Gereon Hermkes: Welcome everyone to Behendigkeit Podcast number five. We’re coming to you straight from Berlin. My name is Gereon and I’m here today with Pauline.

Pauline Rummel: Hello everyone, it’s nice to be here, thank you for inviting me.

Gereon Hermkes: Alright everybody, so today we’re going to talk about a book that I found very interesting. It’s called Power Forward and it’s been written by Reggie Love. The thing that I found to be really interesting is that he was the bodyman of President Obama. For those of you that don’t know, a bodyman is kind of like a personal assistant, somebody that takes care of basically everything. It’s almost like a shadow to the politician, to the top manager, and that person just takes care of whatever comes up, right? So it was very interesting to read this because, first of all, it’s Obama. While the book doesn’t reveal any juicy details that would be, you know, like compromising in any shape or form, it’s really interesting to see how Obama behaves when the cameras are not around. There are no big surprises there because he seems to be a really stand-up guy, but that’s interesting. Also to see the role of the bodyman as it relates to the principal. So we’re going to go through the book for a couple of minutes, talk about some things that were interesting in there and hopefully this is going to be of interest to you as well. The first thing that I think is really relevant is that a bodyman or a bodywoman—but it tends to be usually men that do this—I think some people think it’s a very simple position, right? It’s like an assistant, almost like a secretary, somebody that is maybe not as educated. You couldn’t be further from the truth, because a bodyman or an executive assistant to the CEO is often very highly trained, is somebody that went to often an elite university, has an advanced degree, and then suddenly does this thing which is a little bit strange. They don’t go on to get a PhD for example, they don’t start working in a management position immediately, they start getting the coffee, which is possibly kind of a step down, right? Because it’s strange. Suddenly, you know, maybe you went to Harvard and then suddenly you’re getting coffee for somebody, right? And I see somebody looking at me from the side, so I’m getting that as a signal that the mic is maybe a little bit off. So I think this preconception that a lot of people have, if you talk—if you tell them, „Well I’m working as a bodyman,“ „What’s that?“—if you tell them, „Oh, I’m an executive assistant,“ they’ll think you actually are not progressing. Now I would say it’s actually exactly the opposite. In Germany, and we are coming to you from Germany, there’s actually a whole culture on this thing. I found this to be reflected in Reggie Love’s relationship to Obama. That is, if you ever have the chance to be the bodyman to somebody, and that person needs to be kind of like capable and interesting, right? But take it. First of all, it’s not going to hurt you to get coffee or carry the bags for Obama, right? I mean, what an honor that would be. But the thing is, this is how you learn the most. This is why actually in Germany it’s kind of like a little secret for people that becoming an executive assistant to the CEO of a company is actually the biggest career booster that you can have. Because guess what? You’re not going to be one of the regular employees that sees the boss on a video, right? That’s been prepared, that’s been stylized. You don’t just see the boss when they’re up on stage and talking like in a very refined way, they have prepared the speech like ten times before and they’ve rehearsed it. You’re going to see that person in life. You’re going to see how Obama is when he’s really hungry and really tired and not in a very good mood, right? This is something that you cannot get anywhere else. You cannot really read about it, you cannot really learn it, you cannot study it in University. This is something that is profound, a profound experience. It’s not rare to see people go and become a CEO a couple years after they have been the assistant. So the first point I want to make is that if you ever get the chance to do this, do it. You know, it’s not beneath you, just just go for it and take that opportunity. The second point that this book really brought out in me—and it’s a very well-written book, it’s interesting to read, it helps if you like Obama—but the second point is, a lot of young people are kind of lost, right? They don’t know what to do. A minute ago I said, „Well becoming an executive assistant is a great career chance,“ but I would actually take it farther than that. I would actually say if you have the chance as a young person to join somebody that is capable—you know, you hopefully you know somebody that is somewhat capable, right, in your environment, if not maybe you need to change your environment first—but hopefully you know somebody. If you don’t know what to do, find somebody that is capable, find somebody that takes you seriously, and then do whatever they tell you. Might sound unintuitive. I’m not saying do something immoral, but find somebody that you think is capable, that will take you seriously—and this last bit is very important—and then join them. If it’s not your path, you’re going to find out real quick. But that’s much better than just trying to chart your own way, especially if you’re young, you’re just out of university. So Pauline, does anything of that resonate with you? Have you seen something like this in your like in your circle of friends for example?

