Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What connection is there between the goals we set and gaining insight? That’s the question we explore in Room #839 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
With that, I warmly welcome you all this morning to insight and goals. We want to look at the significance of goals for gaining insight. That means looking at what connection there is between goals we set and insight. And maybe personal goals of ours, or of yours, have contributed to generating your biggest insights. Maybe there are nice examples we can bring in to work with and open up different perspectives, and then see what insights we personally can draw from the room today, after 60 minutes. So I’m really, really curious. You’re warmly invited, as every morning, to simply join and step into the exchange, because this shouldn’t become a monologue but a dialogue, and in that exchange these different perspectives should be generated, in the sense of a reflection space. Another reminder that the room is being recorded, so there’s a recording running in the background. Anyone who joins automatically agrees not just to it being recorded, but to the whole thing being published accordingly. And we have three small room rules to follow: a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least a sentence in your bio. Anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to do that is warmly invited to simply use the chat, and bring in questions, thoughts, examples, and so on here. So let me unmute for a moment and see who’d like to join first this morning. A wonderful good morning, dear Sonja.
A wonderful good morning, dear Yasemin and everyone else here in the room. Yes, I actually thought I’d just listen at first, because everything echoes so much in this room, but I’ll have to bear with it now. Insight and goals — that reminds me of something that happened yesterday. I’d prepared a presentation for a coaching colleague who didn’t have time for it, and she thought, hey, on the neuroscience topic I’d be her very first point of contact. So I made the slides for her, and she gave the presentation, and it landed like a bomb. Afterward we talked about what her observations from the event were. And out of that I gained an insight — first, that this topic comes really easily to me, and I hadn’t even been aware that I could connect it with topics that are much better known and more relevant to companies than the neuroscience topic itself, that I can actually combine the neuroscience topic well with something else, and that it would be possible for me to create a product within two or three days that connects business-relevant topics with my neuroscience knowledge. And out of that my goal grew, and I was so excited last night, I had to tell everyone right away that I now want to build exactly this product, and then I’ll go around to companies and present it, and that will fulfill exactly this goal of generating a meaningful sum in a relatively short time, to bring a stable flow of money into my life. And this idea, I’d been missing it for years, and it was so, so close, and this insight really only came from helping someone else create something they hadn’t managed to finish, and I never would have realized it alone, and it was a truly, truly wonderful moment. And that on a day when I thought yesterday, I just have obstacles, because I’m in a new home and the internet didn’t work at first. And I thought, hey, I really have so many obstacles to deal with right now, why do I get this task on top of it, and I had to be on the phone with Vodafone all day, and I was really, really annoyed. And then this evening came, with this insight, with this conversation, and I was in a completely different energy, at the other end of the scale, and I thought, okay, it’s all so close together, and how cool is that, and how fascinating and unpredictable life is when you really fully commit to it. That’s an insight too. Thank you.
Great example. Thank you so much for sharing. Yes, lovely. So on one hand, through the task that arose, preparing something, and the experience that was then shared from the results of this presentation, and from that generating an insight, and this insight, so to speak, spurring you on and building a bridge, to then also derive a goal from it, namely the goal, well, here’s a bridge, I can use this, and then quite specifically approach companies with it and offer it accordingly. I find that great. So in terms of the sequence, I’d say in this case, first the insight, and from that a goal that you’d like to pursue soon. Is that correct?
That’s completely correct, and not just soon, but today, because the best moment is now.
Wonderful, great, thank you so much. And with that I’d also like to welcome Marc onto the stage. A wonderful good morning. What do you say about this?
Good morning to you both, lovely to be here with you and of course with everyone else too. I’d like to add one word. For me the starting point would be a different word, namely what Sonja did — she was open. Marc, I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I can’t hear you anymore right now.
I only heard up until “she was open.”
Then I noticed that her action, and the experience she gained from that action, can lead to completely new business models, and that’s why for me today the word openness, or fundamentally the word openness, is always so, so important, because we never know what emerges when we’re open in every direction.
I’ve only heard half of it unfortunately, but I can at least piece it together. So she was open, and this openness has a special significance in this context. We already had a room on this aspect of openness. That means openness plays a really essential role in being able to have new experiences at all, and is therefore one of the essential and important basic prerequisites for being able to generate insight, and above all, for trying out new things too. So in this case it’s specifically this presentation as support for a colleague, which Sonja then took on accordingly. Sonja, would you like to add to that?
