I started writing my blog just about nine months ago. My motivation was to start sharing my thinking on growth, strategy, differentiation, branding and digitalization. It’s a new world, with new rules and hopefully some new thinking.

In just about 200+ days I wrote around 180 blog entries, received 35,000 visits and around 200 comments. This is considerably high – given that the blogs, up until now, were all in Finnish. Finland is a country with a low population (of 5 million people in the whole country).

I’ve had a great time writing these blogs, and have had some truly interesting discussions with my audience. Though I had some initial reservations about blogging, writing has turned out to be – not only professionally gratifying – but also totally therapeutic on a personal level! I’ve come to the realization that breaking old habits and learning new skills is becoming a viable part of the solution for my personal ”40-something-crisis”. It’s time to move on. Learn something new again. Gear up.

I don’t consider myself an excellent writer per se – especially when writing in English which is not my mother tongue. I did do my degree and my studies in English at the Helsinki School of Economics (MBA courses taught by mainly American professors from top US MBA-programs), so that of course helps. I also lived in the US as a teen for a year, as well as in London and Milan for some shorted periods in my late twenties. But it’s been a while that I’ve actively spoken English, and I’ve never written anything professional in English.

Regardless, I’ve decided to give it a try. From now on, I’ll make it my goal to blog once a week in English about something that’s bugging me in the industry or about something that’s of a great interest to me. I’ll probably have to have someone else edit my blog entries. I’m a fast writer, and my writing style is more like brainstorming than anything else. But I’m more than happy to write in exchange for a few comments here and there and the occasional thumbs up from the readers. I think I’ll need the interaction with you all in order to be fueled up to continue writing.

I’ve created a vision for what my life after forty looks like. I’ll share that with you all later. But I’ll say right now that a part of my life vision is to live abroad again. That’s one good reason to stop blogging in Finnish. I’m also thinking that video blogs might be something to consider as well.

This is a start of something new and adventurous for me. I feel like this is all a bit like learning to fly: A little scary but at the same time very exciting and extremely energizing! Please jump on board! I recommend to all of you to step out of your comfort zone and do something different today, right now and from now on – create a vision for your life path, and start taking immediate steps towards making it real. One step at a time.

Please feel free to comment my texts, and please, by all means, let me know if you think something’s gone awry in my style, my message, my grammar, or anything else for that matter. In any case, I’ll promise to always offer opinions with an idea for a solution or a resolution.

Thanks for reading my blog entries! Hope to see you soon again!

V

P.S. May the force of ”Rome Advisors” be with you!