Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
The Evolution of Tech Entrepreneurship: Resolution Co-CEO Christian Reichert on Building an Innovative Company and Embracing Change
This week I bring you the incredible conversation I had with Christian Reichert, co-founder and co-CEO of Resolution. We journeyed from the comforting nostalgia of early computing to the pulsating heart of today's tech entrepreneurship, unearthing the unique challenges and triumphs that carve the paths of modern tech enthusiasts. Christian's insight into the transition from floppy disks to the digital cloud is more than a trip down memory lane—it's an exploration of how these humble beginnings have propelled an entire industry forward.
Sit back and imagine the camaraderie of two co-CEOs navigating the complexities of leading a tech company. Christian and I peel back the layers of building a thriving business with a flat structure and an employee-centric approach, revealing how such dynamics fuel innovation and success. You'll get a front-row seat to our musings on the evolution of technology curiosity across generations, the shift from individual brilliance to collective proficiency, and the critical importance of promoting leadership that resonates with one's passions.
Wrap up your day with our reflections on the importance of seizing every moment, drawing inspiration from "Dead Poets Society" to the personal philosophies we've adopted in the face of life's unpredictability. We discuss the art of maintaining mental wellness through positive habits and mindfulness, reminding ourselves to engage deeply with what truly matters. Christian's stories, experiences, and the wisdom gleaned from Resolution's growth make this episode an indispensable guide for anyone navigating the exhilarating world of IT entrepreneurship.
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If you have a business that you want to be there for a very long time, you actually know what makes you money today is not going to make you money in 10 years. So when you promote people, you really need to make sure that that's the kind of job that people want and that it's not just for reputation or more money.
Speaker 2:Do you think that this generation has it harder than we did? I?
Speaker 1:don't think so. I would call it more different than harder or easier. For us it was harder to get to information, a lot of things. They have it easier today. That's true. That is a challenge in itself. Life is hard. It's very often the hard things that you do in life where you learn a lot. It gives you good grounding that help you being happy as a person. There wasn't much I could do with my dad at that age, but I wanted to see the world and I took my, my mother and my stepdad along on a lot of those travels or they came and visited me and that was really sort of because of that movie.
Speaker 2:Finally got you in the hot seat, isn't it? Finally, I've had a couple of attempts. You wanted to be guest 100.
Speaker 1:Not quite, but yeah, it's great to finally make it. Well, you can definitely come back for episode 100 and take that crown as well. I definitely will If I haven't retired by that time.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you wouldn't have had retired by that point. No, not quite. I think you still have quite a long way to go, especially nowadays with AI. It seems like you're really into it with Bjorn. So maybe just a quick intro of who you are first, and what does Resolution do?
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'm Christian Reichert. I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of Resolution. We started off as a sort of network consultancy doing Cisco, routing, switching, those kind of professional services, so as a services company. But then over the years we have done many things and ended up being a very successful marketplace on the Atlassian ecosystem now so developing apps for Atlassian, jira, confluence, bitbucket, etc. And having a good lifestyle doing that.
Speaker 2:And who are you? Who's Christian? What's your background?
Speaker 1:Well, my background has always been IT, essentially. I think when I was what would that translate to eighth grade or so I started to have a job on the side working for a software company, and I think I was 11. Yeah, I don't know Probably nine, when I wanted a computer and my dad bought me an Atari 800XL. So I mean there was a Commodore gang C64, I was in the Atari gang.
Speaker 2:When was this? This was in the 80s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, must have been whatever 86, 87 or so, so 64K of RAM, that kind of thing, but he bought me one, and I just would spend hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 1:So 64K of RAM, that kind of thing. But he bought me one and I just would spend hours and hours and hours doing that. At that time you still had the big floppy disks. But a lot of the even the games you could play you very often wouldn't buy on floppy disks. You would actually get them in printed out magazines and you would type the code, really type up the code from that and then run the games. So I've been in IT my whole life because I wanted to be. It was just fascinating.
Speaker 2:It has always driven me and besides being a dad now and other things, it's always been one of my greatest passions and still is I remember those days when you'd have games on floppy disks and you'd have like 10 floppy disks for one game and you'd have to load them, put floppy disk after floppy, and then code for 10 minutes in order to play a game. Uh, good old days 86, 87.
Speaker 2:You know, I was born in 87 yeah you're a baby my first computer was actually my. My first computer was my dad buying his first computer, and it was back in the days of um, when you have, like, uh, pentium and it was of, we would play age of empires one on it and that's so.
Speaker 1:It was a generation I was working on computers for a long time, when at that point came out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got started with atari 800 xl and then, uh, atari st um got a lot of time on Commodores as well, because just a lot of my friends had them. So whenever I was over there we would play on them or develop stuff on them, and only then I think my first PC was a 286, so that was like three generations before the Pentium even came out. Yeah, so that was like three generations before the Pentium even came out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and if you look now where technology is and and it's crazy. I want to talk about that because you've you've seen the computer evolve to what it is today.
Speaker 2:We're just watching that keynote about the rabbit and you make me feel really old now but but I mean you have a lot of experience and I it fascinates me in a sense. I I mean I've been part of the technology, the personal personal computer, um, evolution, for a while. Um, he just had a couple of iterations, so, before going any further, so you and I have a relationship and we know each other for quite a while, do you want to share a bit about how we met, so that I don't talk? I talk on this podcast way too much, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, ultimately, the first time we really met, or that I remember meeting, was on one of the Atlassian events at Weekend Berlin. We were over and obviously we started chatting and at that time really about anything Atlassian and the world, and afterwards we stayed in contact via Slack and ultimately, after quite a few conversations, it turned out, ended up in us investing in your first business which you exited from. So it's been a long while and a and a very, very interesting one, have to say yes, it has been.
Speaker 2:You seen, jack. So from the early days, because when we met it was 2019 and we were. It was less than a year since us launching our first product on the marketplace.
Speaker 1:I think it was just about when you quit Mudano and Niki was still working there, but considering leaving or working on checks of full-time as well, wasn't it? No, no, no.
Speaker 2:No, in summer 2019, when we met, we were still full-time employees at Mudano and basically Niki already still full-time employees yeah, at uh at modano and basically nikki already. When, when we started conversations about um getting investment, uh, in december 2019, beginning of 2020, nikki already quit and I was still working there.
Speaker 1:Okay, this way around, yeah, the other way around.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, it was. It was less than a year. I remember we were getting so excited when we were in Berlin that week. We were at the event but in parallel things were unfolding because it was after we launched a couple of really good features that Jira users were looking for and we were seeing installations start ramping up and I remember that we were at around 500 mrr at that point before the event. Um, we were maybe 300 something and we saw like 150 200 extra dollars over the the event and we were thinking this is getting serious.
Speaker 1:That's always I mean that's always an exciting time with an app. My experience very often is you rarely have an app that takes off overnight and starts, so they're all really crawling in the marketplace, having very low traction. And you also have the thing that a lot of enterprise customers wouldn't really install an app that has 20 installs or 30 installs. So usually once you get beyond 100, 200 kind of installs, then things also start to take off a little bit faster because you have more people who consider the us a serious vendor and others might still be around any yes time and I always find that absolutely exciting if you either hit the feature or have the right blog post or get mentioned by atlassian somewhere, when, when this time is where we're really this slow, slow, slow. One install a week or two, three installs a week really changes to two, three installs a day and that stuff. For me that's one of the most thrilling times about an app.
Speaker 2:It was quite exciting and, I don't know, that was a bit of a catalyst for us to push a bit more. I think we really enjoyed that app week back then. We really enjoyed talking to you and others in the Atlassian ecosystem. We were the newbies in the room and so shy Like, oh yeah, we're Jigsaw. We built this app and I remember that we were hacking Octo and we were creating component management over that hackathon. So it was really interesting, right. So I just wanted to get that out of the way because we're not.
Speaker 2:I've had recently a lot of founders and a lot of guests that I haven't met before, and it was the first time we ever met. We know each other for a couple of years and I know a bit about yourself, but I also want to treat this forum here to find out a bit more about you. So was it when you got your first computer, when you were a teenager or a kid, that you started getting excited about and curious about the technology behind that computer and the computer world? Or how did you got to eventually say I'm going to work in tech?
Speaker 1:I mean, like I said, I was something like eight, nine years when I got the first computer, so I can't really remember why I got it. But I would usually say the other way around. Usually I'm curious about something and that's why I get stuff like a computer or like an iPhone or anything else, because I'm naturally curious in general and very much towards technology as a whole. And to one degree working in tech just happened, yeah, because I was spending the time anyway. So after this first job in a software company, besides still going to normal school, I also, with a friend of mine, we started going into the mailbox, not business but just as a hobby in running a mailbox. So dial-in mailbox with dial-in modems. There could be some crazy stories with us sitting with hair dryers on top of those. We got donated a lot of modems from Creative, which was a local modem manufacturer, but we got them donated because they were buggy, they were overheating. So whenever we had some large updates to do so, we would sit or put hair dryers on top of on cold, on top of those modems to keep them cool and the connection stable. But then we had the highest speed available at that time and stuff like that. That just I'm just enthusiastic about it.
Speaker 1:So we were running the mailbox together with a friend of mine and that's ultimately how I also got into knowing networking, because then the internet started to become a thing. So we got a lease line to the local university and ended up being the first ISP in our area of Germany where people could as private or normal people could get internet access and dial in and have that. And obviously to build that I had to learn a lot. Oh yes, there weren't too many people. You could even ask the whole stuff. You were an IRC Internet Relay Chat, if anyone remembers out there. So that's.
