The AMAYEN Leadership Protocol

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Born Everywhere, Belonging Nowhere

I had been searching for something my entire life. My mother left when I was six. My father was always somewhere far away, working abroad, and I hardly knew him. Born in Colombia to Finnish–German parents, I lived in five countries—Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the USA, Germany, and Switzerland—before spending the last 30 years in Thailand.

I never had roots, never truly belonged anywhere. I grew up looking outward for the love and validation I never received—in relationships, in achievements, and in constant motion. I was always chasing, always proving, always disappointed and heartbroken when nothing filled the void.

The Swiss Years: Learning to Earn It

It started at 17, the moment I was forced to leave home. At 18, I enlisted and served fifteen months in an international reconnaissance unit—it taught me discipline, not glory. Afterwards, I studied design by day at the Basel School of Design and worked deep into the night as a freelancer, illustrating and editing esoteric books for Swiss publishers. I was exhausted, but I didn't waste energy on self-pity. My philosophy was born then: It is what it is. I simply accepted reality and found a way to earn every single cent. Even then, buried in those metaphysical manuscripts, I was unknowingly searching for the answers I teach today.

After graduating, I spent a year as an Art Director at an advertising agency in Zurich—the one and only time in my life I worked for someone else. It didn't last. The entrepreneurial pull was too strong.

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The Phuket Collapse: The Gift of Rock Bottom

Years later, in 1996, I arrived in Phuket, Thailand, seeking a fresh start. Within days of arriving, my credit card was stolen. This was years before instant replacements or wire transfers—it would be seven months before the insurance claim finally came through. Overnight, I had nothing. I depended on strangers for food and shelter, scraping by with no direction, no purpose—just the raw struggle to survive.

Hopelessness pressed in quietly. Suicidal thoughts crept in occasionally. And with all external distractions stripped away, I was forced to ask the question that shattered everything: "Who am I?"

That collapse was the gift.

For the first time, I stopped fighting and started listening. I began to understand that my true wealth was never in my bank account or possessions—it was inside me, waiting to be discovered.

But understanding something and living it are different things.

The Void That Success Couldn't Fill

I got back up, and the old patterns followed. I rebuilt—opening and running a design office, leading a team of 40 people. Over the next 14 years, I consulted for five-star hotels on customer relations, brand development, and marketing. I opened five restaurants in Phuket. I published children's books and lifestyle magazines carried in international airports and five-star resorts.

Twenty-five businesses. Offices managed, teams led, and the highest levels of hospitality consulted. I was good at reading rooms, reading people, and sensing the current beneath the surface of things.

And still, the void followed me into every room.

I was attuned to everything around me. I just hadn't yet learned to read myself. I had spent my entire life distracted by work, by proving myself, by chasing money—a shell obsessed with achievement, with no concept of my true self.

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Building the Proof: The AMAYEN Sanctuary

That realization became the foundation of AMAYEN Sanctuary, the retreat center I built to guide others through the same transformation. We created a space where people could strip away the noise and reconnect with who they really were. The results were undeniable. Guests arrived weighed down by expectations—their own, their family's, society's—and within days, something shifted. I've watched people arrive exhausted and guarded—and leave with a quiet certainty they hadn't felt in decades.

AMAYEN Sanctuary quickly gained a reputation for delivering accelerated breakthroughs. Over the years, hundreds of guests—among them executives and entrepreneurs—came through the sanctuary.

Then COVID-19 hit, and international travel stopped. The sanctuary closed overnight.

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The Second Bottom: The Real Test of the Protocol

What followed was brutal: a complete financial collapse. Maxed-out credit cards. Repossessed vehicles. Selling everything I owned just to keep a roof over my children's heads. As a single father of three, I was constantly worried about how to put food on the table. I had a knot in my stomach that wouldn't go away.

This was the second time. And this time, I had no choice but to live what I was about to teach.

While creating this very protocol, surviving on the bare minimum, I continued applying the practices and exercises I was developing. Slowly, something shifted. I realized that there is always a way out—and it often comes from unexpected sources. Finally, the knot in my stomach dissolved, and the constant worry faded.

That's when everything changed.

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The Shift

Today, work feels different. I follow inspiration rather than fixed hours, choosing to work when it feels aligned and meaningful. Helping others fills me with a kind of purpose the frantic hustle never gave me—and I've built a life where showing up fully doesn't require running myself into the ground to sustain it.

And perhaps most importantly: I discovered genuine self-love. Not the concept, but the lived experience of it. After a lifetime of seeking validation and love outside myself, I finally found it within. The constant disappointment and heartbreak stopped because I stopped looking in the wrong direction.

I give myself permission to rest, to take long walks in nature, to watch movies—without guilt. What used to register as falling behind now reads as recovery. That one distinction changed how I lead, how I decide, and how I work.

I stopped forcing outcomes and started building from a settled place instead. The results didn't slow down—they compounded faster, with far less of the strain that used to come attached to them.

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Why This Protocol Exists for You

After the sanctuary closed, I made a decision: I would take everything I had learned—from decades of study, from coaching guests through transformations, from my own two trips to rock bottom—and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere.

This Leadership Protocol isn't just theory borrowed from books. It's a synthesis of powerful teachings, real-world application, and practical exercises tested under the most challenging circumstances. It answers the existential and metaphysical questions that keep you stuck, then gives you simple, actionable practices to create genuine change.

It's for people who are serious about becoming the leader they were always capable of being—not just interested, but ready. That includes people rebuilding from a real setback, and it includes people who are already winning and simply want the version of success that doesn't cost them everything else to sustain.

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What This Means for You

This isn't a quick fix. It's a full recalibration of how you exist in the world—and how you show up as a leader in it. Managing your life and actually understanding it are two different experiences. So are performing success and embodying it.

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That's the shift this protocol is built to create in you—not by making you relive my story, but by giving you the same structure I had to build for myself, so you don't need a decade and two collapses to find it.