The Place: Flipnotics

The Cup: Nando had a rich, velvety mocha and I opted for – surprise, surprise – an iced coffee. When it’s one thousand degrees outside, a hot drink just won’t do.

Background: Almost a year ago, when this blog was just a wee little baby and I had just barely learned WordPress basics, I attended BlogathonATX, a very cool blogger event that is rich with learning, connecting and awesomeness! I suggest you sign up as soon as they let you – assuming you are in Austin – or will be on Oct. 19, have a blog – or want one and are already at least a little awesome. I’m pretty sure that’s part of the criteria based on the people there last year. I snuck in and pretended I knew what I was doing. (Which fooled no one, I’m sure.)

Nando was not only there, he was one of the experts teaching people super cool, advanced stuff. This is when I learned that when you need to summon Google just to make sense of the questions people are asking, you are in over your head. I hung in there though. Nando was not only kind enough to answer questions there, he was extra nice and reached out after the event to assist me with a font size issue I was having. He’s been in the back of my mind as someone to get to know for a while, but when I saw a comment from him on a post written by a national blogger I follow, I viewed it as a sign and sent him an invitation to coffee. He took me up on it.

We’ll get into Nando’s super powers as a digital marketing whiz in a moment, but first, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds

1. How did you make your first buck? Delivering papers.
2. What’s a food you can’t live without? Baked goods. I am horrible around them. I can’t buy them because I’ll eat them all.
3. What is your guilty pleasure? Expensive beer. Local favorite, Stash from Independence Brewing Company. Nationally, I like Lagunitas.
4. What is your favorite way to unwind? Going for a mountain bike ride. Being on a bike is like a vacation for me. You have to be in the moment when you are riding. You get to explore and have to focus on what you’re doing. It’s one step removed from meditation. It clears the mind.
5. What is the best compliment you ever got?  When people appreciate the work I do, they don’t even need to say it.
6. What’s the best place to eat in Austin? That depends how late in the night we’re talking. We don’t go out to eat all that much. My favorite place to eat is actually our kitchen at home. But if I had to pick a restaurant, we really like Cipollina – it’s really good Italian food, especially the pizza. One of the only sit-down restaurants that I’ve been to twice.
7. What is the last thing you fixed? My wife’s flat tire on her bike.
8. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would you pick? I’ve been reading Chris Brogan for long enough, that I wouldn’t necessarily want to swap lives with him, but I think we’d be friends. He’s sensible and smart and I wouldn’t mind hanging out.

Nando tells me that like most people here in Austin, he’s from somewhere else. By the way, that number grows by 160 people every day. This is a very happening city. In Nando’s case, he got here from Puerto Rico by way of Orlando.

Leaving Puerto Rico was not an easy decision, but twelve years ago, Nando and his wife could see that the economic future for professionals like themselves wasn’t looking hopeful. They chose Orlando as their new home and try as they did, they never managed to feel at home there. Nando says, “Orlando is a place you visit. It’s very manicured. I just didn’t relate to the place and I realized its important to me to feel a connection to the place I live.”

A friend was living in Austin and every chance he could, he sang the praises of Cap City. Nando never paid a whole lot of attention to these shameless recruiting efforts, until 9/11. Although Nando and his family weren’t personally impacted, the event shook him, as it did many of us. He decided that since life came with no guarantees and that your entire world could come crashing down in an instant, there was no sense living somewhere you weren’t happy. A few months later he got on a plane for a visit to Austin.

Nando tells me that during his visit, he had three job interviews, ate at a handful of great restaurants, went out on the town and, probably the clincher, he went for a bike ride on the trails around the lake. There were several things about Orlando that were hard to adjust to, but the lack of mountain biking trails was one of the most difficult. Nando tells me that from the day (2 months after his visit) he and his wife got to town, they have felt right at home. I know exactly how he feels. And today, so do another 160 people.

