There are no wrong roads to anywhere. Wayne Dyer wrote that. I'm Brad Habansky and this is the Winding Road Show, where executives look back at the real path that got them there. Today I'm sitting down with Udo Rauch, a physicist by training, who spent three decades in enterprise tech sales and leadership. Okay, let's get started.
Before we recorded this, I told Udo that a motorcycle accident of his years ago was part of what actually inspired the show. Here's how he responded.
interestingly enough that it needs some kind of happening like that, that you think like that, because normally you can read it in books. People talk about it.
But still it doesn't happen to you. And if it happens to you, then it ultimately changes how you perceive life. So you need this kind of probably or obviously you need this kind of events that trigger something. and that I find this interesting and I when you talked about the whole topic, I thought this is interesting because I started writing a book about similar topic.
about like everybody wants to control everything in life, especially in sales. And I have talked to so many very, very blue people that want to manage everything and you find
out it's not possible. And you don't want to agree with that. So people don't want to accept that there is a big portion of things that you can't control.
that are out of your control and you still need to manage stuff.
The idea that you can't actually control your career or your life, you just have to stay open to what shows up, is the thread that runs through Udo's entire story. It's there in the books he's writing, it's there in the 30 years of saying yes to jobs he never planned for, and it's there in a motorcycle accident that could have ended everything. Udo's a physicist by training, someone who spent his entire life around things that are supposed to be predictable, and yet
That's the exact belief he's built his whole career and his life around. Here's our conversation.
you could start by just giving us a little bit about yourself,
Sure, yeah. I live in Germany. I grew up in Munich, south of Germany. It's a little bit comparable to Denver, I would say. A lot of mountains, seaside missing, yeah, warm in summer, cold in winter. I spent my childhood going to college, to university, at a local university.
Munich which is quite famous at least in Germany and studied physics, which is weird When you look after the And you look what I'm doing today, but anyhow, it was like more about interest and at that time I think You do what you are interested in. You don't have a plan at least I didn't have a plan What I do want
to become when I'm at the age of 30, 40. And so maybe people have that. I didn't add that at the time and just did what I was interested in. And yeah, have a sister younger than me.
And that was, the family.
you had mentioned to me last time that your dad worked for BMW, was an engineer, built what do you say, the one of the B six engines, is that right, that they still use today?
Yeah, it's interesting. mean, BMW is based in Munich. So my dad worked there and it's weird because at the age of like my parents, you work for a company for 45, 50 years, which doesn't happen anymore now, but companies are very loyal to yourself and you are very loyal to companies or you were. And this means that
that you dedicate your whole life to one company. A lot of people did. Yeah, my dad was an engineer. He worked for BMW and he was like working on how you drill a hole into an engine where like the wells and the pumps move,
he dedicated his knowledge to do that. yeah, we talked last time about it in the family. Of course, we were addicted to drive the cars he was building
And yeah, that was the diesel V6, which they are still building. My dad retired 20 years ago and he died three years ago. But still, the family is not allowed to drive any other vehicle.
It's interesting, you know, yeah, that's what that's one thing we were talking about last time is that you still only drive BMWs, right? Even though you have Mercedes Benz, you have Audi, you have Porsche.
great car you can drive, but BMW is still your go to car. Yeah.
Yeah, BMW
is the one. Yeah, I think it's similar when your dad or mom work for a company for like their whole life. It does something with you. It binds you more to the company. You are loyal to that
Yeah.
firm because you know so much about it and you know how much effort it went into building that stuff and it's not easy and you compete and...
Yeah, I have a motorcycle
Yeah.
and even the motorcycle is from BMWs.
This is
BMW. Do you think because your dad was in engineering that physics was kind of something you looked at or you think it had nothing to do with that or what
Probably, yeah. So I had a lot of discussions with my dad about technology and of course manufacturing and not IT at the time. There was no IT in the 80s,
Yeah.
90s. Well, in the 90s, yes, but not to that extent. But in Germany, it was all about machines, technology. And I think that resonated with me.
