Introduction
Hello friends, I hope you are well. As several of you know by now, I have left the role I held for more than 20 years at the company I founded. Apologies in advance to anyone reading this post hoping to find the reasons for my departure: you will not find them here, at least not today. Patience (c)…
First, when I write “start everything again”, that is a slight exaggeration: I only mean my professional life. Still, it is not far from the truth, because for more than two decades it took up 16 to 20 hours of every day.
Throughout that entire period, I never spent a single day without working, even in hospital: days, nights, weekends, without ever taking a single real day off in my whole life. Work and keeping clients happy were the only things that set its rhythm.
Besides, with my beloved working alongside me as my business partner, and with us working mainly remotely, I do not know what separating “personal life” from “professional life” means. I am not complaining: it suits me (us) perfectly, partners in life for better and for worse ;)
The first changes
Two important changes had already taken place in recent years: in 2015 we left France for Ireland. It all happened very quickly: a ticket bought in August for early September, a house rented through Airbnb for about ten days in central Ireland at €30 a day, and 2 to 3 house viewings a day squeezed in around the ever-present work… lease signed in a hotel car park, move-in on 15 October.
It was a done deal: we were officially expats! Life here is pure happiness, and I will talk more about this experience in another post and/or an upcoming video on my personal channel.
Then came the end of 2019. Although, looking back, I can now say it had started at least a few months earlier, that was when I fell ill… very ill. I had a severe form of Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disease that remains incurable to this day. I had always felt “immortal”. I realised I was nothing of the sort.
For a while, I became visually impaired and paralysed. I coped relatively “well”, as far as that is possible, taking an interest in screen readers and other technologies that some blind people and people with other disabilities use to code and do much more.
The disease also made me rethink quite a few of the projects I had at the time, along with some of my priorities. A little later, after losing more than 40 kg, I went into hospital for tests, expecting to stay a few days. I had not anticipated being forced to stay for a month.
Fortunately, I never go anywhere, even for a few minutes, without all the equipment I need to connect and work, so I was able to continue taking care of the clients who trusted me from my hospital room: an exceptional hospital (Bon Secours Hospital in Galway), where, alongside an excellent Internet connection, I had 2 dedicated nurses each day (one during the day, one at night) who knew my case, with 24/7 service that even included bringing me herbal tea at 2 or 4 in the morning if I wanted it.
This period taught me several things, apart from allowing me to improve my medical English a little. The first is that I now know how I react, and what my strengths and my weaknesses are when I feel at my worst. Looking back, my hospital stay reminds me of those moments that only seem to happen in a novel, film or TV series… Those moments when absolutely everything collapses around a protagonist…
The fall
1) I already knew I had Crohn's disease, (I had absorbed more than 20,000 pages of medical encyclopaedias and nearly 600 clinical studies, and it was that or 3 different diseases at the same time, some of them rarer than Crohn's disease: the statistics clearly pointed to the latter…) but I was also waiting for results to rule out the possibility… of cancer, and they were overdue… far too overdue.
2) Irish Revenue (the equivalent of the French tax authority) was claiming several hundred thousand euros from me under a retroactive VAT law because the VAT number of a former Luxembourg client from 3 years earlier appeared invalid in the EU. The invoices only amounted to a few thousand euros (here, the fine is per invoice, regardless of its amount).
3) I was also facing a court claim for the cost of replacing, at its brand-new price, a rental vehicle stolen during my last visit to France in summer 2018, despite the 2 comprehensive insurance policies I had taken out.
4) Following the departure of the person in charge of this relationship, our largest French client had stopped paying its invoices for 3 months, and cash flow was starting to sweat a little…
5) The hospital, which had been my new home for several weeks, told me it did not accept my health insurance… As a result, the treatment that could have helped me was delayed, and I was threatened with being made to leave the hospital if I did not pay. My parents were even considering selling their home under a lifetime annuity arrangement to pay for my care if necessary… I would have found some other solution, whatever it took, but that gives you an idea of the “atmosphere”… It was not great…
6) I had become very weak indeed. I could barely walk, and much of my time was marked by excruciating pain, day and night, rather like being Mike Tyson’s or George Foreman’s punching bag… My legs were only good for dragging myself to the toilet 18 to 20 times a day, and to the shower when I had any strength left.
Looking back, I think I “kept up appearances” rather well through all of this. Surviving at all costs has always been my credo, and that had not changed despite all the shit piling up and the excruciating pain making daily life impossible.
But I also learnt something else important. I would not go as far as William Shakespeare in saying that a deep fall often leads to the greatest happiness, but I learnt that even at your lowest, it is always possible to get back up, and things do get better… And once again, as in a novel or a film, everything eventually worked out…
The upturn
1) The assistant of one of the two professors treating me finally comes to see me with an envelope containing the results. Before opening it, I ask: “good or bad news?” She replies: “bad news…”. A bad start. A very bad start, to say the least…
I ask her to tell me plainly what the bad news is. She replies: “your Crohn's disease is confirmed and it is a severe form”. Confused and angry, I tell her I have known for months that I have Crohn’s disease. I am asking about the cancer diagnosis! She replies: “oh no, no, you do not have cancer!”
