Your personal story and the development of KAYA&KATO are closely intertwined. To what extent is Forward Again also the story of your company?

The creation of KAYA&KATO makes up a large part of the book. Building the company, seeing our products come to life, and watching customers wear them is one wonderful side of the story. The other side involved unforeseen crises such as COVID-19 and the resulting closure of all our customers’ businesses, the war in Ukraine with its dramatic increases in raw material and transportation costs, and deeply discouraging moments like my first meeting with an industrial laundry operator, who bluntly told me, “I don’t give a damn about your sustainability,” before leaving the meeting.

All of this came on top of the “normal” major challenges of building a startup and led to the kind of chronic stress described in the book. At the same time, the book also shows that many of the factors that later contributed to my burnout had been present within me for a long time. It examines in detail the biographical roots of burnout. Research suggests that roughly one-third of burnout cases have biographical origins.

In Forward Again, you combine personal experiences with scientific insights. Why was this connection important to you?

I believe that combining the two is essential if you want to understand what happened to you and how you can protect yourself from it. I wanted to understand why the human mind can reach a point of complete overload. Professor Michael Gielnik helped me put things into perspective and make sense of them. He is one of the leading experts in occupational psychology and entrepreneurship research. I have known him for a long time and have often worked with him.

Many things only became clear to me in hindsight. A good example is the so-called Recovery Paradox. It describes how high levels of work-related stress and exhaustion can leave people without the energy needed for the recovery they urgently require. In the book, I describe how I fell into this trap and was unable to find my way out. With what I know today, I can counteract it.

For your book, you also spoke with people who must manage extreme mental demands in order to achieve exceptional performance. These include freediver and world record holder Jennifer Wendland, big-wave surfer Freddy Olander, endurance athlete Jonas Deichmann, Michelin-starred chef Micha Schäfer, artist Jeppe Hein, and Swiss entrepreneur, lecturer, and investor Max Meister.

I have always firmly believed that we should learn from people who do things better than we do. Everyone I spoke with performs at an extraordinary level in their field—whether in freediving, big-wave surfing, endurance sports, fine dining, art, or entrepreneurship. They all have clear ideas about how to train for peak performance, the importance of recovery, the need to set boundaries, and the necessity of maintaining control whenever possible.

These are lessons we can and should learn from. In my book, I describe how losing control over what was happening during the growth of KAYA&KATO was almost the worst part of the experience. Research shows that a loss of control can create a state of chronic stress that is a direct pathway to burnout.

Many brands talk about growth, success, and purpose. You openly discuss exhaustion, uncertainty, and pressure. Why do you think this honesty is important today?

I believe it is particularly important in the startup world. In 2025, founders in Germany were surveyed about their stress levels, and nearly 85 percent reported experiencing symptoms of burnout.

For the book, I spoke with Swiss entrepreneur Max Meister, who founded several startups and is now a co-owner of the venture capital firm KOYO Capital. He argues that mental health should be understood as part of professional business leadership rather than a private side issue. And he is right.

Very few founders have even the slightest idea of what lies ahead of them, and even fewer have a system for dealing with long-term pressure. My book shows which symptoms should be treated as warning signs, how people can get caught in a spiral of chronic stress, how they begin to compensate for stress in unhealthy ways—unsuccessfully, of course—and what they should do to avoid ending up in a clinic. Because that is something that should be avoided at all costs.