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, of course. I think first of all, I think this position is such an honor and you learn like so many different things and especially on the emotional basis it’s super interesting to be so close to somebody because like you said, if you just see your boss like once in a while or like you don’t even know your boss, there’s such a big distance and it’s hard to learn directly from like big positions. But if you have this position or like if you’re super close to your boss and like seeing him reacting, behaving in difficult situations, it’s like a life lesson in every kind of situation. So I think you should take this opportunity seriously and like take it to your heart and reflect and also like, yeah, I think how like how to take this like for your for your career, like your opportunities in the future, you know? So I really like that and for me it’s really a big honor and like I would really value this possibility, yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: And I I think there is a certain kind of mindset that’s connected to that, right? You have to have some humility and can’t have your ego get too big, „Oh, I just finished my university degree,“ because suddenly you’re going to be getting coffee, right? Or making sure that Senator Obama is getting up on time. But this is actually why I like this book so much, because a lot of us don’t have that opportunity to become like an executive assistant to an important person, and by writing this book Reggie Love has actually given us kind of like an insight into how it was, right? Specifically with Obama, but in general if you’ve never had that experience you can actually kind of get like a little bit of that experience in this book. One sec.

Pauline Rummel: I think, like, to be honest, this is not a position for everybody. I think you have to be made for this because you have to lower your own ego and you have to be open to, yeah, accept different opinions and see people like making decisions in another way you would maybe not do, but also you can question it and then you maybe see the consequences and know why those people behaved like that or reacted on specific kind of things like that, you know? And then you can learn. I mean, at the end maybe you would still like do it differently, but maybe maybe you like, in this moment, maybe you see like how people in a higher position would like make decisions in this kind of situations. Like I said, I think it’s not for everybody because not everybody can or see himself like bringing coffee for a while because they really think it’s not a good position, but you have to think further and you have to see all the possibilities you have afterwards. Like you said, most of the people like become a CEO afterwards like in in their further career, but some people like want to start with a high on a high level already after the uni because they think like they know everything, but mostly it’s not. So yeah, it’s a big chance.

Gereon Hermkes: So this is really interesting that you’re seeing, because what you were describing, in describing the person that is willing to take such an executive assistant position, was actually to me it was like as if you were talking about who’s going to be a good boss, right? Who’s going to be the good boss? Is that the person that’s willing to get the coffee for someone else, that’s humble, that’s open to the experience, that wants to learn at at all cost? Or is the person that thinks they have already arrived and they’re too good for whatever comes up, right? And so, and this is I think partly why this is kind of a filter. In the end, it’s actually nothing new or nothing special because this is just some form of apprenticeship, right? So what would happen, I don’t know, in the Middle Ages somewhere in France—you wanted to learn a trade, you wanted to learn a craft—well there was no school, there was no formal system to get apprentices. So you found somebody that was capable in whatever trade you wanted to learn and you asked that person if they would train you. Actually back then you would pay them to train you, right? That’s what a lot of people forget now because now we’re paying our apprentices, right? But so like, even you of course have to afford it, but even if you have to do it for free to get into this kind of a position, in a historical context, you know, still getting a bargain because it used to be that you actually had to pay for that, that honor of that time and attention of the Smith or the leader or whatever. What I really find interesting in what Reggie Love describes in this book is that like how Obama actually executed on this mindset. I didn’t—I never I in in grad school I actually did a psychological profile on Obama—so I didn’t expect to be surprised as much as I was. One thing that really surprised me is how competitive he was or still is. Whenever the the campaign to get elected to become president of the United States didn’t go well, what they did is they would tease him, right? They would ask him—he was really tired, he really had his fill of everything—and they would tease him and say, „Well sir, do you want to win a tour? Do you just want to go home?“ Okay? And he’s so competitive that he would then just jump up and do whatever was needed, right? I think this is also a really important part because this is kind of the job of a good executive assistant to understand the boss and to know their triggers, right? Because this is something you’re going to learn really quickly. You’re going to learn that, „Oh well, if he didn’t have his coffee in the morning, he’s going to be unbearable,“ right? Why are you smiling here? But so you kind of over time you kind of learn like what makes them think. Then I personally think it’s actually your job to find out the positive triggers right and then use them at a moment when you can actually have an impact. Because you’re kind of like the the baggage carrier, right? You’re not in a position of real power, you can actually get away with stuff that somebody else cannot do, right? So let’s say you’re you’re the executive assistant to CEO, the CFO can say some stuff and cannot say some stuff. The executive assistant is kind of outside of that hierarchy and can get away with stuff that like the regular people on the hierarchy cannot get away with.

