Money & Me: ‘I invest in Montblanc pens’ – The National

Money & Me: ‘I invest in Montblanc pens’ – The National

Philippe Mathijs, founder of executive and business coaching service Reach Outstanding, recently quit his 30-year corporate career in investment banking and financial services to pursue his passion.The Belgian national, 53, now works as an executive coach and leadership adviser and consultant. He’s been in the UAE for 10 years.“About 10 years ago, I started realising that people are increasingly coming to me for advice. The more senior I became, the more people were seeking me out for advice,” Mr Mathijs recalls.“At some point, I realised that I should do it properly and become a coach. I trained with both Tony Robbins and the International Coaching Federation to become an accredited coach.“For 10 years, I did both jobs [coaching during the night and weekends] to help with the transition.”He quit his corporate life at the end of 2023 and took up coaching full time, after working for companies including JP Morgan Chase, the Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard, UBS and Barclays.In the UAE, he worked with Network International, Wirecard and Delma Exchange.He studied architecture for four years to become an architect and pursued a bachelor’s degree in information technology.However, he soon realised that architecture was a networking-based profession in Belgium. Since he