100% All In: Why Half Measures Don't Work in Business or Life with Mads Rossau

"I don't do things that's only half done. Either we don't do it or we do it fully." These powerful words from entrepreneur Mads set the tone for a fascinating exploration of leadership, balance, and what it truly means to commit fully to your business vision.

Host Nico and Mads delve into the paradox many founders face: the all-consuming passion that drives success while potentially leading to "founder disease." Through candid conversation, Mads shares personal insights about the symptoms he's experienced - tunnel vision, overconfidence, and becoming so deeply involved that you can't see the forest for the trees.

The discussion takes surprising turns through management philosophy, with Mads revealing how a simple practice of acknowledging one team member daily transformed workplace performance. You'll discover why Denmark achieves one of the world's highest productivity rates despite shorter working hours, and how cultural differences dramatically impact leadership approaches.

Perhaps most compelling is his practical advice for leaders at any level: "Next time, just grab the mop, start mopping the floor." This symbolic action of joining your team in the trenches creates immediate respect and demonstrates the leadership principle that actions truly speak louder than words.

As founder of Intersect AI, Mads shares his strategy for building a sustainable AI agency focused on business automation, highlighting the importance of maintaining control over core technology rather than becoming dependent on platforms that might change pricing unexpectedly.

The conversation culminates in a powerful message for anyone facing entrepreneurial challenges: "Just try." Mads encourages people to reframe obstacles not as insurmountable walls but as "speed bumps along the journey" - noting that often the barriers in our minds are much larger than the actual challenges we face.

Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, aspiring founder, or leader seeking to improve your management approach, this episode offers valuable insights into building a business with both passion and sustainability.

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:00 100% All In: No Half Measures
• 11:27 Founder Disease and Unhealthy Work Balance
• 14:24 Effective Leadership vs Bad Management
• 19:30 Country Culture Impacts Business Culture
• 23:36 Finding Partners and Building Trust
• 26:37 Building an AI Agency and Control
• 31:13 Just Try: Overcome Mental Barriers

Transcript

Mads: 0:00

I don't do things that's only half done. Either we don't do it or we do it fully. I don't care if it's business work, having fun drinking. It's either 100% or we're not doing it.

Nico: 0:18

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van der Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs who are striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I have a small request. If you find value in our podcast, please take a moment to subscribe and add that five-star review. Share this episode with at least three people in your network. Thank you so much for the support, guys, and for keeping on listening to our podcast and these wonderful guests. Today's episode we are welcoming Mats to the podcast. Hello, mats, welcome to the podcast, thank you very much.

Mads: 1:14

Thank you very much. Long time in the making.

Nico: 1:19

Yeah, that's all right. You know people who are busy. They have schedules that jump from left to right, and so we're here. That's the most important thing, Finally here. Yeah, indeed, I got one question to start off with CO disease and foundry has anyone ever heard of it?

Mads: 1:33

I've heard about it. I've heard about it. We've had some previous conversations about it. To me, it's really well. You're so much involved in everything that you can't see the forest or the trees that's right in front of you, but yeah.

Nico: 1:50

Yeah, indeed, and basically you know a lot of those symptoms. There's isolation, there's the overconfidence, there's, you know, resistance to change, lack of self-awareness. A lot of people are a little bit self-absorbed not entrepreneurs, no, not at all. You know who I'm talking about. You know a little bit of a detachment from a company culture, stuff like that. That's, you know, that's. Those are really symptoms. I don't know if you've ever experienced any of those, maybe a couple, maybe only one. Any experience there?

Mads: 2:27

Sure, there's been some experience with it, I believe, in the terms of, like some people probably call it, unhealthy work-life balance. I think if you find something you truly love and enjoy, and as long as you still take some time to the people you love, I wouldn't say it's a problem as long as you're enjoying it, you're not like completely stressing out and just being an absolute asshole to be together with. To put it as frank as possible, I probably more experienced it and what the way I described it of being so involved in everything Sometimes I get very tunnel visioned and that all of a sudden you're back at step two because it's been missed, like the right, like a good example is you're sitting there, you're doing something, you're spending hours and hours and hours and decide it's finally time to go to bed, wake up the next morning, take 10 minutes of time what was the big problem? And three hours yesterday? Well, why didn't that? So that's where where it shows through the most.