Yes, I’m really happy that this is seen so positively, because I feel open too, and I believe that’s a really essential key to actually attracting things at all — both the, well, the good ones especially. I was about to say both the good ones and the bad ones, but to attract bad things you don’t even need to be that open. That works even if you’re very closed off. But if you want to attract good things and recognize and invite opportunities, then openness is really such a valuable help. Above all an accelerator in time, because we recognize things much faster when they’re brought to us multiple times. Because if we look attentively around our environment right now and really listen attentively, we’ll notice that we actually get a lot of hints from several directions repeatedly, and we keep getting the opportunity to generate insights from them. And there are moments when we’re open to that and recognize it and accept it, and there are moments when it’s simply not the right time yet, and we pass over certain comments because we’re currently occupied with other things. That’s the part with selective perception, and with what’s important to us right now in life. So I’m glad that I not only cultivate and try to preserve openness, despite many obstacles, but that I also try to prepare my body so it has all the resources to be equipped for this openness, to be able to clear away stones that fall or are placed in my path, and for that, movement, exercise, sleep, nutrition are really, really important. When I sometimes just feel like pizza or junk food, I think exactly about this point, and then I still choose the garden herbs that grow here in the meadow instead. A lot of chickweed grows here, for example, and I recently discovered it, and yesterday I just went outside and picked a whole bunch and ate it. That was my afternoon snack, and I was so happy about it that just from the joy alone I gained a lot of energy. And these are all these little energy generators I invite into my life, and they probably contribute to me still being able to feel joy and stay open, even on days when the internet doesn’t work all day and I’m trying to get it going, so that a wonderful, great insight like last night’s can enter my life.
Yes, wonderful, and there are several different aspects at play here too. It’s not just openness. On one hand you raised a really important point — we might be open per se in various places, but that doesn’t always mean we can also recognize certain things, because it also has to do with this selective perception. So what lands with me right now? Things that might be very obvious, that I don’t see at all in certain moments, or can’t recognize at all, and it takes a certain context, so to speak, for it to jump out at me, you could say. And on the other hand, this reflection process that took place here too. That means, if you’d prepared the slides in this context and hadn’t received any feedback from the coaching colleague who gave you this resonance, exactly at the right time, to then also step into this reflection process and let it become visible, then — maybe it would have been a great presentation too, that landed like a bomb, but due to the missing feedback loop, and the conversation afterward, or the exchange, the reflection, the insight wouldn’t have emerged at all. So we already had a room on that too. Here you can see how these individual components come together at a certain point, and through this coming-together an insight is suddenly derived from it — really, really fascinating here. And then we surely don’t just have this process in the direction of, I first have an insight and derive a goal from it that I go after directly, but it can also be exactly the other way around, that I first have a goal, and by pursuing this particular goal, I gain insights again too. And I’d like to look at that too. Do you maybe have an example for that too, that comes to mind from your own life, that you’d like to share with us? Marc, Sonja?
Honestly, I forgot your question a little bit, because I was still thinking about a thought I wanted to share. If you repeat your question again in a moment, I’ll gladly get into it. And what I also wanted to share was the aspect that the fact that she even talked to me afterward about this presentation and how it went, is maybe, possibly, due to the fact that I’d offered it to her for very little money, because I wanted to help her. So for me it wasn’t a deal where I could earn a huge amount, it was sold well below its value, and that possibly triggered an impulse in her, I want to give something back, even if it’s just the feedback, hey, that was really good work, and we offered great value there. And through this “I want to give something back too,” this whole space was created in the first place, that she also thinks along with me, hey, listen, it would be easy for you to generate a product like this in two, three days. Or she said in the shortest possible time, and I thought about how much time that would actually take. And it was exactly as long as the presentation took, two, three days. I can do that for myself too, not just for others. And if I look at it under this aspect, I’d say I’d always offer something at a much lower value to people who need support right now and who are close to me, because I’m sure it always comes back from some direction. And from a direction that does me good right now, that I can use. And I count on that, because that’s how it’s always happened in life so far. And in this case it came back from the same person. But that doesn’t have to be the case. And if we put exactly this expectation freely out into the universe, I’m convinced we get everything back. The good as well as the bad.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. And the question I’d formulated, to show the process the other way around too, do you have examples where you first set yourselves a goal, and along the path toward that goal, or upon reaching it, generated insights? So exactly the reverse of “I generated an insight and derived a goal from it,” now looking at it the other way around. I set myself a goal and gained an insight from it. Do you maybe have an example for that too?
