111. I lent a complete stranger €3,000. And (thankfully) got it back.

Hi everyone and welcome to Project Mindset. This channel is for all those who know that with the right mindset, anything is possible. Before I get to today’s podcast topic, trust, I’d like to tell you a completely different story. I recently spent a few days in Sicily with my family. We had a really great time. We got some sunshine, visited friends there, and had delicious food. The old town in the city where we stayed was absolutely lovely.

I had a really great time. And one thing immediately caught my eye at the airport: the older Italian men there. They had amazing style. It was incredible. Right at the airport, as I said, I saw older Italian men. They had beautifully styled hair, swept back a bit, wearing nice, smart shirts, with the top two buttons casually undone. Nice shoes, trousers. I even wanted to ask one of them, “Wow, where did you get those shoes?”

They looked absolutely immaculate. Gold chains, gold rings, and so on and so forth. And then I noticed, looking at people back home, that the older you get, the more colorless their clothing tends to become. Which I find a real shame, because I experienced a stark contrast in Italy and saw that older people there simply project that energy through their clothes. Of course, they also have more sunshine there. I think it has a huge impact on one’s lifestyle.

From Italian style to the topic of trust

But to all the men listening right now, let’s take a page out of the book of older Italian men as we get older and stride through life with the same style they do. However, today’s podcast episode isn’t about older Italian men, but about trust. We all know that trust is something that takes years to build, and can be built. We have friends we know we can trust 100 percent, and then there are those we’ve been disappointed by and can’t trust as much anymore.

Trust takes time to build. But even the smallest thing can destroy that trust. That alone is worth a podcast episode. Today I want to talk about trust in people you’ve met for the first time, people you’ve just gotten to know completely. In such a case, you don’t have a track record. You don’t know, you have no experience, no shared history. You simply don’t know how the other person will react.

Two very different experiences

And here are two little incidents in my life that I’d like to share with you today. In one, I actually lent someone 3,000 euros. I really didn’t know the person beforehand. And in the other, I lent someone five euros. And in one of these two incidents, I didn’t get the money back. To explain how that happened, I need to go back a bit. So, we’ll need a little more time for this today. I have a thing for sports equipment.

I’m not just saying this; I’ve noticed that I’ve built up quite a collection over the years. Half my garage is crammed full of it. My wife has even complained about what I actually do with all this stuff. Of course, I don’t use any of this equipment every single day. But to add a bit of variety to my home gym, I simply use different pieces of equipment. That’s how, quite by chance, I ended up having the opportunity a few years ago to join a company that manufactures fitness equipment made in Germany.

The company is called Berg, and Berg has a huge history. It was founded around 1860 by Caspar Berg. It’s a true story, and you can read all about it online. Founded in 1860, it grew incredibly large over the years. They offered sports equipment, including footballs, soccer balls, and so on. Everything from the Berg brand, including punching bags, and many other sports, was covered. They were even the official outfitter of the 1936 Olympics. This history is truly mind-blowing to me, and of course, everything is made in Germany.

The history of the Berg sports equipment brand

Sometime in the 90s, a lot of management mistakes were made. And after many years, when profits simply weren’t there anymore, the brand was discontinued. A friend of mine from Heidelberg bought the trademark rights a few years ago and has been trying to revive the brand ever since. And a few years ago, I also had the opportunity to get involved. And with my passion for sports equipment, it was like paradise for me. To be perfectly honest, not only can I choose from a wide variety of great sports equipment, but I can also have a say in the design, the quality, and so on – it’s just fantastic.

Continued

At some point, I naturally asked myself, how did this come about? Why am I so enthusiastic about Berg? And this isn’t meant to be an advertisement for Berg; I’m simply sharing my perspective on how it all began. And then it dawned on me—I’d completely missed the forest for the trees. So, not only does it have such a rich German history, but also, as you may know, I’m a huge Heidelberg fan.

And just recently, which was a complete mind-blowing realization for me, I realized, wow, the word “Berg” (mountain) is also in the name of Heidelberg. And maybe that’s why I’ve developed such a fondness for this brand. I hadn’t noticed it all these years that I’ve been involved. It only just occurred to me recently, okay, why didn’t I notice it before? But today isn’t really about the Berg brand itself, but simply about the fact that we manufacture fantastic sports equipment here in Germany, and the price reflects that.

A request for the thesis

So it’s not comparable to other competitors who produce in the Far East and so on. Our punching bag retails for 3000 euros, so approximately 3000 euros. Recently, a young student contacted us by email and wanted to borrow one of these punching bags for her final project. The email was very friendly. It said, “Dear Sir or Madam, I’m training to be a visual marketing designer and I’m writing my final project on fitness. I have a product exhibition at the end, and I’d like to know if I could borrow one of your punching bags.”

The email was very friendly. The lady also noticed, of course, that the punching bag is relatively expensive for us. And for me, it was incredibly difficult to decide whether we really wanted to rent this punching bag or not. So, in the end, we’re actually talking about 3000 euros. And I’m not talking about the punching bag getting stolen, or being stolen during the exhibition, or whatever else might happen, but rather that if it gets damaged, we won’t be able to sell it anymore.

