I have done this twice. Both times, nobody told me the hard part first.

My father ran a translation business in Krakow. It was one person: himself, the work and the hours. I came back from an Erasmus exchange in Bergamo during my studies and joined him, with the idea of turning it into a real company.

It became LIDO-LANG Specialized Translations, with over thirty people in-house, thousands of freelancers, and clients across Europe and North America. In 2016 we sold it to SeproTec in Spain.

While we were growing LIDO-LANG, I saw that translation companies had no proper management software to run on. So I co-founded XTRF to build it. We raised venture capital in 2014.

The turning point

In May 2016 the investors cancelled a funding round they had promised, days before critical payments were due. We had nearly a hundred people and three weeks of cash. I thought we were about to die.

That was the moment I had to step up and change the way I operated. I stopped trying to do everything. Every task, every meeting and every request had to answer one question: does this bring cash in, or keep it in, within the next three weeks? If it did not, it waited. Almost everything waited.

We cut costs that same day. We sold prepaid packages. We talked openly with the team, and part of the team deferred their own salaries to keep the company alive. We survived without a single additional euro from investors.

Here is what I took from it. When you put all your energy into the one thing that strategically matters most, which for us was cash and financial independence, things start to connect. Results that looked unrealistic three weeks earlier become real. I did not learn that from a book. I learned it because there was no other way out.

It is the same principle I teach today, in ExecSide and in Private Advisory.

In 2020 I led a management buyout of the investors. In September 2021 we sold one hundred percent of XTRF to K1 Investment Management, a private equity firm in Los Angeles, at more than double the buyout valuation.

The part nobody tells you

Somewhere in the middle of all that, with around a hundred people, my investors told me I was slowing the company down. I was insulted. Then I realised they were right. I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, Saturdays included, and every decision waited for me. I was always present and always available, and I thought that was good.

Before anyone would buy either company, it had to be able to run without me. The decisions had to sit with other people, the clients had to belong to the company rather than to my phone, and the week had to carry on when I was not in it. That work took years both times.

And here is what changed how I think. The same work that makes a company sellable is the work that makes it liveable. I did not do it in order to leave. I did it, and then leaving became something I could choose. You can have that long before anyone talks to a banker, and whether or not you ever sell.

What I do now

I work with founders and CEOs who built something real.

Some are still carrying all of it. They hold the title of CEO and spend the week doing everyone else's job. I help them get out of operations and run the company from above it.

Others are already there. The company runs without them, or it has been sold, and the question has become what comes next. I help them define that next chapter and become the person who can get there.

For both, it is the same move: from inside their business to above it.

The rest of it

Polish Entrepreneur of the Year 2006, in the services category. A member of Entrepreneurs' Organization, where I serve as Finance Chair of the Polish chapter. Certified High Performance Coach, certified through High Performance Institute.

I took up endurance sport around 2017 because I needed to change my mindset. From the outside, a lot of what I had achieved might have looked as if it came naturally to me. It did not. Staying consistent, daring to aim high, and working towards a distant goal week after week: I had to learn all of it, and I had to train it. I still do. I still miss sessions, and I still have a coach. After years of half distances, I finished my first full Ironman in 2023, after both exits.

That trained way of working towards something big is what I teach now.

I coach in English, Italian, French and Polish. When I am not with international clients, or working remotely from somewhere sunny, my base is Krakow.