Pauline Rummel: I think this depends on the personal level. Like if you have a good connection, then like your boss or whoever values your opinion and take it for serious even if it’s not his own opinion and I think this is very important. So if you really have a good connection on a personal basis, you have a big input, like a big impact, you have a big influence. So I think you both learn from each other. It’s not only like the assistant learning stuff like for his future, I think also that’s why this job is even there, you know? Like that’s why everybody has to listen, and even if it’s not the nicest thing and I think that’s the most important. Also like the competitive situation, if you know know the trigger points, that’s exactly like why do you know them? Because you know them like so well, you spend so much time with them. Like the coffee situation, I think it sounds so yeah, low rated, but honestly you see the people in outside of the working situation. You see them in their natural behavior and their habit and so I think this is the people when they are real and that’s how you get to know each other really well and that’s that’s the most important thing, yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: Something that was really important to me from this book is, so I I hold Obama in quite high esteem, I think he’s a he’s a great man, like a great person, and it was fun to see how much he was struggling all the time, right? If you remember back, he had to fight for the nomination of the Democratic Party against Hillary Clinton who like everybody thought she would win it easily, right? He didn’t stand a chance but he kept on fighting, he was strapping all the time, he was really making a go at it and over time he changed his fortune. But that also means that a lot of things didn’t go well and he really did a lot of stuff to make this happen, right? This guy who not only went to Harvard, who not only was on a Harvard Law Review, he was actually the editor of the Harvard Law Review which is extremely extremely difficult if you’re in the field of law. So this super smart guy, a U.S. senator at a young age, he had to like go to birthday parties in in Iowa and shake people’s hands. Like people would almost blackmail him and say, „Well, we’re not going to vote for you if you don’t come to the birthday party of my nephew,“ right? And he did everything. I mean he was out there, right? He didn’t say, „Well, I used to be the editor for Harvard Law Review, sorry but I’m I’m above it.“ No, he grounded out. I think it’s really important to see, you know, often you just have this this persona in your head of this guy that’s already arrived. He is the president of the United States. Of course, then he wears the right clothes and the camera and the lighting, everything is perfect, and you see that person, you say, „Oh, he was always like that.“ No, he wasn’t. He was actually the guy that had to go to birthday parties and go to every single café in every small town in Iowa just to get the nomination, right? The hustle behind it, the will to persevere is just so impressive. This is what you have to do. People aren’t born winners, people have to fight it, even if they’re as capable as Obama for example. One passage I really liked and I’ve sent this to you, you know, I want to read it. Reggie Love is just at the beginning of his bodyman career to Obama and he is complaining a little bit, right? He’s failing a little bit. He’s saying, „What I didn’t have was a job description. To this day I still haven’t been able to track it down because there never was one. Each bodyman job is as is unique to the principle. Every boss is peculiar. Like snowflakes,“ and I’m not sure snowflake is the best word there, but any, „Like snowflakes, the bosses come with their own distinct characteristics and needs, and more likely than not they don’t even know what those needs are until you don’t meet them,“ right? This is really crazy because of course the bosses won’t be able to. First of all, there is no job description, right? It’s do the job. Then the bosses don’t even know what they need until you fail and then they’re going to they’re going to let you know. I found this to be very profound and insightful. He’s given advice to personal assistant candidates and he says, „Nobody’s going to tell you what you’re supposed to do. There’s no training, there is no manual.“ I actually think this. I’ve been an executive assistant to two CEOs, very different characters, right after each other, and it was a very very interesting experience, especially because they were so different. One was the CEO of a stock quoted company here in Germany, not a large company but fairly big, and the other one was a COO and it was quite quite interesting. This is absolutely true. No one ever told me what to do. There wasn’t a job description. The real job description is actually on the next page and you know what it is? Handle stuff. That’s it, right? Again, this is leadership. There’s this famous story of Steve Jobs who at some point of time said something along the lines of, „If the janitor doesn’t know where some tools are, doesn’t know where the garbage bags are, that’s a good excuse because he’s the janitor. If a manager comes to me and says, ‚I can’t do it because there are no garbage bags,‘ that’s not a good excuse, because as the manager you have to handle it. You have to handle your own shit, you have to handle stuff. Nobody is going to come and teach you how to do it, nobody’s come is going to come and explain this stuff to you, and you just have to get it done.“ Frankly, I think this has become the job description of most jobs nowadays, right? If you, well, if you work in a factory they’re going to tell you exactly, „Okay, pull this lever and then this is going to happen, that’s going to happen,“ right? With knowledge work, these things have changed but they’re often still like constructed—these jobs are still constructed in like an industrial mindset. But I think this is becoming less and less so and most people now have to figure out their own jobs and find where they can add some value. The other thing that I think is really important here is that if you are in this position you have to understand that this is a position of maximum trust, right? Because at some point of time you’re going to be alone with that person when they’re really tired. They’re going to say some stuff that they don’t want to be publicly known. They’re going to vent, right? They’re going to complain about their partners, maybe even their life partners, right? They they are going to decompress. So trust is of the utmost. I would actually go so far to say that if you don’t if you don’t feel it with your principal or the principal of course, if you don’t feel it with your assistant, you should just move on because it won’t make any sense because like you were saying, right here, like in very vulnerable moments, and then that trust needs to be there.

