Peter Brunke’s Vision: When Europe Meets America in Executive Search

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (14:06.272)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote, and today’s guest is Peter Brunke, partner of EO Executives in Nuremberg, Germany and Orlando, Florida in the USA. EO Executives was founded in 1997 and is present in 10 countries with more than 30 offices.

They were just recently recognized as one of the top 40 executive search companies in Germany. Their mission is to help clients build the best leadership team they have ever had. And they do this by bringing together their clients with consultants who are experts in their respective industries and functional areas. This ensures that success critical leadership positions are filled quickly, permanently, and successfully. In addition to amazing consultants, their team provides a dedicated researchers and staff

and each brings their extensive knowledge to the search for the perfect executive. Their unique methodical approach called Executive Intro ensures that candidates are not only convincing from a professional point of view, but also represent a long-term enrichment for the management team. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits

that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the managing partner of EO executives Orlando and Nuremberg,

Peter Brunke, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Peter (16:01.382)
Thanks, Anthony. I’m super stoked and happy to be here. Looking forward to our talk.

Anthony Codispoti (16:06.068)
All right, let’s do it. So Peter, tell us in your own words, what does EEO executives do?

Peter (16:13.212)
So EO executives, so thank you for the question, good question, and thanks so much for the nice introduction, pretty on point, thank you very much for that. So EO executives, the name EO comes from Executives Online, it was initially founded, as you mentioned, 1997 in England, and EO executives was actually one of the first companies, executive search, recruiting, headhunting, whatever you want to call it, companies that realized that…

the recruiting, like in former times, printing out resumes, sending them via mail to the candidates and such things are going to be changing dramatically through the internet, which was in the 90s, just at the beginning, baby steps and stuff. but, and this was the reason why it was also named EO executives online because realizing the recruiting will change dramatically and this is not being a resume paper printing out, sending around anymore.

So we were actually one of the first ones, if not the first one, jumping on the train, changing the industry and recruiting to online business. And what we do and what we’re good at, so this is how it started. And in 2011, the German managing partners bought it out from the owners in England and now it’s headquartered in Germany. And as you said, we’re branching out into…

more and more international markets. So it took some years to get successful and settled in Germany. And as you also mentioned right now, we just got awarded a few months back by one of the two biggest financial newspapers, an independent survey done by them as one of the top 40 executive search companies in Europe and out of 2000 executive search firms in Germany. it’s not just 2000, there’s like 12 of them.

Anthony Codispoti (18:02.304)
out of 2000. You’re the top 40 out of 2000.

Peter (18:07.094)
Exactly. and of course, there’s a lot of one and two’s of people that are doing recruiting as one person, and then also obviously big, big company. So we are a mid-sized company, we’re about 100 people worldwide, and we’re growing. And I started the branch in Florida about two years ago, initially with a different recruiting company, but now being part of the O.

because of my, how can I say this, my own personal experience. I, and I just said this at the beginning, as of today, today was the day 24 years ago when I entered the United States for the first time. So it’s kind of a, October 3rd, so that’s the day we’re recording today, October 3rd, 2005, I arrived in New York City. Good place to be anyways, New York City is always fun. And…

Anthony Codispoti (18:47.751)
on October 3rd.

Peter (19:01.628)
started my journey. And the interesting part was, there’s a couple of things. So the first thing is, when you study and you have a university degree anywhere in a Western culture, you learn decent English, you have to, because that’s the language of business. But when you then move to a country, like the United States in this case, and this becomes a completely different kind of beast.

So your language skills are not up to par what they are now 24 years later, of course. And when it comes to business, you make a lot of mistakes. And I spent all of my years in the United States working in transatlantic international businesses for mainly Europe, subsidiaries of European headquarters, two German headquarters, a Swiss headquarters, a French headquarters.

Peter (19:57.724)
This comes still, although all of these things are not new. You can find all of this in the internet somewhere, and there’s guidelines how to behave, how to talk. But the cultural differences between Europe and the United States are as different as they are from the states of Europe to China. But in China, say, you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to watch out. And with the states, you…

Anthony Codispoti (20:14.89)
Mm.

Peter (20:21.274)
You speak English, you watch the Hollywood movies, you know this TV series, so you think you know America, which is the first and the biggest mistake that you can do because that is just wrong. Americans are way different in doing business from Germans, Austrians, pick any country in Europe as well. So, and I was lucky, I have to say this, but it was painful at times as well.

