Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Torsten, welcome to the show.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Hey rm, thanks for having me.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: All right, for the uninitiated, for those who don't know, who are you and what do you do?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: All right, so my name is torsten Philipp. I'm 49 years old. I'm the father of three wonderful kids. I'm married to a wonderful wife.
I'm a former hardcore kid, just like you.
And today I'm managing director of a company called Geislinger, which is a family owned Austrian company with about 800 people working in two locations in Austria. Mechanical engineer by education.
Yeah, that's where I am today when it comes to my profession.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Okay, so lots of stuff to unpack, but the first thing that strikes me. Former hardcore kid. Tell me about that.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Well, it's still hardcore, but not so much kid anymore.
That's the basic thing. And I lost a bit track of the current scene. So from time to time I dig into it and I don't see that much new things, which I like. So I'm still addicted to the old stuff.
Late 80s until early 2000.
That was the time when I was active and I'm still addicted to that part of the, of the music.
And I have more or less no idea what happened afterwards.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Well, you know, when we hopped on at first, I could see that there is an integrity poster behind you on camera and there's a night poster. So I know you still love it. It's still part of your, who you are as a person, as you said. You know, it was like your culture, your roots and the same for me. Like, I don't know, I can't, I can't even think of the last time I went to a hardcore show outside of something that like one of my band played. I can't think. Gosh, I don't know, maybe it might have been years outside of something that we played, but I still love hardcore. If I listen to music 10 times in a day or in a week or whatever, probably one of those times is going to be hardcore. And that one time it's probably going to be something from like the 80s, you know, like in that space it's going to be like maybe Minor Threat or Bad Brains. More often than not it's probably going to be like you the Day or SSD or something like that. But yeah, I, I, I still very much consider myself a ardent believer and like member of the hardcore scene, but I'm not a kid anymore and I just don't have as much time for it.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's what Happens if you grow older, if you build your own family, if you have kids. Of course the, the focus of your life shifts towards something completely different.
But let me tell you one thing. In, in one month from now, I will go to a Green Day show together with my, my daughter. She's 14. I mean, green Day, yeah, they are far from being hardcore, but they are part of the punk rock history.
Had couple of great albums out there, lots of party music still. I think that's a great band.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: And my 14 year old daughter wants me to join her for a Green Day concert in Vienna in June. So. Yeah, that's great.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: That's awesome. I like, I love that so much. And I love Green Day. Green Day rocks. Like, I really like Green Day and also it's like politically relevant still, you know, like they got stuff to say. They're, they're a cool band for sure. Okay, dude, let's get into you though.
So tell us about your role. Like what's different from your role versus any other senior level role?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: So yeah, being a managing director means that in the end I'm responsible for what is happening within our company, being responsible about the financial results.
So I do share my responsibility with Adrian Geislinger, who's part of the, the owner family, which is super popular, set up in Europe to have family owned companies.
And yeah, I'm not part of the family of the owner family, but I joined the responsibilities with Adrian, who's a bit younger than I.
And yeah, of course in the end it's Adrian and I who are in the end responsible for if we are successful or not.
Of course it's not just our work, it's the work of 800 people here in Austria. But in the end it's the two of us who are being held responsible. Yeah.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: So for people listening, they might be wondering what's the difference between a managing director and a CEO?
[00:04:55] Speaker B: There's no difference, just we don't have that title in Europe.
I could also call myself a CEO, but it's basically the same.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: So when did you join this company? Because you essentially worked your way up to this role, right?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. I joined that company 20 years ago.
So more or less. Exactly 20 years ago. And that was not planned at all. Like so many things in my career that was not planned. At that time I was living at the Dutch German border, far from the Alps. I'm now here in beautiful Salzburg, which is close to the Alps.
And during my childhood, during my teenage days and in the early 20s, I've spent nearly all my money for skiing holidays and snowboarding holidays in the Alps. So I had to travel quite far away, had to spend lots of money.