Pauline Rummel: Exactly. I think the trust is just giving also like your the relationship grows because you trust each other and you get along. Even if you do your work really well, if there’s no like emotional basis, I think it will never come to the point where you totally trust each other, you know? So this is really important.

Gereon Hermkes: Absolutely. I was talking about Iowa before in the context of the the primaries to become the candidate for U.S. president. I actually was an exchange student to Iowa. So when I went there at age 17, 18, there was a really strange thing that I noticed when I got there. Everything was really strange. The internet wasn’t around yet, right? So Iowa was as far away as you can imagine. When I arrived there, something curious happened. Keep in mind that I’m German, and Germans think that they are like very hard workers and very focused on on being productive and so on, which they are, but you’re going to be surprised I think when I tell you what I noticed there. When you’re a teenager in the United States, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, usually people would go cruising. That means somebody had already had a car, right? Then a couple of people would pile into the car and they would cover it on the city circle. It’s really old school, but it was really cool because frankly there was nothing to do, right? You would have the car stereo on and then everybody would go cruising and then you would hop out of cars not into other ones and so on. Pretty quickly I noticed something there that was really weird, and that is when teenagers were talking about other teenagers, they would always ask two questions. Let’s imagine a teenager from a neighboring town came into our town center and so they would say, „Okay, who’s that?“ Then another person would say, „Well, that’s Pauline.“ The second question would always be, „Is she a hard worker?“ The first time I heard I was like, „What? What are you talking about? Who cares?“ I I don’t know any German teen at that time that would have asked this question, right? They would have asked, „Is she cool? Is she nice?“ or something like that. At first I was like, „Okay, this is a fluke,“ and then it happened again and again and again and again, right? This was normal because most kids had like a part-time job. They would work at Safeway, which was a supermarket chain for example, or some fast food store. Kids would actually like rate each other not on their social media profile, not if they’re nice, but if they are hard workers. I think this is just the culture that was prevailing there, at least at the time, it’s probably still like that. I really sense that here in the book because, you know, if you’re a hard worker, if you’ve been raised to see work as normal, you already have a like up, you have an advantage that others don’t, right? I think it’s often undervalued, right? People always look at, „Oh, is that person beautiful? Is that person smart? Are they good at academics,“ right? At memorizing stuff for example. But in the end, if you ask elite athletes who’s gonna be on the top, they always say one thing: „It’s not the talented guys, it’s the guys that are disciplined and that work a lot.“ Because the talented guys, they’re going to run into some problems at some point of time and they’re going to give up, right? So the work ethic is so important. I really love how Reggie Love, he talks about his education and this work ethic is what saves him again and again and which makes the relationship to Obama possible. I marked something here and I actually wrote the name of my son next to it because I’m going to talk to him about it. He was told the following: „Reggie, you got to do the work. Sports or school, it doesn’t matter. The work won’t do itself, and if you choose not to do the work, then you should never be surprised about the outcome because you chose to leave it up to chance.“ This might be obvious to a lot of people, but I think at the same time a lot of people are underestimating it because especially in a world that is as chaotic as ours is right now, you cannot control a lot of things. However, there’s one thing you can control: your input, right? Are you disciplined? Are you a hard worker? Do you actually do the work or do you just leave everything up to chance? Stay on TikTok, stay on the couch, don’t do anything to influence the results. Maybe you’re given a a bad deck of court, right? Maybe you’re not the most beautiful, maybe you’re not the smartest, maybe you have some other impairments. But there’s one thing that you can usually still control and that is how hard you work. I think this is the big game changer that a lot of people aren’t seeing. I really love how it comes through here, how Reggie Love has been educated like this, been trained by his parents to pay attention to this, and how this works out for him.