Thank you… thank you very much… I admit that, for half a second, I was torn between a real urge to hurt her and profound relief… I waited until she left, and, for the first time, I broke down in tears on the bed… but they were not tears of sadness or despair: only tears of joy. At that moment, I felt that perhaps my luck was turning, and apparently… it was only beginning.
2) I negotiated an agreement with Irish Revenue. In the end, I paid the VAT in place of the client, which no longer existed. The case was a little complicated: I had a document from the Luxembourg government certifying that the VAT number was valid and that there was an error in VIES. But VIES is authoritative: if the number is not in the database, you’re out of luck. The seller is responsible for checking the client’s VAT number at every transaction. It was not a victory in itself, but in this kind of situation, any “lesser evil” counts as one.
3) My lawyers were making good progress on the stolen-car case and believed they had found a major flaw in the other side’s case. More good news, which led, a year later, to the proceedings being dropped altogether.
4) Payments from our main French client resumed, instantly replenishing our cash reserves.
5) The hospital’s finance director came to discuss the problem with me, because the bill was getting substantial. I explain that they are refusing my insurance because they have apparently had a dispute with the insurer… and she says she has no idea what I am talking about…
To explain briefly: the information came from one of the professors, whose main post was at another clinic. He was an external practitioner at the private hospital where I was staying. It had gone through the wrong person. There was no problem, except that the right person had never spoken to my insurer.
I put the right people in touch, and after some shouting down the phone, the problem was finally resolved the next day. (When you pay nearly €18,000 for insurance with unlimited coverage and are told to wait a week to find out whether they will cover your treatment because their own doctors need to examine your file, while each day waiting for treatment means another day of suffering, I can assure you it is like Scrabble: time counts triple!)
6) Despite the fistula complications on top of surgery for an abscess a few months earlier, which made any activity on my feet very painful, I forced myself to walk every day. I got up and walked up and down the hospital corridor. When I started, I could barely stand. I could not lift my leg high enough to climb a stair or put on a sock without lifting it with my arms…
But after several days of effort, I began to regain some of those abilities (in practice, it took several months after I got home before I could get into the bath without lifting my legs with my arms, even though I gained a few millimetres each day).
7) I finally received my treatment: a biologic therapy based on a cocktail of human and murine cells (mouse cells)… and the result was… miraculous! I had been “sold” a gradual improvement after a few months, possibly getting worse after 3 months before gradually improving. Yet 48 hours after the first infusion (I have one at the hospital every 8 weeks, “for life”, or at least as long as it works), 95% of the pain had disappeared! And just 2 or 3 weeks later, I was starting to go to the toilet “normally” for the first time. Panoramix’s magic potion could not have done better!
This experience taught me that even when you think you are at death’s door, or the medical staff think you are (the nurses could not help telling me they had never seen a patient’s scans look as bad as mine when they first discovered the file at the foot of my bed…), it is always possible to recover and get better.
Today, I am better. That is a certainty. I just have to avoid major sources of stress, as it can trigger a flare (this disease comes in “flares”, with periods of remission in between).
Fortunately, almost nothing in life stresses me out: work does not, not even a datacenter in flames, or not for more than 10 minutes;) Only certain very rare toxic people can do that, and I have now distanced myself from them for good.
Today
Now, what about my situation today? In practice, when I left my role, I also lost most of my income. My previous work as a speaker, trainer or consultant stopped when I fell ill at the end of 2019.
I of course still have ScalarX: a company I created in Ireland with my wife 6 years ago now, and whose main activity, until now, apart from one-off operations, was R&D: the company does have clients and generates revenue, but the latter served only to finance R&D operations, equipment, external software development, electronics, doing a bit of science, etc. In short, everything I cared about in the little free time I had.
In return, I have regained something I did not have before, something extremely precious: time… a lot of time, and I have already started to put it to use. Over the past month, while resting for the first time in more than 20 years, I used it to accelerate all these R&D projects and make rapid progress, and ScalarX will gradually emerge from this long R&D phase to become the foundation for all my new activities.
You can already see an outline of these activities (time for an ad) at https://scalarx.com. I will add to it gradually as I go.
Depending on who you are, you may know me professionally for very different things, or not know me at all.
Some know me for my skills in information-systems architecture, in infrastructure, or in system / network administration.
Others know me more as a consultant who steps in to solve complex problems, restructure a business unit, help a company grow, or negotiate difficult situations.
For others, it is security, competitive intelligence, perception management or communications (in a crisis… or otherwise).