When I started in a startup situation, I was allowed to make tons of mistakes because I didn’t know. I didn’t know better and I did probably all the mistakes that you could do because in a startup it’s not that big of a deal because there’s not a lot of so much money behind it but if you’re looking at bigger corporations that want to come.

into a market or in a market, those mistakes can be very, very costly. so, and this was my inspiration, my passions and all those learnings that I did from a cultural perspective, I want to help other people avoid. Or if you’re filling a position and let it be in Germany for an American company or in the States for a German.

Austrians, this company, finding the right people that can deal with both sides. You’ve got to be immersed to some extent in both cultures. If you hire…

a German person for an American subsidiary in Germany, that’s going to fail quickly. Same here, if you have a German subsidiary in the States and you hire an American that has never dealt with any foreigners besides Americans and maybe Canadians, it’s going to fail because communication, the way how to do business is just different. So this was kind of a long answer to your question, sorry, about why I’m doing what I’m doing right

Peter (22:26.008)
I was, I’m in an executive search for years now. I was in, yeah, since I came to the US and corporate America running two companies. again, so I learned all of these things. There’s funny stories to it, but also sometimes the hard way.

Anthony Codispoti (22:45.312)
So that was a great answer and several things I want to unpack there, Peter. So the company, when it was first founded in 1997, did it have that same name EO for executive online? I mean, for people who don’t realize who maybe weren’t around when the internet first got started in 1997, these were really early days. Like not, not everybody even knew what the internet was at that point. And so

Peter (22:58.714)
Yes.

Peter (23:10.331)
Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (23:14.88)
for the company to have the foresight to say that this rickety tool, I mean, it was budding. It was a lot of promise there, but to have the vision that this is where everything was going to move to, I think was quite prescient because nobody really knew what this was going to become. I just want to make that point that to have called it EO for Executive Online back in 1997, I think showed a lot of foresight.

Peter (23:43.61)
point and you’re right on point with that and you have this was kind of a I mean we know this now I mean if you’ve been around in the in the 90s it was a revolution in the making and we have the same we see I believe you seem the same right now with AI

AI since it started in COVID, it got sped up last year and it’s just the things are changing so dramatically fast and probably younger generation five, 10 years from now, they will live up to completely different processes. And this applies also to the industry that I’m in, in executive search. It’s just changing the speed of change is so dramatic and…

Yeah, we have it in our name, so we’re trying to keep running with the AI stuff as well, yes.

Anthony Codispoti (24:32.192)
That’s great. So tell me a little bit more about this award. mean, to be chosen top 40 out of, you know, thousands of different firms is really impressive. What were the criteria that they were looking for? Why do you think that EO was chosen for this list?

Peter (24:47.196)
To be honest, that is a very good question, but it was a survey that was done completely without involving the executive search companies. Nobody knew, so they did this with companies and going after HR departments and executives and asking them about their experiences with recruiting companies, asking them, name your…

top one, two, three, and why are they good, why are you working with them, and why are you not working with them. So we have no… It was pretty surprising because usually, I mean, there’s those type of surveys that are a little bit hybrid, I would call it, where you are involved and you can participate and sometimes you pay money and stuff like that, but this was really an independent one. So it was…

A very surprising and B super surprising because hey we’re in the top 40 out of 2000 that’s pretty cool.

Anthony Codispoti (25:43.166)
That’s amazing. Yeah, it was going to be my follow up question is how much did you pay to get this honor? But you didn’t even know that it was coming. You weren’t involved.

Peter (25:47.546)
Nothing, To use the logo and now promoting it, then you gotta… So, that’s the whole deal.

Anthony Codispoti (25:56.596)
Gotcha. That’s really impressive. Now you mentioned that when you first got here, you were making a lot of mistakes because of the cultural differences between doing business in Germany and the USA. What are some of those big differences?

Peter (26:07.948)
Yes.

Peter (26:14.502)
Fair enough. So I started representing a company out of Germany, in the emission reduction business out of Nuremberg actually. And I started in California and Southern California, pretty cool place to start a business, always sunny. And I started…

With an Ikea we rented an office. I had an Ikea table a cell phone a laptop and one service technician that came on board two weeks ago and One service technician coming over from Germany training the guy and then said okay Peter now go for it so I did business development and stuff and also started hiring people and my one of the first learnings

with my then assistant secretary, whatever you want to call it, somebody that helped me with the administrative stuff. And I remember one day, very early on, said, can you come in my office and close the door, please? And she came in, closed the door, and was sitting in front of me and was shaking. She was like, her hands were like this, and said, what’s up? Why are you shaking? And I are you going to fire me? And she said, no.

