The Heavy Cost Of Choosing Corporate Success Over Your Passion.

Welcome back to Mork Unfiltered, folks. Today’s conversation is a masterclass in what it really takes to build a high-flying, global career in high-stakes, high-pressure environments—and more importantly, the brutal trade-offs and decisions behind that journey.

My guest today is Brazilian Renato Goebel. He’s a heavyweight global business leader, the former commercial head at Braskem, country manager at Odebrecht, and someone who has lived and operated across the trenches in Brazil, China, Singapore, and beyond. But what makes Renato so fascinating isn't just the titles on his resume. It’s the sheer audacity of the choices he made along the way, and the personal cost that came with them.

We dive deep into how he made the agonizing decision to walk away from the Brazilian national volleyball team to pursue engineering , the psychology of "sleeping with your problems" to beat career fear , and what it was actually like to uproot his family and spend nine years in Shanghai opening operations from scratch. If you are feeling stuck in your career comfort zone, this episode is the wake-up call you've been waiting for.

If this conversation resonates with you, make sure to subscribe to the show, drop us a like, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Let's get unfiltered.

Chapters:

[00:00] Intro: The Cost of a High-Stakes Career
[01:27] Leaving the National Team: The Death of a Dream
[03:20] How Elite Sports Wire Your Brain for Business
[08:25] The Career Pivot: Defying the Fear of Starting Over
[16:33] "We Have China For You": Sinking or Swimming in Shanghai
[25:31] Cultural Warfare: Navigating Asian Business Dinners
[28:39] The Hidden Strain: Raising Kids 30 Hours from Home
[36:38] Why Company Culture is Your Ultimate Corporate Backbone
[38:47] Becoming CEO of Odebrecht China: Overcoming Paralyzing Fear
[42:37] Redefining Success: Why Being a CEO is No Longer the Goal
[44:35] Lightning Round: Superpowers and One-Sentence Advice

#GlobalCareer #ExecutiveMindset #CareerPivot #BusinessResilience #DoingBusinessInChina #CompanyCulture #MorkUnfiltered

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I played volleyball my whole life. I had to stop playing volleyball and go finish a mechanic engineer.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

So you made a like significant career change.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Sometimes people look at that and say, oh, that's so nice. They don't see the bad part of that. I mean, life is all about trade-off.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

So there's a lot of marriages that uh that that don't make it through that. The first reaction was like, what China? Why do people have to pay attention to culture?

SPEAKER_00 0:24

People collaboration is essential, it's the backbone of a company.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

When you look back on it now, do you ever have any regrets? Welcome back to Mork Unfiltered Folks. Today's conversation is about what it really takes to build a global career in high-stakes, high-pressure environments, and more importantly, the decisions behind that journey. My guest today is Brazilian Renato Goebbel, a global business leader, former commercial head at Braskin, country manager at Odebrecht, and someone who's lived and operated across many countries: Brazil, China, Singapore, and beyond. But what makes Renato interesting isn't just the titles, it's the choices behind them. And what those decisions cost along the way. This is another episode of Mork Unfiltered, and this is Renato Google. Renato, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Thanks, Patrick. Very nice to be here with you guys. I hope I can share my experience, my background, and congratulations for your programs. Always interesting, always good conversation, and always good insight we have from those conversations you're putting online.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You know, we we try our hardest to keep it interesting and always have interesting and fascinating guests on the show. So uh we really appreciate you being here. As we start off today, you know, I'm always intrigued about people's origins, you know, the story of who they are before the career. So tell us a little bit more about you know where you grew up and what shaped you, family influences, and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I'm uh I'm natural from Brazil, uh in Sao Paulo State, the countryside of Sao Paulo State. The name of the city, not that easy to say, is Araraquara in Portuguese. It's a tiny city in the countryside. But I grew up in Sao Paulo, where I I love sports, so I I played volleyball my whole life. I managed to play for the Brazilian national team up to the junior uh age. I play uh universidades in Japan, Fukuoka, representing uh Brazil. But uh I was studying chemical engineer at that point, so I had to decide where I was going to, right? And I decided to go with my technical career. So I I stopped playing volleyball and I finished my chemical engineer in Brazil, Sao Paulo. That's that's where I grew up.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Playing volleyball at such a high level and playing for the Brazilian national team. I mean, I I lived in Brazil a brief year, and I remember, you know, short of football, I mean, br volleyball is a big deal in Brazil. How did you make that decision and and how difficult was it to make that decision to quit volleyball?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Volleyball. At that time, I was playing. Brazil was number one in the award, so we basically changed the volleyball in the awards. And at that time, the decision to stop and pursue my technical engineering after became a commercial procurement career, I can say was the one of the first biggest decisions I had to take. Very difficult decision. But I mean, life is all about trade-offs. So you have to put in the balance. If you go to one side or another, what do you get? A benefit and uh not not as a benefit. So that was, I can tell you, was one of the first big decisions I had in my life. I had to stop playing volleyball and go finish mechanical engineering.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

