Empresas Grandiosas - Un Resumen de Libros para Emprendedores

in business as in life, if there's something true, it's uncertainty. How can some companies survive or even shoot down their growth when the future is so unpredictable? Today we're going to see a book, a book called "Great Companies". What's the result of nine years of study of a lot of companies, but a lot of companies in which one studies as a whole series of myths that we've always wanted certain companies to survive. Maybe they're not so certain. We're going to see those myths one by one. We're going to destroy them. And all of that will give you the clues to find out how well your company is a great company in the 2011 book of the great gentleman Jim Collins, of companies that survive. It's the book that we're going to see. Here and now, in "Libros para Emprendedores y Más", let's get started. Welcome to "Libros para Emprendedores" podcast. To achieve success in any business you want to start, you must train, you must study, learn to start, and for that, there's nothing better than a book. In the "Libros para Emprendedores" podcast, we help you in three ways. First, by selecting the best books in the market to help you to start, to improve your business. Second, we offer you, for free, a summary of the most valuable points explained in each book. And third, we finally give you steps to follow to put in practice all those learned lessons and thus be able to cut your path to success. Whether it's marketing, sales, leadership, entrepreneurship, mentalization, we're going to analyze the best of the best books in the market and we're going to give you all the best, and that's it, to be applied. I'm Luis Ramos, businessman and entrepreneur, and I'm going to join you if you allow me on this path. Without further ado, let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome to "Libros para Emprendedores". Here we are again with a book, with a book that has been very difficult these last weeks. I have to be honest, you know that lately on Instagram, well, on Instagram and on other social media, I'm proposing what book you want to be the next one that you interview, that you analyze, that you bring here in summary. And I've been asking for three weeks for several books and one of them will be this one. These great companies that we're going to see today. And it was always second, it never was first, but it was always second, very little, because there are a lot of people who wanted me to bring this summary. This week, what I've decided this weekend, this weekend, I'm not going to put it to vote, nor do I bring it here directly. Great companies, you know, this book of 2011, the great Jim Collins and also Morten Hansen, who are the two co-authors, and who basically are dedicated to analyzing for nine years, this team is dedicated to analyzing for nine years, a lot of companies to analyze. Why are they successful? Even in difficult times, in times of uncertainty. The concept of this book, as I told you in the introduction, has to do with the fact that we have to analyze a whole series of companies that had it difficult and were in situations, perhaps, or went through stages or complex world situations, but nevertheless, they were brilliantly overcome and even shot themselves in their growth. The authors started a list of more than 20,000 companies. More than 20,000 companies. And what they did was filtering that list of 20,000 companies, looking to identify seven study cases of 10X companies. They were called 10X companies. Those companies whose performance was much better than the average of their industries, at least ten times during complex periods. In other words, companies that grew ten times more than the average of their industry. So, how did these 10X companies define them? How did they detect them? To be a 10X company, you basically had to be a company that would fulfill three criteria. You had to have shown impressive results during the last 15 years. You should have achieved those results during times, during tumultuous times, and in events that could not have been predicted. And it should also be about a young organization that would have started a few years before and would have had a spectacular growth. With all those parameters, the authors decided to define seven 10X companies, which are the companies that we are going to focus on in the analysis of this whole book. Companies like Microsoft, companies like Southwest Airlines and all of those. And the book is interesting in that sense, because it compares one company to another, companies that are in the same range. For example, Microsoft compares it to Apple. There's something to be said about this. The analysis that was made of these companies was from the last 15 years, and that analysis ended in 2002. That means that there are a whole series of companies that were analyzed here that might not have brilliant results until 2002. But as we see it with more perspective, we see that after 2002, some companies like Apple, who were also analyzed here, had spectacular results under the direction of Steve Jobs. But basically, what this book does is analyze those companies, select those companies, and what it does is derail myths. There's a whole series of documents that are analyzed, thousands of documents that are analyzed, and that allows them to reach extrapolar conclusions and derail five myths, which is what we're going to derail in today's summary. Five myths. The first myth is that successful leaders have to be visionary, they have to take many risks, they have to be aggressive. The second myth, and we're saying that we're going to derail these myths, the second myth is that successful companies have to be innovative. The third myth is that successful leaders have to move super fast, always react very fast, always. The fourth