Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

#874 NerdioCon 2026: Christiaan Brinkhoff - 🚀 From Comfort Zone to Innovation: Building What’s Next

• Joey Pinz • Episode 874

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🚀 What does it really take to evolve from curious builder to global tech leader?

In this episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Joey Pinz sits down with a senior product leader shaping the future of cloud, AI, and modern work. From building websites at age 12 to helping scale Microsoft technologies like Azure Virtual Desktop, this conversation reveals what drives long-term growth, innovation, and impact.

💡 You’ll hear how stepping outside comfort zones consistently creates opportunity—and why staying curious is no longer optional in today’s fast-moving tech world. The discussion dives deep into AI-driven automation, the evolution of virtual desktops, and how businesses can scale smarter without increasing complexity.

🌍 Beyond tech, this episode explores personal growth, life-changing decisions, and how global experiences reshape perspective, leadership, and purpose.

 

🔑 Top 3 Highlights

✅ Leaving comfort zones creates exponential growth

🤖 AI and automation are redefining IT and business operations

🌱 Continuous learning is the ultimate competitive advantage

 

 

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Join us for enlightening discussions that spark growth and exploration. 

Hosted by Joey Pinz, this Discipline Conversations Podcast offers insights and inspiration.

 

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Discipline. How does it play a role in your life? How does it drive your decisions? Do you have too much or too little? Every profession, hobby, or passion requires a level of discipline. I have used it in weight loss (+130 lbs.), family death, and found a +25 year business. Am I an expert? Absolutely not! Please join me, as I speak to interesting people and find out how discipline affects their career, life, goals, and decisions. Join me as I talk to interesting people in: #Health, #Fitness & #Wellness: #Business, #Technology & #Science: #Art & #Culture: Website: joeypinz.com All social media @TheJoeyPinz Do you wish to Sponsor? Get the prospectus here: www.joeypinz.com/sponsor

 

 

 

 

 

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SPEAKER_00

NerdioCon 2026. What a great event. What an absolutely great event. They're in Palm Springs, California. I believe it's their fifth or their sixth. First one I've been to. I was I reached out and I was graciously invited by the entire marketing and sales team, PR. Just a wonderful event. The Star Wars team was there. The opening day was May 4th. So, of course, May the Fourth be with you. May the force be with you, excuse me. But just wonderful event, great theme carried through of Star Wars. I've never seen it done so well before. This is the best I've ever seen it done well, uh, really well. And the the attention to detail from the leadership team, from the marketing team was absolutely incredible. Wonderful keynotes. Um, I attended all the MSP, of course, related ones and lots of great MSPs. I had great side conversations. The vendor hall was was pumping and thriving, a lot of great vendors there, but just an absolutely wonderful event. Um, glad I was a part of it. We set up a podcast station there and we had four great conversations. The first was was with Vedeen, the CEO, an absolute pleasure. A gentleman, kind, smart, uh, first time meeting him, a walkthrough some, you know, where he was, where he is now. Uh you know, Nerdio was nothing a mere seven years ago, in 2018, I believe, is when it started. Um, meeting his partner Joseph and wonderful conversation with Vadim, building the future of MSP Cloud Success. The next conversation was with Will Lominsky. I've had the great pleasure of knowing Will for six or seven years. Now we haven't talked in the last couple of years, but to see his career just skyrocket is is inspiring and makes me happy and and um really, really impressive. We were able to catch up a bit, uh, scaling smarter how MSPs went in a fast-changing tech world. Great conversation with Will. The third was with Amal Dalve. Great conversation. Amal was really, really cool to talk about some of the older technologies in the 90s and the 2000s that we're both familiar with, that we both kind of came up with. Uh, from code to product leadership, building what matters. We uh real candid conversation. He exchanged, shared some of the things that he uh asks people on interviews, and really great conversation. Smart man, uh, where he grew up in India to where he is now. Really, really great conversation with Amal. And then lastly, with Christian Brankoff, wonderful young man, very open, very smart, author of five books, holds all of these titles and awards. He was at Microsoft for a while, and uh really smart the way he uh systematizes everything, and um, he was really candid too. At the end of the conversation, he shared something that he generally doesn't talk about, but it was a really great conversation with Christian. I really, really enjoyed it. I thank the whole team there at Nerdio, Liz, and team and marketing and PR and sales and leadership uh to have me at this wonderful, wonderful event. I hope to come back to come back soon. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Hi, I'm Joey Pins. And here's my 45-second introduction. After starting my business in the 90s, I started developing poor habits of eating and my diet because of working way too much. I found myself at 340 pounds. The doctor told me if I don't lose the weight, I'm not gonna see my daughter graduate. I took the next seven months and lost 130 pounds. People ask me, How'd you do it? What's the secret? I need to lose weight. How'd you do it? How do I lose weight with just one word? Discipline. I've had other successes in life and I attribute them all to discipline. No, I'm not thinking of discipline, but I believe that it can help all of us. How do we better ourselves and society? I talk to interesting people in health, fitness, or wellness, business, technology, design, art and culture. And I eventually ask them how discipline plays a role in their life. Podcast vision through learning from others. What was the title? Forgive me.

