Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: As an entrepreneur, you have to sustain a lot of pressure. You have to be present enough not to be swept away. Whether it's a crisis in the boardroom or a world that's changing faster than you can map, you really just have to show up, stay steady, and don't flinch.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations.
The guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for. If you've ever wondered why having everything still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
My guest today built Germany's first digital health insurance company, then assembled a 500 person pharma services roll up platform spanning Europe and one in America. He has a medical degree and an MBA from INSEAD.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, he realized he was running on empty. Not because things were going wrong, because they were going right. Roman Marcus Rittweger is a founder and a board member, a Zen practitioner, and right now at 61, he's sitting with a question a lot of high achieving people are afraid to ask out loud. What does meaningful contribution look like after the peak chapter? I'm really glad he's here. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Thank you, Diana.
I'm very honored to be here.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: You're an old friend. I met you when I was 17 in Germany when I was learning German, how to speak German. I was at the institute and you were so sweet. You were in medical school and you invited me to the beer garden to have my first big.
The combination of beer with lemonade.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah, Beer with lemonade. Yeah. Radler. Yeah. Yeah. That's the.
Just to not get too much alcohol into those Americans. And finally, we had lots of American guests at our place. And in Bavaria, drinking beer is like a very normal thing. And people drink underage and that's also very normal. And they don't drink much and they just get used to it. It's more like a cultural thing. So whenever we had American friends, you know, they were so happy that they could drink alcohol. Now, you know, they all usually overdid it.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Did I overdo it on that day? I don't remember.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: No, you didn't. Just taking a Radler, you know, the mix is also a good thing. You did.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I remember we had a mutual friend who was also a medical doctor in training, and she introduced us. And I was alone at 17 in Munich. I mean, it's unbelievable. I Would never send my child off at 17 to go live by herself in the city like that.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: The times changed at that time. One did that my family sent me with 16 to Paris to learn French.
Now with our kids we are much more cautious, obviously.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: And then you came to the US when you were studying at Harvard.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: I was doing an internship at Harvard Medical School at the end of my medical studies.
That's when I visited you again in the US And I liked it. I liked those internships. I did another one in Brazil and another one in Denver and it was a cool life. But then when I was becoming a dermatologist in Germany or would have become a dermatologist in Germany and I saw the next five years ahead of myself with lots of routine. I hated it and had to make the first change in my life.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Talk about that.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: My father was shocked because he was very happy that his son had become a physician, which was his secret wish for himself. And when I was in Rio, I sent him a letter and said I'd rather open a bar in Rio than becoming a physician, which is family folklore by now.
I didn't open a bar. In the end, a friend of mine told me, explained to me that you would have to stay up all night because otherwise the bartenders would take all the money from the bar and you wouldn't make any profit. So I understood that and I didn't become a bartender or didn't open a bar, but I rather went into management consulting and worked with at Carney and McKinsey at the time. And I like the challenge, I like learning new things, did an mba, learned the whole thing about how economics work and like that for a while again. And then I realized I have to do my own business.
And then I started my own, my first startup.
And in the new economy where things were wild like they are today actually with AI but we even had less and less profits than they have.
And we prepared an ipo. We stopped the ipo. We sold the rest of the company very quickly to Germany's largest private payer. And then I had two years where I lived on the private health insurance scene in Germany as the top edge one, but hated it absolutely because I'm not built for big companies.
And then I left and started my next company which was I left and had two years with vvideo Consulting where I learned a little bit more about marketing and sales as a partner for them.
Did quite fun projects all over Europe, but projects that weren't really BBDO projects, but more Roman healthcare innovation projects out of that came my next startup, which was my own healthcare consultancy. I was a little bit bored by that. I'm quickly bored, I must admit. I love innovation. I need lots of inputs.
So I started a health innovation conference on the side, which actually was a quite good synergy with my consulting business because it allowed me to be very close to the new emerging topics. It also gave me a lot of context to really interesting people and credibility in the market, really.
And out of that combination I did that for 10 years.
The idea of my health insurance, digital health insurance in Germany was actually born and then changed again.
Did that for seven years.
And at the end of that run I handed over the company to the coo because to be quite frank, I'm really good at starting things, but least useful once things are running, then it's better to hand over really. And so at that time I took a year off, went to a monastery in Bhutan, went traveling around the world, went to conferences everywhere, had lots of consulting gigs where I checked out different things. And in the end I felt like, you know, it's time to learn what private equity can offer. And so I did this buy and build in pharma services that you talked about before, where we bought eight companies in two years very quickly.
