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Episode 51 - Erica Ancobia
27 Plays14 days ago
In this episode, Sade is joined by Erica, , Managing Director and CEO of Kuno GmbH, who support businesses with HR and payroll services—specifically tailored for start-ups, scale-ups, and small to medium-sized companies.
Together, they discuss:
- Her career journey and what first sparked her interest in HR
- Her experience at Rocket Internet and the key lessons she took away
- Her time at Finleap and what it was like working with startups in the FinTech space
- The challenges she has faced as a woman in leadership
- Why communities like Tomorrow Belongs to Her are so valuable
- The advice she’d give to others looking to pursue a similar career path
Recommended
Transcript
Erica's Leadership Journey
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Women Talk Tech. Today, I'm joined by Erica, Managing Director of Kuno. Now, she's had such an exciting journey from getting her start in HR to working at Rocket Internet and Finley, and now leading Kuno.
00:00:29
Speaker
We talked all about what she's learned along the way, her experiences as a woman in leadership, and her takeaways from the If Tomorrow Belongs to Her event, which is where we met, an incredible community aimed at helping women in leadership. If you're in HR and thinking about stepping into leadership, this one's definitely for you.
00:00:43
Speaker
Let's dive in.
00:00:47
Speaker
Awesome. So thanks again for joining me, Erica. I guess, yeah, tell us a bit more about yourself.
Role and Roots of Erica
00:00:53
Speaker
Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for having me and um about myself. So I'm erka Erica, Erica Ancobia.
00:01:02
Speaker
I'm a managing director and CEO of Kuno and Kuno is a service agency for h r and payroll. um which means that we work with different clients, especially startups or scale-ups.
00:01:16
Speaker
um And what we do is we work with them long-term or interim project-based or on consulting everything around HR and especially payroll. Payroll in Germany is very old school still. We try to make a little bit different um and and being a little bit more responsive and stuff like that.
00:01:36
Speaker
um and We focus mostly on processes and we help out when capacities are tight or we do a tool implementation and stuff like that. um And yeah, that's what I do. And about myself, I'm born and raised in Berlin, which is seldom in Berlin, I guess.
00:01:57
Speaker
Moving to Berlin and they're always surprised to learn that I'm actually a Berliner. um But I do sound a little bit like an American, I guess, still. I used to live in the States for seven years. I lived there between the age of 12 and around 18 or end of 18 when I moved back to Germany. And I, yeah, I came back to Germany to study here and to learn what I learned back then.
00:02:25
Speaker
And then little bit more private. I'm married. I don't have any children. have two cats. um I hope they're going to be quiet today because they love jumping into my calls all the time.
00:02:36
Speaker
Oh, wow. Honestly, like you said, I don't think in the six years of me working in the Berlin market, um I don't think I've ever met anyone who was born and still lived in Berlin. Like being born there is fair, but still living there is, is like you said, it's quite seldom.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, very true. I mean, I'm married to my wonderful husband, Tristan, and he's also a Berliner, which is even more seldom. um And we're just very, very heavily rooted in Berlin. Now families are here. My mom just moved, she moved back around nine years ago back to Berlin. She's a Berliner herself.
00:03:12
Speaker
um So we're always gonna stay here, I guess. Wow. It's interesting because I'm born and raised in London, right? Whenever I say that, it's it's it' it still feels quite rare because of course, London's again, quite multicultural, yeah but it's not as rare as being born and bred in Berlin. I i don't know what it is about it. It just feels so weird.
00:03:29
Speaker
it's true Oh, gosh.
Hotel Management to HR
00:03:32
Speaker
And, you know, let's start the very beginning of your journey, right? What first drew you into the world of HR and and how did you actually get started? and um Actually, the funny thing is I didn't get started in HR at first. um When I came back to Berlin, I'm one of the crazy people I knew when I was 11, what I wanted to do.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I knew that I was going to work in hotel management, actually, for the rest of my life. So I came back to Berlin to... ah train in hotel management. So in in Germany, you do a very classical apprenticeship, which takes two and a half to three years.
00:04:06
Speaker
And I did that. And I did work in hotel management for around 10 years. And I was a hotel director in the end. But yeah, as it happens, after 10 years, I noticed, okay, um it's not the right thing for me um you either love it or if you stay there and you don't love it, you don't really feel good about yourself. So I actually decided to study very late or very late on in life.
