How do you answer what do you do?

It's a question that many of us hate because we often don't have a concise answer. It might involve a label that limits us. And it doesn't cover the range of how we do, what we do and makes us special.

At best, it's limiting and at worst it's confusing.

Today is a special episode of The Unified Team Podcast.

It's a milestone as it is the 100th episode and my guest is possibly the nicest man on Linkedin.

Eduardo was one of my earliest connections on Linkedin. Yet, I never approached him because I didn't see a clear topic to discuss. He is one of those people who are hard to pigeonhole.

🤹‍♂️ Husband and father.

🤹‍♂️ Ex-Pat.

🤹‍♂️ Technology leader.

🤹‍♂️ Coach.

🤹‍♂️ Linkedin Creator.

🤹‍♂️ Author.

🤹‍♂️ App Developer.

🤹‍♂️ Book Reader and Reviewer.

🤹‍♂️ Speaker.

🤹‍♂️ And currently available for another Technology Leadership role.

We talked about growing through pursuing your interests. About developing a portfolio career. And about how his wide range of interests add to what he can bring to his team.

What I like to do in these is just understand what someone does and really

their journey of what led them to it.

You're slightly different in that you're you're in between jobs.

I know you do coaching is that something that you offer?

Actually, rather than me reading into my assumptions of your

post, let's start with, if you explain who you are, what you do.

It's a wonderful question, Rob, and I love that you tried very hard at

first, because it gives me the sense that, yes, it's sometimes difficult

for people out there to understand.

And I think it comes back from this concept of a portfolio career.

That is something new.

That is something that is still developing human or mankind has been for many years

overly developing into niches, right?

To the point that even this platform that we use to connect to each other supports

even for us this over specialization.

The more you niche down, the more you get into something very

specific, the more rewards you get.

And work has been like that for so many years, since Ford, right?

And, okay, you specialize in your A little piece.

And that's what you do.

And that's how you're going to get the best results.

My background is technology.

I started in infrastructure in technology.

So I was the guy that work on the servers, even the cables and stuff like that.

And I migrated into software development and wrote back then.

20 little bit years ago.

Let's not get into the details.

Software development was you do everything I would install the operating system.

I would install the databases.

The applications that run on top.

I will do the coding.

I would program the databases.

I would transported from server to server.

You would do absolutely everything.

And even in that profession, what happened was over specialization, right?

Nowadays, you hire Okay.

Front end developer, what they call that will just design the interface

for you, just the screen to make it beautiful, to make it useful,

to make it accessible and so on.

Then you have the backend developer that is going to do the more intricate stuff.

Then you're going to have a DBA database administrator that

is going to coordinate that.

Then your DevOps engineer that is going to make sure that this systems go to

the production systems and all that.

And what I'm doing with my career now, is almost the opposite.

I am spreading myself across.

So I am still corporate animal.

So I'm still to the point of the transition of jobs.

Looking forward and working on getting a new position in corporate,

in technology, leadership roles, but that's happening at the same time

that I am developing my coaching.

Yes, you're right.

I do offer coaching services and I have my clients.

I have had my clients ever since a few years now.

And it started back when I was in a corporate position, right?

That's how I got interested into coaching.

But even that's not the end of the story because I'm also authoring books.

That's also not the end of the story because you know about my

contributions in LinkedIn and that's not the end of the story because

I'm also having a small partnership for doing some app development.

A little bit on the entrepreneurial side of the things, and I see the future

of work a little bit like that and the future of mankind a little bit like that

people are going to discover more and more that they have more than one talent

that they are interested by more than one thing and that is nothing wrong in

pursuing a few of them at the same time.

It's actually making people way more interesting.

How to explain that sometimes cumbersome in a platform like Linden, absolutely

impossible, but that's why I value so much this kind of opportunity is getting

back and together with people and having conversations and then explaining.

That's interesting because I've followed you for quite

a while now, over a year.

And I didn't know about you developing apps you're writing books.

So that interests me straight away.

You maybe bringing this a little bit more to the open, but it's not

something that I talk too often about.

No.

I think you're a bit like me that you have lots of interests and I'm

not very disciplined in, I should just really, I know, talk about relationships,

talk about conflict and talk about trust and teams and this kind of thing.