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, I think this is even if you’re super talented in some in something, if if it’s sport, if it’s a musician, whatever, you still have to practice, you know? You still have to work on it, like get better, do your stuff. There’s always somebody outside who’s probably better than you, but if you keep on doing it, if you keep on practicing, like focus on your on your goals, on your future, I think then it will work no matter how. But like at least you do something for it. If you just like wait for something to happen, even even if you’re a big talent, but if you’re just like sitting around and waiting for it to come true, nothing will happen. I think like lots of people will like get better than you even if they’re less talented. So you really have to to work for for your goals and for whatever makes you happy, yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: The other thing, and this kind of connects to that, is that it’s really interesting how he deals with criticism, right? Because he is messing up a couple of times. He talks about his sports career. He was a basketball player and then went on to get that job as bodyman. He got that job as bodyman because, guess what, somebody on the political campaign of Obama called the coach, his basketball coach, and asked about him. Because he was so disciplined, because he was a good team player, he actually got on the sports team, he actually got into the political campaign, right? Then he was Obama’s bodyman, right? For I don’t know, six years, eight years, right? So of course now he’s made, but it came to that because he was on that basketball team and how he behaved on that. The interesting thing is how he deals with criticism, and he actually, you know, the book is about his his life, right? It’s a biography. So he doesn’t start out in the perfect state. But you can really see how his parents taught him well. What he’s saying is, „Well, if you’re superior, if your boss, if your coach is not happy with you and he criticizes you and he holds you to a higher standard, that hurts but that’s actually a good thing because somebody cares enough to get into the conflict with you.“ Because they could just not say anything, right? „Gets into the conflict with you, thinks you can do more and holds you to that higher standard that then you have a chance to achieve.“ This resonated so strongly with me, especially from the position of a boss, because quite frankly, if I criticize somebody, that usually means that I I hold them in high regard. Because, you know, you only have that much time in the day, especially if you have like many employees, many responsibilities, and at some point of time if somebody just keeps messing up all the time or doesn’t even try, you’re gonna you’re gonna reduce your investment as far as time and emotions go into that person, right? So the best thing you can actually do is, well, the criticism isn’t always going to be fair, but like think about it, right? And think about if there isn’t something to it and if the boss or the coach or whoever isn’t actually right, that you could hold yourself that you can be held to a higher standard and get to the next level, right? I think something that connects to that is that as you grow older, you know, when you’re a student in high school, you know, everybody’s criticizing you all the time. The teacher is always complaining, right? And your parents, „Oh, you have to get better grades,“ and so on, and it’s super normal and you are so annoyed by it, right? But what happens over time is that at some point at some point of time nobody’s gonna care anymore. Nobody is going to give you that. Especially, you know, if you work in a job where nobody is taking interest in you, maybe you’re in a big faceless corporation, right? And you don’t have a sports coach. The brutal reality is you’re not going to have anybody tell you anything anymore. I think people go into that and they don’t realize it, right? In the beginning they realize that, they say, „Oh, now I’m at university and people don’t criticize me as much,“ which is good, right? But at some point of time you’re not getting any feedback, nobody’s taking an interest in you. Of course as you get older, the generations that are ahead of you, they’re going to start dying out or they’re going to exit the workforce, right? And you’re going to get better and then if you have it achieved a high level in your field, there’s just going to be less people that give you feedback. So, you know, I understand that people often want to get out of the criticism. Yeah, it sucks, feedback hurts, but it’s so valuable, and if you don’t have it you’re going to have a hard time figuring out where to go. So if you have somebody, ideally like Obama of course, who can tell you what you’re missing, what you’re lacking in or where you’re messing up, then that’s super helpful.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, especially I think it’s first of all you have to see the criticism as You Like A Life Lesson, something where you can learn out of it. On top of that, you see that the the person like cares about you and once and and sees like, I think you just criticize somebody if you see he could do better, and that’s why like there’s there is the possibility to do something better. So you really should be thankful about all the criticism you get. I mean, of course, it’s nobody likes to be criticized and like in this in the actual moment I think everybody’s pissed and like not amused, but like when you look back in the past, everything you got criticized, even if something was not fair, whatever, was there for a reason and most of like if you do better in the future, yeah, yeah, you learn for life. So I think that’s important. It doesn’t matter if it’s job-wise or in personal relationships. So I think if somebody stops criticizing you, he’s losing interest.

