Building wealth slowly

I'll be honest with you. When I see someone who made an absolute killing overnight, I feel a pang of envy. Living in Marbella, you bump into these people often. Someone who timed a crypto run perfectly, or sold an app after eighteen months of work for a sum that looks like a phone number. They are thirty years old, driving cars that cost more than my first flat in Stockholm, and they seem completely unstressed. I look at them and think about how I started in sales at a PR agency on commission only, against the advice of everyone around me. Fredrik Bage was the one who told me I'd be good at it. We eventually co-founded Mediapilot and spent roughly seven years grinding out sales, hiring more than a hundred people, and worrying about payroll every single month. It is hard not to wonder if I did it the stupid way.

But the truth is, I don't know how to get rich quickly. I only know how to build wealth slowly. Most of my financial life has been profoundly boring. Every month, for more than a decade, I have bought broad index funds. I buy them when the market is up, and I buy them when the market is down. I don't trade. I don't try to time the bottoms or guess which sector will boom next. I have a small number of angel investments and some property, but the core engine of my finances is just relentless, mechanical accumulation. It takes zero genius. It is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it works.

The price of sleeping well

The problem with getting rich fast is that it usually requires carrying a lot of risk, heavy borrowing, or insane luck. I realised early on that I am not built for high-stakes financial gambling. I play tennis often, and badly, but I keep playing because I like the slow, steady improvement. I treat money exactly the same way. I keep my borrowing low because debt is a strict master. When you owe large sums to a bank, your optionality disappears. You are forced to make decisions you otherwise would not make. You keep a client who treats your staff poorly, or you delay taking time off, simply because the monthly payments demand it. The boring approach protects you from that trap.

When I was in my early thirties, I travelled around the world for a stretch. I was largely disconnected from the internet and entirely disconnected from the daily grind of building a business. That trip taught me what I actually wanted from money. I didn't want private jets. I just wanted my time to belong to me. You cannot buy that sort of freedom on credit. You have to save for it, slowly, month after month, putting a portion of whatever you earn into a boring vehicle that compounds in the background while you get on with your life.

The real return on boring investments is the ability to walk away from a bad deal without a second thought.

Measuring what actually counts

Since around 2010, I have kept a written life plan that I update every year. I score different areas out of ten: family and friends, health, finances, work, and personal time. What I have noticed over the years is that my financial score rarely correlates with the absolute number in my brokerage account. A high score in the finance column doesn't mean I have a hundred million euros in the bank. It means I have total control over my calendar. The money is just a tool to protect the other categories in the plan. You cannot score highly on family and friends or health if you are constantly panicked about paying the bank. When we moved the family from Sweden to Marbella in 2018, the plan was to stay for two years. We are still here. That is what a long financial runway lets you do. You can change your mind.

Because I don't have a massive debt burden hanging over me, I can spend my time on things that might take years to work. Right now, I am building Anchor, an AI project for alienated fathers. It is a deeply personal, difficult problem to solve, and the timeline for success is entirely unknown. I am also working on Substrat, building infrastructure for AI builders. Before this, I worked on the commercial side with Happeo, which was brilliant, but scaling software always demands a massive amount of energy. Now, I have the breathing room to build things at my own pace. If I were stressed about paying off a heavily mortgaged villa, I would not be able to focus on these projects. I would be chasing down the quickest invoice just to keep the lights on.

I'm forty-five now, and I finally accept that I will never be the overnight success story. My method takes patience, and it means accepting that you will feel poor for a very long time before you suddenly realise you are not. I still don't know how to pick the perfect stock, and I am entirely unqualified to tell anyone how to read a crypto chart. I got plenty of things wrong for years before I settled into this boring rhythm. But I do know that waking up every morning knowing nobody owns your calendar is the best return on investment you can possibly get.