Business advice we would give to our kids | #018

In today's special fatherly advice episode, Raul and Toni talk about what advice they would give their kids when it comes to business today. 

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (03:06) - Play the long game
• (05:52) - What's more important than money? Leverage
• (07:42) - Focus more on the behavior
• (11:26) - Do you even need University anymore?
• (16:19) - Trust the process
• (21:43) - Want above average returns? Don't be average
• (25:03) - Don't compare yourself to competitors
• (28:01) - Execution is more valuable than ideas

Creators and Guests

Host

Raul Porojan

Director of Sales & Customer Success at Project A Ventures

Host

Toni Hohlbein

CEO of Growblocks

What is Revenue Brothers?

What happens when a VC and a CEO come together?

– They nerd out about all things revenue. And they don’t always agree.

Raul Porojan of Project A Ventures and Toni Hohlbein of Growblocks are the Super Revenue Brothers. In every episode they dissect and debate current issues in B2B SaaS, and offer solutions on how to solve them

No matter if you’re an early-stage startup or a scaling unicorn – you’ll always learn something new.

Revbros 18 - Business advice we would give our kids
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Introduction
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​[00:00:00]

Toni: Hey everyone. This is Toni Holbein from Growblocks. You are listening to the Super Revenue Brothers with Raul and Toni.

Toni: In today's special session, Raul and I are discussing business advice that we would be giving our kids. Enjoy. Toni, we've talked about this before, but you've, you're kind of raising your perfect own little revenue ops family,

Raul: uh, with how many kids?

Raul: 15, 20. I don't know how many you're planning.

Toni: No, no, no, no,

Toni: no, no, No,

Toni: It's two and you know, it's gonna end here. I'm, you know, we are fairly certain we're gonna end here. You know, it's, it's always, it's always when you're in those, like, I would say terrible one or two first years, so you are like, no, not more. And then when you are out of, it's like, ah, you know, let's see.

Toni: But you know, for now, two is, two is good enough, bro. You know? Where, how, how far long are you? Huh? On the, on the, you know, zero to 10 scale.

Raul: So from zero to 10, I'm currently [00:01:00] probably at zero since there are no kids. However, however, I recently, well, a bit sort of around Christmas, I had a discussion with, uh, I, I don't even know what you would call him. Probably like my second degree nephew or something like that.

Raul: And he asked me, he's like 12 years old.

Raul: He's like, Raoul. What do I do if I wanna make a lot of money? How do I get into

Raul: business and, uh, sort of a kid in, in school, not even in the business world at all anymore. And I thought that that would be a good thing to talk about. Since you have

Raul: kids and I have heard and know about kids. , what do you tell your kids about business?

Toni: The first question is why did he ask you, you know, Hey, Raoul, how, how, how, how can I make as much money as you do? Was, was that the question or

Toni: how did

Raul: No, no, I, and, and I was asking myself the same thing. He is like, you, I'm probably not the right person, but, uh, I, he, he, he heard I had a podcast thing, so he thought I had, I

Toni: Uh, I mean, once they have a podcast, you made it basically, right?

Raul: You're a serious person then. Yeah.

Toni: yes. I mean, okay, let's jump into this. I think it [00:02:00] is a hilarious topic to talk about. So, I mean, it's like super boring, arrogant, uh, you know, rich people thing, off the bat, the first thing you should be doing is, um.

Toni: Create a, create a like a, like a game be how a limited or a company or something like this. It's like the number one thing. If you wanna make money, you know, try and try and pay less money to the tax man. So I think that's like a, I don't know, when can you do this in Germany? Open and game. Be obvious.

Toni: You need to have like, what, 20,000 years I think. Um,

Toni: but when you're 18. When you're 18, is it when you're 18, you can kind of open your own business basically in this way.

Raul: Oh, I don't know actually, I would assume it's 18, but, uh, probably 18. Everything in Germany related to business is 18. But, uh, if you look at TikTok nowadays, twelve-year-olds are making millions while you and me

Raul: are asleep. So

Raul: I don't know what they're making those millions with, to be honest.

