The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
Cold Calling in Broken German to a 7 Figure Business with Dan Norenberg
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Dan's journey of transforming into an entrepreneurial powerhouse is a real inspiration and a living demonstration of the good old American 'Can Do' spirit.
He shares candid tales of his early days grappling with language barriers and the incredible stroke of luck that led him from the doing research at the U.S. consulate with a bag lunch, to the boardrooms of Siemens.
In this episode Dan shares:
- The surprising story of how and why he decided to leave a promising trajectory in Silicon valley and move to Munich (spoiler: it wasn't a relationship!)
- His life philosophy and approach to making decisions
- Living in a WG with roommates disinclined to speak English
- The relatable challenges of navigating German bureaucracy
- How he got started with no connections and no German language skills
- How he identified a gap in the German market and how he could serve it with the skills he already had
- The astonishing story of how he landed his first Fortune 500 client
Dan's story is a masterclass in adaptability and perseverance. His anecdotes about pushing through fear and the humorous realization of operating without proper permits will resonate with anyone who's ever sat dejectedly in the KVR office.
Beyond business stories, Dan also shares a wealth of knowledge on leadership dynamics. With his background in psychology and criminology, he doesn't shy away from getting into the nitty-gritty of executive coaching and the significance of investing in team relationships.
His transition from running a successful company to focusing on improving team interactions within corporations offers an insider perspective on leadership that's both informative and inspiring.
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. 20 plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency, freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here Now. I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. I am here talking to Dan Norenberg and, dan, I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everybody on this podcast, which is where are you originally from and what is the two-minute story of how you ended up in Germany, if you can?
Speaker 2:Fair enough, eleanor, and it's a pleasure to be here. I'm Dan Norenberg. I'm originally from a small community about 25 minutes outside of Des Moines, iowa, and I grew up there, studied psychology, spent 10 years in California and now I'm here, and to describe the story of what brought me to Germany, I guess I'd give it the headline A Night in Paris. I was working in technology in California. The company I thought I'd be with for the rest of my life went out of business Shortly thereafter sort of my relationship. It went out of business and I sold my house in Palo Alto, which is south of San Francisco.
Speaker 2:I thought I'd go to Europe for nine days to clear my head and come back and do my next big thing. And during that trip I was spending one of the last few nights in Paris, and this is the honest to God truth that I feel. It feels like it was yesterday and I had a dream that I was 80 years old and saw myself at 80, you know back in California pushing a lawnmower. I'm not sure I could at 80 years old, but I saw myself pushing a lawnmower with two and a half kids, two and a half cars and sort of that American dream which I thought that looked appealing. But I remember at that point, at 80, looking back at my life and seeing myself back in Europe in my early 30s, just traveling with no job, no family, no house, no obligations, and the thing that struck me, I remember thinking in that dream at 80, you know, will you ever regret, or would you regret, not spending more time in Europe and exploring what that might look like because you have no obligations here in the States?
Speaker 2:And that left me with such a with such a strong feeling of potential regret. And I that's another story that we might touch on about regret and I woke up the next morning and just felt that I couldn't go forward back to the States and perhaps have a regret about not spending the time in Europe. And I never took the return flight back. I got on a train and went back, came to Munich, which I'd been through for just a day, and I didn't know a single person, I didn't speak a word of German, I didn't have any work papers and I just sort of, let's say, started floating, if you will. And 34 years later I'm still here.
Speaker 1:What a story I thought you were going to say. And I met a beautiful lady in Paris. Like that was not an answer, I was expecting no that's not what happened.
Speaker 2:I later met a beautiful lady in Munich. That's another story.
Speaker 2:But the original thing was just this feeling of regret. I'd had an experience earlier in my life where I took a decision and for about 10 years I lived with some regret and had to do with playing football at a collegiate level and stopped playing early and I used to wake up for 10 years after. After that happened, I would wake up thinking that I was in the game, you know, helping the team, saving the game, being a key player, and I realized that was 10 years ago and I'm not even on the team because I quit the team, and it was just such a such a taste of regret and I really learned to work with that.
Speaker 2:So, the design. So if I'm approaching something big or something scary or something daunting for me personally or professionally, I always think of the different paths I could take, which one would potentially leave me with the most regret if I didn't pursue it, and that's generally the door I walk through. That's why I have the woman that I have now. It's my wife. While I left my, the Envision Learning, the company that I ran for 25 years, which was highly profitable and a really cool place to work.