I'm not that person.

I can't sit down and go, okay, I'm going to do this.

I have an idea and I want to share it.

And I think you're quite similar in that, but where that becomes a problem is

it's hard to pigeonhole someone, whereas certain people you can go, okay, there.

This person, they do this, they do that.

There's no doubt about it.

But it's, it takes a lot of discipline to do that.

And I think you're similar to me that we have too much that we see something.

We want to talk about that and develop that idea.

Absolutely.

It resonates with me.

Rob I am, I just listed the things that I feel like I'm having real progress with,

I could list another 10 or 20 things that I'm also very interested about and

pursue in a certain degree or the other.

And it does make it, A little harder for us because of course we have

only so much attention to give and distribute to other people.

I have, though, learned over time that it has its benefits, you don't need to

be known by everybody for just one thing.

Eventually, if you're just connecting around teams and topics and interests

instead of connecting just with people, it will naturally for the people that I

really care about that they understand I have a corporate career that I have

this leadership aspirations and so on.

Namely executives hiring managers recruiters, and so on.

They know me for that.

Even if they get sometimes a little confused, hey, but you're

still doing the coaching thing.

That's okay.

They still know What is important for them to know about me and how I can help them?

Same thing with my coaching clients every now and then I'm having

this coaching conversations And people address all sorts of topics.

You probably know that.

And then somebody comes out where, okay, having, this actually

happened not too long ago.

Somebody came up with the topic around SNOP meetings.

That's sales and operation planning meetings.

And that's a concept that comes from supply chain management, which is

something that I have studied and I used extensively in my latest corporate

job, and then as she was getting into it and she noticed that I actually

understood what she was talking about without she having to explain

it to me, she was really puzzled.

How do you know about that?

I'm struggling to implement this and I don't know what is the value.

Yeah, we can talk about it because.

This is part of what I'm doing.

Oh this job and that job.

Wow.

You did all this things.

Yes.

She was my client and she was still very surprised to know

that I had such a background.

Again, it was not important for her, at least up to that point, to

know that I had that background.

What was important to her.

Was that she knew I was a coach and the kind of coach that I can deliver

and the kind of difference I can make.

And I think you continue in the spin you're going to find in your life.

You're always connecting with the people around the teams, around the

topics that are of mutual interest.

And that's enough.

And also the other side of that is that the more interest that you

have, the more cross pollination.

And so that helps you be better at.

different things.

Although they may seem different on the surface there's a lot of commonalities

and interrelationships and you can transfer them from one field to another.

Absolutely.

On the example of supply chain management, right?

I have been working with technology for many years.

And one of the things that are core to technology is to understand systems

and systems are extremely easy, right?

You have inputs, you have process, you have outputs.

It's not harder than that.

And as I started studying supply chain management, what do you think I found?

A big system.

It's the same thing.

You have.

Yeah.

A lot of inputs.

You have a lot of processing, intricated rules and everything, but it's processing.

It's not that complicated to understand.

And you have outputs.

And once you, you just transpose and you can do this at several levels when

you get into process for example, you can understand things like dependencies,

bottlenecks, and the sort in the same way that you understand it in the context of

software development and people would say what technology and it's something else.

No everything in life.

Okay.

It's connected in some way, how that's up to us to learn, to discover, to exercise.

And I think this is actually the value that human beings bring.

That's the one thing that artificial intelligence cannot, at least

not as of yet bring to the table.

So you began work and you began work in tech.

What led you to that?

So maybe what were your influences as a child and what led from

childhood to going into tech?

That's probably a very common story, right?

It was my parents, or most specifically my father when I was seven, eight, he

decided to give up his banking job.

And start a business firm himself with a few partners.

And guess what?

He decided to start with tech.

I have seen my father working with it for a little bit of time.

And back then in Brazil, we are talking about 30 years ago.

Now, it was really not common for anybody to have access to computers.

I wouldn't have most probably I wouldn't have for many years still.

If it was not for the job of my father, the kind of work that he was doing.

And that was fascinating.

I think it was the aspect of the mystery of the novelty of being

something that people still didn't know how to deal with and so on.

And as a child, I started where pretty much every child would

start with computers with games.

As I was 12 then there was a lot happening in the family.

