Practical Bravery: VOLATILE INNOVATION!

[00:00:00] This podcast is brought to you by Always Possible

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[00:00:12] Psst, yeah, you come gather, come closer, I've got something to tell you.

[00:00:20] In the fast paced digital world, the role of global entrepreneurship is more crucial than ever.

[00:00:26] And on the Possibility Club podcast, we're diving deep into how entrepreneurship not only shapes

[00:00:31] economies and societies worldwide, but also drives the bold leadership and bravery required

[00:00:37] to address some of our biggest challenges. From economic inequality to tech disruption,

[00:00:44] the questions that we're looking to find answers to are fundamental to paving the way forward

[00:00:50] in a digital future. Our guest this episode worked at the forefront of digital innovation,

[00:00:56] a serial entrepreneur's CEO and founder of more than digital. He's a leader in promoting digital

[00:01:03] trends and exploring how tech landscapes can be leveraged to foster change and drive progress

[00:01:10] in commerce and in innovation. What does it mean to be a global entrepreneur in 2024?

[00:01:17] How do new technologies help entrepreneurs tackle big challenges? And what kind of bravery does it

[00:01:22] take to lead in such interesting, stupid, fascinating times? In this episode, we're

[00:01:30] exploring these questions with a leader, an entrepreneur who's trying to redefine the

[00:01:36] boundaries of business and innovation in different sectors right across Europe and beyond.

[00:01:42] I'm Richard Freeman. This is The Possibility Club and my guest this episode is Entrepreneur

[00:01:48] and Digital Visionary, CEO of more than digital, Benjamin Tallinn.

[00:01:59] Well hello, welcome to The Possibility Club. It's Richard here. We're here to discuss

[00:02:04] bravery and the application of big ideas, innovation, risk change as ever. But I'm delighted

[00:02:12] to be joined by someone who knows a lot about this from the front line, a man who has founded

[00:02:19] a number of businesses, dreamt up lots and lots of products to take to market in

[00:02:24] different parts of the world, very much knows the ups and downs, the rough and the smooth.

[00:02:29] And that's what I'm very interested to talk about today, that the pains and rewards of

[00:02:33] entrepreneurialism. And my guest today is Benjamin Tallinn. Benjamin, how the devil are you?

[00:02:39] Thank you very much. Thanks also for inviting me. It's really a pleasure to hear.

[00:02:45] And where are you calling in from today? Actually right now in Bulgaria. It's with

[00:02:50] our team in Bulgaria. So we have a development team here. And that's why I'm calling from

[00:02:55] not Switzerland normally. Or let's put it this way, most of the time I'm in Switzerland

[00:03:02] for filing my taxes and opening some letters. Because in the last one and a half years, I

[00:03:08] needed to travel so much between development team between business development, so on.

[00:03:13] So constantly traveling literally giving up. And so we are here speaking of pains, right? So

[00:03:20] constantly traveling for one and a half years between meetings, between partner meetings.

[00:03:25] What's the sort of innovation tech landscape like in Central and Eastern Europe at the moment?

[00:03:32] The overall sentiment is mixed. Let's put it this way. We have a lot of different sentiments

[00:03:39] actually coming together. There is those who actually see the opportunity because it became

[00:03:44] a big thing to be entrepreneur, to start his own business and everybody's feeling about it.

[00:03:50] So in the last years, especially after Corona, people were just like, yeah, let's get the

[00:03:54] business going because there was a huge surge during Corona in business activity and

[00:03:59] entrepreneurial activity. And of course, we also had this big hype around all the technology,

[00:04:05] pretty much free money was floating around and just everybody was happy because they got huge

[00:04:11] funding for just having a little idea and the five page pitch deck and just saying like,

[00:04:15] I worked for Google for two months and I was an intern there. But now I'm tech pro and AI pro.

[00:04:23] So that actually filled a lot of the hype.

[00:04:27] Now there is an awakening. So Europe is still growing compared to US. It's not really that

[00:04:33] dynamic. You're not really that much into this entrepreneurial spirit. So you still have

[00:04:38] this gap to fill. So this is the one trend that the gap is filling and people are starting

[00:04:43] to actually be more entrepreneurial. The second thing what is happening right now is actually

[00:04:48] people are desperate for money because most we see is they're sitting on a lot of dry powders

[00:04:52] so they don't invest. They don't really take companies to the next level. We have just saw

[00:04:57] actually that there was it was the last quarter of 2023 and we had more company

[00:05:04] bankruptcies than in the whole 2022 together. So there are a lot of startups dying and even

[00:05:10] big ones. So they don't get like the C or D funding and we see also a lot of

[00:05:16] downruns. So there is also a lot of pain in the whole process because people are starting

[00:05:21] to lose a lot of money, are starting to burn through all the capital they have.