Speaker 2:I think I left that all behind because I had another thought I might have a potential regret. I wrote a book and got into the middle line of business, so potential regret has been a big, big catalyst in helping me make tough decisions.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a good. That's a good touchstone or way to think about things when you have a decision. I want to touch on all of these things, but I want to get back to you. Took the train to Munich. Why Munich when you didn't know anybody here?
Speaker 2:I had gone through Munich for a day or two and I, and when I came to Munich, like I said, I didn't know anybody didn't speak any German, but for me I had kind of an almost like a deja vu. Strangely enough, it felt for me a little bit like Iowa, you know, it's kind of. It's kind of you know it's kind of like country here, and you only have to move four or five minutes outside of Munich and you can smell the farms and that's the area that I grew up in. So I really still love that smell.
Speaker 2:And at the same time you've got BMW, you've got Siemens, you've got the biotechs, and so I could feel that kind of international flavor here and actually when I was in Paris, I really I was in Paris when I made that decision, that I had that dream and I really was enjoying Paris and walking the parks and doing things, but I felt that Paris was too big. I was living at LA. I was living in LA at the time that I came over here and I just felt that Paris was was just too big for me and I خ Darryl was really big as the Munich felt something that I could manage, you know it's going to large village which I later learned it was so described as sort of a global village.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was born and raised in LA and I feel that way about Munich too. Okay, I like it. Okay, so you came to Munich, it was. You didn't speak any. You had a professional background, though you were working in technology. Like what what next? Like you, you had no working. Like what did you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, well, I floated for a long time, which meant I went out a lot. I was 32, going on and sort of living my life. I think that's really cool and of course, what I did initially was I went back to the things that I that I thought I did well. So, you know, I had a background in psychology and criminology, was on my way to law school and that's what I sort of made a detour through California and thought, you know, I'll work for one year because I've got to get residency established before I could study law school and and I took a job in technology with office automation and later photo will take, and I found that I really loved. I really loved that, that whole sales and marketing piece and so that.
Speaker 2:So I and I was with a couple of high growth companies that grew really really quickly. So I was managing people and large pieces of business that are probably at an age probably far sooner than I should have been. So that gave me the, the, the, the business background. But when I came here it was just like starting over, you know, with, with, with, no language, still right Workpapers, no connections, no, no alumni or anything like that, no girlfriend that I could lean on, or a family, or something like that. So what I what I started doing initially? You know, this is just a sprite pre-internet age. So I.
Speaker 2:I worked my way into the, into the US consulate in those days you could, and I took my sack lunch in there and I spent four or five days a week, three or four hours a day at the US consulate in Munich. It's unheard of. Now it would. It wouldn't be possible. I could just stroll in. I knew people could say hello.
Speaker 2:I mean there was still some type of security, but this was really nice and I spent a lot of time in the commercial library there and I was looking. I thought the logical thing to do. Following my logic you know my life brain I'm thinking well, I'm going to look for German companies that are doing business in America or American companies are business doing business in Germany. And with my background and I had a very successful track record, it won't be long before I at least have a job and up and running. And, of course, things I've been into was how's your German? And I said, well, I don't speak a word in German. They said, well, what about your work papers? And I said, well, I don't have any work papers. And they said come back in two or three years. Now, you know, as an American, two or three years is like a lifetime. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, by coincidence, I met someone out of the blue and we were walking in the English Garden. I told him what I was doing. He said well, is that what you want to do? You want to work in a sales and marketing role? And I said, well, I don't know, it's what I'm good at. He goes but is that really what you want to do? And I said well, I don't know. I never really thought about it that way and at the end of that conversation I just thought you know, I'm just going to see what comes. And about a week or two later I got a call out of the blue.
Speaker 2:I had rented a room in the student and start, so I was staying in the dormitories, the student dormitories, for, I think, 130 marks a month, you know, living with students. I'm in my early 30s, you know, and I'm saying this crazy, and I got a call from somebody at Siemens and Siemens had heard about me that this is the American guy living at the US consulate. I wasn't spending the night there, but I was spending a lot of time. Now the year, they got the cost. I said yeah and they asked about my background. I told them and you know I had background strategic selling and negotiation and running large scale sales teams and suddenly I was on their docket to speak at intercultural or meet business partners events in the evening to Siemens executives. What's the time were people that were men over 50, you know, sort of you know German white males over.
