I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | C-Suite Executive | Mentor, Coach, Strategic Consultant | Real Estate Investor | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
What I was doing at 3am with an Italian guy
|
Let me share with you a lesson that can change how you see things… and if not, you should talk to the doctor in case you have no blood on your veins. ​ It was during my time at JP Morgan. Investment banking. There was a guy. Italian. Name, Luca. Very nice guy. ​ There we were. At around 2 or maybe 3 am at the office, in London. We finished a presentation for important VPs that needed to take 8 copies of it for an important meeting in a huge deal. We had sent the presentations to print. They arrived. And Luca wanted to verify one. Page by page. ​ Trust me, in 2004 people were not obsessed with PowerPoints full of images for an inspiring presentation… Don’t know if TED Talk even existed. It was really dense. ​ I wanted to go home… and asked: “Luca, why are you verifying the presentations”. “Look. When people are about to take a very important decision, around hundreds of millions, any small error, any thing that seems displaced, will tell their brains that there is something wrong. They are under stress, and they want out. Simple errors can derail a deal because you destroy your credibility, you create doubts – what if these guys get this wrong, I see here two spaces instead of one between these two words – yes, that ridiculous… I know… but it happens” ​ That marked me a lot. So much, that I took the other seven presentations and start looking for these errors myself. “What are you doing, Vicente” “I don’t want to risk that there is one presentation different with the others, better to scan all 8 than just 1 sample” “Cazzo”. And we went home at 4 am for a fresh start in a 4 hours. ​ Well… if you are interested in how to manage stress so small mistakes don’t become a “no deal”, you should take a look below. ​
​
​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. ​ ​ |
Vicente Valencia
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | C-Suite Executive | Mentor, Coach, Strategic Consultant | Real Estate Investor | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Do you believe that Amazon could be built by Jeff Bezos doing 15$/hour tasks? I have this debate very often with entrepreneurs from all sorts of backgrounds. They believe that they need to do everything by themselves. If you want a business not to grow, or you want your business to get stuck or simply your health going to hell… do all by yourself. Schedule meetings, take minutes, actions, do follow ups, check the receipts, upload this into the accounting tool, etc. etc. etc. All by yourself....
I like saying “be gentle with yourself”. I see too many people being the worst critics of themselves. Never enough. Never done well. More, and more, and more. Don’t take me wrong. I’m a fun of self-motivation. I’m all-in in improving myself, in challenging myself. But how you do it matters. The words we speak have a direct and definite effect upon our thoughts. Thoughts create words, for words are the vehicles of ideas. Words also affect thoughts and help to condition if not to create...
It was winter in Montreal and I was making a tour to some VIP guys from Madrid. It’s normal that if you’re building a $1.5bn project, you are interested in knowing first hand how the project is going. “Fascinating” “So cold” “So white” “Snow everywhere” They pointed out a place outside the construction site. And then I saw it. A dad had made for his children a hockey field in the lake. Smoothed the ice. Put goals. Painted the field. Even he put some lighting. The lake was in his backyard. My...