Things I wish I'd known at 30

I was sitting in a dark office in Stockholm when I turned 30, and I was entirely consumed by pace. I was building Mediapilot with my co-founder, Fredrik. The business was growing quickly, eventually creating more than 100 jobs, but I felt a constant, suffocating anxiety that I was running out of time. Around that same period, I started keeping a written life plan. I still update it every single year. I sit down and rate family, friends, health, finances, work, and personal time out of ten. Looking back at those early spreadsheets, my scores were completely erratic, heavily skewed towards whatever fire I was trying to put out at the office. I thought if I just worked faster, I would eventually clear the deck and balance the numbers.

Speed is the wrong variable

I would love to tell my 30-year-old self that speed is a distraction. Back then, I equated motion with progress. I answered emails within minutes. I rushed from meetings to dinners, trying to force outcomes on my exact schedule. The problem with moving that fast is you lose the ability to see whether you are even heading in the correct direction. Moving fast in the wrong direction simply means you have to walk further to get back to where you started.

It took me years to understand that the things that actually matter cannot be rushed. Today, at 45, I am building Anchor, writing software for alienated fathers, and Substrat, providing infrastructure for AI builders. I am moving significantly slower than I did in my Mediapilot days, yet I am getting much more done. I let things sit. I sleep on decisions. The artificial timeline I had in my head at 30 was entirely made up.

The slowest asset class

This relentless urgency ruined how I viewed people, too. At 30, I viewed professional meetings as transactions. I wanted immediate results. But relationships are the slowest asset class in the world, and they do not compound if you keep trying to force early withdrawals.

Think about how I even got into sales in the first place. In my twenties, I took a commission-only job at a PR agency. Everyone around me said it was a terrible idea. But while I was there, I met Fredrik. He pulled me aside one day and told me I would be good at sales. That single, honest observation changed the trajectory of my life, leading directly to us starting Mediapilot together. If I wrote a letter to my 30-year-old self, I would tell him to stop treating networking like a task to complete.

You cannot optimise human connection, and the people who end up changing your life will do so on a timeline you cannot control.

A few years later, in my early thirties, I did something completely out of character. I stepped away from the grind and travelled around the world for a stretch. I was largely disconnected from work, which felt deeply uncomfortable at first. I felt as though I was letting the clock run out on my ambition while everyone else in Stockholm was getting ahead. But being offline gave me a profound sense of perspective. It forced me to realise the world does not stop spinning just because Martin Wettergren hasn't checked his inbox. It was an accidental investment in my own sanity, and it paid off far more than another six months of sitting at a desk ever could have.

The health debt comes due

Then there is the physical side. Let me explain something about my life plan spreadsheet. At 30, the health score was mostly an afterthought. You can eat heavy food, drink half a bottle of wine, skip sleep, and wake up the next morning feeling entirely fine. You feel invincible, so you assume you are. But health compounds, and so does neglect.

Today, we live in Marbella. We moved the family down here from Sweden in 2018 for what was supposed to be a two-year experiment. We are still here. I am now deeply aware of my physical baseline. I play tennis often, and I play it badly. I hit terrible backhands into the net. But I show up because maintaining a physical routine is the only way I can sustain the energy required to build companies, manage a few angel investments, and be a decent father. At 45, if I eat poorly and skip sleep, my entire week is ruined. You do not get away with it anymore.

I'll be honest with you: I haven't got this completely figured out. I still catch myself occasionally rushing through a Tuesday afternoon as if there is a prize for finishing the day fastest. I still look at my annual life plan and wonder why the personal time score rarely hits an eight. But the anxiety of 30 is mostly gone. If I could hand a letter to myself at that age, I would just tell him to sit back and breathe. The companies will get built. You have plenty of time to work, to travel, to ruin a few things and then fix them. Just slow down enough to actually notice the life you are putting together.