SPEAK LIKE A CEO

How many entrepreneurial journeys have started with a wrongly booked ticket to China? Alone in a hotel room in Beijing, Johannes Reck realised how a city is transformed when you have access to tour guides and experiences. 

Two years later, with a failed student tour guiding company behind them, the two university friends took a leap of faith and launched GetYourGuide – a platform that unlocks unforgettable experiences. 

Fifteen years later, the app offers more than 70.000 unique experiences worldwide. 

How did they continuously grow for over a decade and survive a global pandemic as a travel company? 

The answer is hard work, trial and error, patience, and a positive mentality.  

The key to unlocking your potential as a leader is through training. By continuing to train himself rigorously as a speaker and communicator, and always searching for ways to grow as a leader and human being Johannes Reck has done what most founders dream of.  

GetYourGuide has built a global brand with strong word of mouth, product-market fit in multiple countries including the US, and continues to innovate for the future.

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https://www.eoipsocommunications.com/kontakt/

Viktoria Lindner is a former model, psychiatrist, CEO and founder of digital mental health startup Mindsurance.

Mindsurance is an all-in-one solution for organisations to streamline their entire employee mental healthcare operations. They help to analyse employee mental health, find and match the right care provider, and deal with the bureaucratic parts of insurance providers.

Improving mental health among employees is essential, also because absence rates in organisations are increasing from year to year due to mental health challenges. 

Viktoria is a big believer in the role of communications in scaling the business: “There is no bad communication. Get started, and you will become better and better over time. When you never start, you never give the world the chance to learn about you and your product.”

She sees it as a key to unlock growth. “How people purchase products and services has changed.” They don’t want to be flooded by sales messages. They ignore most inbound. Instead, they want to educate themselves. When the time is right for them, they come to you. When that happens, they are ready to buy - unless you screw it up. 

Her analysis is spot-on. Demand generation is now so much more powerful than lead generation. That’s why the best companies focus on pre-suasion and pre-sales through communications. It creates the demand that makes sales a piece of cake. 

Viktoria decided to strategically position Mindsurance as a safe space that acts as a guide on an employee’s mental healthcare journey. To create trust with employees, Mindsurance does not offer a white-label solution. However, this poses challenges, as their customers would like to see data to understand what initiatives are effective, for instance, in decreasing absence levels.   

If you enjoy this conversation with an inspiring founder, subscribe to the Message Machine newsletter and become an unstoppable founder yourself. 

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Daniel Stammler - entrepreneur, co-founder of Kolibri Games and a Forbes 30 under 30 laureate - shares his unique insights into how massive success does not need outside investment.  

How they did it does not match preconceived notions about gaming companies. There were no literal or metaphorical ping-pong tables, just hard work and dedication. 

This took them on an unlikely journey from their student apartment cum office in Southern Germany to 100+ employees in an office in Berlin (that was robbed twice, as life likes to throw in some extra challenges).  

The key to unlocking growth: a great product that was improved weekly. Paired with spot-on marketing, branding and communications. Growth was slow until they got their marketing right. 

Within 3 months, they 10x’d their profit and revenue. Then went on to create word of mouth and created a magnetic employer brand that attracted thousands of applications. 

Subscribe to the Message Machine newsletter and become an unstoppable founder yourself. 

That’s a huge oversight. Boosting our body language gives us more confidence and makes us more successful in business, says Martin Brooks. 

Martin is the author of Body Language Decoder and a leading expert and what our bodies say. 

In this highly actionable episode, he gives founders and CEOs a body language tool box on everything from speaking to the team to pitching to investors. Some highlights: 

Job interview: You can detect if someone over-embellishes their CV. Take a baseline of the interviewee’s body language by asking simple questions like “where did you go to school”. When questions get tough, someone who is deceitful would deviate from their baseline by making either more eye contact or avoiding it.  

Leading the team: Stand tall, smile warmly and make eye contact to signal that you are comfortable and certain about what you are about to say. Apply confidence gestures such as “the chop” or “the pinch of salt”. 

Pitching for funding: Know your audience and practise your answers to their toughest questions. Reassure with body language. Apply confidence gestures, but avoid signals of nervousness like rubbing your hands or fiddling with objects. 

Public speaking: On stage, come out from behind the podium, inject lots of energy so it feels over the top as you fill the room with energy. In a virtual setting, move away from the camera, then raise your hands to chest height so people can see your body language. Get the angle right and don’t look down on people. Don’t talk to the camera, talk through it. 

Power play: If someone is trying to elevate their status at our expense, show them it is not working. Look them in the eye and give them a warm smile.

More about Martin: https://successthroughimpact.com

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Boost your comms and get a free book chapter: Sign up to our newsletter via this link and get a free chapter from Jag Singh & Oliver Aust’s  ‘Message Machine’: https://www.eoipsocommunications.com/#machine

Tim Dettmann is a former badminton champion and the founder of sports tech startup BEAT81. 

He is inspired by a simple idea: to deliver happiness and lasting wellbeing to people via fitness, tech & hospitality.

To make BEAT81 as big and relevant as Crossfit, Tim and his team need word-of-mouth.

Word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing tool there is. 90% of people are much more likely to trust a recommended brand (even from strangers), and it is more effective than paid ads. 

Unfortunately you don’t have the time to sit around and wait until people start to talk about how great your product is. You need to kickstart word-of-mouth. 

Tim and Oliver discuss how a growing company can trigger word-of-mouth, both digitally and in real life. 

WOM is a strong signal for message-market fit. On the show, they also craft the messaging that could take BEAT81 to the next level. 

Free book chapter: Sign up to our newsletter via this link and get a free chapter from ‘Message Machine’: https://www.eoipsocommunications.com/#machine

“I'm a former academic and psychologist. Our answer to everything is ‘it depends’. But in the business world, that's just not how things work,” says Darja Gutnick, the co-founder and CEO at Bunch. 

She is on the Business Punk Watchlist, a “rebel psychologist” (Forbes) & podcast host. 

Her Berlin & NYC-based startup is on a mission to unlock the potential in every professional. Their aim: help you become a better leader in 2 minutes a day with AI-powered coaching that is personalised and scalable.  