Toni: Anyway, you know, and, and that is also okay, right? Because like, and there's, there's no risk in there. But any, any, you know, moving on from the TikTok thing, which I'm [00:03:00] very jealous of. Okay, let's kind of think about this for a little bit. To a degree you can flip maybe all of these different pieces around and be like, oh, this is also a really good thing for my business and in general, right?

Play the long game
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Toni: So let's, let's see how we're gonna piece this together here. But, I think especially if you're 12, um, play the long game.

Toni: Don't think about how am I gonna get money tomorrow? Think about the things you might need to learn and the right things to do and to kind of work towards, in order to go in the right direction, right?

Toni: And I think this is, maybe, , it's pretty, , shallow advice because it's basically asking you, Hey, what should I be doing? And it's like, well, you know, , don't optimize for the short term, optimize for the long term. And , what , from a career perspective, mean by that is, .

Toni: Especially, I think it especially starts when you go into your first job, don't optimize for , the big shiny logo. Don't optimize for McKinsey, don't optimize for, a bigger paycheck to start out with. Optimize for, which place can help you , the best in developing your [00:04:00] career.

Toni: And I think this is usually connected to your first boss. I would say. Kind of, you know, find a really great boss that believes in you and. You know, goes out on a limb for you and helps you kind of accelerate you. I think this is career wise probably, , much more worthwhile than to, you know, BCG and I don't know, I already get there from the bat and from the get-go, but still more than you know, any other spot.

Toni: I think that's something that I would probably kind of give advice to the kid. I mean, he is 12, so he is maybe a little bit further away from the, you know, finishing university and all of that stuff. But, um. I think, I think there's something there, um, that might also be broken down to someone in, you know, I dunno, his age.

Raul: Hmm. So interestingly, you went into one of the, I wouldn't say it was a very long discussion, but you went into one of the later points that I gave him, which is I. I, I told him almost the same thing. I said, go where learning and responsibility is, and that those

Raul: two places are typically the same. So, uh, because he asked me, he is [00:05:00] like.

Raul: Why can't I just like, wait tables, or , do like a service job at 12, 13 years old or like, I don't know, deliver newspaper and make a lot of money. Why do they make so little money? And so one of the ways that I try to explain to him is, I don't know if it's fair, but the way that we've decided, , collectively that money is distributed a lot of times is responsibility and ownership , in what you do over there.

Raul: And, uh, that the responsibility part plays a big part with it. And that making a lot of money or that at least growing into positions of making a lot of money, , a lot of times comes in hand with, of course learning because that gives you the ability to actually do stuff, but then also being in a position where either you have a lot of the cake, whatever the cake is, I.

Raul: Or you are responsible for a big part of it. And funnily enough, and luckily enough responsibility , and learning correlate a lot of times, and that is the reason why the startup world was so interesting for me because here there is too much responsibility to go around and you need to take it. And that's why you learn a lot.

What's more important than money? Leverage
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Toni: Yeah. Did you preface the whole thing [00:06:00] kind of, I'm really imagining this actual conversation. Did you preface the whole thing with like, Hey mate. Making a lot of money is actually not that super important. Was that part of the whole thing or was like, you skipped over this and both of you agreed.

Toni: It's super important.

Raul: So I did not say that. The one thing that I said is what's more important to me than money is actually leverage and this is something that I talked about my, with my teams all the time that I, that I ever led or managed is money is just one form of leverage and collectively, one thing that we decided is a, is a big one, but.

Raul: I did ask him, why do you want that? And then the things that he told me, I was like, okay, but if you could achieve that without money and have those things, would you like that? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I would. He's like, Hey, he wants this car. Like, you know what? Twelve-year-olds want, he wants this car, he

Raul: wants PS5, and he wants that kind of freedom and he doesn't wanna work.

Raul: He's like, okay, I'm, that's probably not gonna happen. 'cause if you make a lot of money, you're probably gonna work, wanna work more? ,

Raul: not less, but either way. This is what you want. If you could have that without money, would you want Then he is like, yeah, okay. Like let's say you could snap your fingers and be the president of, of the United States, and that's [00:07:00] what they get.

