Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So this is part two of our interview. If you missed the first half, feel free to go back and have a listen. Let's go back to when you took that risk. So you went, you took a job that didn't have any people manager responsibilities and you did a good enough job that you got promoted. And how long were you at this other company for?
[00:00:17] Speaker B: For five years.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Okay, so what in the end led to you coming back to where you are now?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Yeah, once again, I think the basis is really that I did a good job which was also visible outside.
Of course I never.
We talked about relationships before. So I've kept all my relationship with my former company.
I visited them from time to time, I talked to them. So I was bit informed about what's going on.
And obviously people saw what I was doing in that other company. So they followed my career, they followed my success there.
And they had to manage a generational change some years ago. So the third generation of the owner family was active in that company.
They decided that they want to step back.
The fourth generation was too young at that time, still within their university career. So they needed someone to bridge that gap.
And of course they somehow followed what I was doing outside that company.
And yeah, the path crossed again and we talked to each other and said, well, would you be interested to rejoining our company, helping us in the general management?
I knew them, they knew me.
I think that was a good starting position at that time.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: So in the company that you'd been at for five years, what level were you at before you transitioned back?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I was reporting to the general management in Germany that once again was an Austrian company, 10,000 people company, quite a complex setup with affiliated companies all over the world. 3,000 people working in Germany, different business units, quite a complex structure, hard to follow from the outside what my position really was because you had different countries, different ways the management was organized, different business units, different fields of responsibility. But yeah, I was head of marketing and sales. That's at least title, which sounds good.
But I really learned to manage remote teams to.
To make people support my vision and also people outside my direct report structure, people from the headquarters in another country convince them to put energy into my project instead of any other project. So that the Chinese colleagues were also knocking on their doors. Well, we need your support. And I somehow managed to make make them believe that my projects in Germany are the most important ones.
Once again, communication, relationship building. I've spent quite some hours in the car driving from Munich to Austria to the headquarters to build up a strong Personal relationship which then helped me. I don't know if that was all visible from the outside, but at least a part of it was obviously visible. So we entered in talks about rejoining my former company in Tambitz, where I am now.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: What position were you rejoining? The position that you're in now? Or were there steps before that?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah, there was one step in between. I was my first position was called Chief Strategy Officer.
So the role was really to define a strategy how to hand over responsibility from the third generation to someone like me is not part of the family.
Which causes quite some brought up quite some questions. So if you're not part of the owner family, how's the decision making process organized?
Because it's not my money.
If you're owner and CEO at the same time, it's very easy to do decisions.
If you are a CEO but not the owner, you have different stakeholders. So we had to organize the way how we do decisions, how we involve the owner families, how we want to bring in the next generation. We had a changing market at that time.
So that was 2019.
So the automotive industry already saw this change, disruptive change. And our industry, shipping, energy started to change. So we, we knew we had to realign our position, our portfolio, our offering.
So that was all part of this first year as chief Strategy officer. And then I stepped up to the general management and organizing this handover the of the management responsibilities from the third generation to myself and to the fourth generation.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: So your first real deal professional job was like a technical job and you were an individual contributor. Then you went up to leading technical teams, but then you went out as an individual contributor in a different company, in a different city as more of a sales role. Then you moved up to leading sales teams and then leading sales and marketing. Then you go back or then you go back to your old company, but you go into a chief strategy officer role where not only do you have to manage diversifying your portfolio and figuring out how to like adjust to a changing market, a changing global market, you also have to handle the intricacies of preparing a business to have the first time a non family member leading and be create like a gap situation of leadership between a third and a fourth generation in a fount in what had traditionally been a founder led company.
So how did you know how to do any of that stuff? Because it seems like your first two roles did not at all set you up to do that.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it laid the foundation for, or let's put it the other way around, I did not have to learn the technical background stuff. So I knew exactly what the industry is about. I know exactly about the product portfolio, about the strengthening and the weaknesses of that company.
I know about market dynamics, let's put it that way, so I could really focus on, okay, what's happening in the market, what's, what are the, the global trends, what are these mega trends that we are all talking about? Decarbonization, digitalization, stuff like that. What does this mean for our industry? Where do we fit into that?
And then also thinking about, okay, how can we. Of course I also knew how decision making process was established in this company with a CEO who was also the owner of the company. And then, okay, it was really clear that cannot.
I mean, we need to find different ways because I'm not the owner.
So I could focus on these two aspects and my technical background and my commercial background were really the base on what I could then develop the strategy on. But if you ask me, were you prepared? No, not at all.