Yes, gladly, Sonja. I have an example from my recent life for that too, I’ve mentioned it elsewhere before too. Through a recent breakup, for about eight weeks, I asked myself the question, how do I want to live? What’s my life’s goal, my big intention? And it’s not really a proper goal, but it’s much better than a goal, because it won’t have an end. And that is this intention to live in love and connectedness, professionally as well as privately. And the moment I set this focus, my perception filters aligned exactly with that. That means I paid attention to both professional and private contacts, and what helps me nourish this goal and let it grow. And suddenly I felt richly gifted from all sides, exactly with these ingredients. And I exchanged ideas with people who were just bubbling over with love and connectedness. And really great ideas emerged from that. And I felt so connected and so powerful. And that’s the insight — that the moment we align our focus, or our perception filter, on a goal, we notice exactly the useful things that are useful for that goal, more frequently too. And that’s incredibly valuable, because everything is always there. And if we set ourselves a goal, we can pick out exactly what we need right now. Like when we’re looking for dessert at a buffet, we find the sweets corner much faster too, and don’t have to first look at and taste all the dishes in detail, because we simply know what we want.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And I’d like to draw attention to the fact that there are quite different possibilities here too. It could be that we step into a reflection process, so to speak. So here, for example, what you described as “I asked myself the question,” and you actively engaged with a question, so to speak, and from that sequence derived insights for yourself again. But there are also situations where we simply set ourselves a goal, something like, I don’t know, whatever comes to mind spontaneously, but which is also connected to these AI tools too. For example, I have this quite often — I just say, I want to engage with this topic. I don’t even know exactly what’s behind it. I’ll just take a look at it. Whether that’s AI tools or other topics, that’s completely open at first. That’s how it was for me with NFTs too — a topic gets hyped, and I just look at it more closely now. I want to engage with it, to see what’s actually behind it. That means the goal comes first here, I engage with it and take a look. And then that could be training, a conversation with an expert, or whatever in that context, which then suddenly, through the fact that I engage with the topic, generates insights I wouldn’t have had access to before, because I never would have engaged with the topic. That means here we have a completely different process again, where reflection or something isn’t necessarily front and center, but simply that I open a door I don’t actually know yet whether there’s something behind it for me, yes or no, but just to look and engage with something to see — here too this theme of openness is present again, but the missing reflection process, at least at the start, to then first look, quite openly, what’s hidden behind it, and from that generate or derive insights for myself. And in that sense, this is also how, for example, this idea with this AI toolbox I linked today came about, thinking, hey, I really have the feeling in exchange with others that the potential here isn’t really recognized, because we might talk about hearsay. Maybe someone’s turned on ChatGPT and entered three prompts to see what happens. But to actually be able to recognize these opportunities, what’s actually possible with these AI-powered tools, maybe first requires a framework you enter into, to look with a certain openness at what’s actually hidden behind this door, and only afterward, so to speak, step into a reflection process, to see what I do with it now, or whether I do anything with it at all. Sonja, Marc, would you like to add to this too? Gladly Sonja, and then Marc.
Yes, the AI example is a great example, and I have to say, you’re a really cool role model there, because you look at things, work through them, and quickly turn them into a product you can sell. I’d love to take a page from your book on that. That’s just really, really good strategic approach, and I had a similar experience with AI, though I’m not quite as far along as you, but that’s completely fine. Well, the beginning, I don’t know if it’s similar for you, but I first looked at AI a bit cautiously, and thought, that probably won’t be my core business. I’ll maybe look at it sometime, but it wasn’t intended for now. And then the topic kept coming up more and more often, and at some point I thought, now I actually want to try it, mess around with it a bit, and I brought not just openness, but I’d even go a step further, namely curiosity. Because curiosity, I think, is even stronger than openness, because it also brings its own drive to want to discover something, and releases a lot of energy. And then I engaged with prompt design, what all you can enter to get certain results. And I couldn’t stop being amazed. And the joy, that was a real game, a dance with this new topic, and I find that super fascinating. From initial skepticism to real joy. So I’ll definitely use AI too, to profile my product, to embellish it and to gather some mosaic pieces together, to then add my own style to it. I’m really looking forward to that. I can hardly wait to get started. So yes, AI was my topic too.
Yes, great. And yes, and I wanted to add that too, you just said it — here too this bridge, on one hand this insight you maybe gained through this reflection with this presentation, with the aspect of brain and business, how can we build a bridge here too, and take this element of AI on board too, because that’s another bridge, and especially questions like, what does that actually mean for us employees, executives, and so on, when something like AI now comes along too, so to speak, and not just to evaluate AI in some form, but to actually look at what that means from the perspective of neuroscience — what does that actually mean now? Because the speed here is being multiplied many times over now. It’s about competitiveness and so on. So various aspects play into this — emotions play a role, worries, fears, and so on. And all of that can definitely be picked up when looking at an overall portfolio, and something can be done with it too. Before I switch to Marc, just briefly — Stefan, you sent me a message, I answered it. And if you’d like, I don’t know exactly how it’s currently working for you, try it with the hand signals and let’s see if it works. It actually works today. I already mentioned it briefly yesterday. It might be that for you, since you sent me the message on the 30th — I checked, that was the day we had an authors’ breakfast — and it could be that hand signals were switched off when you tried it, so it wasn’t working for anyone right then. Or, and I don’t know this for sure, because we had the switch from Clubs to Houses, that it has something to do with that. And I saw that you’re not a club member, so to speak, at Bestselling Authors, and it might not have worked for that reason. But I don’t know, because with this switch that just happened, I simply lack the experience at this point. But now, since Marc is already waiting, I’d first invite Marc to make his addition, and then we’ll gladly bring you in, dear Stefan. Marc.
I’ll keep it short too. You just brought up curiosity in connection with the word openness. That’s the same thing for me too. And this curiosity, and above all the point that we don’t always immediately ask “what’s in it for me,” but that with curiosity we openly encounter new things and then see, was there something for me in it or not. But refusing to do something from the outset because we don’t immediately have the answer to “what’s in it for me” closes us off, or doesn’t even open many doors in the first place.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Stefan, let’s see. I think it should work again today, right?
