Execution is Key

Danny Fabricius Fogel has been an entrepreneur all his life starting from his school days. It's fascinating to hear how action defines Danny's life. Read further to discover how an entrepreneur thinks to achieve success.

Who is Danny Fabricius Fogel?

Danny has been an entrepreneur all his life, describing himself as ambitious and energetic. Danny is a doer and less of a thinker. Danny is characterized by this quote: “Only by aiming for the impossible do you reach the highest possible goals.” (August Strindberg).?

Another quote that characterizes Danny is one from Mario Andretti, the famous racer: “When everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.”?

A last description Danny gives is he is like a beach ball with air in it. If it goes underwater, it always comes back to the surface.

Danny was not cut out to study and read a lot. Even as a child, he preferred building things and creating something. At 18, he already started his first business, and even before that he was creating graphic designs for flight magazines and travel agencies.?

In school, he also founded a magazine and reached out to record labels for CDs so that he could review them in the magazine. In a few months, he had a large collection of CDs.?

Danny also visited local bars and merchants to advertise in the school newspaper. It became his first business and has always remained so. After school, he did have a few jobs, but they didn't really suit him. After one year, he wanted to start on his own. Together with a partner who was working with enterprise planning software, they founded a company that opened up data to the web. After 17 months, they were already working with 10 people and Danny bought out his partner and doubled the company by taking over the activities of larger companies.?

The key to his success is wanting to do stuff, being honest, and being ambitious.? Where others think something is impossible, you just need to keep on doing it. Will you encounter difficult times? Yes, but keep moving and pushing yourself forward.

The difference between perseverance and being crazy

The difficulty with perseverance is that it is hard to distinguish between persevering until you reach your goal and being mad because you are doing something that is impossible or unrealistic. You never know along the way whether you're heading for success or failure.?

Danny points out that it's easier for large companies to adjust if they don't see success. In a start-up company, it is much harder to see if you should have continued or stopped earlier.?

According to Danny, there is no general rule, and every individual situation is different. Much depends on the energy the person has to push through. Giving up is more related to the opportunities you have to keep pushing forward, than being able to predict whether you will succeed or not.

I want proof that something is NOT possible

In the conversation, the subject comes to his energy and ambition. Danny felt as a child that he didn't fit in, that he was different from others. That made him insecure, but also sucked in that he had a strong drive to prove himself.?

Danny didn't want others to help him as he wanted to do everything by himself. It wasn’t because he didn't want to accept help, but he believed that anything was possible and he proved it himself without others being responsible. This taught him that you can always figure out a way to make things possible. You either like Danny or you hate him. The way of looking at himself and the world resulted in this reaction from others.

Those who knew him knew that all the things he said, no matter how crazy they sounded, did eventually become reality. Danny attributes his attitude and drive to his upbringing. Maybe even his genes. Danny has strong-willed children. The attitude Danny has is the opposite of what most others have. Usually, people want to get proof that something is possible. Danny was much more focused on finding proof that something is impossible.

A good example is the bankruptcy of one of his companies that Danny could not avoid. But instead of resigning himself to it, he worked hard to make the best possible exit. He was close to avoiding bankruptcy and had accumulated so much money to avoid it that it allowed him to buy back many operations from bankruptcy. He was also able to rehire many people and make sure they could get on with their lives. They were only 27 hours between declaring bankruptcy and letting everyone know they had a job back.??

Danny believes that everything goes fast, and there is no point in dwelling much on things. Always moving forward to the next thing is the key to achieving the impossible. Danny quickly learned that lesson when he locked himself in his office after a major setback. He was in a bad mood, but quickly asked himself what the best attitude was to get out of the crisis. Is staying in a bad mood the best thing to do? No one has ever overcome a crisis with negativity and a bad mood.?

Danny turned that around and began to generate positive energy around him within himself. The situation that taught him this eventually turned into a successful exit that paid off handsomely for him. Learn from a situation, stay away from negativity, and move on.

How to handle if things don’t go as expected

Danny indicates that he is good at handling situations that don’tt go as expected. A first element is not to plan too much. If you already don't have many expectations, there is no need to deal with them. But if, for example, sales growth is not going as expected, Danny tries to look at the small things that precede such growth. For example, Danny looks at customer dialogues. If those improve or are very positive, he knows that growth will follow.?

A second element is action. In the weekly meeting with his partners, this question is asked each week: What are the good things that happened last week? After all, results are only the result of actions. This often explains why, when selling a business, there can be such a big difference between the asking price and the offer of a potential buyer. The seller knows much better than the buyer, who sees mainly output figures, how much value there is in the business.

Again, the action-oriented mindset emerges in Danny. He was never successful as a passive investor, and he now invests in things that he himself can participate in every day. This is also the advice Danny wants to give to new startups. Execution and action are the key components to success. Lots of talk won't make the difference, but focus will. Keep things as narrow as possible, especially as a start-up. You can always broaden later.

In a start-up, there are only two feelings. Either you're super excited, or you're absolutely devastated. There is nothing in between. Do you have the stomach to become an entrepreneur?? Because you know in advance that nothing will turn out the way you expect. Do you have the financial resources and support from those around you, because you will need those when you get started according to Danny. This is why entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Fairness is important

It is always interesting to ask what causes a person to feel frustrated. For Danny, it is dishonesty. Even if things follow the letter of a contract, an imbalance that makes a situation or relationship unfair is very difficult for Danny. Danny is therefore angry with himself if he waited too long when there are signs that something is going unfairly. More generally, Danny is more quickly frustrated for what he has not done, than for what he has done even if things do not turn out as expected.

We end with the challenges ahead for Danny. He wants to stay hungry and to keep learning. Staying childishly curious and not becoming a boring man are his ambitions for himself. Even though Danny is not yet earning much from his current initiative, he enjoys going to work every day. He is very happy that the platform they are building is growing and more and more customers are coming in.

To learn more about Danny and his business, visit the following links:?

LinkedIn: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/danny-fabricius-fogel/

Frontliners: https://frontliners.ai/

If you wish to be featured in our Mindset Stories project, please send me a direct message here.