2025 was a defining year for both the marketplace industry and for Marketplace Universe itself. In this final episode of the year - and Valerie’s last before her maternity leave - Ingrid and Valerie take a clear, honest look at what shaped the past twelve months. They discuss the major industry shifts: the continued rise (and regulation) of Temu, Shein, and AliExpress; the accelerating AI shift from SEO to AI-readable content; the uneven rollout of TikTok Shop across Europe; and the renewed push for marketplace internationalisation. At the same time, they provide insight into their first full year as a small bootstrap startup: the successes and the challenges that Valerie's maternity leave brings with it. They share what worked, what they underestimated, and why transparency, early handovers, and a strong team made all the difference. A reflective, practical year-end episode about an industry in motion - and a business learning to scale sustainably.

A big thank you to all our loyal listeners! We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

If no one is using Marketplaces per se anymore and just asking the chatbots what to buy and buy it directly with the chatbot, what happens to the marketplaces?

And this is something that all Marketplace providers and services will have to consider.

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vana Vridisti.

Hey everyone, welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace and to a very special episode because A, it's our final episode for this year and this is always a special one and B, it's also very special because it's the last episode that I'll be doing together with Valerie for a while at least.

So last episode, Valerie, how does that make you feel?

Oh, well, to be very honest, I mean we're pre recording this today, so as you listen to this, I don't know, I.

There might be my baby boy already in our life.

So let's see.

Yeah, let's see.

Yeah, well, yeah, it's a bit strange to be honest, like just to let go business for some time for a special time and yeah, so.

But it's also good that it now finally comes to like this break because yeah, juggling business.

There are like so many things this year, preparing for baby break, etc.

That was actually also exhausting.

It was a full year, definitely.

It was really a full year and we really covered and we everything up but also tried not to talk about as early as some others would do about it.

So yeah, the year actually flew past.

Flew very.

Yeah, passed really fast and I really appreciate that I can take this break now and yeah, I would say so many things happened.

You see, like I'm a bit like you all over the place.

So I would say we do a short recap of the year in like different point of view.

So yeah, yeah, I think we could do that.

We could look at what happened in the year as we normally do at the end of the year and happened what happened in the industry and also what happened with our business.

But in this special case, I think we'd also reflect a little bit on how it goes personally and give you some insights on how we prepared Marketplace universe for this special time that Valerie is going into.

Because we are a young startup after all.

So yeah, we have challenges to meet with this, but I think we did pretty well and maybe this is helpful to you in some way.

So I guess we can dive into this.

Yeah.

And I doubt we fit it in into 30 minutes, but let's give it a try.

Yeah, I doubt that as well.

So I would say let's start with the biggest industry news because that's important to all of you.

And then we do like on the other point of view, a private and business marketplace universe business review.

So Ingrid, you are the news lady.

So I would say let's go on or start with the news review of this year.

What was really going on this year in the marketplace industry.

Yeah, I had a look at our newsletter archive which is really helpful that our colleague Christiane always puts, that puts each newsletter that we send out to you in our in one box and then we can have a look at it at the end of the year.

And it's always interesting because the year does flow by and you do forget things very quickly and then you look at the stuff and go like, yeah, all right, that happened.

And that was actually quite big.

Yeah.

And I think the thing that went through the whole year is that we are still in a crisis situation, even though we would like not to be, because growth rates have returned overall to most European e commerce markets.

But that growth isn't evenly distributed.

So.

So it mostly goes to the new Chinese players and to Amazon and to some select country and category leaders and also to second hand platforms, of course.

But outside of these pockets of growth, the outlook is still quite tough.

And I think also that tariffs were also a topic this year.

Right?

Yes, but mostly for those who go to the US So we had some stories from the community as well of people withdrawing again and struggling with their whole calculations.

That wasn't that much of a topic inside Europe, but it might be gearing up to that next year a little bit.

But yeah, I think so that there was an influence.

Right.

Because like dropping the US or like lowering down the US in growth, we're like, okay, where do we go now?

There's Europe.

