From 11 startups to Entrepreneurs' Organization Global Chair: Joaquin Cordero's unlikely climb through broken bones, bee attacks and buying failing companies.

Joaquin Cordero was 8 years old the first time he made money selling something — small wooden spinning tops to other kids in Guatemala City. Since then he's founded eleven companies, survived 2 broken necks, a bee attack 30 meters up a rock face, and a bone infection that hit the exact week he stepped into the EO Global Chair seat at a 22,000-member global organization. In this episode, Joaquin unpacks what carried him through all of it — and the one piece of advice he keeps giving younger en...

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Different points before COVID, I bought my company from my last partner. And the company was losing money back then. It's the only year that it's lost money in its 17 year history. And that's when I bought it. And I thought, you know, it has to, it has to turn out right. I have had some accidents in my life. I have broken my neck twice. I've broken ankles. I've broken arms, different bones. Recently, last year, I was in a climbing trip in the Dolomites and I broke my fibula, which was right when I was starting the year as chair. And it got infected.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  And the bone got infected. So I had to take antibiotics directly to the heart through a PICC line for 45 days. And I had many of stories like that one, I guess, where I have to constantly push a little harder to get out of a hard zone. And I think that's where resilience has come from, from being able to understand that there's hope, that things can be better, and that challenges are that, are challenges.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in personal and collective transformation, your master health, stress management, sleep, nutrition, executive coach, whole person coach 360, and just someone who's really passionate, pumped about, and obsessed with unlocking more of our potential every single day, learning how to be a little bit better, how to grow a little bit stronger through proven and well researched and life tested tips, strategies, hacks, and tactics.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And today, I am excited over the moon to have really, really a special guest on this podcast,

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Joaquin Cordero, someone who has built and occasionally lost 11 companies over the past 25 years. He's the founder and CEO of Lumen, founded with a simple idea, great teams create meaningful impact. Today, Lumen operates across Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, partnering with some leading brands like Volkswagen and Danone, building stronger connections through strategy, creativity, and integrated marketing. Most recently, Joaquin served as a global chair of the entrepreneurs organization, a network of over 22,000 entrepreneurs,

• 3:02Speaker 01

  great entrepreneurs across more than 68 countries. But I think what makes this conversation different and fascinating isn't the resume. It's what's underneath it. Two broken necks, a B attack that almost ended up in death, a bone infection that hit the exact week Joaquin started the biggest leadership role of his life. Lots of setbacks, challenges, one might say, failures, that built a long lasting relationship with Stoic philosophy that got Joaquin through

• 3:41Speaker 01

  all of this. In this episode, we talk about why Joaquin thinks most entrepreneurs are terrible at measuring risk, and why that might be the point. How two, not one, two near death experiences rewired his definition of success that Joaquin lives by today. The daily habits from a 2000 day morning ritual to intermittent fasting that keep Joaquin steady amidst all the roller coasters of life and entrepreneur journey. Why he calls discounts cocaine for business. And the one

• 4:20Speaker 01

  question Joaquin asks strangers that gets past small talk in under a minute. Joaquin's story isn't a straight line. From a failed donut franchise, a company he bought back while it was losing money, 14 years of unpaid volunteer work that eventually put him at the head of a global organization. If you've ever wondered whether setbacks disqualify you from building something big, I think this episode is going to change your mind. So let's get into it. Joaquin Cordero, welcome to Change Wired Podcast. I'm so grateful and thankful for having you on

• 5:05Speaker 01

  this show today, because you have such an amazing story to tell to our listeners. Welcome to the show.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Thank you very much, Angela. I'm very happy to be hearing your podcast.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And I always like to begin these podcast episodes with a little bit of backstory. So listeners get interested, hooked on your story, and you have quite a story to tell. From entrepreneurial perspective, like personal growth perspective, can you tell maybe the most interesting, the most important parts that you believe will help listeners to know you better, understand you better before our conversation?

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, I think I was introduced to the word entrepreneur by my mother when I was young. And she would talk about how her father was an entrepreneur. He was a Cuban migrant who migrated to Guatemala. And she would tell the benefits of being an entrepreneur. So very early on, I have this knowledge in my mind, telling me that it would be great to be an entrepreneur because of all the freedom that it would give me. And before I finished university, I was a little anxious because I was anxious about going out to the system, kind of like the system.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  The forever system that I would live in as part of the university. And in my mind, because I was very passionate about rock climbing, I wanted to continue being able to rock climb one or two weeks a year in different places in the world. And for that, I thought the best way to do it would be putting my own business. So I had that thinking in my mind. And I had put previous business, but the one that I own now, I did it after working nine years in a television company, where I started as a production manager, and then I moved up to be the CEO. And when the

• 7:07Speaker 00

  TV channel was sold, which was the end goal of that journey, I thought, now is the time I'm going to put my business and I'm going to focus on growing it. So I'm really able to travel and climb beautiful rocks around the world.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think you're not telling like the full story, all of your accomplishments. Now you are a global chair of entrepreneurs organization, right? You've started, I think, 11 startups, if the data they are found correct.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Yes, many fails.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  And what?

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, many, many failed, which were stepping stones to the next position. So yeah, I did many startups. I had a video club back in the day when they were VHS. I had a rock climbing gym. We did a data center, a tier three data center, tier four, I think it's bomb proof. Tier three has all the redundancies. I didn't know how to do them. But I had a company over 12 countries, which was a technology company. And we were serving over 20 telecom companies. I exited that business. And I came back to my original business, which is in storytelling,

• 8:25Speaker 00

  advertising, so connecting people with the brands that they love. And I did find a great support group, a great community in the entrepreneurs organization where I've been for 14 years now. I've been lucky to serve on it as a volunteer leader since day one. So for 14 years, I've been serving this wonderful organization, which

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Purpose is to move the world forward by unlocking the full potential of entrepreneurs. And I wouldn't probably have imagined that I would continue scaling this ladder until becoming the Global Chair of the Entrepreneurs Organization, which is an organization with over 22,000 entrepreneurs that sell approximately $4 million a year as a median, and where I would grow from other people's experiences, which is the best support that one can have. And because of that, I have gone all over the world. I've visited over 58 countries. I have friends in many places, including Cape Town. I was there, I think it was in 2023.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  And we did a wonderful climb of Jacob's ladder, a route, a traditional route up Table Mountain with my wife and my daughter. I have a beautiful picture of that. I can send it to you.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  And it's been a wonderful journey. And I just recently finished the Chair role in June. I stayed in Board Advisory Committee for Strategy with the current Chair and the incoming Chair. And that was a great learning, which kind of like surprised me that I would learn so much about governance, about high-performing boards, about the organization and managing an organization that size. And I had a great team, a great team from all over the world, friends from Pakistan, India, China, from Brussels, from Kenya, from the US, Guatemalan there. So it was a wonderful experience. And E O gives one the opportunity to step out of one's comfort zone

