May 9, 2025 • 16 mins
Sustainability isn't just what you sell, it's how you operate. Maike Gebhardt, MD of Utopia - Germany's leading voice on sustainability - reveals how authentic leadership creates resilient, thriving organizations even during crisis.
As both an environmental economist and mathematician, Maike approaches sustainability with analytical rigor and genuine passion. She shares why Utopia chose to be a for-profit company rather than a non-profit, sending a powerful market signal that businesses can balance purpose with profitability. This unique approach requires finding investors who value mission alongside margins, allowing Utopia to grow sustainably without the pressure of unrealistic "hockey stick" projections.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Maike details Utopia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than immediately cutting staff when media spending dropped, the management team voluntarily eliminated their own bonuses to preserve jobs. This people-first approach created remarkable team cohesion and, surprisingly, led to Utopia's most successful year ever. Maike explains how they rapidly adapted their business model, shifting from large branding campaigns to smaller, conversion-focused products that met clients' immediate needs.
What emerges is a masterclass in authentic leadership. By truly embodying the sustainability principles they promote, listening deeply to customer needs, and valuing people above short-term profits, Utopia demonstrates how companies can navigate uncertainty while staying true to their values. As they prepare to expand into the US market, their story offers a compelling blueprint for building businesses that thrive by doing good.
Want to hear more leadership insights from purpose-driven executives? Subscribe to Leadership Espresso for conversations that blend practical business wisdom with meaningful purpose.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A very warm welcome this morning for another episode
of the Leadership Espresso,this morning with the leading
voice in Germany aboutsustainability.
It is Maike Gebhardt.
She is MD of Utopia.
A very warm welcome.
I'm thrilled to have you on theshow, maike.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good morning.
Thanks for having me, so I'mlooking forward to talking to
you.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Fabulous, Maike, let's jump right into it.
You are the leading voice withUtopia about sustainability,
sustainable products andservices.
But what only a few people knowthe company itself is ingrained
in sustainability, itsleadership, its attitude.
(00:51):
So how sustainable are you andwhat makes the difference?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, first of all, of course, our topics and our
mission is sustainability.
We try to give inspiration andinformation to consumers and to
motivate them to live moresustainable.
Additionally, as a companyitself, we try to operate
(01:22):
sustainable, which means allproducts we as a company consume
are more or less sustainable.
We, of course, consumerenewable energies when we
travel most of all, we don't usethe airplane.
(01:42):
So with everything we doourselves, we try to be
authentic, because sustainableis about trust.
So this is in our dailybehavior.
We try to be, and it's not thatdifficult to be, because most
people that work for Utopia theydo this because they believe we
(02:06):
need this transformationtowards a more sustainable
society, which makes it easierto live it yourself.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So I absolutely agree .
Now you are also an economistyou're an environmental
economist, and you're amathematician, so you can
calculate right.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I like numbers.
Yes, you like numbers right.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Most of our leaders also either like or have to like
numbers, and you have aninvestor as well, right, so they
have expectations.
So how is your tradeoff betweenfulfilling expectations, such
as coming up with a profit andpotentially growing the profit,
potentially growing the top line, and still having a culture
(02:54):
where you don't burn out people?
So how do you live thistrade-off?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, indeed, it is a trade-off and when we started
Utopia, we spent a lot of timethinking about should Utopia be
a non-profit or should we be afor-profit business?
And we decided to become afor-profit company and I
strongly believe this was theright decision, because we need
(03:21):
this signal in general that youcan do business and be
sustainable and if you want tobe successful with this topic.
So this means we don't want tohave like 2,000 people using
Utopia, but we wanted to havemillions.
This means you have to be, youhave to have the best people.
(03:42):
You have to be, have excellenteditorial stuff.
You have to have the bestpeople.
You have to be, have excellenteditorial stuff.
You have to have excellent ITstuff.
So this forces us to be aprofitable and, yes, working as
a business.
(04:02):
But we were lucky to have, or westill are lucky to have, an
investor which, of course, lookson the figures but not that
much on stakeholder value, likemany others, like many other
companies, but nonetheless, it'severy year the trade off.
(04:23):
On the one hand, we have thismission and our idea is really
to bring the idea of sustainableconsumption to millions of
people.
Therefore, we need money tobuild the company and at the
same time, you're in this logicand this means over many years,
(04:43):
we needed fresh money from ourinvestor to grow the company and
today, of course, he's seekingfor the return on investment.