00:04:34
Speaker
I'm not sure if it's very late, but um I was in my 30s when I started studying and I studied business administration. And um there again, after the second semester, I knew I wanted to go into HR. I don't know what happened, but something made me, you know, look into it. I think it was everything around employment law, um which I found really interesting. And also, it's you know, it's not so far away from hotel management because of Instead of guests that you, you know, take care of or you handle or you support um in HR, you have employees that you, you know, try to create everything for, um but also keeping in mind the company. So in hotel management, it's the hotel. Of course, you have make sure that you get your rooms filled and everything. And in HR, it's the same thing. It's always, you know, two poles.
00:05:24
Speaker
One side is making sure employees come and stay. But on the other hand, ah you also have to keep the business in mind to make sure that the business thrives to actually be able to employ ah people.
Daily Deal Experience
00:05:37
Speaker
So, um yeah, i was working um in as a working student at Viacom or back then it was called MTV um and I was working at the reception and I actually had a fellow working or a fellow student who was working at Daily Deal at the time.
00:05:53
Speaker
um Daily Deal back then, um was quite known in Berlin. It was one of those crazy startups. And I just found it very interesting what she told me about it. And she told me that they had an open position for an intern in the HR department. And I actually, funny thing is I had a friend back then who worked at Daily Deal and he told me, oh my gosh, don't go there. It's a typical startup. Nothing is organized, whatever.
00:06:17
Speaker
And then I told him that I wanted to go into the HR department. And he said, well, no, HR is a totally different thing it's completely organized that's the best part of the company. And um yeah, I always like to, you know, try out new things. And I thought, okay, it's completely different than anything I've ever done before.
00:06:34
Speaker
So why not try it? And um it was a little bit of a culture of shock, to be honest. So on my first day, I came there. And you know, I'm coming from hotel management, where everything is very structured, you have very clear processes, because you only have one day to, you know,
00:06:53
Speaker
sell a room, you only have a short amount of time to make guests happy. And here I came and they actually didn't know I was coming on that day because the person that had hired me, I think she was out sick or on vacation or whatever.
00:07:06
Speaker
um And they picked me up at the reception They got me a desk out of the cellar. They put it against the wall. I was looking against a white wall almost most of the time.
00:07:17
Speaker
But I don't know, something just grabbed me about it. And I thought it was the craziest thing, but I thought it was absolutely amazing because it's Like from day one, it was a just do it mentality. i I had never worked in HR before. I had never worked in a startup before. To be honest, I didn't even really understand what they were doing.
00:07:38
Speaker
um They just, you know, they gave me a computer. They showed me something. They took me along on the ride and showed me everything. It was great learning, great training for me. And they just let me do. And it was a lot different from what I knew from beforehand. where it was always, you know, the saying, we've always done it that like that. So we're going to keep it that way.
00:08:04
Speaker
And here was everything new. You just had to try out yourself and see how it works and so on. So I really, really liked that. And i actually stayed there for five years, even after ah I finished studying um until I moved on to, yeah, to to the next stations.
00:08:19
Speaker
Wow. Wow. Honestly, I absolutely love, I think that's my favorite question whenever I do a podcast to ask about someone's journey, because whilst there, you know, there are some similarities, there's always like a turning point. And of course we spent a lot of time in hotel management, went into HR, but like you said, there was still so much of that experience that was transferable to to kind of where you are now, which I think is always just so interesting.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Totally. I mean, it's, it's like, um, I made such a a career jump from one field to the other, but there's always things that I look back on that, you know, helped me progress in the meantime, because now, especially being in a service agency, it's not so far away from doing services in hotel management, just with a totally different crowd around yourself and just ah with a different focus.
00:09:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, totally. And of course, you've had an impressive career already, yeah you know, including your time at Rocket Internet. What was that experience like for you? And maybe are some of the biggest lessons you took
Rocket Internet Insights
00:09:19
Speaker
away from that? Yeah. um So there again, funny thing is when I actually applied to Rocket Internet um and I told friends about it or especially people that I worked with at the time at Daily Deal,
00:09:32
Speaker
um Some of them were looking at me like, okay, are you sure you want to move on to Rocket Internet? Because they had kind of a reputation back then and made me think. But like I said, I try to try out things by myself and try not to listen too much to what other people say.
