SCALING WITH CLARITY AND COURAGE

Skillionaires Podcast Episode 5

Sebastian Scheplitz

[Angela Thomas]

Very warm welcome here for another episode of the podcast Skillionaire, the podcast where you know how to get deeper insight of stories that stick and strategies that scale. Today I have a wonderful guest that actually comes out of my old hometown. Saxonia is his base ground, I just realized.

And Sebastian, Sebastian Schiblitz, is that right? Did I pronounce it right? Perfect.

So you have businesses to scale, but what brought you there? May I invite you to introduce yourself?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Absolutely. So essentially 25 years of leadership and marketing. That's the main thing for me.

That's my main slogan. So I've built my own marketing agency, marketing localization about 10 years ago, sold it two years ago, built my own software SaaS, AI SaaS, content generation platform, built this for about a year right after, sold this last year, built a media startup. And then since summer, I am a fractional CEO CMO.

So I advise startups. And I'm also a mentor for different, yeah, different startups, startup platforms where mentors are needed. So I do too.

[Angela Thomas]

Whoa, wait, wait, wait. How, how did it all started to get there actually? And where was your tantrum of the scaling point?

So tell me your first steps. I know when you come from East Germany and Saxonia, there is something behind this. These people are very special.

So tell me about your special start in the first steps that you did.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Sure. So starting wise. So I've, so the leadership part even started back in school.

So I was the speaker of the school. I was the speaker of my class, speaker of the school. Then in the army, I was the speaker of the, of the company.

So I was elected for, for that. I was a basketball coach in my twenties for, for 10 years. So while I was studying and while I was starting to work, I was also the basketball coach for 10 years.

So I did this whole leadership thing always. And I always had, I always knew I wanted to start my own company. So I did even back in the, back in the 2000s, like 2002, three, four ish.

That's when these, uh, these band buttons, these buttons that you can do.

[Angela Thomas]

I had one too for more than talking.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Nice. So I, that was my first business. Basically I did, I did this on a, on a smaller scale, but then these, these larger ones, the bigger competitors came up and I did everything by hand.

And the, these guys were coming up with, with their big machines, uh, much cheaper. So, but I did this for, um, you know, for, for smaller projects, even for the city of Leipzig, I did that as well. Um, and that's what, that's what gave me the bug of, of doing my own thing.

Then learning the whole, learning the whole situation around, um, sports marketing. That was, that was there. Um, thinking about maybe going into a team, doing the sports marketing there while being a basketball coach as well.

But then I realized that's not really where I see myself. Um, I, I always wanted to be, I would say champions league kind of, I was one of the best, but I knew as a basketball coach, the air is really thin to be, to be up there. And I knew I was not good enough for this.

So I did all of my learnings through internships here, actual jobs here and there. And then in 2015, that's basically in between, I was also doing like smaller, smaller ideas on how I can do my own business and what, what can I do? Maybe a marketing agency.

Uh, but I didn't really know how to start. And then in 2015, I lived in Malta, worked for an online casino and I was in charge of the German market. Then later on, I was in charge of all of Europe.

And I always saw that I had to do proofreading for every German content that was going out there. So I came up with the, with all of the campaigns and then I had to proofread all of the German translations or all of the German content that was written. And there were all, there were mistakes after mistakes constantly.

And I asked the other guys in Swedish, is it the same thing for you? Yes. Same thing.

Same for Italian, same for all of the other languages. And I was like, so we have some in-house people that are not good. And then we also work with another agency, which is apparently also not good because otherwise, why would there be mistakes?

And I met my girlfriend back then. So my new girlfriend and she was a certified translator. So we were looking at each other.

We were like, Hmm, you're the translator. I'm the marketing guy. How about we do this?

And that's how we started. So I left the job. I started a consulting gig for SAP back then.

It was a big software company. And at the same time, um, I started the agency with her. So for eight years, we were pushing this in the beginning.

We started with, um, just English to German translations. And then we were asked, can you do content as well? Can you write the stuff?