Speaker 2:IRC what's?
Speaker 1:up 20 years ago Kind of thing, very text-based, but that's where you could get help and things and talk to other people. But, obviously, being very enthusiastic about it, we've built all this and we didn't make any money with it, and making money with it was never really the the important thing. Um, making some money was important to buy new hardware or to finance the lease line and that stuff. So it wasn't all free because we didn't have any money. Um. So, but every dollar someone paid us, um, we would invest back in in that. So we didn't see it as a business, we saw it much more as a hobby. But that was obviously a way where I learned a lot of the networking skills and then, to a degree, I was also lucky that that wasn't a time of the internet boom, oh, yeah, everyone wanted a landline at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I felt like one of the nine people in Germanyany who's ever heard of cisco and cisco routers and, um, I got people asking me hey, do you want to do this job? Can you work for us? Do you want to work for us, and those kind of things. So, um, I don't. I think there were maybe one or two jobs in my life where I actually applied for something.
Speaker 2:The other thing just came to me I'm curious when you were, when you're doing this, you said you weren't doing it for for a profit, but you are more charging people for, uh, for the internet um line. How were you charging people? Was it like bank transfer or how? How was it?
Speaker 1:yeah, ultimately it was more like a um, typical, typical club. So you had a membership fee and some some internet hours included in that membership fee and, um, oh, sorry, call it subscription service today. Um, so yeah, ultimately you have a couple of hours included in that and if people went above that they had to really bank transfer some money to buy another hour package and then they could use that up and was this like lines in people's houses and they were using their computers? They were using their telephones.
Speaker 2:They were using their telephones, Telephones yeah, really modems. So it was dial-in modems and it was just a neighborhood thing that you were doing, Because I suppose you need the, in a sense some infrastructure where you're pulling cables and stuff.
Speaker 1:Not so much. I mean at that time we did have a leased line to the university to get internet access from the university. So that did have a leased line to the university to get internet access from the university. So that was really a leased line permanently there everything. And then we had essentially a bank of initially, I think, 16 analog modems and 16 telephone lines connecting to those modems that people could dial into. And then over time obviously ISDn as sort of digital telephone network came out, so we had digital modems, 32 lines that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I remember so. At first you were dialing in, so you're dialing a number, you get a signal and that would be your, uh, your internet feed you weren't permanent.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, hard to had to comprehend today for some people, but you didn't have a permanent internet connectivity. Yes, you would dial into, like making a phone call, and as long as you were on the phone call you would have internet access. And those were actually some of the highest charges on that phone call. If you were five hours on the internet, you obviously had to pay us some fee for those hours.
Speaker 1:But you also had to have a five-hour phone call which was still reasonably expensive at that time from the phone companies, so having internet access wasn't super affordable.
Speaker 2:I mean not super expensive, but it did cost a fair amount and it was obviously, compared to today's standards, hella slow yeah, I remember, because we we were getting like um, I didn't had a computer with internet back then, but but I had a friend that uh had this and his parents were giving him ration of an hour or two hours per per day and it it was still that's all we knew at that point, right, because everything was pay by minute, pay by text, pay by whatever, so you would pay for your phone calls all the time and you'd pay for your texts and so on. So it was status quo to pay for an hour of internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not even just that, it's also then you were plucking hour of internet. Not even just that, it's also then you were blocking the phone line. Oh yes, if the husband was online for five hours, the wife could If there was an emergency somewhere and someone would try to call you. It's like I'm on the internet, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:When was this? When did you start this?
Speaker 1:internet. Oh, good question. I know my 99, 98, so yeah, 97, 95, probably 94, 95.
Speaker 2:And this was, and what happened to that business? Was it that you got offers for work and such and you fizzled it down? Or did you close it down when everyone started moving to kind of like the internet infrastructure?
Speaker 1:No, ultimately someone, a company, took it over to really try to commercialize it and they ended up making some money on it, it, um, and they ended up making some some money on it um. But I moved, um, moved on at some point, um, just because I did a lot of networking projects. Then I didn't have the time to help anymore.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I saw it more as a hobby then, as a business that I was running and um a lot of it, because when we started I wasn't even 18 yet, um, so it wasn't the name of the guy who did it with me. So he then transferred it to that company, so never made any money out of it, but that was not the point. But I learned a hell of a lot and that gave me a fantastic foundation to I mean, a lot of the other projects that would have never been offered if people wouldn't have known me and seen me or know that I am one of the people who's actually touched a cisco router before.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, I've had the exact same um pattern of getting into technology in a sense, and um coding and such. It was just the necessity of and the curiosity of it. Like, I just found this topic and I was super curious of it and I started doing stuff on my own and that led to a wealth of opportunities in other areas. I feel that this is one of the things that people kind of nowadays well, you know, you have the AI and you have a bunch of technologies like this that are coming up, but there's a lot of folk out there that don't experience this that much. They don't have the awareness and the visibility over the fact that we, back in the days when the personal computer was starting, when the internet was starting, we were just super nerds and curious about all of this stuff. How does it work? How does it?
Speaker 1:But I think that that is sort of a repeating theme. The technology you start with, you don't tend to be overly curious about how it works. My granddad was an engineer for TV sets so he's seen TV sets coming up from black and white and those things and would open them up, would build them, would lay people antennas and all that stuff. He could tell you exactly how a TV set works. Yeah, when I started growing up I would turn it on and watch stuff. I mean, yeah, nowadays I roughly know how a TV set used to work, but I was not curious about it. It was a technology I was growing up with and computers were the new stuff. So I was totally new to it.
Speaker 1:If you look at my kids now, a tablet is just normal. They don't ask how does a tablet work? What is wireless? How does wireless work? They are not curious about that. They might be more curious about AI or some other things. Um, uh, that's new to them. I think. If you look at the generation, that's always the case. The tech you, that's already there. That's not really new anymore. You just take for granted and never ask the question how does it work?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I completely agree, but I'm I'm talking more from the concept of of being ultra curious with up and coming technologies and getting into it and cracking it up and figuring out. And figuring out thinking, oh you know, I've set this up for myself, can I give it to my buddy and, like you did with the internet, um lines and then, okay, make a a neighborhood business out of it, and so on. There is maybe I'm a bit detached from it. I think there is the AI and there's a lot of people that are curious and kind of like opening that up and looking and poking and figuring out what people can do. But I don't know.
Speaker 2:From the outside to me, because I'm probably older, older it just feels like we're, we're not that curious anymore. There's try a lot to figure out way to for easy money and to generate revenue and curiosity. When it comes to technology, it seems to be more of a of a progression path where you've dealt with, you've had a, you've had a certain education, you went into through certain means of working and you evolved from various roles into something that gives you the, the, the, the, let's say, the title of data scientist. This, this, this that I don't know, maybe it's just me I feel that, technology being a lot more rudimentary back in the days, it was a lot easier for us to get into it and maybe we were a bit more curious.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, I absolutely think there's some truth to that. Also, I think we were forced to figure out more things ourselves because now you have and even I see that and feel that you have YouTube tutorials and that stuff. So if I want to know how to do something, I just go to YouTube, watch a tutorial and you're fine. And it's amazing because I can do things, even plumping or some crazy stuff like that, which.
Speaker 1:I would otherwise never have done or touched. But just when we were young, a lot of that wasn't there. Sometimes you could read a book, but even then, on a lot of the technology that we dealt with, there was very little information around, and maybe not, um, then maybe not in english, maybe not even in your um first language and that kind of thing. So, um, you had to play around and figure out a lot more because just less information was available. But, on the other hand, I still see a lot of people who are very curious about things and I think that is one of the tips. I mean, it's a beaten down thing. It's like find whatever you're passionate about. Yeah, I mean, a thousand people have said that, but I think there's a big truth to that, because I couldn't have done what I've done if I would have to get up in the morning and force myself oh, I need to read a book today on Cisco iOS or what's new on Cisco.
Speaker 1:If that would have been hard for me, yeah, then I could have never learned as much and worked as much as I did, just because there was no clear differentiation, because I would read Cisco iOS release notes or anything just in the evening, because I was curious what's happening, what's coming out, what's new, and maybe even try that out in the evening, just because I was curious.
Speaker 1:That was the only way to learn as much and be as quick as I ended up being, and which was part of the success I had at that time. So I think there's a lot to be said about if you find something where work or the thing doesn't feel like hard work to you because you're naturally curious and it interests you and it gives you a push by doing that and AI today is the same thing for me again that I'm just trying to use it everywhere because I'm curious about it, want to know its limitations and so on that really makes a big difference. And I think that is really where a lot of people have a difference if they're happy in their jobs or not is if they have found something and can work on something that they're really truly curious about.
Speaker 2:Do you think that this generation has it harder than we did growing up? I mean, you're also quite earlier than myself, so you've had even more I would say, early on technologies and things just coming out and so on. But I feel that while I was growing up as well, there was a lot of concepts and a lot of tech coming out and you'd be easy for you to figure out and dabble with it and come up with new things to do. But do you reckon that today's generation has it harder in that sense?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. I think so it's just different. I would call it more different than harder or easier. I think they're just different challenges. Or even if I look at my parents, they had a lot different challenges than I had growing up.
