Craig Andrews 00:06

Today I want to welcome Alex Brookman. He is the founder and president of Brookman Executive Consulting based in Vancouver, Canada. His clients include high growth startups and Fortune 1000 executive teams looking to achieve greater strategic clarity. Alex is a facilitator speaker and bestselling author. At the intersection of strategy and leadership, alex helps businesses reach unmatched levels of alignment, performance and results. Alex, welcome.

Alex Brueckmann           00:42

Thanks for having me, Craig. I look forward to our conversation today.

Craig Andrews 00:45

Yeah, I've been looking forward to it as well. And we were chatting a little bit before in the green room about where you're from. You're from Nuremberg, yeah, that's correct.

Alex Brueckmann           00:56

Good old Germany.

Craig Andrews 00:57

Yeah. And what's amazing is so you live in Canada, you live in Vancouver, and you've only been here in North America for three years, yet your accent is amazingly clear.

Alex Brueckmann           01:12

Thank you for saying that. That's very kind of mean.

Craig Andrews 01:16

How'd you do know? I've worked with a lot of international people, I've lived in multiple places and it's hard. I mean, it's one thing to learn the language, but getting the accent right is tough.

Alex Brueckmann           01:30

How'd you do it, there is no intent behind it. Let's be totally frank. This is nothing that I've ever tried to be better at or that I've tried to improve in. But when you live and work basically 100% in a certain language, I guess it's just what you do over time. I've always loved languages, so I speak a few other languages as well. Not at all to the degree of English, but I think it has to do with at least that someone who is a language teacher once told me it has to do with whether you're a musical person. You listen and understand and adapt the sound and the flow of a language more easily than someone else might do it. And I'm a very musical person.

Craig Andrews 02:18

What an interesting perspective. So musical. Do you play instruments?

Alex Brueckmann           02:24

No, not really, not anymore. I did when I was younger, but I've always been a huge music fan. I've been a semi professional DJ for over a decade when I was younger, so music always played a massively important role in my life.

Craig Andrews 02:39

Wow, interesting. So what other languages do you speak?

Alex Brueckmann           02:44

French and Spanish and apparently.

Craig Andrews 02:52

Know I've been to Munich, actually multiple times and I used to travel from Munich to Nuremberg, rather to Ulm. And one time I ran this Renault and the GPS had two languages, it had German and French, and I don't really speak either. And so I'm sitting there trying to figure out which language I can understand the best. And it ended up being French, I guess, because I know a little bit, know more of the Latin roots. But I know at one point I was looking at the GPS as it was speaking at me in French. I ended up getting a speeding ticket because the speed limit changed right as it was speaking at me. And for those that haven't driven in Germany, you don't get a warning that the speed limit is about to change. The speed limit changes and you'd better be going that new speed.

Alex Brueckmann           03:45

That is correct. That's how we.

Craig Andrews 03:51

Now, Nuremberg is a city of historical significance.

Craig Andrews 04:02

I think it would be amazing to live there. What was it like? What did it mean to you to live in Nuremberg?

Alex Brueckmann           04:10

The fact that I was born and raised relatively close to Nuremberg, but that I have never had a strong connection to the city when I was younger literally made me feel like a tourist when I moved there first. And that meant I allowed myself to explore the city from a tourist perspective with all those historical sites. The city is far older than 1000 years. It has this massive castle sitting on the hill in the center of the city that is in itself a pretty impressive sight to see and to enjoy. Also to roam the castle and just be in the presence of the history that comes with it. But also, Nuremberg has this dark side of the history that is attached to it, especially known for the gigantic buildings that the Nazis built there. And then, obviously, Nuremberg became very famous after the world had ended, when the Nuremberg Tribunals took place, the trials that convicted the big names of the Nazis and tried to bring justice to the world.

Craig Andrews 05:26

Yeah. And in all of that, I would say there was still good that came out of that. I would say with any adversity, there were good things. One of the ethical documents that was created was the Nuremberg Code, that tightly regulated medical experimentation on humans. And there was one doctor that said that had the biggest impact on medical ethics of any other document in history.

