Sindre and I go back quite a while.
We first met around a dinner table at an event for Start-up Founders in July 2021, where we vibed hard enough through deep meaningful conversation for him to invite me to his 30th birthday party just shy of a year later.
It was here that I got to know the real Sindre. Among his friends he became a natural showman, writing personalised notes and connection cards to bridge his network of actors, entrepreneurs and mavericks together.
We stayed in touch and kept supporting one another’s projects.
Then when it came time to launch the Undefinable Community, he was one of the first people I reached out to. He enthusiastically accepted, joining as one of our founding members, and is now known to all in the community as the living embodiment of one of our shared values - to be ‘seriously silly’.
You see, what makes this Norwegian wonder a delight to be around is his unique ability to adapt to the emotion of a room on a dime, bringing either a playful self-deprecating humour or a serious consideration of life’s deepest questions, depending on the energy and mood of those around him.
He’s a pretty wonderful human being.
And by chance (or perhaps not) he’s also a great example of someone who is fully embracing the future of careers by blending his many interests, earning through his many income streams and navigating his many careers.
Which is why I knew I needed to sit down and ask him “So, What Do You Do?”
Here’s the career portrait I painted from his response…
Aspirations of a Multi-Artist
16-year-old Sindre had lofty ambitions for himself.
Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, Øystein Sunde and Rowan Atkinson, Sindre's many interests knew no bounds. He wanted to play six different instruments. Be a comedian. Act on the West End stage. Direct a blockbuster film. Understand the laws of physics. And learn everything he could about the lives and beliefs of philosophers.
And for a while he did just that.
He played, acted and directed, pursuing all that interested him, while earning the recognition of the Norwegian government who rewarded him with ‘the dream grant’ ("Drømmestipendet") to support his comedy sketches and musical performances.
This led his teenage friends to brand him a ‘multi-kunstner’, or Multi-Artist, who half in-jest, half in-admiration continued to ask him “Is there anything you can’t do Sindre?”.
Which, as would be the case for any adolescent, went straight to Sindre’s head, where he did everything he could to live up to his own expectations of being a polymath, refusing to focus on any one thing at once.
Now nearing the end of secondary school, he was in full flow, adding juggling and taekwondo to his ever-growing list of skills, while doing all he could to maintain all that he’d already learnt.
This came to a defining ‘peak moment’ when his stellar performance at the Christmas ball had his peers raving about how great he was and that acting was his true calling in life.
High on the drug of praise, Sindre was torn between taking on acting or music at university until one day he stumbled upon a UK programme called Actor Musicianship at Rose Bruford College in South East London, which was an absolute no brainer for him.
A graduate degree, a network of aspiring actors and 3 years of practice later Sindre left formal education with his sights set on a career in acting.
But, things didn’t quite go as planned.
The Quarter-life Crisis
Only 2% of actors make a living from their profession.
And Sindre knew this. He’d accepted that he’d be working long hours and honing his craft to perfection for only a lucky few to get the faintest chance of stardom. But, after 7 years of optimising his time for the spotlight he was ready to be on the stage.
He auditioned a lot. As any aspiring actor would. Getting turned down time and time again until he landed a role in a video produced by Unicef, which opened up the door to several other adverts and stage performances.
This compounding momentum led to his first breakthrough.
That being composing a musical called “Fables for a Boy”, which garnered quite a bit of attention across London and saw several weeks of performances.
Things looked like they were on the up.
Until, as they closed their programme, they realised that they hadn’t actually made enough money to cover all their expenses and everyone walked home empty handed.
Soon enough reality hit home and Sindre needed to find a way to pay his bills.
He tried his hand at pretty much everything, taking on a part-time call centre job that he hated, joining a translator company that turned out to be a scam, turning up to people’s houses as an escape room mission master and overinflating his balloon making skills to land a role as a children’s entertainer.
Nothing really stuck until his girlfriend at the time showed him a music tuition agency, where he could teach students his six instruments - guitar, violin, piano, banjo, mandolin and even the recorder - that he’d by now gotten pretty great at. The money wasn’t ideal and the commission structure sucked.
But, gradually over time Sindre established enough of a client base of students to wave goodbye to the call centre role and regain his lost sense of freedom.
