104. Fuckup Nights & a culture of learning from mistakes, €700,000 for Michelle Obama, and Social Impact Investing

Hi everyone and welcome to Project Mindset, the channel for all those who know that with the right mindset, anything is possible. Perhaps you heard the previous episode. We discussed a tendency to talk more about bad things than good actions, such as making a donation. In the last podcast, I said that this is perhaps a kind of false humility we carry within us. When we donate something, we don’t talk about it, but when we do something good.

So, most people don’t talk about it at all, but when something bad happens, everyone talks about it. That’s why I think it seems to have triggered something in my listeners. I’ve received a few messages saying that it’s absolutely right. We should talk more about the good things we’ve done or are currently doing. And somehow, the topic of donations has become established here. I mentioned it in the last podcast; I met with someone from a foundation. It’s true that there are, of course, large and small donations, or large donations and small donations.

Talking about good deeds

And they typically don’t even talk about the fact that they just donated something at that moment, and I think we should change that. We should talk about it more when we’ve done something, talk about it with our friends and relatives, because I believe that’s how you can create a movement, if I know that a friend of mine has just donated something to some foundation, for example, because he’s convinced that they’re doing something worthwhile.

That also motivates me to donate something, to do something. And maybe through this podcast we can manage to change our mindset in society a little bit in that direction. So that’s it, very briefly, for the last podcast episode. Today I actually want to talk about my experiences from the last, I would say, two weeks. I went to two or three different events, and I had a blast. One of them was a huge event in Munich called Bits and Pretzels. Incredibly impressive, in my opinion, what the organizers, the three founders, put together there. Huge respect to them.

Encounters at Bits and Pretzels

Basically, it’s a kind of networking event for founders, investors, and companies that want to invest in startups and so on. And the pretzel theme, coinciding with Oktoberfest, was a perfect fit. They carried the pretzel theme through completely, along with the dirndl and lederhosen themes. I thought it was a really cool event. It lasted three days. The first two days were filled with presentations, panel discussions, and so on. Then, on the third morning, everyone met up at the Oktoberfest grounds and had the chance to network.

I thought the idea behind what the founders had done was amazing, and I wanted to get a little inspiration myself. Making connections with specific startups or investors was not my aim. Inspiration was what I wanted. I wanted to see what other people are doing in terms of events. You may have heard about my Heidelberg event series, “Dinner im Schloss” (Dinner at the Castle). It focuses mainly on sustainability. I simply wanted to get some inspiration from what other events are doing. Of course, there’s “Zum Pretzels” with 5,000 people. 5,000 participants is obviously not comparable to my event, which is much bigger. But I have a couple of ideas.

A panel with Oliver Kahn

I picked up some things I absolutely have to share today, even if only briefly, hence this very short podcast episode. A panel discussion with Oliver Kahn impressed me. He is the former German goalkeeper who played for the national team for many years. And Oliver Kahn—I think many of you probably know him, the titan, so to speak—was truly an outstanding football player and goalkeeper. So, in his interview, he talked about how he deals with mistakes. He said something that’s actually always been on the tip of my tongue. I’ve also talked about mistakes here and there in my podcast, about how you can make them, and that’s perfectly okay; they happen.

What mistakes mean for people

But that’s obviously completely stupid, or rather, there’s nothing to celebrate when you’ve made a mistake. You should try to learn from it and then do better next time. But personally, I wouldn’t find that at all. The way the topic of making mistakes and a culture of learning from mistakes is currently being handled is good. I know mistakes themselves still create shame for people who make them, especially in the corporate world, for example. We still have a culture of shame here. But that’s changing in a direction that I find a bit strange: these “f*** up nights,” for example, are being held where entrepreneurs and startups and so on meet and then talk in a totally funny way about some f***-ups they’ve made and, yeah, all the good lessons learned and so on.

My own experiences with failure

I don’t know if you can or should make light of such topics. Major mistakes in my startup led to us having to shut everything down. I had to let my people go, I certainly wasn’t in the mood for laughing. These were mistakes that actually affected entire lives, years of work, and a lot of heart and soul, for example, and ruined them in some way.

Yes, I know, you learn from mistakes and you can also change your perspective and say, okay, for example, on the way there – and that’s what a lot of my podcast is about – I changed my perspective. I made friends, I built a new network, I learned some things about starting a business, and so on and so forth.

But to celebrate the whole thing like that and try to say that every mistake is my biggest learning experience, and even then I think we all have a slight bias and might think that we’ve learned from the mistakes. But that’s not the case every time.

