Your Personal Sparring Partner.
You did everything right. The title, the team, the numbers. But somewhere on the way up, the job started running you instead of the other way round. The days are full, the energy isn’t, and nobody around you asks the one question that matters: what is all this for? Most people I talk to call it ‘feeling stuck’. I call it the moment things get interesting.
Personal Sparring is a ten-week program for leaders who have given most of themselves to the job and want to find out what’s left when the title comes off: Who you are, what gives you meaning, and where you want to grow from here.
“Jan’s strategic strength is unrivaled. He combines experience with emotional intelligence. On top of that it’s always fun to think, develop, and discuss with him.”
— Nadia Schmitt // Managing Partner & former Group Head Business Marketing
The program
Experience, spirituality, science.
All in one program.
Personal Sparring applies what I have done with brands for years to the person who leads them: an honest picture of where you stand, clarity on what you stand for, a vision, an edge, and routines that carry you through the week. The method draws on three sources. Experience: twenty years in brand and marketing, a decade of working on myself. Spirituality: the search for your own truth, meaning and connection, found through practice, beyond any dogma. Science: the exercises we work with stem from research at Oxford, Yale and Harvard. This is how it works.
The journey
1Identity
Forget the title, forget the story. Become nobody for a moment. Then we set an intention and start digging: limiting and empowering beliefs. Core strengths and values that make you you. The shadow behind the persona you show to the world, and how you connect with others.
2Opportunities
From there we look forward: the vision that pulls you, and the purpose that drives you.
3Moves
The last weeks turn direction into motion. How to create from flow instead of fear, and what becomes possible when unwavering belief and inspired action come together.
Weekly flow
Arrives a few days ahead and asks for real attention: a talk, a chapter, a film, an exercise. It sets the questions we open the session with.
Sixty minutes, walk and talk, because you already spend enough time in Teams calls. This is where we think out loud and go deep.
Leaves the session with you: a test, a writing exercise, an experiment in your everyday life. The insight gets tested, and the next session builds on what you find.
Building blocks
A 90-minute kick-off, eight weekly sparrings of 60 minutes, a 90-minute closing session.
Me on WhatsApp for the questions that can't wait. Usually answered the same or the next working day.
A big picture that builds session by session, from strengths and values to vision and moves.
What goes in: thinkers from psychology, research, business and philosophy. Every week has its own voice, so no single one runs the show.
What stays between us: everything. Sessions, messages, notes. Your company gets a confirmation of dates and duration if it asks. Nothing else.
Because I've been you.
Why me?
For twenty years, brand and marketing have been my job: Head of Brand in a large corporation, leadership roles at agencies, most of it as an independent strategist side by side with marketing leaders. Budget rounds, board decks, reorgs, the Sunday Scaries before the Monday meeting. I know what’s on your calendar, because it was on mine.
That calendar burned me out twice. Successful on paper, stuck everywhere else. The first time I went into therapy and did the work from the client’s chair. The second time I unstuck my whole life, with every trade-off that came with it: divorce, an old version of myself gone, a fresh start. Then three years in Bali as the second education: meditation, breathwork, embodiment, and routines that make energy a decision instead of an accident.
So here is what you get in your corner: twenty years of brand and marketing, a decade of working on myself (and still doing it), plus the methods and the best from both worlds. That is the foundation I work from today, and it makes me a better sparring partner than the corporate years alone ever could.
Curious who you could be?
Let's find out in a quick 15-min Discovery Espresso: we'll spot where you're stuck or out of balance, feel out the vibe, and see how ten weeks could fit into your busy life.
Book your Discovery Espresso now.
No strings attached, just ideas brewing.