind and how does that affect your body and so what you're resisting against. And in this case, I've always been resisting to the thought of, am I good enough? Am I the imposter syndrome? Like, nine CEOs out of 10 have that, and they get to be a super entrepreneur and so on, because they want to prove a point to the world, to themselves. And often it's also that resistance. And his key thing was studying Chinese medicine, was, well, the day that you convince yourself that you have what it takes and you have the talent, and each of us has a great talent, big, small, or doesn't matter, but we have one or a couple of great talents. And the day that we embraced and we truly stand firm and strong in our shoes towards that, you start that flow, and that flow is where you will excel naturally, is where you will experience fulfillment and joy. And he was talking to your point. I found it very interesting. And. And that came to mind. He was talking about the brain sending signals. If I think I'm good enough and I convey that message unconsciously, people will see in me that ooze of a certain confidence. Not ego or arrogance or anything negative, but that sense of, hey, yes, I can help you in that area. And so their brain will notice the signals, but if I don't think I'm good enough, then my brain will send those signals. And somehow that's when you get a guy in an interview and everything is perfect on the cv, everything. But, you know, your gut feel tells you, hey, red flag, don't do it. And so that's truly amazing to see that. That connection between the brain, the body, or core talents and that flow state, which is mental, emotional, physical. And that's quite a bit of the work I do with CEOs on themselves, but then on the teams, because then there's a multiplier effect of having a team that's complementary to each other, and they all. It's the raw energy of that racehorse that you've just put on the rice racetrack, and all you do is then guard a bit. The jockey's work is 1% light touch. The raw energy just flows naturally, and that transforms organization. So that's kind of part of the work I love doing. Truly.

Yeah, I appreciate this. And I think sometimes we need that outside perspective, because when you're in a situation, it can be very hard to identify what's motion versus what's talent versus what is getting you stuck in that ick. Or that red flag that tells you that you should be doing something else. You know, we can get into the mindset of, well, this is what we're supposed to do, because this is how business is done. This is what we've been taught. And it seems like you. I mean, the name says it all, right? Disruptive leap. So you figured out ways to disrupt these situations. And before we get into talking about some of your clients and your philosophy and framework, I did want to ask a little bit about some of the teams you've managed, because you've managed teams of over 4,000 people across multiple markets. And I'm sure some of the leadership moments and challenges that you faced as CEO also helped shape the way that you view other CEOs and the lens that you bring to your conversations and your coaching with them.

Yeah, absolutely. Totally. And the main learnings for me in people management were from doing all the things that I possibly could, doing them wrong, and all the possible mistakes you could do in people management. I've probably made them all several times. And I wasn't natural at all in that space, and I'm certainly not pretending I am now. But from all things I saw myself doing wrong, that's where the biggest learnings came. I still remember I had a CFO that was hugely complimentary to me when I was managing a number of companies in a group in South Africa. And I had several leadership teams. And so I'm very strong at understanding a business and at seeing the potential, what it can become, and articulate a go to market, a strategy. It flows, problem solving, like all of that flows. But then I didn't realize until extremely late that that was my superpower. That felt very natural to me. Not a superpower. That's how my DNA is built. So it's neither good or bad, it's just. And I showed constant irritation for years at colleagues who didn't get there as fast. Now, that created a sense with the others of who does this guy think he is and how. And I showed impatience, I showed frustration, I showed like all the, all the wrong sign. And it's extremely late. Then I finally discovered, hang on to the same tune, that I'm not so great at a few things and I need to be given the time to get like I needed to do that all along. And so the problem, when we have a superpower, it feels extremely natural. Now we have to understand, hang on, it actually is a superpower. Like I was with training an executive on new industry and managing clients. And so she job shadows me in a client meeting and we solve a number of problems, which is what I'm getting paid to do with the client. And so we get out of meeting and then she turns to me and says, and of course, you had to solve all the problems in five minutes. And I thought, and well, first, why is she saying that? Like, it's my job, I get paid to do that. This is the client. He's paid. Like, it felt natural to me. And I realized instantly, hang on, it doesn't feel natural to her at all. So hang on, what I'm doing here is something special that I have. It's probably one of my talents. And so that helps. So the feedback of others help recognize our super talents. But there's always another side of the coin. We need to be cognizant of others around us. We need to lead, we need to ship. So about leading, the work I do now is truly the result of many, many, many mistakes in people, man. Hard learnings and seeing others excel at that that I found hugely inspirational.