Speaker 1:For us it was harder to get to information. It was most of the time our parents were poorer, so we couldn't afford a lot of things. So if I wanted a gadget, I had to work for it, not because my parents didn't want to buy it for me, just they didn't with paying off their house and they just had barely enough money to make due on normal things. So if they sent me to a school trip, it was any of the money they had spare and they couldn't afford their own holiday anymore to send me on a five-day school trip. So they just couldn't afford all that trip. So they just couldn't afford all that.
Speaker 1:And I think today a lot of parents, or many parents, are in a better place financially, so that if I look at my kids, they get a lot more than I ever had. But I think that's different today. I think the challenges are much more that there's a on some side maybe too much information, that some things that you need to learn how to deal with distractions and focus, and so I wouldn't say it's easier or harder, it's just different, and there are challenges in today's generation. There are challenges in the generation from 10-15 years ago that starts working today and that we're hiring, where we see where they sometimes struggle, and they're different, but not necessarily easier or worse there is a, there is a certain level of, I would say, an increased comfort of today versus you know when you know, you had your parents, my parents, having to work hard and just ration certain things around your way of living and so on.
Speaker 2:I think technology has contributed in our evolution in a sense, with technology has contributed to us doing better and I don't want to generalize, because there are a lot of people in the world that aren't doing even as good as our parents were in the past but I think that helps. It's always this generational um conflict in a sense, right, where you look to to younger people and say, oh, you guys have it so good and you guys are lazy and you guys are into these weird things in terms of interest and so on. But it's a pattern, you're right. Every single generation goes through different challenges and at the end of the day, because the things that we were going through, they don't exist that much anymore, at least in our world, and no one sees them as challenges, right. So that's part of the standard, that's the base. And then there's other things that people are facing sees them as challenges, right, so that's, that's part of the standard, that's, that's the base.
Speaker 1:And then there's, like other things that um, people are facing, and I, when I say people, I say you know the 20 year olds um and teens today yeah, I mean, yeah, like I said, a lot of that um is absolutely right and, um, like I said, um, I see it more as each generation has different challenges.
Speaker 1:It's got different bonuses and things they start from, but none are without their challenges.
Speaker 1:And even if you say in a lot of things they have it easier today, that's true, but that is a challenge in itself Because I mean, generally life is hard, yeah and um, it's very often the hard things that you do in life, um, where you learn a lot, where, um, it gives you a good grounding, where it gives you an appreciation of um or gratitude for um, the wins you have and that stuff that help you being happy as a person, and if everything is easy and you don't do the hard stuff anymore tend to make people miserable most of the time, yeah, and so I think some people who are very easy for them, the hard part is to learn to do more of those hard things anymore.
Speaker 1:I mean I learned more from, I mean, misfit Founders, which were hard projects, which have driven me very hard, where even came close to burnout, or those kind of things, or even the things where I outright failed. These are the things I learned most and, honestly, a lot of them is the stuff I'm most proud about today. Not the easy wins, yeah, not the lucky guesses, or I've picked this and it was a winner.
Speaker 1:So, you're not proud of Jexo, then yeah, okay, that's not true.
Speaker 1:I'm joking, I know but it's a good point. No, I'm very proud of Jexo and for me the Jexo time was easy, but you guys had the hard things to do. But what I'm trying to say I think it's just different challenges. And the other funny part is, um, obviously, being a parent, you think, um, you have to deal with the tantrums of your kids and all those things. So, um, um, there's a couple of years back I was reading sort of this generation, they don't have any respect anymore, they don't behave, they don't, they talk bad to their elders and stuff like yeah, I can fully relate to that. That's actually fully true. And then you look at who wrote it. It wrote Socrates yeah, sort of many. I was going to say weren't the wrote Socrates? Yeah, sort of.
Speaker 2:That's always been the case, I was going to say. Weren't the articles and the writings always like?
Speaker 1:this, yeah, and that's totally true. And then you realize it's always been the case. It's always that kind of faces and it's never the same, it's different. But there's still some repetition on that. The parents think the kids are a lot less respectful. We weren't as bad as kids and you know what we were.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely, and that's what kind of pulls me back sometimes. Sometimes I have these moments of, oh, this is happening. Oh, I don't understand these 20-year-olds that are getting into the workforce, they have challenges with this, oh, they're not doing this, they're like this, and the reality of it is that we're living in a completely different world. But you know, even when I was growing up, I've had, in terms of career and growth, and probably yourself as well, because it doesn't seem like I want to ask you this. But first, to finish, my thought, like when I was growing up and I started doing business, my parents wanted me to my mom not my mom my dad wanted me to go to law university and become a lawyer and all of these jobs that were quite common and some prolific in in those times. And you know the fact that I started getting into business and being a founder, an entrepreneur. It was, although my dad was an entrepreneur as well, but for him was like no, you have the means, you should go do university and and such. So it was kind of disruptive in that sense as well. So it's always been, even in the workforce, new generations coming in kind of disruptive and innovative in terms of what it means to work.
Speaker 2:How was it in Germany? Because you had an interesting start right. Was it in germany because you, you had an interesting start right. So you, you got curious, you, you got into this internet thing and then that got picked up by someone else and you said that you started getting opportunities for jobs in in germany, what's usually good. Is it the same as we had, where you go through a school system to higher degrees and then, as an engineer, as this as that, and then you follow a path with your degree into workforce?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it's um, it's very similar. You have um, you have different lines, you can go in the school system but ultimately, once you finish there, to can go to university or some similar places where you get sort of apprenticeships, where you get teached. If it's more of a job where you don't, uh, typically go to university for um, yes, and I went to school and I'm straight um into those projects and and working. Afterwards. Did you do uni? No, so you were like, actually I did a bit of uni just a couple years after I started working because I needed a break. So, but no, I just went into.
Speaker 1:At that time you also had to do military service for a year in Germany. So after school, yeah, was my military service, and then it's when usually people went to university. But I already picked during the military service something I could do where I would be a week there on base and then a week off, so you would work pretty much 7 days straight on 24 hour kind of shifts with some sleep in between. But then you had a week off, um and um, so that I could actually still do some projects and and work in the other week. Um, do things.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, but, um, even going back to your original question, I mean, in my family, um, there was no one who had his own business or anything. So it was very common Even at that time it was still very common that you would work for a company for 30, 40 years, or even some people start or have their apprenticeship in one company and then retire from that company once they are 65. Company once they are 65. So me doing project, me creating my own company to do those projects, and that stuff was just not very. I mean, it's not unheard of, but it was just not the typical life path.
Speaker 1:And my parents had all the concerns we all have from young age I don't be that much at the computer, don't be that much in front of the tv, don't do this and that stuff, and ah, don't you want a normal job somewhere and that stuff which pays you money and those kind of things, um, um, but obviously with with the money and uh, I earned and like um, and the projects I did, and very often I would take them along or they would visit me if I was somewhere else and invite them over for two, three weeks to have their holiday, because I wouldn't otherwise travel in the world. I think they understood very quickly that things are working out relatively well for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 30, 40 years with the same company. I feel that today is such a foreign concept. Did something go wrong In the past? It used to be like if you would leave quicker than 10 years, it'd be like what went wrong. And now, if you stay for 40 years, what went wrong in your career?
Speaker 1:But then again the funny. I would I totally agree. But then the funny thing is it's like my 26th year in resolution now, yeah, what went wrong in your career, christian.
Speaker 2:Uh, what was the first company? And we'll get to. We'll go to resolution. What was the first company that hired you? What were you doing?
Speaker 1:Well, ultimately it was already Resolution, but I was essentially what other people today do say as freelancing.
Speaker 2:That was after the internet company. Yeah, true, I was never officially hired.
Speaker 1:I never really worked there for money. That was after the internet company. Yeah, true, I was never officially hired. I never really worked there for money. So, you've never been a full-time employee. I did in the mean. I mean it's legal now, even for Resolution I'm a full-time employee, but it's still my own company.
Speaker 1:No, I worked for. I did breaks from Resolution for year to um okay, where I was a full-time employee, but um, yeah, always just doing a project. So it was always relatively clear I'm not going to stay there. They, um, sometimes it's just, if you do a lot of things international, in some countries easier to be a freelancer, in other countries it's easier to just be hired by the company and then leave after a year. But that was all very intentional project work.
Speaker 2:So you are based on your career and the multitude of years I said 27 years of Resolution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 26 or 27. In 98, we founded Resolution, so you can do the math.
Speaker 2:So you're the definition of a rogue professional aka entrepreneur. You've not seen yourself in a role in someone else's company, full-time employee, for a very long time.
Speaker 1:You always wanted your own path that's how it looks today, yes, but I I never thought that way, or never.
Speaker 1:Um, um, it was never as intentional as you make it out now, but I think that that's actually true with a lot of things. Yeah, I mean, you get those graphs on the internet like this is how the, the path to the success looks like, and it's like a straight line to whatever, and reality is like up down and um, whatever, craziness, um, yeah, I never looked at it with that intentionality. So I looked much more in what I was doing and what interested me and um, I also wanted to see the world when I I was young, yeah, and I'm very glad nowadays that I did um, but I also didn't want to travel like most people do on holidays, like two weeks here and um and that's it. So I wanted to really see something how people live, how they are, meet some of the locals and in my time I mean today, you might accept a job that's remote work and then travel from place to place, stay there for a couple of months, go ahead. But obviously when I was young, remote work wasn't a thing.