Speaker 2:I was talking about business. That was now seems like, well, you've got the internet and everything, but that was quite novel. And through that experience they offered me an opportunity to work with their executive development group and I spent three years with Siemens, which was really a wonderful experience. They were sort of really world leaders in cross cultural intercultural management skills. I would say I did my MBA and doctorate there not officially, not through practice, which I'm a practice oriented person and I worked with Siemens in France. I worked with them in the UK and did a lot of work in Germany. And after three years came that coveted opportunity where Siemens said we'd like, we'd like to offer you a full time job.
Speaker 2:And of course all my German friends are like a full time job at Siemens. This is the thing of a lifetime. And I thought, you know I'm always taking the path. But I said, well, thanks, but no thanks. And I thought it was time for me to see life outside of Siemens. And that's what I found in my own, my own corporation and vision, learning solutions. And yeah, after three years with Siemens and thought I'd do my own thing, I thought I got pretty good at what I was doing and literally starved for a couple of years, because that was when sort of mid, mid, early, still early mid 1990, and sort of Germany was going through a recession, europe was in my business which was kind of like growing, you know, working within the Siemens world, and I went out on my own and well, I was eating a lot of drinking a lot of soup and eating a lot of meat for a couple of years.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about that, because I mean, your story so far is just sort of like leap and the net will appear in a lot of ways I mean, which is amazing. But so when you started this company, I mean it's difficult now, but just then I mean I don't want to get into the boring details of like the administrative part of starting the company, but was that difficult or did you have somebody that could help you with it?
Speaker 2:Or I'm assuming it wasn't, like was it a gambi ha, or just yeah it started as a sole proprietorship, but then I moved the proprietorship into a gambi ha, which is an interesting story. But just two points I'd like to make. I know now, looking back, when I tell this story, it probably sounds like oh wow, everything he touched just turned to gold. That wasn't the case. It was a combination of being frightened to death like what in the world am I doing? What in the world am I doing?
Speaker 2:For three and a half almost four years, I lived in a von Geinmeinschaft a community apartment with two girls who didn't really have an interest in learning English, which is probably the only two Germans I ever met that didn't want to speak English, but they were in love with Italian guys, so I moved in with them, bought a TV, and that's how I learned German.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I learned German by watching TV and speaking with my two roommates for three and a half years. But imagine being in your early 30s. You got a mattress, you're sleeping on the floor and you're talking to your friends in the States and they're all buying their second house, their lake house, their screen TV and everything. I mean I was sort of having a little bit of identity crisis. So it sounds interesting and really exciting now, but there were a lot of hard knocks along the way. I mean a lot of hard knocks and sacrifice along the way where I really thought what am I doing? But I just kept trudging forward. But to answer your question in two parts, I just did it. I didn't worry about paperwork or things like that, I just did it. I mean, I got my original legal entry to stay here because someone said if you set yourself up as a coach, particularly as it relates to international business or business English or something like that then you're freelance and you don't take a job from the Germans and you're not a tax on the social system.
Speaker 2:So I had to pay my own insurance, do all this, set myself up like that, and then I had a little bit of a free reign, okay, and what I saw was and this is maybe something to point out is that there's opportunities, innovation that take place when we're constrained, like the constraint of not being able to take a job because I wasn't European, and the constraint that I couldn't speak German, at least initially. That forced me into a freelance role and also using the language, and I thought what could I do? And what I observed in the marketplace here was is there were a lot of language schools, teaching business English, if you will, and because I always had an interest in learning and development things like that, I could see there were a lot of German companies that were doing German management training, but they were largely very academic.
Speaker 2:They were largely very theoretical, sort of a spin-off from sort of the university, university academic stuff. So I thought that there was a great place. Germany was so dependent, or is still dependent, on its export orientation. Export activities in Germany is really what keeps things alive and I thought, wow, with my skills and my background in learning and development, my business background, with English as my native tongue and 10 years of real-time business experience, I could market myself as a business coach, as a consultant, trainer, and that became the focus of Envision Learning that I ran for 25 years.
Speaker 3:Now one other point, if I may this stuff forward like.
Speaker 2:This is like 15, 20 years later. I've been running a GMB hop for 20 years, had a half a dozen people in the payroll, full running business. I never really had any legal permits to do that, as far as I know.