00:09:51
Speaker
And I thought, what's the worst thing that can happen to me? um And I started there and it was an experience. It was very new to me. um My first day started out really structured, then it got kind of unstructured. And i think on my first day, I worked until 1030 at night because it was We had to get some payroll done for one of the ventures. I think it was Foodora.
00:10:20
Speaker
And it was really, really crazy on the first day already. um But it was also very impressive working there. I mean, it was so fast paced. It was really fast paced. I remember one venture from, I guess, having the idea to finding a managing director to start it up to until the soft launch.
00:10:44
Speaker
It was, i think, two weeks. um And they hired their first employees in that time. And it was, I mean, Rocket Internet at that time was like a machine in building companies. They also had like a poster on every floor showing exactly how you build ventures. So it was really impressive working there. It was a lot of hard work. But um I think what I took away for myself is,
00:11:10
Speaker
learning a lot about myself as well, yeah um applying the skills that I had learned at Daily Deal. And um I mean, I must say, learning at Daily Deal, um as crazy it as it was sometimes, but the HR department, there were a lot of different people that worked there.
00:11:26
Speaker
um But it was like a really good foundation. And I was able to apply that at Rocket Internet, which I didn't even know I had in me. um And I worked with especially the new ventures together. So it was a little bit weird. I wasn't really part of the HR team because they only focused on the employees of Rocket Internet themselves.
00:11:47
Speaker
um And then I was part of the recruiting team, but I wasn't a recruiter. um I was hired really just to focus on the newly built ventures and some of the old ventures to support them in their you know day-to-day needs, building up onboarding and stuff like that, working together with the founders essentially, um also to consult them in different issues. i mean This was a time when Rocket or some of the ventures also had a little bit of a hard time. There were some mass dismissals and stuff like that. So um it was really applying my skills in that and finding more about myself and the fast-paced startup um environment as Rocket had it. I mean, even faster than Daily Deal was also very interesting.
00:12:32
Speaker
um And yeah, other lessons I kind of took from it is sometimes it's too fast. So yeah. good structures, good processes before starting up or going, you know, just hiring, hiring, hiring. Of course, we're now in a different phase where I think most startups don't work like that anymore.
00:12:52
Speaker
um But it was also a big lesson. I started learning more about startup lingo, you know, different ah managing directors that I dealt with. um But I also learned again for myself is that I don't really like working in such ah large teams, yeah you know, in large companies. So um um um I thrive more in smaller teams and smaller companies.
00:13:21
Speaker
um And Rocket was really big at that. I mean, from my sense, it was really big. I think they were over 500 employees, which Daily Deal was at them oh at the beginning when I started as well. But it was just a different atmosphere.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess, you know, from what I hear, the good thing about that experience, whilst, yes, it was very fast paced and yes, it was, I'm sure at times, very chaotic. You got a chance to, I guess, learn each kind of aspect of HR. You know, you mentioned you were doing a bit of recruiting, working with the ventures, working with the founders.
00:13:54
Speaker
Like that, I think, truly encompasses kind of all aspects of HR, which does put you in in kind of good step to to kind of move on to maybe one of those areas which you thought would be really interesting for you.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, especially like employment law and stuff like that, because I'm there were a lot of questions. And I mean, I was it was like learning day by day for myself, but um also going more into employment law and processes and structures. So that's something that I found out for myself was my my core where where feel like I can really apply my skills and that I'm really good at.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. And you then moved to Finley, where you worked with other startups, but mainly in the kind of fintech field. um How was that experience in comparison to Rocket Internet?
Learning at Finley
00:14:44
Speaker
um Yeah, so it was it was um I mean, it was still fast paced, not as fast as Rocket Internet, but nothing's as fast as Rocket Internet was back then.
00:14:53
Speaker
um But it was. um When I started at Finleaf, I think they were founded around, not not even a year before I started. And they were founded by HitFox, which was already a company builder.
00:15:08
Speaker
And they um decided to build up Finleaf as a fintech company builder itself. um And they had, I think, only about 10, 20 employees at the time when I started. So that's, of course, something that I already liked much more was a smaller scale, even though we were in a big shared office with a lot of people, but it was, the focus was just a little bit different.