Darja is no stranger to challenges, quipping that the company deserves the “cockroach medal” for surviving many crises. 

What helped Bunch overcome challenges has been strategic agility and effective communications. “Messages have to be boiled down to simplicity. And it's still like a big challenge for me personally.” 

Her best communications advice? Simplify, simplify, simplify. And she says it “as an entrepreneur who has always struggled with simplicity.” 

Bunch follows a freemium model and is free to download. It is kicking off in the US big time where 70% of their premium customers are based. 

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Tanja Bogumil is the CEO and founder of Perfeggt, a food innovation startup that changes what people eat by taking the animal out of the food system. They created plant-based eggs that may do for eggs what Oatly did for milk - provide a true alternative and create a new product category. 

Their approach is remarkable for several reasons: 

Perfeggt builds hardware with the speed of software by applying the lean startup approach of continuous optimisation. “Even in food, speed is of the essence.” 

Their go-to-market is also truly innovative. Instead of getting a new food product on supermarket shelves hoping that it will sell, they opted for food services such as restaurants. 

This allows them to use storytelling to explain a product and category consumers are not familiar with. “With our partners, we work out the best fitting story for their guests so it is seamlessly integrated with multiple touchpoints to understand what works best, so that guests actually get it,” Tanja Bogumil says.  

“It’s all about telling the right story that’s not only catching people’s brains but also touches their hearts. Food is so emotional, we can’t just talk about numbers.”  

Perfeggt is positive and uplifting at the point of sale. But the team also learnt to talk openly about what’s wrong. 

“It’s ok to communicate in a way that will also p*ss people off. It’s ok that some people will never understand that we need to change what’s on our plates. What matters is the increasing number of those driving the change.” 

When it comes to fundraising, Tanja’s advice is to focus on answering three questions: “Why this? Why us? Why now?” Investors need to sense “this unapologetic determination to do what it takes - this is part of good and strong communication.” 

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“Communication is so important for us because communication is part of the treatment. What we don’t want to do is take an old, grumpy doctor and sit him in front of a camera and treat our patients,” says this week’s guest Florian Semler, co-founder and CEO of Formel Skin. 

Formel Skin is a telemedicine scale-up that treats skin conditions. They are on a mission to make medicine approachable and accessible thanks to digitalisation and state-of-the-art communications between doctors and patients. 

Florian founded the Berlin-based company two and a half years ago with Dr Sarah Bechstein, a trained dermatologist, and product and marketing expert Anton Kononov.

Formel Skin’s success formula? “We want to provide our patients with a dermatology 3.0 experience where doctors are very friendly, thoughtful and approachable - a combination of a digital patient experience and a physical patient experience with a doctor.” 

This hasn’t always been straightforward. “It was a journey for me and Sarah how to communicate to the patients and how to develop these skills. Also from a company perspective. It is much more sophisticated and much simpler today.”

The interaction between doctors and patients is the key to Formel Skin’s success. “We have a training curriculum for all doctors on how they communicate with a patient. The most important thing is that you are honest with the patients and that you communicate with the patient.”

Research suggests that patients can only remember 30% of what their doctor shared with them and don’t dare to ask many questions. “This is something we want to change. We want patients to remember 100%. And we want to take their fear of asking questions.”

Formel Skin has already raised over 35 million from well-known VCs and has now set its sight on the Brazilian market.

Free book chapter: Sign up to our newsletter via this link and get a free chapter from ‘Message Machine’: https://www.eoipsocommunications.com/#machine

Valerie Bures is a serial entrepreneur, and founder, CEO, investor, board member, and a mom of three with an incredible track record. 

Over the past 20 years, she founded and scaled Mrs.Sporty, Pixformance and VAHA - successful businesses at the intersection of fitness, health and technology. 

Mrs.Sporty is a Europe-wide chain of fitness clubs that Valerie helped to scale to around 300.000 members in 550 Clubs and 10 countries with revenues of more than 80 Million EUR during this time period. 

The insights gained at Mrs.Sporty led her to found Pixformance, which offers digitally-enhanced movement therapy and is now entering the US market. 

In 2019, she also founded VAHA, a smart fitness mirror company that offers live and on-demand classes from yoga to strength and aims to be the best alternative to a gym. Last year, Bioniq acquired VAHA, and Valerie joined their board.  

Valerie’s view is that “you are not building companies. You are building teams. Teams who want to create and change the world together. That’s what I learnt from sports. It is more about the team than the company. You have to fail again and again to eventually score.” 

Part of her extended team has been athletes turned investors in her companies such as Steffi Graf, who was one of the early investors in Mrs.Sporty, and German football star Manuel Neuer who backed Vaha.  

In this wide-ranging conversation, Valerie explains how Mrs.Sporty built a sales machine, and predicts which companies will win in the health & fitness space in the future. 

Our guest is the accomplished entrepreneur Jan Reichelt. He built and sold two massively successful ventures, Mendeley and Kopernio, before bringing 10x Founders into existence in 2021.

In a short period of time, 10x Founders has become one of the top funds in Europe with the vision to boost the European entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Jan and the team raised 160 million from 200 individual investors who are also entrepreneurs. It truly is “the entrepreneurs' VC”, boasting a huge network.

Scaling two companies, Jan knows that “your communications can be a complete game changer. That's what sets you apart, that’s what gets people excited.”

His advice to founders: “Take communications seriously and think about your communications strategy. It is such a huge opportunity and you and your team want to shape it. You don’t want it to be shaped by others.“

Sophie Chung is back on the podcast! She is the founder & CEO of Qunomedical where she is building a much-needed CRM for hospitals to improve patient care.

A force of nature, Sophie was our guest on Episode #9, “No Bullshit”, and she still lives by that mantra - now more than ever.

Sophie and Oliver discuss how especially in tough times, “No BS” really counts. But you often see the opposite, argues Sophie. “You just know they are bullshitting.”

“It’s misleading, it’s not helpful. I’m trying to be different. Whenever I say something, I want to be genuine, truthful, value-adding. Not saying something you have heard a hundred times before.”

People who are listening to you are not stupid, they want true leadership.

Sophie & Oliver also dive into Qunomedical’s shift in focus from a B2C service for patients to a B2B software suite for hospitals.

