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What the CEO of Time Out Group learned from his first summer job at 12 years old

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Julio Bruno, CEO at Time Out Group plc.
Courtesy of Time Out Group

Every person's first foray into the working world teaches them something about who they are: whether that's who they want to be – or not want to be, interactions with new environments and learning key life skills.

For Julio Bruno, the chief executive of global media and entertainment business Time Out Group, he got his first taste when he took on a summer job at the age of twelve.

"My first, first job I was like 12 years old and it was in the summer. It was a summer job and I was working with the bricklayer in the village of my mother when she was born - very small village, and this was the bricklayer for the village," Julio Bruno, Group CEO of Time Out Group, told CNBC's "Life Hacks Live".

Courtesy of Time Out Group

"I was loading 50 kilograms at age 12-13 (years) and it was very hard work. A lot of hard work. And my father always said - he was always a renaissance man - you have to know everything, you have to do everything in the house from gardening to electricity and then you have to build your brain as well. So that to me was natural."

"So doing that very, very hard work at that early age was - it taught me a lot of discipline and the value of working, because at the end I remember of the first month, I got paid 14,000 pesetas - this was before euro, so I don't know what that would be today, not even 100 euros. I don't know what it was, it was very little."

While 14,000 pesetas – worth around 84 euros or $98 in today's world, according to XE.com – may not seem much to people today; at a young age, the value of money can mean a great deal.

For Bruno, he had created a list of all the music he was going to buy with the money, the CEO tells CNBC in London; however, when his mother found out, she told Bruno "No, you cannot go and buy all this".

"So I think I learnt a lot about the value of money and the value of hard work and discipline, and then I continue with that throughout my life, so that's the first job experience that I have."

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Despite his love for music, Bruno admitted later on during the "Life Hacks Live" episode that he did fancy the world of movies, as well as working for Formula One. However, Bruno did go on to say that business did come naturally to him.

"Business came natural to me. When I realized that, one thing I wanted to have was economic freedom and then I realized that I wanted to, you know, take the reins of my own destiny."

Julio Bruno is the Group CEO of Time Out Group, having been known for taking the company public in mid-June 2016. Bruno has also worked internationally for the likes of TripAdvisor, Diageo and Regus.

Life Hacks Live is a series produced by CNBC International for Facebook, where tomorrow's leaders get to ask some of the world's biggest influencers for advice. You can watch the full interview here.

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