And then also in math and physics, it was easier for me to keep up in school. So I thought, that's something I'm into.
how did you get from physics, you know, to selling technology at IBM? I mean
Yeah
how did you how did a physicist get into sales?
Yeah, you study physics and you have no plan. is no, there's no job afterwards, except you become research or scientist. So you stay at university, but not every student can stay at university and do science. So 80, 90 % or even more need to get a job outside and you find all kinds of jobs, physicists do nowadays. So we have politicians here, lot of
People do completely other stuff because physics doesn't prepare you for any kind of job. There is no job that you are prepared for. So you need to start from scratch with the background they give you. And the background, think, is valuable to understand things. Complicated, complex things, little better maybe to have some tools to deal with it. yeah.
When I finished, was no one calling me, asking me to join the company. I can share it here, but there was the Iranians at that time already who wanted to have experts to build the bomb, the
He's
nuclear bomb. And I was specialized in atom physics.
So I some discussion. I didn't think
So you thought about that one?
about that one, but that was maybe the only option I had. So weird enough, but then...
Well, glad you didn't take that one.
Yeah.
Not even sure. Maybe other colleagues did, but I'm not sure. So it wasn't really an option.
The option that we had at that time was to look into the emerging technology market. So IT really, because that was in the 90s, late 90s, the business that really took up. coming from a technology, mathematical background, it was easy to join companies who deal with technology. I joined an agency belonging to GE.
The first place doing IT projects, being the technical part, the pre-sale consulting technical guy, understanding technology and communicating to clients, implementing software. And that was an easy, easy step. But again, it wasn't planned. was like, just have a look what's out there.
and try to make the best choice or even the best first choice and then see what's next. That was basically my strategy all my life
I look back on my career is like there's always seems like there's people that kind of give you some help
Mm-hmm.
here and there, you know, and maybe you don't see it at the time, you know, was there anybody at IBM that kind of took you under their wing and said, Hey, you know, this you're a young kid at the time, you know, maybe you should be doing this or hey, study this, learn this.
Yeah.
You know, did you have any folks anybody like that was in your life then?
Many, many, and I remember, I remember when I look back like a few moments or sent just sentences people told me, which I remember and which kind of changed my, my point of view. I remember a strong one. was like in IBM, I already was doing sales and was leading a team and I was struggling with
being not heard and being not seen. And I worked hard, but I didn't move the career ladder as fast as I wanted. then someone told me just a sentence, this is an American company run by Americans.
Yeah.
And he left me with that sentence. So I didn't understand what he was talking about, but I understood later that
Even when I was in situations like that, it doesn't matter so much your subject matter expertise. It matters most in big companies to align with their point of view, to align
Yeah.
with the strategy, to be part of the solution and not trying to find a different way of solving things because that's not the right way.
at least in big companies. So that advice was good once I understood it to change the way I put energy in.
Was that hard to do for you?
It wasn't hard. It was just a learning. was, and now I understand how I should behave. Nobody
Yeah.
told me before. because you think when you, when you are young and you come from a university and you think all you know and all the expertise you bring is the, the value that you bring.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's kind of, it's kind of the value, but the more value you bring to an organization is more what you do for the team, what you do for the overall.
how you support your overall strategy, how you support the mindset that they have, how do you fit into the culture, which is much more important than being the smartest guy in the room. And don't try to be the smartest guy in the room, try to have the company be the smartest company in the world. That's more important.
Yeah.
And if you don't like the strategy, then...
Don't argue,
leave it, change it, but don't try to work against something that is set in stone. that was like, okay, I can do that. So let's change the strategy or let's behave like that because that's a good advice. It was more a better, a good advice than hard learning and I don't want to do this anymore.
Because at university, no one teaches you that. And hardly, I mean, I would vote for schools and universities that prepare you for the real life instead of for like subject matter experts,
which counts less and less in the world we are living in AI.
information and expertise that you bring or that you have is less and less important because it's available to anybody.
So soft skills, and someone said soft skills are not soft skills, are the most important skills nowadays is the thing where everything is changing into. So you need to train yourself to be a smart individual in the embassy,
hard enough, teamwork, understanding politics, understanding forces within teams,
Yeah.
understanding this kind of stuff, much more important.
