Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the People Processes podcast. I'm your host, Rhamy Alejeal, and I am really excited today to bring you Thomas Veeman.

The co-founder of Conversari Global. They upgrade people for the future of work. Thomas has worked in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, India, and Thailand. He's lived in Mexico City since 2012. He draws on his international background to teach executive courses on emotional and cultural intelligence. Thomas is especially passionate about using experiential and narrative methods to help teams bridge cultural and communication divides. I'm excited to have you on here, Thomas.

The pleasure is mine as well, Rhamy.

Well, Thomas, the first question I ask all of our guests, you know, not everybody dresses up as a kid for as an HR person or a business owner. It's not the most common life choices that get us here. How did you wind up where you are now? How did you get into this crazy world?

Well, that's a great question and it's a long story. As a kid, I certainly never thought I would do anything related to business. Actually, I grew up moving back and forth between Switzerland and the United States. My mom's Swiss and my father's an American. And I think it's kind of like that was the era before you had cell phones. But if we imagine it in today's world, it's kind of like every year I had to switch the SIM card in my brain to work with a different set of values, a different set of rules for how to behave. That was just normal to me. I learned later on and even growing up that's not necessarily normal for everyone else. If I fast forward, I thought i was going to be a pilot because pilots, they travel a lot and that would allow me to do that.

Yeah. I didn't become a pilot. If I fast forward, several years, later on after college where I studied in the U S. I Had been going to Switzerland and I studied in Thailand as well. My first real job in which I got to see a way to apply more of myself than just a job working the forests of Oregon. And later as in wilderness therapy in Arizona. And through that work when I really got to see was the beauty of it. Of people learning not only something that they can do to make themselves more effective, because the whole job and being effective as a job wasn't very compelling to me as something to do with your life growing up. But when I saw him here, these were practical lessons that you learned. You've figured out, if we use this kind of plant in this way. If you use your effort to make this tool, then you get these skills that make your life happier and getting to be part of that and seeing that within people kind of switch to chip for me and said, “you know what, that's something I need to find a way to do with my life.”

Wow. What an interesting background. Just to start with, but then to have those experiences after college. And so you said, all right, this kind of work moves me. It's something I could see myself doing. There is great value in it. How did you go from that to co-founding an incredibly successful company?

Yeah, the road was interesting. From working in wilderness therapy, I realized, if I'm going to take this step forward in my career, what could I do if I had a family or to be able to buy a house and afford a life. I gotta pay those bills, right? Meet the practical requirements of life. Well, the next step was either go into the therapeutic side. So to be a therapist, a masters in psychology now at the time, life is complicated. 

So I was dating a woman in Monterrey, Mexico. And through that long distance relationship we had to figure out well to keep this relationship a chance, where do I go? She worked for the United Nations here in Mexico City, so she couldn't move. I had to come here. So I thought, well, what am I going to do that's relevant? Professionally, if I come to Mexico City. And I found this great program, Masters in Counseling Psychology that I could do here, that brought me here. Now studying in English U S school out of California and doing work with local populations here. Basically the ghetto of Mexico City with youth. Like I was working before now to make money on the side.

I was teaching English in organizations. And from that I started to not care very much about the English part, but I started to see, look, there are really creative people who have a lot to give, but who are in teams or in organizational cultures that are holding them back from bringing the best of themselves to work and through first, as an English teacher. I thought, well, why don't I use some of the skills? Some of the tools that we used in either wilderness therapy or in the psychology training to help bring some of these creative energies out so people can really be alive with what they do. And it worked beautifully. It worked beautifully. People bloomed. They enjoyed coming to their classes. I enjoyed coming to their classes. And often we didn't look at a single element of grammar. 

Right. The result was the ability to communicate. It doesn't matter. It's not about the language. It's about the ability to actually get out there and get the ideas across. Right.