And at a certain time in, in my career, I did a presentation, a technical presentation. I'm an engineer by education and that was in Salzburg. And I got in contact with that company and they offered me a job and I was like, yeah, I can, I can go skiing and snowboarding after I have to work.
And it's also quite attractive position. So why, why not moving to Salzburg? So that's, that, this, that was really the start of my career within that company as a, as an engineer. And from that on things developed.
And 20 years later I'm, I'm back here. I left the company in between for a couple of years to, to do other things, but I'm still in Salzburg and back in Salzburg and back to, to Geislinger with a completely different role and somehow made my way up to being the managing director today.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: So it was never the plan, though, to be a managing director or again, in U.S. or Canadian terms, we could see a CEO. It's not something you set out to do. Instead, you were like an individual contributor, came in as an engineer and it was more opportunistic, like, oh, this is a cool job. I get paid well, but mostly it brings me close to skiing and snowboarding. I don't have to spend all my money getting here. I can just kind of follow my, my passion.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right. I mean, that was in my early 20s. When you, when, when you start being an individual, when you try to figure out where's your, you know, where's your position in life, what's your plans in life? And the fun part was very dominating. At that time, I went to three to four hardcore punk rock shows per week. And during the winter season I went to the Alps.
And basically, I've never had any strategic career plan, which I try to follow.
So the first step was really coincidence.
Afterwards, I found out that taking over responsibilities is something that I like, that working within this industry is something I really like.
And so I've put quite some energy into what I do, but I've never made a master plan which guides me through the next 20 years.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of have mixed feelings about whether how much planning and kind of like, oh, I'm going to do this at this time and I'm going to try and get to this role. I mean, I know a lot of people that do that. I'm certainly not against it, but that's not at all. What happened with my career? I mean, everything was just an opportunity presented itself or something terrible happened. And then, like, because something terrible happened, it caused me to like, figure out how to figure. How to get things done. And because of that, a different opportunity showed up. So for me, it was just like chance, opportunity, crisis. And that's how I built my career. It sounds like for you, it's like same. Some version of the same thing.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I like the world, the word opportunity, because that's exactly what I did every time an opportunity showed up.
Yeah, I was maybe brave enough to go after it, to choose this path, even if it's.
I had to move away from my hometown, which is totally normal for you guys in North America.
Here in Europe, that's. That's not that common.
Moving 800 miles away from home is quite a seldom thing.
But for me, that was. There was an opportunity really.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Well, how much of that was natural to you? That kind of like the guts to do that? To do something that maybe is not that common? How much of it was just natural to you versus how much of that did you learn from punk and hardcore?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, punk and hardcore brought me to many different places.
It created an interest in different scenes, different people.
So I guess this.
And it made my world much wider than it was in my hometown. I mean, living at the German Dutch border, that's.
That's not New York City. That's not even Vancouver.
It's a very small place. But hardcore bands playing in our area, from the us, from other places of the world, it really made my world bigger than it originally was. So it created some kind of interest, created some curiosity. And so I followed this through.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Yeah, one of the things that.
One of the coolest gifts that I've gotten from punk is basically what you said. It made my world a lot bigger. And it made things that might seem impossible seem like commonplace. Like, yeah, of course I do that. So, so much of what I've done around my career has always just been like, well, yeah, of course I do that. Like, why wouldn't I do that? And that mindset is like, well, yeah, like, going back to. I can barely play my instrument and most of my friends can barely play our instruments. Of course we're going to record a record and tour Europe. Of course we're going to do that. Like, it. That one is insane to someone else. But to like someone from the punk scene, that's like, well, yeah, that's what we all did. Like, none of us know how to play our instruments. We all wrote records, we all toured all over the place. And that kind of like, leap of faith, of course I'm going to make that happen. It makes things that are impossible seem like totally to me, that's just like a Tuesday.
And. And it's like a huge gift because it just helps me refocus the way I think about risk. And I think about risk, I think in like, kind of a drastically different way than people who haven't grown up in the punk scene.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: I like what you just said about the. The ability to play an instrument.
