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Building a Business While Working Full-Time

Abboud Zeitoune

Alexander Meyer

Valen­cia, Spain
35 Years

Website
Linke­dIn

After years of strugg­ling to balance his corpo­rate career with his entre­pre­neu­rial dreams, Alex finally found a way to build a profi­ta­ble busi­ness while working full-time. Despite multi­ple attempts—including laun­ching a brea­thwork startup, a car cost compa­ri­son plat­form, and life design work­shops—none gained enough trac­tion to replace his job at Maiborn­Wolff and Alli­anz. Frustra­ted, he stop­ped chasing ideas and instead focu­sed on writing about his passi­ons on Medium. Over time, this led him to his true niche: stra­te­gic problem-solving and leader­ship coaching. By sharing valuable content, refi­ning his exper­tise, and deve­lo­ping a struc­tu­red coaching program, he built an audi­ence and even­tually quit his corpo­rate job. Today, Alex runs a thri­ving leader­ship coaching busi­ness, helping young profes­sio­nals grow into impactful leaders. His jour­ney proves that persi­stence, curio­sity, and stra­te­gic itera­tion can turn an uncer­tain path into a successful venture.

3 Insights You Can Take Away from This Lebensstory

Execu­tion Beats Stra­tegy
"In my previous busi­ness attempts, I had a stra­tegy but no clarity on the problems I was solving. This time, I expe­ri­men­ted, reco­gnized patterns, and solved problems itera­tively. My stra­tegy became an evol­ving by-product of my disco­very."
➡️Lesson: Stop waiting for the perfect plan. Take action, expe­ri­ment, and adjust along the way. What’s one step you can take today to move forward?

Find Your Niche by Provi­ding Value
"I star­ted to write about my lear­nings for four reasons: For joy, to build an audi­ence, to get feed­back, and to disco­ver which topics reso­nate most with people."
➡️Inspi­ra­tion: Share your know­ledge without expec­ting imme­diate returns. What’s one insight you could post today to help others?

The Path Illu­mi­na­tes as You Walk It
"Don’t force yours­elf to find the perfect busi­ness idea. Simply start with what you have and what you’re curious about. Dig deep, learn, and reco­gnize patterns and problems. That’s your start­ing point."
➡️Action Step: Stop overt­hin­king and start doing. What’s one curio­sity-driven project you’ve been post­po­ning?

Who are you & what Lebensstory would you like to share with us today?

Hey, I’m Alex, 35 years old, born in Spain, grew up in Germany.

Alex at his home base in Valencia.

Alex at his home base in Valencia.

As I star­ted my career some­where between IT and busi­ness, I was always in a dilemma:

On one hand, I wanted to start my own busi­ness. I had always wanted to be inde­pen­dent and create some­thing on my own.
On the other hand, I wanted to make money and live well.

The problem: In most cases, when you start a busi­ness, you make (almost) no money in the first few years.
This kept nagging at me.

So, I made three attempts to build a busi­ness while being employed at Maiborn­Wolff and Alli­anz:

  • I star­ted Fitby­Breath, a busi­ness that helps people use the power of breath to improve their health.
  • With a team, we laun­ched CARMETA, a plat­form that allows users to compare the total cost of owner­ship of diffe­rent cars across various purchase opti­ons (leasing, buying).
  • I ran Life Design Work­shops, where I helped students define the life they wanted to live and break it down into an actionable road­map.

But none gained enough trac­tion to replace my corpo­rate career.

So, I gave up. That was it—corporate for life.

Frustra­ted, I stop­ped chasing busi­ness ideas. Instead, I used my free time to aimlessly follow my inte­rests and write about what I had lear­ned on Medium.com.

Fast forward three years, and guess what?
It happened—the thing I had given up on. The wish I had let go of became reality: I recently quit my corpo­rate job. I’m a busi­ness owner now. I work less and get more satis­fac­tion.

As a young corpo­rate leader three years ago, I would have never imagi­ned this.

How did I get here?

In retro­s­pect, I realize I follo­wed six steps. Had I known them earlier, I would have avoided a lot of stress, wasted time, and frustra­tion.

So, here they are.