And then I learned, at least in Southern California, if you call somebody in your office and say, please close the door, that’s usually bad news. said, no, I didn’t want to have bad news. I wanted to have peace, talking with you, not somebody else running in the office. But obviously, that was a learning. This is just little things and funny stories. And another story, this was when I started writing at the beginning in New York City. I helping at the beginning.

Anthony Codispoti (27:46.9)
Yeah.

Peter (27:58.328)
Also similar German speaking companies with entering the American market.

So legal setup, bank accounts, whatnot, the legal foundation getting hooked up with potential clients, distributors, and all those things. And I had a meeting in New York City and I rented a meeting room in a hotel where I had a German company with cool products and a potential distributor for them. So they’ve never met. And I was brought them together and said, okay, we’re just going to spend half a day here. I rented the room in a nice hotel in the city.

and then the journals did their presentation and their spiel and whatnot. the meeting was so-so because also I was new so I had my learning, I go through my learning curve as well. But at the end, and this was the learning out of this, was the American distributor said to me, hey Peter,

these guys are so reserved, it sounds they’re not even convinced about their own product. They talk about, yeah, we gotta watch out for this and this can be complicated. And I was like, okay. So there’s a point to that. But again, I was German, I’m still German obviously, but now after 24 years in the States, I’m a little bit in between. So if you wanna sell to Americans,

You’ve got to be way more pushy, more aggressive, more positive. say, hey guys, we have a great product. This is what you should do. We’re going to make lots of money. The both of us, we’re going to give you a good price. And you run for it. Give it a try. We tried this for six months. And then you see how it goes. That would be the American approach. And as I said, the German one is slowly think about it. we’ve got to watch out this one. We’ve got to think this through. We’ve got to calculate this. And this is the German way. But if you’re going to come.

Peter (29:50.18)
And this is, I mean, one of the major learnings is if you go to a different country, it doesn’t matter if you come to the States, if you come to Germany, you got to do it the way other people do it in that country and not trying. And there’s examples either way, big companies, not Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz came and got it has called like a marriage between equals, got together with Chrysler. What is it? 2000 something? I don’t remember.

Anthony Codispoti (30:00.746)
Hmm.

Peter (30:19.516)
It failed and it was two of the largest companies in the world because the cultures were just different. They couldn’t make it out. And on the other hand, the same thing happened with Walmart. One of the biggest companies in the world, except Germany, they tried to go to Germany as well in the early 2000s. And same thing, they failed because they were trying to copy what they’re doing in the US, doing it in Germany and spent…

tons of money, millions and millions, lost a lot of millions and then gave up after six, seven years. And this is something, I don’t know if you or one of the people that listening today, if you go to Germany, you will never, never find a supermarket where you have people helping you packaging your things in bags and should have drive your car down and help you load the car. This is invading private space for Germans. No, no, no.

I’m doing this by myself. I’m packing by myself and going to my sense. This is, and then also the chit chatting with a cashier and a supermarket and a Walmart, whatever. Forget about that in Germany. I tried, I gave it up. I did it at the beginning. So Aldi, German brand now starting everywhere in the United States as well, at least here in Florida where I there’s like Aldi’s popping out everywhere. And German brand and…

In my first, I don’t know, first or second year when I moved, traveling back to Germany, I said, okay, I’m going to try this at an Aldi cashier in Germany. So I went to buy my grocery in an Aldi and then went to the lady and said, hey, how are you doing? How’s your day? Is it busy today in Schutland?

That’s just un-German. You don’t talk and say, okay, how much is it? Okay, payment credit card or cash? Yeah, chop. Why transaction and chit chatting with a Kashian ID, which, this is weird. She got scared, the lady at the Kashian said, do I know you? Do I know you? What do you want from me?

Anthony Codispoti (32:15.456)
It’s very transactional. We’re not here to be buddies, right? Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (32:25.828)
What’s going on here?

Why am I being interrogated?

Peter (32:31.836)
And then I have just a current example, friends of ours. We had over for dinner a couple of days ago, a couple with their son. And she works for Siemens, Siemens major competitor, Chenner Electric, doing everything from hairdryers, washing machines to nuclear plants. And she works in the medical division Siemens Health Ineos, that’s what it’s called. She comes from Colombia.

and she’s here now or here. And then she told us, I had a major issue with one of her bosses and HR needed to get involved. And then I said, okay, what was it? they said, well, she doesn’t speak German. So all the conversations in English, that’s normal in big corporations by now business language is English. And she wanted something from her boss and she wrote in an email, dear Katja, I need this and this.