Speaker 2:And I'm going back in to get my residence permit my Alpenhaus al-Altis renewed, and in my passport I had a sticker that you probably had at some point. It said like allowed to teach your coach in the English language. That was my restriction. And this lady, mrs Schmidt, said Mr Norenberg, I just wanted to point out we've gone through quite an evolution here in the German. You know Abbeyfamthia and you actually, if you wanted to, if you paid a fee of $60, you could expand the skills that you could offer in Germany. For example, you could even start your own business if you paid 60 euros.
Speaker 2:Now by this time I had, you know, half a dozen employees. We had seven, eight, eight, nine, eight, nine, eight, and I'd been writing this for 15 years and paying tax and everything. And I said well, you know, fidel Schmidt. I said that's really nice of you to mention that, but you gotta can't forget, I'm American and obviously if I start a business here and I take the risk and I hire people and I'm paying tax on that corporate tax and value added tax shouldn't the German government pay me to start a business? And she said well, mr Normberg, that's a good idea, but remember this is still Germany. So in the end I paid the 60 euros, got the new stamp from my passport or whatever it was, but by then I was already long running. So my motto is always do things. You know, I don't necessarily always ask for permission, but I will ask for forgiveness, forgiveness, yeah yeah, that's a good motto.
Speaker 1:I wanna go back to the time when you were eating soup and like how so you had these, obviously some network from your time at Siemens. Like, how did you go, what did it look like from going to eating soup to being able to go out to a restaurant? Like, how did you get your first clients?
Speaker 2:basically, Well, two things happened when I started Envision and I didn't approach people from Siemens initially. I grew up in the Midwest. It's just my moral compass. I felt that I've met people inside of Siemens and through Siemens and so that wouldn't necessarily be as an independent bear for me. I maybe sounds ridiculous now for most people who were just looking after number one, but I have a strong moral compass and it's always served me well. Sometimes it's painful but it's served me well. So I didn't really contact people initially from Siemens.
Speaker 2:And my marketing catalyst, believe it or not, was the telephone book. And I picked that's in the day when they had a telephone book and my German was pretty bad. And. I picked up the telephone book and I just went down the telephone book and anything that was in bold in the white pages, anything that was in bold, usually meant a business.
Speaker 2:I tried to ascertain if I thought they had any degree of international activity and then I would just call them. I mean, I made hundreds of calls, hundreds of calls. It was absolutely horrible because my German was good enough. This was like three years of being here. My German developed very late. I had quite an inhibition about speaking German and probably relied too heavily on English. But I got to the point where I could promote myself and I had the lines down. I'd hired a German woman to help me. You know with the first 30 minutes how it could go. But when somebody asked me a question it was a little bit off the beat. I didn't know how to answer it. I like having a seizure, you know. And then I talked to some friends and they just said like, look, you're selling yourself as an international business coach and consultant. You're going to be working in English. The truth is, dan, your German is terrible.
Speaker 1:Your German it's horrible.
Speaker 2:So stop speaking German, just start speaking English and then see what happens. And so I switched to English. I felt like a million dollars, like I was flying, and something remarkable happened in those days when you called somebody and you were speaking English, they thought you were calling from the state. They thought you know, this guy must be somebody really. And I always got to the top person. So my first two independent clients that I landed one was the Burger King Corporation and they were expanding franchises around Germany and Europe and they wanted to really work on negotiation skills, strategic selling, international teamwork themes. That became a client of mine. And another became an electronics company that had to do things and negotiate with Asia and North America and those became my first two clients. And then came a project with BMW and that's where things really really took off. I got connected to BMW right in those early days in the 90s when they were just beginning to expand in North America and in.
Speaker 2:Bartonburg and also they had bought Rover at that point and I had come into BMW through a referral from somebody from Siemens, by the way and got one project with a purchasing manager that went really well. And they referred me to a couple other things and they just kept referring things to me and I started hiring people and paid really well. I paid extremely well, probably twice as good as anybody else in the marketplace. So I attracted really really cool consultants to work with me and suddenly, with the course of I mean, really, it was almost it wasn't like some digital explosion like Amazon or Airbnb or something like that.
Speaker 2:But for a small startup brick and mortar business, it went from, let's say, zero to what? To a huge amount in a short period of time. And I remember asking them because I was certainly wasn't the most experienced coach or consultant they had, working at BMW, and I certainly didn't have the background that some of these other people did. They had 20 or 30 coaches working there. But I remember saying and I'm really grateful for all this work, but I'm just a little bit surprised that I'm getting this. And I look at all these other people around your organization. People have no degrees and backgrounds. They speak fluent German. They're always why me? Why did you come to me? They said, dan, we asked everybody else. Nobody wanted to any more work, nobody wanted to expand, and I just kept saying yes and that allowed really my business, which became Envision Learning Solutions, to really break through. So I would say it took probably 48 to 60 months for me to really break through.
