EP267: Building Community Into Every Business
Julia Wagner started investing in real estate before most people start their careers, and now runs a coworking space and software company across Europe. In this episode, she talks with Jens Heitland about long-term thinking, community, and why Europe needs to build its own technology.
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Julia Wagner: Building Community Into Every Business
Julia Wagner started planning her life at eighteen, not for the next year but for decades out. At thirty-two, she is already calculating when she might have grandchildren.
I spoke with her for this episode of Human Innovation. The businesses she has built, a coworking space and the software company that grew out of it, sit on top of a horizon most founders never build toward at all.
Her story starts in a bank. As an intern in Vienna, she spent an hour or two on her assigned work and the rest of her time studying real estate listings. She saw apartments other people walked past as opportunities, because she could already picture the walls coming down and the kitchen going in. By the time she had capital to invest a decade later, she understood the market better than people twice her age.
That pattern repeats across everything she has built. A banking internship became a real estate education. A sales career at Salesforce became the foundation for a coworking space in Valencia. A coworking space that outgrew its management software became the starting point for its own software company.
None of it was planned in the traditional sense. Julia describes it as stumbling into things that then required commitment. The coworking space began because her partner at the time needed more room for a language school. The software began because existing tools were built for one kind of coworking space, and hers was a different kind.
Her thinking on failure is worth sitting with. In much of Europe, failure still carries a quiet penalty, met with suspicion rather than curiosity. In the United States, she pointed out, failure is closer to a credential, something investors look for because it signals someone has already paid the cost of learning what does not work.
She talks openly about the parts founders rarely share publicly. Years without a paycheck. The pressure of meeting payroll before meeting your own expenses. Most new companies never make it past the third year, and Julia keeps building anyway, arguing that Europe undervalues the act of trying itself, regardless of outcome.
The most unexpected part of the conversation had little to do with business. Julia thinks often about how children were raised a generation or two ago, in communities where families split responsibility for each other's kids as a matter of course. She sees that structure disappearing, replaced by two working parents and institutional childcare. Her long-term vision involves land, a small cluster of houses, animals, and enough people around her that raising a family does not mean outsourcing most of the actual raising.
She recently spent time with her grandfather in Poland after her grandmother passed away, and I appreciated how openly she described that visit. She used it to ask questions she had never asked before: how he met her grandmother, how he built his company from nothing. Those conversations end once the people who lived them are gone, and that urgency shapes how she thinks about time.
Her current company now sells to coworking spaces across Europe, with particular momentum in Eastern European markets, and she frames this as more than a commercial opportunity. European technological independence from the United States and China, in her view, is a strategic necessity, given the continent's recent experience with energy dependence.
Julia holds two timeframes at once without apparent strain. A grandfather's stories from decades ago and a fifty-year vision for her own family. A real estate instinct built as a teenager and a software company scaling across a continent right now. Few people manage to keep the long view and the immediate one in the same hand. She does, and the conversation was calmer for it.
Timecode:
00:00 EP. 267_Podcast_Jens_Julia Wagner
00:03 Early Banking & Real Estate
05:30 International Career & Moving to Spain
09:25 Starting the Coworking Business
11:46 Lifestyle & Community
20:22 Two Businesses: Coworking & Software
25:42 Future Vision
31:51 Understanding Your Talent
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliawagner-salesqueen/
Website: https://rundesk.me/
Transcript:
[00:00:03] Jens Heitland: Good. Let's, let's go
[00:00:04] Julia: All right, let's go. So starting from the banking intern experience, I actually did that for a couple of summers. And what I did there was basically check on the movements of the bank clients and all that stuff, which is work done in pretty much an hour or two. And then the rest of the time I was chatting a lot with the people there to see if this is a work environment for me or not.
[00:00:28] Julia: But the majority of my time, and don't tell this to the bank manager, I checked out the real estate listings of Vienna because I always found it really interesting. I always watched these real estate series on TV, where they're trying to rent out some flats or the luxurious villa in Mallorca or something like this.
[00:00:51] Julia: I was always really interested in that. So I started off pretty early on checking out apartments, checking also the room configurations, what I could put in there, how I could rent it out, what kind of remodeling I could do to make it look appealing. Because I usually go for apartments that don't look well put together.