So in Germany, if you have a superior person, it’s not dear Katja. The normal addressing of the person, even in an email, which would have been expected, would be dear Frau Dr. Sonnenstein. So, title is important, and you address people with the last name and not with their first name. And, well, she didn’t know, but it got bumped up the chain, then HR needed to get involved. It was a big deal.

Anthony Codispoti (33:40.362)
title is important in the way that you address them.

Peter (33:54.712)
And this is the same. What I had when I mentioned before this meeting in New York City, I told the German guys and said, hey, these guys want to talk with you with your first name. They’re not going to say Mr. Miller, Mr. Smith. say, hey Jim, hey Peter, hey Tony, what’s up? Well, how was the trip? How was New York? And this is normal. The interesting part is if you have those things, and I have this also the companies that I work for, but you still have this

more formal approach within a company, even with people that work for 10, 15 years with each other, that in the meeting with the Americans, they all are like, hey Bob, hey John, what’s up, and what are we going to do with this project? And then as soon as they’re going back to their normal daily routine, it’s still, Mr. Miller, can you help me with this? So this can get awkward because then if the employees think, okay, now I’m on a different level with my boss now.

Anthony Codispoti (34:53.066)
But actually they just have to shift gears to be in the right communication mode for the Americans that they’re interacting with.

Peter (34:53.52)
It’s not.

Peter (35:01.024)
The point to this is you’ve got to address it. Ideally, before it happens and figure out what’s the rule here. Are we going to switch to this informal level also in German or are we moving back to our list that everybody’s clear how this is going to work? And this is just, again, mean, this is like little stories like this.

that you go through, like I mentioned, this friend of ours from Colombia, she was addressing just what you do, no? Dear Anthony, you don’t write. Dear Mr. Cori Spoli, and you say, hey, Anthony, what’s up? No, thank you for the invite. And this is just different.

Anthony Codispoti (35:42.026)
So this is interesting to hear, Peter, because I see that you’re the managing partner in both Nuremberg, Germany and Orlando, Florida. These are two pretty geographically diverse locations. And now we’re hitting on a really interesting point that very culturally diverse as well. I’m curious, is this part of maybe a unique offering that you bring to the table, sort of having a foot in both of these worlds?

to where if there is sort of this cross-cultural thing with one of your clients that you’re better able to kind of address that as you’re helping to look for an executive for them.

Peter (36:23.932)
Absolutely, that’s quite important. This is one of our USBs, the Unix selling propositions, our niche here, so to speak. In addition to that, and then I’m going to elaborate a little bit on that one, is also all our partners, so including me, come from a corporate world. I’ve been managing director of the two companies, as I said, they’re running the subsidiary of a German and a Swiss company.

I know what I’m talking about. had employees, had to hire people, I had to fire people, I had stress, I was in court three times for the company. All those things. And I learned, and this is why I mentioned this before, I learned all those cultural differences. Now, of course, I’m picking the funny stories, but there was also painful things and they come home and say, dang, I mean, this is horrible, what am gonna do? But…

because I’m, and this is, know what I’m talking about because I lived through this by myself. It’s not, so by helping people in recruiting, finding the best fit of what we call it the best leadership team ever. So this is our long-term goal. we are not.

trying to be transactional and say, okay, I’m going to fill one box in your orchard and get you a VP or CEO, whatever person in there and that’s it. We are striving for a long-term relationship. And ideally is that if you work with us, my goal is I want to, I wouldn’t say replace, but I want to equip your C-Suite, because they’re changing anyways over a couple of years. So that in five years you come to me and say, hey Peter,

This is the best team I’ve ever had. I mean, is this a goal like this? Yes, it is. But you got to have those type of goals that this is what we’re going for. We don’t want to fit boxes in an org truck. There’s tons of other people that can do that, but that’s not us. Our mission is best leadership team ever. And for doing that is like, and again, my niche, yes, having the foot in both sides and having lived through all of this.

Anthony Codispoti (38:10.336)
Mm.

Peter (38:38.406)
By myself.

Anthony Codispoti (38:40.798)
Yeah, it’s not like you read this from a book. You’ve gone through these sometimes funny, sometimes painful experiences yourself. And so you’ve got a lot of personal experience to draw from. You you said something, Peter, that your goal is to to equip your clients with having the best leadership team ever. How do you approach executive search differently than maybe some of your competitors do that allow you to achieve that?

Peter (39:12.038)
We have as part of our standard procedure, I would call it, or let me go, I’m going to go one step back. So usually when you deal, and this is the same in the States and in Germany or in other countries as well, dealing with recruiters, sometimes you’re just getting said, hey, I’m getting a resume, or said, hey, here’s the LinkedIn profile. And I had this in my time.

few years in corporate America, the last company that I worked for in the Atlanta area at the time. I worked with recruiters quite a bit and then I’m getting resumes and I said, well, if I would have put my assistance two hours to work and said go through LinkedIn and me five candidates, the result would have been more or less the same except there was a nice write-up and the conditions and whatnot.

