Brabus Owner Exclusive: The TRUTH About Counterfeit Cars, Family Trauma & The Future Of Brabus!

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I didn't have any time for grief.

Unfortunately, him passing away way too early at 62 years old.

And I never got to answer the question what we have done

from one day to the next.

I was faced with having to take over the entire business, my family.

They were very clear at the time that said,

you're going to sit in his office in the morning.

This is it. There's no turning back.

Constantine, you run one of the most iconic,

recognisable tuning brands in the world.

How much money do some of these vehicles cost?

For the sake of the argument, go 501 million.

Probably around 400.

We're moving from singular cars to projects that are literally

costing hundreds of millions of euros.

For example, for me, designing a Brabus boat

and then looking to see how the market reacts is really fascinating.

I was diagnosed with a tumor under my brain

that came out of nowhere and noticed how short life is.

Doctors told me I would never be able to...

Constantine, you run one of the most iconic,

recognisable tuning brands in the world.

Impossible to ignore, loved by most,

criticised by some,

but in your own words, who are you and what you don't.

Thanks, good. Ben, it's good to meet you finally.

There's nothing more to add, goodbye.

No, it's a pleasure to have you.

I'm super happy that you took the time to come by.

We've been talking about this for a while.

Thank you very much for coming here.

Thank you very much for being here.

To answer your question in a very short way,

my name is Constantine.

I'm the owner and CEO of Brabus, a German family business.

And by now, I think I can say a German brand.

They're doing all sorts of fun things,

which is also the reason why I get up in the morning.

It's a privilege to work here.

It's a privilege to work with what I consider

as one of the most fascinating teams in the world,

because this is not a one-man company.

This is everybody as a team.

And so I love my job.

You grew up knowing nothing other than Brabus.

It probably consumed your life.

What age did you actually understand

what Brabus was and why?

Very, very interesting.

So we're in pretty much the middle of what we call factory one

in here.

And I actually learned to walk one section over a part of it.

And the mechanics at the time, today,

this would be a safety disaster regulation-wise,

but they actually carried me around on their shoulders

as a little boy.

So I quite literally grew up in this business.

And my father started it in the 70s.

I was born in 84.

And I don't know whether it consumed my life,

but I've been here before.

Actually, a few weeks ago, somebody came up to me and said,

are you aware of the fact that it's your 20th anniversary

in the company?

I said, I don't even know what you're talking about.

I must have signed some sort of contract.

I believe that was the time when I was studying in parallel

and I started working here officially as an employee,

but there was never a time when I have not been around the business

in one way or another as a boy, as a student in school

or university later, of course, then as an adult working full-time.

When you grow up with a brand that means so much to the family,

so much to the family name,

something that is literally ingrained in your heart,

owners that take that on often go one of two ways.

They want to steer completely away from whatever the legacy is.

We'll dive head first into it.

You obviously chose the latter,

but was there ever been a point in your life

where you thought you were going to steer away?

Oh, you didn't want to do this.

Absolutely.

So that was, first of all, I think it's completely natural

to go through different phases when you grow up.

By now, I know what I want to do and I know why I want to do it.

And it's a wild and very adventurous ride at times

because none of what we've been able to achieve

in the last few years since I've become the CEO of this brand

I take none of this for granted, absolutely not an inch.

And I've made a lot of experiences that have very clearly shown me

how fast success and health and everything that you've got in life can vanish.

So it's been a fantastic ride.

But I think as a, I've had many phases as a,

I've really had many, many, many discussions.

My father was a hard man.

He was a tough entrepreneur.

He was one of the best sale of people I've ever seen.

He grew the business for 42 years

and he was super tough on me as a,

he was grooming me as a successor long before I knew

and realized that he was doing this.

And of course, you know, when I think the first time

I really noticed what was going on, that was something going on.

That was unlike the unlike what the other kids at school were experiencing.

That was probably when I was 15, 16, 14 something teenager.

And the company kept growing.

We were lucky enough to be almost in our fifth decade.

The 50th anniversary is starting November 27th.

So next year.

And that's, I've had many, many, many debates

where I wanted to do something else.

I've had, I've had, my father has fired me multiple times.

I have, I have,

there's no way, what way to say,

there's no way to diplomatically say this.

So when you grow up in a family business,

you always, you've got the two,

you've got two things sitting at a table

that normally don't work with each other.

It's got tremendous advantages and there's tremendous disadvantages.

Family works on the principle of love.

You always belong whatever you do.

Your parents love you.

You're always going to be part of the family.

Business, on the other hand, works based on performance.

You, if you perform, you belong, if you don't,

to a certain point, from a certain point on, you don't.

Because of course, every business needs to be successful

and pay wages to the employees.

Those two things don't really work well with each other.

And that's what's always,

what's always at the table with you in a family business.

So the resilience, the loyalty,

and all of those positive things are more present,

but conflict, drama, and of course,

all the issues that you might have in a family

also go directly into the business.

And that I think is, it's just an ingredient

that you'll find in every business that is set up this way.

And you have to, we had to,

my father and I had to learn to get along,

especially at one point, somebody, you know,

I got a bit older and wanted more responsibility.

He got a bit older and was looking,

eventually trying to hand over parts of the business,

which of course then ended him, unfortunately,

very unfortunately, him passing away way too early at 62 years old.

And I never got to answer the question,

what we have done, if, you know,

how would he have handed over the company?

How would we have arranged his retirement?

How would we have solved all of those questions

that you've got at that stage in a family business,

because it never came to that.

And so I had, at that time,

I had answered the question,

whether I wanted to be in the business.

I was, I had gone through,

from literally having to clean the yard,

carry around boxes, working in logistics,

I had done every single job you can imagine in this business.

And my father had very clearly made me

not go one extra round, around the truck,

about five, six, 10, 15 extra rounds.

And as I said before, I wasn't really realising that as a kid.

And then from one day to the next, I was faced,

I was at, I was seeing more at the time,

chief marketing officer, I had worked with a brand

from one day to the next, I was faced with having to

take over the entire, entire business.

This is how it goes.

So tell me this, what is one thing about Brabus now,

that your dad would completely agree with you on?

And what's one thing that he wouldn't,

but you have to make your stamp on it anyway?

The interesting question, let me answer,

let me start off with, let me start off with this.

I believe, or I hope somebody is somewhere,

he's sitting on a cloud, looking down,

and I'm asking myself like, what would you say?

If he looks at all the, so he would say,

it's just as crazy as when I was building this company,

he would say, I can see some that the numbers are growing,

but the risks are also growing, and the craziness is just the same.

He would probably also say, I think he would be proud of the team

and what we're achieving, and that we're continuing his legacy

and the mission and the idea of what he's built.

And he would very clearly tell me to watch out for my health

and not overextend myself, because we've been there before.

And honestly, I have a feeling that it's, I know, it's so interesting

that I know, I've gotten to a point where I've been up and doing this

as a CEO for eight years now, and as an owner.

I know now, I know about the challenges of running a business now.

I know about the challenges it is, it has the effects it has on your health,

the dilemmas that you're not going to be able to solve.

I know the trade-offs or the risks involved.

And I always say that you cannot simulate entrepreneurship, you just can't.

You can be a third row.

So if you imagine a classic orchestra, you can play the trumpet in the back corner

or the drums, and you can't imagine what it's like to be first violin.