Speaker 1:So the only way I could do that is do projects in different countries or different cities, usually a couple of months, up to a year, that kind of thing, and that's what drove me much more um because it was um at that time, building large networks. I was always, very often, attracted to the project. What I had to build or the challenges in it, um, that's what I would choose, and, and the best way of doing that was having your own company or being a freelancer and then be there for the project. What I never wanted was being stuck in a company and then manage the network that someone else excitedly built, manage that network for the next 15 years until it gets refreshed. So I didn't see it as I wanted to be the entrepreneur in charge of that. But I wanted to see things of the world and that was easy, doing project to project, and I wanted to do exciting stuff.
Speaker 2:And I mean I feel that that's kind of like subconscious attraction to staying a bit more on your own in a sense, as in not getting super attached to, let's say, a bigger company and being there for a career trajectory and so on, because that implies a lot less flexibility, a lot more time spent close to teams, to individuals, to that company and so on. So I think it was willing, unwilling in a sense, it sounds like so you were doing like you mentioned freelancing in the kind of like what is today freelancing, which is like contracting and doing projects with Resolution. Was it called Resolution at the beginning?
Speaker 1:It was very early on Reniko Reichert Network Consulting, but then I can't even remember why, at some point we needed or did change the name to Resolution, I think after a year or two. So yeah, it's been 23, 24 years of.
Speaker 2:Resolution, and where did that come from the name?
Speaker 1:Reichert Network Solutions. That's the Resolution sort of the short form of that?
Speaker 2:I never realized that. What the hell of that? I never realized that. What the?
Speaker 1:hell. I always thought it was resolution as in resolution, solving something, and also at that time it was, I mean, you did a lot of emails and very often you had this RE, so that's also where our original logos came from, which you still have in different colors today, like RE solution, sort of the thought of we are the solution.
Speaker 2:Okay, but it's also a good play on the resolution, which is, you know, solving something, the solved bit Exactly. That's really, really interesting and you build, you build a resolution up and sold it eventually like sold the servicing a service business. Tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 1:Essentially it was a business unit that we sold, so we never, sold the whole company, just what we were doing.
Speaker 1:Again, a lot of that came natural. So I would be invited to join a project somewhere, being paid for it. And then what would usually happen? Because I tended to pick big, complex, complicated projects because it was what I got excited about, because it was what I got excited about, and then very often when I was in there, the project team needed to grow because I might be the first senior engineer in it, doing a lot of the architecture and so on.
Speaker 1:And then comes the time where you actually need to implement it and need a lot more people to do the implementation. So, and very naturally, then the customers or the people I was working with would come to me hey, do you know anyone we can hire, and that stuff. So ultimately that meant me initially having a network and then afterwards hiring people into Resolution and they would join me in those projects. And even then, to customers I worked for before, I would have keep relationships and they would still ask, hey, can you come back to do this? And I'd say, no, I'm not available, but I've got this colleague here so he can come and that stuff and I'll support him. Those, those kind of things. So that's how sales very naturally happened and initially it was very word-of-mouth based and then afterwards, obviously, I had relationships with a couple of companies implementing networks and they would reach out to me when they needed some help.
Speaker 1:And that's how originally um, um, the whole business, um did grow to, yeah, some 20, 25 ish people okay, and I was still doing my own projects, but that became very challenging um sort of being the more or less relationship-based salesperson, um finding, hiring those people, training them up and um doing that all while you're still doing your um projects. So that size. It was really the um where I needed to make a decision if, um, if I want to do that more full-time or essentially running the company became my full-time job rather than doing my own projects and running the company on the side when you, when you started getting to those numbers, did you have to to start getting into management, supervising and things like that?
Speaker 2:or was it because I know there are also services, service companies that hire professionals, train them, like you mentioned, and then send them off to projects and they're basically working for that client there? There's not much of an interlock within them? Was it that kind of setup or did you had to manage, oversee, collaborate with the rest of the team? Well, a bit of everything.
Speaker 1:I think the first things I had to learn is that most companies die by running out of cash, not lack of profitability. So once we started hiring people, because there was typically a gap of um um I mean the customers would pay us month by month on the day rates, but there was still a gap of like um um you hire a person, need to spend some time to training them. So it might be two, three months before they can go productive on a onto a project and then um once you have them on the project, there would still be. After a month you would raise the first invoice. There would be another two months before the customer would actually start to pay the first invoice. So per person you actually had something like 50, 60,000 of cash to have to lay out to pay before you would get actually the first um um invoice being paid. And if you do that for five, six, seven, eight people, um, that's a big amount of money. Um you need to have first before before you can actually um, before you actually get some return or things. So it was all um on paper profitable because you're making the money and um all of that. But um cash flow was, I think the first um not hard, but the first lesson I had to learn um that that can really restrict the growth of company um and find solutions for that um. So that was um one thing, then um, then afterwards um a little bit.
Speaker 1:Like you say, a couple of the challenges that we had were when people were on the customer side all the time. How do you keep a relationship with them? How do you make sure they still feel part of your company? Don't just go to the customer. I always thought when people join us they would do that for two, three years and learn a lot during that time and then end up with one of our customers if they didn't want to have the project lifestyle anymore. In reality, people stayed a lot longer with us than I expected and many of them then still ended once they got kids and that thing. That's when I said, oh, it's time to stop the traveling, so I want to stay with this customer move my family here, uh, and those kind of things.
Speaker 1:so it's well, it was always. It wasn't that I said, oh it's, it's gonna be terrible because they go to customers. I always saw it as, um, I'll have one of the best allies and that customer. Whenever they need help, they come to me first. So it was always the model that they would leave at some point. So I was, if anything more, surprised that they stayed as long as they stayed.
Speaker 1:But certainly making sure they feel at home in the company was part of the job. But also make sure that they kept learning and learned a lot, because they obviously very often started with a relatively low salary with us and the way they ultimately also made their money was by becoming or being getting on to a senior level engineer very quickly within two, three years, by having the right project and those things and then getting those kinds of salaries and even higher. When they left us While other people going joining bigger companies, they might have been promoted from first line support engineer to second line support engineer in that same timeframe, promoted from first-line support engineer to second-line support engineer in that same time frame, not getting a big bump in salary along the time. So I think that's one of the key things.
Speaker 1:People doing those kind of projects and I experienced that myself they would learn a lot in a very short time frame and part of my job was that they were always challenged, so that I put them in project which would challenge them, but we could also give them a little bit of the safety net of knowing there's someone else who will help me when I struggle, and we always did so. They could always call me or their colleagues at one o'clock in the night hey, I'm having a problem here and everyone would help. And what that also did inadvertently it had created a incredible team bonding among the people and that's part of why they stayed as long as they did, and even if we meet up today or anything, we still talk about the good old times and most people myself never got that team bonding anymore afterwards.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense and it does seem like you've built a company with people employees that were contracted to companies, where it wasn't much more around structure or organization management and layers of structures and such. It was quite flat, where everyone would go and do work as a representative of your company inside these other organizations and then, like you said you, the entire team bonded because you know it was your people and they would help each other and that became quite a strong bond and connection exactly, and I always had the expectations or set the expectations also with the guys when they were progressing to sort of from junior level to senior engineer, that they would take care of some of their colleagues.
Speaker 1:So it was always the expectation. The senior engineer needs to look after a couple of the mid-level or junior engineers and help them teach. That's another relatively fundamental belief that I have, or actually not believe. It's a belief as well, but it's my experience. You've really understood the topic once you can teach it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:So making sure that a mid-level engineer has some junior engineers to look after, to teach them or help them explain topics where they are stuck with and that stuff was always and that's also how I explained it to the guys doing it was always a thing of this also helps you, because once you can explain it, you really understand it, and by explaining topics to other people that's when I sometimes learned the most, because I wanted to understand it even deeper than I otherwise would have. So that was part of the whole DNA and the expectation I set with promoting them or giving them a pay rise to become a senior engineer, but then you'd have to look after things, so that it ended up in a little bit of a pyramid type thing, not a super formal structure, so it wasn't like this guy reports to you, but we also didn't have the size where we needed that and I was.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask how, how did you, what was your process or mechanism of of basically promoting people from, let's say, senior to mid to sorry, from senior, from from junior to downgrading now um we're demoting you today was it? Was it feedback from the client? Was it uh? Were you doing any performance reviews, any specific traits?
Speaker 1:I hate performance me too yeah so I hate those kind of once a year performance reviews. I think if it's like just once a year it's, it's, it's not enough, um. So I always encourage having regular interactions and those things should not be, or don't need to be, performance reviews or that stuff. But if you talk on a regular basis, see how people are doing, what they're struggling with and those kind of things then a performance review in terms of giving it one year and really think where should the person go and that stuff and what might be good courses for him to take, having that as a checkpoint to sit down and think about those things that can be helpful. But I hate this culture of we don't talk about any issues or that stuff for for a year and then there's a performance review where we bang or or like other people do it. They never want to have the hard conversation, so the performance review is all happy, hunky dory and um, they turn around and I'm not happy with that guy. Yeah, so that's another one of the things I can only encourage people is don't avoid hard conversations because ultimately they just get harder when you have to have them. What I often see people do if they need to lay someone off or there's no cultural fit or things stuff that you can fix very early on. If you have those harder conversations or set the expectations right, they just turn into things that at some point you can't work with each other anymore just because they put off those hard conversations since they didn't want to have them.
Speaker 1:But ultimately, going back to your question, since we were having regular contact, it never felt like having to do performance reviews or anything.
