Scaling the Entrepreneur Before Scaling the Business with Frank Gessner

Welcome everyone to tell you my story podcast the podcast where we explore authentic journey leadership in Supreme your ship and the experience that ship meaningful success today's get is Frank guest now. That's absolutely okay serial entrepreneur investor and leadership system tinker with more than 30 years of experience building, scaling and monitoring businesses to his work with life pilot and bloom groups. Frank help entrepreneur create clarity, reduce complexity and skill puts themself and their businesses sustainably. In this episode, we will discuss leadership, entrepreneur, entrepreneur groups decision-making, scaling businesses and the healing challenges found as faced as company grows. Frank, welcome to tell me my story. So Frank, what's originally inspired your journey into entrepreneurship and business leadership? Well I grew up actually in Eastern Germany in the communism part of Germany and then after the unification of Germany, I was part of the very early internet area and co-founded a company called Intershop. That was one of the first global e-commerce players was actually a commerce software company. So we took this to 18 countries, we went public in Europe as well as in the US. So it was quite a success and afterwards I was involved in multiple other businesses across Tech, venture capital, recruiting, HR, real estate, crypto, many, many different industries and also helps scaling delivery hero which was my second IPO. And if you look at my LinkedIn profile, it looks super impressive. I assume. But you know, as it is, there are many apps, many downs, many failures, many stress, many talk times, many kickbacks. And so I learned a hard way to run companies and also to deal with all the challenges. Okay, that was actually inspiring. So after decades of building and scaling companies, what pattern have you consistently seen among green businesses? Well, what I usually saw also in my own companies that I was always looking at opportunities and was kind of touching these opportunities by potential. And kind of the more I was kind of running multiple projects at the same time or adding this and adding this and also doing this feature and this special niche market and others. Obviously, I kept building up complexity, not only for myself, but also the team around me and in my company and complexity is growing much faster than clarity is. And to the peak moment was that I was by accident running for companies at the same time. This was 2018 for companies at the same time. It's like really, really nightmares. So nothing really broke, but also nothing really compounded. And in addition, I was even became president of the entrepreneurs organization in Berlin. And since like running another company. So this taught me the hard way that clarity at the top, what do I really want? What is the company actually wanting that this clarity is really kind of the key? It's not only strategy or execution alone or discipline or motivation. No, it's it's leadership clarity. Since every company is reflecting how in our weather, there is decision stability at the top or not. And today, my focus is helping other entrepreneurs to create stronger operating systems. Inside their companies and also helping them as the founders, as the ones at the top to have much more clarity direction and decision stability, which is, yeah, which I think is something underestimated so far. Okay, that's great work. So you often see business is struggle because entrepreneurs lack clarity, not strategy. Can you explain? Can you have that idea? Well, you know, the more founder centric or entrepreneur centric in organization is right. The more the clarity of the founder or of this person has an impact on the entire organization. If I don't have decision stability, if I keep adding and not subtracting, then I push complexity. And the more growth I have, the more complexity I have, the more complexity I have, the more trauma, the more tension, the more stress and pain I have scaling my companies. And many companies fail on this. Many companies see a slow down in growth and nothing really gets completed. Nothing is really compounding. They start a project, which is not really contributing to the next project. And this is not contributed to the next project. So success is not compounding. And I have seen this in my companies as well. I'm a techie. I'm a tech entrepreneur. So I love, I love whatever to innovate. I love features, I love building the next big, good thing. And this is not, it's very often not helpful if it's against to what problems do we actually want to solve? What is actually important for us as a team? What is, what really is contributing to the long term vision we all had when we started the company. And leadership clarity sounds easy, right? I mean, sounds something like, all right, let's just sit down together or on my own and find out what I want. And then let's stick to it and have decision filters. But this is really hard. Having, it's really very hard to have that clarity. What is actually what I want? What is actually, what is the company I want to build? What is, what would really be the differentiator between good and great, right? What really makes this team successful? What even means success? How can I build a company and not lose my health, not lose my family, not lose my community? And all these kind of really tough questions. What is actually my more star? What's the more star for our organization? And I was always avoiding these hard questions. I mean, these are not easy questions. These are hard questions, right? Questions which were not that easy to answer. And I found out that, you know, to more I sit down and think about it, kind of the less clear it came to me. So I just was rather confusing. So I said, you know what? I'd rather need a system for it. For something, an infrastructure to make such, you know, such decisions or such clarity statements. And this is what I did with, you know, with live pilot and with bloom and other systems are used that you have kind of a flight plan on your journey. A flight plan you can always look at when the sun is no longer shining. And it gets a little bit tough. And, you know, competition comes up or, you know, all the challenges we have for some of the nerves, right? If you have a flight plan, if you have a