With patients, digital marketing & SEO ruled. That’s different for a B2B software product. “No one googles patient relationship management software.”

Now it’s about bringing the content to the people who are interested. “Talk about the cause, the why. This is where you can start a conversation.” This can happen on LinkedIn or at events.

It was a leap into the unknown that paid off. Jochen Engert is the founder and former long-time CEO of Flix, a German startup best known for Flixbus that has grown into a global tech and transportation company with more than 60m passengers per year - a journey he describes as “absolutely crazy”.

Jochen led Flix for 11 years, from knowing little about trains and buses to expanding globally and taking over the iconic Greyhound brand. He is now a member of the supervisory board and an active investor.

Jochen and the founder team executed a highly effective communications, branding and marketing strategy centred around a core idea of ‘being the perfect host’ and a brand purpose of allowing people to travel sustainably.

As a leader, Jochen is clear that “crisis is nothing you can delegate”, and that “authenticity is the basis for credibility. That’s the most important thing you have as a leader.”

Fortunately, Communications Designer Jeremy Connell-Waite breaks it down for us. He leads IBM’s "Wild Ducks" industrial storytelling programme, where he coaches partners to create compelling pitches and presentations.

Stories are how you move people to action as a leader. But not random ones. Effective stories and speeches have structure.

Following the structure gets you to into the top 20% of communicators. But structure doesn’t move people to action. Emotions do. And the one emotion that can change people’s minds and get them to act is surprise. So ask yourself: How can I surprise this audience?

“We need to become students of emotions. If the purpose of a great communicator is to let the audience feel something, the only way to get really good at communicating is to learn how emotions work.”

Only emotions move people to action, and the key emotion is surprise.

More about Jeremy: https://jeremy.earth

Take a look at his one pagers: https://issuu.com/jeremycw/docs/the_art_of_the_one_pager_isuuv2 

Josef, who has two nine figure exists under his belt, is a serial founder, successful entrepreneur, and investor.

But success didn’t come easy. Starting out at the age of 16, he dropped out of school to build his first company which he sold only two years later to buy his parents a house. Since then, Josef, who loves to spend his weekends hiking in the alps, has climbed many entrepreneurial mountains.

Among others, he is the founder of JouleX, which was acquired by Cisco, and relayr, which was acquired by MunichRE. Recently, he was instrumental in a funding round for StartUpInsider.

In his book “Follow the Pain”, he describes his entrepreneurial journey.

In today’s episode, Josef gives us insights into the thinking of an exceptional entrepreneur who considers communications and storytelling as fundamental to what great CEOs do.

Tune in, and find out:

💊 Why pain is a great driver to success.

🎹 How to scale mentoring

📈 How to distinguish transformations from trends

⚫️ The beauty of simplicity

📣 How to approach thought leadership

🖖 Why personal relationships and trust matter in investing

We don’t run ads on Speak Like a CEO, but would appreciate if you support the podcast by sharing it with a founder who may benefit from it or by posting a review on Apple Podcasts.

Top international executive coach Bettina Hausmann and Oliver Aust both see opportunities in communicating in a hybrid world - if done right. In this episode, they give leaders the roadmap to be more impactful and avoid the spectre of mediocre communications that no organisation can afford in a rapidly changing world.

Tune in a find out:

🎨 How to draw up a hybrid plan for your organisation in 3 minutes

🌵 The pitfalls of leading in a hybrid environment

📖 How to tell stories and present with impact now

We don’t run ads on Speak Like a CEO but would appreciate if you support the podcast by sharing it with a founder who may benefit from it or by posting a review on Apple Podcasts.

Podcast Oliver mentions: School of Hiring. Staying Hybrid or Back to the Office. Konstanty Sliwowski With Jessica Kafka: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/staying-hybrid-or-back-to-the-office-and-the/id1546484127?i=1000596532545

In his new book “Helden werden in der Krise geboren” (Heroes are born in crisis), Holger G. Weiss dissects the archetypical, existential crises many founders encounter - from product to founders to investor crisis - and how they avoid meltdown and instead emerge stronger.

As German Autolabs founder and CEO Holger knows, communication is a central part of your life as a CEO, especially when your startup encounters a crisis.

Holger's book provides tangible solutions—supplemented by valuable experiences of founders of successful start-ups such as Sofatutor, Idealo, door2door, XbyX, Women in Balance, Signavio and others. More often than not, the issue can be averted by great communication.

Holger has 20+ years of experience building technology-driven companies with innovative business models in the future mobility sector. In this time, he has seen and mastered more than one crisis. .

Tune in and find out:

🤸🏽‍♂️ How to pivot your product from b2b to b2c without plunging your business into crisis

👸🏻 Why your investor is not your “agony aunt”

📣 What do founders often get wrong when communicating with the team

We have nothing to sell you on Speak Like a CEO and don’'t run ads. We would however appreciate if you support the podcast by sharing it with a founder who may benefit from it or by posting a review on Apple Podcasts.

Find Oliver and Jags newest book on Start-up Communications: "Message Machine. How Communication Will Make You An Unstoppable Founder." - here: https://hub.messagemachine.io 

Life's a pitch and you need to nail this skill for basically everything you do in life, says Bryony Cooper.

Her life story is both unusual and impressive: She stepped up to the mic early as a professional singer, which gave her the communications skills and stage presence to successfully pitch her first tech startup.

After building several startups, she became a VC and currently is the Managing Partner at Arkley Brinc VC.

In her experience, pitching and communications are superpowers that founders need to master. Rather than just focusing on the financial aspects of building businesses, Bryony is on mission to help early-stage startup founders to navigate the many challenges that come with building and growing a business.

Bryony's love for singing never vanished. She is now the lead singer of BC & the VCs, a Berlin-based band comprised of tech investors and founders including Christoph Raethke and Julius Bachmann. 

Tune in and find out:

🎤 What singing and being a CEO have in common

🛫 How to transition from a creative field to founder to VC

📅 What the communications milestones of a startup are

The links to the apps and the book Bryony talks about in this episode:

Headspace: www.headspace.com

Balance: www.balanceapp.com

Building a Story Brand, Donald Miller: https://buildingastorybrand.com

Find Olivers books here: https://oliveraust.com/books/

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dvyxVVtt

Find all of Olivers books here: https://oliveraust.com/books/

Our guest knows what he is talking about. John David von Oertzen is the CEO of Mobimeo, a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider that aims to change the way we move. He heads a highly international team that hails from 44 countries and works in a hybrid fashion.