I Immersed Myself in My Favourite Topics

Frustra­ted by my early attempts, I star­ted lear­ning about various topics I was passio­nate about:

● Health and Biohack­ing: I follo­wed Ben Green­field, Dave Asprey, Peter Attia, and Tim Ferriss. I read and applied Bound­less, listened to count­less podcast episo­des, and expe­ri­men­ted with 50+ biohacks.

● Problem-Solving and Stra­te­gic Thin­king: As a consul­tant, I deve­lo­ped a passion for problem-solving. I read books like Bullet­proof Problem-Solving, Cracked It, and The Decision-Maker’s Play­book and tested diffe­rent stra­te­gies.

● Leader­ship Skills: As I advan­ced in my career, I became fasci­na­ted by what makes a great leader—how to influence others and commu­ni­cate effec­tively. I read books and atten­ded leader­ship trai­ning programs, inclu­ding ESMT Berlin’s Emer­ging Leaders and Leading Change.

● Perso­na­lity Psycho­logy: I have always been curious about what moti­va­tes people. I took popu­lar perso­na­lity tests (MBTI, DISC, and ID37) with family, friends, and colle­agues, compa­ring and discus­sing our results.

Alex experimented with many biohacks.

Alex experimented with many biohacks.

What did all this immersion lead to?

I achie­ved two outco­mes.

  1. I became very know­led­geable in these fields. I lear­ned and applied as much as I could. I became a human guinea pig.
  2. I reco­gnized oppor­tu­ni­ties. For exam­ple, I saw how using syste­ma­tic approa­ches in problem-solving can save your team days of work. Why isn’t ever­yone using these tech­ni­ques?

As I built my exper­tise, I felt driven and quali­fied enough to share my know­ledge.

This leads me to part two of my frame­work.

I Started to Provide Value Until I Found My ‘Niche’

I star­ted writing about my lear­nings for four reasons:

  1. For joy.
  2. To build an audi­ence.
  3. To get feed­back and improve.
  4. To disco­ver which topics reso­nate most with people.

To achieve points 2–4, I needed reach—but I didn’t have any.
So, I had to figure out which artic­les perfor­med well on my plat­form of choice—Medium.

Alex published his first article on Medium in 2020. Not many readers, but it was a start.

Alex published his first article on Medium in 2020. Not many readers, but it was a start.

I broke it down into two compon­ents:

  1. Quality infor­ma­tion: The things I share must be well-rese­ar­ched, drawn from perso­nal expe­ri­ence, or ideally both.
  2. The right format: For me, in-depth how-to artic­les with tangi­ble examp­les and perso­nal anec­do­tes in a conver­sa­tio­nal style worked best.

This approach allo­wed me to publish a few artic­les that gained signi­fi­cant reach, and I finally star­ted to see what people liked.

Some of Alex’s articles took off, helping him identify a potential niche.

Some of Alex’s articles took off, helping him identify a potential niche.

For me, my stra­te­gic problem-solving and leader­ship pieces gained the most trac­tion. That’s how I found my niche.

Countless hours of writing and experimenting led to this important aha moment.

Countless hours of writing and trying leading to this important aha moment

I Doubled Down on What Works

Once I knew what topics my readers were inte­re­sted in, I focu­sed on them.
I explo­red diffe­rent angles of problem-solving and leader­ship, expe­ri­men­ted, and contin­ued sharing my lear­nings through Medium artic­les.

For exam­ple:

-Problem-defi­ni­tion
-Issue trees and hypo­the­ses pyra­mids
-Decis­ion-making
-Leader­ship for intro­verts
-Commu­ni­ca­tion tech­ni­ques we can learn from top consul­tants

I also star­ted coll­ec­ting email addresses—even without having a product to sell—for two reasons:

  1. To build an audi­ence of highly enga­ged people.
  2. To connect with them and learn about poten­tial clients if I ever crea­ted a product.

Next, I expan­ded to another plat­form: Linke­dIn.

Alex's current LinkedIn account.

Alex's current LinkedIn account.

Here, I share insights three times per week, often inspi­red by my longer Medium artic­les.

One of Alex's weekly LinkedIn insights

One of Alex's weekly LinkedIn insights just got recently viral.

This is how I star­ted buil­ding my perso­nal brand.
Now, I had a message and an enga­ged, growing audi­ence.
But aside from my Medium payouts, I had no way to mone­tize yet.