What what was the toughest part of making that decision for you?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Playing volleyball was something that I was good at. I I knew already uh the team, uh all the friends I had in my life came from volleyball. So I knew everyone, I know I knew what I had to do. I I knew I had a professional career ahead, but at the same time, it was a limit career because of this high-level sport, right? You cannot play for such a long time. Uh, you go all the way up to, I don't know, maybe 30 years old, and then you have to do something else, right? So I saw uh a longer and more beneficial career on the professional side, on the engineer side. So that was basically what made me decide to stop with the volleyball and pursue my professional career in in uh engineer and with the in the with the teams, the industries.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

When you look back on it now, do you ever have any regrets?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, that's that's a tough question. The decision you you take it, you have an impact for the rest of your life. So, for example, I came back to Brazil uh five years ago. I had the option to go to Europe. I still today look back. If I had I decided to go to Europe, how would I be? You have to have all the best information you have you can have to take your decision. Once the decision is taken, it's taken. I think you cannot imagine how your life would be if I had been playing volleyball, for example. How would the life be? It's it's impossible to know, right? But it's after decision is taken, decision is taken. I think it's difficult to look back.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

But you then so you decided to pursue this career in procurement, and it started really with getting your degree in chemical engineering. Why chemical engineering?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I always at the school, right? I was really good at this mathematics, physics. I decided by engineer because I'm a logical person, I like numbers. Also, because of the options you have after you finish your engineer course. You need to work as an engineer itself, right? You can go for financial market or commercial, whatever, right? That's why I decided for engineering. The second decision was chemical or electrical, civil. I decided by chemical engineer because actually I liked that when I was at school. It's not so common, right, to have someone that likes the chemicals. So I decided by chemical engineer. So that's another decision, right? I worked as like two, three years as a as an engineer in uh Unilever, as a process engineer and in a food company. And and after some years there, I said, no, it's not engineering is not for me. I'm more like a relationship guy, negotiation. So I moved to the procurement commercial area like two, three years after.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

How did you figure that out? Because again, going from you know, being more on the on the engineering side, you know, particularly starting at a company like Unilever, how did you come to that conclusion? What led you down the path of getting into procurement and negotiation?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

When you are on uh engineering, right, you have all your routine, right? You have like a time to arrive, you have the problems around along the day, you have to solve. When I play volleyball, you have this practice, you're training every day. So I would like to have a little bit more excitement, talking to people, negotiation, learn more, travel. That's how it started my interest uh outside of Brazil, right? Somewhere else, negotiate with someone else. So then I decided to leave the technical part, right? The engineer and move to procurement. At that point, Inbraer, the aircraft uh manufacturer in Brazil, they were looking for engineering to go to the supply chain area, to procurement area. It was perfect for what I was looking for. It was like international company, international negotiations, and you still have the technical part of it with equipment and I said, okay, so let's give it a try. That's how I left to Neliver, which was a great company, to join a different world. You go to a different company, different business, different area. You're gonna work as a procurement supply chain where I had no idea what I had to do, but that's the beauty of it. What are you going to do next? It needs to be a challenge, right? We need challenges in our life.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Tell me a little bit more about that. Because you did something interesting. You went from Unilever, right, which is CPG, to MBIED, which is like airplane manufacturing assembly. You went from chemical engineer to procurement. So you made a like significant career change. Why was it so important for you to take on this challenge first? And then second, how did you go about doing that? Because most people, you know, you tell them to change companies, it's one thing, right? You tell them to change careers, it's another thing. You tell them to change careers and companies, most people go crazy. Why was kind of taking on that challenge so important for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