Mobimeo is owned by Deutsche Bahn and operates in a B2B, B2C and B2G (business to government) environment. This brings plenty of communications challenges. As a partner of regional mobility providers, Mobimeo connects existing public transport systems, sharing and on-demand options, making these accessible to users.

Mobimeo’s digital products aim to change people’s behaviour from car ownership to new and shared mobility, by providing access to mobility as an integrated system that offers more options than traditional public transport apps. Changing our mobility behaviour is necessary to stop climate change and reduce congestion and land consumption.

David is an expert in the mobility industry and a pioneer in the field of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions.

Tune in and find out:

🎭 How to persuade different audiences like shareholders, customers & politicians

🌍 How to foster a great company culture in a hybrid setting with members from 44 nations

🪢 How to merge the teams of two seemingly similar companies

🎨 How to create and grow a B2B brand

Enjoy this episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Sherilyn Shackell has a clear view on the importance of marketing: "The CMOs should be present in every boardroom." They are the ones who feel the pulse of the customers, hear their heartbeat and can make all the difference.

Sherilyn is the Founder & Global CEO of The Marketing Academy, a unique non-profit organisation that turns the marketing, media, advertising and communications talents of today into the leaders of tomorrow. She took money off the table to create a priceless experience that money can’t buy.

The academy is highly selective and provides more value than a Harvard MBA - yet it is free. Its coaches and sponsors are leading CEOs, CMOs and Agency Heads from some of the biggest brands in the world including Salesforce, BT, KFC, Mars Wrigley, Accenture, ITV, Google, and Facebook.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Oliver and Sherilyn discuss how she changed her life and abandoned a successful career in recruitment to follow her calling, why generosity is key and why ethics feature prominently at the Marketing Academy.

Tune in and find out:

📣 How to convince a global network of leaders to give up their time for free

🎻What CMOs need to learn to be exceptional leaders

📌The purpose of communications

☀️ Why you should "live the story"

Enjoy this episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Episode mentioned in the podcast: # 167: Marketers make good CEOs. Phil Rumbol https://open.spotify.com/episode/18yuzZk2oNM3j2fpKVbtt7?si=1c1e70d1aa7041ba

Check out Oliver Aust & Jag Singhs newest book: Message Machine - How Communications will make you an unstoppable founder. https://hub.messagemachine.io

So Miloš Djurdjević set out with his co-founder Daniel Deutsch to build a real painkiller. “There’s a lot of anxiety involved in this topic due to personal liabilities that may be at risk if you don’t comply correctly,” says Miloš. This makes everything in communications, from marketing to PR and even employer branding and approaching investors a tough nut to crack.

His compliance-as-a-service approach is paying off though, as heyData! went from bootstrapping to VC-funded this year.

In this episode Miloš shares his approach to communicating about a dreaded subject, so that SMBs are not only compliant but can also use it as a competitive advantage. And heyData! can grow successfully as a company.

Tune in to find out:

🔥 How to work different channels for different messages and objectives

🌳 Which content is suitable as an evergreen

📣 How you can attract top talent despite a dull topic

Enjoy this episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

"The biggest mistake a company can make is not to communicate at all. As a founder, you need to start in the early stages and continually be strategic and smart about it,“ says Christian Meermann. Together with Daniel Glasner and Filip Felician Dames, Christian has backed some of Europes most game-changing ventures.

Their VC Cherry Ventures teams up with founders from all industries, beginning at the (pre-)seed stage. Their impressive portfolio includes the likes of Auto1, Flixbus, Formel Skin, Forto, Flaschenpost, Flink, Amboss, and many more.

Prior to Cherry, Christian was instrumental in scaling ecommerce giant Zalando as their long-time CMO. Lacking experience when he started, Christian studied 500-page book "Website Boosting 2.0“ at night and applied what he learnt the next day.

Tune in to find out:
🚦When startups should not limit their marketing budget
🪢 What the key skills of a CMO are today
📣 Why a brand name matters so much
🌳 Why entrepreneurship is vital for society
💸 How the world of venture capital is changing in Europe


The episodes mentioned in the conversation
125: Taking responsibility as a CEO. Michael Wax, Forto
143: Turning transactions into interactions. Marc-Alexander Christ, SumUp

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

#consumer, #foodtech, #earlystage, #europeantech und #venturecapital

In this special episode, Phil Rumbol walks us through the process of building and re-positioning brands.

There is really no better person to ask for guidance on marketing and branding. Phil is a business leader, award winning marketing director, founder and CEO with a broad range of experience from startups to agencies to global brands.

He has helped shape some of the world’s most iconic brands including Cadbury, Heineken and Stella Artois. Most recently, he was the CEO of iconic biscuit brand Bahlsen.

Tune in to find out:

📌 What are the immutable principles behind a successful brand

💶 Why having a small marketing budget can be an advantage

🌵 The biggest marketing pitfalls

🥇 Why marketers make good CEOs

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Phil’s book tipp: Byron Sharp, “How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know”

Shilpika Gautam is a Guinness World Record Holding climate activist and CEO and founder of SALT Global.

Before creating the fintech platform to finance the climate transition, Shilps became the first-ever person to stand-up paddle the river Ganges in India from source-to-sea. 100m people worldwide watched her journey on the Discovery Channel - the result of a cold email.

Not one to shy away from big challenges, she is on a mission to close the 100 trillion climate financing gap by unlocking every climate tech project that can move the needle with speed, scale, and equity.

One of her advantages: she speaks the language of all her stakeholders, from investors to entrepreneurs to activists.

Tune in and find out:

📧 How to successfully pitch in a cold email

💸 How media coverage can help you achieve your goals

💚 What leadership traits are at the heart of every conversation

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Klaus Wegener, co-founder und Managing Director of 35up, knows what he is talking about. He has seen companies rise and fall, founded several himself and led his first company Caseable through a severe crisis in 2019. Thousands of customers were waiting for their phone and laptop cases to arrive - thanks to trade barriers erected by the Trump Administration. Caseable's online rankings dropped like a stone to 1 star, usually the end of any e-commerce startup. How Klaus and the team turned it around thanks to excellent crisis communications, holds many lessons for any #entrepreneur.

