About FJ.

A man is defined by his actions, but let’s start with a ton of words

Published in

fjhendrix

9 min readJan 7, 2018

Hi, I am FJ short for FJhendrix, my real name is Florian, but somehow the FJ nickname stuck with friends and it felt kinda cool, so why not?

Now that we got that question out of the way, let’s build a FJ-fueled FAQ :)

TL;DR

Hi, I’m FJ. I ponder about the meaning of life, productivity, the impact of new technologies, my travel plans, building startups and much more. I used to journle, now I blog so you can be the antidote to living in my personal echo-chamber. I hope you learn something from me, as I hope learning from you. FJhendrix.com is only a part of the online real-estate that I contribute to, check out #stealmyidea, www.getsleek.co and www.irex-consulting.com for some of my other ventures.

Background: Studied computer science, went into business consulting, dreamed of starting my own business and I did, still quite secretive but you can read about it here: www.getsleek.co. Always planning my next side-project. In 15 years, I would love to be a startup mentor or part of a VC-firm.

Personality: I have too much energy, not enough time, aim for 100% productivity, avoid black&white opinions, bring focus to projects, value creativity above intelligence and want to live on the frontlines of technology and innovation. My thirst for self-improvement knows no boundaries.

Why Blog: Check my why blog?-post here:

Contact me?: Sure don’t hesitate: Instagram, Linked-in, fj[at]fjhendrix.com

What do you do exactly?

I currently combine two main activities: I work as a business consultant at www.irex-consulting.com since 2014 and I run a software-startup www.getsleek.co since 2017. Aside from that people reach out for help with their projects, I take the time to work on temporary side-projects and well in 2018 I decided to start blogging.

sleek

At sleek, we are building a product to help users manage their information in today’s complex reality. We receive mails, files and chat messages from multiple channels. We discover interesting stuff across the web, internal tools and through word-of-mouth. We take notes, keep todo’s and create complex roadmaps for long-term projects. We collaborate and share on all of this.
It’s great to have access to all this information. However this vast amount of information has resulted in 2 problems.

Focus has become a scarce resource.
The holy grail of information re-use, remains largely unused.

Unfortunately most of the tools we use today are not focused on the needs of the individual user, both on benefits for the team or the enterprise. For example, to create focus, most of us gather what we need to get our next job done. So we download files from everywhere, open a ton of internet browser tabs and start working. While we are working, we get notifications from everywhere. Plus if something is missing, we need to search again. Potentially distracted by a ton of information that we don’t care about. Finally we are confronted with a lack of re-use when finding stuff that we could have used a few days ago, but forgot we had.

irex

At irex, I run consulting projects for clients, mostly in energy utilities. Aside from that I am part of a ton of internal initiatives such as marketing, recruiting and knowledge management. I also consult our internal software development team that now offers 2 innovative products. The consulting projects typically run for 3–6 months and are about finding and implementing initiatives that reduce costs, increase client satisfaction and bring in more revenue. Over the years I have been suprised about the differences between each of our clients despite many of them operating in the same sector. Thanks to our broad approach, I have been able to work with every department imaginable and often reported directly to management. In practice I analyze problems that clients are already aware of and gather data from interviewing employees and looking through their IT systems. Throughout the project I report consistently about my results, implement quick wins directly and integrate long-term opportunities in an implementation roadmap that the client can pick-up when the project is concluded. I would love to keep doing this as long as I have time available, the projects interest me and my impact on the growth of irex itself stays visible.

Side-projects

Side-projects can last for weeks or months. They outgrow me or they rever to my backlog. If you have an idea you want me to help with, let me know.

I am currently pursueing the launch of a community called #stealmyidea to encourage everyone to share their ideas, no matter in what stage. It’s a shame so many great ideas stay locked up in people’s mind, because unexplored they are worth nothing. It’s only when they are tested in the real-world, when their value can be assessed. And that can be as simple as writing a blog post. The bar to share ideas with the community will be as low as possible. Thanks to a group of editors, we will push all the ideas to a common quality-standard before publishing. Want to share your idea, let me know?

How would you describe yourself as a person?

In short, I am an entrepreneur, management consultant and computer scientist mashed into one. I

What makes me thrive:

Learning: I’m like a knowledge sponge. I want to learn about everything.
I enjoy a well-written article or a great speaker, but mostly I like pursueing a new project. Because result can be so rewarding.
Data & Change: Opportunities are all around us and discovering hidden insights motivates me. I look to reduce bias and make informed decisions.
Results & Decisions: In the end, analyses are irrelevant without action.
Discussion: I surround myself with like-minded people who surprise me.
Efficiency: Life is short, so I want to get the most out of it. My schedule always has a next thing planned: a next trip, a next meetup with a friend, a next visit to the gym, a next …

How would others describe you?

