Episode 300 And Trust

Joeri 0:00

I gave a TEDx talk recently here in Lisbon and it was about trust. And we are in the world today where so many things can be generated to reI can be automated. It's important to have human connections and meet people in real life to build these things. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Web3 CMS Toys podcast. My name is Joeri Billast, I'm your podcast host, and today it's a very special episode. It's episode 300 of my podcast. And today I'm here at the Blue Panda offices with Jo, the president of the CC LBL. Hey Jo, how are you?

Jo 0:37

Hey Joeri, everything is going super. It's my second time with you on a podcast, so super excited to see what's coming for the rest.

Investing In Young Talent

Joeri 0:50

Jo was on my podcast. Actually, also a special episode. We were at the website boot with people around. Today it's a bit less crowded, too. Just a little bit. It was actually Jo's idea. But to give an opportunity to have young professionals on the podcast to give them a voice on this episode. As you know, I've been having a lot of senior professionals, people from around the world on the podcast. And I said, why not follow your idea and make a special episode? We will be talking to a few young interns at CCLBL, the Chamber of Commerce for Portugal, Luxembourg and Belgium, here in Portugal, is the president. So, you to start with, explain a bit to our audience why the CCLBL is investing in young talents and in internships.

Jo 1:40

Maybe I should start with saying that everybody is a senior in something, right? And also the new generation is a senior in whatever is coming and what we as an older generation don't understand yet fully. And that's why it's a big part of growing the new generation of leaders, growing the new generation of business people, or non-business people, also fine, of course. And giving them a chance to experience the multi-international and international environment with a lot of organizations connected to that. And also having a look into what's happening with diplomacy, how embassies work, and how does inter-country relations work. So, yeah, I think it's a simple question that we need to focus on helping building the new generation. One thing is supporting the current generation, but also we need to think about the future and we need to think about the younger people coming forward.

Joeri 2:35

Thinking about the future is also, you know, being ready with everything that happens around AI these days. We already discussed this when you were at my podcast at a web summit. But what is your vision? How is AI changing expectations around work?

Jo 2:51

Yeah. I would like to maybe touch to the topic of reverse mentoring first. I think it's related to it. Something that happens already for a long time, where you take a younger generation, put them together with a senior team to see what is going on today in the market in the new world. I think that uh especially the new generation coming out of school right now is building up their life with AI and have a specific view on this without having the whole legacy behind them of the traditional technology. So I'm actually quite excited to see what they will make of this in the future, and it's our job to guide them a bit. Uh, where I'm worried about, of what I'm worried about, is mainly the fact that they do not have the traditional education as well, and that we need to see how this will evolve over time in the structural thinking versus the more creative and abundance thinking today. So that's where I see AI coming in. Yeah.

Joeri 3:47

Thank you, Yo. One of the reasons I joined CCL Ballery is the networking and the community. But from your point of view as a president, tell us about the importance of networking and about community.

Jo 4:00

Yeah, I think it's becoming even more and more important at this point in time. Human connections are reducing a lot in the current world. But you still see that without the human connection, you don't get to the results that you really want. To look at AI, you can do things really quickly with AI, but they're not adapted, they're not humanified. That's something that with networking and connections are still covered. So we focus really on bringing the human connection together and then the IT, the tech behind it, or the solutions behind it to become more efficient.

Interns On Why Portugal

Joeri 4:34

Actually, I gave a TEDx talk recently here in Lisbon, and it was about trust. And in the world today where so many things can be generated to reI can be automated, it's important to have human connections and meet people in real life to build this trust. So thank you so much for introducing this episode. And we will now give the floor to the interns. Thank you, Joeri. Hi Emma. Hi Jenne, how are you doing?

Emma 5:01

I'm doing great. How are you?

Joeri 5:03

I'm good. Are you Jenne? I'm also doing first time on the podcast, I imagine. Maybe do you guys make content for social media yourself, or are you just, you know, liking, engaging with all?

Emma 5:16

Sometimes I post something on Instagram, but not too much.

Jenne 5:20

Do you I post some LinkedIn posts, but further-wise, not business-wise, I don't have any other posts.

Joeri 5:27

Also, some video content, like maybe TikTok or not?

Emma 5:31

Sometimes it's friends or something.