My parents are divorced and then my father actually found it would be a

good idea to get closer to me, to have an opportunity to be closer to me if

I would work with him for some time.

So I started splitting my days mornings, I would work with him.

Afternoons, I would go with to school and at first work with him meant

I would do office shorts, right?

I would run to the bank.

I would deliver some notes.

I would do even some cleaning if that was necessary, but there was always some

time available and I started reading the books that were around there.

That's by the way, how I started learning English as well.

Because you couldn't access any technical books in Portuguese back then.

And I started playing with something called Lotus 1 2 3.

I don't know if you remember what that thing is.

One of the original spreadsheets.

That's the Excel of the past, right?

And I started doing some cool stuff for him that he didn't thought was possible.

Because again, even he didn't know.

He was more into reselling the computers and stuff like that,

more working at the hardware level.

And I got more and more fascinated with the possibilities.

We are now in 2024 and we are talking about automation.

Automation for me started 30 years ago,

One thing you mentioned is that you worked with your dad in the morning.

Was this like really early or do you not have school in the mornings?

No, in Brazil, there was completely different system.

And I realized that now that I have lived in the U S and here in Europe the

school I was in public school it was only four and something hours per day.

And you had a choice.

You could do it in the morning.

You could do it in the afternoon.

And if you have some two things, Either if you had the need or if you would have

repeated too many years, then you could do it at night because that probably meant

you needed to work even at earlier ages.

So I decided because I was never a morning person to do it in the afternoon.

So I was doing my primary school and secondary school throughout

the time in the afternoon.

It usually started like at.

Two two and something in the afternoon, which meant that at the

age of 12, I could then go to my father's to work in the morning.

And then after I would have lunch and then go straight to school.

That's a much better system.

I wish we had that.

No, it was not a good system.

I could tell you horror stories about it, how the classes were.

And even in this few hours that we were supposed to be in the school,

mostly we didn't have the teachers.

Public school has been failed and it's a failure in Brazil for many years now.

What I remember from Brazil when I was younger, I remember there was you

had such inflation that the money that you would get in the morning in, oh,

this is the reports that we were reading, the money you would get in the morning

you wouldn't be able to buy enough stuff because the inflation was too high.

So crazy at that time.

Yeah, that's the early 90s.

We managed to get more than 100 inflation a month and It's funny.

I was talking to some friends about it the other day here living in

switzerland the habits are very different compared to brazil and one of that.

One of those habits is grocery shopping And the thing is, I noticed they go

much often to the groceries to get whatever they need to get sometimes

even three or four times a week or coming back from work or stop quickly.

And in Brazil this inflation thing was so strong that it has

built culture, a habit, in us.

that we would go to the supermarket once a month, load the shopping cart

to the point it blows up and take everything home and store, which meant

that the refrigerator had to be huge.

We needed freezers.

We need a lot of space because of how afraid people were regarding inflation.

So whenever people ask me, can you build habit, can you change culture?

Yes, you can.

Just make it hard enough that you're going to see that it changes.

That must have been some interesting times to be growing up then.

Luckily for me, in a way I was still maybe too small to understand all

that to the level that I understood in later the worst years I was like 10.

So it was a little bit before I started working.

from the point that I started working and onwards we had a better economical plans.

We had a little bit better structure.

The current currency that is in Brazil is the same ever since 1994, which is

a record for the country, by the way.

Before that, we had a new currency every two, three years, which is absolutely nuts

and also explains the inflation and all.

So things change for the better in that sense, for the much better.

It sounds idyllic growing up in Brazil.

I suppose if you're in the right part of Brazil but I just imagine

beach, sunshine relaxed football.

Was that how it was for you?

It was it was, but let me add here, big disclaimer.

Brazil is a huge country.

And you have a lot of inland where people would never ever get near the beach.

So you, you may cross paths with Brazilians that would

tell you, no, I never did that.

And that would be absolutely normal, but lucky me.

I had family.

So Sao Paulo is a big state.

In Brazil and the capital city.

It's where I come from Sao Paulo as well.

It's one of the biggest cities in the world.

It has been like that for the last 40 years.

It's around 25 million people.

So really huge.

And that means that you have, in a way, access as long as you can grab

some money to many experiences, different things that you can do.

