Latest / Beyond Leadership - Adopting a Coaching Mindset / #04 - Your Partner Silently Exits: Save the Company or Walk Away?

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#04 - Your Partner Silently Exits: Save the Company or Walk Away? · Beyond Leadership - Adopting a Coaching Mindset

• 0:00
  Um, so what do you think about the topic that I  
• 0:02
  chose? I was a little bit in  doubt. Is it a good topic?
• 0:06
  I think it's excellent.
• 0:07
  Okay. Super.
• 0:09
  Yeah. I mean, you put yourself on the line.
• 0:12
  So, yeah. I always do that. I don't  understand why, but I always do that.
• 0:18
  Well, let's get down to it. So, I'll start out.
• 0:21
  Okay. Are we ready?
• 0:23
  Ready.
• 0:28
  Welcome to Beyond Leadership, adopting  a coaching mindset. In this series,  
• 0:34
  our conversations aren't about biography  or polished advice. They're about how  
• 0:38
  decisions are made in the real world when the  pressure is on. We'll anchor on one situation  
• 0:44
  where the path wasn't obvious and explore  what goes on in the mind of a leader when  
• 0:50
  confronted with real tradeoffs, imperfect  information, and the need to move anyway.
• 0:59
  This podcast is brought to you by  Peer Plaza, human help instantly.
• 1:07
  I'm sitting down with Juliette  Guldberg, the CEO of Job Vision,  
• 1:13
  a company that offers career development  and counseling for both job seekers and  
• 1:18
  employers. Juliette built Job Vision over three  decades, sold part of it in 2018, and then found  
• 1:26
  herself carrying the business while a partner  stopped contributing and wouldn't step aside.  
• 1:33
  What followed wasn't a clean turnaround  story, but a long stretch of constraint,  
• 1:39
  stalled performance, and decisions with  no good options. Today, we're talking  
• 1:45
  about the moment she realized that saving the  company meant risking everything she built.
• 1:53
  So, welcome to the program, Juliette. Should  I call you Juliette, like the Danish way?  
• 2:00
  Probably I'm just killing the Danish,  
• 2:02
  but why don't you pronounce your name  for everybody in Danish first of all?
• 2:08
  Okay. I will say it in French  because it's a French name.
• 2:13
  Of course it is. And I really wanted to  impress her with my Danish pronunciation.
• 2:20
  Say, my name is Juliette Guldberg.
• 2:23
  Hi, Juliette.
• 2:24
  Ah, here I am trying to make it into  Danish because nobody in Denmark has that.
• 2:30
  But you are Danish, right?
• 2:33
  Yeah, my mom was French, so that's why.
• 2:36
  Ah, okay. Juliette.
• 2:38
  So what do people say in Denmark?
• 2:43
  Everything. Everything.
• 2:46
  Yeah, I have a lot of names and I'm just saying  
• 2:48
  yes every time. If someone says it  correctly, I'm getting confused.
• 2:53
  So, okay. So every once in a while  somebody will call you Juliette,  
• 2:58
  but a Danish way of saying it would be Juliette.
• 3:03
  Juliette. Yeah, that's pretty far away.
• 3:09
  Okay. So, I'm going to call you Juliette  the way your mother might call you,  
• 3:13
  with my terrible French. And why don't you set the  
• 3:17
  scene for our story? Tell me about the  constraint that we're focused on today.
• 3:25
  The scene is that sometimes we as  a CEO think we're working very,  
• 3:31
  very hard to make up a solution because we  are used to finding solutions. And sometimes  
• 3:40
  we think we know the solution to a problem.  And once in a while we end in a dead road,  
• 3:50
  and we work too hard to solve the  problem so it won't get solved.
• 3:55
  So you're making a difficult situation  much more difficult than it has to be  
• 4:01
  because you can't see clearly. I think  that was the scene for me. I was totally  
• 4:06
  blind and scared of losing the  company, scared of the future.