decision filter, it's easier than to make better decisions than innovating or improvising. Okay. Sometimes clarity can be difficult at the beginning. So why do many entrepreneurs become the bottleneck inside their own company? Well, in most cases, and I do now mentoring for 12 years, mentoring entrepreneurs. In most cases, without the entrepreneur, the company would not be where the company is today, right? Entrepreneurs has started it. She or he has built the foundation, the initial products, the initial customer wins, the initial revenues and so on. And then at a certain point, right, we as entrepreneurs, we end up in a role within our own company, where we most often don't even like what we are doing every day, right? We become much more, much more operational. We take care about whatever departure the employee rehearsals, the day-to-day operational activities. And we are usually not that good at it. And the more this company is growing, but we keep the center of the center kind of that no major decision is being done without our approval. Our limitations as persons, everyone as limitations have a lot of limitations. the limitations are tell you. The all limitations become limitations of the organization. If you don't scale, if you don't build up a leadership team around us who can actually do everything in whatever sales, finance, marketing, product, you name it, can do all these much better than we do. And then we can, once we do this, we can step out of the day-to-day operations, and work on the company, right, whatever, as divisionary, as the, as the mentor, as the advisor, and, and, and scale the company in a, in a way that would not be possible if we would do it alone. And, and, and doing this is a journey. It's not a one-time decision. This is a process usually taking two years, it might sometimes even longer. And for these, for these kind of process, or, or evolution of a company to go from a founder's centric set up to a scalable set up, for this, for this business systems exist, operational execution systems, how to do this, how to align on this, what, what, and which sequence is which leadership team to be added, and hundreds and thousands of other entrepreneurs have been in this, on this, on this point before. So, I use Bloom, but they're also scaling up, you know, as their other systems. And some, some, some, some companies never do this. Some companies never scale beyond the founder. And, and then they see that they are, you know, they reach the ceiling. Nothing is really compounding anymore. The, the founder is also usually not really good in what they are doing, right? Maybe it's good in networking or good innovation, but not good in running a company. However, systems help to get over this point, kind of infrastructure systems like, as you would use in sales, everyone, the running sales uses a sales system, everyone running engineering, use engineering systems. And so you can also run in a leadership systems for yourself, which is the precondition, and then operating systems for your company. Just use systems and don't invent yourself. This is kind of what they're currently doing, what they, what they're love doing. I love, I love build sustainable business growth, right? Which requires execution systems and stable leadership. This question is a bit personal. So, I read from a nut to go, they said once the entrepreneur dies, the business dies with it. Is that true? Well, all businesses that continue to be founder centric will, will experience this. And most often it's not as a traumatic that the, that the business owner, that the founder is dying, sometimes it's just that the founder is no longer doing what the founder is really good at. Which is usually whatever next product innovation or key relationships in the industry or whatever the founder is really good at. And it's, and these, these companies are also not dying. They are just kind of, they're drifting. There are the companies are, it's a very slow, slow death. Slow, slow down, down turn, moment, right? And the alternative is to realize this as the founder. And to say, you know what? Great. What we have built as a team. I realized that this organization and I, I had the same. I also in organizations of mine or companies of mine. I was the center. I was the, and I was the bottleneck. And then kind of the next evolution step is, all right, how can I build a team around me who can run this company even better than I? And then I can work on the company. And if I drop out for whatever reason, this organization continues and fulfills its purpose, right? Independent of me. Okay. So how does this one fatigue in parts, that should quality and business performance? Yeah, this kind of if there is not, I mean, obviously, if there is not no clarity at the top. The result is decision instability. That's the result, right? Today we decide to go here and whatever, a quarter, quarter later, we go into a different direction, a quarter later, we see an opportunity and go into a different direction. And this kind of lack of decision stability, which resulted out of a missing leadership or leaders clarity. It's very often the reason why organizations handle an enormous complexity inside. Right? Kind of that it's the sometimes nightmare, right? Having just whatever a handful employees or even less or whatever 20 or even 100 employees. This is small company sometimes depending on the industry. And if you have, if you have not enough decision stability, you keep adding and you keep adding, but mature leadership is substraction. Mature leadership is getting rid of everything that's not contributing to why we are, we are running this company. What problems do we actually want to solve? What footprint do we want to leave in our industry or at our customers? And the more there is clarity about it, the more everyone in this organization can align on it, can also make decision on itself the last founder, centric, and organization gets. So and I had the same I know what I've speak about. I'm I sound like that I would have known this from the from day one. No, I have and took me decades to figure this out that this is the this is crucial. I was for thinking that the more I work, the more projects accept the more opportunities I go after, the more growth we have now it's wrong. The more focused we are, the more aligned we are, the more we prioritize the more progress we have, the