Yeah, there's Europe.

And that was definitely true for the Chinese players.

Yeah.

So I, I think that is the other big topic that also went with us through the whole year.

What to do with Timo and shein and AliExpress and how to react to their exponential growth.

And how can we counter that?

That was the problem that many companies but also governments were dealing with.

And we had some very different tries on that.

So there have been some tries on that and the Growth of those platforms has been slowing down over the year, but that might just be because they have already grown so much and have become so important to European consumers that yeah, of course they can't be keep on growing by 300%.

Yeah, maybe.

We also have to mention that we record this episode right before Black Friday.

So if something happened in December that's not part of that, we didn't cover it in this episode, but definitely in other episodes you will have with Ingrid together.

Yeah, that's true.

And yeah, so we have like the, the, the topics you already mentioned and we will also.

What we also see is a huge shift and influenced by AI.

Right.

Like in several different cases in several different marketplaces service partner topics.

Yeah, I think the biggest one was that that ChatGPT wrote out their in chat shopping so that.

Oh yeah, I tried this.

That was like that happened like last week to me.

I was like, yeah, I looked actually to some what is like gardens like for like window clothing.

And I asked chatted P like hey, I want to have like feng shui wise and I want to have like this color.

I have it already in this room.

And then he was like, okay, yeah, what like price do you want, like what shops do you want etc.

And then he gave me actually with the links, shop, shop links with.

To the products I could buy in the sizes I wanted.

I was like, okay, that's crazy.

So I was like, okay, yeah, yeah.

The problem starts here if you want to click on anything because then often it doesn't work that way that it's intended.

In this case it worked okay.

Interesting work.

And they also have shown pictures in it.

So I think they're, I mean this is like still in baby shoes.

Yeah, because yeah, there's like still like it's, it's obviously not working for every category or we tried this out in summer for holiday homes.

That was a mess.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean that's just three or four months ago.

And the speed of evolving AI and influencing our daily work life orders, that's insane.

And there is so much more coming.

We also saw that Miracle also transforms content for AI agents.

Right.

Because that's the whole part about it and also influencing our marketplace business is that your content must be readable or scrapable, whatever or however AI does it to be very honest for the AI agents because if it's, if you don't have like, if you have shit content, then you will never be shown somewhere.

Yeah.

So yeah, this is again king.

Yeah, but we're moving from Search optimization to AI optimization.

Yes, that's.

That's quite true.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was like one of the big topics, I think because everyone's thinking, okay, how can I use this?

And Amazon's reacting, of course, with their own features and Miracle did some stuff, but it all feels very experimental at the moment and everyone's not really sure where this is going.

So McKinsey is always very bold in their forecasts.

But still it is interesting to look at that.

Yeah, yeah, definitely one of the big.

Topics, I think also a topic we will have a deeper look in the coming year, right?

Yes, this is because I picked that up for my talk on the E Commerce Expo that I will be holding because I thought.

Yeah, well, of course it really, it takes the question to what happens to the marketplace business if no one is using marketplaces per se anymore and just asking the chatbots what to buy and buy it directly with the chatbot, what happens to the marketplaces?

And this is something that all marketplace providers and services will have to consider.

So yeah, I picked that up.

Let's see where the research is going on the case of AI.

Is your AI a he or she?

Because it's something that my kids yesterday asked me and I just realized that you said just he gave me that and this and that offer and I always.

For, for me it's a she.

It's just completely stupid.

But for me it's an it.

You just said he.

You just said he.

Really?

Yes, you did.

I realized I normally talk with her, with her and when she annoys me, she turns into a he.

Might be something I should talk to my husband about maybe.

Yeah, so I guess that is.

Yeah, identity commerce is one of the things and well, maybe on a little less global note, we had a lot of talk about TikTok shop this year because they started out in Central Europe and there was a lot of.

Yeah, does it work for Europe or not?

And there were a lot of high profile accounts that pulled out again, for example, about you after just a few weeks.

But it seems to be doing quite well.