Raul: That's what a life of a president is. Would you like that? He is like, yeah, man, I would like that. Okay, so it's not about money, what you're looking for, right? So the question is like, how do you get to those things? Unfortunately, a

Raul: lot of times it is about money.

Toni: No, I think it's just a tool and it's by the same in the venture world, right? Kind of, um, let's just say you do your series A and that's great, by the way, getting to series A, you know, b, c, even IPO, it doesn't actually matter. All of these things are, you know, wonderful milestones to be achieved.

Toni: Don't get me wrong. At the end of the day, they don't actually prove any value, right? Kind of. It's, it's the same thing, right? It's kind of, yes, you have more money to fight another day and you have more money to invest and kind of deliver value, but the event by itself, albeit super difficult to achieve is actually not it's not an outcome.

Toni: It's another input actually kind of that needs to be managed. Right.

Focus more on the behavior
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Toni: Okay. Maybe I'll go into the next one. , I think the more engineering term would be input. , but I think, and then this is focus more on the behavior,

Toni: right? Instead of thinking about like, Ooh, you know, I'm gonna make a lot of money, and, [00:08:00] you know, putting yourself into that spot, focus on, you know, doing the things that will maybe eventually get you money.

Toni: And, and then there's a big conversation, you know, what are the things that get me the most money? Um, but, you know, whatever you do. Um, focus on doing the right things all the time. Right. And this has to do with consistency, has to do with showing up, has to do with attitude, has to do with all of the things that you don't even need to go to university for, by the way.

Toni: Um, and then obviously you need to figure out, and that's kind of the difference, you know, busting tables, this is this, you know, first of all, anyone can do this. That's why it's not that well paid. Right? , and , the other thing is kinda you need to figure out, you know, where you wanna spend your time and then kind of doing this consistently, right?

Toni: And it's the same thing. In business. For example, building a sales team. So we had, , Kevin Dorsey KD on the show like two days ago or something like this. It's going live today, you know, in the past when you listen to this, obviously. , and he was talking about something pretty cool, , when he looks at his sales teams.

Toni: , he scans for outlier behavior, so he scans for the [00:09:00] top 1% behavior, basically, , or , the top 1% sales rep. And then he's kind of deep diving into this and is like trying to figure out the cyphering. Why is this? , why is this outcome, why is , this person generating those results? Right? , and in a very specific, it might be, you know, they consistently have 30% higher ACV.

Toni: They consistently have, you know, faster sales. Like, they consistently kind of generate more opportunities. Then kind of, he basically kind of dives in and dissects and tries to understand why is that the case? You know, and his, his mindset is. This is not random. And you know, sometimes he comes across like, oh, he got more inbounds.

Toni: And that's, that's the explanation, right? But that is also an explanation. But he basically kind of zeroes in on the behavior. So what are the things that that person is doing that is leading to those outlier results? Once he understands that, he kind of then, you know, structures this and then kind of gives it back to the team and, you know, teaches the rest of them on continuity to doing this.

Toni: And then his mindset is not, okay, [00:10:00] now I'm gonna pat everyone on the shoulder. When they get a bigger deal, because ACV was what I, what I taught them on. , he gives 'em a pat on the shoulder when they're showing the behavior

Toni: that

Toni: might lead to the desired outcome. Right.

Toni: Um, and he's basically kinda seeing it's all about, you know, managing inputs and, and people will, inputs this behavior kind of, or your rituals, kind of the, the stuff that you do consistently.

Toni: And I think that's the same for, you know, for, for small kids and young kids and, you know, adolescents and, and, and young adults. It's like, um, show the right behavior that you wanna, you know, that you know, will get you to the next spot, right? And it might be in, in his case, it might be getting, uh, you know, good enough grade.

Toni: You know, I'm not sure if he's going to gymnasium soon. Like high school. But if he is right, hey, you, you maybe want to consider getting a good enough grades in order to open the opportunity to go to university, right? And then once university, you wanna have good enough grades to get the opportunity to be considered by your dream [00:11:00] job, or, or if you wanna do startup, you know what?

