One day I’m running with a film crew through the corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels. Another day, I’m waiting tables at Vollmers in Malmö, almost pouring gorgonzola cheese down Tareq Taylor’s lap.

You’d imagine that the waitress experience was before my time at the European Parliament. It was. As well.

I’ve been serving people majority of my adult life. It is my purpose. Nowadays I serve in different ways. By bringing people together. By helping raise understanding and creativity at meetings.

We all have a purpose to serve people in this world. It’s just a matter of finding out what your way of service is.

I came back to Sweden this year with holes in my pockets. I invested two years of my life in building a successful communications agency in Africa with a partner and came out with nothing. Our relationship failed. He decided he wanted to continue the company on his own. And I didn’t have any kind of agreement signed. I had jumped into a dangerous venture with all my heart, without a parachute.

I came back to Sweden after 10 years abroad without financial stability. Without a home. Without a job. But not without hope and will.

Time to start over.

I was blessed and found an apartment through a yoga friend.

I pondered about getting a high profile job in communications to get back on the career latter. But the entrepreneurial life had put its marks in my being. I read books like “F*ck it – Do what you love” and found a new passion in life: Live Scribing. I discovered that, not only is this a field with enormous potential to make real impact in organisations, there is an untapped market in Europe and a pool of talents who do it for a living. I decided this was what I had to dedicate myself to. Simply Draw it Big – my new way of serving both the talents and the businesses.

Starting a new business without a financial foundation is anything but easy. However possible, through the help of family, good friends and good people who believe with you.

I had to get any kind of job to pay my rent. So I found a job as a waitress through an old colleague of mine who now had built up his own successful restaurant, the only two star Michelin resto in Malmö – Vollmers. I learnt lots, enjoyed exquisite food and almost failed at slicing up the gorgonzola cheese infront of one of the guests who happened to be Tareq Taylor, the sweet master chef of Sweden who sounds like a journalist from a BBC documentary.

I was at the same time working on building Simply Draw it Big and started to get the first projects and collaborations going. With gratitude I found myself back at the European Parliament. This time as a supplier working on the Open Days with 20.000 people visiting. That same day we were scribing at a TEDx event in Malmö.

The projects started to come in mainly through old friends in Brussels who had heard about my new venture. I’m still in immense gratitude to them for giving me the opportunity.

Now I’m focused on building the foundation in Malmö, the city of creative minds. Although Simply Draw it Big is a European Agency with the objectives to 1. support each individual scriber’s development and 2. open up the market. One third important goal is to enable Malmö to become the city of visual thinking and scribing.

I want Malmö to embrace the possibilities and use our services, our pool of talents. Make meetings more efficient and memorable. Reduce stress by creativity. Increase learning capabilities. It’s really that simple. It’s here. And it’s available. Use Live Scribing at your next meeting, workshop or event.

And learn yourself how to use visual thinking in your daily life. As a project coordinator, as a teacher or as a leader. We all need more visual thinking techniques in our lives. Get off the computer and draw it. Put down your camera and draw it. You’ll experience a whole new dimension of life. One you thought was lost. But nope. Here it is.

You see why I have to do this?

#sharethefailure #funmalmo