Yes, good morning, Yasemin. Good morning, Sonja and Marc and everyone else here in the room. Yes, it worked flawlessly again now. I just uninstalled the app and reinstalled it. I had this phenomenon with a lot of things during the transition. I mean, we all know Clubhouse, this application here, wasn’t programmed particularly well. It’s still an absolute battery hog, and there are just these technical inconsistencies now and then, that’s really difficult. So first of all, thank you for answering me. Everything’s normal and okay again now. So I’m glad to be here this morning too. It just occurred to me earlier, since I’ve been traveling quite a bit the last few weeks, so I couldn’t join, even though it triggered me now and then in between. But I had this thought in my head just now — that would actually make a nice book title too. Maybe Sonja could act as the author in parallel, “The Dance With AI.” I found that quite nice actually. So in the end a story came to mind. Yes, I’d already mentioned here before that I also professionally engage with artificial intelligence, a technology we’ve had in some form for 50 years, but which has really only, I’ll say colloquially, or for us, arrived in perception since the end of last year, because a kind of revolutionary step, so to speak, has happened in various versions, and through GPT of course something very, very thought-provoking has emerged too. I approach it with great joy too, but I already started years ago with various tools, and we’ve used them. I really enjoyed doing that, and of course there was the professional angle too, that I have to engage with it, but also my goal, without having had the insight beforehand, was that I approached it with great joy. Well, I mean, somewhere we’re all on certain topics we don’t quite have a handle on yet, or where we know relatively little, or where new tools or new things enter our lives that we simply find interesting and should try out. That can ultimately be applied to people too. Because, like Sonja’s example earlier, if I just change my mindset a bit, when I’m out and about, we always have this issue of being exposed to a lot of aggression. It starts with traffic, when I’m on the highway in the morning, we always have some troublemakers who cut us off, or don’t get how to merge onto the highway, or ignore it, and so on. So it’s hard to always just be open and peace, love, and understanding. That’s difficult too. But I think in that moment you should show strength and say, no, come on, I’m not going to overtake that guy now, or I’m not going to engage with that, and so on. Ultimately I just want to say, this openness for topics and this openness for people with the corresponding mindset, that’s something that should work in both directions. So either I already have the insight beforehand and define my goals, or, as described, I approach things without prior insight, with a certain playful joy, so to speak, and openness toward things too, toward topics too.
Yes, thank you so much, and let me briefly pick up on these technical challenges that always keep coming up on Clubhouse, so I’ve formulated this clearly for the others too. So, I definitely, once we’re done with our overarching theme of gaining insight, want to use a room for this too, to actually pick up the topic of rules and so on again, one thing or another, to set the guardrails here too and go into transparency, and at the same time also these aspects, because that you gave me that feedback, dear Stefan — someone else might have thought, oh, Yasemin blocked me and I can’t get into the room anymore, and might have just not tried again, and left with frustration, so to speak. I’d like to communicate this really, really clearly in every direction. It rarely happens that I block someone, and if someone is blocked, they can’t get into the room at all anymore. So it’s not that the hand signals stop working or something — the room won’t even be shown to you anymore, and you won’t get in at all. And I’d like to underline here too that I do observe this for a while, and am very, very sparing with these blocks, so to speak, with blocking. That’s important for me to communicate transparently. So unless there’s repeated “misbehavior” observed on my end. That could be, for example, someone being viciously attacked, or with swear words in the chat, or similar. That happens relatively quickly then, I don’t need to think long about that. But especially with people who’ve been listening here for a longer time, or similar, there needs to be, so to speak, not just once but multiple times something I interpret as misbehavior, so to speak, to make that decision. And that has several components too. I know that if I remove and block someone from the room, for example, if I’m in another room, or, on one hand, that you’d have no access at all, and on the other hand, it could be that we both have shared interests in participating in another room. And that’s exactly a phenomenon here on Clubhouse. You have to handle that carefully too, I personally think, because that could, for example, lead to a situation where if one person is speaking on stage, the other can’t join, and so on. There are various components playing a role here. That’s why I’m quite careful with these blockings, and don’t just block someone per se, but really weigh it up. But if the misbehavior, maybe even after a warning or similar, still doesn’t stop repeatedly, then I do go into the consequences. But what you definitely won’t experience from me is someone just getting blocked and suddenly you can’t join anymore, or something. If something like that happens, I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to figure out for yourself why it ended that way. So these are really reflected and considered processes, not just randomly blocking someone or something. That’s important for me to say again. And then this aspect you brought up with the book, I find that really great here. Yes, we already have a book title, The Dance With AI, Sonja. You have an assignment, or an impulse so to speak, that you can pick up if you’d like. And that’s also, for example, how — and I’d like to build the bridge here too to the book I recently published, namely “Magic Hack for Optimal Use of ChatGPT: Create Your Own Nonfiction Book Using AI.” And that was basically ultimately connected to this same curiosity, saying, hey, I find that kind of cool, let’s just see how quickly you can actually develop a kind of nonfiction reading material with ChatGPT, with the right prompts so to speak, in the shortest amount of time. And that was a kind of experiment. And this experiment led to this book actually being created within 24 hours and also published. And that’s of course a record time. Now you can look at it, you can talk about the quality and so on, but that wasn’t the point. The idea behind it was simply to show, look, if you engage with it, what’s possible, that you can further optimize it, that you can look at how to further develop it, how to lengthen it, shorten it, change it, and so on. All of those are doors we can then open again