myth is that successful companies have to be always changing, adapting to the environment, making drastic changes. And the fifth myth is that successful companies usually have more luck than others. All these are myths that the book derails. And what we're going to do is go for the first myth that says so. Successful leaders are visionary, they accept and take many risks, and they're aggressive in their leadership. That's a myth to derail. The 10X leaders or the 10X business leaders are not people who have been super aggressive or who have super histrionic personalities. They're not more creative, more ambitious or more visionary than other leaders you could compare to. So, what's the difference? What does a 10X leader do? There are three common risks in all these companies that are big companies. The three risks of their leaders are, and they're risks that make the company grow, the first one is fanatic discipline, the second is empirical creativity, and the third is productive paranoia. Let's go with fanatic discipline. Fanatic discipline doesn't always have to do with following the rules, with obedience to authority, which is what we could understand by discipline, traditionally, but in a 10X company, discipline is more about sticking to your values, to your goals in the long term, to your working standards, to your working methodologies, even if that means not conforming to what society expects. That is, to stick to what you consider your business philosophy is fanatic discipline, to stick to what you think are your goals, your standards, your goals and your values. The second risk is empirical creativity. And this is what empirical creativity has to do with a theme, which is that people think that leaders are aggressive and play very risky roles. However, this investigation of thousands of companies shows that the 10X leaders, the 10X leaders are not more aggressive, they're not more risky than any other leader. What they do have is that every decision they're making is based not on conventional knowledge, but on expert opinions, even on ideas that might not have been tested, but what they do is that all their actions, all their decisions are based on evidence. They come from observation, they come from experimentation. That, from the outside, seems to take aggressive, risky decisions. What they're actually doing is to make a creative decision, not risky, always analyzing all the risks they can make. That is, actions and decisions are always based on evidence and come from an extensive observation and an abundant experimentation. The third risk is productive paranoia, that in a 10X company like Microsoft, for example, we have to see, with Microsoft, it has to do with a constant thought for the directors, for the directors of a 10X company, which is the one that would go like this. Basically, they're constantly considering any scenario of terror that could happen to that company. They're always analyzing what could go wrong and how would we react in that case. In that way, they're always vigilant, they're always prepared for the worst. Even though the current conditions may seem perfect, we know that the storms will be armed right away. We already talked about Microsoft, because Microsoft, in this case, Bill Gates, had a super successful company, it grew a lot, but still, it was an obsessive of the worst possible cases, of the worst possible scenarios. In fact, it even had a director and a memo, which was even filtered to the press a few years ago, in which it was the memorandum of the nightmares. And that memorandum of the nightmares would list all kinds of threats, all kinds of problems that could happen to the company. That indicated that this person wasn't obsessive, but he was preparing his company for possible scenarios in which things didn't go as well. In that decade of the 90s, for example, Steve Jobs wasn't compared to John Scully. John Scully, on the other hand, had a good year, John Scully was going on sabbatical for nine weeks, because he had had a very good year. That would never be seen as Bill Gates, who was always obsessed, even when things were going well, in not taking sabbatical years or sabbatical months, and always analyzing things. Now things are going well, but what would happen if things didn't go well? That's a risk that it would share with all the 10x directors of 10x companies, which is that productive paranoia. Another fundamental risk of all these companies is what's called Ambition Level 5. Ambition Level 5, basically, and that of Ambition Levels, if you want, we can do it. If you're interested, it's based on a book called "The Five Levels of Leadership". Well, Ambition Level 5 basically has to do with, in some way, an obsession for being ultra-disciplined, for always looking for evidence and evidence, and that can be seen as a bit of a paranoia, but basically, what we're looking for as a 10x company is always constantly attracting talented people with whom we can work. Why? Because these 10x companies don't look for personal greatness. Their behavior is always looking for something that is bigger than themselves, which makes them have a purpose. The ambition of getting a big company and being impacting the world in a big way is a legacy they want to leave behind. And that's the level 5 in the ambition of a company which is to leave that legacy. In this book, it's where the famous 20-mile march appears. A few years ago, I dedicated an entire episode to this adventure because it has a lot... It's out of this book, and it has a lot to do with this whole example of a company that's 10x and not 10x in this sense of obsessive focus on all these things we've said, now we're going to analyze them. Let's imagine the conquest of the South Pole. In 1911, there are two teams that want to be the first to arrive at the South