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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you, who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

The Organized Energized Podcast is produced for your enjoy. And show notes are found at thepodcast.organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show.

Hi everyone and welcome to the Organized and Energized Podcast. Today we're gonna talk about how do you craft your business in today's world. Cesar Hasselmann is an author, a mentor, a coach, and a business consultant. And after helping multinational and international company's adjust and succeed in their projects, he began to branch out and help small to medium businesses achieved success and he founded the AMH Consultancy, AMH Consultancy. He delivers a roadmap for growth, strategic planning, and hands-on implementation plan and support. So we're gonna talk to Cesar because he's passionate about identifying and understanding your environment to help you create a process that works for you. He's my kind of guy, so let's jump into it and talk to Cesar. Hi everyone. I am back and I have a very special guest. We're gonna talk about how to make your business grow with Cesar Hasselmann, and he is a pro, he's been doing it internationally with multi-billion dollar corporations, and now he's bringing it down to the level that we're on enterprising entrepreneurs, small businesses, and we're gonna get some information from Cesar on how to do it. So welcome to the show.

[00:02:00] Cesar Hasselmann: Thank you very much Kathi. Thank you for inviting me in, it's my pleasure.

[00:02:05] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. So let's talk about your background. I know you were sky high with some huge corporations. How did you get to that and why have you decided now to tone down into talking to regular folks like us?

[00:02:21] Cesar Hasselmann: No, actually I, my first business started when I was 13 and since then I was growing different ways until we have a big crash for the president in my country who broke in the whole industry and people in 1997, something like that. And then we need to start over again from the start. So from that time, I start to work with a corporation that they have marketing company. They have a little company inside them, but little is 20 to $30 million turnover when you talk about big marketing companies, right? And then in some stage, I got sick of that and I say, oh, what? I love that little business. Nobody paying attention to that. I will open something similar and try to succeed. In the meantime they have a big conflict. I have made a deal with industry to be able to work inside the industry. They have seven different industries. They have a bank and I say, Hey, can I be your principal supplier for subsystem SAP systems? And from here I can grow. And we have made a deal. I start work with them. So from three people working for me, I start to go to the market and suddenly 18 months to two 20. 5 28 a month, we have 120 employees company because we just switched start to win so many accounts. And of course, because the business partner from that business, they come on board too because they were broken relationship with the other group. And once they realized what I was doing it, they asked if they would like if they, if I can have them as a business partner. And for me it was just a jump of 10.

So it's a mix of doing the right thing, knowing what you're doing, plus opportunity, if you're ready for them you get there. And then in that situation, I have one, one focus in my way to grow was I want to have the biggest names on each valuable industry. Okay and then if I find one of them, I will became reference in my market. Simple as and that's what really happened. So I got big account. I was working behind the scenes for some marketing companies like Ogilvy. I used to win clients for them behind the scenes because on that stage we, we did a lot of our main work was S A P C. So everything that was after subsystem, but we used to do B2B, B2C marketing in institutional communication for big companies, corporations online, and the marketing company on that stage, they don't, they was not aware how to translate the offline marketing to online marketing, and that where my company was in the middle of it. So I became reference of being a strategist for online. So I used to get what they're doing offline and transmute and add value for that to became a online, and the university's online was starting, LMS tools was starting. So we start to get all those things and we just use those tools in a good way. And we start to give all the bigger companies, corporations, their own university to teach and train the, their own clients we call internal clients.

