My Story -- Jan Trautwein

Stuttgart - 1991 to 2013

Growing Up in Stuttgart

I grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, in a middle-class family -- the eldest of three brothers, with Levin and Maik coming after me. It wasn't a household of pressure or strictness. My parents gave me room. I could mostly do what I wanted, and what I wanted, mostly, was to play.

School came easily. The more engaged I was, the easier it got, and I sailed through Schickard-Schule without ever needing the discipline that other kids had drilled into them. There were no soft drinks at home, just water and the occasional juice -- but with friends came the LAN parties, whole nights of gaming and pizza and sweets, no awareness of any of it, just the pure short-term pleasure of a kid who liked to indulge. That part of me -- playful, pleasure-seeking, allergic to boredom -- never fully left. I would spend my adult life learning not to suppress it but to build a life where it could play without wrecking me.

What stayed constant from the start: sport, nature, adventure, and books. I read for fun and I read to grow. I valued contribution, freedom, and autonomy long before I had words for them.

University - 2010 to 2016

Physics, and the First Startup

I studied physics -- a discipline that gave me a particular way of seeing: systems, first principles, the search for what's actually true beneath the appearance of things. I never took the path most physics graduates take. In fact, I've never held a traditional job.

Instead, after my degree, I co-founded a social startup and secured EU funding -- part of a government founders' grant worth around 72,000 euros, paid out at roughly 2,000 euros a month over a planned 36 months. At first it was aligned and fun. Then it wasn't. Two years in, I was burned out and depressed, and I didn't have the tools or the support system to climb back out.

So I did something that, at the time, looked like failure: I walked away mid-funding, after about eighteen months, leaving the rest of the money on the table. I was in my mid-twenties, anxious, unsure what came next. But out of that collapse came the single realization that has organized the rest of my life -- happiness is fuel, not a reward. I saw that if I didn't feel more energized and alive, no business I touched would ever truly work. Happiness wasn't the prize at the finish line. It was the engine. I decided it would come first.

Australia - 2017

The Year Everything Shifted

Then came the travel. Australia for a year. A camper van. Life stripped down to the road and the landscape and a lot of time to think. Somewhere in there the spiritual awakenings began -- the first cracks in the ordinary way of seeing, the first hints that the self I'd taken for granted was more fluid, more constructed, more open than I'd believed.

It was in Australia that I first started to truly understand my own psyche. Through the work of Eckhart Tolle, I began to see my thoughts for what they were -- not the truth, not me -- and for the first time in my life I felt a genuine freedom from them. Watching the mind rather than being driven by it was a revelation I couldn't unfeel. And living out of a campervan in the stunning, wide-open nature of Australia gave that freedom a physical form: no fixed address, no obligations, no noise -- just the road, the sky, and a growing sense that a much larger life was possible.

aervideo - 2018

aervideo, Last Startup

The second startup came as a co-founder alongside my brother -- airvideo.com. We ran a Kickstarter that raised 120,000 euros, with more than 2,000 people pre-ordering the product. It was real validation, real momentum, a different chapter of building -- this time with family.

The Work - November 2018

Life-Purpose Unlocked

In November 2018, I found what I'd been circling the whole time. I discovered my passion in coaching and gave myself to it fully. Everything before -- the physics, the burnout, the silence, the medicine, the travel -- turned out to be preparation.

Since then I've worked with more than a hundred clients across the world: founders, high-level executives, actors, and others who wanted to uplevel their lives and their work. I built my practice on the principle I'd paid so dearly to learn -- that happiness is fuel -- and on a deeper conviction that who you are being determines the action you take, which creates the results you get. Being, then action, then results, in that order.

Inner Work - 2019

Going Deeper

Once the work was clear, I went deeper into the inner work that made the outer work possible. I sat my second 10-day Vipassana - ten days of silent meditation in the tradition of S.N. Goenka.

And then the medicine. In Brazil and beyond, I worked with ayahuasca (4 ceremonies), psilocybin and, most profoundly, Bufo alvarius, the 5-MeO-DMT that took me to a state I'd describe as pure nothingness. Later came an 8-day darkness retreat, a tantra sangha, and a steady study of Dr. Joe Dispenza's work on the mind, neuroplasticity, and subconscious reprogramming.

A continuous journey of learning to be sovereign while staying soft, to hold strong boundaries while remaining open, to heal old trauma and become more free. Every year since has been another step in the same direction.

Lisbon - October 2023

New Home in Portugal

After years as a digital nomad, I chose Lisbon as home -- landing here in October 2023. I live here with Diara, my wife and the best life-partner I can imagine: someone with an enormous capacity to love, an absolute A-player, and my best friend. We share an apartment outside the city center and a rich community of friends and entrepreneurs.

In 2026 we adopted 2 cats, Luno and Koda. I love playing padel, volleyball and hanging out with friends in nature.

Looking Ahead

Roots, Retreat and the Long Game

The vision that pulls me forward is one of deep roots alongside full freedom -- not the freedom of nowhere to be, but a life built on purpose, surrounded by nature, community, and people who are genuinely growing.

I see myself coaching more in person -- or on the phone while walking through the forest, the conversation deepened by open air and the quiet of trees. A retreat center where people arrive carrying the weight of their ordinary lives and leave lighter; a place built for the kind of transformation that only silence, nature, and careful guidance can create.

Children raised in community, in contact with the earth, surrounded by people who live intentionally and love without condition. And the work continuing -- with the impact-driven leaders and technology builders who are shaping what the world becomes. The conviction beneath it all: a beautiful future is not a utopia to be imagined, but a practice to be lived -- one conversation and one life at a time.

My Story

The Story