Toni: Fuck all of this. Don't even get your, your high school diploma. Mom won't like it. but all of those skills that you're learning kind of in high school and university, probably not gonna help you all that much in the startup world, right. Put forward the behavior and then that would be different behavior.

Toni: You would need to be kind of. Learning, for example, but focus on the behavior that you wanna, , that then gets you the output that you wanna see, right? And the output might be money, or it might be then another, unlock another level up in your life in order then to kind of unlock the next piece.

Do you even need University anymore?
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Raul: about you? See, that's what they teach the kids nowadays on TikTok is, uh, don't go to school. It's funny. It's like, uh, these, these. I don't have TikTok myself, by the way, full disclaimer. But, these kids show me things and one thing that is very popular is saying, gets a lot of views, which every, all the influencers repeat, the business influencers and everything is like, don't go to school.

Raul: Right? Don't go to school. , it's a scam. University's a scam. . And, , it's very easy to say that and get views, but that is like what a lot of kids now grow up to believe. So that's actually very funny. I have [00:12:00] another friend who's a teacher who tells me that she has a problem with that a lot and it's high school, so it's like sort of the, the more educated children or those, or more willing by, by nature, they're not willing anymore.

Raul: They're like, I don't even need this. This guy tells me that I watched a makeup tutorial and she told me she didn't go to school. Like, I wanna do the same thing now. Uh, so I, I, I don't

Raul: know if, if, that is where we're

Raul: going

Raul: right now, but

Toni: no. So, um, actually, let me jump into this. So yes, I think this is a great topic that gets a lot of likes. and then you have people like Elon Musk and a couple of others that basically say the same thing, kind of, Hey, school is fucked anyway, so why do you go

Toni: there? For me

Toni: All of those diplomas, stupid or not, it's two things. It's optionality. It's like you, you unlock a new. Hallway with a lot more doors suddenly.

Toni: Right? If you don't have your high school diploma, I'm sorry. Yes, you can be a carpenter, you can, you can be a startup, CEO, but you can't be a doctor, you know?

Toni: Sorry that that door's closed now for you. And the same thing as you, you know, when you then go to university, it opens up [00:13:00] like, Hey, you know, now you can. Apply for this job and you can apply for that job and so forth. Right? It's more about the doors it opens, um, than, than than anything else.

Toni: I also don't believe that, , all the stuff that's being taught there is necessarily super helpful. I don't, I don't think I'm using lots of that stuff. I do think, you know, I enjoyed that time a lot by the way, and it was fantastic. And I think what it does is actually. Especially university, it teaches you to learn.

Toni: That's actually what I

Toni: think. Right. Um, and, um, uh, and, and that kind of, uh, skill to learn stuff, um, I think that is extremely valuable across Can you acquire this other ways? Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. I think it's really difficult to kind of acquire those skills without the pressure of you need to show up and you as an exam you need to perform and stuff kind of basically is a, is a professionalization of, you know, learning.

Raul: So learning is, is the one thing, and the one thing that I talked to, like I, I always need to try to, he's like a smart ass, you know? So I always [00:14:00] have to try to trick him a little bit. But he's just 12 years old, so it's unfortunate. It's fortunately for me, not that difficult to outsmart him. At least let's wait a couple more years.

Raul: And so one of the things I asked him, he is like, Hey, you gotta girlfriend or a boyfriend. Have you, have you ever had one? He's like. No, why? what does that have to do with business? It's like, okay, where would you meet them? 'cause he is about all about, yeah, I'm just gonna stay at home and be like a crypto and this, and where should I invest my money?

Raul: He is like a hundred euros. Like, it's like, okay, where do you, where do you meet a girl? Ah, I, I don't know. Do, do I have this girl that I like? And she's always at the parks like, yeah, you go outside, right? Like, where, where do you meet a boy? If you, if you like boys, like, where do you go? Uh, and he's like, okay.

Raul: And then I, I went on, uh, okay. Uh, who would you start a business with? Like, 'cause I know some of your friends and they're fuck-ups, they don't even go to school. Uh, or, or they go to like, not very good schools. They're not very smart. Would you start a business with them? They're your best friends. He's like, nah.