And again it was time to hand off to somebody who knows to run all these companies, which I did last fall. And now again, I'm in one of those phases where I'm very broad and thinking about what one could do and what the world needs. And one hypothesis is really that we have every year thousands of accomplished executives who stack back from their peak chapter and basically don't do anything anymore. And we could still use them very well in the system. Especially now, if you think about AI, and I'm doing a lot of work with AI right now, we still need the person who has a lot of domain know how domain expertise and contacts. If you marry that with AI, that's very strong, but without it there's something lacking.
So one of my ideas is to build something around that. In some ways it's still a hazy idea. In some ways I'm getting some fun ideas. So for instance, I'm planning to do a conference in Cape Town next winter to get all those people together because again, I believe in one way it's great that today we can use video conferences and emails and everything. But on the other hand, if you really want to change people and transfer experiences, being in the same room still is important, as strange as it may sound.
So I like the two extremes, I like to be very efficient with using our digital tools. And then I like to, for the very important parts, I like to be in person there. Give you an example for buying those companies and the buy and build.
Again, the most important part was when the contact was established to jump onto the next plane and go there and meet them in person and get the feeling and then all the rest. I use plenty of AI in finding them and working out the due diligence or whatever. But at one point in time you need this personal contact. So that's an idea that I have now. And maybe you could marry that with kind of like I married the concept with the conferences in my consultancy.
One could probably marry that with getting these people also into interim jobs where they can help situations where you just, you don't need a new CEO, but you need maybe a new viewpoint, you know, you need a help for the CEO.
So that's one hypothesis that I'm looking at right now.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Wow, that's so cool. I'm thinking that the CEOs that are now entering that sort of second mountain stage of life have a lot of skills and know how and perspectives that could be really useful for projects like you're describing.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, they're looking also for a combination of purpose and also for relationships because we get a lot. I mean, we need, we all need personal contacts and relationships. We are herd animals, really.
And I'm a big fan of happiness theory, you know, and it's quite simple. You know, people underestimate how much they need other people.
And that's when you step back from some kind of job. Yes, you step back from 60 hour work weeks and from jet lag and whatever, and that's good. But you also step back from regular contact with other people. And so I think the idea is how can you do that? That you do something good for humanity, for yourself and for some company that's stuck somewhere that you can help, or some government or some nonprofit.
But just at the very beginning, to be quite frank, just exploring, having gone from just coming from Zen retreat where we did Zen and AI, going to the TED conference in Vancouver just to be inspired and then to learn and then to shape my way into the next phase.
And so I'm basically probably, you know, a poster child for those, for, for what I want to help others with. Right, help. Help yourself. You know, grab your own mask first and then help others, I guess.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: You said you're a student of the sort of happiness theory. Who are your favorite writers, authors, philosophers who help Create your vision for that.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: I think it's a combination. Historically, you start with Socrates, you know, who said, I know that I don't know. So this certain humility and humbleness, is that what I've learned in older age? When I was young, I felt like I knew everything. And now I realize I don't know anything. I know very little.
The more you learn, you more understand how much you don't know.
So let's start out with Socrates and his.
Then obviously, if you look, the Stoics have basically said it all before, you know that I personally have a preference for Japanese Zen because it's a way of spirituality that is grounded also in business that you can combine with business life.
And it's not, you're not in a monastery, but you are still in the real life. And so that, that resonates with me. And then obviously, I think all the positive psychology of the last 20 years, it's been a fascinating, fascinating journey there where we really looked at, not diseases, what I know as a student of medicine, obviously, but where we looked at how you live well, you know, and I thought that's been really helpful. Now obviously these days things are getting a bit exaggerated with social media and the Hoopermans of this world where people are trying to make a business of it. And unfortunately, the stuff that's really important is the stuff that you can't make any money on.
You have to meet other people, you have to move, you have to eat well, you have to sleep well. You can't make any money on that. You got to sell some pills or some audience or whatever. If you look at it, really quite simple and obviously I'm a big fan of looking at the edges and trying out every little, every little something that gets you to the next step. But in reality, happiness and health span have very many simple things in common which are simple to say, but very hard to do in real life.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Can you give us an example?
[00:14:12] Speaker A: One example is my dog.
