A journey through the stratosphere of entrepreneurship with space captain Ela
Source Creative Commons License I Archonom
By Isabelle Van der Trappen
According to Eurostat, 3.4 million new businesses were created in Europe in the year 2021. More than 60,000 of those start-ups can be found in Germany, as reported by GTAI. Unfortunately, the European Commision states that approximately only 50% of new businesses survive their first five years. You may or may not know it yet, but Laika celebrated its 5-year anniversary last November. As a young woman in the professional field, I always feel intrigued to hear about the stories behind it all. A conversation with Michaela Krause, the CEO and Founder of Laika, taught me new insights about leadership, her point of view about being a founder, crucial leadership characteristics, work rituals, news platforms, and work-life balance.
‘Entrepreneurship is a seed that’s planted in you from an early age’
A lot of motivational speeches tell the story of entrepreneurs that ‘are born’ with the vision of being a founder, that it is a seed buried in your body and thriving to grow. However, in the case of Michaela, and according to the quote by Vince Lombardi: "Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else—through hard work”, some journeys seem to align with the stars. Ela worked for a time as a general manager in an agency where she was already responsible for a lot of decisions, and after a while she started to freelance. She always liked working with people and felt that she was missing a team around her, instead of clients only. The moment when two former colleagues contacted her to follow, she went along with the opportunity to make this the starting point for a company. Michaela shares: “It was a connection of lucky little coincidences, but also kind of very straight career path at the same time. It wasn't a long-term plan, but worked out nicely.”
Leadership characteristics to enter the cosmos of success
As I continue my chat with Michaela, we come to the question about what crucial leadership characteristics are according to her. She says: “To be decisive, a decent communicator, and to have a network to fall back on.”
Michaela continues: “If you’re indecisive, you will spend a lot of time deciding on things and then not take the plunge to implement some things. You have to be a fast decision maker, which doesn't mean you always have to rush things, but sometimes you have to be absolutely happy to make the decision yourself and live through it.”
She highlights the importance of being a good communicator: “I'm not the most empathetic person. I don't think I have the initial way to immediately understand what someone is thinking or how someone feels, but I check in regularly, and I try to get a sense of everybody. It’s important that you like working with people.” Based on BetterUp, a platform that delivers transformative coaching experiences to drive productivity, engagement, and retention, effective communication can boost productivity, satisfaction and engagement at the workplace. Moreover, it will lead to a better collaboration, which will shine from the core of the company all the way to the universe of external partners and new prospects to network with.
“Keep an active network. It’s something that you should bring whenever you open your business, having a network that you can fall back on is quite helpful”, Michaela adds.
Work rituals, how time mastery can shoot you over the moon
According to Forbes, work rituals may differ the best from the rest. What is noticeable is that a few of the mentioned work rituals, for example yoga, exercising, meditation, or making your bed, are all elements that contribute to a clear mind and, from my perspective, tend to also work as energy reloaders, which are sometimes essential. As a CEO you need to think about an uncountable amount of elements, how is it possible to balance all of them?
Michaela shares: “I have blocked times in my calendar. This can be, for example, a time for focus or for quick help where I do little things to help others proceed with their work. I regularly try to update the crew on ongoing things and am very keen on celebrating achievements, such as winning a new client.” According to Asana, an American software company that focuses on work management, time blocking is a way of working where you try to use your time as effectively as possible by breaking your work tasks into bite-sized time slots, such as in Ela’s case: a time for focus or quick help…
Navigating in the universe of information sources
An article from December 2023, written by Urban Recovery, cites in a recent report by Statista which discovered that approximately 3.8 billion people in the world are addicted to their phone, which stands for over 48% of the world's population. When thinking about how that could be, I immediately think about news platforms and social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X and LinkedIn. From my own experience, I notice there is an urge to stay updated 24/7, also, do I use my phone for calendar appointments, mailing and more. But, what about Michaela?
She says: “I can’t opt out during work hours and days so you will catch me via email or WhatsApp, but I try to stay away from Insta. The algorithm creates bubbles and likes to keep you there. Also, I used to be on X for news, but I feel like a lot of people have left, and I’m not using it the same way as before too. Besides that, I’m having a set of newsletters, some for general news that offer a broad overview, and some for more specific news. I check that every working day. During the weekends, I put my phone away and spend more time with people.” Ela continues: “Maybe a personal pleasure, I like to use Reddit intensively. I like to dive into topics and get lost, but also in an entertaining way. It could happen that I watch something and afterwards continue reading about it on Reddit.”
A spacewalk of balance
But what about work-life balance as an entrepreneur? Michaela tells: “I often think that’s a really odd concept at least if you want to achieve it each and every day. It’s like striving towards an ideal that you can maybe achieve 1% of the time, and therefore could get immediately frustrated by. What I can struggle with is information overload—things coming from left and right that become too much. In that case, I need to filter, because there are too little hours for too much work. It could happen that there is a period where I have too little time for my friends or family, but then I try to readjust it. I don’t try to balance it every day, because that’s not realistic. My husband works in a similar industry, sometimes we sit on the couch thinking about a solution for a problem together. That’s exciting, in that way I find work is a part of my life.”
In my chat with Ela, I got a cosmic view of our space captain's journey. Decisiveness, communication, and networking? Check. Plus, her knack for managing time and info is like a secret map through the business cosmos. Work-life balance? A tricky orbit, but Ela's blending it into one stellar adventure. Her story's all about pushing boundaries, staying committed, and sailing alongside a stellar crew.