The problem
You're good at your job. Maybe great. Marketer, lawyer, designer, developer, consultant, operator, whatever. People trust your work. Your boss is happy. Your LinkedIn looks right.
And you're slowly dying inside.
Not because the work is bad. Because the box is too small and too grey. You have more color than the place can hold. Ideas that don't fit the job description. Energy that doesn't fit a 9-to-6. A restlessness that no "career development workshop" will ever fix.
You've tried the playbook. It doesn't work for people like you, because the playbook was written by people who are terrified of people like you.
The corporate world wasn't built for misfits. But misfits are exactly who it needs.
I know this because I was you. Big law in Mexico City. Good suit. Good salary. Miserable. So I went to Yale, walked the Camino de Santiago, moved to Nairobi, then Kigali, then wherever the interesting problems were. Structured over $5 billion in deals across 25 countries. Got fired once. Best thing that ever happened to me. Then I set myself a mission: work 10% of the time and deliver 100% of the outcomes, without dimming a single thing about who I am.
Misfit Lab is everything I learned doing that, turned into a program for one person at a time.
Rainbow people in a grey building
Neurodivergent. Creative. Rebellious. Burned out. Or all of it at once. People who feel they don't belong, who feel different, who have more flair and more to give than the place around them knows what to do with.
Maybe you've burned out more than once. Maybe you've got a notebook full of ideas and no structure to ship them. Maybe you're bored out of your mind and asking yourself whether you're lazy. Laziness and lack of motivation feel identical in the body and come from different places. Telling them apart is where we start.
After sixteen weeks
Three things we aim at, and measure at the end against where you started:
- You know your color and you've started building a job around it. The poison is named and, piece by piece, cut, delegated or reframed. More of your working time is work you'd choose.
- You have a way to stop frustration stacking. A venting protocol, daily release valves, rest spots on the trail. Pressure gets flushed before it turns into another burnout.
- You've asked for something you were afraid to ask for. Pay, scope, flexibility, a project, a boundary. Asked like a closer, not like someone hoping to be noticed. Whatever the answer, you know how to ask again.
And underneath all three: fun at work again. Not "fun" as in a ping-pong table. Fun as in you, fully yourself, playing a game you designed, inside a building that never asked you to.
Performance buys freedom. Deliver so well that being different becomes your edge, not your risk.
What you get, what it costs
Sixteen weeks + kickoff
1:1, live, online
17 × 60 min
$500/month
Four payments of $500. That's $2,000 for 17 live sessions, daily challenges built for you, your own tracker, chat access to me throughout, and the full assessment. Sessions are scheduled to fit your timezone. I'm in Barcelona (CET).
The first five shape it with me
The program is new. The first five people through it get a say in what it becomes, keep their tracker after the program ends, and get a follow-up check-in with me once the dust settles. In return I'll ask for honest feedback along the way and, if you're happy at the end, a few words I can show the next misfit.
Can't afford it? Apply anyway.
I keep a spot or two open for remarkable people who can't pay the full fee. I don't care about your bank account. I care about your fire. If you've got the drive but not the funds, tell me. The worst I can say is "not yet."
The weekly rhythm
A short prep questionnaire in your tracker replaces the status update. I arrive knowing what happened. We spend the session on what matters.
60 minutes, 1:1, live. We debrief your mission, work the theme of the week, and design the next one around your real situation.
A micro-challenge from the tracker, usually under 10 minutes. Streaks, energy log, venting log. Small, odd, specific to you.
One real thing you do at work before the next session. Not homework. A move. The tracker holds you to it.
Chat access to me. Stuck before a meeting, need a line for your boss, want to vent at 11pm: write. I'm on Barcelona time and answer within the day, usually sooner.
Your tracker sends me your week: energy, vents, color moments, mission status. I read it before we talk.
Week by week
Four acts, four themes each, plus a kickoff. Every week has a theme, a live session, daily challenges, and one mission. The themes are fixed. The challenges and missions are built around you, from your assessment and from what happened the week before. Open an act to see its weeks.
Your color: the traits that make you unmistakably you. Poison: the tasks, rituals and people that drain you. Misfit Map: what your assessment says about you. Tracker: your app for the program, built by me.
Base camp
Before the climb, we look at the map.