Since I have a dog, I do more steps.
So you hear this, oh, you should go out in the morning and see the daylight go outside.
It's very hard to do. But if you have a dog, it forces you to go outside. So I think you need this discipline. You can outsource it to your dog, which I did.
But it is simple. You go out every day with whatever the weather is and you meet other people through the dark, by the way.
So these are things that it's a simple formula. You can't write any surprising books about it. You can't make any money selling the formula. But it needs some discipline. And sometimes in my example, it's an easier way to do the discipline.
And I think understanding the logic is one thing, you know, or eating less sugar, you know, that's an easy one, right? I mean, I want to eat less sugar. I love chocolate. And so, you know, over time I've gone to a higher percentage of cocoa, you know, less percentage of chocolate. Nevertheless, I still like Musa chocolate, for instance, you know, I like it, you know, and I've been obviously in some ways I've been lucky that in my childhood I have not been accustomed to too many unhealthy things.
But in my childhood, sugar was not so bad. You know, people were coming, my parents were coming from a time where they still were hungry.
So having sugar on the table was something really cool.
So for me the challenge is to eat less sugar.
And it's a discipline. It's discipline.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: People, they were hungry because of the wars, you mean?
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, in post war Germany, you know, the people were still, you know, hunger was still experienced, you know, which is something that in these days and age, nobody knows, you know, what that is, but that basically you see this through the generations, you know, then. So in our generation, obviously we were never hungry. So our kids, we say Dolly Chugar, you know, and be very healthy there and do that. In my youth it was still, you know, you were still happy if you could put meat on the table, you know, and you put too much meat on the table. So I used a couple of unhealthy habits from my childhood, which I kind of like tried to strip off during life.
But that takes discipline.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but also in your childhood you didn't have the glucose syrup that they have now, like the, you know, the high corn syrup or in Europe you don't use corn, you use something else for the glucose syrup, it's called.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: But that is true. That is true. And we didn't have mobile phones, you know, that's the, that's the worst thing that, that, that today, the worst challenge to your mental health.
We didn't have that. So I'm really happy for that. So I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that there's something, it's very simple what you should do to live a happy and healthy life, in theory.
But our instincts are obviously made for a time 3,000 years ago where there was very little sugar available. Right. And very little meat available.
And so whenever you found some sugar, you found some honey, you should probably eat it right away. And if there was Some meat. You should eat all the meat, you know, because you never knew when the next meat would be coming. So those are our instincts, and we have to overcome our instincts with our mind.
And that's the challenge, really.
And everything else follows from that. You know, there's no big secret, I believe.
So it's quite clear. Move a lot.
And then over time, obviously there are discussions, like you say, oh, you do 10,000 steps. Oh, well, 7,000 steps probably are enough.
Oh, and by the way, you need to do some weight training.
So whenever you do too much of one thing, obviously that's also not super good. But if you look at the world population, to give you another example, and the mountains here, where I currently am, by a place in the mountains, people have always used a lot of milk, right?
And so there's no lactose intolerance. And actually that has been their strength. You know, the cheese in the wintertime, you know, milk in the summertime. In Asia, they did have the milk. So they are lactose intolerant. But it doesn't make any sense, you know, for us to stop drinking milk here. But it doesn't also. It also not make any sense for people in China or the Middle east to start drinking milk and eat yogurt and cheese because their bodies are not made for it, you know, so if you go into detail, it becomes obviously a little bit more complicated and you can lose yourself in the detail. But in reality, the big things are really, you know, don't eat sugar, you know, don't do alcohol, nicotine, whatever, all those things that are really bad for you and move.
And today I probably would argue, and that's something that I don't say because it comes easy to me, relatively easy to me, but social media addiction for our kids. I've trained my sons a lot to read, and they were poster boys for reading a lot in public. And people were talking to me like, how did you do this? But these days, they get up in the morning and they're watching something on their laptop while they have their breakfast.
And I feel like now I'm the old guy who says, in my time, we didn't do that.
I think that's probably a bigger challenge these days than even eating well, is using the right kind of information diet.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: I'm wondering if there's a certain fear or hypervigilance underneath all of this social media consumption, because they include so much news in social media feeds. Like, I. I personally, I get up in the morning and I go, did the world end last night? Like that's the first thought on my mind when I open my phone. I know that that's not healthy.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: The first step that I learned about this when, when again, you know, you always have to look at the history. You know, when we grew up, when I was a consultant, you know, on the airplane, you would grab all the newspapers and you would read all the newspapers during the flight and, and then you would go out and with the client, you were able to talk about the actual stuff that happened on that day. So it was very important over time I realized, and that was this.
