Adrien is not only a Global Key Account Manager at Ledger, but also an accomplished endurance athlete. His commitment has led him to qualify for the Ironman World Championship. In this post, he shares valuable insights that apply equally to both sports and the business realm. Explore his inspiring journey below.
Can you tell us about your journey and how your career has evolved since joining Ledger?
After 5 years at Netatmo, I joined Ledger almost 3 years ago to build our wholesale distribution networks in MEA & APAC. Since then, I’ve been working to bring Ledger to retail in strategic markets such as the UAE, Australia, Turkey or India. Contributing to the introduction of a new product category in the retail worldis a unique opportunity, and while the team has come such a long way there’s still so much more to achieve. Exciting!
Everybody at Ledger knows about your passion for sport as you were one of the winners of the Ledger Olympics this summer. Can you tell us how it all started?
It’s really been a rabbit hole, starting endurance sports from scratch at 25 years old to making my Age Group podium at an Ironman race and qualifying for the World Championships a few weeks ago. I started training just to get fit enough for ski touring - a far cry after 10 years smoking and no background in endurance sports whatsoever. The further I trained and got fitter, the more I kept pushing myself, and the more I started to see I could achieve things I thought were impossible for me. I've learned that the difference between impossible and achievable is a proper plan. And knowing that each day I’m training helps turning yesterday’s dreams into tomorrow’s objectives is really empowering.
How does the love for sport impact your daily life at work?
Endurance sports taught me that with resilience, consistency, humility and a great team, anything can be achieved. These have also been instrumental in my daily work at Ledger.
Resilience
In sports or in business alike, things rarely go exactly according to plan. Today, we’re about to enter 25 stores at Officeworks in Australia, after having opened JB Hifi earlier this year. But this has been a 2.5 year journey until we made it reality.
Consistency
It’s not about that one massive workout or one big business win, it’s about the daily grind. India, one of the most complicated markets when it comes to wholesale distribution, also took almost 2 years to crack between product certifications & convincing the best possible distributor for Ledger to onboard onto the Web3 journey.
Humility
No matter how good or how fit you get, you’ll always find someone so much better than you from whom you can learn. In retail as well, and in order to build relationships with different people around the world, you always have to stay rooted, keep learning and remain open.
Team work
Even in an individual sport like triathlon, a team of experts have helped me throughout my journey. Exactly as each wholesale achievement always required the support of many other teams at Ledger, from Marketing, Brand, Design, Legal, Certifications, Logistics, Shipping to Product and more.
Finally, how would you motivate more people to start doing sports?
Whether it’s about starting from scratch or getting a personal best, just think about a dream you have. From running 1k to an ultra trail, it just needs to be something that scares you a bit, but that you want even more. If you really want it, dreams can be achieved. Just show up and keep yourself accountable. Just do it :)