You can play the third violin, second violin,

you still can't imagine what that's going to be like.

I could not.

I very clearly noticed that I could not imagine what that would be like.

And suddenly you have to play first violin and solo a lot of times

in front of a bigger audience.

And it comes with strings attached that you could not see

and you could not have been seeing before.

And that is why I'm saying you cannot simulate responsibility

that way before you really have it.

You mentioned that, but I'm evading your question.

So that is a lot of things that he would say.

Now, what would he completely disagree?

I think he would agree with a lot.

He would look at a lot of the decisions that we've taken since then

and a lot of these beautiful decisions.

By the way, we have some of them here today.

And he would understand the reasoning.

I, from the top of my head, would he like that car?

He would understand why we're doing it.

And he would, he would, oh, I have no idea.

Does it matter?

You know, I have to like, here's the thing that I'm,

there's a theory or there's a picture that I've always,

that I call footsteps of a dead man.

Here's what it means.

And in life, we all have parents and we're all, you know,

walking in somebody's footsteps up to a certain age.

And from a certain point on, you are, you're walking,

you're making your own, which I was when I took over the business,

but I noticed I was still walking in my father's footsteps.

I was still making for a few years.

And I noticed actually very, very consciously when I got to the point

of noticing that I was, he was no longer there,

but I was still making decisions, which is, I think, natural.

I ask you, it's like, what would my father have done?

What would both of us have done?

What would you have decided?

And that's suddenly you're noticing that either,

if you imagine footsteps in, in, on a snowy field, for example,

and suddenly you're noticing that the footsteps go off

to a direction where you don't want to go, or they just stop.

And that's the point in my mind.

That's, that's the picture I use, the image I use,

and to describe the point of which I got.

And then suddenly you're very vividly noticing,

it's like, I cannot rely on those footsteps anymore.

And I can also not justify my actions by claiming,

I'm following somebody's footsteps,

because everybody's going to tell you, you're crazy,

because it's obvious that, you know,

you've got to take the decisions now.

And so that is what I, what I describe as,

as kind of the image that I call footsteps of a dead man.

And it's, it's basically a metaphor for responsibility.

Because your responsibility

has been to think about the future of Brabis,

how a lot of us do looking forward, where are we going?

And that is transpired into Brabis Marine,

Brabis fashion, Brabis housing in Dubai.

Brabis is becoming more than modifying Mercedes.

Were you the first person, as you rather than your father,

to go outside of modifying Mercedes?

So, two things, number one,

I have seen my father build this business around cars.

Cars have been the center of the brand.

Cars are the center of the brand.

And it's, it's, as far as I can see,

that's not going to change anytime soon.

Every brand has a core, our core is cars, period.

That is, and I've seen him work with cars,

and I've seen him, I've seen him deal with the benefits

involved and the risks involved all his life.

When I, but I've also seen an absolutely fascinating business

that even before, before I took over the business for him,

I was talking, I was walking through the company,

I was experiencing it.

I was seeing all kinds of,

every single area of the business for making,

you know, metal and plastics and carbon fiber parts

to mounting them to, you know,

from, from packaging to marketing,

from logistics to supply chain optimizations, everything.

And there was one meeting where I,

I stood in front of our engineering team afterwards.

I think it was like two years after,

after I had taken over the business.

And I looked at them and said,

I'm seeing a, I'm seeing a team that is able to

sketch or design.

In other words, you know, draw,

as we would say in German construct,

as in 3D construct in parts,

you can, you can build molds.

You can, you can properly produce parts.

You can produce all kinds of things in all kinds of,

all kinds of variants and with all kinds of materials.

You can put them together.

You have the capability to go to the wind tunnel.

You have the capability to test in all kinds of ways.

You can even build the machines that you're doing,

that you're producing with.

You can put,

you can go through all the regulatory steps necessary

to certify a product.

You can put a number plate on it,

which oftentimes is the most expensive part of a car.

And yet we're waiting for Mercedes

to drop a new S class over the fence

or drop a new G class over the fence.

Drop of whatever.

I'm a big Mercedes fan disclaimer.

You know, I'm a huge Mercedes fan.

And I grew up around the brand that they will never change.

However, I'm the CEO and owner of Brabus,

not Mercedes-Benz.

And I'm responsible for that.

I looked at them and said, you can do all this.

Every time I walk through the company,

there's a rocket landing, a rocket starting.

There's things happening.

Somebody's doing an experiment.

People are, you know, wearing fancy scientists classes

and they're doing, there's something.

And you've seen parts of it.

There's something going on here every time.

And there's an amazing, amazing array of competencies

in this business.

Hundreds of people that are specialists

and I said, why are we not?

Why are we waiting for somebody

to drop a product over the fence?

And then we're doing front, rear, side, wheels,

drivetrain, aka engine, transmission,

maybe lower end kits, rear spoiler,

interior, and that's that.

You guys have the capability to design full products.

And while we can keep doing what we're doing,

why don't we just, you know, I used a metaphor,

I think I used a really ugly metaphor for a zombie movie.

And I said, why don't we just stay awake

and we try to do more things than that?

I said, why don't we try to design a motorcycle?

Why don't we try to design a boat?

Why don't we try to design other things?

I was like, what do you want to design?

Have you ever thought about, you know, what are we designing?

What could we design?

What is the, what is, what do you guys actually want to do?

And that was a really, that sparked a really interesting

conversation that came out to be,

that came out to be the new mission of Brabus,

which is one second, wow, designing products

that within, that you have a visceral reaction to

within a second, in other words, that wow you,

that you have an emotional reaction to within,

you know, like this within one second when you see them.

Because that is, before we used to think Brabus

from an industry point of view, if you had asked my father,

coming back to what he would agree with and whatnot,

if you had asked him, what is Brabus 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

who has said we are probably the largest independent

tuning company in the world?

For Mercedes.

For Mercedes, exactly.

So that is, you know, it's this much of a sentence.

Did, in your own words, who are you and what do you do?

Well, I'm an Audi RS4, I was ended in Germany,

and I provide drivers with lots of comfort, but plenty of power.

Some would call me a wolf in sheep's clothing.

And what's been the hardest challenge over that mileage?

Well, I'm on 43,116 kilometers on the clock,

and yes, I probably look a bit weathered,

but it's in line with age and mileage,

and my mileage has been pretty consistent.

Well, that's where I know that that's untrue.

I've done my research using car vertical,

as I do for all of the vehicles that come on this podcast.

And on car verticals mileage chart,

I can see that you did no mileage between mid 2019 to mid 2020.

What happened?

Oh, nothing much.

It was COVID, cast it around.

You know what I mean?

I do know what you mean, but I also know that you're lying.

Oh God.

Because nothing gets past car vertical.

In the report summary,

not only does it raise that mileage should be looked into,

but it also has an amber warning for damage.

And I have proof to back that up,

because car vertical pulled the photos of your damage,

and they're here for us all to see.

And as I got your report as part of a bundle,

which meant I was able to look into my previous guests

and the coming ones,

I saved up to 50% using my discount code success.

But I'd also get 20% off a single report

if I needed to check a guest out in a hurry.

And anyone listening, you can check a car out too,

or a bundle of cars using my discount code success

to get you 50% off a bundle,

or 20% off one of those one-off checks.

