From the orchard to the wider world

Jakob grew up in a fruit-growing family in the Netherlands.

His father saw the effects of pesticides on the land early and chose to move toward organic cultivation. It was the more responsible path, but not the easier one. Cheaper fruit arrived from elsewhere, the value of the family’s work declined, and the surrounding land was gradually taken for housing.

The family survived, but the farm could no longer sustain them as it once had. Jakob’s father took a job in the healthcare system. He remained loyal, disciplined, and deeply committed to providing for his family, but the work also took him away from home.

Jakob learned early that what is valuable and what is rewarded are not always the same thing.

He saw that land can nourish people and still be treated as disposable. He saw that hard work can sustain a family while also separating it. He saw that economic progress can come at the expense of continuity, presence, and place.

Those questions would return throughout his life.

Other worlds

As a child, Jakob was drawn to worlds that felt larger and more meaningful than the one immediately around him.

He read The Lord of the Rings at a young age and went on to consume Tolkien’s wider work. The stories gave him an early language for fellowship, stewardship, loyalty, corruption, courage, and the defense of what is alive.

He also spent years inside large online worlds. Through games such as World of Warcraft, he collaborated with people across countries, often taking leadership roles within large groups. Long before remote work became normal, he was learning how to coordinate people through the internet, align different personalities around a shared purpose, and create trust among people who had never met in person.

These experiences shaped his sense that human beings are capable of creating worlds together—but also that the quality of those worlds depends on what they serve.

Leaving the prescribed path

After finishing secondary school, Jakob did not go directly to university.

He worked, saved money, bought his own ticket, and travelled to Australia.

It became a year outside the expected path. He lived more closely with the light, the weather, the days, and the physical world. Away from the structures that had defined him, he rediscovered parts of himself that had been quiet.

University brought him back into the measurable world.

He performed exceptionally well. He studied econometrics, led a nonprofit student organization, achieved the highest recorded grade average in the history of his master’s program, and placed third in an international championship.

He then entered McKinsey & Company through a highly selective recruitment process.

Mastering the system

At McKinsey, Jakob worked internationally, received exceptional performance ratings, and advanced rapidly.

He was surrounded by highly intelligent and ambitious people. He learned how organizations make decisions, how leadership operates under pressure, how complex systems are transformed, and how modern institutions define value and success.

He also began to see the limits of that world.

A private coach helped him access a part of himself that had been subordinated to achievement. Jakob began trying to live and work with greater authenticity. He moved to Asia and spent time in Japan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

Living across cultures changed his understanding of what was universal and what was merely conditioned. He saw that professional norms, social expectations, and ideas of success were not reality itself. They were one way of organizing life among many.

When he attempted to bring more of himself into his professional life, the institution no longer embraced him in the same way.

He left McKinsey.

Technology, coaching, and independent work

Jakob responded as a high performer often does: he quickly moved into another demanding environment.

He joined Mirakl in Paris, supporting major clients with marketplace transformation as the company expanded internationally.

He later moved into more independent coaching and advisory work. He coached consultants at McKinsey, supported executives in technology, and advised technology companies through growth, leadership, and change.

The work gave him more freedom and allowed him to apply his judgment directly. But it still largely existed within systems designed by others.

He had left the institution.

He had not yet begun building the alternative.

Elizabeth and the return to life

Around the time COVID was announced to the world, Jakob reconnected with Elizabeth.

They had dated briefly before, but Jakob had been too consumed by work to fully recognize what was in front of him. This time, he did.

They moved to Costa Rica, where they began rebuilding their relationship and reconsidering the future. They lived more closely with nature, beauty, rhythm, and one another. They became increasingly aware of the urgency of the systems around them, but they did not conclude that life should become harsher or more joyless in response.

They began to see beauty as part of the answer.

A family emergency later brought Elizabeth back to Wisconsin. Jakob followed her to the Northwoods.

Together, they bought a historic lumber baron mansion and began restoring it. The work taught them about craftsmanship, preservation, materials, patience, and the difference between replacing something and caring for what can still endure.

Jakob had grown up watching land and continuity disappear.

Now he was learning how to restore.

Becoming a father

When Elizabeth became pregnant, the measure of success changed again.

Jakob and Elizabeth no longer wanted greater independence merely for themselves. They wanted to create a life in which family was not treated as an interruption to work.

They wanted more presence.
More freedom.
More ownership of their time.
More room to create.
And work that could be judged by what it made possible at home as well as in the marketplace.

Family did not make Jakob less ambitious.

It gave his ambition a clearer purpose.

BETTER BÅLLS

Together, Jakob and Elizabeth founded BETTER BÅLLS.

The original ambition was expansive: to make everything better.

Not instantly.
Not artificially.
And not through more disposable production.

They began slowly, developing collections from natural materials chosen for their character, quality, and ability to last. They wanted to create objects that became more meaningful through use rather than less valuable with age.

They travelled across the United States with the brand and developed its visual and material world as they went. In San Francisco, they lived in Presidio Heights for several months and held a successful pop-up.

For the next stage of the company, they returned to Europe.

They opened a showroom on Amsterdam’s Keizersgracht, bringing together objects, interiors, imagery, publishing, and the wider philosophy behind the brand.

BETTER BÅLLS became more than a product company.

It became their first serious attempt to place their beliefs under the pressure of reality.

Could a business create beauty without becoming hollow?

Could growth happen without destroying what made the work meaningful?

Could ambition serve family rather than compete with it?

Could objects be desirable without being disposable?

The Books of Better Being

As the company developed, Jakob’s writing expanded.

The questions that had followed him from the fruit farm through consulting, technology, travel, coaching, marriage, restoration, and entrepreneurship began to form a coherent body of work.

Why does the modern economy so often fail to protect what sustains life?

Why are people trained to optimize lives they never consciously chose?

What must be protected before genuine freedom is possible?

What would business look like if it served life rather than consumed it?

How do we build better worlds without reproducing the patterns that damaged the current one?

These questions became the Books of Better Being.

The series explores five movements:

Protection
Nourishment
Remembrance
Belonging
Creation

The first book, Sacred Protection: The Return of the Soul, examines how people can reclaim their attention, judgment, dignity, and inner life from systems designed to use them.

BETTER BÅLLS gives the philosophy form.

The books give it language.

Today

Today, Jakob works across business, publishing, ventures, and institution-building.

He writes about the systems we inherited, what they reward, what they destroy, and how they can be rebuilt around family, responsibility, beauty, and life.

His work is shaped by a simple conviction:

Success should not require the sacrifice of what makes success worth having.

He is first and foremost a husband and father.

Everything else begins there.

Learn more

Discover the wider world of Jakob’s work.

BETTER BÅLLS
Objects of desire, created with Elizabeth from real materials and made to endure.

Books of Better Being
A growing body of work on protection, nourishment, remembrance, belonging, and creation.

Writing (to come soon)
Essays on business, family, responsibility, and the creation of better ways to live and build.

LinkedIn
Follow Jakob’s current thinking and public work.