Pole, where never a human being had arrived. We have a first team led by Amundsen, who seeks to arrive at the South Pole and always return with a very specific schedule. Then we have a second team led by Scott, who arrived at the South Pole, the second. The first to arrive was Amundsen. They arrived, the second team, Scott arrived 34 days later, and never returned. Everyone died on their way back. Each of these teams started practically at the same time the way to conquer the North Pole, just because they separated for a few days of difference at the beginning. The distance they had to cover was the same, the temperatures and the winds they had to cover were the same. What is the difference between Amundsen's mentality, the mentality of Amundsen's 10x, who managed to return in the previous and all calculated time? And what was the difference with Scott? He did arrive 34 days later, but he died on his way back. The difference with Amundsen is that discipline, his empirical studies and his productive paranoia, which we have been saying, had a great impact. For example, he was a very disciplined person. He knew that that path, until conquering the South Pole, was a super adverse, super difficult environment, and then he trained a lot. He even trained physically to resist that a lot. He did practices of up to 2,000 miles on a bike to endure his body. He even learned from the skimals how to work in polar conditions, using dogs instead of horses for the trineos and all that. For example, how he was learning from the skimals. Now it seems to us a very normal thing, but from that they were doing unique things that no one had done before. So being a disciplined person, point one. The second, he used empirical data in a creative way, which Amundsen did, to design his path. He started reading all the daily notes of all the previous expeditions to help him make decisions about which base camp he was going to be. And he put it in a place that no one had considered before. But he didn't do it because he understood. He did it because he had studied all those newspapers and had decided that the best point for a base camp, which was quiet, was that one and the other. That is, he used empirical data in a creative way. And then, he also had that paranoia productive that we were also analyzing. In his case, he analyzed all the scenarios and possible casuistics of those pieces and he didn't let anything go wrong. In fact, he had a whole series of material, three tons of material. He had them saved for his team in key points. And he had them perfectly marked as provisions and all kinds of changes and things, in case they got out of the way, in case they got lost, in case a fan came and took them to the stores or whatever. He had all those scenarios, he had them ready. But besides that, what he had was a plan. And that plan is very interesting because here we go back to the book. Well, all this comes out in the book, as we said in companies, that want to be 10x. In that sense, they had a plan that was the 20-mile march. And that 20-mile march was the one that led them to get the results. Amundsen, basically, what he did was analyze what could be the performance in the best of cases and in the worst of cases of his team. And he knew that 20 miles, about 30 kilometers a day, was the amount of traffic that could cover his team, both in the best of cases and in the worst of cases. That is, if it rained, if there was a fan or whatever, what is the minimum amount that we could cover? 20 miles. And then what he did was define that daily march of the 20 miles. Not even less, even though the day was good and sunny, and we could have continued shooting and doing 25-30 miles, 20 miles. In the good day, 20 miles. In the bad day, 20 miles. What was the difference with Scott? What Scott did was what we said, "It was a good day, so come on, everything we could, 40 miles." Of course, yes. And in the bad days, when there was a lot of fan, we stayed camped and didn't do anything. So what happened? Well, Scott arrived later and he caught the bad time. Why? Because he caught many days in which he didn't advance. On the other hand, 20 miles, 20 miles, 20 miles, 20 miles. In that way, this person, with 20 miles and very clear and defined things, kept advancing constantly every day, while the other one was forcing his team a lot. The days, well, he was forcing them a lot, and in the bad days, people didn't advance. And that expedition didn't survive. So, this lesson of the 20 miles is something great companies take as a great example, something you have to look for in your company, which is a good plan, 20 miles, as they call it in the company, which is basically defining a plan and that has several characteristics. The first thing you have to define some limits, for the low and for the high, like Amundsen had with his 20 miles, the companies that are 10x and that want to be fulfilling their goals year after year, can't avoid defining those minimum and maximum objectives. If you define a minimum objective, but it's realistic that the company can achieve it, always, even in difficult times, even if you have to make a great effort, you're defining a minimum, that range, in Amundsen's case, between 15 and 20 miles, in the worst of cases. If you're defining your range of low and your high range, basically, you can always work to achieve that minimum range. Even in the worst circumstances, I know I'm going to achieve my 20 miles. Maybe in your case we're talking about a annual measurement, but you have to define those 20 miles, which in your company can be something completely different, which has nothing to do with distances to cover, but with icons, with data to reach. Then, this 20 miles march of your company has to be adapted to the needs and metrics of your company. That is, it has to be customized