Thank you, CarVertical,

for helping me check out all of the cars

that come on this podcast.

You ever have a strained relationship

at any point in the history with Mercedes?

Like, if you're with a partner,

if you're with a wife,

and you're together for 20 years,

at some point you're going to have an argument.

What is the relationship

between Brabus and Mercedes been like?

Get one sentence to finish this point up.

So you've got this much of a sentence,

largest independent OEM independent Mercedes-Benz tuning company

in the world, form this much of a sentence.

And it's clearly spelled out from an industry point of view.

How much does the customer care about it?

Not really, more or less.

So I was essentially, when I became the owner and CEO

of the company, I was asking,

it's like, what is actually,

what if we turn this around?

Why should somebody be interested in a product?

Why do people care?

Make me care.

And that combined with the question of,

what can we design?

Why can't we just stay awake?

Ended up in a two-year process,

and that became one second well.

If that describes the emotion

that you feel towards a product,

you cannot describe it

more market and customer oriented than that.

You can't describe,

I can't discuss the feeling that I want you to have

towards one of our products,

and that I use as a yardstick

when I walk into a board approval,

when I walk into the first time,

in a meeting room, into a lab,

into somewhere where I see the car

for the first time, the boat for the first time.

And I cannot use that as a yardstick

and not talk about a customer.

It's impossible.

And it doesn't contain several things.

Like, of course, what does one second well not contain?

It doesn't contain anything boring,

anything that's going to not excite you.

I mean, and also, it doesn't contain...

It contains controversy,

because one second well can be good and bad, right?

Because I look at that,

you're a son, I wouldn't have that.

I look at that car and I would have that.

So it is very personal.

Very, very personal.

But first of all, absolutely,

we can have all of those discussions and we should.

But first of all, in the context of that time,

it does not contain car.

It does not contain Mercedes-Benz.

And now we can get to, what does it mean for our audience?

But automatically, you see,

we're discussing target groups, audience, market, customer.

And that switched the perspective.

And that was at the time, that was really, really important

because it was basically the prelude

to all of our engagement on social,

the prelude to all now the Amazon show,

to a lot of different things

that are market, customer, audience oriented

because that has become the focus.

And that the mission is so easy,

so easy to grasp that everybody in the company

cannot help themselves but to remember it

because it's quite catchy and it makes things super simple.

In essence, it's a quality promise

because if you're not going to have a while effect,

if you don't look at a car and say,

as an expert, just like yourself,

you see a lot of things.

But now, question.

The relationship to Mercedes is an interesting one.

We've had a good relationship for almost 49 years now.

There's a relationship on many different levels,

sometimes on a project level.

Projects that last a long time,

such as the smart relationship of smart and Brabis,

I think we've proved, I don't even know.

I couldn't tell you how many cars we've produced now.

It's got to be somewhere around the 200,000 car mark.

Maybe it's 180, maybe it's 220,000 cars.

I wouldn't be able to count it other than in years.

And it's been, we're going on 20,

I think we've just passed the 25-year mark.

And there's many other different industrial projects

where we've collaborated.

And also, of course, we're simply purchasing a lot of cars.

We're dealing with the cars.

Of course, we're dealing with the technology in depth

every single time a car comes out.

So there's a lot of different touch points.

Mantai were acquired by Porsche, 51% of Mantai.

And it's the only other German brand they can kind of relate to you like this.

But they were Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche,

just like you guys up into a Euro, Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes.

And as you said, you even moved, I think it's fair to say,

a Porsche out the shop at the beginning of this podcast

to make sure that there was a Mercedes at the front of the shop.

But I was wanting to have, actually, we switched them up

because I felt like when I came in,

actually, I wanted to have this in the picture,

which is a car that I absolutely love.

It's the 900 Rocket Edition.

Yeah, that's cool.

Which is what I consider,

I think it's one of the most collectible car variants

that we've produced up to now.

And it's also a brand new car.

And it is a, it's not black, but it's gray, dark gray.

And my favorite color will and is forever a black

and that will not change.

Yes, same.

And we're, of course, mixing up, we're mixing it up

with funky colors like the mint one in the front here now

or the peach further in the background,

which is completely fine.

But that's the 2% compared to the 98%.

And that was my, that was my opinion.

The reason I asked you about was it you

that made that decision to go away from Mercedes?

Kind of relates to that Manta point I'm making.

Because do you think, did you ever consider that at that point,

that might have been the separation from one day Mercedes

acquiring Brabis?

The Manta acquisition, of course, itself,

I think there's several examples.

There's a Manta acquisition by Porsche.

There is the AMG acquisition by Mercedes,

which is 20 years before.

There is Alpina, which has been bought by BMW.

And we yet have to see what they're actually going to do with it.

There is many different examples of companies

being acquired by the EUROMs.

Smart was transferred from the pure Mercedes-Benz ownership

to the shared ownership of Mercedes-Benz and Geely,

which is a project that has kept me busy also for the last three,

four, five, I don't even know, three, four, five years.

So the landscape is shifting continuously.

And the reason why none of those transactions have a direct

connection to what we've been doing or not doing.

I like to think that Brabis is thinking Brabis is doing Brabis.

We were pretty much, we're always planning ahead.

Probably we know now what we're going to do in 26 and 27.

It's not, we couldn't deploy and bring products to market

at the rate that we're doing.

In the last years, if we were not planning ahead, of course.

And at the same time, I literally, I took over the business

and I had a very clear perspective in mind of what I thought about it.

I thought that it's essentially a raw diamond

and there's so many more things that we can do.

And frankly speaking, I always, I get up in the morning

and I want to, I get up in the morning, I love to do cool shit.

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Own the dream.

It's, I want to design cool products.

I get up in the morning to design cool products.

It's what drives me every day.

It's what drives the team every day.

And I think we've got a bit of ground,

we've got a bit of ground to cover.

And if we design a safe, for example, for me designing a Brabus boat

and then looking to see how the market reacts,

the customers react, the price react, is really fascinating.

Because it's the question of how do I transfer the DNA,

what's the DNA of a brand?

What's the mission of a brand?

Why does it exist?

What's the promise of a brand?

How can I transfer this to another product category?

So if I take all the labels off, we cover them with tape,

and I put you in front of a Brabus boat,

how can you realize it is a Brabus boat simply through design?

If I can get that done, I have to go through a process that makes me learn it.

If I've gone from cars to boats, the step from boat,

then going to the next category becomes easier.

The step to the next category, again, becomes easier.

So each time you design a new, each time you go from category to category,

you have to learn something.

You have to ask yourselves yourself a series of questions again.

You have to get better at what you do.

Because let's say, I think we presented the first

Brabus motorhome, Brabus Big Boy 1200 at last year's signature end of 24.

And you cannot design the interior of a motorhome the way you design an interior for a car.

It simply doesn't work.

You know, you can't just stuff it with leather and Alcantara and carbon fiber,

and hope that it'll look good.

You've got to work with stone, wood, floors, there's a shower, there's a toilet,

there's a bed, there's all kinds of things that you would never have in a normal passenger car.

And that is, and so it's again a new, it's actually quite, it's not as far away as I think of

actually a car and a motorbike are further away than car interior and motorhome material.

But then again, there's a lot of differences.

Going then from cars to, for example, real estate is another fun challenge,

which we're in the middle of right now.

