Pivotal moments
New territory
No playbooks
All-In.
Strategic consulting | Interim-Leadership | Business adventures
Hi! Yes, that’s me. All-In at Pivotal moments, despite (or because of?) the absence of clarity, routines, guidelines, previous experiences or established processes. Across the past 20+ yrs., I’ve worked across continents, industries and roles - but the one thing that always stayed true was that I thrive in situations, where comfort ends, change begins and most hesitate. And I feel that’s where I belong and where I’ve always done my best work.
What are Pivotal moments? These are special, critical, sometimes even magical periods, or turning points, where the story and direction of organisations or agencies begin to change, yet their destination and roadmap are rather undefined and unclear, at least beyond commonly believed assumptions and opinions. Being rather the beginning of a journey, these phases are often overlooked, underestimated, but certainly NOT business as usual. Typical examples include durations of (international) expansion, market or category entry, growth trajectories, strategic shifts, re-structurings, re-brandings, new ventures or actual pivots.
The Craft
I’m a Father, Husband, Marketer, Strategist, Entrepreneur, In-House Consultant, external Advisor, Kickstarter and YOUR Sparring Partner all at once. I love to build, to develop, to spearhead, to identify root causes, to take up complex challenges, as well as to inspire people & businesses to change status quo, try out new routes and continously evolve.
I have lived and worked in Germany, UK and Japan and uniquely blend long-term corporate experiences with consulting and entrepreneurial environments and across different industries and sectors, such as Automotive, Retail, B2B and Tech. These diverse experiences enable me to seamlessly travel between different cultures, departments and disciplines and forming a deeper, contextualised understanding of each and especially, the people, their relationships and the interactions within.
I built the Global Consumer Insights Team for Mazda from scratch throughout my three-year assignment in Japan, launched and scaled the German operations of Avaus, the leading Nordic Digital Consultancy and founded my own venture in the field of sustainable fashion, Sneakers Unplugged, Europe’s first retail concept for sustainable, fair & vegan sneakers, nominated for the German Sustainability Award 2025. Throughout my corporate career, I led the strategic marketing, brand, media & insights functions for over a decade and initiated several pivotal projects from setting up Car Connectivity over Econometric Modelling to applied Behavioural Science and constantly tested and adopted effective new innovations from the field of Marketing.
Alongside the depth and breadth of functional experience, I will always bring a high degree of energy, refreshing honesty, speed, relentless curiousity, decision guts & ownership to anything I do. In essence, I’ll swim fast, even in cold water.
-
Strategic Marketing & Brand Management
-
Brand Strategy & Positioning
-
Research, Consumer & Behavioural Insights
-
Go-to-Market & Business Development
-
New Ventures, Start- & Scale-Ups
-
Corporate & Sustainability Strategy
“I work where change begins and stay until something new has been built”
How can I best support your Pivotal moments?
-
Clarity
(Think)
Deep dive into your world, your customers, your past & your desired Future
- Sort, Discover & Advice
- Questioning & Mirroring
- Structure the unstructured
- Develop strategic plans
-
Kickstart
(Build)
Spearhead the activities, get stuff going, setting foundations, doing groundwork, establish the base
- Initial recruits, partners, target customer
- Test & Learn your hypothesis
- Marketing & PR
- Setting Culture & Mindset
-
Momentum
(Drive)
Scale the ship, don’t sleep, constant cycles from customers to recruitment to creative problem-solving and back
- Execution power
- Clarity what works / doesn’t
- Enlarge Team capabilities
- Early structures
-
Embed
(Handover)
Ensuring what has been built survives without you or me or others, aim for lasting
- Knowledge transfer
- Successor search
- Strategic back-casting
- Coaching support
How I work - Engagement models and use cases
-
Corporate, Brand & Sustainability Strategy
Audits, Readiness & Discovery Phases
Strong Automotive, Retail and B2B industry knowledge
No vetted interests, hidden agendas & no Tech to sell on the back
For companies: Your honest second opinion & neutral sparring partner “Your outsourced In-house consultant”
For agencies: Your external advisor and expert to support your pitches and client projects
-
SME’s, agencies & smaller consulting companies
Privately owned or Investor-led
Overall or Partial Lead
Kickstart & Spearhead
Open for co-founding opportunities
-
6+ months duration
Clear mandate, responsibility, budget (if applicable)
Remote or Hybrid
-
Strategic (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, Narrative)
Operational Introducer (i.e. for foreign agencies) or local representative / contact / bridge helping companies to grow
External Advisor and Expert for agencies and institutes to support pitches and client projects
No “Telesales” function
-
Vacant positions (i.e. no one fits the Brief yet, illness, maternity leave, etc.)
Clear mandate, responsibility, budget (if applicable)
Opportunity to change legacy ways of working
-
I’m open & flexible if you are too! :-))
Thoughts on Interim-Management
Why playing it “safe” may not be the best of your choices
Pivotal moments are unique to each organisation, which is why standard solutions often proclaimed by consulting companies or change agencies are limited in dealing with these, especally if they are not accustomed to the context they are trying to alter. Equally, these phases require people with a particular set of experiences, creativity, energy, curiousity and hands-on mindset you typically find among entrepreneurs, but not in the league of conventional managers, who themselves thrive in different, more established settings. If you want to maximise the opportunity of your (ad)venture or strategic project, the least you need is risk aversion & mitigation, status quo maintenance, short-term thinking and fear of failure. In other words, what you need is rather an “interim-entrepreneur”, not a traditional interim-manager.
