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The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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those of W four WN Radio it's employees or affiliates.
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directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W
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four WN Radio.
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This is Beyond Confidence with your host W Park. Do
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you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you
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want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,
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and financial goals? Well? Coming up on dvparks Beyond Confidence,
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you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
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who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and
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are living the life they want. You will learn how
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relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.
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Moving your career business forward does not have to happen
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at the expense of your personal or family life or
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vice versa. Learn more at WWDS You Done, Divpark Dot
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com and you can connect with div ants contact ants
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divpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's
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your host, div Park.
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Good morning. It's wonderful to be here with y'all. And
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what I want to share is a really cool story
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that happened recently and it goes back to our kindness circle.
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So it you know, as we all are human beings
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and we all make mistakes. I don't know about you,
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but I definitely make mistakes every day. So with one
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of my team members, I thought that, like when we
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were talking, they were good. But then after the conversation,
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I had an inklink that the conversation we had had,
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the feedback I had provided may not have set well
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with them. So for me, it's important to be there
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for someone. The work is critical, the work and business
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keep the lights on in everybody's home, and yet people
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come first. So I reached out and I shared that,
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you know, let's have a five minute conversation and we
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were just talking in general and I opened up this
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space and it was amazing how that person shared back
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with me as.
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To what.
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Did not sit well with them and what I want
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to like go back from this kind of story and
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what I want to share with you is that they
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were very kind and understanding that I was a human
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being and that it was just a misunderstanding. So so
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many times what happens is that we assume things. So
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it's important to have that open communication and kindness also
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includes having those tough conversations, because kindness is not just
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going and doing an act. Kindness is also about sitting
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down and step into the discomfort zone and asking people like, Okay,
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let's clarify, Let's bring things out in the open. Otherwise
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what happens is that there may be a little wound
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that can become a boil. So you don't want to
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let that happen. So just wanted to share that story
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with you all, and thank you for everyone who have
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gotten books. We really appreciate you because those books Expert
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to an Influencer and the Entrepreneur's Garden will change your
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life because I can share with you it's not because
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these are our books, because I've heard back from readers,
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and also it's going to change other people's lives because
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we do share out part of the profit with keebo
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dot org. So I want to thank you each and
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every one of you for your support and making our
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show possible. Let's invite our guest in Welcome Stefan.
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Hey, nice to be here.
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Thank you so much for having me absolutely, thank you
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for your time and being open to sharing your thoughts
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and experience. So usually we start out in the childhood.
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Do you have any positive memory from your childhood where
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it was a person or a situation or an event
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that left a positive mark on you.
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I remember, it's a funny story. I remember that my
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mom picked me up from school when I was like
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a six year old kid, and I think we were
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locked out of the house because she had forgotten the key,
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and we also had picked up my sister, which was
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a little bit longer, younger she was in the kindergarten,
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and my father he was traveling for professional reasons and
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no way to enter the house. And then my mom
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was coming like, well, what do we do? Yeah, she
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went to a telephone, to a telephone cabin, I mean
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cell phones didn't exist back then. She called up a
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friend in Munich and asked her if he could stay
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the weekend with her because we couldn't go inside the house,
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into our house. Yeah, and there we were and ended
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up ended up in Munich, and that's the first time
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I got into Munich's beautiful opera.
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Oh wow, what a beautiful story.
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That was a big story. And how to approach life
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basically from my mom. She always was like, if something
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doesn't work, you do the next better thing instead of
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the next verse one, you do the next better one.
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That was my mom goodness, very resourceful and insightful. So
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as you grew up, did you have any interests just
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like any other kids or your interests were different? I
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guess my sports any day.
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I guess I was a very avid reader, and at
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home we used to have thousands of books and I
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really enjoyed reading, and we had a few different national
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international newspapers at home. I guess I also had the
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luck to be able to travel a lot with my
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parents at a young age, and I was big time
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into sports.
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That's fantastic. So what would you say, Like, you know,
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you did a lot of different things, sports, in traveling,
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and reading. So reading has been reading and traveling has
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been one of my favorite things, as well as sports.
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What would you say that each of the things taught
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you a lesson that has stayed with you even till today.
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The sports, perhaps if you start with sports. Sport was
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I think important because you learned to move and manage
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your body, and if you do that at a competitive level,
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I think it's important that you'll learn to compete in
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life somewhere. It doesn't matter where. Can be a good
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violinist player or do whatever you like, but learning to
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compete at some level I think is an important lesson.
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I managed to get this in sports in two or
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three disciplines, which certainly built me to a degree, because
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once you've figured out how you compete in one area
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and how you get good in one area, you just
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replicate the same process. I think reading has absolutely been
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critical because it builds knowledge and that thirst for discovery
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and experiences and learning, which I had brought me to
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live in many countries, so today live in Zurich in Switzerland,
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which happens to be my fourteenth country. That led me
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to explore very different fields, to read literally thousands of books,
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to eventually write for not or three. Yeah, I think
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these were important stories. And last, but not least, traveling
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is a way. I mean, unless you just go for
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beach travels, if you really travel to explore the world,
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you get to know the world now. And this makes
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me feel comfortable today that I have seen so many
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different areas of the world, both rich and poor, lived
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in different countries, managed to see so many different places,
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which was uniquely enriching. Now it definitely opened me big
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time for this world.
