Marjan Balaško
Father, entrepreneur and builder from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
People first.
Probabilities second.
Life somewhere in between.
I've never been particularly good at following a path just because it was the normal one. I always wanted to figure things out for myself, build something of my own and have some control over how I spend my time.
Sports betting happened to be one of the things that pulled me in early. Not so much because of betting itself, but because it introduced me to probability, uncertainty and systems. I started building models, first for myself and later for other people. That eventually turned into teaching, consulting, courses, digital products and an online business.
Along the way I had to learn a lot of things I never planned to learn. Marketing. Copywriting. Spreadsheets. Selling. Customer support. Building websites. Creating products. Managing communities. More recently, AI has made it possible for me to build things that a few years ago would have needed a developer or an entire team.
The part I enjoyed most was rarely the model, the spreadsheet or even making money from something I had built.
It was people.
A message from someone telling me that something I taught them helped them change their life always meant more to me than hearing that one of my models made them money.
Years later I took the Gallup strengths assessment and that suddenly made a lot of sense. I had spent most of my working life surrounded by numbers, but almost all of my strongest traits were about people, relationships, helping others grow and getting things moving.
- 01Positivity
- 02Developer
- 03Responsibility
- 04Relator
- 05Empathy
Gallup CliftonStrengths, top five.
people first
That idea now makes sense to me far beyond work. Almost everything meaningful we do comes back to other people. Success isn't particularly interesting if you have nobody to share it with.
Becoming a father made that much clearer. It changed the way I think about attention, responsibility and relationships. I became fascinated with what children actually need from us, and how much of parenting is simply being there, listening, and creating an environment where a child feels safe enough to be completely honest with you. Eventually I turned many of those thoughts into a parenting journal and published it.
One idea from that period has stayed with me more than most:
The purpose of fatherhood is to prepare the person you cannot imagine living without to one day know how to live without you.
still figuring it out
I don't have a philosophy that explains everything. I change my mind and I get things wrong. After spending so much time around probabilities, I'm probably more comfortable with that than I used to be.
A good decision can still lead to a bad result. A bad decision can occasionally work out beautifully. Life doesn't always tell you right away whether you were right.
So I try to stay curious, take responsibility for my decisions, and avoid pretending I know more than I do.
now
These days I'm interested in people, business, AI, technology, psychology, relationships, parenting and building things.
Some of those interests will probably change. Hopefully I will too.
"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
And for now, I'm quite interested in seeing where this one goes.
If you are building something interesting, or you just want to say hello, write to me.
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