or, How to Outwork a Room. Being the tenets, trials and unfinished chapters of Joakim Isaksen, told in seven arenas.
Chin on hand: the international sign for “working out how to win this”.
Optimism is my default setting and competition is my favourite hobby. I believe things work out, and then I do the work to make sure they do. Give me an arena, any arena, and I’ll find the part that can be mastered and chase it until it’s mine.
I compete with everyone, but mostly with yesterday’s version of me. I read, I train, I ask better questions than I did last year. Self-development isn’t something I do on Sundays. It’s the operating system.
People sometimes call that intense. I call it being fully awake. And I’d rather be the most prepared person in the room than the loudest one.
Talent is the entry ticket. The hours nobody sees are the whole show.
Halfway is a hobby. If I’m in, I learn it down to the details.
Applies to sports, companies and, apparently, margin notes.
Believe it works out. Then do the work that makes sure it does.
The only rival who shows up every single day is yesterday’s version of me.
Nobody claps for preparation. Everybody sees it anyway.
Also applies to building a personal website.
Own the loss out loud, take the lesson quietly, and come back sharper.
The ring, the sales floor, the boardroom. Someone in there knows something I don’t yet.
Listen harder than they expect. Then say it plainly.
What I’ve built is proof it can be done, not permission to slow down.
Hungry is meant figuratively. Mostly.
So keep the pen moving.
The ring is the most honest room I know. No title, no pitch deck, no excuses. Just the round in front of you and how ready you are for it.
I step in for the same reason I work: to find out where my limit is, and then move it a little further.
LessonComfort is a rumour. Go and check.
Football is the team version of drive. You can be the hardest worker on the pitch and still lose if nobody else knows the plan.
So you talk, you point, you run the extra metres for someone else. The best competitors I know make the people around them better, not smaller.
LessonWin together, or it doesn’t count.
I played PUBG professionally, then Fortnite, full time, streaming on the side until I became a Twitch Partner. Esports is brutally measurable. Every decision is recorded, replayed and judged by people who were not nervous at the time.
Later I moved behind the camera. At the CS Paris Major in 2023 I was the producer for ohnePixel: more than 10 million views in one week, the #1 channel on Twitch. The biggest stream at the biggest event. It made me allergic to excuses and addicted to review.
LessonPractise like the replay is public.
| 2023 | Won |
|---|---|
| 2024 | Won again |
| Q4 2023 | ≈ NOK 1M in personal insurance |
Storebrand · insurance advisor · October 2023 to January 2025.
At Storebrand I advised private customers on insurance, needs first, one conversation at a time. I was part of the best-performing sales team in Norway and sold about NOK 1M in personal insurance in the fourth quarter of 2023.
That year I won a national sales competition. The next year, I won it again. Selling well turned out to be simple and hard at once: listen harder than the other person expects, then tell them the truth.
LessonKeep score. Then beat your own.
| FAIM founded | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Partnerships | 200+ |
| Company managed | 16 employees |
| Sold to private equity, 2022 | $1,400,000 |
| Delta Ventures co-founded | 2023 |
I took FAIM from an idea to a gaming-gear brand built on more than two hundred partnerships with creators, streamers, esports players and organisations. I owned sales, strategy and partnerships, managed the whole company of sixteen employees alongside countless agencies, partners and freelance designers, and moved to the US to scale it. In 2022 I sold it to a private equity company for $1.4 million.
Today I co-run Delta Ventures, building our own tech projects and weighing where capital and time do the most good. Same boardroom habit: own the outcome, not just the task.
LessonOwn the outcome, not just the task.
In which we go north, to the family herd.
My family has a reindeer farm up north, and it’s the book I’d never sell.
Winter there isn’t a season, it’s a character. The sun leaves for weeks, the cold gets honest, and then the sky pays you back in green. The herd needs looking after every single day, whatever the weather and whoever is watching. Usually nobody is.
That’s where my drive comes from. Not from a spreadsheet: from growing up around a family that shows up, day after day, for animals that will never say thank you. Up there, work is how you take care of what you love.
I carry a little of that cold into every room I walk into. It makes a boardroom feel warm.
LessonStay close to what made you.
In which the next book is being written.
Goal number one, written in my own notebook with three exclamation marks and a crown: Move to the US!!!
I moved once already, to scale FAIM. I’ve hosted watch parties for Norway’s World Cup matches in New York and Boston. Soon I fly to New York for good. I don’t know yet which room it starts in. I know I’ll be the most prepared person in it.
“Delusionally follow your dreams!! Relentlessly chase your goals with laser-like focus and determination and let nothing stop you, ever.”
#2 is done. #1 is boarding. #3 is daily.
This page stays blank until I earn the ink.
I went to Thailand for a month with one rule: if the answer could be yes, it was yes. The kind of month where the days are loud, the nights are long, and every plan lasts about an hour before something better turns up.
I came home with stories I’ll tell for the rest of my life and the reminder that comfort is overrated. The best chapters start where the plan runs out.
I grew up with Ronaldo and Beckham on the screen and Manchester United in my heart, which is, in my completely unbiased opinion, the best team in the world. Standing in Old Trafford in the red shirt was a kid’s dream, ticked off by a grown man grinning like a kid.
Beckham taught me that a set piece is just preparation you get to show off. Ronaldo taught me that nobody outworks a man who has decided to be the best.
On a trip through the US I found the silver-and-blue Nissan Skyline R34 from Fast & Furious, parked in front of a Hollywood mural at Universal Studios Hollywood. Some people meet their heroes. I leaned on mine.
It’s a silly photo about a serious feeling: every time I’m in America, the goal in my notebook gets a little louder.
Tromsø, 69° north, where winter owns half the calendar and the snow is ankle-deep by default. It’s the place that made me, and the reason New York doesn’t scare me.
If you can keep your drive through a winter where the sun takes weeks off, you can keep it anywhere.
The next line is yours. A role, a venture, a room worth walking into: write to me.