more the more we scale. Okay. So you created life pilots and bloom groups. What's the problem where you're trying to solve with these stems? Well, life pilot is is a system for inner leadership. If you don't have inner leadership for yourself, kind of clarity about what you want, what is important to you, what gives you energy, what is your person definition of success as an entrepreneur, without having inner leadership is really really hard to have good leadership in your organization, right in your company. And in the end, we don't build companies, we build teams, right as entrepreneurs and these teams then build whatever needs to be built. Right. So life pilot is an inner leadership system. It's a system. It creates you in flight plan. And in this flight plans, you have you have direction. Kind of you know what is your, what are your co values, what are priorities in life, what is what is driving you, what giving your purpose out of this, what could be my most star in life, right? What is how would I would my life be perfect in 10 years time, right? Or 15 years time and what what type of person do I want to become. And once I have this, I can break this down to the foreseeable timeframe, right, which is usually three years five years max. And then I know what's important in 2026. And then I can make I can I can find out what is really my my party for the next quarter. So it's a really a system for inner leadership to have much more clarity direction and and decision stability as a leader that I know what I want. Right. And that is everything is aligned across family, friends, profession, my business, my health, my personal needs as well as my role in the community. So only if all these four areas of life are in line and balanced, right, I will be successful as an entrepreneur. If if I build something up on the cost of my health, the company will feel it. If I build something up in the cost of my family, my company will feel it since I don't have the energy anymore. If the company is not integrated or if I'm not integrated into the community, the company will suffer. So that means kind of with live pilot, you have an inner leadership system, right. And you don't have to figure it out by yourself. There's a couple of questions. It takes a couple of hours and you have this flight plan for your entrepreneur journey. Once you have this, right, you have your your leadership clarity as an entrepreneur, right, is how to how to print this into a company. How can I bring an execution system operational execution system into my company that that we build up the leadership team we need that this leadership team is working well together fully aligned. And that we bring kind of execution partization focus focus and simplification into a company, right. How to run meetings, how to hire how to hire how to build. I'm priorities and so on, right. And this is bloom bloom growth. It's an operating system for companies not invented by me. It's bloomcrowth.com. you can just look at it as a US based organization, just use this system, which really helps to scale companies and it's really, it's magic, it's really, I love it. It's really good, really good system. So yeah, that's what I do. And having such infrastructure systems, like operating systems, like Bloom, or in a leadership systems, like a live pilot, makes it much easier, and you can just use them. And you will see that everything becomes more interconnected and you know why you're deciding to go right or to go left, that you don't kind of improvise every day, which we entrepreneurs very often do. We also sometimes love to improvise, but if you're always improvise, it's hard to stay focused and it's hard to reach where you wanna go. - Okay, so how would you advise entrepreneurs to reduce unnecessary complexity by maintaining groups? - So first is do not compensate lack of clarity with more work, or with more engagement, or with longer work hours. It's not helpful, right? Start with yourself, as an entrepreneur, find out independent of the company you're currently running, first find out what is important for you, what problem do you actually wanna solve, right? Use a system like live pilot to get clarity about yourself. Once you have this, bring it into the company, use a system to bring it to the company, and have everyone aligned around you, this will help you to even find your perfect role into the company, which is really, really hard to find as an entrepreneur, and then have fun scaling, and not pain scaling, always had a lot of pain scaling my companies or growing my companies, it was always more work, more work, more work, more pressure. But once you have clarity at the top, and clarity at yourself, you're less reactive, you're less, right? I was always kind of depending on investors, depending on the market, depending on key customers, if they say whatever would change contract with me, or if they would do something, I would be dead, so as well as always, a lot of fiatre than what I've done. But once you have clarity about what is actually, what's driving you, what gives you energy, why are you actually running this company, what could this be something bigger than you? Then I have seen it, then it becomes more purpose, it becomes more laugh than fear. And this is not that hard, but many entrepreneurs don't even know that these operating systems or in a leadership system exist, so they have potentially heard about systems or engineering systems or marketing systems, but have not heard about leadership systems. And not only in Africa or in Europe or in US, it's everywhere, the D systems are not so popular yet. So maybe with my focus today, helping entrepreneurs to create the great such stronger systems, or with the podcast we're currently having, Henry and me, it will potentially spread to earth, that such systems are a good idea to use. - Yes, you're doing the proximity. So Frank, thank you for sharing your insight, experience and perspective on leadership, clarity, and entrepreneurial growth. Your journey highlights the importance of scaling the person behind the business, not just scaling the business itself. So I'll listen to us, thank you for tuning in to telling my story. Be sure to follow and share the podcast for more conversation that's inspired growth, leadership and meaningful success. Thank you for your time, Frank. - Thank you, Henry, thanks for having me.