And yeah, the best work we can do is truly collaborative. But it is hard to. When you like to do something or approach a situation in one way, it can be very hard to see. And I've. I've been through the same situation of knowing that I can get things pushed through for organizations that I have enough power, people who are rallying to make some change, but then having another cohort of people who need more information, they need to be brought along. So for fast movers, it can be very difficult to slow down and say, okay, wait, I know where we're going. I know this will happen, I know this will pass. But all of these other people need to also understand what the full situation is and why this is important to the organization. So I love the fact that you're able to see that in yourself and take feedback as well, because it can be very hard for us to take that step back and internalize that feedback.

Yeah, definitely. And then there's the huge leadership lesson that I've realized is the if you want to fast track extraordinarily rapidly all the areas where you're not so great at, don't start giving it a try. Stay carefully out of there and get the right guys whose natural talent it is. So I started speaking about James, a previous CFO I had. So when I understood I was leaving the whole team behind, but I knew the strategy was right, I recognized in him that extraordinary power of talking for one or two sentences to each person individually and get the immediate buy in. And I observed him several times because I saw what was happening and I observed him, and I think it's something to the tune of understanding really someone genuinely, authentically and being able to find the right words for each person. Now, I could try do that for a century and I might get to be average, but he was a natural talent in there. And so what we ended up doing is I would sit with James and I would tell him, here's what I think we need to do and how, and said, okay, leave it with me, and actually went to. Spoke to everyone before exco meetings. Then I made him to lead the exco meetings, not me, because it was his talent, not mine. And Results were immediately changed for the better. Whereas if I had to become good at that, oh my God, geez, the guys would have had a lot of patience with me. So that power of fast tracking by recognize the complementarity of talents and having that team flowing on the 82 in the single one most important aspect of what I try to achieve because when I get teams to achieve that, the results then speak for themselves. The plan can be not perfect, but it will all be the strategy, the organization, the structure, all the rest will flow. There's that and then there's building for the organization of tomorrow which is another principle people hire for. I need a bum on a seat for today, I need a cto, I need a whatever salesperson. But they don't build in a fast scaling environment. You need to hire for two steps ahead on the strong potential that can then immediately so high ability to learn fast entrepreneurial mindset which is basically a set of personality traits, go getter, problem solver, et cetera. And you need to find that high energy and people who want to change the world naturally so that high energy so that you let them lose on the right racetrack and they'll and you test the IQ, the EQ. So once you've hired for three steps ahead you get to have 18 players because now you have an exciting plan to share and something you give them an opportunity to change the world. And if you have a team of 18 players and you work at that complementarity of talents these two things make for it's 80% of the scalability of a business. The rest is really not that complex, frankly.

At what point did you realize that while you were a leader who got things done, you could lead and manage large teams and be very successful. But you saw that you also had the skill set of being able to observe and wanting to make that transition into coaching other high performing scale up CEOs who perhaps are between $5 million and $15 million. You even went you got certifications at Harvard and you went through TR coaching to hone that side of your skill set as well.