Sometimes people ask me, okay, is there anything you learned from. From your punk rock and hardcore roots which you can transfer to your professional world? And that's something that I really find important and outstanding. That within hardcore, it was never about being the best guitar player or being the technically best band around. It was about diy. It was about, okay, we are creating our own stuff. It was very much about doing things, believing in things, putting energy into something, be it a fancy and be the band, a label, setting up shows, whatever. It has all been done by. By ourselves at that time. So there were no sponsors outside who set up any show. So if we wouldn't have done it, there wouldn't have been any. Any shows in our area. So we did it by ourselves. We did the record labels by ourselves.
And that's something that I'd like to transfer to. To my professional business.
In each and every discipline, it's hard.
You will easily find someone who's better in this or that or any specific thing. But bringing this energy into it, the will to perform, the will to learn, the will to do things by yourself, to drive things forward, that's something which is.
I think that that's a very special thing within punk rock and hardcore, which hopefully helps me and maybe also others within professional lives.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Heck, yeah. And I, I love what you said. I'm gonna, like, as we get a little further down the path, I'm gonna tell you a bit of how that thinking is something I've been playing out recently in our business and what the results are gonna be. I did want to circle back on something Monica mentioned. When the two of you spoke, you were like, yeah, you know, I didn't necessarily have any kind of like formal training to be a managing director. You know, I just kind of learn as I went along.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: So tell us about that. Because, like, I mean, you're in the most senior level of role and of course I know it's scaled up over time, but how did you learn how to lead People like first how to lead teams and then lead people and then lead an organization.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, leading teams, that, that came quite early in my career. These were smaller teams, technical teams. Of course you, yeah, you learn by trial and error. Unfortunately, afterwards you get some training, you get experience.
I'd love to have bit more training in my early years, but yeah, that's how things go.
After a couple of years within technical positions, I've seen that this niche is a bit too narrow.
So I actively decided to go for something else to widen my horizon. Again.
I moved then into a commercial responsibility. I also moved to another company, also to another city. Once again there was an opportunity which just came up and I did not took over staff responsibility at that time, which some people would maybe call it, call a setback.
But for me it was important to move aside to do something different to gain experiences in other industries, in a different setting, in a commercial environment. So I was a business development manager and obviously I did that role good enough to be once again promoted to get again responsibility for, for a team. I was promoted to be a sales director for one of the business units in Germany.
So I learned things and I was willing to take over responsibility.
So that was I guess the key thing, not being afraid of doing new things.
And that's something which is I think also important for being a managing director.
There is no training for being a CEO or a managing director, but I think the ability to accept challenges, to accept an environment which is constantly changing, which needs someone who's willing to drive and make decisions, I think that's the key thing that you need together with leadership skills and yeah, hopefully a vision for your company.
A vision, a strategy, something to give purpose to 800 people.
But I don't think that there's really some way of preparation. It's more about the mindset of being able to adapt.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Well, let's go into that mindset. So going back to when you're like, yeah, I was a bit earlier career when I learned how to manage teams. I'm going to ask you two questions about it. The first is what's something that you learned about yourself that you were like pleasantly surprised to learn about yourself as a result of those early experiences where you're like, oh, I didn't know that about myself.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I really like to interact with people and that's something which is maybe not so typical for engineers. So these are technically driven people I figured out. I mean, I'm a technical person. I love all this tech stuff. And yeah, I'm also deep in technical solutions. But I figured out that I'm quite good developing a solution until 80% maturity.
But the hard 20% which are needed to bring it to life, that was for me, it created really headaches.
But on the other side, I was quite good in talking to people.
I was curious enough to also talk to customers to understand their needs.
And that's something I figured out maybe three, four, five years after stepping into my professional career that, okay, this is interesting. It's not only about technical things, bolts and nuts and all that stuff, but really interacting with people, understanding the story behind it. So why do we need a technical solution like this? Does it really serve the purpose?
Does it create value?
So what's the requirements behind it? So all these things which are not so straightforward and which can be different from industry to industry, from customer to customer, and it requires lots of interaction with people, listening to people, understanding their perspective.