What is two projects that on one hand, you've done is a bit like me with a podcast,

I can do a podcast, put everything into it, and it'll, it'll flop.

I can do the odd one and boom, I never realized it would fly.

What is a project that you were like, we're going to nail that.

And it just was like a big learning curve of, oh Jesus, we got that wrong.

And one that was just like, yeah, we got that right.

Oh, I, one thing that I got wrong was I knew when I tried Brabus aviation

as a segment transfer because I tried 10 years ago.

I think, what do you know?

10 years ago, probably like a long time ago, good concepts.

And I had to learn a lesson that was in the end, you're going to have to either purchase a plane

and design it, build it, and sell it.

Or you're going to have to find the right customers for it to do it.

But if you don't have the goods on site, it's amazing and difficult.

I learned a very, the most important lesson I learned at the time

was actually not about the financing of aircraft or the, what a customer wants.

The most important lesson that I learned was you've got to have sponsorship approval.

And at the time, I think, I know, I know that my father and I had differences

about what I was trying to do.

It was frankly speaking too early because I was very serious about it.

And at some point, I presented him with the challenge of either buying a multimillion dollar plane

or supporting me in a, if there was a few other scenarios.

And he was pretty much telling me to get lost because he had, he had regarded as a nice,

as a nice exercise.

I was very serious about it.

And I learned that if the boss doesn't support your project, you earn me in trouble.

So would you do it now without him?

There's a few, there's a few interesting ideas around that.

We have, we have not made it a reality until now, never say never.

I'm surprised at what opportunities come all the way these days.

However, it's a very, very complicated business, especially due to regulation.

So the, I mean, one thing is, you know, getting, getting again, getting up in the morning saying,

Oh, this is cool.

I would love to do that.

On the other hand, I'm, I'm now having to deal with, with truths such as scalability of business

models, investment returns versus costs, the question of how much and how many years to have,

you have to invest into something.

And of course, that I have to make that decision across various sectors from,

from gearbox housings for racing up to branded real estate or one of these beautiful cars that

we see here in many, many different businesses every single day.

Can you talk me through what must have been the hardest moment of your life when your father

passed? How old were you? And then the months afterwards, how did that transpire to you

becoming in your role in Brabison? Was that difficult with everybody around the business?

It was a hard time. It was really hard time.

I've had two, two very, very, very hard, especially hard moments in my life. One,

there was one I was diagnosed with a tumor under my brain. I was 25, I think 24, 25 at the time.

I came out of nowhere and I had to deal with it for the next,

actually I'm dealing with it today because I had, had lasting impacts.

But I'm, that was one of the things where I personally may have noticed that how,

how short life is for the first time. And it played into the second time,

which was my father having a stroke and me actually going to the hospital

and seeing MRI scans of what I immediately recognized as a person that I would since,

that I sincerely hoped would never come back. Because there's a moment in life where you,

there's things that you don't want to survive. And I don't know if you can, if you can read this,

there is, at the time I saw my father's MRI scans and I was confronted with it and I,

I since see, I, this sounds, this sounds awfully cool. And I mean it in,

in, I really mean it in the best way possible. There was no way,

there was no way he would have survived this with dignity, with, with, again,

this would never have my, my decision to make, please don't get me wrong.

There was a lot of specialists involved. There was very clear recommendations given at the time,

but there was a moment when I, when I very clearly recognized that he wouldn't have wanted to be.

This is not going to end well. My dad always used to say, if that ever happened to me then,

just push me off the cliff. Exactly. And this, he was an entrepreneur. He was a very proud man.

And I think it in the, in this case, he would have wanted it to end right there.

And is it debatable? Yes, 100%. As always, when you talk about life and death,

but that was one, that was a very hard moment for me, especially because of my own experience.

I had known it had taken me years to come back from, from an injury like that.

And luckily, in my case, it was, they were able to treat it with surgery.

And I was lucky enough for them to catch it quite early. And I hadn't gone through,

it was, it was able, at the time doctors told me, for example, when I, when I had this,

I would never be able to have a, and have a function in a stressful environment.

Here we are, you know, 50 years later. What did that do to you?

They're like, they know, it may be what did that do to you.

It trans, and so why am I saying this? Cause I, I,

I had a bit of a relationship to MRI scans of brains,

is what I'm saying. So I know, I understood at that moment, I understood life's going to change.

If you allow me a second moment, because that's, and then I'll go into this.

The second moment was a story when he was, he had a stroke, was in a coma. And then we, we,

we had to act as if everything was okay. And he, he was on holiday or away for a while,

which was unusual for him to not, for people not to be able to reach him in the business.

Yes. But because we simply did not know what would happen. We had no information,

but we didn't want to freak out everybody before the point where we had to freak out everybody.

And of course that he came when you walk around looking like, you know, looking like a white sheet

of paper with rings, bags on your eyes every single day. That does not become easier with

each day passing. And there was one meeting that I had with my family where I very clearly told them,

listen, I've got two options. We have an empty office space that I can, I could go to IKEA and

I purchase a bit of wood and build myself a, build myself a desk and I can sit there tomorrow,

or I can actually sit in his office in the morning. And each sends a different message.

But whatever we decide, it's game on from, from that moment onwards.

They were very clear at the time they said, you want to sit in his office in the morning.

This is it. There's no turning back. And still we didn't know how it was going to turn out.

And so I didn't. And the hardest thing for me was not to see people break down,

10 people, 20 people, 30 people, 40, 50, 60, 70 people break down. They just walk in the door and

lose it. The hardest thing for me was to stay, to not become a robot.

You know, because you're going through this and you have to function and you want to be able to

relate to the emotions. But at the time, I didn't have any time for grief. That was not the place

for me to, to feel anything. And so at the same one time, you want to relate and empathize with

the team. And on the other hand, you just have to, you have so many things to deal with.

And that was the second moment I very, very vividly remember. I know we were able to very,

very luckily at the time the press was was ultra positive. I remember a conversation with a very,

very big newspaper in Germany. They could have written at the time, they could have said, oh,

my God, the owner is dead. Bravis is going down the toilet or any, any headline that would have

helped to sink us. They did not. They came to actually one of the lead editors, came to me,

shook my hand and said, oh, we've always been wanting to write a success story about the raw area

for a long time. Wink, wink. But in other words, he was at the time they were saying,

thank you for a good relationship. We're going to support you. And that was also

a good moment. Yeah, because you feel like you've got the weight of the world on your

shoulders in that position, right? You've got not only the team where you're going to be in two

minds of are they going to be with me or are they not going to be with me? But you've also got the

world, the customers. It's not everything. In the movie, there's a lawyer and he's going to come,

he's going to open the world and read it to you. And then you've got, you have your legal

certificates and you're basically, you get the magic wand and now long live the king.

You know, it's not like that in reality. I found a document probably one year later

or half a year later that actually told me I was entitled to do, to do the things I did

and to make the decisions I did that I made or decisions I took. It's, you're operating on,

you're operating in, you're operating on gut feeling and instinct at that time, at that point.

A little bit like the conversation you have with the press about which way they were going to go.

I feel that if your father was sat in the van right now with us and we all had a stiff drink and a

beer and we could have a bit of a debate because your era of Brabis is going to relate to so many

people like myself that think that's cool and that's cool and that's cool. But he might not.