SPEAKER_02

Uh Global Black Belt. I've been here.

SPEAKER_00

Global Black Belt. And what does it take to do to become that?

SPEAKER_02

Well, not Taekwondo or something like that, no.

SPEAKER_00

Not a martial art.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, no. It's uh it's a title for incubation sales at Microsoft. And uh when I joined Microsoft, um they Microsoft acquired Evis Logics, which is a profile management solution. And at that time, Azure Virtual Desktop, or back in the days, Windows Virtual Desktop was uh was not really a product, or it was a product, but not at large scale. And what they are looking for in the beginning in terms of sales is uh incubation sales, so people that talk product and customer and go out there and see how the product should evolve to a better product market fit offering, and that was exactly the product um the black belt, global black belt uh kind of opportunity I had. So I joined that and uh yeah, it was really really great because we went from like AVD, W V D was only like 5050 customers to AVD. AVD is now the name, but back in the days it was called WVD, so Windows Virtual Desktop.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, yeah, virtual desktop, yeah, yeah. It's come a long way, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_02

It has been coming a very long way, but it has been going extremely fast. Time uh during COVID when everybody was sent back home, the yeah, the product went to an extreme growth curve for people working remotely, and that's where Nerdio also, of course, jumped in and uh really helped facilitating the need of simplification when the knowledge of Azure and other products wasn't there in the field, or there's like uh a hard there's a hard time to get the quality of a consultant in at the time that you need it because they were busy with other customers. So they jumped in, automated it, and really scaled it. So small customers started to use Azure Virtual Desktop and uh enterprises as well via Nerdio, and now we are like five, five, four, four years later, and you see that it still keeps growing even beyond COVID as the yeah, added value of Nerdio has been keep expanding on customer feedback.