But I think we're good in it tofind a good balance.
So there is a return now, butit's a fair return.
So every year when we talk aboutthe business plan, we try to
(05:07):
avoid over-promise hockey sticksenormous hockey sticks.
We have a hockey stick, but notthat enormous.
So because I have to care forthe people who work for me, I
have to be authentic and I can'ttalk about sustainability on
the one hand and, on the otherhand, let people work 12 hours a
day for me.
So this is a year by yeartrade-off, but fortunately, our
(05:33):
investor is invested in severalsustainable business, so he is
used to it, used to this logic,so we're getting along Right.
So it sounds like you're lucky.
Yes, definitely we are, we are.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right Now.
Could you just illustrate alittle bit about how is working
for Utopia maybe different toother businesses?
So what is?
How is the leadership different?
Or how is daily workingpractices?
How is that different, so thatwe can get an idea how you can
(06:12):
grow sustainability in numberstogether in a healthy way.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So maybe it helps if we take a look at the corona
crisis we faced this year.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, sure, we're still facing yes.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Because I think me and my dear partner we are very
aware about how important peopleare to us, so we really try to
make the best people stay withthe business and today, if you
(06:51):
want to have the people staywith the business, you have to
care about people.
So this year, when we faced thecorona crisis in the very
beginning we were reallyfrightened because we saw an
immediate impact on mediaspending and media spending is
one of the main pillars of ourbusiness model.
So, of course, our investorasked us what are you planning
(07:16):
to do?
And we ask ourselves what arewe going to do?
And, of course, the first thingwe're doing is talking about
cost cut.
And the easiest way to cutcosts is reduce people.
And if you are in the mediamarket, like today, where it's
(07:37):
hard to sell media, you canreduce people in the advertising
department, for example.
So we try to find a plan how toget through this crisis.
And, of course, we cut someexternal costs and we stopped
(07:58):
some development project tofocus on the core business.
And additionally, we said, well, there's a certain amount of
bonus money.
So if we are all ready todispense with our bonuses and
say this year in order to savejobs.
(08:21):
We are ready to reduce thebonus to zero, and everybody of
us.
So it took us a couple of daysto talk to the management team
and everybody says, yes, we'rewilling to do it.
But we had a clear deal.
(08:42):
The deal was as soon as thebusiness is running, you're
getting your bonus, and theemployees are first, and the
management team, and especiallythe general management, is we
are the two last people to get abonus.
And so, yeah, but this was veryclear and I said if I have the
(09:04):
entire amount of bonuses, thisgives me the flexibility to go
through this year without anyadditional cuts in employee
spendings, without any cuts inthe employment team.
(09:28):
So sorry, can I do that again?
Sure, so this helps us to getthrough this crisis.
It was enough money to know weare still going to be profitable
at the end of the year becausewe didn't get fresh money in
this year.
But the most interesting thingwas what it made to the entire
(09:52):
team.
So for the team spirit knowingmy job is safe and we all go
through this together and wedon't say, well, 50% of the
employment can reduce the hoursby 50% and the rest will still
have their full money.
So we said we're all in thesame boat and we go through this
(10:16):
together, right, and the funnything is, or the lucky thing is,
in the end it will be the bestyear of Utopia ever.
So it really it builds strong.
And of course, we didn't onlydo this.
We then together try to reactto the market, anticipate the
needs of our customers, buildnew products.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Before we jump into the next topic, and I think it's
fantastic.
It's a real role model, becausefor our audience in Asia and in
the Americas, you need to knowthat internally we have
something called estate-fundedshort-time work, so where you
can kind of set your team on alower scale of hours and the
(10:58):
state will kind of fill in theexpense, right.
So this would apply for anybusiness, and all the big
companies did it.
Utopia didn't do it becausethey didn't have to, because
they had a different focus, andI really like what you said.
People first, and this takes alot of creativity for management
(11:19):
not to think the easiest way isto cut costs and to fire people
or to put them on redundancypayment or whatever.
But the harder thing is, how doI need to reshape to the
conditions?
Now?
This was the second step and II thought that was fantastic
because you were an internetplatform, basically right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And you applied kind of the Agile way of doing
business and maybe you can putthe second pillar to how you
cope with COVID.
And actually you just didn'tcope with it.