Nico: 3:39

So the the complete passion, absorption of uh of the industry, yeah, yes, I don't do things.

Mads: 3:46

I joke about it. I don't do things, that's. That's only half done. Either we don't do it or we do it fully. I don't care if it's business work, having fun drinking. It's either 100 or we're not doing it. Either we don't, we don't go if that's a maypiece yeah, oh yeah.

Nico: 4:03

Yeah. The drinking, that's been a while for me, honestly. I still go into. Never did basically go all the way, but the drinking part is something very prevalent at some point for certain people in the lifetime.

Mads: 4:18

I got it out of my head. I got it out of my head. I won't say anything to anybody that done it, because I have definitely done it myself. We weren't crazy about that. 1918, 20 complete. It was absolutely insanity. I'm kind of happy that I got it out of the system because then you see people that maybe start doing a little bit later. They're spending their mid-20s doing it. If you get it out of your system, you're in your 20s and you can just focus on the things that actually help your life.

Mads: 4:57

I think that's healthy. Some of us at least have a little bit that needs to get out.

Nico: 5:03

Yeah, yeah, of course, and sometimes these things are really like scapegoats to get away from the busyness and the full-blown passion on solving problems. It also helps. I remember our last conversation I think it was on your podcast when we discussed it where we were talking about drinking and business and business and drinking, about the effect of you know, really hanging it out the day before with all these colleagues where you then, you know, get promoted and then there are no more colleagues, they're actually subordinates, and then you know, and they remember those nights, yeah, yeah, I can't remember.

Mads: 5:39

I think you've had this experience I have, I have, I have, I have. I have been in that exact same scenario and it's definitely a difficult one to handle. The only real trouble I ever got in because of it was we can't take them all out to drink. What if somebody calls in sick and nobody comes and comes?

Nico: 5:57

Yeah.

Mads: 5:58

That was the only real issue. I luckily nobody called in sick and I definitely learned my lesson after that one. I think if you set very clear parameters, you can like not blur the lines as much. It can definitely be a problem when you don't want to get hammered. Don't do that. I've gotten to the extreme now. Unless it's somebody I know really well, I refuse to get drunk in front of them. I won't do it, of course, if you're in a club or a bar, none of those people you're going to see again. But if it's on a date or in a professional environment, I'll. Most times I won't even drink the beer because I'm like, nah, I can drink, but nothing made I don't want made. I don't want to get drunk at all. That's more to fit in. We do dumb things when we're drunk and I am definitely one of those people.

Nico: 7:00

This is getting interesting. Keep talking, why not? Is there a story coming up? Definitely.

Mads: 7:09

There could be a story here.

Nico: 7:11

I've done a few things we might digress a little bit about this on the subject. So basically, mats, you've got your own company and you've got your employees and that wonderful stuff going on. Company and you've got your employees and that wonderful stuff going on. What's, what's your experience with? You know, these founders or c-levels who, who you know, really go out and and become the the evil side of of leadership why I don't really get uh it.

Mads: 7:42

It works much better to do it the other way if you have happy people. I actually have a good story about that. When I did management at a retail like a big retail grocery over here in Denmark called Bilka, basically I was going through management training and there was this whole thing about acknowledging your people and we were supposed to go up to an exam like take one of the principles, go up and be extended. So I thought let's try this acknowledgement thing out. We're like a big team where we're always a minimum of 10 at work. So I was like I'm going to acknowledge one person for one thing every day, just one thing. It's not that difficult when you have that many people, especially when you start looking for them.