So what we do is, and with that, the resume checks boxes on the skill set. Do you have a bachelor in engineering? Do you have a master in this and that? Did you have experience in that working abroad, working for a company? Do you speak French, German, English, Chinese, whatever it is. So this is just checking boxes on skills. But with this, also the discussion that we had before with the dramatic involvement of changing technology and now with the introduction of AI.

skills that I’ve learned 30 years ago, I need a fraction of that today. You’ve to be constantly learning and be making sure that you’re getting into… Yeah, the learning mode cannot stop anymore. This was different 30 years ago. We said, my father learned this and then he practiced this and he was in the same job for 40 years of his life. This is not the case anymore. So the constant requirement for learning.

which then makes those skills that you’re checking on a resume, in our opinion, less important. For us, it’s more important that you figure out two more areas. One is the behavioral things, how a person is working and doing things, and then even more, the driving forces, the motivational factors. Why is he doing what he’s doing? And for that, we’re using, as I said before, as a standard procedure tool. Yeah.

Peter (41:37.948)
personality assessment tool, which we believe is one of the best in the market. And of course, if you’ve, as you said, been around in the nineties, I did the beginning of my career, physical assessments, where you’re sitting in a room with HR and some trainers and there’s two or three candidates. This was stressful and painful, like, I don’t know, and I’m happy that I never have to do this anymore. Now those…

Personality assessments are all online. This is a questionnaire that you fill out online, at home, or in your office, whatever, whenever you want to. But the questionnaires are so sophisticated by now, even if you want to cheat, you need to be a master in those tools to really cheat. Because the questions are reversed questions, and there’s tons of stuff going on.

We also, I did one just two months ago and I was rushing through and said, don’t think about it, just ask what you think. And then you get the report and you think, Jesus Christ, this is so spot on. And this is always good, the same thing. If you do it by yourself, it’s easier to talk about it. So we are testing the behavioral, the how people are doing things and why are they doing things. And just to mention that making a difference.

The most common things that you know is the disk test. I don’t know if you know this is the four colors, red, blue, yellow, and green. Anthony Codispoti (00:00.17)
there. And then I’ll just do a quick intro about the tech issues that we ran into and kind of reintroduce you to talk about where you left off.

Peter (00:11.438)
So the one thing that I wanted to tell you is about one of the most prominent personality tests is the so-called disc test, which most of the people know and have done. And you’re getting categorized in four types, the red one, the yellow one, the green one, and the blue one. The D stands for dominant, is the red one. E is initiative, is yellow. Green is steady. And then blue is a conscientious type of person. So you better keep getting into four boxes and obviously like if you have.

Anthony Codispoti (00:19.05)
Mm.

Peter (00:41.612)
lots of red people in a team, you’ve got lots of clashes, so you need a good mix. But it’s just four categories. We have two different layers on top of this. We can get over 400 different personality types. So this gives you obviously a very more nuanced description of yourself. And this is, again, if you do the test, it’s very point on. And the good thing is those tests are not, there’s no good or bad.

It works on your strengths, whether you’re good at and whether you use this and things that are a little bit weaker on your own, but with weak not being bad. So every person, you cannot be strong in anything. That’s normal. All right. So, and this works very well. And because there’s nothing judgmental in it, it works on your strength, even with executives.

older people, executives in their prime, they’re still doing those tests and there’s always things that you can work with. A, with the person, say, is this how you see yourself? Or is this something that you reflect on, yes or no? And then obviously the same, making sure that you’re getting the right person for the right job, having the perfect fit.

Why are we doing this? Of course, we want to have the best leadership team ever. This is how we started it. And of course, you always have when you’re placing a position, it doesn’t matter if you find it by yourself, through your own network, through like an executive firm like ours, there’s always a risk that this is not going to work out. And with using a personality assessment like this, we reduce the risk.

Anthony Codispoti (02:17.61)
Hmm

Peter (02:25.102)
Do we reduce the risk to zero on making 100 % sure that it’s right fit? You can never be 100 % sure. But we reduce the risk as much as we can.

Anthony Codispoti (02:34.559)
So I can see how doing these really in-depth employee personality tests can be super helpful. Let you know what their profile is. How do you know from the employer’s side what profile they’re looking for?