As you said, you probablyturned out the best year in
history.
So what's the second approachabout your products?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, we had to realize that our typical
products didn't work as soon asCOVID started, because we often
try to sell long termcorporations, corporations, but
(12:24):
at the moment, as most of theentities outside, they can't
plan, so they won't give memoney for December or January
next year.
They decide if they have moneynow.
So we realized that we have tobuild new products.
The second was that onlinee-commerce became more and more
(12:50):
important.
So we tried to build productswhich focused on conversion
towards online shops, less thanbranding campaigns branding
campaigns for sustainability.
So we try to sell um.
Instead of one time 30 000euros, we try to sell 20, 20
(13:11):
time 1500 euros.
And that worked.
It sounds, it sounds simple um,but it was a.
It was a different view on itand it forced us to cope with
the fact that if I today look atour income in December, it
looks like a catastrophe.
So I really have to focus ontoday and maybe next month, but
(13:37):
if I look three or four monthsahead, it's still a nightmare.
So it's like coping with thefact that there is less security
, focusing on the moment, today,now, because this is what
companies can do at the momentthey react to the conditions
which we have today, talk to ourmost important, biggest clients
(14:08):
.
And instead of trying to sell,we said, we asked them what is
your need?
And and one of the mostimportant needs in the beginning
was they said well, now we havea crisis again and everybody
tells me that sustainability islosing importance to businesses
and to consumers.
Do you have any arguments forme that helped me to keep up the
(14:33):
same level of sustainability inour company to to proceed.
So we we then started analyzingdata data of our platform and we
asked the user of the platform.
So, in order to get a betterknowledge, which are the topics
that are working today?
(14:53):
Is climate change still a topic?
Regional products, what is it?
And with these facts, we wentback to our clients and said
these are the needs of theconsumers today.
So the first step was to thinkabout the needs of our clients,
(15:16):
and later on they came back andsaid well, we decided to spend
money for other topics.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So, but in the beginning we didn't know what
would come back, but it was likewe realized that there's no
chance to sell today I reallylike that story because it shows
that uh, so it shows how we canmake a company really
sustainable by being sustainableyourself, by rethinking the
(15:43):
situation and by adjusting, andby balancing, and by being
creative, and, and, and, uh.
For today, I want to, I want tofinish, uh, but I do know that
you have a major launch uhhappening in the future.
I, I, I don't know if I'mallowed to talk about it today.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Please go ahead, please go ahead.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You're thinking about entering the US market with
your platform and by growing,and I think we should have a
second podcast once you'regetting closer or once you
launch it, and then talk abouthow you enter the market, how
it's different and how you kindof be the voice in the Americas
about sustainability.
(16:28):
So, mikey, thank you so muchfor today.
It was an awesome podcast.
It was really mind-blowingabout how you grow sustainably
inside out for everyone, andit's all about the people.
I fully agree.
So be inspired.
What else?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
thank you, have a good day.
A very warm welcome this morning for another episode
of the Leadership Espresso,this morning with the leading
voice in Germany aboutsustainability.
It is Maike Gebhardt.
She is MD of Utopia.
A very warm welcome.
I'm thrilled to have you on theshow, maike.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good morning.
Thanks for having me, so I'mlooking forward to talking to
you.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Fabulous, Maike, let's jump right into it.
You are the leading voice withUtopia about sustainability,
sustainable products andservices.
But what only a few people knowthe company itself is ingrained
in sustainability, itsleadership, its attitude.
(00:51):
So how sustainable are you andwhat makes the difference?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, first of all, of course, our topics and our
mission is sustainability.
We try to give inspiration andinformation to consumers and to
motivate them to live moresustainable.
Additionally, as a companyitself, we try to operate
(01:22):
sustainable, which means allproducts we as a company consume
are more or less sustainable.
We, of course, consumerenewable energies when we
travel most of all, we don't usethe airplane.
(01:42):
So with everything we doourselves, we try to be
authentic, because sustainableis about trust.
So this is in our dailybehavior.
We try to be, and it's not thatdifficult to be, because most
people that work for Utopia theydo this because they believe we
(02:06):
need this transformationtowards a more sustainable
society, which makes it easierto live it yourself.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So I absolutely agree .
Now you are also an economistyou're an environmental
economist, and you're amathematician, so you can
calculate right.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I like numbers.
