Dr Martina Muttke on Chaos to Creation Confessions: How & why to turn your book into a course

Debs Jenkins (00:00):
Okay, it’s recording. It’s recording. It’s recording. Right? So I’m going to introduce you and then we’ll get going. Okay. So today we’re talking to Martina Muttke, who is a Harvard graduate from the flagship program after completing her medical studies in Germany and Italy with a doctorate, she works as a senior executive and FTSE 100 healthcare companies and lift the world around the globe. Well, recently, Martina has been following her passion in developing global leaders to translate their knowledge into commercial success. She coaches and mentors, CEOs, topic executives, and startups, and she’s a keynote speaker around the world, sharing her unique message on leadership and neuroscience. Now, before I hand over to Martina, or I just want to make my own personal confession, this is the second time we’re recording this interview because the first time I forgot to press record. So Martina, thank you so much for coming on again. And if you would like to tell us a little about yourself and about your most recent creation that you’re working on right now.
Martina Muttke (01:04):
Thanks. That’s and I’m happy that we can do that together. It’s important to me, and it’s important to me to make you happy also, because I think it’s a nice thing what you’re doing. So I don’t need to speak too much about myself. I have morphed or moved from being a medical doctor in the beginning of my career because I was just fascinated with human beings. And besides that my grandmother owned a pharmacy and a fond drugs, really exciting. I have more from that into an executive with pharma and helped her many, many years being a senior leader in pharma and healthcare, leading teams all over the world. I noticed I was very much in my comfort zone and there’s people who’ve spent their whole life in the comfort zone and there’s people who just then wished to do something else. And since the, the future still hopefully quite large for me, I decided it’s time to go out and do something with the experiences I had gathered so far, but also do something new, which caters more to the things I have mostly liked and the needs, which come from those experiences I have made.
Martina Muttke (02:19):
And this is dealing with people, developing people and helping people to become the best they can be. And that led me to do still while I was working full time and, or coaching education. And now I’m, I’m doing that with pleasure and coaching and mentoring leaders, senior leaders, so CEOs and teams of startups, and do that together with what, what you have just mentioned with expanding, exploring my interests and teaching about the wonderful topic of neuroscience and leadership, because there’s a lot of parallels to how brain works and how we can lead us, utilize this to become much better leaders. And I have much happier people to lead.
Debs Jenkins (03:08):
Tell me, cause you said you wanted to do something new. Were you afraid you know, taking a leap from corporate world well-paid respected to do something new and whilst it was following your passion, were you a little bit nervous there or were you just ready to go and dive straight into it?
Martina Muttke (03:27):
You know, there is, there is a couple of models that tell you how your brain gets in into threat States. And this can be different social or physical triggers, which are perceived by your brain in the same way. So let’s say when I tell myself, I’m not only my job, I lose my position as whatever group vice president thingy. And this is a big threat to my brain. Actually, I may realize it or not. So even if I’m not obviously scared, my brain definitely is quite scared about that. Then the moving from the certainty of having a paycheck to not learning the paycheck is a total sweat for my brain. And it probably has yelled at me many times eight. Wait, are you sure you want to do that? Stop it. So, yes, I think on many levels I have been consciously or subconsciously quite scared about that.
Debs Jenkins (04:22):
And how did you, so now I love how you speak about your brain and do as kind of separate items. My brain was probably scared. I wasn’t scared, but my brain might’ve been scared. Tell me a little bit more about how you think about the brain and how it’s well, you think about three brains. So tell us about,
Martina Muttke (04:40):
Yeah, I didn’t know that, that when you start having a bit more time and this happens when you’re not in a full time job anymore, you, you devote a bit of your time and interest to a few, a good person to some social connections, but you also start learning and I love learning and my fascination has always been about, or the hidden capabilities of the brain. And so I started when I was 10 reading all kinds of Spillers, which are come from scientific to science fiction to the whole world of Stephen King and Dean Coon’s. I still do that today. I must confess and everything that the brain may do, if we have a way to explore, what’s really ended and how to make it work, that fascinated me. And I remember when I went to this little book, ordering from the university is actually making your brain requesting things to put into your future, which you just put simply as an order to the universe.
