Fabian Wigger entered leadership earlier than most and learned quickly that rapid growth comes with real consequences. From building revenue at an accelerated pace to managing international teams and US-facing markets from Europe, his experience challenges the idea that success is only about moving fast.
In this interview, Fabian shares candid lessons on pressure, structure, relationships, and the personal discipline required to sustain growth across borders. His insights reflect execution in live markets, not theory, and reveal how early wins, hard mistakes, and unconventional choices shaped a global operating mindset.
You stepped into senior leadership roles unusually early. What did leading teams and revenue growth in your early twenties teach you about decision-making under pressure?
Breathing. I believe it taught me to breathe and to take a second to just breathe in and out whenever high-pressure situations arise. It’s very rare that there is no time for that.
Breathing and having a moment of clarity furthermore often allowed me to get a better picture of the correct problem to solve. Ironically, I realized that pretty frequently your first instinct actually rushes you to solve the wrong problem, at least for me. That’s where a short break is worth millions to identify the actual problem.
Another lesson from high-pressure moments is that there are usually more choices than just the obvious ones on the table. I learned to create my own choices when dealing with a decision under pressure. If I can’t take a clear and reasonable choice in the moment, things like “referring to waiting for correspondence from the team regarding this matter because additional data can help improve common understanding on this topic” have helped before. These were valid choices for me in many instances because new data and insight always benefit both sides. Your team doesn’t need to have all the data yet; most importantly, you bought time before making a potentially negative decision while bringing new value to the table for all parties.
Many agencies follow similar playbooks. What core principles guided your approach to scaling revenue quickly while keeping client satisfaction stable?
Truthfully, client satisfaction did take a hit in our first explosion-like growth. We scaled astronomically quickly after doubling our GMV within two months, but with the side effect that later on the quality fell off and some clients became unhappy. That’s why afterwards I changed my approach and can confidently say one core principle: don’t scale too quickly. If you have the option to go for a high quantity of leads or onboards right away – great. But I recommend ensuring that this works with your business model. In my opinion, for agencies this usually comes with largely increased expenses, opportunity costs, and work, which is why I now approach scaling with the following questions: what effect does an x-times growth have on my company? How do I guarantee service and satisfaction when x-times growth happens? Simply being aware of the scale, numbers, changes, and steps that an expansion requires usually told me what steps to take to maintain quality and plan ahead.
You’ve spoken about building structured onboarding and retention systems. What mistakes do you see most founders make when they try to scale without those foundations?
Good question. I would describe myself as a person who prefers structure over looseness, which is why I believe that especially in onboarding systems, structure is key. One of the most dominant mistakes I’ve seen is that growth actually slows down because of missing systems. These can include: a missing or faulty CRM, lack of a follow-up funnel, irregular check-ins, or unclear processes between you, your employees, and your clients. I noticed these issues in our own early systems. Our first attempt to keep everything „organized“: a WhatsApp group and Google Sheet.
Later, I also made the mistake of judging cold leads as dead leads and stopped following up or retargeting. Afterwards I learned that just because someone went cold doesn’t mean the person will never respond again – it usually meant that either the timing was bad or the approach was faulty. Switching those things up later worked wonders when my team reactivated a great number of leads.
Another point I’ve seen is that many onboarding processes are very linear and not flexible. Even in my past agency’s early steps, every client received the same message templates, decks, timelines, and product guidelines. To me, personalization and finding custom approaches for each client while working alongside an internal guideline with wiggle room made the change. I understand that each client has different needs, concerns, timing, preferred style of communication, and goals. Listening and finding out all of those points significantly helped me onboard people way more smoothly and, most significantly, way more cooperatively.
One of your standout results involved rapid revenue acceleration in a very short time frame. What specific levers mattered most during that growth phase, and which ones surprised you?
There were three key levers I can think of: speed, specifically in communication; structure; and outsourcing – where outsourcing had the largest impact in my case.
Communication speed. Corresponding quickly was one of the most important things to ensure a smooth process across all levels: between leadership, team leads, departments, and clients. Scaling effectively always required me to work as a team, with my team. That’s where this type of communication became irreplaceable. Leading by example also helped us maintain consistency. I believe that employees are more likely to adapt to your actions and style of communication rather than what they’re advised to do, subconsciously or consciously.