Mads: 8:24

But I noticed a theme where all the weekends I was not there, there was like big problems, they couldn't keep up, but when I was there it was pretty smooth. For sure, sometimes it was high pressure, but in people wanting to make sure we succeeded when I was there and also strategic thinking in terms of okay, if we are really pressed to the max, we need you doing this, you doing that, you doing that. It needs to be some sort of structure. So it kind of became a problem for a lot of people who weren't doing it, because you know how they do C-level like this at the top, this is like down at the bottom floor. They just look at the numbers and be like, well, they can do that. We didn't hear a problem. So let's keep doing that, because it's possible on paper and it was, but there was different things that played into the scenario.

Mads: 9:27

So that's one thing that good management can do compared to bad management. Yeah, that they should. Just don't. You want people to want to work with you, not because of fear. It might have worked in the past. I don't know, I'm not that old of knowing how it works in the 50s and even before that, so I can't say. But nowadays I think there is much better ways where you can get much more results. I actually watched a good documentary, like a quick YouTube video yesterday about Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world per GDP, but we only work 37 hours a week. We work a lot less than a lot of other big countries, so our efficiency per work hour is one of the highest in the world, and that's not by putting pressure on people, that's by letting people shine for a certain amount of time and then go do what you want. Yeah.

Nico: 10:21

It's probably there's a certain formula. I think it's probably there, there's there's a certain formula. I think it's also something cultural, because when you mentioned you know when, when, when my dad was was working, for instance.

Nico: 10:31

You know the guy is now in his his end and 50s, 70s, it's a totally different world. You know, he's a baby boomer. A boss was a boss. You listen to your boss and you did what they asked you to do. There was no way of saying no. You know, it was that word was not in there for gobbled the other way around. Yeah, they said no, uh, very clearly, uh, but as an employee, no way.

Nico: 10:53

And these days I see like a lot of balancing out all these pros and cons and discussions and people going into 15 different layers of compassion and so on, and at some point I understand completely what's going on. You don't just want to be one of those bulldozers saying what's done in the 50s or the 60s or in the 70s, you're going to do it this way. I do work in an environment that's still very classical in that level it's a nuclear power plant. So can you imagine they're doing this for 40 years. So we're going to be doing it, you know. But they also have to change in their attitude because young people are coming in, you know, younger engineers and so on, and they have, you know, they have a bigger mouth, you know they're really, they're really talkative and they really tell their manager you know what you're doing. It sucks really clearly and I'm not used to that. It's like he's talking to me that way and in the beginning apparently there was a lot of you know conflict and and so on. But when they switched over to the listening mode and said, okay, let's listen to what they're saying and captivate what's necessary or what really impacts the environment, and they started to evolve towards that. And I think that's for a lot of companies exactly the same. You know, for one it might be a little bit slower than the other, but of course, if you're in a country where people already are of a mindset that you know listening, very personable, very, very empathic, it helps.

Nico: 12:19

You know, when you look at my country, you know I live in Belgium. You, belgium, we have three different official languages, three different official zones, three different, actually, four different governments. You know the national government and then per region language region we have a different government and then sometimes I'm even, you know, I think we have more ministers than toilet ladies. Basically, you know, it's just unbelievable the conflict that's within our country about just the other guy speaks French and I speak Dutch. Who the F cares what language you speak, as long as you all got your nose in the same direction and standing for it.

Nico: 12:58

It's one of the best examples of what happens in our country. You know the World Cup football. Yeah, that's the World Cup football. Yeah, that's the moment of the year every four years that our national flag flies everywhere. It's the only time in four years that our national flag is in, and the added value that's come on that is that they actually put advertising on our flag as well. You know we have a beer called Tripoli and they put it on the flag as well. You know we have a beer called they put it on the flag and that's on. You know that's flying in front of houses. It's cool. It's completely nuts. All the rest of the time we have the flemish flag, we have the walony flag. It's so nuts.