[00:01:14] Julia: Let's just say it that way. Most people will just turn around at the door and say, "No, thank you." I actually see a gem because in my mind's eye, I can already knock down some walls. I can put in the kitchen that suits that place, for example. So I already have this kind of vision.
[00:01:31] Julia: I already know what it costs because I have the experience right now. So it's pretty much on the go. What then happened when I moved to Spain, I immediately signed on the same day because I was like, "Okay, this is something I can work with."
[00:01:49] Julia: And then I just canceled all the other visits because you know how it is in Spain, they have 25 or 30 visits per day. I was like, "Where can I sign? Where can I give the deposit?" And the real estate agent was like, "I guess we can go to the office now."
[00:02:05] Julia: And I said, "Let's do it." So that's how it started.
[00:02:10] Jens Heitland: That started from an interest perspective when you were the intern.
[00:02:15] Julia: Yeah, exactly. So that actually gave me really good time. And the bank has a database of their own apartments, right? So I could peruse through that, and that provided a great opportunity. So that really started my interest in real estate. I was also planning for the very long term.
[00:02:35] Julia: When I started at the bank, I was 18, and you know how every 18-year-old is. But I wanted to live a relaxed life when I had children. At 18 I didn't want to have children yet, but I knew I had to start then because I had a lot of time, and with time you don't have to invest as much capital.
[00:02:55] Julia: So then I also started with stock market investments, funds, and played around a little bit with that. I continuously started to put money aside. And when the day finally came that I was investing in real estate 10 years later, I had a good starting capital already.
[00:03:15] Julia: That obviously made it easy to get financing from the bank and get the whole thing rolling.
[00:03:24] Jens Heitland: Was that something you learned from your parents as a good example? Or how did you get into that?
[00:03:32] Julia: It's a really interesting question. I don't think I learned this directly from my parents because my parents didn't really invest in the stock exchange or those kinds of things. My mother is a medical doctor, so she used to work a lot. She enjoys her work, but it's a lot of work and I never could see myself doing 24-hour shifts.
[00:03:54] Julia: I just didn't want to do that. I also did a little experiment on the side where I was working as a teacher from 8:00 to 4:00, and then from 5:00 to 1:00 in the morning I was working as a waitress just to see how it feels to work all day, and I realized that was not for me. So I needed to find a plan on how to accumulate wealth without working all day and all night.
[00:04:21] Julia: I think this came more from my dad's side. He's an entrepreneur. He has a company, and with that he was doing well. So I thought, "Okay, this is one of the ways I can go," but I thought it was a little too early because I had no expertise at 18.
[00:04:37] Jens Heitland: Hm
[00:04:37] Julia: But I already knew the exponential curve, as I like to call it.
[00:04:45] Julia: If you put in €100 every month for 40 years, at some point it goes up rapidly. Warren Buffett got around 90% of his wealth after he was 65 years old, which is difficult to comprehend. But once you understand the system, you realize, "I just need to continuously put money aside, and then it will take care of itself more or less."
[00:05:10] Julia: This is what I started, driven by my own thinking and interests.
[00:05:20] Jens Heitland: So then from this early internship, you worked in many different organizations and many different countries,
[00:05:29] Jens Heitland: now you live in Spain.
[00:05:30] Jens Heitland: How was it going from Austria out into the world and exploring all the different jobs and different things that you have done?
[00:05:39] Julia: That actually came before my internship in the bank. When I was 14, I went to America for the whole summer to do a language camp, and when I was 15, I did my high school year in Canada. So I was already out there way before I even started working. I was really interested in learning how different countries do different things, and that continued. I did my master's in Paris, and another master's in Ireland.
[00:06:10] Julia: I went to Shanghai for an exchange. I lived in all kinds of different places. Finally, I was back in Austria ready to start my career. I went into sales, which started off in consulting, but a colleague of mine encouraged me to do sales because he saw that I had a good talent with people—communicating and building relationships.
[00:06:32] Julia: Then I went to Salesforce, which is a big US company with big paychecks, which was really nice to ask for a bank loan.
[00:06:43] Jens Heitland: Ja,
[00:06:44] Julia: That started everything. In this period, I moved to Spain. It was during pandemic times, COVID.
[00:06:54] Julia: It feels like 50 years ago already, but
[00:06:57] Jens Heitland: It's
[00:06:58] Julia: Then I decided I could spend confinement in a sunny country, not locked in 50 square meters. Actually, I wanted to learn Spanish. So I decided to do some workation in Spain and fell in love with Valencia, and one month after that, I packed my stuff and moved there.