That was something new. You don't get any.
Maybe you get an idea if you do some international management studies, which I never had.
So I was not prepared.
And in addition.
Yeah, go ahead.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: No, you please, please tell me.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it was 2019 when I started with this company, with this role and with this task. And by the end of 2019 we had the COVID crisis starting to, to roll over us and flipping the world upside down and making all our supply chains collapse and all that stuff.
And again, was I prepared for handling the effects of a global pandemic? Yeah, of course not.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: I love what you said was like, so yeah, my background set me up, but was I ready? No, I wasn't at all ready.
So when you took on that role like outside of COVID what was the most challenging thing to kind of get your arms around or to learn how to manage or learn how to take on?
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah, the most challenging part was maybe finding the right level of push the organization to, to make change happen.
And at the same time accepting that there are different stakeholders like the owners, like the former management who did their job for 30 years and they did it in an excellent way because the company was successful. But of course it was clear we need to do things differently. We need to implement change in all different aspects, but to find the right balance in a family owned company.
So driving change, creating new momentum, creating a new vision, a new strategy for the whole company, but at the same time not forgetting about the roots, about the family structure, about different stakeholders and really have this balanced, that was, that was Challenging and it still is.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: So tell us about the company today. Like, you know, for, for people who aren't familiar with the company. Well, what is it you do? Like what kind of, like what kind of products do you offer? And also like, tell us about the architecture of, of your main building because Monica was like really taken by.
What can you share with us about the company?
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, the company is a family owned business. As I mentioned before. It's roughly 800 people working in Austria, another 150 around the globe in the U.S. in China, Japan and Korea. So these are also our main markets.
We are designing, developing and producing powertrain components for large applications. Everything which you won't find on the road.
So for example, ships and wind energy plants, or wind power plants, stationary power plants, gas engines, powering data centers and stuff like that.
We provide all kinds of components between engine and gearbox, between engine and propellers, within gearboxes, in large offshore wind turbines and stuff like that.
Everything which is heavy, everything which has high power, everything which is not running on the streets, that's our business. So it's a very specific market. It's a global market.
So customers in the U.S. customers in China, in Korea, of course in Europe.
But really more than 50% of our business is happening outside Europe.
And an Austrian company developing parts for the global marine market is also a bit special. So we don't have any direct access to the sea.
So that's just how the.
It's just a coincidence about how that company was founded. But yes, marine is an important part of the company, which means, yeah, we have to be in Korea and China, the places where shipbuilding takes place, for example.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: So what are some of the changes that have happened in the industry or in the global market that have caused you to have to innovate or shift your tactics or strategy?
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, we've seen it or you see it in every day.
What happened to the automotive industry so that we go from traditional ice based powertrains to electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles. So that's a whole new technology. And it's not only a new technology, it's also a new supply chain.
There are also new market or new players in the market. So traditionally we had this big automotive countries like Germany, like the us, like France.
And now we see that the China is getting stronger and stronger in that position. So we have all kinds of new players in that field. And we see a similar thing happening in the industry for marine drives, for example, where also part of the fleet is being electrified.
So these are completely new powertrain concepts, electrical or electric Driven vessels are operating in Norway, for example, for short distance travel and other places around the world. So that's a whole new technology which we are not into it.
We have to think, okay, we are, what kind of expertise do we need to build up who are potentially new customers? Which are the bigger trends?
How does digitalization play a role? So we are a manufacturing company.
We produce parts made out of steel, out of carbon fibers. We have a huge facility which produces steel components.
Yeah. And if we now talk about digitalized ecosystems, we have to find a way how to integrate our expertise into the digital world, how to create value for a digital value chain.
And that's quite a challenge for a company of our size going from pure hardware focused company to a digital company to a data based company.
Because in the end you will find better data scientists at Google and Microsoft and whatever.
So it's again not the question to be the best everywhere, but how do we integrate our expertise in the digital world?
Can we create partnerships to create value?
That's something which is really new to us.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: And how's it going.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: From the technology point of view? Very good. We are really at the forefront of this development.
It's really hard to find a commercial business case for digital solutions. That's something the whole industry has to learn.
I would not say that we are struggling with this, but we have to carefully decide where to go.
Which are partnerships which can really create value for the end customer.