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So I believe in life happening in the right direction. And so I remember super early. And so you start rereading your history and your work history, your personal history and the puzzle starts taking shape all of a sudden and the penny and for me it was more, more of that. And what I recalled is when I was a super young manager and at first I was thrown at a deep end at 26 I had oversold myself in that need for compensation and making sure I'm good enough. And so I overdid it and got to my first job was managing or second job actually after going after university for two years in a non for profit. But my first corporate job was running a business unit with 600 people and I had completely oversold myself. And I thought okay, now it's not the time to drop from my chair. It's completely crazy. And it was thrown at a deep end and had to make it work. And that's been kind of the story of my life. And then in the first psychometric assessment I had and there's a million of them, but that one was the analogy of animals. So you had the lion kind of the leader. You had the tortoise, which is the paced, steady, consistent person. You had the rabbit, you had and I was the owl. And the owl was the guy that sits over not in the arena but like, like and has that natural perspective and sense of observation and so on. And that came back years and years and years later. And in fact what I realized it's often we get to understand what we're meant to do by understanding what we're not meant to do. And so I've super early managed big teams which allowed me totally not to manage any day to day because then I had people that were trained and experienced in doing that and I got away with it. And I always got to shame those 80, 20 on working the business in short cycles of 18 months or three years and always got like naturally promoted because I could see the next problem. I said hey, I think I can do something about that. And then so but when the penny drops. My last venture before doing CEO coaching was a tech scale up held by a VC fund. And they came to have chat and said hey, why don't you co invest or and why don't you lead this? And it was an SME with 50 employees and I had never managed that few people. And I thought well how hard can it be right? But it was totally hard because I had to do 80% of the day to day management. And after two years the guy said to me well we're not sure you meant to manage an SME. Maybe you're better with a bigger organization where you have more structure. And they had an absolute good point. And I realized then that managing large organizations has always allowed me to work on the businesses and to be fiercely successful at that. And this is exactly what I'm doing now as a CEO coach. I also have a few board positions as a non exec or chairman and I always have those portfolios scaling regional expansion M and a new tech innovation. Anything big, bold and ugly I love to get stuck in and I bring that perspective that way. And so when I reread my history, those pieces of puzzle kind of fell into place.

Wonderful. So disruptive leap, right? What do you actually mean by that in the context of scaling a business? And how is a disruptive leap different perhaps than incremental growth, what we consider steady business growth?

Yeah, so that's a super question. I love it because everything is different. And so disruptive leap came when I founded a few years ago. It was an advisory boutique firm first that was meant to do business model innovation and transformation for high scalability. So how do you get to have outsized business results? And it was born from at 40, a first midlife crisis thinking I've been a corporate dealer for 10 years now, you know, I'm not gonna, should I retire now at 40 or. And and so I had witnessed a, in a, in, in a services industry with a bottom line of 3%. I had witnessed how an SME had SH in a complete commodity space, super low margin industry with lots of people and so on and so forth. Very operational, very traditional. They had reshaped that into a 50% EBITDA. Like as in the most successful companies in the space were operating at 5 to 7% EBIT. So they had completely transformed the approach. So I bought them, I bought then the four entrepreneurs. Well I bought their company and them on a 90% earnout to come on board and on three years to go and say instead of large corporations swallowing the tech scale up, we're going to do the rest the other way around. So I got these four guys on my xcoin. I said now let's transform this company. We have a blue chip, my credibility, a big brand, lots of corporate clients, so go big. And they did. And it was truly amazing. And so that business model evolution. So to answer your question. So it was from the learnings of what you need to have consistently in place to have a chance to have outsized results. So linear business models. It's to do more of the same next year, plus 10% or plus 20% or. And then the usual trap of companies is to do an ambitious budget which is basically a glorified P and L just with a number that. But essentially it's that definition of insanity from Einstein. It's to do essentially more of the same but accept vastly different results. And then at the end of the year we have long explanations and next year we'll do the same again. And so that's the old business model. So there's a number of ratios and so to the law of normal business. And so the whole business world is structured around like for example corporations who. It's extraordinary. It's an oil tanker. It's extraordinarily precision to do more of the same and keeping this trajectory for the next 100 years. And that's why when you try to put innovation in there, the organization rejects it. And because it's been so risk averse to anything that might change its course and so on. Then however they want to pretend to do innovation labs and all of that. And so it's instilled into most of the businesses. Yeah. And so you have to restart. And I'm busy thinking out loud. Is that because I don't want to do the whole. It would take an hour to just. But there's a multiple of key ratios and there's a language to exponential businesses. And it's the analogy of a chain that needs to be to have a chance to get exponential results or all these links. Each link of the chain needs to be aligned correctly. And if one link doesn't do the job, the whole chain collapses. And it's about your USP and your value proposition always starts from the market to then link to your core skills, expertise. But reviewed differently like take Amazon. Amazon says well a few years ago we're selling books and then we sell books digitally. But some guy raised well hang on, are we selling books digitally or are we in the meantime a digital business who happens to sell books? Because that reframing all of a sudden what else in books can we sell otherwise? You know. And so that reframing of companies and that critical thinking and mindset opening is always where I start. And then you flow and craft USP value proposition. And you need to have an offer that's too good to be true. It could be tech. And so instead of having a CD player then you have a streaming or whatever. But. But often it doesn't have to be and so it doesn't have to be the next tech invention. It's how you shape your usb. And then your entire company needs to be realigned and focused around that. And I want to and then we speak about the team as to once you've got that in place. But I realized with consulting it wasn't working. I had three steps blue sky workshops. So 100% people were ecstatic. We're going to get to be the next Amazon. It's amazing but 100% happiness. Second step was shaping the three ventures that you could reshape yourself into. So that went reasonably well workshop and so on and so forth. The last step was then well execute and the blood, sweat and tears to get all on above the day to day. And that is where it systematically fell flat. And I understood that my positioning as a consultant was wrong because as a consultant I'm a supplier. I will give all the slides the insights. But now my position as a CEO coach is vastly different. I'm the sparing partner of the CEO and I hold him or her accountable. And I'm paid to ask the hard questions, to say hang on and he guides. The third time we're speaking about that, what do you think? Should we do something about it or you know, is this real or. So that space of accountability is completely different then that space of altitude and perspective. So I forced the CEO then to work on the business because I'm not on the day to day, I'm not on call phase. So all every single one of my Questions will be on the business. So they will be elevated to working on the business. That sense that space of clarity and then that accountability to build momentum. And I found and I use the techniques of strategy consulting and then of exponential organize, all of that. But now it's quite a bit more pragmatic and we co shaping and it's about what will be different. It's is the momentum. Yeah. The sustainable momentum.

