YouTube: Watch full video on YouTube
Key Points
- Leverage curiosity to solve real problems creatively
Magnus’s journey with MyBox began by identifying inefficiencies in student housing and using shipping containers as a cost-effective, practical solution. Instead of accepting the status quo, cultivate a curious mindset to spot opportunities and devise innovative, resourceful solutions tailored to specific needs. - Act quickly and decisively in early ventures
The success of MyBox and Innovation Dock stemmed from rapid execution, Magnus and his partners moved fast to test ideas and seize opportunities, like placing a container on campus or buying a building during a crisis. Avoid overplanning or bureaucracy early on: prioritize speed and adaptability to gain momentum. - Build a strong network to amplify opportunities
Magnus emphasizes Richard Branson’s saying that “your network is your net worth.” His ventures thrived by connecting people, e.g., introducing tenants at Innovation Dock to visitors. Actively expand and leverage your personal and professional connections to open doors and drive success. - Turn crises into opportunities with resilience
Both the 2014 oil crisis and Covid-19, though challenging, led to Innovation Dock and FOMO’s growth. Rather than being paralyzed by setbacks, view them as chances to pivot, innovate, or fill gaps others overlook, trusting that persistence can turn adversity into advantage. - Design environments to shape behavior and culture
At FOMO, Magnus crafted spaces, like social areas with coffee machines, that naturally fostered community without explicit rules. Shape your surroundings intentionally (e.g., home, workplace) to encourage desired interactions or habits, letting the environment guide outcomes organically. - Focus on emotional experiences, not just functionality
FOMO’s success lies in creating a “wow” factor, through smells, visuals, and amenities like gyms and restaurants, that draws people in. In your projects or interactions, prioritize how people feel, not just what they get, to build loyalty and engagement. - Simplify processes to boost efficiency
Magnus cut construction costs at FOMO from $1,240 to $250 per m² by skipping detailed plans and trusting skilled workers to problem-solve. Strip away unnecessary complexity in your work or life, delegate to capable people and focus on outcomes over micromanagement. - Know when to step back and evolve your role
Recognizing his strengths (e.g., starting ventures) and weaknesses (e.g., managing large teams), Magnus hired CEOs to lead scaled companies. Assess your skills honestly, and transition to roles or tasks that align with your strengths as circumstances change. - Protect your energy by managing context switches
After burnout in 2021, Magnus implemented “Focus Time” to limit interruptions. Structure your day to minimize distractions, batch tasks or set boundaries, to maintain productivity and mental clarity without exhaustion. - Redefine success beyond wealth
Magnus shifted from chasing money to valuing experiences, relationships and peace after realizing wealth’s downsides (e.g., worry, loss of freedom). Measure your achievements by personal growth and meaningful connections, not just material gains. - Use psychological solutions to enhance quality
Inspired by Rory Sutherland, Magnus suggests improving experiences (e.g., travel, work) through small, thoughtful additions like Wi-Fi or better food, not just big fixes. Look for low-cost, high-impact ways to elevate daily life by addressing how things feel, not just how they function. - Contribute to community for lasting impact
Magnus’s vision for FOMO and his work with rehabilitated individuals reflect a desire to create jobs and belonging. Seek ways to use your skills to support others, whether through work, volunteering, or mentorship, to build a sense of purpose and collective value. - Stay open to learning from everyone
Magnus admires the resilience of others (e.g., ex-addicts) and believes everyone has something to teach. Approach interactions with humility and curiosity, assuming each person offers a unique lesson that can enrich your perspective or skills. - Balance drive with calm through intentional habits
Post-burnout, Magnus uses reading and nature walks to redirect his restless energy. Find activities that channel your ambition into relaxation, like creative pursuits or exercise, to sustain enthusiasm without overextending yourself. - Listen to your body to avoid burnout
After hitting the wall, Magnus became attuned to how stress and diet affect him, adjusting accordingly. Pay attention to physical and mental signals, rest, eat well, limit stressors, to maintain long-term health and effectiveness.
Transcript
Intro
[Video from the main atrium area of FOMO and its cantina/restaurant with upbeat background music]
Joachim’s Intro of the Guest
Today’s guest is Magnus Øgård Meisal.
By education he’s a civil engineer from the University of Stavanger. During his time at university, he led Start UiS, an organization that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. While studying, he also developed the idea for MyBox, to use shipping containers for student housing. Later on, Magnus was also involved in the establishment of the co-working space Innovation Dock, in which he held a lead role for 2 years.
After leaving, he founded and headed the extraordinary co-working space FOMO at Forus. Hectic times ensued as he got married, renovated a house, and entered into a partnership with real estate mogul Christian Ringnes across the short span of roughly a year!
Long working hours combined with renovation, led to health issues and a necessary break.
Today, he’s found a better life-balance. FOMO has become a great success, now spanning three buildings and is valued at more than 750 million NOK.
At heart, Magnus is an entrepreneur who values structure, but not when it hampers innovation, and his vision remains to create meaningful experiences and environments.
…and now dear friends, my conversation with Magnus Øgård Meisal.
The Podcast
[edited for clarity and brevity]
Joachim: Welcome to the pod!
Magnus: Thank you.
Joachim: During your time at University you led Start UiS, an organization that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. While studying, you also developed the idea for MyBox (article in Norwegian newspaper), to use shipping containers for student housing. This also got the attention of Forbes! Can you tell us a bit about the idea, the execution and the journey of MyBox?
Magnus: Yeah, of course. Actually that started when we were at Start UiS, entrepreneurship organization, and we were having a party. Discussing ideas about all kinds of things. Me and my buddy Kristoffer (Kristoffer Sørstrønen) were both very eager to look at how things in the society was not really optimized. One of the things that caught our attention was the student housing. At that time they were building student dorms at university and spent around 600k NOK (~60k USD) per unit, or something like that. This was like in 2008-2010. We saw that spending so much money on a dorm that was only 18 m2, and we thought that we could do this much cheaper. So, we started investigating a bit what had been done other places.
Quite quickly, the Tempo Housing in Netherland caught our attention. They had built a thousand student dorms in shipping containers, and was perhaps the world’s most famous project. You’ve probably seen this huge container village. Every every container is red, so it looks like a massive communist camp. It’s not really pretty, but they managed to build those for a really affordable price. We thought that we could adopt that concept and make it even nicer.
With a shipping container, you start out with almost with a house that is completely isolated from the environment for only ~20 000 NOK (2 000 USD) at the time. That’s the price of one empty shipping container. Just to build a structure that’s isolated from the outside environment, water proof and everything. It would cost much more before you even start doing any interior work. It has structural integrity, so you can stack like 12 of these on top of each other. There’s a lot of advantages. [Very important is also the fact that you] have 25 m2 inside, rather than 18 m2, which gives you 7 additional m2. That’s a whole bedroom! That enabled us to make a dorm where you can have a separated bedroom and living room. You can also put in a kitchen and have the bathroom in the middle.
The dorms that they used to build (at the university) had the kitchen and bedroom the same room. So when cooking, all your clothing, everything, smelled. The kitchen that they put in was really cheap. A lot of the students kept the microwave, or maybe a portable oven, stuffed in their closet. So, the [layout and usability was really not] thought-through.
We started drawing, and we soon got in touch with some investors who had already been working on the project and produced a unit from China that they had sent to Norway.
It was a Norwegian group of investors who [had picked up on the student housing problem], because it was in the news a lot. Everyone was talking about students not being housed in this region. The oil and gas companies were basically renting all the apartments. Just a small apartment could go for maybe 2 000 – 3 000 USD a month. This was about six times the amount that students could pay, so the problem was really high on the media’s agenda.
We got a shipping container sent to university, and managed because of our contacts to put it in the middle of [the university] campus. We received [massive] publicity that first summer. We were on the front page of every major newspaper in the whole of Norway, except for one local Norwegian newspaper in Stavanger. We got a lot of attention, and people started calling. The ball [started] rolling.
In my bachelor degree, as a construction engineer, we started drawing how this concept could turn out, and strived to also make it pretty. We did a lot of innovation. For instance, how we could make the paneling on the outside a little nicer. If you search MyBox, you’ll probably find some articles and pictures still on the web.
We got a local, famous architect company called Helen & Hard to help us do some design and coloring.
Joachim: Oh, cool.
Magnus: We managed to get about 350 000 USD from the university to fund our bachelor program with regards to actually building a physical version of the project. We built five apartments in the middle of campus. Those actually still house PhD students today.
We managed to put it up (he 5 apartments on campus), and when we did, I got a phone call one morning. I talked to this guy in English. It was a really interesting conversation. He said: “Well, do you think this is a product that can also solve student housing issues around the world?” I said: “Yeah, sure.” We had everything set up. I talked to my buddy and said that this journalist guy called from the US. I don’t know, have you heard about a newspaper called “Fobes“? He was like: “Are you kidding me?Forbes?” I was like: “Yeah, What’s that?” I had no clue what that newspaper was. I didn’t know anything like that. I was not into that [world] at all, so it was quite funny. We got a lot of attention. They pushed us on Twitter, the phone started calling and people wanted to get in contact with us.
But, that’s the thing with entrepreneurship. You build something. You get a lot of attention. You have a technical solution, or whatnot, and suddenly things change.
As you remember, in 2014, the oil price started going from like 130 USD pr barrel down to, I think, ~ 26 USD pr barrel. A lot of people got laid off in our region. A lot of people moved out of the region because of the lack of jobs. Actually, in a very short time, maybe just like 6 month, things went from being mayhem with pictures of students sleeping in sleeping bags outside on the campus, to there being a lot of apartments available. We had some huge local investors lined up. The Gjedebo family wanted to invest. We actually turned them down. They wanted to put, I think, a million NOK (100 000 USD) into the company for 10-15%. I can’t remember exactly. We had one offer at 150 000 USD for for 10%, which valued the company to ~15 million NOK (1.5M USD). For us as students that was a huge amount of money. Still, we thought that we were worth much more. “We can’t accept this money.” Then, everything crashed, and we suddenly had no money.