Your Misfit Map, read together
You've done the full assessment before we meet (seven modules, about 100 minutes, more on that below). We go through it together: strengths, patterns, chemistry, people, play. We agree on the one or two goals this program exists to hit, and on what a weekly deliverable looks like for you. We build your first challenge menu.
MissionPick the goal. Say it out loud to one person who isn't me.
Act I
Find Your Color
Weeks One to Four. You can't bring your color to work until you know exactly what it is and what has been covering it.
Sparks and poison
Where you light up, where you die inside, and what corporate has sanded off you. We run an energy audit on your actual workdays, hour by hour, and name the sparks and the poison by their real names.
MissionLog energy and mood at three points every workday. Catch one spark and one poison in the act.
Color and shape
Your signature traits, the flair you hide, the version of you that shows up at your best. We write your "I am who I am" statement: the version of today, not the aspirational one for tomorrow.
MissionShow one hidden trait at work, on purpose, where someone will notice.
Read the room
We map your organization like a deal: who has power, who has information, what each person actually wants, who champions you, who you avoid. Your relationship map goes live in the tracker and stays alive for the whole program.
MissionHave one conversation you've been avoiding, with the only goal of learning what that person wants.
The poison list
Every task, ritual and relationship that drains you, sorted into kill, delegate, shrink, or reframe. We design the first version of a working week where most of your time is work you'd choose. That's the 80% rule: aim for four fifths of your time on work you'd pick.
MissionKill or shrink one poison this week. Document what happened when you did.
Act II
Play in the Box
Weeks Five to Eight. The box isn't going anywhere. So we learn to have fun inside it.
Boredom as raw material
Boredom is a signal, not a verdict. We reframe the dull parts of your job and turn them into a sandbox: side quests, games, experiments, an idea ledger for dead meetings. Learning to have fun in confined spaces is a skill, and it's trainable.
MissionTurn your most boring recurring task into a game with rules and a score. Play it all week.
Permitted rebellion
Small, safe, visible acts of color: how you write, how you run a meeting, what you wear, how you say no. Weird enough to be memorable. Never enough to get fired. We calibrate your dial together.
MissionThree acts of permitted rebellion, escalating. The tracker keeps score.
Venting protocols
On a long trail, pain builds unless you plan the rest spots. Same at work. We build your daily flush: what you do with frustration before it stacks, who you vent to, how, and when. Plus the two golden rules: if it can be solved, it will be, don't worry; if it can't, it won't, don't worry.
MissionVent in the tracker every day, tagged with the trigger. By Friday we know your pattern.
Flow architecture
We redesign your working week around your energy, not the calendar app. Deep work where your chronotype says so, meetings where they hurt least, rituals that start and end the day, and the no that protects it all.
MissionRun your redesigned week. Protect at least one deep-work block from everyone, including your boss.
Act III
Get More
Weeks Nine to Twelve. Negotiation and influence, from someone who closed deals for a living.
Negotiation from the deal room
How closers actually think: interests over positions, your walk-away before you walk in, anchors, silence, structure before capital. Applied to the only negotiation that matters right now: yours, at work.
MissionWrite your ask. The real one. With your walk-away and your anchor.
Ask for more
Pay, scope, flexibility, remote days, the project you want. We role-play your actual ask live, with me playing your boss as badly as they will. Then you go and make it.
MissionMake the ask. Log what happened in the negotiation log, word for word if you can.
Influence without authority
Pitching unconventional ideas up, down and sideways when nobody reports to you. Building allies, reading timing, warmth plus directness, saying no and keeping the relationship. I once led seven inexperienced people into the Himalayas. Nobody reported to me. Same skill.
MissionPitch one idea you've been sitting on to someone above you. Small stakes, real pitch.
Handling no
Rejection, pushback, "not now", the boss who nods and does nothing. How closers reopen a door without pushing. How to lose an ask and keep your color intact.
MissionGo back to one no and ask again, differently. The second ask is the one most people never make.
Act IV
Perform Wild
Weeks Thirteen to Sixteen. Deliver so well that your weirdness becomes non-negotiable.
Performance buys freedom
Leverage over effort. Systems over hustle. The 10% time, 100% outcomes playbook: what to automate, what to template, what to stop doing entirely, and how to make your output visible to the people who decide your freedom.
MissionSystemize one recurring piece of work so it takes half the time. Show someone the result, not the effort.
Your signature project
One thing at work that only you would do. Artistic flair, creativity, reinvention applied to a mundane task until it carries your fingerprint. We scope it, you ship it.
