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Today we’re speaking to Alex Brueckmann from alexthestrategist.com
Alex is a strategy entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He built and scaled companies in Europe and Canada, and led client projects across the world. He helps entrepreneurs and founders create profitable businesses to make real impact. In his new book, THE STRATEGY LEGACY, Alex presents a framework called “The Nine Elements of Organizational Identity” to help you build better businesses. He’s hosting a a global strategy summit in February 2022, Legacy – The Premier strategic business event, and has loads of things going on – welcome Alex!
Full transcript
Alex:
Thanks so much for having me. That’s yeah, that’s a lot of things going on. There’s f actually true. And it couldn’t be more excited, because there’s so many people involved. And we’re really see that we can make the needle move into the right direction, when we all do our part. And what I mean by that is, you already mentioned it, building businesses, for profit and for impact, right? So a business that only creates money. It’s something nice to have money, right? Is it that’s the really fulfilling? Yeah, so yeah, that’s what we actually do during legacy legacy, the premier strategic business. And as the name already says, it’s all about creating strategies to help you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, set an intention, and then follow through on that intention on how you can actually use your business as a force for good. And that can be in the social space, it can be in the environmental space, it can be all kinds of charities that you can support. And we talk about what actually what options are out there. What can you do with your business? How do you build it for profit, at the same time, because hey, you can only support others, if you have that topic of money off the plate, if you don’t have to worry about it, right? So you need to make sure that your business is thriving, that you have a go to market strategy that actually works, that provides the funds for you and your family to live the life you want to live to live a fulfilled life. And to make that impact that you want to make.
Debs
Okay, brilliant. So and tell us a bit about you previously to I mean, there’s really exciting things that you plan on crazily doing at the moment, but what were you doing before? What, how would you got to where you are,
Alex
um, through a long and winding road.
Debs
I think that’s kind of like that we should all sing that song.
Alex
Oh, my God, I would rather not sing. It’s a song. It’s it’s a fun McCartney song actually. Not that great. True. But the road was long and windy in the end. I mean, I’m in my mid 40s. Now. And when you when I think back to the humble beginnings of my career, I was a professional radio journalist before I actually studied Business Administration. And that was kind of two worlds that really didn’t mesh in my in my brain. I couldn’t get the content creator in me think business and the business person in me was kind of content creation is so much fun, you really want to stick to that. And, like fighting constantly that battle and I, in the end, I was able to merge kind of those two personas in me by working for a media company. I wasn’t in charge of content creation anymore, but more in the strategy space, like helping the company to find the way forward and yeah, follow through on it. And through that experience, more and more and deeper and deeper. I worked with a lot of different management consulting companies get to know more and more strategic frameworks.
How can you build successful businesses from the get go?
So rather than just trial and error really creating something that is properly planned and designed, and fast forward 10 years, I ran a company together with my colleague in based in Europe, where we supported large corporate organizations around the world to get their strategy straight, their business strategy straight and align their leadership development to that. So in the end, that means if you have a large organizations with hundreds and even 1000s of leaders, how do you enable them and empower them to understand and follow through on the business strategy on the piece that they can influence? If you do that, you create a supercharged organization you have on the one hand A clear strategic path. And on the other hand, you have a leadership population that is fully invested and understands how they can bring it to life. So that’s what we did. I move to Canada left that company in Europe, behind, I’m still associated to the company, don’t get me wrong. It’s something that I’m truly passionate about. And I love working with these guys.
However, here in Canada, I needed to build in life, it’s a nine hour timezone difference. So I handed over my managing director hat to other people, so that the company can can develop and thrive without me. And I started to build a business that is slightly different to what I did before. So I’m not working for large corporations predominantly anymore. I’m more helping smaller business owners, entrepreneurs, people that just start out are people that have been around for 10 years and just hit that glass ceiling, to dig into their business and fill the gaps in order to help them to make that leap that they want to make. If you set out and be like, I want to create a new product, or I want to open a new market segment, or I want to grow my revenues by X percent. And you you just don’t get there. There are reasons for that. And I help you find those reasons I help you understand where the holes in your plans are and why you’re not getting where you want to be. So it’s it’s a different kind of work because I basically take what I’ve learned over 20 years, and we’ve packaged it in a way that is accessible to everyone, not only to that, say highly educated corporate leaders, so I take those concepts and help you understand those concepts in within your reality. And that gives you the access to the knowledge that you need in order to make the money and the impact that you want to create.