Yeah. And that's fantastic framing. So thank you for that. And change management can be very difficult. Right. For people. So I love the fact that you mentioned, even though of course we don't have enough time to touch on every single step of what you do, but when it comes to working with the CEOs on these high impact decisions that will completely change the trajectory of their organizations for the better. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see them have when it comes to prioritization of decisions? What are they obsessing over that really don't matter, you know, versus what they should be thinking about? Because I'm sure that's a large part of your work is helping. Like you said with Amazon. Right. Are we a digital book company or are we a digital company that sells books? And I think a lot of times the CEOs we can as business owners we prioritize things that maybe will get us more in the weeds and not bring us that complete reframing and that leap that we need.

Most CEOs are not leading the organization, they're being led by the organization. And what I mean by that, the 80% of them mix energy and noise and think it's momentum. And what I mean by that is they'll have full days of, I don't know, 12 hours, lots of meeting, lots of energy and like lots of language and they're busy on the coal face. And at the end of the day they'll have lots of dopamine of a sense of yes, we're doing something, but what has truly moved the needle in that day, probably not much. And if you ask CEOs what are the 23 things that are uniquely critical or what is the one decision out of space that you don't have clarity on and that's going to make or break your year 2026 right now most of them will have to think for a while and then let it drop and they will get to an answer, but they won't ask themselves that question necessarily. Or if they do ask it, they might be led by the short termism of either more of the same. And so the pitfalls are more of the same. They're mixing the budget more of the same with a strategy. They don't really have a strategy. Most corporate organizations don't necessarily have a strategy to be blunt. More of a glorified budget with actions. Then if no strategy their positioning on the market isn't clear or the USP or the differential. And if a 12 year old boy can't sit as in oh yeah, I should go to Annika because she's great at uniquely great at this and obviously I need to yeah then they need to reframe. So the USP isn't great. And then the third thing is the big is the lack they're being eaten alive by the Everyone wants a piece of their time, of their schedule, of their thing. And it feels rewarding in your suppliers, clients, employees. And then it feels you're busy. But what's the percentage of the stuff that truly moves the needle? What are your 2, 3 key bottlenecks? What are the 2, 3 big moves that are gonna unlock truly the market and what does that truly require and have you scheduled that will and then only left some space for the day to day and so those are and it goes by cycles. Right. And so you could have all of that and then you've started your year perfectly but then the good old habits catch up and you're drawn again into then it's taking too much that they shouldn't do the stuff that they're not uniquely great at and that they should have other guys doing. So many pitfalls essentially but you always find these three to five there. And when you can reshape behavior so awareness and then behavior changes and there's a mathematical so there's a scientific I was in at IMD in Lausanne most prominent one of the top five business schools in in Europe and had a high performance leadership course there. And so one aspect is to Change your behavior. 67 is the scientific number that create the new habit to shift. It's like driving a car. It feels extraordinarily clumsy and complex. But then once you've done it 67 times you're good to go. And you don't think that you're driving, you just drive and same for those traits. And when you reshape three to five traits of a leader through awareness through working on themselves there's the conscious brain and the unconscious brain. And so the conscious brain is okay awareness and so I need to do things differently. And so but unconsciously new pathways are created in our brain and we start awareness bringing Automatic, natural work and so on. And so when you see some of those transformations happen, it's wonderful. You see joy, you see fulfillment, you see the flow that you were speaking about.