I Built an MVE

Making money with your own busi­ness doesn’t have to feel over­whel­ming.
To turn my know­ledge into reve­nue, I star­ted small. I built an MVE (Mini­mum Viable Expe­ri­ence) around my growing exper­tise.

Deci­ding What to Offer

The first question was:
How can I bring my exper­tise into a format that crea­tes maxi­mum value for my custo­mers?

I saw four opti­ons:
● Build an online course
● Start a commu­nity
● Offer a coaching program for indi­vi­du­als or groups
● Create trai­ning for compa­nies

How to decide?
For me, two factors matte­red:

  1. How easy is it to market?
  2. How much do I enjoy crea­ting and deli­ve­ring my service?

So, I deci­ded to start with 1:1 coaching because:

  1. With a small audi­ence like mine, “done-with-you” services are easier to sell than online cour­ses.
  2. As a team lead, I enjoy coaching others the most, so I wanted to do more of that.

Crea­ting an MVE

First things first—people throw the term "MVE" around a lot. I refer to a Mini­mum Valuable Expe­ri­ence.

It’s simi­lar to an MVP (Mini­mum Viable Product) but focu­ses not just on product features but on the customer’s over­all expe­ri­ence when inter­ac­ting with the service.

This approach forces me to consist­ently put the custo­mer at the center when desig­ning my offer.

Here’s how I did it:
My MVE had two compon­ents:

  1. The content for the coaching program.
  2. The over­all jour­ney my custo­mers expe­ri­ence.

For the content, I packa­ged ideas from my best artic­les into nine leader­ship modu­les. For each module, I:
● Added more content and nuan­ces.
● Crea­ted exer­cises and case studies.
● Wrote down rele­vant expe­ri­en­ces from my career.

For the over­all expe­ri­ence, I crea­ted a modu­lar program tail­o­red to each customer’s needs.

To achieve this, I did two things:

  1. I mapped out the custo­mer jour­ney on a white­board.
  2. I spoke to people in my target audience—consultants, at that stage.

The initial jour­ney looked like this:

  1. Needs assess­ment: Does this person even need my program, and if so, which modu­les?
  2. Purchase or decis­ion to parti­ci­pate (more on this below).
  3. Program kick-off.
  4. To-dos between sessi­ons.
  5. Evalua­tion.
  6. Follow-up mento­ring.

The key to selling the program is the initial needs assess­ment before parti­ci­pants enroll.
From the begin­ning, I wanted to ensure that I only worked with people who were a good fit.

A question I get a lot is:
"But can’t you just let AI create ever­ything?"
Sure, you can. But who’s going to train and coach your clients? If you’re not the source of know­ledge, you can’t and shouldn’t teach it.

Defi­ning a Marke­ting Message

Finally, I craf­ted two marke­ting messa­ges:
● Two slogans for poten­tial custo­mers: Learn core leader­ship skills in 7 weeks & Become an Inspi­ring Young Leader.
● An "I help" state­ment about what I do: I help consul­tants become leaders through a tail­o­red 7‑week leader­ship trai­ning program.

Alex´s promise: Become an inspiring young leader with his highly individual 1:1 coaching

Alex´s promise: Become an inspiring young leader with his highly individual 1:1 coaching

Now, I had a service and a message. What’s next?

Focus on Value, Improvement & Credibility

The follo­wing three steps were the criti­cal bridge from an idea to a sellable offer.

1) Work for Free
Of course, I thought my MVE was great. But did others think so too? And would they actually pay for it?

The super­fi­cial feed­back I had recei­ved before wasn’t enough—I had to test it in real-life condi­ti­ons.

So, I follo­wed Alex Hormozi’s advice: I gave my service away for free to my first four custo­mers. In return, I got valuable feed­back and testi­mo­ni­als I could use on my website.

To find these first four custo­mers, I reached out to about 12 mana­gers in my network and intro­du­ced them to my offer.

This is a varia­tion of the message I used:

Hi (NAME),

I heard you just had your first child—congrats! Wishing you and your family all the best during this exci­ting time.

I wanted to share some­thing I’ve been working on that might inte­rest you.

