"Fear" with Simon Goldschmidt

So we're back with another episode of Conversations, and today I have Simon Goldsmith with me. Goldsmith, I kind of butchered that, I'm sorry. Simon Goldsmith, how are you?

I'm good, thanks. Excited to, to be part of this.

So Simon and I got to meet each other some years ago, I think over LinkedIn, and have had many walks around a local lake here. And before we get started, I'll let Simon introduce himself. But today's topic is fear, and so we're going to try and talk a little bit about that in the context of professional life and personal life and whatever else comes up. But Simon, why don't you tell the people that are watching this who you are and, and where you're from? Cool.

So thanks a lot, um, and I'm happy to be part of this exciting and very relevant topic, I think. for everyone at any point of time. But my background, I'm Danish, I'm a father of 2, I grew up in Denmark, and I think my childhood, younger time was predominantly spent on soccer, and that became competitive and professional sports. And I think in that journey, you'll learn a lot in a context of playing games, basically, that prepares you really well for more professional, a different professional career later in time, but also just life in general. And I use that, and, you know, I hate when I meet people that are like, so who are you? And I'm an old football or soccer player, and then you identify yourself with that. So I try not to do that. However, there are things that would always bring me back to that time because that's where you create social bonds, you learn to compete, you learn the discipline of practice and becoming better and functioning in social interactions and actually have a goal in, in everything you do. So I think that's an interesting background. I spent some time After professional career in Denmark, I moved to the US, spent some time there both with sports and with starting my university degrees, and coming back, I was lucky to get involved in an early startup where we started with tracking and payment solutions online. and disrupted a lot of that before it was Google and Facebook and all that stuff and did really well. So in a very early time of my career, I transformed some of the things that you learn in sports that you want to get to the first place early and maybe I, in a professional context, didn't have enough routine but I could connect and recognize the same journey as you do, and later on I've started a number of companies, and every time I start a company, I always say we start in Division 3, even though we might have the potential aspiration to be Champions League or whatever it is, you always start in Division 3, you need to win that division to qualify to the next, and there is always a journey involved in that. So that's part of it. I am I've been working, as I say, in startups. I've been working in corporate. I've been working with M&A as an advisor and very much hands-on. So a full spectrum. And I think one key component, it always comes back to, for me personally, other than a great product and great commercial and capitalistic opportunity, it always comes down to people. and the ability to create a somewhat harmonious team. It doesn't have to be fully harmonious, but it has to be able to develop in a shared aspiration and vision and direction to some extent.

I realize as you're saying this, so You and I must have walked together, I don't know, 50 times or something over the years.

Yeah.

And you retelling your background and your professional soccer sort of where you got started comes so much more to life now because whenever we talk about whatever we talk about, and oftentimes it's business, but sometimes it's also personal, you have this very methodical way of kind of lining things up and the steps required to do certain things or what a company should be doing or, you know, I went through some tough times, you've gone through some challenges. And as we've discussed those, you have a very disciplined approach of addressing a problem and sort of how do we actually break this down into manageable bits and then one foot in front of the other.

Right.

And so, you know, I think that comes from all your years of getting that discipline of practicing and training and always trying to get better and always trying to, as you say, move from 3rd division to 1st division or move up. Um, so I don't think, you know, you shouldn't shortcut yourself by saying, oh, I don't want to be this, you know, using my professional soccer career as the starting point. But it really has shaped who you are, right?

Um, for sure.

And, and so as we, as we chatted about doing this together, uh, which is a new experience for us, uh, you brought up the topic of fear. Why did you bring up that topic?

There's so many great topics, but I think fear— it's a good question why I brought it up. I think fear is a constant driver in everybody's lives to a certain degree. It's a spectrum between fear and hope, and I think you can actually have that Duality between fear and hope. Either you are hope-driven or fear-driven, and then of course you might be a little bit of both in that sense. I think the world we look at today and how we work, and there's a higher level of polarization. I think there the fear aspect comes to live to a higher extent that I've been used to see. So maybe it's just my personal perspective, but I I I've believe I see it both from a political perspective and a business perspective and also privately, that people are maybe more defensive and driven by what might be a risk rather than a hopeful, aspiring attitude.

Is that because of where we live in the world? Is that because we're Danes and our national mentality is one of, oh, what if it goes wrong? Whereas, you know, you've been studying in the United States. I lived there for a while. It seems to be the reverse there. You know, they don't have— I was telling this story yesterday to somebody about how I founded my first company as a 28-year-old or whatever. And I said to him, and I said, I would never have done that if I was in Denmark. And he's like, why? I'm like, well, because in Denmark I would have gone into working at some ministry or something, you know, the safe route or whatever, gone through. This is many years ago, right? Today everybody starts companies and that's That's wonderful. But back then, not everybody did. And so in the United States, you know, it's, it's kind of the reverse. There is no safety net. Nobody takes care of you. Yet more people start companies because they have this hope-driven thing in their mentality. Could that be a difference between the two places?