It was a moment to celebrate. At least briefly.
Until, as the weeks passed by and he found a joy for teaching others, Sindre started to question whether he even wanted to be an actor anymore.
It wasn’t an easy decision to confront.
As is natural with anyone who likes to do many things, Sindre hated to waste time. And nothing felt like a bigger waste of time than spending his childhood practising for a stage he no longer wanted to stand on.
He was 23 and lost, spending several years struggling to move on. He read every book, watched every YouTube video and listened to every podcast, seeking answers for what he should study next. But, in everything he consumed he found only more questions.
Reflecting on the brazen ambition of his youth, it was here that he realised that becoming great took longer than the 20-year-old celebrities who’d been in the right place at the right time ever told him. He now had a newfound respect and appreciation for the timeline.
But, none of this answered what he should do next.
For that he had to stumble into his soon-to-be business partner Adrian.
Embracing Entrepreneurship
Adrian, a fellow Norwegian who’d also ended up going to the same UK university and working on the same “Fables for a Boy” musical, suggested to Sindre what in hindsight is a pretty clear next step for him. That being to quit the stringent commission structure, take his clients and lessons elsewhere and start his own music agency.
At first Sindre was a little hesitant. He’d never considered entrepreneurship. But, by joining forces with his new co-founder, he got onboard for the 4-year rollercoaster ride that led to some of the highest highs in his career so far.
Everything was exciting and new. They were building a custom platform from scratch in the hopes of not just teaching students music, but also using the practice as a gateway to learning other seemingly unrelated skills.
Traction from students was slow and although it wasn’t exactly enough to sustain an early-stage business, it gave Sindre the clarity he desperately craved.
He was no longer lost.
Instead, he was drawing on the skills of his younger years by leveraging his musical and acting talent to give him an edge in creating video content. He deeply understood how certain notes communicate emotion and used it as his secret weapon both in marketing his business through video and continuing his passion of film-making that bubbled alongside.
To fund his agency adventure Sindre was still squeezing in around 30 students a week for in-person lessons. He was sapped for time and constantly on the move, jumping from house to house, working evenings and weekends around the lives of his students.
He felt trapped, only incrementally increasing his hourly rate from £40 to £45 to £50 over the years, which hardly accounted for all his travel around South West London. Pushing his rate any higher made Sindre feel like an imposter, as he knew he couldn’t live up to the technical brilliance of other musicians he’d met along his journey.
But, after sharpening his business skills, the cross-pollination of mental models became two-way. He started to reframe his teaching from a simple exchange of his musical abilities to the delivering of a full teaching service that valued his personality, teaching style and dedication to his students in equal measure.
He then raised his rate to £65 per hour and never looked back.
This allowed him to scale back his teaching, reclaim more of his time and realise that, although his first business Duett no longer fired him up, he had a clear next milestone to aim towards - that being to earn all his money through a remote-first business that allowed him to travel whenever he liked without losing out on potential income.
Which brings us to the present day…
Preparing for the Leap
Now, with his eyes fixed on his newest venture, Procubate, the world’s first online-only business accelerator, Sindre has one clear goal: to transition his income from earning with his time via teaching into earning with his value via his accelerator.
And right now he’s in the messy middle.
He’s juggling weekends and evenings of teaching ever smaller numbers of weekly students while he starts to scale up his existing accelerator client base.
But, he knows that by applying all the lessons from his many careers performing, acting, film-making and starting businesses, he feels more equipped than ever to stay patient, stick the course and masterfully transition into taking the leap.
And I can’t wait to see what comes of it.
So, if you’re interested in finding out more about his current venture, asking about any of his many war stories or simply saying hello drop him a message on Linkedin.
To close out this career portrait I’ll leave you with one of Sindre’s quotes that I feel he’s uniquely positioned to speak most clearly about:
“Pursuing several things that complement one another often gives you an advantage over people who pursue only one thing.
Gaining traction and awareness for your main project is easier if you have a complementary project that excites people.”
Loved it, such an inspiring journey, there’s a potential movie in there 😊Thanks for sharing your story Sindre and crafting it up beautifully Charlie 🙏