Tayyip, the author of the Black Swan, wrote this, that he saw this in Lebanon, that people were always reading the newspaper every day to understand what would happen in the war and the next few.
But what was much more important was to understand that this war would go on forever and, you know, and Lebanon was really in deep trouble. And you would have. The best thing is to go out, to get out, which he did, you know, obviously, and went to the States.
And so it's very important not to be caught in this news cycle, always looking at the latest news. And so I decided also to stop all the news apps on my phone or whatever. But over time it all crept back up again, you know, but the thing is, the most important news will always find you.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: It will find you. Yeah, like, like when the hours fell on September 11, you know, I, I didn't turn on the news because I wasn't doing that then.
It was my mother in law called me and said, oh, turn on the news. You know, a plane just crashed the building.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: But I think that's, that's the danger that we lived in. I think the danger that our kids are living in or the young people today are living in is that you get your dopamine kick. So you're not really thinking, you know, the world ended, but you want to have like a really nice little clip that makes you happy. And then you get some clips, and then maybe the next clip will be even nicer, and then the next clip might be even better than that.
And so you get lost into like one Instagram session or one TikTok session, and you wake up one hour later out of this. And the interesting thing is, most of the time, I mean, I'm culpable too myself, you know. And the funny thing is, afterwards, you don't really remember all the clips that you've seen because your brain is smart enough to say this is really not worth anything. So you kind of forget it very quickly.
Nevertheless, you waste the time in the
[00:22:45] Speaker B: old days, we used to read while we had breakfast.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Now, yeah, my dad used to read the newspaper while I would argue in my health guru mindset.
Also my Zen mindset, if you eat, you should eat right.
If you bite into an orange, you should bite into an orange and taste it and get the feeling.
And this is one of the secrets of a good life, to really live in the moment and to smell what it smells like and to taste what it tastes like and to get the.
Not only when you eat, obviously, but especially when you eat.
And in my philosophy, I think you should not have anything at the table. It's very hardly. Usually mobile phones are on the table, but they should be kept there.
I'm a big fan also of the whole family or the group eating together or in the business life.
I've had all my first. When I bought those companies, all the first meetings were in a restaurant over lunch.
When you eat together, that bonds you. That's something that's very deep, tribal in us. So I believe eating together, talking while you eat, but not watching news, not reading the newspaper, I think that's the best that you could do.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: So you've just gotten back from the Zen retreat and you had the theme of Zen and AI.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah, and the fun thing is that my Zen teacher is actually 80 years old, but he used to be an entrepreneur, so he has a very open mind.
He does Zen classes via Zoom with us. And he had a younger colleague who. Who's more into AI, who basically did part of the course and presented basically an agent that he had trained to act like a Zen priest from Japan from the 15th century, which was quite fascinating. And we talked about in between, we talked about the fears that people had about AI. Interestingly enough, most people have a lot of fear about AI.
While the strange thing about me is there's a gene missing with me.
I'm not afraid, unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know.
So I look at all the opportunities that you have with AI, but I realized that many people have lots of fears. And that was also quite clear in that retreat. In the end, it was a Zen retreat, which you need from time to time to set back your normal routine. Because whenever I do a Zen retreat, then I meditate a lot. And then every month that follows, I meditate less, less, less, less, less, you know, then I need another Zen retreat.
That's what I say, you know, the discipline that you need, that's, you know, that's the hardest for me.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Figured out the movement with the dog. What would be the dog equivalent for meditation.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Very hard to say. I'm a big fan of BJ Fogg, who would say, you have to make it easy and you have to make it simple. You know, whenever I get out of my bed, I do one very deep breath, you know, and that would be a thing, you know, that could be doing. Or whenever I get out of the apartment, you know, I do one deep breath.
I've read a book many years ago that says, you know, do I think it has something with 10 breath in the title.
So when I'm out there with a dog in the Englisher garden in Munich, and it's a very beautiful landscape, I look at something and I try to do 10 deep breaths.
Not very easy because sometimes the dog does something in between, and I have to stop at seven breaths. But so the idea is when you see a good moment and then you do take 10 breaths, so that's easier than, you know, sitting down for an hour if you don't have any time or if you.