What my friends, colleagues & clients say about me:

Gets the job done, on time and with quality above expectations.
Always full of energy & creative solutions.
Speaks up when he disagrees and very responsive to feedback.
Leads people by helping them not by bossing them around.

Why do you do what you do?

I have always been thirsty for change and innovation. People around me have always admired me for dreaming, thinking outside of the box and giving an unconventional answer. I generally get iritated from seeing inefficiencies or opportunities that are not realized.

I often wonder, why are we doing this in this way?
This is so frustrating and time-consuming, there must be a better way, no?

This is how I ended up studying computer science to understand how computers work, because I generally consider them as the most important technology ever invented to lift our human limitations and improve our lives by automating away boring unproductive activities. When I graduated, I thought about starting a business and exploring my ideas directly. During my time at the academy, I had already explored starting a business through entrepreneurship competitions, but I felt I missed a thorough understanding of the business world to bring them to market. So I joined the consulting world to learn about writing business plans, convincing stakeholders and generally running a business day-to-day.

After about 2 years, it struck me that I really wanted to explore the sleek idea. It kept frustrating me how difficuly personal information management really is. The complexity of managing my information had risen because I was working with a ton of clients and collaborators. Most research and competition that I found, focuses on the discovery of new information, while I still believe there is much more value in re-using old valuable content. Plus I was clearly not the only one, having this frustration. So let’s see what we can do about it, right? :) I met with my old high-school buddy Michiel and he was invested in solving the problem as well. We found our first investor Wim, joined @kbcstart-it and started interviewing, building and iterating on how we could help bring more focus and re-use of information in the world.

Everyday, I wonder how to have a positive and lasting impact on others.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I think having original thoughts might be near impossible. Most of what my inspiration comes from others. From talking to them, from reading online and offline, blogs, books, the news etc.I think any form of information breaths inspiration as long as you reflect about what it means for what you are doing at the time. It can be images, things around you, music, words, whater makes you tick. The only thing that’s important is that you are paying attention.

I look at the world with the curiosity of a child. If you don’t care about being wrong than you’ll struck gold sometimes. Even if it’s not an original idea, the only thing that matters is that no-one has brought it to life. Even if they have, the fact that you have come up with the idea, without knowing of the existing solution, proves that it isn’t solved 100% or their distribution model isn’t reaching all audiences.

Get out of your comfort zone and start talking to your audience, because that’s where your inspiration can become the engine of change.

How can one person pursue so many dreams?

Well, only time will tell. Of course I prioritize www.getsleek.co currently because getting such an idea of the ground is no small undertaking. I love the switch between al the things I am doing. I generally believe this keeps my mind on edge.

I think it’s challenging to pursue multiple goals simultaneously, but as long as you focus on one thing at a time, you can achieve a lot.

That’s why I plan my week to focus on my different endeavours per day of the week and my day in blocks of a few hours to finish my daily goals. I read a lot on productivity and have tried many techniques like GTD and pomodoro and try to pick and use what works for me.

How do you think the future will look like?

Generally I believe that the future depends on a combination of technology and an understanding of human psyschology. If we can invent it, we will. Humans are changing the world dramatically and the Human Colossus (see Tim Urban) is just a bunch of humans creating systems to work together. Understanding group psychology is probably your best bet at understanding what we will do with the things we invent and how we will prioritize our efforts. I generally avoid to make any predictions, but I try to read a lot about the predictions other make, hoping that the truth is somewhere in the middle. If you want to be fascinated about what others have said go to the futuretimeline.net project.

My favorite quote on the future is this one from Bill Gates:

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the short-term and underestimate the change that will occur in the long-term

What’s your advice to your fellow man?

Life is short, think about what you would like others to say at your funeral.
Ask yourself:

Did you enjoy life enough?
Did you have the impact you wanted to make?
How about your karma points, how have you treated others?

My tips to improve would be:

Focus to bring out the best of YOU.
Network with the intention to help others and they will help you.
Measure your progress or you will run around in loops.

And above all:

Search for happiness, not success (it’s a by-product)

Call to Action

Wisdom starts with answering to yourself (Check this awesome post):

What are your beliefs, your unquestionable truths?

Thanks for Reading!

FJ.