Alex Brueckmann           06:08

Isn't it the same with many instances in history that someone does something really either stupid or terrible, and then we get a new piece of legislation or regulation out of it? So to prevent others from going down a similar route, I think especially during that time in the mid 20th century, if we think back, that's not even 100 years ago. Not even 100 years ago. And the world was so vastly different back then, in every aspect of life, everything was different. And when you take a look at what has changed in those past 70, 80 years, since the end of the Second World War, it's amazing how far we've come. Yet there is still a lot of terrible things happening in the world. So in some areas we've come a long way, and in others, it's easy to doubt whether we as humankind will ever live peacefully side by side.

Craig Andrews 07:10

Yeah, well, I've got a book that I'm releasing now called Hope That Won't Die that actually deals with the Nuremberg Code, which was passed in 1947. And when that code was passed, and again, it was something that limited medical experimentation or tightly regulated medical experimentation on humans. At that time, there were some experiments going on in the US. Called the Tuskegee experiments, where poor black men that had syphilis were having these various experiments done. And a lot of Americans know about that. But what most Americans don't know is that that type of experimentation was strictly prohibited by the Nuremberg Code, and it continued in the United States for another 25 years until 1972, all in violation of the Nuremberg Code. So back to your point. In some ways we learn, in some ways we don't.

Craig Andrews 08:18

What an interesting thing, to have lived there and seen that and experienced that. Now, you moved to the US three years ago. When did you move?

Alex Brueckmann           08:36

Moved to Canada. To Vancouver?

Craig Andrews 08:38

I'm sorry, yes.

Alex Brueckmann           08:39

North America, which for most people in the US. Is just another province of North America. Right, of the US. Which makes total sense. Yeah. I moved there in March 2020, and most people remember what they did in March 2020 because it was at the height of the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. So it was not your regular, let's fly to Vancouver, move. It was a very difficult decision to make because originally so the whole transition from Germany to Canada had been planned for about two years, been set up. We hired replacements for me, I was the managing director of a business back then. So it's just nothing you just do, right? So you plan it, you execute that plan, and then COVID strikes. At that point, we had an eight week old baby on our arm. So it was, from many perspectives, a difficult decision to make. And if you remember back then, no one knew anything about COVID-19. It was just a fear filled climate. People were dying in masses. I remember the pictures from New York City. They were just terrible. And we had to make the decision whether we board a plane overnight to bring our child and seven suitcases to Vancouver, or whether we stay where we were and just wait it out. But back then, no one knew what waited out would mean. And if you know a little bit about immigration laws, I had a window of twelve months to immigrate into Canada after I had been granted permanent residency. And we know now that waiting it out would have cost me that window of opportunity. So we made that decision back then because we felt it was the right thing to do. Was it an easy thing to do? Of course not. I mean, everything that was so well planned out just was thrown overboard. Like, we had to book flights within days to get out of the country. We were on the last flight out from Frankfurt Airport to Toronto because there weren't any direct flights anymore to Vancouver. So if you know a little bit about Europe, frankfurt is the third largest airport in Europe, and it's scary when you walk through an airport that is entirely empty. Lights are out, and the only people that you see are military police. And you're like, do you want to shoot the virus? What's happening here? You try to find your humor in a difficult situation, but it's just very exhausting to go through that, especially when you have a newborn with you.

Craig Andrews 11:27

I can't imagine, I mean, I really can't. The fear and the uncertainty,

Craig Andrews 11:39

you know, one of the things that struck me was you flew out of Frankfurt. That's not exactly next door to Nuremberg.

Alex Brueckmann           11:46

Well, it's not next door, but it's not too far away either. And your options are very limited. When every airline tells you our last flight is leaving in two days, our last flight is leaving in five days. And Air Canada told us our last flight is leaving in nine days, it's the last scheduled flight. So we cleared out the apartment, we got rid of everything. Most of the things landed on the dumpster because there know, curfew no one could come by and know, buy stuff of our hands. So everything that was worth saving either went to my girlfriend's mom's place or to my mom's place and everything else. Like, for example, our two cats, they were adopted by my mom for the time being and then later were adopted by my girlfriend's sister and her kids. So you need to make decisions that are really tough and you make like 20 of them per hour. And that was something that taught me a lot about what you're able to do if you have to, if you want to. So no one forced us. There was a decision that we took, so we're not victims in any kind of way in that situation. We brought it upon ourselves. But then you also need to make sure you work through it because there is no way back.