Or the reality is you don't want to, you know, but. But you. Your mind will say, I don't have any time.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: But you shared also that when you walk your dog, you meet people and it becomes social, so there's a certain pleasure, it becomes pleasurable. You know, you.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: You.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: The more you do something, the more pleasure you actually feel from doing the thing.
And I know from experience, too, that by. Through. By meditating often, you. You start to feel the. The pleasure of meditation.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: And that's the strange thing. It's the same thing like going into the fitness club, you know, I don't want to go to the fitness club. I really don't want to. But if I go and if I leave, you know, I went to the sauna afterwards, you know, I feel much better, you know, So I know in my mind, if I go to the fitness club, I will feel better. If I do meditate for an hour, I will feel better afterwards.
And what helps me a lot is like, this teacher of mine, when he does, he does like a meditation, Zen meditation, plus a little bit of yoga every Wednesday night.
So it's like I have to do it now or never.
And so it's like it's a date in my calendar.
And then because it's in my calendar, I will do it. So I'm pretty good at. So I'm very glad for this teacher, obviously, because. So that way I can do this. Because it's much harder if it's not in your calendar, if you can do it just by Yourself. And then you feel like, I could do it half an hour later. And then you don't do it. Whatever.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: This one appointment with. It's with him, right?
[00:28:19] Speaker A: It's with him. But he has like.
It's a whole group. It started in Covid, so he used to have a group in Dusseldorf. So much too far away from me.
And then during COVID this group said, why don't we jump onto a Zoom call? And he said, yes, I will do this as long as one of you guys organizes it. And then somebody said, yes, I'll organize it. And.
And since then, since COVID then I've been taking that weekly class with him.
So that's another thing where Covid really was helpful. It was good, you know. So there were some good things in Covid as well.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Is it a big class?
[00:29:00] Speaker A: No. The surprising thing is it's a fascinating man. And it's usually 30 to 40 people and never more, you know, and he's open.
More people could enter there.
So you see, again, I would think something that is basically free. You can give some money, but you don't have to. It's basically free. It makes you happier afterwards. It just takes one hour of your time. You should expect hundreds of thousands of people in there. But no, there is a barrier, and people are afraid of it, maybe, or don't want to.
So it's very typical for a great thing for yourself, but not a great business. It's a much better business to sell coffee.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: A lot of things people buy, they don't carry. They'll show up for the first two sessions and then they give up. So they get the dopamine hit from actually purchasing the thing, because they think with their purchase, they get a feeling of pleasure. Oh, I just bought this.
Then it doesn't last.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: We have to trick our own instincts somehow. So that's why I say it's very difficult. It's not.
Making people healthy and happy is not a good business. Strangely enough, it's a much better business to make them unhappy, you know, hate each other, you know, like on X. You know, so that's the difficult thing. So it's basically our own. We ourselves have to make that jump. You know, best example is, you know, going to the fitness club. You know, it's like everybody knows that, you know, you don't want to go there. It's like, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to go there. Why? Because he's always been going, you know, so if you make it a habit, if you have made it a habit, then it's easy, but to get there, that's the hard part.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: That's interesting. I was just reading some research from Jud Brewer at Brown University. He just came out with a piece on Substack where he said, yes, repetition was always sort of seen as the, you know, how. How to make a habit stick with repetition. BJ Fogg discounts that. He thinks it's more the. You know, it doesn't take long to start a chocolate eating habit. It doesn't take 66 times or 21 times to try to start a chocolate eating habit. So that's his point. It's like if the dopamine hit is good enough, you can start a habit in like three or four days. And I agree with that. That's why his. The celebration part is really important. Judd Brewer just came out with a thing that said it's not just. It's actually not repetition, it's time.
And it's also when you have reward that's not regular.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Unexpected rewards is a better kicker than an expected reward.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: It almost had better results than a regular.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: That's the secret behind the slot machine, because you don't know what's going to come. You saw this unexpectedness.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah, the intermittent reward. And then so it was over time. So actually having fewer rewards actually increased the likeliness of a habit to stick than having it frequently, more frequently. But I was also thinking, in that group that you participate in every week for meditation, do does your. The teacher say hello to you when you come in. In the room?
Does he recognize, like, hello, Roman?
[00:32:10] Speaker A: No, this is a Zen teacher.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: He notices you're there, though, right?