Martina Muttke (05:44):
That was super fascinating and tried that out with a couple of examples and throughout my life being an MD, having studied medicine. So being a scientist, I see that there’s a lot of unused potential. For example, they know phones, they probably know that that in animals, there is a kind of Telus telepathic capabilities. So the way that a sparrows, when you see them in in hundreds and thousands and that they within one minute change direction and all at the same time, there was a wondering if they have a different way to communicate, which is a kind of telepathic possibility. So all of these fascinated me and then quite lately, there’s so much things spoken about neuroscience. Neuroscience suddenly becomes the new hype, but just because there’s a lot more things you can discover about the brain, you can see what happens in the brain.
Martina Muttke (06:44):
We know that the brain can be changed, it’s changing every day. So I started learning, reading a lot about this. And at one moment I said, this is great. People should know about that. It would help them so much in dealing with themselves and dealing with people for leadership, for not getting new people, stressed out for bringing motivation to your teams and to give people what they really crave in our times. But especially the new generations regard much higher than any kind of money. Monetary rewards is purpose, giving them purpose sense of achievement. This is all stuff which has made in your brain. It’s endorphins, hormones, which being being released and make you feel this way. So I found that super fascinating. And when I find something really fascinating, I like to speak about it. And the, like the people understand it in the way that I understand it.
Martina Muttke (07:41):
And I get really angry when I see it being communicated in books and articles where they’re either really stupid or too complicated. So I decided I wanted to speak and teach about this in a simple way. And of course the best way would be also to have a book that explains this in a bit more detail in a simple way, and in a humorous way and entertaining one. Tell us about your book. So how long have you been working on it? What is it about what’s it called? So the book is called built better brands, a leader’s guide to the world of neuroscience. And it is with your help as my book coach, whenever I tell probably that I have completed a book and I think it was a one nine months. So that was that’s amazing actually, but I must say in hindsight it was nine months of a lot of work.
Martina Muttke (08:40):
And again without having a person, like you holding me accountable on one side, but giving me the tools and the guidance on how to, because this is an area I have never explored. You have to recognize when you’re ignorant, but you also have to be able to just say, I want to learn, but also I need help. So I needed help. And you were there and I’m very happy that with your help, he could complete the book project. And now I have a book which was a lot of work. I feel a lot of pride and yeah, I’m looking forward to have a published.
Debs Jenkins (09:16):
Do you know when it’s going to be published more or less when we’re going to be able to see it and buy it? Yeah,
Martina Muttke (09:20):
I think it, it seems to move quite quickly. So there is this English term about a couple of months, which I learned in my, my life can mean everything from four weeks to basically two years. So let’s call it a couple of months with a hope that’s on the, on the, on the left hand side of the spectrum. And I’m sure it will be just a good couple of years.
Debs Jenkins (09:43):
Fantastic. Okay. And so when you were putting, I mean, how I’m hearing this is you as you decided you wanted to write a book, you wanted to write a book because you felt a need for, and you felt angry when people were communicating about neuroscience and the brain in bad ways or boring ways. So tell us about that. That, that thing that irritated you enough to make, you want to write a book, to make you want to produce information that was much better than what’s already out there.
Martina Muttke (10:14):
You know, maybe it comes because first of all, my mother was a teacher and I had this experience. I was giving lots of presentations when I was in the corporate world and I enjoyed it very much. And I remember when I was in China, in Beijing, speaking about really complex disease and the treatment options and the research on that. And I try to put it in words so that the audience, which was a lot of press, people could understand it also as non-medically educated people. And then the, the, the moderator who was a very prestigious professor from the local university, he came to me and said, this was great. You should be your teacher. And that was the biggest compliment I received in my life. I think for me, it was very important. So when I see that there is information about the brain about all these things like nootropics, can you pimp your brain?
Martina Muttke (11:09):
Can you hack your brain? That makes me angry because I think no, no, no. I think about the movie from Luke based on where Lucy, where her brain is being pimped in the end, she’s just being blown up into a computer. So it’s scary. Why do you scare people? The brain is a wonderful organ that we don’t know it. That’s the second thing. Why shouldn’t we just start getting a little bit information about this box on top of our head, which we don’t know, we know everything about how to cut our nails and wonderful shapes and how to make our eyes green or blue, but we don’t know what happens in there. So it’s so important. So let’s, let’s get a look into that. So I read a lot of books about neuroscience, because there was no list, no science. I wanted to speak about the first place.