00:15:33
Speaker
And um it was in a younger phase. So a lot of, ah a lot of the ventures that came from Finley were being built up at the time that I was there. and And I was able to help shape the HR team a little bit further, the employee relations and so on. And Finleep was also, mean i think, a little bit more focused on HR than Rocket was at the time. yeah I think also because of the phase that Rocket Internet was in, because they were, you know, moving away from
00:16:06
Speaker
building too many more ventures and, you know, getting a little bit more settled. But Finleap was in this starting phase again. um And at Finleap, I had more, because it was a smaller team, um I had more insights into how a company builder ticks and what shareholders look out for, what reports they need, what happens during mergers, during um the actual founding stage. I had a closer contact to the founders again, just with a different, um with a different focus for them.
00:16:43
Speaker
um And I also had a little bit of an insight of how building a company, you know, ah works and what to look out for and so on is of course, ah mostly from an HR perspective, but it was, it was just more structured, I guess, as well, because it wasn't so fast paced and, perhaps it also comes from fintech, you know, finance and stuff like that is always a little bit more structured because it's more yeah related, of course.
00:17:14
Speaker
um And yeah, it was, it was different. It was still fast paced. was still very interesting. I mean, it was of course it's very interesting. I was there for almost six years. So um um and, and there I also took the time to um do a master's of law for employment law.
00:17:32
Speaker
As I said, in the beginning, I was always very interested in that and, working with the different venture MDs or with the founders, I just wanted to have more skills to apply when it comes to employment law, since there's always, let's say, the same questions coming up, and I wanted to be more sure when answering these questions.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think especially in the fintech field, right, like you said, it's so heavily regulated. There's so much you have to make sure that you you're compliant with, that think the structure there would have provided...
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, a bit more structure for yourself, right? Especially being in the HR world, there's so much you can do and there's so much work to do. But I guess having that bit of structure, I'm sure helped. Oh, yeah, definitely. i mean, when you're building up a company um that is regulated by Bafins or the German finance organization,
00:18:21
Speaker
head or institute or whatever you call it in English, um then of course you have to make sure that the processes, even in HR and especially also in payroll, are are clean because they're going to look into that as well. We had a lot of audits that we helped out with um and it just makes you look into the clean processes even more closely. And that's time when I also saw, okay, there's just basic things you should mind in the beginning when building up a company from an HR and payroll perspective, which in the long run will be important for these audits and for these, um,
00:19:01
Speaker
you know, later mergers or finding investors and stuff like that, because they look into that as well and want to know if everything is clean in the books as well. So it's always very important to have him so have a look out for.
Becoming Managing Director
00:19:15
Speaker
Totally, totally. And of course, fast forward to where you are now. Of course, hell of lot experience, a hell of lot of, you know, I guess, learning experiences as well. Like, how do you think those past experiences have kind of prepared you for where you are now in your current role?
00:19:29
Speaker
a um Yeah, it's ah it's a mixture of different experience. I take out of pretty much every stage I was in. um So at Finlieb the end 2020, also Finlieb was going through a change, let's say it.
00:19:47
Speaker
um I mean, it was, of course, also during the pandemic. So everything, everywhere was changing at that time. um And that's actually when Kuno was founded, um but it wasn't founded by me. So um here again, i wasn't, you know, i but I kind of followed along and I was or in at Finlieb, Katharina Jung was also working. She was um running the whole finance department.
00:20:14
Speaker
And I was in the HR department, um head of HR there. and um And she, together with the managing directors of Finlieb,
00:20:26
Speaker
decided to build up Kuno. And Kuno was actually built as a fintech as well. So we had a technology that we built in the beginning. um And it was interesting for me to move away from company building. um but For the last, I think, ah seven years or so, i had worked in different company builders, always looking from the company builder perspective into the ventures. And it was the first time for me, myself, to move on to a venture, which was little bit scary at the time, but I thought, hey, again, what's the worst thing that can happen to me?
00:21:05
Speaker
um And I ah joined the founding team, and we were, I think, at the beginning around 10, 12, 13 people um um that started at Kuno and was um all people who worked at Finleep before. And our focus or our plan was to build a platform to unify HR, finance, payroll, into one platform so you don't have so many island solutions.