[00:07:24] Julia: It was supposed to be for a year; it turns out to be five now. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, where life takes you. You have to have a plan in some sort of way, but then also be flexible enough to adjust in case life throws you other opportunities. I think that's really important for the next generation: to have a rough outline of where you want to go, what interests you have, and then be flexible enough to follow the opportunities thrown into your path.
[00:08:00] Jens Heitland: To that point, coming from banking and then going into sales is not the obvious step either. What are key learnings you have working in sales with many different organizations that help you now running your own business?
[00:08:19] Julia: For sure. Sales is communication 2.0. You have to really understand what the other person is lacking and what they want. They don't care about what you want.
[00:08:33] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:08:34] Julia: What they care about is what they want. So you have to be really good at finding out what they want, and also be honest.
[00:08:39] Julia: If you don't have anything in your toolbox that might help them, just tell them, "I don't think there is a fit here. I don't want to waste your time." Through that I got a lot of recommendations because they saw it wasn't for them, were grateful for the honesty, and then recommended me to people who actually needed my services or products.
[00:09:02] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:09:02] Julia: That's the big thing you learn when you interact with people. You do that in a bank, in sales, and when you build your businesses here in Spain at my co-working. I'm in contact every day with people coming from various backgrounds.
[00:09:23] Julia: So I think that really helped.
[00:09:25] Jens Heitland:
[00:09:25] Jens Heitland: How did the idea with the coworking start? I get the real estate version of that, but how did it start that you said, "I'm opening a coworking"?
[00:09:36] Julia: You have to understand where I was coming from. I was doing a lot of enterprise sales, and at some point I was really tired of doing the same thing over and over again, trapped in the system. I wanted to do something else, though I didn't really know what.
[00:09:53] Julia: I never saw myself as an entrepreneur either. I was afraid of that because I saw my dad never home, always busy, and always stressed. I didn't want to do that. But then I met my ex-partner, who is an entrepreneur and has always done that.
[00:10:12] Julia: He took me by the hand. He had a language school in Valencia already, and wanted to grow because they didn't have enough space—they had around 100 square meters. He suggested, "Why don't we do this together and make a co-working/language school out of that?"
[00:10:28] Julia: So that's how it all started.
[00:10:39] Jens Heitland: It started with the business plan, and it's interesting how sometimes you stumble into something and it works out because you have a passion for it.
[00:10:51] Julia: Absolutely, this was definitely stumbling into something. I didn't have that idea on my own. I was looking for things to do. I knew I was good in sales, but I didn't want to just be known as the salesperson; I wanted to test myself out. I also knew that with salaries, you won't become super wealthy.
[00:11:13] Julia: You can have your house and two kids, for sure. But I wanted to build something bigger that doesn't constantly require my time. I didn't want to sell my hours for money all the time. So it intrigued me.
[00:11:35] Julia: I was curious, and not having to do it alone—having somebody who had done it a couple of times before—reassured me to go down that path as well.
[00:11:46] Jens Heitland: Let's dive into the lifestyle part.
[00:11:51] Jens Heitland: You mentioned a couple of times that you don't want to be like your dad—always traveling, always away, with no time for family. Last time we talked, you were visiting your grandfather and spending time with him. Let's unpack how important community and lifestyle design are for you.
[00:12:12] Julia: Sure. I think I'm really good at projecting things into the super long term. At 18, I planned for when I was 50. Right now I'm 32 and planning for when I'm 80. I'm calculating when I will have grandchildren and how I will spend time with them.
[00:12:39] Julia: But that means if I add another 50 years, my grandfather won't be alive anymore, and my parents might not be alive either. Right now I still have them and can spend time with them. Once they're gone, all I have left are memories.
[00:12:57] Julia: All I have are photos or writings, but you don't have the opportunity to interact or talk to them about current events. You can't make them happy or learn from them because there's no dialogue happening. A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Poland where my grandfather lives. Recently my grandmother passed away, which was hard for him since they were married for around 60 years.
[00:13:28] Julia: I could see he was feeling more alone as his friends are also passing away—he's 83 years old now. I thought it would be nice to renovate the kitchen a bit, give him a hand, and make the apartment my grandmother used to live in nicer. It gave it a new spirit, and he actually loved it.
