99 chances you can do anything
so
when i was invited to give this talk i
asked myself
what would my 30 year old self ask me
about yours
for sure it would have been outweigh
beaten
so this talk is going to be a little bit
about what i’d say to 30 year old david
and a couple of conclusions and
adventures that i had along the way
so join me on this journey dear david
there are far too many variables to
control
so instead of trying to beat the odds
prepare yourself
and be open and flexible to what the
universe brings your way
this doesn’t mean don’t have goals or
objectives flowing
it’s very different from drifting
there’s a quote i particularly like from
eisenhower
in preparing for battle i have always
found that plans are useless
but planning is indispensable
so let’s see a little bit of what
happened these last 10 years
don’t take it as the absolute undeniable
truth
it’s only my experience question
everything and most things you’ll only
learn
by crashing against the wall and that’s
totally fine as well
so in 2010 i fell on top of the world
had my company i fundraised i was in
magazines had entrepreneurship awards
it was a lot of what i had imagined that
success
looked like and what i wanted in life
the things a little bit that
you believe during your mbas
i had a clear plan that seemed to be
working
looking back my sense of worth was
driven a lot by ego
and recogni recognition from others but
if you want to talk about thoughts so we
had this amazing contract
took me six months to negotiate and sign
and should have made us a very wealthy
and successful company
that same contract took our company down
also an investor that said it was
putting enough money to take us through
the next two years of exponential growth
had a heart attack so suddenly things
went wrong
i was in mexico city sleeping on a
friend’s couch
trying to make ends meet by january 2012
i had to close the company and lost most
of my savings that i had invested
i broke up a four-year relationship my
grandmother died
and therein one of my best friends was
killed in a really stupid accident in
miami
i was where i had never been before i
felt defeated
i remember being ashamed of going to
family parties because i had fundraised
money from family and friends and that
money
was now all gone so a very quick lesson
here that has been proven right
several times over be very careful of
doing business with friends or family
most of all with your romantic partner
too much at risk
for too little gain so
i had no idea what to do next all my
plans were shattered
i remember having coffee with a friend
of mine in lisbon and she told me the
world was going to end on december 21st
that year
according to the mayan calendar it was
february
so i decided well if the world is going
to end
how am i going to live and that’s what i
did
so at the time my country portugal was
going through a deep crisis
and brazil was a very appealing market
for people to immigrate to
i was working in sao paulo and my
friends kept asking me for help on how
to move there
so i started social community on
facebook called jobs in brazil for
foreigners i could answer
everyone at the same time four weeks
later
somehow i had 65 000 followers
and suddenly i have the bbc calling me
about the community
i remember during the interview on the
phone i kept thinking
this could be an interesting business
and came up with a business model
during that same call so once they asked
me what we were going to do i said we’d
provide career advice immigration
lawyers
conferences and job boards when i hung
up i started working on it
one month later we had a talk show on
national tv
gave paid conferences for over 2 000
people published a book and supported
many people to move to brazil
so he’s paid for my year and definitely
it was a lot of fun
but something more important happened
the universe
is far more creative than you and has
more interesting paths
than the ones you imagine so during one
of these conferences
the director of a top university saw me
presented and we were chatting during
the break
and i mentioned my experience with
e-commerce and digital transformation
weeks later she called me and asked me
if i want to interview for a position
teaching e-commerce at the university
i never wanted to be a teacher and
thought i had skipped far too many
classes in college to go surfing to
actually be a good teacher
but if the world was going to end what
did i have to lose
i did like speaking in public actually
my first job was actually
as a tv show host and i knew the subject
pretty well
so i took it this unlikely path
took me to finding out one of my biggest
passions
education which i now believe is our
greatest tool to change the world
now i teach over 300 students every year
at
different universities around the world
and have a school here in mexico
so now i had some money i was even a
professor but was still
completely clueless about what to do
next many of my peers had very
successful careers in banking
consulting and all those things sounds
kind of cool like 10 years later at the
ted talk saying i was lost but let me
tell you that it kept me awake
many nights during that year so
i decided to flow and see what happened
it’s something called
my attention and i could afford it i’d
go for it
and i went all over the world
one of them one of the most
transformational experiences that came
about at this time was a survival course
i did in the
desert of utah so
we keep making all these rules for our
lives that go against
our genetics our basic instinct that’s
animals all kinds of diets the keto
the no carb everything relationship
formats and so on
here you become the animal you are i’m
not speaking about your spirit’s animal
no i’m speaking about the animal the
basic you
that need shelter food and sleep
everything else becomes insignificant
and you go back to your basic self so
curiously the most things were not how
to make fire or eating a rattlesnake
which you actually did
the two key lessons were simple you have
much more in you than you believe
and you are great at finding excuses why
you can’t do it
you are tired you are not prepared etc
etc etc
if i tell you that most of you have to
run a marathon
now you’ll tell me you can but if it’s a
matter
where your mom’s life depends on it