Nico: 13:37

But how can you create a culture in in a country that already is in conflict and and and then you have a company that has the environment spanned over two language zones where you have to talk to other people. It's so strange. And, yeah, your country has a completely different history as well. You know, you've been independent for so long and so strong, it's another world. You know it's like, it's amazing what you guys do and indeed you know maternity leaves and stuff like that. You've got a very strong process there that that is also valued by everyone. And when they come back into the office it's a different story than you would have here. You know people, you know come come to the office with a very wrong face because they have to go back to work. I think you have a lot more people with a smiling face coming in saying, oh, I'm going to see my colleagues again.

Mads: 14:27

I think about the reason why Denmark used to be the happiest country war because we would drink so much. It's kind of, basically, guys were the most uncaused, the happiest people. Seems funny. They just went into a bud. It really went down. They were having a wonderful time, I imagine. But yeah, it is different than a lot of other places, like most places are. So I think it would be wrong trying to duplicate a lot of the Danish system. It ain't gonna work. Firstly, it's like a tiny place. There's not even 6 million people here. It's very unified unified, as you mentioned, still 84% Danish, something like that. So they're in big trust in the government. I do think they might have some problems coming. There's been a few things recently that might shift into into problems in the future. But we'll go through ups and downs, but it could be worse.

Nico: 15:31

Could be worse oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I only mentioned my country. I think we've had some recent news that has a completely different story, where you're not even thinking about going back to the office. But yeah, it's just. Yeah, I think it's. It's. But one, one big part is the attitude of leaders. You know you set your example. Why is there a lot of conflict in my country? Because there's no straight, clear leadership. You know the politicians jump from left to right every every years and then they don't even agree on anything that is of value long term. So what will you create with your country? You know all the entrepreneurs here. You have to think about it. Our tax rate is 51 to 53%, so almost half what we earn goes to government and, like I mentioned before, we have more ministers than toilet ladies. So you know where they're going with this.

Nico: 16:27

If you would expect that, we have highways that are, you know, smooth, I drive a motorcycle, I drive a car, um, in both, it is a horrible experience to drive our highways. By the way, you know you can really feel when you you cross the border from holland, you drive into belgium, you drive through belgium and you come, go into the, cross the border from Holland, you drive into Belgium, you drive through Belgium and you come, go into the cross the border to France. It's like you know these old roads where you come and they have cobblestones. Well, that's our whole country. I think Malta is a country that has less potholes, and man, I'm dishing on my country. But it's just, if your leadership doesn't give you the right tools and this is, you know, roadworks it's their part, it's their role to do these things. If your leadership is not in that direction, how are your people going to do it? You know, it's just basic common sense, I would think.

Mads: 17:20

It all comes from the top, always. I would think it all comes from the top Always, always comes from the top, which is why important like good leadership is so important and having the right people like sitting at the top Probably one of the best tricks for any manager to get or leader to get a quick boost amongst employees. Next time, just grab the mop, start mopping the floor. It doesn't even need to be dirty. Quick boost amongst employees. Next time, just grab the mop, start mopping the floor. It doesn't even need to be dirty, just have to see you mop the floor. They're like I'll fake that guy. He's telling you.

Nico: 17:55

That's a good point.

Mads: 17:58

Cleaning lady changed yesterday. You don't need to tell him.

Nico: 18:04

I would. I would kind of put a bucket next to it with some water because I thought I'd spill the infuriant. Yeah True.

Mads: 18:10

You shouldn't take it a little bit at least, but I think you did Totally, totally not.

Nico: 18:15

Definitely.

Mads: 18:18

Well, truly, truly is. I always remember like when, when management has done that, when I've seen it, like I, you, you, all of a of a sudden you're not, as opposed to when management says, go do X, because you're like, all right, that's fair enough, but they're doing it themselves, compared to well nobody. They think they're too good for it. And most people are going to understand you can't do it every time because you have a million other things to do, but but do it every, every once in a while, and just being down in trenches with your people actually seeing how things run is one of the most valuable play or one of the most valuable places to spend your time if you are a leader, is is down there and to see how things are actually going. Because every time like another link gets added on, like another part of the meeting gets lost, gets cut down, can bubble and enough steps, you're not going to get any of the original message. It's going to be completely different. We're speaking about all of us. Very much True.