Martina Muttke (11:55):
And many of these books were so complex. There were so scientific that I thought, Oh my God, these are so intelligent people. And all these thousands of references. And there’s a thousand more books that they have as a background information. And I got lost and I just was forcing myself through these books. And then they had some books where there was one principal being the epitome, and epiphany of everything. And I thought, no, that’s so dry. That’s too simple. You’re falling people. And then there were books where I just noticed that somebody had, did not have any idea about the medical background. And I also felt this is not correct that people are being misguided. So I want to give something which has a little bit of everything and provides a useful angle and takes the facts, but explains them in a manner that everybody can understand them. And then put this into a setting, which is familiar to me, and this is leading people and organizations.
Debs Jenkins (12:57):
That’s brilliant. So, so if I can just paraphrase you that the information that was out there that people were, that people had to read or to, to consume was either too complex, too scientific, too referenced, very dry and was missing the point. So you’ll go, you, you could see a need for something that was a bit more relevant lighthearted and slightly less heavy.
Martina Muttke (13:24):
Yeah, exactly. But more entertaining and not esoteric though. Okay. So
Debs Jenkins (13:31):
When you started thinking about writing a book, what did you do? Did you do know? You said you don’t, you’d already site that you’ve read lots on neuroscience. What did you do next?
Martina Muttke (13:41):
Yeah, I mean, I learned to write, I learned to put pieces together and I, I needed to see how much information do you need to write a book. And I think this is a super critical question because thinking about some books I had read, you can probably, you would need like three studies to start writing a book. So you can do that. And I have a friend who actually is working since 10 years on a book and he just told me, one of his footnotes is two pages long. So he’s getting lost in all the information, which is then which he desperately tries to fit into a book. Do you need that? So I think that the biggest decision you need to make becoming an author is how much do I need to know how much do you want to put in there? What is really relevant? And of course, in order to do that, you need to, at some stage, say, stop. I have learned enough. This is now what is, what is useful and what needs to be the basis of everything.
Debs Jenkins (14:40):
That’s a brilliant question because it’s a real challenge for smart people is that they could carry on research and they could carry on reading. They could carry on watching the podcast and carry on learning. How do you
Martina Muttke (14:52):
Know, how do you decide when to stop? When enough is enough? I think they are my, my kind of the way I am helps me, but because I’ve always been the 80% person, whilst many people in my surroundings, especially scientists are more than 120% people. So I live with this little bit of risk effect or that I’m missing out on. And I decided, that’s fine if I’m missing out on a hundred gazillion of little things, that’s what other people write about. But for me, it was enough until I got to the point where suddenly whatever I read, heard podcasts, write articles, books, all information I gathered about the world of neuroscience and leadership models. For example, I suddenly started to find the same things again, put in different phrases, books, models, and you think that this data, they caught it like this last time, but here they call it like that. But it’s the same thing. And then if you kind of have a bit of confused and betrayed and just having this sensation of that has been there before, or no, not you again, is making me bored. And for me a sign that I should just stop doing, learning what I’m learning, doing, what I’m doing is when I start getting bored. So that’s what I did.
Debs Jenkins (16:15):
Excellent. If you could go back and do this whole process again, would you change anything?
Martina Muttke (16:22):
I think probably not depths only. I probably would follow all the guidances of people who have advised me about becoming an authority in this field and think about growing a real network. We’re being more present on Facebook, on all the social media, LinkedIn, Twitter. It certainly is no harm when you build up the community before writing a book, because then you have something directly which will benefit from your efforts. Right? So I have done it. I’ve started to a little bit during before not so extensively. So, but this is certainly some recommendation I would give birth to your community who wants to read the book and who wants to see who you are before.
Debs Jenkins (17:13):
Excellent. Okay. So what are you working on right now? Is there anything that you’re working on new, different, unusual?
Martina Muttke (17:23):
I have started to make the book into modules for workshops because I have presented the topic in a very short one hour session.