• 10:33Speaker 00

  and be able to have a tremendous impact in the different areas that one can support the organization in.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  A few questions here. You've, again, been on quite a journey and you've started many companies and you've climbed like all the rungs in the entrepreneur organization as an organization. And it seems like you kept growing, right? You said some companies failed, but it seems that you still were able to grow and develop and, you know, have at least one successful company that you are still operating. So you are a successful entrepreneur. What do you think allowed you to not become a statistics? You know, they say most entrepreneurs fail. What allowed you to keep going and growing yourself and your business?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And also grow through your journey of leadership in the entrepreneur organization? Like what maybe skills, systems, habits, mindsets?

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a great question.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  I think it has been a sum of things. Very early on, I was a big reader. I've always liked to read. That's how I gained most of my knowledge. And I was an avid reader. It was a great habit. I'm trying to get it back as great as I was before. But it has been, I think, probably that part has made a big difference, that part of having this growth mindset. Later on, I guess I understood that it was a growth mindset. Now, a lot of it I consume with podcasts. There's a great saying by my production director of the podcast, which I also have one. And he says that he learns more in one hour of podcast than he spends hours of audiobook.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  And I think that's true because you get like right into the meat, right? Like all the experience heard from the people who are being interviewed and from the podcaster as well. So I think climbing partly has something to do with that as well. Climbing, you are very stressed. You're doing a very hard thing and you have to keep your mind calm to be able to surpass the challenges. And you're always doing incredible things. So you're always kind of like aiming to do something incredible that you would have thought that you were not going to be able to do it. And you surprise yourself every time you go to the crack.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  I've had my set of lows where I thought I was going bankrupt. Of course, everybody went through that in COVID as well. At different points before COVID, I bought my company from my last partner. And the company was losing money back then. It was the only year that it's lost money in its 17-year history. And that's when I bought it. And I thought, you know, it has to, it has to turn out right. I have had some accidents in my life. I have broken my neck twice. I've broken ankles. I've broken arms, different bones. Recently, last year, I was in a climbing trip in the Dolomites

• 13:41Speaker 00

  and I broke my fibula, which was right when I was starting the year as Chair. And it got infected and the bone got infected. So I had to take antibiotics directly to the heart through a PICC line for 45 days. And I had many of stories like that one, I guess, where I have to constantly push a little harder to get out of a hard zone. And I think that's where resilience has come from, from being able to understand that there's hope, that things can be better and that challenges are that, are challenges. I recently, maybe not recently, probably around 10 years ago, I became a fan of Stoicism.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  A friend of mine, a friend of mine gave me a book on Ryan Holiday. I think it was "The Obstacle is the Way."

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  And then I read "Ego is the Enemy." And I read most of his books. I would say probably about eight of his books. And I read Mark Cosmoly's Meditations and so many others. And they are amazing books

• 14:51Speaker 00

  about people who are going through things that we go through 12,000 years ago. And they so well explain that, you know, life has setbacks and sometimes life can get tough. And when life gets tough, if we think that things happen to us and that we are not able to do anything about it, that the world is against us, we fall into victimhood. And that's a very hard place to fall into. I don't recommend it to anyone. It's better to understand that things happen to us because of decisions that we've made and that we're able to change what happens to us or to find a better place on how to do it. And I think that's, that's part of a basis of Stoicism that,

• 15:35Speaker 00

  you know, when the going gets tough, you figure it out yourself. You can always change the perspective of how you see things. And you don't, you don't have to have an opinion of certain things as well. So I think the accumulation of that knowledge plus the sport that I do, I think it's been kind of like a soup of experiences that has made me the possibility to find a way on how to innovate, to continue moving forward. I think my business has innovated in many different ways. It started being a production company where we were doing commercials for advertising agencies. Then we started selling airtime in cable.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Then we decided to do an advertising agency. That was 16 years ago. And now we serve great brands in the Central American market. And we have continued to grow steadily. We had a great team. I think we have a really cool culture as well. And that has been really helpful to continue us being relevant in this market.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  You know, Hokin, you mentioned that a lot of your success, you think, came from your mindset, the Stoic mindset, the growth mindset.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Was it always a strong sort of character trait for you? Or did you develop it after certain maybe experiences or going through hard things? I guess what I'm trying to understand is, is it something you were almost born with? Or is it something that you had to learn to get through, you know, certain tough and challenging experiences and keep going and keep growing? Is it something that you were born with or you developed? And did it get better? Was it all this with you?

• 17:35Speaker 00

  You know, I think I was, I was always kind of like a commercial guy trying to sell things. When I was young, I remember selling this little wooden spinners, trumpets, we call them. I don't know how you call them all there, that you would throw and they would spin and another one would try to hit it. So I started buying those because I found smaller ones and selling them when I was really young, probably around eight years old. Then I, I had a, a business where I would put music in, in parties. We were doing low place back then. We didn't bring a USB with all the music, so. So I was, I was doing that probably at fourteen.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Then at fifteen, I, I got a hot dog cart and I was doing hot dogs at parties as well with some friends. One of those friends became the owner of Subway in Guatemala, so he continued kind of like in the, in the food business. So I, I was selling posters, like selling CDs when they came out. So I was, I was always kind of like curious about the relationship between being able to sell something to someone and, and them getting value out of it and me getting value out of that transaction. You know, if I find something valuable for you, then I'll get valuable, value, something back for myself. So I, I think that that was really good. I mean, it's, I wouldn't call it child labor,

