Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

Considering that there are many people who asked to see an example of what I have built, instead of sending it to each person I am going to upload it as a post (it’s too long to be a comment).

It’s a little boring to read, so I recommend that only those that are dying to have an example of what I talked about in the last post, read this. In saying this, I feel liberated to post something long and difficult to follow, and it’s only for the really motivated who want to know more about this. If you get bored, don’t complain! Before you dismiss me, think of the work I did to make this “complexity”.

To get things straight, this is not a complete list. This is a more detailed explanation of how to build a business model in Excel, using Officenet as an example. I have the list that we once used to plan ON before launching but without explaining it would result in something incomprehensible, I think.

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In the post about the theft of ideas I started a discussion thread about the earliest stages of an enterprise. Here I want to talk about another related aspect of launching a business. The post might get a little long or heavy but within it, there is a secret that I believe is key.

Imagine that we have come up with a potential business idea.� What should you do first?� The first thing I do, apart from evaluate my own idea like I was an impartial third-party, is get a helping hand from my old and dear Excel. The majority of people think that in business, Excel only helps with financial projects.� But the reality is that, for me, it is much more than just that.

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As you might have noticed, in early 2009 I have stopped posting in English. I tried hard to do both Spanish and English for a few months, but the combo platter of translating and working to develop an English speaking audience proved to be too much for me at this time.

So until I can find the time to resume my English postings, the best I can give you is a link to the Spanish version, translated by Google Translate. I know it’s not perfect… It is not even good. But here it goes:

Take me to the translated Spanish blog

Oops! This post has not been translated yet. At Palindromic, we are working hard to have all the posts translated into English. Please try again later. In the meantime, you can enjoy the Spanish version.

In the comments to my post on Boca, Ramiro BM refers to a comment I made in a post he wrote on optimism. There I stated that “you don’t need to be optimistic to be an entrepreneur and that I myself am the living proof of it”. As I find this subject very interesting, instead of answering to his comments in the other entry, here goes a whole post.

I believe optimism is a double edged sword. On one side, often, being convinced that the results lying ahead of us will be positive reinforces our determination in adverse circumstances. Many entrepreneurs are “optimism driven”. Optimism is the fundamental fuel for their engines.

But, on the other side, optimism may be a great source of problems in two similar yet different ways.

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A while ago, while talking with a friend, she asked me for a tip saying that she did not know what to do with her life. She was running in circles for months, without deciding what to do. My answer was simple: “No matter what you choose. Flip a coin and let chance decide”.

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In Officenet there is no air conditioning. In the summer we suffer for the extreme heat and in the winter we shiver with the cold. But soon we are going to solve this.

More than 10 years ago it asked a group of people in our Office of Corporate Acclimation to work on defining the purchase of an air conditioning equipment to resolve the issue. In this time they made trips to see companies from other countries to see if the temperature in their office was OK, we met with representatives of several companies that sell air conditioners, we surveyed our employees, suppliers and visitors on their favorite temperature
and did some other things.

In these recent days of heat, we had some people fainting because of the high temperatures. But, luckily, in the winter we only had one person with severe respiratory problems from the cold. I estimate that within a year and a half the Acclimation area is going be able to make the best decision on what equipment to buy to give our employees the working environment they deserve. They are very important to us.

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For those who could not see it live on Sunday but want to watch it, this is the video of Argentina para Armar last Sunday, where together with other Entrepreneurs we talked about how to deal with the crisis. I also include my presentation from Palermo Valley.

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In this world, there is no sure recipe to succeed. But making sure we fail is quite easy and we can do it ourselves, without help from anyone.

A few years ago I read the book “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. I did not like it at all. The basic philosophy can be summed up in that “when a person really wants something, the whole universe conspires so she/he can realize her/his dream.” It is, in short, the prototypical “you can”, carried to the extreme.

This week I wrote a post on the impact of the financial crisis. In a comment, with great diplomacy Ines (which by one of those coincidences happens to be my mom!) objected to my vision of the crisis as an opportunity, assimilating it to that kind of philosophy.

I acknowledge I may have sounded like that, but nothing is further from my way of thinking. This is a world that in general conspires so that most people do not have what we want. It is almost never true that “if you want to, you can”.

Both the “if you want, you can” and its logically equivalent “If you can not is because you do not want to” are cruel oversimplifications. They generate false expectations, then put the blame on us when we fail.
In my view there is, however, a very important rule that is almost universal: “If you DO NOT want, you can NOT”.

What this rule says is quite different from the other two. It states that something good never occurs without the power of the will to make it happen. The will is not enough, but it is essential.

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This week Officenet won the Mercurio Award, given by the Argentine Marketing Association, in the Technology category. This award recognizes the companies with best marketing in the country. For me this is the best prize of all because it wasn’t won thanks to me but despite me!

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