Of course. I mean, I'd say there are many aspects. One thing could be cultural, geographical, aspect. I think it's also a matter of maturity, age, again your risk factor, what are you looking at, but also a time which we are— we have introduced so many technologies, media, now we are discussing climate change, there's a lot of fear being brought into everybody's everyday life. There's a lot of— we, with the technology, there's not one person who can have mental control of everything.

Mm-hmm.

So if you lose mental control and, and understanding of, of your full picture, there's also an aspect of fear. Some people have more than others, obviously. So, so I think coming back to US versus Denmark, We have a strong welfare system, so why risk that? We have a history of being very cold and protective and going all the way back where US is a much younger mix of immigrants and people that come in for opportunity and they're more hope-driven.

And so people are not— you don't think people are traveling to Denmark for opportunity?

Not commercial, not capitalistic opportunities.

Right, but social opportunity maybe. Maybe they're traveling here because of— yeah.

So if we look at it from— we don't necessarily put up the best opportunities to create your own business, but have a— I mean, we have a work-life balance, we have healthcare systems, we have different kinds of systems that also come with a cost or a trade-off or whatever it is. But it's not someone who's gonna risk everything they own on a monetary level to come to Denmark to get multiple return on investment.

Right.

Then no. But other reasons, I met people that come to Denmark, they think it's a great opportunity, but they have to say no to some other opportunities.

Right. So, yeah, you, uh, so when was the last time you were afraid?

Um, good, good, good question. I was just diving, uh, with my son in Jordan, and he's, um, his tank went low and had no more air in it. And we luckily, we were diving with an instructor, and You know, he were basically just communicating how much pressure he had left, and, and he had to share, uh, the instructor's tank. And you're underwater and you're like, okay, here's my son, uh, no water. We are maybe— we're trying to ascend from 18 meters to— I mean, we couldn't just go up.

Hmm.

Um, so I didn't have any influence on how we did it. It was my son with an instructor I didn't really know. We just met. There is a level of fear in that. Yeah. So again, out of control, didn't have control of the situation. And it was my son's health at risk that definitely gave me a level of fear.

And I think that's easy for any parent to relate to, right? And so for all of us who are parents, the The most frequent we experience any kind of fear as adults is when it relates to the health and well-being of our children. But at the same time, you know, when we— if we don't have children, what is it that we fear? And you say something here which also triggers me, which is it's the unknown, right? So fear is often, or if not all the time, and the psychologists that are watching this, they may educate us. But it's often associated with the unknown. So we're basically afraid that something might happen because we don't know what will happen.

If it drives us, if, if that drives you or me. Unknown is not a fear for me.

Okay.

I, I, the unknown is actually super interesting to me. I, I, I, I would say personally, I'm in the spectrum of hope-driven personality, um, where if there's an unknown, I get curious.

Hmm.

What is this? How is this? Who's in there? What— why did— why are they here? All of that. And I don't know if it's directly an opportunity, but at least it's just interesting. It's untouched territory. That doesn't scare me. I think it scares other people. So that's part of it. I have a complete fear of heights. So there's a physical fear, you know.

So why are you afraid of heights? You're standing on a building, right? You know, it's solid. It's been standing there for a while. There's other people with you. You look over the edge and you're like, holy smokes, I'm getting uncomfortable.

I think there's a draw that kind of draws me when I look down and then kind of just draws me into the void or whatever you call it. And then, and then there's, there's a mechanism in me that kind of quantifies the value of being here versus my risk of dying. Yeah, if there's no, there's no reason I would step out of this, you know, edge or anything and then fall off and die.

Right.

But then just why would I be here if that should be an option?

Have you ever, have you ever gone parachuting?

No, but I've been with my dad. My dad was a mountain climber.

Uh-huh.

I experienced this the first time when I was with him, and he was, you know, he, his son, me, was a great athlete. You know, he can do all these things. And we were just walking on a ridge in the Alps, and we didn't have a rope between us or anything. And he was just walking. He was a trained mountaineer, and I was walking behind him. And suddenly, I just froze. I froze. And he didn't see it. I got down on all fours and I was just looking at him. And for me, that was hours of him walking. It was, it was seconds in reality. And he turns around in shock and just looks at me and says, so, Simon, that's not, that's not how you deal with this. Get back. And he basically helped me back up on my feet and I would take my step by step and get over this ridge and And that's when I realized I had a deep fear of heights.

