About the author
Joris van Huët
Born in Paris. Raised in London. Built a life in the Netherlands. Fluent in English, French and Dutch.
The short version
- Born in Paris to a French mother and a Dutch father.
- Went to school in London, then moved to a small Dutch village where he did not speak the language.
- Spent more than fourteen years in European programmatic advertising and growth, including at Publicis (Zenith) and Omnicom (OMD).
- Quit a stable marketing job in 2020 to freelance, mid-pandemic. Year three paid 50% more than the job he left.
- Founder and CEO of Causality Engine, which measures what actually caused a sale for European DTC brands.
- Lives in Utrecht. Plays football as a defender. His hero is Socrates.
Why he wrote Lean Living
Looking back at a childhood of pivots (Paris, London, a Dutch village, a language he had to learn in a year and a half before the test that decided his school track), Joris saw a pattern he had never named. He had been running experiments on his own life since he was six. Lean Living names the pattern, then turns it into something you can use: tell contributions from distractions, and design your own life experiments on purpose.
The book is upfront about its limits. In the introduction he lists his advantages, a multicultural upbringing and various forms of privilege among them, and says his path won't be yours. What travels is the method.
Influences
Socrates for the questions. BJ Fogg and Philip Zimbardo for behaviour design and situational psychology. Eric Ries for build-measure-learn. Robert Cialdini for persuasion, including the kind used on him.
Also by Joris van Huët
The Price of Being Found, a free research book on marketing measurement, published by Causality Engine.