Joeri 5:33

Okay, great. So, as I announced, we are here today making a podcast episode around your internship at CCLBL. Let me just introduce you a little bit. So, guys, today we have here Emma, and we have Jenne. Emma Powell, 19 years old, living in Antwerp, Belgium, and you are studying your second year of international entrepreneurship. And during your internship, you are conducting research in markets in Luxembourg and Portugal as well. And then Jenne, 20 years old, international business student at Carl de Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Antwerp, a passion for entrepreneurship, which sparked during a small business project, building a business from scratch. Actually, I did that too when I was studying. It's a quite good experience. And also, you have some valuable experience at Kinnepolis managing the box office and supporting major B2B events, and currently also at CCLBL. Emma, I will start with you. Tell me what originally attracted you to doing international internship through CCLBL in Portugal?

Emma 6:47

Yes, so the first of all business environments because it's three other countries also, and also gaining experience in abroad, also for personal development, and doing because CCLB is CCLBL is doing business in three countries. You meet a lot of uh uh other companies, and it's not like in one company, but more companies and other new experience.

Joeri 7:17

Okay, so for the experience, and how long are you at this moment doing this internship?

Emma 7:24

Till next week. Till next week.

Joeri 7:26

So you already have a bag full of experience from those three months. And so, what surprised you most when working around entrepreneurs, the business leaders, and an international business community?

Emma 7:39

What surprised me most was um that a lot of entrepreneurs on the end were really open and also wanted to make contact with you, also when you're very young. They were um really open to talk with you and share experience. Also, um the events were a lot of people and um a lot of shared experience.

Gen Z Work Values

Joeri 8:06

Yeah, a lot of context, a lot of good energy, yes, which I love about networking. Jenne I have a question for you. Do young professionals look more for flexibility, purpose, community compared to previous generations?

Jenne 8:23

I actually think they do because I think the previous generations were more looking for a stable paycheck rather than a good connection with the company. And I have the feeling that our generation is also, of course, looking for a stable paycheck, but they also want a connection with the company where they can feel themselves like they are at home at the office. So I think that's a big difference between our generation and the previous generation.

AI Tools With Real Tradeoffs

Joeri 8:52

Do you feel that is there's less spit? You say feel at home at work. So is the frontier between work and private life a bit blurry, you would say, or do you, as a young generation, really say, okay, this is my work and this is I think when you compare it to the previous generations, there was a big phenomenon called the 9 to 5 jobs, and I think now it changed a bit to flexibility, and that our generation wants to have a good work-life balance, and I think that's a big difference between our generation and uh previous generation. Okay. I already spoke about AI with Iowa, the president, and I also want to ask you the question: AI is changing the workplace very quickly. How are people from your generation already using AI, maybe in your studies, in your work, in your daily life?

Emma 9:48

I think that AI is more improved as normal today. A lot of people use it rather than thinking it's something new. A lot of students use it to make assignments or summarize text or explanations about things. And at work, I think a lot of people use it for efficiency. So things get faster than like sending an email or transcriptions that you can do now. And in normal life, a lot of people use it for unnecessary things, like just a question you can ask to Google instead of AI because it's not very good for the environment. But yeah, that's something I think people are gonna work on, and in the future it will maybe go away.

Joeri 10:39

You mentioned the environment. Is that something that your generation is more worried about?

Emma 10:44

Yeah, I think a lot of people, yeah, like waste and all this stuff, you just put it in the bin that you need to put it in. Because I think AI, not a lot of people think about how much it affects, but it also has like positive waves and also the technologies.

Joeri 11:03

How did you use AI during your internship if you used it at all?

Emma 11:07

Um I discovered the new AI, the Notebook LM. Okay. Because I didn't know that it existed. And because first I was uh searching articles just on the internet, and then you told me I could just use Notebook LM. So you can just type in a question and you get like a lot of articles that you can use, and if you don't want them, they can just disappear. So it's a very, very good website.

Joeri 11:33

And for you, Yana, was there a tool that you have been using during your internship, or maybe what is your favorite AI tool?

Jenne 11:41

I also like the notebook LM tool because you can choose which sources you can use, because it gives you a couple of sources and you can decide which source you want to use, and that's also a nice way to discover the sources, because I think finding a source on Google is much harder than picking an AI-generated source. Of course, you have to be down to earth and you need to verify if if the source is still a valid source, but I think for finding sources, notebook LM is very useful. Yes.

