Following My Dream

Already in primary school I heard about an older cousin who joined the Swedish navy and got an officer education including a long around the world travel on a navy ship. At that point in life I decided that I will do that as well, as I really wanted that around the world trip.

I grew up with sailing and got my first dinghy from my father at the age of 6. During my college years, I spent every summer vacation sailing on tall sailing ships that sort of prepared me for a navy life.

I did manage to get into the Naval Academy and I spent 4 years with hard learning, exercise and in and out of navy ships. I also managed to do the same round the world trip as my cousin did many years before me.

However, after my graduation as a lieutenant in 1980 I wanted more of that round the world stuff and decided to join a group of people building on a sailing yacht that was supposed to go round the world for 5 years. I asked the navy for a one year leave, which was declined. I could only get 6 months.

I decided to resign from the navy and follow my dream. I joined the yacht building team and after one year of very hard work the yacht was ready to sail. The only problem was that it was in the middle of the winter and the sea was frozen.

I couldn’t wait any longer. For my last money I bought a ticket to Caribbean for a crew job on a charter sailing yacht. As it turned out, the captain of the sailing yacht was moving to a new job and with my education and background I was offered his position. This was the beginning of 5 years of sailing between Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia including 10 Atlantic crossings with both nice weather and hurricanes.

Conclusion: Keep your dream alive and go for it…

Stuck On Land

After 5 years I was offered to take a 65ft racing yacht from the Caribbean to Australia for the Americas Cup in Perth. I knew this would be a long trip and decided to take some time off and go home to Europe for a ski holiday in Austria.

On my one week ski holiday I met this Austrian girl that totally twisted my head. For the first time in my life I was really hooked and I couldn’t leave her. I decided to stay in Austria and gave the yacht delivery to a happy friend of mine. I married the girl and spent 8 years in Austria with a lot of learning and struggling.

I decided to go into the hotel business as it was much the same as the yacht charter business, except it wasn’t moving. My only problem was that I couldn’t get a job. I made 100 applications, all declined. This was a hard punch in the face for a guy that was used to  tropical islands and luxury yachts. Now I was sitting in an apartment building in Vienna looking at a gray back yard.

I ended up working for one year in a subway station coffee shop, 16 hours a day, 2 floors down below. I wasn’t serving millionaires anymore, I was serving factory workers coming for a quick glass of wine (or sometimes coffee) at 6 am, before going to work. I learned that most of these people are just living from day to day without any dream. Spending the money today not being able to feed their family tomorrow. I also learned a very bad language.

I finally managed to get a front office job in a 5 star hotel in Vienna. I was the only man among 10 girls. After 6 months they kicked me out as they thought I was too slow with computers. This was the day I said to myself:

Wait, I’m gonna show you. I am gonna be the General Manager for a hotel in 5 years.

I worked another year in a small hotel front office before I walked into a 320 room, 5 star hotel under construction in central Vienna. I asked for a job and I was told they could need someone in the sales department. The Director of Sales & Marketing was gay and I wasn’t sure I was in the right place. It turned out that he was absolutely professional and I learned all my initial sales and marketing skills from this guy. The only problem was that he never wanted to stop working and he wanted the sales department to stay with him until he was ready.

I must have been doing quite well as after one year the Director of Sales & Marketing was leaving for a new job and I got his position. After another 6 months I was asked by a Swedish hotel development company, if I wanted to be the General Manager of a new business hotel under construction in Vienna. Well, you know the answer… I did it in less than 5 years.

Conclusion: Never Ever Give Up!

Finding Out What Really Matters

A few years back my mom told me that since I was 15, I always talked about living on a South Pacific Island. All this I wasn’t aware of anymore.

Long story short, I ended up as the General Manager for the business hotel and at the same time had a divorce with my wife. This was mostly my fault as I was never at home, just working and working…

I soon met another lady, who gave me a wonderful son. The mother had her own restaurant and nobody would have time for my son. I decided to quit my work to stay home with my baby, which I did for 11 months. This was a life changing experience for me… wow.

One interesting thing that happened was that most of the people that I called my friends didn’t want to talk to me anymore as I was considered to be a week looser giving up a fabulous career. I realized that I was touching a very sensitive point in their own life… To give up something for someone.

After 11 months I again realized that I needed more money. I got an opportunity through a very good friend to set up another hotel, this time in Miami in the US. This was the Italian “Diesel” clothing company wanting a small fashion hotel on the Ocean Drive at Miami Beach. I couldn’t say no and my son was going to be taken care of by his grand parents.

This was also a time when me and my son’s mother realized that we were not meant to be a couple for life.

I was now working for 6 months beside hotels owned by Mick Jagger, Madonna and many others.

After coming back to Austria I got in contact with a group interested in alternative thinking. They were just about to organize an open air festival with native American Indian and Hawaiian people. They needed help in organizing and communicating with these indigenous people. I spent a lot of time traveling to Hawaii and northern California meeting all these very interesting spiritual leaders and medicine men.

The festival was a great success and I had the great honor to spend every day during one month with one of the greatest American Indian medicine men, Semu Huaute. He really changed my life with his teaching. He also gave me an Indian name, “Mahewa” (the ruler of the upper sky). Although Semu passed away, I am still in contact with his nephew “Mala Spotted Eagle” and his wife Sky.

Shortly after this success, we started to plan for a new festival, which should be with South Pacific people, Aborigines and Maoris. I was again sent out to make the contacts. I stayed with the Aborigines in the bush in Australia and I stayed with Maoris in New Zealand. I also came to a small island in the South Pacific called Samoa. I new nothing about Samoa except for a few small things I learned from a Samoan lady I met in Hawaii.