• 4:11
  When had you joined the company?
• 4:14
  I started working in the company 14 years  ago. Bought it with my partner in 2017,  
• 4:22
  but it's an old company. So, I think we have  to have a lot of respect for the company's age,  
• 4:31
  size. It had a big legacy over 30 years, right?
• 4:34
  Yeah, exactly.
• 4:36
  And so, when did you first realize that your  partner had effectively stopped contributing?
• 4:44
  It took me a while because he had a lot of  excuses about the market. We were lucky that  
• 4:51
  we owned the company due to COVID, and it  was a very, very difficult time because 80%  
• 4:57
  of our clients stopped sending orders to  us due to COVID. So it was a rough time.
• 5:06
  So, it took me some time to see that he was  closing sites around his area and was always  
• 5:14
  saying that it was due to the fact that  I had an area that was much more easy to  
• 5:21
  get orders in than in his area. And I  was like, that was a little bit strange  
• 5:26
  because he had the biggest part of  Denmark where there are a lot more  
• 5:30
  companies than in the part that I have. I had  Jutland with a lot of space around the cities.
• 5:39
  So it took me a while, but his excuses  got worse and worse and I began to see his  
• 5:49
  physical reactions when he was  lying to me. So it actually,  
• 5:54
  to me, I think I used one and a half years  before the reality hit me. And I was like,  
• 6:01
  okay, he's not contributing. He's doing  this on purpose because he doesn't care.
• 6:12
  It's one thing to uncover the wrongdoing  of an employee, but the moment it dawns  
• 6:17
  on you that a partner has stepped outside the  relationship, whether personal or professional,  
• 6:23
  a cold chill runs down your spine,  followed by a moment of pure disbelief.
• 6:32
  And I think it was because we got a lot of money.  We sold a third of the company to a very, very,  
• 6:39
  very big company just before COVID, and  we got a lot of money privately. And I  
• 6:46
  think his reality check on that was when the  money wasn't there anymore, I will get a new  
• 6:54
  good idea and sell the company overpriced to  some genius and he will get some more money.
• 7:00
  But that wasn't the situation because I'm valuing  
• 7:06
  myself very much. So I won't go out to  sell a bad company to somebody I know.
• 7:13
  So I was like, it was really  difficult. So I was talking  
• 7:17
  to my network. I've been in some  investor groups, and I was like,  
• 7:22
  how can I do this? How can I do it in a proper  way? How can I secure the company? What do I do?
• 7:30
  And because you were considering either resigning,  bankruptcy, or some sort of a takeover, right?
• 7:39
  Yeah. But it took me a while to get to  resigning or bankruptcy. I was like,  
• 7:45
  it's my responsibility as a CEO to look at the  company and secure that people get their money.  
• 7:54
  But it took me a while to face the beast.  It was really a rough time. I was sad,  
• 8:02
  and at the same time I had staff  members around Denmark and I had  
• 8:08
  to make them believe in the project and keep it  a secret. That was the worst part. Going around  
• 8:16
  looking like everything is okay and he's  a good partner was the worst part for me.
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  At one point some of the  staff went to me and said,  
• 8:27
  "What is going on here? Because he's  closing all the sites and he's losing  
• 8:31
  staff and he's losing orders. What  are we doing? What is going on?"
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  And at that point I was like, okay, they see and  hear everything. So I really had to work fast,  
• 8:45
  and I had to work fast because he didn't  have orders enough to take care of all his  
• 8:54
  expenses. So it was like just seeing your  money go out the window, and I was running  
• 9:01
  faster and faster and faster and getting more  and more broken. So it was really difficult.
• 9:10
  So, I talked to the lawyers and I said, "What  do I do in this situation? I'm totally broken  
• 9:18
  down now. I don't know what to do. The company  is worthless right now from my point of view."
• 9:27
  And they were like, "Quit. Just quit."
• 9:30
  Yeah. I was thinking that was going to come.