If you look now at the numbers, it has solid growth in most of the Central Europe European countries and there's also a solid turnover happening there.

So that seems as if it is establishing itself.

Yeah.

And it's again, depending on the Products you sell, the target group you want to reach.

Right.

The prices you share.

This is definitely what we already got.

And also that the.

The economy around it needs also to grow because for example in the UK they are much more faster because they have Tik Tok Shop already implemented and but for example in Germany they are like TikTok studios.

Like there's not really like video studios for IT or service partners are just building up or starting.

So this needs to grow.

And as we know the European people are a bit, just a tiny bit less speedy than the Chinese.

So in China there's all this like operational stuff.

You need to have such channels or live shopping, etc.

And that's already there.

They are already used to it.

Which we are in Europe not yet.

So let's see how this will evolve as well.

But it's super important.

Yeah.

And an absolutely.

An interesting new channel to look at.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also brings us to the topic of internationalization of marketplaces.

Right?

Yeah.

We see is that many marketplaces located in Europe are also growing and expanding to other countries in Europe mainly.

Yep.

Yeah.

So there were like a lot of happening this year.

Yeah, we had some international pushes by BNQ and on buy&Buhl, MediaMarkt, Kaufland, Zalando, Vebode, you name it.

There was plenty of those stories and well it figures really.

I mean if you look at the growth numbers and at the problems that we are as we talked about in the beginning, we are still in the crisis situation.

So of course the marketplaces need to look for new areas to grow.

And internationalization is something that is on top of their minds as it is retailers and brands by the way because I really noticed also when from our communities and from our connect events, internationalization is something that is high on the agenda for everyone is just because they're looking for new areas of growth.

Yeah.

And Zalandon about you also merged finally.

Yes.

So last year it was like oh, there are maybe going to.

And now it's like okay, it happened.

Yeah, it happened.

We did.

I remember that we.

We had to do that like last year minute in our last year's review because it happens I think two weeks before Christmas or something.

So.

Yeah, yeah, that now that happened.

And about you seems to be establishing themselves as the more easygoing smaller brother in a way.

Yeah.

So the easier to enter as a fashion brand, as a small fashion brand platform.

And Zalando is more like the big brother with a huge bodyguard who says like you're not important enough.

You're not big enough.

You're not matching to our brand approval guides by my go to about you.

Maybe.

Let's see.

That's the feeling I have right now.

You did a webinar on that, which nicely brings us to our review on what happened with the Marketplace universe.

Because that was just one webinar of lots that you did last year.

12 webinars we did this year.

That was quite crazy actually.

Now we have almost finished the first full year and yeah, we implemented so many new content pieces.

I mean you knew us already from LinkedIn posts and podcasts.

Right.

But then we added webinars where we host webinars.

So if you want to watch any of our webinars this year, go to our website, marketplaceminousuniverse.com and go to the events and on the webinars, if you scroll down, you can re watch every recording of the webinars.

We did for example with about you.

We did some with bo, with Kaufland, with ebay, with Channel Engine.

There are so many different topics we covered with so many different speakers, also guest speakers from brands.

So there's a lot of content in there.

I'm really happy with those actually.

This is because that is really good content and also content that is, that will keep for a while because it goes so deep and is very operational in a way.

So yeah, definitely worth checking out for you.

And that's actually what we do, right?

We connect you as Marketplace people in our universe and we will get, we get also so much amazing feedback from you.

Is it about our newsletter?

I mean, newsletter is mainly your part, Ingrid, because if, if it would just still be me, there would still be no newsletter.

Of course.

I have no clue.

And I'm really so glad how amazing you're doing the newsletter with our team.

I mean now we have like three and a half thousand subscribers.

Yeah.

And we just started last year and it's growing and growing.

The opening rates are above 55%, liquids is about 11%.

And if anyone is here in the marketing, hey, these are really good numbers.

They make me very happy.

Yeah, yeah.

It just goes to show that we managed to implement ourselves in your daily Marketplace business with.

And that is.

Thank you for that because that is really great.

Yeah.