Nico: 19:29

Very much. Yeah, so you have a. You have been a founder at some point. So what's your experience starting up your company? Is that something that you, you know, was like fluent and ongoing?

Mads: 19:45

Well, I've always been. There's been companies that I have started trying to get off the ground always started with somebody besides me. I'm not the person that goes out there and do the solo founding. I like the idea of you have a team of different individuals that focus on what that, the bit, what they are, the and you just have trust among each other. I've done that both times, both when I did content before and business consulting kind of a mix of a lot of things but also now, with AI is finding the people to actually work with you.

Mads: 20:23

I like that whole idea because on your off days you don't feel like it, the chances of you doing something a little more because somebody else is expecting it is a lot higher. Your chances of success generally become a lot higher, especially if you're like me. Then it's kind of a no-brainer just because it's more efficiency and it's more enjoyable. So you've got to keep doing it for longer and you're going to be able to do more. So that's one thing that I do truly believe in is very important Comes from catch them. You got to be able to communicate with your co-founders and have them be able to communicate all the difficult things. That's almost like. That's more difficult than like manage that. And communicating downwards is communicating across or upwards, at least my eyes Because you got to agree to some extent with whatever the person is saying and find some sort of agreement, because it's not your word, that just goes at the end of the day. Sometimes it's like you just have to do it, that's it.

Mads: 21:33

Because I said Exactly, but we can't do that sideways. Our doubt is going to work. But that's definitely been a challenge sometimes.

Nico: 21:47

Well, it's like a relationship. You know it's when you're married or have a relationship. You know you have to balance out things as well. You make decisions as well. And you're not the only one in the relationship.

Mads: 21:56

It's basically comes down to that. What do you think? I like that idea. Okay, we do it.

Nico: 22:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't have that problem. I don't have any partners in my business. So I do have a lot of people that work for me remotely and so on, but I don't have any partners. So it's fun, I decide and that's what we do.

Mads: 22:18

What is it?

Nico: 22:19

And then I go into a company, do some consulting. I'm like, okay, so we have how many leaders that's going to take a long time before they decide. Nothing's going to happen A different story. So what businesses are we talking about here? What's your core business?

Mads: 22:37

The core business at the moment is an AI agency called Intersect AI, where we help businesses to build different automations.

Mads: 22:45

We have a few pre-built ones foundation, social media content planners but the real goal is really to get to the point where we can build our own language model, large language model, made for business, for businesses' mind. If the consumer wants it, sure go ahead, but it's really created for the business and not a mass market type of thing as all the other ones at the moment are. And really Mitch should now be specific. Also, protect yourself in the future. You never know. Like, once subsidies, that kind of stuff runs out, what is actually going to be the real price of the different tools. We don't know. I like being in control and having some sort of control over it, because it's just so stressful Not being completely out of control Not a funny thing. I prefer things go wrong. I can do something to fix them compared to well, that sucks. What are we going to do now?

Nico: 23:48

I started up on PC a couple of hours back to check and it was windows 10. And suddenly you get this up. You know this mentioning support is ending, blah, blah, blah. And it's like. You know, you used to have a pc that you could run for years and nobody would complain. You would get your updates, and these days, so once that ends, what are you up to? You need to buy another pc because those pieces don't don't.

Nico: 24:10

It's the port for windows 11 or whatever they're finding I'm going to invent in the future, but it's kind of the same thing, isn't it? It's the same thing with ai. I use ai a lot, you know. It's part of my team. Basically, I've got automations running and everything, and, and I love, for instance, 11 labs. It's one of those systems where you use your own voice and it replicates it and so on, but it's one of the only ones that's out there. That's really good In essence. There are others, of course, but what? What happens when they, you know, jack up the price like double? I'm okay, crap. What am I going to do now? You know you have to have the money at that point and then you're right.