Speaker 1:And yes, since I was also talking to the customers and that stuff, I got their feedback. But most of the time I could make a decent judgment by what the guys would ask me, what the feedback would be, and you could see their progress by the kind of questions they would have. Or if you, hey, can you review this design for me? You would see the progress and how much better it is than maybe six months ago they would have been. So I was a bit intentional about it, but it didn't feel like something I had to do on top of other things because I was close to the business and the day-to-day what they're doing and I was still either doing projects myself or still had a lot of the knowledge from the project because I hadn't been out of it for um so long. So, um, I could do a very decent judgment as that person a good engineer to see, or what? What does he need to have?
Speaker 2:now, did you had, uh, any people that in your team that kind of like disagreed with your with your judgment of how they're progressing and so on, and how do you usually dealt with the with that kind of situation?
Speaker 1:well, if people don't disagree with me, it's yeah, absolutely. I mean, how often have you disagreed with me? So I think disagreement is just a part of the job. I mean, I don't watch them 24 by 7, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if my judgment is they're weak in one area um, and I tell them that and they give me um. I don't think that's true. Here Five examples where I've done that and it worked very well Um, um, then I've got a good answer to that. I was wrong Um and um. I think for me it's um. It's very often the style of those conversations yeah, so I don't like this. Oh, you're always bad at this.
Speaker 1:Because then a person just needs to give you one example, go into defensive mode, give you one example of where they haven't screwed it up and they discount your argument. Yeah, it up and they discount your argument. It's much better to say, hey, I've seen you do this thing three times and I really would have expected X, y, z, so what you delivered here I didn't like. Because of these reasons, if you're that concrete and specific in those examples that you've seen, then it's very, very often they can't argue against it or very often they see, yeah, actually that's probably true and people are less likely to go into the defensive and you're talking about concrete things what your expectations would have been, how they could have done that better, what to learn from it, so they don't feel like you're attacking them as a person, because that's never what I want to do.
Speaker 1:I mean, for me, the goal is always to make someone be better and help them be better, because inherently, I don't think anyone comes to work and thinks, oh, I'm going to do a really bad job today. I mean most people. When they go to a job, they want to deliver a good job. So if I give feedback, then the whole intention behind it is that I've seen things which I think are not working great and how can I help improve that?
Speaker 1:And if you then concrete and do those things, things and people are much more open to accept that and and see that, and then you don't have, then they can still object in terms of, ah, yeah, but you don't know this and that's the reason why. Um, I think you're wrong here, but then you're, it's not really fighting, it's, then you're a certain fact, I don't need to get fussed about it, and the person doesn't get so. So those feedbacks are hardly ever had. Even a loud argument with any of that is working with me or anything, or if anything, it's a discussion because we both believe in the point and then at some point, okay, yeah, I heard your opinion, I heard mine. That's the middle way that we can go.
Speaker 2:To follow up with this topic. As you know team and work dynamics and such you eventually sold the services business. You got to a point where you had a really good team, really strong People loved working for the company. Was it a customer of yours that acquired the company?
Speaker 1:Ultimately it was a system integrator that we worked with a lot that public listed company. They also have a distributor and they actually acquired at that time was 70, 80ish people where they acquired that part of the business and I joined them as an employee for a while to do the integration and run that part of the business. So it did grow then. I was then responsible for the immediate wide services and that distributor. So it then did grow to something like 300 plus people oh wow and were you managing all of these people?
Speaker 1:yes, I I mean. Obviously it was much more of a structure behind it and obviously many different companies in Europe. How did you find that transition?
Speaker 2:Because, from what you're telling me, you had a pretty flat structure. You weren't doing management and performance reviews and all of the layers and stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a fair point, but by the time we had reached more than 70, 80-ish people, there was more of a structure.
Speaker 1:So you had managers, I think compared to other companies it was still flat Right. But you had some team leads, engineers, someone responsible for engineering Björn, who you know well being part of the sales team and someone running the sales team, someone looking after finance and HR. So you had that structure, because 70, 80 people that's too much for one person to manage. So over time some of that structure did grow. So the relatively structure-less thing was about until sort of 25-30 people and then from 30 to 70. That's where I had to build a bit more structure. But most of that then came from the people in the company already.
Speaker 2:And was it organic as in? Oh, we're facing this challenge here. We need someone to oversee that. We need someone to um sell this. We don't have time for this area. Let's, let's have someone from the team do it, or how did it?
Speaker 1:well, yes and no, um, I'll give you I'll answer this in a little bit of a roundabout way, I think where a lot of people go wrong, and I did some of those mistakes as well, because sometimes you just don't know until you do it, and I think it's part of learning. If you promote the best sales guy to be sales director, sometimes that's the right step, but very often the best guy doing that particular job is not necessarily the best manager of the team doing those jobs.
Speaker 1:I think that is where a lot of people go wrong and a lot of relationships get ruined. So if in your startup the first engineer becomes your engineering lead, um, that might not be your best choice, because if that guy enjoys being an engineer, is good about being an engineer and enjoys his job, he might hate being an engineering lead yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you promote people, um, you really need to make sure, um, that that's the kind of job that people want and that it's not just for reputation or more money, that they actually really have the skills and the talents that are needed, because a sales director needs to be a lot more process-oriented and those kind of things than a typical sales guy is.
Speaker 1:And if you take your best horse, who brings you in a lot of revenue, and put him into a not so much revenue generating role, you hurting yourself double. And if that guy leaves after a year because he's unhappy, well you've done really crappy thing. So what I ended up learning along the way is that I would very often try to promote people who would naturally already step up. Yeah, if you would see them, if a team is a bit structure-less, if you would see someone come on, I'm going to create this and this and Mike, could you help me here and do that. And very often you would naturally see people taking on some of those responsibilities because they saw are they needed doing and they had an attitude of getting it done. And then I would usually have a conversation with that person if that's a role he would like to do yeah yeah, um, and then um, really say, okay, do more of that.
Speaker 1:Let's do that as an experiment. Let's not make a big promotion or title or anything out of it, because I always want to give you the opportunity to come to me in three, four months and say, ah, it's not really what I like.
Speaker 1:Let me be a really good engineer it's actually a very fair approach to be honest and yeah, because I didn't want, also didn't want to lose those people in the end, and so so it's not that the engineer I hired first became at some point the engineering. That's actually not. That didn't happen. I mean, that's not what happened. So the guy who actually ended up starting to do more of the organization has done a great job looking after junior engineers, going far and and that above he um, I promoted him in the end after he tried that for a bit more and said, yeah, that's the kind of thing I want want to do, um. And then we made it official, promoted him and that kind of thing and the other good thing that happens in that case if people are already naturally starting to do that, usually the team accepts them outright.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because most of the time it's about time that you promote him, because he's been doing that for six months already, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I've always said you see, this is what I'm saying. It's interesting because I've always had a slightly different approach to this and I don't think there's this is a really good approach as long as there is a lot of transparency around that. Because I've with Jigsaw as well. I've always kind of rushed into building people, promoting them, giving them a title and a function and a very concise um, I'll say mission, um, and I think the reason why I've jumped into that quite often and done it quite quickly was my experience in the past with roles and and other bits where people would naturally pick up stuff. You would see that and you'd get comfortable as a leader in having them develop in that direction but in the same time them having self-doubt of oh, but I'm doing more of this other job. I kind of like it, but I feel that that's a different bracket type of role. I don't want to really do it. I'm not fully invested in it because I don't know whether I'm doing this at my current salary bracket and at my current title or such.
Speaker 2:I think transparency is really important and at my current title or something, I think transparency is really important and that's why, like the way you can address it is. Hey, you've been doing this. We'd love to see you more and enable you to do more of this if you're interested in doing it and there is a future for you in this. If you want it right, that's right. But like I took often, I was like you seem to be good at this. Let's make you, let's promote you to this, let's give you these responsibilities.
Speaker 2:It comes with a salary increase, a different bracket and so on will promote you and kind of like to to put all the cards on the table up front to get them motivated. That works sometimes with people that are that really fit into that and and they embrace it and they flourish in that. But there are often times where the pressure of that role or they realize later down the road, a couple of months later, that no, I would actually, I was actually preferring more this thing, and I've had a couple of occasions where it got a bit awkward because this person after a couple of months realized that I actually love more what I was doing and the pressures of this and the extra responsibilities and so on. I'm not into it and I think transparency and giving it some time to bake is important.
Speaker 1:But even this allowing people to step down if you have the right team, then that works as well, and I think that's the great thing about business. There's just not one right way of running a business and all other ways are wrong.
Speaker 2:It's a nice thing you can experiment and the different, many different leadership styles work very well yeah, true, there's no, there's always challenge, always challenges, and there's always things to to scratch your head around. What did you hate so much about being full-time after you sold that business? It had not been.
Speaker 1:What I hated were a couple of things, but none of that had to do with being a full-time employee. Right, yeah, it was actually so. Running from a 70, 80 people team company however you call it, business unit to getting into a 4,000 people company who mostly sells boxes or IT distributors, so they sell hardware generally, that was a big shift and even to the point that you could say there was a lot of success in it in terms of increasing that to like 300 people across EMEA and all that. Yeah, there's still a couple of things that I learned about myself that I don't like, and I think getting older has one big advantage in a lot of the different things that you've done.
Speaker 2:Because you don't care anymore. You can be a grump without care. Ah no, I'm hardly ever grumpy.
Speaker 1:No, but you can actually also learn a lot about yourself. What is the stuff that you really like and what's the stuff that you don't like. And there's a lot of people who are great in running companies from small to big, or be in a 10,000-people company running them, or be a vice president and run a division of five, six hundred people and be very happy about it. But I'm not one of those. So the the things I enjoy most is working with a small team. We can all be relative, still relatively close, know a little bit what's going on in each other's world. So, being in 10 people, 20, 30, maybe 40.