I’ve foun­ded The Career Acce­le­ra­tor, a tail­o­red 7‑week leader­ship trai­ning program that helps consul­tants become leaders.

Right now, I’m offe­ring it for free to a few selec­ted people to gather feed­back and improve the program.

Do you know anyone who might bene­fit from guidance on their leader­ship jour­ney?

Happy to jump on a quick call and explain more.

Thanks, and congra­tu­la­ti­ons again!

That small perso­nal touch at the begin­ning makes a big diffe­rence. It shows thoughtful­ness and atten­tion to detail—because at the end of the day, people respond to people.

Within a few days, I had enough calls lined up to select who I wanted to work with. 

2) Improve 

With my first clients, I made a deal: they would give me dedi­ca­ted feed­back in two ways:

  • After each session—to refine the content and format.
  • At the end of the program—to improve the over­all expe­ri­ence.

This was gold. Every piece of feed­back helped me shar­pen my offer.

For exam­ple, I would have never known that:

  • My sessi­ons were too infor­ma­tion-dense.
  • There wasn’t enough time between sessi­ons for parti­ci­pants to apply what they had lear­ned.
  • Consul­tants weren’t neces­s­a­rily my target audience—young leaders were.

3) Build Credi­bi­lity
At the end of my program, I asked my clients to leave a testi­mo­nial if they found value in working with me.

I always made it clear:

"Only leave a testi­mo­nial if you genui­nely got value from the program. No pres­sure."

Authen­tic feed­back builds trust. No one should feel obli­ga­ted to stretch the truth—even as a favor.

Vatan nutzt unterschiedliche Methoden und Tools, um seinen Weg vorzuzeichnen.

One of Alex´s first participants

Set Up a Simple Sales Funnel

Now, I had a service, an offer, and a message. Time to sell.

I tried diffe­rent sales funnels, and here is the one that works best:

1. Expo­sure
2. Free skill assess­ment
3. Call
4. Purchase

Here is how it works.

Expo­sure
Before anyone books a call with me, they need to:

1. Know I exist. Duh.
2. Believe that I can help them.

Once they do, they become a lead.

I get leads in two ways.

I. Inbound: People read my posts on Medium or Linke­dIn. At the bottom of each post, I place a call to action, invi­ting the reader to take a free leader­ship skill assess­ment in exch­ange for their email.

II. Outreach on Linke­dIn: I directly cont­act poten­tial clients on Linke­dIn. Here is how:

1. Create ICP: I crea­ted my ICP (Ideal Client Profile) based on the charac­te­ri­stics of my most enga­ged early clients.

2. Create lists in Linke­dIn Sales Navi­ga­tor (optio­nal): Based on my ICP, I create lists I can cont­act in Linke­dIn Sales Navi­ga­tor. If you don’t have Sales Navi­ga­tor, you can use the stan­dard Linke­dIn search and save your search terms and filters in a Google Sheet.

Vatan nutzt unterschiedliche Methoden und Tools, um seinen Weg vorzuzeichnen.

Screenshot from Alex´s LinkedIn Sales Navigator

  1. Connect: I send connec­tion requests to people matching my ICP (Ideal Client Profile).
  2. First Message: I thank them for connec­ting with me. I then mention that I run a coaching program that helps young leaders increase their impact and grow as leaders. Finally, I offer to share more infor­ma­tion if they’re inte­re­sted.
  3. Conver­sa­tion: When the other person is inte­re­sted, I ask follow-up questi­ons. I let them know I want to ensure this is a poten­tial fit. My goal is to create a natu­ral conver­sa­tion. I aim to under­stand how important their career is to them and what chal­lenges they are facing.
  4. Offer: After a few messa­ges, I invite them to take my free skill assess­ment. I propose a short call to see if a colla­bo­ra­tion makes sense.

Free Skill Assess­ment
Quiz­zes are some of the best lead magnets. They kill two birds with one stone:

  1. Most people like taking quiz­zes. There is some­thing satis­fy­ing about answe­ring questi­ons and seeing where you land.
  2. They high­light people's skill gaps, leading them to wonder how to close that gap.

I crea­ted my leader­ship skill quiz with Score­App.
You can assess your leader­ship skills here.