and measured by your company, because it's not useful to say that you have to make 20 miles or you have to make a certain amount of income. Each company has a series of sometric factors that have to be used as a basis to take these measures. It can be not financial, even for a church, for example, they tell you in the book, "For a church, a congregation, maybe the unit of measurement is the amount of adults who go to church. For a school, maybe the measurement is not the income, but the performance of the students." So, we have to have that 20 miles march, which can be something different in each company, but it has to be defined, in the case of a school, the performance of the students, we have to get an X average, and that average has to be met, no matter how complicated the year is. So, it's important that we do it in our own 20 miles march. And then, it has to be always achievable, it has to be everything achievable based on your own actions. We will never depend on external factors. If this is fundamental, all my work, all my results depend on me, everything is under my control. We can't leave the delivery to say, "Well, if this year goes well and sales improve in general of this kind of business, or if many tourists come to my country this year, then it will surely go well." All these are external factors. So, a company will never support external factors to achieve results. It will always look for its own actions to be the ones that generate those results. And then, it's also very important that the 20 miles march of your company, or of a big company, always has to have a temporal mark. It has to be defined in a reasonable temporal mark. In the case of the 20 miles march, 20 miles a day. In the case of a company, maybe you can achieve those results in three or six months, in a year, but there has to be always a measure of time. It has to be achievable in time. Why does a 20 miles march work in a company? We understand that it's a concept, it's just a name. Why does your own 20 miles march work? Why does it work in a company? There are three reasons why a company achieves success if it defines its own 20 miles march. The first is that it generates confidence. We're not talking about motivational emails that you have to send to your team. There's nothing like that. There are adverse circumstances. We know that, but we have confidence because we have a plan. And it's a plan that has to work in the worst situations. And having a plan generates confidence. People like to have a plan, some steps to follow. That's also very important. When you have a 20 miles march for your company, it's a plan that works especially well when there are disruptive events, when there are difficult times. When you go through a difficult time, if you have a plan that already has a minimum or maximum defined and you know there's a minimum that you're going to achieve, then it doesn't matter if there are disruptive events, external factors that impact because you have a plan to even react when there are times. And that allows you, and that's the third very important point, to have a 20 miles march plan. And it's that it puts you under the control of the situation. It can happen. Natural disasters, there may be financial problems in the markets, there may be changes in the regulation. There's always going to be things that are out of our control. There may be a virus that closes us all. And of course, all that wasn't planned. But if we have a 20 miles march plan, as they call it, that's going to give you a clear direction, a clear purpose. It gives you a light to the bottom, to the one you have to aim for and to the one you have to go to, especially in times of chaos or uncertainty. And it's precisely in those times when the companies that are prepared for it, that have been prepared for it, are when they shine more. When there are complex times when other companies fall, it's when they generate the biggest profit because they were prepared for it, because they had a plan. The second myth that comes from this book of great companies is that great companies are constantly innovating. And it's not so much like that. In the investigation, one of the surprising results is that they are not only innovative, but they are innovative to a certain point, with repairs, like little by little. And how is that innovation of little by little, that innovation in small doses, which is the characteristic of these companies, which are not highly innovative, but they are innovative with a small margin of risk, what they do is shoot bullets instead of cannon bullets. Instead of cannon shots, they shoot bullets. That's how they put it in the book. And what are bullets? It's easy to understand. The simile, in this sense, what they do is look for innovation through small tests, tests that are not risky, the bullets, before putting all their resources to the service of a great cannon. The cannon will be used, but always after having done a preliminary analysis. So, this, this about bullets and cannon, how does it work? Well, the characteristics of a bullet, that is, of a pilot test, is that a bullet will always be a new product, a new service, a new technology, a new procedure, a new acquisition. It has to have those characteristics. The test that we are going to do has to have a series of characteristics. The first is that it does not have to cost much. Why? Because if it has a lot of cost, it will be aggressive for the company's accounts. So, always look for tests that are not expensive, point one, that have minimal consequences, that is, it does not generate risk for the company, and that it is not disruptive for the company, that it does not mean too much work, too much work for a lot of labor force in that sense, and that it can make this test, we need to have many resources from a part