Speaker 1:But at some point that's where I think, if I look back at the 70, 80 people range, that was already on the verge of being too big for me, for me to really enjoy it. And's why resolution, at the moment we are a little bit less than 30 people. That's an awesome size um to do, to kick out, to do kick-ass stuff, um. So what was um running such a division? What was the things um that I didn't like is um was the things um that I didn't like is um most of the time, only the shit comes to you.
Speaker 1:So stuff other people couldn't solve, yeah. So, um, you spent probably a lot of your, or you definitely spent a lot of your time, or I had to spend a lot of your time solving negative things that no one else could solve, and that tends to give you always that if you all the time focus on negative things, you see a lot more of negative things. So that's not mental healthwise. I didn't find that very well. And the other thing is I had my personal assistant. She would be in charge of my calendar and the most anybody would usually get is 30 minutes with me. So most of my day was 30-minute slots with different people, different topics and so on. That meant I could very often not completely fully understand the situation or anything.
Speaker 1:I was good at that, yeah, so I could have. They would have loved to keep me and keep going like that or even grow it further. It's not that I was bad about it, I just didn't like it. Yeah, it's not that I was bad about it, I just didn't like it. And that's another one of my relatively fundamentals is spend so much time at work. We should try if we can. I know I appreciate that some people don't have the choice or many people don't have the choice. But if you have the choice, then don't focus on the money, the reputation or anything. Pick a job that you're really enjoying, you're happy with, so when you're managing.
Speaker 2:You said that 1.400. Yeah, um, was it? Because I always see these very senior head of and management roles that manages a fleet of people as potentially, if not done right or not even if not that right because of the logistics of it a bit detached from the I would say the interpersonal side of things, because you know you, you don't work with a flat team and you kind of get to interlock and engage and empathize with absolutely everyone. You're at a point where you have a few people here, that kind of report into and you see, oversee the big picture and, as you said, especially with things like like no one gets more than 30 minutes slots because you're busy and you have so many moving parts, did you feel that that was one of the things that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, absolutely. I mean, you lose a lot of the sight to what other people on the ground are doing, to what other people on the ground are doing. And also and these are the things that were somewhat hard for me I have a hard time to accept if there's a waste in the company. So if people work on things that just don't matter or some kind of thing, and the bigger an organization you get, the more of that you also have, and you need to accept that Even with 30 people, there's a level of that happening and I'm not very good at accepting that.
Speaker 2:Wasting time.
Speaker 1:Or making my peace with that, and so other people can say, I don't care, it's just part of that, 10% is just wasted, that's just life. And I had to do that as well, in that position to, on one hand, to accept it, but I could never make good peace or was never happy about having to accept it. Yeah, um. And the other thing is, um, what's what's much? Much harder is if you have um, two or even sometimes three layers of management, different nationalities, um and so on is to get a certain message across. If we have 30 people, we're in a room and I can talk to everyone, or can talk with most people at the same time or in a Zoom call, then it's relatively easy to get a message across. But it's not what people experience from the company, um, their first line manager, the person really they're reporting to, um, such, such a big example. It doesn't matter too much if the big boss comes on a zoom once a month, says something, and then the guy you're working with behaves totally different. 39 hours a week 100%.
Speaker 1:So accepting that or having to deal with that, that was just not what I enjoyed. So it was much nicer for me to have that very direct communication and to do some crazy stuff with a small team as opposed to do a lot of different things with a big team I think there's there's two things that that um kind of like out to me from from what I know, uh, about you so far.
Speaker 2:One is you are really good at being genuine with your team.
Speaker 2:So like as in because I've seen you in a couple of team calls and so on. So you're really good at just speaking truthfully and being like with the team and and being able to, uh, to motivate the team and like just be genuine and real. And I feel that when you're at 400, if you want to go on a call with 400 people and give an update, there's a lot of pr work being done, there's a lot of you know, preparations, slides, a bunch of other people in the team having to distribute responsibilities of who's saying what, and so on. It becomes this big PR At least the things that I've seen. I suppose that must probably been one of the sides of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's more of that, or people also assume that's the case. It's more of that, or people also assume that's the case. So even if you are as truthfully and honest and straightforward as I always like to be, because I very often have sort of a zero tolerance for bullshit then it's not that people experience as genuine If they know, you as a person, then they know oh yeah, he's the same, regardless if that's a job topic or if he goes out with friends and things.
Speaker 2:But if the people don't have that kind of personal relationship with you, they don't necessarily see that in the same light and we're all different and if you see someone that you don't know as an individual giving a speech, in a sense like talking about or communicating something, and that's the only setup that you ever see them and whatever you hear from your line manager about them or this or that. We also vary individuals when it comes to analyzing and processing and consuming and understanding people in general, so you might have a portion that thinks something about you, you might have a portion that thinks something else, and so on. I think the second thing is you're a very hands-on person. Even when I met you in the early days and so on, I think the second thing is you're a very hands-on person. Even when I met you in the early days and so on, even in 2019, you were coding, you were hacking away with your team there and then even the other evening, us coding AI stuff, and I suppose when you're at that level, there's not much hands on.
Speaker 1:There's absolutely zero more excel sheets and powerpoints so that kind of like.
Speaker 2:These were, alongside with the stuff that you told me, the catalyst for you to go back to Resolution the company that you're still owning and do something completely different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean obviously it's also lucky that we started the Atlassian business on the side already. I mean, the first plugin we wrote was Sammel Single Sign-On for Jira and Confluence and, to make a long story short, it was a problem that annoyed me, so I got it solved and then we turned it into well, there's a marketplace, so if we have the problem, someone else might have it too and then release it to the marketplace and it found some growth there and a lot of it is history from there. So I was lucky in that respect that we had that Atlassian business starting to generate some money as well and I could see oh, I think there is something if you do it right and that could be very successful. So I had a good alternative to go to as well did you did?
Speaker 2:you had to bootstrap. How did it work? Because you're so, you're coming out of this role. You got some, some money from selling the consultancy business, you moving into full-time Atlassian developer. How did that financial dynamic work? Did you brought in a bunch of cash or what happened?
Speaker 1:It's very funny that I say that as one of the person who invests in other companies. But we never took any investment and I never um. The only thing I brought into the company was sort of the base capital that we laid out very initially in germany for a limited company. It's I think 25 000 euros was split between my um partner, um, and the business and myself and um. I never, ever, put in any money other than that so it was.
Speaker 2:it was all generated from Atlassian, but were you paying yourselves?
Speaker 1:I mean most of the time, yes, but also there have been times where, even in the professional service business, even in the professional service business, we had times where times were tough and I would rather not take a couple of salaries than lay off people. So, but most of the time I've been getting a salary and in good times I also got an incredibly decent salary or obviously, dividends in the company, so it does sound like when.
Speaker 1:So the formal answer would be we all bootstrapped it from initially the projects we did and even if we went more into the Atlassian business. Obviously Resolution had some reserves from the past business and that stuff. So we used some of that cash that we still had in the company to build out the Atlassian business and that very quickly also started to pay for itself.
Speaker 2:Okay, I see that makes sense. You didn't have an extensive period of time where you weren't getting paid or the Atlassian took a long time to get off the ground.
Speaker 1:No, that was a couple of months at max and those periods where I wouldn't take a salary.
Speaker 2:And it was when you started. I mean started because you're already doing it, but when you left the consultancy, the work that you were doing there, the consultancy, we are full-time role you started with your, with your co-founder, with your partner. You got into it full-time in the same time, or did? Did he come later? Or how did that work? No, actually we, we started resolution together oh, the, the consultancy, yeah, oh, I see, I see, I see okay, it was um.
Speaker 1:his name is chris bloomery. Um, he was someone I was I didn't know before in terms of around the networking kind of area and, um, when I started doing the projects, I could have done that as a more freelancer without my own limited company, right, but I never wanted to be alone or work alone, and there's also some additional sort of protections if you have a limited company, as opposed to doing it yourself where you're responsible or where you're liable with everything you have. And that's where I decided to create Resolution but also do it with Chris together originally, because he was working on some of the projects. I got in as well and he had the same problem. So initially we created Resolution, essentially so that we didn't do normal freelancing and a bit of protection, and then that grown so we were doing that essentially together from the start.
Speaker 2:You said you never wanted to start a business alone. Why was?
Speaker 1:that I never wanted to be alone.
Speaker 2:Why was that? What were some of the thinking there, some of your reasoning? You wanted to have a buddy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I don't even know if I have a good answer. I mean, I knew some people who were freelancer. They were always just by themselves, working by themselves, and I think I always wanted to work in a team, even if it started off just a team of two okay, that's pretty, pretty clear and I completely understand that.
Speaker 2:like that's the way I am right now and that's how I've always wanted to start. In a sense, I failed with a lot of founders in the past, but I feel that I've always never wanted to go on my own and do things alone. We talked about this.
Speaker 1:I need some balancing yeah, same same here um I like also like in in general, if I can bounce ideas of someone else and those kind of things, um, or even if, if you look at um, how I think about um teams, I would never want a team five times myself. It's all having different skill sets and complementing each other, and Chris was one of the. I think I was a damn good engineer, but I couldn't even keep up with him anywhere close, so he was one of the most talented engineers that I've ever seen, which is why I ended up with sales and other stuff.
Speaker 2:You've been relegated.