Yes, you like numbers right.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Most of our leaders also either like or have to like
numbers, and you have aninvestor as well, right, so they
have expectations.
So how is your tradeoff betweenfulfilling expectations, such
as coming up with a profit andpotentially growing the profit,
potentially growing the top line, and still having a culture
(02:54):
where you don't burn out people?
So how do you live thistrade-off?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, indeed, it is a trade-off and when we started
Utopia, we spent a lot of timethinking about should Utopia be
a non-profit or should we be afor-profit business?
And we decided to become afor-profit company and I
strongly believe this was theright decision, because we need
(03:21):
this signal in general that youcan do business and be
sustainable and if you want tobe successful with this topic.
So this means we don't want tohave like 2,000 people using
Utopia, but we wanted to havemillions.
This means you have to be, youhave to have the best people.
(03:42):
You have to be, have excellenteditorial stuff.
You have to have the bestpeople.
You have to be, have excellenteditorial stuff.
You have to have excellent ITstuff.
So this forces us to be aprofitable and, yes, working as
a business.
(04:02):
But we were lucky to have, or westill are lucky to have, an
investor which, of course, lookson the figures but not that
much on stakeholder value, likemany others, like many other
companies, but nonetheless, it'severy year the trade off.
(04:23):
On the one hand, we have thismission and our idea is really
to bring the idea of sustainableconsumption to millions of
people.
Therefore, we need money tobuild the company and at the
same time, you're in this logicand this means over many years,
(04:43):
we needed fresh money from ourinvestor to grow the company and
today, of course, he's seekingfor the return on investment.
But I think we're good in it tofind a good balance.
So there is a return now, butit's a fair return.
So every year when we talk aboutthe business plan, we try to
(05:07):
avoid over-promise hockey sticksenormous hockey sticks.
We have a hockey stick, but notthat enormous.
So because I have to care forthe people who work for me, I
have to be authentic and I can'ttalk about sustainability on
the one hand and, on the otherhand, let people work 12 hours a
day for me.
So this is a year by yeartrade-off, but fortunately, our
(05:33):
investor is invested in severalsustainable business, so he is
used to it, used to this logic,so we're getting along Right.
So it sounds like you're lucky.
Yes, definitely we are, we are.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right Now.
Could you just illustrate alittle bit about how is working
for Utopia maybe different toother businesses?
So what is?
How is the leadership different?
Or how is daily workingpractices?
How is that different, so thatwe can get an idea how you can
(06:12):
grow sustainability in numberstogether in a healthy way.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So maybe it helps if we take a look at the corona
crisis we faced this year.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, sure, we're still facing yes.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Because I think me and my dear partner we are very
aware about how important peopleare to us, so we really try to
make the best people stay withthe business and today, if you
(06:51):
want to have the people staywith the business, you have to
care about people.
So this year, when we faced thecorona crisis in the very
beginning we were reallyfrightened because we saw an
immediate impact on mediaspending and media spending is
one of the main pillars of ourbusiness model.
So, of course, our investorasked us what are you planning
(07:16):
to do?
And we ask ourselves what arewe going to do?
And, of course, the first thingwe're doing is talking about
cost cut.
And the easiest way to cutcosts is reduce people.
And if you are in the mediamarket, like today, where it's
(07:37):
hard to sell media, you canreduce people in the advertising
department, for example.
So we try to find a plan how toget through this crisis.
And, of course, we cut someexternal costs and we stopped
(07:58):
some development project tofocus on the core business.
And additionally, we said, well, there's a certain amount of
bonus money.
So if we are all ready todispense with our bonuses and
say this year in order to savejobs.
(08:21):
We are ready to reduce thebonus to zero, and everybody of
us.
So it took us a couple of daysto talk to the management team
and everybody says, yes, we'rewilling to do it.
But we had a clear deal.
(08:42):
The deal was as soon as thebusiness is running, you're
getting your bonus, and theemployees are first, and the
management team, and especiallythe general management, is we
are the two last people to get abonus.
And so, yeah, but this was veryclear and I said if I have the
(09:04):
entire amount of bonuses, thisgives me the flexibility to go
through this year without anyadditional cuts in employee
spendings, without any cuts inthe employment team.
(09:28):
So sorry, can I do that again?
Sure, so this helps us to getthrough this crisis.
It was enough money to know weare still going to be profitable
at the end of the year becausewe didn't get fresh money in
this year.