Finally, the rest of you either do not know me and are discovering me through this post, or know me for things entirely unrelated to any of that, from music and poetry to politics and a whole lot of other, very different things ;) (I know, it is starting to get complicated…)
It is generally hard to get a clear picture of my profile. “Atypical” is fashionable and no longer means much, but if I had to define myself, I would say: “I am someone with strong powers of observation and an ability to pick up weak signals, extract everything useful from them, communicate it and then use it to solve problems others consider impossible, across many fields”.
Whatever the field, I retain a very strong affinity for science and technology. I am, openly and without the slightest shame, one of those people who believe science and technology are the keys to a better future, capable of solving all of humanity’s problems.
What about this new start?
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to share content that shows you from the inside how I build all this from scratch. I always think on several timescales at once: the very short term, medium term and long term, as well as about the formats I could share with you.
As some of you already know, I have no problem talking about money. I am not aiming to become a billionaire in 6 months, but, starting from scratch, I am giving myself about a year from early 2022 to reach an initial recurring revenue of €400,000 or €500,000 to finance the business’s growth.
I am very lucky: over the past 22 years, I have not only built a real network of trust in different fields and activities, but also watched hundreds of projects be born, live, grow… and die. That experience gives me a clear head start compared with my first attempt more than 22 years ago. It is a bit like “cheating”, but XP points are part of the game too.
There is another advantage to starting from scratch: no “legacy”, no baggage, no ball and chain or anvil tied to your foot to drag around year after year. You can calmly and sensibly leave it all behind. That is far from a negligible advantage to me. In technology, the impact is direct: at the moment I invest, I get the best technology available, another significant competitive advantage.
The other important change (for those who have already had to negotiate with me in the past) is that my beloved and I are each a sole decision-maker in this project. Have a particular request, whether administrative, technical or financial? I am not subject to an executive committee’s or CFO’s veto, nor subordinate to a business partner or anyone else. Apart from the law and my own ethics, my only limits are those of my own will. Take note if you are interested :)
On the professional side
My initial, short-term priorities are relatively straightforward:
1) Consulting / supporting clients to solve all the problems they encounter, whether they are strategic, operational, or technological, now also including legal and financial expertise.
This can cover any development or transformation project, at the scale of a large group, a mid-sized company, a business unit, a product unit or an SME. Support can be temporary or long-term, but will always focus on results. More on that soon.
After years of searching, I have finally found and surrounded myself with rare gems I thought impossible to find, some almost by chance. They combine legal or financial expertise with a good understanding of technology and what is at stake.
I used to have to spend a considerable amount of time taking in the technical details, then explaining them in terms a non-specialist could understand. That time will be considerably reduced, making the legal side faster and more effective.
2) Managed IT services and fully managed cloud infrastructure, but on a completely different basis and in a completely different way from my previous work.
I have chosen to “productise” my approach: to turn what is really a service business, with a “business model” that comes down to balancing labour hours against revenue, into a product business whose model no longer depends on labour hours.
We move into industry, but not just any industry. I mean cutting-edge industry, where the quality and performance of the product (and the services it incorporates) drive the choices.
In this approach, every new feature, improvement in stability or increase in security benefits every client using the product, without compromise.
I intend to serve not only direct clients, but also those who may have been my “competitors” or “peers” in my previous work (your choice, depending on your mindset), so they can complement their offerings with more than decent margins, backed by non-solicitation guarantees.
In the medium term, I will very probably release something in training, a field I have always cared about and which directly benefits those who receive it. It is not evolving fast enough for my liking. Many courses could not be more sleep-inducing, and I am very tempted to give that anthill a little kick.
Finally, alongside my family, health and these new projects, there is something else I will spend more time on: my YouTube channels.
I promised you a few months ago that I would spend more time on them, but unexpected events delayed my plans. It is only a delay, and I can officially tell you I will make up for it very soon :). As I explained in a livestream, my channel has become a significant source of leads for my business, even though it was absolutely not created for that purpose. That will let me devote much more time to it.
In the longer term, I return to my initial objectives, which I was not able to accomplish in the past, because we could not reach unanimous agreement. I have many projects in the scientific and technological field, and I want to use part of the revenue generated by my activities to finance them. Some are reasonable, others completely crazy, we will do it little by little, but we will do it ;)
On the personal side
Easy: nothing changes, or almost nothing. I am not moving house, and certainly not changing wives ;) I am just reclaiming a little more time for myself and my family.
Conclusion
You will have gathered that I will not be sitting idle in 2022 ;) I see I have just passed 3,000 words. In a world where people often share content after reading only the title, very few of you have probably made it this far, so I will stop here. I could probably write another ten pages on the subject.
To each and every one of you: see you very soon… here and elsewhere;). Warm regards.
Christophe Casalegno
You can follow me on: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Telegram | Youtube
12 comments