Speaker 1:Okay, and Burger King and the Electronics Company? Was that from like cold outreach in the phone book? Yeah, you were kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what was your-. They were two success stories out of probably 150 calls.
Speaker 1:Okay, but that's still amazing. I mean, did you? I mean, you probably don't remember now, but what was like your pitch in English, Like the gist of it, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just. You know what I'm doing. I think pitch is a word. I'm really not trying to sell myself. I think that's one of the things that I think people get in trouble with. They try to. They feel like they have to have pressure on themselves because they're trying to sell themselves. I'm more trying to get people to buy me, if you follow that thinking.
Speaker 2:So my question is how important is international business to the success of your organization and to what degree does English play a role in collaboration or in performance or things like that? I'm trying to ascertain to what degree English or international activities are important to these businesses and, if they are, and say how equipped do you feel to succeed in those areas? You know, if you're negotiating with international partners or if you're selling to international partners, how good are you? And they say, well, not, we don't feel very good about that. And so you know if you had someone, a resource that was here, local, that could help create.
Speaker 2:You know real time, live situations and I think that became sort of my claim to fame. I've always been a pragmatist, someone who's down to the ground, so, and that became kind of the core DNA of Envision. Learning was real, pragmatic, real action oriented. You know how to run meetings, how to negotiate, how to build sales teams, and everything was really built around that. It was a very action orientation, so people could really practice what they had to do in real life and it just became explosive.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you kind of led with questions Because of your great English skills. You got to talk to the right people and then you just sort of were curious and ascertained what they needed and you got to remember.
Speaker 2:I mean, my background is psychology and criminology 10 years in sales and marketing. So if you're and I was in leading sales roles for 10 years. So, selling is really about asking questions and asking questions and to understand if what I have can be of value to other people. And I think sometimes people feel they have to push themselves or push their ideas on people or I, you know. It's just, it's very stressful and it's not very effective.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow, okay. So let's envision learning systems that took off after 48 to 60 months and now you've mentioned, you sold that company.
Speaker 2:Well, let's say I moved my sole proprietorship into Envision and I ran that for 25 years with some really good coaches and we did stuff with Lego and Disney and a lot of the British Spanish, the European Patent Office Alliance, munich, rhee, just and we focused on talent management, sort of first time leader to sort of strategic leader and ran that for 25 years and my idea was to sort of create a company that's full of partners.
Speaker 2:You know to have 10 or 12 people who were partners in the business. I was the founder, I was the managing director and I had some good people, but nobody really wanted to come in and take take part in that and at that time, probably 10, 15 years ago, I was also discovering my next big thing, which was really working with leadership teams.
Speaker 2:You know, 90% of the coaches and consultants in the market right now. They tend to see leadership as an individual activity. You know they work with individual leaders. Most organizations have talent programs set up for individual leaders and I just saw over the years that that we were just investing too much time at individual leaders. So you coach a leader and the leader goes back into their uncoached team and the system can be very strong.
Speaker 2:So I began to see that that leadership for me was really a team construct and it didn't start at the bottom of the organization or the middle of the organization, started at the top of the organization. That became my fascination, my passion, I would even say my obsession, and so I was working with senior leadership teams on their group dynamics, their communication, their strategy and things like that, and I was also running Envision Learning and I just felt that I was coming to a point where I couldn't serve two masters. So after trying to see if the team wanted to take the business over, and they didn't, and I thought about selling the business. But everybody that and I had several buyers, but everybody that wanted to buy the business said Dan, we're very interested in this business. However, you're a key part of this, and so if we buy the business, we want you to agree to stay for five more years as a management continuity and I just didn't.
Speaker 2:I've never really made decisions. My life based on money, it's more about my passion and what I think is important and in the end I just slowly closed Envision Down, which Anansan thought was a little bit crazy. Why would you close the seven figure business? And I spent a lot of time in tax audits because they're thinking I was offering this whatever which wasn't the case and now and today, I don't have a team.
Speaker 2:I don't have any team assistants, I don't have any secretaries, and I can spend 60 to 70% of my time supporting senior leadership teams on things that are important to them, and I'm really enjoying that.