Structure. By this time, we had thankfully moved on, and I was running an automated CRM software that, with the help of intelligent checklists, notifications, and automations, did most of the overview work for me already and even took over large parts of internal communication and passing on tasks and responsibilities. No matter how fast my communication was, my automation was logically faster – and always more reliable, removing human room for error.
Outsourcing. At this time, by far the biggest lever was outsourcing, but not in the typical way you might think. You see, usually most agencies I’ve known have built their own little network of referrers and connections to reach out to in case they are interested in a lead while running a lot of cold outreach on the side. At the time we started, cold outreach was effectively still a decent option. Our first marketing campaigns were run in-house with thousands of nano and micro influencers as target leads, costing a lot of time and money, eventually leading us to questioning its profitability. This changed drastically when we started to outsource not just the back-end work for the outreach preparation (sourcing, documenting, contacting, etc.) but the outreach channel itself – we didn’t just rely on a referral network or our own rather irrelevant Instagram account; we started working with a strategically placed referrer who was a large content creator in the space (30+ million followers). Logically, having a person like this reach out to leads for us and offer them product or campaigns had an incredibly larger impact than our own channels could’ve ever achieved. Nowadays, people, especially potential clients – in our case macro and mega-sized influencers – are usually unlikely to review every DM they receive. The odds increase tremendously when the person messaging is a celebrity or person they’ve seen in the space. Combining this move with a working outreach system that supplies enough leads and a streamlined onboarding and communication process was part of the critical setup I created to facilitate this growth.
You built US-facing market leadership while operating from Europe. What skills or habits helped you compete effectively in markets that are often seen as harder to enter remotely?
My most impactful aspect is probably also the most controversial one: I was living in my own time zone. You see, almost every American client I spoke with had the same complaint about working with German companies: slow communication. Europeans might be able to relate to this more – that in my culture it is pretty common to wait until the next day for an answer from your business partner because, well, the working day is over at 4 PM. Or even more prolonged, the weekend is the weekend; no communication is usually expected. Here’s when I observed: many people in the states operate with quicker response times and increased flexibility, especially in the social media space, which is filled by dominantly young people – communication feels more rapid, and 24/7 availability is a strong selling point. Not providing this or not being on the same level turned out to be a heavy dealbreaker for some. Another crucial point is the time difference. Most European countries are roughly 6-9 hours ahead of the American time zones, depending on the coast, which in the worst case could effectively lead to completely contrary availabilities between two partners. To avoid that communication mismatch, I lived in my own time zone, disregarding what the rest of my country was living in. Truthfully, I think this requires a good amount of ignorance and high flexibility in everyday life because in my case, it effectively played out as some sort of permanent night shift. One key point that helped me maintain a schedule like that was to change my devices, watches, and alarms’ time zones manually to EST, the one I chose. It gave some sense of normality. After all, it was a beneficial move to guarantee effective communication and way quicker progress compared to other German competitors, but at the cost of an unhealthy schedule and lack of daylight. Retrospectively, I don’t recommend it for prolonged periods. If you’re in a similar situation, my take is: as soon as financially possible, find a way to travel to a country that allows easy entry and stay for a longer period of time in the same time zone as your clients in the states. My personal picks are Colombia or Canada.
Your path didn’t follow the traditional university-to-career route many expect. Looking back, what mattered more than formal qualifications in earning trust and responsibility at scale?
I do believe that there are many points to name, but I’ll leave it at three: personality, effort, and relationship management.
I firmly believe that having the right personality traits outweighs any form of knowledge. From what I’ve experienced, most of the knowledge can be studied, learned, and implemented over time – at least in my fields. Changing a whole personality type requires more. Traits that I look for in employees and that also helped me significantly include resilience, conscientiousness, the ability to reflect, emotional intelligence, and most importantly, a friendly approach to making “mistakes.” I say “mistakes” because doing something wrong once is always the best way for me to learn and improve. I strongly believe mistakes have a terrible connotation and people are afraid of making them, which seems counterintuitive to me – this is how I progressed.