Fantastic. I want to ask because I'm very curious about this. I was in Vietnam a few months ago and it was really interesting to me how different the culture is in terms of the business culture, the way that people operate, the way that organizations operate, even the way that companies have to advertise and get in front of their customer base. You coach in multiple languages, English, French, Spanish and Dutch across continents. Do you see key differences in leadership challenges in these different markets? Even the emerging markets in Africa or India perhaps, versus mature markets in the US And Europe.

So yes and no markets are different, market rationals are different. And so you have to study each market for what it is, but each industry would be different. And so you have to understand and approach the market and understand how it works. You obviously have a cultural aspect on how to interact with people and so on and so forth. But no, because at the core depth, we share the same humanity, the same ways or the same DNA, the same. And the stuff that truly matters is common across organizations, across people, across culture. So you need to have. But if you spend a few years in a couple of markets, in a couple of cultures, it's like languages. The first new language you're learning is super hard. The second new language is a little bit less hard. The fourth is kind of those pathways work as well. And so you get to understand those cultural differences and so on and so forth a little bit more naturally. And then you tackle the same essence and every pitfall or every part of the method or approach that I spoke about before are valid across markets, across industries, across cultures, scale up stages and so on?

Yeah, fantastic. I love hearing about our similarities.

Right.

Because we can always be pulled apart by our differences. And that's. There are people in the world who try to separate us. But hearing that you see more similarities in the humanity and our goals is. Thank you for saying that. I'm in North America, I'm in the United States. We can have a very view of us as the most important country sometimes.

Right?

Just. I'm trying to frame this nicely, but what are some, perhaps if there are any cultural nuances in leadership that North American CEOs need to understand when they're trying to scale globally? Are there surprises that you see in your North American CEOs versus other CEOs or is it still, you know, they can see the humanity and they can get to that point of the cultural nuance.

So I think the first thing that comes to mind is there's a direct correlation on the size and the power of a certain economy or culture. And the bigger, the more powerful the country, the economy, the culture is, the more difficulty they'll have in putting themselves in the shoes of another culture. And so if you take a country, it'll be substantially harder on average, of course, everyone is different, but you have these cultural traits. It will be substantially harder for a US CEO naturally to go and embrace other markets and understand the rationales. And they'll have to fight against the thought that, oh, let's just copy paste what we're doing in the US and surely, well, why isn't it working? The local guys haven't understood how life works. And, and so it comes substantially more naturally to small countries. So I come from Belgium, and if you need to get any job in Belgium, you have to speak French, so that's my mother tongue. And then you have to speak Dutch or Flemish, which is the second national language. And because it's such a small country, you drive an hour in any direction and you're already in another country. So the market is too small, so you're forced to be fluent in English. Otherwise you won't have a good job, you won't meat client. And so that ability to. And passively, by learning a language culture, you understand not just a way of communicating, but the way a brain works in a culture. Choice of words, the grammar, the structures, and so learning that culture. And so once you've worked with different cultures and you're forced to do that since a young age, it's easier for a Belgian because of that small country, or for German or French or US citizen, it'll be a little bit harder. And so it starts with awareness of that and then meaningful action to say, okay, let me not take for granted. And a few years ago I was sent from a European multinational to shape up to start a company in emerging markets. When I called the global CEO to say, hey, what's the strategic plan? Well, what do you mean? We're doing what we do in Europe and we're going to do it there. And for the 15 years, I had a great possible difficulty in making them understand that the business model in Europe was, could only be a big failure in South Africa, for example, of and because they had the greatest difficulty, well, surely it's going to work over there, because it worked here in Europe. And then so. And they couldn't comprehend and had to operate Below the radar and below the. To really move ahead in an entrepreneurial way and ask for forgiveness rather than permission and and so on to shape successfully a business. So that's the first thing that comes to mind. But also what comes to mind. You spoke about the US it's also super positive character traits. That strength of entrepreneurship, of that drive to build businesses, to build, like that's extraordinary. And so each culture is different but there's yeah, important aspects, the good, the bad and the ugly in each group.

