Christiaan's journey began with what most would consider a dream scenario: winning a national tea championship and building a thriving business serving premium experiences. But success came with a devastating twist. "The business was so successful that it grew faster than I did, so I failed," he explains. Within months, unpaid fines snowballed from €350 to €1,450, eventually reaching €9,000 in debt. This wasn't poor planning—it was the dangerous gap between external growth and internal development that catches countless founders off guard. His experience reveals how success can become your enemy when you're not prepared to handle it, turning triumph into a trap that nearly cost him everything.

Perhaps the most groundbreaking insight from our conversation centers on the neuroscience of decision-making. "Some say 95% of your behavior is subconscious or non-conscious," Christiaan shares, "but how do we know which part of our behavior is unconscious?" He discovered he carried a subconscious belief from childhood that "you can't get out of debt"—a mental program inherited from watching his father lose his job to automation. This hidden belief sabotaged every attempt to solve his financial crisis, keeping him trapped for years. The revelation came only through extreme pain: "I wasn't aware that I had a belief in my brain that said you can't get out of debt, which was a subconscious thing I got from my youth." This highlights why traditional business advice often fails—it addresses conscious strategy while ignoring the unconscious patterns that actually drive behavior.

Christiaan's analysis of the startup ecosystem is particularly damning yet insightful. Traditional accelerators and incubators fail because "they don't understand the brain and they don't understand the subconscious." He breaks down the three levels of knowledge: what you know (conscious), what you know you don't know (can seek help), and what you don't know you don't know (the failure zone). "When your business gets into that level where you don't know what you don't know, that's where you mess up, that's where you lose your cash, your relationships, your foundation—everything." Most programs focus on the first two levels while ignoring the third, where real disasters happen. Even worse, programs often harm founders by creating comparison environments that trigger impostor syndrome and depression, leading to destructive coping mechanisms.

The lowest point came when police arrived at Christiaan's door, leading to imprisonment for unpaid fines. Remarkably, he describes prison as "like a holiday break that gave me a breather of thinking what's happening—it literally was the safest place for me to be." This moment of forced reflection preceded his spiritual breakthrough. Preparing for suicide, he discovered a YouTube video about potential that shifted everything. A quote from Les Brown about talents dying with you made him realize: "If I would kill myself today, probably I have to relive this life including all the pain and maybe even worse." This fear of repeating the cycle became more powerful than the fear of facing his problems, catalyzing a decade-long journey of self-discovery and system development.

From his dark night of the soul emerged a deceptively simple yet powerful practice: weekly reflection across eight life areas using the wheel of life. "Most coaches use it once a month or once everything, but what we do with all founders and what I use as my secret source myself—it's doing this every week," he explains. This isn't just another productivity hack; it's a systematic approach to conscious awareness. By weekly reviewing health, relationships, finance, business, personal growth, recreation, environment, and contribution, founders develop the self-awareness to catch problems before they become crises. The practice reveals the interconnections between life areas—how relationship problems affect business performance, or how health issues impact decision-making quality.

One of Christiaan's most practical frameworks is his 33% rule for building sustainable founder support networks. Spend 33% of time with people ahead of you (inspiration and learning), 33% with peers at your level (normalizing the struggle and maintaining perspective), and 33% mentoring those behind you (reinforcing your own learning and giving back). This balanced approach prevents both the isolation that comes from only networking "up" and the stagnation that comes from staying comfortable with familiar peers. "While you start educating and mentoring others that are in the stage behind you, that's where you learn what you think is true and what worked for you—if that really is a principle that works for everyone."

Chris's attitude and voice are so full of energy and motivation that if you crossed him on the street, you’ll never guess what he had to go through to be where he is now. This is what I love about the real success stories. Not the funds raised and PR "tips of the iceberg” stories, but the real, crude reality of the inner work that is needed to break our internal barriers and limitations. Chris is doing just that, and he learned his way out; he’s dedicating his life and his mission to sharing this wisdom with other founders who are going through the same shit. Similar to what I’m doing with my work now. So stay tuned because I’m pretty sure he and I will be working something up together soon or later!