00:21:30
Speaker
And there, interesting for me was that, getting of course, my background back then had been 10 years in HR and doing everything with an HR focus.
00:21:41
Speaker
But since we were building this platform where we wanted to integrate payroll and HR processes, I worked very closely together with a CPO. So I kind of ventured into the tech area as well. And the understanding of, okay, how do you build a platform, which was new to me. And he kept asking me all kinds of questions and I didn't understand it until it made click.
00:22:03
Speaker
um And um so that was also very interesting. And I think the experience from the past helped me to understand what things to look out for, to not make it too complicated. Cause sometimes you think within your tunnel,
00:22:16
Speaker
um and not outside of it and just really think from an outside perspective, what is something that people need? um Well, but obviously we're not a ah tech company anymore.
00:22:30
Speaker
We moved away from that because we got then into ah stage where it was very difficult to get financing um because of the Ukraine crisis that was happening and stuff like that, because we were just too early stage.
00:22:45
Speaker
um And that's actually when I came into the role that I am in right now, um because the CPO and Katharina, the CEO at at the time, um they...
00:23:00
Speaker
noticed that we weren't going to make it without new funding. um But we had always offered our services in the beginning. And that was actually, you know, we were making money with that.
00:23:11
Speaker
um And so it was just chance, like a crazy idea of, hey, Erica, why don't you take over? Who knows, since you've worked in service before. and at the time I started as head of HR, but at the time I was head of operations. So I was taking care of the finance team as well.
00:23:31
Speaker
And um it was a little bit of the question of, do we move forward with Kuno? Do we close it down? Or do we just go a different route? And I said, well, let's try it.
00:23:42
Speaker
ah Yeah, why not? It's the worst thing that can happen. And that's when I decided to take over the managing director role. um And of course, the CPO left since we were not going to have a platform anymore. We closed it down. um And Katharina also moved on to a different venture since she always wanted to stay in the tech field.
00:24:03
Speaker
um And yeah, since 2023, I've now been the MD, which is a completely new Germany. i like Going back to your question, what experience do I take from the past? So um pretty much what we do now is what I did in the past at Finlieb and at Rocket, working together with different ventures, with different startups, with different companies, helping them in their HR topics and payroll topics. And now we're a team of 20 women. Funny enough, we're a team of only women. We don't have any men in our company.
00:24:39
Speaker
um And we do everything for the companies to make sure that they have the structure, of the processes, or you know where we need to help out and um Everything from the past has helped me a lot with that, of course. Also the fast paced startup environment. I understand how founders take, you know, what they look out for. They have a lot on their plate. They don't want too much of the information around it. They just want pragmatic ah solutions and stuff like that. So it helped immensely.
00:25:10
Speaker
No, I can imagine. And I think, like you said, you know, working with founders before has now given you, I guess, the skill set and and I guess know what problems they need to help with, right? So you can actually, I guess, sell the product which you're now working on.
00:25:22
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so that's, that I think, the core of what we do. We understand when companies reach out to us, they have a problem of they don't have any capacities or we have some smaller startups that don't have their own HR department. So we take over that ah department for them, what we call co-sourcing. So it's not outsourced to us. We work very closely with the teams within um and we really set up everything for them because we know the typical mistakes that can be made in the beginning that are hard to clean up later on.
00:25:56
Speaker
um And everybody on the team focuses on that. Also, when we work directly with the HR departments, you know, it's the same thing there. We understand HR since we are h r and payroll um and we're able to help there on ah on a different level.
00:26:13
Speaker
Wow, wow.
Women in Leadership Challenges
00:26:15
Speaker
And, you know, i feel like it's it's it's a crime to maybe not mention this, of course, because you are a woman in leadership. And I imagine there have been, you know, both challenges and breakthroughs, maybe not so where you are now, because of course you are working with a team, all of women. But yeah, I can imagine, to be fair, it could be worse. But is a I'm sure there's probably a lot of challenges and breakthroughs that you've kind of gone through as a leader, especially now being the MD, maybe not something which you thought about at the beginning of your career in HR.
00:26:43
Speaker
What's that journey look like for you? Yeah, that's actually that's actually really interesting because um what you just mentioned, I never really thought of being ah managing director of a company. That was not a plan of mine. And now I am. So it's ah also very new to me.