Digital Networking And Future Skills

Joeri 12:15

So I mentioned in the beginning this is episode 300 of the podcast. I have recently published a new book called The Future CMO. Okay, and one of the tools I used to get value out of all my podcast episodes was Google Notebook LM. Because, of course, you mentioned transcripts. It can take all the transcripts, it can take all the knowledge from all my guests, and then based on my own point of view, I could use what they explained to me in the podcast as examples for my own book. So, yeah, Google Notebook LM is definitely one of the AI tools to try out. So, Jenne, CCLBL stands for networking communities. You mentioned it too. How important are online communities, digital networking and global connections for your generation?

Jenne 13:09

I wouldn't say it's important for us because it's normal for us because we grew up in an online environment. So that's why we are used to it. So yeah, we cannot live without it. And I think online networking gives possibilities for more introvert or shy people to also make connections with people because often when you are at networking events, the loudest person wins the room. And if you have online networking, you also have a place for more shy or introvert people, so I think that it has a big advantage at that part, and also the other part that I like about online networking is here in Lisbon, I can make connections on my PC with people from China, for example. It it doesn't like brings you into a border because you can network with the whole of the world, and I think digital networking is the future.

Joeri 14:13

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For me, networking communities, I mean marketing, but communities is really important that you're not always talking to an audience, just you know, speaking, talking, but that you have conversations which can go on in communities. My main podcast sponsor Rio is Japanese, actually. We are in Japan. You mentioned China, and they just launched an online community where actually people from all over the world, I don't know if you you guys are into crypto, but they have a community around that payments through crypto, but also a whole mall, online mall that they have, even stablecoin. If you heard about that, they build a community around that just to bring it to the masses that your grandmother can understand it. What skills actually do you believe that will be the most valuable the next five years?

Jenne 15:04

It's AI that is evolving. I think because AI is changing the road so fast that adaptability is something really important that we should require because the changement of the road is going this fast that you need to adapt every week to the changes that are happening in the world. So I think adaptability is very important. Furthermore, I think that soft skills are very important because I think soft skills like empathy is something that AI cannot replace. And lastly, I think that entrepreneurship, the skill of entrepreneurship is also something that AI cannot replace. So I think the entrepreneurship is a human-to-human thing, and a robot will never replace it. So I think these skills will be very important in the future.

Joeri 15:58

Anything you wanted to add, Um, to the skills?

Emma 16:01

No, I think uh I'm the same.

Advice, Reflections, And Closing

Joeri 16:03

I have the same the same and the same opinion about it. If that would be one piece of advice, you know, to business leaders that want to work with younger talent, what would it be?

Jenne 16:15

My advice would be to shift from total control to autonomy, because I have the feeling that our generation wants a bit of autonomy and they want to have the feeling that they are hurt in the company, they want to be given real projects, they don't want just a nine-to-five job, they want to mean something for the company. And I think if you give them the trust that automatically uh our generation gets motivated, and I think really controlling someone as a manager can be a perceived negative by our generation because they feel that they don't really trust them, and I think that's something that's very important for our generation.

Joeri 17:01

And now I have a question that we didn't prepare, but if there would be one word, and you can think a bit, but if there would be one word, how would you describe your experience, your internship as CCLBL? How would you describe it? What pops up in your mind?

Jenne 17:19

For me, it was mature. Okay, because I didn't really have any experience in entrepreneurship before my internship at CCLBL. And after this internship, I have the feeling that I became much more mature because I've been in real meetings with high-end people, and it's something I couldn't imagine before this internship. So I think maturity is something that I really improved on. Okay, thank you, Jenne.

Joeri 17:49

And what are you thinking about, it's a hard question.

Emma 17:54

How are you?

Joeri 17:55

How are you feeling right now? If you go back home, what would you tell your parents? They ask you, how was your experience? What would you tell them?

Emma 18:02

It was amazing, amazing because we did a lot of things, a lot of new things, and also just living abroad alone for the first time, and also the first time doing internship, working from 9 till 5.

Joeri 18:19

So well, I would also say amazing, and it is now your first podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, how you see the world from your point of view. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Guys, what a special episode today, here in Lisbon at the Vana offices, speaking with interns at CC LBL. If you feel like this episode could be useful for people around you, whether they read a boat chicken, not like one chicken, whether it is left children, number two, number two, it's a number. Feel free to share this episode with them. If you're not yet following the show, well please hit the subscribe button. If you give me five stars, this will help me to reach a bigger audience. And of course, I'd love to see you back next time. Take care.