The big project that we were working on with 4 apartments all stopped, because there were no need for it. Basically we were out of a job. Things change so fast. We were motivated, and there was a new wave coming that led us into our next project.
Joachim: I can imagine that you learned a lot of valuable lessons through that journey, that you could apply later on.
You’ve founded quite a few companies, and you were also part of co-founding the co-working space Innovation Dock. If I’m correct, you were involved for about 5 years, and had a lead role for around 2 years. Maybe you could tell us how this all came about, and what you learned from that journey?
Magnus: Yeah, so actually a lot of things can come out of a crisis. Nils Henrik Stokke who was my co-founder of Innovation Dock was working with recruitment. When a lot of people get laid off, no one is hiring recruitment, right? So, he was also without a job, and moved into our MyBox apartment at the campus. He just needed an office to start his new venture called Busy Busy Bird. We were sitting there talking. Because of our background in the entrepreneurship environment at university, we all knew a lot of other entrepreneurs. We had noticed that in London there was starting to pop up some co-working spaces in 2013, quite early. There was not a lot of these things yet in Norway. There was only one other co-working that had been established in Oslo. We started thinking that maybe there is a possibility that you can get other entrepreneurs together, and we can make some sort of a community out of it. We started to investigate that opportunity.
First we were a group of other entrepreneurs, and that group started to scale. I think at one point, we were maybe 14 different people sitting around the table with the same idea: We wanted to create a co-working space. We had some representative from the university, from iPark, Validé and all these entrepreneurship facilities around the university campus. Other entrepreneurs who also had started a lot of exciting ventures [after their studies].
I quickly understood that this would fail. The reason being that we were too many people involved in an early phase. One of the things that I’ve learned through my ventures is that if you want to create a company, you need to be (move) fast. You need to have the “get it done”-mentality. If you try to start off with a lot of bureaucracy and democracy, it will not happen. You won’t get the speed you need.
So, Nils Henrik and I pulled out. The remaining group started a co-working space called “Mess and Order.” I think they were bankrupt after 1.5 years. They put the co-working space on the wrong business model. They rented the building. They had a high rent at that time. They signed a rent that is actually the same price as you would probably be able to rent now, 10-15 years later. So, it was a really, really high rent. They had a business model that was based on freelancers and a lot of really early-stage entrepreneurs, which are [far from] stable payers. When things started getting tough for the entrepreneurs, they would just end the contracts with the co-working space, so the co-working space would suffer.
We saw that if you want to make money from a co-working, you needed to own the building. So, we started to look for a place we could buy. Luckily for us, there was still a lot of issues in the region because of the oil and gas crisis that really hit us hard. I think at one time, there were maybe 10 000 unemployed people in our region, which is quite a lot for a small region like Stavanger.
We bought the Innovation Dock facilities down at the harbor.
Joachim: Beautiful location! Right by the sea.
Magnus: Yeah, really nice location. You could see the mountains and the fjord in front, so the location was set. You just needed to make the space nice inside, and design everything. That was one of my specialties because I was a construction engineer and had been doing that at MyBox for a couple of years. We managed to do a lot of work ourself. We had to build a lot of things ourselves to keep cost low. When we opened the first space, it was really small. Only 300 m2, and people started coming. That was the beginning of it.
I’m really grateful that other entrepreneurs also saw that this was a community that they wanted to to help support and build, because we needed a quite high rent to be able to afford getting the whole building and everything to run itself (to break even). Part of what we were doing was that we had a sort of mutual agreement that you are renting with us, but we are spending our time helping your business with networking and leveraging all the people we know and bringing them in [when relevant]. Every time we had visitors, we would bring them along and knock on all the doors to introduce them to all the others staying on our co-working space. So, just by being a member, you would expand your network hugely at a fast rate.
I think Richard Branson said once, maybe a million times what do I know, that:
“Your network is your net worth.“
Richard Branson
I think there’s so much truth to that. If you don’t know people, it’s so hard to sell them anything. The truth is that people buy from the ones they know.
Since me and Henrick both had a huge network, and our networks was not really overlapping, we knew a lot of people that we could bring into Innovation Dock.
It’s interesting to think about now. It’s like 10 years ago, and it feels like a million years, but it was a lot of hard work. We spent most of the hours at the office. We didn’t have a lot of other things to do, and I think that’s the price you have to pay if you want to like start something and and get it running.
Joachim: Yeah, for sure. It takes a lot of hard work, effort, commitment and dedication to be able to succeed with a start-up.
At some point that journey with Innovation Dock ended. What would you say led to the exit from Innovation Dock, and what did you want to do differently when founding FOMO?
Magnus: At that time in 2019, Nils Henrik and I were seeking out opportunities. We thought that Forus, which is a huge area business area and region with 45 000 people working, could have potential for opening some sort of a co-working space. We started looking at different premises, but our mindset was set on an Innovation Dock model, which was based on a space around 2 000 m2. That’s not a huge space. Because of our [prior] success, I think your mindset was sort of keeping us back from thinking bigger. Even though we’ve taught everyone else to just “think big”. That’s the thing when you are challenged to it yourself. It’s not that easy. To think big you need to have a big wallet. We didn’t have that, so we just saw a lot of obstacles to how we could build something even bigger. So, we were starting looking at office spaces around 2 000 m2 that we thought would be affordable for us to buy, and to start building.
During that time, we got in contact with two guys at Forus that Nils Henrik met. It’s quite an interesting story. He was around at Forus, which is this industrial area, and went to look at three other buildings. One of them was this building that turned out to be FOMO. After having been there, he came back and said: “These guys have bought a huge office building at Forus. It’s like 35 000 m2. It’s completely empty. Equinor used to rent the whole premises, and they moved out [about] four years ago. There’s no one there. These guys are [going to] lose all their money. How in the world can they manage to rent out this huge building? It’s impossible!” [I was like:] “Uh, okay. So, you didn’t find anything interesting?” Nils Henrik: “No, not really. But, they had a lot of office desks that was left over from Equinor. Maybe we could buy those cheap, so we could save some money on our next project.”
These two guys, Vidar Rossland and Ola Soppeland, would not give up. They really wanted to have Innovation Dock as a partner in their huge office building. They just started calling and calling. In the end, we set up a meeting and they came to Innovation Dock. I met them for the first time.
I had still not been in the building. I just heard about the building from Nils Henrik. They said: “We really want to build this with you guys! You can get 50% of the whole building, if you want to join us.” It was a really good offer. We thought: “Wow, this is too good to be true!” We’re talking hundreds of millions if this can succeed. But, it looks almost impossible. How can you fill this? It’s too big. They said: “You have to come and see!” So, I came out and had a look. We went through the whole building. The first thing that struck me was: “Wow, the technical quality here is really good!” Equinor have upgraded all these electrical networks. Ventilation. Everything. All the technical stuff. That’s really the one aspect that [usually] costs the most to fix. But those things were really good! It looked like shit, but the technical aspects were good.
I came into this huge atrium which was like the heart of the whole building. It was about 20 meters under the ceiling. It was 10 m x 50 m big. We were standing there and looking out. I just thought: “Okay, this is our indoor street. Here we can make a new downtown, if we want to.” I just had a lot of ideas. I think that’s how my brain is different than a lot of other people.
At that time, a lot of investors had been checking out the building and doing due diligence on it, and everyone came back with the same conclusion: “This is the worst thing that you can possibly buy in our region, at the moment.” Everyone agreed on that. Especially that big atrium in the middle. That was the worst part. You can can’t use it for anything. It’s just a costly common area, and you would have to [finance it by adding] to the rent for all the tenants, and they would not like that. [It would lead to] a high rent, with lower quality. They had a lot of arguments, but I saw that there’s some gold here. You just have to dig it out.
At the time, Nils Henrik had two kids. When we started going through the numbers, we saw that it’s a huge risk. We have to invest 5 million NOK (~500 000 USD) of our own money into this project, if we want to make it happen. I think we both agreed that this is going to be a dangerous journey. We could lose everything. We [realized] that Nils Henrik would be the right person to take Innovation Dock further, and [given] my knowledge on constructing and technical things [considering the work for] that building, it would be a better fit for me.
At the time, we were finished with building Innovation Dock. All the construction that we’ve done, that I had been managing, had come to an end.
We agreed, and Nils Henrik bought my shares in Innovation Dock. He got the whole company. I spent most of that money on what would become FOMO. At that time, I didn’t own my an apartment. I didn’t have a lot of savings, or anything. I thought that this was an “all-in” opportunity. If I go all in on this, and actually succeed, I could make maybe between 10 – 25 million USD. That’s the upside. The downside would be losing 500 000 USD. [I thought]: “I’m still in my thirties, and if I spent another 10-20 years working, I could make those money back. But, if I succeed in the next 5 years making ~100 times that, [then] I don’t have to work for the rest of my life. Would I take the chance, yes or no?” I’ve always thought that if you focus on the upside, and put a good plan together, the chance of success are not high, but it’s there.
Joachim: Absolutely! Yeah!
Magnus: I think that the team that we put together at FOMO… The owners, [the two guys] who had bought the building [earlier on], had lot of knowledge about sales. Both of them were car salesmen. Actually used car salesmen. They were both highly successful. Vidar Rossland used to sell Chrysler, Jeep and Skoda. That was basically the brands that didn’t sell themselves. You had to go on course to learn how to actually sell those cars. You have to convince the clients to buy those cars.
But, if you’re working at BMW, Audi or Mercedes you would more or less just be shuffling paper. People would come in [and say]: “I want that car.” You would sign contracts, right. These were sales people, and they knew how to close contracts.
