SPEAK LIKE A CEO

Founderland is Europe’s fastest growing community of women founders of colour. In this week's episode of Speak Like a CEO, Oliver hosts Stephanie von Behr, Managing Director of Founderland. 

Founderland is not your average community. Stephanie, together with experienced founders Deborah Choi and Alina Bassi (our guest in E94) have been highly intentional about building the brand, deepening the community and making a real-life impact.

Stephanie urges everyone to branch out and to hire from different segments, rather than just sticking to warm connections. One of the reasons: diverse leadership teams tend to be better at communications. 

Diverse teams are challenging because of cultural nuances you need to consider, and demand a more vulnerable and self-aware team. This improves culture, communications and the business at large. 

To find out more about the incredible work at Founderland, check out https://www.founderland.org

Heres the link to the Personal Operating Manual TEMPLATE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z7D9U3b5CPZsbZ2C4wu1x5vgjKJUKZGkDMkkucXx1wM/edit

We have a special episode of Speak Like a CEO for you: an Ask Me Anything session with Oliver Aust. 

Oliver answers five of the most frequently asked questions. How to deal with the transparency dilemma, how to make something boring sound interesting, common communications mistakes, how to inspire an audience, and the changing trends of founder communications. 

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

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

His company has dressed 41 out of 46 US presidents, is the oldest apparel brand in America in continuous operation, and was the first brand to introduce ready-to-wear. 

Brooks Brothers is nothing short of a legendary brand, and Ken Ohashi is the man behind its revival. He took over as CEO after the company had to file for bankruptcy during Covid. After an impressive turn-around, the company had a record year in 2022 and paid out bonuses to its employees for the first time in over a decade. 

What is the recipe for success? According to Ken, he has an inside-out and a 360 degree approach to branding, marketing and communications. Instead of first focusing on the customer, his focus is on the company culture. The customer will buy if you practise what you preach. You also need to be everywhere at all times. 

In this week’s episode, Ken talks us through how he transformed Brooks Brothers and revived the brand, how change is not about abandoning the past but building on it, and the importance of listening.

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

Most people abhor change. But without change, your business will never succeed. This is why Jörg Hellwig puts change at the centre of everything he does – from digitalising companies, building new businesses, and adapting communication processes.

Jörg is the former CDO of multi-billion Euro revenue company LANXESS, founder of CheMondis, and angel investor.

According to Jörg, any success should be followed by change. When things are going well you are in the best position to change because it leaves room for failure. Fail fast, adapt, and keep the pressure on to become successful.

And how does he convince people of change? He tells stories to motivate his teams to come with him on the journey, and he gives them the licence to prompt him to change him too. 

In this week’s episode, Jörg talks us through how he transformed a massive company, why the 2008 financial crisis was the best thing that could have happened to him, and the importance of having fun to succeed.

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

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

Has a speech ever changed the way you see the world?

Now imagine being able to write a speech that has this effect on people.

That is what Simon Lancaster does. As one of the best speechwriters in the world, author of several books, and multiple TedX speaker, Simon knows all the secrets to captivate an audience with words. And the secret dates all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome, and the rhetoric art of ethos, pathos, and logos. It is all about establishing credibility, portraying emotion, and using logical arguments. 

In this week’s episode, Simon talks us through the crisis in corporate communication, how to communicate to the instinctive and emotional brain, and the key to relaxing when you speak. 

Simon also shares the challenges and trends in speech writing and communications, and how he uses TikTok and ChatGPT to great effect. 

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

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

How many digital tools do you use? Chances are you’ve already used at least a dozen by the time you got to the office today. Now imagine managing the digital tools for a company of several thousand people…

As the company and team grow, so does the number of tools we use and need to manage. Software is now in the top 3 of expenses for many companies. 

This is the problem Sven Lackinger is solving with his company, Sastrify, that just raised a €30m Series B round. He helps companies make sense of the software they have within their enterprise. 

When Sven and his co-founder Max sold their first company to a large corporation, they realised the challenge big businesses face when managing their software stack. From this realisation, Sastrify was born – a scale-up that helps companies make sense of their software.

How did Sven and Sastrify successfully navigate the rapidly changing world of software? By knowing their customers and being everywhere where their customers are. According to Sven, it is all about reaching the correct people and putting all sales efforts towards this select group. 

Today Sastrify is a global brand with around 150 employees based in over 18 countries. Thanks to focus on transparency, company culture, and hiring good people they are just getting started. 

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

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

80% of the global workforce are deskless employees. 

They don’t have email or Slack, they don’t respond to calendar invites and won’t attend conference calls. But they are the biggest part of the workforce. Keeping them informed, engaged and aligned is a major challenge for businesses. 

While working at Porsche, Benedikt Ilg noticed how hard it was to reach his colleagues in production.

The solution that Benedikt and his co-founder came up with is Flip – an app that allows deskless employees to receive information and connect. Their goal: to change the future of deskless work. 

Your workforce is the heart of the company. In times of crises or times of rapid change, it is the labour force that drives the positive change. This cannot happen if they are not engaged. 

Flip aims to make engagement easy. With a roster of impressive clients such as Porsche, Rossmann, McDonalds, Flip under the leadership of Benedict Ilg is changing the future of deskless work. 

In this week's episode of Speak Like a CEO you can listen to Benedikt talk about the future of internal communications, the importance of honesty, and why you should always keep it simple. 

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

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

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.

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

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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.   

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What an entrepreneurial journey: three college friends decide to build a gaming company. Their two biggest challenges: they have no clue about creating games or building a startup. Games bomb, investors decline, failure seems inevitable. 

Just a few short years later, Idle Miner Tycoon counts 100+ million users and the three founders sell Kolibri Games for 100 million. 

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. 

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