Oliver Kahn’s view of a mistake

And he was asked about it in this context. And he referred to a specific situation. It was about the Champions League final against Manchester. Actually, I don’t really watch Bundesliga football or Champions League or anything like that very regularly; I’m more of a World Cup or European Championship viewer. But I remember that Champions League final against Manchester, and Bayern were leading 1-0 until almost the 90th minute—I don’t even remember exactly—it was really close, and then they still lost 2-1..

And then he was asked what he had learned from the mistake. Apparently, there was a ball he should have caught, and that’s what triggered the whole thing, causing them to lose. He got really worked up about it on stage, saying, “What am I supposed to learn from this, except that I should have caught it sooner? It was a simple ball, I should have caught it, period. What can I learn from this?”.

And I found the way he presented it so funny because he said, yeah, people always want you to do a kind of error analysis at the end, then have all the big lessons learned, and then know what you can and have to do differently next time, and so on. At that moment, he just should have caught the ball.

Not every mistake represents a great learning experience.

I celebrated that to no end. That feeling comes up for me sometimes, too. I also draw my own lessons from things, I try to change my perspective, and so on and so forth. But sometimes a mistake is simply a mistake. And I also know people in my circle who say there are no mistakes, only lessons. Yeah, I see it differently. A cardiac surgeon can’t say, “I had a really big learning experience last time, the patient died, but the learning was amazing.” So, it was a mistake in that moment. There’s not really anything you can learn from it. It’s simply that maybe the attention wasn’t quite right at that moment.

Why failure shouldn’t be glorified

Yes, I think you understand what I’m getting at. Mistakes happen, mistakes are annoying, and sometimes they lead to a huge number of changes that result from them—for example, my startup back then. I might even address the mistake I made back then in a podcast sometime. But it’s not something you can talk about in a glorious way, at least not that I want to, and say, “Oh yeah, it was cool, screw it,” or talk about it enviously and laugh about it. Isn’t it even annoying? It happens, sure, you try to learn from it, but yeah, I don’t really understand this glorification of mistakes. And Oliver Kahn presented it pretty well from my perspective; that was one of the things I found super inspiring about the various presentations.

Michelle Obama on stage

The other thing was also incredible for me: Michelle Obama had a slot where she was interviewed on stage. And I found it incredibly inspiring. It was so interesting to hear her version of what it was like with the White House and how she experienced it all. Of course, not everything is directly applicable; she also tried to share some life lessons. I thought it was great that she did that, but not everything was transferable. For example, at one point she said, “Put your life first on your calendar.” That means she always makes sure that she schedules her personal appointments first, then her work appointments follow, so to speak..

Yes, I’d love to do that too, but unfortunately I also have to earn money from time to time to support myself and my family. So, from a normal perspective, I don’t think it’s so easy to say “put your life first on your calendar” because sometimes you just have to prioritize work because that’s how you earn your living.

Being enough for oneself

There were still many valuable things included. She talked about the idea that you are enough, that you don’t have to beat yourself up when you feel like everyone else is further along, progressing faster, having more than you, and so on. I thought it was great how she described it, that you shouldn’t let yourself get destroyed by it, but rather that she herself says, “I am enough just as I am.” That’s fantastic. The path I’ve traveled, I’ve traveled with the resources and means that were available to me, and that’s enough. I think that’s great.

The discussion about the speaker’s fee

But what I wanted to get at a bit more is the discussion that followed in my link in the bubble. So maybe you’re also on that link; if so, feel free to connect with me. The discussion in my link in the bubble afterwards was super interesting because it was about the fact that she apparently received 700,000 euros or dollars or something like that for this presentation, for this interview on stage. So, basically, for one hour of work. And I found it incredibly interesting that people are even upset that she took the money because that’s apparently the price that’s paid for it..

So, if the 700,000 euro/dollar figure is correct, then it’s an easy price to pay; someone is clearly willing to do that. Then you could perhaps blame the organizers—though I wouldn’t say so—but you could rather question why they paid themselves at all, and not Michelle Obama for accepting it. I found that incredibly interesting within this bubble I’m in.

Envy and the perspective on success

For me, it’s heading in the direction of an abundance mindset. So, what do I get out of it, or how does it affect me that someone else received 700,000 euros or dollars—I don’t know what it was. Did I miss out on anything because of it? Did I miss out on anything? I think this abundance mindset, this debate about envy, isn’t really well represented here. My belief is that someone else receiving 700,000 euros does not remove my chance of earning it. That amount is not being taken away from me. I think we need to work a lot on saying, “Hey, thank God, there’s enough abundance of everything in this world in some form or another, and just because someone else gets it doesn’t mean I don’t.”