And I still enjoy that today.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: All right, so what's something you learned, like kind of in those early days of managing teams, what's something you learned about yourself that you didn't like and you're like. And you had to work on to fix?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: I learned that I need to be.
That you need to be very precise in communication.
That's something which is still within my learning process, which I still need to remind myself, okay, being clear in communicating goals and expectations, being strict on agreed timelines, agreed deliverables and stuff like that.
So it's not only about a vision, it's not only about communication. It's also about being very precise and strict when it comes to setting goals, making communication very clear.
I had to learn that maybe the hard way.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: What was the hard way? What happened?
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I remember a meeting with one of my team members where he told me, well, Thorsten, that's all nice, but yeah, you're talking and talking and I simply don't know where to go. Stop talking.
Give me clear goals and give me clear guidelines. And.
And that's maybe 15 years ago, but that meeting is still in my head because it was so.
That feedback was so painful at that time and at the same time it was so valuable because that's so important when you lead teams.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Totally.
Can I share an example for my career around that?
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Absolutely, I'd love to hear about it.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: So I used to work in supported housing. So I used to be. I was a therapist when I was younger and first I did work with street entrenched youth and at risk youth and gang members. That was my first five years. It was all like youth Addiction, mental health work. It was super cool. Really, really cool. Worked with a small team, like, real front line. My boss was like my buddy. It was like, totally awesome. My boss was like a hardcore kid.
And my second job was in supported housing, so creating housing that's low barrier for people living with addiction and mental health concerns and all that. And it was like a much bigger organization that I'd worked for, worked in before.
And the director of the organization, if you did something, he would say, that's a great piece of work. And when he'd say it, it just felt so, like it's such a great compliment. And of course everyone around him starts saying that's a great piece of work. And then like, everyone around them starts saying, it's a great piece of work. But like the, the entry level for something being called a great piece of work kept lowering, you know, like as, as he went along.
And I, I remember, like, I've got like, versions of this story because, like, it gets even worse than what I'm about to tell you. But one day, someone switched the paper and the photocopy machine in front of me, and someone was like, all right, you got to tell them that was a great piece of work. And I was like, it was my.
It was my first management position and I was terrible. I was like, terrible. I was young. I didn't know what to do, but I was so horrified. And it made me like, really calibrate, like, wow. What I say actually totally, totally matters. And people are going to pay attention to you either in a good way or. Or in a bad way. Right. And it's like, either they're going to be listening to things because listening for things that, that confirm to. To them that you don't know what you're talking about, or you suck or an idiot, or they're going to be listening to you because they believe in you, they're inspired from you. And then there's this kind of like, neutral part that just wants the data. They just want the information. They just want to know what to do. And the precision of communication is like, when I first totally understood it. And I was like, you know, my early 20s, I was like, this is not for me. I don't want to be a manager. And I actually went back to just being a therapist.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah, one. One interesting thing that you just mentioned is one of my biggest learnings.
I tend to underestimate the way people look at me.
So one thing which is different to all other leadership positions within our company is that there's nothing I can say or do, which is not interpreted in one way or another.
And that's also hard for me because I love conversations as we do have now, being very open, getting back and forth for a certain topic.
But within our company I have to be very careful because it's, it's not only Torsten who's talking here, but it's also the, the managing director slash CEO who's talking. And of course, whatever I say is being recognized.
Everything I do, the way I behave is being recognized if I like it or not. But that's something I have to remind myself very often. Okay, be careful what you do. Don't be sarcastic.
I know I like it, but that's not the right environment.
Irony might work, but maybe not.
So that's a hard learning, I have to say.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just talking about this yesterday. I'm gearing up to go to Toronto next week to lead this session. I'm working with about 100 leaders on leading through change. They're part of a quite a large organization, like a global organization, and their section of their organization is going through a lot of change right now. So I'm going to go work with them for a couple hours. And one of the things I was talking to with the sponsor for the session was that when you're leading through change, you're always on stage.
You might be in a one on one conversation, you might be in a team meeting or you might be in front of 1,000 people or sending out an email to a big group of people.
