held my mother in my arms as she out of
the blue and in a couple of hours lost
her life to raging blood poisoning she
left us like she had loved us with great
intensity and without a doubt my mother
always saw the light in people
she kept caring for the ones that others
had long since given up her death awoke
the need in me to expand my family for
it also to include the people I work
with I guess I wanted somehow to
compensate for the loss of her I no
longer had any interest in adapting to
co-operate structures or rules I felt
that way too much energy was lost in the
process I decided to make business
happen firstly based on Who I am
and secondly on what I do driven by the
urgent needs to turn one day into day
one so I left a long career in large
organizations and entered life as an
entrepreneur within recruitment and
advisory services for tech companies I
had no previous experience of running my
own business and almost no financial
buffer to support my family during the
startup phase it took me two months to
support myself well and to start working
less than 20 hours a week I have to this
day never made a call call never signed
a written agreement
and all customers and candidates have
been handed to me today I work less than
two days a week for money and get to
spend the rest of the time pro bono
assisting in running a women’s clinic
and Congo and reducing energy poverty in
Africa doing what actually matters in
the world challenging status quo for the
people less fortunate than me let’s get
into how it’s done the business model at
play here is a business model of trust
based on two main principles building a
business family and practicing complete
honesty the people I do business with
for my business family meaning that we
provide for each other an abling
business making sure that the right
energy is provided to the right people
at the right time guaranteeing that the
meetings we supply are always worth
taking because we understand which
people will not only benefit financially
from connecting but who will get
inspired and ignited and change the
world together this is something we do
several times a day and as a result our
business family grows by the minute
maybe you’re wondering how to choose
people for your business family could
visualize the people in your life the
challenges you that makes you grow who
makes you feel brilliant and loved and
enriched exclude immediate family make
sure the people you see are people that
wants the best for you and that you
would be willing to help succeed
regardless of whether it benefits you or
not what you see
is your network starting point is there
someone there are you looking at a void
well if you are voids are only spaces
left to be filled right now open your
eyes
maybe you visualize tons of great people
and maybe you need to start from scratch
whatever the case may be start exploring
people that interest you ask them for a
meeting to tell you their story most
people like telling you what drives them
and who they are my use that moment to
decide whether there is a way to go from
acquaintances
to business family I use three questions
to guide me in that process do I want to
learn from this person is the person
humble and kind do I want them to
succeed regardless of whether it
benefits me or not if the answer to all
three are yes we have a winner and we
could move on to the next part how to
treat them once you have chosen the
people in your business family then
always be the mirror of the best
possible version of them trust them to
remain intelligent and kind and honest
as was your first impression you will
find that this is what they become
because it’s how you make them feel when
chosen wisely your business family will
mirror how you treat them through how
you choose to precede them turning
people into exactly the people you wish
they were for leading by example one of
my strongest proofs of concept is that
my business family keep trusting me were
the most important people in their lives
they
email and call me saying this is my wife
mother brother best friend could you
please help them find a new job mentor
them meet the company etc building a
business family it’s not something you
do for work it’s a way of life and as
long as you honor the trust that people
give you it has no apparent structure it
because all people have a friend who has
a friend who has a sister who has a
previous colleague right always accept
meetings provided by your business
family the reason being that you should
cherish their wish to contribute to your
success above your own preconception of
possible value all meetings yes Oh our
gift
it’s sometimes the gift of meeting a
person you wish to stay away from in the
future but it’s still important one
thing I’ve learned in the process of
building my business family is that
asking people for help is a million
times more effective than telling them
what you know giving people the
opportunity to shy and explain and
highlight great people around them to be
heroes if you will and in return you get
smarter and you build a better
relationship my first month as a
full-time entrepreneur was spent in 100
meetings me and my business partner at
the time decided to introduce ourselves
and each other to all the people we
thought might be a relevance we used
them to juggle ideas discuss our
offerings tell them our fears we
basically told them everything the
obvious gain for us being that we got to
build our offering together with a vast
amount of people working in more or less
the same
industry but the even bigger advantage
was that these people leaving our
meeting were proud of having been part
of our process they immediately became
our spokespersons and it took days until
they started providing opportunities and
still we did the opposite of what was
expected telling everybody everything
trusting that honesty would help us and
not kill us
and we were right this brings us to the
part of practicing complete honesty with
trust as a business model the permanent
code of conduct is what I say is what I
am this is surprisingly enough as
unparalleled as it seems simple this
will cause the right people to be part
of who you are not what you do and
your business family should be trusted
enough for you to tell them everything
you do all the wise and the House and
Lords maybe not always the whose due to
caring for personal integrity but
sometimes that too this is what I do
every day to everybody I firmly believe
that if you take my ideas home and you
make them your own and you do it better
than I do then more power to you I guess
I’m the one who needs to get back home
and find a new career where I shine
brighter it is my firm belief that the
world needs no more dimmed lights and we
should all live nothing less than our
there are three interesting examples
where complete honesty actually became a
unique selling point for me let’s start
with me meeting a new software company
regarding recruitment since I base
everything on what my network provides I
will not promise anything regarding
timeframe competencies or number of
people in return I never asked to be the
sole provider all customers and our
meetings saying they wish to work
together and it’s apparent that neither
speed competence nor quantity or part of
what I sell did I mention I worked in
recruitment my customers are buying into
beliefs and honestly and our
relationship trusting me to deliver
interesting huh
another example is that fall when I
actually turned down working with a
customer several times quite bluntly
telling them I did not have any passion
for their line of business and I was not
the right fit you would expect them to
ask me to leave right but now it ended
with them asking me to transform them
into a customer that I would be willing
to work with suddenly business I didn’t
want turned into business I actually
won’t it only because I was honest as it
turns out they wanted to understand my
no more than they wanted to find that
other Zapata buyer that would most
likely have promised passion and
commitment from stripe and once again
you could say that complete honesty
outsmarted any given say its theory last
but not least while recruiting for a
product owner it came to my knowledge
that the same candidate had been sent to
the same customer through a cheaper
supplier so I called the CTO at my
customer I told him exactly what
happened
I gave him the reference of a great
candidate because he really was and I
advised him to choose the other supplier
obviously since that will be cheap
before him what he answered I will let
the other supplier know I already got
the candidate from you because I liked
you better these three examples and
there are many many more shows that
business can be based on something much
more valuable than journey isn’t that
Trust has a business model it is not
something you do it is something that
you live by and if your reason for
adopting these ideas would be to
outsmart competition or increase profit
because you see your brain it’s not your
key player here your heart is applying
these ideas to work life is something
you do for yourself because you want you
to fulfill the need of creating value
with a currency much stronger than money
well handled you will support yourself
well too but if that is your sole Drive
choose a different path
you see if the honesty part of this
model fails whole idea kind of crumbles
Trust is something you give to give not
to get back keep in mind that the
business model of trust is a business
model of paid forward not a business
model of
return on investment thank you [Applause]