And then if you have another.

Because like as you can see, Ingrid is a news lady.

I'm more the reporting in our internal topics.

Yeah, yeah.

Whenever you go, like we need Some figures, Valerie.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, I have a look in our report.

I go and let that even our Excel files.

Yeah.

Well, we had amazing clients this year again.

72% of our clients rebooked us again.

Yeah.

In Kamal, we were sold out in June or something.

Or July.

Yeah, yeah.

For the whole year.

So if you want to work with us in the coming year, then you can, you can definitely.

And this time you need to contact in the first quarter, Ingrid.

Yeah, normally that goes through Valerie, but now I have been taking over this whole part of the business and.

Yeah, more on that later maybe.

Yeah, and we have great clients like Kaufland Marketplace, eBay, MediaMark, Zatron Exporter, Channable Base Channel Engine and so many more.

Yeah.

We launched a new community, the Marketplace leader circle.

Oh yeah.

With head of marketplaces from fashion and sports from 16 different fashion brands and big fashion brands.

It was really amazing to host this first circle.

There will be another one in the coming year.

You can also pre register on our website, not just for sports and fashion, but also for other outlines, categories, let's say.

Yeah, so that was a big one I would say then we did a lot of events.

Yes, seven actually, which is crazy if you think it's nearly like every day, more than one every two months.

Which is Universe Connect events.

Yeah.

I mean if we consider the work that goes into this for just organizing and finding the right locations and the right catering and of course inviting all the people there and making sure they have a good time, that is quite a feat.

And so doing seven of those, that was fun.

Yeah, exhausting, but fun.

We did mainly in Munich, Cologne and Berlin, but we also thinking about expanding because we overall expanded our audience more internationally.

So maybe a few words on that later.

But the connect events were amazing because we see you in person, we get your direct feedback, we see your posts afterwards, we realize how many people extra just arriving for our event.

Not for the pre event or like for the event where we thought we are just the pre event for it or the side event.

Yeah.

That makes us so proud.

And it also connects us with you in.

In person means otherwise we are full remote team.

Right.

So in the meanwhile, I mean we were always a full remote team, you and me.

We are seeing each other once a month about that.

In person.

Yes, like yeah, on camera every day, I think.

Yeah, almost.

Yeah.

But we have like a really great team with like where like we have a support of like additional roughly seven ladies, all rock stars in the background.

And that's also the Reason, it's not just that I'm going for a break and Ingrid is the only one taking over.

No, no, no, no, no, of course.

No, I could manage.

No, yeah, but we got a great team and that is really helpful as well to have that in the background and all of them taking responsible disabilities and shouldering part of the load and.

Yeah.

And just building that with us and.

Yeah.

That.

It was quite a year.

It was quite a year.

Quite a year.

Yeah.

Internationally we grew.

Right.

So we are much more present in the uk, in the US with the podcast, which is quite interesting.

Yes.

Listeners here.

Yeah, yeah.

And I always realize that because in the start of each webinar we ask people, okay, let's try out the chat, let's see if the chat is working.

And just to try it out, write in the chat, where are you located?

So where are you sitting?

And so it makes me so happy to read all these international cities.

And I'm like, I'm from Real Madrid and I'm from Warshaw and I'm from London and I'm from Rome and it's like, yes, please welcome all of Europe.

That's what I wanted.

That's really cool.

Yeah, yeah.

And so this is why we are thinking about expanding our connects, events in a bit more international maybe as well.

So.

Yeah, let's see if that works out.

Yeah.

And our LinkedIn profiles grew as well, so.

And especially in a time where it's getting harder and harder.

So I counted and we published together more than 420 LinkedIn posts this year.

So.

On both our whole team.

Yep.

Insane.

Every week, almost five posts from you and me.

That's just word.

Yeah, It's a full blown media operation, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then lots of good feedback there as well.

I mean, you're now up to 21,000 followers.

I'm up to nearly 10,000 followers.

We've got great impressions and they are still growing.

And of course, and especially engagement is growing and that's what we really appreciate.