We are driven by challenges in our career, right? We need something new that that brings you like this fear of how am I going to do that? And I was looking for something new at that time. And when you look at this procurement supply chain role, okay, it was an embraer. But the procurement role, negotiation, buying, logistics, all the companies they need someone like this. So that that was in my mind at that time. So listen, okay, I'll go to Embraer. But if I don't like Embraer and I like procurement supply chain, I can go to other companies. Open paper, metals, mining. It kind of opened a different market for me, a wider market than being on my when I was as a chemical engineer for any liver. I learned a lot as well. It's not it's not that I I didn't like it, but I want something else. I want a new challenge. Having this challenge, it could open other doors as well. So that was the plan. Go to Embraer, a new area, new company, new knowledge, new challenges. But this will definitely open new doors for me in the future, right? So I'll have more flexibility to decide on my career next steps. And Embraer was in a different city as well, from Sao Paulo. There was the time when I also left home. In Brazil, you go to university, you stay in your parents' home usually. And then uh was a big, big change at that time for my life. So I left, I left home, new company, new challenges, new role. When I look back, it was a very good decision. I like that. It's a part of my career. That's where it started.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

And then you spent the next 10 years or more in procurement, right? You spent a significant amount of time across multiple companies. You went to both Aront and Metals, probably, I guess, around the about around metals, uh pulp paper, cement chemicals, all that kind of stuff. Then you went to the international division. Tell us about that because you then made a huge change. You change companies, you spend three years in this company, and then you go to Shanghai, China. Where did that come from? Why leave and go to China?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah, it's amazing, right? That was an amazing experience as well. You know what? I think we all need a plan. You need to build your plan like the Chinese do the five years plan, ten years plan. You must have that in your life. You know, you know that your plan will never happen as you wish, but you need to have this as a guideline. When I joined the procurement team in Embraer, right? My plan was to open doors in different companies to have new challenges. And it's amazing, right? When you when you really want something and you work hard for that, the universe helps you to make the help uh happen. After Imbra, I moved to a pulp and paper company, also the procurement side. And after the pulp and paper, I went to the mining company, metal and mining, Votoranchin, like you mentioned, which is uh a big company here in South America. I was the supply manager, procurement manager. And Votorantim had other different uh business units as well, like uh cement, pulp and paper as well, uh orange juice, very diversified group. And they were planning to have this unit, the operation in China, to support the whole group. And at that time in Votorantim Metals, we were expanding outside of Brazil. So I helped Votorantim do a due diligence in Colombia, where we acquire a steel mill, in Peru, where we acquire a zinc unit in Guatemala. So I decided to say, Alistair, it's time to move out of Brazil in my career. That was my plan. I was uh single at the time, I had my my girlfriend, but was single. I want to have an experience outside of Brazil. And then in Brazil, it's always about US or Europe, right? When you have this kind of plan. I remember I was talking to my boss. I said, I wanna live outside of Brazil for some time, gain an international experience. And after a couple of months, he came, he came back and said, Okay, we have China for you. And the first reaction was like, What? China? Who wants to go to China? That was not what I was looking for. But then when you, my old boss would say, you need to sleep with your problem first, right? So I told him, Let me sleep with the problems for some time, and then I come back to you. So after thinking about it, I realized China was the best option. I was on the procurement side buying the logistics, and China at that time was the manufacturer of the world, right? Everyone was trying to buy something from China 2006-07. So I said, Yeah, that's that's the best option I could have, actually. Forget about the US and Europe. That's where the world is happening. I accept the offer. I got married with my wife. I'm still married with her, Luciana. She loved the idea to move to China. She quit her job, and we moved to Shanghai to start the business. So we had to open the office, hire the Chinese people to support me. And I lived in China for nine years.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

The culture in China, the way people work, obviously the language is so different. What was the toughest thing about moving to and living and doing business in China?