Martina Muttke (17:33):
And of course it’s only a little glimpse of what’s in the book and there’s so much more exciting things in the book that I started to make modules out of the book. And they have basically six teaching modules, which as first thing I’ll probably start teaching. I have a request, an Indian university group who wants to present this as a little extra curricular seminar to the students. So I’m going to test that. And I mean, you need to test the, how the audience perceives that. And I’m going to test a couple of exposure points for this topic and for my book,
Debs Jenkins (18:11):
Brilliant one. My, my philosophy on how we create things is we start off with some light chaos over here are the things that go on on their head. And we put lots of input in and we have to go through a constraints process and to get to the creation. But once we’ve got to that creation, so your creation was the book. One of my things that I love encouraging class to do is to recreate, to reuse, recycle upcycle. So I love that you’re reusing all of the work that you put into the book to create these modules, to create these teaching modules for the university. Did, does it feel different creating modules from the book or because before you were doing speeches on the ideas that you put into the book, how does it feel? Is it you sort of gone round the loops a few times, this creation loop, how does it feel to you?
Martina Muttke (19:00):
I would say when there’s all quite philosophical answer, which I will give you, if you love these things you put into writing or into presentations, you get more and more excited because again, a book is compiling knowledge, putting it into some palatable pieces and you want to present it, but it’s also new for you. It’s still like 300 pages. And every time I discover something new on how I want to present it, speak about it. So if this is really exciting for you and you have the right topic, then it’s always new, it’s always exciting and it will never get boring for you or for your audience.
Debs Jenkins (19:42):
Yeah. I love that. I want to go back a bit and deconstruct a little bit more of what you said earlier. One of the things you said was you want with the modules that you’re delivering to the Indian university that you want to test, you want to see the exposure points he wants to test how they go down. How much testing do you do in general for your ideas and your creations?
Martina Muttke (20:07):
I think you have to jump into the cold water. You can you can this is this nice saying from Kung Fu Panda. You may know that from the movie today, tomorrow, yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it present. So testing can only be good in the present. It can be some totally different output and the future and whatever was in the past is, has been done already, maybe in different ways. So I like to test with very different audiences. I gave this chapters of the book and even the full book, the full manuscript tool, very different people, because I think what is good to have a test with people who are not your key audience, but people where you really want some critical feedback, or even that they tell you, this is total.
Martina Muttke (21:12):
This is all just nonsense. Or this is too high level or this too, whatever. But if, if you get a feeling that people just like, something about that, dentist gives you confidence and you need this confidence because you need to stay on track and motivated. When you have a project, you know, you, you have the dream you start with to, to bring this message into the world about neuroscience and leadership, to become a speaker, go, go out and teach, speak. That’s the dream. Then after the dream, you make it a project. And the project is the presentations and the book, that’s your project. And then you may be able to realize your dream to do that. You need to test your dream and to test the project. And this gives you little pieces of satisfaction all on the way, which may be a very long way because the book is just the start.
Martina Muttke (22:07):
And every time you test something with success, this gives your brain a little kick of dopamine, which is the, and then that keeps your reward cycle activated and brings more motivation to you and keeps you going. So testing, asking, trying is part of it. And of course you can fail, but you can also succeed. And this is then what will keep you going?
Debs Jenkins (22:34):
Tell us a bit more about the dopamine reward cycle. How can we attempt to use the phrase that you don’t like? How can we hack that? How can we actually increase the dopamine reward cycle? How can we do that? Yeah.
Martina Muttke (22:47):
So it’s, it’s quite a little bit of a, a nasty and sometimes dangerous thing, right? And Facebook is the last one who figured that out. There’s dopamine. We want. So I go very well, because if you do something in action and somebody gives you a, like, it gives you a praise, even chocolate because chocolate directly end-users also, there is a reward cycle, the dopamine, your brain gets an activation of its pleasure center.
Martina Muttke (23:16):
And the pleasure center activates other structures, which then are involved in releasing the so-called neurochemical, neurotransmitter dopamine, which then is being floated into your system. And you feel good. You feel nice, rewarded and content, and you want to keep that feeling. Cause there’s this motivation. This is good. Since you want to keep that you look for what, what was that? That gave me that feeling. And you remember, Oh, it was at like on Facebook or it was a piece of chocolate, or it was the praise for my boss, or it was the place about, yes, you would be a good teacher or you should do these things more often. Or I liked what you said. So keep this dopamine reward cycle activated for a leader is extremely important because sometimes first of all, everybody needs one thing and that is continuously to be rewarded. Otherwise we would just not start new things and take risks and be courageous and not get anywhere and everybody would stop questioning now. So it’s very important that you learn. How can you give people in your daily life and your work and yourself daily, with words,
Debs Jenkins (24:26):
Give us three tips for how they can, we can do that to ourselves. Cause a lot of the people listening will be solos. That, that way we work in at home, in front of their computer, how can we do that to ourselves to avoid the, a, the Facebook and video likes?