[00:05:26] And of course if you're VC backed they always tell you like invest everything invest everything

[00:05:31] be fast be fast. But if no money is coming up it's like you invested everything. How bad.

[00:05:39] Eastern Europe is very entrepreneurial because they have more pain I would say

[00:05:45] rather than for example Germany or Austria. Switzerland is a little bit more compared to

[00:05:51] Germany or Austria when it comes to entrepreneurial activity. But the problem is also that the

[00:05:56] road viewer to be honest I travel so much and it's so different when you actually talk with

[00:06:01] Americans when they talk about billions and in Switzerland Germany, Austria is rather like

[00:06:07] yeah we dream about one million or two million. So the type of dreaming big is way different.

[00:06:15] Is this what you always planned to do? Was this your dream?

[00:06:19] Actually not really. I had my first company be 13 so my first enterprise was with 13.

[00:06:27] Yeah and I just kind of stumbled into it because I was good at what I was doing. I was

[00:06:33] doing IT marketing stuff. I was literally building server networks and literally that was good old

[00:06:39] time to build servers so that was my job. I was actually making good money you know for a small

[00:06:45] boy who actually got like 20 euros of allowance per month suddenly having like 300 euros a day

[00:06:51] it was kind of good. And yeah then after selling pretty much the customers base there

[00:07:00] with 18 I was going to the US and I started dreaming bigger and I came back and I had the first

[00:07:09] companies and not even companies. I was just actually I was coming back to study. I wanted

[00:07:16] to go into finance that was back then my idea to go into finance and in the university I was

[00:07:22] just so bored. I was literally just so bored. So I started to go to some entrepreneur club

[00:07:27] sessions and saw that there is like help to get your startup up and running and it was just like

[00:07:33] yeah okay I had a startup so why not think about something else. And then I came up with very

[00:07:40] very big ideas and it was so big that it was already doomed to be actually too big for what

[00:07:47] I wanted to achieve and what I had in capital. So I was burning a lot of capital of my own

[00:07:53] capital for my startup there and I literally wrote it into the ground. Then the second startup

[00:08:01] was also it was a little smaller but still way too big and I didn't really get the game because

[00:08:06] no products, no funding, no funding, no product right. And I wasn't really getting the game

[00:08:11] and then I was changing it and then I was just like building my company back around. I

[00:08:18] actually built a digital agency because I said like I'm good at marketing so I just built that

[00:08:24] and from this agency then a company group and I did a lot of publications and a lot of change

[00:08:29] management topics and I always thought that I'm going to be in the consulting industry and

[00:08:34] I always loved turnaround management. And out of the simple reason because it's just so fun to

[00:08:40] actually just deconstruct and reconstruct something and yeah and then I had my own

[00:08:46] company in Cubator. There were actually seven companies in this incubator. It was just a

[00:08:51] journey of constantly I see an opportunity and I do it and I create an opportunity and

[00:08:56] I leverage it. And actually the last one was a very frustrating experience also in a way

[00:09:03] because I was doing a lot of consultancy. You know back then I started smaller so I

[00:09:08] could help SME companies because they literally had the pain and there you have more freedom

[00:09:12] to do something. It was more hands-on approach and suddenly due to my expertise being widely

[00:09:19] shared and I had a lot of publications that gained a little fame. I was suddenly advising

[00:09:25] companies like Google, Arliant, Governments and you know it's a total different ball game.

[00:09:30] It's more politics. It's more about make a presentation now and the next presentation

[00:09:35] is in six months and you have this and we have to stake more on the meeting there.

[00:09:39] It's not really like do something and change something. It's more like play the game and you're

[00:09:44] okay and I lost pretty much all my passion for that stuff and I also got so annoyed with all

[00:09:51] this bullshit thing. Sorry for language here but everything all this bullshit thing,

[00:09:56] all this marketing blah around digital here and innovation there and AI blah and I was just

[00:10:01] so annoyed with it. It's not rocket science. You don't need to do much. It's just easy.