And on top of that, there is a coast nearby.

So in one hour, you can be there.

And a lot of people will just go over the weekend for the day and then come back.

Again, lucky me.

My father's family comes from the beach on my grandmother lived

there for many years, and I would spend part of my vacation there.

Also, the weekends as a grower.

When I was just leaving university, I actually got a job there

and I spent a couple of years living with her on running team.

On the beach, by the beach pretty much every day, every morning.

Yeah.

The entirety of the year, because you basically don't get many cold days

or rainy days or anything like that.

It was marvelous.

See, I live 20 minutes from the beach.

Most days you wouldn't want to go there.

Our clocks change in summer and winter and in winter at four o'clock, it's dark.

So when you were talking about going to school, yeah from December, So

like late November till January pretty much by four o'clock, it's dark.

So if you were going to school at two o'clock, yeah.

That's tough.

How did you manage that?

We're lucky here.

We have a lot of things.

We have a lot of stability.

The infrastructure is good.

The health services is relatively good.

But we don't have weather.

But we have stability and it's good for growth so yeah, it's pluses and minuses.

I always tell my Swiss friends here that I know why

God didn't give them a beach.

It's because things are so perfect here.

Then it would create hell, you would have everything.

Why would you go anywhere else?

It's that

kind of

thing.

When I think of Brazil, one of the things, it's the beach, it's the football,

but when you look at a lot of some of the greatest footballers Ronaldo, they

were, they never really achieved their talent in the same way that someone like

Messi or Christiana Ronaldo, because the party lifestyle was too strong.

The

professionalism.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's something that's changing though.

I know you like football so it's also something we can talk about.

I am a big supporter of Palmeiras in Brazil.

Okay.

And there are a few players that are coming to, one of them is

coming to Real Madrid this summer.

Endrick.

And you can see that things changed with that boy.

And I follow the team, I follow all levels.

So I can tell you that it's not only that boy, that it's more systematic

now they are getting very professional.

That is a work that is done with a boy.

That is work that is done with a family.

That is a lot of work that is done in the transition between every level on

the teams, a lot of care to what kind of behavior is expected, what they

should and should not do and how they can actually achieve higher levels.

And I was just listening to an interview by the boy, he's 17 now

extremely professional, very mature.

To the to a point that you'd say what happened they really changed the country.

So I think that is awakening.

The thing we can never forget about Brazil is that Brazil is still very

young country in so many ways, right?

The culture, whatever people call Brazilian culture is according to

many historians still developing.

Because it was a big mix off Europeans with Africans with Indians

as well to a lesser degree and all that took a lot of time to adjust.

It was not for example, like in the U.

S.

that started with one specific culture and then later on

started embracing other cultures.

Brazil has always had a very strong mix and large mix across the country.

So we are maybe sometimes running a little bit behind.

But I do have this feeling that the country is progressing over time

and we see that in football as well.

So the technique, the abilities, the skills have always been there.

And probably because I was playing football the whole day, and

that's what everybody does, but I see that now that is awareness.

It's raising the awareness of the kids, of the parents, of the clubs of the

structure in society that we have created.

We don't take it more serious than things are not going to work that

well because of the examples you have mentioned, Rob fantastic football

players that got nowhere, but also because of the national team.

That is huge pressure over there.

Why is that?

The team is not ever winning the World Cup again.

And why is that?

It's collecting some significantly negative results against even

in expressive national teams in the world scene, and then things

really are supposed to change.

And I trust they are going to change.

Now, I remember coming from England, which is a team, which

has had many great players.

And apart from like 1966, they've never been able to make the national team work.

But I remember my earliest memories there was magic about Brazil, with

Zico, Socrates when those players Play football was different.

There was just this swagger and there was a beauty to it that no other country had.

And so everyone, so I think particularly people who were around

them saw, they see Brazil as a different type of footballing country.

And I think that's an extremely good example on abilities,

on closing gaps, some performance, because you can have Like the Brazilian

players have all this ability.

What did mostly the Europeans did to close the gap?

They put in the effort, they did a lot of put science to work

physiology here in Europe works on a completely different level.

You have different training structures, you have much

better organized tournaments.

I am always surprised here in Switzerland with the level of organization they have

even for young kids in every village.

