An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Always trust your gut feeling. I cannot count the times when I doubted myself or my gut feeling and it almost always makes for bad decisions. Trust in your gut.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Stausholm.
Michael Stausholm was born and raised in Denmark, one of the most sustainable countries in the world, which makes sustainability a natural business approach and value for him.
Stausholm has been working with sustainability in the business world for more than 20 years. He has lived in Asia for 14 years where he worked as a consultant for companies such as Nike and Walmart.
He founded Sprout World in 2013 and is the founder and CEO of the company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company also has an office in Boston, USA.
Sprout World was named the second most sustainable company in Europe in 2020 by the American media FAST COMPANY, and Michael Stausholm was included in the Worthy 100 list in 2021 by Worth Media who pays tribute to 100 entrepreneurs in the world who use their business to do good.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Today entrepreneurs and founder are often billed as rockstars and heroes etc.
When I grew up, my father was the local firechief and saved lives, even risked his own doing so.
I admire those kind of heroes, i.e. nurses, doctors, firefighters, police.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
JW Marriott said:
“If you take care of your people, your people will take of your customers, and your business will take care of itself”
In my world that is how you must run your business. Find and surround yourself with the right people. Take care of them first and foremost, nurture a work culture where people are included and feel responsible as individuals and as teams for driving the growth and vision of your business. Then your business will grow almost by itself.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I read alot when I have time. Especially when travelling. Mostly fiction, but also history and current event issues.
I could mention a lot of inspiring books, but actually would like to mention a film that really touched me, which was the Danish Oscar winner (Best international movie) 2021 “Another Round”. On the surface it is about the Danish alcohol culture in connection with what we call “hygge” but in reality the movie is about celebrating life and trying not to get caught up in daily routines and forget yourself. A very fun and very touching story.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
In my opinion, Ideas are the easy part. Especially if you have an entrepreneurial mind. I get on average 4–5 new ideas every day. New product development, new ways of doing things, change this or that. If I shared all those ideas with my management team, they would run away and never come back. The real challenge is to keep focus and to sort through all those ideas.
95 % of the ideas I get will never see the light of the day.
It is more about following your gut-instinct and it has very little to do with the idea itself.
Anyone can get those, but what matters is the team you put together to execute on the idea.
A great idea and a bad team will make for failure, while a great team will often be able to execute on what from the outset looks like a bad idea.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
My company is mostly known for our patented Sprout pencils you can plant.
It is actually a very simple idea that combines 2 things. Writing instruments and seeds.
In the beginning I often heard the sentence “I could have come up with that idea, it is so simple” and my answer would always be the same — — “But then you should have done it!”
Ideas are all about execution.
The important thing to remember when talking about product development is that it is almost impossible to invent completely new things today, but it is very much possible to innovate or develop on existing ideas by combining refining (i.e. more sustainable raw materials etc) on existing products. Always however keep immaterial rights in mind. Do not infringe on existing patents, protected designs, or other IP.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Making a prototype these days is very simple using materials such as a 3D printer, but to file a patent you don’t even need a physical product sample. You need to describe the product in detail, and you should do so together with a patent agent or lawyer. They will help guide you through the process and help you file the patent if possible to do so, and nothing like it already exist.
Keep in mind you must do this as a first step before you market or publicly announce your idea.
Manufacturing is also very important. Any product idea can be really fantastic on paper or as a sample, but if production is too expensive or even worse, too complicated or impossible to mass produce, then your idea is useless. Look for local, national or regional manufacturing close to where you plan to sell. For many reasons I would never produce in Asia to sell in USA or Europe.
With Sprout, we produce in EU only for the European market and we produce in Minnesota for the No rth American market. This is faster, more reliable, and you can controi raw materials and working conditions. Something you cannot do in China.
The hardest part is when you are finally ready to sell your product. You can cold call but will probably experience lots of rejection which you will just have to ignore and keep pushing on. Many retailers however have special programs for start-up products or innovations or locally produced goods.
My experience however is that PR works. From the very beginning of my company we focused on PR.
Good PR, which is easier to get when you have a good story and a unique product , is for me the best way to reach a lot of potential customers. No matter B2B or B2C. What happened for us was that it created enormous interest and customers came to us instead of the other way around. And still today we literally receive hundreds of requests every week from companies all over the world who have read about or heard about our company and products through the media
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
1:That leadership is about being present.
I once spent almost a full year looking for investors, as the company was growing fast. Too fast. That meant I was physically and mentally away from the daily life of the company and that had a lot of consequences to the culture of the company which took me another year to rectify.
2: That being a founder and CEO is about letting go and trusting your team to be better and smarter than you.
It took me many years to understand that I did not need to be in every detail of the running of a company.
Once I learned that the people and the company could grow without limitations.
3: Always trust your gut feeling.
I cannot count the times when I doubted myself or my gut feeling and it almost always makes for bad decisions. Trust in your gut.
4: Don’t be afraid to admit when you are wrong.
Once during a brainstorm an employee suggested we expand our range of product with plantable makeup liners (as our patent would also cover such a product). Contrary to what you should never do during a brainstorm, I shut down the idea as bad. How big could that market really be? Then she and many of the other employees around the table started to open their bags and it turned out they all had such liners. I realized I was wrong and it turns out it is a billion dollar market. We launched the product last year!
5: Employees matter more than customers.
As earlier discussed when you build the right team around you, they will make sure the customers come.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Research research and more research. Google is your friend. You can also search patent databases if you think your idea is so unique that it is patentable. Talk with some close friends or with people you know in business to get some feedback on what they think. In the end however always trust you own gut-feeling. If it feels right, then go for it.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I would never use a consultant for that. At the idea stage of any idea, one important thing is to keep cost as low as possible. The money will definitely be needed later if the idea is workable.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I’m actually not a very big fan of VC or business angels, but if you do need, make sure that their values align with you, and that they bring actual knowledge about your business to the table.
My advice would always be to try and hold on to your shares for as long as possible and not get diluted much too early. Bootstrap if you can. When I founded Sprout I implemented from the start that business customers should pre-pay the orders which is not always easy for a new company to request, but nevertheless more often than you think will be possible. That meant we from the beginning had a positive cash-flow which helped build the business and helped me still today to retain full control over the company I founded almost 9 years ago. Even today. with sales in 80 countries, pre-payment is still our standard payment policy.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
As I grow older, money in itself is actually becoming less important to me in the sense that I’m more concerned with what we do with the profits we create. I’m concerned with how we spend natural resources and being a company that uses wood, it makes sense for us to do afforestation. We are purchasing land where we produce and are planting forests. Not to be used to make pencils, but to simply help increase natural habitats and biodiversity. It is investments in the future, but investments with no profit business-wise.
With the products we make which you can plant and grow new plants from, I also want people to think about other products. If you can give a simple pencil a second life, what other things can you develop to have a second life?
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I’m working in and concerned with the field of sustainability. It is important to remember that sustainability and making an impact is a journey, not a destination. The important thing is to get started and start with the small every day actions that when added up will make a big difference. Ask what little thing you can do today and work from there.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
My company is B-Corp pending and I would love to meet Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. He is a great inspiration
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Michael Stausholm Of Sprout World On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