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Or, yeah, you already know, like, you know, on a zoom screen. You never know.
We say goodbye and thank you at the end, you know, so he does. Yeah, so that's there.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: He has known as you, probably. Because if it's only 30 people, would you have the same motivation to go if it was 300?
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Probably not. Yeah. And that reminds me that I've always played inline hockey on Sundays and it's been a small group. And then we have an online thing where we say, you know, how many people are coming? And so it's like, eight people are coming. We're going to play four against four. And then you don't want to go, but you know, you have to go. So because you're basically indebted to the other people, you need to go.
So it's always, if there's like a group that wants you to come, you know, where you feel you should come, then that also Helps. Obviously. The same thing with going to the fitness club with the buddy, you know, so.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Or a trainer, I always have to schedule.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Or personal trainer. Yeah, Perfect.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And then it's like you have to go because you're not a. I don't like paying for something and not using it. I don't want him to think that I can just throw this money out the window.
And then I also enjoyed the. The conversation.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: That's the nice thing with a personal trainer. I've also, for a while in my life, I felt like, you know, I'm not going to do that. You know, I don't need this, but. But I've done. But I'm now doing it. And the cool thing is a.
You basically push yourself harder than you would alone. I push myself really hard when I'm playing inline hockey because this is this game thing.
But in the fitness club, it's just too boring. But with a personal trainer, you just push yourself harder. But then you also have a person who knows you and who you can joke with.
So I actually selected my personal trainer after his personality profile. So it's like the coolest, nicest person in the club, where you feel like, hey, you get out happier just because you talk to the guy.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly. There's a guy here in Newport who's really popular because he's really fun to chat with, and he's just got a great personality.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: As we said, what you need in life, you need relationships and you need, obviously, sport. You know, then I think if you challenge yourself, you know, you feel better afterwards.
So, yeah, you get that.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: I participate in weekly zoom sessions for karate. That's my practice. Our teacher. It's very small. We only have about 30 people. No, we're always under 25. During COVID we were about 50 or 75, but it's now reduced to about 15 or 17.
And it's great because he really pays attention to all of us. And he actually says he can see. See if a knee is off and everybody's is all the same then. And one off, he can see who's off. And he's able to. We call him the Lie. He can see every little mistake and he's able to say, oh, Diana, no, your left knee's moving. Or, you know, Joe, you're. You're left. You're. I'm seeing too much of your left shoulder. That means you're not really compressing enough. The people who do the zooms love it. And they show up and they. I haven't stopped since COVID Yeah.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Cool. Yeah. See, those are the best habits, really, and they make it easier for us to do this thing.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: But I've gone to these big sort of Facebook karate sessions with 300 people. They don't see me. So I'm not seen by this instructor. I'm not corrected.
And I might as well just put a YouTube video up and I might as well just do that. And I'm not really.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: You're right. And you're right. Now I understand your question before, you know. And yes, I think we know all the people who are in the class.
You see them all the time together.
And for instance, we do one practice in the yoga part, the bear. So once I was in Stockholm, I saw a bear in this pose. I made a photo and sent it to the coach, to the teacher, to the master, and then he integrated it into his next speech.
So, you know, they see you. Yeah, I agree.
This is nicer than just an online class somewhere.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: I'm now a member of 12 Step Communities. I've been in recovery for 20, for over 20 years. And I don't like meetings that are 300 people. I like small, intimate groups where it fills one zoom screen and that's it, no more. And in my coaching practice, I have a group that I keep it small for that reason.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think if you look back again to the last 2,000 years, we are made for groups of around 30 people.
That's the same. I've always started companies and you always experience the same thing. The first trouble you get into is when you get up above 30, because this is like the normal size of a human herd 2000 years ago of a human settlement.
And then somehow we seem to manage, you know, like a hundred. We can still manage a hundred. It was like, you know, our settlement and the next settlement there and the settlement to the right and the left, you know, more or less get that. But after 100, we lose it.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: It's like the Dunbar research. You did a. I think we're only able to have like 50, like 5 really, really close friends. I think another, as you said, another 25 that are close, but not like close close, close. And beyond that, his acquaintances. Right.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah. These are the other. The five are basically the one living in the hut with you. Right.
And then there's the other huts.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: I tried to separate all of my friends according to location. Of course, you're on the Roman, but you're Germaninji. So I have a lot of good friends.