Raul: Like they're, this guy's not very smart. This guy always cheats and like, and like on his exams and everything, like, I love these guys, but I play football with them. But I wouldn't start a [00:15:00] business with them. It was like, exactly. Right. So who would you start a business with? And then he thought for a while, and I'm, I'm sort of summarizing the whole, uh, discussion into very short frame.

Raul: He was like, yeah, well this guy's very smart in my school. And then she's like very, very good at like, drawing stuff. So maybe she could make the website. Yeah. So you go where smart people are, right. So, well that's one of the ways that I tried to to, to bring it to him. It's like, okay, like you go to school or you don't man, like it's your life.

Raul: I would advise you to stay at least until you have a better idea. Which is one of the ways that he also understood it. He is like, do you have a better idea No? Then stay. Okay. But then the other way is like, where do you meet the people that you actually wanna work with and that you do want to be around with?

Raul: It's like probably in those places, like in the top universities, in at least the top businesses. So if you're not gonna go to school, become really, really, really good at meeting people. And funnily enough, in Berlin, a lot of people are jumping around that are making a living out of being sort of fake consultants really, or like connectors to be seasoned.

Raul: Everything. And they never really got into school and they never really built anything. Great. And the one [00:16:00] superpower that they do have though is that they know half of Berlin and it works and they make a good living out of it. So,

Raul: uh, this is one of the ways to do that.

Toni: you have those kids need to understand that this is just, it's a fricking rockstar effect for every one of the ways, you know, nail polish influencers. There's, this is the one that makes it, and that's the one they see obviously. Right? Kind of all the one, you know, all the others.

Toni: They, they obviously don't.

Trust the process
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Toni: Okay. , maybe one, one other thing here. I would tell them to trust the process and maybe it's a little bit

Toni: overlapping with the behavior thing, but, you know, trust the process of, because it's so easy, it's so easy to. Tony, I've been doing this now for a year and hey, I've been, you know, I did, did go to university and you know, all of these people rejected me and all that stuff.

Toni: Um, trust that what you have been doing was the right thing. I think once you start questioning that too much, you know, you kind of probably think about just jumping out the window at some point. So kind of keep, keep trusting kind of what you're doing is the [00:17:00] right thing. Um, and, uh, and, and keep at it.

Toni: Right? And, and I think those are. You know, one piece is the not giving up part, but the other part is also, it's almost like, um, when you play a video game. And those video games, they're designed in a really, really cool way. So not only do they get , your onboarding done really well, which everyone should be learning from in B2B, but the other piece is also they design those levels in a way where the level before teaches you all the skills you need to have in order to, you know, finish the next level.

Toni: Kind of. That's actually how this whole thing works. So when , you progress and you progress and you progress, you kind of get this innate feeling when you play video games that. I'm well prepared, I'm prepared for this next level, and it's gonna take me one or two or 20,000 tries. I don't care, but I know of all the skills I need to have in order to, you know, achieve that next unlock.

Toni: Right. And that's not the same in reality by the way. It's just not, you know, that's not how the world is being, you know, built. But if you have that belief. If you have that [00:18:00] belief that, no, I have all the skills , I need in order to achieve this next thing, I just need to practice harder, then I think, , a lot of things that seem completely impossible, suddenly seem less threatening.

Toni: You don't think about failure all that much. And also when you do think about failure, you don't think about the. Or, you know, the world is just impossible, which then it's like, oh, it's easy to give up. It's like, oh, you know, you know, couldn't do anything about it. You think about yourself, you know, what, what are the things I can improve?

Toni: What are the things I need to do differently in order to crack this fucking nut? Right? , and I think if you have that mindset, , I think it's gonna make you more resilient, robust and, you know, self-confident and all of , these different things. , and I think what's gonna happen is it might just give you this little five to 10% extra energy.

Toni: , to slam your hat successfully through the wall instead of only against it. Right. , and , that's true for businesses by the way, just as much as for toddlers , and everyone else. Um, but kind of, you know, trust the process and trust that you can achieve it. Right. And, and, uh, and, and don't give up kind of halfway, right.