00:27:01
Speaker
um i mean, okay, I'm three years in now, so it's not that new anymore, but it was very new at the at the time and it was more of a spur of the moment decision. um But leadership for me has looked differently throughout the year. So, mean, I'm...
00:27:20
Speaker
um I just turned 47 on Sunday, actually. um And so I'm i'm a 90s kid. I grew up during the 90s where um women were treated still, I mean, they're still treated not very equally, but back then it was even more different. So it was a lot of the ah shitty things that happened ah back then, you know, that also created the Me Too movement and stuff like that. And um complaining as a woman was frowned upon or you were looked at as a feminist or whatever.
00:27:56
Speaker
um And feminist was not a positive word back then. Yeah. So um and especially in hotel management, I mean, I don't want to tell you any details of how it was like ah back then.
00:28:09
Speaker
um I mean, nothing. bad ever happened to me in that sense, but it was still remarks and gestures and stuff like that. So that was already not so great. So you kind of swallowed your anger sometimes. And sometimes this anger came out in the wrong situations or in the wrong form, especially when I took over some of my first leadership roles.
00:28:33
Speaker
um And then also, For me, I mean, looking at diversity in companies or in Germany, um i'm I'm a woman, first of all, but I'm also quite short. So people kind of look down on me in that sense.
00:28:49
Speaker
And then I'm um very German or people tell me I'm very German, but I don't look very German since I have an African background. So I'm a black woman. I'm quite short. And that in Germany makes it a little bit difficult sometimes. And it makes it difficult to be heard in the way ah you want to be heard.
00:29:07
Speaker
um But i I had a lot of support as well. um I had a lot of great people that I could learn from sometimes.
00:29:18
Speaker
understanding how I don't want to be and the mistakes I don't want to make. um But I had great mentors, great colleagues. um And it sounds a little bit cliche, but I have a great husband who supports me as well.
00:29:31
Speaker
um And um it's it's it was a lot of reflecting. um And I always say, i mean, some of the things ah I wish I didn't have to experience, but um they brought me to where I am now. and um in a more settled stage of being able to try to give the best in my leadership role right now. And um I mean, I hope my colleagues say the same thing. i'm I think I'm doing sort of a good job. I don't want to toot my horn, but it's it's much better that I'm in this position right now um instead of being there 10 to 15 years ago, because i I would have been, or I was a fairly different person back then
00:30:16
Speaker
um And all the all of the experience that I've had just brought me to a more calm version of myself right now. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's it's a double edged sword, right? Because, you know, without the experiences that you've been through previously, you may not be where you are now.
00:30:33
Speaker
However, I feel like where we are now for women in leadership and for women in male fields, as we say, it's a different experience, right? And of course, we met the Tomorrow Belongs to Her event, which is an organization or community used to help women in leadership roles progress and just have a bit of it a network for them to kind of speak about their challenges. And I think I wish we had things like that, you know, back in the 90s, like you said, because I think that is a game changer for but not only just women, but people stepping into leadership roles. um
00:31:04
Speaker
I think it's it's important to have that. But I do wish we had it, you know, in the 90s as well, because who knows how further along we would have been if we are if it wasn't just starting now.
00:31:15
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. I mean, we we started a long time ago, but it was It wasn't as loud as I have the feeling it is now. I mean, looking at my mom, my mom was born 1945. just turned this year And she tells me about her wild times in the sixties when she burned her bra. She always makes a joke about it. She actually didn't need a bra because she didn't need a bra, but she burned it anyways, you know, to support women's rights and everything. And I mean, that was a crazy period um for women. And just the other day I saw um like a, historical numbers when different laws for women were changed. And some of them were in the late eighties where women around Europe, which is very progressive, were finally allowed to buy their own homes or didn't have to ask their husbands for permission to work anymore and stuff like that. And we've definitely moved away from that. And also the, the, the me too, um,
00:32:21
Speaker
phase you know, the Me Too movement that ah came out of all the stupid things that happened in the past. I have the feeling, looking at younger women now coming into business or coming into their own, that they are so more outspoken about it. so Oh my gosh. And and it's it's something that we just have to make sure to really follow ah along with, follow follow through with, um because it's so, so important.
00:32:52
Speaker
And Tomorrow Belongs to Her is just the perfect, perfect example for a community like that. And I was very, very happy to join the first time that Vesela started this community.
