I am not a theorist. I am a practitioner who has been inside the specific experience your audience is navigating — and came out the other side with a system, not just a story.
2016: Cancer diagnosis. Career at its peak. Identity gone overnight.
2017: 10th national water polo title. Goal set during treatment — achieved after it.
2025: 65km across Lake Constance. First Austrian ever. 6th person on earth.
Between those points: rebuilt sales teams across two countries, raised five children, and developed the SWIM framework — an operational system for high performers who are medically cleared and personally lost.
One principle survived everything: 5% capacity, applied with the right system, is still 100% of what you have. And it is enough.
There is enormous support for people going through a health crisis. Almost nothing exists for what comes after.
No system for the person who passed the medical check, went back to work, and still doesn’t recognise themselves. No framework for the specific grief of losing an identity built over decades. No protocol for the rebuild.
When I decided to swim Lake Constance, people thought the goal was the swim. It wasn’t. The goal was to prove — publicly, measurably, in extreme conditions — that the system I built during cancer treatment works after the treatment ends. That what I wrote in ‘Against the Current’ isn’t theory. That 5% capacity is still 100% of what you have.
The Why wasn’t about the lake. It was about every manager, leader, or athlete who got a call they didn’t expect — passed their medical check, went back to their desk, and needed to know that the story doesn’t end there. That Why turned 5% into 65km
Know your values and identity when the external ones - the title, the output, the body -are no longer available. Lead yourself before you can lead anything else.
Motivation runs out. Why doesn't. When your reason is undeniable, the how takes care of itself. The goal becomes a side-effect.
Finding steadiness in the middle of uncertainty. Not passive hope - active certainty. The difference between surviving a crisis and being shaped by it.
Consistent movement, even at 5% capacity. And the support boat - because elite performance, and elite recovery, are never solo journeys.
I don’t speak from theory. I speak from cancer treatment, from freezing open water, from management under pressure, from rebuilding an identity I had to reconstruct from scratch.
My talks are built for organisations where leaders, managers, or athletes are navigating the post-crisis rebuild — back at work, back delivering, and carrying something internally that the organisation cannot see and has no framework to address.
What the audience leaves with:
I work with high performers — managers, leaders, and competitive athletes — who are on the other side of a serious health crisis and have not yet rebuilt the person the crisis erased.
Specifically:
This is not motivational coaching. It is operational. Built on the SWIM framework and grounded in real experience — cancer, career, elite sport, corporate leadership. We work on what is actually in the way — and what the next stroke looks like. Coaching is available as the structured 12-week SWIM online course, as individual sessions, or as a combined programme. Everything starts with a conversation.
