About

My failures
became my work.

Author, guide, entrepreneur, creator of the Three Mountains map and founder of Humania. Above all: a person still on the journey.

A current portrait of Istvan Joos

My story

I was successful. Then I lost what I thought I was.

In my twenties I became successful as an internet entrepreneur—and I was deeply self-centred and arrogant. Then the life I had built collapsed.

I began writing about my wounds as a form of self-therapy. I had no plan to become a guide. I wrote honestly about what had happened to me, and people began to connect.

Across twenty-one years of practice, more than a thousand people have shared their turning points with me. The first Three Mountains map was published in 2015. I have continued developing it through practical work ever since.

I draw maps, share what I have learned, and work with people to understand their situation and recognise the next step.

What I believe

Three convictions.
Learned through experience.

01

Imperfection creates connection.

Dropping the pose gives another person someone real to meet.

02

Suffering can point toward timely change.

A crisis may reveal that a way of living has reached its limit. It does not establish progress by itself.

03

Experience can update a worldview.

Our own lived truth—and other people’s—can show where inherited explanations have become too small.

Faith

How belief becomes visible in a life.

Faith is part of my own journey. After years of searching, doubt and dead ends, the example of Jesus has become an increasingly important point of orientation for me. You do not have to share my beliefs to engage with the map. What interests me is how what we believe becomes visible in the way we live.

Men and women

What we need changes as we change.

A substantial part of my work explores how men and women change—and how what we need from ourselves, a partner and a relationship changes with us. I approach these questions through the same developmental map, rather than assuming that one answer fits every stage of life.

The body of work

The work began
in Hungary.

Much of this body of work is currently available in Hungarian.

The map’s Hungarian book history includes the titles Út-Mutató and Az Én Útja; its current third-edition presentation is Élettérkép. The wider work includes more than fifty courses, more than a thousand long-form videos, and the ÉNAKADÉMIA archive, accessed historically by more than 15,000 people.

21YEARS
1,000+LIFE STORIES
1,000+VIDEOS
15,000+HISTORICAL REACH

What I’m building

The map should lead
back into real life.

The Three Mountains framework is the map. Two connected projects are being built around guidance and human connection.

01

Digital Sherpa

Digital Sherpa is being built as an AI companion for understanding what is happening, choosing a next step and following through. Its orientation and human-matching capabilities are in development, not presented here as proven services.

02

Humania

Humania is a Trust Network in its own right: an environment for becoming visible through lived experience, meeting relevant people and building real relationships and communities.

Working with me

Start with the map. Add help only if it fits.

For English personal-work enquiries, I begin by understanding the situation and whether direct work is the right next step. The work is arranged individually, after an initial conversation.

How I work