It doesn't matter if it's three, 10, 15, 000 people, you're

going to have a football team.

This football team is going to be organized having a few to train and

coaches to train them and et cetera.

It's part of the community life.

And then it always raised my own question.

Okay.

Is Brazil the country of football or is this place here?

Look at how much more serious they treat the thing, right?

Just to say that you can close gaps in terms of abilities.

If you're aiming for higher performance to science, to data, to discipline, to

organization, and then the task of those who are skilled, who have these higher

abilities is to catch up with that.

Yeah.

I think an example of that is Germany.

Germany traditionally whatever the players they've had, they've always

just been there in terms of World Cups.

And yeah, they often won without having the greatest players.

But just through that organization.

Organization.

Yeah.

That that's how you can make things work.

And you see the results it's undisputable.

Now you see when Spain decided to organize themselves, what happened,

they also got their work cut.

Yeah.

Which I often think is analogy for England.

Because had what we call the golden generation with so many individual talents

and yet no one could get them to work.

And Spain, I think were like that for many years, great individual players,

but they never performed as a nation.

But then that all comes down to, like you say, the organization and

being able to make them as a team,

And for that, what, how important is the role of what we

would call the leader, the coach.

As I was younger and following football, there was some praise to the coach to the

role of the coach and the importance for tactics and et cetera, but not like right

now people understand that much better.

That it's not only about organizing the 11 guys in the field and telling them

to do this or that, but it's managing the other 11 that eventually don't play.

It's organizing the interpersonal relationships, the dynamics, understanding

that it's managing the peaks and valleys of each player and matching that it's

understanding their opponent that's it.

Big piece of what the coach does to adjust that extra technique, keeping

that flexibility within themselves and then spreading that to the team.

So it's not too rigid.

And the opponent will not be able to read you that easily.

That knows that you're always going to do this, going to do the same thing.

So I feel the role of the coach also has a much higher stand right now.

Understandably and we could translate that back into corporate just as the

same, where you see the best coaches, you're going to see the best results.

Okay now when you went into tech what was that journey from

working on like the actual tech?

How did you develop into software and then the other areas that you've moved into?

Accident.

My life is full of lucky accidents that I am.

Yeah, I treasure them so much, I was in the university.

So what happened was.

I worked with my father, then I stopped for a year went to a small school

to teach informatics when I was 15.

Stayed there till right before the the uni.

And then in Brazil we have a national exam that you do in order

to get a position in the uni.

And I wanted six months to study for that because it's really tough exam.

Then I entered and I got back to work with my father for a year or so.

At that point in time, I was already a Microsoft certified specialist and

things like that, working really hard on again, infrastructure side of the thing,

servers operating systems and so on.

And one day a guy called me from this company in Santos and said I'd like to

talk to you and like to run an interview.

If you would come it would be nice.

Okay.

I have nothing to lose.

My grandmother is there.

I can pay her a visit.

Fine.

Went to talk to him.

He was really impressed with my technical certifications and how

early I was in the career and so on.

And he offered me a job and the job was to be a software developer.

I don't know.

I really only did that in the university and only at student level, right?

I can probably learn that, but just letting you know

that I never did this before.

That's fine.

I think you are going to do fine.

And anyways, I'm going to negotiate the salary accordingly.

So it's a distributed risk.

Okay, fine.

I took it and within three months I was performing at the highest level.

It was so natural to me.

And I feel it's like that.

In life, when you get into the things that you're naturally good at, it

just flows, the things I'm naturally bad at, it's equally easy to see and

understand, yeah, I suck, I'm not born to do that, when I got into that

thing, it was like heaven for me.

I love languages.

That's why I've learned English from earlier on, then Spanish now later on

German, a little bit of French and so on.

And for the people that sometimes struggle with computers, let me

just say, programming is pretty much like learning a new language.

that is spoken by the machine.

It's not harder than that.

Once you understand how the machine likes to be talked to what are the

expressions, what kind of sentences you use, what kind of words, and it's

much simpler than any other language that I know, then it's really easy.

And then it's more about solving problems, which is something that I love.

Okay.

I need to get from this point to this point.

What can I use?

So what's the strategy?

And so on.

And yeah, that was pretty much the transition.