Toni: Kind of. That's, [00:19:00] I think that's something that I would, uh, you know, hopefully try and teach my kids.

Raul: I would agree with so many things there. , I'm not gonna repeat that, but one of the ways that I, that I did put that for him is, and that links. I wouldn't say that he named it that, but he sort of was trying to ask me about like, work-life balance, right? So I don't wanna work too much. Like how do I, how do I automate this?

Raul: How do I do that? Like obviously all the kids, they're gonna grow into a, an age, which I don't even know if I can relate a hundred percent to where the first idea almost always will be like, how can I let the machine do that? ,

Raul: and so that's already , what he approached us with. He's like, okay, but.

Raul: Yeah, I get it all. But like, you are old, right? , you don't get it like you work and you think and like, that's all nice, but I'll just let the machines do it for me.

Raul: It's basically Originals tone. , what he told me. It's like, okay, what if that's not the case? Or what if, even if the machines do it, you still have to work eight hours or you still have to work six hours or 10 hours a day?

Raul: No, no, no, no, , that's not gonna happen. I would never do that. Right. So it's very hard for a twelve-year-old to fathom. Like [00:20:00] being able to do that and , even liking it. But, and, and I didn't really have a better answer than what I really feel like, which is. I would try to forget about work-life balance and, and just try to make life out of it.

Raul: And, , I know that this is something that people love to whine about on LinkedIn, so I'll, I'll give them more feed right now. , that, like you're a delusional executive, if you say work-life balance doesn't exist. And to me it really doesn't. , it, because , if you have that, it means you're probably not in the job that you want to have or you could be in a better one.

Raul: . What I mean by that is, is not work all day and be available all day and don't have a life. What I mean by that is. If you have to separate, and this is basically what I told him word by word. If you have to separate your life in such a way that eight hours of the day is sort of a black hole and you're just trying to get it over with, and then the rest of the time is your fun time or your sleep time, that's probably not something you should be doing anyways, especially if you say that this is something that you want to make a great part of your life.

Raul: So find something. You can stick with, and this [00:21:00] goes back to what you said also, another lesson I gave him is like, you're probably not gonna make a lot of money in a year or two, or even in 10, especially if you're 12 right now. , maybe yes with your YouTube channel or whatever, but probably not. So a lot of the times either you're gonna make it immediately if you're really lucky and shit goes viral or.

Raul: Time is gonna be a big component of it.

Raul: And how are you gonna stick with something for 20 years? You're 12 years old, like you just began thinking or walking 10 years

Raul: ago. It's like, how can you fathom being with something for 20 years? , he's like, could I? And I'm like, could you imagine playing football for 20 years?

Raul: Like, yeah man, I'm gonna play football for the rest of my life. Okay? Find something that is maybe not the same as football, but at least gives you a little bit of enjoyment and maybe you can grow into that enjoyment a bit more. 'cause otherwise your life's gonna be really difficult and you're not even want to wanna be.

Raul: , very successful in there.

Want above average returns? Don't be average
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Toni: Yeah, this goes kind of to the heart of my, my, my last item, which actually would be, . So first of all, if you wanna be rich, like, you know, quotation marks here, , you know, by default that means above average, right? [00:22:00] Kind of by default. That's what that actually means. , and I think if you want to have above average returns, I.

Toni: You need to do something that is not average. You know what I mean? It's like it needs to be a little bit special, right? And, , and I think yes, you can do, , a TikTok channel that maybe is special. You can also be lucky and just hit it right off and kind of goes off. , but more likely than not, uh, you know, people aren't lucky to that degree.

Toni: , and really, you know, something special develops, . Over years and years and years of doing, you know, working towards that direction, right? So it's, with, you know, find something that you can see yourself doing for 10 years. Let's just say it like that. , find something that maybe even gives you an optionality, you know, you can jump off like after those 10 years, but find something that can stick to.

Toni: For so long, , and have it shot at being special at the end of it. ,

Toni: and if you get to that end result, if you kind of [00:23:00] have a special skill, if you have a special something, , then that specialness might return above average, you know, financial returns for you.