• 9:36
  Many of us have endured difficult  moments that feel like nightmares,  
• 9:40
  but this situation is particularly  bleak. What makes it even more troubling  
• 9:44
  is that Juliette's partner has walked away,  leaving her to face the entire ordeal alone.
• 9:53
  Yeah, just walk away. Walk away  from it all and see it all burn  
• 9:58
  down. I can't do that. I have staff relying on me.
• 10:04
  What would bankruptcy have  meant for you personally?
• 10:07
  Nothing. That's the worst  part. Nothing. I have nothing  
• 10:14
  to lose if it went bankrupt,  but I'm not like that.
• 10:18
  It wouldn't have affected you financially, but  it certainly would have affected you emotionally.
• 10:24
  Yeah. My pride.
• 10:25
  And your values and your pride.
• 10:27
  Yeah. My pride and my values. I  think that was my worst enemy,  
• 10:32
  my pride and my values. I was struggling  with myself, facing the beast, facing  
• 10:38
  the situation. And it was tough because I'm  also a wife, a mother. So when I went home,  
• 10:46
  I just had to park it all and just be the  mother and the wife. At the same time I  
• 10:53
  was just finding no solutions. I was just running  around like a hen without a head. It was terrible.
• 11:03
  So, and how long did that go on for?
• 11:06
  It took me five years.
• 11:09
  Five years. Let that sink in for a moment. That's  enough time for a child to go from birth to  
• 11:17
  riding a bicycle. Long enough to complete  both a bachelor's and a master's degree.  
• 11:24
  WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook  for $19 billion five years after  
• 11:29
  it was founded. It's a long time to  stick around a floundering company.
• 11:36
  Wow. Yeah.
• 11:37
  Looking back at those five years that you  spent where you might have spent maybe  
• 11:45
  one of them closing down the company  and four building up something else,  
• 11:49
  any regrets there? Do you think that it might  have gone well both ways? Do you think that the  
• 11:55
  decision you made to continue on was so much  the right decision? Is it so black and white?
• 12:02
  No, it's not. I hope it's the right decision  because now we are making a turnaround with  
• 12:08
  the company. So I hope I made the right  decision. But a lot of people were like,  
• 12:15
  close the company and start by yourself  because you are the company. And I was like,  
• 12:18
  no, I'm not the company just by myself. I have  the consultants who are doing a very, very great  
• 12:26
  job. We have very satisfied customers. We're  different in the market. And I was like, I don't  
• 12:32
  just want to go out and copy paste that. It's like  giving your child away. I think it was terrible.
• 12:41
  Yeah. Sometimes it's difficult to  know if our emotional responses  
• 12:46
  should be counted as much as the economic ones  because as you said, you had a family to feed.  
• 12:51
  And it's interesting that you also say that I  hope that it was the right decision, not that it  
• 12:59
  definitely was the right decision. I like that  because if we don't put some doubt into that,  
• 13:07
  then we're not really thinking all the way  through, right? Because we don't know. We  
• 13:12
  don't know what would have happened the  other way if you had left the company.
• 13:17
  We do know that you would have disappointed  a lot of people. That we do know. But we  
• 13:22
  don't know if you could have made it up  to them in a different way in a different  
• 13:26
  company. But you went down the path  that you felt was the most important.
• 13:32
  And I want to ask you, what made  this decision unavoidable for you?  
• 13:38
  If it comes down to one thing, what  was the thing that made you say,  
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  "I'm not cutting and running. I  don't care what the lawyers say."
• 13:49
  It was the solution. The strategic... I'm  very skilled at strategy. So, I had to...
• 13:58
  Yeah. If somebody has seen the series House of Cards,
• 14:02
  we were playing a part of House of Cards. Not my  values, but it was necessary to get the company.
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  So the solution was for me the answer to what I  would have to do. But I had to give the company  
• 14:19
  up first in my heart. I had to take the  decision, if this strategy doesn't work,  
• 14:25
  I will have to leave. And when I took  that decision, the solution just worked.
