Interview with Yert Gelemen (G)

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews and we have a new interviewee this time around. We're speaking with Yert Gelemen. I probably, possibly, maybe didn't get his name nailed, but he likes to go by G. And so that's a little bit easier for me to pronounce. He is an international business high performance strategist. This guy is one of the great interviews. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think you're going to find out that G has quite a bit of experience. There's a really interesting story and he has a lot that he brings to the table to help us understand how we can do better. Usually it's more in a business sense, not as much individual, but there's also a lot of individual stuff that he talks about. He's worked with a lot of startups and incubators and things of that nature that I think you'll find very informative and very useful as you navigate your own career and business future. That being said, let's get right into our conversation with G. All right, so we are starting a new conversation today. Some people are so good that they're down to like, you know, just a name like Bono or Oprah. This guy's down to one letter. We're going to be talking today with G. Yes, the letter G. And because I'm not always going to give the best introduction, I don't know all of the insights and nuances that you can provide. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll get going from there. Well, thank you for having me. And yes, my name is G, at least for all the people who can't pronounce my name. In reality, I'm called Geert and it's just easier, right? I mean, I don't I don't listen that well to people pronouncing my name in a way that I can really not understand. So, yeah, I go by G and I'm from the Netherlands. I work international. I help business owners and management teams to grow as leaders and to basically manage the growth of their company. So how did you how did you come to this point? I mean, I don't think you were walked out of the womb or like, I know how to help companies grow. I know how to help leaders lead. So how did you how did you sort of step into this or maybe did maybe did grow? It came out of as a child. You said I'm going to teach people how to succeed. Well, actually, when I was very, very little, I watched a show called Family Ties. And there was this guy named Alex Keaton and he was like he wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I always thought, oh, that's interesting. But to be honest, I was always too scared to become an entrepreneur. And I started around I studied law and, you know, I worked in law for about three and a half years. And I really, you know, I really didn't like the profession that much. It was very black and white. You could either do your job really well, but people really didn't appreciate the beauty of the law, the contracts that you made. Or, well, if you're not that good, people actually couldn't see it. And I was always busy in yeah, in my in the offices where I worked as an employee saying, how can we do this better? How can we do this with automation? And I think that's where a little bit of the love for information technology already surfaced. So at one point I just said, OK, you know, I'll finish a postdoc education I was doing, but I'm going to find something else. And I basically said bye bye. Everybody told told me, gee, you're crazy. Why are you going away? You could make a lot of money and said, yeah. But, you know, when I'm 65, I don't want to regret the things that I didn't do. So I quit my job and I made my first big jump. And I was really scared because I didn't have anything new lined up. But I went anyway. So when you made that big jump, you didn't have anything lined up. So you just knew that you didn't want to do law at that point? Yeah, I really thought there needs to be something else. And I made a jump and and it was pretty scary because I had a good income. And I was on my way to, you know, even more. And people said, actually, you know, you're amazing at what you do. Why are you jumping? And I just followed my passion basically for the first time actually in my career. And so where did that lead you to? You said, OK, I know this isn't my passion. How did you find your passion and move in that direction? Well, basically, I started to think, OK, so what do I know? Well, I know law. And what do I like? Well, like information technology. And I happened to stumble on an ad for a job, which was basically me being the product owner or the inventor of a software program for my old profession. And I started to work in a publishing company. And I was there for around two months and I gave them the advice. Well, either you spend a lot more money and we're going to do this well or you shouldn't do it. Well, they told me, well, gee, this is the best advice that we got in years. And I'm sorry, but we're not going to do it. So I found myself out of a job again. Sometimes honesty does that. But otherwise you would have gone through all of that stuff and then you probably maybe you would end up in the same situation just further down the road. It's one of those that then they spend all their money and they say, gosh, why didn't you tell us months ago that this was not going to work if you knew that? So so now you get to jump again. Well, I guess you're pushed this time a little bit. Yeah, but but you have your integrity. So you're like, hey, I was honest. I told them the truth. I did my job. They wanted me to tell them, you know, help them build this. And I told them, hey, you may not want to. So now we're now that you've and now you've got a little bit of a taste of something else. So now how did that progress? Where did you go from there? So then, you know, there was this department within the publishing company and they were always at the forefront. It's always like talking to their customers, top 50 legal and tax firms. And so the customers, they had wishes. And at the same time, we had