Just bring us to that raw, that raw, what would you and him agree and disagree on out here?

We would very much agree on everything surrounding quality, everything surrounding

technology. There's a story where my father and I, it's one thing I will always remember,

we used to walk into buildings, approval sessions, labs, status meetings all the time. From a very

early age it would take him with me. It was one time when we walked into kind of a bigger building

and there was a car like 30, 40 meters away and he stops, looks at me, it's like, what do you think?

And I'm looking at the design and nobody wants to hear and I'm looking at it as kind of gone,

you know, I think that there's something off. There's something on another front of the vehicle,

the left side of the vehicle, something's off and he's saying, he's nodding his head and we're

going there and he's saying to the engineer, left side, the front, something's off. And then people

are measuring and they're looking at the car and actually we were always, we always shared

this opinion and I've inherited or have been raised with, I don't know,

this trait or this ability to look at a vehicle in the same way as my father did.

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, we can again debate, you know, but it's, we've always,

we've done this for probably the better part of 30 years, you know, we've walked into buildings

together and we've been, we had to kind of form an opinion at a glance about something.

And it's a blessing and a curse at the same time when you're this deep in the industry,

because when I look at a car today, it's almost impossible for me to just look at design or just

look at the wheel because I'm looking at the technology, I'm looking at the axle, I'm looking

at the motor, I'm looking at the drive term and looking at the trunk space, I'm looking at the

alignment of all components, I'm looking at 100 million things at the same time.

And probably I've, I'm always asking myself, have I lost, when am I going to lose the ability to look

at a car as just a car? Because we're pretty deep down the rabbit hole and that's not,

that's not how the majority of our clients look at a vehicle.

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It's true because on the signature vehicles behind us, everything down to the tiny

Brabis logo on the grill lights up. But all of those things cost money. I want to ask you,

how much money does some of these vehicles cost versus the actual stock vehicle? You know,

I think people, when they see a Brabis, unlike when you see one, aren't just taking it apart,

they go, one second, wow, like that's nuts. That's insane. But they, they are what I call

ice cream parlor mode. They go to see it drive by. What these cost in euros? Because people

might not know. You can, you can essentially. How much is the euros versus standard one?

Essentially, to make life simple for us, you can always go in like half a million dollar increments.

So you basically, for the sake of the argument, go 501 million, probably on 400.

There's a, we're clearly above a million back there. Six plus six is, I believe, 1.2 or 1.3.

So, I don't know. So we'll four to six million.

Is half the time the cars doubling in price from what they would be stock?

Not always. It really depends on the specs. So nowadays, you can, you can cluster our,

if you look at what, what you've been doing as a business and how we've, how we've,

we've come to the point where we are today.

However you see that point, by the way, it's tuning business, which is components, accessories,

the refinement of cars. Then you can still, we still, of course, do that today. And if you want

to purchase a set of wheels for your S63 as a customer in Melbourne, Australia,

we're, we're happy to send a set of wheels to our, you know, to the right dealer in your region.

You bring your car, we mount the wheels out the door, you go and you can enjoy a new set of wheels.

That's that. That is not nearly the numbers that we talked about just now.

So that is wheels, that is, you know, exterior parts. That is, of course, as soon as we talk

interior, it becomes a bit more complicated because the car has to go somewhere,

what we can actually do, do that and mostly it's here. But that is the first segment.

Second step up is what we call Barb's masterpiece. And a Barb's masterpiece is essentially,

you know, you go to McDonald's, you buy a big Mac, you've got two patties, maybe an extra one,

you've got a cucumber, cucumber, you've got tomato, you've got everything on it, extra ketchup.

So it essentially everything is included, everything we can offer is included. And from

there's very, very, there's a very limited amount of things that we make optional,

such as a rear spoiler on G-Class based Barb's masterpiece. If it doesn't fit in your garage,

then it doesn't make sense to make you take the rear spoiler, just to have, to have,

to have it be a Barb's masterpiece. That is, that is, there's no point in doing that.

But apart from that, it means fully equipped cars, fully, as we would say today,

Barb's masterpiece with everything we have to offer is what we call Barb's masterpiece.

And of course, then you've got exterior drive, the drivetrain wheels,

potentially portal axles or any sort of heavy, heavy off-road equipment, interior, etc. etc.

How do you cope with counterfeits? Is it so?

And is that your era versus your father's era? Was that a thing when he was doing it?

Since it was a thing, but it has become more of a thing since we're simply with the growing

popularity of the brand. I believe it's something that every brand has to deal with. On the one

hand, it's a compliment because if you copy something, you copy it because there's some,

there's always some aspiration behind it. People see a business, they suspect that there's money

to be made and so they copy it, just like a Louis Vuitton bag or Rolex watch, whatever it is.

And on the other hand, it is a, especially when it comes to cars, it's simply a tremendous

safety risk because you say you buy your normal car, your car, in person interested in purchasing

a car, you're buying it from, you're seeing a car somewhere, whether it's in a newspaper online

or in a store, you're buying it and most of the times you're not going to be the super-educated

client that is able to immediately identify a counterfeit. Now we can discuss, it's an interesting

discussion to talk about how educated should you be when you buy a car for several hundred

thousand euros. It depends on how much the hundred thousand euros meet here.

As a client, as a consumer, you don't have to anything. You can walk into a store and

just buy a car and that's completely fine and whether you should read about it, read up on it,

talk to the manufacturer before, give me a call, et cetera, et cetera, is simply a matter of personal

preference. But what happens is you purchase a vehicle, you don't know it's a counterfeit and

let's say the exterior parts, the wheels, the brakes, something with the car is not done the

way it should be. Then there's a big difference to a handbag because handbags rarely kill people.

At least I've never heard of it. If we just talked about a re-spoiler, for example,

where we could go through possibly endless amount of examples in this,

it'll say re-spoiler is mounted wrong, something is not fixed to a car in the way that it should

have been fixed. A wheel is not working, it's breaking, which we've had happen to people

in the case of really, really badly done, uncertified wheels.

Then there's just a tremendous risk of harming people and that should not be,

that is never going to be something we could support. Guys, if you like this conversation,

that Ben and I are having in the middle of a lot of beautiful Brabus cars,

then don't forget to like and subscribe and also check out Brabus One Second Wow.

They just dropped on Amazon Prime last week.

You must have seen recently online the Matei Rimac versus Armstrong Bugatti conversation.

Do you fully understand where Matei Rimac is then compared to Matt?

If that was your car, would you supply parts for it?

Catch me up on it. I have literally not seen them.

There's a Bugatti Chiron being rebuilt in the USA and Bugatti are refusing to supply parts for

that car in case it's not installed correctly or done properly because Bugatti are going to do it

themselves. You have one side claiming, well, if you give us the parts, then it makes it safer

rather than us trying to make our own parts out of 3D brown materials and the rest of it.

And the other side saying, I'm not giving you guys parts because we will just want to work on the

car ourselves. I'm very sorry I haven't seen this. Bugatti is one of my absolute favourite brands.

There's a lot of memories connected to the brand personally and I appreciate what Matei and his team

are doing. I think it's a tremendous step that they have managed to kind of get Bugatti as a

brand out of the Volkswagen conglomerate as it was before because I think it's healthier for

the brand this way. Also there's downsides, but that's again a whole different rabbit hole.