Yeah. That's a big part of it. Getting the ideas across. And that requires also having the courage to share what you really think. To be aware of what you really think by going through a process of understanding yourself both emotionally in terms of what you really want from life, what your priorities are and what you have to give. And then finding a way also to make that work in a team and to bring value to an organization.So yeah.

And from that, you decided to launch this global organization now.

Yeah, exactly. So I knew Kevin Kennedy Anderson from my studies and he had already gone into consulting and frankly, at that time I didn't even know what consulting was. Alright. So I thought it was going to be a therapist, a psychologist, but then working in the organization, I thought, well, how can we do this in a way that we actually get to create the programs that have a bigger impact. Sat down with Kenneth, brought him into the organization to do a special kind of course company. Loved it. They bought it for consulting prices. And from that moment, Conversari was born.

Very nice. Yes. Those kinds of consultant prices are always a good place to start a business.

Sure. I mean, it's a big difference right here. And if you're in the box of an English language teacher, you're always limited. No matter how much value you add to people's lives, that's not going to be reflected.

In transferring from that hours for pay to value for pay. That's the shift. Well, that's awesome. So now you've got a successful organization. You guys are really bridging those cultural communication divides, helping companies and organizations out. And I know that you have had that experience of growing your organization. You've had to have had some amazing highs and some amazing lows. Now I think our listeners, maybe it's because a little shot in Freud, but mainly I think they learn the most, not from the successes, the great ideas, but from failures.

So I always ask my guests to take us to the day. Tell us the story in that narrative form. You're so good at, about your greatest entrepreneurial failure mistake. Very, very, very bad day. What came of it?

That's a great question. I think there's a few places it could go with this, but the hardest part is,

Picking one, right? You've been in business long enough.

There is one that sticks in my mind right now. We were lucky enough to work with a multinational company here in Mexico and they liked our training so much that they said, “alright, we have our partners in Krakow and in India that would like your services, are you able to travel and deliver there?” We said, “of course, right. First class ticket each way, please.” Right.

Then here's the funny thing, we went to India, we delivered a course and it was actually relatively straightforward in terms of the cultural element. Then we got to Krakow and kind of in a way the train came off the hinges. What happened was we have our courses, we always like to do them in a way that prioritizes experience, right? Because it's great to have theory and to have constantly and all of that. But at least for me and for the other, the other, now 16 of us. 

One thing that binds us together is that we like to see things in action. So we put that first in our training and we came to our training in Krakow, now crack coasts, kind of the European training hub for a tech company that we were working with. And you're going to have to help me because I'm not asking for me, where's Krakow Caicos in Poland. Okay, well it's behind what was the iron curtain of course, as much deeper, longer history, they're just fat. But it's kind of the new growth area of Europe where some of the infrastructure costs are lower. But also not as much experience internationally yet. 

So we come to Poland and there's participants being brought in from all over Europe and not only Europe, but also Africa and the middle East. So you 're training a group of people that's widely diverse. We start our training the way we normally do. And that's when things start to look a little different in terms of the response people. They had that quizzical look on their face rather than nodding the excitement that you look for as a trainer had that quizzical, the crossed arms.

A lot of questions. That doesn't seem to go away about what we're doing, why we're doing it. And then we started getting feedback. All right, we'll get feedback from our contacts there. You know, people really don't, they're not on board with this. They feel like it's very American in its style and they don't trust it. And we're like, “what's happening? What's happening here?” Right. Lowest reviews we've ever received. And I remember walking back that night in it's cold in Poland, in the winter and just feeling like, man, I don't know how I'm going to get up and what am I going to do the next morning to make this feel different.

Right. And of course, these are big risks for your company too, right? I mean, not just this one training, going back. This isn't. These are very costly to put on. I'm sure there are significant risks to the company and career.

Sure. I mean not only to the self-esteem that was happening with regard to the organization. This was our first as Conversari Global. This is our first reach into actually delivering globally and we're being faced with this big challenge. If I don't turn around, we will lose that continued contact and that feedback will come back to our biggest client. Right.

So of course the opportunity for more work in that area.