developers and there were always new ideas. This is triangle. And I became somewhat what they call the business developer or I would say product owner because it wasn't really sales. But basically, I started to work in a department, so I ended up staying in the publishing firm and I ended up staying there for about 10 years. And my role was basically to invent new stuff, talk to customers, say, what do you want? And that's the time that we still had CD-ROMs, right? And they migrated to intranets. And I think your listeners might appreciate it, right? Being developers. And I basically sat next to the customer, really listened well, talked to the developers saying, hey, guys, can we create this? And sometimes I had my own ideas and basically we saw if we could actually make it happen. And that's what I did for a long time. And even to the point where, you know, years ago, I thought, well, e-learning, you know, I think that's going to be big. And I talked to the publishers and I became somewhat of a program manager across business units and try to basically create e-learning products when it was not hip and happening. But that was my job, right? Developing, well, not developing, but developing ideas so I can talk to developers, if you will. That's really interesting because you said you were sort of scared, I guess, I know scared off somewhere, but you liked entrepreneurialism as a child. You liked Alex Keaton. You said, I like this. And yet it sounds like that's really what you ended up with. I mean, when you're sitting down with a customer like that and you're helping them customize a solution, it's not that far off. I mean, granted, you're not throwing money out and building a company at that point. But I think the key thing of finding a problem, finding a good solution for it and then communicating that to somebody, you've got like the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship right there. So then now I'm really interested. So now, you know, moving on in your career, where did you progress to next? Well, you know, I always wanted to become a real entrepreneur and, you know, do stuff for myself because I always had these crazy ideas and wild ideas. And again, somewhere on an island, I thought, OK, you know, I'm super scared. And I knew they were reorganizing the whole company. And I said, you know, this is the time I need to go. So I raised my hands. I said, can you please fire me in the hope that they would give me like a big bag of money because they needed to get rid of people? And they said, no, we're sorry. We love your DNA. If you want to go, go. But we're not going to fire you. So at the end of the day, I said, OK, you know, and I was super scared because, you know, entrepreneurship, I didn't know how to do it, was scared what would happen. But I said, OK, you know, I'm going to jump anyway. And that was the second big jump I took in my career. It's like, OK, here goes nothing. And I stepped and basically jumped into entrepreneurship. So did you have when you took this job, did you have sort of like a driving thought or goal or think product that was this you got to a point like, hey, I got to go do this? No, I didn't have anything. I just had a few ideas and crazy ideas. Also ideas that maybe didn't resonate as much with me. But I had one idea. I said, hey, we have all these gardens where we live and I don't know anything about it. Why don't we why don't we create an app, something that you are in your garden tells you exactly what to do and when. And I had this gardener at the time and I asked him, hey, would you would you be, you know, helping me create this app? Well, soon enough, you know, it was it was I was starting up. So I made I basically always say I made all the all the mistakes you can basically make when you when you start up. We went from an app to a website. It was Gold Royce Garden Tips where you could select the flowers in your garden. And then at the right moment in time, you will get professional video advice from the gardener and only cater to the flowers and the plants that you had in your garden. And I basically sat next to a developer, had him build the whole portal because that's what I know how to do. Right. I did that in the in the publishing firm. And yeah, we basically created the website. I learned myself how to make videos, how to edit. And I was there in the rain in the sun creating videos, editing, learning after effects, learning, learning, learning Premiere Pro, audition, all that good stuff with a camera. And, you know, that was the beginning of my startup days, so to speak. So you were and so when you did this start, that was it was all you basically. I mean, you had your gardener expert, but basically you were doing, you know, chief cook and bottle washers, they say all of the work was really fell back on you. Yes, I was everything and well together with him. I mean, I didn't know anything about gardening and I know a little bit more because I watched all the clips and I edited all the clips. But still, I know gardening is not not really my thing that the media and the concept of building something scalable where you build it once and you can sell it. That's and in the end, what we ended up doing is, is, is we created a white label where garden websites could put their header and the footer underneath and call it their garden tips and embedded and use it in their website. And there were a lot of things, but also made a lot of mistakes along the way. So there is let's call this episode in my career, an expensive learning. There are there are plenty of those, but that's where that gives you an opportunity then to allow people in the future to learn with less expenses, basically, and less expensive learning opportunity for them. Exactly. So you know, there's a lot of great ideas that you already had with that. The idea of being able to make it in a way that you could, you know, that you could white label and allow other people to reuse your content. Is that something that you