But when you're leading through change, you're always on stage and you have a spotlight on you. Because the level, even if you're, you know, let's say a mid level manager or senior level manager in a time of change, people put a ton of value on the precision of communication. You have to really understand what you're communicating, why you're communicating in a certain way and who you're communicating it to. And it's, it, it's like really serious. Because as you know, if you take it too lightly, you could literally ruin someone's day, ruin someone's week. You could screw up a project, you could cause someone like huge anxiety or you could get, you can empower people to act in certain ways that are uncool.
The precision of communication for leaders just in general is super important. And of course like for your, for the case of managing director or a CEO. But in a time where there's any challenges in a business, you have to always remember you're on stage it's like the most important thing and that being on stage is a real responsibility. And that goes to the idea of like if you're choosing to lead, you're choosing to accept that responsibility.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Right. I want to hit on the, the, the first thing when you learned like, oh, I actually like, like people and I like interacting with people.
What advice do you have? So engineers and I, I like that you brought it up is like engineers aren't always. Now I, I, I know a ton of engineers who, in general I know a ton of engineers. I've worked with many of them through our company. But I also know a lot of engineers who are total people who love people and love interacting.
So this is not a rule, but there are a lot of engineers who are a little bit more in the space where they aren't necessarily, they aren't necessarily client facing or they aren't like looking to go out of the way to engage with people.
So what advice do you have for young careers who are maybe new to the profession or early career or maybe even mid career, what advice do you have to them about communication and relationship building and business?
[00:27:58] Speaker B: I think especially in, in, in our times where we believe everything is digital, we can hide behind our screens, we do everything remote.
Don't forget that it's still a people business.
And it's not so much about the technical solutions, it's not so much about the spec sheets, it's not about the best technical solution. It's about trust in business relations.
It's I guess More than 50% is about trust.
And trust is something which is created between people and not so much between organizations and not on the, on the spec sheet level.
It's about communication and yeah and in the end it's about trust. So people buy from people.
It's not companies buy from companies. Of course in the end they do. But someone is doing the buying decision and that's of course based on data and, and specifications.
But it's so much about trust. And don't underestimate the importance and the value of relationships.
Communication of direct communication.
Video conferences is a great tool. It would be a hell of a work to come over to Vancouver to do this conversation. So great that we have it.
But it's also important to meet people in person at. Yeah, that's, that's sometimes time consuming.
It's not very efficient. You have to travel somewhere.
I've traveled to Asia, to China, to the US just for a one hour meeting.
And of course if you just see it from the efficiency Perspective, then it's a complete nonsense. But if you can create strong relationship that also helps you when you have hard times with your customers, with your suppliers. If everything runs smoothly, you can do everything remote.
But I'm old enough to know that there are also hard times, that there are obstacles in business relationships. And you need this.
You need a strong relationship to your partners.
You can only create them by communicating, by sitting together, sometimes having dinner together, all that stuff, which sounds a bit old school, but I think is still super important.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that, man. And I agree fully. But speaking about buying, you know, said like, you know, people buy from people.
So let's talk about that shift when you. When you left the company to go work into the sales world and, you know, like, learn a new. Basically a new element of industry.
So you. You were in a job that you were doing well and you liked it. So why change?
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Because I was too curious to see what's outside.
As a technician, you very often think inside out.
You look at your computer, you look at your product, you look at your software.
You're very much focused on the inside of your company, and you see the world inside out.
But sometimes you recognize.
Some of my colleagues do, others don't. But there's, of course, the other way around. People see you from the outside, and of course, they have completely different goals.
And what you think is valuable might not be valuable for them.
You're super proud of your product because you designed it, you, you produced it. It's great and shiny, and then you find out people don't see it the same way. And I wanted to learn more about their view to become better as a person. So what can I do to better understand this interaction?
And that was really the driver to step out of this technical position, going into a commercial role, into a sales role, to see how can I really deliver value and how is value defined?
Something which is valuable to person A is not valuable to person B. So that was.