SPEAKER_00

So tell me about yourself before the age of 18. What were you interested in? What was your pat what were your passions then?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I'm the type of person that um went through uh a couple hoops in my life before I knew kind of what I wanted to do. You know, right? Before 18, you think you're ready for conquering the world, but you kind of aren't. It's like uh that's the type of life that I lived. I uh I had some hints in my early career or life. You cannot really make it a career when you're like 13 years old, but I um I think I was 11. I got a computer from my grandfather, first computer, very happy, it was very expensive. What kind? Uh it was a Packard Bell Pentium 1. So um, and what kind of changed there was I I started like uh scripting, coding, I created my own website, and I created a website that people could log into, play games on, and call number, get more credit, and I got paid for that too. So I was like try 12, 13 years old, and I got paid like two, three thousand euros because I was living in Europe at the time, and I think that was a moment that I now realized that you get some hints like in your life sometimes that you're like kind of an entrepreneurial kind of person, but you don't you're not like thinking that that that's a benefit. But later on, my my grandfather uh always said you should go in IT. And I was like 16 and I started to work as an um as an an air conditioner kind of AC engineer as a vacation kind of job, and um I I I earned money for the first time after school, and I got used to that very fast. So I ended up doing that a year, trying it out, and I ended up not liking it for more than a year, and then I went to school and did my IT degree, which normally takes four years. I did it in two years. Wow, and then I started working in an MSP that did a lot of Citrix, and then I was like uh searching for enterprise-size customers, so I went to an enterprise consultancy firm and started to work international size-based companies, bigger, bigger, larger, larger. And then eventually I um started blogging and presenting about the things I learned at the customer on my own platform, and I did videos, presentations, and then people started to like that, and then I got all the titles of the vendors to appreciate me, and then I got introduced to a vendor called Avis Logics that wanted to hire me to build a product value around that product in the cloud in Azure, and then a year later, Mike knocked on the door to acquire that company, and now eight years later, I'm sitting here with you in this podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Uh tell me about the jump Christian from when you were at the MSP. Why did you want to go to enterprise?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a very good question. I'm the type of person that if I feel that things get stable, I want to strive for the next big thing. I see. And I want to keep challenging myself. And I I kind of get like that like lazy feeling if you feel that you know everything. Some some some some people feel that's great because it creates comfort, right? But I'm I'm very much a person that believes in um the um magic happens where uncomfortable kind of starts to feel coming in in your brain, right? So it's like um I think there's a phrase for that that uh that uh yeah, success starts when you move out of your comfort zone. So that's kind of a habit that I have been doing for a long time and that kept kind of creating new opportunities for me as like I'm opening all these boxes pretty much of oh, what's going on here? And there's something there. And of course, that's I don't know, my brain loves that because I like to get a lot of energy out of things that I don't know up front and then figure out later on, and hence why I uh I have been always in RD kind of type of role. So incubation, new things, fast paced, and now with AI, yeah, it's it's it's just remarkable to be part of this journey and uh take on so many of these new opportunities as part of Nerdio and uh yeah, partner solutions as well.

SPEAKER_00

So tell me about when you were at the firm and it got acquired by Microsoft. How did your role in life change?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, my I I've been very humble. I think I'm always very humble, but at that time I was a consultant. I I of course at my wife, we just had a kid, so things were very early, and like life actually kind of starts. I bought my house, I had a mortgage, so I was like ready for like that next phase in your life, and then all of a sudden a company got acquired, and yeah, there are life-changing moments happening to you, and you're actually not really realizing that's kind of happening too. So, yeah, yeah, if you work for an international company, your salary goes up, you know, all of a sudden have the bonuses, the stocks, the all these things coming in. So, in like four or five years, when I was living in that first house, I was able to financially uh pay off like that house and feel more comfortable about certain decisions in my life because sometimes you get sort of influenced by oh, I don't want to lose my job, and then I don't take that risk for going to that other opportunity. And I kind of because that that happened to me, I kind of felt very comfortable to eventually make decisions of like I'm I'm okay, like let's try it out because that baseline was okay, and and that made me eventually in 2021 move to Ratmond from the Netherlands to immigrate and to work for Microsoft and Redmond.