• 18:57Speaker 00

  but I was a kid working in selling things. My dad sometimes would say, hey, not shut down a bit. You still have to study. I don't want you to get infected by the feeling of making money and then losing your studies. So I was, then I went to, to study to Monterrey, Mexico. And oh, by the way, I had already had a formal business, which was a BHS rental business. And then when I went to study to Mexico, I learned how to rock climb. Then I was giving classes to people on how to rock climb. So all, all these little things that kept, in Monterrey, I, I learned about this franchise that they did mini donuts. And they were really good. And I thought, oh, this are gonna hit great in Guatemala.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  So I got the franchise for Guatemala and for El Salvador, small countries. And, uh, and the business didn't take off, so it was bankrupt like a year or two years after we started. And, and there was no passion in it. And I remember that time it hit me really hard, where I was really hard with myself, thinking I just graduated university. I just came back with my first business. Now it's going down and, and I'm a failure. So that was the mindset and I, and I went into a dark place in that moment where I thought that because it was not successful, then it meant that I was a failure. And it hit me hard and, and, and finally I, I understood that failures are very relevant in life,

• 20:23Speaker 00

  that they're not a negative and that they don't define a person. And then I went to work with someone who was a great role model, who was a, he was for me probably a figure like, how do you call this, the word is escaping my mind, like a mentor. And, and I was able to learn a lot from him, like, you know, making contracts with clients. That little thing has saved me more than once. That was back when I was working. It was an amazing, he's an amazing person. He was in the International Olympic Committee, IOC. So he was one of the few Latin Americans in the IOC.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  He would go, of course, to every Olympics for the last many years that there has been. He did a, while, while I was working with him as CEO of his TV channel, he brought the decision for the Soviet Olympics to Guatemala. So I was at a dinner that night and I had pudding like right in front of me and the Prince of Monaco right next to me. All these wonderful figures, very global figures back then, I would think, just right there in, in Guatemala because of this amazing organization that is the IOC. He was working with the president back then. He was the Minister of Tourism. So he gave me a lot of free time to, for me to be able to manage his business.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Uh, I was very much empowered. We did an interview with the president of the OPEP or the petroleum. So it was, it was a really great experience and, and I, and I think that's relevant as well. I mean, everybody wants to go and start a business, but there is also value in, in being able to work at a company or to work with someone who's got experience and who can magnify that experience. You can learn from that person and then put your own business. Sometimes people say like, oh yeah, go do all the stupid decisions to someone else's company. I don't think it is like that, but being able to get an understanding of how relevant relationships are.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  That's something really good that I learned from him, how important relationships. He's a great networker, great relationship with people, and that would bring business. And people wanna do business with friends and with people who elevate their frequency. So I, I think that was really relevant to be able to understand all that knowledge before starting my own business as well.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you think, by the way, that relationships are still as relevant or maybe even more relevant in our age of AI and, you know, such a technological eruption of, of things we can connect, used to connect with each other? Like, do, do you think still, like, personal relationships are still as relevant for a business?

• 23:21Speaker 00

  I, I would have to say yes. I think that personal connections are still relevant. Probably having someone there, right, that you can able to, to have a conversation with and a call. And, and it gives you a lot of accountability. I mean, it's very cold when suddenly the computer erases whatever you're working on and there's no one you're able to call. I think those connections are still relevant today as they have ever been. And I think they might be even more important nowadays when we're relying so much in, in technology. I think being human is involved just because it is so much more relevant now than it has been in other times.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  I, I, I find that very much so in, in every area that I work in. For example, in the entrepreneurs organization, we had a, a staff of a hundred and seventy-six people in over twenty-four countries. But still we would get together yearly for a global staff week and be able to touch base. We would get together for strategy. We would get together for, for, you know, operations, for different things. We would get together, work hard for three days and then everybody would leave and everybody would take their homework and whatnot. So I, I think those connections matter more today than, than at any time.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  And I think part of how I was able to become the chair of EO was, was in a way, being able to have those connections, being able to understand other people, to understand what takes them, what motivates them, how well they work in a team, how to get the best from them in a team. And, and that made all the difference. And that's probably why I was able to, to go and work on the global board and then being able to, to participate as chair.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Can you maybe give us, give away a couple of secrets to entrepreneurs listening? I'm definitely working on my skill to develop relationships with people mutually beneficial, right? So they don't feel like transactional and, but the ones that help all, all of the parties to maybe do better business or to grow certain causes, like what are some, yeah, tricks or tools or strategies that you learned that can be applied by entrepreneurs to build better relationships?

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think they, they have been very natural to me. I wouldn't say that, you know, that they're probably like maybe tricks or anything like that because I know there's, there's ways that one can understand and maneuver around. And, and for that, I'll, I'll say that I, I had a teacher in university that would say that. If you read ten books on any subject, you will become an expert on that subject. And that was impressive to me because I had never thought it that way. And one that I am interested in is in communication and in human beings. I came to understand that every problem in the world is a problem of communication

• 26:34Speaker 00

  and that all the difficult things that we will have in life and the hardest moments will be moments with human beings. So how am I able to relate better with human beings and have a better understanding of them and a better communication? And I read many books. I, one that I highly recommend, that you probably already read it and it's an old book but has a lot of value, is How to Win Friends and Influence People.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  That's a fantastic book. It shows you, you know, how it is that we live in a, in a society. And then I started reading, you know, I read books like Machiavelli, The Prince of Machiavelli, which is, you know, a little more on maneuvering or probably having an intention, manipulation, even if you want to think it that way. I read many of Robert Greene, who has a great relationship with Ryan from Stoicism. Robert Greene wrote The Loss of Human Nature. And he gives many examples on that book on how human nature is. And, and his historic examples are fantastic.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  He also wrote Mastery, The Art of Seduction. I'm a big fan of him, as I said, I'm looking to see what other books I have of him. And, and in that way, I was able to understand all the things that we have ourselves that we sometimes don't like in others. And sometimes we don't like someone else because of something that we see in ourselves, of them, and so on. So I think it hasn't been so much about applying all those learnings from the books, but kind of like confirming many of the things that I already knew. You know what, I, I usually find something that is in common interest between me and the person that I, that I just met.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  A friend of mine from Johannesburg, I believe, Barney Bukes. I don't know if you know him. He gave me a recommendation. He said, "You can speak with anybody in the world." Because everybody in the world has a family. Not necessarily children, but they have either siblings or, or parents or uncles or whatever. They do something that they do for work, that they get paid for, and they do something that helps them feel the effect of time flying, which is something they are passionate about.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And, and that was really interesting. And I'm able to have a conversation with anyone regarding those terms. And then also something that is someone for both. Like if you're a rock climber or a rock climber, I'll ask where you've climbed, what books do you like to read, things that there might be some, some commonality. And then just trying to figure out if you're able to support them in any way or make their experience better. Something that I would do in EO, for example, is when I would travel, I would bring these beautiful Guatemalan bracelets. You know, they're not expensive at all. They cost less than a dollar maybe. But they're really nice, very colorful, and people like them.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  And I would, you know, tell them that my people believe that when you use these bracelets, if they fall, they protected you from something. And it's a little historic thing. People would remember, oh, Kenny from Guatemala, he gave me this beautiful bracelet. I was this weekend in, in New Orleans, Saturday. The chapter of New Orleans invited me to give a, a chat, sharing my experience as chair of the organization. And, and I went there and, and the president of New Orleans, she stood up and she shared the story of when she met me in Hawaii a couple of years ago, where I gave her a Guatemalan bracelet. And that bracelet touched a chord with her