that we already have working to put them in this part of I+D. In short, it does not cost much, that it has minimal consequences for the company in an economic way, and that it has minimal consequences for the company at the level of resources. So, if we start shooting bullets, that are a whole series of tests, that is when we will find that maybe not all tests work. And it's fine, they were not at great risk. But what if it works? What if it works? Then the results can change. For example, there is a company called Amgen, that makes DNA recombination technology. The laboratory, what we are talking about is from a company that started shooting a series of bullets, of these virtual ones that we are talking about, and what it did was use different recombination technologies of DNA, from using different ingredients, to say it in some way, to see what they could find as a new DNA recombiner, a new technology that was disruptive, that was innovative. And they were testing with many things, from vaccines to hormones, from growth, from everything. And in the end, they detected a thing that is called Epo, edited, I'm not going to say it right now. Epo, basically, is now a combined chemical that stimulates the production of red globules. And they saw, after testing a whole series of combinations, a series of ingredients and tests that they had done, that were the bullets, they found one that was very promising. And that was the most viable to invest in. And they turned that into a cannonball. That is, once they did all the tests and were satisfied with the empirical data, then they shoot the cannon. And that cannonball is a lot of resources to get Epo out of the market. Amgen, this company that got Epo out of the market, turned this project, this bioengineering product, into the first bioengineering product, into reaching the $1,000 million dollars of income. In short, all that cannonball they did was not because of innovation, but because of the study that was not aggressive of small shots, small shots, small shots. They didn't invest all of their money in this and to see how it didn't work, but they did an exhaustive analysis of the data, of all the tests they found, which cannonball was worthy of being shot. The next myth that goes above this book is the myth that successful leaders always move fast. The main characteristic of a leader is that they move fast. They react fast always. And in reality, the book shows us that instead of focusing on speed, the 10x leaders, what they focus on, is always doing things at the right time. They don't respond immediately to threats, but they respond to threats in the right way. They are always asking themselves what would happen and always looking for those heavy-weight scenarios that we should be mitigating in the case of what would happen. And how do they end this preparation? So, to act at the right time and not immediately, which is what we could think, deriving that myth, they say that there are three things that lead to great companies and their 10x leaders. The first thing is that they have buffers configured. A buffer does not stop being a security guard. And in this case, economic reserves are something that all 10x companies have. They have immense economic reserves. In that way, they can respond to disruptive events, unexpected events, because they have a reserve box flow. We have mentioned it before. The box flow in a company is the blood that keeps a company alive. And having a reserve always prepared is what will allow you to react or protect yourself from these events. The second thing, the risk management of a 10x company is always limited. They take fewer risks than other companies compared to them. Every time they have to take risks that are based on time, they don't go crazy and get stressed out with that situation. They always make decisions based on the time they have to do it. I'm not going to react immediately. If I have a week or this year to react, I'm going to take this year and make the best possible gesture to reduce the risk. I'm not going to act fast, but I'm going to act in the right way. And then they have a macro and a micro vision of everything that's going on. A micro vision means that you pay attention to the work you're doing. But a macro vision is to be aware of the market. That macro vision is to be aware of threats that can come from other external companies from external situations in the market. And that can be threats, real or perceived, so they are used to make decisions in the right way. For example, in 1979, Intel, it was a leader company in its sector, but it was facing a very big danger. It was a company of Motorola. It was generating changes. It was being innovative through a winner design, after a winner design, one after another. If they continued on that path, Motorola would become the new standard of the industry and would have left the Intel obsolete. So what does Intel do? It analyzes not only the micro version of what we're doing, but the macro version, which is what the competition is doing. And they work on a plan, the crash operation, which is what they tell in the book, in which, in a week, they set it up and started executing it, generating 2,000 new winners designs in that year and crushing the threat that Motorola meant. That is, they didn't act fast, they acted in the right way. In the right time, when they perceived a threat. Another myth that ruins the book is the myth that successful companies change drastically to adapt to the times they run. Based on the data in the studies that this book handles, the 10x companies change much less than the companies with the other companies compared to them. And that is basically based on something, in a point we said before, that they recognize that the only thing they have control over are themselves. So what they do