I have some. Some other friends in Munich, but. And they were really, really close when I lived there. But now that I don't see them every day, they've maybe gone from like five to the other.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Location is so important to. Yeah. And I have, you know, obviously, I'm a very systematic person, so I have some lists as well.
And I have these friends living abroad. You know, there's this list, you know, but it's just the friends, you know, the list of friends that could go on e bike trips with me. You know, obviously there's much more interaction with them, you know, because you say, hey, that's a great weather. You know, why don't we do this? And then, you know, you talk and you constantly in contact.
Yeah. So if you're very far away. So, you know, so I'm glad we do this podcast so we could talk to each other.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yes. I get to finally see you.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: But, yeah, distance makes it harder.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: God, you make me want to move back to Germany. That's my problem. I keep bopping around from place to place because I can't find home. What would you advise somebody like me who can't figure out where to land?
[00:38:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. Basically, I'm your mirror image because I'm pretty grounded in. In Munich, Germany, and Mittenwald here, where I'm staying. But I really like to be abroad, so I like to. I have this. My MBA friends, where we're going to meet in Iceland now, for instance. So we do trips where we meet each other. And whenever I travel abroad, I try to meet those people there and have those lists. Visit in New York, visit in la, visit in Rome, whatever.
But in my case, I'm too much in Germany, so I don't. I have the list, but I don't, you know, I don't fulfill the list.
In your case, when you're bopping around so much, I think having some regular meetings with people.
So I do, for instance, with a friend in la, we do regular Zoom calls. I visited him when I was in la, by the way. And I said. We said, hey, we had such a good talk. It's such a. So, so stupid that we don't do this more often. And then we said, we have regular Zoom calls. Fun thing was a friend of mine who emigrated to Canada and started a company there. He visit always when he comes to Munich because his mother still lives there. He says, I'm in Munich. Can we do something tonight? I say, yeah, sure. So I told my wife, sorry, can't be home tonight.
Frank is here.
And then the last time he was There. He said, after this, my wife will come and we'll go to Portugal for a short vacation. I said, oh, that's fun, because I'm also going to Portugal for a short vacation. And he said, well, where are you going? I said, well, I'm going to Compote. And he said, well, I'm also going to Compote. He said, so what hotel are you going to? So we went to the same hotel.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: We stayed at the same hotel at the same time by coincidence. Now when I said to my wife, I said, we have to organize it this way, you know, now this was fun because we were at the same hotel, so we weren't forced to do something with him the whole day. So, you know, I don't want to be invited by people on their sailboats, you know, and, you know, and have to stay the whole day with them, even if I don't like them, you know, in some specific context, you know, whatever, or start not liking them anymore.
But if you just stay at the same hotel, then they said, we're going to play golf. And I said, no, we're going to go to the beach.
So we meet again in the evening and we have dinner together. And it was really cool. Before that, I had watched the Four Seasons with my wife. I don't know whether you've seen the series. There's a movie with Alan Alda and that has been made into a series on Netflix, basically about three couples who always spend time together.
So I think it's a bit too intense for my liking.
If you organize it a little bit like these NBA friends, where we originally met on a stack party from one of our friends. And then we said, let's do this. This is so much fun. We can't wait until he marries again.
So we organized this.
So my latest idea is whenever I would basically say I'm going to do a weekend trip to Rome, I could tell all my friends and I could tell you, you know, and then you say, hey, I'm in Staad. You know, hey, it's too cold. You know, let's. And then you could also go to room, and then you could be at the hotel, we meet in the evening. You could. We could even say, let's go together, you know, at a restaurant for lunch. But you could also say, no, not today. You know, do something else. And so that's. That's another idea. So just a couple of ideas for you here.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: The Pythagoras group, that is your main project right now. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a collection of different companies that are all kind of united together on this platform. Right.
And what is the main goal of that?
[00:42:25] Speaker A: So the main goal is you have an innovation in the pharma industry. When you bring innovation into markets, you usually have very specialized people and services to help the pharma company to enter into a specific market.
That starts with regulatory affairs where you basically help them fill out the right kind of papers and organize the right kind of trials and ends up with market access where you basically talk to the different payers and systems, you know, about prices. And also obviously has something to do with getting data. You know, there's this so called real world evidence. If you don't have enough data yet, you can basically get data from the systems of those countries and then you work with the data with the pharma companies.