And then once that arrived, I was working between Marketing, HR, IT, and Sales. And when you arrive in that position, a company that we can give solution for those four key stakeholders, you never leave. They always gonna love you. Some, sometimes one of them gonna hate you because you need to deliver projects. You need to tell them the truth. But because the other three still love you, you keep yourself until the other one love you again. And then that's the way I arrive in that level. And until the day that I was too busy, the price was arriving. And I look around, my professional life was good, but my personal life, I have a six month year old kid that I just spent two weeks with him. I have four offices and one international office trade and 120 employees. So was a 80 hours plus job. And I just look around. I could not manage my company anymore. It's a lot of things in between. We grow too fast, so it's a lot of problems that happened. So I need to fix so many things for the last two years that I was there. So I was not enjoying as much until the day that I said the cruise is arriving, the crisis arriving. We need to cut the laws from the big brains who give us awards and visibility. We cut those guys out and just keep the good clients who pay the bill because we can keep the same profit in our pocket while the client's coming. And so the banks and the group didn't allow me to do it because in that stage was the second biggest one in South America. Then I said it is not my kid anymore. I cannot, it's not my business anymore. So I choose to leave and stay one year sabbatting in Australia. and if you come to Australia for more than 60 days, prepare yourself. You are never gonna leave.

[00:07:10] Kathi Burns: That's what you were saying at the beginning. I like a couple takeaways that I got from that story is I love the fact that you said, let me get the top one in this one, the top one in this one, the top one in this one. Because I think as entrepreneurs, if we set our sights, I've learned a lot. You take the top 100 influential people that you really want to get to know and you make that list. And then you start plugging on that list of who can I meet and who knows who. And that way you to become influential, which your case in point that it worked that way. So yes, that's a fantastic story. So when you decided to downsize what did you do? Did you close your offices and just let go of your staff? Or how did that work when you decided Enough is enough? I don't have a life. I'm working too much. I can't handle it all. I have a six, it was a six month old right. A six month old baby.

[00:07:59] Cesar Hasselmann: Yeah, no. Oh yeah. Six month old baby today. He's 15 years old. Which is the joy of my life. Now it's to arrive in that level. It's a lot of political games you need to face and you need to understand that no matter what you do, you cannot win. It's a lot of histories that, that people create in that stage of a company to take benefit for themselves. And it, it's a lot of in a group of, that was an industry family group. And the people who make the deal with me was the top dog. So the guys who is the boss of the family, so is the kind of patriarch, the god of the family. And the rest of the whole family hates them because they believe they take too much out of the table. So I was facing things in college that I was not happy with and histories that everyone that works in a big company understand the political game you need to go through. And then that's the reason why I said, you know what, this is gonna take me 10, 10 years off my life if I try to face it up or fight for it. While I was in Australia, I just arrived and realized that whatever I have in here, nobody can steal. And because I already build more than 10 business before I arrive in Australia, I made a deal with my solicitor and say, Hey mate. It's 50/50. You look after that. I don't want this to bother me anymore. I want my share of this and I don't wanna talk about it. If you come to talk to me about it, your deals out of the table. I pay you just your fees. If you resolve the problem and get something for us, then that's us. You became a business partner, but I will start my life again. And that's what I have done.

[00:09:39] Kathi Burns: Excellent. So now I know that you're working with small businesses and if you had, I think a lot of people that are listening on this podcast are perhaps looking at not leaving a large company that they built, but actually leaving a large company that they didn't build so that they can start building their own company. We do have the great exodus and the great resignation now. A lot of listeners at the show I know are reinventing themselves, so what piece of advice would you give someone that's starting, they're gonna jump outta corporate, jump into becoming their own entrepreneur. What would you have to say to, or what would you think would be their first, second, third steps or what would you recommend?

[00:10:16] Cesar Hasselmann: Okay. I don't know if everyone gonna understand what I'm saying. But if you do not, please jump on my Instagram or Linkedin, I'll be happy to answer. But business model, is a word that is, is a title or whatever you'd like to call that a lot of people use in not the properly way. And we don't teach we cannot have this teacher in universities or courses business model. It's what gives you the platform to work from and the vision to go to, okay. And yesterday I was talking to a guy he gonna turn 60 years in two weeks time. He has a cycle of good momentum in his business in different times, and he always arrive in a place that his business just all over. And I was talking to him, it was very easy for me because I'm doing this for many years now. It's, it is very, I know what his gap is, his business. His business model is not attached to his solutions. So doesn't matter. And then with his way to think and his way to do things. So he has a beautiful structure that I can see going so further away if he just change a way to deal with the industry.