SPEAKER_00 13:11

It's a completely different culture. The language barrier, of course, was there. But on the positive side, we are really familiar with each other. I mean, the Chinese people and the Latin people, Latin America people, mainly the Brazilian, we are kind of similar actually. Like we like interactions, we are driven by emotions, so we like to talk to each other. It's very different from a negotiation with an European or an American guy, for example. They don't want to know about you, they want to sit and negotiate with you, which is fine, by the way, just different styles. But in China, in Asia, right? In Asia, there is really relationship-driven. They want to know, they want to know about you, they wanna talk about your family, they want to go out for dinner and talk about sports and traveling, and then you negotiate. Brazilians, we are quite similar. Before a meeting really starts in Brazil, they have like five, ten minutes talking about whatever football, soccer, the house, the coffee. So that was a surprise part of being in China. The behavior was quite similar than we used to have here in Brazil. We used to have a lot of challenges with uh with uh with the language barrier and way of uh communicating. On a daily life, for example, nobody speaks English at that time, right? Nobody speaks English was not that easy, but this challenge was so different from what myself and my wife were expecting that was actually good. It was really interesting for us. My wife just loved China, she started studying Mandarin, so she fell in love with this with this uh culture. The challenge was so difficult that actually helped us to adjust to the country. On the negotiation side, yes, it was a bit tough because they don't usually say no, even if they will not do it. They'll try to find a way to make it happen, but never know if it's really gonna happen, which in Brazil we have something like this as well. So it was a good learning process we had over there.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

What was the hardest moment of those nine years in China? I mean, when you look back on that experience, a deal maybe that fell through, pressure on your marriage, not being close to friends and family. What was the toughest moment you went through in China?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

From Brazil to China, it's a long way back home, right? So that's a very very tough as well. You you kind of get isolated from your world, right? From your family, right? No personal life. You have like a couple of hours in a day to talk to your family. They are basically 30 hours away, 25, 30 hours flying to see them again. So it's it's not easy. You're quite isolated from your family and friends. That's one issue you have being on the other side of the world. But at the same time, these kinds of put your family closer, right? Because you have to have you be you stay closer, help each other, right? So I have uh two kids. They were born in China, Felipe and Leticia. Both they were born in China. We kind of get closer to each other because we are quite isolated over there, right? We have friends, of course, Brazilian friends, other nationalities, Chinese friends, but it's different, it's on your family, right? It's tough. You need to have a good resilience to live there, far away from your hometown. My wife used to say, let's move somewhere that you just need one flight. It doesn't matter if the flight is eight hours or 14 hours flight, it's just one flight. You go into the flight and you arrive in your home. But we got used to that. It was good for the family, I might say, got close because of that. On the business side, headquarters was in Brazil. The bad part is that you're isolated as well. You spend your whole business day by yourself. All the decisions is up to you because they are sleeping, they are 11 hours uh behind. So that makes things really more difficult, right? You have to talk to the to the guys in headquarter during your early morning or night to align what's happening, and then it's up to you the next day what you're gonna do. But this this helped me to build up my entrepreneurship. You have to make it happen. That's why we love challenges, right? You're gonna have feel some pain at some point, but this will bring something better for you. You learn with this and you develop some skills we start using. You have to solve the problem by yourself. People are waiting for the results, they need some good numbers, so you have to make it happen by yourself, right? Oh there's always a pro and con, right? Pros and cons. You have to know how to use them, uh for you.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, you know, I I lived abroad many, many years. You know, my uh my ex-wife was Chilean, and uh and we lived in Spain, we lived in England, we live in Silicon Valley, and uh it was very hard for her, particularly the last few years being away from Chile, being away from her family, it it really took a toll on her, it took a toll on our marriage. Eventually, absolutely in 2015, you know, we ended up separating, and she eventually in 2018 decided to move back to Chile. So there's a lot of marriages that don't make it through that. The pressure of being so far away from family, particularly with small kids, not having help. How did you navigate that and what did you do to keep your marriage together?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