Alex uses ScoreApp to conduct an initial assessment of where his potential client stands.

Alex uses ScoreApp to conduct an initial assessment of where his potential client stands.

Once people sign up with their name and email, the quiz guides them through 27 questi­ons across six diffe­rent cate­go­ries of leader­ship skills.

After comple­ting the quiz, users receive scores broken down into the six cate­go­ries I defi­ned.

I also get to see their full results—every answer they provi­ded. Addi­tio­nally, I can track the time spent on each question and the quiz over­all, which helps me gauge how seriously they enga­ged with it.

An example output from an assessment

An example output from an assessment

Call
During our call, we go through four key points:

  1. I ask the person who took the quiz how they felt about the results and how their skills relate to their career progres­sion.
  2. I share a couple of tips and stra­te­gies tail­o­red to their situa­tion.
  3. We jointly evaluate their needs for upskil­ling based on their profes­sio­nal goals.
  4. I present the nine leader­ship modu­les I offer, and we discuss which ones align best with their needs.

Purchase
After selec­ting the rele­vant modu­les, I provide the final price, which depends on the number of modu­les chosen. I then send addi­tio­nal details, a payment link, and an invoice. Once the first install­ment is paid, we begin the program.

Follo­wing these steps enab­led me to leave my corpo­rate job—one of the best decis­i­ons of my life.

An example output from an assessment

Alex with his friends – leaving his corporate job was one of his best decisions in life

When people ask me for a short version of how I made it, here are my key takea­ways from my jour­ney so far:

Key Takeaways

For most people, start­ing a busi­ness while being employed feels like a distant dream.
It certainly was for me.

But in the end, giving up opened new doors.
Instead of sear­ching for the perfect busi­ness idea, I simply follo­wed my inte­rests.

Unkno­wingly, I had star­ted a jour­ney that led to a profi­ta­ble busi­ness through six steps:

  1. Immersion
  2. Provi­ding value
  3. Doubling down on what works
  4. Buil­ding an MVE
  5. Focu­sing on value, impro­ve­ment, and credi­bi­lity
  6. Selling with a simple sales funnel

Stra­tegy is great when you have clarity on the problem and a goal.
But when you don’t, execu­tion beats stra­tegy.

In my previous busi­ness attempts, I had a stra­tegy but no clarity on the problems I was solving.
This time, I:
● Expe­ri­men­ted.
● Reco­gnized patterns.
● Found and solved problems itera­tively.

My stra­tegy became an evol­ving by-product of my disco­very.

Here are four questi­ons that helped me in the begin­ning:
● What topics are you curious about?
● Who else may bene­fit from your know­ledge?
● What exactly do they need?
● How can you package your know­ledge so they can and want to consume it?

One quote that always helped me get star­ted comes from Walt Disney:
"The way to get star­ted is to quit talking and begin doing."

What’s next?

Now that I have systems in place that work, it’s about growing as a busi­ness.

Besi­des my 1:1 coaching I run three addi­tio­nal services:

  1. I have laun­ched a coaching commu­nity where young leaders support each other to grow as leaders and to create more impact. https://www.career-accelerator.io/community
  2. I teach stra­te­gic problem-solving work­shops to corpo­rate clients.
  3. I help young entre­pre­neurs start a busi­ness based on their passi­ons and exper­tise (just like I did)
Alex runs a coaching community for young leaders alongside his 1:1 coaching sessions.

Alex runs a coaching community for young leaders alongside his 1:1 coaching sessions.

So in the next few months, I will focus on growing these services and helping as many young leaders as I can.

Everyone—whether an employee or a busi­ness owner—should have the chance to build some­thing meaningful. Some­thing they’re truly passio­nate about.

One Piece of Advice

For me, the most important thing was to get star­ted, expe­ri­ment, and learn.

So the advice I always give is: Don’t force yours­elf to find the perfect busi­ness idea.

Simply start with what you have and what you’re curious about.
Dig deep, learn, and reco­gnize patterns and problems.
That’s your start­ing point.

The path illu­mi­na­tes as you walk it. But you have to take the first step.

Contact

I’m happy to connect with you.
The best way is to reach me is:

  1. Linke­dIn
  2. Email: alexander@career-accelerator.io

Talk soon,
Alex

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