Effort was an important part. Our slogan was to always go the extra mile, which definitely helped maintain motivation. Not being afraid to jump in and do things myself has been a strength, ultimately also bringing up with me the entirety of the team. High effort also usually showed high rewards in return and taught me to believe in myself, although it’s not always possible to give the highest of efforts. I learned that acknowledging rest and recovery is key for long-term high effort.
Relations have opened many doors for me. I like to keep in touch with important people, show interest, and cater to my relationships. I never wanted to intentionally cut ties with people or let a door close. That way I still to this day benefit from people reaching out to me or remembering me in a positive light.
Several professional relationships evolved into long-term partnerships. How do you approach relationship-building differently from transactional networking?
This to me is closely connected to what I’ve said in the prior point about relations, which matter a lot for sustainable growth.
I differentiate between different types of connections and how closely I want to keep in touch. It often is enough to reach back out on their birthdays, congratulate them on accomplishments, and send an honest and interested text here and there. Key, however, has always been showing genuine interest and finding out what people really want and what interests them. Talking about those topics has turned into incredible conversations and quick rapport. Depending on the type of connection, I always tried to be present in person – for example, while on vacation in the states for a few weeks or in other places. This was crucial for including activities and fostering relations beyond a colleague-business dynamic.
One simple thing I like to do is remember birthdays, special hobbies, or preferences. I note down this information, which allowed me to always send surprising gifts or birthday greetings. I also focus on creating many other moments – outside of work – that are of value and strengthen those relations over time. Things like this can be spontaneous invites to trips, doing activities, or, which worked for me specifically with men, challenging activities with unofficial competition like going for a run, shooting range, or an arcade. The book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie was a life-changing purchase for me, explaining a lot about that topic. In regards to relations, I also found it important to find a way to interact the best way possible – for them. I like to refer to another book called “Surrounded by Idiots” by Thomas Erikson, which covers the color personality framework, explaining well that interacting differently with different types of people matters, categorizing them into four colors. Another point that helped me apart from checking in and staying on top has been being genuine, honest, and authentic around people, especially in the world of fame and social media popularity, where many people would describe others as “fake.” My final thought is to provide value. To me, relationships, especially in business, tended to function well as soon as there was mutual value. I tried to see how I could be useful to people, retain an exclusive position, and saw how I quickly became “best friends” with other business partners after that was given.
For young professionals coming from small markets or non-traditional backgrounds, what mindset shift made the biggest difference for you when moving from survival mode to long-term growth?
The strongest mindset shift I’ve experienced that set me on a successful business trajectory happened way earlier, right after my father had surprisingly passed away when I was 14. I was developing from a challenging childhood involving drug abuse and single parenthood, setting me up for a rather negative path. That moment shook me, and I realized that, having lost most of my family members by that point, I wouldn’t have any way of falling back since there was no inheritance or support. I realized that if I wanted to succeed in life, I needed to achieve it myself. Ever since then, I’ve been feeling a special drive, and I hope that others in similar situations can channel that same energy and drive for good without having to experience a shocking moment prior.
This experience taught me the truth behind a cliché: to always believe in yourself. It’s true and carries a big meaning to me. I rarely have self-doubt, and even if a situation might seem worrying or concerning at first, I know that work and genuine effort will pay off eventually, as it did before. Connected to that, I will name timing as my last point. I strongly believe everything comes at its right time, and by keeping up a good work ethic, an objective mind, applying critical thinking, and maintaining a positive chemistry with yourself and your team, success will come eventually, even if it’s not there yet.
From the editor….
Fabian Wigger’s perspective cuts through common startup myths. Growth without structure strains teams. Availability without boundaries burns people out. Credentials matter less than character, effort, and trust earned over time. His story shows that competing globally at a young age isn’t about shortcuts or hype, but about clarity under pressure, systems that scale with people, and relationships built on genuine value. For readers navigating modern business paths that don’t follow traditional rules, his experience offers a grounded blueprint shaped by reality, not slogans.
