Jindřich Čadík: "How to start a successful business and make money"
Hi, in today's podcast we'll be talking with Jindřich Čadík, who has been a teacher at Unicorn University since 2009. Jindřich is also a finance consultant and the founder of Bistro 1902 in Prague's Vinohrady district. Jindřich, welcome to our podcast.
Hi, hello, good day, viewers. Thank you for having me.
What led you to teach at Unicorn University and what subjects do you teach here?
The story of me at Unicorn starts as a bit of an adventure in Dungeon & Dragons. It was a pub in Hradec Kralove, where I met Honza Čadil, who is now the rector here (Unicorn University, ed.), on a random evening and we discovered, over a beer of course, that besides the fact that we share common interests, we also share economics. We agreed to collaborate on an article that was subsequently published. A week or so later, I got a call from Honza saying that the teacher of a course at the school related specifically to business economics had dropped out, and would I take it for a year or a semester. So I took it and I stayed on. So it hasn't been thought through at all and there's not any long-term preparation yet. It was just kind of a fateful moment.
And the subjects you teach?
All my courses are either money-related or business-related. Which has a lot to do with itself, and possibly economics. I'm in the department of management and economics and my main focus is on subjects that are related - it used to be called business economics, that's not used as much anymore. My focus is just on starting a business, understanding what business is all about and management. Of course, management is a terribly complex discipline and I focus, and I've always focused, because I've always enjoyed it more, on the more practical stuff - how to do things, how to start things, how to think about business, how to make money and how not to go crazy. Obviously we're a University, so I try to combine that with the necessary level of theory, but the connection to the real world has always been the foundation.
What is the main thing a student of our school should take away from their studies or what else do you focus on in your classes?
I have always understood Unicorn University to be very business-oriented, that we are not that old-fashioned university where you do a lot of research (although we might want that too), but we are primarily a business school and our graduates should be equipped to do their best in practice. So in the other department they are taught to program well, to understand the job well, and in our department, at least as I understand it, we are supposed to prepare them to be managers, to take care of people, to manage people, to manage processes. And they're going to try not to go crazy. And to do the job as efficiently as possible - to try to save them months of some of the things that they would have to learn the hard way. So maybe it will help them to hear from me, or from someone else, to hear a little bit about the blind spots we've tried, and equip them with best practices that might be useful in that real world company.
You yourself are the founder of a bistro in Prague and you teach subjects such as the basics of business and the basics of business management. What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs, maybe some specific ones, because there are also students who often start or want to start a business while studying?
So the specific advice is to apply to Unicorn University where there are a lot of subjects and you learn it in detail. There is no easy advice. For example, I missed the business fundamentals class in University. Because of that, I found out a lot of things in hindsight until I stopped, sat down and thought about what I actually wanted to do. And how I wanted to do it - I hadn't thought about that at all and it cost me about 10 years of working in some kind of field and not being happy with it. Maybe I could have shortened some of those 10 years if I had thought a little bit differently before, if I had somebody with me who was asking good questions. Entrepreneurship is built on the fact that it's definitely not for everyone, it's very specific, it makes demands on that person and it brings some opportunities. It's a quid pro quo and you need to know that it's something I want to do. And what can I expect - of course the reality is always a little bit different than anything one might read or learn about it.
What are the typical mistakes that new entrepreneurs make - and how can they be avoided, besides what you mentioned a moment ago?
Entrepreneurship is about seeing some obstacles and trying to overcome them, and either you don't see some obstacles or they are difficult to overcome. It's about building efficiency so that you can overcome obstacles efficiently and on a daily basis and not go crazy and be completely drained. Harnessing the power of what the long day has to offer you, that you have to yourself, that you manage on your own. So that you can work, function and ideally do what you enjoy. That's the most powerful thing about it. So there's no universal advice - don't do this or do that.
How can new or aspiring entrepreneurs effectively engage in financial planning and raise the necessary capital to start a business?
Hardly :) I've always been in the small and medium business field. If someone wants to start a power plant, how they're going to raise the capital for it is going to be a little different league. I've always found it helps tremendously to talk, to spread the word, to know as many people as possible. And quite often there's somebody in the neighborhood or the wider area who has capital. And you as an entrepreneur are the one who has the idea and ideally the skills and abilities, and there's going to be that intersection. Otherwise, of course, in the course I teach, we talk about how to raise commercial capital, whether we're talking about a loan or whether we're talking about a strategic partner, an investor. There are guides on how to work with that. But again, what we're going to get to is that we're going to have some general guidelines at the beginning, and on top of that, the path to that specific money is going to be very different for everybody, very specific, and it's either going to work or it's not going to work. However, we are talking about a small, medium-sized business. There we start somewhere in the units of millions, maybe lower tens of millions, and the moment you get into it, you realise that the money is there. But it's not easy to get at it because there are quite a lot of people who want to get at it, and it always costs something. It's not that you get a guide and you go to the bank and they lend you 10 million. No, it's going to be significantly more complicated and you're going to have to write a lot of paperwork, you're going to have to present the business plan very well. But our students are doing it.