Every time that you are reacting to one of our posts and telling us what you think and adding your insights, that always feeds back into everything else we do because then I get some new ideas about new content pieces or then I come back to the next conference with the team and say we need to do something about this or about that because I had a comment here.

So yeah, keep doing that please.

And we are still bootstrapped.

Right.

And then if you're not in startup language means like, we don't have any investors.

It's mainly Ingrid and me who started this.

And yeah, we are profitable.

And I think this is also something where we could really be proud of is having a six figure business in just one year, which is profitable with so many amazing people working with us and also with this great community we are building with you and our listeners, our audience, our readers.

So, yeah, we can really, like do.

This, you know, like, yes, yes, yes, yes, we can.

And sometimes we miss this, right?

Like celebrating our successes is sometimes like, oh, yeah, the year has passed by.

It was great numbers.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Why we don't have the time, you know, there's always like the next thing coming, the next thing on the list or the next asana task to do whatever.

So there's not much time.

Also going into my baby break, it's also like, yeah, but I just need to do this or like, and then I do this and then I really do my break and then I really do my break.

And it's like two, two weeks over my official maternity leave and I'm like, yeah, well, but to be very honest, and this maybe leads us to our part three, the personal review.

Because it's really a. I mean, from my personal female point of view, it's a challenge to be pregnant and have your own growing business and managing everything.

It was really a crazy year.

And yeah, it is a challenge and.

I think it's good that you are calling it as such because sometimes you either get the feedback of, yeah, you should just, you know, either stay at home and stroke your baby body or you just rock this.

Yeah, you're just pregnant and of course you're building three businesses on the side and that's not a problem at all.

And I mean, of course this is a struggle.

Yeah, of course it's, it's something that we have, you have to deal with and that's all right because in the end, if we don't work on it and if you don't connect on it and if you're not transparent on it, we can't solve it.

And this is what I really appreciated because you have always been very transparent with me and with the team and saying what, what happens, what you need, how we can now move on.

And yeah, maybe why don't you tell a bit, tell people a little bit about how you went on handing over your business, your side of the business to my desk.

Because this was a long process in a way and I think that is.

It might be helpful to hear that.

Yeah, definitely.

But maybe I would start a bit earlier Actually before founding a company with you because I think that's quite important that you are.

I mean, I'm so glad that we have each other.

Otherwise I would would get crazy now thinking about like there's no one where I can.

Whom I can like trust and hand over the business and I know it will be there when I'm back.

That we spoke before we found it together about our private goals in life and that you knew before we signed the papers.

Hey, you knew.

I. I really want to have.

Want to become a mom.

Right.

Because otherwise if you're founding together and then someone says you like one and a half years, not even one year later after signing the documents, like, hey, you know what?

By the way.

By the way.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean you were somehow prepared about this message.

Maybe not as fast, but to be honest, I was also not prepared that it happened as fast as it went.

I mean, I'm also not the youngest anymore.

And I was like.

We were like, yeah, that will take time.

Yeah, it didn't.

Luckily it was like, yeah.

And then I was like, okay, I really need to tell her as soon as possible.

Yeah.

Because I mean if you are working so close together, then you get a feeling about like oh well, she's not well today or there's something happening and if you don't share it openly, then no one can support you.

Yes.

And then there's also like, nah, what's going on there?

Right.

So I think it's very, very important to be transparent, open and honest with your business partner or co founder.

And I mean as also we have some people of my family in our team that was also sometimes a bit like some new.

Some didn't knew so which also involved a team very early.

But to be honest, our audience, we.

I kept it very long hidden as.

As long as it was possible because I mean, oh, we were in conferences and there was a man.

It was, it went.

Didn't.

Went everything quite smooth.

I had like a. I was not feeling well in Berlin when we were at the K5 conference and I was so happy you were there.

There was like, yeah, really some ups and downs where I was like, okay, now I need a break or I don't know.

Yeah.

I think the thing that you heard most from your gynecologist was always like, take it easy, take it more easy.

Take it easiest.

What?