is use this control to be stable in the middle of chaos. And what they do for them is use fanatic discipline, empirical creativity and productive paranoia, as we've mentioned. And what they do is define what they call, in the book, "smack recipes". "Receta smack" is a specific, methodical and consistent recipe. Basically, they are like systems or ways of working, okay? So that "receta smack" is a group of operative practices that are going to be sustainable, that are going to last for a long time and that are going to be specific. Basically, they are going to define how the company should act and how the company shouldn't act. They are like the laws in a country. They are the way we work. So that's what these "smack recipes" are called. Specific, methodical and consistent recipes. And in the case of these 10X companies that are studied in the book, the changes that are made in these recipes, in these ways of working that companies have, in the case of the 10X companies, the changes are from 10 to 20% and we're talking about a study that was studied for 15 to 20 years. So in 15 to 20 years, a company has changed its recipe, its way of working, from only 10 to 20%. Using empirical creativity and that productive paranoia that we were talking about, what they do is to have the discipline to change. Only what is needed to change, not to go crazy, trying to keep the recipe as intact as possible. And that's what is generating some gains in time. Here are studies for a long time. It's not studies for us to do well this year, but studies for a long time. The companies with which they are compared are usually, and have not had such spectacular results, are companies that change their "smack recipes" between 55 and 70%. And in that same period, when they change their way of working so much, that company never wants what they call in the book the "momentum" or what they call in English the "momentum" that pushes them, the maximum acceleration, because they are constantly changing, constantly changing, constantly changing. And that doesn't allow them to acquire that speed of a cruiser. For example, in the book talking about a South-West Airlines, which is one of the seven companies that are analyzed, an airline company from the United States, and that basically in a moment in which a lot of competition appeared, in which the regulations were opened to allow more competition companies competing against them, what South-West sought was to adhere to its "smack recipe", to its way of understanding how that company should work. That "smack recipe", in the case of this airline company, was always about using the same airplane model in all the flights. In that way, all the manuals were much smaller, the parts were smaller, and the repair procedures were now much easier, because it was a single model, and they didn't offer food, they didn't offer mail, that is to say, a series of services that they were going to do. Normally, that plane wouldn't arrive in time. So, what they did was to optimize their "smack recipe", and that allowed them to have a very simple, very simple recipe, but that worked based on empirical data, on real data, and that allowed them, in complex times, in times when there was a deregulation and an increase in competition, to allow them to remain intact and with brutal performance for more than 25 years. The fifth and last myth that this book is about, great companies, is the fact that successful companies simply have more luck than others. And that's a myth that's not real, but it's not about the luck that a company has, as a single explanation of its tremendous success, it's about seeing luck as a situation, an external event that you react to. And what determines that these companies are great companies, is not the luck they've had, but what they've done with that luck. There are four possible scenarios that a company can have, and how it can react. In the first case, very obvious, that you have a great return having had good luck, that is, you have good luck and that allows you to do great things. And then, 10x companies are not simply made up of having good luck, but they use good luck as a tool to react. One of the most important cases of good luck for a company is probably finding the right person, or signing the right person for your company. That could be considered good luck. In this case, they talk about the example of this Amgen, that we mentioned before, from the EPO, this genetic engineering, that they hired a scientist from Taiwan who responded to a statement from the classifieds. That is, they put an announcement in the newspaper to hire people, and this scientist appeared, they signed it, and a super obsessive guy was working, he worked so much, and it was the one who developed this EPO gene, and it meant thousands of millions to this company. Can it be considered good luck to sign that person? Yes, but what they did was create a environment for that person to shine. So, when you have good luck, in this case, to sign the right person, what do you do with that? Are we creating the right environment for that person who is brilliant to shine? Or not? This takes me to a memory that I have when I worked and I commented on it some time ago, that I have worked many years in a German bank. And in that bank there were a series of brilliant people, who, however, did not find the right environment to work in, and many of my colleagues of work that I consider to be brilliant, and then we have been shown that they are brilliant people, they left the company, because in that company they were somehow covered, in some way, in their growth. And it is not because they signed the company, in this case, it is often a matter of direction, changes in the direction that I also go up, and how you react to that, and how you let that talent escape, which is