Debs
Okay, so you went from working with you said hundreds, maybe 1000s of leaders in these big organizations to now maybe founders, owners, entrepreneurs, okay, what’s most fun? Who do you prefer to work with? Who’s the most fun to work with?
Alex
In the end, it’s the same type of people that you work with, because so when I think back, those those many years that I work for large corporations, you don’t work for the corporation, you work with the people in that corporation, so you still work with human beings and with, with people that have hopes and dreams and fears and, and strengths and weaknesses and aspirations. And that is basically the same.
Now and then the only difference is, most of the people that I’ve worked with in the past, and those large organizations, they’re not invested with their own money. That’s the biggest difference. Working with an entrepreneur, it’s different in that sense that they put their own money on the table, and they want to build something they can be proud of. I’m not saying that people in large corporations can be proud of what they build far from that. Amazing people, amazing human beings. They work so hard, they achieve a lot for themselves and for their clients. When you take a look at what entrepreneurs do, especially when you are like two or three or four years in and you realize, hey, I’m serious about this, this was not just an idea, I really want to go for that for many, many years, maybe even the rest of my life. The decisions that you take different ones, you bet your own money, and there lies. That’s where the rabbit lies in the pepper. As we say German, it doesn’t make sense in any other language. You know what I mean?
Debs
Yeah, I know what you mean. Do you know what you mean? Okay. So before we talk about the summit, and I do want to talk about the summit, this is the chaos to creation confessions. So now I know you’ve written a book. I know you created a baby, I know, you’ve created this fantastic summit as well. So have you got any confessions for the people listening? That we all try and create these things? And we get into these habits and we want to do things? How are you finishing things? I’m not gonna ask about the baby on that one. But how are you finishing things? How are you actually getting things done? How are you getting from brilliant idea to something out there that other people can use?
Alex
I don’t think I follow a step by step process every time but there are certainly some steps I do follow every time.
Step 1: So when I have an idea, the first thing that I do I share this idea with people I trust. I talk with them about the idea. Most of the time this is even before I sat down and wrote the idea down. The moment you sit down and write something down the moment you crystallize your thinking, the moment you realize whether this is just a pipe dream or really a good idea, or whether it is so flawed that you better just throw it into the bin. But sometimes I’m not doing that. I just start talking to people because the type of questions that they ask helps me then afterwards to write even better, right write it down properly. So I often talk to one or two people and just give them my idea and the way they react.
Step 2: And the way they ask questions helps me then to write the idea down. Once I’ve written the idea down, as sometimes realize that this is a nice article that I could write, or I realize that that might be an idea for another book, or I realized that that is an idea, maybe related to my website, or a product that I can create for my clients, a new online course, a product that is super cheap and accessible for everyone. So the type of ideas that you have, they can end up in all kinds of channels, and sometimes stuck with an idea in my head, and I realized, oh, this, this is not an article, this is the little product I can create here. So being open and being creative during the process, often this is something so that the step behind that is “is that really what I think it was?” that’s the question that I asked myself sometimes.
Debs
Oh, I love that question. So just before we go on, sorry, I’m making notes or know where to bring us back to is that say that question again? Because I just love that question. So the question you need to ask ourselves, say it again?
Alex
Is this really what I think it was? Or should be?
So if I start writing with an article in mind, is that really an article? Or is that something else? In the end? Is that the foundation for? Yeah, a new course that I could create for people? Or is it a learning nugget for someone in the course that I can just plug into an existing course that I that I run. And sometimes, like you mentioned the summit, the summit came about, from a completely different angle, I didn’t set out to create a summit, I asked myself, what can my business do in order to create a true impact in the world. And then you can go in in all kinds of directions. And I said, Okay, I want to, I want to leverage the platform that I have. And bring in hundreds, if not 1000s of people to learn how they can become better entrepreneurs, how they can learn strategies and discover stuff that really helps them in their journey. And at the same time, they help us do something good and create a ripple effect.