Speaker 1:Okay, and this is your current business ownership.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, the title of my book is Executive Ownership and this is about getting executives to see themselves as the agent of change that they expect in others. So the book is Executive Ownership. And sometimes people associate my name, dan Normberg, with executive ownership. So the business itself legally is just Dan Normberg, because I'm a sole proprietor.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So in this story, what is pretty clear is that you've developed a lot of relationships over the years through the line of work you're in, and I'm sure that's like. I mean, I wouldn't even imagine, like marketing is not a thing you do or need to do, because I'm sure what you do is so relationship based. And yet you are very present on LinkedIn. You do these great 90, nuremberg's 90 seconds videos very slickly produced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:So my question is why?
Speaker 2:Good question. Let me back up a second, because you made a couple of comments. Let me just check that I do have, let's say, a very extensive Rolodex.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't have it in a Rolodex digital, but I've always valued relationships.
Speaker 2:I people have been really good to me, you know people have really helped me.
Speaker 2:I've accomplished a lot in my life, but it's been through the support of other people, so and I'm very grateful for that and I look to pay that back, pay that forward wherever I can. But to come to your question about marketing, I mean I think we both agree that BMW is a great automobile. I mean, it's just a great automobile. But every month BMW spends tens of millions of dollars on marketing to BMW and the forefront. If they were really a good car we could say why do they need to advertise? Because everybody drives one.
Speaker 1:Everybody.
Speaker 2:Uncle drives one, everybody's brother drives one. We just think, well, they just keep buying them. But BMW knows that to stay present and to stay relevant and to stay attractive, they've got to spend and make an investment in marketing. And it's no different to Dan Norbert, I'm very good at what I do.
Speaker 2:I don't think there are a handful of people in Europe that could do what I do with leadership teams. I don't mean to sound boastful, I just know I'm good at what I do. However, saying that it's important to keep myself out there and so, and also, it also helps me stay on top of my game, to articulate situations that have happened and to think what's the tipping point for that situation. What is the tipping point? And that's how I use the Norbert's 90 seconds. There's a little war. We can come back and talk to that, but I am reasonably active on LinkedIn because it's a place where I can share ideas and by writing those ideas, it helps me formulate and crystallize those and I think it also brings value to people.
Speaker 2:So, and does it? Do I benefit from that? Obviously, you know. And third of all, the LinkedIn is just one piece. I parked those Norbert's 90 seconds on my YouTube page. I don't do much to market that. It's basically just a parking place. I could probably use some help in marketing that, but I've got YouTube, I've got the LinkedIn, I've got, I think, an outstanding book on how leadership teams can play at their best. So those things, they contribute to what I call the body of work.
Speaker 2:And I think for any, let's say, even small business person is is what is your contribution to the body of work? And that means it's just out there, even like this, this podcast that we're doing. I think what you're doing is absolutely cool. I would have died to have a resource like you 20, 20 years ago. We do listen to other people, share their successes and their failures and their lessons learned. I would have been, I would have just been glued to your channel, you know, wanting you to go 24 seven. So but and this thing that we're doing is part of your body of work- and now it's part of my body of work.
Speaker 2:So when people Google Dan Norberg or Eleanor you know, they're going to find different pieces of our work and they're going to say, hmm, so what I've seen is that in the let's say, the old days with Envision, where 95% of our business 98% came word of mouth, it's now, for me, probably 60% is coming through networks and relationships and things like that and 30 to 40% are just coming from people who call me and say I read your book.
Speaker 2:It made a lot of sense. I like the way you look at things. I saw your numbers 90 seconds and I want to talk to you. So it's really that body of work helps to establish a degree of trust that before we had to meet with people for four or five months. Now, within three or four weeks, I'm doing work for somebody I didn't even know six weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay, so it is part of I mean some people might call that like you know, your authority content or this kind. It's all part of that.
Speaker 2:I think that when you write and when you speak, that also contributes to that as well.
Speaker 1:And this is a little more tactical thing but how it's actually quite hard to make us a synced 90 second video, Like how do you do that? And do you like do the whole thing yourself and the filming is good, the lighting is good. Do you write a script?
Speaker 2:I mean well, I don't know why it's difficult.