Klaus’s focus is now on his latest venture 35up, together with his co-founders Fabian Louis and Viktor Schröder. 35up recently raised a seven-figure round and aims for category leadership in "embedded cross-selling".

Tune in and find out:

🔥 What communications can turn around an existential crisis

📣 How talking about the negatives can strengthen your reputation

📌 How to become a category leader

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Here’s the link to the Robert Ermich episode, Klaus mentions in the episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535?i=1000532566862

#pitchdeck #startup #funding #communications #crisiscommunication #podcast #speaklikeaceo #ceoinsights

If you want to dive deeper into Message-Market Fit check out this episode with Oliver Aust: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/96-what-is-message-market-fit-and-why-is-it-so/id1441419535?i=1000511572989

There is only one person who fits this description: Daniel Hanemann, the CEO of wundertax, the startup he co-founded in 2016 and returned to as CEO in 2022. His mission is to make tax returns easier. "It’s all about connection. We don’t pretend it’s a fun thing to do, but we can make it simpler and quicker.“

The key is in the language, according to Daniel. Trash the lawyer speak. Never make your product cool and funky, if it just isn’t. Simply ask, listen and talk to your users - from human to human.

In today’s episode we talk about:

🎭 What comedy and business have in common

🌳 What is means to become a "re-founder“ and return to your own creation

🔠 How a tiny copy change led to a 20% increase in conversion

🙊 Why fluency in a language is not always enough to bridge cultural misunderstandings

Here’s the link to the episode with Jannes Fisher (vermietet.de) that Daniel mentions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/150-create-a-market-and-own-it-jannes-fischer-vermietet-de/id1441419535?i=1000562791413 

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Enter Impactbytes (https://www.impactbytes.io), the growth engine for sustainable e-commerce. It’s the brainchild of the impressive Amsterdam-based founding trio Noor Veenhoven and sisters Marcella and Melissa Wijngaarden. The @TechstarsBerlin alumni are building the machine that powers the web with sustainable product data so that ethical businesses thrive. They already partner with the likes of Ecosia and (investor friends, take note) are currently fundraising to bring sustainable goods to bigger and bigger audiences.

Tune into this episode to get your weekly dose of CEO insights into:

🚀 How to successfully transition from a customer-facing brand to a new behind-the-scenes product

📸 How to get into the media as an early-stage startup

📣 Whether purpose really helps to get your message out

👭🏻 And what it’s really like to start a business with your sibling!

If you want to dive deeper into new ideas and tech around product sustainability, check out:

Episode 107: Becoming the Tesla of the fashion industry. Anna Franziska Michel, Yoona.

Episode 132: Storytelling Secrets for Start-Ups. Iris Skrami, Renoon 

Episode 159: Your Purpose is your Story. Gemma Comabella, COCOLI

And here’s the link to the episode with Ecosia’s founder Christian Kroll: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0UoA4bvJLM3c3iDcL4729r?si=Ce4tnGzBQ3im3-rTIE3T1A

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

But by speaking to them as individuals. "Customers want to feel special, like we’ve made the effort to get to know them“, says our guest. What used to be impossible or at best a tedious and time-consuming process is now possible with technology. Pranav Ahuja, CEO of xeno and his growing team have truly simplified end-to-end personalised communication.

Pranav co-founded xeno in 2015 to make an impact on the marketing industry by enabling brands to build personalised experiences and marketing for customers. The idea took off after joining Techstars Berlin in 2018. Back in New Delhi, the pandemic hit the company. With no money in the accounts, the team moved closer together. They redefined the Northstar metric to involve every single person in the company, making the goal specific and attainable. Since then xeno is going from strength to strength, with a second funding round in early 2022.

Tune in and find out:

🤩 How to elicit emotions through marketing in a way that it induces connection instead of cynicism

🪐 Whether marketing messages are universal or dependent on culture

📚 What happens when you double your team fast

🤝 What makes trust the number one communications goal to achieve

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Company Website: https://www.getxeno.com 

In 2020, Max Linden co-founded the fintech start-up lemon.markets — a stock trading API that enables developers to program their own trading algorithms, bots or applications.

Despite his young age, business angels and fintech investors have been keen to get on board. lemon.markets has already raised 15m Euros from high-profile backers such as Creandum, Lakestar and Lightspeed.

The company has big plans, and communications is central to their plans. Find out:

🤝 How to build trust so people trust you with their money

🛗 Why leadership is work in progress and CEO means Chief Enablement Officer

🏔 Why your vision is important when fundraising

🍋 Where the brand lemon.markets came from, and what Limoncello has to do with it

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

This was the question Gemma Comabella posed herself while she was Managing Director DACH for MADE.com. And she hit a nerve.

Pre-loved furniture is more than just a gap in the market. It is also a solution to reduce the environmental impact of our love for all things interior, which produces million of tonnes of waste every year. Gemma Comabella decided to do her part and founded COCOLI, together with a dream team of five co-founders to tackle a tough problem no one has solved before. Together they have created a platform that reinvents the way we find, buy and reuse furniture. Launched this January, COCOLI already has 4 warehouses in Germany, lots of media interest and 40% month-on-month growth.

"It’s not about what you sell,“ says Gemma. "What is your purpose?“ She found hers after a career building global fashion and consumer brands like Zalando, L’Oréal, Vestiaire Collective and Showroom, and then joining the furniture platform Made.com as Managing Director for the DACH region in 2019.

This episode is packed with insights including:

🤝 How to convince 5 co-founders to form an all star team

🗞 Why purpose creates PR

💸 What works in fundraising in the current environment

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

„You can’t make change happen alone!“ says Mali M. Baum. Together with her team, she is shining a light on others. As CEO and founder of WLOUNGE and the MAGDA GROUP fund, Mali has created an ecosystem that supports female founders and promotes diversity in business and technology. Mali has over 20 years of experience as a founder and is active internationally as an investor, speaker, mentor and ecosystem builder.