SPEAKER_00

Why? Why did you have to make that change? Why couldn't you stay there?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a good question. I I did it myself, I didn't have to go. Uh I was not pushed for. I just strongly believe that all the stuff I did in the last 10 years, like implementations of Microsoft technology, that I was like, how nice is it to get an opportunity to work for Microsoft in Redman, close to the core, where the whole IT business started as well. So I just saw that as like a dream come true, as well as a moment in my life that if I do that, I can probably benefit from that experience for the rest of my life. Because there are ways to do kind of partnership kind of work and work with people in in the US as part of a corporate organization that are completely different than working for an MSP, for example, and it opens your eyes in the way of how you can kind of pre-calculate certain opportunities, and then I also felt that if I do that, I can also become a better product manager, so I can kind of look through product better than I can do at a smaller kind of startup from another location because the operations or the the skill Microsoft operates in is just remarkable. They are a 50-year-old like company, they keep innovating, and there's a formula that made that work, and you can only feel on how that works if you're part of that formula. And I have been part of that for eight years and five years in actual product core product management, and that has been just changing everything. My philosophy of life, how I think, how I think about work-life balance, how I think about me as a person, how I think about values in life, and how I how I want to be remembered as well as a person. Like if somebody thinks about me working with me, I want to make sure that people think about yes, he helped me as well, come coming a little further in my journey, life, career, or opportunity or partnership that we do on the business side. Um and if I was probably st uh if I stayed in Europe, I probably would be a different person. Really? Because of the culture in the country that is different than in the US. So the US has been transforming my way of living in a positive way because I've seen multiple cultures coming together, right? As well as working with like, I don't know, probably thousands of engineers over the last five years in Redmond that just changed my complete perspective of life. And in a positive way. Like I'm uh yeah, I can I can definitely say that I'm I'm a better yeah person by yeah, working with many different cultures at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

And you wrote five books, Christian.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you're well informed. Yeah, I wrote five books indeed. Yeah, and it started all with a community book uh called I think it was called Bite Size. When it when the revolution, well let's say evolution, revolution happened with cloud from on premises to cloud back in 2015 when it really became a big shift. Um, there was a need for a lot of customers and and people in the community were looking for tips and tricks from how should I go to the cloud? How should I do security? So we built a book with like bite-sized recommendations of how people think about the cloud, and that we made available for free for a good cause, and that got like sold or sold, give away for free almost, um, like like a couple thousand times. And that was my first book writing experience. And then after that, I was like, I want to do it more again, again, and help more people writing technical books. So I wrote a book for Windows 365, a book for Azure um for Windows 365. I did a part kind of influence or forward writing for an Azure Virtuesta book as well. Um, and I'm in fact uh considering doing a new one on uh Intune as well uh this year, which will be more AI focused, so more the evolution of agents, MCP servers, and how management is gonna get gonna be evolving to uh a non-GUI kind of uh future. That's where I see Nerdio coming as well, evolving the current product to, for example, an AI-driven, uh MCP-enabled product that really infuses an existing AI kind of let's say assistant consoles that customers are using.

SPEAKER_00

So there's a big shift happening, just like the book happened in your brand deserves to be in front of the right audience decision makers, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are ready to take action. That's exactly who listens to the Joey Pins podcast. Thousands of engaged business leaders and consumers tune in every week, millions of views and listens across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Sponsors see real impact, higher engagement, brand trust, and conversations. We offer strategic partnerships tailored to your goals, including uh targeted ad placements, branded guest appearances, multi-episode and event sponsorships. Make your brand part of the conversation. Let's grow together. Visit joypins.com slash sponsor to explore sponsorship opportunities or email us at sales at joeypins.com. The Joey Pins Podcast, where brands and thought leaders connect.