Speaker 1:Well, being succinct is difficult, Like if you talk to authors, sometimes like fiction writers, they say writing a short story is actually really hard. I mean, all kinds of writing is hard, but yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's also the other thing. You know, how can you, how can you choose an area and be very good at that, like my area? My area is working with leadership teams. That's my area of expertise, that's my, that's my channel. And then also, how can I be different? You know so I don't. I don't bring in legions of dozens of consultants. I'm of the belief that that leadership teams deserve to solve their own problems, to create their own breakthroughs, and I'm a catalyst to create the framework or the setting. You know where there are other large scale consultancies that bring in a lot of people and do a lot of analysis and tell leadership teams and I don't. You know so it's. It's about being different.
Speaker 2:So, in this light, with the Normers 90 seconds, is that? Yeah, I'm going to be very succinct there. People's time is very valuable. And the idea for Normers 90 seconds came from one of my mentors, marshall Goldsmith, who I would say I think I'm good in my field. I would say Marshall Goldsmith is the number one executive coach in the world. He's coached the head of the World Bank and just number of executives and the head of Ford Motor Company and Boeing. And in the early days of COVID, you know Marshall was saying you know this is a tough time for everybody, it's a disruptive time for everybody. But what you could also do is look for things that you can do, that that help others and see how you can pay something for and Marshall shares his stuff really generously. So I thought over some time, I thought you know Normers night. No, it just kind of started to evolve short message you know, really tight, really client oriented. Naturally I benefit from that. Naturally I've been people I go to conference.
Speaker 2:Oh, normers, 90 seconds. So I, there's no doubt I benefit from that. But my original idea was spawned by my Marshall outreach to say is there something that you can do that would help others? You know, I'm helping you. And.
Speaker 2:I don't want anything for that, but is there something that you can do to help others? So I'd like to think that Normers 90 seconds are helping leaders in a very short time. Look at different situations and get that and and. So I just really try to focus on what's the problem. You know, as I go back through my memory and I keep pretty good, notes. It's really important for me to keep them anonymous.
Speaker 2:You know I don't want anybody that know that I'm doing, but they're there every single time. I don't want to be on the norm, but 90 seconds that I do, which you're on live page on on on. They go on LinkedIn and they also go with that YouTube. They're all based on real situations, are all based on absolutely real situations and I try to understand what was the crux and I really unlock that for this team and then that that's what I try to do, and at times you do have to be careful that you don't expand, but I keep them really tight. I try to just focus on what I think. For me. It's been good for me as someone who enjoys talking, and I must give the whole formatting, filming, lighting setting, editing, captions, thumbnail, all that stuff that goes in there. I have a very gifted son. I've got a gifted dog. I got a gifted daughter. She lives in.
Speaker 2:Los Angeles and I have a gifted son and he's really into photography. His name is Noah Noah Noranberg. He does some studying photographs, noah Noranbergcom, and so he does the filming, and it's not not easy for him now because he's in a digital marketing agency, so he's fine. Great things, but I try to corner him, you know once in a while I do one video, so I'm going to give him credit for that.
Speaker 1:That's your secret, secret weapon in your video production.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I see we're going to need to wrap up. I have one more question before I ask the final question. You can share as much or as little as you want around this, but so you talked about coaching executives as a team, like a leadership team, and I would imagine you draw on your background in psychology a lot. Is there a tension between thinking about the group dynamics and coaching the team and business objectives? Do those things play a part at all, or is it just pure coaching? On leadership dynamics?
Speaker 2:Now that's a really good question. That's a very, very thoughtful question. My background is psychology and criminology, but I spent 10 years in business and I'm a very results oriented person. I mean in every situation that I was in, every leadership role that I was in. Starting at a very early I was managing people four years old, at the age of 25, because I was always someone that got the results.
Speaker 2:I always got the results. In my first role as a branch manager in San Francisco, my branch exceeded performance quotas 12 out of 14 months. We won all the national sales contests. I had good people. I wasn't necessarily the best leader or the most empathetic manager at that point, but I always got results and that's one way to promotion. I learned that when I got over here, when I shifted and I became the more consultant coach, I began to see that a too strong a reliance on business only or business results.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily the best way. I really got to see that sometimes you've got to go slow so you can go fast. That's investment in people, investment in trust building, collaboration. I work with teams that are different psychological and different cultural makeups. Naturally they do things in different ways. If they don't understand each other and how those differences can contribute to an exceptional team, you can have a team that quickly falls into dysfunction. I'd like to think today that my clients would say I provide a very good balance of people orientation, like what's really happening in this group right now, what's really happening, what should be happening in the group and how do we make that happen Really in terms of the group and the team dynamic and at the same time. I'm not an MBA, I'm not a PhD and strategic analysis stuff like that, but I understand business language very well. I think I'm very good at helping reduce complexity and identify what are the things that they really need to win and help them do that.