Speaker 1:No, I think we've been a very good team In Resolution. Nowadays he doesn't engage that much. He looks after another business that we have together, freedom, which is more VPN type of service, not as big as Resolution or anything, but that's his baby, but we're still both. We're still talking a lot of things. I mean every other company events. He's there. We still talk, like once a month or so, how the business is going or if I have an idea then what he thinks about it, etc.
Speaker 1:So, and I think that's also what made that relationship so successful I mean I cannot even once remember a situation where we would actually fight or anything, and I think among co-founders with that kind of history, that's probably very rare. But I think what made it so successful is that we don't work together every day. That we don't work together every day, yeah, it's Okay, there's a If I say there's a certain amount of distance, I don't mean that in a negative way Still very good friends at the same time. But it's and in some respect he's one of the people I trust or would trust with anything, since we have such a long history. But since we also didn't work together every day eight hours a day, we didn't have a lot of conflict points as well. So since there was a little bit of that distance as well, it's part of, I think, why we never got into fights or anything that's.
Speaker 2:That's a very fair point. I think I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm the type of person that gets super excited quite often and needs to share all the time, and I think that's one of the things that I learned with Nikki in the early days, because in the early days we'd be in the same room, in the same office, working next to each other until Nikki said no more get out of here, go in a different room.
Speaker 2:I need to do some real work. So, yeah, some distance is always good and healthy, for sure. 27 years, 27 years of resolution. I have a couple of questions around that this length. One first what are some of the biggest? I'm happy with one, if you just want to tell me one. One of the biggest takeaway of running a business you've been pivoting, you've been getting into other bids, you've gone with the currents and had done a full-time, but you've been resolution has been your baby for like 27 years. What's one of the biggest takeaways of being a founder? Oh, there's so many of being a founder.
Speaker 1:Oh, there are so many. One thing is it's been my choice. I mean I could have sold Resolution in the meantime and those things, but I like what we do, so it's my choice to be in that business. But if you have a business that you want to be there for a very long time, like you say, um, you actually know what makes you money today is not going to make you money in 10 years, yeah, or very likely not. So, um, you really need to um, dedicate part. If, if, if your goal is, oh, I want to build this product and then I want to sell the company, then you can holistically focus on that single product and just do that and then it either works, it doesn't work yeah, or you pivot and learn something and but you're very, very focused, um, if you and when I started the resolution business and we did projects, we were also just focused on that.
Speaker 1:But if you want to run a company over a long time it's more of a lifestyle business then at some point you need to get into a rhythm where you know some of your product that's making most of your money now, of your money now. You need to find one or two or five other products that are going to be doing that in five years' time or six years' time, depending on the cycles. So you will be doing different things in different stages of it. So paying the bills now, investing in this or trying these 10 things out to see what sticks, and if we find another winner, or two or three things that will pay the bills tomorrow and and fund the team. So you need to get a bit more into that rhythm that you're always looking at um, what um, that you don't dedicate 100 of your time just to that one product, um, but that you spend a little bit of things what is the medium and the long term and think about that as well.
Speaker 1:I think that's that's one learning um, the other thing is that almost always there's an up and down and cycles. So, um, there's times where the moment resolution is going incredibly well, it's fantastic. But there will probably be a time, three, five, ten years from now, where we have challenges where we might even lay off people again or let some people move on and that stuff. It's not guaranteed that that you're always on top and always successful. Those things you will have, sometimes times where it's not, and often it's not even your fault.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's some macroeconomic things. In Resolution, we had a time where, for a couple of months, we need to lay off all the engineers that we had. When there was a dot-com crash, where most of your customers would, within two or three days, would cancel your contracts or say, well, you can come back, but only at 20 percent of the rate that you're now, and so on. I mean, there was also the 2008 financial crisis, which didn't hit us very hard, but there there are things in the world be be it pandemic, be it things. In that instance, with the pandemic, we were in a lucky situation that, if anything, it increased the business that we had because of remote work and the Giro Atlassian tools, which are helping on the remote work side.
Speaker 1:But there will be things that hit your business. Some are homemade, some are just coming from the outside, so it's not all honky dory. It's fantastic growth and that stuff all the time. So, um, um. So you will have cycles where you're on top of your game. You'll have cycles where you're down, um, and you need to deal with all of that.
Speaker 2:And after 27 years, what keeps you going? What keeps you motivated to carry on with this business?
Speaker 1:Well, what keeps me motivated is, on the one side, the team, and on the other side, that it doesn't feel like 27 years, since we don't do the same thing. If I would have a coffee shop and would do exactly the same thing, I would probably be bored of my mind. I'm not good with doing the same thing forever. But since today we're looking at AI and those things, I mean it's old news by the time the episode comes out, so the plug is not very helpful, but today, we launched our….
Speaker 2:We reached singularity. By the time the episode is up, maybe.
Speaker 1:We launched our Jira GPT today, and that's something you couldn't even envisage a year ago. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That wasn't… what's possible with that thing wasn't even envisage a year ago. Yeah, that wasn't. What's possible with that thing wasn't even on the cards a year ago, um, so that's why it doesn't feel like um, it's um. It doesn't feel like I've been doing the same thing, um, for 27 years. Yeah, um, the name resolution might be the same, but what we do today is very different to what we did in the beginning and I learned, learned tons along the way, and I think that is that is the key thing. Um, what would also tell me to stop at some point if I don't feel like um, there's stuff to be curious about and things I can learn and things I can waste many hours in um, just trying out and, uh, because I'm just interested in them yeah, I don't see that happening you're hopefully not you're way too curious and excited.
Speaker 2:You have all the gadgets. You have all the gadgets you buy and I think bjorn isorn is kind of like on the same frequency. You guys kind of entertain each other in that sense, like Bjorn comes in and says, oh, I found this cool thing, I bought it. Oh, yeah, I found this cool thing.
Speaker 1:Come in here, let me show you what I've been coding, and that's a great thing. Working with Bjorn, who's my co-CEO. With Björn, who's my co-CEO, he joined Resolution. What is it now seven years ago? Or something like that. That's the nice thing about working with Björn. There's a lot of overlap in curiosity and interest that we have, but vastly different skill sets. So as a team, I think we really complement each other very well in terms of stuff he's great in which I'm not and other things where I'm better in. And again, if we also look at what someone who listens might take away, I think the important thing is um, if you build teams, look at the point, how can teams complement? I've never been, um, even in personal development. Um, there's tons of things I'm really shit. Yeah, um, and my team will tell you some of them I'll ask you in a second.
Speaker 1:Yes, you, you can, or even you know some of them. No, but it's. I've never been a big fan of investing a lot of time and effort in the things you're bad at to be bad at. If something is really standing in your way and stopping you from achieving your dream, then work on it, get better on it, but a lot of other things. If you work on your weaknesses, the only thing you'll achieve is it's hard work. You get probably better, but you probably only get mediocre at it, but you probably only get mediocre at it yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you spend time on the stuff you're strong in, the stuff that's usually the things you're curious about you can really get great at it. Yeah, and I think that's much better. So spend the time you have on things to be great at two or three things and then, if you have to build a team, try to find the people, um, who complement each other. That, um, whatever, this guy is great, our pion is awesome at sales and relationships and that stuff and, believe it or not, I feel much more like an introvert um and um. So, or if you put, if you want to put someone in front of a stage of a thousand people, pick peony, don't pick me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you want, if you have a room of seven engineers who you want to convince or get enthusiastic about something or something, you pick me. That's the whole thing in terms of know your weaknesses and strengths or of the team or people that surround you. Try to put the ones together that you have a very strong team, but individual. Whatever Bjorn can make up for my weakness presenting in front of a thousand people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very easily. Or he's a better marketing guy than I ever will be, and so if you then put your teams together and that's the whole philosophy in our engineering and those things as well is not to have five times the same engineer, no, have different people that are strong in other things and can help each other achieve some awesome things. So invest in your strengths, not your weaknesses. If you look at it from a personal development thing, yes, absolutely Be stronger in your strength and really only address your weaknesses if they really stand in your way. And the other thing is, I think at least I think I'm pretty open and would recommend everyone that be also open about your weaknesses. If you tell your team or the people working with you, or so, hey, this is what I'm good at, but also here are the things you see me struggle with, or I'm, for example, bad about giving good feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm only going to tell you what's wrong with this, not what's good about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to a degree, because my brain works a little bit in the way if something is solved, especially solved in theory, I move on to the next thing. I'm not great at executing all the details then, and make it look some crannies and do those 10 000 things. But it also means that, um, if we brainstorm with part of the team and, um, or we should do this and this and this, um, that might be my strength, um, but then someone goes and does all those things I have already moved on and I'm on the next thing.
Speaker 1:So instead I should say, hey, oh, very well, great solution, fantastic, and those are things, and I really appreciate that that's happening. But I'm just not good at um, telling that, um, I force myself to do that more often or because I know it's one of my weaknesses and um, but, um, I'm never going to be great at it. Yeah, and everyone I hire, I tell them that pretty much up front hey, if you work with me, that's the thing you should know about me. This is the stuff I'm really good at and you can count on. But you should also be able to deal with um, um, the things I'm not so great at or the things I don't tolerate, and then they can also have they have then have a chance to make a decision. Is that actually someone I want to work with?
Speaker 2:yeah, we chose. We chose violence. Nikki, um, you're also an investor. Aside from being an entrepreneur, founder, what? What motivates you to invest in people, in companies?
