Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #1117 Toto Wolff & Matteo Franceschetti On Chasing Excellence & Building Winning Organizations About this episode Toto Wolff is the Team Principal & CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team and Matteo Franceschetti is the Founder & CEO of Eight Sleep. In this conversation, we talk about the path to excellence and the leadership necessary to build winning teams. We discuss how these two men hire employees, optimize their schedule, and delegate their personal time throughout a week. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Even better? Eight Sleep recently launched the next generation of the Pod. The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with double the amount of sensors, delivering you the best sleep experience on Earth. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp =======================
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone. This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Toto Wolff is the team principal at Mercedes and Matteo Franceschi is the CEO and founder of Eight Sleep. In this conversation, we talk about chasing excellence, building winning organizations, and how these two leaders go about hiring, firing, spending their personal time, and making sure that they're always operating at their best. In this conversation, we cover a lot, and I'd love to hear your feedback. So get on Twitter once you're done. Let us know what you liked, what you don't like, what you agreed with, and what you disagreed with. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer,
0:46 Anthony Pompliano? and the Eight Sleep Pod is the ultimate sleep machine. The Pod is the only sleep technology that dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed to maintain the optimal sleeping temperature for what your body needs. With the Pod, you can start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit, or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. What is the result? Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 19% increase in recovery, 32% improvement in sleep quality, and up to 34% more deep sleep. How do I know it works? I sleep on it every single night, and it works so well that I begged the founders to let me invest in the company. Go check them out today at eightsleep.com/pomp to start sleeping cool this summer and save $150 on the Pod. Again, eightsleep.com/pomp, you get $150 off when
1:30 Anthony Pompliano? you use code Pomp. All right, let's get in this episode with Toto and Matteo. Hope you guys enjoy this one.
1:36 Speaker 01 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
1:59 Anthony Pompliano? Thank you guys so much for doing this. I thought a great place to start is when I think of both of you, you all are competitors. And the word competition, obviously in racing and in business, people talk about a lot. But I thought Toto, maybe you could just help expand a little bit. Like, how do you think about competition? And why does that drive so much of what you do on a day-to-day basis?
2:17 Speaker 02 I think that we're all different, and we've talked about it. But competition for me is meeting my own expectations, whilst also benchmarking myself against somebody that I deem to be to be good at what she or he does. And I've always enjoyed that, and that has then brought me to motor racing from an early age onwards. The stopwatch never lies. You immediately know whether you're good enough or not.
2:46 Anthony Pompliano? Mate, what about yourself?
2:48 Speaker 03 It's very similar, but I use competition as a stimulus to keep raising my own bar, right? So when I see other people, I'm never envy, but I just try to steal their abilities and see if I can match them. So that's the number one driver and thing that gives me the most energy.
3:06 Anthony Pompliano? I think one of the common traits of all great competitors is they pursue excellence, right? They pursue excellence with themselves, with their teams. When you think about excellence, how do you manage driving every piece of a detail? And really kind of micromanaging and trying to instill that excellence into your teams? Versus maybe saying, hey, I've hired the right people and I don't need to micromanage and let them do what they're great at doing?
3:31 Speaker 02 The truth is, I have never met a company leader that didn't micromanage. But I think for me, micromanagement doesn't mean taking all the decisions, but for me it means knowing about the decisions. It means empowering and letting the people that I choose do their job, whilst always being aware of what's going on. And that's number one. Number two is that the attention for detail
4:07 Speaker 02 in a way starts with the leadership itself. And then just then translates into all the organization. And that is important.
4:17 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And Mateo, what about yourself in terms of you running the team that's remote? There's people all over the place. How do you make sure things are getting done, but also realize, you know, you can't walk over and knock on someone's door and say, hey, what are you doing?
4:28 Speaker 03 So the way I measure all our executives is through five principles. One of them is managerial efficiency. And so I always try to see how efficient they are at how they deploy money and what is their ROI on every initiative they follow. But one thing I find very effective for us is daily course correction. So the best managers, they don't wait a month or two months or six months to course correct an employee, a team member, whatever. But daily they keep giving it feedback to fine tune every little single detail.
