Hello lovey humans,

If you're new to our newsletter, welcome. Each week we feature remarkable people making big changes to their lives. Whether it's coming back from a brain tumor, burnout, or navigating grief, these people all have something to teach us. These are people we've go to know personally, and they are people just like you. If you'd like to read the archived stories, please visit the site.

This week, we follow Martin's story.

Martin Eriksson decided the way home to himself was to take things away. It started with walking away from burnout, losing 130 lbs (60 kgs) and finally shedding the imposter syndrome getting in the way of publishing a new book. He wasn’t a seeking to become a new man, he was looking for the one buried under twenty-five years of ceaseless work and unhealthy habits.

You may know his work even if you don’t know his name. Martin is Swedish by passport and all over by upbringing. He's lived in Indonesia, Kenya, Thailand, Iraq, Turkey, the US, and finally London. He arrived in tech by his own admission, as a failed designer and a failed developer, who discovered he was very good at the thing in between: translating. He could connect designers to developers, and both to the business. He rode the original dot-com boom and never really stopped moving after that.

Twenty-five years an operator. Always adding.

Master of Ceremonies

In 2010 he gathered twenty people in a London pub for a meetup he called ProductTank. That pub night became a movement and now runs in more than 200 cities. Out of it he co-founded Mind the Product, which grew into conferences across London, San Francisco, Singapore, Hamburg, and Manchester. The largest community of product people on earth.

Then the pandemic arrived and nearly destroyed it all. Ninety-five percent of the revenue came from in-person tickets. Twenty full-time staff were counting on him. So he and his team did the only thing they could: they rebuilt the business from the ground up and sold it in 2022. He calls those the two most stressful years of his life.

We're all familiar with the next part. Before the sale had closed, he had already started a demanding new job. As Operating Partner at EQT, one of the largest private investors in the world he was helping build their venture and growth funds from scratch. He loved the work. But he walked into it already burned out. Go, go, go is a habit that doesn’t know how to stop. It just finds the next thing.

In 2024 he quit. The plan was three to six months off, with another job already lined up. The plan did not survive contact with reality. Three to six months became eighteen. Because something else had started.

New Math

He’d married his long-time partner Analisa in 2023, and the union changed everything. He realized he wanted to be around for her for a long time, and that his current path was working against that wish. Over eighteen months he lost a hundred and thirty-three pounds! He rediscovered cycling, a love he’d had all along. He rebuilt his whole relationship with food and movement, and he went "from hating exercise to craving it." He picked his camera again. He and Analisa joined us on retreats in Girona, and in Austria to disconnect, to find himself again, and to hang with people approaching life the same way.

And with the headspace all that subtraction created, he finally finished a book he’d been noodling on for years. A concept he’d spoken and workshopped for the better part of a decade, The Decision Stack, was published in 2026 to a warm reception. Today he advises and consults on it. He’s booked out for the year, working considerably less, earning the same, and in control of his own calendar.

In his typically humility, he’ll tell you who’s responsible for all of it; Analisa. And since we've got to know her, we agree.

Why we’re telling you Martin’s story

There’s a narrative most accomplished people carry says: more is the answer. One more round, one more raise, one more promotion, one more deal. It says stepping back is giving up. It runs in the background of a whole career, and it will happily run you into the ground. We call it domestic propaganda. That internalized story that dresses itself up as drive.

Martin’s eighteen months are a case study in not adding your way to a better life. He subtracted his way there.

So the invitation, as ever, is small. You almost certainly have too much self already. Enough weight of one kind or another. Ask Martin’s question instead: what would you have to put down to be around, fully, for the people you love?

Martin’s 2026 book, The Decision Stack, is available wherever you buy books.

With warmth,

Richard & Devon

P.S. And since you didn't ask, here's a bunch of cool stuff we're doing. Richard is publishing more practical life altering experiments on Substack, we've rolled out a monthly webinar series featuring experts in self-employment law, breath work, journaling, and financial planning for midlifers. We have also launched The Club, which includes our newspaper (yup, an actual printed paper), our newsletter, free workbooks and discounts on events (including those webinars).

P.S.S. New retreat dates have been added to the 2027 calendar. We're going to South Africa, Portugal, and the Azores next year but spots are very limited so get your applications in very soon.