Can a brand make all the difference? Yes, it can! Robert Ermich is a passionate and successful serial founder and investor. He masterminded DeinHandy, a portal for mobile phones, which he scaled to market leadership and a successful exit. To a large extent, the success of DeinHandy was built on the brand he built there which received two „German Brand Awards “. Next has been OnTruck, an agency with a climate pledge which offers creative advertising on – you guessed it – heavy goods vehicles. As co-founder and investor @ Leevi Health, a health tech start-up with unicorn potential, he now focuses on building a brand that parents of new-borns can trust. Tune into this episode to find out more about 🚀 Robert’s version of how Rocket Internet sparked the Berlin Start-Up scene 🧑🏼‍🍳 The secret sauce to building a great team 🚛 How to change a bad image through good communications If you like this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends and give us a review on Apple Podcasts.  If you have questions, or if you are a CEO with communications advice and would like to be featured on the podcast, please connect with Oliver Aust and Lena Carlson on LinkedIn. Thank you for listening!

Traditional recruitment is over while companies experience The Great Resignation. In this special episode Oliver talks with Konstanty Sliwowski, founder and CEO of Caissa Recruitment about the rising role of employer branding to attract and retain top talent. Tune into this episode to find out 📺 How talent perceives potential employers 🔝 How to update your company’s brand to attract the right people 🔥 What recruiting has to do with energy If you find the episode helpful, please share it with your colleagues and friends and give us a review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions, or if you are a CEO with communications advice and would like to be featured on the podcast, please connect with Oliver Aust and Lena Carlson on LinkedIn. Thank you for listening!

In today’s episode we speak to Jonathan Romley, co-founder and CEO at Lundi. Lundi helps companies scale their global hiring. After running companies on three continents Jonathan realised that we need to rethink labour mobility and enable employers to have access to the world's top talent through one platform. Whether you’re in need of an engineer in New York or looking to hire a fluent Mandarin speaker in South Africa, the network of thousands of pre-screened recruiters helps you find the perfect match. Especially now in the post covid world. Tune in to find out: 🗣 How to communicate to attract top talent ☑ How to hire globally, regardless of the size of your company 🔝 The do’s and don’ts of descriptions 📺 How recruiting is representing your brand around the planet You have been asking us, how you can support the podcast. Thank you! If you find the episode helpful, please share it with your colleagues and friends and give us a review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions, or if you are a CEO with communications advice and would like to be featured on the podcast, please connect with Oliver Aust and Lena Carlson on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening!

Double Dynamite: Today’s episode features two entrepreneurs solving the biggest pain points for #freelancers: finding customers and managing finances. And to do this successfully, sustainably and on scale, both have built highly engaged communities. We talk to Vincent Huguet, Co-CEO and founder of Malt, an Airbnb-style marketplace that connects employers and freelancers across Europe, and Christopher Plantener, serial #entrepreneur, currently founder and CEO of Kontist, a banking solution for #freelancers that makes taxes easy. Eight companies ago, Christopher wrote his master thesis on communities and since then knows that to build a scalable community you need more than Google Adwords: you need time and patience. Vincent had the Airbnb founder team crashing on his couch back in 2009 when they were in Paris to meet with their community. This spirit has inspired @Malt from the get-go. Tune into this episode to get: 🪜 Key steps and all the lessons about how to build community to scale your business 👩🏽‍💻 Insights into the freelance sector 🎤 Tips to create an effective yet fun working environment and to fire up your team spirits (spoiler: involves Karaoke and danish drinking songs) Connect with Oliver Aust and Lena Carlson on LinkedIn. If you like the episode, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts and share with people, who might profit from the insights. Thank you!

How can I inspire as a CEO? How do I communicate in an age-diverse company environment? And do female CEOs face other communication challenges than their male colleagues? Irina Crisan, founder and president of the WHU Women in Business Club invited Oliver to answer these and more questions in depth in today’s special episode: the recording of a #StartTheConversation event from the Women in Business community at the WHU - the Otto Beisheim School of Management. After a brief introduction into the backstory of how the podcast Speak like a CEO came about and why communications is a hard skill, Oliver talks about the nine steps needed to successfully communicate as a leader. Then Oliver answers the student’s questions: As a junior, how can I effectively speak to a CEO? (00:30) How can a CEO inspire the team to execute the company’s vision and mission? (00:32) How can I ensure successful communication while maintaining my authenticity? (00:36) How can I effectively communicate as a female leader? (00:40) How can we communicate our personal values, even if they do not align with the company value priorities? (00:44) How do you get the CEO to see the long-term win of innovative ideas? (00:48) What tips does Oliver have to deal with the German failure culture? (00:51) How much time should one invest to become a great speaker and where do you start? (00:56) How do you communicate with coworkers that have a great age difference? (01:00) How to communicate as an introvert CEO? (01:02) When you enter a company to build a new department, how do you communicate with the other heads of department? (01:05) How can you establish a reputation at the beginning of your career to set the stage to becoming a leader? (01:06) How do you pitch your own topics as a junior to become visible at the leadership level? (01:08) How do decide, who to send in front of the camera: is it always the person who has the best communication skills? (01:11) Watch the whole event on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d48UtkLHOfQ You can download the e-book - From Business to Thought-Leader in Nine Steps - mentioned in the episode here: https://www.oliveraust.com/from-business-leader-to-thought-leader If you have feedback or questions, get in touch with Oliver: oliver@oliveraust.com