So then did you s did you see a change like with your career trajectory after that, once you started making that change internally, you know, to be more of a team and be part of the, align with the company?
Yeah, as I said, first of all, I started as an engineer, IT engineer, a presets engineer, whatever you want to call it. So I had still good knowledge about products and was able to communicate to other technical people the value of a certain solution. then I realized, well, there is a second guy or girl or woman.
sitting next to me having the sales name on the card. I do all the work here
in the sales pitch and they get all the money. So I thought,
And they get they get all the money? Yeah.
that's not a smart move for me. Maybe I can do that as well. And again, I waited for the next opportunity to try to become a sales person.
And once it opened up a window of opportunity for me, then I took the chance and become a salesperson. And learning then that these people don't just sit around next to me waiting that the deal is closing. They have a lot of other tasks which I didn't saw at that time. and I would consider sales, majority of the parties is soft skills and the things we just.
touched on and it's a small portion or let's say 50 % is tactics and methods and all this knowledge stuff but 50 % is art I would call it and soft skills, emotions, politics, things like that. Emotional intelligence,
Emotional intelligence. Yeah, the eQ, like emotional intelligence yeah.
Emotion and intelligence sounds like a big thing, but
Yeah.
just understanding if you have like five people in front of you, what are their strategy, even if they don't tell you what are their, what drives those people, what are they meaning when they say something. And that's complicated enough. And then you have to combine it with a mythology, which I find very interesting. So combining real mathematical.
science with emotional non-practical things.
The other the other thing you said when we talked last was that you were you were kind of willing to go wherever they asked you to go. Like you moved a lot. was that at IBM you were talking about, that they you took different roles and you had to move to Paris and you had to move to the US or is that later on?
Not that was straight in the beginning. mean, in big companies, you always get a chance to move on or there are open doors every now and then. You just need to be open to do it. So I probably was always the fastest to say yes to something, even not taking a night to sleep over or because I thought, yeah, why not? Let's try this. What can happen? So I was always had no fear in any
shape or form, just exploring what I can do next. So that's probably what describes my working life. Taking on just changes and sometimes it doesn't work out because it was the wrong job for the wrong person. And then it's okay. You can still live and do something else. I'm not talking about jumping like
every six months to a new task because you get bored. That's not what I'm talking about, but evolving from doing this and then taking on even more responsibility, not leaving the old job, but taking on a little bit more, try to see if you can do additional stuff more
a lot of people won't do that, like out of fear or whatever, you know, but what do you think about you made you more open to take on those things and try new things and then be okay with if it didn't work out? 'Cause some that's what holds people back, I think a lot is that if it doesn't work out, you know, that's a failure or whatever you want to call it, you know, rather than a learning, like you said, you know.
Yeah.
what do you think about you made it
That you were just okay with that. Yeah.
I think I asked this question myself and I think first of all, I didn't get married in young years. So I didn't have kids and family early. So I didn't have a lot of responsibility to stick to some like I need the income of X, Y, otherwise my family is suffering. So I didn't have that. And then the worst thing that could happen is
fired,
yeah. Isn't that bad?
I'm fired and I should move back to my parents' house or so, which... Yeah, and I think you... Isn't that...
Yeah, isn't that bad? So you get fired and then you try something else. I still thought I can do everything. I can drive taxi or Uber if the worst things happen. I remember Elton John, the famous
Yeah.
singer, he said, and this stuck with me, he said, I spend like...
all my money because I have no fear that I run out of money. The worst case that can be, I go to a restaurant or hotel in the lobby and I play piano for the evening and they give me something to eat. So, and kind of this resonates with me. So what is the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing is you get fired and you have no money for, and then, okay, you work as a waiter or so. It's not a problem. I don't felt this was a problem. And then,
It makes you free, right? And free decisions are good in some way because you can focus on the growth part, on the let's build something, let's do something crazy without thinking, what happens if this goes wrong? But of course, I'm not saying, well, do this, people. If you have family, it's not possible. If you have like bills to pay in a huge...
then it's not possible.