Weigh the risks and place your trust in others

And that, of course, is a total loss for us. It was a really difficult decision for me. My business partner and I talked about it at length, and we asked ourselves how we should react. And in principle, from my point of view, you should show goodwill in such a situation. If you can help, you should help, especially when you’re asked in a very friendly and genuinely polite way. In this case, it was a young student who needed help, and you could tell she had a vision of how she wanted to present the product.

And in that case, we said to ourselves, okay, we’ll just borrow it and hope for the best and that we get the punching bag back. And that’s exactly what happened. The lady got a fantastic final grade. She sent us photos of it, and it was like a small exhibition stand she’d created for the punching bag. It looked so good that we even asked her if we could borrow it if we ever needed it. And she agreed.

And that’s when I realized, wow, just the cost of this trade fair alone would be huge if we were to order one now. It would cost us three, four, maybe even five thousand euros to have one of those. So that was another little confirmation for me. Yeah, cool. What goes around comes around. We did something good, and something good is done in return. So everything really went well, a win-win situation for both sides, which I was especially pleased about.

Five euros in an underground parking garage

Now let’s move on to the second incident, where I lent five euros to a complete stranger. Of course, that’s a completely different amount, not comparable to the 3,000 euros, but at least as interesting to me. You might remember the podcast episode. I think it was number 101. I had the conductor and founder of the Mannheim Philharmonic as my guest. That’s Bojan Widenow, an incredibly interesting person, and above all, an incredibly gentle person. You absolutely must listen to it.

We talked about auras and whether one can develop them naturally or if they’re innate. We know that conductors, especially, have this aura when they enter a room. Everyone notices it, every finger movement is meticulously observed. And what Bojan had to say about auras was incredibly interesting. That was podcast episode number 101. And, funnily enough, it was in this context. I had met with his team beforehand in Mannheim.

Continued

I had parked in the underground garage in Mannheim earlier and was just about to leave when a young guy approached me and asked if I could lend him 5 euros. He didn’t have any cash for the parking ticket, and the machine only accepted cash. I said, “Yeah, no problem. I can give you the 5 euros. You can transfer it to me directly via PayPal.” He said, “Yeah, sure, we can do that.” Okay, I gave him the 5 euros. Then he said, “Here’s my PayPal,” opened the app, “Just enter your address.”

I entered my PayPal address and the amount. All he had to do was click “Submit.” It was all ready. I didn’t want to wait until he clicked “Submit” because it’s a bit awkward watching to see if he’s going to click it or not. So I said, “Okay, thanks, have fun.” And that was that. As you can probably guess, I received the 3000 euros. But I didn’t get the 5 euros back, which is perfectly fine.

Observe your own gut feeling

I had a feeling that guy wasn’t entirely serious. I don’t know. Sometimes you just have a kind of intuition. And with him, I actually had that feeling about whether I’d really get the money back, even though I was entering all the details. As a test, I didn’t even click submit to see if my intuition was right. And sure enough, in this case, he didn’t click submit. I didn’t get the money.

That’s perfectly fine with me. I’m not going to make a fuss over 5 euros. My point is this: I really considered whether, in the future, if something like this happens again, I wouldn’t help because I’ve, in a small way, burned my fingers here. And that’s what today’s podcast episode is about. I don’t want to say, based on one or two minor bad decisions or missteps, that I’ll never help other people again.

I don’t think it’s an option to think, “Okay, if I’ve been wrong once or twice, I’ll just stop helping anyone.” If we all had that attitude, I believe we’d live in a world where we simply couldn’t, or wouldn’t, treat each other well anymore, where the future just isn’t as optimistic as I’d like it to be. This has come up in several of my podcast episodes. My belief in karma is strong. Everything comes back to you.

Helpfulness in everyday life

I’m even aware that when I help an elderly lady, for example—as I mentioned in another podcast episode—carrying her shopping bag up the stairs or whatever else needs doing, I’m happy to help, hoping that if my grandmother, whom I can’t visit right now due to the distance, also needs help, she’ll receive it too. That’s why I firmly believe in karma. I always check and ask whether my grandmother is being helped.

She says yes, there are people who carry the shopping bag right up to the front door and so on. And that makes me incredibly happy. I think it has a lot to do with karma. And I don’t want to decide, just because I’ve had one or two bad experiences here and there, that I’ll forever and ever say, “No, I don’t trust them. I don’t want to do that.” I think that just kind of buries your own head.

Despite disappointments, remain open

You just lose all interest in the outside world. And I don’t want to live with that mindset. That’s what today’s podcast episode was about, as a little mindset tool. I don’t think I really need to elaborate on it. Karma, I believe it’s 100% real. You reap what you sow. So, folks, that’s it for today’s podcast episode. Finally, I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who gives me feedback, comments, emails, or posts on LinkedIn.

So, to be perfectly honest, it means the world to me. It does me so much good. I put my heart and soul into this podcast, trying to process many of the stories that have happened to me, to share them with you, to spread a, well, how should I say it, a more positive mindset. I think there’s an awful lot of negativity in our world, unfortunately. And I believe that’s why we need to start a small movement like this, to spread positive energy and positive vibes outwards.

Continued

Great guys, thanks for listening. We’ll talk again soon. And don’t forget, until then, mindset is everything.