Yeah, exactly. So we met with the leadership, with our contacts there. We went out to dinner actually, where they tried to explain what was going on. We started reading and looking more at the cultural elements of this and part of that we were already doing, but we were missing a key element. Right. Well, it turns out as we're looking at these things, it turns out that the main element we were missing was the difference in pedagogical styles from one culture to another. And in this sense it was shared by most of Europe and an approach that puts theory before applications.

So what was happening is, we were explaining things with examples, with demonstration, with popping people into role-plays before we explain all of the process and then working backwards to develop the process. Well that tended to work pretty well in the U S and here in Mexico. But doing that in Europe, people don't feel open to trusting an application until they understand the process behind it.

Wow.

And even more than that, like the people, I remember people, some of them were like shaking to do this and getting angry at us because we were putting them in a position where they had to make a mistake by not being able to do something well yet.

Because we didn't tell them what the goal, what the theory was, what the outcome should be.

Exactly. They didn't know the criteria. So they hated us because we were putting that emotional space that was really uncomfortable.

Wow. That reminds me, gosh, so what'd you do?

Well, one part of it was really just like when you understand what's going on, that's half the battle, right? Pending that we just backed up. So the next day we made the adjustment of changing some of the order, putting more of the explanation of why we're doing things and giving more space for that upfront. And then we did find that they could debate a little bit back and forth once they got the concept. There was almost you could see this palpable nod with people and that was the cue that okay, now we're ready to put it into practice. And then it worked a lot better.

That is so interesting. At my company, Poplar Financial, we do systems design. So companies come to us because they have a great training like yours or anything that they want to systematize to make sure it goes out to everybody to keep track of, to issue certificates for all that kind of stuff and we just picked up. 

We're licensed and we practice in the United States and we very much work in the HR function for consultation. But we had one client that came to us earlier this year. I think they started January 1. They only have about 20 employees in the U S but they have 300 contractors internationally. Some of Ukraine and some of the Philippines. And they wanted us to systematize their training, their on-boarding tools, their performance management, that kind of stuff that they already have figured out, but they wanted us to systematize it.

Right. And I'm sitting here staggering, thinking. I'm just like, because something as simple as the order in which information is presented could vary by culture. Like that had never occurred to me. Very interesting. So given your experience, our listeners, they run the gamut from an HR person and a 5,000 man company to mom and pop shop with three employees or their CPAs who have no employees but just working a bunch of organizations. 

What do you think they could take from your story of this that'd be a really rough time that you turned around and what they apply in their own businesses?

Well, that's a great question and that's what we always try and do too, right? Getting slapped upside the head with an experience like that. What can we do to learn from it and not make the same mistakes and open up new opportunities in the future. I think a key one is recognize whether it's a small organization or a big one. You have to think globally in today's business and so much of both geography and time borders are breaking down. Like we're having this conversation across an international border. It becomes so easy to do that, that the flow of work is going to require more and more of that to happen. Whether it's a supplier, whether it's a business partner, globality is a norm that you have to take into consideration. So that's the first part.

So then the second part, once you understand, okay, we have to be able to deal across the borders and also understanding the differences. It's like, the culture is an iceberg, right? There's the part of the surface, the part that you can see where people speak different languages. They might look different, they might wear different clothes and have music and food and all of that stuff, right? That's the visible part of culture, but it's the underneath part. That's where the ships often wreck in business, right? It's the values. The assumed, the expectations of how things work there. And even often in cultures that are seemingly similar inferences are exactly where you end up with conflicts.

Oh yeah. Not too many years ago, we were just in the Southern United States, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas. These good old Southern States with barbecue. And in the last few years we've expanded nationally, picked up a lot of New Yorkers, a lot of Washington tech people in California and business owners that are coming up with the next big idea. And we've had to do internal training and conversations about when you're talking to someone in Nashville, Tennessee, if you don't ask how their kids are doing and what's up with their dog and how's business, how's life, how's the weather? You're downright rude. But in New York, if