Martina Muttke (24:41):
Well, there are some things which, which we all like even to just to get another cup of coffee or get a piece of chocolate, or you go for a walk with your dog, which just is relaxing. You. I had in my studies, I had some, some friends. She was just happy when she could fit in half an hour of a hot bath for herself. Right. take a book, allow yourself half an hour of reading your favorite reading, your favorite creamy. I myself, reward myself with naps. I love naps. So I go on the sofa and take my dog and we nap. And there’s this my reward after I have done something for a couple of hours.
Debs Jenkins (25:17):
Fantastic. Okay. That’s brilliant. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you want to tell us?
Martina Muttke (25:24):
I think it’s it’s great that I had the chance to work on this project and again you need a partner in crime. Don’t try to go it alone. So that’s, that’s my recommendation. And there is help out there. And if you have had to help weave, which, which, which I had with you, this is something then you can become successful in your chances of success are much higher. If you don’t think you are able to do everything yourself. And if you recognize you need help and if then you start looking for help and just embrace people who want to help you in your journey.
Debs Jenkins (26:01):
Fantastic. Okay. I’ve got one final question for you. And I’m asking everybody this question. It’s when was the last time you did something for the first time?
Martina Muttke (26:12):
Oh, wow. That’s a great question. The first time. Oh my God. Yeah. Very good question. And how long does it normally take for somebody to answer you that question?
Debs Jenkins (26:26):
Some people just can’t do it. The reason why I’m asking it, and I’m asking lots of people, this question all over the place at the moment is because I find myself getting into routines. And so I was finding myself in the echo chamber and hearing the same things and doing the same things. And whilst I like routine, it helps me get stuff done. It was also stifling me. So I kept thinking, okay, I need to do something new. So I’ve been asking everybody, when was the last time you did something for the first time? Oh yeah. I can tell you
Martina Muttke (26:54):
Today at two o’clock I gave a team workshop, coaching, teamwork, shopping, teaching a team on how they should use coaching where their people and I, for the first time went into such a workshop without any, any, any preparation. Wow. It felt very good. And it was even better because I knew I had knew 80% of the knowledge I do have the rest is going to be a provider and this 20% improvisation made it.
Martina Muttke (27:29):
So that was kind of exciting then using your 20% that would have liked it. Well from us neuroscientists point of view, neurologic point of view, what was happening in your brain with that 20% that you didn’t know that you had to improvise? I think
Martina Muttke (27:42):
Get activates a couple of things which are there’s, there’s happiness hormones. They were two need because it makes you happy to be just on your own creative and you can let go. It activates adrenaline and endorphins, endorphins are doing the pain. So whatever you think is happening, your, your endorphins keep you excited and happy. And adrenaline put you in a, in a powerful energy loaded mode. And then the, the, the 7,200. So the serotonin and when it goes well, when you notice after five minutes that yes, this was a good decision. So we have all good hormones coming together and that, in that time.
Debs Jenkins (28:25):
Excellent. Okay. But is there anything else you want to tell us? Nope. Okay. Let’s wrap it up there. So Martina, where can people get in touch with you? How can they find out more about you?
Martina Muttke (28:37):
My webpage wwwMartinaMuttke.com is the best way at the moment. And I will very shortly also posts the possibility there too, where people can sign up when they want to receive my book.
Martina Muttke (28:55):
And there’s a test on there isn’t that they can, they can do.
Martina Muttke (28:58):
Yeah. And that’s a fun thing that people can test their leadership style because my book speaks about a new leadership model, which is about the gardener, the captain and the magician, and without telling too much who it’s quite a fun test to discover what is your innate preferred leadership style. So before it is on the webpage,
Martina Muttke (29:19):
We can go there and just try and find out who, what our innate leadership style is from your test. Exactly. Exactly. That’s on MartinaMuttke.com yet. It is fantastic. Okay. Martina, thank you so much. And we’ll speak again soon. Ciao.
Martina Muttke (29:35):
Very good. Bye bye.