5:01 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And so that brings up the question of the team itself, right? And what's interesting to me is great people have to be in every organization that ends up being great. The organization is made up of individuals. So how do you think about the hiring process, finding the best talent? And then also knowing when you thought you made a good decision somewhere and maybe it's not working out and hey, we got to get rid of this person and replace them with someone who's better?
5:24 Speaker 02 I think what Mateo said is important, that you need to be able to adapt your course. Because we are trying to strive for excellence when hiring. And in a way, if it doesn't work out with the person, it's my own responsibility. That means I failed. I either failed in the hiring process or I failed in positioning the person based on their skills or failed in developing the person. And sometimes we just get it wrong. It can happen. But I see, I have departments that run completely smoothly where the leader and their people just, just, just do the right things. And then others where there is a bright individual that might be on top of the organization,
6:07 Speaker 02 but somehow he doesn't, he doesn't have the ability to do it the right way. So we just need to be open minded and say some people have a skill in a certain area, but not in the others. So it's us about positioning them within the organization.
6:20 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And Mateo, I've seen your hiring process and it's quite rigorous. How do you think about making sure that the hire you're making has the highest probability of actually succeeding in the organization?
6:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, so the framework I use at the end of the day, as Toto was saying, you never know if the hire will work out. But my framework is I need to have eighty percent confidence that this is the right person for the job. Then usually obviously they go through the process and we have a very simple rating like strong hire, hire and pass. And we never hire anyone who doesn't have at least two to three strong hires from the rest of the executive team. Then once they join, then I start measuring based on our five principles. But what I keep repeating my executives is you are as good as your team. If your team sucks, you suck.
7:09 Speaker 03 So if you want to keep growing your career, you need to make sure that you grow them and you take the right actions when it's needed.
7:17 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I recently was talking to Harvard Business Professor Ranjai Gulati and he's done a huge study on purpose. And what he found was the companies who had the clearest purpose usually had some of the best financial results. And I know that both of your organizations think a lot about why are we here? There's a lot of things both of you could be doing and your teams could be doing. Toto, how do you think about what that purpose is and then also just reinforcing and communicating it to the team, partners, stakeholders, sponsors, you know, just over and over and over again, so everyone is aligned on the same mission?
7:48 Speaker 02 When you look at an organization or a team or a company, it's a bit of a hybrid for me. The truth is it consists of people, their dreams, their hopes, their anxieties. And sometimes we as entrepreneurs or executives, we think about ourselves. We think about what is my objective, what's the EBIT margin I want to generate? How can I have my family in a good place, et cetera, et cetera? But we never, it never kind of sinks in that it's the same for everyone that works with us and for us. And I cannot design an aerodynamic surface, but I know everything about the guy who can.
8:29 Speaker 02 And I'm trying to provide a framework that the person achieves what will be their objectives. And if I'm able to align that these personal objectives. From this particular human being with the objectives of the company, then obviously you have a best case scenario. But this is not trivial because we may be driven by completely different objectives than someone in the organization. So it's about spending time with the people and having a real interest.
8:59 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, what about you?
9:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, two things. So one connected to what Toto was saying is one thing I tell our executive team is your team, your individuals, they need to win. They need to have a story for their partner at night, right? We have a story because maybe the company is doing this and that and is successful. But what about the mechanical engineer? What is he gonna talk about with his wife tonight to be proud of his job? And so as a leader, even a leader of a specific sub-part of the team, you need to let them win. Because burnout at the end of the day to me is always a lot of effort and no impact. Right? You keep working, but you don't see the whole point.
9:44 Speaker 03 But one thing you do really well that impressed me is after each race, you send an email to the sponsors, recapping what is happening and also not forward looking. And this is our first year together with you. When I started receiving that email, I was really impressed. First by the transparency, second by the fact that you were finding the time to share what's happening with the sponsors. And that was a way to, for me to connect with the team and understand what was going on. So that was awesome from our perspective.