[00:10:07] I explain it to you easily. It was just again frustration. I created most of the companies

[00:10:13] just out of frustration and I said I'm going to make a blog. I'm going to explain all these

[00:10:17] things as easy as possible without buzzwords, without all these marketing phrases, without

[00:10:22] CTAs and sponsor posts and some advertising whatever. Pure information as I would want

[00:10:30] it to here as an entrepreneur and yeah this little block then became what is now one of the

[00:10:36] top 15 big business platforms in the world. We are helping now with two and a half million

[00:10:41] executives worldwide every year. We are doing economic developments programs because that's

[00:10:46] actually what I was doing for governments but they also didn't want innovation. They didn't

[00:10:51] care about innovation. Most of the times I literally had people saying like, ah that's

[00:10:55] so different from what we are doing and I'm like that's what you pay me for.

[00:11:01] Do you think most people that talk about innovation have the first idea what innovation means?

[00:11:07] Most of the people think innovation is like I don't know building a rocket or so. It's something

[00:11:13] super innovative and you need to radically change the market. The fun thing is actually that more

[00:11:19] than 80% of innovation is incremental information. So you have something, it's an existing market,

[00:11:26] it's an existing product and you implement something that is making it better. And radical

[00:11:32] innovation that is actually what all the people always think about innovation is actually creating

[00:11:38] a new market within your product and that is almost impossible. We are not anymore in an age

[00:11:45] where we can literally have radical innovation. We can just build on iterative innovation.

[00:11:50] For example AI, everybody is hyping AI but in the end it's an algorithm. It's a simple

[00:11:55] algorithm and all of these algorithms were actually invented in the 1960s. The only bigger

[00:12:00] breakthrough of an algorithm was deep learning and that was in the 2000s. Just getting a little

[00:12:05] better at understanding languages and a little better at actually building a bigger model

[00:12:10] to actually have better answers for this model. First of all we are all humans. I guess that's

[00:12:15] the first and foremost biggest thing we should mention. We need to understand that besides we

[00:12:22] wish that the society would be better and we wish that humans would be nicer, we are first and foremost

[00:12:28] always optimizing our own good. So that's our own priority. And if we understand that then

[00:12:34] we can actually extrapolate it on organizations because in small teams and small startups

[00:12:40] it's easier to find that everybody works for his own good as the bigger group. If you are five

[00:12:47] founders, everybody works for himself or his share but together you actually put in the company. So

[00:12:53] that is actually opening up more possibilities to actually get a personal wedding in. You cannot

[00:13:00] be fully agile in an organization because then everything would break apart. Who is going to

[00:13:06] manage the numbers? Somebody has to manage numbers. Somebody needs to be responsible for numbers.

[00:13:12] And of course if somebody becomes responsible for a very big number his responsibility is there

[00:13:17] and he is taking care of himself that he will also in future be taking care of this big number

[00:13:23] so he's fighting quite a big thing to actually defend his number. And hierarchy also gives you

[00:13:28] then pretty much power. And if you have power you want to be in power and you want to

[00:13:33] be less than power. So you're not actually very likely to give up the power because somebody

[00:13:38] else says we have a new thing that's actually the innovators dilemma, right? So you're successful

[00:13:43] at the moment with something and I need to destroy myself. I need to destroy my reputation

[00:13:48] something where I'm proud of somebody that makes me maybe good bonus and good salary

[00:13:52] whatever and admits that something else will be better and I'm not proud of that

[00:13:57] It's a very human thing. The size makes it worse, but it's not that the size is the only determinant

[00:14:05] in that and of course the harder it is to pivot for example I don't say the name here

[00:14:11] and very very very large company. I always thought they're super innovative. They're super good

[00:14:17] at breaking things and putting together. They actually have one of the biggest

[00:14:21] optional transformation problems ever created by humans because one of the departments is

[00:14:26] actually so powerful that by just triggering 0.1 growth in this department it's bigger than

[00:14:34] 20 other departments compliant. If you have this power the power leaves somebody to corruption

[00:14:41] and then it's actually coming from the inside because you cannot give everybody equal rights.

[00:14:46] You don't have equal departments, you don't have equal budgets, you don't have equal whatever

[00:14:52] so somebody will always be a little more right because he can say like

[00:14:55] hey my budget is like 50 times bigger than yours why should I listen to you?