He's not a box guy. He's not a guy that's gonna do the same thing as everybody else because he doesn't wanna be a leader. But he has a lot of knowledge and he's ripping you and he can be a business owner. And then, and he just come with these waves of helping people and be being the leader for awhile and then lose them, because he doesn't have that business model properly set up for his way to do things in the way that he likes to do things. So with the time you lose what you build with momentum, because momentum just can take you that far. If you keep having that power and if you don't have love of passion and desire behind that power goes away. And suddenly everything fell down.

[00:12:14] Kathi Burns: Could I ask you a quick question around that? So you're saying that I, and I think that this is true, a lot of entrepreneurs start because they have an expertise in something. And I did this way back when I started 19 years ago. I'd give all the information away. I'd give it, give this, give me all my knowledge away, right? But not really provide the platform to give them a solution as such, I'm not really selling a solution. I'm selling education. Is that what you're speaking of?

[00:12:39] Cesar Hasselmann: Kind of, yeah. So at the end of the not leadership point of view, yes. That's what the others take. They take your knowledge, they take your know how, but if you're trying to build something that could become a franchise, they actually, you've, you are gonna perceive as they stealing from you, but they're not stealing from you. Your business model is wrong. You do education model in a thing that's supposed to be a leadership model . So the business platform that you start from was wrong.

[00:13:08] Kathi Burns: Okay. So a solution model. Give me, gimme a for instance of a solution model so that I can wrap my head around this.

[00:13:17] Cesar Hasselmann: Okay, so you need to understand your limitation, what you need to have to be able to deliver you what you love to do, right? And then from those limitations, you say, okay, I'm very good to talk to people and sell and bring people on board, but I'm not as good to keep them consistent, to give them consistency and leadership. So you need to find someone to do that. You need to pay someone to do that, or you need to find a business partner. The problem in, if you think about the business model, you have three options you can try to do yourself and then with some time you're gonna get tired, you're gonna lose it because you're not gonna have that power to keep doing it. You can contractor manager to became the leader that you don't wanna be, but then in five years time, in five years time, he arrived to look around and say, Hey. I have everything here that person's not a leader. Why? I'm still in under wage. I'm gonna open my own thing. Make sense? So instead, people leaving won't leave and take everyone. And then you have this smart choice. Bring a business partnership, put a very solid agreement on that. Then you share knowledge and make that person do this job. So this is what I call business model. So you need to understand that, but it's hard for you to understand the big picture if you don't have the knowledge in business to be able to predict the future. And that's the reason why you need people who has knowledge to come down and say, Hey, this is the way you love to work. This is what you got. This is the information from your business, this is the history that you have. Okay? With those things together, What you're doing is quite not what you supposed to do. You're supposed to do this because based on that, you're gonna arrive in a better place in your life, but also you're gonna, you're gonna have a better business, right? That's what they do.

[00:15:05] Kathi Burns: Okay. Excellent. So it's like finding out what they want long term and then building the business based on, I love the fact that you said the leader, the guy didn't wanna be a leader. He wanted to be an information output device. So he wanted to just give his information to the world and someone had to lead. And I've seen that happen over and over where the leader finally is I'm doing it all. I'm the front man or the front girl, so I'm just gonna go do it on my own. And that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs are in fear of, quite honestly. So I know you have a book and you started talking a little bit about it. So talk to us about your book, because I know that it is designed for small business owners.

That's right.

[00:15:43] Cesar Hasselmann: Because of those ups and downs in business, you have some situations emotional fight, that as an interpreter business owner, you fight them by yourself. So you, it is a lonely trip. You don't have many people to share, and sometimes you don't wanna share with people that you love because you don't wanna show weakness or you don't wanna make them worry because you are the responsible for the income of the house. Or you just feel by your ego that you feel that's too much for you to handle whatever is the reason why. What I have done is every single business they have what I call, the intersection base. So we have the ups and downs if you think about the graphic, you have the ups and downs, but if you draw a line in the middle of your ups and downs, you already have a potential to create a platform to work from. If you understand the reason why the ups and downs happen, and that's what I call cycles, right? So business cycles. Life cycles, personal life cycles, friendship cycles, family expectation, those things, because these altogether, it's what put pressure on us in how to live our life. So the book is actually break that down in pieces to show that beside your Catholic, or you have a master degree or you are CEO.