Raul: About about the average part, by the way, so. I, I mean, I'm currently not in that job anymore, but I was for six, seven years. So one of the things that I did was talk to a lot of graduates, like probably three, 400 or so that I had in the funnel for a while. And , we had a couple cases that we did with them, calculate random things and like populations and everything.

Raul: One of the things that I realized is that even well-educated graduates, but I would say young people in general, 'cause I had the same thing with this nephew. Their idea of what average is incredibly skewed. So I would sort

Raul: of try to talk to them about, okay, so we had this business case about like, how big is this market?

Raul: It was sort of a market sizing case,

Raul: right? And so I would be like, okay, how much of the market do you think has this kind of disposable, , income? And they're like, well, you probably need to make about 150,000 euros a [00:24:00] year. Then I was like, okay, but how many people you think in Germany make that kind of money?

Raul: Well, I guess like twenty-five percent or so of the population. It's like, okay, is that households? No, no single people. It's like, okay, where do you get that idea from? Well, like, you know what you see on social media and everything? It's like, no, no, no. That's probably like 1%, or even less than 1% in Germany.

Raul: Let's say 1% for the

Raul: sake of the case.

Toni: What is. average income in Germany right now, Raul?

Raul: So , it's hard to say. , it depends on, and are you talking average or median, right? Because average can be highly

Raul: skewed by high numbers. Uh, so I'm talking about median and, and it depends on where you look at. Berlin is a bit lower, but it's been growing in the last years.

Raul: , somewhere between 40 to forty-five, it used to be

Raul: like thirty-five or or thirty-eight or

Raul: so, gross income a year per person, right? And so. Some kids know that some don't, and they think like, 'cause all they see out there and all they bombard their head with every single day is all these rich kids and everything.

Raul: And, and they think that people make 150 k just like that, right? Um,

Raul: and so understanding what average [00:25:00] is is probably also part of that, right? Because if, if you reference point is all these people who are millionaires, um, maybe you're never gonna be happy in, in that way.

Don't compare yourself to competitors
---

Toni: Okay. You know what, one last thing we are kind of way over time, but, um, so this comparison thing kind of, I just want to triple down on this, right? And this, this goes for business just as much, right? You can always compare yourself to, I dunno, the Amazon or the, um, I know UiPath or, you know, whatever. You can always compare yourself to those.

Toni: And, and I think you will always be sad. It's like, even the thing is, let's just say , you beat UiPath, and you're looking around and it's like. You're just looking for the next big one to be disappointed, you know, 'cause of Right. It's like, okay, now it's gonna be Salesforce. It's like, you know, there's always, there's always a level up.

Toni: There's always kind of a one up that kind of will give you grief. And, , that's true right now, especially because everything is global. It's not just you're walking down the street and they're like 20 other, you know, businesses and you've beaten them all and now you're kind of the king of the, of the street.

Toni: No, you know, the street is [00:26:00] infinite and , it is the internet. And you will always find someone that, you know, because of the rule of law and big numbers, they, someone will always beat you. , and you will always oriented yourself towards that, right? , and probably draw the wrong lessons from that as well, right?

Toni: , and the same thing kind of goes for kids, right? I mean, whatever you want to do these days, it's so easy. To find, you know, someone that's already there, , that is doing that, you know, incredibly, much better than you think about, think about skills, like, I dunno, playing the piano

Toni: Take something like this, right?

Toni: You are in this piano school and maybe they're 20 other kids with you , and maybe you're good. Maybe you're better than those 20 other kids. And then you go on YouTube and you Google sixteen-year-old plays piano and you see this whiz, I don't know, from Japan or , from wherever. Just completely knocking it out of the park and you're like, oh, wow.

Toni: So I do suck actually. Right? So it's so easy, you know, if you play the comparison game to feel bad all the time and kind of give up because of it. Right? So, stop this [00:27:00] comparison bullshit. That's actually what I'm thinking. Stop, stop. And I think that will make you happy and life in general, and I think in businesses, might actually help you to, , not be biased and therefore maybe draw stronger, more insightful conclusions from when you s you know.