Debs
Okay, so first, share your ideas, and you talk to people I’m sorry, I just I am fascinated by people’s process from getting stuff out of here, into the world. How do you do this? Because I’ve got myself a little question here. So when you say you share your idea, and you talk to a few people, before you write it, even write it down? Are you ever afraid to mention it to people to talk to people about is or is there something? Is there ever any fear that stops you from talking about an idea that you have?
Alex
I was afraid, talking about my ideas early in my career that that completely disappeared when I realized that the true creation is a co creation, the ideas that other people just throw into the bucket. They make your own ideas even more worthwhile and even more valuable for other people. And it’s created, it’s in the co creation where the truly magnificent things happen, that truly magnificent products are being created in services that have been created. You only have your own brain, but there are a million other brains that you could tap into.
I mean there, how many people live in this world? 7 billion, 8 billion? Yeah. Why would you think that your ideas are the best ones, they are just ideas. And if you sit in a room, and I’ve seen this many times when I work with larger corporations, when you bring 10, 15, 20 people together diverse people from all kinds of areas of expertise, and you start collaborating with these people on a new five year strategy for that business. You can smell and sense the energy in the room. The sparks flying the creativity, just bustling in that room. And it’s it’s something that would never happen if there were only two or three people in that room. Yeah, that would be probably pretty good. But it’s not amazing. becomes amazing when when you let other people into your world, and let let them share what they think. Of course, you can be afraid of criticism, of course. I mean, the upside is so much higher than the potential downside. Yeah, yeah.
Debs
And I think sometimes clients say to me that they’re afraid that people may steal their ideas. I always say, Well, an idea really is of zero value until you start putting it into action and start getting it out there. So they might steal the idea, but it still stays in their brain until he gets into the world.
Alex
You can’t actually steal an idea because an idea is exactly that. It’s just an idea and the value is in the execution is not the idea that is valuable. The idea For the iPhone is just the idea. Putting it into practice is super hard work and creating something out of that idea. And I was never afraid that someone could steal an idea, simply because probably because I use a mindset of abundance rather than a mindset of scarcity. There are tons of ideas, and I have tons of ideas every day.
10 years ago, I used to meet with two very, very good friends from time to time over a weekend. And we would call these weekends idea labs. And in these idea labs, we would just bounce ideas back and forth and develop potential business ideas back then we were all employees. And we were always thinking about becoming entrepreneurs, ourselves. So these ideas lead to early versions of delivery hero, and companies like that. But we never follow through on this study, we had similar ideas. But this is the best proof that ideas don’t count until you put them into practice. Other people had similar ideas, even the same ideas they follow through, they build amazing companies, super successful businesses, that’s you can you can just take your ideas and write them on a website and inspire other people to follow through on them if you don’t have the guts to do it on your own. But in the end, it’s only what you create out of those ideas that truly counts.
Debs
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely 100% in agreement with you on that. So we’ve got share your ideas with few people, then you write them down. And then they might turn into things that you didn’t expect them to turn into. So you might think it was a course and then it might turn into an app or a product or whatever it is, what do you do next? What’s your product? What’s what happens next to your ideas that you have? I get really excited about ideas.
Alex
When I realized that my ideas go in the direction that I that I initially thought it’s a fast process. Usually, I ask myself whom do I need?