MissionShip the signature project. Imperfect counts. Invisible doesn't.
The outlaw path
The long game. Options, side projects, your career story told your way, and why the unconventional path is a strategy and not an accident. Getting fired, starting over, changing countries: how to make the wild moves survivable.
MissionWrite your next chapter in one page. Where the color goes after this program ends.
Encore
Your personal operating manual: how you work, what drains you, how you vent, how you ask, what you never do again. A plan for the next quarter. The before-and-after scorecard, side by side with Week One. Graduation.
MissionTeach one thing you learned here to one person who needs it. Then you don't need me anymore.
The goal is simple: make you into someone who doesn't need me anymore. If you still need a coach after sixteen weeks, I failed.
Built for this program
I coded it during a sabbatical. Yours comes configured from your assessment and grows with the program. Nothing lives in a spreadsheet or in your browser. Everything saves to my server as you go.
- Daily challenge, with streaks
- Energy log, three taps daily
- Venting log with trigger tags
- Color moments: every time you showed your flair
- Mission board: the deliverable, its status, the evidence
- Session prep questionnaire
- Negotiation log: asks made, outcomes, lessons
- Living relationship map
- Boredom sandbox: your idea parking lot
- Recommended readings, ticked off
- Weekly review, sent to me automatically
- Before-and-after scorecard at the end
We start by actually knowing you
Before Week Zero you take seven short tests, all multiple choice, about 100 minutes in total, in as many sittings as you like. They build your Misfit Map: the thing we read together in the kickoff and the reason your challenges fit you and not some average person.
Context and story
Your work, your life, your goals, and the moment you knew you didn't fit.
Mind
Attention, focus, executive function, impostor patterns, procrastination. Includes standard self-report questionnaires.
Mood and body
Wellbeing, stress, burnout, sleep, loneliness, habits. Standard self-report questionnaires, read with care.
Chemistry
Your energy style by self-report: what fuels you, what runs out first. Inspired by neurotransmitter questionnaires. Not a lab test.
Personality and drives
Big Five, values, chronotype, needs at work, grit, perfectionism.
People and power
Attachment at work, rejection sensitivity, conflict style, negotiation habits, influence.
Play
Your fun fingerprint: humor, games, risk appetite, creativity. This is where your challenges come from.
These are self-reflection tools, not a diagnosis. I'm a coach, not a clinician. You see your strengths and your map right away. The sensitive scores only I see, and we go through them together in Week Zero. If anything suggests you'd benefit from a professional, I'll say so and help you find one. Nothing you answer ever goes to an employer. You can ask me to delete all of it at any time.
Who this isn't for
People who want the standard path, the ladder, and a certificate for LinkedIn. People who want comfortable. People who think coaching means someone validates their decisions and tells them they're doing great.
I will be honest with you. Sometimes uncomfortably. If your strategy is bad, I'll say so. If you're avoiding a hard conversation, I'll call it. If you're brilliant but coasting, I'll tell you that you're wasting something most people would kill for. This is a rigorous challenge, not hand-holding. It's for the ones who'd rather hear an uncomfortable truth today than a comfortable lie for the next ten years.
What people I've worked with say
"Someone who's not a stickler for rules and old ways of doing things. I'd warn them to not let the fun demeanor fool them. You are actually serious."
Faith Wanjiku · The Room, 2020 to 2022
"If you're ready to get serious and held seriously accountable, Pepe will always be honest with you (even when it stings), but you can trust that he is rooting for you to become the best version of yourself."
Faith Gathoni · Lawyer, ALX/Sand, 2020 to 2024
"Talk to Pepe. He's great at helping you uncover your 'why.' He challenges your assumptions in a way that leads to deeper clarity about your current path and whether you want to shift into something new."
Business Ops Specialist · Former direct report
"I don't exactly know how, but he'll get you sorted, and you'll somehow have fun doing it."
Michael Muturi · Head of Biochar, Tupande (One Acre Fund)
Interested?
No committee. No 12-step process. Applying takes three minutes: a short form, then you get your personal assessment link on the spot and I get pinged. Then we book a free fit call. Be ready to tell me three things:
- Who you are and what you do right now
- What's in your way, the box you're stuck in
- What you'd do if nothing was stopping you
Prefer to write first? [email protected]
One misfit at a time. When my calendar is full, you go on the list for the next start.