Gereon Hermkes: I’m going to read a sentence and it actually connects quite well to a situation we had today at the company. It goes as follows. Somebody’s telling—somebody’s really unhappy with Reggie’s performance—and he’s saying the following: „What I’m trying to figure out is how you don’t see just how lucky you are to be on this team.“ We’ve had a conversation about a team member today where I’ve been saying, „I don’t understand how he how it doesn’t realize how lucky he is.“ I think this, I mean this is a really blunt criticism, I don’t wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of that, but I think this is about as valuable as you as you can get. Because sometimes you are on a team or in a company or a on a sports team or in a friendship group, right? And you can be you should be really lucky to be there, and sometimes you don’t realize it, right? You don’t realize the the value of the friends that you have.

Pauline Rummel: Somebody telling you that, yeah, it’s like a slap in the face. But I think sometimes it’s very important to hear like some hard words like that. It’s like a wake-up call, you know? Like especially if you everybody need like yeah receives to have a second chance or whatever. So sometimes it needs to be hard to really wake up and to do things better and to realize like if you don’t get up, you’re going to lose this chance or you’re going to lose your job or whatever. So it’s hard, but most of the time it’s necessary.

Gereon Hermkes: Another thing that I really like and that I sometimes struggle with is there’s a whole chapter and it and it’s called „You’re never not representing.“ When I first became the CEO of a company, I was fairly young. I did one-on-ones with all the employees, and what I like to do in interviews or in one-on-ones is to not in every instance, but Barry was very it was a very good fit. I let them do a case study and the case study was designed to measure ethical responses to a problem, right? So I would confront them with a problem to see how they solved an ethical dilemma. I had this session with an apprentice, and she was kind of struggling, right? She had failed her apprenticeship at another company, and we’re like her second chance and she wasn’t doing great. I presented her the problem and asked her what she would do next, and she said something that it’s going to be obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn’t to me back then. She said the following: „So first of all, I’m going to get a Cherry Coke and bring it to you because I know you’re going to be angry and I think this will help to soothe you.“ At that time I was drinking a lot of Coke and actually Cherry Coke, but nobody had ever like mentioned it to me. I didn’t even realize that all that much that Cherry Coke was my favorite, right? I didn’t have that much to do with her. She wasn’t, you know, the best performing apprentice, right? But of course she watched what I was doing. I was the new boss, right? She noticed, „Oh, he seems to like to drink Cherry Coke.