SPEAKER_02

Um, ten years ago when the cloud shift was happening. I feel a cinema revolution with AI is kind of happening right now. So where I can to help and share my knowledge that's all in my brain, I I try to do that as uh as much as I can.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a really, really cool way of giving back. So you're at Microsoft, you move to a completely new country, you're being influenced by all these cultures, you say you become a better person. Why leave Microsoft?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's also a very good question. So as I am like really an incubation-driven person, I felt that I saw Nerdio in 2018 being one of the biggest partners, largest partners of Microsoft and Windows 36 or uh Window Street 65, but Azure Virtue Desk back in the days as well. I always admired their passion, their culture for striving for a better product hand in hand with customers. And I was like thinking at some point, like I think it was December last year, and I was thinking, like, I've been five years at Microsoft, five or eight years at Microsoft, five years in Redman, and I was like, before we move to the US, I always sat three to five years we want to live there, and then go back to the family that lives back in Europe and kind of yeah, we just be close to family again, but then take all these learnings that I gained there, and then either start my own company or do something new from scratch. And I had the opportunity to start building Windows 365 from when it was nothing, it was a Visio stencil, and of course it was a great team that we worked with all together, but I had that expertise from starting from zero to one, and I had the opportunity to do that at Nerdio as well. So, right now I'm leading the RD team, and we are current currently building a new platform from zero to one as well to extend kind of capabilities for AI in the future. So, um, yeah, how how great would it then be to take all that learnings from Microsoft and do it with the largest partner for the products that I was representing? So I talked with my wife and the family friends that I have surrounding me, and I was like, what do you think? And they all said, Yes, you should take that opportunity. Yeah, and and this comes back to the if you don't take the chance, you will never know what you miss in your life. And I rather regret what I did than regretting what I didn't do exactly.

SPEAKER_00

We're here at NerdioCon 2026, Christian. What are some of your goals this week?

SPEAKER_02

My goals. Well, um, as this is the last day, so my goal after this event is getting a uh a good drink, probably. Um, it's been a busy week um and talk with customers as well during the drink, uh, because this is all about people socializing, networking, and then uh yeah, go back home and see my family again. Because uh the other side of these conferences is of course, yeah, you're away sometimes from your family. So I uh more and more I'm away, how more I appreciate to go back and uh yeah, see them again.

SPEAKER_00

Christian, I'm a former MSP. How does Nerdio help MSPs?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, Nerdio helps MSPs really from the yeah scaling layer. So, for example, all the products Azure Virtue Desktow 365, MT System365 solution, they all request certain knowledge and expertise. So training a consultant to get to that point is expensive, hard to get. It's still very scarce in the field to get good consultants, especially for smaller businesses. They all work at enterprises. So Nerdio really facilitates the unified management automation layer that an MSP can use to just kind of buy into the philosophy of automation and AI without investing in yeah, a lot of people that are needed to manage and maintain that. So you kind of with let's say an MSP product, you can operate as like a company of like 20-30 employees that you normally would need when you do it manually. And I see that as well as an example where like Windows 365, Azure Virtue Desktop require certain expertise of virtualization. But if you uh buy Nerdio, it allows you to use Nerdio as the facilitator without the knowledge for virtualization. So it's really it gives you kind of a power set of tools that you can use after enrolling without the complexity and investing in it. So and I feel that more and more moving to AI and agents that gets more powerful where we infuse in other parts of the product and with the Microsoft Stack, of course, where you can even be more powerful as like an MSP to use an agent that does some of the autonomous management for you to maintain like a cloud PC or an Azure Virtue Desktop VM.

SPEAKER_00

Is there a question you wished more people would ask you?

SPEAKER_02

Um well, um I think I get a lot of questions on a daily basis, mostly are technical, um, like, hey, how would you do this? Or what do you suggest in the direction we should be going? I think the question that I think is not always asked correctly or answered correctly is what's the long-term projectory of like like EUC, Windows? And I feel strongly that we have been in this virtualization space for a long time with existing products, Citrix, Omnissa, um, all these different players in this field, but it hasn't been really innovating. And I think the question I would like to be asked more is where is like the next three to five years, what where is like the puck going? Where is the VDI infrastructure going? How is the simplification happening? And I think that's the question that I I can answer, but a lot of people, a lot of consultants don't see that transformation yet. So terminologies that you might have heard during this conference are computer using agents. So it's a computer that can behave as a human user, so you can offload repetitive tasks. So I see that as the big shift of VDI UC to a genic AI while not touching your old legacy application to transform to AI already. So that's one. And the other part I feel is autonomous management that we just talked a little bit about. So imagine you don't have to click all these buttons anymore in your GUI to go to a web portal, but you can just talk like you normally would do with a call center employee. Like, I have a problem. Can you help me? I have this error code on my screen, and yeah, I cannot work because that's pretty much what an end user thinks, and a technical person can solve it. I feel that that boundary of human needs to talk with human becomes more human, talks with an AI interface that talks directly with the MCP-enabled backend and solves it for you. And then you as an IT professional can still decide do you want to have the approval human in the loop? Kind of, I need to be in control of that in between. But I feel that whole layer of the flows and the people talk with the other people that fades away and becomes more and more automated.

