Coach for Global Players

The funniest coup of probably the most successful digital prophet of our time was of a rather analog nature: as his stock investments in South America were at risk of drastically losing value as a result of a currency reform, it was no longer possible for hobby sailor Michael Saylor to transfer them to his home country. Consequently, he bought the most expensive yacht in the country, paying for it from his investments, and just sailed out of the harbor to the US … that’s how to perfectly combine passion and action. In other words, Saylor did not wait for good wind conditions. He just knew to set sail.

But Saylor does not act in self-interest alone. Very early on in his career, the natural high achiever proved this by making his software for models that foreshadow successful stock exchange results available to hundreds of thousands of students for free.

What do I really want? – this is the guiding question for “Radar for Leaders” – especially once the material work of feathering the nest is done. When it’s not about your career or simply “more” anymore. When you want to leave a legacy behind. That’s when a completely new kind of freedom comes alive. Like that of Michael Saylor, for example.

Saylor has lived up to his name. He has literally sailed to independence. The MIT graduate and head of the renowned company MicroStrategy has become rich and famous with educational software. Saylor is a pioneer in mobile intelligence. “The Mobile Wave” is the title of a standard piece of work that the self-made millionaire, born in 1965, published in 2012. He shares his knowledge online free of charge at the Saylor Academy.

The man who holds around 40 patents in the field of mobile data solutions is brilliant at successfully anticipating market developments. Exploiting his insights in software, he has become known above all as a strategist in what may well be the most successful story of the modern data economy: Bitcoin – the digital currency without any bank accounts or fees. And likely a currency of the future.

In the year 2020 alone, Saylor, who originally wanted to become a pilot (but switched to sailing because of medical limitations), exchanged his cash holdings of $450 million into 425 million Bitcoins – an astute assessment of the situation as it turned out: a short while later, the cryptocurrency increased from $8,000 to more than $40,000. Saylor got in gear and amassed some $400 million for a corporate bond. His most recent stroke of success again involved acquiring Bitcoin, bringing MicroStrategy’s holdings to 90,531 Bitcoins purchased for $2,171 billion at an average price of $23,985 per Bitcoin (as of Feb. 24, 2021, source: Wikipedia). Bitcoin, Saylor says, is the currency of the future, and he is stocking up on it to such an extent that he is practically a stock market institution. In contrast, hard currencies like gold are considered to be almost antiquated in his view. Some people might achieve a slight added value using gold, but you can't build a mutual, successful future with it.

Billionaire Getty left the message to his son that pictures are the ”new oil” – and then built the international Getty Archive. For Saylor, the new gold rush is a digital one. And, similar to Getty, his success is only a foundation for creating something truly valuable.

Saylor has something more valuable than money: Courage. For him, the definition of “adventure” is something with an uncertain ending. He always follows his curiosity and his inner compass. With these assets, Saylor has the main features of a leader. He enters “new territory”, foresees developments and patterns very clearly, and uses these as a basis for his decisions. Saylor does not wait. He acts. He provides results.

The crucial point regarding Saylor is that he does not feel limited – neither territorially nor by conventions. His passion consists in anticipating, especially when it comes to the medium of money. He lives the old dream of being able to foresee monetary developments, from his computer models at Dupont to MicroStrategy on the stock exchanges all the way to demise of the medium of “money” as it gives way to the new currency Bitcoin. At the same time, this makes him a super successful investor. This also includes the downsides: for example, after an investigation by authorities, Saylor lost $7 billion due to the subsequent crash on the stock market. With this awareness, even Saylor needs to readjust his compass.

Today Saylor is no longer concerned with himself; he has been rich enough for this for decades now. He moves on a level of more awake consciousness, in the highest state of being, the state of freedom. From there, the view is a different one. You see the new in things. The perception of reality is selfless, driven only by curiosity. A perception that hardly costs any energy: your own visions are the wind that fills the sails. But even “Saylors” need radar to navigate.

Successful entrepreneurs without radar often fall into an entrepreneurial midlife crisis. They skip the “energetic view” of things. Most just keep going and therefore operate only on enlarging their treadmill. But global leaders are high performers and need to “keep going”: their nature is to formulate new goals as soon as their old goals have been achieved. They need radar within which they can navigate further. This radar can therefore only come from a “Coach for Global Players”.

Leaders who place their trust in Sonja Becker’s “radar” enter the orbit of what we call the “sense dimension”. As a coach for global players, Becker can empower people to become global leaders, especially when they have already achieved their career goals. When people feel free, they begin to look for the meaning of their life. That’s where the dimension of high performance, inspiration, innovation and creativity starts, in keeping with the theme: what else am I capable of? And what is the next adventure waiting for me?

They do not necessarily look around for new goals, but find their new “goal” in the sense of the whole – from which new success is not excluded. They become curious about themselves again. Global leaders like Michael Saylor sail casually out of the harbor with ships “buoyed by” Bitcoin. But the now distinguished, graying, professorial Saylor is concerned with the meaning of money, with the deep understanding of a currency that connects us all. Michael Saylor is a global player in this regard. Regional players perceive the world as they see it. Global players view it as it is. If Bitcoin catches on, Saylor's global vision will have won.