Lucky interview out of the blue not applying for positions or whatever and

then just getting into the technology.

Then I need to say it was probably also luck that I was joining a team of

wonderful people, really wonderful people.

They were very good software developers and they could have

mistreated me or diminished me or not paid attention or just let me on

the side, this guy doesn't know what he's doing, what he's doing here.

But instead they embraced me.

They really supported me.

They.

Shared whatever knowledge they had, they shared examples,

code snippets, books, whatever.

And in no time I could keep up with them and work together with them.

And in six months I was leading the team there.

And even that transition was so smooth.

I know a lot of people worry about leading peers or even

leading their previous bosses.

And my experience was so positive over there that I have to say big

thanks to them, maybe they are going to hear this and they deserve it.

Let's talk about that.

Moving from a programmer to a leader.

When you say that was smooth what, when you say that it's natural and

this comes naturally to me that that means that there's a, like a through

line a theme throughout your life.

And those, and you've been able to transfer those talents.

So when you talk about languaging and the problem solving, that to me

says empathy and problem solving.

Can you speak to what you found natural about that jump to leadership?

Oh, great question, Rob.

What was natural in that jump?

I think it gets back to college, really.

Now I'm just thinking about it.

I think it's the first time somebody asked me exactly this question.

I was an introvert as a young boy.

Very introvert and the typical nerd, as some would call high grades, a good

student but quite kept to himself.

Some people nowadays would say bullied I, I wouldn't label it like that,

but it was rough sometimes and it was not like I was taking any kind

of leadership position in school or with friends, anything like that.

I cannot pinpoint exactly what happened, but the moment I started

college, I just felt different.

And one of the things that, that happened then is that I started organizing events.

I started organizing the group work.

I started organizing class activities.

I was the one taking the responsibility to do the presentations, the oral

presentations, but I didn't stop there.

I started teasing the entire class to participate in the discussions.

It was like really lively discussions.

Some people even hated me for that, for bringing them up and making

them stressed, but it was such a great experience that I felt.

This is what I need to do.

This is where I belong.

When I see these people doing so much while having fun while

developing, while, it's the kind of environment I want to build.

It's the kind of experience I want others to have.

And if I can be in a position to do that, that's what I'm going to do.

And if I have any opportunity.

To enable that's what I'm going to do.

So when I moved from the company of my father, when I was an individual

contributor, we would call and that's because the company was very small.

It's three, four people, every person just do the job, into a

company where there was a team.

I just felt natural to start taking some responsibilities that were not

software development related, that were more related to taking care of the team.

I just felt naturally good with that to represent them, to support them,

to fight for them to defend them to bring their results to management to

bring them closer to the customers and all those things, it just felt right.

So what I get a grasp on is you had very solid foundations on what you were

doing, like you studied, you knew what you were doing, you were good at that.

You developed your social network and you increasingly took on

more and more responsibilities.

You took initiative.

So what it seems to me is you were if you imagine a circle and if you imagine

you keep going out of your comfort zone, you just keep expanding that.

Now it makes perfect sense why you do so many different things, because

you've started from this core of a very clear idea of who you are.

And expand it out so that who you are now is has many different aspects

because you've become a bigger circle.

What also comes to mind is I know that you're a fan of Spiral Dynamics.

I am, yes.

Really like the idea of Spiral Dynamics.

I really like the way that explains how, because I see this, that we move

from, when I was growing up, things were very much you do as you're

told, authoritarian and centralized.

And now it's become, you look at Gen Z it's very much of power

to the kids, power to everyone.

And so through these polarities, spiral dynamics creates so it's

like a more conservative sense.

It's like the blue, blue one is conservative and then it

becomes very hierarchical.

Yeah, which is like the eighties of everyone for themselves.

And then it goes back and it bounces.

So where I'm looking at as you've expanded now, you're a very positive person.

I can tell that you're not a complainer.

But.

I'm guessing there must've been challenges.

There must've been setbacks.

Because what it seems like too easy, seems too perfect that you

would just grow exponentially.

So was it that it just grew out or was it a spiral where you each

time had a setback, which then led you to the next level which analogy

would fit best with your growth?

Yeah, I love the spiral dynamics, Rob, because it first of all,

it reminds us that we are not fixed.