Speaker 1:I did spend 10 years at a big corporate digital agency. Like you said, siemens was your MBA. It was a school, for I came in as just a young designer and at the time I was just a few years behind you the first guest that I've had. That also remembers Deutschmarks. My first salary was like 100,000 Deutschmarks. I learned so much there. There is a lot to all the dynamics that happen in an organization. Whether you like it or not, you're going to end up doing a lot of personal development through working at a company, but at the end of the day there's always that bottom line. That is very real. It's just interesting to me to hear how that works at the executive level.
Speaker 2:Let me pick up on one thing there, because I think that was really interesting. When you said that about learning the experience, it sounds to me like you're also very reflective and self-aware and picking that up. I remember early in my career I was just working all the time. I was working all the time and weekends. I was just single and so they just worked just into the ground. I remember complaining to a colleague in another business unit I was making good money. I was making good money but I wasn't making anything near what I felt they were making out of me.
Speaker 2:The guy's thing was Greg Wall. Greg was in the dealer network and he said I just remember something. I know you feel like you're being used and you are, but how many 25-year-old guys get a chance to run their own branch operations with P&L, with 12 people working for them all of them who are older than you? Think of the kind of experience that you're getting now and how that's going to serve you later on. I never forgot that what Greg said, as people are going through and maybe some of your listeners are in a job right now that they're not particularly happy with and they're wondering what's on the other side of the fence or they want to start their own thing.
Speaker 2:I think your advice that you just said what you learned there. I would just double down on that and say there's always learning going around, even from people who aren't necessarily our cup of tea. Even if we're working with people who aren't necessarily ideal partners for us, we're still learning something from them and we shouldn't ever forget that every day is a learning experience At some point. Now, when I tell the story, it sounds like really, really cool. I can tell you it was terrifying at times, but I just appreciate the opportunity to be on your show and share a little bit of my background and answer some questions with you.
Speaker 1:Good, I will ask you the last question, which is what nugget of advice would you give to somebody who is thinking you're starting their own business or thinking about starting their own business? I mean, you just talked about how there's always something to learn, but if there's something you know now that you wish you'd known, then what would it be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question, I mean. I'd say a couple of things. One thing that comes to mind is whatever you aspire to do, if you're going to do your own thing, it's going to take you much longer than you think. Number one and number two you're going to work much harder than you've ever worked before. Number three the outcome is going to be probably very different than what you thought.
Speaker 2:I remember having a business colleague who was working in global human resources and he wanted so desperately to go off and be an independent coach and consultant, which he did. I remember meeting him about six or eight months after he started his independent. I said well, how's it going? He said just terrible. He said my marriage is on the rocks. I said I'm days away from probably even losing my wife. I go, why he goes? Well, I begged my wife to let me leave the comfort of the corporation and I told her that I would only work half as much going independent and I would make twice as much. I would do that within the first year. You've got to manage expectations. I got married when I was 42 years old. I didn't feel that I could even support someone until I got things off the ground. I was fortunate in the fact that I was single.
Speaker 2:Then maybe the second nuance I would say is that you'll find your sweet spot. The sweet spot is the combination of what you really love to do. I have the sense that you really love what you do and also that you're good at I'm just thinking out loud, but thinking back to your dad's print shop back then and you're already getting that orientation. What do you love doing? What are you really good at Then? Is there a market for that? Is there a value for that in some configuration in the marketplace? That's what I call the sweet spot.
Speaker 2:My last piece of advice is make sure that, whatever you choose to do that you're solving some, be clear about the problem that you solved. Be clear about who your real customer is. My motto has always been just outperform everyone else. I never wanted to compete on price. I always wanted to compete on adding value. I want people around me to be tired and think they can't compete with me because I'm just going to offer ideas, not necessarily working more, but adding value adding things that create value to people's lives and their businesses.
Speaker 1:That is a great note to end on. Thank you so much. I think people are going to get a lot out of this episode.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me and keep up the stuff. I listened to your stuff. I think it's really really cool and great to be on your show. Maybe we'll do a sequel someday, who knows?
Speaker 1:Who knows? All right, thanks, so much. Thanks for listening. You can find this episode and all other episodes of the Germany X-PAT Business Show at my website at wwwellinormeierhofercom slash podcast. That's wwwelanorcom slash podcast. See you next time.