Of course we can, because obviously you want to scale, you want to be bigger. So we can do that as well. And then we were approached.

The quality is amazing. We love this, but can you also do or offer Swedish and maybe Finnish? Yes, we can.

So I knew some people who would be able to provide that. So we had our systems in place for this. So we started with initial systems and then we scaled this up to 60 different languages worldwide.

And at the same time, because I come from marketing, all of these companies, they were also asking us if we could also do the marketing for them. So we now had two different brands. One was the localization brand and one was the marketing brand.

And then after eight years, we were looking at each other. So me and my, my co-founder, then now ex-girlfriend, we were looking at each other. Do we want to continue with this?

Because when we started, we had three competitors, but after COVID hit, we now, and everybody was working remotely. We now had a hundred competitors. So do we want to continue?

And while we had this discussion, we were approached by three different companies, two companies from outside of the industry, and one was our biggest competitor. And they wanted to, the other guys wanted to have an in into the market and our biggest competitor wanted to take us off the market. So we sold it to them to keep it in the industry.

[Angela Thomas]

This is also a very interesting strategy, exit strategy, that you obviously did not plan in the beginning, because you just adjusted to the timeline of the economy and the happenings around you. But tell me this year when it just came, I mean, you had done your first steps everywhere with little buttons, your entrepreneur things and got your own things aside and your own side hustles. But with this very business that you brought then into the rolling, where was your realization that you are now about to scale and where you had the point of switching it around with what questions that you had to tackle and what obstacles that you had to tackle at that point?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

We had different touch points where we were looking at scaling, basically. So the first one, as I mentioned before, we started with English to German translations and then we were asked to do the content as well. So that was basically the first time where we were looking at not scaling, scaling, but doing things differently.

Like there is something here. So not just be a small, a small mini boutique agency that is just doing the English German translations. Now we can offer two different services, not just different languages, but services.

And when we were then approached for the different languages, that's when I saw this is an actual, an actual thing that we can scale. Instead of just doing one small thing, it can be much bigger. And the next step was the being approached by people from first outside of what we were.

So first we started with a casino and sports betting translations, and we were then approached by people from the beauty industry, fashion industry, and also by a lot of word of mouth because people in casino were happy. They were telling their friends, they were working in other companies and they were like, these guys are amazing. Ask them if they can do beauty.

And we now did beauty and fashion, and we also did industrial companies. So big machinery. They also needed to translate their brochures or write their brochures.

And that's, those were the steps where I saw that can be scaled on that end. And then also being approached by, by them for the marketing side, because that would be completely different. The first, I mean, yes, different languages and also translating and content, but it's still word related.

But then, and also even graphic design for this, but it was different from the marketing. And then the next step was scaling the marketing, the marketing side of things. So we had smaller steps where we saw we were growing.

We might need more people here. We might need to have them in house. So we had around 500 freelancers that we trusted in the process at the end.

Overall, we tested, I think around 5,000, probably 5,000 freelancers back and forth testing, testing them. But in the end, 500 were the trusted ones for different, for different, um, that's a big hustle.

[Angela Thomas]

I know if it freelancers to test them and just also to make a decision of yes, no, it's totally coming in my philosophy of we hire first, we fire first. You somehow cannot say this, but you have to have a decision. When you talk about scaling, when I'm talking about scaling, it's always about detaching time from factor your workforce.

So time from labor to differentiate it and detach it. How did you, you just said you had to have more stuff to actually deliver the services that you was known for? And how did you do this?

And how important was processes that obviously had to come all the time repeatedly again? And what was your process in that? How did you figure out what processes, if there was some, was leading to actually getting the detachment from factor time and labor?

Yeah.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

So I believe for every business, it's important to just start scrappy in the beginning and not focus too much on, on, on processes. Um, that's what I've seen with so many other companies and the startups that I'm advising. They are trying to overcomplicate the process first without actually delivering something.

So we did, we did the route. I'm not sure if this is the absolute best route that we took, but it worked for us. And I see that other, other startups are struggling with the other approach.