We could jump into a discuss for an hour. The essence is I really, really appreciate what

they're doing. I think the Tourbillon is a brilliant release that has confirmed a lot of the

hypotheses that I have about the business itself, mechanical speedometer, a lot of design language,

the positioning of the car, the design of the car, the powertrain of the car, the debate whether

the next Bugatti should be electric versus gasoline. There's a lot of very, very interesting

things going on. The debate that you're mentioning is an age-old debate. It's a debate that Ferrari

has been having with coach builders and clients. It's a debate that a lot of different brands

have been having. It's a debate that's going on when you talk about resto mods nowadays more and more

and it's always the question of what is original, who should work on a car and who should not work

on a car and what concerns are involved. In the end, every car is going to be the

private property of somebody. If you own a Bugatti and you want to work on it,

that is your personal thing as a private person. If you do it commercially, there's

different rules that apply, but that is not really a new debate and there is pretty,

pretty clear legal boundaries to all of this. There's very little things that have not been

defined or ruled on by a court. Because didn't you have a pretty big media blow-up in the last

year, something to do with a rapper owning a fake brother? How did that go? Very intense

discussion. It's interesting that, let me kick it off this way, we as a brand,

if you look at Brabis as a company, we are a fundamentally healthy, I believe, all right,

organized family business at the base, tech driven, expert driven. But if you look at the

fundamentals, it is exactly what Germany has been built on in what we call the German

Wirtschaftswunder after the Second World War till today. It's exactly what has made the

German economy what it is, companies like ours, whether you produce car components, cars, or

the screwdriver, it doesn't make any difference. So fundamentally healthy family business,

medium-sized. Now, the thing that makes Brabis special in my mind and part of why I've described

it before as a raw diamond, when that was part of the ambition, why I took over the business

and started trying out new things, is that the brand is disproportionately bigger than the company.

It is insane and insane. I have moments every single month where people call us and I have,

I can't believe it, moments or things happen. If tomorrow, honestly, Elvis Presley called

and somebody would tell me, but I heard that he's tossed away, he's dead. I say, yeah, whatever,

he's still on the phone. So there is nothing that cannot happen at this brand. We have these

ridiculous things happening every single day and they're all due to the brand having grown

to an absurd degree. At least that's my own opinion. And we are always the things that

become popular, get discussed in different ways. When governments give speeches half of the country,

whoever does it, Prime Minister in UK, Chancellor in Germany, half of the country is going to love

you, half of the country is going to hate you. When you are a football player, after every match,

if you don't win 5-0, half of the people are going to hate you, half of the people are going to love

you. Some people are going to say you're too slow, some people are going to say, oh my god,

it's the best player ever. And it all starts because you've reached a certain relevance

that that is simply the name of the game. And so we are having to deal with

moments that get discussed on a pretty frequent basis. Some people are going to love, I mean,

mass appease based on the euros. Some people are not. Some people are going to support us when we

talk about the safety of counterfeits. Some people are not. Some people like my ears,

some people think they're too big. To me, the question is what audience and what target groups

are relevant to us from a business point of view? How do we position ourselves and what makes sense

and what does not?

If we are aiming to make everybody happy, we have no chance. We're not going to achieve that because

I think a really poignant thing that's happened in cars over the last like five years that must

have got you thinking and you must have seen it was the rebrand of Jaguar. Because when you decided

that we're not just going to be fully known for murdered out Mercedes and G wagons, we're going

to do fully blue Lamborghini Uruses and Range Rovers that look like that and sun colored G.

There's an interesting. I know what you mean. That's a big bold decision. Jaguar said copy

nothing, but they may have still should have copied a little bit. What did you think of

that situation? Did that ever make you think about the decisions you make with doing something

really bold? No. The Jaguar campaign, it was almost like an April Fool's joke. It was so bad

that when you watch a movie and you kind of ask yourself, is it a comedy or is it

do you actually mean it? It was even down to the claim of copy nothing. They copied everything.

It was almost an exercise of how can I take a brand and make it as absurdly bland as possible

while checking off every single box on a list that is more oriented to progressive politics

than it is actually to selling cars. I think it relates to what we just came from.

If I try to please everybody,

it's just not going to work. Good design has never pleased everybody. Good design is almost always

polarizing. Honestly, the Jaguar campaign was literally, I was stunned because you're taking

a brand and you are, it was just absurd. Ripping apart. It was absurd. That was not even a soul

left. How can you take away the Jaguar from the Jaguar? It was like a free kick the hipster zombie

campaign. But as one thing here, I'm willing to make a small bet and I may be wrong that you

wouldn't have worked really on a Jaguar before. Why would you have got amazing AMG Mercedes and

loads of stuff going on? But I bet you'd be interested to take that new car and see what you

could do with it. Not at all. No, zero. Does it not make you want to make it? No, zero commercial

viability. Zero commercial viability. Not even close. This is not, I mean, I love cars where

but we're design nerds, but there's a business underneath. And some, some moves make sense

immediately. Some moves are the ones that people expect from you. Some make sense down the road.

Do you really think that we're doing colored cars for two years in a row,

not factoring in that some people are going to absolutely hate it to then drop

a black car next? Which you've done in many different formats, not only in Bentley, Mercedes.

What else is coming from Bravers in terms of cars? Are you taking on all the marks?

We've got no, I think if we can't just do, if we can't sit out to do everything, there's a few,

there's a few cars I really like. And there's a few cars that are obvious sort of,

there's a few cars that are obvious basis. I think the questions that we're asking ourselves

are always, for example, is it very simply, is it a technological base that we're interested in?

Is it a technological base that our customers are interested in? Is it something,

I'm sorry, is it something that we believe is going to be popular for a few years to come?

Because you have to take engineers and you have to invest the time into really,

really digging deep into the car if you really wanted to work. Then we're going to ask ourselves

when do we have model changes? So if we're investing in models into technology in time,

and if we're putting time and effort now, how far long is the model in its life cycle and when

is it going to change? Simply put, the reason why we're doing, why we're bringing, we bought this

out now and presented the Bravers model based on the Lamborghini Urus now is because the model

changed very simply. And now people are going to say, oh, there's other companies that came to

market early and so on and so forth. It's fine. It's fine. Sometimes you're the first, sometimes

you're not. We don't always have to be first. We have to make it work as a product and as a

business in the long term. And my horizon is not one year or two years, my horizon is 20 years,

30 years, 40 years. I'm not claiming I know what we're going to be in 20 years, but I want to make

things work long time, every time we talk about a product. So we get into something, we don't set

an end date because we try to understand that technology, we try to develop the designs the

right way and then we try to run with it. We just don't think that way. In the same way that sometimes

you can be displeased by a counterfeit, no different to the wrapper with the car scenario,

have you ever had a brand that you've started to work on displeased with you? Is it easy to just

modify a Lamborghini Urus and have Lamborghini be fully fine with it?

Again, as I mentioned, the case in itself when you talked about counterfeit is actually quite

interesting because it was heavily discussed online and at the point was a supermarket

cement campaign about it or train companies in German, very public. I think it's worth pointing

out that the essential discussion that was actually a very, very short one, the car was

a counterfeit period. There was a court ruling on that I think two weeks after that, two weeks

feedback, sometimes the frenzy is going on, things happen and are being discussed,

especially on social media, which is very, very interesting. There's very interesting echo

chambers out there. I think we addressed what happened and how it happened very clearly.