had? Did you sort of develop that while you were building out this this that really this company or had you already had some of those ideas that you had been exposed to in the past? No, we started out thinking, Hey, this could be an app. Then the app and recognizing leaves, et cetera, was way too expensive and difficult. And then we went to the portal, the website that didn't go as fast as we wanted. And then we said, OK, so how can we pivot? Right. At that time, I didn't. Well, I started to get to know the lean startup. And I don't know if you're familiar or your listeners are familiar with it, where you where you basically say, what are my dangerous assumptions? And then have some hypothesis and do some tests. We basically build the thing and then figure it out. OK, we need to pivot. And right now, I wouldn't recommend any startup to do that. But, you know, at that time, that's how how I rolled. And that's why I say expensive education. And we started to pivot until we had some customers and, you know, the ball started rolling. But still, it didn't go as fast as I wanted to. I don't know that it ever does. It's one of those things sort of funny. And I guess I could you and I guess we'll move on to your your next jump or where you went from there. But I think that's it does seem like that's always the thing where you say, all right, I've got this I've got this product and everybody in the world needs it. It's going to make their life better. And then you get going and it's like, hey, why hasn't everybody already bought my product? It's always that that sort of that slow roll that you have to get to to get it built up. Yeah. And also, you know, with the with all the knowledge and all the education that I have right now, I would say, OK, if that's your assumption, what can you do to test and to see if your assumptions are actually true? Right. In the startup land, we always say, you know, fail fast in order to succeed soon. So in hindsight, there are a lot of lessons and it's I think it's really a graduate education. And I don't regret any day that I did it. But it's also good to get the learnings from the things that you know, well, that that that me and myself and maybe other people have so that your listeners and other people out there don't have to make the same mistake as I did and move on. Right. But it is important to test your most dangerous assumption if you are going to be an entrepreneur and to fail fast in order to succeed soon. And that's a yeah. And so I guess sort of as a pivot or a little bouncing off of that, how do you see in that situation, how do you see MVPs where, you know, minimal viable products working in with that whole idea of finding your your biggest dangers, your biggest risks and sort of tackling those first? Yeah, I think I think it's very important to make something that you can really test if your customers, you know, find out what they want and then really have your basic your your MVP and and see what's working and what's not. Because usually what we have in our minds is, you know, is different than the maybe our target audience has in our in their minds. And it's great to have something. But but you need to have something that is representative for what you're trying to build. So an MVP as low as you go. I think they always say if you're not a little bit hesitant to put it out there, you're you're too late. So, yeah, put it out there and see what you can learn and then quickly adjust and adopt. So going with your your professional your by the way, I do. I think I've always been one that with with any project that I first like to hit the risks first to just if not mitigate them to really understand them so that you know that because sometimes you you can't really. It's not until you get out there that you can really gauge it, but you can do. There's always some testing and things like that. There's some some ways that you can at least be comfortable with. This is the risk that I'm I'm getting into. So I know how big or small it is. And then, yeah, the customers are always going to be the ones that are going to be because they're buying it. If they don't buy it, then obviously there's a problem there. And I've always been one that feels like the sooner you can get feedback, the better, which is why when you start like you did when you start sitting next to your customer and understand their process or their problems and their pains, then you're already getting ahead on some of that because you're seeing that maybe there's ideas that you would have had. You know, entrepreneurial type ideas you would have had to solve their problem. You know, you're like, wait a minute, I know this. That's not going to work for them. That is something that's so I can just mark that off the list already. And so you're you're already I think if you're if you're doing it right like that, you're already eliminating options and sort of refining your solution even before you started when you're really spending that time to understand the problem and what what a solution needs to look like as far as like response times and usefulness and all of those other things. All of those other magical things that go into it that are hard to put metrics on, but they they drive that bottom line for sure. And that's exactly right. Right. We did, of course, talk to potential customers. But here's the thing. You're always biased for your own beliefs and especially in that time when you you know you didn't know what type of questions to ask in order to to to basically be very objective in what you what you're listening to and what you're what you're hearing. And I think it's super important to and then also be very creative. Sometimes we have this idea, oh, there needs to be a portal. Well, what if you just create a web page and you do a lot of concierge work behind the scenes. You don't have to have the whole database. You don't you don't have to have to build everything built like really a minimum just to prove to yourself that your dangerous