for ourselves personally, and handle differently too. This was really an experiment here, to show on one hand what’s actually possible, in the sense of increasing efficiency too, and I find that just amazing here, and at the same time to show that the content in there is mostly actually picked up directly from AI as the result. That means there wasn’t much further refinement or anything, but it worked exclusively, again and again, with the prompts, to get the best result, so to speak, at high speed. That means you could of course have further refined it, elaborated on it more, and so on. But it was about looking at how efficiently you can work with the corresponding prompts, and what kind of prompts can be used and applied here to get a corresponding result. And no secret is made of this or anything — at the end of the book this gets revealed accordingly, saying, by the way, this work was also created largely with ChatGPT, simply to give some food for thought here too, and maybe even build the bridge to thinking for yourself, where can I connect, and how can I maybe use AI for myself here too, whether that’s ChatGPT as a tool or another one. Stefan just said it, I mean AI-powered technology, we’ve known about it for a long time, it’s been researched for a long time, and I wanted to say that too — I’m also really, really grateful for ChatGPT here, through this free tool that was initially offered. Meanwhile there’s also a paid version, so a market penetration has succeeded here that has led to people now starting to engage with this topic too. And that’s exactly how I’ve experienced it too, by the way. So we can say this doesn’t just apply to AI. That’s exactly how I felt about it too, by the way. We’ve had a lot of discussions about home office and digitalization and so on, where it’s sometimes really exhausting, in quotes, because the grass doesn’t grow faster just because we pull on it. So how many years have we already been talking about digitalization? And then sobering to notice how slowly things move forward here, because the insight or realization is simply missing that this has huge relevance for me, as a company for example. And then something like Covid, experienced by many as a crisis, the pandemic, suddenly brings in massive speed, and against that background, unfortunately again through the sense of suffering instead of the joy that Stefan just described, which personally I much prefer too, rather than waiting that long until it’s no longer possible and only then connecting. But nonetheless Covid had something positive here too, depending on which lens we look at it through, because it led to many, many companies that were still in slumber mode or deep sleep actually getting into motion, changing something in relation to digitalization. And now we have these developments that have already been on the market for a while, but which have simply become noticeable now for many through ChatGPT. And I hope that leads to curiosity developing here again, and not only once the sense of suffering is there. And I’m telling you, the sense of suffering will come, and faster than one or another might even imagine or grasp right now, because they’re just not currently engaging with it. I just hope that curiosity leads here too, to really engaging with these topics in time, approaching the whole thing with curiosity and openness, and embarking on a kind of journey here too, so to speak, to see, what do I discover for myself here? What can I do with it? Yes, and that’s why I’m really curious. Sonja, Stefan, would you like to add to this too? Was that a wave from someone? I didn’t see it.
Yes, Sonja. Yes, that was a wave. Since the others aren’t waving, I just didn’t open their mic. So I wanted to say two things. One is a quote I found during my breakup, or discovered shortly after the breakup. And I just find it great. And it fits the whole Covid crisis too. It’s a quote from the universe, fictitious. “I had to make it uncomfortable for you, otherwise you’d never have moved.” And I like that so much, because it looks at how valuable crises are, and what energy they release in us, with humor, that we finally get our act together and do things differently than before. And once we’ve recognized that, we can also see it with a wink and approach the new situation with curiosity. And the second thing I wanted to say, I just wanted to repeat it, because it’s just so important. Your approach, how you did this with the book, with ChatGPT, is so inspiring and encouraging, you can’t emphasize it enough. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this a topic and sharing it with us and shaking us awake. That’s a huge gift. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much for that feedback, and I can tell you, it’s not always easy either. It’s not always easy to go ahead first, so to speak, because of course we get watched too, there are reactions to it, and they’re not always just positive. And we talked just yesterday about various constellations that happen here too, that we encounter, where I keep having to realize, yes, we’re allowed to develop an increasingly thick skin, so to speak, because ultimately we’re all human, of course. And every piece of feedback does something to you, in quotes. And to keep shaking that off, or say, I don’t care what others think, even if a negative review comes in, along the lines of, what the heck, because, yes, there was that with the book too. So it’s not all just positive, in quotes, but really shaking it off, and always saying, I’m going this way. I’m going this way with openness and full of curiosity, and see what happens. And I’m quite aware that not everyone always sees that positively, in quotes. And there’s always plenty to criticize. And here too, to some extent, especially as a self-employed person and entrepreneur in particular, I think, because otherwise we don’t get anywhere here, always listening to feedback, and reflecting on it for yourself, while at the same time letting feedback be feedback, always making yourself aware that these are subjective perceptions that aren’t always generalizable, only with recurring aspects. There I’m allowed to look more closely and reflect. But especially individual pieces of feedback aren’t necessarily generalizable either, and so accordingly walking through the world with a certain distance and a certain thick skin, so to speak, is something that’s really, really important. And we have this need to belong. We have the need to be loved, to be recognized. And that doesn’t always necessarily align with that, especially when we try new things. How often do we hear from various sides that it won’t work, or that it’s a stupid idea, or whatever, and yet, I can’t know unless I’ve tried it. So really daring here too, and bringing the courage, so to speak, to actually go for it and do certain things, even if they’re sometimes maybe even risky and carry a certain amount of risk. And I’d like to build a bridge to tomorrow here briefly, because tomorrow we continue with the expert talk with Patrick Wenke, you can all look forward to that.