His first job in Austin meant a significant pay cut and a position that was a few rungs lower on the career ladder. It was disappointing, but he understood the trade-off. He gradually worked his way up and found higher paying jobs at other companies until he landed an Environmental Graphic Design position. The design studio he worked at had 40 people when he started and after three rounds of layoffs, they were down to just a few. Nando had hung on and although he was doing the work of multiple people, he knew the hard work and long hours would pay off. In fact, Nando and his wife went out for dinner to celebrate their anniversary and he found himself telling her that he saw a clear, bright future at the company. He was proud of the work he was doing and had hung on for so long. He told her that when things picked back up, he would be in a great position – back up to the spot on the ladder he ought to be. He was so confident, he even told her he was planning to ditch his side entrepreneurial ventures and focus 100% on this corporate career. This was a big moment for Nando and he felt terrific about the decision.

Brief side note: Are you the kind of person who reads a string of happy, positive stuff and then assumes things are about to get ugly? Do you find yourself holding your breath a little as you wait for the hammer to fall?  Do you silently plead with the author, No! Don’t you dare do what I think you’re going to do!  And then when you just can’t take it any more, say Just get it over with already! I know it’s gonna hit the fan, so get on with it for crying out loud!

You are? Yeah, I thought so.

Two days later, Nando went in to work. He and his boss went to make a big presentation to a client. The kind of presentation that never ends with a “Yes!” on the first try. This time, the “Yes!” came  immediately. Huge victory! Hip, hip hooray! Cake and balloons and confetti everywhere!

Nando, still on cloud nine from the excitement of the morning thinks his boss might be interested in congratulating him or even promoting him when he calls him into his office later in the afternoon. Nope.

Cue the fan.

“We’re going to have to let you go,” are words that don’t sound a whole lot like, “Awesome job, dude! Here’s a big pile of cash! Take the afternoon off!” Well, he did get the afternoon off, and every afternoon following. Mornings too. Just when he’d mentally committed to being a company man, the plans changed. Nando said it was the first time he’d ever experienced something like it. And walking out that day, he decided it would be the last.

From that day, Nando has been an entrepreneur – working for himself, doing design and digital marketing consulting and project work. He tells me he was in “shell shock” at first, but eventually started to put himself out there. He joined Meet-Ups and began networking and things began to change significantly for him. He met wonderful, talented people and became a part of a community.

Things were going well, and he enjoyed the work and his clients, but was looking for something more. That’s when he met his current business partner, who had a similar vision for the type of digital marketing company business owners needed on their team. Nando’s skills and areas of expertise were on the solution and production side, and his business partner lives and breathes sales. Perfect match!

They’ve been in business since September 2012, and things are picking up. When I asked about the most significant thing that’s happened to him in the last 30 days, Nando jokes and says, “We got paid.” Which I’d say is very significant. He reflected a bit and then told me that it was a conversation he and his business partner had that was a game changer. “There was this issue and we didn’t see eye to eye. We ended up having an argument about it which led to a conversation. As a result of the discussion, we are much healthier going forward and in a much better place in our business and in our friendship. People who say, ‘It’s just business, it’s not personal’, are wrong. If there’s anything about a small business, it’s that it’s personal.”

That network of professionals Nando built while he was struggling to figure things out and get his business off the ground are the same people he relies on today to provide services for his clients. He also learned lessons during that time on how to build a sustainable business and the importance of serving people – clients, referral partners, vendors. He joined a group based on the Seth Godin book Linchpin, and then used the lessons learned from it to become a Linchpin for his clients.

As much as I love Seth Godin (I’m a seriously huge fan!), I’ve never read Linchpin. No reason for it, just never did. I may have to pick it up though based on Nando’s review and those of 434 people on Amazon. From the book description, here’s what a linchpin is:

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers.  They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art. 

Who doesn’t want to be a linchpin? It sounds fantastic! Do they get a special name tag, or perhaps a cape emblazoned with a large “L” on the back? If it came with a tiara, I’d be all over it! I was never anything even resembling a pageant girl or royalty, but I do love a tiara. I wore one on my wedding day and, true confession time, sometimes I dig it out while I’m cleaning house and put it on. If you think I’m joking, you obviously don’t know me. Cleaning isn’t fun! But the tiara helps.