Toni: Don't compare yourself to a competitor. Study a competitor. You know, what

Toni: are they doing? Why are they doing that? What is the insight that they have that I don't have? Instead of like, oh, you know, they're, they got 150 million, you know, evaluation. You know, I must, I must be doing everything wrong. , I've seen this now, like specific, right, talk to a lot of different, you know, teams and.

Toni: Sometimes the same industry. And , and one team was like, Hey, these other guys, they're doing a lot of outbound, you know what we're gonna do outbound now. And then I

Toni: literally the next day talked to the other team and that team was like, Hey, you know, these other guys that, which, you know, which I talked to the other day.

Toni: They're doing all of this through inbound. I think we're gonna kill upon now, we are also gonna go the inbound route and, you know, this is the craziness that.

Toni: happens there. Right.

Toni: And stop, you know, try and stop doing that. [00:28:00] Try and stop doing this comparison game.

Toni: Oh

Raul: Uh, okay. That would be an entire podcast in itself, but you hit a, you hit a sweet spot there.

Execution is more valuable than ideas
---

Raul: I do want to add, basically the last, and I think the biggest lesson that I, that I gave him. One of the first things

Raul: that I did start with before I went into this whole rant about education and all that is, uh, so I asked him like.

Raul: What have you done so far? Yeah, well, you know, he plays football. I'd said that already after football practice. Like I talked to the other kids and then we think about ideas and about YouTube channels and everything's like, and they're a big idol. I don't know, you probably know him as Mr. Beast. Right. And, and I don't know if the

Raul: listeners do, but like Mr.

Raul: Beast is probably the biggest thing out there in the world since anything ever. Uh, and he's like

Raul: the biggest YouTuber probably like, yeah, but, but whatever. Study him, like if you wanna know what kids are into nowadays, and so he's like. But how do you become Mr. Beast ask. I'm like, yeah, you, you just need the right idea.

Raul: He had the right idea. He is like, you make a lot of money by giving people money and then people give you more money to give other people more money. He's like, okay, okay. Is that all that Mr. Beast did? Yeah. Like, I dunno. And then we actually went on [00:29:00] the YouTube channel and like he thought sort of, and he didn't even know, he thought that Mr.

Raul: Beast is just sort of this guy who had this great idea and just made millions immediately in a, in a month and, and a year later they could have the channel where he and his friends could do great stuff and have fun and make it millions. Okay, look at his first video. 'cause I actually know that story.

Raul: The first video is like 10 years old or 15 years old, where Mr. Dweeb, Mr. Dweeb, Mr. Beast is like a little Dweeb sitting in his basement playing video games and, and had at the time like a hundred views. It's like he did never had this idea at the time to have this sort of charity channel and all that stuff.

Raul: , and basically this led me to the last lesson. I think this really he understood is like. You are vastly overvaluing by a multitude of, of, of, of magnitudes, , the value of ideas. And you're undervaluing the value of execution and that the ideas do come with execution, and that is how you shape something.

Raul: And , I think this really drove home. The point is like you have never actually done anything. And that is a problem. You're not 12, you're 12 years old. You don't have to do a [00:30:00] lot. But if you want to, don't sit around talking with your friends. Then do nothing like Mr. Beast didn't grow to become a, this guy like Cristiano Ronaldo had didn't just have an idea to become a soccer player.

Raul: You have to execute it.

Raul: I think this was the one thing that he really understood. The rest I'm not so sure about.

Toni: man. So this was like a, , I don't know, parenting session, but it might have also turned into, you know, some good business advice, right? We talked about, focusing on the behavior, playing the long game, this comparison thing. , build something special kind of that could, you know, return special results, trust the process.

Toni: And there's probably one or two things I forgot that kind of we kind of had here. , but those are really things that I think. You know, kids would benefit from, , sorry, we had the kind of the execution piece just , in the end here. , but it's also things that depending on where you are in your business journey, probably will help you as well.

Toni: Right.

Toni: So thanks a bunch for the conversation Raul and, thanks everyone for listening.

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