Peter (02:49.614)
That is valid and a good question, yes. The situation that you described, if you just do the personality test based on the briefing or the job description that we’ve gotten, again, you have some uncertainty in the game here as well. So the ideal situation would be we do the company that wants to hire the person, the…

peers that working very closely with this position that needs to be filled do that the requirement profile, let’s call it the profile of this position in the personality test. So we have an

the profile how it’s supposed to be and then matching one with the person or the candidates. We’re usually having a recruiting company. We’re not coming with one guy or one person. It’s usually two, three, four different options. And then see where are we matching or do we have gaps? And this is gaps that are important, gaps that can be bridged through educational training or whatnot. That’s the second one. And the third situation would be if you have, let’s say, a volatile C-suite.

for whatever reason, or a volatile team if it’s on a VP level, director level. You can do a team assessment of the people there that are working there and say, okay, this person needs to be getting along and working closely with this person. So we do a team assessment, which would be the ideal situation, but to be honest, yes, that’s the ideal situation, but we’re not doing it most of the time, unfortunately.

Anthony Codispoti (04:24.662)
You know, it’s clear that EO, Executive Online, is kind of at the forefront of technology, right? 1997, they saw where the internet was going, big deal. Such a big deal that’s how you guys named yourselves. You’re talking about these really in-depth personality tests that you do. I’m curious how you guys are approaching AI and how either you choose to incorporate that into your business practices or not.

Peter (04:56.046)
That is a very good question. we are approaching it, we are working with it. It’s still a little bit driven by individuals right now that are having an interest in trying different things. We are just working out now, we have a meeting, a suite, and trying to implement a dedicated person or a person that will inherit or get this on his or her shoulders to deal with

How can we, in the best manner, use AI in our processes? What we also have, I mean, this would be the same thing. Of course, we’re doing this also with using tools, using the internet, using social media. And also the tools that they’re using, the apps they’re using, there’s new releases all the time now including AI as part of their functionality.

tools that you have maybe since 10 years, same thing, mean a software tool that you’re using, they have to go with the times as well.

Anthony Codispoti (06:04.894)
Yeah. Peter, how would you describe your ideal client, whether size, industry, geography?

Peter (06:13.42)
I mean, again, for me, mean, we as a total SEO, we deal with most industries. So I’m an industry guy. I don’t deal with consumer or retail. That’s not my forte. I’ve been in industrial and business to business, B2B business my whole life. But for me specifically, and this is what we’re talking about here today, clients would be customers that have…

transatlantic offices and need help finding the right people. So I have one example also. have a customer out of Oklahoma. They bought a company in Germany right before COVID.

Peter (06:59.49)
I called up the CEO, the Renu and said, hey, I saw you bought the company, you want to help with staffing or something? said, no, no, no, we have an internal solution. We put the CEO there and that’s good, that’s fine. said, okay, good, good, good. I got a call again nine months later and I said, hey Peter, we’re losing people and it’s having a tough time finding new people. Can you help us? And then one of the reasons, no.

This is not the whole picture, for the point, for the story. One of the reasons was the difference in vacation time. And this is a big difference between the US and Germany, for example. So in the US, if you start a new job, have somewhere between 10 and 15 days. And if you’re lucky being in a higher executive position, maybe you 20 days plus some sick days or something. So the German company with now the…

owner in Oklahoma offered for their new employees 24 days of vacation time plus sick time. So, but the standard in Germany, the standard is 30 days. So nobody literally, you would want, it’s a, this is six days, this is a week and one day less vacation. Why would I do that? This is like, come to you and say, hey Anthony, I have a cool job for you. Awesome, awesome people, great pay, but you only have five days vacation in a year.

Every normal person says, Peter, are you serious? This has to be a joke, right? Because it’s just, you’re deviating from the norm. the discussions are still, they’re still not at 30 days by now. They’re 27 now. Because the American C-suite says, are you nuts? 30 days vacation? And then on top of that, in average, a person in Germany is about 15 days sick, in average, which is on top.

So if you’re looking at a company that you run or department that you run or team that you run, you have six weeks vacation plus two and a half weeks sick time on top, not going out of your vacation. So somewhere between eight and nine weeks, each employee is out of the office, out of work in a year, in any given year. And this is completely different obviously in the US. And this was one of the reasons that, hey,

Anthony Codispoti (09:10.335)
Yeah.

Peter (09:27.306)
If you want to hire people, endeavor the companies not like in a big city that it’s attractive to be. They’re a little bit like Podunk Germany, a little bit outside of country side. Forget about it. If you don’t give them the same what other people are giving them, other companies, forget about it. That’s the reason why they’re struggling finding employees.