You can call it curiosity.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: I could take a copy of Break down the Walls on Blue and show it to one person. They'll be like, what is this? Used vinyl? What do I care about this? I got to show it to someone else. And they'll be like, I will pay you $10,000 for this.
Right, right, totally. Were you married at the time when you decided to make this change?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yes, I was.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: And did you have any kids?
[00:33:04] Speaker B: I had two kids at that time, and the third one was on its way. So we were very settled here in Salzburg, and the decision was, okay, shall we go to Munich, which is, again, from your perspective, it's nothing. It's 100 miles.
From a European perspective, okay, that's huge.
So, of course we had some discussions.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: So you switched companies, you switched role, and you had to move, right? And you were already a little bit into your career and you were in a job where you liked where you lived, you relatively liked what you did, and you could have stayed in the company and just kept going.
So was there anyone in your life that was like, dude, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe there were a couple of people I did some interviews with people in my.
From. From friends to, to ask them, okay, do you see this as a risk?
Leaving this well established position where, okay, everything goes wrong, I can maybe step up the ladder. One.
Yeah, one. One. One more level and work as an engineer until the, until retirement without any headaches.
And there were some people who said, well, might be a risk, but there was no one who told us, well, don't do it.
So maybe your peer group, your group of friends shares the same mindset as you do. So I had more people in my environment who supported me in this decision and luckily also my wife that was most important.
So she immediately said, well, if you think you want to do this, if you see this as an opportunity, I will support you and I will move together with our kids to that new place.
Because we could have had a setup where I was living in Munich from Monday to Friday and then going back on the weekends.
But she immediately said, no, we have to keep our family together.
That's the basis of our life. That's something which gives us a strong foundation.
And I want you to be able to see your kids in the evening, and I also want our kids to see their father in the evening.
So she, she supported all those steps very much.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Do you mind if I share a story about when I changed careers?
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: So I'd been. I'd gone back to being a therapist after working and supporting housing for a couple years, and I went back into addictions and mental health work.
But I went in to work with adult populations. And it was cool. Like, you know, it was really cool.
But I had this boss who he didn't have at that time. You had to have a master's of counseling psychology or clinical psychology to be a therapist. And when I had initially started working in the field, you didn't have to have that. You just had to have like a psych degree. Anyway, so we had this guy, but he actually didn't have either one of those. He had a master's of divinity and he was this, like, real kooky, kooky guy.
And we had these offices where every single office had an outside window except for, like, the set. There was this one office that was like, in the center of the office. It was like the cave. No outside windows. And if you did something that pissed him off, he would come in on the weekend and move all your stuff out of your wind. Whatever office, like the window office, move it in. Yeah. Oh, it was. It was.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: That's weird.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, it was super weird. The interesting thing is I kind of look back on this guy fondly because he wasn't a terrible guy. He was like. He was this kind of interesting guy who was a former priest and now was running this counseling thing.
And he also was an artist in his spare time, and he would paint and he made everyone put his art in their offices.
And I had just gotten in trouble with him for. At the time, which was actually a good reason, but he had moved me back into this, the center of this cave and his art, like, over my shoulder. And I remember thinking, it's like, dude, I can't. I just can't with this. Like, not every boss I'd ever had had been. Not had been off. Like, I'd had, like, you know, I've had fine bosses or whatever, but I kept having this experience where I'm like, man, leadership is such a weird thing, you know? Like, so why is one person good at leadership and this other person sucks at it? Why is someone who's a great therapist like, a terrible boss? Why someone who's like a really good boss doesn't actually know, like, they're not an expert in what they're leading. They don't actually understand the expertise of the team, but they're a really good boss. I just became, like, real interested in it, started thinking about it, and then just had a by chance meeting with this guy who ran a coaching firm. Like, literally ran into him on the street. And basically on the street, after talking to me for a few minutes, he offered me a job. And I was like, oh, okay. And what really caused me to do it was like, I was like, I just want to understand. Like, I just want to understand what makes a good leader and how do you get there? How do you train someone up for it?
