Diary of a ceo

Diary of a CEO — Entry 9

Snowstorms, Setbacks, and Perspective

This entry was supposed to be about speed.

I was travelling to Calpe with my business partner, Dr. Sosan Cheon, to attend the Team Bialini–Hygge training camp — one of those rare environments where performance, testing, and quiet progress all happen at once. The objective was clear: deliver our new prototype wheelset for real-world testing and introduce a prototype tyre setup we’ve been developing over the past months.

Not a lab. Not a wind tunnel.

Just riders, terrain, fatigue, and truth.

The wheels were built around a specific brief — stability at yaw, predictable handling on fast descents, and efficiency over long, repetitive efforts. The tyre prototypes were paired deliberately: casing construction, compound behaviour, and pressure sensitivity designed to complement the wheel profile rather than fight it. Marginal gains only matter when systems work together.

That was the theory.

The road was meant to be the proof.

But plans, as usual, had other ideas.

The journey began at home in central London, before flying to my second home in Frankfurt. I needed to drop off some parts, collect my bike, and reset before continuing south. A routine stop. Or so I thought.

A few hours after landing, a freak snowstorm rolled in.

Flights grounded. Roads shut. Stories everywhere of travellers stuck in terminals and on motorways. Madrid was offering nothing but 13-hour layovers and crossed fingers. Calpe suddenly felt very far away.

For a moment, it felt like everything had stalled.

Thankfully, this is where partnerships matter.

Sosan made it through. The wheels were delivered. The tyres were mounted. Testing went ahead. Data was collected. Feedback started flowing. Progress continued — just not with me physically present.

And that’s a lesson in itself.

Building something meaningful means knowing when to push and when to trust. When to be hands-on, and when to step back and let the system work. Momentum doesn’t always require your body in the room — just clarity of intent and the right people carrying it forward.

We’ll go deeper later this month when we meet our new ProTitle team, and in many ways the timing may actually be better. Fresh riders. Fresh context. Clean comparisons.

Stranded, yes.

But also unexpectedly gifted time.

I stayed home in Frankfurt with my pup, caught up on admin that had been stacking up for weeks, slept properly, and allowed myself something I don’t often prioritise: stillness. No alarms. No flights. No constant forward motion.

And somewhere in all of that, I realised — it was also my birthday.

No big celebration. No crowd. Just reflection.

Another year older. Still building. Still learning that leadership isn’t only about acceleration — sometimes it’s about patience, trust, and knowing when to pause.

Not the trip I planned.

But maybe the one I needed.