• 30:22Speaker 00

  because she had come to Guatemala some years before to support a community and they helped build a house for the community. And one of the mothers of that community gave her a little purse and it was the same pattern as the, as the bracelet that I had given her, the same colors. So, you know, those stories, they found each other. And it probably wasn't my intention to find that story, but, but, you know, it was to connect and, and probably be seen and, and to have a special moment. Not that I was trying to get something out of it.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Not that I knew that she would become the president and she would invite me to give a presentation just because, you know, it is nice to connect, to be seen, and to help others be seen as well.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah, I think what I'm hearing is, you know, you become a, someone who studies human nature and then also try to connect on this like common things that we have as humans and try to see how you can be helpful, how you can bring something special into a relationship and then... And, and then what I'm, what I'm hearing is, you know, you did the most important part. You've started building this like relationship on a human level and whatever, you know, comes out of it is going to be better in, in, in any way, like whether that's business or whether just you're going to have a friend somewhere.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It's going to add quality into like your network overall.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  I guess so, and I, and I do it naturally. When we started talking just earlier before we started recording, I told you that I also had a podcast, so we have that commonality. You can relate with me because we have both interviewers. And, and it's got a similar theme also. And I shared you another that, that has worked with me about more people being able to see it because I put a little money into it and I advertise in YouTube, so that might be something that could be helpful for you. So, you know, just trying to, to see where we connect and, and if I'm able to give you something that has worked for me before and could be helpful for you.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, where we connect and where you can be helpful. I think this is the main takeaway that our listeners can then use as well, apply to build better relationships and can, like deeper, more human connections with different people in their lives or in their business.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  And another thing that I, that I might want to add is, I don't know where I heard this, but, but I, but it stuck with me. I heard that authenticity is one of the highest forms of vibration.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Recently, I, I was, well, that time that I was at GLC in Cape Town. And GLC is the Global Leadership Conference of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, where most of the leaders or 10% of the members get together to train themselves on how to deliver value on each chapter for the next year. And there I met a futurologist who is from Cape Town, I believe, John Sinai.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I know you.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  And she, and she mentioned something about, I, I think it was a quote from Einstein that he shared with us that said that Einstein had said that the future of medicine would be about frequencies. And I'm a big believer in frequencies. It has supported me in different times of my life and I use it almost daily, where I search hertz, like HC, on my Spotify or on YouTube and I, and I find one for, you know, the God frequency or the DNA repair frequency or the meditation frequency or the sleep frequency. I learn them because 17 years ago, when my daughter was born, my wife had hyperemesis gravi darum, which is, it is only given to 1% of pregnant women.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  And, and she regained her starting weight on month seven. So she would throw up every 45 minutes constantly, like day or night. And it was more like to do with anxiety than to do with anything else. It's something about the hormones not being ready when the womb comes to be. So, so they get this bad symptoms and it's worse than anybody who says, "Oh, I have some morning sickness." It's way, way worse than that. And I discovered frequencies back then and I discovered one that was eight hours long that I would put on, on the TV at night. And she would be able to sleep for that long while that frequency was there. And she was taking a lot of medicines and a lot of things,

• 35:07Speaker 00

  but this really made a big difference. So I've, I've been a fan of it. And, and when I heard that about how one of the highest forms of vibration was being... Oh, I forgot the word right now, sorry.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Authenticity.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  My English, authenticity, there you go. Was one of the highest forms, like it just resonated so well with me. And I feel like, you know, I'm, I'm not going to say I'm super authentic, but, but I feel that I come from a place where, you know, where I, where I am myself. I like to tell jokes, I like to make people laugh. And, and I think that that's another way to connect. Like you could be in China, you could be in Japan, you could be in another planet. And laughter will also be always a bridge that connects people.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, laughter and that comes from authenticity, from the true selves, right? One must, one might say. No, thank you for reading it, definitely. You know, I, I don't think that you can build relationships well if you are faking it or trying to get something out of it, something that you, I don't know, don't, don't say or... Yeah, I don't know, somehow trying to give the, the person or the system.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  And then again, I guess, you know, just asking like, "How are you? How are you feeling? You know, how's your family?" Like, you know, questions that is not going directly into the business and, "Hey, how are we doing with this? How is growth? How is numbers?" Like, being curious on how people are and if you're able to support in any way that you may.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that reminds me of on the, we had this networking hike, which we often have in Cape Town like a week ago. And there was one person, we always meet each other at networking, but always talk about like, how are you, how is business, et cetera? And this time I asked, what's your 10 year vision? And he stopped for a moment and then I learned so many things about him as a human being that I probably would not learn in, I don't know, a year of those more surface level questions or meetings. So that became my hack after it. Whenever I wanna get to know the person a little bit deeper, I'm asking them, what's your 10 year vision?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Where do you see yourself? Family, health, business, et cetera?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Now that you say that, something came into my mind. And I think it has to do something, it has to be in a way in how I live my life. You know, I was accident prone when I was young. I think I'm risk averse, knocking on wood. But I would, you know, my sports, the sports that I do, rock climbing and do a motorcycle downhill mountain bike, so they have risk in them. I say that entrepreneurs, we are not great at measuring risk because we get into the business out of excitement and we build our wings on the way down, as they say. But, but a couple of times where I was close to, close to death,