What I took away from the lecture

I actually see it this way: thank goodness someone was willing to pay that price because I then had the opportunity to be inspired and take away a few things. While I don’t agree with everything she said, I’m trying to take away at least the most important points for myself. If someone else paid for it, all the better; I don’t have to pay for it myself, but perhaps only indirectly through the ticket price. But I definitely found it super interesting and wanted to allude to this culture of envy again. I hope I don’t even remember which podcast episode I talked about the abundance mindset in, but if you look at the earlier episodes, you’ll see that I sometimes talk over the top in the podcast.

A panel on social impact investing

Then there was another event I attended. It was much smaller; it was more of a panning discussion with a small, select audience. I found this panning discussion incredibly interesting. It was about social impact investing. I hope I’m explaining it correctly. What exactly is social impact investing? Basically, as an investor, you invest in projects that solve a social problem while simultaneously generating returns..

I think that’s good and right. But I also think it’s good that instead of saying, “Hey, I’m just an investor looking for the maximum return, regardless of whether it involves slave labor, regardless of whether it’s filling war chests,” and so on and so forth, sometimes we don’t even know where we’re investing, be it stocks or anything else. But social impact investing is about investing in things and activities that solve a social problem.

Social problems and new ideas

And among those present were a professor and an investor, and they talked about some very good and interesting examples. The professor, for instance, said something I found incredibly striking: when he started studying, there were just over two billion people. Now that he’s been a professor for some time, there are almost eight billion people. So, in a single lifetime, the population has grown so dramatically – our growth and the number of people worldwide – and of course, this creates entirely new social problems. That was, so to speak, the foundation of the discussion.

An example with an orphanage and a retirement home

Then the discussion turned to how to solve social problems. And one thing one of the investors on the panel said that I thought was fantastic. It’s something that also resonates with me in today’s podcast. He said, for example, that he invests in projects. I thought that was a really great example: investing in projects where, for instance, an orphanage is built together with a retirement home. Basically, I think everyone immediately understands that it makes perfect sense because the orphans then have grandparents, so to speak, and the grandparents then have children, lovely grandchildren, or whatever, with whom they can spend time. And both sides benefit from it..

If there’s a return on investment involved, then that’s actually the ideal scenario for both the investor and society. And I didn’t find that particularly creative because it was so obvious, so obvious that you wouldn’t think of it, and the famous saying “you can’t see the forest for the trees” is absolutely fitting. So, I think, as I understood it, he said that he first saw and heard about it in Colombia, and then somehow brought the idea back to Germany.

Simple ideas for social problems

And that’s what I want to talk about today. Sometimes there are such fundamentally good ideas that we somehow never even think of them because they’re so simple. We can’t see the forest for the trees, which plays a bit of a role in what I believe was the second-to-last podcast episode: the topic of self-reflection. I think we’re sometimes so preoccupied with various issues, some of which shouldn’t even be a priority, that we no longer see the simplest solutions to the problems around us. And this whole orphanage with the retirement home makes perfect sense, absolutely..

There were several other examples that I also found very great. But what I wanted to talk about today is that I think sometimes it’s not about overthinking, about forcing yourself to find creative solutions to problems that are actually relevant, but rather about simply looking out the window and thinking, “Hey, wow, the most fundamental ideas, even the simplest ones, can actually change the world.”

Continued

Perhaps as a summary of today’s podcast episode, it wasn’t so much about the mindset tools I usually share, but simply about inspiration I’ve gathered from recent events. Perhaps this serves as a brief summary: I believe it’s truly worthwhile to be inspired by different events. So, if you hear about something happening around you, go and listen to the panel discussion, even if it seems somewhat removed from your day-to-day business.

For me, for example, Bits and Pretzels… I’m not exactly at the stage where I’m looking for an investment, investors, or startups, and so on. It was more about inspiration, what I could take away from it. The whole effort was totally worth it. Driving to Munich and everything else was worthwhile, and even just getting that one small panel on social impact investing was worthwhile because I think it provides so much thought-provoking input that you can then apply to other areas of your life.

Alright guys, that’s it for today’s podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, as always, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, because that’s the only way Project Mindset can continue to grow. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk again soon. Don’t forget, until then, my set is everything.