I have always considered my proffesional path as an unconventional one. When I graduated from design school, I didn’t go to work at a studio or agency. Rather, I started a food and agriculture company with my father and my best friend. I felt right from the start that I wasn’t going to be the typical graduate student from my program. Even during the program I felt different, like I didn’t want to be put in any category. Being labeled felt like failure somehow, like giving up on the richness and endless possibilities of life.
During my years at Lomarosa, my company, I learned an infinite amount of things. Facing the challenge of starting a company comes with a constant confrontation of the unknown. I learned on the go (and through several diploma courses) about agronomy, accounting, finance, marketing, HR, corporate sustainability, governance, and more. The most unexpected situations taught me so much! Like that time early in my journey when I was in charge of negotiating with the contractor who was renewing our offices. I had little-to-no experience negotiating and this guy wasn’t delivering. I can’t remember our arguments in detail, but I can certainly remember the effect it had in me. In my nervous system. It was a shocking experience that I will never forget. That feeling of someone betraying their word and taking away what’s yours. I bet that’s how lions feel in Africa when someone takes their prey.
With time, I got better at negotiating. Keep your cool, have the big picture in mind, always come in with a clear goal for that conversation. This is now a playbook I follow, but that I learned by putting myself out there, and failing several times.
This morning while running, I was listening to a podcast interview with the editor of Forbes Spain. The guy explained how money is seen differently accross cultures. In some cultures religion has made it a taboo and in other, it’s a sign of success, like you did well at surfing life. Since I come from the first one, the second one resonated deeply. I’ve always seen money ambition as something impure, but what if business and moeny were a manifestation of our natural instinct of survival, competence and adaptation?
When I say it, it sounds like an idea I’ve heard before, but it came back to me today and I felt the urge to put it in writing. I had a similar situation today, that I managed properly, but felt like my primal instinct were out again. Again I was defending what’s mine. Aggresively, actively, defending what’s mine.