So I feel it might have gone down the best lane of just starting, just delivering as quickly as possible with the, with the best quality, but not looking too much into processes. And once we saw that this is something viable, that's when we installed the processes, um, new tools, new processes with, um, more automation even, um, where we could take back some time. But the main thing, and that's also, I just told you that I come, that I come from this, um, uh, this, this is mentorship program.

And I told, told these guys the same, the same thing. For me, it's very important that you, that you understand your numbers and understand how in, where in your process you are, because it's not a linear growth. It's always an up and down.

And sometimes the down can be a little bit further down than you would have hoped. So it's very important to understand where, where in the curve you are. Maybe the curve is just, is currently upwards, but it's about to go down.

And a lot of people make the mistake of scaling right there because they're going up because they feel like the baseline was here. Obviously they started at zero and now they're here and now they are a little bit above this point. And they're like, oh, maybe we should scale right now.

We have to hire two people now. We made the, we made the same mistake. Um, we hired two people, we should have hired one only.

So that was not the best decision at that time.

[Angela Thomas]

That's how I learned. Why do you think it's not the best decision? From my point of view, it's like you're just killing the momentum with interrupting it with new people.

Is that also your, um, yes.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

So the, we, we kind of interrupted the process, but it was also because we were not scaling upwards perfectly. We were going down again. So now after going back down below this line, we now had to find ways to get back up the lines to be able to sustain that, that the higher of this new, of these two people essentially.

And for me, it's very important that people understand where they are. And if, if this is currently as the growth was there and now, now the growth is stagnant and that's where I believe you should, you should actually thinking about scaling or hiring someone, um, maybe trying to save some money in some processes in some way. But for me, it's very important that people understand that this being stagnant can be a good thing because now you can sustain this new baseline.

And I believe that when you build a business, we are talking about time. You don't want to be stuck in the business all that all of the time. You don't want to be stuck in execution.

You want to have someone to help you execute so that you can work on the business and not in the business. But there might be certain times when you have to do 16 hour working days. I have, I have a really good friend and he, he was a product based business or has, and during COVID he got so many orders coming in that he worked for two nights in a row.

So three days essentially without sleep at all, just a short, just a short rest in between, but he had to fulfill the orders. But the only way to get the orders done was him doing it. There was no other way because he had to deliver in these, in this timeframe of three days, he couldn't just hire someone else.

So his girlfriend, his partner helped as well. So both of them were just constantly working for this. But the only reason that's what he says at least is the only reason why he's a millionaire now is because he did these two days.

That's how I was able to scale, but only because he delivered this one big thing. But he couldn't hire a week before because he didn't know what is going to happen. And I believe that's the same thing for, for many other startups as well.

Don't hire too fast, but hire at the right time and understanding where in this curve basically your business is currently at. That's what I believe is, makes the most sense. Made sense for us, made sense for him.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah. Very good. Sebastian, you said something twice about your partner and about a partner of your, your mentee or the colleague?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Just a friend.

[Angela Thomas]

A friend. Okay. Tell me this.

I think it is very important to choose the right partner for when you are up to scale, isn't it?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yeah.

[Angela Thomas]

What do you think about it and what is the most important thing that you have to look of when you want to have a partner as an entrepreneur and are up to scale, not to have just an, you know, kind of stagnation business that is bringing in and bringing in and you are just like having a job, exchanging time versus money and have your free time going to golf classes. And then what must be a right partner bringing into the game when you as an entrepreneur have your full heart for entrepreneurship and you want it to scale?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yeah. So in this, in this case, partner was, was, had two meanings. So both of them were girlfriends, so to speak.

So for him, same, both partners and same for me was basically partner and partner. I believe so in relationship wise, I believe that there are basically three different types of people you can be in a relationship with. There's, there are those when you, no matter what you do, they always try to undermine you in some form, in some way.

There's always, oh, are you still, are you going to work? Are you going to work this late? There's always just like a constant, like a small minor thing.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes. Obviously it's, it's important to work on the relationship and to have a good proper steady. All of this is really important, but there's a certain type of person who, who wants to keep you away from, from the business, which doesn't, it doesn't work.

