Marek
Lenarcik

The first paid byline arrived before the driving licence. Within a few years it was official accreditation from the Chancellery of the President and the Prime Minister of Poland, travelling with state delegations and filing on EU and NATO summits from the United States, Israel, Sweden, Austria and Belgium. Technology reporting ran alongside it and taught the other half of the trade: read a system properly before you write a word about it.

Embedded at Microsoft's EMEA headquarters, running enterprise licensing for corporate accounts. Multi-million-dollar Enterprise Agreements, each carrying strict compliance obligations and audit exposure. Terms, entitlements and audit records had to stay accurate and defensible — in an environment where an error in the paperwork was a legal and financial event, not an administrative one.

Nothing about the documentation discipline that now governs a tanker's chain of custody was learned later. It was learned here.

The exit from Dublin was not a sideways move. Asia Explorers was built from zero and run end to end: client acquisition in Europe, physical logistics across Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, suppliers sourced and terms negotiated face to face — and personal responsibility carried when a delivery failed, because there was nobody else to carry it.

In parallel, scoping missions into seven Latin American markets, assessing operating conditions, local partners and counterparty risk in jurisdictions where none of it was documented in advance.

Myanmar's economic opening meant demand arriving years ahead of infrastructure. Two regional properties were taken from ground-up development to operational launch — Myanmar Andaman Resort and Riverside Hsipaw Resort. More than fifty itineraries were designed and priced from scratch, with B2B contracts negotiated directly with hotels and transport providers in a market that had almost no established commercial base to negotiate with.

LEN Ventures was the vehicle for interim executive work across Southeast Asia: physical asset management, multi-country operations and deal brokering for marine, river cruise and hospitality operators. Six engagements over five years — four line roles with full operating responsibility, two mandates with a specific output.

Operations for a seventeen-vessel river cruise fleet across six countries, launching more than ten cross-border routes, with vessel movements, permits, clearances and documentation coordinated across jurisdictions whose regulatory regimes did not agree with one another. Country management for Cambodia across the Phnom Penh and Siem Reap offices. Regional product ownership across Southeast Asia. Then the instalment-structured acquisition of Burma Boating, brokered between buyer and seller to fit the owner's cash-flow constraints, and interim general management for an early-stage group that needed operational frameworks before it could scale.

Cambodia's premier eco-luxury resort: sixty-three suites and villas on a remote island with no established supply chain, where every input had to be forecast, contracted and delivered on schedule or not at all. The commercial launch generated $2.8M in pre-opening revenue.

Dynamic pricing models held an average daily rate of $285 against the regional competitive set. Distribution partnerships were negotiated across Europe, China and APAC. More than 150 international journalists were hosted, converting into 200-plus publications including The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Condé Nast Traveler.

Started during the Myanmar years and still running: an independent practice in risk management and capital preservation, with no employer, no office and no outside capital. A proprietary portfolio held through multiple full market cycles, using collateralised positions and disciplined exposure limits to keep capital and cash flow intact through prolonged drawdowns.

Alongside it, ongoing strategy and portfolio structuring for a private network of more than fifteen individuals: instrument selection, counterparty risk assessment, yield strategy.

It looks like the gap between a hotel launch and a commodity desk. It is neither a gap nor a detour — it runs underneath both, and it is still open. Price the risk correctly, size the exposure, and stay solvent when the market moves against you: the sentence is the same whether the exposure is a portfolio or a cargo in transit.

KANSO is a digital studio, founded in 2020 and registered in Asunción, Paraguay, working with independent businesses wherever they operate. Websites built rather than templated. Search and local visibility, including the results that now come from AI assistants rather than a search page. Paid campaigns with the budget shown. Monthly content with a scope that does not quietly expand. Workflow automation dropped into the places where the same task was still being done by hand.

The proposition is deliberately unglamorous: you are good at what you do, and the job is making sure people find you, trust you and buy from you. Every account is run personally — there is no handover to someone junior once the work is won — and the interviewing habit from the press years does most of the early work. Ask the direct question, get the specific answer, then build from what is actually true about the business rather than from what the category says should be there.

It is the one chapter of the record where the writing is still the product.

Back in Europe, the same problem in a different vocabulary. CESO Trade sources and contracts REDcert-certified feedstocks — used cooking oil, fatty acid distillates, vegetable oils — for ester and biofuel producers across the EU. SNM Logistics moves them: bulk liquids by road and rail across the Union and along the EU–Ukraine corridor, taking operational responsibility for everything that surrounds the movement.

Cross-border tank transport is rarely a driving problem. It is an administrative one — documentation, permits, clearances, delivery windows, and whatever the counterparty on the far side of the border requires. Any one of them can hold a load. All of them are predictable to someone who has run the route. Between them the two companies cover the chain from collection point to plant gate.