trust me you’ll do it
and you’re going to break records the
other very important lesson i’ve learned
there was
no expectations by having expectations
you don’t enjoy the way
and if things don’t happen the way you
plan you feel disappointed
and that brings you down also it closes
you to much
better things that can happen so now on
a more practical tip that will save you
several times some people have tattoos i
have scars and broken bones
paradise becomes hell really quickly
i’ve had my leg open down to the bone
and had to close it myself
after a motorbike accident in vietnam
ran out of air 20 meters deep in the
great barrier reef
had horseback riding falls in the middle
of nowhere and several
really dumb accidents if you do extreme
sports
train with the best learn well but
everyone should take a first aid course
it only happens one of out of ten
thousand times
but then it does it saves your life and
probably someone else’s
the world as you know ended up not
ending in 2012 so it was time to get
back to work
i went back to mexico city and posted on
facebook that i was in town
the vp of google saw it and told me that
there was this large company that was
having issues with their ecommerce
so we went for lunch with the director
of that company
and she ended up hiring me as a
consultant
two years later we had built a company
with 80 people
the path to get there however was hard i
was trying to rebuild myself
living on my best friend’s couch getting
my projects refused over and over again
clients not paying working long nights
to finish a project
but we were a team it was tough and
intense but we were in it together
hard times can be great times and a lot
of fun community
having a cause that is larger than you
and overcoming obstacles together
is one of the most fulfilling
experiences you can have
take care of your friends and team
so although my previous venture hadn’t
gone well people
people considered me hard-working that i
thought out of the box
was honest and got things done a couple
of things i’m really proud of
when we closed our previous company the
investors
put a mention our last meeting notes
that
we did everything we could to save it
several of the people we had to fire
when we closed the business
joined us later in the new company we
created and some
work with us to this day so
education and reputation allow you to
rebuild yourself from the ground
over and over again another thing that i
remember that my dad used to tell me and
i threw around the word freedom
is there is no freedom without financial
independence
being able to fire your boss or your
clients because you don’t really depend
on them financially
is one of the biggest assets you can
have once you have financial freedom you
can change a lot of things in your life
at any time
if you’re not really enjoying what
you’re doing
so let’s go back to 2013 after that
initial consulting project
we started growing one thing led to
another and we created our new company
called beats adventures
blitz stands for life is too short
adventures
because it’s about our adventures in the
business world
we started by helping companies with
their ecommerce and digital
transformation
yes we know a lot about big data and
tech and e-commerce and digital and so
on but what truly differentiated us
was that we were helping people change
and transform
we are transformation catalysts
soon we realized we’re making great
plans for companies but they remained
just that plans most companies didn’t
have the capacity and people to
implement what we proposed
so we started to help with the people
side of things and help them create
their vision
and support them on that implementation
great people make great companies and
great societies
i found that to drive big changes you
have to take care of yourself
how by looking at yourself as a top
athlete that needs to be in top shape in
four areas
mind body emotional
and spiritual once all these four are in
balance
you’ll be able to flow through life like
a sphere and if you see actually that’s
the logo of our company
so mine mine is about your professional
skills intelligence logic things
typically
very valid very valued in our society
and rightfully so
so keep learning dedicate at least 30
minutes
a day to learn something new body
is about how you keep yourself in shape
just ask yourself
if you’re given just one piece of
clothing for your entire life
how would you take care of it and then
emotions and spirituality this gets a
little more controversial
as a fun fact we have a shaman in our
office and it has done
wonders for our companies my approach
here is
simple i can’t prove if god exists or
doesn’t
but if it makes me happy to think that
there is something
else bigger than us i’ll just go with it
i don’t really want to be right i just
want to be happy
you don’t need to prove everything in
life 200 years ago if someone saw a cell
phone
they would call it black magic and
probably try to burn the person
the fact that science hasn’t explained
it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
also some things you can just understand
with your heart
it’s very hard to explain a sunset to a
blind person
i find intelligence often to be
overrated and was guilty of judging
people in the past fight
isn’t it wonderful to look at the
butterfly and just be amazed by it
is it really better knowing its latin
name
so it always seems that when people like
me
give these 12-minute talks that is
probably longer than 12 minutes now
that we’ve made it and we live on an
ongoing blissful state
but am i happy i’m in a good place i’m
healthy
sleep well at night surrounded by great
friends and family
love what i do our company has a
positive impact on our clients and
society
pays the bills and i have the freedom
and finances to manage
a lot of my time life is not an
instagram story
with just nice moments we all have
insecurities tough moments
feel down feel that the whole world is
against us at some
time it is an adventure with ups and
downs
the only place you arrive is that and if
there is no hurry for that
until then might as well enjoy it don’t
take life so soon
laugh more understand what’s important
dedicate time to it
and believe in magic so what are your
odds
after all this 99 you can do
anything thank you