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[00:16:06] This is a quick note to say that the Brighton Paradox will be back.

[00:16:11] Season two will be a shorter, tighter series looking at the energy,

[00:16:15] impatience and opportunity happening in post pandemic Brighton and Hove.

[00:16:20] We're examining the landscape across the city in 2024, what's changing, what's building

[00:16:26] in economics, culture, community and technology? Why are people telling me that they are in

[00:16:32] fight or flight mode? What is the significance of a council with an overall majority?

[00:16:37] How is artificial intelligence maybe changing the way people solve problems in the city?

[00:16:42] And of course, how has a podcast changed the lives of Brighton's children?

[00:16:48] And it's not this one. All new interviewees and all new explorations of the city.

[00:16:55] But right now we're still gluing the jigsaw together so you'll have to wait a little

[00:16:58] bit longer. But we are delighted to announce that we're being supported again by Brighton

[00:17:03] Hove Albion Football Club, who return as brilliant headline sponsors and partners.

[00:17:08] And the University of Brighton's Help to Grow Management program also returns as a really

[00:17:12] valuable project partner. And in addition, we have two new supporters, the exceptional

[00:17:18] focus EQ investors and the legends at Midnight Communications. And we couldn't do this

[00:17:23] without all of these visionary people. Brilliant. Thank you. Take care. Speak soon.

[00:17:29] If you're painting a picture there of inherent human frailty, I guess, or fallibility, humans will

[00:17:38] always get in the way of themselves as well as be gloriously creative and imaginative.

[00:17:45] But I'm going to argue that there's also an innate compassion and a need to solve problems

[00:17:52] that we can do at a scale and with speed and with technology today,

[00:17:58] more than we ever could do in history. And so do you see a shift in the kind of entrepreneur

[00:18:05] psychology where we are also better at harnessing the power of capital, of technology,

[00:18:12] of genuine innovation to create greater value than just finance? Do you see

[00:18:20] any more of that than perhaps there used to be? Or do you fundamentally feel no,

[00:18:26] it's still every person for themselves and will ever be thus?

[00:18:30] No, it's not just every person for themselves. But it's actually Maslow had a very nice

[00:18:35] pyramid, right? So he was like, we care less depending on how much are we fulfilled.

[00:18:42] Part of my job as a futurist is actually to see 20, 30, 40, 50 years into the future.

[00:18:48] So first question that we asked is, do we see the positive impact for everyone? Yes,

[00:18:54] we see it. Actually, there has never been a history or any part of the history where there was

[00:19:01] less poverty and less people starving or less people living pretty much below the

[00:19:08] super limited poverty line. So what contributed to that is, of course,

[00:19:15] better factor productivity. So for example, agriculture. Agriculture wants 80, 90 percent

[00:19:21] or almost of the whole GDP production. Pretty much everybody was working in one kind of

[00:19:28] or another in agriculture, right? Because that's the only way to survive. And right now it's

[00:19:33] less than 1 percent of the global workforce and less than 1 percent of the global GDP. So

[00:19:39] right now we are super efficient in actually producing something that is a basic need. And

[00:19:44] that is the same with manufacturing for years, for almost centuries, you can say,

[00:19:51] manufacturing is in decline. So manufacturing is becoming more efficient. We have more

[00:19:56] automation, we have bigger plants, we have better processes, we have better materials,

[00:20:00] so also the production processes can improve. I mean, we can literally have something right now

[00:20:06] made for $1, which was 50 years ago, maybe $500 of labor you would need to put into that.

[00:20:16] The better we get, the more productivity we'll put in, the better it is. Just imagine,

[00:20:22] if we just text the whole world 1 percent, we could literally feed everyone for free. We wouldn't

[00:20:28] even need to think about food at all. Just 1 percent of the global GDP is agriculture. So we

[00:20:35] could literally feed everyone for just 1 percent of the global GDP. And we literally could give

[00:20:41] everyone everything from housing to everything if we just do 20 percent of the global GDP for that.

[00:20:49] And that number of manufacturing will also go down. So if we look into the future,

[00:20:54] what is happening? Productivity is getting better. We have no algorithms, AI, everybody loves AI at

[00:20:59] the moment, but we have algorithms. They're making things easier. They're making decisions

[00:21:04] easier, they're making production easier, whatever. And that will continue to do.