And so there's, you know, there's a plethora of things that we can be afraid of, right? Some people are afraid of the dentist. It's more associated with, is it gonna hurt? Uh, heights is a common one. Some have the fear of flying associated with heights, right? Oh, it might crash. Um, a lot of people have— so in, in the business world, right, you know, fear is a very strong word, but there's, there's certainly people that I've met that are fearful of making presentations or, you know, pitching or being in meetings with certain types, right? Investors, for example. So they start having this, they associate it with fear.

Right.

And so you and I are relatively experienced. So what do we, what do we tell people that's helpful when they have a fear of something in a business context?

So that's— first, I think we've talked about the physical fear, maybe fear of dying. Then there is a performance fear of not performing. So that's related to being on stage or saying the wrong thing or whatever have you. But that's associated to, I think, a social fear. where recognition, whether it's from your partner, private partner, or a good friend, or someone you don't know that you really want to be recognized by, or in a business context, you also need recognition in order to get to this capitalistic society where we're like, okay, there's a trade going on. So if I acknowledge you, I'll pay for your value. So I think there's a spectrum of the social business-related performance fear. And I think, and now I'm coming back to sports, you have a fear of not performing, whether you are an athlete or an actor, maybe on stage, or a presentator, presenter. My— the way I dealt with it and have dealt with it since is I'm as good as I am. I need to have confidence in what I do and maybe block out your evaluation of me as I'm going because if I'm looking at you, I might misinterpret you if you're like doing this or do something else. And like, and that, that gets to me before I actually deliver what I do. So I'd say the more you practice, the more you are aware of your skills, abilities, what you want to say, you can be comfortable. And then separate that from your— I don't know, that, that's simple. I know it doesn't work like that necessarily, but the practice would be try to separate other people's interpretation of what you do to what you feel comfortable and make a comfort zone of, of, of your, of your own performance. And then learn to evaluate. And, and, and then I think a very important factor in this is you might think I sucked, another— the, the woman next to you might think, well, that was pretty interesting, maybe not presented the way, the best way, but it was pretty interesting. And, and if you can feel a little comfortable about that, I think you can progress and develop, uh, your, your work with your fears so don't— so they don't work against you.

There are many aspects of that, right? Because the, the thing I tell people is the audience— let's, let's say you're giving a speech, there's 100 people in the audience, right? You know, honestly speaking, They're not gonna all be paying attention to everything you say, right? I mean, even Obama, when he speaks, not everybody's like clinging on every single word, but maybe more than when you and I speak in front of crowds, right? But so not everybody's gonna be paying attention to, uh, as you say, some people are gonna like it, some people are not gonna like it for a number of reasons. And oftentimes that actually has nothing to do with you. That has more to do with them and where they are in their life, right? So Somebody might look at you on stage and be like, oh, I like— I don't like that guy Simon. He's so smug. You know, he's standing up there looking all cool and sharp. But that's because of their own insecurities, right? Or somebody might disagree with you and, and be like, oh, well, you know, Peter presented this idea that we're all gonna be flying around in drones in 10 years. I think he's wrong, and therefore I don't like what he's saying because I don't— you know, I think he's—

Yeah.

What a— up in the sky, right? So, So, so once you start siphoning off all the reasons why somebody may think that what you're doing is not fantastic, there's enough reasons that nobody will think you're fantastic for, for different things. But the fact of the matter is, you cannot control that, right? As the speaker, as the person presenting, the only thing you can manage and control, to your point, am I prepared? Do I know my stuff? And how do I relate to my own thoughts about my own abilities, right?

Yes.

And so, you know, I've done it a ton, you've done it a ton. It never gets super comfortable, but you, you certainly learn to be more like, well, I'm here for a reason, I'm going to deliver my message, and either people are going to love or hate me, but at the end of the day, some of them will have gotten something out of it, and that's why I'm here, right?

I think, I think, um, it's not uncomfortable, but there is a level of nerve that's playing to your advantage because you're actually getting on your toes, you're trying to do well. And this— the good balance is if you're having fun doing it. That's, that's—

And then people, people will see that too, right? They'll see if you're If you're having fun with it. So, so most of the time, the advice I give people— now we're talking very much about presentation techniques, and I'm looking over at my bookshelf because I probably have 4 books on the topic, right? And we can— maybe Christina will put it in, we'll recommend some books, uh, for folks. But, uh, what I typically do when I go out on stage, I'm like, I literally start most of my presentations with saying, you know, who I am, this and that and the other. I'm going to tell you about something tonight, and I'm sure a lot of you in the audience don't believe me or disagree with what I'm saying. And when that happens, I want you to raise your hand and we'll talk about it. That's why I'm here. I'm here to have a dialogue with you. And if you kind of start your presentation that way, right, everybody that might be sitting like this, they're kind of like, oh, okay, he acknowledges that he's not perfect and that I don't— I'm not supposed to believe everything he says. So I can be a little more relaxed. And for me, I've basically now opened, you know, the firing range and they can just shoot at me, right? Because I'd much rather have dialogue, I'd much rather have discourse than me standing up there for 30 minutes sweating because they look like they're bored or whatever, you know.