And we welcome him on the topic of insight and courage to take risks. So the bridge fits wonderfully to tomorrow now. At 8am we continue with Patrick, and here we want to look at various aspects, including the role of courage and willingness to take risks in gaining insight. And so I’m glad that this bridge just worked out wonderfully here. Yes, Marc, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, I’d like to add a small hook to what you said. I agree with you 100 percent that we shouldn’t let ourselves be influenced by others, that we should pursue our idea, our goal. The limitation I’d like to make here for myself is that openness in this case also includes the fact that we might be able to learn from mistakes. You once told me about your office, that you had an office, or that from experience we always thought, if we found a company, we also need an office, because customers visit us, and that with all that openness and all that pursuit of the goal, we could still think, okay, now I have this learning effect, I don’t let myself be influenced by others, I’ll just rent an office in Cologne now, in the Rheinauhafen or wherever. And there it makes total sense to always go into reflection, what relevance does this have for me, could there be something to it, and really evaluate that emotionlessly from a helicopter perspective and then decide. And not just say, I’m doing this now and trying it. Because possibly, I’d say, this experience of others could also lead to us not necessarily having to run headfirst into a wall. Though we shouldn’t give up our goal because of that, just the path to it. There can be different doors we can go through.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. And I find it lovely that you’re bringing up this example with the office again, because ultimately it’s always a matter of perspective too. I’m totally with you. Those are weighing-up processes too. That means I always get to weigh things up and decide, what do I actually do now and what don’t I do? Which mistake do I repeat? Which mistake don’t I repeat? Or where might I want to have my own experiences? And also, when we make mistakes, and especially with mistakes we make, insights get generated from that too, when we step into a lessons-learned process. And I’ve always said, and I’d like to pick this up again specifically with this office topic — it was a price I paid, and it was quite substantial monetarily too. Nonetheless I was able to derive an incredible amount from it, not just derive, but I’m also aware in hindsight that if I hadn’t taken this path, I might not have managed to make the leap into 100 percent self-employment, into entrepreneurship. Because that was the origin of how it even came about, saying, I’m doing this now with the office. So the thought was, just a quick reminder, I kept setting myself certain things to do. I’d already been self-employed on the side for a long time, so to speak. But then came the next project, the next topic, the next promotion, and whatever else. And it was all fascinating too, and all legitimate, and had its place too, in hindsight. It’s just that, again and again, when I reflected, say two years later, once the project was finished, I found for myself, damn it, you actually wanted something else. And you let yourself get pulled back into this current again, so to speak. Not that it wasn’t fun, not that it was somehow wrong, but I let myself get pulled away from my path again, from my very own, individual path. So I took a detour again, so to speak. And then the consideration, okay, now I can either keep going the same way as before, or I change something, and so radically that it opens up the chance for me that I won’t be sitting here again in two years finding the exact same result again, and I wanted to break this cycle. And I managed to break this cycle with a crazy idea for a two-story, 350-square-meter office. As I said, the price I paid, monetarily too, was immense. But even in hindsight, though, yes, it wouldn’t have been necessary, and so on, so the whole thing was dissolved accordingly after the insight. But I was suddenly on a completely new path. This path I embarked on through this decision — and I’m still completely convinced of this — if I hadn’t done that, it contributed to burning these bridges behind me, and really fully committing to this path. And then there was pressure, there was financial pressure, there was this “how are you going to do this now,” and standing with my back against the wall in many places, saying, I need solutions now, because things have to move forward. And this search, this constant search for solutions, for problem-solving and options, that ultimately contributed to, in the end, completely burning all bridges behind me, so to speak, and focusing exclusively, really and 100 percent, on that, namely my path. And for that I’m grateful again in hindsight. That’s why we’re allowed to keep looking at this from different perspectives, and keep going into personal, individual re-evaluation too. Stefan, you wanted to add something too.