So you were so that you mentioned that it's kind of your personal life or you weren't married or you didn't have any kids, so it was it made it easier for you to do jobs like this. Was that kind of the thing you were did you do that consciously, like, hey, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get married young. I'm gonna go and try to try different things and move around and just have fun, have a career, you know, and be my be by yourself for a while, or was that just how it worked out?
It was what it was and no one wanted
So it wasn't a strategy. was just the way it was. Maybe I was maybe a little more interested. So I loved what I was doing. I loved technology. I loved IT. I loved software.
Yeah.
I loved
hardware. I loved seeing the production of hard disks back then and sell this technology to customers because I was just interested in the technology itself. I think you need this intrinsic motivation to spend a lot of time at work, which I did. And then of course you miss other things.
But I didn't feel I missed something. So again, no strategy behind that.
Then again most Yeah.
You said last time we talked and I think you had an analogy of something you played tennis and it's you know, someone had if they want to go to think they're gonna go to Wimbledon, you never had a plan, like I wanna get to this level? you know, 'cause a lot of the you know, I have a son who's in college and he's got a plan.
you know, for where he wants to be, you know, and I think a lot of the younger people do that today. they've got a plan. you d you seem like you didn't have that. You kinda it maybe you can talk a little bit about that. I mean, how you
Yeah.
viewed it or did you even think about it at the time? You know, or you just
Yeah, it's a good example. talking about tennis, I tried to play tennis since 40 years. I tried to master this game. in tennis, when you start as a professional tennis player, and then you have a clear plan, of course, because there is only one track. So be successful and you know the tournaments and you can have the plan to win Wimbledon.
the age of 20 and then you build everything around that. So that can be a plan and probably must be a plan for the people to prepare for that because it takes some years to get there. But in most of the other job roles, it's not possible. Imagine I should have made a plan for what I'm doing today when I was 20. I mean, we deal with AI today.
In 1998, didn't have a clue. Nobody had a clue what AI will look like. So how can I make a plane at that day? So the world in especially, and now we are talking about IT at a certain scope, you can't nowadays make a plan what you will be doing when, because you don't know that how life and technology and the world will change.
So I think it's not possible to do it, but you can make a plan on what kind of job roles you would like to have, course, being more working with people, working more alone, more in teams and so on. That's probably something you learn about yourself over the time. you should make a plan on what's good for you and what's bad for you. But having a plan on becoming...
this and that at a certain point in time with that technology, I think it's impossible. It was not possible like 30 years ago and it's harder nowadays because the world is changing faster than it has done before.
Yeah, I think our jobs, have changed more in the last eighteen months than it probably has in the last ten years as far as how we do our jobs, you know. I mean
Yeah.
it's and you never would have guessed it or saw it coming, you know, at least I didn't, but you're a physicist and you're a little smarter than I am though. So they did you saw it, yeah.
I didn't. Even all the physicists that I
follow that are much smarter than me, of course, haven't seen that coming and they still try to understand. And then when you ask them about projection of the next three years, nobody's really having a clue because
No.
that is really, it's so chaotic. Not badly meant chaotic, but chaotic is a scientific wording that you can't predict it. just, it's just...
impossible. But the good advice could be to just be open, to have the right mindset, a positive mindset about change. And I think that's the most important thing. To have a positive mindset about what's coming and then grab the opportunity that's in front of you and don't think about failure first. Of course you can
Yeah.
fail and that's okay. I think US people are more into it's okay to fail.
In Europe, especially in Germany, it's a disaster if you fail for whatever reason. mean, they don't like it, but I think, yeah, give it a chance and don't care about what other people say. If you fail, you fail. You learn.
You learn and you grow. what you consider a failure is usually your highest growth time too after that. You know, as you evolve, you know, 'cause it if it's life's too easy and then you don't change much, right?
It forces you to do it better. And I've read a book 30 years ago, referred it to me. don't know if it's well known. It's from Jim Collins. And I think it's called From Good to Great. And it talks about that the worst enemy of a better life is a good life. Because you don't change things.
Yeah. Yeah.