If you are a human being first, and doesn't matter which color you are, which religion you have, we are made in bonds and muscles, nerves and the soul. And if we could understand that from the start and start to come from there, to be able to understand our cycles, our life cycles, and what people expect from us and what we make them expect from us, and we can take that aside and then you start to organize. Okay that's part of that I need to get it clear to be able to stop, to feel shame, to be able to stop, to make decisions based in feelings that not gonna get me through. So the book approach is more, more or less like that. And we go through business situation, we go to personal situation, we go to industry situation. Because every single business they have the cycle. If you do things that you sell more at summer. At summer will be probably almost 60, 70% of your revenue for the year. So you need to understand that if you don't have more six month cash flow while the summer finish, you might gonna finish the year counting the coins and this happened for 10 years and you didn't learn from it. So understand, that's normal. Don't get emotional for that. Understand your numbers, then you are not gonna be counting the coins anymore because every year that's happening for 10 years. Why you're gonna suffer every year at the end of the year.

[00:18:24] Kathi Burns: Because you haven't taken the time to stop and see what it is. So I love that. Now if you had to tell your younger, you're 18 and you're looking at yourself now, what would your younger self tell you right now, what would you tell? I'm sorry I did that backwards. What would you, okay, let's do it again. What would you tell your 18 year old self right now to guide yourself onto a little bit easier journey? Oh, there he goes with the popcorn.

[00:18:57] Cesar Hasselmann: I will tell to listen to more of things that's calling your attention. Don't let those things pass by because you're too busy. Those things. They actually cost me 20 million in my company because I was seeing things. Those things was giving me the indication that what was going on. And I was not paying attention because I was too busy on the day to day. So listen to your guts. Is the thing that I'm trying to say. With more intention. Don't let those little things that bother you a bit go away because you're too busy is the reason why they're there.

[00:19:34] Kathi Burns: Yeah. I call it being stuck in busyness. We're so busy doing the busyness stuff that we're not really looking around us or listening to our intuition or listening to cues from other people. We're just not listening because we're just like, we're busy. We're doing our stuff. , that's. That's really good advice. Absolutely. So when you have a success, Cesar, now that you're, oh, you're gonna have your book come out, when's it gonna be out?

[00:19:56] Cesar Hasselmann: In two weeks time, the publisher just send me the whole package approved for printing yesterday. So I believe in two weeks time I'm gonna start to have the printing.

[00:20:05] Kathi Burns: Okay, gang. So we're now filming in March, and this interview will be out after he's published. So what I wanna ask you, Cesar, is how are you gonna celebrate when your book is released? What's gonna be your celebration?

[00:20:18] Cesar Hasselmann: So yeah, if you wanna know that, I need to tell you more, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna have the first printing in my birthday on 22nd of March, and I have a social project that's my own social project, Indonesia, for the last 11 years. And I'm going there on the, I believe 9th of April. And I'll celebrate my book, my birthday with my social project.

[00:20:42] Kathi Burns: Excellent. That's fantastic. I'm glad that you had it right there, knowing what you're gonna do. This is my year of asking everyone on the podcast how they celebrate because I think celebration is so very important and a lot of people don't know. I didn't know how to celebrate actually when I launched my first book, I'm just like, okay, now I have to market. And I didn't even stop to say, I published my first book. That was just silly. I love that you have a plan about your in. So tell me about what you're doing in Indonesia.

[00:21:11] Cesar Hasselmann: Oh yeah. I have a social project that we take plastics of out of the ocean. It's a small, it's a small community of 2000 people in group book. It was a place that was too far away for the console to be able to take the beans out of there. So I just embraced their problems. I was going there 11, 12 years ago, and I have sixth surfboard. I was surfing. We have a full moon party on a at the beach, and I saw all those plastics and I could not enjoy the party. I, and I asked the guy who was organizing the party say, Hey, what do you think how second people would like to collect a pile? And then I made a score. Big square on the stand and say if you guys put it plastics on those squares, each square, that full of plastic, you guys gonna win one, one surfboard per square. And I have six. I just need one. So I have done five squares and the party became the plastic taking out of the ocean. And since then I start to go there. This start to get bigger and bigger. Today we educate the school is the 250 kids there 32 teachers, and we take the plastic out of the ocean every quarter.