But the most interesting thingwas what it made to the entire
(09:52):
team.
So for the team spirit knowingmy job is safe and we all go
through this together and wedon't say, well, 50% of the
employment can reduce the hoursby 50% and the rest will still
have their full money.
So we said we're all in thesame boat and we go through this
(10:16):
together, right, and the funnything is, or the lucky thing is,
in the end it will be the bestyear of Utopia ever.
So it really it builds strong.
And of course, we didn't onlydo this.
We then together try to reactto the market, anticipate the
needs of our customers, buildnew products.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Before we jump into the next topic, and I think it's
fantastic.
It's a real role model, becausefor our audience in Asia and in
the Americas, you need to knowthat internally we have
something called estate-fundedshort-time work, so where you
can kind of set your team on alower scale of hours and the
(10:58):
state will kind of fill in theexpense, right.
So this would apply for anybusiness, and all the big
companies did it.
Utopia didn't do it becausethey didn't have to, because
they had a different focus, andI really like what you said.
People first, and this takes alot of creativity for management
(11:19):
not to think the easiest way isto cut costs and to fire people
or to put them on redundancypayment or whatever.
But the harder thing is, how doI need to reshape to the
conditions?
Now?
This was the second step and II thought that was fantastic
because you were an internetplatform, basically right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And you applied kind of the Agile way of doing
business and maybe you can putthe second pillar to how you
cope with COVID.
And actually you just didn'tcope with it.
As you said, you probablyturned out the best year in
history.
So what's the second approachabout your products?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, we had to realize that our typical
products didn't work as soon asCOVID started, because we often
try to sell long termcorporations, corporations, but
(12:24):
at the moment, as most of theentities outside, they can't
plan, so they won't give memoney for December or January
next year.
They decide if they have moneynow.
So we realized that we have tobuild new products.
The second was that onlinee-commerce became more and more
(12:50):
important.
So we tried to build productswhich focused on conversion
towards online shops, less thanbranding campaigns branding
campaigns for sustainability.
So we try to sell um.
Instead of one time 30 000euros, we try to sell 20, 20
(13:11):
time 1500 euros.
And that worked.
It sounds, it sounds simple um,but it was a.
It was a different view on itand it forced us to cope with
the fact that if I today look atour income in December, it
looks like a catastrophe.
So I really have to focus ontoday and maybe next month, but
(13:37):
if I look three or four monthsahead, it's still a nightmare.
So it's like coping with thefact that there is less security
, focusing on the moment, today,now, because this is what
companies can do at the momentthey react to the conditions
which we have today, talk to ourmost important, biggest clients
(14:08):
.
And instead of trying to sell,we said, we asked them what is
your need?
And and one of the mostimportant needs in the beginning
was they said well, now we havea crisis again and everybody
tells me that sustainability islosing importance to businesses
and to consumers.
Do you have any arguments forme that helped me to keep up the
(14:33):
same level of sustainability inour company to to proceed.
So we we then started analyzingdata data of our platform and we
asked the user of the platform.
So, in order to get a betterknowledge, which are the topics
that are working today?
(14:53):
Is climate change still a topic?
Regional products, what is it?
And with these facts, we wentback to our clients and said
these are the needs of theconsumers today.
So the first step was to thinkabout the needs of our clients,
(15:16):
and later on they came back andsaid well, we decided to spend
money for other topics.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So, but in the beginning we didn't know what
would come back, but it was likewe realized that there's no
chance to sell today I reallylike that story because it shows
that uh, so it shows how we canmake a company really
sustainable by being sustainableyourself, by rethinking the
(15:43):
situation and by adjusting, andby balancing, and by being
creative, and, and, and, uh.
For today, I want to, I want tofinish, uh, but I do know that
you have a major launch uhhappening in the future.
I, I, I don't know if I'mallowed to talk about it today.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Please go ahead, please go ahead.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You're thinking about entering the US market with
your platform and by growing,and I think we should have a
second podcast once you'regetting closer or once you
launch it, and then talk abouthow you enter the market, how
it's different and how you kindof be the voice in the Americas
about sustainability.
(16:28):
So, mikey, thank you so muchfor today.
It was an awesome podcast.
It was really mind-blowingabout how you grow sustainably
inside out for everyone, andit's all about the people.
I fully agree.
So be inspired.
What else?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
thank you, have a good day.
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