WLOUNGE brings together C-level executives, political leaders and aspiring entrepreneurs to make an impact and tackle the business world's biggest challenges. Last year, WLOUNGE HOUSE opened in Berlin, providing a flagship location and a gathering place for the community.

Mali believes in the power of curated events. Next up on 10 September 2022: the Tech Awards Gala, one of the largest and most prestigious award ceremonies of the German tech industry. Under the motto "Women drive innovation", the Tech Awards 2022 will focus on the strength of women and diverse teams in the tech ecosystem. The patron of this year’s event is the entrepreneur and investor Brigitte Mohn.

Mali was a guest on our show 3 years ago (check out episode #34). This time we wanted to find out what has changed in terms of communication since then including:

🕸 What the secret of building a thriving network is today

☄️ How to ensure that every event creates impact afterwards

🗞 When the right time has come to focus on PR

🤘🏽 How GenZ is changing communications

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

"Our best marketing employee is Elon Musk!“, says Caro Gabor with a twinkle in her eyes. Musk’s goal of fixing the „incredibly inefficient“ car insurance market while making a lot of money from it has gotten the attention of the car industry.

For car buyers, getting insurance is the least favourite part of the purchase. This is about to change. Caro’s aim is to make the insurance experience delightful, especially for that moment when you need it. To do that requires solving some really hard problems, something she relishes.

Since April 2021 Caro has been CEO of Movinx GmbH, a joint venture of Mercedes-Benz and Swiss Re. The global startup has a unique positioning, delivering mobility insurance through a digital business model that takes full advantage of tech and data to deliver a great customer experience. The aim is for it to become invisible.

As a communicator, Caro is not holding back. As an experienced entrepreneur, she believes that CEOs need to trust their teams with the difficult stories for them to perform at their best. Before joining Movinx, she was CEO and co-founder of Joonko, Managing Director at finleap and the CEO of autohaus24 and TopTarif Internet.

This episode is packed with insights into including:

🦖 How to bridge the dinosaur and the green field mindsets when working with large companies

🗣 What truthful feedback can do for you and why Caro enjoys disagreement

📈 Why performance marketing is dead and what the next new big thing is

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Speak Like A CEO is back after the summer break.

Today's guest is the CEO and co-founder of a trailblazing company that digitalizes the conservative insurance industry and has raised $115m+ in the process: Getsafe. The InsurTech scale-up is based in Heidelberg. „Not being in Germany's start-up tech capital Berlin gives us the freedom to build a company culture that is independent of startup trends“, says Christian Wiens. This has given the company the „Day 1 feeling" since 2018.

Christian develops his communication skills consciously and continuously. The same applies to the company itself. A rare beast among tech companies, Getsafe is in it for the long run, thinking decades into the future.

Tune into this episode to hear from an inspirational CEO who is hardly your typical insurance industry guy:

• How to position yourself as a challenger brand in a traditional industry and win 300.000+ customers
• Why the CEO is chief communicator
• How storytelling and messaging empowered Getsafe to raise $115m+

We also dive into Christians personal backstory (it all started with broken glass) and his best piece of comms advice.

Please enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Christine Kiefer is the co-founder of RIDE Capital. RIDE is a private bank for the digital age that helps customers structure their portfolio in an optimal and tax-efficient way. Customers already trust RIDE with close to a quarter of a billion Euros in assets - a massive amount for a four year old company. This was made possible through great communication and messaging.

Christine Kiefer also founded Fintech Ladies, a network for women involved in digitalisation and innovation in finance. This year she also joined Angelinvest as a venture partner.

In episode #155, Christine shares:

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Having experienced the expat life herself, polyglot Hanna Marie Asmussen, co-founder and CEO of Localyze, knows exactly how complex and bureaucratic it can be to move abroad for a new job. In the absence of a state-of-the-art digital solution, she developed and founded Localyze in 2018 with co-founders Lisa Dahlke and Franziska Löw. Localyze simplifies the management of international teams by providing a comprehensive platform that automates processes and contains all relevant information and documents in one place.

Half a year after founding Localyze, the company was accepted into Y Combinator - the mother of all accelerators. The company has grown ever since and now aims to expand from Europe into North America and to reach a total of 50 markets by 2025. In episode #154, Hannah not only tells us her personal backstory: living, studying and working as an expat and founding with friends but also talks about:

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Katharina Gehra is the co-founder & CEO of Immutable Insight and manages one of the leading crypto hedge funds in Germany.

Coming from the traditional world of finance, she is now an integral part of the crypto industry. Katharina has been invited to speak to the German parliament on blockchain technology and has been named Top 40 under 40 three times in a row. She also co-hosts one of the most prestigious blockchain podcasts, Block52.

In episode #153, Katharina and Oliver take us on a deep dive into

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Today's guest is one of the key players in the German and European FinTech scene. As co-founder and CEO of company builder finleap, Ramin Niroumand and his team were instrumental in building 15 companies that are now worth €3bn+, including Element, Penta, Clark and Solarisbank. Several of these have already achieved unicorn status.

Never one to rest on his laurels, Ramin recently founded his own venture capital fund together with Michael Hock called embedded/capital. Its aim is to become the no. 1 investor for Europe’s freshest, most innovative and trailblazing #FinTechs. The well-capitalised fund has already made 7 investments, and is hungry for more.

Ramin’s main success ingredient is to always bring joy to the table. With hundreds of pitch meetings under his belt, his first advice to founders is to smile.

To find out why a smile can be worth millions, tune in to episode #152, in which Ramin shares his insights and know-how about:

Why their brand is more important than most founders think

What’s behind the brand name embedded/capital and why this is exactly the right name for his fund

How to build trust with consumers as a fledging FinTech

How to communicate well with financial regulators, especially after the Wirecard scandal

The difference between a crisis and times of crisis, and what it means for communications

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

Selling is hard. To make the sales conversation better our guest today has built Demodesk, a revolutionary screen sharing and video conferencing platform. It acts like an AI-driven sales consultant that assists you by analysing data and giving suggestions to improve the conversation with the customer. You can compare this with the real-time assistance in cars today, says Veronika Riederle, the CEO of Demodesk.

Veronika founded Demodesk in 2017 with Alex Popp to revolutionise the sales process. They were accepted into Y Combinator and has since raised multiple rounds of funding.

