The Revenant (Part 4/5)

In July of 2015, I stopped charging Raccoon a salary. At that time, I was about to finalize the repayment of a 30,000.00 euro loan that I’d taken out years before to be able to launch Clara and her Sisters. I went to the bank to again take out a loan in that amount in order to have economic breathing room to be able to keep supporting my family without needing to make drastic changes (changing house, school, and other) while at the same time being able to implement a new project that had been taking shape in my head for months.

Closing Raccoon was not easy. For months, I had to deal with daily calls from creditors, banks demanding payment and worried clients. I had the skill and the fortitude to be able to reach agreements with nearly all of them. To date, we are still managing a project that helps to decrease the debt of the Partnership, a large part of same personally underwritten by me. A proper closure means at least the collaborators most committed to Raccoon over the years and the banks that supported us charged the maximum possible.

Lessons learned

I have learned that what may seem to be a failure is a great investment. These 13 years have been incredibly intense. I don’t consider them 13 years lost, but rather that I have attended 13 years MBA—13 years in which I have learned countless things and I have built an incredible network of contacts and friends throughout the world.

I have learned that success in only possible by surrounding yourself with the best professionals and good people. In fact, I’m still collaborating with some professionals who were Raccoon employees around the world.

I have learned to know in which ways I am a good professional and in which environments or which I do not like. I believe that one of the mistakes I committed at Raccoon was not knowing how to create a commercial structure. And I wasn’t capable because I don’t like it; I don’t enjoy pursuing collaborators and that is something that is intrinsic to commercial management: the near daily follow-up of the goings on.

I have learned to value every dollar invested. Let me give you an example: In 2010, in light of the good situation at Raccoon, we moved in Madrid to an office costing 6,000.00 euros a month. The idea was to receive the clients. Don’t fool yourself—unless you’re a great firm of lawyers, the clients won’t go to your facilities. We could have saved 240,000.00 euros from 2010 to 2015 with a less ambitious change.

I have learned to say what I think and stick to my ideas in spite of the pressure (although it’s still a lot of work for me to do that).

I have learned to follow my instinct: the day of the 2010 capital increase, I felt no joy; every fiber of my being told me it wasn’t good idea, but was rather the most comfortable. I didn’t follow my intuition. The same happened to me when I moved forward with the Mexico project, when I met the man who was going to be our manager we had no chemistry, but neither did I object. I have countless examples of the cost of not sticking to your guns, but it is something I am working hard on.

I have learned to prioritize investments. If I could turn back time, I never would have opted for open offices in Latin America—we were too short on resources for that. I would have reinforced Spain with a powerful general management or sales management. Nor would I have opted to create Betrained, or perhaps I would have partnered with an existing and consolidated platform or created simpler and more agile products.

I have learned to keep a cool head and control my anxiety, and this I owe to my therapist, to the colleagues in my Group, and my wife, all of them outstanding professionals, and to Dale Carnegie and his exceptional book, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” https://amzn.eu/3hZz5vz My personal motto is “Everything works out”

Thanks to Raccoon, I got to know Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay very well (Three countries I love) and I also knew Puerto Rico, Peru and Argentina, which are also wonderful.

I learned that sales are not what matters; what matters are the benefits. Sales enslave and profits fulfill. “The Little Black Book of Entrepreneurship” https://amzn.to/2qUEbDD

I learned to learn from books, everything that happened to us was written in the book “Competitive Advantage” by Michael Porter. https://amzn.eu/2fvy4RE But it’s one thing to read and another to have the courage to put what you’ve read/learned into practice. Another book that I strongly recommend to is “Positioning: The battle for your mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout. https://a.co/1iAsJdv

I learned that in a sector where the prices have plummeted, business cannot be based on bringing value, since that is not sustainable. There are currently new high-quality elearning factory projects, but can they be maintained? I believe that there is an enormous opportunity for a type of work in factory mode—not to the Spanish market  but rather with a global approach.

I have learned of the importance of a brand and of its positioning. You have to invest not only in the design and the protection of a brand but also in its care and respect. One of my favorite phrases is “The key to success is not to be the best, but to be different” from Michael Porter. Regarding brands and positioning, I carried out two of the most interesting projects of my career from Raccoon: the development of the Learning Quarterly and the organization of the Afterwork of learning.

I have learned to launch projects, and this is no small feat. In these 13 years I must have participated in more than 150 learning projects, and in fact I think that one of the things I like most in this life is creating ideas and kicking them off like I did with the Clara and her Sisters series. And I can also say that this has become a vice, since at this very moment, I have at least two very powerful ideas on deck.

I have created an online community with more than 19,000 contacts in the worlds of HR, education, innovation, and startups. This is something very fun and enriching.

(To be continued) We will publish a part of this story every week, if you do not want to wait you can download the full article at: https://jvsp.io