Speaker 1:well, a little bit. Um, that's a complex question, um, when I told you that I really enjoy working with small teams. So if you take the flip side from that, it's also that I don't have the appetite to grow resolution into 100 people, 200 people, 500 people business. So that means I need to be very selective in what we do and what we don't do, because even if I would have and I don't at the moment but if I would have 20 more app ideas which are great and that stuff would need to hire 30 more people, it would go to a size that I don't really want it to have. So that means we can't work on everything ourselves At the same time.
Speaker 1:I love to see passionate people and people like you, like Nikki, some of the others, who have a great product idea but are very passionate about solving a problem and that stuff. Being able to help with some money and other things to get them started and see them successful also gives me a thrive. So it's very rarely actually about the money. The money comes as a consequence of that and we have done well, so there's no secret about it. But I rarely do an investment because I think, oh, this is going to 10x my money and it's fantastic, and I don't even care too much if I get my investment back or if it's 10x or 5x on the stuff. I'm happy once it does, but it's not the thing that drives my decision. It's much more looking at the team that is looking for funding. Can I believe in those people? Do I like those people? I would never make an investment with someone I don't like or don't believe in just to make money, and then I see it much more as investing into those people. Um, yet I might have a great product or great product idea, um, but if I invest much more into them than into the product because, um, I feel like um, even if they figure out the product is not working or it's not the best idea or they need to pivot, have the trust in them that they will do all of that because, yeah, they are passionate about it and and smart people and um then seeing then build other small teams um, um that are doing great stuff. Um, it's not the same as running my own team, but it's still something that um um has me passionate about it and I can get a lot of positivity out of that.
Speaker 1:Um. Money, yes, but that's not the the deciding factor. I mean, I'm also not. That sounds like money. I don't care about money. I'm not doing this for charity. We invest a lot in or we give a lot to charity, but that's're about making money. So that's not the thing. But money very rarely is my primary objective or primary consideration when looking at it. Certainly, the business case needs to be sound and all of those things, but the people behind it or the small team behind it, I care about much, much more.
Speaker 2:I was expecting that answer.
Speaker 1:You know me, or the small team behind it. I care about much, much more. I was expecting that answer.
Speaker 2:You know me, so it shouldn't be a surprise to you, and you know we were talking the other day about an idea and whether you'd whether you'd invest in that idea, and your answer was like, don't necessarily like the idea, but I would definitely invest in you, right?
Speaker 2:Which kind of like in, in very short sentence, summarizes what you just said, which you know. You said it beautifully, but that's what it is right. You invest in people and the potential of people and, yeah, sure, you have to have an idea to come with along the way. But I've noticed this as well investing in a couple of companies, that's what I'm interested in. The character, the potential, the way that founder carry themselves speaks volumes to whether and not even if they're going to make it or not, but whether they're going to be able to take the hard decisions and be able to be flexible and pivot in ways that they make things happen. And some people have an eye on spotting those, and it does seem like you do. A large portion of the businesses that you invest are doing quite well or have returned the investment, and then some, but yeah, I think for me that's important.
Speaker 2:But not everyone cares about that. I know a lot of investors that look at um right, this, that's, that's the growth, that's uh projected over the next period and so on, and not necessarily looking at the, the profile of the yeah, and there's nothing.
Speaker 1:I don't even feel that's a bad thing to do. It's not what I'm doing. Um, ultimately, I try to do a lot of things that make me happy. Yeah, that's um well, none of the money I'm gonna make, I mean I can take with me once I die. Yeah, my children are secure in terms of um money wise. So if I make 10 more, 20 more, it's not going to make a difference to my lifestyle, to what I do at the moment. Those things that might sound arrogant, but it's part of the reality. So for me, the important thing is that I can do things I'm passionate about, I'm great at and that bring me joy.
Speaker 1:And just having a bigger bank account doesn't bring me joy. As as simple as that and as stupid as that. Um, working with you, working with um some of the other guys, um that thrills me. Yeah, seeing that they do well and and those things.
Speaker 1:Um that, that is awesome or the products they create, the users they find the um I mean I always believe it or not, I I get a thrill out if I look at our customer list and you see whatever um, nasa, google and some I can't mention, but um, the who's who of the internet companies are using our plugins yeah yeah, and I get an incredible thrill or proudness, or however you want to call it Out of that more than the monetary amount they spent with us, that they see enough value in the product that team creates to use it to pay us.
Speaker 1:Where hundreds of salespeople try to reach out to those companies and sell them something and we get nothing. They come to us to the marketplace, buy our products because they see the value in it and the problem it solves and I'm really really proud of that. And seeing that other people do the same. Or the customers you had, and even to the point of that it was interest for AppFire to acquire you and saw enough value in the business to do that. There are other things that really get me excited and get me out of bed and what I really enjoy and maybe to add one more thing to the investment. The other thing that I always look at and we had that discussion is that we can add some value beyond money so yeah I typically don't do anything where money is.
Speaker 1:The is the only thing that's that's needed, because I that's the thing. I want to add more. There are better ways. There are other investors who just look at your business case, give you money and that stuff and might give it as a better valuation than we would do. It's um. We always also look at can we help that team to be faster than they would be just by themselves and just with money?
Speaker 2:that's a really good answer, and I why with the clients things. I also agree the amount of times that I'd feel so proud when I see a new name or when I see customers just bragging about our product. So that's the profit. That's the profit that you get right, the profit is not just dollar signs. Often, when that becomes the main motivator, you're in it for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1:And you can see the profits should be all of the things that you mentioned, or the fun in knowing that. You know I get a lot of gadgets, but most of the company I get those gadgets from they spend more money with us than I spend on their gadgets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, very true, christian. I usually end with three questions flash questions, so we're going to get into that now. What is a quote that?
Speaker 1:you live by. I'm not sure if it's an official quote um, but it's a modern, nevertheless um and it's um. If I make more good decisions on a day than bad decisions, it's been a good day. The sum up is positive, basically. Yeah, and I think part of that is everyone. No one should strive to only do great decisions. I mean, you try to do the best decision with the information you have, but you should also know that you're doing a hell of a lot of bad decisions, and on any day where I had more good decisions than bad decisions, that's been a good day. And also, sometimes making a decision is better than not making a decision. Or even if it's a bad decision, you can at least learn from it and change it. So making a decision is better than just putting it off, putting it off, putting it off or not making a decision, because, inadvertently, even not making a decision is a decision in itself, but usually it's the wrong one, true.
Speaker 2:Book, a book that impacted or changed your life, be it personal or professional, career-wise.
Speaker 1:I actually can't think of one. I read a lot of books, I listened to a lot of audiobooks, but there's none that I would say hugely impacted or changed my life. Maybe I divert that to a movie.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, dead Poetry's Club with Robin Williams, and I mean, maybe many of you are too young to have seen it, but the abstract ultimate, it's even nowadays a movie worth watching and I actually like Robin Williams and even I think it is a story in itself that a guy that was so funny and so truthful in a lot of his movies ended up doing suicide being personally very unhappy, um, but nevertheless, that poetry club is the key takeaway.
Speaker 1:There is the carpe diem use your day, and I think that is something I feel I do a lot of days and would love to do more. So, um, I think that is a very good takeaway and has changed my life really at the at a young age. So I wouldn't have see, I'm even it's even hard for me to talk about I wouldn't have traveled that much with my parents and so on, if I wouldn't have had that motto when was the movie?
Speaker 2:when did the movie come up?
Speaker 1:oh, I can't tell you it's. I was probably when did you watch? 1920, so it's an old movie. And what today's time? When did? You see it the first time um, yeah, must be around that age. And um, yeah, must be around that age. And sort of, maybe why that movie resonated so much with me is that my dad died when I was 11. Okay, so I'm not taking for granted that you have time.
Speaker 2:That's an important thing and essentially using the day that you have yeah, sorry, didn't want to get you there no, it gets me emotional because I lost both of my grandparents this last year, in 2022, and it's, yeah, you think of um, that's very true, taking advantage. I haven't really taken advantage of of them when they were alive. And um, I, I can. I can maybe not as at the level that you're feeling it, but I can definitely resonate with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there wasn't much I could do with my dad at that age. But, like I said, I wanted to see the world and I took my mother and my stepdad along on a lot of those travels or they came and visited me and that was really sort of because of that movie.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised that I haven't seen the movie Now. I really need to watch the movie. Well, to put it on a more positive note, the last question is about a positive habit that you advocate for usually, except for telling bjorn all the time to stop smoking oh, positive habit, um, again, there are so many.
Speaker 1:I think the advice there would be find something that gives you balance and grounding. For me, what helps me a lot is to do running. I mean, obviously it's healthy and usually also helps me with my weight management, and you can now see that I was injured and didn't. I wasn't able to run for six months and that means I struggle a lot more mentally wise than other time. Also, if you're the type of person who likes that, it's mindfulness, sort of meditation or just being more mindful. So I reduce a lot of the time I spend on my mobile phone and those kind of things. Be more present with my kids, play with them and not just play with them and then look at your mobile all the time, read facebook and those kind of things. Really be there with them in the minute so being present, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for for doing this. Um, I was, you know, even when I started misfit founders. Even when I started Misfit Founders, you're in my mind as someone that I really wanted to share their story on camera, in a sense. And also thank you for opening up and talking about some of the challenges, as well as what motivates you to do what you do, and I'm definitely going to have you on for episode 100, okay, which hopefully more of a party then a party yeah definitely that's going to be a good episode, so thank you for doing this.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate it my pleasure. Thank you for doing this.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate it, my pleasure.