Certainly you talk about these shifts, right? We've talked about going in the flow state. We've talked about shifting mindset and trying something 67 times so that you, that you can really make that shift. This also goes along with emotional intelligence, which you've shown in your examples of your own experience as CEO and being able to understand what you're really good at and what might be better left to others in the organization. So can you talk about an example of how improving the mindset shift and the emotional intelligence of one of your clients helped their effectiveness and helped them reach that growth state that they wanted?

Yeah, what comes to mind is a successful entrepreneur in West Africa and it's created probably 20. So it's an extraordinary entrepreneur. He has a hunger and a drive and started 20 ventures. And so super respected person in that side of a business, person in that side of the world. And his question, the first couple of questions were, well, what of it is successful? What of it is less successful? And cut long story short, actually only, and I don't recall, but only 25% around of the investments were actually successful. So it was a huge energy for seemingly not great results. And then he was putting himself in question saying oh, the whole probably not meant to do all of that. And I could vividly see the raw talent or not raw talent, the experienced talent of that racehorse, to take that same analogy. It's just that he consistently jumped onto any racetrack and got enthused and couldn't say no. And so, oh yeah, sure, I'll do it. Oh yeah, sure I'll do it. Oh yeah, sure I'll do it. And people came to him with new ventures every day and he kept saying yes and embracing too much and then doing justice to none. And so I'm a little bit over complexifying that, but that was the core. Then we reached awareness to say, okay, it's not that I shouldn't be an entrepreneur and I'm greatly. It's all that talent, but it's about choosing which racetracks, what's the 80, 20. And then setting hardcore criteria to say, okay, what's the definition of a successful venture? And the thought was, okay, it needs to be close to my core industries and businesses because that's the stuff I can do with my eyes closed. If it's close to that, it's a guarantee of success. It needs to be in my geography because I know everyone I know. Like it's. I can operate the space. The yeah, it needs to be close to the core business because I can leverage the back office and the structure and the finance and admin and HR team and all of that. And so we had seven criteria like that. And I said before you say yes to any new venture, this is the funnel. And if it's no to any of those, you don't do it. But then at the next coaching session, so he had homework he had to put against that dashboard all his current ventures and say, is it dead wood? Should it be? Is it the hit list or the shit list? Sorry for the. That shouldn't be there and is it a transferable list? And so what to do? And. And he came all saying, oh, I didn't do my homework, I'm so sorry. Yeah, but I'll do better next time. I said oh, okay, well but what I did do is close five businesses, sell three and reinvest in one. And he, he did hundred x homework. He had completely grasped that it made total sense. It was all he needed is that reframing to push that raw talent of his racehorse of talent in the right racetrack. And he reshaped his portfolio 80, 20. He had the most amazing results after a couple of months. And it didn't take three years at Harvard to do that. It's getting to depth of the real root cause, understanding what stands in the way that awareness get an entrepreneur there and they don't need an action plan. Once they have clarity, they empower it again. Once we reach clarity on something that truly matters in a coaching session, the entrepreneur knows how to run and will get it fixed. And so that works. So what I work with now at the beginning of the year with my client, it's a clarity session. What is the one thing, the bottleneck, the decision that's going to make or break you this year and you are not. It's still a bit fuzzy. It's not that they can't take decision. It's sometimes when you're too much in the cold phase, you lose that perspective. And so what's the one thing that's what. What's the one Clarity session on what's the one topic and let's start the year with that. And often you have extraordinarily surprising results when you get them there. And I'm opening that as well to that's always what I suggest for new clients when sometimes people say, oh, I've never done coaching, how do I start? Is it for me? Is it? And I think so. So that's what I always suggest and I think that's the reason why CEOs and entrepreneurs who are coached on average outperform by large margin those who aren't. Because first it attracts the right people. If I know it all, if I'm Mr. Perfect, then the last thing I want to do is coaching. And so coaching attracts naturally the guys who are open to learn, who are keen and thirsty, who want to change. And so there's a, there's a kind of a natural selection of I'm not sure that Donald Trump would truly want coaching or listen so I may be political or it was a light hearted joke, but you need the right mindset to be coached and so that already you can't learn if you're not open to learn. And then getting that consistent space for clarity on the stuff that truly matters, the results can only flow. Yeah, that's what comes to mind.