“ That really struck me hard. What’s what’s behind it is that I didn’t realize at that point of time that as the boss you’re always on stage. You’re always being watched. Every little thing you do or don’t do is being watched and interpreted, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, but you’re always on stage, you’re always representing. So of course if you walk work on a presidential campaign, you’re never you’re never off camera. Yeah, and it’s not only Obama, it’s also everyone on staff. We had a situation with a what was he, the candidate for to become the Chancellor of Germany. He was visiting an area that has recently had recently been flooded. Experienced politician, like has have been in the business for dozens of years. As they were like being led around, they made a stop somewhere. He was kind of like inside the building, but the camera stood could still catch him. He was joking around with some of his employees, buddies, whatever. That glimpse was enough to cost him the chancellery because he was seen as joking around in a situation where people had lost their home, right? So you’re always representing. This is very important to keep in mind that it sucks, right? But this is normal. You do the same thing to others, right? You always watch how they behave. So it’s very important in my mind to realize that you’re always on stage. Everybody’s always viewing you, watching you, interpreting whatever you’re doing. The way he answered, he says, „So when things go awry, when things aren’t working the way you want them, you at least look like you have your stuff together,“ right? This is really important, right? We always want to have these great moments where we win the wrestling match, where we score in soccer, right? And then we want to look good and of course freshly cut hair and the cameras are zooming in on you. But it’s actually just as important, if not more important, to be professional when you’re losing, right? When your project ends, don’t throw hissy fit. You know, I was on a project a couple of years ago and it ended through no fault of our hours, right? Somebody came in from the top management, said, „Oh, this is the cost, but we’re just going to stop it,“ right? One of the more senior consultants he came over to me and said, „Gereon, you know what? It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t my fault, this is just how it is. Say goodbyes, be professional about it, you know? Don’t start complaining, don’t start crying about it and we’re gonna see each other on the next project. Just be a pro about it,“ right? It was the best advice he could have given me. I think this really plays into that: you’re always representing, whether you’re winning or losing, and just be a pro, man. One more thing that I really liked is how disciplined Obama is, like in his sports and his nutrition. I’m really a big believer in setting the foundation for your success in these two arenas, because I think if if you’re not fit and you’re not eating right, you’re going to get run into trouble sooner or later. Especially if you have the right kind of metabolism in your young years, you can get away with everything, and I certainly—I’ve talked about the Cherry Coke—I’ve certainly done that in Red Bulls and everything, right? But at some point of time you can have the best genes, it’s going to catch up with you. What I found really interesting is that, first of all, he lifts weight or trains every single morning. If you’re on the road, this is really difficult. If you’re on in a different town every day of the week, right? Then suddenly you’re not in the five-star hotel where they have this nice gym and personal trainer, but there’s like some broken weight somewhere in the corner, and or you don’t have anything at all, but they would train like every day, no matter what. He would always get like healthy food to fuel this engine, which was a little bit surprising, but I think this is this is really a smart move and I think a lot of people aren’t aware of how important it is to get your nutrition right and to get your exercise right.

