Business Athletes: Max Friberg

Hello and welcome to Business Athletes everyone 👋 

Each week, we’ll explore the athlete-like habits behind a different business leader. In less than 5-minutes, we aim to provide you with practical tactics that you can quickly apply in your day-to-day.⚡️

In this edition, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Max Friberg, co-founder and CEO of Inex One. Inex One is a B2B SaaS platform that connects businesses with expert networks to supercharge their research processes.

Max is not only a leader in the expert network industry, but he's also passionate about high-performance living, balancing the demands of building a globally recognised business with family life and his own personal growth.

Here are some of my favorite takeaways from our conversation:

1. Sports Lessons in Business: Embracing a sports-like mindset, Max applies lessons of consistency and strategic planning from sports to business, aiming for steady progress and resilience in his entrepreneurial ventures.

2. B2B Clients and Early Adopter Strategy: Max highlights the value of engaging early adopters in B2B sectors through education and detailed demonstrations, which help Inex One refine its offerings and secure crucial early feedback.

3. Dealing with Elite Clients: Max tailors Inex One's services to meet the demands of elite clients by ensuring rapid, precise, and reliable outputs that respect their time-sensitive and high-stakes business environments.

4. Team and Communication: Effective communication is key at Inex One, where Max prioritizes directness and transparency to enhance team efficiency and foster a trust-based workplace culture.

5. Starting the Day with a Clean Slate: Max begins his day with no digital clutter, allowing him to focus intensely during his peak morning hours, setting a productive rhythm for the day.

⚡️Enjoy this week’s edition!

The Business Athletes Ethos

Reflecting On The Business Athlete Ethos

To me, being a business athlete means embracing the mindset of continuous improvement and recognising that small, daily wins are what lead to long-term success. Just like in sports, resilience, strategic thinking, and adaptability are key to navigating the ups and downs of the business world.

Championing Small Wins & Continuous Improvement

Just like in tennis, my approach to business isn't about scoring big, headline-grabbing wins; it's about consistently overcoming small challenges that add up to significant success over time. We haven’t had a single transformational moment at Inex One; instead, we’ve seen a steady stream of smaller victories that have compounded into something big, robust and sustainable.

Pre-Game Preparation

Family For Balance & Focus

I have a toddler at home, so my mornings are family-oriented. I wake up between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. and aim to get to the office by 8:15 a.m. It’s important to me to spend that first part of the day with my son and wife. I don't have a complex morning routine like I used to, but I make sure I have a prioritized list of what to tackle when I get to my desk.

Starting With A Clean Slate

When I sit down to work, I start by making sure my workspace is clear and simple. I use only one monitor at a time to minimize distractions, and at the end of each day, I close my laptop and all tabs. This way, when I open my computer the next morning, I feel like I’m starting with a clean slate, ready to focus. Much like preparing for a game, setting up my environment the night before ensures I hit the ground running each morning.

A Workspace You Want To Stay In

We work in a charming, early 20th-century apartment converted into office space, with high ceilings and minimal distractions, a setup that fosters creativity and focus. We’re two to four colleagues in each room, which strikes a balance between fun/chats and individual focus work. Music gently plays in the common areas, adding a relaxed vibe to our space.

Rediscovering The Power Of Pen & Paper

In a world dominated by digital devices, my #1 hack is turning to pen and paper for strategic thinking. This approach helps me slow down my thought process, allowing me to engage more deeply with complex ideas. For me, this method creates clarity, proving that sometimes, you need to go slow to go fast.

Lessons From The Field

Growing Inex One: Finding Early Adopters To Build Momentum

In building Inex One, I’ve realised the importance of identifying and engaging with early adopters, particularly in a B2B context. For a tech company like ours, working in the expert network space—a sector deeply entrenched in traditional business practices—finding these early adopters has been key to our iterative development and success. These early adopters are crucial because they are typically more open to trying new solutions and can provide invaluable feedback that helps refine our product. 

Working With Demanding Clients

Our clients, especially those in private equity, demand efficiency, accuracy, and speed. They operate in environments where decisions are made quickly, and information is a premium commodity. Understanding their needs and pressures is critical. To meet these demands, we’ve focused on creating a platform that not only delivers fast and reliable expert insights but also does so with an interface and experience that respect the time-sensitivity of our clients' projects. This responsiveness and attention to detail are what set us apart in the competitive landscape.