And they are not used to pay for digital offerings. I mean we all do with our cell phone. So we all pay for kind of apps. That's normal in the B2C world and the B2B business.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: You have to convince people to pay for data services. That's simply not state of the art.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: I'm always interested when people are telling me about their business challenges and how they're adapting them. Because it's like my job, our company, it's all the people company, it's coaching people and then it's teaching people skills like how to write an email or how to have a tough conversation.
And what I've been seeing in, you know, past number of years is like you've got a, it used to be like you have a coach over here who's got like an individual practice and maybe they partner with like one or two people and they've got this little practice, they work locally and maybe they have some like they've got a little bit of reach.
And now I've been saying like these big, big organizations who've got like access to Hundreds, if not thousands of coaches globally.
And they basically, they become like a sale, a sales point. It's like, oh, like, where. Where are you? Where's your company doing work? Where do you need coaching? Oh, you need coaching in Calgary, Alberta, but you also need coaching in Egypt. No problem. We got you. You're going to have like one person who's your sale of contact. And we're going to. We're going to use all these coaches. And so our challenge has been like, well, how do you. Because we're a little bit of an anomaly because the company started with just me, but it scaled up to about 30 people. And we work globally and where we hit challenges is like, well, this company's got like 800 coaches worldwide and you have 13, and they're all based in the US and Canada. Why would we work with you? And that's where that relationship side comes in.
And the thing that I always encourage when I'm talking with my team, it's like, I don't care. We'll go up against a company that has like 20,000 people worldwide. That's totally fine. As long as we're really, really good at what we do, we're super easy to work with and we have good relationships, it's fine. I'll go up against anybody. And sometimes we win and other times we lose.
Just recently, I was in a business conversation with someone. They were like, oh, no, no, We've. We've got two service providers. They're global. They have like hundreds and hundreds of coaches. I was like, cool. But I actually know your business. Like, I know your business unit leaders. I worked with them. I'm from the town where you're headquartered in, like, I actually used to skateboard at that building. And I just started giving them, like, my background, my involvement in the business. They're like, oh, you actually, like, know all these people? I'm like, yeah, you're dealing with someone based in London, uk, who, who is like your point of sale, who's like, going to help you structure this stuff. I'm the next province over. And we're not going to. We're not going to take all the business from them, but we certainly. You can parachute us in. Because of my depth of knowledge in the business, I know how I can help you. And they're like, sold. Okay. So now they have three service providers, they have two global ones, and they have us. And it's all about, are you good at what you do, are you easy to work with and you have good relationships, and that's how we've built our brand. And it's.
I don't know, I think you got to also just be like, yeah, I love what you said. You're maybe not the biggest or the number one, but you are damn good at what you do. And of course there's space for you in the conversation then, yeah, I like.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: What you just said about we know your business and that's the value we bring in. Of course, you will easily find company who's better in data handling. Of course, we also have our own cloud services, we have our own AI models. But yeah, you will easily find someone who has the better cloud infrastructure and stuff like that. But do they know the business of our end customers? No. We are within this industry since 50 years, so we know exactly their pains, their daily grind, what they are dealing when operating ships, when operating offshore wind power plants.
So, so we know about their business and that's the expertise we bring in. And okay, if, if something is missing on the technical side, okay, we, we choose partners to help us with this, but it's more about understanding business.
Yeah, and, and as you said, sometimes we win and sometimes we don't win. That's just part of the deal. But I think that's our expertise.
Knowing and being part of that business, knowing all the dynamics within that industry since decades.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Are you a naturally competitive person or have you become competitive over time?
[00:21:41] Speaker B: What do you mean by that?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Well, you know, if you're a business leader, you clearly like to win. You like things to grow, you're focused on that. Was that natural to you? Like, did you grow up, like, kind of being interested in competing or is it something that came to you over time?
[00:21:58] Speaker B: No, I like to win always with my kids, of course they are allowed to win, but. Yeah, but basically always. And that's in private life. That's sometimes a bit of an obstacle.
If I'm stepping into some new kind of sports.
For me, it's impossible to, yeah, just do it just because of the fun.
It, it doesn't necessarily be a competition, but I have. Have to reach a certain level of professionalism in that sport to be, to feel, to feel happy about it.
For me, it's really impossible to just do something twice a year.
So if I do a sport, I have to focus on that. I was a runner many years ago.
I was running marathons and stuff like that because I took it quite serious.
I stepped to being more a cyclist a couple of years ago and I had to skip the running part because you can either do one thing Good or two things.
But yeah, not that good. So I decided, okay, better to do one thing very good.