Step 3: Who do I need to involve? Because very often, it’s not me who follows through on these ideas, I have these ideas, I put the right people together, and then they do their magic and create something, right. And that’s because I’m not always the best to actually implement the ideas, you might need a certain skill set, let’s say a technical skill in order to do something. And I might even be the best one to implement the idea. But I know people who do have the skill set, so I bring them together. And we do the magic together. And in other in other times those ideas develop into into beasts that are really the turn against me, I would say I would even say that. Like when I wrote my first book that you mentioned, The Strategy Legacy, which is hopefully coming out in 2022. Hey, when I, I wrote the first 100 pages, they were just on paper so fast. And I was like this is going really well. And then something strange happened. I mean, the book that I wrote was not the book that I intended to write the this thing just turned into, develop its own life. And it’s something that a lot of people experience when they when you write books, the book that you want to write, that you have in your head and the books that you actually write a completely different books. And the reason is, people don’t buy your book, because of the knowledge that you share. The knowledge that you have is not unique, the person that you are is unique. And once you realize that, it’s not the content, it’s not the knowledge, it’s the knowledge through you as a lens, then you dare to write from your perspective, rather than just sharing knowledge. No one, no one writes. Books that contain knowledge, are encyclopedia no one buys them anymore. So people buy books, because they want to get your unique take on something. And that’s what you need to realize when you read your first book that you need to dare to share you not only your knowledge,
Debs
I love that. And I find when I’m writing that I that the writing process helps me understand what I’ve been thinking. So it might be something here in the back of my head. And it’s only when I write it down on paper that I can actually articulate and get those the points in the right order. And I think differently when I’m writing them and when I’m speaking does that happen for you?
Alex
Yes, in addition, that they are things in my brain that I didn’t even know that they were there. They just came out when I wrote there were entire frameworks in my brain that I used subconsciously that I’ve never written down before they were there. I followed them. I have no idea where they come from. I couldn’t find them anywhere. So it must have been stuff that my brain produced over time by combining others their learnings from the past. And that was kind of it scared the hell out of me, I was writing stuff down that I’ve never seen. That’s just out of my brain kind of amazing. And it was one, it was the first time in a long time that I allowed myself to become truly creative, just to let my thoughts flow through my fingers onto paper, or into a computer. In that case, that was just it was so rewarding. And, of course, it took a lot of time and a lot of courage to do that that study was so so rewarding, I loved to see that I still have that content creator person in me that started out 20 years ago.
Debs
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I love that you have to have the courage to dare to share you made like, is just a lovely phrase. So okay, so you. So your process so far, you’ve shared ideas, verbally, you talk to a few people, and then you write it down, and it might turn into something else. And then you decide who you find the right people to help you make that thing happen. Okay, what to do with it next, what happens next?
Alex
Step 4: When we make it happen, we put it out there, and we just test it. And the moment you realize that it’s good enough, and that means it’s never going to be 100%. And if it’s good enough, you put it out there you shared with the world, you ask people to try it, you ask people to read it, you ask people to go through it and just bluntly tell you what they think, whether it’s valuable for them or not really tested with the target group, your pilot program, whatever it is that you wrote, or created, you share it with the people that you created it for. Because in the end, if it’s for you, nice, put it in a frame hanging on the wall. But if it’s for other people, share it with them, you need feedback you need you need to learn. And very often that gives you an additional twist that you haven’t thought of yet. And I just strongly believe in that co creation process. So ask for feedback, rather than pilot learn, tweak implement again.
Debs
I love it. It’s fantastic strategy. Okay, well, I’m going to bring you back to something that you said earlier and then we need to talk about the summit, because I really want to talk about the Summit. But when you said the word a few times, and I want you to tell me about this word. It’s a word I love. And it’s a word I use when I’m buying, planning and strategizing – direction. So you said quite a few times, if it’s in the direction I want to go, if it’s in the direction for the business, if it’s in their direction, tell me about direction? How do we know? How do we find out what direction we should be going? How do we do that?
Alex
I mean, that’s basically what I do day in and day out, I help people find direction I help people visualize, literally visualize where they want to be in a few month, couple of years. That’s what every planning process starts with. You ask yourself, if I take a look at my business, what do I want this to look like in two to three years time? That’s what we call a vision, a vision statement writing down in detail? How if you could time travel? How would your business look like when you see it? How would it feel like what would it do? Whom would it interact with?