• 14:31
  Yeah. What do you attribute that  to? How do you think it just worked?
• 14:36
  I think sometimes if you're trying  to hold on to something too tight,  
• 14:41
  the solutions won't come. But sometimes if you let  go and be honest with yourself and ask yourself,  
• 14:48
  is this the way to go, and you let  it go, sometimes a solution will  
• 14:53
  come. But you can't see a solution when  you're holding on that tight as I was.
• 14:58
  You had to negotiate with your partner.
• 15:01
  Yeah.
• 15:02
  What was that like?
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  It was fine for me because I  had lost everything I thought  
• 15:09
  positively about him. So I was just  like, I just need to get him out of  
• 15:14
  the company. I just need to get him as  far away from Job Vision as possible.
• 15:20
  That part wasn't difficult. The difficult part  was to be a civilized person all the way through,  
• 15:31
  to this day today. He doesn't know what happened.  He doesn't know that I didn't believe in him.  
• 15:36
  He doesn't know I knew he lied. He doesn't know  anything because I played it clean all the way.
• 15:43
  What do you think you learned about partnering?
• 15:47
  It's difficult because there will  always be one part who feels they  
• 15:52
  are left alone with something. I think  our lawyer said to us that it's difficult  
• 15:58
  to be more than one in a company. And  I spoke with a lot of people and it's  
• 16:03
  very rare I hear that in a company you  can be two people well at the same time.
• 16:08
  Well, at the same time the statistics show  that when you have two owners of a company,  
• 16:15
  there is more success for the company because you  have at least one person borrowing with you so  
• 16:22
  that some of your great ideas don't actually  see the light of day, to your betterment.
• 16:27
  So today your partners, or I suppose,  how many partners do you have today?
• 16:32
  It's an investment company where  there are 20 investors in it.
• 16:37
  You're the CEO, but you  have no operating partners.
• 16:41
  No.
• 16:42
  Okay. Well, that makes it easier for you  to make all those decisions and it also  
• 16:46
  makes it tougher for you to have to take  responsibility for the decisions you make.
• 16:52
  Yeah. But I have my board now and  that's the game changer for me.
• 16:56
  So tell me more about that.
• 16:58
  When I sold 35% to them, I could finally get  a professional board. I didn't have that,  
• 17:05
  and I've been yelling for that all the  time that we have owned the company,  
• 17:09
  that we need a professional board  we can spar with, we can talk to,  
• 17:14
  and they can say, "Yeah, great idea, but  have you thought about this and that?"
• 17:18
  And now I have my boardman and  he sees me and understands the  
• 17:22
  way that I want to go. And he knows that  I'm a hard worker and I can work on many  
• 17:28
  projects at the same time. So he's  like, okay, Juliette, that's fine,  
• 17:32
  but if we look at the strategy for the next  five years, how does this idea fit in there?
• 17:39
  So I'm not alone anymore. I can call.  In the 20 investors I can say I need  
• 17:46
  something. If we wanted to make... I  don't know what it's called in English,  
• 17:51
  that's quite difficult for  me. In Danish... subscription?
• 17:57
  Yeah.
• 17:57
  If we wanted to change the  company to a subscription company,  
• 18:01
  I had one of the investors just sold his  company, a very, very big one in Denmark,  
• 18:06
  based on subscriptions. So I could spar with him  and he told me if you want to go down that road,  
• 18:13
  this has to be clear and this has to be clear.  So in one week I had my answer if that was the  
• 18:20
  right way to go from a professional who  really knew what it took to go there.
• 18:26
  So every time I go down a path, I  have somebody I can call and say,  
• 18:32
  "How is it with this?" Something  you normally pay many, many thousand  
• 18:37
  euros to get from others, I have for free  because they're sitting in 35% ownership.
• 18:44
  Exactly. They want you to succeed.
• 18:46
  Exactly.
