#246 A Global Journey to Sustainable Commerce with Maxim Haartsen

 About Maxim Haartsen Maxim Haartsen is the co-founder and CEO of eJaby, a groundbreaking e-commerce marketplace that provides premium overstock products at unbeatable value while reducing environmental impact. With a background in life sciences and a career spanning pharmaceutical sales, marketing, and business development, Maxim has combined his expertise with his entrepreneurial spirit to tackle one of the world’s biggest challenges—food waste. About This Episode In this episode of The Matrix Green Pill Podcast, host Hilmarie Hutchison sits down with visionary entrepreneur Maxim Haartsen to discuss his fascinating journey from a career in life sciences and big pharma to launching eJaby. Maxim shares how his upbringing, influenced by his entrepreneurial grandfather, led him to think beyond the constraints of the corporate world. He takes us through his global career journey, from the Netherlands to Japan and the UAE, and explains how his experiences shaped his approach to business. With food waste being a $64 billion problem in the MENA region, Maxim saw an opportunity to create a business that not only solves a critical issue but also provides real value to consumers and suppliers alike. He details how eJaby works, its impact on reducing waste, and how technology is playing a key role in transforming the supply chain. Quotes 4:00 - My parents were obviously great examples for me, but it was always something from day one that kept pushing me in another space.  4:30 - I always saw the opportunities within the career path, but also in business. I always looked at different ways to get products promoted faster ways to boost turnover.  5:39 - I made a very bold decision to follow my heart and to follow the feelings that drive me and that make me happy. 7:31 - I learn from everyone. I"m learning. I"m sure I will learn from this conversation today. It is very inspirational to me to be able to do that. It is very enriching as well. There"s positives, obviously, and there"s also a few, I would almost say, negatives. 8:55 - E-commerce was kind of on the rise, but nothing like what I"ll look like in the near future and we thought how can we use technology in order to circumvent this type of problem? 12:11 - eJaby stands for positivity in Arabic, so it really aligns very well with what we believe, our brand values. 12:50 - Our tagline is shop green and strike gold. 16:05 - It"s all about measuring the individual CO2 footprint, because we really can drill it down to an individual who is ordering from a job. So, when you order from a job, you will be able to see how much money you"ve saved and, at the same time, you"re able to see how much CO2 you"ve avoided entering the atmosphere. 25:58 - It really comes down to the needs and the expectations of the end consumers and our technology is the conduit. Our technology caters for that convenience. 27:52 – It’s through mistakes that you learn and you change and come to the solution. 28:53 - I always say I"ve learned the most about myself the extreme cultures I"ve lived, I"ve worked, worked and I"ve actually let people through. 28:53 - It has shaped my leadership style a lot, in the sense that I"m really trying to understand people from a culture aspect better before I would start making my decisions. 30:36 - I"m blessed basically to have that in my veins to kind of understand the situation very quickly. But it really brought patience, and with patience also comes gravitas in leadership. 31:10 - Follow your heart, because otherwise you wo The Matrix Green Pill Podcast: https://thematrixgreenpill.com/ Please review us: https://g.page/r/CS8IW35GvlraEAI/review