[00:13:59] Julia: I'm really happy I got to do that and that he saw the progress. It's a great feeling.
[00:14:08] Jens Heitland: What kind of topics did you discuss with him while you stayed there?
[00:14:13] Julia: It's really interesting because the older I get, the more I realize my parents and grandparents were young once upon a time. As a kid or young person, I wasn't really aware of that—they were just the parents and grandparents. But they had similar experiences to what I'm dealing with or used to deal with.
[00:14:40] Julia: It's interesting to ask my grandfather, "How did you meet my grandmother, and how did you come to marry her? What were the reasons, where did you move, and how was your childhood? What are memories with your dad?" It's fascinating to hear that firsthand from someone close rather than reading it in history books.
[00:15:06] Julia: I think it's really cool.
[00:15:08] Jens Heitland: And it
[00:15:09] Jens Heitland: so but
[00:15:11] Jens Heitland: The thing is, once they're gone—like in my case, my father died a couple of years ago—you can't ask those questions anymore.
[00:15:22] Jens Heitland: What's interesting is that you only ask these questions when you're further down the road in age.
[00:15:29] Jens Heitland: like year, you would
[00:15:33] Jens Heitland: It's cool to hear that you spend time on these things, even though you run two companies,
[00:15:42] Jens Heitland: are super busy, and have a lot of responsibilities. You still focus on this. I love that there is so much in this that will help you grow, understand things differently,
[00:15:56] Jens Heitland: and be more successful as well.
[00:15:58] Julia: For sure. I asked my grandfather how he started his company, and I asked my father what the beginnings were like. No matter how big a company gets, they all started from zero at some point.
[00:16:11] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:16:12] Julia: It's interesting to get an unfiltered point of view. Famous entrepreneurs will say, "You just have to hustle hard," but there are so many variables that contribute to success. You need work experience in the field, contacts, and people you trust to build it with you.
[00:16:21] Julia: You need family support, housing, and background story that is different for everyone, but there is a common thread. It gives me perspective and patience that success doesn't happen overnight.
[00:16:37] Julia: You're not going to blow up in two or three years; it takes a long time sometimes.
[00:16:54] Julia: You know, you're not gonna blow up in like two or three years. It's, it, it takes a long time sometimes. Definitely.
[00:16:59] Jens Heitland: That, that only works on
[00:17:01] Julia: Exactly. That's what goes viral and what you see.
[00:17:06] Jens Heitland: It's fascinating. I'm spending this week with an entrepreneur friend visiting me who is almost 20 years older.
[00:17:14] Jens Heitland: very serious. I think he's, like, almost 20 years older.
[00:17:18] Jens Heitland: And, and we are sharing exactly this kind of
[00:17:21] Jens Heitland: We were sharing this over wine last night. Everyone thinks you're successful from the get-go.
[00:17:28] Julia: From the outside it looks successful, of course, but it's still small. It's trying every day.
[00:17:35] Jens Heitland: When something doesn't work, you need to figure it out.
[00:17:37] Jens Heitland: out,
[00:17:38] Jens Heitland: It's not big success overnight; it's not possible.
[00:17:41] Jens Heitland: y- today to tomorrow. It's not possible. At
[00:17:44] Jens Heitland: haven't seen it
[00:17:45] Julia: Nobody talks about the panic attacks you have as an entrepreneur, or the fear of how you're going to get by next month.
[00:17:54] Julia: You need to pay salaries when you haven't paid yourself for years. There are so many additional pressures that don't get talked about. Once you are successful, a lot of people assume you cheated your way through, not seeing the years prior where you didn't make a buck and spent life savings to finance other people's rents.
[00:18:24] Julia: Nobody talks about that. More credit should be given to people who try. Most companies fail—around 80% or 90% don't make it past the third year. Taking that risk takes resilience and courage.
[00:18:45] Julia: I don't know many people who do that. In Europe especially, we need to value the attempt even if you fail, because most people won't even try.
[00:18:56] Jens Heitland: Specifically in Europe, there's a mindset that if you fail, it's bad.
[00:19:02] Julia: Ja, exactly
[00:19:03] Jens Heitland: In the US, as an extreme example, you're celebrated when you've failed because you learned from it for the next attempt.
[00:19:11] Jens Heitland: next
[00:19:12] Jens Heitland: Working a lot with investors, I know they literally look for that.