10:15 Speaker 02 I think the emotional connections were important, not only to your own people, but also to the partners, the people that you value and that are important to you. And for us in sports, it's easy. If we are able to make you part of the team because, and make you emotionally connected, that's a best case scenario because we want you to be. We really enjoy being partner to you. And that's why the interaction is super important. It's personal.
10:42 Anthony Pompliano? When you think of these organizations, so you try your best to find the best people, you put processes in place, you have these frameworks, you're managing the executives, kind of everything's going well. The idea that there's nothing more fun than winning, right, in business and sport, but how do you make sure that people don't lose enthusiasm or lose energy? Whether it's because there's cycles in business or in sport, are there things that you try to do in the good times to lessen the blow or mitigate the risk in the bad times? And then also, what do you do when maybe a team's not winning or a business is going through a tough time to keep people energized and enthusiastic about that mission and kind of pressing forward?
11:19 Speaker 02 I think first of all, not everyone in our organizations will be wired like us. There's people that want job security, the people that want to have a predictable daily routine, that enjoy family life or maybe sport, they're still very good in their field, but just differently wired. I think this is something I realized that is important, and that means you need to provide a framework for that person that is very different to maybe what we would deem to be good for us. I think like any business or any sports team, you never win every single day or for us every single season. We have won eight consecutive world championships, but we knew all along that one day is gonna
12:04 Speaker 02 happen, that we lose, there is no sports team that won every single championship forever. But when you're in there, it's so different to what you have expected. We talk about culture and values, empowerment, trusting, and that in the tough times, we would be relying on those values. The immune system of the company, the truth is, you know, if you keep losing, not a single weekend, but two and three, it's not catastrophic, it's still respectful, you realize you got to be really disciplined on sticking to your values, because it's so easy to point fingers.
12:43 Speaker 02 It's so easy not to lose trust or faith, but to be skeptical or question, and you need to protect the relationships. And I'm literally living or working, learning on my job at the moment.
13:01 Speaker 02 Life, we went into the season expecting that it's gonna be tough. We didn't go into the season saying we're gonna be beaten fair and square. Question mark fair. But it is what it is. And so the learning in this year is particularly important to kind of smoothen, not to oscillate too much as a leader. We are emotional, but stabilized for our people to know that they can rely on us rather than our swings of emotions between frustration and happiness.
13:36 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And Mateo, in sport, it's very obvious. There's literally a first place, second place, third place. Business is a little bit different because the metrics somewhat are internally imposed, but also there is a scoreboard externally. How do you think about it?
13:49 Speaker 03 I think about that in terms of transparency, right? We went through some of these moments and even now, the financial world is in a downturn. I think transparency is what always pays back. And the key as a leader is to show that you are in control. So the way I do it is, or I try to do it, is by being very clear about our strategy, what's working, what's not working, and also explaining to them that based on a certain trajectory of the business, decision can go in one direction or the other. And so, for example, I don't know, with our board, we talk about three scenarios, right? About 2023. This is what happens if this is our growth, if that is our growth, or this other case. And to a certain degree, you transfer the same principle to the executive team and
14:34 Speaker 03 the whole company. But I remember when in 2020, there was COVID, we had to do a reef at the time. So we had to let unfortunately a few people go. Then what I did immediately after is I asked all the company to join in all hands and I say, and I explained why I did it, why this matters, and what is coming next.
14:53 Anthony Pompliano? So when you think through these scenarios, during the bad times, the competitor, I think, in people comes out. During the good times, you know, everyone's competitive because there's a prize and people are enthusiastic. But the true competitors separate themselves during the bad time. They get frustrated and they want to push forward. Both of you don't just represent yourselves though, right? You have companies and organizations and brands that you work with and for. How do you think about your own competitive nature versus sometimes having to defer and say, hey, in this situation, I want to do A, but what's best for the brand or what's best for the company is B?