If I would switch my camera to the left, to the right, you would see my indoor training equipment, which is close to my computer here where I do indoor training when the weather is not good. So I have to be a bit of competitive also in private stuff, like sports.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: I used to labor under this delusion that I was not competitive.
And this friend of mine was like, that's the craziest thing you've ever said. You're the most competitive person. I'm like, oh, but I'm not, like, because I would always equate being competitive with being like, know, like crappy, like total, like weird alpha male. Like that kind of energy, you know, And. But I always, like, I always, if we were playing a show, I always wanted to crush the band that either came before us or came or came after us. Not because I didn't like them. It's like, hey, man, my job is to make it very hard to go on after us or to make the band who goes before us, they have to put on their best possible show or we're going to blow them off the stage.
And so this buddy of mine was always like, dude, you're insane. Like your most competitive person. And one day it hit me, it's like, you know what? I. I'm conflating like being competitive with being like just like a bad person or like one of those like kind of cringe, cringy, like alpha type people. It's not that at all. I love doing good. Like, I really love doing good. But for me, most of it is competition with myself. Like I want my results to get better and better and better. Like I want to be, you know, I used to be really dedicated runner for many years. Like, my running was good and then I went to triathlons. I knew I was never going to be in the, like on the podium in a triathlon, but I always just wanted to do better and better and better. I cycled for a long time, all that kind of stuff. None of it was about being in the top percentile, but it was always about like, am I doing every single thing to be as good at this as I possibly can be at this time? When it translates into business, it's not about taking business from other people. Like, I don't, of course I want our company to grow for sure, for sure. And do. Like, I certainly am a big believer in our services, but I always want to be like the absolute best company we could be at our size and like, innovative solutions. What we do is good. Reputationally, we're strong. We are doing really, really cool stuff in our space.
And I got to tell you, I've like, leaned into it really, really hard where actually, like, my, my wife's always laughing because, like, we play a lot of Mario kart with our 7 year old and we talk about her with like the philosophy of competition with her a lot. And she's like, oh, dad, I can't believe you shot mom with that red shell. I'm like, well, of course I love mom, but I want, I'm going to win this race. Like, you know, we have that and I think it's one of the coolest things to kind of like talk about competition from a healthy way. Just from. About bringing out your best.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's not if you, if you lose in a soccer match. My son is dedicated soccer player.
Okay, that's, that's not bad. I mean, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That's just part of the deal. And, but I know that he's super frustrated if he has the feeling, okay, we, we could have done better.
We could have done much better. And that's also part of my understanding within the company.
Always strive to be really the best in what you do.
And if the business constellation sometimes leads to you not winning a project because others have, in this specific case, a better offering, okay, that's just part of the job.
But I really want our company to do what we do. The best possible way to have the best offering, best customer journey, best customer experience all over the lifetime of our product.
That's really my ambition.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, man. We're coming to the close of the interview, so we're going to go into the crucial three. I'm going to ask you three questions that are going to scale up in difficulty. But before we get to it, is there anything you want to shout out? Is there anything that you, you want to ask me? Anything you want to bring into the conversation?
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Well, first of all, thanks a lot for quite some interesting insights. I've, I've listened to a couple of your episodes and some of them were more interesting than the others, depending on which guest you had.
But it's great to see how diverse your guests are from different areas, from different businesses.
Great mixture of personal stuff and business related stuff. And there's one specific thing that maybe you can repeat it for me.
You have this Ask Aram episodes and you reflected about burnout and you made an example about a chair with four legs, which I find super, super valuable when I reflect on my own health, how I feel in my role in my everyday job.
If I get it correctly, it was about sports, it was about social lizing, social relationships, it was about sleep.
Super important. And the fourth one, what was it?
[00:29:17] Speaker A: It's diet.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Diet, exactly.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Sleep, social. The legs of the chair.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Right.
I found this super helpful because I witnessed myself, okay, if one of those four things is maybe not missing but getting out of control in one way or another, I feel really bad.
And once I get this balanced again, my whole life is much more settled, I'm more energetic, I'm more stable. So that was super helpful.
Thank you very much for this great part of psychology background, whatever that comes from. But for me that was super helpful.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Thanks man. And I'm just gonna, I'll just say it again for the audience who might not have seen one of those.
So when we think about burnout, there's what I call the four P's, it's patterns. That's the patterns of how you take care of yourself. There's performance, performance, how you're actually doing your job and then there's personality. And when your patterns of self care start to go. So it's the legs of the chair. So it's going to be diet, exercise, sleep and social. When more than two of those legs go out, then you're in what's called minor burnout.