assumptions are either right or wrong so that you can adjust. So I totally agree with you. Yeah, and I think that's I mean that goes down to the most minimal I guess of MVPs that I often talk about trying to build from a software point of view. It's just like a call a clickable demo that it's, it's almost a completely blank like dumb, we'll call it a dumb website that doesn't do much but it's just like we can walk them through and say if you click here, then this thing's going to look pop up that looks like this. If you click here, this thing's going to happen that will look like that. Just that very simple, very hard coded like it's almost like showing pictures to somebody say, okay, you're going to be in state A and then B and then C and then D. It is amazing how much that alone can give you feedback that is invaluable. It's things like, oh, wait a minute, I'm missing a step or I don't need this data or things like that that you have this big idea and once you get it into a customer's hand or I guess it's getting into their head a little bit and giving them something they can work with, then you get all kinds of insights and feedback on that. Like you said to help you understand, sometimes it's to understand, let you know what you don't know because there's things that until you get into it, you don't even know what question to ask but now you get that feedback. And I don't know how many times I've been in those situations where it's like, oh, wait a minute, I never even thought about that. Let's talk about that for a little bit. I need to ask you about how does that work or what is that facet of the solution? Yeah, correct. And, you know, it's even if you build something and you have to do some work in the back end, not building the whole database and stuff, but you basically you transfer things over because building, you don't have to do that for 100 customers, but if you do it for 10, you really get a good insight. So yeah, I totally agree. And that's, but I must say in that time, the reason why I actually made the decision to jump and become an entrepreneur was also because, you know, I was doing personal development. And at the personal development course, I basically must have enough courage to jump and that personal development will come back later in my career. What happened also is that when I was in the publishing firm, you might know the book, it's called Business Mobile Generation. It was being produced by a guy I knew and I connected that guy to what ended up being the Dutch publisher of that book. And because I sort of made that connection and I was, how do you say, a little bit involved in it in the sense that there was this hub, you could participate. Well, I didn't do much, to be honest, but because I did, I got introduced in the startup ecosystem in the Netherlands and I became what they called a mentor in startup accelerators, right? Where they asked a bunch of people, they select a bunch of startups and then there's this ecosystem of mentors who voluntarily help startups. Well, I had a whole thing, by the way, I of course did also some things right. So I did some things right. I had knowledge about startups and I had this innovation knowledge that I had in the big corporate. And so they asked me to become a mentor there and I started to help startups. And at that time, there was their presentation coach that helped startups to get funding and I started to work with him. And after a year or so I started to do that separately as well. So I started to train and help startup owners to help them to get funding basically. So now something curious happened. The communication knowledge from helping people to present to get funding, the personal development knowledge, the innovation knowledge from a corporate perspective and the innovation knowledge from a startup perspective came together and more and more. First startup owners and founders and then scale ups and then bigger corporate started to ask, Hey, gee, can't we talk? I say, yeah, sure, we can talk. And that's basically how the whole journey started for me being. Well, let's say a strategist for management teams and owners and founders, but because that's that's basically where that happened. And more and more people wanted to have that conversation. And that's how I now help people all over the world through the power of zoom. And we have conversations about where they are in their business. And yeah, basically with the legal background or let's say the legal way of thinking, because I'm really dangerous. I'm really dangerous in that sense. I don't know anything really, but I have that mind and I have that personal development type of questions. And if it's around your beliefs or really we're talking about strategies on how to grow. And that's basically how it all came together. But I never set out, as you said, to well to become a strategist or a sparing partner for management teams and and owners, if you will. So was that did all of this grow out of that that big jump into entrepreneurship or was there another jump there that we we haven't talked about yet? Well, I think it's the combination of jumps. It's the jump from from from legal to, you know, I want to do something else than the jump to entrepreneurship. And then the combination of all those. Well, five things really the legal background, the innovation background, the startup background, the communication background, and then more and more people through conversations because I started to mentor these startups and became a business coach for them. And then, of course, I did training, you know, all over the world with with big names and and yeah, it started to morph into something that I couldn't have dreamt up when when I was 18 or something. That's that's that's always a good part of a story when you you start out saying, OK, I just wanted to do this thing. I didn't expect it to get crazy big like it did. And yet it did. You know, and yet that's like things fell into place. And I think a lot of that