Why I Learned More from People Than from Titles

Posted on February 15th, 2024

Looking back, my real education probably began the day my father decided that philosophical discussions alone would not finance my growing appetite for independence.

So he gave me a remarkably simple instruction:

“Go work.”

And so I did.

My first job was in a gardening center, where I spent parts of my days putting tulips into boxes and helping them grow. Not exactly the glamorous beginning of an international career — but strangely enough, highly educational.

Because very quickly I discovered something fascinating:
people become emotionally attached to almost everything.

Plants.
Shoes.
Cars.
Status.
Stories.
Even identities.

Soon after, I moved into selling shoes.

And strangely enough, I became exceptionally good at it.

At some point I realised that people rarely buy shoes because they simply need shoes. They buy confidence, aspiration, attractiveness or a better version of themselves — cleverly disguised as leather and rubber.

I also discovered another important principle of capitalism at a very young age:

if you sell enough expensive shoes, you can eventually buy them yourself at employee discount.

A revelation.

Fashion stores added another layer entirely.

Because suddenly presentation mattered.

Style mattered.
Perception mattered.
Confidence mattered.

Being tall, athletic and unusually comfortable interacting with people, I occasionally drifted into modelling assignments as well — which, looking back now, sounds either highly sophisticated or deeply ridiculous depending on the perspective.

Probably both.

At the same time, I was selling shoes with an almost suspicious level of success for a teenager.

Not because I was manipulating people.

I simply understood surprisingly early that customers rarely buy products alone. They buy trust, confidence, aspiration and the feeling that the person in front of them genuinely understands them.

At sixteen, I could already convince customers not only to buy one pair of shoes, but a second pair in another colour “just in case.”

And strangely enough, many of them actually followed the advice.

At the time, I thought I was simply talented at sales.

Looking back, I was unconsciously studying human psychology.

From there, life became increasingly entertaining.

Bars.
Nightlife.
Cigarette promotions.
Marketing operations.
Rental car transfers across markets.
Nürnberger Flugdienst.
Executive driving assignments.

At one point, while still studying law in Germany, I found myself driving executives connected to Siemens while simultaneously working across completely different operational environments, simply because I was curious about how systems — and people — functioned.

Looking back now, parts of my CV occasionally resembled less a career strategy and more a sociological field experiment with questionable structure.

And yet, beneath the apparent chaos, something important was happening.

I was learning how people behave.

Factories, warehouses, airports, bars, fashion stores and promotion campaigns taught me more about leadership psychology than many formal business environments ever could.

Very early on, I realised that success itself is rarely about products alone.

It is about people:
their fears,
their aspirations,
their emotional drivers,
their need for recognition,
status,
security,
identity,
or belonging.

And once you begin understanding human motivation deeply enough, entire organisations suddenly become easier to read.

You start recognising invisible patterns:
where energy flows,
where resistance builds,
where talent is misplaced,
and why some leaders naturally create trust while others merely create hierarchy.

By the time I entered my first major international venture in my late twenties, I realised something almost unexpected:

I was far better prepared than I had consciously understood.

Years of observing people across radically different environments had quietly built something no formal structure alone could teach:
an instinctive understanding of communication, motivation and human dynamics.

And suddenly, many things that appeared difficult to others began unfolding almost naturally.

Sales grew.
Structures scaled.
International benchmarks were exceeded.

Looking back, the results themselves were probably less surprising than the strange and wonderfully unconventional path that had produced them.

Perhaps this is also why I sometimes struggle with educational environments that become overly insulated from real-world experience.

Not because comfort itself is wrong, but because growth often begins at the edge of familiarity.

Some of the most valuable lessons I ever learned came not from protected environments, but from exposure to radically different people, systems and realities at a relatively early age.

Work teaches dignity.
Responsibility teaches perspective.
And direct contact with different social environments creates a form of human understanding that cannot easily be simulated inside purely theoretical spaces.

In many ways, resilience is not taught through comfort alone.

It is developed through experience.

And perhaps that was the common thread running quietly through all those seemingly disconnected worlds:
gardening centers,
shoe and fashion stores,
bars,
promotion campaigns,
Nürnberger Flugdienst,
rental car operations,
executive driving assignments,
law studies,
sales structures,
and the wonderfully absurd image of arriving at five o’clock in the morning in an Alfa Romeo Spider while trying to understand how people, systems and ambition really function.

At the time, much of it probably looked chaotic from the outside.

Looking back now, it was probably the best preparation I could ever have received.

So perhaps we should be careful before judging unconventional paths too quickly.

Sometimes what appears irrational from the outside is, in reality, empirical sociology research disguised as life experience.