Doing well, feeling fine

I am sitting down today with Andrea Berchowitz, co-founder and CEO of Vira Health, a startup focused on improving women’s healthcare, starting with menopause.  Andrea served clients at McKinsey in London and Johannesburg and worked in philanthropy, with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I was curious about working with the foundation and what can be learned from a secondment in the social sector. We spend a little bit of time there, but then shift gears and talk about her path as an entrepreneur.  We talk about the moment she realized that she wanted to be responsible for something end-to-end, stepping away from careers in established institutions. We discuss the struggles inherent in raising capital for a startup and what to expect if you choose that path.  Among a number of interesting stories, Andrea also shares her three main lessons as a co-founder and CEO:  First, contrary to the image of the CEO as setting the bar high for excellence, Andrea describes an early-stage startup CEO as “the grand defender of mediocrity”. What does this mean? It means they define what will have to suffice; what is “good enough”. Though counter-intuitive, in practice, they may have to lower the bar, gauging, “how low is high enough?" With limited runway and limited shots on goal to come up with something that customers will accept, resources have to be constrained - even if the team would prefer to invest more… Second, We talk about the need to understand and keep pace with the technology itself, engineering and product management, to get a realistic handle on what can be built, how, in what time, in what order, and with what team. And third, we talk about the hardest lesson of all when the founder’s grand vision makes contact with reality: that is to say, retaining conviction that what you are building can be a billion+ business, returning the fund for your investors, while your v1.0 release is necessarily a work-in-progress.   Andrea talks affectionately about how she shares the load with her co-founder Rebecca, and we discuss the broader implication on whether to start alone or together.  Andrea's Ted Talk "The link between menopause and gender inequity at work" can be found here. This is her LinkedIn page, and here is Stella, Vira Health's menopause care service.

I am sitting down today with Tao Tao, COO and co-founder of Get Your Guide, a global booking platform for travel experiences. Get your Guide is a two-sided marketplace bringing together travelers from over 190 countries with local tour operators to create memorable experiences. The company has approximately 800 employees in 17 locations.  Over the past 14 yrs, Get Your Guide has served more than 80 million travellers, growing at a steady rate of 100% per annum; except for 2020, when travel came to a halt due to Covid. The team recovered and continued their growth path within the global travel experience market, estimated at $200-300bn, 80% of which is still offline. I really enjoyed this far-ranging conversation with Tao Tao, who takes us back to the founding days and drops us off with his current goals, on a whirlwind tour of Get your Guide and his lessons learnt shaping it.  In our conversation, we cover: How to think about starting a business in the wake of an economic crisis We talk about two founder qualities that are essential ingredients, namely: loving to build and having a high tolerance - not so much for risk, but for uncertainty - and not knowing for a long time whether what you’re building truly has product-market fit. Especially if you're trying a model that doesn’t yet exist How to pivot from a C2C approach - think: peer-to-peer couch surfing - to a more quality-assured and reliable B2C platform We cover some of Tao’s favourite maxims drawing on Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Jack Ma, as we talk about life advice such as not living someone else’s life or template for success; applying a “regret minimization framework”, imagining whether your 80-yr old self would regret what you are presently considering; and, solving for learning in your 20s, building in your 30s, and harvesting in your 40s. I’ll let you guess who famously said what... We talk about how to shape organizational culture through values and principles. Pro tip: make them 80% about what you are today and 20% about what you seek to become. We also talk about how not to do it... We discuss “Moore’s law of startups”, and how high-growth settings require personal development to keep pace with the business: even as you retain your job title, you constantly operate with increased scope and basically re-qualify for your role On this, Tao shares his cascade of ever-increasing managerial growth, ranging from managing a direct report, to a team; then on to shaping management systems that scale beyond individuals; then on to shaping culture as in collective norms and values, to setting corporate strategy and beyond Finally, we discuss strategy under uncertainty and how to make those tricky 51/49 decisions, injecting creativity and courage. Supporting material and further reading: Tao Tao on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taotaotao/ Get Your Guide: www.getyourguide.com Steve Jobs' Stanford 2005 Commencement Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd_ptbiPoXM Jeff Bezos on his regret minimization framework: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ Jack Ma on advice by life stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DByuo1UBiW0

In this podcast, fitness entrepreneur Max Barde discusses the importance of accountability and self-identity in maintaining healthy habits. They also dive into the impact of breakfast on blood sugar levels and food choices, as well as different diet strategies and their pros and cons. The podcast emphasizes the importance of focusing on what really matters in the long run and not getting caught up in temporary worries.

Today I am speaking with Julia Grosse. Julia co-founded “Contemporary &”, a platform for contemporary art practice from Africa and the global diaspora. You can access it under www.contemporaryand.com. She is also a journalist, curator, lecturer, and author.  One of her books - Ein Leben lang - is about life-long relationships. Its point of departure are Julia’s grandparents who were happily married to each other for 70 years. Based on their example, Julia tracked other couples who spent 60 years or more with each other: she documented artists and musicians, activists, and immigrants making a new home abroad; she speaks with secular and deeply religious couples; with same-sex and heterosexual couples.  In our conversation we explore what characterizes such relationships. We cover the roles of:  Trust and respect Freedom and individual space The difference between companionship (simply resigning oneself to a partner) vs. ongoing intimacy and love We talk about the importance of making memories as a couple We explore the role of shared goals, values and beliefs in sustaining the relationship But we also address some of the imbalances within relationships and the question of who gets to take, who has to give, and how this can change over time.   There are some important caveats worth mentioning upfront: some of the relationships discussed were formed against a historic background of highly conservative social norms and unequal economic structures that - without doubt - made it difficult for women to prioritize their own objectives or even to leave a relationship. There was far greater economic dependency, and the conventional expectation was also that there’s little wrong with prioritizing the husband’s career by default. Thankfully we have made progress here, though much work remains to be done. In the introduction, I also reference the work of Sue Johnson on maintaining emotional connection; a key ingredient for life-long love. I draw on her work Hold Me Tight. Sources:  www.contemporaryand.com  Julia Grosse: Ein Leben Lang, published by Hoffmann & Campe Sue Johnson: Hold me Tight, published by Little, Brown & Company