One thing that a lot of people don't understand on the spiral is that you can

spiral up or you can as well spiral down.

And it's not up in the sense of better and down in the sense of worse.

It's a lot influenced by the context, by what's happening and

what are the triggers, right?

And adapting to the situations and making the changes again, in

whatever direction is always going to mean there is some rupture, right?

I'm not a complainer.

You're right.

But I probably gave you some hint very early on my parents are divorced

and their divorce was terrible in, in pretty much every sense they it left

a lot of unsolved things that I had to solve later on as a young adult.

For example the whole process of becoming an expat going out of my

comfort zone from Brazil to the U S given that if that was one of my dreams

had a lot of fractures one of them, again, getting back to the family team

It was a big rupture with my father that I had to work on later on again.

And even the theme of coming to Switzerland was not an easy thing at all.

Think about it.

I was my dream place to live back then.

I was happy and I had everything that I could possibly want.

I didn't want to come.

It required a lot of convincing.

And for me, a lot of letting go and changing deeply rooted ideas that

I had about life, about human beings about culture and so on that I had to

change in the process So no, It was not easy I tell this tale in brazil.

It's very normal that middle class young boys would get their cars whenever

they are 18 or 19 stuff like that.

My younger brother got his car and started driving around.

Back then there was a lot of pressure for a boy of middle

class to have this kind of stuff.

And I made my own decisions that no, I wouldn't do that.

My path was different.

My priorities were different.

And I would commit to that.

I had my first car when I was 27.

And a lot of people didn't really understand he's putting all the work,

the effort and where are the results.

And this kind of stuff is very heavy because I could feel the pressure

that was again coming from society, from family, from friends and whatnot.

And.

You had to deal with this shit if you want to get somewhere.

Not complaining, not I never complained that I didn't have a car.

That I was robbed in the bus stop because of that.

That I would take two hours to get to college when other people

would take 30 minutes and You just carry on, you decide your strategy

for life, you commit to it and go.

And when it's time to change, then you need to realize it's

time to change and go again.

That's it.

Okay.

Yeah.

So where I'm looking now is it's more like a, It's not a spiral, it's more like an

upside down funnel, that you had a very strong core and you have something that

makes you able to push yourself out and out of your comfort zone and to grow.

And maybe it was the difficult experiences you talked about your

parents, but also about how school might have been challenging.

And maybe it's those difficult.

experiences that you resolved early on, which give you the foundation so

that you're able To grow from then on.

I think that one of the reasons was that I had difficulties,

if I hadn't had any difficulty then maybe I wouldn't have got anywhere.

But I was Growing up in an environment that was showing itself very limiting,

that I couldn't do or reach or achieve these or that or the other thing.

Traveling abroad was like a big no go for me as a kid.

Can you imagine that?

So I would never have dreamed about it.

For a short period of time.

We were not hungry, but we were struggling to get food at home.

And I think this experiences helped me shaping up this

idea that I know what I want.

And then that I am capable enough as a human being to develop a strategy.

To get what I want.

And then be flexible enough, right?

That's where the spiral comes in.

And I only learned this much later, but without knowing it, that's what I have

been using pretty much my entire life.

So that's where you've come from now, when you look

ahead what is it that you want?

What's the things that drive you?

Or maybe what did drive you and what drives you now?

One thing I hope came already across quite loudly is the

enablement of other human beings.

So I want to play an active role in developing people.

In making sure that others are having the opportunities that I had

that they are having developments that they need, want or aspire.

I'm making a difference in their lives.

I think especially with my kids.

Yes, they are growing up and I see I'm making that difference there for the

good for the bad because we all fail.

I got a huge reinforcement that this is my role in the world that I am here to

serve others to help others to enable others and that I need to be in positions

where I can actually make that difference.

So that's definitely one thing that I continue to look forward to.

And that's why I have this at least dual role and the corporate on one

side and coaching on the other, because you can also interact, change a lot

between the two and I can feel like I'm fulfilling my mission very easily.

I just mentioned Rob, My family is my treasure, so I definitely want

to make sure that I'm here for them, that I'm supporting them through their

development, and hopefully that I'm given a number of years to watch them, what

they do with their lives after that.

I'm very curious about it.