[00:22:27] Kathi Burns: That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. There's too much, there's too much riff raff floating around in the big blue, that's for sure. What an amazing thing. Thank you for doing that. I so appreciate that work, and I'm glad that you're gonna tie it in with the trip and celebration your book and all that. So happy birthday early. I love that. Okay. You've been in business a long time. What's your favorite organizing hack or organizing system that you use to keep your life streamline and simplified. Is there anything that you love?

[00:22:59] Cesar Hasselmann: Yeah I have developed some stuff for myself that I do every November, December for the whole year. And if you're talking about it or a app I use pipe drive. And I customized pipe drive for me. So I put it telemarket on the pipe drive. I record all the calls in and out. I have flex for the clients. I have the cycle of the deliveries from my clients in the stage that they have. And all divided there cause I customize, I spend a good money in the pipe drive to be able to customize and have people prospecting from there. I have clients when they call my mobile, they go directly to there. So I have recorded all the calls. If I need to go back and have a look on those, my clients they receive a documentation when we started that I use the system and that's the way it works. So every single email, phone calls, text message or media communication from me and my clients, they go for the same place. So if I'm popping up my client's name, everything goes there together. Enough history. Yeah. So that's my five drive. But they doesn't come like this. You actually need to customize for yourself, but you don't need to spend money to make that a simple tool for you anyway. But before that, I have created my own little thing in the way that I like to work, that I do between October to November. So what I do is I break down my whole year. Everything that I believe that I achieve and I did it right on that year and everything that was wrong and I break down my big picture and I break down in weeks. First of all, I break down in, in semesters, trimesters, month, weeks. And then from that, I don't do daily. I believe that's, I believe we need to have a room for you to be able to do things. And at the same time, the weeks, they're not kind strict. So I do it a monthly, which I break down in week, and if that takes four weeks, I'm not upset with it.

But what I have also is every quarter, I don't know if you notice, we have every quarter, we have one month that has five weeks. So that week is mine. I don't sell. I don't trade. That's mine. It's one week that I take off.

[00:25:10] Kathi Burns: Ooh, I love that. I never considered that. Every month it has five weeks we take off. I might have to implement that one.

[00:25:19] Cesar Hasselmann: So what's happened is the, is a quarter game. I play a game with myself of a quarter achievement and that quarter gave me the right for that week ago overseas. And that's the week that I do my social project, by the way, because I quarter go away. But then I start to get fancy because I discover that if I work until Wednesday night, people don't feel that I was going away. Because I still in them brain on that week. And then if I take the next week off, which is my fifth week, this give me 10 to 12 days. So if I go overseas at the night of Wednesday, I wake up at the place that I would like to be, and then I have two days to slow down, keep talking to my team, but I'm already there. And doesn't matter what's happened. If you go away, you're gonna spend the first two days thinking about what you left behind anyway. I use that week of work internationally already with my team, right? So then the next week I'm off and I come back on a Saturday to give me time to spend on Sunday, organizing my life, getting time zoned properly, and have time enough to wake up properly on a Monday. So when I visit my clients, when I'm back at my office, people don't realize that I spend 10 days off because was in the middle of the week. Make sense?

[00:26:38] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. And I always thought if, yeah, if you're gonna travel far away, I always recommend that people take 12 to 13 days, always, because you need three days to get into it and you need two days to get out of it. And then you have that seven days in the middle where you can actually be there present.

