hi there my name is Joel on earth war and in this awake episode I will be talking to Josefien Groot, the founder and CEO of few layers not only fast-growing started but also conscious company or at least that’s the thing that Josephine wants to create and I really admire her for this their big ambition but at the same time she’s a real inside out and the veneer for me that’s next level alright Josephine cloud CEO and co-founder of Q layers great to have you here how are you doing good good so what is the biggest goal

you’ve ever set for yourself well with Q layers we want to become a unicorn which is that we have to work really hard this these five years because we were established last year so I think that’s a really big goal because we just started so we have to progress a lot and I really see the danger the the impacts of my decisions hmm so I think that’s a risk but it’s actually also not a risk because if it doesn’t work out it’s also fine hmm but it’s my biggest goal to achieve that we are coating on any location everywhere

in the whole world and become a billion dollar company yeah yeah yeah of course the vision is more important than that but I think it should profit and purpose again go hand in hand and go together yeah so yeah do you truly believe you can become the Unicorn yeah definitely otherwise I wouldn’t say it hmm what makes you believe that this is gonna come the unit coin um I see the potential of our technology and we really want to learn so we we put a lot of effort in learning yeah and I really see a lot of things that we are

trying and everything is is going well so yeah why not I think we can we can do it yeah now how old are you right now 24 24 yeah so what what do you experience do people feel or say when they hear you talking about these really ambitious goals yeah the depends depends for instance last Monday I was at the dinner an evening of what with a maritime sector and we had to we had a lot of discussions about sustainability and I have a really strong opinion on that and there was one CEO sitting next to me and

after that he said like oh can I have your card because I want to introduce you to my kids who are 19 and 22 and so he was really really nice and but there are also others that think like what are you talking about you don’t know anything because actually the same evening I got to talk with a shipbuilder company the really large ships and then yachts and I was talking with him and I thought he was a bit yeah like all the the grey old guys were been dominant he was also like that and so I was also

doing like this and then he was like yeah you don’t know what you’re talking about and what does ever hear what does it do with me yeah then I only feel more motivated to do it so it doesn’t it doesn’t work and actually that’s also one of my I’m super competitive so if someone tells me that I cannot do it so I only get more motivate to do it and that actually can be a really big motivation for me to make a decision towards moving that we can do it yeah what is it that drives you do you have to prove something to yourself or to

others what is underneath there no it’s more that I am really aware of my competitive side but I use it as a tool because I want to improve the world and I see this competitive matches will which is really something that my ego has as a tool that I can use to improve the world so I don’t see any reason to to work on it to to to to to make sure that I don’t have it anymore because until now it really works well in a lot of situations hmm and why is it that you want to improve the world actually during high school I was really busy

with sports and I lost myself a bit in that so I got a I was a sports addict and got totally what wrong I wanted to go in the army for my fifteenth until my 18th and then at one point I went through all the psychology tests and then I was sitting in in Breda with four officers officers at the other side of the like a really big large wooden table and then they were asking me questions like oh and you with your blonde hair what are you gonna do when you are an officer in the army how are you gonna lead people and and I

felt a bit disrespected after this conversation and I thought if I’m going to to join the army then I’m only I will only be busy with proving myself to them to other people and then that makes that I cannot develop myself further so I didn’t join the army I went to university I had to choose a new study in a month so and I studied science Business Innovation with a sustainable energy Trek and then I really developed my my my my passion and my for sustainability because first I always thought like I want to join the army and

I want to do tough things and then my whole world changed because I make the major decision to not go to the army and then I started to think like what I really want what do I really care for and then I had one moment that I really felt like was my heart chakra that I want to do something more sustainable energy I want to improve the world and make sure that we all have clean sustainable energy and at the end I knew well what I wanted so so I work you with the busy schedule like uf and high ambitions yeah

what is your in general your state of being how do you feel and this yeah at this moment very busy and yeah actually I would like to have some more time to also invest in my own development I now do that in the weekends that also helps a lot and what I also tried to do is invest more time in when I’m not working in myself so actually since the the purpose can in voiceover I got really better in seeing what kind of persons I want to have around me hmm because of course the purpose scans showed that I had an

energy lack of energy and then I fall about where that is going hmm and I thought okay I want to develop my company so it’s good to invest my energy in that but then I cannot do other things it’s cost a lot of energy yeah so now I’m getting really yeah better in selecting people more selective with people around me hmm what do you think if you if your future self in ten years from now would give you advice what what kind of advice would she give to you um spend more time in nature you think because I actually planned