Enhancing Client Engagement Through Education

Educating our clients about the benefits of our platform is a critical part of our strategy. We use webinars, detailed case studies, and interactive demos to demonstrate the real-world applications of our technology. These tools not only help potential clients understand the value we offer but also provide them with the confidence to implement our solutions within their own workflows.

Within education, our blog posts have been a cornerstone of our outreach and engagement strategy at Inex One. They’re both a way for us to share things that we think are fun, or interesting, about our industry, but also for demonstrating our expertise and why our platform is such an improvement to our industry. Writing detailed, informative posts about the expert network industry has helped position us as thought leaders, attracting attention from potential early adopters within our target markets. For example, some of our most engaged early adopters discovered us through our blog posts. 

Peak Performance in Business

Peak Performance Hours

I know my most productive hours are between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m., so I structure my day to get as much done in that window as possible. After that, I schedule meetings. I’ve realized that I can’t be productive all day long, and I don’t try to be. Sure, if I do find myself energized later in the evening, around 9:00 p.m., I’ll seize the moment - but I don’t force myself. 

I usually think of my day in these two blocks of focused time - the morning and the late evening. In between, I’m putting out fires like most founders. But it’s during these deep work hours that I can focus on work that has potential for non-linear returns and that has really moved the needle for Inex One.

Staying Grounded When Plans Go Awry

With that said, not all days go to plan. When a day doesn’t go as planned, I’ve learned the importance of being gentle with myself. If I lose focus, I don’t berate myself; instead, I see it as a chance to explore new directions that might indirectly benefit our business. My go-to strategy for regaining focus is to disconnect from digital distractions and reconnect with the traditional pen and paper, which forces me to slow down and think more deeply about strategic decisions.

Some of my best ideas have come from following what might initially seem like irrelevant tangents. For instance, one morning I found myself deeply immersed in researching the debt structure of a market research firm, not on my to-do list for the day, but it turned out to be incredibly insightful and led to one of our most popular blog posts.

Learnings As A Player & Coach

Effective Communication Is Direct Communication

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a founder is the value of direct, clear communication. As a founder, it's your job to clear up complexity and keep things transparent. This straightforward approach helps reduce misunderstandings and builds a culture of trust. When giving feedback or addressing issues, I believe in saying things in as few words as possible and being upfront. If you get in the habit of being direct, people start expecting it, and it becomes easier for everyone to separate the work from the person. 

Learning To Find The Right Direction

I have lots of important coaches in my life, like my wife, my co-founders, investors and even members of my team. My co-founder and Inex One’s CTO, Mehdi, and I have tried to build a culture where everyone, from our junior account managers to our engineers, is encouraged to share their expertise. We believe in this culture because we try to view every interaction as a learning opportunity; we never know where an amazing idea will come from or how it can transform our business for the better. 

As for leadership, I believe it’s about synthesising and rehashing all the input you get from your team, customers, and stakeholders, to take the right direction for the business. Sometimes that may mean changing our approach, if the facts change or if someone presents a more valuable perspective at any given moment in time. Everyone has unique insights to offer, and embracing a diverse range of perspectives has significantly enriched our strategic discussions and decision-making processes.

The Business Athlete Mindset

Winning In Business & Sports

Winning, for me, is about growth and improvement. Every day, it’s about the number of meaningful connections we create through Inex One. The more we help our clients share knowledge, the more we grow. I’m an optimist at heart - sharing expert knowledge is good for the world, and the more we grow, the more positive impact we have on society.

In business, as in sports, it’s all about compounding small wins. It’s a process of showing up, being consistent, and working through obstacles bit by bit.  In turn, this behaviour leads to huge transformations over time.

I draw a lot of parallels between my business and my love for tennis - both require persistence, strategy, and, most importantly, a passion for improving every single day. Much like for my favourite player, Novak Djokovic, it’s about just showing up and delivering, despite what the haters say. Winning is more about tireless persistence than one-off perfection.

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