For our quest for the business hero, we asked Gábor Lévai how he would describe it and if has ever met one.
Gabor is an Entrepreneur, Economist and Coach who is concerned about the environment. Through his Entrepreneurial skills he wants to make a difference in society and make a difference in the environmental standards set by the companies.
He was our host for the interview for the quest for the business hero. We spoke about our three central values: ethics, sustainability, and creativity, the qualities that a business hero has to approach.
In the interview, Gabor talked about his business journey, how it started and going on, what a business hero is from his point of view and if he has ever met one.
Gabor talks about the hardship he had to go through in his Business career and also shares the two special mentors he had in his life.
We invite you to nominate one or more than one person that you think has these qualities. The nominations will be open for the whole summer at this link.
The prize for the winner is the Atlas Award, the annual prize since 2019 for the competition winner.
We also interviewed Michele Orzan, President of EuCham, Gabor Marton, a Peak-performance coach who works in Finance and Business, Alessandro Farina, Founder of ITL Group, Omar Balducci, and Luigino Bottega, coach and author of “IO – how to win the game of life”.
1. Please introduce yourself (who you are, what you are doing, what is your profession…)
Thanks, I am Gábor Lévai, I am the founder of several impact start-ups. I am an Economist, coach and I am leading two different companies. Both of them are working on impact,one of them is a franchise of German and Austrian International environmental audit and brand agency. We do audits for Corporate’s to see if they are working for the environment and not against. If they are good enough we give them a Seal which they can use for two years. So if we talk about ESG ( Economic, Social and Governmental ) ways of doing business then this is the ‘E’ part and other business is called scale-impact which is focusing on the social part of the challenges that we face. Here we work with NGOs, we develop them and help them to grow their activity in a sustainable way and we involve corporates to work together and have us develop their organization, their management skills and so on.
2. Let’s start with an easy game of word association. What comes to your mind when I say “business”? And what comes to your mind when I say “hero”? There are no wrong answers!
If we speak about Business then I say ‘ Stakeholder Value ’ and if we speak about Hero then I say ‘ Multiply Our Efforts’.
3. Now, let’s combine them together…what do you think is a business hero?
A Business Hero is someone who uses his power and connections coming from the Business side to change some fundamental bad way of working in the society or in the environment. So he multiplies his efforts together with others to change or transform Environmental Issues.
4. Every business person goes through a journey: when did you hear your call, and how did your journey start?
I started as a regular banker in a small Hungarian leasing company dealing with Car Financing as I was a Business Developer and then I joined the ‘G Capital’ which is one of the biggest companies in the world focusing on the same matter. In the meantime I was learning a lot about self-consciousness and self-awareness.
This led to developing my first company focusing on banks and financial institutions, how they can manage their work flows and HR questions. As every businessman my first and second company went bankrupt from which I learnt a lot. The third company was the most successful one, we were focusing on workforce leasing and we could sell it. In the meantime I wanted to come back to the Financial area and began to work as a General-Secretary of the Hungarian Leasing Association, which was a professional body helping small financial institutions to work better. It was 2006, less than a year later, the departure of my brother’s came, every Financial Institution and the car market collapsed in Hungary so I had to stay ahead of the Governance, public and press and speak about what we did wrong and how we could not manage to save the people from financing cars in foreign currency. Then I had to work together with individual CEOs of different financial institutions and help them to work together although they were competing in the market with each other. It was really transforming me how to learn about negative impacts if we do business and years later I was an advisor at another company which was focusing on balancing this negative impact and with some of my friends I began to work at NGOs and help them to work in a professional way. I spent total 5 years on MBA in learning as I was working, half of the time in pro-bono for free and spent a lot of money on projects which were more or less successful or unsuccessful and this led me at the end to build these two organizations which I am working with on the environmental and social part.
5. Which obstacles did you encounter during your journey?
Every day, when you wake up in the morning, many thoughts come into your mind. Every situation can be, through your thoughts, described in something that you have a fear of, that you achieve, or you can be excited to see this new challenge: it means that every day is a call to become a creator.
For sure, you need to see the challenge you face only as an element that permits you to grow. Especially failures are a good moment for learning and to make a jump to understand yourself better and how you can be more successful in realizing your vision.
6. Did you find a mentor or inspiring leader to help you go forward?
Everybody around us is a mentor, some are direct mentors: you choose them because you think you need some kind of inspiration and learning. But everybody around you, also an enemy, somebody that makes you hurt or a child, can be a mentor, because everything that happens around you is a lesson for how to grow.
Talking about classic mentors, I like to study a lot from international mentors. I learn from the online platform where there are international mentors that you can acquire information for your life or your business activities, your reactions, or also in the level of the spiritual awakening, that is also important because, personally, I believe that there is something more than only the body.
7. What important lessons did you learn, and what is your contribution to society?
The most important lesson for me is that we are inter-connected not only with people but also with nature, animals and everything. If we build a business then we need to see this as a part of something. It can be a value change, it can be an industry , it can be regional. We are connected with different parts of life, with employees, with local communities, with the environment, with marginalized groups because in the society we have to grow the weakest chain part this will lead to a bigger economical development and if we see business this way then we are not focusing on Shareholders but also stakeholders and build a business together with them so that they can also achieve more from the business.
8. Atlas World is looking for business heroes with an Ethical, Sustainable, and Creative approach: can you think of someone that embodies these qualities?
First of all I have two companies and I have some investors and co-founders, all of them are in the same way of doing business like me. So I can give you some names for it and I think they will all be ethical,working for sustainability and social justice.
9. Do you consider yourself a business hero?
Am I the right person to say it or someone else needs to say it about me? I am doing my best to multiply my efforts, to build a better world.
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