This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.

In the conversation, Philippe shares his journey – which started in the German countryside, then led him to start a nightclub, and later became a social entrepreneur and co-founder of multiple organisations. We spoke about culture, what it means to genuinely take care of your people, and how to keep balance while doing all of that.

You can find Philippe at the below links

In the interview, Philippe shares

  • How as a child they didn’t have much money and started earning at the age of 14 years then my exchange semester in 2010 at a university in South Africa.
  • I’m very extroverted, I have a lot of energy but I don’t fit very well into existing structures
  • Got very deep into impact entrepreneurship and nightlife in my twenties. 
  • I had a nightclub in Amsterdam for three years and I worked in different impact entrepreneurship. 
  • I always wanted to go back to the countryside and have a bit more nature around me this got me back into agriculture.  and then into the amazing potential of regenerative agriculture to essentially reverse climate change
  • He and some of his friends bought an older abandoned village in Portugal and the idea was to basically rebuild the village as a community.
  • I was introduced to social entrepreneurship, and since then, I basically kind of shifted my personal mindset and goal from basically earning money while having fun, to actually having a positive impact.
  • I started a foundation with two of my best friends called the Love Foundation where we basically organize parties to fundraise money for water projects. 
  •  Climate change is the biggest threat that we have at the moment to our planet and to our own human well-being as well.
  • one of the core issues that we are having in our society is the fact that we are very disconnected from nature. Human beings have the tendency nowadays to see themselves outside of nature. 
  • I look at what are the things that I’m good at and that I enjoy. What are the things that I’m not good at, but I really want to get better at, and I enjoy them, and what are the things that I’m not good at, and I don’t enjoy. and one of the things that I’m good at, but I don’t enjoy them and I try to do not much of the end of the parts, which I’m not enjoying.