Anthony Codispoti (09:49.408)
So in this case, was it just a matter of providing him this advice or were you actually then moving forward and helping him place some executives there? Yeah.

Peter (09:57.592)
But, but.

Anthony Codispoti (10:01.258)
What are some of the most common mistakes that you see companies make when looking to fill executive level positions in these sort of cross-cultural situations?

Peter (10:13.358)
Well, the biggest mistake is underestimating the difference in business culture. And this sounds very flat, but that’s just a big thing. also, it’s, again, I mean, this is not something that is fancy and super new, like AI. You can look this up. If you spend time in the internet, there’s guidelines, there’s coaches and whatnot. And still, I had a meeting with a German automotive supplier beginning of the year.

Mid-sized company, couple of hundred people doing 107 million in sales, so not a small company. Had customers in the States but didn’t have a subsidiary yet. So they said, okay, we’re planning to fund a subsidiary somewhere in Detroit where all the big car companies are. And we’re gonna send somebody over from here. So the guy that they wanted to send over, technical sales manager.

I said that has never worked abroad. A young guy in 20s, beginning 30s without any judging here. But he has never worked in any foreign country and his English was so-so. And then if you read the business forecast, the annual report of the last year said they want to go to, I don’t know, was it 30 or 40 million in three years in the US.

And you, and then with all respect, you’re sending a young guy to this never, has never led a team, going to a foreign country. He has no clue about the culture. has no clue about founding a company. He has no clue how to get a credit card, how to set up a credit history. Little things if you know how to do it. But if you don’t, I learned this the hard way. But if, if you’re in a, and this is a company that has money, it is large and said, why are you doing this? This is very.

very unprofessional at the end of the day. So I didn’t work with them. They didn’t choose me. hey, if you want to have this guy starting and running the company, fine. I would recommend, this is part of my job. I have a network of German people also in the automotive industry in the Detroit area. said, somebody that can do as a fractional something or as a freelancer for three months, six months, two days a week.

Peter (12:37.654)
Helping this guy or taking away all the administrative stuff, legal paperwork, bank accounts, whatnot, and this guy can concentrate on sales and business relations.

Anthony Codispoti (12:52.0)
So Peter, as an American, if I were to go to try to do business in Germany, what should I be aware of not to do? As an American businessman, what is a common mistake that I would be likely to make going to Germany that I had no awareness of?

Peter (13:09.998)
And this again, the advice is goes either way, don’t do it alone, get a trusted advisor, get somebody from the country that helps you. You’re gonna do silly mistakes. If you’re running into say, okay, I wanna do a subsidiary with production with larger footprint. You have, have said, okay, we started 50 or 100 people in Germany at a certain size of employees, you’re required to have a workers council, which is.

part of the company but it’s independent. They can veto. If you say, we got to lay off half of our staff and they say, no, you can’t. And then they can’t. So this is something that is in that form not exist. It’s not like the workers union. There’s also workers union in Germany, but there’s this workers council as part of the company. So there’s lots of legal thingies. Bureaucracy is miserable in Germany, in my opinion, yes.

Anthony Codispoti (13:45.28)
Well.

Peter (14:03.77)
One example is Elon Musk, Tesla built a facility outside south of Berlin last year, beginning of this year, something like that, I don’t remember, but it’s not that long ago. the Germans, the bureaucracy, the German politicians were surprised how fast Tesla was able to pull this off, build everything and start production.

They were thinking, this is going to take two, three years. No, it was done in nine months. And Elon Musk was surprised how lengthy all the approval process was, all the instances, people needed to approve and could talk about this. And he was frustrated because it took so long. For the Germans, it was like way faster than they would normally expect for him. It was longer than expected. And this depends on if you’re coming over.

With a small footprint, it’s a little bit easier. If you want a bigger footprint, it’s a little bit more complicated. in any form of shape, I would always go with untrusted advisor. It’s your business. And even if you’re responsible, if it’s your money, if you’re responsible for it, the money that you’re paying an advisor or an executive search company, yes, it’s a lot of money, but it’s still cheaper than doing all those mistakes.

Anthony Codispoti (15:24.83)
Yeah, for sure. You know, earlier in the interview, you talked about how Americans received sort of the more withdrawn sales presentation of the German style. How would Germans receive the more upbeat aggressive version of the American sales pitch?

