Venture Athlete & International Expansion Expert | Thriving as Generalist in a Specialized Economy

I’m Dominik, founder, athlete, & creator. A proud generalist. This is my story: 

For the last 7 years, I helped bootstrap one startup from 0 to 1M in revenue and built the international business from scratch for one of Europe’s fastest growing EdTech companies (50 -> 240 employees in my three years there).

All while competing at the highest level of the beautiful sport of Lacrosse, including an appearance for the German National Team at the 2022 World Games (the Olympics’ little brother).

While my professional achievements may seem more impressive on paper, representing Germany on an international stage is the feat that I’m most proud of.

I wasn’t very athletic up until my mid-twenties. Very little talent, but a lot of injuries to make up for it.

Until one day, I started working with a personal trainer. He helped me break down the fundamentals I needed to fix.

I worked hard, and I worked consistently. Showed up to every practice, every gym session. Did my recovery & mobility work daily.

4 years later, I made the national team roster.

The potential was in me. But it needed help unlocking.

Throughout my entire career, I’ve also helped humans unlock their potential, just in different ways:

- By teaching people in rural Rwanda and Brazilian homeless shelter how to make glasses for less than $1, and how to build a business around it
- By bringing unemployed nurses from Italy to Germany and teaching them German, opening a completely different career path for them
- By expanding the leading operating system for schools throughout Europe, so that education becomes more digital and thus accessible
- By writing about my experiences online and sharing them with the world

In late 2023, I made the decision to quit my cozy, well-paid, full-time job that fit my profile perfectly.

I'm on a mission to build my own portfolio career - and help others to unlock theirs. Join me on my journey towards building a portfolio of cashflow-positive, impact-driven businesses.

These businesses have one goal: help others unlock their potential. Just like my personal trainer did for me.

I wish that some of the best portfolio company owners turned creators had documented their journey from day 1, and not retrospectively.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I write for generalists like myself, who want to make a living in a specialized economy without specializing themselves. 

You can do more than one thing in your life. 
Let’s design that life together. 

Sign up for my newsletter here: www.dominiknitsch.com/newsletter

Dominik Nitsch

"Life is half over by 23" sounds like an insane take, but I think it has some substance to it. Here's why: 

When you're 5, each year represents 20% of your life. 
When you're 10, 10%. 
Etc.

With each passing year, the relative increase in experience slows down. I'm 32 now, so the current year represents ~3% of my entire life so far. And it's just gonna become less. 

So according to Sam, my life is already 75% over. Unacceptable. 

Here's what you can do about it: 

1/ Implement landmark events 
Some days, even some weeks, I ask myself: "wtf did I do today?" and can't really think of anything. It was just a normal workday with no specific things worth remembering. 

Chain too many of those days, and time passes by incredibly fast. 
But if you do something out of routine (like attending a sports event, traveling to a new place, meeting an interesting person, trying a new skill) – you'll remember that. And the more landmark events you have in a year, the longer the year will feel in retrospect. 

2/ Diversify, diversify, diversify 
If you just do one thing, it's much easier to get stuck in a rut. If you do several things really well, progress accumulates not just in your main job, but also in your side hustles. 

Subjectively, this makes life feel longer. You look back on a year and think: "damn, I did all this in three different disciplines? that's cool." 

3/ Engineer anti-routines into your life
I'm all for having a routine; the best work gets done in a familiar setting. 

But as with everything in life: "everything in moderation, including moderation". If you always stick to your routine, life passes by fast. So build anti-routines into it. These could be: 
→ setting an objective to travel to 2 new countries every year
→ consciously breaking your normal daily routine 1-2 days per week
→ meeting one new person every week 

Novelty makes life longer. 

That being said, Sam has a point. Life's short. Don't waste it doing things that mean nothing to you.

Founder @ Generalyst | building talent infrastructure for early-stage startups | 1,245 generalists read my newsletter to future-proof their career.

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Specialization is the most overrated career advice of the last decade.

“Pick a niche.”
“Go deep.”
“Become the expert in one thing.”

What sounds great in theory, doesn’t work in practice anymore. 

It locks 20-somethings in boxes they shouldn’t lock themselves into yet. Most people in their 30s don’t know what they want. How do you expect high school and university grads to know that? 

The best way to find out what you want is to sample different things. 

This allows you to:
→ build a broad foundation
→ find out what you’re actually world-class at
→ get pattern recognition 

Knowing what you’re uniquely good at via trial and error is the ultimate way of “sharpening the axe”. 

Yeah, you might be falling behind compared to someone embarking on a medical or law career. 

But down the line, you’ll have a life that works exactly for you. 

Maybe it’s one job.
Maybe it’s a portfolio of jobs, turning into a Portfolio Career.

The possibilities are endless, but just picking one thing at 18 and sticking with it for the rest of your life sounds like a pretty bad strategy if you ask me. 

PS: I wrote a few articles about building a Portfolio Career. If that sounds interesting to you, you can download my portfolio career playbook here: https://lnkd.in/dGZaPsrv

Founder's Associates exist on a spectrum – from being purely operational to being a proper sparring partner. The breakdown: 

Want your own Founder's Associate? That's our bread and butter at Generalyst. We work with A+ generalist talents of all the three levels listed here. Faster than your own recruitment process, cheaper than your headhunter. 

PS: Want me to do one for Chief of Staff, too? Comment below.

Simon Veithen and I sat down on Friday to discuss: 

→ what the hell a generalist is, and why it's the best way to prepare for the future
→ how you can acquire meta skills 
→ why job safety is an illusion
→ how to achieve non-linear results 

... and much more. 

Listen to the full 1h episode here: https://lnkd.in/dNdxH_9s

How to identify high-performing organizations: 

"The single best indication of a high-performing culture is the prevalence of former entrepreneurs. It usually portends a high-agency organization equipped with people mentally and emotionally prepared for a startup journey. Figure out what percentage of a company’s employee base previously launched businesses of their own, and try to understand why they’ve decided to forgo their independence to contribute to a new mission." – Mario Gabriele

It takes a lot as a founder to subordinate yourself again (been there, done that). When an organization manages to attract these kind of people, there's usually something special going on. 

If you're a former founder and wanna join such an organization – there's a few in the Generalyst client portfolio :)

Change Leadership, General Manager PFA @ Batgroup & Member of the Board @ Putzfrauenagentur

Leadership is not about volume.
It is about clarity, alignment and steady execution when the pressure is on.

I work with customer-facing and regulated organisations across MENA and Asia to strengthen leadership capability where strategy meets delivery.

In hospitality, banking, retail and other service-driven environments, performance rarely fails because of effort. It fails when:

• Leaders are promoted without structured support
• Executive teams are misaligned on priorities
• Expectations are implied rather than defined
• Accountability drifts under pressure

My work focuses on alignment first.

I facilitate Leadership & Performance Alignment Sessions that help senior and mid-level leaders:

• Clarify must-win priorities
• Align leadership behaviours to business goals
• Identify capability gaps
• Define a focused 90-day execution plan

From there, we implement through structured leadership capability projects, including:

• Development journeys for emerging and mid-level managers
• Team coaching during change and transformation cycles
• Targeted 1:1 leadership coaching for high-potential and critical role holders

Across 25+ years with Apple Retail, Swissôtel, The St. Regis and multi-site service organisations in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, I have seen the same pattern:

When leadership alignment improves, engagement rises, execution stabilises and commercial performance follows.

I have led brand integrations and organisational transitions while maintaining performance and cultural stability.

If you are strengthening your leadership pipeline or want greater alignment between strategy and day-to-day delivery, I am happy to explore how we can work together.

📞 Book a call: https://cal.com/jeffross

Jeff Ross

93% of managers in the UAE consider themselves a good manager.

Around half of their employees disagree.

In Gallup’s UAE workplace research, that gap is not about character but about calibration.

Most managers do not see what their team is actually carrying, because the signals arrive late.

By the time burnout is visible, the conditions that caused it have been in place for months

Unclear decision rights.
Responsibility without the authority to act.
Every priority treated as the top priority.

In large service organisations - retail, hospitality, leisure - managers absorb pressure from above so the operation keeps moving.

They keep the shift running.
They hit targets.
They protect the guest or customer experience.

Until they cannot.

Gallup’s UAE data shows that disengaged employees report burnout at nearly twice the rate of engaged ones.

This is not primarily a workload story.
This is an engagement story.

Which means it sits with how managers are set up to lead.

Most organisations in this region can tell you their sales figures or occupancy rates.
Fewer can tell you how their managers are actually doing.

If burnout is appearing in your organisation, do not start with resilience training.

Start with how clearly your managers know:
– What they are accountable for
– What they can decide
– What is truly a priority

What is one pressure your managers are absorbing right now that the system should be carrying instead?

Leadership Capability Partner for High-Pressure, Customer-Facing Organisations | Alignment Sessions, Leadership Development & Coaching | MENA & Asia

Someone on your operations team has done the work you're hiring for.

They led system integration during the acquisition. They managed the brand transition. They consolidated operations across locations.

But when you post "PMI Lead" or "Integration Manager," they don't apply.

They assume it's different work.
You hire externally.
They get quietly frustrated.

This is not a capability gap you are having.
It is a translation problem.

I was at a networking event for M&A professionals last month. The room was full of consultants and advisors casually discussing deals "we don't touch 

Open article: The terminology gap that's costing you internal talent by Jeff Ross • 5 min read

The terminology gap that's costing you internal talent

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