Pauline Rummel: Yeah, it’s very important for your mindset I guess. Like if your personal life is like a little bit messy, how should you perform professional like at work? I mean, of course it’s different and of course you have to separate that completely, but if you’re well structured and have like your routines at home, you’re even more likely to keep this up at work, you know? It’s not that hard, like it’s easier for you if you stretch it at home also so to keep that structure up at work too, yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: I’m waiting for you to say something about like you’re looking at me like I’m supposed to disagree, but I actually think this is the way, this is the way how you become successful, right? People always want to know like where should I invest? What should I do? Like should I do crypto or should I get into AI and so on? I think, well, basically you should train and eat right because it’s going to be the foundation. How are you going to build business systems if you can’t even build the system for your apartment to keep it clean, to go to the gym for example? I think so I really like this conception of like different sports and nutrition as the grind, right? When I was in Iowa, I was on the wrestling team. You know, if teenagers already have this mindset about work, right, you can imagine what the wrestling team—and for those who don’t know, wrestling is like one of the most brutal sports there is, right? They say, „If you’re not wrestling fit, you’re not fit,“ right? Wrestling fit is like a whole different category. So this grind of doing sports every day, getting up early in the morning and then eating right, it’s really wearing you down, it’s not fun. But what people don’t often don’t realize is if you master this, the rest will be easy because you have mastered the discipline of getting up early, of like running stairs for example, lifting weights and so on. You have mastered the discipline of not just eating donuts and drinking Coke all day long, even though they’re everywhere, right? I know the colleagues are being nice and bring donuts to the company. Great, thank you for the diabetes, and well, it’s true though. If you’ve mastered this, then you know mastering business stuff becomes easy, like building a career, building a skill is easy because you you’ve already done it.

Pauline Rummel: I think everybody who does sports know like it’s such a good feeling when you’re done. I mean, of course like when you’re running, like it’s hard to get out every morning or especially in Germany when the weather sucks, it’s raining, it’s cold, but once you’re out there and then you come home, it’s like it’s crazy. You feel so different and you have an open mindset afterwards. You go to work with like a completely different mind and I think this is all like, of course it’s hard, but once you get it done, it’s done also like personally or work-wise.

Gereon Hermkes: Couldn’t agree more. Two things that you just brought up for me is it’s not knowing that you’re done, you have the first win of the day, right? I like to get up early and like before other people get up, I’m already winning whatever comes after that, you know? Even if I lose all day long, I still have that win and nobody can take it away from you.

Pauline Rummel: And you do something for yourself, that’s also a big part, because if you eat healthy, if you if you do some sports, you feel fit, and this is the biggest gift in your life: being healthy, living like, do something for your own good, you know, your own health, and that’s the start. If you do that right, everything will be easier.

Gereon Hermkes: Good. Alright guys, thank you for joining us. This was our Behendigkeit Podcast about the book Power Forward by Reggie Love. It’s a really good book, especially if you really want to get the insights on what it’s like to be an executive assistant, and it’s really interesting because it’s Obama, right? Thank you guys for listening in. This is Pauline and Gereon coming to you from Berlin. If you like this, please follow us on any of the platforms that you get your podcast from and hope to see you around. Bye bye.

Pauline Rummel: See you soon.