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And between these travels and between playing sports, tell us, like,
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you know, where did your career interest take you?
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My career interest, I got started with computers relatively early,
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which raised my curiosity, and then eventually started selling computers
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when I was like a fifteen year old kid, and
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when I was seventeen, so that was back in nineteen
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ninety eight. I was joining a first startup instead.
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Of going to school.
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That was basically my history, and then it went on
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from there.
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Well, that's fantastic, tell us about that's amazing a fifteen
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year old I can just kind of imagine you're walking
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down and working with the computers. And there's so many
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young entrepreneurs out there who think that college is the
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only route to take. The key is that it's knowing
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about yourself. So how did you know that's what you
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wanted to do, that you wanted to start up have
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a startup at that young of an age.
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Actually, I wasn't sure. To be honest, I think you
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can do a lot of thinking, but in the end,
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if you haven't been to that place, it's unlikely you
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figure that out by just thinking. So I would definitely
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welcome and invite you to explore and to test more.
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Unless you try it out yourself, you will never know
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if it's your shoe size, I mean, if it fits you,
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and if it if it feels good. Yeah. So that
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startup I just got involved in there. It was a
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fantastic experience for me, But I didn't know that was
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a good one before I was there.
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Yea.
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And repeatedly in my life, I've been thinking hard about
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certain things. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong.
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Some things you simply have to try and to do. Yeah,
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and you can't foresee how they eventually end up if
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you haven't been there yet.
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Absolutely, you bring home a really good point that you
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just can't know everything for sure. It's about being open
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to failing, and it's about being open to experimenting, because
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that's what all science and innovation is about. So tell us, like,
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you know, what was your startup about, and were you
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the only one or did you have it a group
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of other people? And what was your journey like through that?
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Let me actually comment on the point you just made.
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I remember having read a long blog article from Clayton
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Christensen at some point in time. And Clayton Christensen was
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that famous Harvard professor, and he wrote various books, and
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he opened several companies, etc. And so you eventually believe
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that this is one of the most successful human beings
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out there, having I mean a Harvard several books, several
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successful companies, etc. And in that blog article, he really
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analyzed step by step what he did in his life
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and he came to the conclusion that eighty percent of
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everything he tried eventually failed. And he goes through his
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life story and he goes like, well, I wanted to
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do journalism. I applied at Chicago Tribute and then New
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York Posts, etc. They didn't take me, they rejected me,
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they rejected me, et cetera. And it's amazing that one
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of the most successful people eventually came to the conclusion
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that most of the things he did in life eventually failed.
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And actually, the more you try, the more you're going
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to fail, but the more big wins you're going to have.
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And that story from Clayton Christensen inspired me to look
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at my own track record and see what actually failed
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and what went well. And also I've to acknowledged that
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many things eventually failed up. But this is part of life.
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Unless you choose a very stable career and work in
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the post office from day one to till you're sixty
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five till you retire, you're going to make errors. And
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the more you experiment, the more errors you're going to make.
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But the more big wins you're going to.
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Take home, absolutely, and there is the joy of taking
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big wren homes. So here's also I want to catch
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upon what you mentioned is that the more you try,
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the more you're going to fail. And it's a perspective.
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The way I see it is that the more you fail,
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the more you learn, and the more you learn, the
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more you grow, and the more deeper your capacity gets,
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the more your death you have, then you are able
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to perform at a higher level. So it brings its
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own things. So tell us a little bit about your
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startup experience and how long did that last.
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Well, that was a very early startup experience. I was
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like eighteen when it all started, or seventeen seventeen I think,
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And basically the idea back then, I mean search engines
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at least the Googles, et cetera. Didn't exist. Back then.
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It was Yahoo and Alta Vista, et cetera. And we
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were basically the central idea was building a local Internet
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catalog similar to what Yahoo and AltaVista I have been,
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but next to offering global information about general worldly things,
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we would offer local information like who is the car
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dealer in your city, what is going happening in the
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cinema in your city, etc. These kind of information. I
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think that was the pivotal idea, and from a business perspective,
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that dramatically changed the revenue model because suddenly local stores
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made sense for them to advertise locally, so totally new
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revenue streams as opposed to the big search engines. And
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that went on quite well. We got a few patterns.
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We got supported from Sun Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, which existed
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still back then. It was a big player, got international eventually,
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but crashed in the dot com crash like many other companies. Nevertheless,
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a part of that technology survived and was successfully sold
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on to another one of the big corporates.
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Yep, not congratulations, because as young as you were, you
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experimented it and you were able to move it forward
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to success. What would you say with your key learnings?