In this episode Veronika shares

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

That’s exactly what Jannes Fischer did. He is the CEO and founder of Vermietet.de, the market leader in digital solutions for private landlords. Helping his grandparents administrating their flats in Hanover, he realised that the younger landlords of the future would not accept paper or Excel sheets like previous generations to look after their most valuable investments. So he built a better a solution and in the process a fast-growing venture that was acquired by Scout24 Group in 2021.

A born entrepreneur, if there is such a thing, Jannes shares in our 150th episode:

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535 

Born in Kinshasa, raised in the USA and currently living in Germany, our guest today is on a mission to create lasting change globally. Freda Katunda Olsen cofounded LEAP in 2020, an ed-tech startup that provides healthcare education across Africa. In partnership with UNICEF, the London School of Economics, international universities and African organisations, among others, the platform provides better, faster and cheaper healthcare training to more people and reduce brain drain. Freda recently won the Social Hero Award from Global Digital Women. She is passionate about leadership and storytelling, and has lots to share about how impact-driven ventures can pitch to investors.

Tune in to #149: Pitching for Impact where we discuss:

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dvyxVVtt

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dvyxVVtt

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Martin Schilling is the Managing Director of Techstars Berlin. As an angel investor, startup builder and scale-up executive, Martin co-founded and scaled a number of successful companies over the past 15 years. Together with Thomas Klugkist, he recently published "The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy!“ (https://buildersguide.org): a blueprint in which Martin and others reveal their most important learnings from scaling - among others - N26 to unicorn status in less than two years.

Tune in to find out

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Our guest today is working to change all this with transparency, great storytelling and an exciting new venture: Unstoppable Finance. Peter Grosskopf is one of Germany’s top fintech innovators and co-founder of several ventures including Solarisbank. His new startup Unstoppable Finance is coming out of stealth mode to democratise decentralised finance. Peter is one of the most thoughtful thinkers in the world of DeFi, blockchain and crypto and is regularly invited to speak to politicians and regulators.

Tune in to find out

🗻  Why the success of Web3 depends on communications and messaging

🪢 How to build trust among the general public for a new technology

❌ How Peter answers critics of crypto and DeFi

🙏🏽 The difference between employer branding and employer being

🤷🏼‍♀️ Who Satoshi Nakamoto is (purely speculative) 😇

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The scarcest resource today is #talent. And finding it is often stressful for both sides. Zenjob co-founder Fritz Trott, our guest today, experienced first hand how difficult it was to find a suitable part-time job as a student. Together with his co-founders Cihan Aksakal and Frederik Fahning, he made it his mission to solve that problem.

Today Zenjob offers a state-of-the-art tech solution that finds the best candidates for each job within seconds. After 7 years on the market, Zenjob is a fast-growing company with almost 500 employees, currently matching over 12k jobs with talents every month. The founders recently raised an additional €45 million to boost the expansion across Europe, starting in the Netherlands last year and now in the UK. 

The purpose of Zenjob is bigger than providing on-demand staffing on short notice. It is to improve the world of work so that people can decide for themselves when and how often they work. To achieve this vision, the company has its own Zenjob Code. Tune in to this episode to find out what that exactly is, as well as

🪜 The stepping stones to building a thriving platform business

🧩 Why a niche of a niche is the key to success if you want to outperform existing players on the market

👇🏽 Why you need to exactly define the monster you want to kill before getting big investors on board

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Today’s guest is one of the most influential women in tech. Nicole Büttner is the founder and CEO of Merantix Momentum, a leading AI solutions firm, and a board member of Merantix, one of Germany's top investors and company builders for artificial intelligence applications.

A tech-optimist through and through, she is pushing Europe to become a global leader in AI. Her impressive background in business and econometrics, academia and politics (she was even running to become a candidate for the European Parliament) has equipped her well to tackle the dual PhD problem, translating between highly specialised talents to make innovation happen. As in the case of Vara - a business that aims to make data-driven breast cancer screening accessible to everyone.

Tune into the episode to find out more about

🎨 What’s behind the recent rebranding from Merantix Labs to Merantix Momentum

🪐 Nicole's journey from academia to politics to deep tech

🎤 Why she values having a political voice and how it has shaped her personal leadership style

🤖 The state and future of AI (we take a closer look at Natural Language Processing)

🏗 What’s needed for highly specialised experts from different fields to build something great together

Enjoy the episode!

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Ten years ago, the founders of the London-based fintech unicorn SumUp went from door to door to convince merchants to trust them with their money. It’s been an incredible journey since.

We have all used SumUp paying for coffee or shopping at independent retailers and now take convenient payment options for granted. But that wasn’t always the case. The historically slow-moving payment industry has gone through a complete revolution over the past decade, and SumUp has been one of the key players in this.

Payment used to be a luxury product, exclusive to big retailers. The long tail of small merchants was left behind. In 2012, Marc-Alexander Christ and his co-founders decided to challenge that. The company started out with one product - the white card reader you probably know from your local coffee shop.

Today, SumUp offers a range of payments and solutions that give millions of businesses access to crucial financial services. The company has expanded to 31 countries so far and has 2600+ employees. Their goal: turn transactions into interactions.

Tune into the episode, get inspired and find out more about:

📚 Why you need to master storytelling as a founder

❄️ How you find the two sentences that get the snowball rolling

🚀 How to win multiple markets and become a global brand in a decade

🥊 The communication challenges of becoming a multi-product company and how to tackle them successfully

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Our guest today is the CEO of Nuri (formerly Bitwala) and a digital thought leader. Nuri enables customers to invest in cryptocurrency directly from their bank account. As Kristina Walcker-Mayer puts it: it is banking without the bankers.

Kristina is rapidely becoming the chief storyteller of neobanking, shaping topics around investing, blockchain, cryptocurrency and modern leadership. In this episode she pulls back the curtain on how she leads Germany's third-largest neobank with her honest and transparent communication, and how a trip to Asia influenced her leadership style.

Kristina joined Nuri in 2020 as CPO after previous senior roles at N26 and Zalando. Before taking over as CEO, she repositioned and scaled the product and design team, drove Nuri’s successful fundraising efforts together with Ben Jones and defined the future direction of the product.