But with an incident or with a disaster or with something happening, it forces you to change. And then you build the new house basically with the knowledge that you had until then. And it's much better because you put in all the experience that you have so far. But you would never tear down that house because you want to build a better one.
And that goes with life. And I'm a big believer that you should let go every now and then things that you have done good enough for a certain period because you can do better. But it's hard to do because it's not in our nature to like skip things that you have done that are working okay.
Yeah.
Because you have no pressure, no pain or nothing. But if an outside event triggers you to do...
As you said, sometimes it turns out it's much better afterwards. You get fired, you find a new job. this is much better. Because you look for the new job with the experience you have made so far. it guides you the right way to the things that you can do better.
when you were talking about that it made me think about your motorcycle accident. I you don't have to talk about like what happened or you know, but i were you pretty close to death or was it a bad that bad of an accident or was it I think it was pretty bad and then did that kind of sounds like a disaster, you know, like you were talking about a disaster and then y things happen.
Did what happened after that? Like when you did you view things differently? how old you were when it happened. Was it like thirty were you y in your thirties or were you was it later in life or?
It was in my thirties, yeah, it was 15 years ago. So I had a bad, was severe motorcycle accident. It wasn't my fault. I had a flat tire, which I didn't notice.
Didn't know.
And it was in the mountains.
scenery was also heavy. yeah, they took me with the helicopter to the next hospital in Italy and things like that. So I was, I can't tell you and I won't exaggerate here, it 15 minutes to death or so, but it was quite severe. yeah, I went to hospital for a week in Italy and then had to rely on bed for
a few weeks, having broken bones all over the place. Did it? I mean, I don't think it changed a lot in my mindset or how I perceive things because I already had this kind of, okay, let's live the moment and let's try to...
experienced good moments. I never hunted or chased fortunes. I had no plan to have a big house or boat. I didn't chase these kinds of things. I more invested my money in a nice holiday or a nice time with friends and family.
So that didn't change, but I know from other friends and colleagues that they changed their point of view at this point in time, having a severe incident or accident, but it didn't change a lot because I think it was already, I lived already that life.
Like you were talking about last time we spoke about sales being, you know, fifty percent science, kind of fifty percent art. And you even mentioned that you were writing a book about, you know, you have you know, there's certain things that you can control and a and ther certain things you can't, right? In sales.
Yeah.
And is that did that kind of come from some of that? I mean, you 'cause obviously you can't control an accident, right? You know,
Mm-hmm.
in life in general. Now yours is an accident, but you like you were saying earlier, you don't know what's gonna happen Is that what is that connected at all or is it just more of a you
already had that mindset, yeah.
I
think it supported a little bit the thinking about what can you really control and because especially in sales and this I have to think about this all my working life dealing with so many people outside and inside companies
they do want to control like the outcome. You want to the revenue in the next quarters. You want to know
Yeah.
the closings and you want to control the exact closing date. You want to control the exact amount of revenue you do. And so I understand that because I am in that position as well. I do want to know my cost. do want to know what kind of revenue I can count with.
I come to the conclusion after thinking 35 years about it, that it is intrinsically not possible. So it is just not possible. can do, you can calculate odds, can calculate statistics. And if you have a big enough business like Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, tell the market, we will come up with this earnings and then they will hit the earnings because they can hedge.
their own numbers with because they have big numbers. If you have a small business, if you close like five, six, seven deals per quarter, you can't do that because
Yeah.
the statistics doesn't work anymore. And you can't predict a single closing, a single deal, a single relationship. You just can't do it. And people that want you to do that are stupid. have to put it like as that.
And you have a lot of people, especially people who invest in companies, they do want to have the outcome fixed or the success and it's just not possible.
Because you have that manufacturing part, the logical part, you have the methodology and everything is fine and is important and none of that you should neglect. You should be an expert in what you're doing.
And you should be motivated and you should work hard on all the parameters that you can control. numbers of chords and pitch decks and so on. That's all perfect. But then still 50 % are missing. And this 50 % art or 50 % emotion, non-technical part, which...