15:29 Speaker 02 I don't know that, I never had that problem actually because I identify myself with my company. It's what I love to do and from a professional standpoint is I believe that my objectives are aligned with the team, aligned with the people and sometimes where there may be discrepancies between my personal life. We have 24 Grand Prix's next year, spend 600 or 700 hours in an airplane and sometimes I need to question myself, what is my priority at a certain stage of the year? I didn't go to Japan, last time around I stayed in Europe, it's only the second time in 10 years that I missed a race.
16:11 Speaker 02 And I knew why I wanted to do it, my wife was working and I wanted to stay with my five-year-old while still being at home with my full intercom panel, got up at 3 o'clock in the morning and I was live in the race with all the channels but I had a five-year-old sleeping next to me and and that was, that was a priority that I took.
16:34 Anthony Pompliano? Let's have a look at you.
16:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think similarly to Toto, I mean when I have uncertainty, I always think about what's the best interest of the organization. All the times I have to take now very tough decisions, that's the question. And then I do whatever it takes that is in the best interest of the business. Because that really helps me, not just the business, but it helps me to be fine with myself in taking that decision even if it's a tough one.
17:03 Anthony Pompliano? Toto, you just mentioned your family, all three of us work with our wives. Talk a little bit about what you've learned there and what you haven't and kind of the shared experiences but also, you know, very different careers and kind of own identities. What has been kind of the pros and cons of being so close from a family perspective?
17:23 Speaker 02 Well, I'm very lucky because my wife knows the business inside out. She's been a racing driver, much more successful than I ever was. She's been a team principal of a Formula E team and has been very competitive, finished second in the championship. And so she's a sparring partner, she's my best friend, she's my wife, she's the mother of the children. So it is about having the right balance. She sold her team six months ago and is about to embark on something new. And it's important for me to support her. And the Japan weekend is a good example. I'm running a Formula One team. The season is basically done because we can't win anymore. So I took over family duties. It's not duties, I enjoy it.
18:09 Speaker 02 While she was on a weekend with Mercedes AMG in a function as ambassador. And I think it is very important to keep that balance. And not one partner running away with its own success or selfishness in order to achieve the personal and the personal objectives.
18:27 Anthony Pompliano? And so while you and your wife are in the same industry and work closely, Mateo, you go to work every single day and your co-founder, how do you balance those two things? And maybe talk a little bit about the way you guys communicate and the difference between personal, professional life and that balance.
18:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, I would say it's our superpower. It's really rare to find the probably a partner that you can work so closely with. And but yeah, Alexander, she's my best friend, she's a partner in crime at work. She knows the business inside out, which is a big advantage. Because when I have a problem, I don't have to explain her everything. She immediately knows, so I just need to really nail the problem. What would you do here? And sometimes she's the one who knows me well enough to match me to take the right action. In our case, it's funny, I don't know if I ever told you, but so as a company, we write to each other on Slack as a platform. But then personally, we use WhatsApp.
19:26 Speaker 03 And sometimes I might be screaming on Slack, like, we need to get this done faster or this is not good enough. And on the other side, I write her, what do we have for dinner tonight?
19:36 Speaker 02 And so we have like these two words. But then, I mean, we enjoy, even before Eight Sleep, we were spending weekends just building stuff and doing hackathons, the two of us. We just love building stuff together.
19:49 Anthony Pompliano? When you think of building a successful organization as the leader, you have to spend a lot of time thinking and trying to understand where is the business positioned? What is the strategy we need to pursue? And there may not be something actionable in that thinking, but you have to spend the time to do it. But then you also have to be laser-like in your ability to drill down and get things done and execute. Toto, how do you think about the balance between the time you spend thinking and kind of away from the action versus knowing when, okay, I need to lean in here and actually get things done?