Then if you go to moderate burnout, that's where your performance starts getting impacted. And a performance of performance, performance can be showing up through avoidance, avoiding parts of your job. And very often this shows up in like things that are a little bit laborious, like doing email or doing reports or things like that.
But not only that, but people become avoidant or they become hyper vigilant. And hyper vigilance is you're doing tons of work, you're pushing it out, as much work as usual, if not more. And you're having a hard time saying no or delegating. But it's the quality of the work starts going down and someone can become both hyper vigilant and avoidant. So they actually have both behaviors. And these are like anxiety and depression responses.
And then if you. And so that's moderate burnout. And then if you get to severe burnout, that's where people's personalities start to change. And it doesn't mean they change for long term, but just the person that we know isn't showing up fully in the space. And that could mean people become much more withdrawn, they Seem absent minded, or they could seem a bit manic. They could start having pressure and speech, any of those things.
Burnout's like super normal. You know, mild burnout is like ultra common. Most people experience it multiple times in a year. So that's like what you're saying. It's like the legs of the chair start getting a little bit damaged and then if you just adjust it and you go refocus on it, you should be fine and that burnout will go away. But most people experience mild burnout a couple times a year, if not more. Some people experience it like every quarter, as I am right now. I'm getting mildly burnt out every single quarter, quarter because we're going so hard this year.
Moderate burnout, though, is something most people experience relatively often in their career. But it's usually around something like you're pushing for a promotion or you just got a promotion or you're taking on some big thing in your career or a big project. It's totally normal to get moderately burnt out during that time or just start hovering around that. Severe burnout used to be very, very rare. And it's like a mental health event. And you'd only see, see or hear something like that every couple of years. But as a result of COVID and during COVID but also in the resulting time since then, it's become much, much, much more common. And that's part of why mental health is such a bigger part of the conversation. But it all goes back to the legs of the chair and managing those as diligently as you can. Because companies only have so much they can do about creating good work scenarios. So you can only have so many programs and care programs and work structure.
If you think of two hands shaking, that's the company side of the handshaking, which is like, hey, we're committing to making sure we have a good workplace culture. We have leaders who are trained up well. We're thoughtful of how much we're asking of people. We have structures around our benefits and our HR and our time off. That's the company's side of the handshake. The employee's side of the handshake is, I'm going to do everything within my power to take care of myself based on my capabilities and my knowledge and all of that. And being able to work in that partnership. A company and the employees requires that both hands are extended and they're in their shaking. And so this being around the legs of the chair is super important for people to learn about but also activate in Their personal lives.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: That's a super nice advice for all company leaders out there.
Create a setup which enables mental health for your leaders also, especially for the top management.
So there's nothing more I can add.
That's really strong advice to everyone outside. If you create an environment also for yourself where you think it's important to work 50, 60 hours per week, something is going terribly wrong.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: 100%.
And there are times where people have to do that, but if that's the.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Norm, sure, there are weeks where you have to do it, but please don't do it 52 weeks a year.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: 100%. Oh, there's something we forgot to get to. Before we get to the crucial three, tell us about the architecture of your building. Because my wife was like really taken. She's really into it. And then also like the lighting around the building as well. What can you share about that?
[00:35:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that has always been, for many years now, company philosophy to create or to combine arts and architecture. Or maybe architecture is a part of art.
With our working environment, we all have worked in typical office buildings which are visually not inspiring at all.
Of course you can have great performance, you can have great employees in a shitty building.
But if you create something which is visually interesting, inspiring also supports your high quality approach.
I think this goes very much hand in hand with creating a company culture, a certain mindset, being aware of what is important. I mean, we spend 40 hours, maybe more in the company.
First of all, I want to have fun.
And then second, I also enjoy working in an environment which is also nice because I spend there sometimes more time in the company than at home. So why should I sit in a crappy building?
Of course, thanks a lot to the owners who, who made this possible.
But we, we support this vision and I think for the employees, it's.
It creates some kind of added value.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: I love it, man. All right, let's go into the crucial three. So again, we're going to scale up in difficulty.
The first one. So I know you, you don't have like, you know, formal management training, but everyone is influenced by someone. So for example, if you listen to like a hardcore band, they're. They're influenced by someone. Like they drew their sound from someone. And it's probably like a singer or a drummer or a bunch of different singers or drummers. So if you think about your leadership style, who are you the most influenced by? Like, who specifically? And they don't have to be like famous people, but like, who are the two or three people that, you know, you drew your Style from or you learned a lot from or who influenced you as a leader specifically?
