The Christian Toetzke interview: “Work is not work: it’s my life”

Hyrox CEO Christian Toetzke’s career recently came full circle. He created and sold a cycling event company, then worked for global conglomerates, but is now back in his happy place, building what he wants to become one of the world’s largest mass participation sports events — from the ground up. The fast-growing brand stages global races in which participants alternate eight, 1km runs with tough workouts, such as pushing weighted sleds, rowing, and lunges with heavy sandbags.

Toetzke, 56, is adamant that Hyrox — which he cofounded with former Olympic field hockey athlete, Moritz Furste — had to begin as a start-up because “big ideas just do not happen at big corporations. The board meetings are too long, every decision takes forever, so they never develop something from scratch.” The task he faces requires levels of stamina and determination familiar to Hyrox racers, but that suits Toetzke’s sensibility down to the ground. “To wake up in the morning with no job, and think, ‘What do I do today?’ Ugh. This is not for me,” he says.

Here, he chats with Big Think about his quest to create “the perfect company,” why he’s been reading Yuval Noah Harari, and why his work is not really “work” at all.

Big Think: You’re unusual in having worked first as an entrepreneur before embarking on a corporate career, and are now back running your own business. How did your path to Hyrox evolve?

Toetzke: After I finished university in Germany, I tried a normal job, working for an advertising agency, but left after six months as I had the idea for a new cycling event: the “marathon on wheels.” I thought, “why not close the roads, and have a pro race and then amateur race open to everybody?” I knew nothing and learnt hard lessons but the idea was so good it quickly became very successful.

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After 12 years, I sold that company to a large French media company in 2007, and was contracted to work for them. At the end of my five-year contractual period, the division was sold to the Ironman Group, then owned by China’s Wanda [Group]. I left there as soon as the contract ran out and my commitment was over. I am not a corporate guy. But I appreciated two things working for huge firms. First, the power they have: their access to capital opens a lot of doors. Second, the luxury of researching sports events in every part of the world looking for their next acquisition helped me with Hyrox.

Big Think: Your formula for Hyrox, creating a mass-participation event for gym-goers, both elite and amateur — has clearly taken off. But how did you formulate your leadership style?

Toetzke: I analyzed the firms I’ve been a part of to try to create the perfect company. My first rule for the ideal company was: focus on a single product and brand. Many people have approached [me] to ask Hyrox to invest in other areas of fitness and brands — I always say no. Our brand is Hyrox and we won’t do anything else.

Second, I tried to make the company as lean as possible. I gathered very senior, experienced people and try to minimize junior positions: these just inflate companies. If I hire an expert, I don’t want them spending their time educating junior people and answering questions all day. I want their expertise to generate revenue and work for the brand, and them to take decisions quickly — otherwise it creates bottlenecks that inhibit fast growth.

The other way I keep the company lean is the support of technology. We use Pleo for expense receipts, monday.com for organizing our operations, plus Slack and WhatsApp — it means we have no need for an armada of assistants. I don’t have a secretary or assistant: I don’t need someone to book my flights or organize my expenses because with software it takes me two minutes.

Having an efficient, lean company with a pool of experts in key areas is also best for our staff: the fewer people we have, the higher the average salary. It keeps them more motivated so they don’t want to leave. The company is getting bigger every month, but my leadership style is to grow smart and not just in volume.

Big Think: Has that focus on being nimble and entrepreneurial rather than slow and corporate led to any mistakes?

Toetzke: Our biggest mistake so far was to underestimate the US market. We opened one office in New York, and thought we’d run all our events in LA, Dallas, Chicago, and everywhere else, out of it. We thought, it’s all the same language and one marketplace, we can do it all from one base. But it didn’t work at all.

Our initial thought was, we’ve done an event in New York, now we’ll go to LA or Texas and they’ll have heard about it and be queueing up for us. That didn’t happen. America is like 51 countries: every state is the size of a European country.

We couldn’t grab enough attention for events in other states because we didn’t have enough boots on the ground. It made US growth in our earliest years much slower than in Europe.

Big Think: You were 40 when you sold your first business. Financially, did you need to work again? If not, what drove you to do so?

Toetzke: No, I could have retired after the sale — but that didn’t come into my head for a single second. I don’t understand what people think is great about retirement: to wake up in the morning with no job and think, “What do I do today?” Ugh. Without work, you either become an alcoholic because the only thing to do is meet friends and open a bottle of wine, or you become obsessed with sport and have to play golf because it’s the only game you can play for so many hours a day. This is not for me.

However, being an entrepreneur with financial independence means the luxury of saying: “I create my own pace, my own schedule.” If a brand says to me, “If you want this deal, have details on my desk by Monday morning,” I don’t have to work all weekend to get it done like I used to. I can say: “It’ll be there Wednesday — if you don’t like it, we won’t do a deal.”

For me, work is not “work”: it’s my life and my hobby. I enjoy it: it keeps me young and energized rather than sitting on the couch.

Big Think: Without the financial compulsion to work, how do you define success?

Toetzke: Having a job that you enjoy, where you’re not looking at your watch every hour, where you’re empowered to make decisions with a supportive group around you — that’s success. I’ve never started anything because of how much money I can make. I do stuff because I think the event will be cool and people will love to do it. That’s why I’m not a banker or investment guy. Creating bonds and funds and making money without producing anything but numbers on a computer? I couldn’t do that.

Big Think: What inspires your working culture at Hyrox?

Toetzke: Google. It started out working so differently to every company from the old world, then outgrew everyone and now it’s the biggest in the world. To grow a company that fast in a decade means a whole different management style and organization. I spent a long time studying what Google did, and how they treated employees. When you go to Google’s HQ, they say: “We want to help you in every part of your life so you can focus on the company: here’s free food, a gym, a kindergarten for your kids.” They want people to be in the building.

We do the same: free gym membership, subsidized healthy food from nearby restaurants. I embrace big tech’s idea of no fixed desks so you have to interact with people — but you need to be in the office. When I see my kids spending 90% of their day staring at an iPhone, I think it’s horrible. We are social people. Working alone from home is psychologically wrong: management means having social skills. At Hyrox we don’t have set hours. People arrive 8am-11am, and leave 5pm-9pm — we don’t care as long as they’re doing their job.

Big Think: Are there any well-worn business books that influence your management style?

Toetzke: Two books have been very influential for me — one new, one older. The Black Swan [by Nassim Nicholas Taleb,] was the first. Most recently, it’s Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus. It’s not a business book but it’s very impactful about information, modern communication and society. Harari’s discussion of how you should work with people — and why the truth is so difficult, and fiction so easy, to sell — is groundbreaking. I’m still processing it. But at Hyrox it will change how we communicate with both our community and our staff. It’s so important on the spreading of misinformation, how companies try to hide stuff, and cover up their mistakes. We all need to communicate in a different way.

Big Think: As a founder-CEO, and with cofounder Moritz Furste working as CMO, can you imagine moving on from Hyrox?

Toetzke: We have a natural succession plan because Mo — my much younger [40-year-old] cofounder — will step up. We met planning a bid for our German hometown to host the Olympics. But so far I haven’t thought about the decision to hand over the torch. I have maybe ten good years in me, but it’s not a set deadline: as long as I still enjoy what I’m doing and don’t consider work a stress or burden, then I think I’m the right person to continue. If I start to think, “Oh no, I have to travel to Thailand or go to this meeting,” it’ll mean it’s time to step back to a different role, less involved in daily operations.