Interestingly, we got feedback from a lot of different audiences. One feedback that we clearly

got from customers was, thank you very much for finally addressing the issue.

I fully agree. We could have reacted in a different way and we were learning from it,

but also we learned one thing that there's many customers who bought a real Brabus masterpiece

and said, thank you very much for finally making this a topic and acknowledging it

because we're tired of it. We want to own an original Brabus and we want to

not be questioned whether our cars are original or not.

The same as the owner of a beautiful Rolex watch does not want to be questioned whether

it's fake or real. That was super interesting to see that sometimes there is more underneath

than what the trend is or what the discussion is. I think you've got to dig beneath the surface

and really ask yourself what do we really have to address? What is this about?

So we talk about a media challenge like that of the situation with the car and the wrapper,

but what about an internal challenge? Since your father passed and you became the owner,

CEO of the business, what has been your hardest challenge in the company?

I feel this is like a question where there's a few people, there's a few questions that people ask

me. One of them is this. The other one is what you see yourself in 10 years and the third one

is what's your favorite car? And I have a hard time answering all of them. So go on all at once.

Because as I mentioned something very in the very beginning, it's really, really mean. I really feel

especially with the story of how I got up to where I am today, with what the team has done

the last few years. It's a big privilege to do what I do on a daily basis.

Saying that, it is a challenge every single day. It is a challenge every single day because we're

growing as a company. We essentially have been since I took over from my father and the years

before. He did not have a stroke for no reason. I always say he quite literally lived himself to

death and worked himself to death. And we've had endless amounts of discussions about it.

And I believe also he asked me what he would say. One of the things that he would not agree is

sometimes it's how I work because I work a lot. And it's I work like a maniac. Not only me,

there's a few people on the team that work like crazy people. And so I would not say what's the

biggest challenge because normally we talk about a comfort zone as in something that you have to

get out of. You've got to do more. You have to move more. You have to read more. You have to get

out of your comfort zone. I feel like I've been firmly outside in my comfort zone. I've gotten

used to being outside of my comfort zone for the last eight years. And we're not really discussing

whether we change or grow or do things differently or adapt and tackle new challenges. But the

discussion is only about the rate of change and about the speed of change. And I have had to get

used to that being a normality. And I would describe that as I would honestly describe it as

a continuous challenge. Well, if you ask me what is my key challenge today, is it quite literally

sleeping enough? And it is a changing organization that is changing from a very, very owner centric

culture, classic patriarch, to a business that is having to work

without what I call the genie, without having to work with split up responsibilities

and essentially having to professionalize in a big way. To be able, it's not a fun thing.

Suddenly, we talk about professionalization. Oh, we have to, you will grow. It is messy.

It is ugly. And it is really a lot of times. Every project that we have eventually is going

to come to a point where we have real challenges. And if you take the wrong turn, it's going to

tank or it's going to, you know, you're going to lose the order, you're going to lose the project,

you're going to lose people because they're too frustrated. So

I'm dealing with organizational change has been the challenge for the challenge for eight years.

How big is Brabis? Give us some context because all we can see is the cars and what can't be on

the van. Very simply speaking, when I talk over the business at the time, I think we were about

and please don't nail me down this. I believe we were about 150, 170, 180 people. Today, we're

500 people and growing,

hiring in various different fields from literally hiring architects for developing branded real

estate to hiring designers to hiring mechanics. It's to hiring bookkeepers and, you know,

administration specialists. There's a lot of different, a lot of different job profiles and

a lot of different things. There is bigger companies, there are smaller companies.

That really doesn't concern me. I'm worried about what we can do and what we really need.

And I'm also, by the way, bigger is not always better. If I've learned one thing, it is that.

Because I don't get up every morning to be, to have the biggest company, employ the most people.

I think that every business model has a certain size where it can exist well

and every business model has its limits. We have certainly grown in a few different ways, but

every time we add on people, every time we add on projects, we also add on risks. And that risks,

risk is very firmly, is very clearly with me when I lie in bed in the middle of the night

and can't sleep one more time. So it's, that is a discussion that's, of course, that everybody

who has a company owner has with themselves every single day.

Do you have a question whether the CEO role is still right for yourself?

Yes, absolutely. I believe from, there's a certain point where I get to the conclusion

that it absolutely is. And there is another point of view where I'm trying to hire and I'm trying to

every single day. This is, this is, this is the everyday discussions right now,

where we are trying to distribute responsibility in such a way that I have to be less involved.

I am not, I do not want to be involved. I'm going to hand over complete work packages,

projects, segments of the business. As soon as I can let go, I will let go because I know that

I've probably been in talks about three other projects, four other projects, the two different

segments, I don't know whatever. And once I, something I had really, really, really had to

learn, the sounds, it's, it's completely unfunny when it happens to you. When you acquire a new

project or a new client or somebody that's really, really valuable, and you can't follow up on your

promise, that is not fun. And I've had a few situations in the last eight years where I've,

I've had to work several days and several nights with no sleep,

to the point where I simply, I have that point where I fell asleep and, you know, you've worked

with Germany all day and then you're working with the US and you're simply falling asleep at your

desk in a meeting with, I don't know, lawyers, quite literally. That is not a good place to be in.

That is not a good place to be in. It's been happening, I think in the last, I've had to

learn in the last one and a half to two years, I've had to learn in a pre intense way that

we cannot take on more than we can digest.

This question, every single person listening is going to understand because if you're listening,

you're probably either going to be employed or have been employed or own a company and have

employed people. People that are employed, often many of them will be happy to voice their opinions

on things. Some won't because they're too afraid of what the boss, the CEO, the owner may think.

It can become, on the other side, a very lonely place for the boss, the CEO, the owner, because

you think, are they 100% always telling me what they feel, how they think, because are they too

worried that they're going to upset me, make me annoyed? Do you think you have anyone in the business

that if push come to shove, they would be brave enough to sit down with you and say,

I think you need to step inside my team? Absolutely 100%. I know for a fact,

and we've been there, that there is, and this is what makes me immensely part of the team,

that there is people telling me exactly what they think about me and what they think about my

decision-making, what they think about whether I'm in the right place or not. There's also people

who will take me to the side and say, you know what, you're going to go home, you're going to go home

and sleep. This is not where you should be. And if you manage a business with the, you're in a,

it's the intensity of what we've, what the intensity of the journey of the last eight years

sometimes felt like a movie to me. And the amount of absurd situations that you're in

and the amount of back-to-back-to-back-to-back things that are happening when something becomes

dynamic, a business that is dynamic, that is growing is a good thing on the one hand.

On the other hand, is just another reason to go bankrupt if you bite off more than you can chew.

And there's nothing cool or glamorous about it. It's just another way to fail

if you're not careful. And so, luckily, I have a few people that will absolutely tell me,

this isn't, this isn't how you should be doing things that will tell me, you know,

you're not in a good place, you know, you should adjust in whatever way, whatever way that that

is, whether leadership sometimes is a pretty lonely place. Absolutely. Yes, it is.

But is success to you long-term growing outside of being the CEO,

making it to the bit that your dad didn't make it to?