Some people are experts in and you don't know why. They don't even fill out the CRM system. They never looked into any pitch deck, but they still close big deals. this...
made me think how can I control this second part better or how can I understand when you hire people for these kind of job roles you do want to know is this a person that has the art side or is it someone else and how can I determine that better and it's a science for itself to find that out because it's complicated.
And the ingredients are hidden. Ingredients are sometimes very specific and you can't really control them and touch them and even identify them. It's like in quantum physics. You can't really determine the state of an electron, for example, before you measure it.
just they have instinct or gut they call it gut or instincts or just they seem to know what to say at
Yeah.
the right time yeah. That part of it. Yeah. Yeah.
you know that. Yeah, you
know that as well. I have this analogy with tennis again. So imagine someone is reading all the books about tennis. So he's like an expert. He has read everything. He has watched all the games that have been played. So he's an expert.
and he walks on the court, never played tennis before, he will not hit a single ball. Because he didn't practice to play and you can't read about it and play tennis. And the same goes for like, what are these people who are like genius sellers have? And they have, they know exactly in the right second, what kind of answer, what kind of sentence, what kind of message they put.
And nobody told them, it's not written in any book. It's just the moment and they know, they feel, they anticipate what's the right way. And you can't, so there is no book about that. Because the, like in tennis, you don't know where the ball will touch the ground. It depends on the opponent. And therefore I need to be in that moment. The moment.
the second the ball comes to my side and then I need to react and this reaction is basically the art because I can't say wait a second I need to read what I should do about it and it's being in that moment reacting and you can't really learn that it comes through this experience so
People that have done the job for long years, they gathered some experience that they can use. And that's in sales, especially and probably in all relationship jobs, very important. But then still you have this talent as goes for tennis. I would have never won Wimbledon even with the best trainer, with the best plan because talent is missing.
But then you have these people who are super talented, very young, and they do everything right because they feel it.
And you can't, well, you can
Explain it, yeah.
teach them to do the methodology part to become even better, but you can't teach like someone with no talent to do sales just using methodology. That's not possible.
No, it takes a long time to learn that too. I mean, I've as a leader, I've thought I could teach anybody to do it, you know, and you can you can't. some people
Okay.
just have it and some people don't. and that doesn't mean they can't be good at their job. You know, they can be good, but they just can't be genius at it
But you know what the problem is then? You have people judging the performance of sales teams and they judge it just on the numbers or on the KPIs and this is wrong. It gives you the wrong result. So then they would fire the best sales people because they didn't close the deal in last quarter, which is totally stupid. But if you manage by numbers in sales, you are stupid.
That's an outcome I already have. You need to be, if you lead sales teams, you need to be the experts, the expert yourself to determine if you have good people or bad people, or if you need to invest time and teach them and share the expertise and so on. If it's worth it or not, that's your job. But managing on numbers, which a lot of like investment firms do, that's stupid. That's well, it doesn't give you a good outcome.
The I had that same argument with one of the CEOs I worked for in the past and it's probably why I don't work there anymore. But I s I said to him, I d I don't know anything about hockey, but I know Wayne Gretzky is the best hockey player of all time, you know. but I couldn't watch him play hockey and say that what he just did was genius because I don't even know enough about what he does or how to play the game to know if there was genius or not. I said so.
You've never done this before in sales. So you don't even know what that what that person just did was actually genius because you don't know anything about it and you've never done it. You know, but it's true unless you have to know a good amount about it to be even see when someone does something exceptional that you just that you didn't that I didn't even think of. but you have to be in that sport or in that j role to ever to know.
that someone is doing something exceptional or genius or creative beyond belief, whatever you want to call it, you know.
Yeah,
I like that example. That's exactly what I meant. You can't, and even if you put the performance numbers in and maybe Wayne didn't score in a game enough assists or goals, but he still maybe is a good player.
Yeah.
for some reason he didn't score the numbers in that game, but still I would like to have him on my team. And this is something a coach can judge.
or an expert in that game, but nobody else, right?
And people tend to be experts. The job we are doing is like being a trainer, being a coach on a football or hockey team. And everybody thinks they can do it. And this is the critical part of it, because it's not easy. You can't tell by the numbers. Looking into the CRM system, these people have added
more pipeline than the other ones in the last two weeks. Well, if that drives you to conclusions, then that's not the right thing to judge performance.