00:33:07
Speaker
And I know that she's going to have ah another event in October coming up. um And the the diversity of women that were there and the connection afterwards or while we were there it was really, but was really awesome to see like so many different fields of um of business that the women came from or are still in um and hearing from each other. I think that's something so important, just telling each other about good things,
00:33:40
Speaker
bad things and everything in between of your journey. I don't know if you remember during the event, there was one statistic of I think 52% or of women have this posture ah or impotor syndrome um or feel unsure of what they do. And that's everybody. Everybody on earth is unsure of what to do because nobody has a handbook of life.
00:34:07
Speaker
um But hearing it from somebody else, I think is so, so important. And I wish, and i know there's a lot of women ah communities and ah female leadership programs and so on.
00:34:20
Speaker
But I think where we can still become better is really seizing the opportunity. Sometimes i but come into some female spaces and it's a little bit like looking each other up and down. And it's not that just, just be open, just support each other, talk to each other.
00:34:38
Speaker
um Don't be so skeptical. Nobody's going to steal anything away from you. um And just, just open up and tell other people about your own struggles or,
00:34:50
Speaker
your successes and so on. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, that's the one thing. I mean, there was many things I loved about the event, but the one thing I loved about the, the the one in May is that the diversity in that room was incredible. Like it wasn't just a room full of all one demographic of women. It was firstly so diverse in terms of culture and ethnicities, but also in terms of industry and background And yeah, it was incredible to be a part of that room because, yeah, the statistics and data which was shared, it was crazy to even have those numbers just you just kind of there in in front of you because it was like, wow, like is that how many women feel that or experience that or whatever?
00:35:28
Speaker
But yeah, it's so exciting to kind of see events and communities like that come together. I wish we didn't have to, but then the benefits of having it have been incredible. So it's like, well, if that's what we have to do to kind of get the results we are getting, i will be here for it.
Personal Life and Community
00:35:42
Speaker
Well, and the thing is, men have had these communities along. So why shouldn't we have it? And why shouldn't there be different kinds of communities? Because learning from each other is never a bad thing. And supporting each other is never a bad thing.
00:35:55
Speaker
um and And we should do that in all sorts of fields. um I mean, my husband, for instance, ah who I mentioned, is he's disabled. um And that's something that is, well, it's not new to us, but it's it's it's a progressive disability. And it's something that that now is becoming new. You know, has his first wheelchair, like when we travel, we have to think about those kinds of things.
00:36:19
Speaker
And it's, I've noticed that we don't really know anybody in the same situation. And there it's also a little bit of sharing the information or sharing the experience that we're making now with day-to-day things, um which where I think that could help other people as well. You know, it's, it's all,
00:36:39
Speaker
types of different fields where you can just share and speak out loud to other people. And with Tomorrow Belongs to Her, I mean, i'm I'm fully supportive of that. Maybe it's also, I told Vesela afterwards, it was for me a little bit of an aha moment because like I said, in the 90s, you weren't very feministic. You know, you have yourself and stuff like that. But i'm I'm noticing that I'm becoming more outspoken in that way because there is so many opportunities to help in that field. And um maybe it's just talking about your own experience. For instance, I'm also not a mother, you know, sometimes in leadership, a lot of women I looked at
00:37:21
Speaker
with ah much praise when they handle both their family situation, you know, their kids and their job. Of course, it's also frowned up upon. I'm not a mother myself, but um I have my husband with his disability, my 80-year-old mom, who's, you know, becoming very forgetful and and yeah very funny, though. Yeah.
00:37:43
Speaker
um And it's everybody has a different living situation. And I think just sharing that and then also the business situations that are different for everybody, but you have so many similarities.
00:37:55
Speaker
And just sharing that is something that I'm feeling more strongly about. out that I'm getting older than I was feeling when more of the shitty things were happening to me when I was in my 20s or 30s yeah yeah no totally and you know finally for the women or for women in HR who are listening right now or maybe thinking about stepping into leadership what's the one piece of advice you wish someone would have shared with you before you kind of stepped into your leadership role or even as before before you kind of stepped into being an MD yeah um
00:38:30
Speaker
I think I mentioned some
Advice for Women in HR
00:38:31
Speaker
of the things. I mean, I have, and I know you might remember that I have a mantra. I'll come to that in a second. but um It's the, it's the, because I know from my own experience of thinking small and thinking you're not worth doing something like this or that you're not good enough. I think that's the most important thing. Women tend to think that they're not good enough, whereas a man will just do something.