[Angela Thomas]

It doesn't work. Yeah.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Then you have, you basically have the cheerleader who is cheering you on and say, this is, this is great. It's not, it's not my thing. I'll do my thing.

Maybe I'll cheer her on back and forth, which is great. And then there is the one you can actually build with. And I believe that in this case, relationship partner should have the same, the same skills in that same, in that sense, or maybe like mindset as an actual business partner you get into business with.

It needs to be someone who wants to get to the same point where you want to go. If I want to play championship, Champions League, sorry, Champions League, and I want to be champion, I need the team around me who also wants to be the champion. And there might be certain things you have to do and might be certain things you have to sacrifice for it and you have to be ready for it.

And only these people who are ready for it, only then it makes sense to be in a business partnership together. If someone just wants to work for four hours a day, which yes, it's lovely if you can get, if you can get that done, but if they come into the business and say, I only do four hours, that will contradict what I mentioned beforehand, where I said, sometimes you have to do 16 hour work days. It's not what I believe is sustainable.

It's not what I want to do forever, but there might be certain times when yes, today is a 16 hour work day and maybe it's two weeks in a row or it's just two weeks, but I know we will get to this point and this has to be done. Otherwise it cannot be done. And I always look at this from the, me being a basketball coach, I always look at this from the sports perspective.

If you have a few players up there who have a work ethic that is so beyond what normal people would do, but there are also those who are far below this and those who are far below this will never become champions. There is, so for me as basketball, you look at Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, for example, these guys are in the gym at 5am. Is this something I like to do?

No, also not as a basketball player, but am I NBA champion? Am I one of those three people that everybody knows in the world? No, I'm not.

I don't think that this is the actual, that this is super sustainable, then everybody should be able to do this, what these guys are doing. Let's say the top three best players in history might be debatable. So if this was a basketball podcast, it might be debatable now.

But you can always, you can try to be somewhere around them. So just the other week, Germany has won the European championships. They have been the world champs two years ago, and now they are European champs, but only because they were a team.

They all say the same thing. We are the team that was working together towards this experience and towards winning this, because these guys made this happen. And also Dennis Schroeder, for example, the captain of the team, everyone is now looking at him to be the leader who comes in at times when nobody else is at the gym, and he's already there.

He's already preparing. So all the young guys are now, oh, if that's what we need to do to become European champs, then maybe that's what we need to do. Because he is I think, I could be wrong, maybe I think he's 32, I think.

So a little bit on the older side for an athlete. But the 24-year-olds, they are now looking at this and they're like, okay, so he's in the NBA, he's our captain, if that's what he's doing, and I believe that's the same thing for a founder or for a co-founder, for a partner, we need to be on the same side of pushing it to the same level. If both of you only want to do four hours per week and do side hustle, that's also fine, because both of you agree on doing this.

[Angela Thomas]

But having the container of also receiving that, first of all, the mindset must be there. And also to achieving that, that is something very important. And I think beautifully, you said that it's transportable, you can actually pass and copy that attitude also on to a team.

And when you say a basketball team, whereas in terms of business can easily speak about the team that you want it to scale with. And if you are having big parts in your team, then you need to make a decision. And that is something that I have actually really good.

Yeah, I witnessed it that this is something that if you have a low player in the team, the whole performance of the team doesn't matter if they're good. It's dropping, isn't it? Therefore, I think this is also something that you have to really have on your mindset as a founder, as a business person who wants to scale.

To also say to the people that you might like, that you might even have in your private life, but they are not good for the team, for the whole performance that you have to say to them, bye.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes, you have to do that. I made, I don't want to say mistake, but I made those, I had those personal relationships, I valued them a little bit more than just letting them go. Because to me, I always believe that you can improve.

You tell people that they need to improve instead of just letting them go. And especially when you know their personal life, their circumstances, we had, we had one. First of all, we were all going to COVID at one point.