Right now, I am getting to the conclusion that I'm good with where I am and I have

enough to give the business in the role that I'm in now. Owner and CEO is a very,

very specific sort of position in a company. I could do one or the other

with not being the owner, become being more difficult of a decision than not being the CEO.

I could call what I'm doing, you know, I could adjust the role in a hundred different ways.

I'm good with where I am now because I always actually had this conversation in a job interview

for management position earlier today. I am making it clear to everybody in my business that being a

CEO makes me a tool. If you're a project lead, if you're a project manager, if you're the line

and line manager in my business, first and foremost, a CEO is a tool you can use. It's like

having a hammer in your tool case. Whatever you're going to come to work in the morning,

you're going to open your tool case and there's 10, 20, 30, 50 different tools like an electrician

or somebody at a construction site, you're opening your toolbox and there's different

things you can use every day. One of those tools is the CEO. That's the tool you bring when you've

got to control the risk that you can't control yourself. That's the tool you bring when you want

diplomacy, networks, a discussion from the CEO of a company to the CEO of a company at a higher

level than yourself. I quite literally mean it. CEO is a tool and I'm telling everybody

because we're having this intense discussion about ownership, proactive management,

predictive management, looking ahead and really taking ownership of the projects that you're

doing and I regard the owner and CEO position as a tool for people to use whenever I can create

value for them in their projects. Being the CEO is not about playing boss or being super cool

or being the top guy. It's a tool. It's a tool you can use to solve problems and create value

for the business and it's a job. One of my favorite videos on the internet is when Christian von

Konenzeg and Matte Rimmack and John Hennessey always drive each other's cars on the track.

I love that one. It's strange really because I was raised with my dad's mindset of you're at war

in business. You're at war with your competition and then one day I saw him sat down having a

beer with one of his greatest competitors at the bar. When I see that particular

Urus, it does give me essences probably because of the color because it's loud of Mansory.

When I mentioned brand names like Mansory, like Urban in the UK, would you be happy to do the same?

Would you love to do that day with them on track where you're all driving each other's cars or

are you guys a little bit more competitive than that?

I don't necessarily think it's about being more or less competitive. I think being competitive is

a good thing but in any industry and you have to be competitive and you have to want to win

a game just like any footballer or any racer or racing driver.

Let's kick things off this way. If there's no competition, there is no market.

I firmly believe in that. If you're literally the only person doing anything, either you're

trailblazing and you're the first ever to do something and have an idea

or you're going to face competition, that is simply a reality in the market.

I don't only have no problem with somebody like Urban, Mansory, Rentech. There's a lot of

different businesses out there existing in the market. I absolutely love it.

I really, and I know all of them, some more, some less, but I know the guys.

We know the players. We know who's coming up. We know who's got what issues. It's not even kind of,

there's not really a research team researching who's doing what in the industry because that's

the pool we're swimming in, so we know. I think the industry that we're in has changed over the

last years in one interesting way. When we started in the 70s, 80s, 90s, the industry

of people who worked on cars in several ways was very, very brand structured.

There was Bravas from Mercedes, and there was App for Audi, and there was many different

examples. Over time, all those companies have developed different, they focus on different

things. They've developed different specialties. They've developed different design languages,

much like you can and much like you can buy a sweatshirt or a pair of pants or a jacket from

Christian Dior, Armani and Louis Vuitton or Jill Zander today. You can also buy

a product from Bravas, from Nancy, from Urban, from whoever you want to buy a product from,

and whether I buy a pullover at Dior or, I don't know, a handbag at Bottega

or at Louis Vuitton, simply it depends on the brand promise, my personal preference,

my style, the history of the brand, and the differences in the calibration of the brands.

Everybody does their thing. Everybody has their customers, and I absolutely value

the contributions that they make into the industry. This isn't something I just say,

I mean it. It's because otherwise, it's one thing to kind of jokingly say, oh,

it would be terribly boring if there wouldn't be anybody else, but that's not what I mean.

It would just, that would just not be a market, because nobody would be buying those things.

So what scares you the most, Dunning-Bravas?

What scares me the most, not performing to the best of my abilities.

I'm asking, literally every day I'm asking myself, what can I do to contribute?

What can I do? How can I generate value? This is also going back to the discussion,

am I good CEO? Am I the right CEO for the business? We're going through different phases

of growth and in our business, I have the feeling that there's going to be two or three,

four moments in the next five years, whether the jumps are getting bigger.

Are we going to stay in the company that we are today? Are we going to need

a different sort of financing because we're literally financing out of the left or right

pocket? Is it enough? Are we going to have to go and market and get on a significant amount of

financing from the outside? Are we going to need investors? Are we going to have to go to market,

to the stock market? Are we going to stay within where we are right now, which is giving me maximum

control, but also to a certain degree, limiting the reach into the tunes of hundreds of millions

of euros, limiting the amount of resources I can deploy towards the business.

It really depends on the opportunities we have and the different markets that we engage in.

Do we look at Brabus Island right now in Abu Dhabi, for example? That is literally,

we're moving from singular cars to projects that are literally costing hundreds of millions of

euros very, very fast. It's happening within a time span of two to three years.

Do you actively ever think about your legacy? Because you think about what your dad left behind

in his legacy, but does it ever enter your head? No, I'm 41 years old. I'm literally

worried about getting shit done and I'm having fun doing it with a team and I'm trying to

perform to the best of our abilities. I'm realizing that you can't be everybody's darling. I'm

realizing that there's a lot of runway ahead of us and I'm also realizing that there's different

turns where we could go wrong. I'm also realizing that I am absolutely not immune to making mistakes.

There's one metaphor that there's one kind of image that my dad has always and obviously

has been a big influence on me. It would be strange if he hadn't been. There's one picture that he

always talked about. He says leading a company or leading a company is like jumping into a pool.

You're going to have to dive from the one meter board every single day without knowing if there's

enough water in the pool. On a very regular basis, you're going to have to jump from the

three meter board and the five to 10 meter boards is where it gets really, really tricky

because if there's not enough water in the pool, then five meter board, can you survive? Yes,

but you're going to have a few broken bones probably. At the latest, when you're at the

10 meter board, it's going to happen several points in your career. Interestingly, with the Amazon

Show, we're at one of those moments in time for several reels again. Then there is going to be

moments where you will not be able to check if there's enough water in the pool and also you're

not going to be able to send somebody to check. He always used to say that when you stand up there,

alone, on the board, looking down, ready to get ready to jump, getting ready to bring up the

courage to jump, you're going to realize that you're going to have to jump. There's no way around

it and that is going to be the second you understand entrepreneurship because there's nobody

who is going to make that decision for you and whenever you're standing up there, one thing

you can be absolutely sure of that this pool is going to be lined with people and everybody's

going to have a comment and everybody's going to talk about your swim trunks and everybody's

going to talk about how you look very, very stupid when you jump or when you jump the last time

and how that turned out and everybody's going to have comments but the only person standing on

the board is you and that's when you're the one you understand entrepreneurship. I find that

metaphor to be very true. Well, the other part of entrepreneurship is getting shit done and

that's what we did today. We put some of the best brabuses that you've ever made in the background

of a shot and sat down and had a conversation about them. Constantine, thank you so much

for coming on Road to Success. I'm very grateful we did this. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for

taking the time.

Brabus Owner Exclusive: The TRUTH About Counterfeit Cars, Family Trauma & The Future Of Brabus!

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