Craig Andrews 13:01

Yeah. Wow. Now when you moved to Canada, you mentioned that you were with another company. Did you leave the company or.

Alex Brueckmann           13:13

Two years?

Craig Andrews 13:13

Did that happen when you moved to Canada? Was that the reason you were moving to Canada?

Alex Brueckmann           13:17

Not really, no. Like two years before we moved, we took the decision. My girlfriend is Canadian, so she wanted to go back home and we took the decision together that this might be a great opportunity for us to move our lives to Vancouver. And I was employee number one back then at that business, so I helped build it and I flew to Iceland to meet with the owner of the company, told them, and they understood because they themselves built a business in Germany. Being Icelandic, living abroad and having that experience helped certainly to structure the conversation and the emotions that come with that decision. When you build a business from the ground up, after a few years, you realize you have so much proprietary knowledge in your head that will be very difficult to replace you in that role or in that many roles that you have by hiring someone from the outside and replacing you as one by one. So we actually decided to divide my role from one of the lead facilitators, the managing director of the business and also the leader of the team in the back office. And we replaced me multiple times. So there were three or four people that came into the business to take on certain pieces of my role. That's not supposed to mean that I did the work of three people. There were many constraints that came with me doing all these different kinds of things. So it was also an opportunity for the business to mature and to grow and to move beyond being dependent on this one person. So that was a very good move for the organization as such, and also for me personally, because I stayed connected with the business over the course of another two years to help transfer the knowledge that I gained, particularly around one of the key clients, to my successor. And that was a very long process. I appreciate that most businesses don't have four years from the decision making to the end of the execution process when it comes to hiring and replacing key personnel and doing knowledge transfers. But no one forced us to do it faster, so we just took our time.

Craig Andrews 15:36

Wow. And so when you moved to Canada, that's when you started the Brookman Executive coaching, is that correct?

Alex Brueckmann           15:44

That's correct. So that business is more focused on the strategy facilitation piece of the work that I've been doing for so long. But it also has a very strong connection to executive development still because you always run into one of the other when you do one or the other. So very often when I do executive development work, team development work with executive teams, we would invariably at some point in time start talking about business strategy and the other way around. When companies bring me in to facilitate strategy processes, to help them design and formulate a new business strategy, at some point they realize that one of the make or break points will be how they, as an executive team, but also as individuals, use this opportunity for growth for themselves to implement and drive execution of the strategy. So those two components are very strongly connected, executive team development and individual executive development and business strategy on the other side.

Craig Andrews 16:48

So starting your own business in 2020. I remember when the Pandemic first hit, people that were not moving to a new continent across the ocean, they were scared. There was so much uncertainty and they didn't know how they would do business. A lot of people just assumed business was going to stop until the lockdowns were over. And of course, the lockdowns went a lot longer than originally expected. What was it like for you starting your business in the middle of all that?

Alex Brueckmann           17:35

When you start a business, what you often do is you rely on your previous network. And that's what I did. So the original transition between my previous business and Berkman Executive Consulting happened in September 2019. So before the Pandemic hit, that's when that whole shift happened. When I left the business, when I started to get my head around helping my girlfriend through a really difficult last trimester of her pregnancy, we also had to say goodbye to my father, who passed from cancer very young, unfortunately, right before my son was born. So it was a period where it was not only about the business. My entire life was kind of in a very volatile and changing state, so I allowed myself to focus less on building a new business and more on just dealing with what was going on in my life. Right? So when we came to Canada, I relied on the business that I still did with my previous company. So I did not have any chance to visit, I don't know, any conferences or any other networking events that I could have attended under normal circumstances because there were none. That then happened a few months into the Pandemic, when people started to live more online, when those first online events came up, et cetera, et cetera. But I used that time to allow myself to be fully present and to just see my small baby boy grow, and I spent a lot of time with them. That was really a wonderful time. On the one hand for us, while the world around us seemed to go completely nuts and I didn't focus too much on working, I focused more on family on the one hand, and I started writing. What then three years later became the Strategy Legacy, the book that just hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Those were the origin times of the book.