• 18:47
  And that's great. You know, I often work with  PE-backed executives and oftentimes they're  
• 18:52
  a little bit frightened of their boards.  They often have strained relationships with  
• 18:56
  their boards. And it's interesting, you  have found a way to leverage your board.
• 19:01
  Yeah.
• 19:02
  Do you think it's because your board is so special  
• 19:05
  or do you think that you are  open to taking the critique?
• 19:09
  I think it is a bit of both. I'm open to the  critique if they know I'm a no-bullshitter.  
• 19:15
  Sorry. So if they're just saying, "Ah, it  doesn't feel right," I'm just like, "Okay,  
• 19:20
  do I have a professional answer?  Do you know something about it?"
• 19:23
  So for me, they're professional and they know  that they have to take care of me. They're often  
• 19:30
  saying if you lose the belief in the company,  we're losing. So we have to keep you happy.
• 19:38
  And I know there's a lot of misunderstanding  about boards. And I've been sitting in a very,  
• 19:45
  very big company on a board where we  were just talking about getting lunch and  
• 19:51
  looking at some numbers and just trash talking  the CEO. And I was just like, pardon me, haven't  
• 19:57
  we hired him to do the job? So now you're trash  talking him. What is he going to do with that?
• 20:04
  So I quit my board job at that time.  I was just like, this is too stupid.
• 20:10
  But I think the more educated the  board gets and understands their  
• 20:16
  real assignment by sitting on a board,  it's so important. It's not just getting  
• 20:22
  money from investors. It's getting  all that knowledge and connections.
• 20:27
  Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense.
• 20:30
  Yeah. And change your board when your  goal is set and you have to make new  
• 20:35
  goals. Change the board so it fits the strategy.
• 20:39
  Yeah. So you have the right people.
• 20:45
  Juliette raises an important point here. The  role of a board is to safeguard the company's  
• 20:50
  survival and support its long term profitability.  At the same time, the board has a responsibility  
• 20:57
  to stand behind the CEO and provide the  support necessary for effective leadership.
• 21:06
  I'm wondering, as a woman, do you  think that you're able to accept  
• 21:13
  the judgment of the board easier than a man?
• 21:18
  No, I'm a drama queen inside. I'm not good at  criticism. I'm good at giving myself criticism. So  
• 21:25
  when somebody criticizes me, if it happens, I've  been there myself and beaten myself up. So no,  
• 21:34
  I'm not. I'm just like a man. I don't think  about the gender. If I one day don't fit in  
• 21:43
  this chair that I'm sitting in, then we have  to find another one who does. I don't think a  
• 21:49
  CEO should sit in the chair for the rest of  their life if they don't fit the strategy.
• 21:58
  So just on the subject, do you think there  
• 22:01
  are any disadvantages or advantages to  being a woman in a company like yours?
• 22:07
  The disadvantage is that you're always alone  when you go to a network thing at night. It's  
• 22:14
  like, okay, I'm alone again. No women.  Everybody's talking about women's rights,  
• 22:19
  but where are the women when we stand out  there at night? They're home with their kids.
• 22:25
  No, I think it's a person thing. I don't  know. I'm not the right one to ask about  
• 22:30
  that because I'm doing everything at home,  building in the garden and everything. And  
• 22:35
  my man is really great at playing FIFA. So,  I don't know. I'm not the right one to ask.
• 22:41
  Another conversation.
• 22:43
  Yeah.
• 22:45
  What's something that you used to be very  certain of that you're not so certain of today?
• 22:51
  I think actually I'm a little bit disappointed  by myself that I went to a certain point where  
• 22:57
  I wanted to quit something. I have never been a  quitter and suddenly I'm a little bit afraid of  
• 23:03
  that point, that suddenly I can quit something.  That scares me. That was what scared me the most.
• 23:11
  Is there a difference between being  a quitter and being a stopper?
• 23:16
  Yeah.
• 23:17
  So, what's the difference  between those two things for you?