Peter (15:44.686)
overarching too much, too aggressive, too pushy, too salesy. And this is, this is either you can go through this process, finding a way to find together, if you’re working together, or trying to mitigate this by open conversation about this and talking about this for both sides.

because it might be surprising for both sides. For the Americans, they Jesus Christ, those Germans are so slow. They always question everything. Can we start, for God’s sake? Can we just start? Then the Germans said, no, no, no, no, no, we cannot start. We’ve got to look at this. We’ve got to calibrate this. We’ve got to watch this. This is going to take another six months. they might say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought we were going to start in two weeks. And you’ve got to find a middle ground. And communication is the one thing. And then…

listening and being open and tolerant for the other side, not just saying, Jesus, the Americans, they just go on my nerves with all their fast and doing and stuff, and all the Germans. Again, we’ve got this endless discussions with any outcome. You’ve got to find a middle ground, and you only reach this middle ground by talking and listening.

Anthony Codispoti (17:04.416)
Peter, I’ve got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I wanna do two things. For those listening today, if you like today’s content, please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Peter, I also wanna let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Peter (17:18.486)
I mean, you find me, I’m a recruiter, I’m living online, so you find me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, so you Google your executives, that’s an easy one.

Anthony Codispoti (17:29.406)
Okay, last question for you, Peter. What’s a serious challenge that you’ve had to overcome either in your personal or professional life and what were some lessons that you learned coming out the other side?

Peter (17:42.498)
point. So I moved, as I said today, 24 years ago to New York City. And New York City is not America. New York City is New York City, but that’s not typical America. lived the last four years before we went to Florida and Atlanta, and then before I lived in California. So this is, from a German perspective, different countries. This is completely different mentalities that you have in Florida, California, and New York City.

New York City was tough. I wanted to go there. I was at Siemens when I left Germany and I was thinking in my young naivety, said, okay, there’s a Siemens office in Manhattan with 80 people. There’s one in Trenton, New Jersey with 400 people. They’re gonna find a spot for me. Neither the German nor the American HR department or my bosses really were interested in helping me. So I ended up.

going there, not alone. went with my fiance at the time. She had got a job offer to work for Daimler Chrysler in Manhattan. So I left with her without anything. And at the end, it’s like I always quote Frank Sinatra, you can make it there, you make it anywhere. It’s up to you, New York, New York. And this, the first six months were

tough, really tough. New York is a city always 120 percent and then one point here is punctuality. Germans, if you have a meeting in five, usually as a German you’d be there 10 before five. If you, and again I lived eight years in California, I had lots of meetings in LA. If you’ve been in LA, the traffic in LA in my opinion is one of the worst in the world. You have meetings in LA usually in the morning.

Anthony Codispoti (19:05.033)
Mmm.

Peter (19:32.556)
Because it’s okay to hey, sorry, I’m stuck on traffic, I’m at I-10 or whatever, the 204. I’m coming an hour late or two hours late. They hey, don’t worry, that’s fine. In New York, if you’re 15 minutes late, forget about it. There’s five people behind you who say they’re gonna take your spot or your offer, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter, it snows, the subway breaks down, you gotta be on time in New York City because the competition there is so freakingly high.

And with that, literally, I was not physically surviving because I had an apartment and my fiance had a job at the beginning. So I gained the confidence, you can drop me anywhere in the world. I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to wiggle through. I’m going to figure it out. And this was a…

gives you the self-confidence that I hadn’t had before to be honest. So that was great.

Anthony Codispoti (20:31.36)
Thank

Anthony Codispoti (20:34.89)
That’s terrific. It’s interesting to hear a German’s perspective on the difference between cultures in New York and LA, especially for those in-person meetings. I do a lot of my meetings over tools like this or Zoom. And so you’re not typically affected by those traffic delays. it’s kind of interesting to hear that, hey, in New York, doesn’t matter. They don’t care what’s going on. You got to be there. LA, you get a little bit more wiggle.

Peter (21:00.974)
Exactly. then same thing, the learning. mean, at the beginning, I can come by at three in the afternoon. Yeah. And if you’re an hour and an hour and half late, say, no, no, no, no, we’re going home. You got to reschedule. And then you’re standing in, I lived in the Coachella Valley, which is like two hours away from LA. So I’m standing in traffic and then I’m standing in traffic again. So I’m spending like four or six hours on traffic or standing on a freaking highway.

without my meeting and I got a rescale and redo it again and I okay I better schedule my meetings at 10 or 11 in the morning to make sure that even if I’m late I’m still going to get to my meeting on that day.

Anthony Codispoti (21:36.81)
Very adaptable. Hey, Peter, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Peter (21:44.76)
I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. It was awesome. I could talk for another hour. It was flying by like nothing. So thanks very much.

Anthony Codispoti (21:51.824)
Absolutely. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.