00:39:00
Speaker
um and then you know say he can do things. um And I don't want to be so harsh about men, oh my gosh. But you know they it's it's known that they tend to be a little bit more like that. And women tend to be a little bit less outspoken about what they can do, which sometimes is also very nice. you know And sometimes you don't need people telling you all the time what they can do.
00:39:20
Speaker
And it's it's nicer seeing what they actually do. um But I started telling myself early on, um Or not so early on, actually, but let's say 10, 15 years ago.
00:39:32
Speaker
And I always ask myself the question, what's the worst thing that can happen if I just try this? And if I just do this, like stepping into the MD role, it it's a huge responsibility. I mean, it's also a financial responsibility. And now we're...
00:39:45
Speaker
We're a self-financed company. We don't have any investors or anything. i mean, we do have shareholders, but we finance ourselves. and I had a lot of sleepless nights wondering if we're going to make it, but we did make it. And, you know, what was the worst thing that was going to happen if we didn't make it? We would have to close down the company. Okay, that's nice, but...
00:40:07
Speaker
Everybody in our company would have found a new job really quickly because we're all really good at what we do. And it happens almost every day, especially, you know, right now, just just yesterday I heard or I read about companies that have to close down. It's part of business. Some companies, say of course, we're not in that in that situation, but it's still the question, what's the worst thing that can happen? And plus, um I always say this between colleagues as well.
00:40:35
Speaker
um when we When we handle difficult situations, we kind of smile always and say, okay, we don't do open heart surgery. So we can, you know, really take care of the situation, go about it with a clear mind, but we can fix things. So what's the worst thing that happen? We have to fix it afterwards.
00:40:55
Speaker
Not saying that Kuno makes mistakes, but we're all human. So sometimes that happens, but you know, we can, we can fix it in the end. And, and Another thing is,
00:41:07
Speaker
um like I said, that, or I used to think that everybody else had it figured out. And it took me a while to see, looking behind the scenes, almost nobody has it figured out. I mean, unless you build your 15th company, I mean, if you already have 14 companies, you're probably not going to build another company.
00:41:31
Speaker
um But yeah. most people don't have it figured out. I mean, a lot of the work and especially in HR also is improvisation. So, um, because you always have different situations. And so I would tell a person going into leadership, i mean, yes, of course, read a lot of books, train yourself, talk to other people, get experience, get yourself a mentor, get yourself a coach.
00:41:56
Speaker
Um, But don't think that everybody has it figured out. A lot of a lot of things, but they don't know everything. And then, of course, yeah my mantra, which I just love to share. And it's not you know, it's not my saying. um It's something that I took away from um from watching a YouTube video that somebody had recommended to me, I think almost 20 years ago um by Randy Pausch, who was a professor.
00:42:24
Speaker
And he was giving his last lecture because unfortunately he was very ill and he knew that he was going to pass soon after. um And he said one thing in a situation when he was still, he was talking about his dreams and what he had achieved and how to how to be able to live your dream.
00:42:45
Speaker
And um he wanted to be a football player, but he didn't get chosen by the coach. And the coach actually told him when he was a teenager or so that um experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
00:43:01
Speaker
And this is something that is in my mind all the time when I try out something new or when when something doesn't work out or even when something works out and is great because I always get an experience out of everything that I do. And especially when something is not so good as you wanted it to be.
00:43:23
Speaker
gives me a really good feeling afterwards because I know I learned something. i know. or I hope I know not of of which mistakes I shouldn't do again afterwards.
00:43:34
Speaker
um And even if I do them again, I'll get another experience out of it. That's something that I would tell, not even just women, I would tell this to everybody because that is, it's it's like a truth ah for myself.
00:43:49
Speaker
Wow, wow. Honestly, I could sit here and speak to you forever. You've shared so many great insights. As I said, when I met you at the ta Tomorrow Belongs to Her event, I took away so much from from the panel and and yourself. So yeah, thank you again for coming on the podcast and for sharing all this. It's been truly great.