That's true. You all you also lived in different countries, you know, how good and how difficult it can be, right? Sometimes people look at that and say, Oh, that's so nice, but they don't see the the bad part of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

And and you're and I I didn't live in China where I didn't speak the language. I mean, I lived in Brazil or Latin America or Mexico, I spoke the language, but China, I mean, did you speak Chinese?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah, we we learned Chinese, the survival Chinese. I cannot negotiate in Chinese, but yeah, getting a taxi, go to a bar, ordering food, talking about sports, it's a survival, yes. And that also helped the marriage, I think. Because my wife, she went to school, she studied Mandarin, and then she studied the fen shui, where there's energy, the balance in the house. So she kind of felt in love with the culture. So she liked to live in China. You have to understand the country you're living in, that will help a lot. So, why do they always love to do business in a dinner table and not in a meeting room, right? There's always something behind, and then it's good for you to learn why is that happening, right? What's the culture of the country that drives people to do that? It helps you a lot. And my wife kind of loved this, and that helped a lot to be in China with her, and then she was not complaining. With the two kids, you are right. Without help from the family, it was a really difficult time. We thought about going back home because it's a lot of energy, right? To have to put in there, and then you were working, right? To travel, you are outside of your home, and she's at home with two kids and our helper that doesn't speak English. But she was great, she loves China, she can't speak Mandarin, so she loved that, and also the good part of this as well. Like always telling you all this challenge is always a challenge, and a good part of it, the pros and cons. The culture, I think I can bring that to companies as well. I think it's that's so important, a company culture, and sometimes the companies they don't really pay attention to that. So I work for like maybe five or six six companies with different cultures, and you see why one of them is like so successful, the other was not so successful. It's all about company culture, man. It's really, really important. Doing this relation, connection with a country culture, with a company uh culture is really important for me.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Why is company culture so important? Especially in today's day and age, artificial intelligence and so many things happening. Why do people have to pay attention to culture?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I think it's not the back, it's the company's backbone. You have to pay attention for that to have like good people in the company, committed with the goal. It all passes through this culture of the company, right? The people need to help each other. Nowadays, look at where we're living right now. We have this war in uh Iran, before in Ukraine, then you have this terrorist war for count before you have the COVID times. It's a mess where you're living, right? People collaboration is essential forever, whatever you want to do. And the company of the company, with having this collaboration, the artificial intelligence coming to the company as well, the daily lives. We need to live with this new world, right? The collaboration is really important, the commitment of the people is really important that and it's all part of the company, so it's the backbone. So they need to look at this. And some people companies they don't pay attention as they should for that.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

They go only for the numbers, and that's it. How does that change when you become uh CEO or general manager? So you're in China, you build the supply engine uh operation, but then you eventually make the switch, you move and you go to Oderbrecht in China, and you become CEO of Oderbrecht China. How did that happen? And what responsibility do you think you have as CEO to drive the culture of the company?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

That was a big opportunity for me. I was in Votoranchin, I loved Votoranchin company, uh the culture itself, but that position for Odebrecht, Oderbrecht was a big conglomeration in Brazil, famous for EPC contracts, but they also. Have uh other business units like petrochemicals, sugar, and alcohol. So it was a big role. It was like us to be the CPO for them, the the chief procurement officer in China. So it's a lot of opportunities, a lot of business. So it's a different level of business, a different size of the office. So it was a new experience. Again, the challenge, right? Remember, challenge for me is everything. When you are afraid of the challenge, that's where you should go, man. I was afraid of that being too big challenge for me, but it was great after all.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