Speaking of books…no really, before I got us off on the tiara topic, we were talking about books…when asked about a Bucket List, Nando says he doesn’t really have one, but then quietly says, “There’s a book in me somewhere.” Ooh, what about? I ask. He tells me, “I realized that I’ve spent a great deal of my life in survival mode. When you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’ve been focused on basic needs my whole life.” Nando goes on to tell me that growing up in Puerto Rico, his parents worked very hard. In fact, he learned about the value of a strong work ethic from the example his father set. But the family never had more than what they needed to just get by. When Nando and his wife moved to Orlando, they were on a budget. After all the bills were paid, they typically had around $10 to play with. Nando says, “When you’ve been in that situation, anything is good.” You are happy with whatever comes your way. This realization was crystallized when Nando had an opportunity to build his dream mountain bike.

Nando had done some work for a client with a bike shop and his pay was to customize the bike of his dreams. Before this day, Nando built his bikes very strategically. He’s buy and sell and trade up whenever he had a few extra bucks. He might buy a bike at a good price that had a few components he wanted, swap out those components for some he no longer needed and then sell that bike. Sometimes, at a profit. He’d been doing this for years. So when the bike shop owner asked Nando what he wanted, Nando realized, he didn’t know. He’d always lived by the rule, get what you can get and learned to be happy with whatever that was. He’d never had the luxury of designing exactly what he wanted.

Suddenly, years of classes taken and books read on the topic of goal setting made perfect sense. He never understood why the goals he set weren’t being achieved. The bike shop moment taught Nando that you have to believe in your goals, you have to believe you are worth it and that they are achievable. When you’ve “gotten by” for your whole life, goals for anything beyond basic needs feels superficial. Nando says you have to find a way to make your goals feel significant. This was a lightbulb moment for him and he hopes to share that message in book form someday!

Nando and I discuss society and I ask him what he considers to be the biggest issue we face today. He says it’s a lack of empathy, adding, “Look at the growth of custom this, or custom that – cell phone covers or whatever – it’s all about ‘us’. We’re getting used to the world revolving around us and we’ve gotten too self-centered. Without empathy, you can’t solve any problems. You’ve got to be able to see it from another’s point of view to really solve anything.”

Nando tells me that one of his favorite books of all time is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven Covey. And one of the best lessons of the book is the idea of the 3rd alternative. In an argument, for example, you have two points of view that may both be correct – for each person anyhow. There also exists a 3rd alternative  – which is the one that creates a win-win. But in order to get there, you must be willing to hear the other side. Nando is concerned that our lack of empathy equates to a whole lot of talking and not nearly enough listening. I can’t say I disagree.

I asked Nando about something he believed to be true for a long time, but now knows differently. He thinks about it for a minute and then warns, “It’s gonna get religious. I now believe that no one religion can claim to understand anything for certain. We claim we do and then in the name of that understanding, we judge people. The old belief is that there is one truth. But now I believe we should spend our time looking for the truth with the understanding that we will never find it. It’s healthier to know that we don’t know. What we should say is, ‘I think ____, but I don’t know.’ We can be a lot nicer when we accept this.”

All of this ties nicely into the speech Nando would give the world if he had 30 seconds to do so. He’d say, “A lot of good can come from us accepting that people are different; we all see things differently, but we’re all human beings and we should remember this. How do you want people to know you? Don’t be an asshole. Be nice. If we just start there, that’s a huge start. Just be nice to each other.”

Nando is on to something. Sometimes it’s the simple messages that have the greatest meaning. There are two sides to every story and somewhere between the two lies a third version. What would happen if the goal wasn’t to win, but to be kind – how would that change what we do and how we communicate and interact with each other? When we can step out of our own custom shoes for a moment and put ourselves in the position of the other person; when we open our ears and really listen; when we open our minds to the possibility of another person’s truth which is just as true as our own – only then can we begin to open our hearts and look for solutions where everyone walks aways feeling victorious. It’s possible. Nando’s message is a reminder to all of us that it doesn’t have to be difficult. Just be nice.

To learn more about Nando, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

If you dig this interview and want more – head over to the book of faces and “Like” the 5 Year Project page. It’s the nice thing to do, folks! 🙂