• 38:24Speaker 00

  I think, I think that shifted my mindset because when you are very close to death, you experience thinking, why is it all about existentialism? When you're close to death, you're shaken and you're like, oh my God, I almost died. I'm only, I don't know, 18 years old or 25. And so what is it all about? What, what life is about? I mean, what is the meaning behind it? So I think in a sense, because of having, I, I had a freak accident. I don't know if I should catalog it as a freak accident, but I was in Monterey, I heard this story on stage in Hawaii for a GLC back then, a couple of years ago, where I was attacked by bees. We were in the dirt, so it wasn't our fault.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  We were putting new routes on rock and I was hanging 30 meters above ground, about 10 floors above ground on a, on an anchor and the bees started stinging me and, and it was intense for like two minutes. They would go into my nostrils, into my mouth, they would sting my throat, into my ears, like my eyes. I would just drop them and kill them and do this like so many times until I understood that no one was coming to save me. And in the end I had to jump from, what, 36, no, 12 meters high and I broke my neck and I broke my foot.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Couple of years after that, I had another accident where I broke the atlas. The atlas is the stronger bone in the body, is the one that holds the skull. It is after the guy who is holding the world, Atlas. And, and, and I thought I was gonna die. So I think those two incidents specifically, where I thought I was gonna die, it made me understood that this life was finished and that death was coming for us all, as the Stoics say, memento mori. Yeah, remember you're going to die if you fumble. Remember that every human being, every animal, everything that breathes, lives, swims or whatever dies. So having that constant in my understanding, I think it made me shift

• 40:35Speaker 00

  a way of thinking. Maybe it happened naturally. Maybe I didn't even intended for that to happen. But I think it was a, it was a wonderful gift because through my life, I have done things because I'm reminded that one day I'll go and I wanna go with a smile. I don't wanna go with regrets that I should have done this, I should have done that. I wanna say, oh, I lived a fantastic life. I climbed the walls I wanted to climb. I've climbed over 22 countries now in wonderful places that before I would only see magazines back in the 90s. And I've been able to marry some of my passions into that passion, which was leadership with CEO.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  So being able to travel the whole world with CEO like I did in Cape Town and being able to climb that wonderful, natural wonder of the world, it, it made a big difference. So I think that part was a gift.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Being almost in a position where I was going to die and coming back from it.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  You know, I actually wanted to ask a question which is related to that. This evolution of your definition or understanding of success in life. You mentioned this couple of experiences that probably changed it. And can you tell, like, what did you used to think success was and what maybe did you try to achieve in life? And then after experiences like that, what became more important? Or maybe there was a different clarity about what this life is all about? What changed?

• 42:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. I think probably at the beginning, success was programmed into my mind like it is programmed to many people. And, and sometimes we understand or think we understand success to be having money, to be having company or being successful in a company, being a leader. I, I think that was probably around the success that I wanna understand. And, and it shifted to

• 42:42Speaker 00

  being

• 42:44Speaker 00

  consistent with what I think and what I do. And, and with sharing time with my loved ones and understanding that time flies and that we should, you know, be thoughtful and mindful on how to manage it. It's not always been like that, but, but it definitely has been a shift. For me, it has been really important for my daughter to understand that, that life is not fair and, and that shit happens. And that when life hits us hard, that we're able to go outside and reconnect and regroup and come back stronger because that's the experience that I've had.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Every time that I've been down, like for whatever reason, I go outside, I reconnect with the forest, I reconnect with the rocks. And, and I, and it, and it just grounds me. So, so I think now, if I think what is success is, you know, being able to live the life that you want to live and, and that is congruent with what you believe. Um, yes, I do have been able to have my own company and making a company that is in three countries now and have a successful team that, that, you know, has a great culture. But, but it is not about making a lot of money. It is about taking care of my community.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  For example, I think the most relevant thing in my company is culture. My company is an advertising agency, it's a communications company. And, and the bottleneck or the social bottleneck in advertising agencies generally is, oh, you guys have to work at 3am because that's where creativity happens. But if you work at 3am, then you're gonna work there for less than a year because it'll, you know, it'll hit you really hard and it won't be beneficial in your life. So we came to understand and to say, people here work from nine to five. And other than that, they need to go and live their lives because if they don't go out and live their lives, first, they're gonna have an imbalance. They won't be balanced.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Divorce rates go high, problems with families and whatnot. And also we need them to live their lives so that they are able to have better insights, to better communicate what it is to be human and to better communicate storytelling to the audience they are communicating to. So even though some companies go into the drill of hiring people, getting the most of them and then firing them and getting new ones and only having them for over a year or 10 year. I have, I have some collaborators with me that I like to call them employees. I like to call them collaborators. We're co-creating all the time. And, and, and they have been with me for 17 years, for 10 years, most of them.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  So they have understood that here they're able to grow, to improve themselves and, and they don't have to, you know, lose an eye in the process or a leg or whatever, or their, their health or their family. So I, I think that is really relevant in the way that we work. Sometimes that makes us a little bit more expensive. Sometimes that makes us a little harder to work with the clients because in advertising, everything is for yesterday. But, but it's, it's the way that we work and it's the best way for our team and for ourselves. So, you know, that's, that's an example of, of what I would say success for is in life.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  To, yeah, create things and live your life in the way that is aligned with your values and the effect, the impact that you're trying to create, I guess.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know that saying that there's this hospice where the people who were helping the old folk, they would write down all the regrets of people who were dying.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  And in those regrets, one was, I wish I would have lived a life true to myself. Another one was, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Nobody says I wish I would have worked more. And another is, I wish I would have stayed in contact with my friends. So you know, it's amazing when you're able to learn from other experiences because one day we're gonna be there, if we're lucky, right, and make it to that age. And we're gonna be there and thinking about our life and all the decisions that we made. And because of the fact that I have been close to death, now I know and I try to make that life something that I'm gonna be smiling over in the last days. I am recently reading this book, which has gotten a lot of traction in EO.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  It's called Die With Zero, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's really interesting.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's about?