[00:19:18] Jens Heitland: If you have failed already, then they know you will be
[00:19:21] Jens Heitland: If you have failed already, they know you will succeed in the future because you earned your stripes.
[00:19:25] Julia: Exactly. It's worn like a badge of honor in the US, whereas here people are suspicious and think you don't know what you're doing. A friend of mine rephrased it well: failure isn't really failure, it's just putting a couple hundred thousand euros into an MBA in real life instead of Harvard.
[00:19:49] Jens Heitland: Ja,
[00:19:50] Julia: I really like that comparison.
[00:19:52] Jens Heitland: Honestly, my perspective is biased because I didn't do a formal MBA,
[00:19:57] Jens Heitland: but you learn even more through real experience.
[00:20:02] Julia: University isn't really hands-on. You learn a few cases, and when I was in business school I thought, "That's easy, I can do that." Then you get into real life with 10,000 other things waiting for you, and all of a sudden it's not that easy anymore.
[00:20:21] Julia: So
[00:20:21] Jens Heitland: Yeah. Le-
[00:20:21] Jens Heitland: let,
[00:20:22] Jens Heitland: Let's talk about your two businesses. One is
[00:20:25] Julia: Mhm.
[00:20:26] Jens Heitland: where you run a normal co-working space with a team.
[00:20:35] Julia: Exactly.
[00:20:37] Jens Heitland: And the software business—how did you get the idea for that?
[00:20:40] Julia: We started with a physical co-working space. While running it, we went through several software management tools, but they didn't work the way we needed. My business partner, who is very into IT development, suggested we develop our own software to run our space more efficiently.
[00:21:11] Julia: Other co-workings were really interested as well because market software tends to be one-size-fits-all, which doesn't work. Co-workings in the Netherlands have bike rentals, while a co-working in Slovenia might not operate like a standard space.
[00:21:31] Julia: They split expenses among long-term members. It's a different modus operandi.
[00:21:36] Jens Heitland: Ja.
[00:21:37] Julia: So we leveraged AI and built a co-working management software combined with a CRM—drawing from my CRM background. With AI, we rapidly built it, and now we're selling it across Europe.
[00:21:58] Julia: We're testing it in our own space first as the best proof of concept. We just launched this year, so we're getting there.
[00:22:13] Julia: It's a big learning curve right now because we're talking to many different countries, working with beta testers, and continually trying to make the platform better.
[00:22:27] Jens Heitland: What I
[00:22:27] Jens Heitland: about
[00:22:27] Jens Heitland: You built a tool that helped you first,
[00:22:32] Jens Heitland: primarily for your own use, and then discovered there was demand from others.
[00:22:40] Julia: The idea was definitely to sell it because if it works well for us, it can help other companies. I see sales as a tool to bring the solution someone else wants. You reach out, and they say, "Thank God you called because I really need that."
[00:23:01] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:23:02] Julia: That's how I view a sale. I don't want to sell to someone who doesn't need it. Many people are struggling with the prices of existing systems, their capabilities, connectivities, and the manual work involved in managing a co-working space.
[00:23:22] Julia: That manual work takes focus away from building community, hosting events, and actually scaling the business beyond a fixed square footage. You can scale by hosting events, offering a virtual office, and so forth.
[00:23:38] Julia: So it's more than just a coworking management tool.
[00:23:43] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:23:44] Julia: capability. Yeah.
[00:23:45] Jens Heitland: Your sales experience helps launch it.
[00:23:51] Julia: It helps. I have a couple of BDRs reaching out to different countries because in Europe everyone speaks a different language. I have Dutch representatives reaching out to the Netherlands, Germans targeting the DACH region, and then Eastern Europe.
[00:24:12] Julia: Eastern Europe is fast-growing, which is my hot take.
[00:24:17] Jens Heitland: I've spent quite a bit of time in Eastern Europe as well, and they are
[00:24:22] Jens Heitland: super developed, fast, and hungry.
[00:24:27] Jens Heitland: Being German, I can say that comparing it to Germany,
[00:24:29] Jens Heitland: young people there are not as hungry at the moment.
[00:24:34] Jens Heitland: are not so hungry in the moment
[00:24:36] Julia: You have to consider the macroeconomics. Germany has around 0.3% GDP growth, while Poland was around 5.7%, which is huge. Those are like Chinese growth rates.
[00:24:55] Julia: Every time I go back to Warsaw, there's a new skyscraper. The speed and willingness of people to try new software is next level.