Today I am speaking with Dr. Nikolaus Braun, personal financial adviser, author, and founder of 49, an advisory firm helping clients define their life goals and supporting investment strategies.   His new book is called Geld oder Leben - Your money or your life! - and it’s just out now in April 2023, in German. We sit down to discuss key ideas and moving stories from his new book.   In my thirties, I hadn’t really thought about money as capital, only as cash flow. Could my income fund my lifestyle? As I got raises, I only increased my spend, as investing the increment seemed too small-scale to matter. I know it sounds silly now, but I had a reactionary attitude to saving: the products offered by my retail bank felt dull, if worthy. Thinking about 30 years from today also felt a little joyless. Instead, I secretly prided myself on living well, in the moment. A sophisticated version of “Yolo”.  What I was missing at the time, is a more helpful way to talk and think about money. As I was searching, I realized we don’t really have a well-established set of words and mental models to have this conversation.  For example, a common mental model for many people comes in the form of the old joke that you’re rich, “when you make more than your brother-in-law” or “sister-in-law”. That is a bit cynical maybe, but there is also some deeper meaning here: if we don’t really understand why we want money - leaving the basics of survival aside for a moment - we are left playing status games, comparing ourselves, upgrading our consumption, and so on.  So this episode is about doing well financially, and feeling fine about money.  What does this mean? Well, money - or better: wealth - can convert into time; time with the people who matter, making memories that pay dividends long after their inception. Wealth can convert into freedom; for example, freedom from the incessant need for validation at work. And with freedom and time - used wisely, of course - we can find other sources of self-identity than status games.  As you can see, this stuff goes deep and much farther than, "how much money should I invest in what asset classes, hoping for what kind of returns?" Please see https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolaus-braun-177501151/ for more on Dr. Nikolaus Braun.

Today I am speaking with Jens Pippig who is currently an Executive Committee member and the SVP Services and Innovation at Fressnapf-Maxizoo, a leading pet care provider in Europe. I invited Jens to the show for 3 reasons:  First, DWFF is about people’s biggest goals in work and life, and Jens has achieved some of the professional goals that many of us set:  He’s had the chance to join big-name organizations in senior leadership roles. He’s set strategy and deployed capital to build businesses. He scaled startups and diversified income streams for established corporates. His story contains lessons, especially for those of us in the early- and mid-stages of our careers, looking to get ahead.  Secondly, Jens’ story is interesting not just for “what” he did and does, but “how”: he is one of the most resourceful and self-propelled people I know: Jens does not wait around for directions: he comes up with a career fair to generate employment leads; he shapes his own strategy roles to include operational components that allow him to stay close to execution, and he enrolls as an intensive care-taker during the early phase of COVID when he seeks an opportunity to make a difference. He’s a self-starter, and there’s something empowering and inspiring about the way he’s in the driver’s seat.  I also invited Jens because although we were never particularly close, we’ve known each other since the mid-90s, and our paths were somewhat similar. It’s a chance for both of us to reflect on our various stations and how we ended up there.  In our far-ranging conversion, we cover:  What high-impact strategy roles look like, and what to avoid How in-house venture investing works and why a company would pursue it The differences between early and later stage investing, incl. but not limited to tech companies How exactly executive search works, as a two-sided business serving companies and candidates, and  The things that make a headhunter go “wow!” Jens's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenspippig/

Welcome to DWFF #1! Leadership feels like a good place to start the podcast. It is one of those foundational capabilities directly connected to “doing well” professionally. At work, it can take many forms: consider the senior leader who makes a difficult trade-off in allocating company resources to an unproven business area; consider the Team Lead who translates a high-level change story in a way that resonates with their team members, injecting ample context to make the story work; or, consider the individual contributor who is closest to the details and raises their well-founded concern in a meeting, even though it’s “raining on the parade”... Leadership is also connected to “feeling fine”, at a personal level. Not just when it comes to self-leadership read as “discipline” or “self-control” related to eating right, training, or preventing the next episode of Paw Patrol auto-starting because it is, admittedly, convenient from time to time. I am thinking of leadership in the sense of hearing others, being available and present for them, investing in relationships, not just the ongoing project of the self…  In this episode, I sit down with Oliver Triebel, who has over 25 years of professional experience as a consultant, trainer, coach, and facilitator. He has worked with clients globally and across sectors, often with a focus on strengthening leaders and leadership teams.  We cover different definitions of leadership, including what it means to lead self, lead others, and lead organizations. We review different leadership types, ranging from “the heroic captain” (cue: Bonnie Tyler) to the so-called “servant leader” and discuss when certain combinations of traits are successful and when they fail. We also talk about followership and what followers can demand but also should expect to contribute (fun fact: leadership produces >4.5bn results on Google; followership produces just under 2.3m results. We seem to be nearly 2000x more interested in learning about leadership than learning about followership ;)  Please check out this fun, practical, occasionally conceptual, and story-rich conversation with Oliver Triebel.

Doing well, feeling fine is a new podcast about people's biggest goals in work and life. Check out this short trailer to find out more.