• 47:37Speaker 00

  It talks about, you know, it says practically, if you die with a million dollars in the bank, you worked whatever time it made you build that million dollars, either a year, or two years, or three years, for free, which would have been time that you would have been able to do some of the passionate things that you would love to do. But instead, you chose to work them. And people will say, oh, but you have to think about the next generation and whatnot. And yes, you can support the next generation. You don't have to wait to die until you support them. You can help them with a down payment for a house or whatever, whichever way you wanna do it. But it's not a game of adding points.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  It's not like you're playing Nintendo and you wanna get the highest points there. I mean, if you're a billionaire, if you're a millionaire, if you have a hundred million, you're going to the same restaurants in everywhere, right? Like, there is this imbalance about trying to get more and more and more and probably wasting your life in trying to get all that, when in the end, I don't think that's what's going to make us have a great life.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yes. But as you said, it's very important to live according to one's values. And if someone's values, maybe not necessarily accumulating wealth for whichever purposes, then maybe they shouldn't do it.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  I also wanted to ask you about your lifestyle, your routines, your habits, your, as you said, right now, success for you, like what you came to understand is about living your life according to your values and what you wanna create in this life for yourself and others. But also, you have this, you know, multiple passions and you are managing businesses and you are on, you're a leader in entrepreneur organization and probably, I don't know, many others initiatives. So how do you structure your life? How do you prioritize things? Like, what's your day to day looks like? I bet our listeners are interested in that too, right?

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Like, such a busy person as you are, accomplished, successful, and then you also try to live according to your values. Like, how do you organize, design your life? What may be also an average day looks like for you?

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you for that one. You know what? I've heard that discipline gives you freedom. And I am disciplined in some areas and in some areas, I want to be more disciplined. I wish to be more disciplined. But I've done many, I've tried many things. Like, I went to a global leadership academy with the entrepreneurs organization and they taught me the one, ten, ten, ten. Have you, do you know that? Some call it the miracle morning, where you wake up and during one minute, you only think, why am I alive today? So today, I'm alive to be in your wonderful podcast and share my story and give value. And then 10 minutes, you read something positive, your mind is in a certain way and you don't

• 50:51Speaker 00

  wanna feed it all the Instagram and TikTok and whatnot. So you read 10 minutes, something positive, then you meditate for 10 minutes or are grateful for 10 minutes, and then you write for 10 minutes. And if you do that, it's almost like you're bulletproof. You can walk on water. Like, it's amazing how it sets you for a great day. So I did that for many years. At some point, I stopped doing it. And then a friend told me, I've done it for 1,500 days. And I was like, how do you know how many days? Like, I wrote in a corner how many days. So I started doing that. It's over 2,000 days now. I haven't been as diligent with it for the last months. But because life is like that, right? Like, you don't want perfection either. It's very hard to strive for perfection.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Progress trumps perfection every time. But it has been really helpful during some very hard moments in my life. And especially when I'm going through something hard, I like to write a journal and write it down. So I probably always have tried to search a better way to manage myself, you know, in different ways. So if I think about how my day is, there has been such a great shift between now and June, when I finished the year being chair, because I had a lot of meetings and a lot of time dedicated to the organization. I would have like, I don't know, probably four meetings a day, something like that. So I put my company not on hold, but I would have put less energy into my company.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  If I was tired, I would take a nap. If I felt bad, I would exercise. So, you know, I'm a strong believer that if you're not improving, then you're doing the opposite of improving.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Going could die is the same.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what I do, like, you know, every normal day, I do a lot of fasting. I feel that doing fasting, like, I like biohacking as well. And I feel like when I, my family has had a lot of diabetes, also heart-related sickness. So, and I am very, I would say that I've been impulsive with eating. And when I found fasting, probably 12 years ago, I started doing intermittent fasting and it has helped me maintain a certain weight. So I would do that every day, 16 hours fasting, eight hours to eat. Sometimes I do 24-hour fasting.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  I do exercise, I don't know, probably about four times a week, a couple times gym and a couple times it would be going outside, one to rock climb and the other to do enduro motorcycle or something like that. I, my company, it has 25 souls. I like that reference on aircraft, when the pilot is taking off in a helicopter and he says, I have four souls with me. So I applied it to my company. And out of those 25, eight already are rock climbers. So I love the fact that they have loved the sport that I love and that they would be able and willing to go climb with their boss on a Saturday after they have seen him from, I don't know, Monday to Friday.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  And also, I'm very thoughtful about, there's this story about a big mogul in the US that wanted to improve his business and he hires a coach and the coach says, I'm gonna show you some techniques. And he says, I already know what to do. The thing is, I don't have time to do it. I need you to give me a technique to do the best with the time I have. And he said, do the top five. What is this top five? You write down in the morning, what are the top five things I have to do today? Everybody will go to their emails and put refresh and see how many emails. And I'll respond all the emails before I get into the middle of the business. And sometimes, it is a boring thing, is read a contract.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  That is the thing that will bring more profit to your company than anything else. And if you work eight hours today on that contract and you are not finished, it doesn't matter, you worked on the thing that was more profitable to your business. So I like to apply that. So I'll think, what is the most relevant thing today that I have to do? And I focus on that, instead of doing all the many things or little things that I can get away with doing quickly and just going into the really relevant in the afternoon.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  And also, understanding that I'm in the business of communication, and that communication is one of the basic problems of the world, or all the problems spun from bad communication. We do things like, we used to do the daily huddle for many years, and then we morphed it into a weekly huddle. And in that weekly huddle, we will go through certain things. Number one, one word, how are you feeling today? Everybody in the company will say how they're feeling. Number two, a good news that they want to share. It can be a personal news or a company news. This raises the frequency, raises the vibration. And then, what is the top thing that you're working on today

• 56:04Speaker 00

  to improve the company? And everybody will say their top one. Top five is too much, so top one would be shared. Then, are there any bottlenecks? Things that are not letting you do your work today? And everybody will share whatever this is, and we can see how we were able to remove those bottlenecks. And finally, if anybody saw anyone doing something cool today. That's when someone will say, oh, I needed this, and this person helped me out with it, and he didn't need to do it, but he did it, and that was pretty cool. And I think that that is really supportive of supporting culture. And I think culture trumps strategy even. So those are some of the things that I do. I don't work my, you know, my soul off.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  I work the time that is needed. I am not a workaholic. I do think that entrepreneurs, I think that we're misfits to a system that we dislike. And instead of working nine to five for someone else, we decide to take the long haul and work 24/7 for ourselves under our own terms. Because we're always thinking about our business, even if we are at a beach, or on a weekend, or whatever. So, you know, I, since I know that I'm already doing this in a way, I take notes, I try to remember things that I'm gonna do on Monday. I don't have them in my mind all the time,