That's one thing. And then we had one was going, was going through in Burma. So the government, there was a coup and the military was shooting at people.

So she was hiding, she was hiding somewhere in the back of her apartment, just not to be shot, basically. That also influences your work. And then someone else was, there was, there was cancer in her family.

Another one that was a divorce in her family. All of this, I'm also looking at the, at the, at the personal, at the personal side, but eventually you have to make the decision.

[Angela Thomas]

It is important to have you to stick with your, with your employees, with some members of the team or with the members of the team that, that are in difficult times. But if it's touching the performance of the team on the long run, you have to make a decision.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Exactly.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah. You have the responsibility for everybody and that's what you have to look at.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Exactly. So that's, that's the same thing that I, that I brought in from basketball. One of the main, one of the best examples I had was back in being the basketball coach where obviously I, so I trained a lot of young guys.

So I trained boys, girls, men, women, different seasons. There was this one season where I've been in a gym like eight times per week, for example, just going back and forth to doing something.

[Angela Thomas]

I heard latest studies that you only have to be once a week in the gym just to be efficient.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes. But I mean, for, for, for basketball, it's a, you have to be there a lot, but also I coach two teams at the same time. Then, then I had to go to the games as well.

And then it was like that, that season was a little bit too much, but it was, it was a good learning, learning curve. But anyway, so the, there was this one, one of my players, I think he was 16 and he had some issues like teenager, teenager heartbreak right now. So during training, he had to go back to his phone constantly and just check to get those heartbreak messages.

So I could have been, I could have been like, no, you have to leave the, you have to leave the gym right now. Or I would look at the whole experience and be like, okay, I know he doesn't want to get to the NBA. He just, we all just want to have a good, we want to be successful in the league that we're in, but right now that's what he needs.

So it was okay for him to, to, to, to go back and check, but it was not a constant thing. It was just for two training sessions. He did this during this one week where he was a little bit down and the next week he was going, he was doing better.

And I believe it's the same thing for business as well. Yes. Certain heartbreak when you're a teenager is different from a cancer, a cancer, cancer scare or cancer treatment in your family.

That's obviously much, much harder. So it takes a longer time, but there should be some, some back and forth of understanding where to go and where, how to deal with this as a, as a team, but also as a, um, as a, as a person.

[Angela Thomas]

I think you can also, when a team member is in difficult times, get actually the team involved so much that the team member feels super supported. And then loyalty wise, they will not have actually the guts to say, I cannot, but they try still to deliver or be a part and do something good. Also because it's somehow an escape from the miserable times and situation that they have.

Sebastian, you mentioned sports so many times. So tell me what has sports to do with scaling the business? Do you have a relation to that?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Absolutely.

[Angela Thomas]

What's that?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

So I work with, as I mentioned before, so girls, girls, boys, men, women, different leagues. And to get to the next league, you have to do things differently. You have to maybe bring in another better player.

For example, with the same training, you might not be able to go to the next, to the next, to the next, higher league. Maybe the players have to understand that you have to do more sprint training. Now, maybe that's the thing.

Maybe you have to do in, let's say in basketball, more shooting or more, um, more rebounding training. Maybe that's important because that's what we're lacking. And same goes for business.

Maybe there's a certain thing that is not helping us sustain the current level and let alone scale. So maybe our processes are not good enough to get to the next level. Maybe, maybe we need to automate something, um, in, in the delivery, for example, or maybe our quality needs to be better so that our clients keep coming back instead of just one of projects.

Now they're coming back. Maybe we need to offer a new service. So in sports, maybe we need to bring in someone who can, let's say in basketball, who can shoot threes because we are good at scoring when we're next to the basket, but we need someone who can shoot from the outside.

So maybe we have to find that person. Obviously in, in the lower leagues, it's a little bit harder to find such a person, but when you go to a certain level, that's what sports teams do. They look at their weaknesses.

They, they look at their strategy, what they want to play. And then you find the right person who can execute whatever it is that you need. That's what, that's what works in basketball.