I finished my MA CT my mimosa program last July so first I combined it and then I thought okay then next to my building q layers I’m gonna do a course to become really good with with herps actually recognizing them and using them for medicine all applications I invited you wanted because I really am really interested in their nature yeah I like to sit on the trees and talk with plants and that kind of stuff so you really connect with it with them yeah yeah yeah I do well now it’s winter so everything is

sleeping trees are also sleeping so you cannot really connect with them yeah I would really like to be more in nature actually to spend so like like long weekends I in a forest or hmm and they get certain day to your weekly practices that you do to stay balanced I stay in your Center I do meditation every day I I did it twice a day but now I only do it in evening so I have that as a practice you if I believe even more in myself and in my own decisions and in my own style my own identity then then I will become the

entrepreneur that I would like to be if I can make that step and I think I’m already working a lot on that but what is needed to believe more in yourself how does a difficult question I think I get a lot of satisfaction and I believe myself if I do things in a good way that’s actually of course a weird answer because it’s really about being to believe in yourself and now I am combining it with an with an action with my actions which should not be the same not interesting thing is when it’s about actions it’s about more about

self-confidence so you can self-confidence when things are going right in your life and believe in yourselves on a deeper layer yeah yeah yeah yeah so then is more about self-confidence and also trying to prioritize opinions based on who is actually telling me this did he experience this himself or not because we are in in in in an environment in delves we are in the incubator yourself so we get a lot of advice we also have a board of advisers and they all have an opinion and in some cases they will be right so I have to

listen to them to see if I could do something with it with it but in the end it should be my opinion if I’m gonna do things or not hmm I think that’s also important for the stage of the company where we are now because we’re growing as a company and I always I wanted to build a tea organization from the MOOC reinventing organization so we’re actually really trying to do that but I also see that a lot of people sometimes you need someone to tell them okay then we’re just gonna do it like this this

and this you’re gonna do that yes I still need leadership you leadership definitely hmm and of course it can be combined with self-management but some people need I think a lot of people need a leader so I have to take that role and that self-confidence is really important for this yeah so how are you how are you building that teal organization with more self-management yeah of course it’s not only about self-management we also do daily meditation classes that’s all for State hmm so the ones where you can join yeah

but what most of them started nine so they miss miss out but so that’s one thing we do the daily meditations we also try to include all of our hobbies inside the company how do we do weekly presentations on Thursday and you can present something about your work but you can also present a hobby or an opinion or anything and then we drink a beer and we listen to you so that’s that’s a way to do it yeah we do a lot of team activities to try to build that really strong connection with each other what is the biggest problem you run into

when creating the teal organization well I made an organization call that’s a tree an organization tree like a hi Rick well it’s not a hierarchy but an organization tree and it was really like a puzzle so I made lines from person to person where when they had daily contacts about the decisions and and so on but it was really a mess actually I think I was the only one that could understand it and I present it to my investors and I said this is our company and they said like okay but you need functions like that we cannot understand

it so you still need to you always need some kind of hierarchy to offer communicate to the outside world how it works within your company you also have to everyone needs some responsibilities and sometimes there’s there still has to be one person that says you’re gonna be responsible for this then it’s self management but within a certain context and I think that’s what something that we learned in a couple of months while trying to implement into your organization now we already see that we still need some kind

of hierarchy even though it’s it’s still flat so we can communicate with everyone and everyone communicates with with everyone freely but there there is a certain hierarchy hmm yeah and I can see and the purpose can result you don’t really like to manage your people all the time you like more in that kind of distance and be the visionary entrepreneur and it might even be part of why you like to create a tivo organization and self-management is it important for you that people that you have come on board that they really feel

the purpose that you are after with the company yeah definitely is it necessary if they don’t feel a purpose wheels gonna hire them that’s actually really difficult because we really we need to really specialize people we need engineers electrical engineers and they’re not a lot of those people that have that specialization but we do want them to have some kind of connection with sustainability and improving the world with technology and they should believe that we can improve the world with science and technology if they

don’t then yeah there’s no connection and we cannot hire in them because that would mean that they also don’t feel the connection with with us if I implement the daily meditations of course not everyone likes it that’s fine but eh I am sorry it’s not minutes or no no of course not everyone can decide on themselves but yet it should be at least open for it because if they’re not open for that then you have a CEO that likes to – in and those practices it would be weird so they should be open fights and how do

you know if someone is purpose-driven enough to come on board yeah so we are started we cannot pay the salaries if you would get them in our in a large corporate so if they want you to come and work for us it’s already kind of a motivation that they have and I have a lot of questions during the recruitment process to find out and you instantly sometimes people tell you what you want to hear but you see you see if they are talking to two four then you’re just telling it to you because you want to

know yeah it’s easy to find out if they if they meet those criteria hmm is there anything you would like to share with other startup and pinellas kind of in the canoes something that you’ve learned I think is really valuable yeah I think what is really important is to develop yourselves to develop yourself before you develop all together with developing your company it it goes together it’s not that you can develop your company without developing yourself so you should develop yourself at all times and

I think a lot of founders or managers miss out that part they don’t focus on that part sometimes I’m a bit shocked see how they’re not a lot not enough started founders or scale of founders actually eat healthy or take care of themselves or those basic things that everyone should know and they’re not even trying that out so I think if you would focus if everyone who focus on self-development then they should all they will always also find what their purpose is what drives them and then they can improve their company and

ship division mm-hmm Oh realize the vision so sail development first and then the company yeah yeah and of course it should go hand-in-hand because I also know people to develop themselves but they don’t take action hmm so then they they they are who they want to be but they don’t know how to take action and I think you can learn faster if you also take action so if it goes together then you can accelerate your your own development [Music] you [Music]