Category Uncategorized

Power: ability to do or act; capability of doing something. Almost 6,500,000,000 results in less than 0.68 seconds in google search and it is ever so elusive. So hard to grasp tangibly, yet we feel everyday the effects of people in the exercise of power.

People seek it. We are naturally drawn to it. We silly humans almost always feel powerless, even those who are in positions of power. And when someone is searching it for the sake of possessing it, he gets possessed by it.

But there is a different kind of power. A kinder one. More noble and much less unstable. This kind of power will never explode in your face. This power is not immersed in a sum zero game: the selfless power.

It is available to all of us. You don’t have to take it from someone in order to harness it, and when you share it, it multiplies.

When you have the power to act upon your reality with the intention of a positive impact, it becomes a part yourself. This means that no one can take it away from you once you have it.

No one but yourself.

Ease the pain.

And desperation also.

It have always worked. That is why marketers have always looked for pain points in their target. It is effective and efficient. It also gives companies and people a sense of purpose.

Today, however, pain and desperation has never been so tangible. People is, unfortunately, thinking about it in a daily basis. And that is not good for anyone, not even those who aren’t feeling ill.

And the amount of people feeling down, sad or anxious has never been so huge. We all are in this together. All of the 7 billion on the planet are facing the same predicament, even if a few are entertaining conspiracy theories.

So you see, the market is all of us. The business opportunities are endless. And humanity is desperate need of new and better ways of existence.

The world we go back in a few weeks will be transformed. The seed of change has been planted and it came in the shape of a sphere with antennas.

I wish I was talking about an alien spaceship. Unfortunately it is not as majestic as a flying saucer descending from the skies. It came in a much smaller vessel: the Corona Virus.

Much has been said about the pandemic. Where it came from, how it spreads and how fatal it can be. Here i’m interested in imagining the world when this is all “over”. It won’t ever be over, but at least, when the storm has passed and the virus becomes part of our daily lives.

Social, labor, economics, learning, and hopefully government will all be changed forever.

Are you, as individual, in position to become part of the forces that will drive this change? How would you imagine your participation? Is it active or passive? Is it designing new ways of social interaction or deciding where not to take your money? Have you ever thought about it? Do you even care?

Just think that in our day to day, small, trivial decisions, we decide the world we create for ourselves for those around us. So tiny as a drop of water digging a hole in the rock, yet so powerful to shape our future.

“I think we should reschedule all of our home tasks and errands.” I confidently said to my wife. Her distrustful look and the smirk told me I was, maybe, walking on thin ice. I decided to leave the subject.

Just a few days later she sent me the link to an article about organizing home office, home school and everything else at home.

She had read it . She said I should read it.

So I did. It suggested we should relax some standards we abide ourselves to. We should move some priorities, etc. We did, things has been working out better.

So you see, people could hear some fact or advise and their minds might discard it. It depends on how biased you think the other party is. Also depends on the moment you are going through. But the funny thing is that our brains will give so much more authority to a written text than to spoken word.

Just by reading something that before you understood intuitively, it suddenly seems so obvious, so revealing. Like it always should have been this clear.

So use it in your own favor. Set your goals. Write them. Make a plan. Write it. Have a schedule. Write it.

And also if you have someone to persuade, find some texts written by someone else or even write them yourself. It might just be the tipping point of their view of the world.

To think that everything will remain bad if you are feeling bad at this very moment.

It is also easy to think that everything will be ok when you are feeling ok.

We are so biased. The present has a huge impact in or projections of the future. People tend to be much more optimistic when feeling happy, even if some scientist showed them a few videos of babies panda. And as well, we are pessimistic if at the moment we’re felling the blues.

That is why is so important to learn to detach ourselves from the context, what sourrounds us, whatever happen to us, and control our reactions so we may se more clearly the future. If that is possible this day and age…

Just keep breathing my friends.

And I mean there is no certain tomorrow. At least for 99% of us.

There is no discernible future. There is no short term. So we must do the best out of today and a few more days ahead of us.

How do you plan in times like this? How do you maintain a sense of what is right about the direction of your life and business?

When you must throw away huge beautiful dreams so you survive the next few weeks, all your frameworks, all your methods and assumptions are obsolete.

A new reality, one that keeps changing every week or so, calls for fast paced adaptations. More than ever we must unlearn over and over so we may remain sane.

To cope with the fatal loss of goals we must set new ones in never ending iterations. But goals are not the goal. Keep moving is the name of the game.

Sometimes it takes all your strength just to keep holding on. And for now, that is fine.

For almost my entire life, legacy has been one of my main drivers. The thought of making history, of being remembered and admired. It is the ultimate immortality. Because if we are remembered, then we will never die. If we are forgotten, then what is the point of anything?

We would be temporary. Inconsecuential.

But then Covid comes along. And I am faced with daily tasks driving me away from that greatness that would eventually write my name in the pantheon of heroes.

God damnit, how anxious and lost I felt! Here I am, the potential kwisatz haderach, spending (wasting) hours of my life doing anything but the things that would birng me closer to my goal of becoming a human myth.

And the, thank the universe, got to read this Naval’s tweet: “Legacy” is the opinion of people not yet born, about someone who no longer exists.

How obvious. How stupid and shallow made me feel. It was a shock. A revelation about how I really felt about others opinions. And the epiphany rose almost immediatly after: The only opinion of us that matters is our own. The only time that matters is now.

Now I feel kind of relieved. Still a little anxious. Not so easy to let go that dream you have been chasing your whole life.

We’ll see how all this ends.

If hard times breed strong people, then all entrepreneurs who decide today to start or keep pursuing their dreams, will become super heroes entrepreneurs.

They will be super strong, resilient, wise, resourceful founders.

They will be cautious but won’t be stopped by fear.

They will understand that starting up a company means solving real, meaningful problems.

They will be driving the betterment of the world.

They will be responsible for the continuity and thriving of the human race.

To those about to rise, we salute you.

You come and ask someone to build you an F1 car. You shouldn’t expect to get the car in 3 or 4 days.

You want the car to be the most beautiful? Add weeks of design. You need the car to actually be fast? Add maybe years of design. You need the car to become an icon so everybody may recognize it? Add months of testing and communication.

This metaphor is valid to any requirement. You want a company agile, self managed, ambitious, recognized, profitable, etc? It takes a lot of effort, a lot of money and a lot of time. If you requested the whole enchilada, then you can’t expect to get it after no expenditure of effort, time and resources.

Be sure to invest so you may get what you imagined.

it’s where I devote my time and effort.

In the last few days, there is an abundance of attention. That gold at the end of the marketing-and-advertising-efforts rainbow has been multiplied.

For most people, time has expanded. They have less things to do and more minutes, even hours, to spare. They indulge. And that is a huge opportunity for those looking to get more attention to say something.

People with time will indulge in 2 ways:

1. They will get even more of the thing that they already like: More facebook, more netflix, etcetera. So if you had a small window to say your stuff, now the door is wide open, so you can go deeper on your story.
2. They will be more indulgent to try new stuff. So you may have the opportunity to get to more people, that people that thought your brand, product or service was not for them and now they will have a huge surprise because you might be just that thing they weren’t looking for. This is a time for changes, for everybody, so you could help set their new normal.

In any case, you will have to provide what really matters. That easy and that hard. They may be indulgent now but this will also come to an end. And when that happens, the window of attention will narrow again. We all will be more selective of what we give our time and effort, and we will choose only those things worthy of them.