How did you get over that fear? You said I was afraid of that challenge, and you seem to indicate that it's when you're afraid of a challenge that you have to do it. What did you do with that situation? And what do you do in general to overcome your fear when you see something that's really difficult and challenging?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah, that's uh the sleep with the problem that I mentioned as well. That's part of my life. Sleep with a problem, see the challenge. You are afraid of the challenge, it's a big challenge. You don't know how to do it, you don't know how to overcome that. And you know it's a big company with high expectation, right? So you need to trust yourself. People are better than they judge themselves. They can always deliver more than they think they could deliver. So you need to trust yourself. That's what I was thinking about. And again, the long-term plan, right? Medium, long-term plan. And for my career, that was part of the plan. When you are comfortable in one position, when you're already not learning a lot at that position, it's time to change. I was with Dr. Anchin already in that position for kind of uh maybe five years. It was time to change. When you are afraid of doing something, you should do. You should go for it.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Who gives you support in in times like that? What does your support network look like? Who do you lean on for support in times like that?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

That's a very good point, uh, Patrick. My wife plays a big role over there, mainly being in China alone. Because when I was back in Brazil, the families around you, my brother, my my father and mother, my friend. So you can talk, exchange ideas with them. It helps you a lot when you talk to people. Network is really important. Till today. I just recently moved as well. I'm in a new challenge where I'm really afraid, to be honest. And my wife also supports it. No, go for it. It's time to change again. I'm in Brazil, I'm still in Brazil in Sao Paulo. I just started this Monday in a new challenge.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

On the next episode, you'll have to tell us what this new challenge is. Has your definition of success and what matters? Has that changed over time now as you've gotten older?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

I think as you get mature, you value different things in your life. When you are like a freshman, you want success. Depends from person to person, right? You have to grow in your career, you have to become like a CEO, you have to grow in your like be manager, director, VP, and CEO. And I don't agree with that anymore at all. Mainly nowadays, the world that we live in, where we have all these challenges outside and the artificial intelligence supporting us everywhere. I think you need to be happy. That's that's a success. You need to be good with yourself, you need to be happy, you need to look around, have your friends, do whatever you like to do, have your hobbies, go to work and do what you like. You don't need to be the CEO, don't even be the director or whatever. You just need to spend the time in a place where you like what you do. That's uh successful for me.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Renato, as we wind down the episode, we always have three very quick lightning round questions before we close out. The first question, which I ask everybody on the show, is if you could have one superpower, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

I would like to have a power of influence. I would like to influence people. It would be great to influence people for a better world.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Absolutely. Okay, question number two. If you could have dinner with anyone in history, alive or dead, who would you choose?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

All the way back there, uh, to this great musicians like Moser, Beethoven. These guys were genius at that time. So it would be so interesting to learn from them how old he was at that time, man.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

And lastly, if you could advise a young person in one sentence on how to build resilience, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Planning.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Have your plan, have your plan and learn from the mistakes. And that's it. Fantastic. Renato, thank you so much for sharing with us uh not just your journey, but the decisions and the lessons behind it. That's where the real value is. A fascinating career all over the world, from Brazil to China to Singapore, back to Brazil, starting as an engineer, moving into procurement, going into general management, and now, of course, you're on to a new venture, which you'll have to tell us uh about next time. And to everyone who has been listening today, if this conversation resonated with you, if you've got something out of it, make sure to subscribe to the show, drop us a like, tell us what you most were impacted by on the episode, and of course, share it with somebody who needs to hear it. This has been another episode of Morgue Unfiltered. This has been an episode with our good friend Renato Goebbell from Brazil. Thank you so much, and we will see you next time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Thank you very much, Patrick. It was a pleasure to have uh to be here with you guys.