That's what works in football, especially in team sports, you have to be more, more aligned with specific people and specific, um, specific skills that they bring to the team. But if you, if you play, um, sports as a, as a single player, let's say tennis, maybe, or MMA, if your backhand is weak, then you need to learn how to play a better backhand. Otherwise you would not make it to Wimbledon or let alone win.

Same goes for, for MMA. You won't be the, let's say the UFC champion if you're grappling is really bad. So that's what I, that's where I believe when I had a really good time with, with, with people who are doing sports, I had a really good time connecting with them on the business level because they understand that they have to push themselves because if you want to run the marathon, you know, you can get there, but you have to train to get there.

Same with business. You have to learn certain things. When I started the business, I know I knew about business and I knew about marketing, but doing it yourself, there was a big learning curve.

That's, it's the same thing for, for everyone else. And same goes for scaling. To scale, there is something you need to learn because otherwise you will stay stuck in this, in the same way.

[Angela Thomas]

I think it's also when you do sports, you kind of keep your mind flexible enough to transport it into, into the business.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes.

[Angela Thomas]

To think also flexible. If you, I always say, if you're not flexible in your body, you cannot be flexible in your thoughts. And that's something so beautiful.

Everybody understands and goes to the gym then. Yeah. Yeah.

If you, if you have young founders in front of you, I just heard that you're coming right now here to the podcast from a speed mentoring session, something very inventive. I like that idea. I have to get into it after we're doing this podcast here.

But what are the most common mistakes that you see amongst young persons who want to scale?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

I think the biggest mistake is even before scaling, it's the starting up. And a lot of them, they think about everything too much. I did the same thing.

It took me years to get to the point where I'm like, ah, this is the business I want to build now. A lot of them, and I had this, I had this just at these, at these talks, they were looking at having the perfect website and everything needs to be perfect, but they haven't really started yet. So yes, they were looking at a lot of it is dropshipping businesses.

That's what they did, but they haven't even received the products yet. So they were looking at the products. They know what they want to order.

They know what they want to then build, but they were so caught up in the first small stuff that they didn't even start yet. Yes, they are ambitious, but they were spreading the small stuff too much. And I'm like, so there's a big, there's a big, big gap between shitty and amazing.

But a lot of people only want to start at amazing. So why not start scrappy and then push it from there? And the same goes for me, goes for, for, for, for scaling up as well.

If you want to scale up, you don't have to have the absolute perfect conditions, but you have to have at least some conditions somehow set in place, let's say processes in place. You have to have at least some clients coming in that have steady progressive work, and then you can, then you can scale up. From a certain, from a certain foundation and the foundation needs to be, needs to be great.

And I, I just read this article about marketing agencies worldwide, especially in Germany, but especially worldwide, smaller ones are going bankrupt and the big ones are struggling. Even big ones like WPP, they are, they, they are struggling so much that it feels like they are about to close down. So even, even these.

[Angela Thomas]

Struggling on what? Getting new clients?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Getting new clients, getting revenue in.

[Angela Thomas]

That's even worse to have, to have a marketing agency and struggle to get new clients.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes. So there's, there's, there are different, there are different layers apparently. So one is obviously AI and another is management decisions.

But if all of this correlates and then you have on top, as I mentioned before, we started with, maybe I mentioned this at the talk before, we started with three competitors and in the end, we had 100. I think I mentioned this anyway. So with, with this, we had 100 competitors because everybody was just, was just coming in and we were, we were essentially competing about or around quality a little bit on the higher end, but absolute quality, amazing, amazing, amazing quality.

That's what our clients came back with. Those were those who were able to afford us, but a lot of others, they were just competing about price. So a lot of clients were going for price stuff.

So I think we have the same thing in the marketing agencies as well right now in this world that we have so many smaller competitors coming in with competing about price and just delivering something. Whereas the big ones now have blown up teams with hundreds of people, worldwide businesses, and they now need to sustain this, but the clients are not coming in. And now we have on top of it.

So we have the AI stuff. We have maybe have some management decisions. We have the, we have so much competition from smaller mini agencies.