• 23:20
  If you're naive or not, you can work  so hard and you could kill yourself  
• 23:25
  by working hard and you have to stop at  some point. But I was just, oh my God,  
• 23:30
  I have never gone to a point where I just  said enough is enough. I have to stop this.
• 23:37
  I think that was the worst part and the  biggest surprise, where I surprised myself.
• 23:42
  And then the solution was a great surprise,  that I know people that see me that are not  
• 23:50
  in my private inner circle. They see me  and help me with the solution. I was so  
• 23:56
  grateful and thankful every day that there are  people out there helping each other like that.
• 24:05
  And I'm just thinking a lot of men are not  as capable of showing their vulnerabilities  
• 24:13
  as I think women are. And I think perhaps that  could have been something that actually helped  
• 24:20
  you in this situation, where you were  willing to be vulnerable whereas your  
• 24:26
  counterpart as a man might not have  been. What do you think about that?
• 24:33
  I don't agree. I think men in top level  positions are really helping each other.  
• 24:39
  I see it every day. But women in tough positions  are really tough ladies and they're really tough  
• 24:48
  on each other. It's a battlefield out there. I  don't like it. I always say that there's only  
• 24:55
  space for one female lion on the savannah. When  you walk into a room, you spot her right away.
• 25:02
  I think women at my level are really, really  tough and men are much more helpful to each other,  
• 25:11
  doing stuff in their spare time, taking care  of each other at that level. Women are not.
• 25:18
  At the same time, we were  talking about vulnerability.
• 25:22
  Yeah.
• 25:22
  And you are able to be vulnerable, which allowed  people to help you. And at the same time, do you  
• 25:29
  think men tend to be as vulnerable as that? I  don't mean to spend too much time on gender here,  
• 25:38
  but I'm noticing that you were willing to ask  for help and when I think about men, not so much.
• 25:47
  No, I don't see men not helping each  other. I don't see them not asking.
• 25:53
  Let me push back here because I'm not asking about  
• 25:56
  whether they help each other. I'm  wondering if they ask for help.
• 26:01
  Yeah, I don't know. I don't sit in the rooms  where they do. Sometimes they ask me for help,  
• 26:09
  counseling, and I have a lot of men coming  by because they have lost their job or  
• 26:16
  are stressed or lost their way, and they're  passing by my office to get some counseling.
• 26:25
  So I think men are getting more  vulnerable and women are getting tougher.
• 26:30
  Wow.
• 26:31
  Yeah. I see a shift, a change in  that. I would be afraid today if  
• 26:38
  it was the women who had all the  top positions in the world. Really.
• 26:49
  Juliette's position on male and female  roles leaves me somewhat puzzled. Yet,  
• 26:54
  it also seems to mirror the moment we're  living in. We're in a period where traditional  
• 27:00
  expectations are being questioned, redefined,  and sometimes even rejected altogether.  
• 27:07
  In that turbulence, perspectives can appear  contradictory, caught somewhere between long  
• 27:13
  standing cultural patterns and emerging  ideas about equality, identity, and power.
• 27:27
  Is there anything today that we didn't touch  
• 27:30
  upon that you feel like you want to  bring up before we close our session?
• 27:37
  It depends. Do people want to hear  the solution? What the solution was?
• 27:41
  We'd love to hear that.
• 27:43
  Okay.
• 27:45
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• 28:29
  I've been in an investment group and I  turned to one of the investment men I've  
• 28:35
  been in the group with and I was talking  to him and talking about my vision with  
• 28:40
  Job Vision. And he was like, "Oh my God,  Juliette, you have caught something great  
• 28:45
  there. It's big. We want to go with  you. We want to be a part of that."
• 28:50
  And I was like, "Oh, okay. Even  though I just told you the situation."
• 28:55
  And he was like, "Yeah, but  that's not my problem. You  
• 28:57
  need to get rid of him and  then we will go with you."
• 29:02
  And I was like, "Yeah, but  he wants a lot of money."