You want to start this project?

Are you fucking kidding me?

No.

So if my boyfriend is like, you know what?

I what my biggest challenge is like getting you calmer.

I'm just like.

Well, it's just not in your nature.

I mean, you are a voice of nature.

If you have something in your mind and you set your mind to it, you go for it 100%.

And to have put.

Put a break in your way, I think that was challenging.

And that was for me, also a bit of a tightrope walk.

Because, of course, I appreciate your.

This, this.

This energy you have and that you bring.

And this is how we build our business.

Yeah.

We both sort of feed from each other's energy and from each other's ideas.

And one goes ahead with an idea, the other says, yeah, let's do this.

Come on.

And now I had this.

Okay, I should.

I take this energy because I needed to for this transformation process.

But on the other hand, I. I don't want you break down immediately.

So I have to break up.

You have to.

Yeah, just go beside you and go, like, I'll take this.

You know, I can take this.

Give it to me.

Thank you.

And just.

And that was a bit of a balance and to find the right way.

And of course it was.

It's.

It's.

You are in a situation where you are not fully in control in a way, because.

And that is.

That is a hard thing to accept, I think.

Yeah.

And also we did bold decisions about our business.

About, like, do we do the next community season now or not?

Right.

Where we were openly sharing and then time passed and we were like, we should have started already four weeks ago.

And we were like.

Both were like, ah, shall we.

Shall we not?

And then we realized, no, we.

We.

Sometimes there was even no space anymore.

Right.

So we also need to cut down topics which were important to us.

Yeah, we had to postpone a few things.

Yeah.

Yeah, we had.

I had to stop a coaching.

We also stopped some other projects or paused them, to be very honest.

Yeah, postponed.

We postponed them because it was simply not possible to keep everything juggling.

Because, I mean, yeah, there's like, one person, like, doing a break for some time and maybe two to.

To say, how.

How long is that break time?

Actually now it's December.

December.

I'm already off.

So it's not forever.

It's.

No, it's not a long time.

It's actually for the first quarter where you maybe realize it.

And then I'm already back again because I have a great daddy for my child.

And yeah, he's able to do this break because to be very honest, this is a complete different side of the story.

But having your own business, being self employed, I mean, we're living in Germany.

To be very honest, it's really not as easy to say like, oh, you know what, I go for a break for one year.

No, it's simply not possible.

If you want that your business is still growing and.

Yeah, from a financial point of view.

Yeah, from a financial point of view.

So there's like really small support and yeah.

So it's, it's a, it's both.

It's actually, I don't want to break too long.

Yeah.

As from my energy wise, etc.

But also it's just difficult in realizing it.

Yeah.

So this is, as you say, it's not that long a period.

But still there was just a lot to consider.

How do you do that?

How do you hand over a business?

Because we have built this business in a way that we have responsibilities on my desk and responsibilities on your desk.

And in generally we don't interact in, on these.

On each desk.

Yeah.

We meet up and tell each other what we did.

And that works well, right?

Yeah, Just going for our strengths.

Yeah, definitely.

And, and that works quite well when we're both there.

And.

And it also works good for when one of us went on vacation.

We, we managed that pretty good.

But that is just a short time.

And then now we had this challenge to say, okay, how do we shift the important things from your desk to somewhere else?

And we very soon realized we can't shift everything that is on that desk on my desk because then I will just go mental.

And so this is where we wondered, okay, how can we involve the team?

In what areas can we involve the team?

Where do I need to keep the head up on everything?

How do I manage to keep everything under control while not doing everything operational?

So that was quite a process actually.

And we realized no one really, there's.

There's no handbook for that.

No, not really.

To create it by yourself.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you have to let go sometimes of like really perfectness or like the approach where you think like, oh, or my approach of like, if I'm doing it, I'm doing it 100.

But if everyone.

Yeah, but if someone else is doing it, maybe it's 80% and that's still enough, you know, or maybe it's just.

Their way of doing it and it's a bit different to yours.

There's Also maybe the 100% are even not necessary in the future.