happens when you when you know you're when you're in the right place, when you are in a doing a job that is what you were supposed to do, because you're you're good at it. You're happy at it. You're that enthusiasm spills over to others. And then it just sort of helps you even in the in the tough spots. It allows you to continue to move forward in that progress in that career that that business. Yeah, correct. And and basically, I love I mean, the tagline of my company is love, create, innovate. So I love to help people who want to grow, who know there is a next level. And sometimes, you know, we're stuck. Sometimes we need that question or that perspective and saying, hey, how are we doing this or something we're talking to? We know we're working with two or three people in our company, and it's it's not going as we planned. And and then sometimes, you know, having systems or strategies and sometimes just a conversation can give you a different perspective and get you over that obstacle. Because sometimes it's hard to as well as they say, you can't see the label from within sight the jar. And so my job basically is to help teams grow or to manage growth, because sometimes we don't want to grow. We just want to get more free time and where we're in that business and we're basically like operators. So how do we get to get a business that operates like a machine and we actually get some free time and we don't have to put the fire extinguisher and go to everything and think why can't they do anything themselves? Right. So that's my job, help you to create a machine and to be basically not be the operator, but more of the owner. What are some steps that a business owner can take to do that, particularly when you think about that, like for yourself, you're sort of you're essentially a, you know, what they call a solopreneur. You start something where it's just you, it's a side hustle or something like that that grows and it's always been you. And I would assume that's a lot of what you're going to see is where you see a company that's just, they get to that point, they realize I can't, I can only put out so many fires at a time. I can only do so much. Like I want to grow. So what are maybe some steps or how do you step into that and say, okay, let's look at how we can help you get from where you are to maybe whatever it is that your vision is. Well, I think that's the, it starts there, right? It starts really with your vision and it starts with, you know, where do I want to be in 10 years in five years and then working backwards. And then I think there are three really big components, if you will. First is like the systems. How are we going to organize it? Then basically your mindset, your performance. How do you perform, but how also do you communicate with others? And then how do you attract the right people around you? Because basically, well, everybody wants a big team, but if you don't have the turn-off to do that, so how do you attract the clients, your partners and your team to not only get to you but stick with you? Well, there are two components there. It's okay. If you have your team, how do I organize it in a right way? How do we have our management team meetings? And basically your team doesn't have to be a fixed set of people. It can also be contractors. But how do you make it so that, yes, you can have them do the work, but you're not abdicating, but you're really delegating and you're still remaining in control. On the other side is, okay, I can only do that if there is enough revenue, there's enough turnover, and then we're actually making a profit, right? So there are a lot of, how do you say it, buttons to push or to turn in order to make that whole system work. And to be frank, every company, every situation is a bit different. The principles are the same. So I don't have to know development. I don't have to know, let's say, I don't know, pharmaceuticals or the type of business. You're the expert. So the principles I bring are the same, but we have to figure out what's the stumbling block for you. For some it might be, hey, I have this great idea, but not a lot of people know about it. Well, then if you start creating a team, you start maybe burning money. For others, it's like, hey, I have some money. We need that team because I'm burning up myself. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that's almost always the challenge with almost anything in life is it seems like either you've got a lot of money and you can pay other people to get more time or you have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of money. So you burn your own time. It seems like what you want to have is a lot of money and a lot of time. That just doesn't happen itself. That's what we're almost always working towards. And that seems like a great place to pause. We will come back for part two. I don't think I over promised. He's a great guy, great conversation, a lot of interesting background and little nuggets there and suggestions and point of view of how to succeed and improve performance. Hopefully you're taking notes. Hopefully you are able to absorb that, able to work with it, integrate it a little bit. And then we're going to come back next episode. Next episode, we're going to get even more of that. I think you're going to find once again, this is going to be another one that you're going to take a lot of notes. And it's one of those I think that will spark some thoughts. It will get you thinking maybe a little bit differently, maybe a little more strategically than you have been before. So very much worth the time. And of course, she's just an interesting guy to talk to. That being said, we'll pause for now. Like I said, we'll let you get out there and do some absorption of what you've covered so far. But always, as always, go out there and have yourself a drink. And I'll see you next time. Bye. Have a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor Podcast. 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