Why I decided to grow an ugly fat horseshoe mustache

I am the oldest boy of a family of 4 siblings that had at that time already taken the decision to overcome a huge set of challenges. When I was 15 years old, I declared that I was going to break out from poverty and addictions that have shadowed my family for generations.

My approach to reach that goal was traditional. I studied hard, worked hard, did what I was told will work out. I followed the advice of my mentors and got a promising job in a global corporation where I successfully thrive for a bit more than a decade.

I was very happy with my success and learned tons from that path. I started to feel the need for change and started taking shy steps toward there. However, I was still seeking validation on everything I did back then, and I never took any serious risk because I was simply very afraid to fail. Whenever I have to make a decision, I was normally talking to some members of my family or some senior colleagues to seek their approval on my plans.

My feelings could be summarized in these two: It was such hard work to get where I was. How could I risk it all?, I was also afraid to lose my reputation, to lose face and was too worried about what others will think if I fail

Then the global pandemic arrived and puts me in a single concealed location for more than 6 months and is still ongoing. For those that know me in person, you know how difficult is for a guy like me to stay steady in a single location and doing the same thing. The year before I traveled 43 weeks in one year! The first few weeks of the quarantine were tough, I started eating and drinking more than I should. Anxiety was also present and I was worrying too much about what would happen to my business.

I remembered some advice from Grant Cardone that says that the best way to get rid of anxiety is through massive action. So, I decided to focus on action and get things moving and running regardless of me not being able to travel and to see my customers. I had an ambitious commercial budget I still needed to deliver regardless of the pandemic.

The whole business was challenged in February this year. I was not certain about whether I was going to make it or not, but I decided not to leave it to destiny alone. I knew that in order to make it we would have to do things differently and I had also foreseen that the world was going to change, not temporarily, but definitively.

I kept working hard, trying to maintain a busy schedule, setting up a lot of conference calls. My look was business formal from the belt up, and home casual from the belt down (see picture below).

Shaving became an annoyance and I saw myself growing a huge beard during the quarantine. I was still running videoconferences and recording video courses. I felt that sometimes my beard was a bit too much for the corporate B2B world and somehow started feeling again the need to be validated by my peers. Anyway, I encounter many video conferences with people that knew me already but also with prospective customers. At the beginning of those calls, I started to feel a bit of fear for the rejection of my new look.

However, I managed to overcome that fear in some meetings. I simply told the story at the beginning of the call, explaining that the beard was collateral damage due to CoVID-19 and the quarantine. The beard resulted in an incredible ice breaker to talk about something different at the beginning of the call and to connect us as human beings. I was also feeling much more confident on the call after overcoming the fear to show up to my customers with this "Fidel" look.

One day I had a very important call with a prospective new customer and I was not able to stand the fear of rejection, so I decided to shave. I was back to my more "corporate" look. See below, the before-and-after picture.

The meeting went ok. But it was then when I realized how much I was caring for the opinion of others in my own life, not only about the beard but in particular about everything else. I realized that I was putting way too much attention and worrying about that in such a way that was not allowing me to fly as high as I could. It was one of those "aha" moments where you connect the dots.

At the same time, during these days I started helping entrepreneurs to launch their businesses online. I started this as a voluntary service to help some friends that lost their job or have their businesses closed due to the pandemic. This thing grew bigger and ended starting with an initial group of 23 people, leading a step by step program to bring their ideas into something tangible that can serve others via the internet. I designed a program from years of learning from various sources, with day-by-day challenges, bringing the whole group through daily challenges, where only those up to date were allowed to pass on the next week and so. As a part of the program, the entrepreneurs have to lose their fear and start talking in camera about their stories and solutions.

It was then when I realize I needed to take myself to the next step. I decided to let my facial hair grew again but into the ugliest form possible: a "machete" style, a big fat horseshoe mustache.

If I could manage video conferences, video courses, Facebook lives, Instagram lives, interviews all with that big thing in between my nose and my mouth, well, If I can overcome that, perhaps I could manage any other fear of rejection and at the same time any need for approval.

So I let it grew for a week and then I took a picture and expose my new "me" in all forms and profile pictures available. Brand new profile pictures on Linkedin, Facebook, even WhatsApp personal and business. The reactions were many, both positive and negative. I was very conscious of the exercise and how to win it: I simply stop caring for other people's opinions on me. Some people joked others complained, others laughed, others celebrated it. I ignore them all (positive and negative) and keep wearing my ugly mustache accepting it was my bloody own decision to let it grow in my own face.

The mustache became also a symbol of a new era in my life. Most of the entrepreneurs I started to help had their business tight to the physical world and were not fast enough to adapt to this new virtual reality. So, I set myself the task of bringing everything I had learned and practiced to help these small and independent entrepreneurs evolve to selling fully online. All this was voluntary work I did without any interest to profit from it. I was working my ass off all evenings and nights and weekends, but it felt so great to be helping them.

My motto was to "get ?? done through imperfect action" and this machete style mustache fitted precisely to support the message of "cutting the ?? and just get stuff done". No excuses, no overthinking. Kill it! Get it done! period! Machete Style.

Suddenly something amazing start to happen! People were contacting me for help, others requiring one-on-one sessions with me. My evenings, nights, and weekends ended all fully packed with free consulting services. The thing grew bigger with three batches of the program so far, reaching 123 people and with a waiting list of more than 500 people for the next batch of the program. All this by pure word-of-mouth!!

At the same time, I have been able to put successfully into practice a lot of these same things into verticeww, our B2B business. I changed all my lead generation strategies, my presentations, all the sales speech. The results were simply amazing. We have managed to keep the closing of new businesses at a never foreseen pace and all this during the pandemic.

This has been an amazing journey! This stuff is having so much impact on people's lifes that I have decided to take this to a higher level and to officially launch "Angel for Entrepreneurs" "ángel de Emprendedores". We help entrepreneurs to launch successful online businesses by offering step by step programs and consulting support.

In regards to my ugly fat horseshoe mustache, well I don't need it anymore. But I will never forget how it served me well and the symbol it represented to me in this new stage of my life.

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