Henry, you interview practitioners for the "finance in context" course. What can students learn here?
I'm also a practitioner - I'm an advisor. The number of my clients is limited by the fact that the projects I work on are many. Financial literacy, as I understand it, is primarily about how my personal world (what I understand, what I understand) intersects with the outside world that wants to get some money out of me. Money flows through our lives, and if I take us as most employees or entrepreneurs, we are the source of that money and we are always channeling it somewhere else to meet our goals. My goal is to do these processes efficiently so that I don't fall for something, so that I don't lose money - that's one extreme - and the other is that I can meet my goals. And to meet them with as much capital as possible.
In the finance advisory business, you certainly address the issue of financial portfolio. How do you most often answer questions such as "What is the best way to evaluate savings in the current time and conditions"?
I knew one gentleman who wanted me to give him quick advice, especially that he didn't have time, that he had 10 minutes - how to make the money work. So I told him to go to the post office, buy a Sportka, that it was such a quick investment and he might get extremely rich from it. That's just to preface the fact that there are no quick tips, there are no easy tips. I'm more of an analytical type. So at the beginning there has to be just an analysis of my situation, who I am, what I want, what my options are, how I'm going to make it happen, and only then can I look for some ways and some tools to put it together. I may be the type of person who is not afraid of risks, likes adrenaline and that may suit investing in cryptocurrencies. That would be a nightmare for someone who doesn't have that gamble in them, who doesn't trust new technology, and while it might bring them some financial enrichment, in terms of the overall fit into their financial portfolio, it would be disastrous. It would be a job poorly done and it would lead to nothing. So I have to start with myself, by analysing the problem that needs to be solved, which in finance is quite good, because over the last 25 years we have a lot of relatively standardised tools that we can use. For example, the mortgage. Nowadays a common thing that almost everybody should understand, not everybody understands it, but most people will come across it. So quick and easy advice doesn't work in this case. It's about financial literacy, it's about gaining awareness and knowledge of the situation and how things work in general, how I can use them and what I should look out for.
You mentioned mortgages - you have young people coming to you - what is a reasonable fixing period for you?
That is a question to which there is no one right answer. We would have to say what the characteristics of the fixation are. A long fixation gives you, let's say, a slightly illusory sense of security. That nothing will actually change in your life from that point of view and that you will still be paying your same instalment and you don't actually have to deal with anything. That's the good side. And then of course there's the other side of it - that you can't even deal with it. Or you can, but it's problematic and there's some financial loss involved. So we would have to go through some sort of network of questions and find out what your situation is, whether you intend to live in the property you bought and use it, own it long enough to justify a long fix. Because outside of that given anniversary, the property is a little bit harder to sell and it's about long-term planning. On the other hand, the short fixation makes me think I'll have to deal with it again relatively soon. Which can be stressful for me (I don't know if interest rates will move up or down, I don't know if I'll make money on it or not). So, again, as with investing, it has to be based on my nature, what stresses me and what doesn't, and then focus on what I want out of it.
Our podcast is coming to a close... I still want to ask you, how do you find Unicorn University different from other universities? You mentioned it a little bit at the beginning, but I'm still interested in the soft skills that you implement in your classes?
Soft skills are a good half of a manager's job. They are essential. If I had to pick one of the most important ones that we appeal to and work on a lot, it's teamwork. A lot of our courses are linked to a project, workshop or something that can be defined as a lot of work that would completely overwhelm one person. And that's why they're done as a team. That team can be three people, five people, or seven people, and I've always observed that students usually handle the technical part of the work just fine. Because it's something that they work through gradually. However, working in a team is stressful, a bit problematic and needs to be trained. Quite often there's a false modesty syndrome - you're on a team and you don't want to take on a job or draw attention to yourself because you didn't have any experience with it in high school and you have some biases or blocks. So one of the things that we coach is that you show up on a team where you're brand new, you don't know these people, you need to get your bearings quickly, you need to establish some informal hierarchy and be able to set a goal and set a path to that goal. Then you have to divide up the tasks and be able to check that all those components are working and if they're not, you have to deal with it, which is a hell of a lot of work.
Especially if one is an introvert and doesn't have it completely in them, it's a struggle. And that's what you get to experience at our school. For example, a lot of situations related to thinking about business, doing some financial portfolios, working in a team. Then we try to give you feedback on what we liked and what we didn't like. All of my courses involve students presenting the results of their work. It's not enough to know how to do it, you have to know how to sell it. I tell my students my point of view, many times I am surprised by ideas that I wouldn't have thought of myself, and I try to incorporate my experience that I have managed to gain over the years.
The guest on today's podcast was Jindřich Čadík, university professor, financial advisor and founder of Bistro Pantry 1902. Thank you for following us.