Yes, exactly right. We’ve already had this topic before too, that you can generally always draw a conclusion for yourself from other people’s insights too. That’s of course, on one hand, the situation that young founders, or in general — it has nothing to do with young or old — people who are basically starting a business or want to implement a new idea, that if they haven’t gained their own insights up to that point yet, they can definitely draw on the expertise of others, or the state of knowledge of others. That of course helps save a lot of money, and gives you a bit of orientation too, in the direction of, how can I best plan this business? Do I need this space? Do I need this address? Couldn’t I invest in other things that would move me forward faster? Or where’s my return on investment at all? At what point would I actually need to close deals in sales? All these kinds of things, you can learn them. But of course you also have to believe in yourself to some extent, that you use your own orientation for security, and very, very quickly fill that in with your own insights. But just briefly, back to the topic of AI, because I found that really, really interesting. I think two or three days ago Geoffrey Hinton resigned from Google. He’s one of the absolute founding fathers of AI. And he suddenly had extremely strong moral concerns, so to speak. Insiders suspect that Google had planned AI projects without building in what’s called AIM, Artificial Intelligence Morality, or at least some kind of moral compass. He apparently didn’t like where things were heading. I find that really, really astonishing, for example. And that’s something that made me really curious — why someone who’s stood for decades for advancing AI, who’s always believed in the good of AI, in efficiency, effectiveness, and this innovation, is now resigning, so to speak. He was one of the highest-paid advisors there is in this field, and issues warnings that all of us who work with AI in programming, or as those responsible — not the users themselves, but those who create and provide the whole thing — that they often lack the moral compass. And I find that a really interesting aspect.
Yes, thank you so much for sharing. I don’t know if you were in that room. We already talked about this one or two days ago, also in the context of Elon Musk, for example. And I briefly mentioned that those who’ve followed him for longer, or look at the developments here, know there were already warnings issued years ago, and efforts to move toward regulation and so on, to get into exchange with the US government, unfortunately without finding a receptive ear, and now recently again this very clear warning, along the lines of, it would be good if we paused for a moment now. But not pausing per se to say, well, AI is bad or something — I mean, he uses it for all his developments and so on too. But also to see the dangers on that side, and say, it would be quite good if we paused here now, to catch up on all the regulations, in quotes, where it’s necessary. And I find that really fascinating, to look at this from these different perspectives too, and at the same time also to underline again, it’ll probably be similar to the internet. A lot of people back then didn’t believe in having your own PC in your own home either, or something. So we won’t be discussing in the future whether AI gets used or not — it’s too important for that. The development is groundbreaking here too, combined also with other technologies like blockchain and so on. Various components come together here, so to speak, that make an incredible development, technological developments, possible, which will be gladly accepted on the market too. So the market penetration. What does that have to do with? Among other things, whether it can increase efficiency, whether it stands by our side as a tool, so to speak. And just like today we can’t imagine the internet away and so on, even though it has its downsides too, it’s the same with this AI construct. And here too, quite different other aspects too — unconscious bias also plays a role. How does unconscious discrimination potentially happen through this whole technology behind it, all the pitfalls that are there? And it’s important to find solutions here too, in quotes, and at the same time not let yourself be led astray by it, so to speak. And I’m not saying this in your direction, Stefan, I know you engage with these topics. But I observe this in a lot of places, along the lines of, well, I’ll just look at it for now. And that’s my personal opinion — the efficiency boost, the acceleration, this multiplication that’s already been experienced in the past, this multiplication is now shooting up immeasurably again. And here I don’t have the option, from my point of view — this is my very personal opinion, I want to underline that — of leaning back and saying, I’ll just observe this for now and look, and then at some point I can — because here things will move relatively fast, because these learning processes need time. I can’t lie down at night and suddenly know it all the next day, I need time to gather experience too, and so on. And if I just switch into this “I’ll observe it for now” mode, then I’m harming myself and my business with that. That means really going into it with a certain curiosity, trying it out, looking at it, well aware that worry is allowed to be present too, well aware that a lot still needs to be tackled here, and a lot might still come in the direction of regulations and so on too. And at the same time not letting this curiosity be taken away, because there’s definitely potential hidden here for me too. And if I don’t tackle it today, but only in a year, then I’ll have let a lot pass me by here. And this gap, from my personal perspective and the experiences of the last few years and what’s now becoming possible with AI, I won’t be able to close that gap here anymore, that fast. That’s my very personal opinion on this, and that’s why I really invite you, no matter where you currently stand, to really dig deeper here, look at it, if you haven’t already done so. And anyone who’s only engaged with ChatGPT, because that’s had this market penetration now, I can only recommend, look at the other things too, because it’s by far not just ChatGPT. ChatGPT is just what’s being talked about very intensively right now. But that’s simply what we’re currently seeing very, very strongly on the market. There’s so much more though. There are also a lot of other things. It’s not just entering prompts and having results spit out, but whether that’s AI-powered transcriptions or whatever, video material creation, and so on. And whether I use ChatGPT for that or other tools. And there are different tools that are, for example, suited for the American market, because they don’t work in German at all, for example. Then there are tools I can already use wonderfully in the German-speaking market. And then the question is also, where it doesn’t work yet, what do I actually do to still get it from English into German and use it for myself, and not wait until the German language works behind it too, all the way to, how can I combine these tools with each other. That’s a really fascinating topic too, not looking at the tools in isolation, but in combination. And that, yes, that’s the magic hidden behind it for me. So you’re all warmly invited to join tonight at 7:30pm. And whoever doesn’t have time, secure your ticket to watch the recording afterward. So, that was the promotional message at the end again. And with that I’d like to move into today’s closing round. Sonja, Marc, Stefan, what were your highlights from the room today, or what would you like to underline again?