In this episode we take a deep dive into:

☎️ Why CEOS don’t have to have all the answers and what else matters in modern leadership

🧨 The learnings, challenges and benefits of rebranding Bitwala to Nuri

🎇 How to attract employees and retain talent even if a competitor offers twice the salary

And: How this year’s summer party will solve Kristina's biggest communication challenge?!

Enjoy the episode and please support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dvyxVVtt

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Jerome Lange went from trying and failing to build a babysitting business as a student (no founder-market-fit) to building an operating system for construction sites (founder-market-fit). It’s badly needed: construction is pretty much the only sector that has become less efficient in the last 40 years. This has become untenable, as we need to build faster, better and more sustainably in light of climate change.

A team of young entrepreneurs decided to tackle this and founded Koppla as a spin-off of the Hasso Plattner Institute in April 2020. They raised funding, now employ more than 25 people and work with some of the biggest construction companies in the region.

But the sector is tough to change as construction companies are conservative and profitable, even if their methods are inefficient. In such a situation, messaging becomes even more important than usual as Jerome and colleagues have to convince a reluctant audience.

In this episode we tackle:
🙌🏼 How to get your message across to an unreceptive audience
🔑 Why the brand name is key to sales and how to stress test it 
🧨 How a first investor term sheet can trigger an avalanche 

And much more! 

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

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Gerrit McGowan is an investor, entrepreneur and startup mentor who has coached over 1000 founders and entrepreneurs across five continents. He is also the host of ‘The Most Awesome Founder’ podcast and recently launched the Rainmaking Venture Studio in Germany that partners with corporates to invest and build high-growth companies.

In this episode, Gerrit and Oliver take a deep dive into the all-important equity story (aka pitch) that all founders need to master in order to raise money, in particular:

- Why founders only have two tasks: to build s**t and tell stories.

- How to craft an equity story that generates generosity in investors

- How founders can use the neuroscience behind stories to their advantage

- What boxing and pitching have in common

- Why FOMO and 'Fake it 'til you make it‘ are really bad ideas while humour can work a treat

For more of Gerrit’s insights into the neuroscience of business and building companies, check out Episode 103 - The art of peak performance.

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts. 

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With the experience of over 1000 media interviews and having coached professionals from over 100 countries between them, top international executive coach Bettina Hausmann and CEO communications thought leader Oliver Aust talk about how to approach #leadership and #communication.

Specifically:

🎤 How to develop an important #speech or presentation in under 5 minutes

☑ The right (and wrong) way to share a personal story

💬 How to gain clarity and structure to become a master communicator

And there is much more to talk about, so that further episodes on leadership and communication are planned. If you have specific topics you want Bettina and Oliver to address, connect with Oliver on LinkedIn. linkedin.com/in/oliver-aust

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

🚀 This episode is brought to you by HeyViz, your rapid content production studio in Berlin. 🎬

Our guest today turned the Why? question into a thriving business. A clinical psychologist by training, Sarah Reitz worked in consulting until her work had lost its purpose. Pondering her personal dilemma, she emerged with two co-founders and a novel business idea that addresses a growing need. The result: whylab - a digital fitness studio for mental wellbeing

Tune into an episode in which Sarah and Oliver analyse 

🗝 Why the framing of your offer and messaging is key to differentiate yourself 

🙊 How to create an effective word of mouth strategy 

💸 The difference between promise and purpose brands and what is important when talking to investors. 

And much more! 

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts:  

🚀 This episode is brought to you by HeyViz, your rapid content production studio in Berlin. 🎬

Connect with Oliver on LinkedIn. 

Our guest today is a company culture builder par excellence. Kristen Mashburn coaches leaders how to get more out of their teams by installing systems to build high-performing cultures. With KPMashburn - a company culture consulting group - she on a mission to change the future of work.

Tune into an episode full of valuable hands-on actionable tools to level up your culture in which Kristen shares:

🚀 How to start and who to involve to build a process that creates previously unattainable levels of productivity

📙 The 4 systems behind high performing teams and where productivity comes from

‼️ How to approach hiring and retain talent to foster a great company culture

And much more!

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by sharing it and posting your review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/speak-like-a-ceo/id1441419535

🚀 This episode is brought to you by HeyViz, your rapid content production studio in Berlin. 🎬

Connect with Oliver on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/oliver-aust

Millennials want convenience, like being able to open a bank account in 10 minutes. The GenZ cohort expect convenience and also want a purpose they can relate to. So how well you communicate your purpose is becoming a main differentiator for companies targeting this group. Still, so far very few fintechs have created financial products for the next generation of customers. Bastian Krautwald's company is one of the few exceptions. While still a student, he founded "deineStudienfinanzierung", a platform for student loans with David Meyer. It even got them into "Die Höhle der Löwen“ (Germany’s „Shark Tank“). With their new product Wajve, the two founders raised 5 million in seed capital last year. The funding is intended to accelerate the roll-out of the platform for the first customers in Germany before it expands into other European markets.

Tune into an episode in which Oliver and Bastian discuss and analyse

😇 How to create the perfect message-market-fit for a specific audience

😎 How PR gets easier with a simple mindset shift

😅 What competitive sports have in common with entrepreneurship

And much more!

Enjoy the episode and support the podcast by posting your review on Apple Podcasts.

Connect with Oliver on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/oliver-aust

This episode is brought to you by HeyViz, your rapid content production studio in Berlin.

Ulrich Adam is the Director General of spiritsEurope, the Brussels-based association that represents the interests of 29 associations of spirits producers as well as 10 leading multinational companies, supporting 1m jobs from farmers to distillers and bartenders.

What sounds like a fun job also harbours many communications challenges. Ulrich has also modernised the association’s communications, making it more agile and digital.

In this episode, we dive into the rich tradition of spirits in Europe and gain insights into:

‼️How to protect yourself against criticism with the right messaging and strategies such as premiumisation.

🔐 How to effortlessly switch between the strategic and operational as a top communicator and why twitter has replaced monthly reports in Brussels.

☑️ Why advocacy is always about solving the problems of policy-makers first, before bringing your own topics to the table.

This episode is sponsored by HeyViz.

Get in touch with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-aust/