[00:25:11] Jens Heitland: It's cool
[00:25:12] Jens Heitland: It's cool to see. I lived in Russia before the war, and it was the same—double the speed of most other European countries at that time.
[00:25:24] Julia: We have our biggest growth numbers from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Eastern European countries. German sales cycles are very long.
[00:25:37] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:25:38] Julia: It's a different playing field.
[00:25:41] Jens Heitland: So le-
[00:25:42] Jens Heitland: Let's talk about your future. When we talked last time, I was fascinated by the long-term perspective you mentioned—looking at when you're 80—
[00:25:54] Jens Heitland: and having a clear picture of how your family and life will be.
[00:26:00] Julia: My vision is based on where society came from, where it is right now, and where it can go. In Austria, where I was born, there used to be big farms and villages where everybody was involved.
[00:26:18] Julia: If a farmer needed equipment or a truck, they would go to their neighbor and borrow it without a monetary transaction. Then, if the neighbor needed something later, you would lend it to them.
[00:26:37] Julia: It wasn't so much monetary exchange as community help. The same applied to children. Right now, society structures raising children around a two-parent household at best.
[00:26:57] Julia: At worst, you're a single parent, which is tough because having a baby is time-consuming and you still have to work.
[00:27:12] Julia: That's not how raising children should be; it's a community effort. In the past, you'd send the kids over to the neighbor's farm, get your work done, and take their kids the next day.
[00:27:32] Julia: Everyone was involved—aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers. We've moved away from that. While two paychecks can get you through, it's very difficult. I don't see myself working full-time while my partner works full-time and my baby spends all day in kindergarten.
[00:28:03] Julia: Why have kids if I don't spend time with them, pass on my values, or teach them myself? The best moment with kids is teaching them something and seeing them realize, "Look, I can do it now." It's very fulfilling.
[00:28:22] Julia: Ideally, in the future I want a big plot of land with houses next to each other and animals. Kids should play with animals, get dirty, and build resistance to allergies that city kids face.
[00:28:47] Julia: Having a community means someone can watch your kids while you go away for a week without stressing over finding a nanny or calling a grandparent living 3,000 kilometers away.
[00:29:05] Julia: Being human is sharing experiences and building community together. Eventually, I want to create that environment.
[00:29:19] Jens Heitland: You want to do that in Spain, right?
[00:29:21] Julia: Whether it's in Spain or somewhere else is still open. Austria, for example, is really expensive.
[00:29:30] Julia: It depends on how the businesses go. If I become a multimillionaire in five years, I'll consider Austria. The capital investment in Spain is different—you can get a few hectares for 20k or 30k and build a tiny house.
[00:29:49] Julia: In Austria, it's a different price tag with a couple more zeros. So it depends on how things go.
[00:29:59] Jens Heitland: your
[00:30:00] Jens Heitland: Where do you see your business in the future, looking ahead from now?
[00:30:04] Julia: Hopefully, we will be very strong in Europe. The goal of doing this business in Europe is to create an alternative to the US market, as so much technology currently originates there. Europe needs to step up and be independent; our dependency on Russian gas showed that relying heavily on outside powers doesn't help us.
[00:30:29] Julia: The next step is technology, IT, and infrastructure. If we're dependent on China and the US, and they decide to cut access, Europe will struggle.
[00:30:50] Julia: Europe is my home, and I want to contribute to it. Hopefully, we'll offer a great alternative software solution.
[00:31:10] Jens Heitland: Do you want to open up more physical locations, or concentrate primarily on the digital side?
[00:31:17] Julia: I don't want to expand physically because that requires significant time and effort. The digital space is more scalable. I would rather empower local operators, as I can't divide myself across 30 locations simultaneously.
[00:31:40] Julia: I want to enable people on site to do a great job and build community.
[00:31:44] Jens Heitland: If, if we look into o-one of the topic that fascinated me last time about you is, like,
[00:31:51] Jens Heitland: One topic that fascinated me last time was understanding your own talent. You were very explicit about that. How would you react if I pass that topic to you now?
[00:32:01] Julia: Many people struggle with understanding their own talent, and I do too sometimes. What you're best at often doesn't seem obvious to you because it comes naturally. Usually, other people point out, "You're really good at that."