When I told people I was going to leave my career, they were like, you're insane. Like, what are you doing? And they thought I was going to be like a Tony Robbins inspirational speaker or Something like that.
And most of my friends and definitely my parents were like, do not do this, do not go. And I wasn't getting paid much more money.
But I decided to take the leap just because I was totally fascinated with it and I was willing to disrupt my life and disrupt my career because I was having a fine career. It was okay, but it just felt like it was going to be differing versions of just okay when I could go out, take a risk, try something totally new. And I did. And I worked at this other guy's company for a number of years before starting my own. And it was probably one of the most important moments of my life to make that leap and to not listen to people who are saying it. Although I did have. People are like, hell yeah, go do that, man. Take a. Take a risk. And I'm just such a fan of people disrupting things, taking a risk, trying something new. And you might fall totally flat in your face and be like, oh, I regret this, but yeah, at least you know now, versus just sitting in a job where there's this untapped potential that you're never going to try.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I think that's something which I.
One or two years ago, a former colleague of mine asked me, hey, I really like your career path.
Can you give me an advice?
What can I do?
I somehow feel stuck in my position.
What can I do to be promoted?
Can I do something to be visible or more visible within my company? And I don't know if I'm really good advisor, but I think one thing which is crucial is if you want to do, if you want to drive your career, if you want to grow as a person, which enables you to grow as a leader, which then also enables you to boost your career, you have to accept risks.
And that's sometimes, of course, painful. Maybe you have to move to another place, you have to leave your hometown.
You have to ask your family, your kids, your wife, okay, can we leave all your friends here and can we move to a different place? I don't know if it's going to be good or not, because of course you can't promise them.
You simply don't know it.
You have to take risks.
So if you just lean back and say, well, I like to do a career, but it has to be within my company, within my setting, okay, might happen.
But. But I think the ability to accept risks, it's something which enables personal growth and which can really enable a boost for your career.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Even going back to playing shows, because as we talked about before we started, you Grew up playing in bands as well.
Thinking about punk, if you go on tour, you. You basically just have the promise of some person that you've probably never met who's like three to five hours away that there's going to be a show there and you're taking a leap of faith that there's actually a show there. There's actually going to be people there, you're actually going to get paid, there's actually going to be a place for you to stay. It is completely based on, yeah, I'll take a leap of faith and it's like a great adventure and it's only one night, but if you're going on like a two week tour, that's like ten leaps of faith that you're making while getting further and further and further away from your, from your home. And the bigger tour, the bigger the investment of time. It's really all about leaps of faith and adjusting and learning when things go sideways as they inevitably do. And I'll just say like learning that from, from punk and hardcore, it just makes. I take risk super seriously. But I also have a real good eye for risk and I think anyone who grew up in punk and hardcore has a real good eye for risk and also has a great self assessment of how good they are with managing when things go sideways. And for me, when, when I get somewhat similar to, to your colleague who'd asked you about, you know, career advice, I have people ask me, people who you and I would consider peers, like from just like around our age group. Whenever they ask me about taking risk, I'm always like, hell yeah, like 100% take risk. But make sure you actually know how to eyeball risk and you actually understand what you do when things go sideways.
Because I know that from being stuck in a van for eight hours and the tire blowing out. And you're not just going to miss the show, you're going to miss the next three shows because you're in the middle of nowhere and you have to like live with these five people for the next three days on like no money and make it work and then get to a show that's like now 15 hours away. I know how to handle all that because I've been there. And eyeballing risk and knowing how you handle it when things go sideways, that sets you up for crazy things.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I think this is also important for my current position because with each and every decision that I make for the company, there's always risk included.
So it's not about avoiding risks, about managing risk, okay? Being aware of what can happen, thinking in two, three different scenarios, but then also accepting risk, being able to have proper countermeasures once you figure out okay, that was a bad idea or it does not work like we planned.
But avoiding risk will lead to stagnation and we won't have any development within the company.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: I thousand percent agree.
Stay tuned for part two of this interview. Next week on One Step Beyond Beyond.