Yep.
you left and you went to Inter Shop and then commerce tools after that. And then, you know, kind of been in that space since. You know, but the one thing you talked about last time that was kind of interesting to me is like when you took some time off, you took like a year off and you were right you were writing your book, right? And then I think you also got married right around the same time and then you had a child shortly thereafter. Like what
You know, what got you what got you to that? Was it the time off that you started thinking about things? 'Cause I remember when we the time we were in Chicago and we were having drinks and I was asking you about kids, you say I think at the time you said you didn't want to have kids. but obviously that's changed. Yeah, so
Yeah, they changed and I'm happy to have a little daughter now, two years old almost. Late for me, but has positive and negative aspects on it. You can't cope with little sleep, but that's another story. Yeah, I took a year off after we sold the company.
to private equity and then that was the I would say the best year so far taking like really 12 months off the business in like not retirement years, but still knowing that I will resume working afterwards and dealt with things that I always wanted to do but never had the time for.
And if somebody wants one advice from me, I would say if you can afford, take one year off. But not just laying lazy on the beach, which I didn't do. So I took some projects on me that I wanted to show myself that I can do other things than just working in companies, technology. For example, I tried to...
to play piano and I work on Chopin piece, which is far beyond my expertise. But I still said, okay, let's see if in a year I can manage to play this piece. And then I practiced two hours a day and that was really a rewarding time.
Additionally to that, I read books and I did a lot of sports. So great year. And also privately, I got married and a lot of things can happen. It was in a year when you
slow down in terms of working hours, but not slowing down like...
being inactive.
What did you finish the piece? The
the piano? I mean was it good?
Yeah,
well, once you go to a different question, but I managed
Hehehehehe
to play in front of my family at New Year's Eve, the piano piece.
Nice.
And I think only me. Well, that's probably too exaggerated, but I didn't make too many mistakes,
what after the year off and then and kind of, you know, trying other things and you know, it seems like a lot of the stuff you're doing too was more on the creative side versus the, you know, the physics side of your brain, right? when you came back to work after that, you know, you're married, you have a you have a b a new baby and just taking a year off, do you do you work differently or do you view it differently, or do you think you
Changed as how you do your job.
I don't think so, no.
Or probably I don't see it yet. I think I focus more on things that I can change or I can have an impact on. I think that evolves over the years that you try to be impactful. Don't try to waste time. The older you get, you don't want to waste time anymore because time is the most valuable.
you have in life and then when you are young you think you live forever and you can waste your time doing stuff and then nowadays I think I'm thinking upfront more about what impact will that have, it worth it, should I spend time. These things have changed also through having had time to think a little bit about life and what matters a little bit more.
But I think it also would have come just with getting older, that you try to use your expertise and everything you learned to make effective decisions for yourself and in your working life. Because you tend to do a lot of things that are useless when you are young.
But I think that's okay because you need to gather the experience. can't get, you don't get experience from doing everything right. You get experiences from all the failures, which is another big learning. Everybody tells you that, right? This is nothing, it's not rocket science, but
Yeah.
you need to experience it yourself. And it's so trivial, but you need to experience it yourself. And then,
change your mind and know, okay, I need to focus on impact
if you could kind of look back now and talk to yourself when you're younger, you know?
Or do you just do everything the same, do you think, that you did and you learn the experience? Yeah.
So the advice to my younger self, I think every decision, every deviation that I made was like by accident and would have happened again. Sometimes it's coincident, you meet someone at the airport and it's about seconds that you make a...
that you make an introduction to someone and or you meet someone or you get a phone call or you miss a phone call. You see an information or you miss the information. That's so many random things that you can't control.
Synchronicities, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you can't control that. So the advice would be the same that I already had for myself is like be open.
It doesn't matter. Don't be nervous that you miss something. Just be open. Take the next opportunity. You can't control it anyhow. And that doesn't mean let go. Don't mind. It's not the attitude. The attitude is catch something. Try to be... If I would have been a taxi driver, then I would try to be the best taxi driver in the city. I'm driving the taxi, you know.