So that goes both ways. It also makes your performance better and you will be more comfortable, and you try to make them more comfortable in the room It's kind of a, it's, it's, you know, I didn't invent it.

I forget where I learned it, but it's kind of disarming. It's kind of taking the thing out of it. And the same thing, you know, we're, a lot of the audience that will watch this are, are people in business. A lot of them are people in the startup and scale-up environments because of the people that you and I are connected to. For them, it's about, you know, going into an investor presentation or any other kind of pitch. And you can disarm all these conversations. You can sort of remove the fear that you have that you're not gonna be loved by everyone by acknowledging that I'm happy to be here. I'm gonna tell you the story about my company XYZ, the story, the future, nothing is certain. It's not perfect, but this is my best bet at what we're doing or my best take on how our financials are gonna look, or we believe this. If you do that, you do yourself a service, because you're not looking weak to the investor, you're not looking weak to the audience, you're looking self-reflective to the audience. And they will more warmly discuss it with you than if you show up and you're like, okay, I got everything under control, you just sit and listen. Nobody likes that, right?

So how does that resonate with You saw— you said something about people bring their own perspective, their own background, their own baggage into any conversation or anything, and then say, okay, I, I don't like Peter because he believes in everything that's self-driven and automated and all that, and that's just all bullshit. Uh, and that can be edited. I'm sorry.

No, no, no, we can, we can swear, we can do whatever we want. There's no FCA here— the FCC that regulates it. Don't worry.

Yeah. But but then I bring a lot of baggage, or at least it doesn't have to be. It's just I bring a lot of bias into any conversation that might actually bring fear with it, which is not necessary. It's just because we're different, you know. So I think that I think that's interesting also in business because it's a management of expectations, and can you read and and interpret? So, so we connect fairly easily, um, but there are other people that might be much smarter than we are even combined but have less social skills, and, and that disconnect, uh, might bring some fear in— into the, into the room that kind of—

Yeah. Yeah, no, I think you're onto something. You said social skills. I think the thing that you and I have learned is to be curious about the world around us, right?

Right.

So, so we— you learned it in your early days in your soccer career and then in your business career, and I learned it mostly in my business career, mostly because, you know, I have 2 left feet. I can't hit a soccer ball and not ruin both my feet and ball. But No, but we learn to be curious on our surroundings. And so what happens when you're curious on your surroundings is you're also open and vulnerable, and you're kind of exposing yourself because you don't persist that you know everything. And so in that context, the social fear that you mentioned earlier kind of goes away because I'm learning in any interaction that I go into. And I'm not afraid of exposing myself and not being a know-it-all, even though some might argue that I come across that way.

I don't— I know that you can say a lot of things with a lot of self-confidence, but I think one thing that we share is you have your full right to be wrong.

Exactly right.

That's— I think that's important to acknowledge. You know, just because I'm right, I'm not better. Maybe I'm not right in another context. You know, it's not a matter of that in that sense. I think we put a lot to being right, which is, what does that mean? What does that mean?

And also, again, back to our, back to our, you know, the people coming into the startup scale-up game, right? There's so many entrepreneurs that I see either on stages or in rooms that are extraordinarily confident. And you have to be, and I love that. But they're kind of machines in that they're so self-confident in what they're saying that they don't realize that the investors that are sitting across from them or the people that are sitting in the audience probably know that they shouldn't be that confident because there is a lot of uncertainty in what they're proposing.

Right.

And they haven't figured out the market yet, and they haven't figured out the financial model, and they haven't figured out the team yet, and they haven't figured out you know, go to market, whatever. And so I really think that the best advice I would give, you know, a 20-something that is starting their company is to very quickly in any conversation kind of acknowledging saying, hey, I honestly don't know, but this is my best attempt at describing what I think the future will look like. Do you agree or disagree?

I would be impressed if a 22-year-old can go out and do that.

After they watch this, they will. They'll be listening to us and be like, I'm gonna go try that.

