Optimum Effort is not a strategy consulting firm. It is a singular commitment: the relentless, precise, and structured transformation of complexity into measurable results — for those who cannot afford a second-best outcome.
In the world of consequential decisions — capital allocation, governance transitions, market positioning, succession — the distinction between effort and optimum effort determines whether an outcome is merely good or truly transformative.
Optimum Effort is the precise application of Clarity to perceive, Order to structure, Growth to expand, and Action to execute — in sequence, in proportion, without waste. It is not intensity for its own sake. It is directed force at the exact point where it changes everything.
Over the past forty years, I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with hundreds of thousands of people across every continent — from students who had never been told they were capable of anything, to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who had built empires and still felt, privately, that something essential was missing. In all of that time, the single most consistent pattern I have observed is this: the people who are suffering most are not the ones who lack commitment. They are the ones whose commitment has been pointed in the wrong direction.
Heiko Faass has written the book that explains why.
Optimum Effort is not a productivity manual. It is not another entry in the long genre of motivational books that tell you to believe in yourself and take massive action and everything will work out. I have written some of those books. They have their place. But Heiko has written something more precise, and in many ways more demanding: a methodology that requires you to stop before you act, to diagnose before you prescribe, to see clearly before you move.
The four pillars — Clarity, Order, Growth, Action — will be immediately recognizable to anyone who has worked with the world's highest performers. What Heiko has done is give them a sequence and a rigor that I have not seen articulated this cleanly anywhere else in this literature. In Principle 1 of The Success Principles™, I write that you must take 100% responsibility for your life. That is true. But responsibility without methodology is just a setup for guilt with a work ethic. What Heiko provides is the methodology — the precise, operational, structured framework that makes that responsibility actionable at the highest level.
What I find most valuable about this book — and I do not say this lightly — is the Optimum Effort Diagnostic at the end of each chapter. In my decades of coaching work, I have found that the questions we ask ourselves are the most powerful technology available to human beings. The questions in this book are not comfortable. They are not designed to be. They are designed to produce the specific kind of discomfort that precedes genuine change.
I wish this book had existed when I was building my own career. I recommend it without reservation to anyone who has ever felt the gap between their capability and their output and suspected, correctly, that the answer was not to work harder.
Jack Canfield, known as America's #1 Success Coach, is a bestselling author, professional speaker, trainer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Canfield Training Group, which trains entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, sales professionals, educators, and motivated individuals how to accelerate the achievement of their personal and professional goals. He has conducted live trainings for more than a million people in more than 50 countries around the world. He holds two Guinness World Record titles and is a member of the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame.
He is the coauthor of more than two hundred books, including The Success Principles™, The Success Principles Workbook, Jack Canfield's Key to Living the Law of Attraction, The Aladdin Factor, Dare to Win, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series — forty New York Times bestsellers, 600 million copies sold in 51 languages.
Optimum Effort: The Architecture of Extraordinary Outcomes will be released soon. Join the list to be notified the moment it becomes available — and receive an exclusive excerpt from the Introduction, "The Redwood and the Axe."
Optimum Effort serves those for whom the cost of a second opinion is not time — it is consequence. Each engagement is unique, confidential, and built around the specific irreversible decisions at hand.
"I act as a trusted representative, steward, and confidential advisor — a powerful catalyst and realizer in complex, high-value situations anywhere in the world. For Family Offices, Investment Funds, and Corporations, my focus is fast, precise, and uncompromising: I restore order and structure for maximum growth, I ensure we see and realize value before anyone else does, and I build the bridge from complexity to measurable success."
With over 25 years of experience across strategy, corporate governance, valuation, capital markets, and cross-border advisory — and active service as Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — Heiko Faass operates at the intersection of institutional rigor and personal accountability that only a singular career trajectory can produce.
Optimum Effort engages on a pure advisory basis: no brokerage fees, no commissions, no product sales. The alignment is absolute.
Optimum Effort accepts a limited number of engagements each year. Initial conversations are confidential, without obligation, and focused entirely on understanding whether the situation warrants the commitment that defines this practice.
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