[00:32:22] Julia: If you feel you lack talent, that's likely untrue. Ask friends around you—not necessarily family, since they will tell you whatever makes you feel good—and figure out if it's something you can see yourself doing long term.
[00:32:45] Julia: Try to combine it with your day-to-day work. You don't feel like you're working a job if you love what you do every day. I won't claim life is amazing every day.
[00:33:04] Julia: Sometimes I wake up and don't want to do it.
[00:33:08] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:33:09] Julia: But if you do something the majority of the time that makes you happy, fulfilled, and feels like a positive contribution to others, that's half the battle.
[00:33:26] Julia: So yeah.
[00:33:27] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:33:28] Julia: You have to go through things you don't like as part of growing and learning. But if you choose something you enjoy the majority of the time, you'll have a happy life.
[00:33:45] Jens Heitland: Sometimes that means building your own thing instead of working for someone else. It doesn't seem as difficult nowadays.
[00:33:59] Jens Heitland: by
[00:34:00] Julia: It's not that difficult, but I don't think every person is suited for it.
[00:34:07] Jens Heitland: Ja
[00:34:08] Julia: I'm in my own bubble meeting like-minded people who travel, which is normal for them. But we need people who maintain the status quo and keep things going for 30 years.
[00:34:24] Julia: While entrepreneurs explore new frontiers, others prefer routine. I wouldn't advise everyone to start a business, as it can push people to their breaking point from stress.
[00:34:46] Julia: Without a backup system, people won't be happy. Some need established routine. If you have an idea, start doing it on the side first.
[00:35:04] Julia: Keep your day job. I would never recommend throwing everything away at once, because financial stress over rent or food is terrible. Just try it out.
[00:35:19] Julia: If there's no market demand, it can remain an enjoyable weekend hobby project. Take it slower—test your idea without risking everything.
[00:35:39] Jens Heitland: I agree. The key is finding something that energizes you and makes you happy. It sounds simple, but driving toward it is what helps you get up the next morning.
[00:35:55] Jens Heitland: something in between. But
[00:35:57] Jens Heitland: that's something that helps you to get up next morning
[00:36:01] Julia: 100%. From my personal life, I'm a horseback rider. I started riding as a kid and dreamt of giving lessons. Right now, I go riding two or three times a week.
[00:36:19] Julia: I started helping a lady who breeds, educates, and exports horses. I train horses now, which is very hands-on work—mucking out stalls with untrained horses.
[00:36:37] Julia: I had this dream of owning stables with 15 horses, but I realized how much goes into it: buying the property and horses, getting farriers and vets, and changing stalls daily.
[00:37:01] Julia: It's not something you just do casually on the side. Testing it gives you a chance to try it without investing everything upfront. I recommend young people try ideas with low risk and low initial investment.
[00:37:24] Julia: If you love it, you gain experience to pursue it. If you realize the capital and labor requirements aren't for you, you have more data points.
[00:37:38] Jens Heitland: That's similar for both of us—our careers haven't been linear.
[00:37:44] Julia: Na ja.
[00:37:45] Jens Heitland: f- away from it.
[00:37:46] Julia: yeah
[00:37:47] Jens Heitland: That non-linearity allows us to compare and understand what we enjoy. I'm a trained electrician and electrical engineer, far removed from that now.
[00:38:02] Jens Heitland: enjoyed it at that time. I
[00:38:04] Jens Heitland: I didn't see myself doing that forever and wanted to explore. Traveling the world gave me understanding; I could go back if needed,
[00:38:14] Jens Heitland: but I do what I enjoy most—meeting people and building projects.
[00:38:20] Julia: Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:22] Julia: Exactly. You never know when past skills come in handy. Maybe one of your kids will build an apartment one day and need electrical work. Past experience is never useless.
[00:38:42] Julia: So yeah.
[00:38:43] Jens Heitland: Thank you very much for spending the time with me. It was awesome talking to you,
[00:38:48] Julia: Likewise
[00:38:49] Jens Heitland: for sharing your story, and inspiring people. Keep building what you're doing. I look forward to seeing where you end up in the next 20, 30, or 40 years.
[00:39:00] Julia: Promise me we'll have another talk in 20, 30, or 40 years when I have gray hair.
[00:39:07] Jens Heitland: I am already. why
[00:39:09] Julia: Thank you so much Jens for having me. I appreciate it. Have a great rest of the day.
[00:39:17] Jens Heitland: