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 :)

Sören Müller

Clean drinking water for everyone! Tokenizing water wells for humanity. It's actually quite profitable too 😉 Web3 Early Adopter and Investor. 25k+ Followers & 24M+ Impressions/Year 💧 HYDRATION IS WEALTH & HEALTH.

Hi! My name is Sören (yes, you can write Soren) and I love that you want to learn what I'm about. 🔥
I'm an entrepreneur and investor passionate about web3, impact, business, freedom, growth and the human mind (it's so powerful once you really understand the mind).

I am building one of the biggest, if not THE BIGGEST web3 impact project.

Water150 by Longhouse Foundation is committed to securing abundant life on earth for 150 years by setting the global long-term value of drinking water.

We think it's crazy that...
-1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water (1.6 billion by 2030)
-Water is polluted, overconsumed & misallocated
-The current economic system does not have anything in common with securing human life on earth

We envision a world in which...
-Everyone has access to clean drinking water
-Water ecosystems are protected globally
-Our economic system benefits our planet & human life on earth

We're now looking for strategic investors, advisors & partners who truly care about creating a positive impact in the world.
Sounds interesting? Send an InMail or connection request (with message).

Or check out our website: www.water150.io

💰 I also invest in web3 projects and am very involved in the space. 

I hope you enjoy my content & would love to learn more about you.
🗣️ Feel free to send a DM or pop into comments on my posts.

www.water150.io

Real World Asset Tokenization.
Water Security.
Impact.
RWA.

Also, don't make any financial decisions based on what I say. I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR & do not intend to advise anyone.

Chief Operations Officer

With Longhouse Water150, I am building one of the biggest, if not THE BIGGEST web3 impact project.
🌊 Water is the foundation of life itself. 80% of global biodiversity can be found near natural springs, untouched by mankind. A human being needs about 1 000 liters (264 gallons) of water every year to sustain a healthy life. 

But clean drinking water is scarce, and that is a global problem, yes USA & Europe are affected in many areas as well!

The UN predicts that by 2030, 1.6 billion people will be lacking access to clean drinking water.

We will secure 1000 spring water wells across the world and provide the best drinking water without disrupting the natural circulation of water.

You can't be ambitious and lazy at the same time.

One destroys the other.

Feed your laziness and your ambition dies. Wake up late, skip the work, take the easy path, and watch every goal you claimed to want fade into "someday."

Feed your ambition and laziness has nowhere to live. The early mornings become automatic, discipline becomes your identity, and work becomes non-negotiable.

Most people think they can have both. They want the results of ambition with the comfort of laziness. They want the body without the training, the business without the grind, the success without the sacrifice.

It doesn't work that way.

You're feeding one or the other every single day. Every decision is a vote. Hit snooze? Vote for laziness. Get up anyway? Vote for ambition.

This battle never ends, just know which side they're fighting for.

Which one are you feeding today?

💧Spring water, reimagined 💧 Partnering with wells worldwide to monetize excess capacity 💧 RWA | DeFi 💧

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