The other guy Ola Soppeland have had a huge success in real estate in our region. At that time, he was also a used car salesman. He sold like 2 000 cars in his 5-year career. That’s a huge amount of cars. He has like a photographic memory. When I met him for the first time, and we started talking I said: “Oh, my dad told me that he bought a car from you back in the days.” He said: “Yeah, it was a black and green-ish Mercedes.” I was like: “No, it was gray…“. [He responded:] “Oh, you’re talking about the car he bought in ’98.” This is like 2019, right. He was like: “Oh, the gray one, yeah. I was thinking about the one he bought in 2003. Oh, you mean the one with the license plate RJ 36 something.” I was like: “Oh my God! You actually remember that! It’s like 20 years ago.”
He also have the same ability with names and people. He knows pretty much everyone, and remembers all the different property contracts. When tenants would sign at competitors, he would remember that such and such companies have a contract running out in one year, you should contact them now.
He’s like a guru and has much insights.
Joachim: What a fantastic asset”
Magnus: Yeah, so there’s the whole team. I was a partner with Daniel (). Daniel and I are both the same age. We were the ones running in front. Constructing. Selling. Trying to get a momentum.
When you look back on creating a co-working space that size, 35 000 m2. It’s probably one of the largest in Europe, at one location.
There was one thing we wanted to build, that the real estate business did not have in our region, and that was a brand! [Others] might think they have a brand, but they don’t, in that sense. So, we started working on a brand.
The last two years in Innovation Dock, I was coaching other entrepreneurs. We had a program called Gründer Hub, and I would use the materials from Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Martin Trust Enterpreneurship Center of MIT. Quite a long title. He created a workbook at MIT called “Disciplined Entrepreneurship.” A really good textbook-way of doing entrepreneurship. A lot of these textbooks from university are crap, because they’re so theoretical. But, this is actually really hands-on. If you do it step-by-step, you manage to get your company sort of focused on the right goals quite fast.
We used the tech type of thinking into the real estate business.
The first thing we started with was finding a name. The name has to be short. Maximum five letters. It has to be a really easy to you remember, and the name could only have two claps (syllables). With that I mean if you say the name: FO-MO (two syllables), right. Our competitors would have: blah blah blah blah blah blah (6 syllables). Innovation Dock as well (5 syllables). All the names are really long. I thought, during that program, that you have to have a short name with few claps (syllables), because it makes it easy for people to remember. Also, the name have to be really nicely visible within a round logo, because everything is round like: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, everyone has a round logo.
We took all these different parameters and we put them together. The name have to be something that fit these requirements. We started working on names, and we had a huge list. FOMO rolled up as the winner because you could put the FO and the MO on top of each other, which would make it really nice inside a round logo. You can also put it on one line, and make it nice on a building. I sketched the logo, just on a paper, and that’s the same logo we use today. We didn’t have an agency, bureau or anything like that helping us chose a name. It’s so easy to remember. I think that’s also part of the success. The business area is also named Forus. So, when you said “Forus”, you’ve said half our name already. All these minor details is part of our success.
But then, as you remember, in 2019 we had Covid-19 rolling up. We started constructing in the summer of 2019, and after opening, we had two good months before everything was closed down. For us that was a bit of a setback. We had just started. We had signed just a couple of contracts. We had a lot of space still available. We started to get really nervous. What do we do now? We had just taken on a huge loan, and I will talk about that later. How we did that, is a quite interesting process.
We were starting to shake, so the bank told me that we had to get back to them on how we thought that we would be able to pay for our mortgages now. I picked up the strategy plan that we made when we started. I looked at all the things that we had written down. What’s the deepest drivers in us humans? If you look back 20 000 years, we’ve been living in caves. At restaurants, people typically like to sit with their back against the wall. No one wants to sit in the middle of the restaurant, especially if it’s empty. [We] have all these inner drivers. I started listing up all these different drivers. One of the most important (driver), is the community. We are social beings. We need to interact with others. That is like the prime part of being human. We are not reptiles. We don’t live alone our whole of life in the forest, or the desert.
The media started a writing articles on how everyone is home officing, that it’s working so well, everyone is more productive, that companies would just terminate all their lease contracts and everyone would just stay at home. In March 2020, in my strategy plan for the bank, I wrote that I’m almost 100% certain that because of this (people being in home office), people would become more interested in renting an office, after or during Covid-19. [The reason being that] now they are really experiencing what they are missing out on. That turned out to be true. It didn’t take long before we started seeing this trend. After couple of months, people started calling to say that: “I’m so tired of being at a home office. Can we come to you guys? I see that you’re still open.”
We had not built any landscape offices. We had only built small office rooms, so you could have a small cell office, a team office and the biggest offices would only be five or six people. If you remember, at that time, we had the cohorts [being enforced by the government] and the cohorts were around five people, which meant that all the people who rented at FOMO could still be at the office! While others were sending everyone home because they were afraid of getting any [negative] newspaper [headlines stating] that they have people coming into the office when it’s not allowed, and people getting sick. At FOMO people could come to the office. We made lunch in boxes that people could bring to their office. People could still meet, and that made FOMO the social meeting point during covid for a lot of these people.
There was no events, so when we had the ability for, I think a couple of months, to gather 50 people, we gathered 50 people. We took a lot of pictures, and we put that out there (on social media). [People picked up on this]: “Oh, here are people are having fun, while me and others are sitting at home watching.” They got a lot of FOMO, because they were seeing that we were having fun at a place where you still have social interaction. Business was still thriving for lot of companies, right, and they needed to meet. Where could they meet? Well, they could come to FOMO. Here, life is good in our (indoor) street. At that time, we thought Covid-19 would would kill us. But, actually when we look back [at it] now, I think the success is also partly because of Covid-19. We got a free space in terms of especially LinkedIn, where we could send out our message. No one else was marketing. Our competitors were not visiting their potential clients, because they were afraid to go out. Maybe they had restrictions in their companies dictating everyone to stay home. So, it’s quite interesting how once again, one crisis can lead to a success.
The oil & gas crisis of 2014, led to the establishing of the co-working space Innovation Dock, and 5 years later Covid-19 led to us making the co-working space FOMO a success.
Joachim: But, I think it takes ingenuity and drive to be able to, not only see but also, capitalize on the opportunity that’s [to be found] within these crisis. There’s an opportunity [there], but not everyone manages to dig it out, find it and capitalize on it.
It’s a wonderful story! Now FOMO has become a great success spanning three buildings, or is it more..?
Magnus: We have 75 000 m2 in our portfolio, and 130M USD in real estate values. FOMO has become a massive brand, in the local scale. It’s become a huge player. It’s mainly thanks to the team who’s done a great job, and our investors who have been able to find really good real estate objects that we have been able to buy at a reasonable [price], and then fix them. With that I mean we’ve been changing a lot of the interior in those buildings. I think the interior also changes the culture in those buildings. If you put in colors and creativity, and you’re met by a building that fascinates you that does something with your soul. You have a different mindset when you’re in that building. It’s like the feeling you get while on vacation, when visiting a great city with lot of architecture, culture and whatnot. You’re influenced by it, right. Drawn to it.
One of the last buildings that we bought at Forus was 15 000 m2. About 45% of the space was vacated, and now we’re at 2% only 2 years later. We’re quite happy with that. I think that is mainly because we are building different than our competitors. We are [creating] a destination out of every location.
Joachim: Maybe you can speak a little bit more to that for people who are sort of tuning into to this who may not have seen the space, and may not know about the different facilities. You have a gym, and all these different parts that make up the FOMO experience. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit.
Magnus: A co-working space is really a community space. A community space is basically a city and if you’re on vacation… I use this analogy because if you’re on vacation, and if you don’t have Google Maps, you would use your intuition. You’re walking down a street and you see a restaurant / place / café, you use your intuition to figure out if you want to sit down or not. Everyone have [slightly] different criteria, but a lot of them are actually the same. You spot a place and say: “Oh, I really want to go sit here. This looks nice.” What is that telling you? Well, it’s telling you that you had a feeling that sent signals to your brain that this is the place that you [prefer] to sit down, and spend your money.
That is actually how most transactions are done. Marketing agencies today are using all the tools they can to influence your brain, in order to give you some sort of satisfaction from spending money on their clients. When we were designing a co-working space, we had to use the same type of thinking. How do you do that with real estate? When we started designing, we thought about how do we design a mental journey when you get into the building. What’s the smell that meet you the first time you enter a building? That’s a really strong connection to your brain, so you will remember that. What are the visual things? In what way are people greeting you? What’s the look on the faces of the people that you meet on the way in, or on the way out? How is the temperature? The lighting? How does it feel like, right? We have to program all these things, so that when clients come into the building for first time, they would go: “Wow! This is where I want to have my office!“
If you go around and ask our tenants, a lot of them are at FOMO because of that. They just came once on a visit, maybe to another company there, and they went: “Oh, I want to be here!” They took their CEO, or whatever, into the building and said: “This is where I want my office!” …and they’ve stayed with us since. They won’t move, because there’s no alternative for them. I think that if you can build a client base the same way that Apple did, [then you will succeed.] People don’t want to leave Apple, because they get woven into it (caught in the web). You can’t get out. It’s so good! It works with your earphones and everything.
Joachim: It integrates smoothly with everything.
Magnus: We tried to make our space in the same [manner]. It’s not just one thing. We’re not just solving a place to work, an office desk and somewhere to have meetings, we’re solving the social needs and a lot of practical needs. We’re also doing a lot of emotional programming for all these people that come to work every day. That does something with their mindset, so that they can be more productive. They become happier. They can interact, meet and expand their networks.
All these things have to be planned, analyzed and [carried out] in the right manner. When you get to FOMO you would experience this sort of journey. People experience this differently, because they have a different channel to tune into. No one knows all the things that influence their brain when they’re entering a space, but you get the sensation when you leave, one way or another.
We made a gym. They actually had a shooting range downstairs. We tore that down, and made a huge gym. It’s like 400 m2, with personal trainers, a yoga room, sauna and everything. We wanted to make this not just an alternative to other offices that have a gym inside, because those are often budget gyms. We wanted to make this a competitor to a gym that you would go to on a daily basis.
The same with the food. We would like [to offer] a food experience. [We made] a kitchen that is more of a restaurant, where they make different dishes. They program the dishes to have delicious taste, so that people would also come to FOMO to eat, even though they’re not a resident of the office space. We have around 50-100 external visitors coming to our office every day to eat lunch, because they’re so happy with the food experience they get.
All these different things have been programmed, so you get a deal flow of people coming even though they’re not working at FOMO.
If you choose to have an office at a space that perhaps is a bit more expensive, than the cheaper ones, you get all these other qualities. The [result] is that your clients would come to you for lunch or meetings, because they get the same experience that you do every day. A lot of people have stayed with us for almost five years. They don’t get the same feeling anymore when they get to work because the brain has gotten used to it. [However], they can see the effect of that feeling [through] how many of their clients want to come to them for a meeting. That’s result of how this is actually working in the day-to-day life.
Joachim: Absolutely, they come there to get this extraordinary experience.
Magnus: It saves a lot of money for our clients, because they don’t need to get in the car and drive out to meet their customers. [Rather], they can just wait in the door for the client to arrive. After half an hour efficient meeting, they send them out. Everyone’s happy. If you think about it, across a year, how much time you’re actually saving by being located at a place where people would like come to, rather than having to travel out, that’s quite significant.
Joachim: I would also imagine that it very much positively affects the perception of the part that they’re meeting there. They’re having this wonderful experience. It’s very positive, and then they have positive associations with the company they’re meeting. That will positive affect sales as well I imagine.
Magnus: Yeah, and as I said in the beginning: “People buy from the people they know.” So your network, once again, is really important. That’s why I think having all these meeting online is not a great way of bonding.
Joachim: Yeah, it’s more one-dimensional. You don’t get all those other sensory inputs, and that strong connection that you [typically] get face-to-face.
Magnus: Another interesting observation that I would like to share is that: We have around 600 people in the co-working space, and we have bigger companies that are not part of the co-working but still at the same premises, we’re around 1 000 people there. Even though we haven’t done a lot of specific work on how to build the community, it’s sort of building itself. That’s because of the way we’ve constructed the building.
Another interesting observation is that when you get into one of the floors, you always get into a social area with a coffee machine, and there will always be people there.
Joachim: It’s like a common kitchen area, for people who haven’t seen it.
Magnus: Even though we haven’t told everyone, it’s become a culture that when you see someone new coming into the kitchen, you always say hi, greet them and ask where are you from or can I help you with something, or what are you doing. That’s become a part of the culture, and that culture have sort of just created itself. If you design the right way, the culture that you want would sort of just enter the building.
Joachim: Yeah, emerge naturally so to speak.
I get some associations, while you’re speaking, to Nike and BMW. They spent a lot of money and time on designing their smell, so that once you buy a pair of Nike shoes or buy a brand new BMW, it will have a certain kind of smell that you associate with that brand. You also get the association of something new, fresh and luxurious. All of these small things really matter, and contribute to the experience.
Image source: Wikipedia
I also got an association to when Steve Jobs designed the Apple headquarters (Apple Park, also known as Apple Campus 2 located in Cupertino, California), which is round and designed in such a way that you would have all these casual encounters. People would sort of bump into each other and that’s how a lot of ideas will spark and cross-pollinate the company. I think there’s a lot to having a very conscious way of thinking about how you design the environment, and it seems to me that you’ve done a fantastic job at that.
Magnus: Well, I hope so. I think that all these the thing that I’ve told you now is not things that we had a plan for from the beginning.
Before I came here, I had a presentation for a group of people. I talked to them about how a lot of entrepreneurs are typically saying: “Oh, I don’t have an idea. I don’t know where to start.” I told them that that’s not really a problem. You don’t need to have an idea. You don’t need to have anything of that. You just need to have a group of people that have a strong curiosity and work well together. If you manage to put that group together and you have one goal in mind, such as wanting to solve some problems for someone, that’s how you find your idea. That’s how you find your solution. You don’t just come up with that solution or idea. There’s so many people that attempts that (finding the solution prior to the problem/need that someone if facing), and then you end up with a product or a solution that’s looking for a problem (a hammer looking for a nail). You may not find that problem and then people typically blame the market, or too low budget. A lot of things you will just figure out on the way. You need to be confident that the process will sort of guide you in the right direction.
Joachim: I want to rewind time a little bit. Maybe going back to, let’s say 2021 or thereabouts. I think in the early days, you’re doing a lot of [the] right things. A lot of people are picking up what’s going on, and at some point you enter into this partnership with real estate mogul Christian Ringnes. I would be curious to know if you could share a little bit about the backstory to how that came about, and how this enabled FOMO to reach new heights.
Magnus: It was actually a magazine in Oslo. A real estate magazine. One of the journalists tipped Christian that there is this thing happening in Stavanger that you should check out. It’s quite interesting. I think the reason to why she said that was of course that FOMO is a really colorful and creative space in terms of design and interior. But also, you have to remember that, during the oil & gas crisis in 2014, and Covid-19, there vast a vast amount of vacated office space in the region. Almost 20%. In a normal year, there would be 10 000 m2 of new contracts for office space signed in this business region (at Forus).
The first three years of FOMO, we signed 10 000 m2 on average per year. So, we basically went from being a completely unknown player, to basically having a market share of 100% (in terms of previous years statistics) in year one.
Joachim: That’s extraordinary!
Magnus: We did that three years in a row. That had never happened before. I think that caught their attention, and they wanted to have a presentation. We flew to Oslo, and presented FOMO for them. We were quite humble. We thought we had a lot of wind blowing our direction. We felt like the things have gone in our favor. We had that mindset.
After the presentation, Christian, which is 70 (years old) now have been working with real estate for his entire life said: “I just need to correct you, because you have not had any tailwind. You’ve basically had the worst timing ever. Almost 20% availability [in terms of office] space in that region. You had no money when you started. You were not located in a central city area. You had Covid-19 on top of that. How could you say that you had tailwinds? It’s crazy!” We were like: “Well, maybe you have a point…” He said: “Well, for us being in this business for 35 years, we would not even see where to start a project like this. We would have no tools in our toolbox to handle this kind of a project. For us thus it is unimaginable that you have been able to pull this off.” I think after that meeting, we realize that we’ve actually done something that is a bit different. The reason why we didn’t see it, is that none of us have [really] been in the real estate [business]. We’ve been doing a co-working [space]. Really small. We didn’t know anything about the business. We were really naive in a way. Our goal was just to create a really nice space, where people come to have all these great experiences.
Most other property businesses that are started think in terms of how can you make a business plan showing how much to invest, what rent you can get, and what we can earn. That’s your business plan. It doesn’t say anything about what people working here feel. What experiences would people have when they enter this new building. None of that is in the business plan. No one’s working on that. It’s only numbers, and it’s quite crazy! If you go to any other product, the feeling that people get when they unbox, when they touch it, or when they use it, that’s the main focus. But, in the real estate it’s not even on the top 10 list of things people are discussing.
Joachim: A completely different mindset. A completely different paradigm in a way.
It’s a wonderful way to use some of the best parts from another industry, from another way of thinking, and then applying it in a completely different area.
You’ve also done a few other things that at least I think are a little bit different. You broke FOMO into several sub-companies, as far as I can understand, that focuses on their own niche, but all of them contribute to the whole FOMO experience. What was your rationale for this approach, and how do you feel that it ties into organizational development and scaling?
Magnus: Focus is the key. If you have too many different business ideas running in the same company, it could be a problem. You tend to work on the things that give you the desired effect the fastest, so harder projects would typically be put aside. When creating the organization, we quickly understood that to be able to succeed in all these different areas, we would need to make smaller companies that focus on one thing.
We have FOMO Works, which is focusing on co-working, trying to make the fastest and best experience for the clients. As a result, they’ve developed a software where they can onboard new tenants really fast. It’s really neat. Because of the software that’s automating the whole onboarding process, you get the same experience every time, for everyone. Everyone is equally important.
Funky FOMO is the fun and amusement department, if you will. They have the responsibility for creating a kitchen, and building the food experience. They rent out premises for all the external companies that want to come and experience FOMO for 1-2 days, through a conference, Christmas/Summer Party or whatnot. They are only working on customer experience in terms of food, beverages and conferences/events. That’s a completely different ball game, because you are focusing on clients coming in to stay there for a very short amount of time. Maybe just 30 minutes to eat, getting that experience and then leaving.
In a co-working [space setting] you have to have the same experience on on a daily basis, for years and years. That takes another type of planning. The organization is put together completely different, and you have a different mindset.
The real estate itself also needs some planning. But, that’s even more long-term. You need to have maintenance on your technical equipment. Sometimes you need to fix the entrance, paint, and all this practical stuff. You need to have a focus on that as well.
You can’t put everyone and everything in the same box (organization). I think that has been a success for us.
Joachim: Did that evolve over time, or did you see that that was a good structure from day one, or very early on?
Magnus: We put that structure in place from day one. Now we have one holding company and eight companies in total.
1.5 – 2 years ago, we started an interior design company, which is our newest startup within the group. That happened because we were listening to the market. One of our suppliers they said to me once that the last five clients that they had visiting had challenged them on making their office into a FOMO style. Four or five had asked them to do a FOMO style. They said: “But, we’re only delivering office furniture. We don’t have that kind of knowledge. We told them that if you want to create a FOMO style I don’t think that’s really easy. You could try, but I don’t know if you will succeed.”
