Johan flew to Malaga from Stockholm. Via Vienna, his new home. We had spoken exactly once before - a week earlier - and he said sure, I'll come. That's not most people's answer.
He's 27. He runs Lindhagen Studio, a personal branding agency for senior B2B executives. His clients include CEOs, founders, people who have spent decades building reputations behind closed doors but have almost no presence in public. Johan helps them show up. The way he does it - the mechanism - is by sitting with them for 60 to 90 minutes and asking the questions nobody else will.
The psychology session
His clients don't call it a content session. They call it a psychology session. Not because that's what Johan sells, but because that's what it turns into.
He described something I hadn't quite put into words before. Senior leaders have no safe space to think out loud. You can't be uncertain with your team - it costs you authority. You can't be uncertain with your board - it raises flags. You can't really take it home either. So all that half-formed thinking... the patterns you're noticing, the doubts you can't quite name... just circulates. Johan creates an opening for it. The posts are almost incidental. The thinking is the product.
That part landed differently than I expected. It sounds a lot like coaching.
The silent follower
He told me about a client who appeared out of nowhere. Six months of following on LinkedIn without ever liking a post, leaving a comment, or saying a word at the events where they crossed paths. Johan had no idea he existed. Then the call came: I saw you in Oslo. I have read your stuff. We are convinced. Let's go.
Silent follower is real. The people building conviction quietly - without any signal you can measure - are often the ones who arrive already decided. The vanity metrics tell you almost nothing about them.
What he said about Coach Ken
Somewhere in the middle of this conversation, Johan decided my YouTube channel had a problem.
I had renamed it. From 50 Lunches to Coach Ken. He noticed. And he came at it directly: as soon as you name it Coach Ken, you've closed the loop. The format works because it's unresolved. You're on a journey. People follow the journey. The moment you name the destination, the exploration is over and the sales pitch begins. I don't want to be on the podcast of Coach Ken, he said, because I'm afraid he might sell me.
That was not on the agenda. And it was exactly right.
What I took away
Two things I keep coming back to. First: the second you ask, you lose someone. Good content gives and gives and never asks. The website carries the ask. The content builds the trust that makes the ask work later.
Second: the interview is a thinking tool, not just a content tool. When someone sits with you and asks questions with genuine curiosity and nothing at stake, you find out what you actually think. Johan does it for executives. These conversations do it for me. Maybe that's the real reason I keep doing them.