a luck that you have already been able to sign, but what are you doing to keep it? In this case, I have many good friends who left the company, before me, who have then become brilliant businessmen, brilliant leaders at an international level, in some way, worldwide, my colleagues of work. So, many times I have commented on it with my colleagues, "Why didn't the company take care of us better?" "Why did I ever have to leave the company, why did I leave the company, in some way, askew, because I couldn't shine, I couldn't grow up, I felt oppressed." And I don't say that I was the most brilliant person, I think I am not the most brilliant person that there was in that group of 600 people that we were in some time in the company, I think I was not the most brilliant, but I was a person who could shine. And, on the other hand, I had to go in some way burned in order to find my own path. Why didn't a company take care of me? Why did a company that was lucky enough to have colleagues like the ones I had, let them go? What are we doing in our companies to take care of that talent, which is a luck, many times that we have it, and that if we take advantage of it, it can generate great benefits, great benefits to those companies, but, nevertheless, we are letting them go. This is one of the cases. We are talking about having good luck. In this case, even signing people can have good luck. But what do you do with that signing of good people? You have to take care of them and make them grow, create environments in which people can shine. It can also be that you have good luck and you don't act well, you don't act as a consequence. There are many companies that are made in this book in which they had good luck, the external events favored them, but they didn't execute them correctly and they didn't get the maximum benefit. There are many cases, in this case, of Intel against AMD, which won AMD, won a trial, and then they had the opportunity to develop a great product, a great product that the market was waiting for. But, nevertheless, they didn't react, they had production problems, they didn't take care of that project in the right way, and, in the end, it was Intel who ate breakfast again at AMD because it reacted in a faster, more agile way, while the others who had good luck and favorable events didn't know how to take advantage of that competitive advantage. Therefore, luck is not determining what you do with luck, what you can determine, whether you have a better result or better, we could say. Another case, it can be that you have bad luck and, as they say, you have bad cards, but still, it's a good benefit. Well, you have bad luck, it's also very likely, but what do you do with that bad luck? The 10x companies use bad luck events to demonstrate all their value, to demonstrate what they can do, the resilience to get up and go through those bad luck times and produce such great results. For example, one of the cases proposed in the book, which is one of the ones I like the most because I didn't know it, is that in 1988, in California, in the United States, there was a popular movement that complained about insurance companies, about insurance companies. And those insurance companies, especially cars, were putting in a lot of trouble and difficulties so that clients could present their claims when they had car accidents and all that. So, a law, the law 103, that forced car insurance companies to lower the prices by 20% of their policies. So, all the companies were facing a huge drop, more than 20% in their income. So, put the example in the book of a company called Progressive, a Progressive insurance company, which was very affected by that situation, but what it did, apart from its large market percentage, was in California, precisely, but instead of going crazy and shouting in the sky, it was noticed that the bad luck it had, that it was the law that forced me to lower the prices by 20% of my policies, instead of going crazy, what they did was listen, why that was happening. And they realized that was happening because people complained that insurance companies weren't good at handling car accidents, presentations, claims and all that. So, instead of shouting in the sky, "Oh, they lowered 20% of my bad luck", what they did was improve their advertising service and make it world class. That is, they understood that this situation wasn't something I had to look for any other product, any other kind of price, but to understand that the market was looking for a company that would give them good service when they had an accident claim. They did it, this progressive company did it, and what was the result, even with the bad luck of that law, this company, when changing its advertising policy procedure, went from being in the market in position number 13, of the companies in its market, to being in position number 4, in the top 5, of the best insurance companies in the time when this was analyzed. In short, let's stay with that idea. We have had bad luck. Let's analyse if we can still get good luck from bad luck. If we can get good luck, there are things we can do that are lessons of learning and resilience. The last situation, obviously, is that we have bad luck and that we don't do anything with that bad luck, we don't react properly. In the end, that's the only way of luck. When you have bad luck, there's nothing you can do. Maybe there's an event that happens, that has to do with bad luck, and that can even lead to the death of your company. That's why it's so important, what we're complaining about today, that you start behaving like a 10x company and you start creating, as we talked about before, buffers, of money saved, of money deposits, or of plans, of trying to prevent negative events and how to react to them. Preparing those cases, those contingencies