An Interview with Per Wimmer
Per Wimmer: Adventurer, Space Astronaut, Author, and Financial Entrepreneur. Wimmer has certainly checked off more than most in his list of accomplishments. He is currently the founder of three companies: Wimmer Financial, a corporate finance advisory boutique specialising in natural resources and real estate; Wimmer Family Office, a family office with an investment strategy focusing on hedge funds and ETF; Wimmer Space, a company focusing on Wimmer’s adventures and charity efforts, as well as publishing, which also falls under the framework.
Sky diving over Mount Everest is not a small feat. How did you muster up the courage to do something that no one before has been successful doing?
The courage has always been there and the desire for adventure. I have travelled to more than 60 countries on earth, lived with the Indians in the Amazon and skied the highest ski resort in the world at 5500 meters. I am also lucky to have three space missions lined up.
I always wanted to do something with Mount Everest before going into space. I felt that taking on the highest point on Earth would just be fantastic before leaving this planet as it were.
Hunger and passion are often considered the most important elements to success. Do you agree? Where does your hunger and passion come from?
Yes, passion, for sure. When you do what you like you don’t think of what it costs or how long it takes. You do it because you want to do it. If you convert your life into doing what you love then you have a good formula for success because you can be on holiday, like me, 365 days a year.
You are expected to be the first Dane in Space. Can you tell us a bit more about Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and your involvement?
I have three trips lined up on three different rocket ships. So far I have gone through training in preparation for this. Training has consisted of Zero G flying, weightless flying, flying on Russian cargo planes, as well as flying Russian fighter jets and being in the centrifuge spinning around as you see in the James Bond movies. You effectively simulate a rocket launch. In my involvement with Virgin Galactic I hope to inspire other people to live out their dreams to the max.
You wrote a book called Wall Street. What motivated you to write?
I wrote Wall Street after the fall out of the credit crunch. The drive was that I felt it was necessary and interesting to tell a bit of the inside story about how things went so wrong as they did: ‘what caused it?’ and ‘how does it happen?’. So the book is essentially about the bubbles of the financial markets: ‘what creates them?’, ‘why do they appear?’ and ‘how do they explode and why?’.
I also described the dot com bubble and credit bubble. In Wall Street I tried to predict the future, the next future bubble, what that will entail and why. It was an analysis of those bubbles and why they appear.
Right now I am just putting the finishing touches to my next book which is called the The Green Bubble, which is about green energy, due to come out this month.
What advice would you give members of PHS?
My advice would be to follow my 7 principles:
1) Allow yourself to be inspired. Think ‘out of the box’.
2) Follow your heart and passion. Have fun.
3) Focus and Execution.
4) Time discipline: Be conscious about time allocation.
5) Teamwork: The sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts alone.
6) Take calculated risks: Assess risks/rewards.
7) Inspire others, especially children, and encourage them to live their dreams.
How do you take a dream and turn it into reality?
The key ingredients are my 7 principles [as described above]. The key values and principles that make things happen for me in terms of how I go about executing my dreams, coming up with the adventures, following my passion, following my heart, executing it, and focusing on it, whilst managing my time, discipline and remembering in the process to inspire others to live out their dreams.