[00:21:08] And we have also a trend because most of the people who are watching us and

[00:21:12] hearing us are on a digital device. We are spending around four hours a day just with

[00:21:17] our smartphone. We can literally imagine a world where you don't even need to buy anything

[00:21:23] because it's just so cheap to produce that literally everybody can print it or just have it,

[00:21:27] or it's just en masse there. Like now, nobody would need to actually think of food.

[00:21:33] And that is where we are getting at, that food is just so cheap that people can't

[00:21:36] just afford it and they don't even think about it. Please take it with a grain of salt,

[00:21:41] what I'm saying. But in the end, when we look really 20, 30, 50 years into the future,

[00:21:46] we won't just be spending with a 2D screen four hours a day, but we will be actually

[00:21:53] spending with any device. It can be VR, AR, some BrainLink or whatever. It doesn't really matter

[00:22:00] what device it will be, but we will be spending more time in the virtual world.

[00:22:05] Technology will change the way people perceive money, people perceive freedom,

[00:22:11] people perceive the social structure and it will also of course have very big impacts on the

[00:22:16] reproduction of ours. Because if we have a virtual friend who is actually nicer to me than any real

[00:22:22] person, then we're also going to have virtual connections and maybe we don't even need other

[00:22:27] people. There is a possibility that we create more equality but also more dystopian future.

[00:22:33] I can see how there's a democratization of knowledge. And for sure, you know,

[00:22:37] I could only have dreamt when I was a child that I would have the entire history of recorded music

[00:22:43] or, you know, a billion hours of cinema and every dictionary, every word in my pocket,

[00:22:50] in my hand. And my daughter has that and doesn't know any different. You know,

[00:22:54] that's staggering how quickly that's happened. But there's also a deep, I don't know,

[00:22:58] is there a cynicism or is there a... I could understand people being deeply

[00:23:03] distressed at this idea of the real world is so dismal for lots of people. We just give up on that

[00:23:11] and concentrate on a virtual world where they can pretend they're in a palace.

[00:23:15] You know, I think from an ethical and moral perspective, that's a challenge.

[00:23:19] For you, do you see the need for a real galvanization of entrepreneurialism? You know,

[00:23:26] so, you know, should we be looking forward to a world in which, you know, most of the

[00:23:32] population doesn't need to work as you talked about, you know, because we should in theory be freed up

[00:23:37] to be able to live to our fullest potential. So the logical conclusion of that is that there are

[00:23:44] billions of entrepreneurs, you know, living creative free lives. Or are we almost certainly

[00:23:53] going to end up with all ownership and technological power concentrated in fewer and fewer people?

[00:24:01] I mean, you know, we are so far away from that utopia at the moment and every bit of tech that

[00:24:07] we've discussed is owned. Let's face it by a group of about four people.

[00:24:12] It's actually funny because I just recently wrote a report and there was part of the workgroup on

[00:24:17] that for Middle Eastern government. I cannot say the name right now, but they actually asked me

[00:24:23] what is the future of society and also pretty much the economy. Pretty much there is everywhere one

[00:24:31] of the major platforms. If you want to go into retail, you need to pay your fair share to Amazon.

[00:24:37] If you want to do something on social media, you're paying social media to your tax.

[00:24:41] So we already, we are kind of like a citizen in a platform and this platform is

[00:24:47] pretty much taxing you for that. You will be seeing a lot of different people being

[00:24:52] entrepreneurial in this space. You have an idea, you pump it up, it goes bust. You have an idea,

[00:24:58] you pump it up, it goes bust. And that is actually the power of social media because you can create

[00:25:03] type, you can create a brand, you can monetize it and people get bored. So before you even

[00:25:08] launch the second t-shirt, people are already bored today, somebody else doing it. So we're

[00:25:12] going to see a lot of new entrepreneurial but small entrepreneurial spirit. So people will

[00:25:18] have the small ideas, they're going to try to test it because as you said, they have time,

[00:25:22] they don't really need to do much. So some people will just get basic income and they just need to

[00:25:28] spend the time and pretty much a basic income on that. Other people will be working on some other

[00:25:33] services and service related things. Economy is always evolving. So that means we will

[00:25:38] always have somebody doing something and creating something that is of value where

[00:25:42] other people will pay you. I've got one more question and maybe it's coming back full circle

[00:25:47] to where we start but also picking up a little bit from there. If we do have much more creative

[00:25:53] freedom to be able to start and build businesses, but as you said, we're in a world in which hype

[00:26:01] will suggest we've got the next great unicorn and then it disappears. What does that do

[00:26:06] for the enterprise landscape? Surely it's going to be far harder to get investment. Surely banks

[00:26:11] aren't going to touch things with a barge pole. Surely it's going to be very difficult

[00:26:15] to find talent and to build a team. Isn't that an unintended consequence of this?

