The game plan: how did Bjorn Hauge get into real estate and what else is on his plate

Bjorn Hauge, the country manager of Norwegian investment fund Romania Invest came to work in real estate after a series of fortunate events and after being very persistent to land the job. Real estate became a passion in time, but Bjorn's main passion is to create businesses. He is now planning sushi restaurants in Romania, a chain of other types of restaurants and a couple of online businesses. Bjorn has taken the time to talk to RBI about his work and his hobbies. It is a long list – it was a long talk. By Corina Saceanu With the alarm set to ring at 5.30 in the morning for the two - hour gym workout, the day seems longer for Bjorn Hauge. And it needs to be, with all the projects he has to handle everyday. The 35-year old Norwegian who runs the local operations of real estate investment fund Romania Invest has plenty of activity on his plate. The fund management company aside – and this is not an easy job nowadays considering the fund's main investment is in Romanian housing- he is now working on setting up sushi restaurants in Romania, bringing the Art of Sushi brand that he and his friends own in Norway. He saw the need for all sorts of restaurants in Romania, rather the “more of the same” that already exists, so he plans to build a network of different restaurants in Romania in the coming future. Stretching from the real estate business to restaurants was just a step away, but he also went into online businesses, which were not a new territory to him, as he has a background as business developer for commercial banking applications. He is one of the investors in a bidding site, Mywin.ro, and in a software development company called Solution Oriented Software. He also plans a poll website called Votemania. He shares some of his passion when talking about all these projects – and we haven't even got to his hobbies yet! What do all these types of businesses have in common for Bjorn? They're all new businesses. “I like to create businesses, this is my biggest passion. I usually tell my people that we have to try 1,000 things and maybe 10 will work. I don't know which 10 would work,” Bjorn Hauge says. Let him be creative, give him a team to follow through with the project and let him go outside the box and you found the winning recipe for Bjorn. The team he is working with is one of the things he mentions at times more than his work. Knowing he has played hockey for 15 years in the past, in Norway, makes it easier to understand why Bjorn values team work. “In hockey, there are five players on ice at any given time and each of them has their own role. If one of these five players is not doing their job, it's very difficult for the other four. It's suddenly five of your opponents against four of you, so it's a problem,” he says. He applies the same type of thinking to managing people. In fact, he combined the two in a recent team building event in which his team played against the Steaua hockey team, he says while also pointing out to a set of paintings made by the Romania Invest/Be Igloo team in another team building event. In another team effort they played and recorded a video for a song about Be Igloo, the sales arm for Romania Invest's portfolio of apartments.(If you're curious you can listen to and watch the video