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Actually, I made.
End of last year, I made a list of people who inspired me along the way.
It was during summer holidays I was reflecting about my leadership role, about what is missing, where I want to improve.
Who were the people who inspired me. And there have been couple of people along the way in different companies who were inspiring one of them because of the pure energy that he was able to communicate and to be a really role model to see. Well, he's fully supporting the vision that he has. He's supporting the change he wants to drive. He was very energetic and I would love to have half of his energy because then I would be super powerful and others were.
There was one colleague of mine who did an excellent job in selecting right team members.
I remember a situation where he had.
He had a team, he lost two team members. The workload was extremely high.
My expectation was that he would bring in a new team member more or less immediately just because the workload was so high. But he decided to put pressure on the team, to accept pressure on the team because he did not want to bring in just any person but the right person.
And that was very much.
That was very inspiring to see this because I saw the, the result afterwards. Once he had picked the right person, the team performance just went.
Yeah, it just got sky high. He had to accept a period of pain, struggling with too high workload, but he was convinced that he needed to bring in the right people.
That was in terms of team building, how to set up a team structure. That was super inspiring to me.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: All right, well, talking about inspiring, I want you to kind of project yourself to the end of your career, whatever that looks like, whatever timeline that is. So when you at, at some point say, I'm going to, I'm going to retire and whatever in retirement looks like for you, what would you like your legacy to be as a leader?
[00:40:28] Speaker B: You know, we have a. We are in transition phase where we.
Where we really want to encourage people to take more responsibility to run the company more or less on their own, to organize themselves in a way that they understand the company goals, that they engage with each other.
It starts to grow, which is super nice to see.
There's a book which is, I guess only available in German, but it ends with the statement, well, when I can step out of a company as a CEO and if I'm not missed because the company is able to run by itself, then I did a good job.
That's roughly the translation I Strongly believe you will still need a CEO.
But maybe you get the idea behind it.
We have 800 people working for Geistlinger in Austria. If we really can leverage 800 highly skilled people to work independently, collaboratively in the way that they find solutions by themselves, that would be really a great success for me.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Heck yeah. That's ambitious. I like that. All right, the last question. It might be the hardest question of the three for you.
So this might differ from the average person.
What are the three best hardcore records that have ever come out of Europe?
All time.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: That's, in fact the hardest question.
All right, number one, Belgium band, Liar Falls of Torment.
Just because the way they changed the whole music scene, it was.
I was blown away. It took me, I guess, two years to understand their approach.
The first two years I was totally confused.
But an awesome record.
Second one, maybe one of the NSTAND records from Finland.
Super nice guys. We toured with them a couple of times.
We visited them in Finland.
I share many good memories with those guys.
So that would be maybe second best album. Third one, Refused or International Noise Conspiracy? Maybe just because the way also they influenced the European music scene.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Well, global music scene.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Yeah, most probably global. Yeah.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: But which one Refused? Our International Noise Conspiracy. You got to pick one, man.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Okay. International Nose Conspiracy.
Wow.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Outsider Baseball. Holy moly. Good for you.
Good for you. Dude. This was a great conversation, man. I really enjoyed it. Anything you want to say? Anything you want to add in as we're closing off?
[00:44:27] Speaker B: I don't think so.
You've touched many valuable points. It was so much fun talking to you. I could talk with you about music. Maybe another two hours.
Maybe we can have that conversation face to face sometime in the future. We'd love to do that.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Heck, yeah.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: And by the way, you can skip this. The third band was Cheap Thrills.
My third band.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Okay, good. I feel like. When was cheap thrills?
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Early 2000s, 2004, 2005.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: I feel like I knew about this band because I started going to Europe around that time. I feel like I heard the name.
I was wondering if it was a Killing Time reference.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: So the first album was very much into New York stuff. And.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Would you play in the band?
[00:45:22] Speaker B: What? I played?
[00:45:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Bass.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Bass. Okay. Okay. Mike just shook his head like that made sense to him. What?
All right, man, listen. We're closing off. Monica and I are in Europe often for both work and just to hang out. So I will hit you up and we'll try and cross paths.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: That's great. Feel free to come to Salzburg whenever you like, love to show you guys around.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we'd love that, man.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Don't miss that opportunity.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Thanks so much, man. I'll talk to you soon. And everyone, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. We will see you next time. Bye. Bye.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: One step, one step.
One step beyond.