in the right way, is what it can do when you have bad luck and you don't have the chance to react in an adequate way, at least, you can survive. And always remember, a company will survive as their cash flow allows them to get it. That is, the money is available to keep paying the salaries, to keep paying the light, to keep paying all the necessary things so that that company continues to work. In the end, there's a whole series of myths that you have to overcome. And it's good that we have those myths, but if we base them on real studies, on real companies, we can realize that those myths are what they are. Myths, ideas that are not based, that are not supported in real data. What is real is that there are companies that still survive in uncertain times. What do they do? They behave like these 10x companies. They exercise fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, productive paranoia to find the best possible result, no matter how lucky they are. With good luck, all these behaviors will lead them to greatness. With bad luck, these behaviors can help them survive and even shine in complex times. Luck, and this is one of the great messages in the book, luck doesn't determine or be the owner of your destiny or your company, because you always have to be in control of the situation, take the right decisions to make your company a great company. So far, the summary of great companies. Obviously, there are many examples in the book. It's a book that's basically an example. As you can see, the doctrine of the book is very easy to understand. There are a series of actions, three main actions. There are a series of five myths. That's what we've done to bring you practical, accessible and easy to understand, so that if this book clicks on you, you buy it, analyze it, study it. There are a lot of examples of real cases of companies compared to companies that have reacted well or that do a certain thing and others that are not doing it. And that's what many cases lead us to understand, because some companies shine, excel, or become companies, like the ones we've studied today, in great companies. I hope you liked the summary. Remember that we now have two episodes a week. Wednesday, you also have two days here, you have a new episode of "Libros para Emprendedores" with no summary of the book, but with clear actions of a book and in super short episodes of 10, 15 minutes maximum, in which I'm bringing you key things that you can put in practice of the best books we've touched on and many other books that we haven't touched on yet in books for entrepreneurs. But this format allows me to bring you things that are essential to me, that we always talk about here, which are things that you can put in practice, things that you can take, and that you can take action with them. Within two days, I hope that if you liked this book, that you've synthesized some of the things that we've talked about, let me know, tag me on Instagram, in "Arroba Libros para Emprendedores" and tell me, "I like it, I'm listening to this book, "I like this detail, this theme, "we're not doing it and I think we should do it." In short, let me know your opinion. Always more than welcome, always more than retweeted, always that I can. In short, let me know what you think of this and also be very attentive, because on Instagram, also in the YouTube community, also on Twitter, I'm also going to put you the next week, on that Friday, Saturday, I'm going to ask you a question, which is, what's the next book you want me to translate? For the next week, and that's where we're going to go with a new summary, next week, here in Libros para Emprendedores, every Monday, a new book, brought, analyzed, removed, more detailed, for you, I hope it's still working, and that you keep choosing me, and that you keep supporting me, as you keep supporting Libros para Emprendedores, remember that we already have two new podcasts. No, one is not so new, but one is new, and we have "Mentor 360", episodes of personal and professional growth, from Monday to Sunday, and eye-opening, because we're already preparing the next season, the 2022, which is going to be spectacular, if up to now, in Mentor 360, we had 20 mentors, what would happen if we had more than 40? I'm not telling you more, but incredible things are happening in the new season of Mentor 360, which we're preparing for 2022, and we have new podcasts, which has been published for a couple of weeks, and is positioned as one of the most listened marketing podcasts in Spanish, also in the world, which is called "Tu marca personal". "Tu marca personal" is also a podcast with two weekly episodes, Tuesdays and Thursdays, in which I bring you strategies, tips, focus, practical things, so that you can develop your brand in a successful way, and you can create a solid business around your personal brand. I hope you like it, if you haven't heard it, I invite you to listen to it, I'd love you to help me, so that more people come, I'm trying hard, I'm giving myself a lot, so that the content is in the first category, and the feedback, the feedback from people, that's what it indicates, well, I don't have more. We have books for entrepreneurs, so that you have a better company. So that you have a better brand, we have this new podcast, "Tu marca personal" and so that you have a better version of yourself, in personal and professional terms, you have mentor 360. There are three tools, I think, that are essential so that you get more and better results. As I always say, if you put them into practice, as I always say, if you go to action. A big hug from Luis Ramos, see you, in this case, on Wednesday, with a new episode of "Pasa la Acción" and next Monday, the next week, with a new book here, "The books for entrepreneurs". A greeting! See you later. (upbeat music)