Amy Wilkinson is a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a bestselling author, keynote speaker and former White House advisor. She is also the founder and CEO of global innovation company Ingenuity and Chair of the Board of Grover. We reached out to Amy because we are truly enjoyed her excellent and extremely well-researched book “The Creators Code“ for which she interviewed 200 high-growth entrepreneurs from Elon Musk to the founders of Airbnb, PayPal and LinkedIn. In our interview, she explains which 6 essential skills extraordinary entrepreneurs have and how they apply it to communications. Tune into this insightful episode to: 💪🏽 Get actionable ways to rock communications like an entrepreneur 🦻🏼 Hear what separates high-growth start-ups from corporates in communication 🏆 And why mistakes, if communicated in the right way, do not set you up for failure. If you like the episode, please leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts and share with people, who might profit from the insights. Thank you!

Robert Klanten, founder and CEO of gestalten, has been a key figure in the global creative industry for more than a quarter of a century. gestalten collaborates with the biggest names in the creative world and is known and loved by millions around the globe for its iconic illustrated books. In this wide-ranging episode Robert talks about books, the changing nature of creativity and his secrets to building a globally recognised and respected brand. Tune in to find out more about: 📚 What makes books such valuable medium of communication even though the end of print has been proclaimed many times 🎤 How to be a digital force with over 200k followers on social media 🇺🇸 The key to breaking into the US market as a German company 🎨 How the world is shaping creativity and creativity is shaping the world All of this and more on Speak Like A CEO, and if you enjoy, please leave a 5-star review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

For top management working with a coach is the norm. The platform Sharpist makes this possible for others in an organisation, so that the entire corporate culture can change for the better. The Berlin-based startup uses artificial intelligence to match managers with coaches. Founder Hendrik Schriefer came up with the idea while working on his master's thesis at Oxford University. The psychology graduate (and later HR manager at Rocket Internet) investigated how personal contact helps with learning progress. He found that people without a coach performed worse than those with human help. Now he helps knowledge workers and organisations improve their performance and well-being at scale. In this episode we talk about: 🥎 How soft skills are finding more recognition in leadership. 📣 Get insights into what Sharpist is doing to spread the word globally 💸 And his secret on how to get investors on your page. All of this and more on Speak Like A CEO, and if you enjoy, please leave a 5-star review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Her company is set to become Germany's first female-led unicorn. Eva-Maria Meijnen is the co-CEO of PlusDental. The Berlin-based start-up has digitalised the entire dental correction process: from making the appointment to planning the treatment, from follow-up checks to billing, each step is carried out on their self-developed digital dentistry platform. The goal is to make tooth straightening available to everyone at a reasonable price. PlusDental already has a presence in eight European countries and will now accelerate growth even further. Investors have recently invested millions, including World Cup football star Mario Götze. So Eva is well on her way to leading a billion euro company. In this episode, she talks all about her communication style. Tune in to find out more about: 🎳 How communication works in a team of three CEOs. 🎨 How to prepare for new market entries from a communications perspective. 🎤 How the consumer research the message-market-fit differs from country to country 🎯 How recruiting a quickly expanding team and talking to investors works during a pandemic and ⚽️ If it is helpful to have a big name among the investors. All of this and more on Speak Like A CEO, and if you enjoy, please leave a 5-star review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

How to Become a Thought Leader: The 9 Steps to Level Up Your Communication Game and Become Unignorable. Traditional paths of corporate communications and public relations do not have the same impact as they did yesterday. Oliver prepared an episode for you packed with the information you need to turn yourself into a leading voice in your industry. Why is becoming a thought leader essential for business leaders today? Who can become a thought leader? And what exactly is a thought leader? These are questions, Oliver answers before giving you the nine steps from business to thought leadership. The nine steps to stand out in business today are: 1.  Know your strategy (4:10) 2.  Develop your narrative (6:22) 3.  Perform a digital makeover (7:56) 4.  Chose your platform (10:44) 5.  Craft your signature talk (13:23) 6.  Gain visibility (15:06) 7.  Inspire internally (16:06) 8.  Protect yourself (17:57) 9.  Become unignorable (19:43) You can download the e-book to the episode here: https://www.oliveraust.com/from-business-leader-to-thought-leader If you have feedback or questions, get in touch with me! oliver@oliveraust.com