And so there are lots of specialized companies who all work on that. In a world that gets more and more global, mobile and needs more and more technology and AI. The typical company that we're talking to, somebody left pharma industry 30 years ago, started the company, has grown it over 30 years now some nice profit, now 60 years old, wonders what should I do with the company?
So here we come and we say, well we're going to make a European network with the foot on the ground in the US and in Asia.
And we help you integrate those services for those companies that are coming to the market. And it's more and more smaller companies, biotech companies and less the big companies, so smaller companies with smaller products. And we also help you with the data and we help you with AI. And so, you know, the founder has been pretty successful until now, probably won't be able to do that, you know, apart from the fact that they will have to find somebody to follow them in the business.
And usually they don't have them in their own business because it's too small for the next leadership level already to be there.
So we solve three problems in one.
No successor, not enough money or size to do technology and no way to become international.
And so we create a larger group out of that. And what you need to have in the beginning, you need to get the trust of the entrepreneur. That's what private equity doesn't have such a good name with entrepreneurs.
And that's where I was quite successful because I'm an entrepreneur, so I know how they tick or how they work. And I explained basically explaining both worlds, how to deal with the other world and the next step. And that's what where I'm less a specialist and that's why I moved to the board. And the next step, you have to integrate those companies and you have to make like one in some ways one company out of these small companies. But by preserving the smaller companies identities in some way.
So it's like there's a gray zone. There are some companies basically where a big company swallows small companies and they lose their identity and afterwards half of the people leave.
That's not what you want. You want the small company that is very much customer focused, keeps that spirit and keeps that entrepreneurial spirit.
On the other hand, obviously you want them to use some AI tools that they're not able to get into by themselves. You want them to be able to do sales on an international level that they would never be able to do by themselves. So. So you have to strike that delicate balance there. And so it's quite an interesting practice.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Plus having access to that network is very valuable, I would imagine.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Yes. And a secret advantage also is if you've been in one of those smaller companies, you've been in a very close ecosystem and now you get access to a much larger ecosystem.
So for those people who are eager to learn like I am, that is great.
For people who are a bit more anxious, were afraid of change, that might also be not such a good news. So again, have to find the right balance there.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: So you're headed to TED in Vancouver soon. What conversation are you hoping to have that you haven't been able to have yet?
[00:46:54] Speaker A: I'm looking forward to totally conversations where I'm don't have to sell or cannot sell anything, you know, because we are very transactional people in our normal lives. Right. Always selling something, getting the next good thing across. Since 17 years ago I went to the TED Global in Oxford and that's been the best conference that I've been in my life. That's why I said I wanted to go again.
It's the great thing is really the other people that you meet at the conference and there's a lot of serendipity in there, basically.
I don't know what I will be getting out of it.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Serendipity. I love that. I had another guest who said you cannot get serendipity online. It's something you really get in real life.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: The advantage of online is that you can be super focused, you know, you will only get what your search terms ask for. Right.
But yeah, that's the advantage there. So it's very much old world, you know, talking to people and join dinners.
Yes, There are the talks, but actually the TED talks are the least interesting thing of the TED conference.
It's just the excuse for all of us that we go there.
And it's actually the same in any conference, in my view. You need to have a great program so people will actually go there. But then you have to make sure that people meet each other and exchange and have that serendipity thing.
So very hard to say how I will profit.
I might not profit at all, but I don't think so. But I don't know. The thing is, you do not know ahead of time what you're going to be learning there. So that's the fun thing.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: You know, you're going to have a good conversation.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Wonderful. I want to go back to the Zen. What does Zen actually have to do with succeeding or failing as an entrepreneur?
[00:48:46] Speaker A: I think it's about pressure. As an entrepreneur, you have to sustain a lot of pressure.
And you have to tell a lot of stories to tell a lot of people. Even when things are really difficult, you have to play the happy entrepreneurial. Everything's running well. Don't worry, we'll get the next financing round, even if you still don't know how you're going to make it.
So it's a lot of stress. That's what I at least got from Zen is this inner calmness, this stillness where you have to be present enough not to be swept away.
Whether it's a crisis in the boardroom or a world that's changing faster than you can map, you really just have to show up. Stay steady and don't flinch. Well. And that's what you learn in Zen.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Wow, that's beautiful. Thank you, Roman. I think that's a really good ending to our hour together.
If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something, something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that. You can reach me@diana oehrli.com. thanks for listening.