20:18 Speaker 02 We have this analogy that we, that it's, you split your time as a leader between being on the dance floor and on the balcony. And there are times when we have to be on the dance floor. It's the daily management of the company. And other times where we have the responsibility and the obligation to take ourselves out of the action and be on the balcony and look at it and think about it, where is this team heading? And what I see with management and entrepreneurs very often is they don't do the balcony thing. They think that seven to seven every day is what they need to do,
21:00 Speaker 02 run it in every aspect, but rarely spend time thinking. And I encourage also my employees to spend time to think. When I'm, we have a big marketing office with about 100 people where I sit. And when I walk in there, everybody seems to be typing away on an email or in some kind of Zoom calls. And I never see anybody turning the chair into the window and just contemplating. So I'm saying that to them, who is, are you guys spending any time thinking actually? Or just doing? And that's why it is important, we are all, we are all very engaged and motivated to say, today, I'm gonna spend so much time on the balcony. I need to think about stuff.
21:43 Speaker 02 And for me, I've now achieved this balance very well. I have days where I'm working from home. Um, well, I know I'm going into the coffee shop in the morning with this fantastic Italian coffee shop in our house. And I go down there at eight thirty and I sit and I read the Financial Times and the New York Times. Um, and I have a cappuccino, sometimes also a croissant, um, or two.
22:07 Speaker 03 Was that Kova?
22:08 Speaker 02 Kova.
22:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, I love that place. I was telling you.
22:12 Speaker 02 He did.
22:13 Speaker 03 I love it.
22:14 Speaker 02 So Kova is exactly where I sit in my house. You can.
22:17 Speaker 03 I'm so jealous now that you make me think.
22:20 Speaker 02 So I'm sitting there for an hour and um, or an hour and a half and then I go in the office. We have a personal or family office in Monaco and I do things there and then I may walk out and pick the little one up from school to go in the gym at hours that would be completely, you know, maybe not appropriate if I'm, if I'm in the, in the office, but I do because I think. And, and we have to really take time for that. Whilst those are being on the dance floor, going back into the office, it's about meeting people, engaging and um, and looking after them.
22:53 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Mateo, I know you have a lot of thoughts here. Uh, how do you?
22:57 Speaker 03 I do something very similar, particularly on Wednesday. I, uh, when I'm in Miami where I live, there is a place at the beach with a bar, uh, I'm in a coffee shop where I go. I just go there on my own with, with my iPad and I read stuff and I, I write. But in my calendar, I set specific, I call it thinking time and I block time where no one can, can bother me. Um, and I'm trying to step out as much as possible. Sometimes I feel guilty, so there is always this balance, but I know it's good, right? I, I can bet that that time that you spend with your kid, maybe at the gym, when you go back, you have way more ideas than if you would have been there working the whole time.
23:41 Speaker 03 But it's always this trade off with you feeling guilty. Which is a stupid sense, but you still have it, right? Should I push more? Am I missing anything? And do I leave an opportunity to a competitor to gain an advantage?
23:54 Speaker 02 And what role models are we? You know, I keep the guilt that kicks in with me. So what are my people thinking? If I have time off where I'm on the balcony, I'm actually still doing stuff, but not in the office. Or when I'm a late worker, I'm a night owl, coming in the office, rocking up at nine thirty is always a guilty feeling. And I mean, we own or co-own these companies. We should be the first ones to say, well, I do what's best for me and what's best for the company. So imagine an employee is very difficult to break out of that pattern and say, this is an hour that I'm spending thinking.
24:30 Speaker 03 Because, sorry to interrupt you. An interesting thing is sometimes people, they ask me, oh, how much do you work? And the reality is, unless I'm spending time with my family, I'm working because my brain just think about my work, right? I can be on a cab and I'm still thinking about how I can optimize certain things. And but sometimes certain people don't understand that because they have no very black and white distinction between work and the rest of their life, which doesn't happen to me, and I bet it doesn't happen to you.