I'm not sure I want to take their self-confidence out of it and their bragging attitude, because if I met a 45-year-old with that attitude, I'll be concerned, because then he hasn't or she hasn't spent the last 20 years on learning and figuring out and getting all the difficult feedback and, and relearning and, and just get back up and maybe losing a few few times, that humbles you. But the young, aspiring, hopeful entrepreneur who just knows everything, just is right about it, and has a drive that none of us have anymore. Only that age with that insight, with that aspiration, can have that certain drive. I would never take that away from her. You know, I would never do that. I'd much rather that she would run at it, make a few mistakes, and then maybe and hopefully she has some good people around her to support when that happens. And if and when that person turns 30, of course he or she gets more humble. Maybe they've had children at that point in time, and that will humble anyone.

But, but, but So, so really good points. Uh, I disagree, right? Because I, I do think that it's not about taking away their, their drive and their passion, but it's, it's helping them understand that they don't need to appear as if they have it all figured out, that it's okay that there are elements of what they're doing which they don't know, because I know they don't know, you know they don't know, anybody else they know.

Yeah.

But so it's kind of like that elephant, right? So instead of kind of walking around, it's kind of displaying that you have everything under control. Say, I got most of it under control, but the tusk, I don't really know how that's going to work out or, you know, whatever. So the other thing that you mentioned, Simon, though, is really interesting because—

I like— I just have to say, I can accept less humility from a young talent than from an older talent because—

Yes, yes. Okay.

Yeah. Then they have lost some opportunity in learning in that journey. And I think it's a natural progression where we just— I also think, and then that maybe changes a little bit, it's still about fear, but how does it play to your advantage?

And I can better today Well, we survived, we survived on the savannas of Africa because we started learning to fear lions, right?

Maybe, or just see, okay, I've been through some negotiations, I've met people who don't have good intentions, or I can't trust, or I felt I could trust them, things changed, now I can't trust them anymore. You know, there's a lot of levels where you come in with a big level of naivety. You're naive, you're young, you're hopeful, and some people will take advantage of that. I certainly— I've lived through that. And I can't say— when you said, when is your last time you felt fear? Um, I don't know if I want to call it fear, but there's an aspect of fear Where I'm like more cautious, so when you tell me we'll do this and we will just do this 200%, I'll be like, no, that's great, you know, let's see if you really want to do this 200%, and I'll be a little more cautious, but maybe let's just start here, you know, where you said that to me when I was in my 20s, I'm like, yeah, let's go.

So, I mean, this conversation can keep going, we do have to start thinking about wrapping it up a little bit, We could always continue at some other time, do the part fear part 2. I mean, it sounds like we're doing a movie sequel here. But a couple of things I do want to mention before we round off. One is, you talked about the female entrepreneur before, used her as an example. One of the things, the great detriments that I see, of course, is that we have a bunch of young guys, super confident and super driven. And we have a bunch of youngish women or young women who are also driven but not confident because societal things makes it more difficult for them to, to be in a position of confidence or because they've been told for a variety of reasons, you know, we all know kind of what the issues are. So if we could balance that out a little bit, right? So when I have female entrepreneurs as clients, one of the things I work with them a lot is on knowing and owning that they are the shit. Right? And trying to give them that confidence, not have fear for, you know, falling on their nose, or, you know, basically bolstering them. And when I have young guys as clients, it's oftentimes a little bit of the reverse. It's oftentimes saying, hey, so I know you're the man, but let's just take it down a notch, because then people won't be turned off by you. And actually, you want people to come with you on this journey, not think that you're ignorant and arrogant.

Right.

So, so there's a male-female thing there. There's an age thing, as we've talked about, as it relates to, to fear in, in the startup environment. All right, my friend. This is— this was basically it. This was my plan for today. How, how was it talking about fear on camera with, with me and everybody watching?

It's fun. It's fun. And I hope it just gives a little bit of inspiration. and maybe, you know, a good reason for other people to keep discussing this, because I think it's a central topic and I think it's interesting and it should not be a topic we should be fearful of. We should not have it as a taboo, which fear often is. So hopefully it's a little more lighthearted to bring up after such a conversation. So thanks for having me.

Cool. So for all of you watching, whichever platform you're watching this on, we'll put a little thing behind this, so you can find out more information. You can comment if it's below or above. I don't know. It depends on where you're watching it. I'm obviously Peter Sorgenfrei. I'm easy to find. Simon Goldsmith is also easy to find, LinkedIn. His company is called Reloop. So that's another way, or one of his many activities is called Reloop. So reloop.dk, I think it is.

Yeah.

So, so you can find him there. And as always, interested to hear if there is somebody I should talk to that you know, or a topic that we should pick up for the next one. Simon, thank you very much for your time today. Thanks a lot.