Being good at what you do, I think that's something that drove me. Not sure if it worked out well, but at least that's something I lived.
What about just kinda to finish up, w the piano, do you still play it? was that just to one of those things you did to kind of prove that I you could do it? Yeah.
I didn't want to prove that I can do it. was, that's maybe also interesting. So what you find out over the years is that things that make you happy are those that you invested heavily in achieving it. So when you climb up a mountain and then you feel like, I did it. And times have changed and people and with social media and so on.
They get rewards every seconds, milliseconds. You don't need to invest a lot of effort into something. And I try to flip that and try to say, okay, I need a huge target for myself to work on to feel that reward afterwards because it feels totally different. It's like winning Wimbledon, but...
I'm not supposed to play there. yeah, set yourself a target that is beyond your normal achievement level and then try to achieve it and see where you end up and it's so rewarding. And that was the case. So I still play piano, but not practicing like two hours anymore, of course, I don't have the time with my normal work. But that was the purpose behind
that.
which goes with everything people do. then when you read through social media, people that went with the bicycle, climbed the highest mountain and things like that, they do it because it's so rewarding and you don't get these kinds of rewards anymore in normal life because it's so, yeah, not easy, it's so available at every kind of achievements through.
technology, internet, whatever, that you don't have that feel anymore as taking a year to practice a play.
It's kinda like y someone's career, That was just a year, it's just something you're enjoying and you're doing it every single day and then you get to the get to the end, whatever that is, and then you look back and you and you don't remember how you got there. You just see all everything that happened and how it all came together and then
And now you're at this point where you can you can play this beautiful song. or you're at the we're not the end of our career. We're getting we're getting closer. But when you kind of look back and you kinda see how it all fit together, right? You know, how it all came together and things that you had talked about,
Just being op saying that you're open to whatever happens. You're open to any opportunity and then you kinda go where the where you think the right place to go. You know, and I think that's the a lot of the kids nowadays don't see that part of it. It's like I gotta push, I gotta fight, I gotta get to here, here, here, here. And then yours is was kinda like, Hey, this door opened here, I'm gonna go check it out and see what happens, you know. And then pretty soon, you know, thirty years have gone by
and
And you are where you're are, you know. it's
You shouldn't push
too much to the status or to where you want to be. You also need all the deviations. You also need the experiences made. Because without the experiences, you can't do a job. You can't be yourself in 10 years without zero experience. So if it's all a straight line, then what have you learned?
What kind of mistakes can you avoid? Where can you teach others? I mean, it's all things that happened where you can draw leverage. But if you don't have that, so I don't think it's a... If somebody has a straight career and is the CEO of Walmart in 10 years, then...
Wow, he's a genius, congrats. But I don't think most careers work like that. it's mostly gathering experience, experience, experience, and then you do things better and better and better and then you evolve. Especially in, and again, this is different in different industries, but especially in an industry like the IT and technology that is changing so rapidly that your plans.
are eaten up,
Yeah.
you can't plan ahead. But you can do something about the change. You can stay open. You can stay open-minded and motivated. motivation is a big thing. If you just wait that things happen to you, which a lot of people do sometimes, if you look into politics and election results and so on, then people...
People wait or expect that somebody is healing their problems, which
Yeah.
doesn't happen. And we need more of the people that try to cope with the actual situation. And it will change.
Yeah.
So don't argue about change.
Yeah. Hey, Udo, thanks for being on a lot of what we're I'm trying to do is for the younger people that are starting their careers and realizing that, you know, there's multiple ways to do it, you know, and that and you're gonna have learnings and you're gonna have things you consider failures or you're gonna have things that you consider not great happening, but then it always leads to something else that ends up leading to where you are right now, you know. So
Appreciate you being on and thanks and I think you're I think a lot of people will get a lot from what you said today.
Thanks, Brad. Thanks for having me.
That's Udo Rauch's road. Never a straight line, but every turn led somewhere. If this one landed for you, follow the winding road show wherever you listen, and I'll see you on the next one.