25:00 Anthony Pompliano? One of the most fascinating aspects to me is the 10,000-hour rule. And usually people think of it as the repetitive action of doing your thing, right? So like sitting there and actually managing the team or looking at certain things. But there is an aspect of 10,000 hours of just thinking about a problem and doing that. You both have mentioned some sort of physical activity. Toto, I can say it because you're the only team principal in here. You're the best in shape team principal.
25:25 Speaker 02 It's not difficult when you look at the other guys.
25:29 Anthony Pompliano? You said that, not me. Talk a little bit about your physical regimen and kind of what you personally optimize for. And it sounds like maybe there's some physical benefits to it, but also there's a mental aspect where you're using that time to think as well.
25:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. I think you need to realize and also they spend time and say, "What do you enjoy doing and what's good for you?" And I've always been a power sports person. I was in rugby, I was in martial arts for many years, and I like jimming. It's just high-intensity training or CrossFit is what I love. It's an hour complete power out, and there's nothing else I think about than just how do I get that weight up next time around. I'm not a cardio person, which you are much more. I'm not so keen in running, and therefore this works for me, and I take time. I take time for it, and I'm absolutely confident that it makes me more effective in my job with our crazy traveling in the
26:27 Speaker 02 jet lag. If I eat well, sleep well, work out well, it's gonna make me a better manager here at the race weekends.
26:36 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, Mateo?
26:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, the same. I feel like a moment first to disconnect and second also to take care of myself, right? Even the thing of not going to the coffee place for me is a moment of pleasure where I feel like I'm taking care of myself and not just working for the rest of the world. And then fitness and sport in general helps me to just relax.
26:59 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Toto, no pressure, but you mentioned sleep. Obviously, Mateo and Alex have thought a ton about sleep. Do you have a special routine before you get onto the sleep mattress that you do, or how do you think about sleep, especially because so much travel and you're not always sleeping in your bed, you're sleeping elsewhere?
27:16 Speaker 02 Well, the technology's groundbreaking that Alexander and Mateo have come up with. The point is sleep is the most complex thing in our lives, because it's very difficult to disconnect. It's very difficult to get the right environment, whether you have the right temperature in your room, the right temperature under your blanket, the amount of sleep that you get, the quality of sleep that you get. We are traveling from hotel to hotel, from time zone to time zone, and therefore with sleep it allows us to just optimize it. And for me, you know, getting up in the morning, having had a good rest, I immediately see the impact.
27:58 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Mateo, do you sleep on the A sleep every night?
28:03 Speaker 03 Now when I'm traveling, but we're gonna fix that soon. But yeah, I love sleeping. And at the end of the day, I can say I work 24/7 because when I'm sleeping, I'm still working, right?
28:16 Anthony Pompliano? That is pretty good. As leaders of organizations, one thing that people forget, especially the people that work inside of the organization, is that you still want to improve, right? How you got to those positions is because you constantly were trying to improve yourself. What do you both do on a day-to-day basis to continue to improve, but also understand you can't spend 12 hours a day just improving? You've also got to execute and manage and do the day-to-day responsibilities. So what does that like personal improvement look like? Are you reading? Are you talking to people? Are you specifically trying to acquire certain skills? What does that look like?
28:47 Speaker 02 It's all of that a little bit. That I think making, putting your brain in a standby function is good in terms of avoiding any stress, too much pressure or burnout. But it's really, for me, it's reading helps me a lot. Interaction with people that are interested, interesting, and I'm brutal. I don't want to spend time with time thieves. I try to have good conversations. I can't take any small talk, so you won't find Susie and I on any events.
29:24 Speaker 03 You can ask him about me. He calls me the chit-chatter because I'm not a chit-chatter. And so I think it was the first day of the year and Alexander and I would just go to
29:38 Speaker 03 a market and we buy some stuff and then I say Happy New Year to the cashier and then she writes him and his wife and say, I have seen Mateo for the first time being a chit-chatter with someone. It's just because it was the beginning, January 1st.