Well, the topic is mega. It’s really so much fun generating new insights here every morning in your room, and it also nourishes my goal to keep trying to be here every morning, to take away exactly these valuable impulses, growth impulses. Thank you so much.
Yes, thank you so much. Glad to hear that. Marc?
Sonja mentioned that quote from the universe, that we come into action from crisis. And I want to briefly remind you of your book too, which you wrote, “Crisis Is What You Make of It.” And for me, I found the book really great, and for me it led to me not just first getting into crisis and making something of it, but always asking myself, what could a crisis be? This idea of, what would a crisis be if the Chinese market collapsed, and so on, I have to answer myself with new questions, even if they can’t be answered yet, but engaging with questions that haven’t even come up yet gives us a feeling of security, because when the case actually happens, you no longer feel powerless, and you’ve already engaged with the topic. I wish you all a great day.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Stefan?
Yes, as I said, where I meant that in the context of AI and insights and goals — ultimately of course it’s the case, I’ve been able to get a lot of people excited about it, and there are of course hundreds if not thousands of tools in this area that are simply fun to experience. You can find out for yourself, especially with music apps, or text-to-image applications too. That’s a lot, a lot of fun. With my youngest son I’m currently in the process, just because it’s fun to try it out, with the kids too, so with different generations so to speak, developing a book, where we use Stable Diffusion or Midjourney, for example, to visualize the whole thing too, and so on. It’s just fun across all areas. That’s why I’m in favor of being more of the explorer, and especially in business, or in your own life too, looking at what advantages I can draw from it, and what fun factor it also has for myself, at the end of the day. So always, generally, overarching for everything, to think of Christopher Columbus, or Amelia Earhart, or whoever is considered a pioneer, awakening and approaching things with curiosity and fun, and creating your own insights, so to speak, from that. That’s definitely, I think, the best path.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And I’d like to pick up these last words of yours in the direction of education too. That’s also a really, really important aspect. So it’s not just about business and so on, it’s about societal developments happening here, with these technological changes that are there. So on one hand looking at our younger generation, so to speak, how can we handle certain tools, how can we have fun with that on one hand, and on the other hand, how do roles change too. We just had that on Sunday, the trainer becoming, so to speak, a learning companion. That’s nothing new, in quotes, but now various further technologies are coming on top of it too, that bring a certain speed here too, bring about new roles too, and so on. And especially with this AI topic I’m of the opinion that we’re allowed to do quite a bit of education and outreach work here, allowed to support, allowed to pitch in, both as advisors, coaches, and so on. Not just the self-use as a company, so to speak, but also in this accompanying role, whether as parents, or in the role, because I’m professionally out and about in this context too, as an advisor or coach or whatever. And so I’m really looking forward to pitching in here too, to see what’s needed, what possibilities we can create here, how we can accompany this process. So not just looking at how I can use this for myself, in quotes, but at the same time also looking at what doors we can open here too, to prepare exactly these roles, do education and outreach work here, and pass on and teach the corresponding skills too. And in this context, an important conversation with a university is happening this afternoon for us. That means I’m really excited, feel free to just cross your fingers. Here too I simply trust the universe. If something is meant to come of it, and if it’s something good, then it’s allowed to come, so to speak, and then we’re happy to pitch in. If it’s not meant to be, then there’s a good reason for that. And nonetheless it’s a milestone today to think in this direction again, and go into exchange with this university accordingly, with the person responsible at the university, about exactly this combination, basically neuroscience, then we have AI and digital health, we combined those once, let’s see what can come from that, and what we might be able to make accessible here too, on the education level so to speak, to prepare and accompany people accordingly in this process. And I’m curious what comes of it, and yes, maybe I’ll hopefully be able to share one thing or another with you soon too. In that sense. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. As I said, tomorrow we have our expert talk with Patrick Wenke. Join us at 8. Tune in, because tomorrow it’s about insight and courage to take risks. And yes, he has a very special journey planned for himself personally at this point, and here too bridges will be built again. It’s fascinating to see what you can shape from that. And so, we’ll talk together about insight and courage to take risks. What role does the whole thing play in the aspect of gaining insight too? And I’m already looking forward to it. You know him, we’ve welcomed him here often before too. And I’m curious about tomorrow’s deeper dive, which we’ll open up together under this overarching theme of gaining insight, insight and courage to take risks, as a specific perspective, so to speak, together again. Until then, I wish you all the best. Ciao, ciao.
