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This was the valuable advice given to us by Marine Simonis, 2024 world freediving vice-champion, during her talk at the EMAclub 2025 event, which brought together our customers and partners on Thursday 5 June.
During the evening, we had the opportunity to discover Tradyglass, which welcomed us to their premises, learn about the project roadmap of EMAsphere, and enjoy Marine Simonis' inspiring advice on our perception of ego, confidence, and team spirit in business. Let's take a look back at the highlights of the evening!
1 - Advice from a world vice-champion freediver on how to perform at work and in life !
What we really liked about Marine Simonis was obviously her story, but above all her very realistic way of drawing parallels between her sporting challenges and the challenges we all face every day at work and in our personal lives.
To hook us in, she began by anchoring her story to an issue we all can relate to: we live in a world where our thoughts are overwhelmed by thousands of other thoughts, those of the past, which we can never change, and those of the future, where we imagine hundreds of stressful scenarios. She managed to break free from this situation thanks to freediving. She tells us how surprised she was by this sport, which would guide the rest of her adventure:
"I thought that if I stopped breathing I would be stressed. In fact, I just stopped suffocating during the apnea".
She got into freediving thanks to a totally random dive she did while on holiday in Australia. That experience brought back a childhood dream: to fly, but more than that, to just live in the present moment. From this story, she described the journey she took to become vice-world champion and be able to give the best of herself (or at least learn to know herself perfectly in every situation).
First, she explained that as soon as she realised she had a strong aptitude for this sport, she decided to start competing. At that point, stress became part of her adventure. And this stress outweighed the ‘feeling of freedom’ she had gained from diving, because she was now motivated only by ‘pressure and performance’. This is a common issue for many of us who encounter the consequences of our ‘ego’ in our work or daily challenges.
‘You probably think that the biggest obstacle to performance is controlling your mind. But that's not it: the biggest obstacle is your ego [driving you to perform and putting pressure on you]!’ explains Marine.
Because, yes, each of us is inevitably motivated by a little bit of ego; she herself explained that this is why she started competing. To help us realise this, she invited us to hold our breath for as long as possible and asked us what thoughts filled our minds during that time.
“If you are thinking about the next steps (which will come later), I was doing the same before I started freediving. My mind was always elsewhere, I was never living the moment! And of course, it is my body that dives down, but it is my mind that allows me to do so.”
Whether you are at work or freediving, ‘the principle is the same: It's not your body that allows you to perform, it's your mind!’. It is therefore very important in our daily lives to realise that our environment increases our stress levels tenfold. In order to perform well, we must not simply control everything or be guided by our ego: ‘Performing means allowing yourself to let go and live in the moment’ and not letting our ego dictate our path, as it should remain a source of motivation, not a guide!
When it comes to performing at her best and living in the moment, Marine shared her three key principles that allow her to stay connected to the present at every stage of her career:
- Audacity: necessary but measured! It should be there to motivate you, not to prove something to someone else. In the right dose, it stimulates; in the wrong dose, it paralyses!
- Managing risk: this means being able to adapt when the tide turns! Take good risks, she recommends us: ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, and above all, know how to adapt to changing conditions. Rigidity equals fragility!
- To delegate, you have to trust! ‘Alone we go faster, together we go deeper,’ as Marine says. A team performs at its best when it feels secure, certainly not when it is pushed solely towards success.
Therefore, to avoid sinking under the pressure, we will now follow her advice to stay connected to the present moment and allow ourselves a little ego, which is an ally that pushes us to surpass ourselves, as long as it is not the sole driving force behind our actions. Got it!
2 - The visit of the Tradyglass company: the discovery of an unknown world between craftsmanship, eco-responsibility and large-scale production!
We were lucky enough to be welcomed by Tradyglass Factory, a company based in Soignies and founded in 2009. The visit of the workshop allowed us to discover a company at the cutting edge of technology.
- They produce their own reusable polymer Alterglass in their workshops with the mission ‘Drink safe and have fun’.
- In addition to being able to create 100% customised shapes, they can meet requests for very large or even very small production runs thanks to one of the most modern workshops in Europe.
- We also noticed their commitment to sustainable development, with new techniques that significantly reduce consumption and a roof completely covered with solar panels that produce 60% of their electricity consumption.
At Tradyglass, the visit was an experience in a world that was completely new to us. We will remember the kindness of an ultra-dynamic, family-run company that is always ready to innovate. We recommend a visit, or at least a look at their hundreds of glass designs!
You can see ours in the photo below:
3 - EMAsphere's vision for the year ahead: continue to give a central place to data and the modern CFO!
EMAsphere is an adventure that began in 2013 alongside our co-founder Hugues with one goal in mind: to give CFOs back control over their data and improve business performance management through financial and operational data.
Since then, there have been many developments:
- partnerships in Belgium and internationally that offer our app to their customers.
- the development of ‘Business Domain Packages’ that allow non-financial data to be integrated into reports: sales, HR, marketing, etc. [LP link]
- and, of course, the internationalisation of the company with more than 250 standard connectors offered to our customers around the world.
The key to our success is our ability to centralise, structure and consolidate data scattered across different systems. Increased efficiency, fast and informed decision-making, competitive advantage: this is what good reporting can offer us to manage your business.
Our guiding principle for the coming years is to support the modern CFO, who now forms a strong partnership with the CEO to work on data and drive business performance. These CFOs need reliable data, to be the guarantor of data (with less dependence on the IT department), a great deal of flexibility and, of course, access to all company data in order to make strategic decisions. Unfortunately, many companies face challenges in meeting these needs: a lack of reliable data and, above all, data silos scattered across numerous systems. This is a complex battle, and above all, it involves non-scalable models that prevent data from being analysed on a regular basis...
EMAsphere responds to this by offering CFOs automated data collection and making them leaders of the analysis project so they can manage their own strategy. To do this, let's take a look at the future of the EMAsphere solution over the coming months:
- The sales module: a plug-and-play reporting model that analyses your sales thanks to its connection to more than 20 CRMs. Sales analysis, number of signed deals, analysis by salesperson, pipeline to track potential future sales... A module that allows data sharing and information historisation, just like the Finance module. Altogether in one single tool!
- The intercompany management module: managing intercompany transactions is one of the most time-consuming aspects of consolidated reporting: unexplained discrepancies, scattered files, manual reconciliations... and closing processes that turn into a race against the clock. With our new Interco module, you can view discrepancies in real time, automate matching between entities, and analyse your results with or without intercos in just one click!
- A new design for menu creation and improved export features: our goal is to make EMAsphere still easier to use. In order to do this, we will be redesigning our menu and adding PDF export features to simplify sharing outside the platform.
- Artificial intelligence, a guide on our platform: AI is a means, not an end in itself. Our goal remains the same: to save you time and help you get to the heart of the matter faster. AI in EMAsphere is not intended to replace human expertise. More specifically, our developments are focused on creating a chatbot that will guide you through the use of EMAsphere: how to create a situation, what steps to take to create a bar chart, or even how to share a menu!
Thank you all for attending the 2025 edition of EMAclub. If you were unable to join us, we are of course available to answer any questions you may have on these topics.