[00:26:57] Cesar Hasselmann: Enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. So I do that and I teach all my clients to do the same actually. Yeah. I have a funny history here. I have a client that we came from $900,000. He bought it his parents out. And today, I believe next month after we are doing the exhibition this month, he'll be 15 million company in seven years and he's only 37. And the first question he asked me when we were engaging about this was, when can I have five month holiday ? And I look at him and say, fuck, do I take this guy on or not? I say, but if he's crazy enough to ask me that, and he's blank enough to tell me the truth, I cannot accept the challenge. But anyway, the last four years he always have at least 40 days, 30 days free and in the, in, in the way that I built his business with him. But yeah, but last year was four month working from Canada, and his business in Australia. Fantastic. It's part of, it's part of not just the way that I live, but also the way that my clients start to live after we got a good time together.

[00:28:04] Kathi Burns: I love it. Yeah, that's great because that's what people want is they want time away. . They wanna feel like they're not bogged down by their business, and the more successful their business becomes the more it turns into a ball and chain, unless it's planned properly in advance. So I love the idea, I love this idea. Five weeks in a month, I'm gonna start looking at the months out of the five weeks and start plotting and planning myself for that. Why not ?

[00:28:26] Cesar Hasselmann: You deserve it. Especially I believe in your country, you pay things monthly, right? In Australia we pay weekly. In your country, we'll make much more sense for you because all the costs that you have for the month is already cover. In, in, in Australia, we take that week, but we still have the heat for the payments . Ah. But in, in my cycle, this, I don't count with that because if not make enough money that you can go away at least one, one week every month every quarter, then yeah, you're not doing the right job. And the other thing that you just have said is people has illusion in entrepreneurs, they have illusion to build a business. To have a job, is the illusion, is the trap not illusion? It's the trap. It's the trap of the interpret new trap. If you can say you build a business based on passion or need or opportunity. Those are the three reasons why you start something as an entrepreneur. And then if it is an opportunity, you might not qualify to keep managing that in the right way to grow. If it's passion, you might not qualify to look for your profit and the long term vision, opportunity, passion, and need if it's a need. No matter what, we might, you might gonna succeed more than the others because you are gonna be killing every day to try to survive. So if you mix them up in, in a proper way, you can have a perfect business.

[00:29:48] Kathi Burns: Wow. That's a gold nugget right there. Yeah, you're giving gold. Cesar, I know you have, speaking of giving gold, I know you have something that people can download or access to you, and I'm gonna put the link in the show notes, but why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is that you're offering the audience here?

[00:30:06] Cesar Hasselmann: Okay. I believe we have put it content that wrap up reports from the book. And this is more explanation. How can you really get something sorted to understand the way you make actions or you make your choices to make decisions for the day? I believe you're gonna have a little sheet about it that you can go through and just reflect about it.

[00:30:27] Kathi Burns: Beautiful. Beautiful. So we'll put the link below and it's been really interesting to talk to someone who's gone really big, too small to now, right into the perfect lifestyle that you want, and the fact that you've figured out a way to give back. With without effort, without any stress. And it's also tied into celebration. I love what you're doing for the ocean, so I just appreciate you being on the show. I think we've learned a lot. I know I've learned a lot from you and I. Thank you, Cesar. You have a fabulous time in Indonesia. Happy birthday early from the thank you late from the audience and we look forward to seeing what you're doing over there in Indonesia too. Maybe if you want to put a link, if there's anything that, that we can do on our end, we can also put a link to your project there.

[00:31:12] Cesar Hasselmann: Oh, that's good. Yes, I do have a link on at save the Ocean 2020. Ah on ins on Instagram, you're gonna see a bit what we do there, but I do not promote this. It's a kind of thing that I do from my heart. I actually took me 10 years to tell people that I do this. Yeah it's completely out of pocket thing, so I don't have a entity that I have created for that passion and investment in the, in, in that area. I fell in love with them and it's just, they just extended family that I have.

[00:31:46] Kathi Burns: That's fantastic. Yeah. Keep up the good work and hopefully we our cross our cross will pass. Our paths will cross sometime soon in the future. Thank you, Cesar. I appreciate it.

[00:31:57] Cesar Hasselmann: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:31:58] Kathi Burns: Okay. Signing off for now, gang. We will see you next week.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.