Yeah. And that's wonderful because I was going to ask what is something that anybody listening can do to start putting themselves on that path. And so clarity is really thinking through, maybe thinking of those few questions that they really need to ask. So turning it on you, what is your plan? Do you continue with what you're doing? Do you have some other plans, a book, courses, other things that you'd like to put out into the world to help others?

At the moment I've just done a number of courses in the last 18 months and then a few business schools. So I feel that learning is always constant. But it feels for now it's good to pause that for a little bit. And now it's more honing into I've done a couple of years of coaching, I've coached them and it's to, to get to the next step in the tools, in the flow of my own practice to make sure I can accompany, I can perfect a little bit the method even more. It's on writing a book, why not? The sword has come to me a couple of times. I don't always have the patience to read books myself so I need to have those podcasts on a one but five speed and so on to rego fast or Regurgitate. I've played quite a bit with AI to accelerate clarity in CEO sessions. So I've built a few agent kis to a series of prompt in sequential manners to accelerate strategic clarity, reframing and so on. And so definitely playing more with, with that aspect. So it's a bit of that tripartite coaching session because then we build the repository and we don't always have to explain context. So I find enhancing coaching with AI is really something I will explore more of. And yeah, continuing to hope to be at the service of more organizations and do a little, my little bit to make the world a better place and you know, fantastic.

And there are many more questions I could ask you, but I think you've given us a really great idea of what to think about, what maybe to put aside how to think about our superpowers and how we get into flow state as CEOs and entrepreneurs to get to that 5 million 15 million 500 million mark wherever we may be. So Loic, thank you so much for offering us all of your advice, your frameworks and the way that you work and your own examples of the things that you needed to learn as a CEO. So one last question. Of course we'll have just your links in the show notes and when you do have a book ready, we'd love to have you back on to talk about that and share that with the audience. Do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto? Family?

What comes to mind is it always seems impossible until it's done. And maybe I'll stay with that one because that's then the other side of the coin from doing more of the same. Expecting what seems impossible is actually because we put our current frames and understanding of the world in that and then yes, it will be possible. And so it takes reframing to then say, okay, so it's not it can't be done, it's what would it take to get it done. And that's always where we start with exponential thinking and so on. So yeah, I'll definitely pick that one. Yeah.

Fantastic. That's a great one to choose. So thank you, thank you to everybody who is also listening to this episode. I hope that you got as much value as I did out of this conversation. We will have disruptive leap in the show notes so that you know how to reach out to like and learn about his scale up CEO business, find out what other resources he has to offer you and continue being motivated for what's ahead. You know, every year I think people start the year saying, this is my year. This is the year everything's going to change. But it's not just going to change by osmosis. You have to actually take those steps and those leaps, reframe the way that you're working to make sure that you're doing things differently, to lead you to that success that you want. So with that, I'll be back again with another amazing guest to share their story and their journey very shortly. Thank you again for listening to your brand Amplified. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of youf Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out@yourbrandamplified.com.