• 57:32Speaker 00

  because if not, my mind will get tired. I understand that my mind is not myself, that it's an organ in my body. And that if I ask it to think of a million things, that how things can go, it'll do that, and that will give me anxiety. So I don't ask it to do that. And I try to finish the day. We just got this sauna at a Costco or a Price Mart, and it was the one in exhibition, so we got a great deal out of it. And me and my wife, we have been doing it for maybe six months or eight months, and it has been fantastic. Like, so good to wind down, to relax, and to be ready for the next day.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yes, well, thank you so much for walking me through your routine, and how you think about this, and why. And also, on a cultural part, which is very important for any entrepreneur who, you know, wants to scale their mission, their vision. You can't do it alone, and culture is very important. You know, one question that I hear from so many entrepreneurs, and it feels like the question of the day. Maybe you have a good answer. You mentioned that you, with your team, you choose, you know, one thing that they decide to work on to move the business forward for yourself. Also, you know, you mentioned five things. I don't know if you do five things, but you also prioritize. So the question that I hear is,

• 58:54Speaker 01

  how do you choose those priorities, those important things? Do you have a system? Because, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like there is never-ending list of things to do. Like, how do you prioritize? How do you choose what is that one thing? Or what are those five things?

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a good question.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  You know, I make lists. I make lists, and I think lists are fantastic. Because on one side, you stop having all that information in your head, and you're able to put it on paper. And when you have it on paper, there's nothing better than just to scratch one thing off. And I think it is not only doing it, the satisfaction, but also scratching it off, and knowing that you have one less thing in your list. We have a weekly meeting. In that weekly meeting, with the leadership, with the managers, we start with also one word, with one good news, and then we do a five-minute meditation. For many of us, it's the only meditation that we do in the week. But at least, we do it together in the office,

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  and I think that is a game changer. And we also go through a top 10 list of the 10 most relevant things that we're doing in the business. We write down 15 or 20, but we stay with the top 10. And how do we think those top 10 are the most relevant? It has to do with the strategy. So we do a strategy meeting at the beginning of the year, and we say where we're going. We recently did, maybe a couple of years ago, we did the 2030 strategy, to have a little more mid-long-term strategy, to say, that's where we're going. What do we have to reverse-engineer to get there? And from that, then everything gets aligned immediately to that point.

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  And then, what's relevant just becomes kind of like obvious, maybe. Because, you know, there is a wonderful saying in Guatemala. It said that if you don't know where you're going, any bus will take you there. I think it comes from Alice in Wonderland. I think it was a rabbit that said, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. And that has to do with strategy. Because anybody can go and work a lot on a certain thing, but that certain thing might not be helpful to anyone. So I think that's when it is very relevant to communicate to the team.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  This is where we're going. This is our North Star. Every effort that leads to that North Star is great. Any effort that doesn't, then, you know, we have to regroup and re-understand. And we do that every trimester. We get together. Sometimes it's a full day, sometimes it's a half day. And we go through all the things that have happened, how are those aligned with our strategy? And then, what needs to happen? Which rocks we need to move forward? And there's many systems for this, right? I remember Vern Harnish, one of the founders of EO, he did the mastering the Rockefeller habits that turned into scaling up. There is EOS, that for most entrepreneurs, they feel is the most entrepreneurial system. Now, there's another one called Bloom. So there's many different systems,

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  but they are all, I mean, in the end, probably the same. It's putting a North Star, putting rocks that we need to push every trimester that way, and that'll keep us sane, moving forward. But it can be hard. And something that I have come to learn, that we're working a lot on, is how relevant processes are. Systems and processes. They say that if you don't have a process, you are the process, and the company will depend on you for that process to happen. But if you start writing them down, and it's, it is not really hard. It's hard to get the habit of writing them down. I don't know, we probably are around that at 25 processes right now. I met the other day an entrepreneur who has a construction company.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  He told me they have already over 130 processes. And that, I think, gives you the base to be able to scale. I mean, at 25 souls, right now, we're at a number that we're still able to communicate with each other. We, we used to be at home after COVID. We became an office, office, not home office. And it was mandatory. And then, a year ago, what was it? No, this January, we said, we're gonna do a hybrid, which I understand is probably not the most efficient way, because you still have to have an office. So we do half the people every day, and they have rests, and they switch every week. And we get together once a month for a creative day,

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  where they're able to bring projects. Nobody asks them to bring, but that they think would be great to communicate for a certain brand, or for a certain. And we give presentations. This Friday, I will give a presentation on my experience as chairing EO, and the leadership that I learned from it. So we're able to get together and hang out, and everybody can meet everybody, and everybody knows everybody. And it's been an interesting experience. I don't know if it has helped us be more effective or more productive, but there's a lot of time spent with people in traffic. Guatemala is a 5 million people city, so there's a lot of traffic. So people spend two and a half, maybe three hours a day just to get to the office and back to their homes.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  So they're very grateful that we did this change, because now they're able to not spend so much time in it and work from home. I don't know if that would answer your question.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, you answered a lot of questions, like how you prioritize the strategy, and then translating that into systems and processes, and communicating it well to the rest of the team. I mean, whichever way works for your specific team. Obviously, everyone has different sides of the team, or the setup, whether that's hybrid, or in-person, or distributed completely. So, yes, I think it's really a great system. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs just maybe, especially at the beginning, don't take the time to think through, like, what is our North Star, and why? And how we then can align our daily priorities to that, and what processes and systems we need? So, yes, that's very helpful. Thank you for sharing this.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  And you know what's hard? You're welcome. Something that is hard is...

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  I remember someone saying that discounts in a business are like crack or cocaine to a body. That if you give discounts, like you're gonna kill the business. And it makes sense, because if you're selling something for a hundred and you give a 10% discount, well, how much profit do you get in your company? If it's 10%, then you're not gonna be profitable in that deal. So we do like to make, we do an X-axis and a Y-axis and we, and we make different quadrants to understand what are the type of clients that we are most helpful to? And which are the type of clients that are better suited for us as well? Which are the clients that we don't want? Kind of like at the beginning, we, we asked questions about, you know, how, how do you pay?