Mads: 24:50

You know, finding out and building your own story there is a good move. Well, if you really want to sell the company for something, you can't go to investors and say we built in this system and this system and this. You just can't follow. If you want to ever exit at a good number, you need to have the, at least have the groundwork infrastructure, and then you can use different things to go and plug in and support, but it's gotta be in-house all of it. Also, seeing the, there's a very big profit margin differences when it comes to, for example, some of the tools we have built using just an automation platform, but completely in-house it's higher. There's definitely a big difference compared to when you'd have to pay somebody else for pre-built service and then you build whatever you want in there. Stig Brodersen, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that as well.

Nico: 25:39

You know the monthly cost is exceeding some points where I'm like, okay, let's make this a strategic decision of how many times we use it and so on. And in the end, you know it's the same thing. I find it very funny where I call them the golden shuffle sellers. There's all these guys out there who are explaining to you how to use AI or how to use social media or whatever, and at some point there is a part of it. Like, for instance, for social media, if you've got three months of content, you can recycle that. You don't have to do it again. It's the same with AI.

Nico: 26:15

If you make an image, it's your unique image that you created with your prompt and you can reuse that, and they're always trying to get you to do new things. It's the same thing with this podcast. I keep on doing the same thing over and over again, talking to people about the specific subject, and in the end we always go somewhere else and come back to the subject. That's half the fun of it. But yeah, if you keep following those shovel sellers, you're going to be out of a lot of money and not a lot of customers. You're going to have a lot of going to be out of a lot of money and not a lot of customers. You know you're going to have a lot of customers.

Mads: 26:49

You have to be really you know, mindful of it and better for sure. And actually, when it comes to repurposing content, sometimes you can just when when repurposing, just just repost it. Three months later it's a day stand, it's oh, I kind of know this. Yeah, I've and links, and then half of the time the post does 10 times especially when I read topics copy paste, save image, upload image. Here you go, done three months and so and then like wait, wait, wait. Why did you do sent times? I don't understand All that.

Nico: 27:29

Logic says it should be, but just yeah, you have to find your own sense. So, Mads, what's one message that you want to bring out into the world?

Mads: 27:41

Just try, just try. It shouldn't be that, like all the what-ifs, obstacles, you think, oh, this is going to be so hard, like that. Shouldn't view that as like war. Start viewing it like it's speed bumps along the journey, and you can't go along with any journey without those. But it's not a war unless you get it in your head. It's actually a wall. So just start, try and then most of it is going to figure it out. You're going to find out what is actually the real challenge and what's not. Sometimes those walls in our head are not even bumps, and then the real bumps come, why you really feel it. You never would imagine that one. So that's what I want to leave everybody with. That's been listening to us today.

Nico: 28:34

Great, great this is great stuff there. Thanks so much for your time, mads, and where can people find you and how do they contact you?

Mads: 28:42

well, they can find the AI agency at intersectai, and the best place to find me is either going to be on LinkedIn, massprimerresult. I'll probably have that name spelled somewhere in the title or description, because no way in hell people are going to sell it. For what?

Mads: 29:00

I just said. They'll be like wait, hold up a second. I had the same on Instagram. It might be just MassResult. So, first and last, in most places I'm the only one with that name, so it shouldn't be too hard. If you just find it, I'm on most platforms and the business library. If you want to check out Nico's episode, I did with him Great interview. We had a great conversation, a little bit about nuclear reactors, but not too much, as he is going to talk to me Can't do that, not surprised.

Nico: 29:35

We mentioned it.

Mads: 29:36

Can you? We're going to, but yeah, we can't go into too much detail. I appreciate that I still haven't had the Belgian police knocking on my door, so it looks like it went over pretty well, exactly.

Nico: 29:52

By the way, I need to call somebody.

Mads: 29:59

I appreciate you inviting me on here as well. It's been a good 30 minutes, a fun 30 minutes.

Nico: 30:04

Indeed. Thanks so much, matt, thanks for your time and listeners. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. Remember, share it with at least three people in your network so that we can grow organically, instead of all the other ways that are just worth mentioning. Have a great one everybody. Bye-bye.