When I stepped out of that plane and was hit by the warm humid air filled with the fragrance of tropical flowers, it again changed something inside me. I knew I was home, I knew that this was the place that always been in my dreams. It was pure bliss…

I cruised around in this paradise for 10 days to find and meet people. After 6 days I was introduced to a young very beautiful local girl, at that time working in a bar. I took a chance, asking her if she could show me some part of the island the next day and she agreed but only if she could bring her 4 small kids along.

We met the next morning and headed east on the island. I asked her if she could tell me some stories about this part of the island and she told me she had never been to the east side of the island before. I ended up showing her, her own island… Fantastic.

We have now been happily married for 19 years and we have also been adding another 3 kids (2 by ourselves and 1 adopted). My wife’s name is Sia (shortening for Anastasia)

At the time of deciding to stay in Samoa, I had to take a hard decision. Either to stay in Austria and be an unhappy father to my son or go for a life that would make me happy but apart from my son. I decided to be happy with the hope of, one day be able to show my son another way of life. This is happening now 20 years later. I always kept the contact with my son in Austria.

Conclusion: Follow your heart not your mind.

Bridging The Gap of Cultures

I certainly took a great risk by stepping out in the blue, following a dream of my childhood to live on a South Pacific Island. I just knew it was right for me. So what now, what should I do? I couldn’t just live from coconuts and love (maybe it would work).

Sia and I started to dream and I told her that we could open a small hotel, showing crazy travelers just like myself a real traditional Samoan life. With my European background I could now be a bridge between cultures and explain how and why things were done in a certain way.

Sia and her family (at that time about 20 of them including her parents) thought it was a great idea and cleared one house with 2 bedrooms and a small living room for us to use.

This old wooden house was already about 20 years old and needed tons of repair.

We didn’t even have a proper access road to the land. We all walked through the neighbors garden. All this didn’t stop us from following our dream.

After a few years we had 3 rooms and 7 traditional huts on the land. Because the land was  very small we had to come up with a new building solution. We were the first people in Samoa building 2 floor traditional huts. Everything we did was done in the traditional Samoan way. We were sitting on the floor eating our meals, we used wooden carved plates to eat on and coconut shells for our drinks.

For 4 years I went to all the major flight arrivals which was always in the middle of the night, to catch tourists looking for accommodation. This was very tiring and luckily after 4 years something new called internet was introduced on the island. I learned that you can show people what you have to offer even before they arrive to the island. As an old marketer I saw an opportunity here.

I managed to get a computer with a brain big like a peanut. If you wanted to write a document you had to delete a picture, to make space on the hard-drive. I spent months on trying to figure out how to make a website and finally I got some help from a guest telling me he was a web designer. I also got to know how to use Photoshop.

The result was amazing. People started to find us online and make bookings. Well, we were the only one with a website in Samoa. No more running to the airport in the night. I could now totally focus on our guests experience. The fact that we did everything the Samoan way was so unique that people talked about it everywhere.

People just came all the time and we sometimes filled our own living room with people that just arrived unannounced in the night. One of the unique things was that my wife’s family were living their daily life with all their kids all around us and our guests. This is how our own kids grew up and learned to love.

We couldn’t expand or make our huts 3 floor, so we were stuck with just 11 units. It was also hard to raise our already high per person price. This was the time I came up with a new fantastic (or crazy) idea. I told Sia that from now on we have no price at all…

Our guests should pay what they want… Hmmm. If they pay nothing they pay nothing…

When we did this, we increased our revenue with 20%. Wow… The only people that took advantage of it was people from my own country Sweden, everyone else paid us more than we earlier asked for.

Moving To The Beach

As a guy from the western world, I had this dream of living on a white tropical beach with the palm trees putting their shadows in the turquoise crystal clear water. Well, after about 7 years in the capital Apia, I didn’t think twice when we got an offer to build up a traditional budget resort on one of the best secluded beaches in Samoa.

Again this was done in a traditional way and become a great success. This was the time I started to use all my previous guest contacts with all names and emails that I collected over the years. I started to organize my contacts in simple databases and I kept informing our previous guests about our new beach resort.

Amazing things started to happen. Previous guests that had been staying with us in the capital Apia now kept coming back to Samoa for another experience together with us. Every month we had one or two weddings on the beach.

I saw the power of staying in contact with guests, also long after they had left. They were thankful for every small message from us. If they didn’t come back themselves, they sent families and friends our way. The close contact and trust we had built up with our guests was just amazing and very emotional.  We got comments like; “Samoa changed our life, now we finally know what matters”. Now 17 years later from when I started using email lists, I am still in contact with some of my previous guests, even if its just with a Christmas Greeting.

Our Beach Resort experience ended very sudden on September 29, 2009 when we were hit by a tsunami wave and most of the resort were gone. We were just lucky to all be alive when other places on the island lost 100s of people.

At this time I already started to help the bigger luxury resorts on the island with internet marketing and web design and when we moved back to the capital Apia, this was what I decided to focus on for my future. I started Miracle Marketing, named after my youngest daughter Miracle, helping Samoan businesses with an online presence.

My passion has always been to help people finding their true path in life, doing the things that makes them happy and fulfilled. I decided that it's time to share my story and at the same time help people to live their dream.

In the beginning of 2015, I took the decision to start making a difference in the world together with my sister Maria, who also were ready to do the same thing...  "Brave Dreaming" was started!

Greetings

Mats Loefkvist

www.bravedreaming.com