IAM1883 – CEO Specializes in Acquiring and Developing Companies with Disruptive Business Models

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David Štýbr Teaser 00:00

Usually, we look on businesses. This is about the disruption we have, let's say, in our sentences about the company. This is the right view on existing businesses, on existing industries, and just looking on what could be done a bit differently to extract the value really out of it.

Intro 00:18

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the IAMCEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:47

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call the CB Nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on operations. The systems will set you free. So think about systems, think about flow, sustainability, potentially working out in your morning routine, waking up early, e-commerce, different business models, think of the operations in the models that basically set up the foundation to allow the creativity within organizations, but also to make sure the trains are running on time and things are going as they should.

Now, this is extremely important because we often turn to the sexy parts of business and forget about the operations and how they're actually running. So I really want to focus this month on this specific topic. So sit back and enjoy this special episode at the IAMCEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today, David Štýbr of Livento Group. David, super excited to have you on the show.

David Štýbr 02:07

Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm looking forward to speak and spend the next minutes together.

Gresham Harkless 02:13

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well, too, to hear about all the awesome things that you're working on. And of course, before we do that, I wanted to read a little bit more about David so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

David is the CEO of the Livento Group, which specializes in acquiring and developing companies with disruptive business models and is focused on film production, portfolio management and real estate investment. David manages Livento's groups, business operations, projects, and team.

His previous roles include being the CEO of OTT Ventures, the Director of Property and Facility at CPI Property Group, and the Director of CPI Byty at CPI Byty. David is an expert in strategic planning, financial governance, and proactive business orientation.

David, excited to have you on the show again, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO community?

David Štýbr 03:01

Yeah, thanks. All the time I hear my CV, it's interesting. You said very well to play with it. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you once more. So I'm ready to introduce to you a bit more what we do in Livento. So, we'll talk about myself, so, I let you speak and introduce it to people and we can definitely follow up.

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Gresham Harkless 03:21

Yeah, that's exactly where I wanted to start. It's just kind of like rewinding the clock, hear a little bit more about your background what led you get started with everything with Livento Group.

David Štýbr 03:29

Yeah, so Livento Group started 5 years ago when I met a few investors. I had this idea about creating a small, let's say, asset management group. I met very good people who were skilled in portfolio management and could program things well better, much better than me in it. So we just put it all together and Livento started to grow. We found out the first few people who helped us to get on the ground and then we continued to grow, let's say slowly. It was not my full time that time. We were just building the company with two other partners. Like it was really fun and exciting.

Yeah. Then we went to real estate as well. We made a few real estate deals. Biggest ones, but the hero residential market in the Czech Republic is still a hot topic and Prague is a very fast growing city, one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, the European Union. So a lot of demand. Recently, Livento became a listed vehicle on a listed company on OTC markets, where we started with our, let's say, newest brand and newest business, which is called Boxo Productions specialized in the movie development or pipeline for movies, right? We are preparing packages of movies.

This is a deal we worked on one year before, so it's already two years in some kind of preparation or let's say, semi-life work. Now we went to going live on OTC. We started this fully. So this is what's our biggest set in the company. Great future for us shareholders.

Gresham Harkless 05:03

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you telling the full story, especially on how it wasn't initially, it sounds like your full time and then it grew into that as you had more assets. You started to grow, see the success of the investments and the things that you were doing, and also the different ranges of things that you have been able to kind of crew those assets through.

I love kind of hearing that just to build that moat for lack of better terms, so that you have the more sustainable and I think more stable growing company.

David Štýbr 05:31

Yeah, this is exactly how it went. At some moment, I had to switch and step in fully. I would just say that even in my latest job when I was leading this family office slash venture company, we had a lot of venture deals. I've seen a lot of startups, a lot of let's say B series companies that were looking for new capital, trying to fundraise, lot of debts. So there, I found out, okay, I need to focus on something that makes sense, that has secured revenues as a very good potential in making a lot of revenues in the end.

This is how I came to Boxo Productions and with the team we agreed that this is our focus because this is what can bring the company where we want to have it, which is a NASDAQ for us. This OTC listing is just one of the steps on the way to grow this really big. So we are working on every day to get the company where we imagine it belongs and where we want to have it.

Gresham Harkless 06:30

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you in doing that, especially, working backwards as well to knowing exactly what's a value potentially to investors, to people that you're trying to accrue funding, but also something that has that potential of growth that you talked about before and then working backwards from there and understanding like, it's not just you're picking something randomly.

You had an idea and it sounds quote and quote criteria for the things that you were looking for, and you work backwards from there.

David Štýbr 06:55

Yeah. Exactly. You are right. You really, really look on businesses. This is about the disruption we have in let's say in our sentences about the company. This is the right view on existing businesses, on existing industries and just looking on what could be done a bit differently to extract the value really out of it. You'll see that there is a lot of movie production companies, but it's not the exact same way how we do it because I found our way much more stable, much more diversified and in the end, delivering high revenues than the others.

Yeah, so we looked at it from the other way and I had the luck to meet, let's say, very intelligent and very skilled people in the business. That helped me to materialize this into a real business, so they helped me to get it on track and set the boundaries and define the business how it should work.

Gresham Harkless 07:50

Nice. I absolutely love that. I love that disruption piece, but I mentioned your bio, you just mentioned as well. And I think so many times when we look at disruption, we think of completing something completely new, but a lot of times the most disruptive things you can do is seeing something within an industry that has that viability, has that potential growth and seeing something that's not done as well.

And you can make that somewhat kind of small or sometimes thing that people just don't see, and it creates a whole entirely different opportunity that existed.