And then I help people to write this down in in very precise terms that you can then use and ask yourself, if that’s what I want to be in a certain period of time, how do I actually measure that I get there, I can’t just keep on doing what I do and hope that I get there. So I need to make this measurable. And we break down this vision statement into measuring criteria into a dashboard of strategically relevant criteria, that when you follow them, when you measure them from time to time, they give you a very good idea whether you’re moving closer to that vision or not. And once you have that vision, and you’re measuring criteria, it’s extremely easy. It like it falls out of your brain onto paper, what you need to do in order to move the needle on those measuring criteria. And that’s what your business then focuses on.
It’s, it’s the three to five key priorities that your business has. Because that’s how you designed it. You want to be here in two or three years, you want to be here in this beautiful space. So make it measurable, and then prioritize everything you do according to move the needle in that direction. I know it sounds super simple. But if you do it that way, all of a sudden, it becomes so clear for you how much time and energy and money you’ve been wasting because you weren’t clear on those priorities. Now, that’s where the magic that happens next direction.
Debs
So I’m all about direction and directionality. It’s my whole thing. The just a quick question to you. Is there a download that we can get? I think I downloaded it recently that will have help people to find that direction?
Alex
That’s something you can find right on the landing page of my website, Alexthestrategist.com. It’s right there. It’s called the intentional strategy toolkit. It’s more than 20 pages that guide you through this process, step by step, you don’t need me for it, you can do this on your own. And if you struggle, you can always hop on a call with me and I’m serious. This is a free call, you will find the link in the toolkit to book it. It’s it’s all out there use it, it’s for free.
Debs
I know I’ve used it. It’s fantastic. It’s really, really useful. So we can get that from Alexthestrategist.com. Okay. Finally, if you have a couple of minutes to talk to us about the summit, tell us how have you got to creating this summit this this massive the event of the year of that? I’m really excited about it, you can tell?
Alex
Yeah, kinda. It’s something that it started as a small idea in my head, when I asked myself, How can I use my business now that I built this business here in Canada? How can I use it as a force for good? And I asked myself, wait a second, in order to answer the question, you really need to know, what is the purpose of your life and your business? So why are you in business? And what is it that you want to leave behind? When you leave this planet? And asking those questions, it became very clear to me that, on the one hand, it’s environmental protection that I’m truly passionate about. So what can we do as businesses in order to support environmental protection? And on the other hand, it’s all about how can we help those in need, and this is a very large group, there are a lot of people on this planet that need help.
I want to help researchers find cures for terminal childhood brain cancers. And that has a very personal reason. A friend of mine lost his daughter at a very young age, because of a terminal incurable cancer, brain cancer. And for the past five years, I’ve been raising funds and running fundraisers and donating money to this cause. And so I said, let’s use summit to collect funds for those causes.
So the summit essentially is a not for profit Summit, I’m not making money with that. That’s not for me, this is not a business model. I earn money with my clients, and not with running summits. So I said, I need people who can run a summit whom do I know that can run the summit. And I found Jenny Wright and Allyson who support me, in setting up this entire monstrosity of a summit.
We have three days, three full days, with 46 speakers from across the world, from Singapore, to South Africa, to Australia, to Europe to North America. It’s really spanning all five continents. I’m amazed by the by the speakers that said, Yes, I want to support this cause. And basically, we’re talking over three days.
Day one is all about how can I create a business that has an impact on society, on the communities they live in on the environment. We talk to CEOs of environmental protection agencies, to young entrepreneurs, that work in the ICO space to entrepreneurs that have built online and offline businesses very successfully with that thought in mind not making money, but also doing the things in the right way, in a sustainable way. On day two, we talk about how do I actually create a profitable business? So we have leading business consultants, Harvard Business School professors on the summit, that help us to understand terms that are also common, like profit and value, what is that? And how do I capture it? How do I create it? How do I capture it? On day three, about everything that you need to know in order to live a fulfilled life. So how do I actually live a life as an entrepreneur that doesn’t burn me out? If I realize I’m running in that direction? What can I do? So it’s about mindset about skills, but it’s also about creating a life that is not completely absorbed by your business.