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  If it's over 30 days, then that's not a good client for us. If things are every, every day they are for yesterday, then, you know, there is no planning. They're, they're not doing strategy and that would affect our culture. Because they would be asking us to do things every day very quickly and working on Saturdays and Sundays, and I don't want my team working on Saturdays and Sundays. I want them to be living their best life. So I think it's very relevant to stop and understand the clients and understand what types of clients you want to be having and to see if you're a good fit. And if they value the philosophy that you have in your company as well, and if they

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  respect it, because, you know, one, one client could kill your company, especially a smaller company like ours. So I think that, that makes a big difference as well. Understanding what type of client is the best client fit for you and which one isn't. For example, our, our best clients, we, the type of clients that we search for are clients where the business owner is not managing the marketing, because they tend to not see it as an investment, but more like a spent. Or, or a multinational company is the best suited for us, that has a very good marketing team behind it.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  That, that is, we work for brands like Volkswagen, we work for brands like Danone Silk, so these consumer brands. And, and that's what we're looking for. And it's amazing, because once you make the list of the things you don't want and the things that you want, it's really easy to see them when you're going to meet a client for the first time and understand how they work, and understand how much change they have in their culture, how much firing or hiring they have in the people who are leading these departments and whatnot. So it makes all the difference in the world.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, thank you so much, Hokin, for this as well. Yeah, I, I can 100% relate that choosing your client is basically deciding the destiny of your business, because this, you know,

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Complete.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Payment cycles and who, how long it has to take time to, for someone to make a decision and how much we work, like all of these small details, right? They, they can make or kill your business. Thank you for offering this advice as well and for entrepreneurs to also think about that, like who is good client for us so we can thrive as a business? Well, I, yeah, I could be talking to you, Hokin, for another couple of hours to absorb all of the wisdom and I'm sure you have so much to share, business advice and personal wisdom and everywhere in between. But obviously we have time limit and you have other things to do.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Thank you, Angela.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, as well, as to wrap up this podcast, this show, what are maybe one thing, a couple of things that you would like to add or leave our listeners with? That can be life advice, that can be business advice, or just something that you think, that like a lesson that you feel is important for more people to know?

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  You know, I was sharing to you about my daily life and how there had been a big change in June when I stopped being the Chair of EO. And it is wonderful, this organization is wonderful, because there is transient leadership. So no one holds to power for a long time and you're always having new people leading and coming in. And for me, after 14 years of, you know, knowing that after this position, I'll try this one and I'll try this one, and when it came to an end, I have understood from other board directors as well, that there's a hard stop. And that hard stop, you know, you have to get a new rhythm out of it. So I think that is probably the biggest learning in humility, that the path of leadership

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  of this organization gives you. One day, A, knowing that it'll stop and that you have to learn again how to live with that and how to manage yourself. And it's weird, because sometimes we might think, and that's why the ego is the enemy, that we are what we do and we are so much more than that. And not a position tells us who we are. So that has been a great learning and, and I believe that the thing, because I have been so motivated and passionate about giving my time for service for others in this wonderful organization of 22,000 souls, to be able to support them in unlocking their full potential. But I think that the next passionate thing for me, which has been the podcast, I do

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  it bi-weekly, I started three years ago, I've done over 60 episodes. And I, and I find it very nice, you know, to be able to experience people like yourself from the other side of the world, literally, and be able to share insights and whatnot. So congratulations on doing that. And one of the biggest learnings that I've gotten, because I normally, it's not like we have a constant question that we ask everybody, but sometimes I like to ask, like, what would you ask your, your younger version of yourself? And the other day I went to Monterrey because my nephew was graduating university. And I, and I told him, you know, what has been the constant that everybody says when

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  I ask them, if you could talk to yourself graduating university, what would you say? And he asked, what? And I said, don't be afraid. And it is amazing, because we are afraid in so many ways throughout life of things that seldom happen. And that's when it is important to understand that our brain is not ourselves. Our brain is, is trying to do what it does best to keep us alive. So sometimes it brings, you know, this, this frightening mode on so that we're able to keep safe. But amazingly, I'm not a very religious person, I am a spiritual, but not religious. But for example, the Bible says 365 times, don't be afraid.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  In, in, and so it is amazing, because I think in so many years, in so many generations, in so many different times of the world, that resonates tremendously. And being afraid is not expansive, it is something that makes you smaller, that makes you weak, that, that affects your frequency. And being able to understand that and to stay in a grateful mindset, it'll, it'll communicate differently to the universe and great things will come. Congrats on that, on doing this podcast. It's, it's amazing to be able to share the knowledge.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah, thank you so much. Podcast is, has definitely, you know, been a very rewarding experience that sometimes makes you feel afraid, like, you know, how, how is it gonna be? I'm gonna talk to this person that I've never met. But you're right, some of the best things, at least in my life, came from the moments of not being afraid and stepping into whatever is in front of me, fear or not, and just doing it anyway. So thank you so much for sharing this, yes. Let's, don't be, let's not be afraid, moving into the future and into unlocking more of our potential and our brightest, biggest future. And the last question, Hokin, where would you like our listeners to go to learn more

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  about you, to explore your work, follow your journey?

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  That's a great one. I would say, you know, they can find me in social platforms, like in Instagram, it's Timeline Traveler, that's the name. In LinkedIn, it's Joaquin Cordero, yeah. And in my podcast, I have some podcasts I do in English, some I do in Spanish. So I, I have different audiences for that. They can learn more from me over there as well. And also, if you search my name in Spotify or in YouTube, there are a handful or maybe dozen podcast interviews that they have done to me. One of them is your fellow podcaster, Ross Drake, from Johannesburg, a great guy, entrepreneur as well, who's done a great podcast. And there they can learn about me.

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  And there are some videos, also some keynotes that I've done that they can probably found in YouTube. Thank you for asking that.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Yes, of course, we're gonna link everything in the show notes and some videos and podcasts. So Hokin,

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  I wanna show you a picture.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  You're gonna recognize it.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Yes, it's on your Instagram, right?

• 1:14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's my daughter, she was 13 back then, when she, she says she doesn't like climbing, but she does it because I take her. One day she'll love it.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Yes, well, thank you for sharing. Seems like rock climbing is something you're really passionate about. Probably if I ask you about, to tell about that, you'll be talking for another hour.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Angela. It's been a pleasure to meet you.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a pleasure talking to you as well and I've learned so much and our listeners, I'm sure, will learn so much. And I encourage you, go and check out your podcast and all of your social media. So yeah, thank you so much, Hokin. And let's all not be afraid and step into our journey and a courageous one to you as well. Thank you so much.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. Have a great day.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  You too, thank you.