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Good At Kolumne: Florian Schleicher

Florian Schleicher has been advising, supporting, and guiding companies in their marketing presence for over 15 years. His experience spans from large international corporations to agencies, NGOs, and start-ups, bringing sustainable growth to brands. With his marketing studio, founded in 2022, he offers coaching, strategies, concepts, and presentations.

In his column, Florian explores the Japanese concept of Ikigai and his initial struggles with it. Discover whether he found his Ikigai by reading the full column.

When I was a child, some of my happiest memories were getting new LEGO sets. Immediately I opened it and began building. My head was buzzing with excitement and while putting brick above brick I spun stories about pirates, castles, deep sea exploration and space adventures.

Once I had finished building the sets, I played with them for a while, but that was just nice to add. The most joy I always had was just building.

Then growing up, I stopped building. “Playing is not a part of adulthood” – I thought. I have to become serious and start working on my career. Until I read a book called “IKIGAI” in 2023.

This book is about the japanese IKIGAI model that looks at the one thing that

  1. You love doing,
  2. The world needs,
  3. You can earn a living with
  4. And that you are good at.

While reading, I got frustrated. I didn’t know what my IKIGAI could be. But on one of the last pages, there were two sentences that sparked my interest: “What did you already enjoy when you were a kid? Maybe you still do that?” – “Could it be?” I thought to myself.

I loved building LEGO back then. And I still love building furniture or something for my terrace. And basically that’s what I have also been doing professionally, without seeing the connective thread: I was building campaigns, marketing strategies, brands, projects and my career.

What is it about building that I love so much?

 

It is like a good strategy: At the beginning, we take a look at where we are. And then we look at where we want to be in the futures. Or in other words: There is something which doesn’t exist yet, and we need to create. This gives me the best high: The feeling of building something that was not before there yet and that I can help shape. Maybe there was no strategy there before, maybe there was no connection to customers, maybe there is a new product that needs a novel marketing approach, or it might be a new channel that needs to come to existence.

I worked for brands like McDonald’s and Greenpeace, and finally put it all together when I became the Head of Marketing at Too Good To Go. I built the brand for the Austrian market together with an amazing team.

After being employed for 15 years, I started my own marketing studio in 2022, and I’ve been lucky so far to be able to continue working with and advising some amazing brands. So now I build my own company. I dedicate 1–2 days per week to building it by writing a newsletter, hosting a podcast, again building a team and the rest of my week I work for my clients. I help them with marketing workshops, strategies, coachings and an online learning format. All to build their brands, be it a startup or a corporation.

It is all building. That’s my IKIGAi. I am good at building things.

Steve Jobs famously said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”.

By the way, I started building LEGO again in my free time. It still calms me down, and it is a great practice to do while I now listen to podcasts.

So let me ask you now: What did you love doing when you were a kid? Do you still do it today?

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