SPEAKER_00

You're your senior director of product management.

SPEAKER_02

Correct.

SPEAKER_00

What excites you about your jobs?

SPEAKER_02

Innovation and customers. So I always say that the product is a representation from the people that work at the company. And I think that the Nerdio product represents that. There are a lot of features in there that came from customers asking for, hey, can you do this? Can you bring this in the product? And in fact, I just met with one customer and they asked, We use this configuration point on Windows 365, and we probably will move to that other configuration point uh in the near-to-future. And right now, that requires the reprovision of a cloud PC. And they asked us, can you help there so it's not a reprovision experience for the end user? And I took that, I put it on like the roadmap, and I'm gonna discuss it next week. And there's a likely chance that we will build that into the product, and it all starts at the conference like this. And I think that's the difference between being a customer-obsessed product leader, product manager versus um, yeah. I'm not sure if it happens to a lot, but I've seen a lot of product management kind of people working in a way of hey, we we know the customer better than the customer knows themselves, and that's not how it works. You need to work hand in hand with the customer, and that creates a product that actually solves something and builds a solution versus a nice technical solution. That's that's just not how it works. It needs to uh it needs to really really help you to be faster, more productive, as well as uh, yeah, of course, eventually save on the cost, because that's ultimately where we all strive for as a business.

SPEAKER_00

It is amazing when you hear a spark, a great idea from a client, from whoever like that, and then you just start to something ignites inside you.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. And especially if you're a product manager that that meets with many customers, you also create these patterns because you have customer one, customer two, customer three, and they all think, hey, maybe customer one is already step three steps ahead, but customer one is in step two, and maybe customer three solves challenges that customer two is also running into. So you can then work backwards from the other customer and solve it for the other customer to jump in. So I think that's the yeah, the correlation exercise that happens in the brain that um yeah, you should strive for to make sure that the product solves these challenges in in the interim and don't be be reactive, but be a proactive product builder.

SPEAKER_00

It's important to stay open-minded in these things, right? People can have good ideas, yeah. Go back, let's say we went back like 10 years or so, Christian. What's something you believe firmly in, solidly 10 years ago that you no longer believe now?