• 29:04
  And he was like, "Yeah, you have to solve that."
• 29:06
  And I got some help with that  with our accountant. I talked to  
• 29:16
  the accountant and he was like, okay, this is  the situation, we have to solve that. Yeah,  
• 29:22
  he smashed our... it went horrible. We  will go out with a minus, a lot of money.
• 29:30
  And it was like, so finally there I  could take the talk with him and say,  
• 29:36
  can you see the company isn't worth anything and  I'm not putting my signature on this yearly report  
• 29:42
  because it's me as a CEO. This will look like it's  my performance. So we have to find a solution,  
• 29:49
  and we both have some money that we  can get from Job Vision if we go out.
• 29:56
  And I was like, I'm not going  with this yearly report.
• 30:00
  And he was like, "Okay, what is the solution?"
• 30:02
  And I was like, "I don't  know, but I have an idea."
• 30:05
  And I put up three solutions:  that we split the company.  
• 30:09
  Second solution was he would get his money  and maybe the apartment that he had that's  
• 30:14
  on a little island that I don't want to have  a part of. Or I would get my part and walk  
• 30:20
  away. And if none of those were negotiable,  I would turn the company in for bankruptcy.
• 30:27
  And I saw the sparkle in his eye when he  saw the yearly report and he was like,  
• 30:33
  "Okay, I can get some money now. That  is better than anything," because if  
• 30:38
  I turned it into bankruptcy,  he would lose his money there.
• 30:43
  So he was like, "Oh, I have to..." This  was a Friday and he had the weekend.
• 30:49
  And the investment group that I had in hand  were like, "If he's turning everything down,  
• 30:56
  walk away and we start off from rock bottom."  But it's always better to have a company to  
• 31:01
  start from than build a new one. So I had  my new Job Vision ready if he said no.
• 31:10
  So, Monday morning he was like, "I'm going to take  my money and the apartment on this little island."
• 31:18
  And I was like, "Holy guacamole." I was  like, "Oh my God, I did it. I really did it."
• 31:24
  So, the investor group just put the money in.  We didn't have any agreement, anything. And I  
• 31:30
  was just like, "Okay, you just put the money in  the bank for him. I will get everything in line."
• 31:35
  And I was just... they were trusting  me so much that I was just sending  
• 31:39
  them emails. We have the agreement, we are...
• 31:43
  And the lawyer called, "This is not  the way to go and what is going on?"
• 31:47
  And I was like, "We have to  get him out of the company."  
• 31:50
  They were saying so I just had to do something.
• 31:53
  He got his money and he got the little island  apartment. So that was great for me. And the  
• 32:03
  new investors are in and we have a strategy that  we are going for, and hopefully it will go well.
• 32:11
  Wow. What a tremendous story.
• 32:13
  Yeah.
• 32:14
  And you turned it into a win-win-win. A  win for your ex partner, a win for you,  
• 32:20
  and a win for your investors.
• 32:22
  Yeah. I do. But I call it House of Cards  because I had to play some cards that I  
• 32:28
  didn't like. But sometimes you have to  go further for the bigger cause, I think.
• 32:35
  And with that, I want to thank you, Juliette.  It has been a great pleasure to speak with you  
• 32:42
  and I hope that we can get together soon, and I  wish you all the best for your fantastic company.
• 32:49
  And thank you.
• 32:49
  Thank you so much.
• 32:54
  I wish Juliette all the best in her turnaround.  She has clearly made a heroic effort. Whether  
• 33:01
  it will ultimately be enough remains to  be seen. Only time will tell. One thing,  
• 33:06
  however, seems certain. The next time  she considers entering a partnership,  
• 33:12
  she will do so with far greater caution.
• 33:15
  Thanks to my guest and to all of our  loyal listeners. Subscribe today so  
• 33:21
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• 33:26
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• 33:31
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• 33:38
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• 33:44
  Thanks for listening. See you next time.