[00:26:21] Yes and no. I mean, if something is really good then this thing is delivering long-term value.

[00:26:29] It will be also delivering long-term value in the future but if more people are participating

[00:26:34] in the market it actually also becomes harder to deliver long-term value. So you actually see

[00:26:40] then a little bit more the extremes because you filter out then the more long-term impact things

[00:26:45] and then you just have all this. I mean what you see in China right now is super fast

[00:26:50] entrepreneurial fashion. It's literally banks are building themselves around these trends so

[00:26:56] they're literally banked from that so they literally play poker with it. So it's not that

[00:27:01] they're not interested in that because it is making money and every time somebody is making money

[00:27:06] if I can tell you I make a business for one hour and I give you 500% return

[00:27:12] and the chance is like one out of 200 then for you as a bank it actually makes sense. So I just

[00:27:18] give you the money and I just do it for 10,000 times and it will bring me to return as long

[00:27:24] as the industry can deliver that it will be happening. It's just a different mechanism.

[00:27:29] On the other side we see actually two currencies and that is for example with fashion.

[00:27:34] What happened in fashion? Fashion is a very good props for that. In fashion we have fast fashion

[00:27:39] so we have the people who are actually don't they don't give a timing thing about it so they just

[00:27:48] buy this room they don't even vary them sometimes just throw it. So we see this super short lift

[00:27:54] attention to something and this super low value to something but at the same time actually brands

[00:28:00] like Louis Vuitton, Dior etc. So the long term brands they gain way more quality and appearance

[00:28:09] and whatever because of this anti trend and that is actually what will be happening also in a lot

[00:28:15] of ways in an entrepreneurial setting so in a world which is super super fast and where you

[00:28:21] don't really rely on anything because there is constantly just new new new new new new

[00:28:27] so everything is new every hour you have a new startup coming up.

[00:28:31] Sometimes people just want to de-accelerate so you always see this other swing around so there

[00:28:36] will be super long term brands that can monetize on that it's just harder in the middle.

[00:28:43] How do you say I mean just look at 1916 70s in the US when the first consulting was coming

[00:28:52] up it was pretty much always the same copy pasting right so it was copy paste how consulting

[00:28:57] should work and then in the 80s 90s when it was flourishing you had McKinsey whatever coming up

[00:29:02] and right now you see all these super fancy pancy left and right agencies

[00:29:07] some are just popping up here some are just doing that there there is no coming down anymore

[00:29:13] so being normally is pretty much boring so you need to have either side and you see that

[00:29:20] in every industry for example for many many decades nobody would buy super cheap clothes to throw

[00:29:26] it away but super cheap clothes are now coming so you see people just using it's like it's worth

[00:29:32] nothing and then you have the other trend that Louis Vuitton can suddenly raise the prices

[00:29:37] for three times and people are buying in bulk as long as the market is not saturated people

[00:29:42] will come up that that is what we had with all this sus boom software as a service

[00:29:48] everybody had the same model the same pricing the same whatever now we literally see the market

[00:29:54] splitting up into this absolute deal kind of society where it gets built after the year it's

[00:30:01] gonna drop so you just have this quick commerce I have an idea I pump it I dump it or the

[00:30:09] people who are actually building long-term things so I mean somebody to compete with office

[00:30:15] it's almost impossible right now Google tried and succeeded in some way but it's not the full

[00:30:20] office here right so and competing with that is hard and that's like the Louis Vuitton of the

[00:30:26] software industry and I guess that will be also true for a lot of other industries that you see

[00:30:31] when they're coming up there will be a lot of averages there is one peak that is literally

[00:30:36] concentrating the power and for the rest is then free game and you need to differentiate

[00:30:41] yourself that's actually one thing disabled every social media we have seen at the beginning

[00:30:46] everybody gets a lot of reach and then at the end if you're if you're late for example LinkedIn