SPEAKER_02

Uh yeah, well, I'm uh I'm definitely 10 years ago. I probably 10 years ago, the rapid pace of innovation was rapid, but not as rapid as it is right now. So I'm more I'm more even more than I did 10 years ago, embracing a culture of learning every day. And 10 years ago, I I learned a lot too, but I also did a lot of uh learning during the job kind of, and now I do more proactive learning while also doing the learning on the job. So, for example, um last year I did two MIT uh studies about agentic AI and uh generative AI. I did a AI product management class at Wharton as well to kind of really for the next change to come, prepare myself for hey, I can raise my hand and I know what to do to optimize the internet process of that specific product management lifecycle part that's currently more old school, and we need to go faster, and we want to use AI for that. So, yeah, probably more even more focused on learning, learning, learning every day, watching videos as well on YouTube or on socials, like really searching for leadership and change and how to optimize process kind of learnings. As you're constantly, I don't know, when you're talking as well, your brain constantly kind of thinks about all of these different concepts. And if you fuel yourself with that all the time, it helps you as well being a better leader.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it certainly does. I started my MSP back in the 90s. Christian, I was working way too hard. I wasn't paying attention to myself, you know, trying to build a business, putting my exercise in the back. And next thing I know, I'm in front of the doctor, she tells me I'm at 340 pounds. So I gained all this terrible amount of weight. I knew I was big, I didn't think I was that big. She says to me, if you don't lose this weight, you're not gonna see your daughter graduate. My daughter was just born. Oh yeah. Scared the life out of me. So you know, I'm upset with myself, I can abuse myself all I want, but uh it's much bigger than me. Spent the next six, seven months, lost about 120 pounds and kept it off. When I tell people the story, they always say, you know, what's your secret, what you do? And I just say, just discipline, motivation, focus, uh, you know, uh willpower. How does discipline play a role in your life?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a good question. Um well, I uh sometimes people think that I'm um they say they're they're walking three Christians around the planet, and they say that because um Yeah, they say that I'm working hard and they think that there are three because I work so hard, they think there are three copies of me somewhere. And it's a compliment. I think it is, uh, but it's kind of going down to the kind of I don't know, when I was 13, my father uh got an eye disease. So he was like slowly getting blind in both eyes. So he started with like 70% and 30, 20, and now he only sees like one or two, so it's almost like zero. And that I don't know, I was 13, I got really impacted by my dad running the family, all of a sudden becoming dependent, right? And as well, me jumping in to help, and being a kid of 13, 14, doing tax refunds, grocery-specific things, home remodeling, painting walls, all these things, it kind of made me a little bit, I don't know, faster and adult or faster kind of mature enough to think. And once I got older and I was like 18, 20, and I got work going, I also thought like, what if with something like that happened to me and I would be like not taking full advantage of my life? Interesting, and that always inspired me as well. Moving to Redmond, um enjoying my life, working hard, but also enjoying my life on the side and taking everything I can in terms of advantages that benefits me from creating memories that can last for the rest of my life. And I hope to stay healthy for the rest of my life. Uh, don't get me wrong, but nobody knows. Right. You you have just gave the example of you you lost weight and and that saves your life. Yeah. And you were in control of that. But there are also times that you're not in control, right? It just hits you and you never know when. And it could be anything, right? It could be you're walking on the street and there's a car not paying attention, and it sounds very dramatic, but it comes all down to the point you paint the picture of your own life. And if you work hard, you can have a better life if you, of course, focus on the right things. But that always kept going in the back of my mind, and then at some point you also realize that if you work very hard and you achieve certain things, that the way to give back and help others is much more rewarding than doing it yourself. So that's I think that has been a life moment change in my life where I think I became the person that I am right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What a wonderful gift your father gave you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, he did. Yeah, it's uh I don't know, probably uh since five years or so that I'm starting openly talking about it as well.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I appreciate you sharing. Yeah. Is there something in the last month or so you changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_02

Uh well, yeah, well, definitely uh about like living and working from Europe, of course, that I'm moving back. So that changed a little bit the way how I think. But no, I think the last coup couple weeks or months I've been very focused on making sure everything is good for for my family when I'm moving back. Because moving to a different country is it's it's I somewhat say it's like product management, but then for family. So you're managing your your family as a product.

SPEAKER_00

So are they the customers or no?

SPEAKER_02

It's uh it's uh a nonprofit business.

SPEAKER_00

Nonprofit, that's right. That's right. Christian, I thank you so much for your time. Best case to get in touch with you is probably LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, LinkedIn. First last name. You can find me there.

SPEAKER_00

I'll make sure we'll put it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02

You as well.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening and/or viewing Joey Pins Discipline Conversations. Please share this episode with one or two of your friends who you think may benefit from the episode. Our website, www.joepins.com. There you find lots of resources, and you could join our mailing list. Please follow us on all our social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Podcast information, the video version of our podcast is on YouTube. Please subscribe. Audio is on all major podcasting platforms. Please follow them. And if you like it, please consider giving five star ratings. We'd really appreciate that. Thank you again for listening or watching Joey Pin's Disciplined Conversations.