Craig Andrews 19:39

And by the way, congratulations on I'm. I've got two books coming out. I'd be happy if they hit Amazon's. Bestseller Journal. That's over the top. Congratulations.

Alex Brueckmann           19:52

Thank you so much. It was never intended, so it was a dream that came true that I didn't know I had, let me put it that way.

Craig Andrews 20:01

What do you attribute to its success?

Alex Brueckmann           20:05

It's with a lot of things out there. It's not necessarily about how great a book is. There are so many great books out there that I've read that have never received any recognition at all. It's about if you focus everything on a certain time or a certain goal, then all of a sudden, everything you do becomes purposeful. You know, why you do things the way you do. So when you spend marketing dollars on launching a new product, for example, or a new service, and you do it purposefully, and everyone in the organization knows why they're doing it, it becomes this one focus point. And we did that for the book. When we launched the book, it wasn't an overnight thing, right? So it was a three year process of writing the book, editing the book, finding a publisher. My agent did a brilliant job. My editor did a brilliant job. There were so many people involved that did their work. And I think that in the end, then we came to a point where we were like, we wonder whether we could spend our marketing dollars for the book launch in a very purposeful way to achieve a bit of some recognition. We never really thought about Wall Street Journal bestseller. That came at the very end when we realized where the pre order numbers were going, that we might have a shot. And then you're like, you know what? Let's try it. And we did. And everyone did their job. Everyone pulled in the same direction, and eventually we pulled it off, which was absolutely amazing. I remember sitting on my desk and working, and my girlfriend came into my office, and she had printed out the Wall Street Journal bestseller list of that week, and she was waving it to me. Look what just came out. Look what just came out. You're on number three. And I'm like, what? I didn't even realize it back then, what that meant. So it was something unexpected and extremely exciting at the same.

Craig Andrews 22:13

Know. So you've had an interesting know, certainly starting with your move to North America three years ago. You faced a lot of uncertainty, and I see a lot of fear in business right now. People are afraid of what's going on in the economy. And so what advice would you share to business owners as they're facing 2024?

Alex Brueckmann           22:46

Lean into the chaos. If you feel fear, there's a good reason for it. Lean into it and ask yourself where it comes from. If it's fear of losing clients, make sure you're closer to your clients. If it's fear of losing a key employee, make sure you're closer to your key employees. Like leaning into the chaos, running towards the uncertainty. That's the only real lesson that I took from that crazy decision to move from Germany to Vancouver at the height of a lockdown in a pandemic. So not shying away from the situation or the difficult decision, but asking yourself, what if I still did it? And then realizing, hey, there is so much value in fear. There's so much value in uncertainty. When you just lean into it and harvest it, it's like a lightning bolt. There is so much energy in a lightning bolt. If we could harvest those things, that would be so amazing. So try to lean into it and ask yourself, what is it that drives your fear? Embrace that fear and play the uno reverse card on it.

Craig Andrews 23:57

Wow. That is so valuable. That is so valuable. Thank you for sharing that. And Alex, thank you for joining us on Lears and Legacies. Obviously, people should go out and buy your book, the Strategy Legacy. How do they reach you?

Alex Brueckmann           24:16

If you dare to write my name Brookman CA. If you are less adventurous when it comes to domain names, just go to alexthrategist.com. And yeah, there's tons of free resources on my website. More about the books. I got a new online course out there that helps you understand the concepts of strategy in a different way, in a different capacity. There's a lot happening on the page and obviously, I almost live on LinkedIn. It's a space where I'm very active, so you can always just reach out and connect with me there.

Craig Andrews 24:52

And for those that aren't up on their German names, brookmann is spelled Brueckmann.

Alex Brueckmann           25:00

The easy part, right?

Craig Andrews 25:01

Yeah. Anyway, well, Alex, thank you again for being on Leaders and Legacies. What a delightful conversation.