We thought that if 4 out of 5 are asking for this, and there’s no one supplying this to the market, this is probably an interesting start-up. We got Siri [onboard], which has been a designer and have been running the design group at IKEA for 20 years. She’s a really talented interior designer, and leader of course. We got her onboard and founded the company. The first 9 months she sold for 100 000 USD. Already the first year, we could take out some money from that company. The next year, she had 1.5M USD.
Joachim: That’s tremendous growth!
Magnus: Yeah, we’re growing really fast. Now we have ~35 projects, with only 2 employees at the moment. Maybe we need to hire some more people.
Joachim: Yeah, sounds like it.
Magnus: The clients are really happy. We’re delivering a great product to them. They’re not getting the same FOMO that we have, but they’re getting the same ideas for how to create an environment for the employees that enables this tremendous experience when you get into the office.
Joachim: It’s a great way to discover a new service. Listening to the market, and [picking up] that there’s a need for a new service. Then creating a company that services that need.
You mentioned that you now have 8 companies that are part of the FOMO [Group]. I want to talk about one of the other ones, which is called Slingshot. At a high level it aims to scale companies to create growth and sustainable jobs. It’s based in FOMO and, as far as I understand, you were the CEO for the first 3 years. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what it is, the results so far and where it’s heading.
Magnus: We’re in a region where [the majority] of our most valuable companies are delivering services to [the] oil & gas [sector], and that makes us really vulnerable to any changes in that industry. Now the whole world is talking about climate, energy shift and all these things. We are sitting here just watching our most important industry being bombarded by everything from political, environmental, the youth, etc. Everyone. This is an industry that we would try to be without, if we had an option. When Covid-19 hit, and the oil price dropped. Actually for one day it was negative. I don’t know if you remember. You had to pay to get rid of oil at one point.
Joachim: It was like -19 USD per barrel, or something like that.
Magnus: Yeah, and that’s crazy. We’re quite vulnerable, right. When Covid-19 hit, we gathered with our bank and started thinking how it would affect us. What can we do? I believe that if we can find the best companies and we can scale them fast, they will be the ones that produce a lot of jobs. If you look at the start-up scene, it might get a lot of attention, but they don’t create a lot of jobs. Most of them are working on low salaries. Most of the salaries comes from the founders (soft funding, angel investors, friends and family) that support them with money. It’s at the time when they start to scale, and the products or services that they sell are generating some income that they start to really hire a lot of people. But, that’s the phase when most companies fail. So, we wanted to figure out if we could help these companies when they are at the edge of the jump into the scaling phase. If we could do something to make them succeed even faster, and try to take some of the dangers [associated] with that specific phase out. Then, we can create a lot of jobs.
We had one goal in mind. We want to spend maybe 5-6 million NOK (500 000 USD) per year using the best consultants from our region to help these companies. Working with them for a couple of months to remove the scaling problems, and see if we can create 200 jobs per year. That was our goal. If we don’t succeed, we’ll just [end] the project. [However], if we succeed, we have discovered a way of creating jobs much faster and much cheaper than all the other typical approaches. They are spending a lot of money on the start-up scene. At that point, there were no one talking about the scale-up scene. Everyone was talking about the start-up scene, and all the money was going into that.
When the scale-ups started [generating] their own income, people [tended to think] that they would be able to manage. However, typically that initial income stream is not enough to make it or to scale fast enough. But, if you provide them with a couple of millions, they could create maybe 10 jobs. However, if you were to give the same amount to start-ups most of them would probably just waste it all, and not make it in the end. Then, you get no jobs.
The result after three years with Slingshot is that we’ve managed to create 450 jobs [according to] the report from PWC. We’ve had around 24 companies from our region participating in the scale-up program.
Joachim: Impressive results!
Magnus: You might ask: “What’s different with Slingshot, as opposed to other scale-up programs, accelerators, etc. I think that the biggest difference is that we used PWC and other consultants. They are really strong in our region because of the oil & gas industry. We’re [leveraging] one of our advantages. We’ve had a huge oil and gas industry that have connected these consultant companies to the whole world. They can [leverage] their network, which I talked about in the beginning with Richard Branson. They can [leverage] their Network and connect these scale-up companies to the right clients in other areas of the world. That is part of the success. Providing them with clients, so that they can scale faster.
Another thing that we saw, when we started digging into the numbers to understand why a lot of these companies are failing, was that the biggest problem is actually culture. Even today, very few recognize that. The reason being that once you start to scale, you go from an organization where you need to have a lot of Swiss army knives (starters / chaos pilots / generalists who can take on anything), to an organization where you need a lot of specialists. If there are two groups of people that don’t go well [together], it’s those two. It’s like putting a scientist with a Navy SEAL. They would not be a good fit, right, and that creates a lot of problems in scale-ups.
So, in a lot of these companies we made a plan for how to change/replace the whole management team. Take out the founders and everyone that was at CEO, CFO, etc. (people at C-Level), all the titles, and put in people who was experienced in the role as a CFO, or CEO, etc. People who have had that role in a larger corporation, who know of the protocols they need to follow in order to make that company succeed.
Joachim: So, a plan to professionalize it.
Magnus: Exactly. That is really hard for any entrepreneur, because they have so much…
Joachim: so much emotionally invested.
Magnus: Yeah, so emotionally invested [that] it’s hard [for them] to just let it go.
Joachim: Yeah, it’s like giving up your baby, so to speak.
Magnus: That is also why it’s really hard for us to get these [scale-up] companies to accept the program. They don’t know… Maybe they know. I don’t know, maybe they know the truth. But, they don’t want to accept the truth.
Joachim: …and how many times have you run through the [scale-up] program at Slingshot at this this stage?
Magnus: I think we’ve had 7 cohorts with four companies in each. The culmination of all our learnings, was actually that we got contacted in 2023 by Monshaat in Saudi Arabia, which is like the SME department in government (the Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority, which is dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and innovation). They were working on their unicorn candidates, which are companies with 50 – 250 employees. They had been using Stanford University for their entrepreneur scale-up program for these companies. I think [through] a LinkedIn post, or something, we caught their attention, and they flew to Stavanger and had a meeting with us. They got a presentation on what we’ve been doing with Slingshot. After a couple of rounds, they decided to kick Stanford University out, and replace them with Slingshot because they thought that our program, and our approach would be much more valuable for them.
We had 7 companies from the Middle-East came to Norway and we ran them through the Slingshot program, worked with scaling them, had sprints, worked on the culture, and all the same things that we’ve been doing with the companies in Norway.
Joachim: Did all the people in those companies co-locate temporarily to Norway?
Magnus: Actually most of the program was online. We did one-on-one sessions with the management on video, and we flew our team down a couple of times. We also had, I think, two weeks that we flew everyone to Stavanger. We went to the Pulpit Rock, had some nice barbecue and social things as well. [It was] really interesting. [Very] talented people. It’s fun when you meet other entrepreneurs and even though their from half-way around the globe with other cultures, there are so many similarities.
Joachim: Let’s move on to another topic.
Given all your entrepreneurial efforts thus far, and this playful creative expression that we talked about at FOMO, who would you say inspires you the most and why?
Magnus: One person that inspired me a lot is a guy called Rory Sutherland. He’s a British marketing man, philanthropist and genius. Almost a philosopher, if you will. If you watch some of his videos on YouTube, you will be quite impressed (TED Talk: Life lessons from an ad man by Rory Sutherland (2009), TED Talk: Sweat the small stuff by Rory Sutherland (2010)).
He has a lot of really interesting ways of looking at marketing. How marketing actually work. How you change your perception in terms of what is a good solution. The way he’s thinking is introduced through his videos and his books, is maybe one of the most important perspectives to take in account [given] the world that we are heading for.
I will give you an example, which is one of his most famous ones. They were fixing the railway between London and Paris, and they were upgrading it through spending some 8 billion £. A huge amount of money to make the railway go 40 minutes faster. Everyone was trying to think how do we solve this. All the technical issues and problems. Everyone agrees that if you want to spend that amount of money, it has to be because you need to save time. But, Rory Sutherland’s way of thinking is that you need to have the technical solution, the financial solution and you have another solution that people don’t often think about. That is the psychological solution. That is rarely taken into account when you’re working on huge infrastructural projects, or even projects within your own company. The psychological solutions are the solutions that create feelings.
Rory Sutherland said [with regards to] the railway project that if you change perspective and [consider] a psychological solution to this problem, the real problem is not necessarily that the duration of the travel is too long. Perhaps it’s the quality of the travel. If you spent [about] 0.1% of that amount of money, you could have free Wi-Fi and people could actually do something productive on the train. Then those hours would be work-time, instead of just sitting there waiting. He’s most controversial suggested solution is spending 10% of that money and have all the greatest super models (men and women) in the world going up and down the isle serving free champagne and caviar to passengers, and people would ask the train to slow down.
The way of thinking that he introduced is so brilliant. Why don’t we think about that, I suggested, in one of our meetings with politicians in our region with regards to traveling with bus. Here (in the Stavanger region), it’s horrible. I said maybe you should change your perspective. Instead of trying to change the time and everything, how can you create more value for people traveling? A newspaper? Coffee? Maybe you could put in some better chairs and tables, and Wi-Fi in the bus so that people can can work on the way to their job? You can increase the prices on those journeys, so that you don’t get a lot of students and others. Only have the people commuting to the business areas on those buses. Or, trying to differentiate your service. Actually make it a better service, so that people actually buy it. It’s not a topic! It’s like: “My job is just to drive busses.” It’s not to transport people. As long as we drive enough buses around, people [will be] happy. But, they are not!
Joachim: It’s a fascinating mind shift.
I listened to this interview (“Masters of Scale” hosted by Reid Hoffman) with Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb. They talked about customer experience, and on a scale for 1 to 5, what is what is a 1 and what is a 5. 5 being the best. Then take it a little bit further. What’s a 6 out of 5? What’s a 7 out of 5? What’s an 8 out of 5? What’s a 9 out of 5? What’s a 10 out of 5? This approach [tends to] release so much creativity, and different ways of thinking. Especially, as you’re saying, focusing on quality. How would a super luxurious experience be? How do you make people happy? What would that involve? How would that look like? Then it just changes your perspective, and it open up different way of thinking. Maybe some elements of the 9 out of 5 experience can be integrated into the 4 out of 5 experience? It’s just a way to unleash some creativity. I think that there’s so much to that! I really love this example with the buses, and with the trains.
Magnus: It is! What you’re saying there, is actually that if you take a 5 out of 5, that is something that you know well. We’re always trying to pin things to something we know, but a 6 out of 5 that is something unknown. You can use your imagination to create that. That’s where you create brilliant and exciting products.
Joachim: Absolutely, yeah!
Magnus: So, that’s really interesting!
Joachim: Just shifting gears a little bit.
You’re you’re a serial entrepreneur. You’ve held leadership positions in most, if not all, the start-ups you’ve been a part of. But you’ve also been busy outside of work, in your private life. You’ve gotten married, you renovated a house, and did all these other things. What would you say has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced, and how did you overcome it?
Magnus: I think for me, the biggest challenge was in 2021, in the early beginning of FOMO. There was so much going on. I was working like 60-70 hours a week. I had a bedroom at the office actually, so I could just sleep there when I was working late hours. We had bought an old house, that we were renovating. I went from work in the evenings, straight to the house constructing, carpeting, painting and all these things. Sleeping. Then back to work. Worked all every weekend and kept going.
I also think that Covid-19 affected me a lot during that time. It took a lot of energy out of me. I don’t know whether it’s the vaccine, or perhaps the combination of everything. Suddenly, I really hit the wall. Tremendously. I was totally knocked out. I couldn’t do anything. It was hard just sitting outside around the bonfire, at the cabin, with my dad for ~10 minutes. I was like: “Oh my God, I have to go back inside and just lay in the bed.” I was almost knocked out for six entire months, before I was back at work. After I came back, I’ve been really cautious about working too much. [I’ve been] trying to listen more to my body. Taking precautions in terms of alcohol, late hours, and all these things that affect the body. So a huge shift because of that.
My work capacity before this was enormous, and it’s been that for my entire life. [I’ve] always been like this. Not that I have ADHD, but you would maybe call me an ADHD kid because I was always running around, fixing, doing and thinking. It’s always been so much things happening around me. So, that was the biggest challenge.
Coming home now, I’m eager to go out to meet people and do stuff, but I just have to say “no” to myself. “No, you have to take it easy. You have to calm down. You have to let your brain relax for a moment.” I think this is a problem a lot of people face in these times. You’re so influenced by your screen. There’s things happening all the time. People are calling and there’s so much.
One of the solutions I’ve tried to cope with this, which is my life hack, is that when I go to work now I’m trying to be a bit more observant about all the context switches. [When] you’re working on one thing, then there’s a phone call, and there’s one guy knocking on your door. There’s all these context switches all the time. You’re going from solving one problem, to solving another, to explaining something, to helping someone, and that really stresses the brain.
I did this also with my team just to try to help them not get into the same problems. Now, we’re considering the time prior to lunch “Focus Time.” No one goes knocking on other peoples doors. We let people do their focus work during those hours. Don’t send messages, if you don’t have to. We take meetings, interactions and everything else after lunch. [In doing this], we’re just trying to help the brain through the day. I think as a leader, you need to take that perspective, to help your employees become productive in a healthy way.
Joachim: That sounds like really good steps, and a scientifically-backed and structured way to build a good culture for the people you work with. That’s a really good approach.
I’m also curious if you would like to share some of the things that you found working for you during those 6 months to rejuvenate or re-energize yourself.
Magnus: Turn off everything that is disturbing you. If I wanted to work, I set [aside] maybe 1 hour, and did everything during that timeslot. I didn’t have a lot of capacity during the day, so I needed to just [batch it] in one chunk, instead of having all kinds of small things during the whole day. Then, try to do other activities to let the brain relax. One thing that I found to be really relaxing is reading. When reading, all your focus is on one thing, through your eyes. You can block out sounds and everything else that’s happening. You can use your creativity to create the pictures in your head about what you’re reading. That is entertaining, but still relaxing.
My brain is constantly running around. If I’m sitting on a bus, or even if I’m in a meeting, I could solve a lot of different problems. Thinking about different things that I want to do, problems, improvements. All these things are running around in my [mind]. I need to stop that. But, you cannot stop it completely. You can re-focus that energy into something else. So, reading has been sort of my go-to in order to calm my brain. Also, going for walks in nature. That’s also a really nice way to disconnect.
Joachim: Yeah, to clear your mind.
Magnus: I think everyone will have to find their own way. Eating the right stuff, that’s the most important. If you put shit into your body, you get a shitty brain. That’s how it is. I can really feel [the effect] to my capacity during the day, [when] I’m eating the right kind of meals or not. Especially now, after I hit the wall. [I’ve] become more conscious about focusing the energy inwards, [and] listening to my body. I can really sense in the morning, whether I ate something yesterday that’s not great for me. You can feel the effect the whole day.
It’s not just the food itself, because if you’re stressed out you [will typically] have problems digesting the same food. [Thus], something that you could eat one day, that gave you energy, could have a different effect on another day when you feel stressed. Maybe you think it’s the food that’s the problem, but I believe it’s the stress that we’re experiencing. Today with all the things that’s happening at once, this also affects the way we are able to digest our food. I’ve seen when I was younger, [when not holding] a leadership [role]. Earlier, when working in small teams with maybe just 1-2 people, we could have a normal day just focusing on one or two things. That would be a normal day. But, now when we have a lot of different companies, there’s so many different things happening all the time. I don’t get that focus time anymore. I’ve never had problems with digestion or food in the past, but now after all the stress and everything that I’ve been experiencing, I now have to be cautious. So, there definitely a connection.
Joachim: Seems like everything is connected to everything, in a way. All these context switches has least been exacerbated by the modern society we find ourselves in. All these [constant] interruptions leads your time [to be] sliced into small pieces. It’s difficult to cope. Also, if you focus really hard on something, it usually takes about 15 minutes to even get into the flow of it. So, if you have these constant interruptions, you never really get into the flow of things. Meaning you don’t really get to the stage where you can get really productive and creative.
Magnus: Yeah, exactly!
Joachim: We spoken a bit about culture, and a little bit about leadership. However, I would like to explore that a little bit more. Maybe you could talk about your philosophy on leadership, and what you’ve learned about non-traditional thinking and going big?
Magnus: I hate bureaucracy. My go-to is always: “How can we get things done fast?” When we started constructing FOMO, one of the things that we did differently was that we made floor plans with no measurements on them. That’s really controversial in our business, because you would [typically] detail control everything. We didn’t have architects. We threw them out! We didn’t have a lot of project management. We made floor plans with almost no measurements at all. We gave the [floor plans] to the construction crew and said: “Build this. Use your brain and creativity to construct this. Just get it done.” We managed to cut cost per m2 from the industry standard of 1 240 US per m2 to 250 USD per m2.
One of the things that we did differently was that we made floor plans with no measurements on them. We gave the floor plans to the construction crew and said: “Use your brain and creativity to construct this.” We managed to cut cost per m2 from the industry standard of 1 240 US per m2 to 250 USD per m2.
Joachim: That’s a significant cost cut!
Magnus: Almost about 1/10th of the cost. Still we managed to have a standard that was above all our competitors. [We had] sound insulated glass in every office with black aluminum frames, soundproof walls, new carpets and everything was really nice.
The reason to why we managed that, is that we didn’t waste time on a lot of planning meetings, architects, all kinds of things. We just put people to work. They all have experience. They are good carpenters, and they know how to solve things, right.
Joachim: I love that approach!
Magnus: We gave them the confidence, and said we believe that you will manage to do this. We had a designer with us who was just walking around writing on the walls which color goes where, pointing and explaining. A very practical approach to all the design work we did. We saved a lot of money on that.
Joachim: That’s really cool. It reminds me a bit about Elon Musk. He has this list of five bullet points that he runs through in every project [at all his] companies. The first one is: “Make requirements less dumb.” In my mind, it really connects to what you’re saying. Rather than having all these requirements about this is going to be this many centimeters, it’s going to be this wide, it’s going to be like this and that, you just remove all those all that dumbness from the requirements. [Instead] you just let really capable people figure it out themselves, while they’re there working.
Magnus: Yeah. You might have 20 people actually doing the project working on construction or whatever, but you might have just 1 or 2 designers. If you can flip that around… If you can allow those 20 people to use some of their brain capacity to actually make the solution, and make them work together in a way that actually works, you suddenly have 20 brains instead of 1-2. Then you’re 10 times more brilliant than your competitors.
When it comes to leadership philosophy, I’m really a fan of having speed. It’s maybe wrong to say a dictatorship, but I think that in the early phase, you need to have some sort of a dictatorship. You need to have someone to just pull the strings, and [making] fast decisions, because speed is so important. When we’re six years down the road, [we’re at a stage that requires] new types of leaderships. That (kind of leadership) is not my strongest skill set. That’s why we are hiring a lot of new CEOs who are taking on our roles, across the different companies. We, the founders, are pulling back. We are letting people who have more skills in HR, putting together [larger] teams and getting [large groups of] people to work smoothly together. Letting [people] who really have those skills as their primary ones, run the companies.
I think that’s important. A lot of people who are founders and become leaders, don’t have those skills. We don’t have all the skills, right. You need to have some insights into what your strengths and weaknesses are. Try not to allow those weaknesses ruin your own career.
Joachim: It’s definitely also important in terms of how you put together a team. If you know what you’re good at, and what you’re bad at, you can complement each other in a good way.
While we’re on this topic of your personality. How would you describe your personality type?
Magnus: I’m really curious. Always very enthusiastic. Maybe not always that critical. When I’m stressed out, I can also go into a very detailed focus. I have this detail-oriented part of me. I can sit down and do detailed sketches of things, if I need to. But, I’m very impatient. That’s been one of the biggest challenges when I’m working as part of bigger teams. I don’t have the patience to wait for everything that needs to be done. I want things to just get done, today.
I’m really happy when I’m sitting in a group of people throwing out ideas. working in that way gives me a lot of energy. Being around people. Being a part of a group who’s heading in the same direction.
If I’m in a group of people where there’s a lot of different opinions, especially if we don’t agree on something, then I think I’m not the easiest person. I have a lot of strong opinions. I’ve got into some struggles over the years with others that I’ve been collaborating with. In a good way. We’ve had our differences. In those situations, I’ve usually figured out that one of us needs to go our own way.
So, I have a strong personality. Definitely. But, I think I’m quite aware of that. I know when to pull back, if you will.
Joachim: I think a lot of the characteristics that you go through is, at least to my mind, a lot of the same characteristics that are often mentioned as the traits that you would like to see in a typical founder type. For instance, being impatient. Having this strong inner sense of urgency. Things can never happen fast enough, which is very important, as we talked about, in the early phases of a startup. Things need to move very, very quickly. You need at least one person, and hopefully several, to have this inner sense of urgency. We just need to get things going. We need to bring results [to the table] in a short period of time. Otherwise, you’re broke. So, you need to move fast.
I think that’s very key. If you want to move fast, you have to make decisions fast. Then you need someone who really knows what that decision should be. So, you need someone with strong opinions.
[Thus], I think a lot of these traits lends itself towards a start-up scene.
Magnus: I think so [too]. If you design a company that fits your personality, that could also play a big role. I’m thinking a lot about problems and solutions. So, even though I’m impatient, when I make a decision, it’s rarely a decision that is just taken out of the air. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. But, when I have to make the decision, I don’t spend too much time reflecting on it after the decision has been made.
I met so many founders over the years, and I see that most people build a company around their personality that make it work in those critical early years. That’s why changing some of the founders during scaling is so important. You need to move on from having a whole company built around the personality of one or two people. You have to look wider. Especially when you scale and get really big.
We’ve invested 50 million USD in the companies that we’ve been doing the last five years. We’ve not had a single budget. We didn’t have budgets constructing. We were just focusing on building with the right quality, as fast as possible. That was our goal.
You don’t have time to spend a lot of money, because most of the time your [main] cost is the hours spent. If you manage to cut down the construction from, say, 8 months to 2 months, that will be [a lot] cheaper. Also, [given] my personality, I’m not patient enough to make budgets, and spend time controlling them. I’ve just had a gut feeling on how much things actually cost as we are running forward at a fast pace. There’s so much money [going] in and out when you’re in a scaling phase, that the budget you made 2 months ago is useless. It’s just a way for the board of directors to say if you’ve done good or bad. I don’t really care about what the board say that much, especially during that phase.
What matters is how much income we manage to create. What’s your revenue stream? Just focus on a few things: revenue stream, the costs for the next 3 months, and cash on account. Focus on those three key metrics.
Joachim: Yes, keep it simple. That makes sense, especially in the early days you need to keep it simple to really keep the momentum.
I’ve heard this saying that: “Planning is key, but plans don’t matter.” Plans change all the time, but having some sort of planning makes sense. The plan itself doesn’t matter. It’s sort of the same thing you’re saying about budgets. The same kind of mindset, I would say.
How do you handle criticism?
Magnus: Oh, much better now. I don’t think I took any criticism into account 10 years ago. I would just think that the other person(s) were not quite aligned. I think that’s changed a lot because of my wife Stina. She’s a really sensitive person. Really direct. Really good at analyzing people. She’s [provided] a lot of feedback. I’ve just learned how to cope with all the dark sides [of my personality], if you will. Being aware of them, and doing something with it. [I’ve] started listening more to why people are responding in that way, and being more aware of my surroundings.
I think there’s different kinds of criticism. When I get criticism from people that know me, then it’s real. Maybe it’s something I’ve done wrong or said. Of course that affects me in a way. I’m always very grateful when people are honest. First of all, I will always thank them for their honesty. I think that’s the key for everything. Then, I would try to think about how can I change my way of being to meet these individuals on their feelings. Everyone is feeling what they are feeling. You cannot change those feelings. You can’t argue for them to feel any different, because that’s what they feel. That’s how they view the situation. You have to realize the facts.
However, I don’t care about criticism in terms of what we [are doing] as a company, or what I’m doing as a leader, that comes from people on the outside who don’t see the whole picture. [I’ve been] doing so many things over the years where you meet so much criticism. It’s more of a sign that you’re doing something right. When you see a lot of people criticizing, then it might be that you’re challenging them in their field of expertise. That’s a good thing. That means that you’re actually on the right path.
Joachim: Sounds like a healthy filter.
How do you define success? Has that definition changed over time for you? Maybe you can describe a moment that change your perspective, if it has changed.
Magnus: To me, success have never been a financial thing. I think for most people it is at some point. I’ve been flattered by myself, if you will. By the amount of money that we could make, at some point. But, I think you quickly realize that all that wealth that you create, also have a dark backside. It removes so much of your freedom. But, people believe that if you have a lot of money, [that leads to] a lot of freedom. That’s not necessarily true. You have to think about that money and how to invest it. Then the investments can go bad, and they can affect you. If you have money, you may want to spend it on things. A lot of us are [influenced] by the media to buy things that we think we need. People start fixing their lawn. They start building a garage. They start buying bigger houses. They start renovating. They start buying more stuff.
Joachim: Upgrading their lifestyle (the Hedonic Treadmill).
Magnus: In the end, you find yourself with a really nice car, terrified to park anywhere. You’re afraid to get a scratch. Your whole life is just filled with worries. I don’t think that it’s a better lifestyle.
When I think back on my early days as an entrepreneur, I was broke as a rat. Working every day. That was the best time of my life. Me and my partners. We just had the upside of the world. There was no downside, since we were [already] at the bottom. We didn’t have a lot of money or investments that we were afraid could go wrong. Really a worry-free life. Hakuna Matata.
Joachim: I’ve heard some some people say that a wonderful thing is when you have momentum and you’re progressing, but you don’t want to progress too fast. Because the higher you ascend, the more you have to lose, which is sort of what you’re saying. You still want the momentum, because you want tomorrow to be a little bit better than today. So, you want to have some momentum. You want to progress, but not too quickly because then you’re afraid that you’re going to lose it all, or that the momentum is going to stop. But being on slow upwards trajectory, that journey, is what a lot of people look back fondly at.
Magnus: That’s a really important observation! If you manage to keep that eagerness that you had in the beginning. That fun of creating, and you understand that this fun is actually created by yourself and your team. You can still create fun, when you’ve had financial success. The fun of being at work, creating products and creating a community for yourself and the people around you. These are the really valuable things. The relationships and the people that you’re working with. If you change that for the numbers in your bank account, [making that your definition] of success, then you start to become really afraid because that’s something you can lose. Of course you can lose good friendships, but it’s a different focus. Keeping your friendships at a healthy level, and keeping your bank account on a healthy level, whatever that is, [is a very different focus].
That has been one of the ways to finding inner peace, [for me]. If I were to lose everything, of course that would be dramatic and horrible, but I’m thinking about my career as all the things that I’ve been lucky to experience. The great people that I’ve been working with. All the stories, experiences and all the fun that we’ve had on our journeys. That’s my book of value, if you will. No one can take that away from me. I’m still filling out that history book with more exciting stories as I progress, and it’s not connected to wealth creation at all.
Joachim: Speaking about memories, and the things you pick up along your journey. What would you say is the most important skill that you’ve developed during your career, or the one that you appreciate the most?
Magnus: That would definitely be the ability to know a little bit about a lot of things. [Ever] since I was a kid, my dad [brought me along] to work on practical stuff. [I’ve] always been really interested in learning how things are solved. So, even though we are quite focused within each company at FOMO, I still know a little bit about so many of the different companies, and the different things they are doing. I can go into almost every discussion and understand what’s happening, what’s going on and work with those people.
Curiosity. Thirst for learning. Making the teams work, to designing the washing area inside the cantina. How do you put together the washing machine area to make the most efficient management of all the dirty cutleries that comes in from the 400 people eating lunch every day? That’s the span, right. From drawing the floor plans, to knowing how much capacity you need for ventilation per office space.
I’ve always been interested in all the technical stuff. Trying to understand how does things work. I thin that’s one of the reasons to why I’ve been able to jump into so many different areas, and make quick decisions. I have some sort of feeling on what’s a good and a bad decision in all these different areas.
Joachim: I can definitely see how you have developed into this Swiss army knife, that we talked about in the beginning [of our conversation].
Looking back at the last 5-6 years, what new belief, behavior, habit or maybe person do you think has most improved your life?
Magnus: Definitely my wife, Stina. She has opened one of the biggest doors into my inner self. Being in contact with my inner self on a deeper level. She’s really connected, and [have] challenged me so many times. If it hadn’t been for her, I think that I would still be running in that hamster wheel, always trying to create the next big thing. Now, I’m more satisfied with the way things are, and value peace. Just being calm. Taking it easy.
It takes some time to get into that. If your in the hamster wheel all the time, and you stop up for a couple of minutes, that wheel is still spinning and you’re just falling around inside it, [so to speak]. You need to be challenged for quite some time, before you can imagine and feel what it’s like when that wheel start going a bit slower. Now I can sense when I’m in that spinning wheel and not being able to disconnect from everything, and I’m able to reduce the [speed of it].
Joachim: Speaking of this urge to create something, or this inner drive that has enabled you to do all these entrepreneurial endeavors. How would you describe that drive historically, and how is that different from the drive that you feel today, if different? Then, at the end, what’s next for you?
Magnus: I think that part of your personality is something that you can never get rid of. If you’re that kind of person who’s got a lot of ideas and the brain is spinning all the time, then think about which context can you put that [to good use].
Before I came here, I was meeting a group of former drug addict and criminals who have been rehabilitated, and come back to work. They managed to get out of those negative spirals. I listened to their perspectives and the things that they had experienced through life. It feels really valuable to be able to use my skills, or my time, to help people like that. That’s some of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time on through Innovation Dock as well. We spent a lot of time helping other entrepreneurs with their companies. It just feels valuable using your creativity and all that “spinning in the head” to to contribute to others.
Joachim: To give back.
Magnus: I think that creativity is also something that keeps you young. You should never stop being creative, and throwing out wild ideas. That doesn’t mean that you have to jump back on that horse and actually make it happen. I don’t think that I’ve changed so much in terms of drive. It’s still there.
Joachim: The drive is still the same, but it has different outlets now maybe..?
Magnus: Yeah, yeah. When you come to a point where your company has [reached] a certain size, maybe you [become] disconnected from the values that the company is creating. It is changing and you need to be aware of when that happens, because that’s when you may start losing motivation and you need to find someone else to take over, and do something different yourself.
At FOMO, I’ve been able to keep that enthusiasm by creating new smaller ventures along the way. Challenging myself on new areas. That’s why I’ve been also hiring new CEOs to take over the companies that are up and running, so I don’t get bored. I need to keep my brain on the edge.
Joachim: Enthusiasm is really, really important. Once you start to lose that enthusiasm, it’s [perhaps] time to to consider doing something else. You need to be thinking: “I really look forward to doing this.” Whatever “this” might be.
Magnus: I guess a lot of the listeners of your podcast is not people who are entrepreneurs and running their own companies. Maybe a lot of people are employed somewhere. To make a comparison, I think that when you are in that state where you don’t feel that your creativity, or your thoughts and ideas, are being heard anymore. Maybe you’re getting bored at the job. I think that’s a good time to just quit. Do something else. Don’t become this gray soggy material inside a huge company that’s been there forever. Get out. Take that creativity and energy, and put it into a new context. A new company. As an entrepreneur, you can do that by just creating something new. You’re running the business yourself. As an employee you can’t necessarily do that, unless you have a boss that recognizes that you have certain qualities, and can move you to another team where you can make miracles.
Joachim: That’s true. It’s important to scratch your own itch, while you still have that enthusiasm. Don’t let it die down. Then it’s too late, or it could be too late.
What’s one thing you wish that people knew about you?
Magnus: I don’t really know. There’s a lot of things that I’ve experience through my life that a lot of people don’t know [about]. Being bullied at elementary school. Having those kind of issues growing up. That’s what formed me. But, I don’t think that those experiences are things that people need to know. When I meet other people, what are things that I wish that I knew about those people. Most times when you would ask yourself that question, it may be that they experienced something traumatic and I wish that I knew, so I could take that into account by being more careful. I don’t think people actually want that.
Joachim: There are certain things where you put a lot of energy and effort into it, and you’re very proud of it, but it’s not very visible, or it’s not known to others. I think maybe [other people] would be able to appreciate a different side of you, if they knew. Maybe in the public eye, you sort of have this persona, or this way that people perceive you. Everyone is probably multi-faceted and multi-dimensional, and there’s a lot of things that don’t meet the eye…
I think the things that people discuss with others, depend on how they know that person. If you know a person from a business perspective, then maybe you will have business conversations, and [perhaps] not share some vulnerable sides of you that also really matters. Maybe there’s something there…
Magnus: I think your question triggers a thought in me that Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about in his books. He talks a lot about the Ego, and how that controls us a lot. I think all those questions about how others perceive us, and your question: “What do you want people to know about you, that they don’t?” is connected to our Ego. What part of us do we want others to know about. I’ve become really disconnected from that. I don’t want my ego to be affected in any way by those things. People can think about me what they want.
The solution to this is that we need to be more open-minded. What I wish that others knew about me, is that I wish others were more interested in everyone. The people behind. Not the job. Not the title. Not work. Not the income. Not any of those things. But, unfortunately that’s how most of our society is put together.
In Norway, all the tax returns are published before Christmas, and everyone can log in to see what their neighbor is worth. That creates a huge amount of traffic. The web pages of those sites are almost breaks down, when they release the numbers.
If you made a similar site, where you could publish all the personality traits, or secrets about yourself that you wanted people to know, then I don’t think a lot of people would visit those. Unless, there was some famous person, because people are always interested in gossip about famous person. But, are you really that interested in the personality, or the deeper life of your neighbor, or your friends, or other people that you meet.
Joachim: It reminds me of one way of thinking that I really appreciate, which is: “If you go through life thinking that everyone you meet have at least one thing to teach you, and that you most likely have one thing to teach them, then that will naturally make you more humble, more curious and lead to better interactions.“
Magnus: That’s so true. When I’m asked to hold a presentation, or a talk, I feel that don’t really know if I have anything to share. I don’t view myself as more knowledgeable than anyone else. Perhaps in one way I take my life and all the things that I’ve experienced for granted. But, I feel that there’s so many people who’ve experienced a lot of things. That my life is almost like any other life.
When I was at this group [this morning], they invited me to talk about things that I’ve done, but I was more eager to hear all their stories. It’s really exciting to listen to how they managed to get out of a situation where they were in really deep shit, and almost killed themselves with drugs. Being able to get your life back on track and get back to work that’s a really huge feat.
Joachim: Absolutely! It’s a fascinating work that these NextGen Ambassadors are doing there, and their work with Blue Cross. It’s a fascinating [and inspiring] piece of work.
Magnus: There’s a lot of people in our community now that’s feeling lonely. When I was at the University in 2010, 15 years ago, the numbers were 10%. I think the last time numbers I heard was almost 33%.
Joachim: People are talking about a loneliness epidemic.
Magnus: Yeah, exactly. If you try to put that into perspective, it’s quite hard to grasp. We’re living in a time where people share more about themselves than ever. You have pictures, stories, you can basically see everything about any person’s life, but still people are feeling more lonely that than ever. Why is that?
Joachim: That sort of circles a little bit back to what you’re trying to create with FOMO. This sense of community and belonging. We used to live in tribes. We used to be close to our family, relatives and closest friends. Thinking about Dunbar’s Number, and tribes of 150 people and not more. We’ve seen this across all these different cultures in the world, across the ages. People naturally congregate in groups of 150, and if it becomes more, then that they usually split into smaller groups because then you can remember all the names of the people in that group. You can have deep relations with all of them.
Now we’re living solitary, in our own little apartment or our own little house. There’s very little physical interaction. Most of the connections are happening online, which is very different, as we spoke about in terms of Covid-19 in which people were alone, but connected, but wanted to get back into the office to have face-to-face interaction. I think it’s part of the human DNA. [The desire] to be close together, and interacting face-to-face, and being part of a community, to feel that sense of belonging. Modern society has sort of robbed us of that. [There’s] a lot of positive [aspects] of with new technology and society progressing, but I think we need to find our way back to that in some way.
Magnus: Your perspective on you having something to learn from others, and something to teach… The effect of that is that you create value for the other person. You both feel valuable, and that you have something to share/offer. But now, with our online [technological capabilities], we can basically get an answer to anything instantly. Why do you even need people? You can just ask ChatGPT or search online to get your favorite chocolate cake recipe. The best ever made in human history, or whatever. In the past, you would have your grandmother’s cookbook: “Oh, I have this great recipe. I can bring it over to the party.” We can find this amazing recipe, and everyone feels valuable and appreciated. We’re losing out on that because the connection to information.
Joachim: Yeah, yeah. That’s true. That’s a good point. Information used to be stored in the heads of people, and now it’s in this decentralized internet and there’s no need to reach out to a certain individual.
Rounding this off now. We’re on these big thoughts. If we zoom out a little bit, and I guess we’re already quite zoomed-out, and look at the big picture. If you could get one message, or image, out to the world what would it say, or show, and why?
Magnus: We need more people to create good working conditions for their friends, families, neighbors and their communities. Especially in the times we are heading for. There so much that’s going change with technology. So many jobs that will disappear, and that will be ripping through the social structures of so many communities in the years to come. We are already seeing the effects in the States (in the USA), where people that used to be middle-income are now almost pushed out. Working 3-4 four jobs, and barely making it. The amount of people living on the streets in L.A. When I was there 8 years ago, it was 60 000 people (living on the streets). Now I think it’s 130 000 – 140 000 people living on the streets. With the fire now, I can [only] imagine how much bigger that number will be in just a couple of weeks.
We need to go back to our roots, and start thinking about creating good businesses that can take care of our communities. That would be the most important thing we can do. Take care of each other, have a valuable place to go work to use your knowledge and use yourself (your skills) to feel valuable. Contributing to the greater good, to the community, to others. That’s what creates human value.
Joachim: Well, it’s been a pleasure. How can people reach out to you online, and where can they find you?
Magnus: Well, they can go to FOMO.no. [That’s] probably the easiest, and my contact details are there. If they see me on the street, or hear me on the street, say hi.
Joachim: All right, perfect. Thank you so much.
Magnus: Thank you
Leave a Reply