[00:30:51] was the same if you're right now starting with LinkedIn it's almost impossible to get to 30,000

[00:30:57] followers my friend told me that he had actually 10,000 followers within like seven days when

[00:31:04] he started with LinkedIn or when it was freshly out so just imagine right now 10,000 followers

[00:31:10] and LinkedIn that is that is almost like 10 years of work to get that you know the danger with all of

[00:31:15] that is that there's no depth there's no quality it's just perpetually driven by a kind of a need

[00:31:22] to move rather than a need to be really good where your skill is and listeners will be fascinated

[00:31:27] by this it's just understanding it being an analyst we all need to be better analysts

[00:31:32] really to be able to to work out how it all how it all plays but it's also hard I mean to

[00:31:38] be honest I spent so many days and hours and just doing that every day I spent like two three hours

[00:31:43] just educating myself understanding the thing it's natural what it does it's just maybe how the brain

[00:31:49] was wired for me maybe I'm just weird you can also be but for me it's always like I hear

[00:31:55] something I need to think what is the impact what will be happening afterwards if I don't know it

[00:32:01] I need to google it I need to understand it I need to see the consequences because you know

[00:32:05] in complex systems you usually say like this is combined with a and b and c and c is combined with x y

[00:32:12] z so you're just trying to actually map out what is happening there but what's a lot of systems change

[00:32:18] for example is missing these productivity gains or for example um these marginal gains whatever

[00:32:25] so you have a lot of these these intricate things which is in every single note not being covered

[00:32:31] and they have a huge potential because something positive can subtly turn negative if the market is

[00:32:36] actually saturating yeah we need to educate ourselves more on these things but it's super super super

[00:32:44] complex and I'm also I'm I'm coming to a maximum of my mind um of doing that and it takes me weeks

[00:32:51] to actually just think through because if the government gives me one of these challenges how

[00:32:56] to actually predict something how to actually look at things um it's just so many thousands of

[00:33:01] variables and so many thousands of possibilities uh dependencies etc and formalizing it it's hard

[00:33:08] that's why yes understanding the future might be good but most people don't have the time

[00:33:16] try to write down pretty much what is the worst that could happen so what is the fall out

[00:33:21] what is challenges what are some negative things that could happen try to map out what is the positive

[00:33:26] things and then pretty much just combine everything into a single table and prepare yourself so you

[00:33:32] are actually by combining it you have from different scenarios that are relevant for you

[00:33:37] you have at least then something that you could either use as an opportunity and so it's

[00:33:42] like a SWAT analysis of your future and always please if you do something like that just use

[00:33:48] the resources you have and don't forget something as a resource is very valuable for example your

[00:33:54] industry expertise your friends people always forget what resources they have they have a friend

[00:33:59] circle they have some expertise in the friend circle um and the same is also with a company

[00:34:03] for example I once was actually advising a carton producer you know this pop up display

[00:34:10] producers there uh for the pharmacies etc so they produce all the the stuff where the

[00:34:15] cosmetics and the pharma products are being sold they didn't know actually one of the

[00:34:22] greatest things they have so they couldn't even anticipate the future because one of the greatest

[00:34:27] assets they had was customer attention their displays were in front of millions of customers

[00:34:33] every day but the only thing they were focusing on is actually how to make cheaper

[00:34:38] carton and how to print cheaper and how to make maybe a flexible carton to do whatever

[00:34:44] bending stuff um but they didn't actually understand that actually the big assets they

[00:34:49] could have is customer attention and by just attaching a screen there and maybe just

[00:34:54] attaching a little camera or tablet there is camera and screen right um they could

[00:34:59] actually track what kind of advertising is working what kind of colors is working so

[00:35:04] they can literally upsell on that they can literally rethink the whole business model

[00:35:08] instead of selling a carton they could suddenly sell attention try to think outside

[00:35:13] of the box and that's the biggest challenge I see in all entrepreneurs thank you well lots there

[00:35:19] lots there um some good some good takeaways thank you so much for spending some time on the

[00:35:26] possibility club uh Benjamin Tellin thank you so much for inviting me

[00:35:35] thank you for listening to the possibility club practical bravery

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[00:36:32] always possible podcast the interviewer was Richard Freeman for always possible and the

[00:36:38] producer and editor was me Chris Thorpe Tracy for lo-fi arts have a good week

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