29:54 Anthony Pompliano? But what's interesting, right? Mateo, Alex and myself and my wife are very similar in that you don't go to any events and, or very few of them. Talk a little bit as to like, how do you curate good conversations? How do you find the people that you want to spend intellectual time with?
30:09 Speaker 03 I'm curious to learn from you because you have probably so many. How can you be picky and how do you pick?
30:16 Speaker 02 So I learned it from Niki Lauda. Niki Lauda was brutal in choosing the conversations that he wanted. And he had no problem in saying. I'm not up for it. Or leaving events. We had this, you know, we had, we have some sponsor events where it's a lot about, about small talk and he would say, do we need to go there? Yeah, we need, we need to say hi. Okay, he goes there, ten minutes later he would say, thank you very much, have a really nice evening and he was off, he was gone. And, and I think that whilst respecting your work, I really try and pick and choose the, the people that I spend time with, um, that are positive in terms of their energy
30:58 Speaker 02 levels of, of what they, what they provide for me and vice versa and, and what I can learn. And I think you just need to be really strict with yourself and not let, let yourself drain by, by energy suckers. And, and sometimes that doesn't make you look very friendly. People perceive that, that you're not giving them enough time, but it's really about, about, about that discipline and we are all prone to WhatsApp and, and, and messages that we feel we need to answer in a timely manner. And, and I try to do it to the best of my ability to be, to be friendly, but at the end it's my communication tool and not somebody else's.
31:42 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Do, do you worry what other people think? When you say that it, it may look like you're not friendly or something like that? Like, how do you balance, uh, you know, you're doing the right thing, but you also know that somebody may be perceiving it as a, as a negative or unfriendly?
31:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. And like we discussed that we're feeling guilty sometimes that we are not on the dance floor. I'm also feeling guilty that I'm not always responding in, to WhatsApp messages, but it's in a way to say, I have, that is really not a priority of mine. And sometimes being very strict, this morning I got, had a WhatsApp exchange with someone that I, that I, that is good in their own field, but they wanted me to do something on, on this weekend. That wouldn't, that would have distracted me and I, I was very direct, I said, I can't do it. And I got a response, well, you are the boss, you can do it. And I said, that's why I decided not to do it. I have stuff flying around me here with cost cap and, and, and the races. I just don't have time for that.
32:40 Speaker 02 And I didn't get a response anymore, but at least I landed a message.
32:44 Speaker 03 Time management is so important, right? The bigger you become, the more important it is. Because at the end of the day, there are really few things that you need to nail every week. And those they make or break the business. And but sometimes it's easy to be distracted by all these little tiny things. And at the end of the day, the week is gone, you have done all this stuff, but so what? And I think for someone like you, everyone wants your attention, but everyone is a race. The thing that a lot of people don't talk about is this sense of guilt. That is what you need to become good at, what you need to manage really well. Because it will always be there. Every day, there is someone asking you to do something else that you will not do.
33:26 Speaker 03 And you just need to coexist with that and be fine.
33:30 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I I think it's also the messages is probably the biggest one, right? If you look on anyone's phone, there's so many different communication channels at this point. There's email, there's WhatsApp, text message, all these different things. And as you become more successful, more inbound comes from people who are outside of the focus area. And so it feels like being able to be okay not responding is a very difficult task. Because usually the people who end up being successful prided themselves on inbox zero, answering every message, being very quick in their response. And so do either one of you have suggestions as to how you've overcome kind of getting comfortable being non-responsive to certain types of people or certain types of requests?
34:10 Speaker 02 I think you're always gonna have a sense of guilt. That in a way, people that are on your wavelengths, they don't always expect an answer. I'm sometimes telling someone, you know, just some feedback. I don't expect the answer because it's an effort. Whilst I know when I'm when I'm in an exchange, it is somehow a non-verbal or automatic communication between certain certain people with the right mindset that you don't expect that and others. Will expect that, so I'm trying to balance it in the right way. And if I can't answer on that first day, I'll do it three or four days later. And I realize that's okay too.