Maybe one person pretending he's an agency, he or she, or five people, but they are there, they are competitors. And then the other stuff is the other big important thing is the economy right now. I'm, I'm in this in this group with 500 marketers, around 500 or so from the UK made it in there a while ago just to get some ideas.

But now they, most of those messages that you're getting there is that people are either transitioning or they have just been let go. So that's the main thing that you see there. So for me, what I know is what I've realized in those, in these 25 years is when the economy is doing bad, really the marketers who go first, even though these are the ones that would be able to drive more business into the companies, but the companies, most of the time, they just let the marketers go.

So now we have economy as one big factor.

[Angela Thomas]

I call this the dinosaur's effect. Did you know?

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Tell me, what's that?

[Angela Thomas]

The dinosaur's effect. I'm saying always, if you don't adjust to the current situation fast enough, you'll be like the dinosaurs. They are died because they were not adjusting fast enough.

So that's the dinosaur's effect. I find this everywhere.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yeah.

[Angela Thomas]

So what somebody needs to do to get in contact with you, Sebastian, tell us what they can get with you and where to find you.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yes.

[Angela Thomas]

Other than into a speed mentoring.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the good thing is there's only one person with my name in the world. So it's very easy to find me online.

I have a few friends who have the same last name, not related at all. Müller, which is a super German name, just as Smith in the English speaking world. For me, Schaeplitz, there's only 40 of us in the world, one with my first name, so Sebastian Schaeplitz is only me.

So you go to Google, you either find my LinkedIn, you either find my website, maybe potentially Instagram, which I haven't really curated that much lately. I got up to 20,000 followers at a certain time and then I just stopped posting because I focused on other stuff. When the video part came up on Instagram, I didn't adapt.

I was a dinosaur. I was only posting.

[Angela Thomas]

I just wanted to bring out my thing.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Very true. So I bought a camera. So maybe in the next couple of years, we'll see.

But yeah, so just look up my name and I will be there online, LinkedIn, my website, and that's how you get in contact. What I do mostly is I work with startups. So either single founders with one or two founders at different stages or startups or scale ups where they need help, so to speak.

So what I usually like to say is I build brands and I build teams. So if they need help with understanding how they can build their teams, let's say I have two founders. Just the other week, I talked to the two founders.

They are super technical. They were building a drone business here in the UAE where these drones will clean houses like these big apartment buildings.

[Angela Thomas]

I saw this the other day.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

They want to build the same thing, but they're super technical. So they need help with team building methods, for example, and they also need help with go-to market strategies. So if you're just starting out, I can come in.

I can look at your business plan. I can look at your investor pitch deck, help you to present to investors better, how to present yourself to them, how to bring an energy to this because investors are looking at the founders as well. They don't want to see the features.

Investors don't care about features. They care about, first of all, how can this make money because they are investing in it. So they want to make that money back in some form, however that's going to look like.

They want to know how the founders, what the founders think about an exit strategy, where they want to build this, how, but also they are looking at the founders. They want to see the passion. They want to see how these, who is that and how, not how they are building it, but who is doing this.

So I can come in at that stage, help them there. And then what I usually do is people who are one step further, they maybe have secured some founding, but they don't want to hire a CMO right now, for example, they can contact me, get some strategy through the door, basically just get some traction. I can stay for, let's say a month or three.

Sometimes I stay maybe like six. So that's what I do. At certain points, they might want to have me only for, let's say one call per week.

And then we do a call with the team, either leadership wise or marketing wise. So the leaders can talk to me about leadership. How can they build this team?

How can they push this forward? Or we talk about the marketing strategy. It's just one call per week.

Let's say for a full month, they can get that as well. So different, different packages that they can, that they can get. And obviously the mentorship that I'm doing as well.

[Angela Thomas]

Very good. Thank you, Sebastian, for your insights and the stories that stick and strategies that scale. I'm happy that you have been here.

Thank you for having me. I look forward to hear more from you.

[Sebastian Scheplitz]

Thank you so much. Have a great time.