David Štýbr 08:20

Yes, that's exactly as you're saying. It's been linked to what I have seen during my work with this venture company. A lot of people are bringing you investment decks, right? And totally new technology, new way. Sometimes if you have an industry that's already has clients and revenues, you just need to know how to do a difference to get in. It's much easier than to, let's say, transform some people into your clients. To explain to them, Oh, you should buy this because this is really good for you and they don't know why.

Why is it for them? So that's how we're looking at it because this I believe, and my team believes, brings the value, right? This can really bring a different view on the company, right? Let's say the uplisting process, it can generate the growth in the valuation and everything.

Gresham Harkless 09:07

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. I love that process and how you all are making those decisions. And so I know you touched a little bit upon like how you're working with your clients, how you're serving them, so I wanted to make sure that we covered everything there. There wasn't anything else that we didn't mention that you had as far as assets or things that you do to support your clients.

I also wanted to get an idea of what I call your secret sauce, the thing that sets you or the organization apart that makes you unique. I almost feel like that disruptive mindset is part of that. But do you feel like we touched on that as well?

David Štýbr 09:35

Yeah, definitely. This model described is definitely one of the secret sauce. We always focus on something that's existing. We can define the model. We can set the valuation. We can set the, let's say, the budget very clearly.

The other secret sauce is just that we are a small team. We listen to each other and I think we can decide, let's say quickly and we can speak completely inside the company about the next steps. So it's what helping us in these days to move forward. We always work with just senior and skilled people. So this is, I would say, Livento's secret sauce. It's like me. Always hire, just very, very, very skilled and very experienced people.

Gresham Harkless 10:16

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

David Štýbr 10:29

I would just say that I don't have any preferred book or like I stick to guide me to some let's say better structures or to some better decisions. But I just believe what I learned during my career, because I was working in CPI, as you mentioned, and I was working for a big company. I was working with some billionaires that were having some family offices, and I have seen their decisions. So, what profiled me is working for these people. I had maybe the luck, let's say that. I was usually working in smaller teams of let's say, very successful people, and they helped me to see a bit on how they decide, how they manage people, how they choose people and how they do the business, what is behind the deal.

Well, when I profile with myself, it's more to make the right deal, right? This is why we created Boxo. So we as well have now the project in the event. So that we are building and it's almost done. So, this is a deal making, right? You need to find the right people, find the right businesses, the right structure. This is what I learned from all the people I work through my career and they influenced me to be where I am now. So I can just say to people, yeah, maybe you can read a book. Maybe you follow some advices or someone, or you just follow the mentors, which can appear to be for example, the owners of the companies or your boss right? Everybody's profiled by someone.

Gresham Harkless 11:54

I absolutely love that. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget. This is a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say, it might be something you would tell a client or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

David Štýbr 12:08

When you are staying in front of a new business. Just check, okay, where are your clients? How you want to meet them, how you will generate the revenue so you can pay yourself and your team, and how all this fits into your story. And can you imagine doing this for next 2 years? Everything takes time. It's really not so simple to build things from the ground.

So I believe a lot of people that I have seen from the startups or the growing companies, they are pushing too hard sometimes on the, let's say, on the speed they want to get up. It's not so simple, sometimes you meet through the time to get things properly and then they can go exponentially up if the right times come for them, but this is sometimes and I guess to be patient, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 12:52

Love that. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show. So, David, what does being a CEO mean to you?

David Štýbr 13:02

Yeah, for me it means let's say a lot of responsibility because still as a CEO you need to hold the decisions, right? So you are having the decision power and on the other hand, the decision responsibility for the next steps of the company. So I believe this is how I would profile it. And yeah, sometimes you really need to see what's the next steps and as you maybe said, if sometimes the decision is no decision, I believe it's one out of ten, right?

With other cases, you really need to make something happen so the company can move in some direction and the people know what to do. Yeah, so not easy always to choose the right path, right? To change the right way. But yeah, it's very, very exciting. it's definitely good when I'm able to create my own business and to run it. So it's getting something back to me. So. This is what I like and this is what's making the motivation to go forward, right? Because when you see that you can work with other people that people are joining you, that there is really someone who's listening to you and you can work with and all this makes sense.

And on the stock exchange, you have kind of audience that is giving you feedback immediately once you do something. So, that's very interesting. Everything is very interesting. I think even the team, we like it too much. So yeah, we want to move forward in this direction.

Gresham Harkless 14:25

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you detailing like all the different inputs. At the end of the day, like you said so well, a lot of it is the responsibility of making that decision.

David Štýbr 14:33

Yeah, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 14:35

Absolutely. Definitely looking forward to hearing more about that journey and how you all are succeeding. So, David, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

What I wanted to do now is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And, of course how best people can get ahold of you, find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

David Štýbr 14:56

Yeah, sure. I would just welcome everyone to follow us on our Twitter or LinkedIn or any other media that they would like to. We are publicly, let's say, traded company. So if they like the story, they want to be part of it, they are welcome to purchase our stock. They can contact us directly for some other options.

We welcome everyone who wants to join and enjoy the rights that we have in front of us. Yeah. So I would just say that many thanks for listening to us, listening to me. And, yeah, if any questions, just don't hesitate to contact us and we are happy to answer anything that's needed.

Gresham Harkless 15:30

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely appreciate that, David. To make it even easier, we are gonna have the links and information and the show notes for the social media, the site, all the things to get to stop all those awesome things that people can do, but truly appreciate you for taking time out today.

I absolutely love it, I think it is even a fresher perspective on innovation and how you can disrupt things by not thinking about creating something completely different, but looking at what exists and what's successful and seeing how you can, for lack of a better term, build that better mousetrap.

So thank you so much for doing that. And in so many different ways, of course, the time you took today and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

David Štýbr 16:04

Yeah. Thank you.

Outro 16:05

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. IAMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the IAMCEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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