34:53 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I think it's a trust thing. Like Mateo and I, I think our wives joke that we probably text each other more than them. And what's interesting about it is if I text him and I don't hear back for a day, I'm not offended. I don't, right, he's busy, right? And if he responded all the time immediately or vice versa, I think we would be like, hey, you know, do you not have enough work to do?
35:12 Speaker 02 It annoys me more. Exactly, but because you know that is not a sense of disrespect, but it annoys me more when people give me an even more feeling of guilt. Like, well, you're not really good at responding. That triggers actually that I'm not responding next time around as well. Because don't give me a feeling of guilt.
35:30 Speaker 03 Well, I have a question for you, if you don't mind. So, because we are talking about what not to do. But for example, usually at the beginning of the year, I really try to think about the people I want to spend as much time with as possible. People that can really raise my bar, they give me energy.
35:48 Speaker 03 You travel a lot. Do you still have time to spend? Do you still have time for people and friends that you like or you would like to spend time with? Or when you're not traveling for work, you just want to be with your family and in peace?
36:02 Speaker 02 Difficult, because my close friends are living in Vienna. That's where I was raised. But, and we are not seeing each other at all. And we are, we are not in daily communication, but they know. So it is what I tried to explain before is that you have this, this other level of communication where it's okay not to talk for two months. I am also there trying to be disciplined. I love to be with my family.
36:28 Speaker 02 Spending time alone or with Susie, with the children is what really.
36:35 Speaker 02 What I really enjoy the most and on the race weekends, I know I in a way compartmentalize. I have the time on the track, I'm with the engineers or with our with our people and I love that. And from time to time, we would go out on the evenings. But I don't want that to do that too much because they will feel a certain sense of obligation of going with me. Whilst maybe for them, it's more fun to be with another group of people and having a beer rather than have the boss around. And and so my my the way I deal it, I'd rather have the evenings alone or with someone that doesn't where it doesn't give me any pressure. I have a friend who sometimes comes with me or Suzie's here or or you know, if we guys sit sit down, we we can talk about the businesses. And it's easy and even if after now you say I'm tired, I'm out of here.
37:20 Speaker 02 You have no, you know, it's no problem because the other party will will understand.
37:24 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, the last thing I want to talk about is this idea of investor slash capital allocator. Both of you have the day job, right, you run organizations. But you have a lot of experience allocating capital as well. And so you allocate capital inside of the organizations, but you also have experience allocating capital into other people's businesses and things like that. Talk about just maybe that mindset and things like the price cap and stuff become very interesting. But also inside of a company. Capital allocation is almost the name of the game to some degree, you know, at the end of the day. So how do you think about that skill set and the advantages it gives you on your day to day job?
37:59 Speaker 02 So our business has fundamentally changed two years ago. Because in order to make ten teams capable of winning races or going on the podium. We introduced a cost cap. That means none of us is actually allowed to spend above a certain threshold. And that means capital allocation has become even more important. Where do we spend our cost cap dollars? And where do we extract most of the performance? And that's why we have changed our processes. We're looking at the we're looking not at a singular update on a car, for example, but we're looking about the the lifespan of that update, how much more potential does it give us later on? How much effort does it need to bring financial and time effort to to create that?
38:44 Speaker 02 And for us, again, this has been completely industry changing. Seismic change because the top line revenue is now literally growing and that is translates directly into profit because we can't spend more.
38:58 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. Mateo, last word on capital allocation.
39:01 Speaker 03 I mean, it's the key, right? Warren Buffett always rates all the best CEOs based on that. It's probably one of the harder things because you always have multiple options and really understanding the ROI of each of them is the key job of the CEO.
39:18 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Well, I enjoyed talking to both of you. You both are fantastic operators and business leaders. I hope people have really enjoyed this as well and learned a lot from both of you.
39:27 Speaker 02 Thank you very much.
39:27 Speaker 03 Thank you.
39:33 Anthony Pompliano? Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends, and I'll see you all for the next episode.
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