So we will see after.

When I, when I come back, we will see.

Okay.

What was really Necessary.

What?

What, like fell down and no one didn't care about it.

Yeah.

So I heard from another because I'm in a huge network of other entities, entrepreneurs, and there was one guy who said like, yeah, I had a client and she was like, yeah, I did all.

I automated all my processes because I became a mom because I needed to have this time.

So you have a different kind of pressure.

And this is also what I felt.

I had a different kind of pressure.

So my baby belly was growing, is growing.

And I was like, okay, I really need to do this handover now because their time is running.

We don't know when he will arrive.

And yeah, so there was like, okay, I really need to keep things going to do the handover, to prepare everything for the team, for Ingrid.

And we really had a.

We really had luckily enough time that I was able to do all these handovers.

And now I'm really confident that he will do everything and which is needed.

And when I come back then, yeah, we start over with both of our energies.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, process wise, I think we did that quite well looking back on it, because we did things step by step and we first, you sort of, we freed you from the operational stuff more and more so that you had time to really think about, okay, which, which processes do I need to.

To write down?

Very important.

And write everything down, please, and record it on record it.

Give you Gemini.

Yeah, Gemini is great for that.

That's really good for it.

It's really good.

Yeah.

And okay, and then whom do I involve and how do I prep my, my team and.

And what stays with me?

So that was, yeah, a step by step thing.

And I think in, in back in May, we both were like, yeah, let's see how that works out.

Don't know yet.

But now by end of November, I'm quite confident because we have had a good, good handover process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we also took our clients into our circle of trust from summertime on, I would say.

So even though the audience and you, we informed you really late because I was like, I didn't felt it.

I had a really bad experience in talking about it very early and there was like really, really much pushback.

And I was like, well, maybe I like keep it for myself.

And then there were some, some people who got it on events.

But yeah, I think that's, that was quite a good way because we never know what happens.

Right.

Well, you feel vulnerable in a way.

Yeah.

And you are.

It's not just you feel you are.

And there Are so many different point of views from the outside.

Also, if, especially if you are business owners, like, there are also.

If we are not strong on the outside together, then there might be some, like, oh, but we are your client and is everything going smooth and well, et cetera.

And this is what we really can say.

Yes, it will go smooth.

Everyone knows, like, go to Ingrid.

She's your point of contact.

Our team is still there.

And to be very honest, in our operational daily tasks, often you don't find me doing.

Yeah, that was most of them on my desk anyways, already.

So I'm really glad I don't have to cover you.

As long as you have to cover.

Me, you know, I'm through with the topic.

Yeah.

Two boys, 116, 113.

I'm fine.

I'm out of this.

Thank you very much.

My kids are coming in school and yours are finished school.

I'm about to finish school, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No surprises there for my side.

Yeah.

Anyway, I mean, I would say because we already quite forgot 30 minutes.

Of course we are.

But maybe it was helpful to hear.

Us rambling houses in between as well.

Yes, you did.

Yeah, that also happened.

Forget that also happened.

Oh, yeah.

Because why not?

You know?

Yeah, okay.

Because it makes sense to live together with your.

Your boyfriend when you're getting a baby.

It's maybe helpful.

I think it's helpful.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But you know, maybe to sum that up, your one piece of advice to someone who's in the same situation as you are.

Be prepared and be honest and open with your co founder if you have one, but with better have one team.

Yeah, I have one.

Lucky.

But be transparent to the people who are close to you.

Yeah, I think that's really, really important.

And then prepare your handover quite well and give yourself also more time than you would think because the more the baby belly grows, the less energy you have.

And this is also what I'm not used to.

I'm always like 120% and I'm like 70.

I'm so.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay, my dear.

Then I would say from for let's Talk Marketplace, thank you very much for every episode we did together.

And I'm very much looking forward to the next one we're doing together maybe in May or in April already.

We'll see.

Yes, we will see.

Okay.

Thank you to you for listening.

Right.

Yeah.

And then bye bye.

Bye bye.

You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.

Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtel.