Be yourself and change the world

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You want to stand out from the crowd. You want to differentiate yourself from your competition. You want to drive your competition crazy! You want everybody to understand your value!
But how?
All previous sentences were focused on your competition. Well... I believe that, in order to beat your competition, you have to focus on yourself first.
Be yourself!

The NBA Way to Success

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Success.

You know what it looks like, right? It's when the clouds clear, the sun shines and the angels start singing... it's a beautiful thing to witness. It happens when you finally reach the goal you worked so much for.

The problem is: it's not going to be easy because, in any game, you're not the only one that's trying to win. There will be the ones that will try to break the rules and put you out of the game. Others will try to break you. Others though, will help you.

NBA players know a lot about this. Their goal? Wining the championship by scoring as much points as possible while preventing the other team to do the same. Their problem? There's a total of 30 teams, each one with 15 players on their roster, making a total of 450 players competing for the same thing: wining!

The question is: how they succeed?

Innovation and The Ugly Duckling Paradox

Cover of The Ugly Duckling

Since the day you were born, you were told how to see, hear, touch, smell, feel the world around you. Our society's culture teach us how to think and behave in "right" way.

It all starts with the Parents. "Don't do this or else... Say that or else..."

Then, the Television, one of the main characters in modern education model, shows you some more rules. "If you don't buy this brand no one will talk to you. If don't buy that brand no girls will like you. If you don't have that car no one will like you. If you don't buy that, you won't succeed."

Enter School. If you don't like the same games that all the other kids like, no one will be your friend. If you don't have good grades, you'll die miserable and poor.

Enter the Job market. If you don't do what your boss says, you'll be fired. If you try to do a task in an improved way, your team will think that you're trying to make them look bad.

They've raised you surrounded by a message of fear for you to fit in. Why? Because when you're afraid it's easier to control you. It's easier to make you become just like everyone else. One more number in a statistic.

Now, you are an adult. It's your responsibility to succeed! After all you were raised to succeed, right?

Wrong! If you were raised surround by an endless set of conscious and unconscious set of rules and "truths", how can you be different from your competition?

Now, after years and years of this brainwash, suddenly you're supposed to:

• "Think different!"
• "Be like Coca-Cola!"
• "Differentiate or die!"

Enter the Ugly Duckling Paradox.

Analog vs Digital Business Management

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We're living surround by an ever growing digital world.

Analog activities are becoming less relevant and replaced by their digital counterparts. The ultimate example of this is letters being replaced by e-mail. With 90 trillion emails sent on the Internet in 2009, who still writes a letter these days?

Why is analog still relevant and how can we leverage it to become more competitive?

Business lessons from Marylin Manson

Love him or hate him. Marilyn Manson is without doubt one of the most controversial and inspiring leaders in the music industry.

The music industry is one of the most competitive and challenging markets to be in business. There's plenty of competition and a dying business model that makes the path to success a hard walk.

However, Marilyn Manson did succeed! Millions of records sold. Sold out concerts around the globe.

So, what lessons can we learn and apply into our business?