Because, you know, we need that space, that freed space that then in the end can also feed energy back into into the business. So I’m not saying as an entrepreneur, my business is taking energy from me. Far from that a lot of stuff that I do that I even get paid for his giving the energy, but I’m not. I’m not just an entrepreneur. I’m also a father, and I’m also a friend, and there’s the family out there and I I need I need that downtime for me to recharge in order to give energy to the people around me that they that need that energy, like my family. At the same time that family gives me energy, and creating this integration of work and life, I hate the term work life balance. I always call it work life integration, especially for us as entrepreneurs and for for many creative people, you can not just switch your brain off, it doesn’t work like that. You sit on your sofa in the evening, have a cup of tea, and you’re like, that’s a darn good idea. But I’m not writing that download because it’s after hours, right? No, that’s not how it works. Exactly. But it’s after hours. You know what I mean? So creating that integration. And yeah, I’m also very thankful for having you on the summit Debs you will talk to us about turning ideas into valuable things like books, for example.
Debs
And chaos. Because I think one of the things that I find in all of this was time and your processes is very similar process to my process. That final step, this is the step that is most fascinating for me, and I think I’m dying to hear at the final step of the summit is the feedback step. Because I love chaos. I’m like, if you give me five seconds, I will create chaos wherever I go. So I’m fascinated by feedback, I want to talk to you again after the summit and find out what you learned what the feedback was, and how you’re going to bring that in and do it again next year, because I’m looking forward to being a guest next year as well.
Alex
It’s probably gonna happen even later this year. So I’m crazy enough to pull another summit off, most likely and after the summer, it’s not 100% sure yet, but you’re totally right. We we will sit down and ask ourself what went well, what didn’t go well? And then we will, in the end, tweak it and make the next summit even even better, even more successful. And yeah, in the end, for us, it’s very simple. We will talk to people that were in the summit. Speakers, we will talk to a lot of people who were attendees. And in the end, we can actually measure how successful the summit was just by the funds that we raised for the causes that we wanted to support. And the more money we make for those causes. The the more we know that we were on the right track with this, and then we just need to ask ourselves, how can we make this even better next time?
Debs
Wonderful. Okay. Now, is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’re dying to tell me?
Alex
That’s a very good question. Actually, I don’t think so we’ve talked about the summit, we talked about the making something nice out of chaos, removing the chaos. We talked about the creation process that that we can use in order to create something beautiful. I think the only question left in my head is Debs, please share with us what you are going to share on the summit,
Debs
I got to talk to you about getting out of the chaos so that you can create fantastic, exciting things, valuable things for you and your clients. And those things can be whatever it is, but got to get it out of you got to break through the brain world barrier. And I love that you aren’t afraid to start speaking to people immediately before you’ve even written anything down. Lots of people wait to like, Oh, I’ve got to write it down. I’ve got to think about it a bit more. And I’ve got to go round and round around in my own head 7000 times. And I love that you get straight out there and talk to people it’s like, yes. So it’s all about getting out of your own brain and getting into the world. Breaking that brain world barrier. So, okay, right, let’s close it up. What’s the website that people should go to to find out about you? And what’s the website we should go to for the summit?
Alex
It’s Alexthestrategist.com the important stuff is right on the homepage, you can sign up from there for the summit. It’s totally free. You don’t have to pay a dime to enjoy all those sessions. You also find the intention strategy toolkit rather on landing page. Everything is there. Alexthestrategist.com
Debs
Alexthestrategist.com I love it because it means I don’t have to say your surname.
Alex
You know, that’s the issue. I do have a domain with my surname. It’s brueckmann.ca. So now you’re gonna ask me how do you write that? Right. So that’s when I said this surname is useless for the internet. And that’s what we came up with Alexthestrategist.com.
Debs
Alex, thank you so much for taking time today to talk to us. And I’m excited to be on to be a guest on your Summit. And I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing from all the other guests too. And we’ll speak to you soon.