I would love to to see, just watch how it blooms for them.

And the other thing that I am resolving and I'm working on right now is again,

settling in this country, in Switzerland, that was a complete 180 degrees change

for us and yes required some time and now over the last two, three years already,

I'm feeling really deeply like home and we take even further steps in order to settle

here and making this country, our country.

So making a difference.

I'm trying to hone in on why making a difference?

What is it about?

What is the why that that powers you?

It's making the difference in others.

And how does that make you feel?

That makes me feel extremely good.

I have read it somewhere.

It's the most egoistic thing that you want a human being can do is to help others.

Because the most egoistic thing you can do is help others.

Because when you help others, you feel fantastic.

It's the best feeling you can really experience in this planet.

The joy of giving the joy of taking somebody by the hand and seeing after a

year or two, how that person has grown has been promoted, has reached goals

and et cetera, nothing compares to that.

I was talking to one of my coaches this afternoon, and we were talking about

LinkedIn experiences a little bit.

One experience that I have and you've probably had that too, is somebody

reaches out and thank you for A difference that you made in your life

because of piece of content advice, something you recommended, whatnot.

And this happens at least here around that happens live people

actually stopped me every now and then in parks to say, thank you.

I'm following you.

And what you said these days really helped me.

I was having this problem, that problem.

And every time that happens, I feel like fulfilled.

That is no other word.

fulfilled.

Like I'm whole, like I'm part I belong here and I'm making a difference.

I think we all want to contribute.

So for me for me, this, the, when I work with someone, it's

about giving them freedom.

So I see a lot of people tied up in relationships.

I started.

Way back, it was a problem of people not sticking to the gym, and then

it became happiness, and then it became relationships, then it became

conflict, then it became teams.

But for me, it's because I see a lot of people who feel trapped and particularly

most bad relationships are because people don't know they can have better.

People get together with someone for a vague reason.

Doesn't really make sense.

The relationship doesn't work out because of that and they're trapped

because they don't know any different.

So the thing I wish through my work is to give people, set people free.

I understand the fulfillment because every, I think everything for most

of us comes through other people.

So what, if you could give them one quality.

What would that be for your case?

The sense of progress.

So I really love to see that they achieved something that was important for them.

I had this discussion once.

What if it's the wrong thing?

I would rather get them getting the wrong things for a little bit for them

to realize by themselves that these are the wrong things and then they can shift

and start working on the right things then leave them there struggling, To

your point, I don't want to fix anybody.

I want people to live their lives in whatever shape, form,

color that they want to live.

And I believe in every single human being as is a potential.

I believe it's there.

You're set to do truly set to do.

They are going to do, they are going to achieve.

We need to bake in time, we need to bake in effort, discipline and all those

things, but it's completely doable.

And the way that they understand that is in progress.

So for me, progress is what nails it.

And progress according to their terms, not my terms.

Now that kind of fits with that idea of growing out.

I like to be able to tie things up so I can see how the congruence of someone.

You do a great job, Rob, I must say.

But I knew it, I knew about it because I saw the other interviews before.

We covered the coaching the books that you're writing.

So this is what I'm interested in.

Cause one of the questions I would write, I would ask is if you're going

to give a TED talk, what would it be on?

But the other aspect of that is if you're going to write a

book, what is the book on so

Let me tell you out loud, so I.

I actually wrote two books, and I am seriously considering

to publish one of them.

The first book that I wrote, which is by the way, this one is my take, my

personal take on the wheel of life.

You will know the concept, right?

You have these different angles and then how you can work to integrate them.

And basically what I do in that book.

I.

I focused on the elements of the wheel of life where I feel I can most

contribute to in terms of experiences and tools and practices to others.

And that was the book that I wrote thinking about my kids.

So I wanted to make sure that regardless of what happens over the next many

years they would have a reference.

About that, because that's probably the number one tool that I used throughout

my entire life, ever since I was 16 or 17 when I got acquainted with

that tool, I started using it and it really made a difference in my life

and thinking about objectives, not from one angle, but from all of them.

And when I think about purpose that came much later.

It was really easy to find it because of the congruence of the

elements in my wheel of life.

So that's why I decided to write about it.

It's a little bit of memories in a sense, because I talk about personal

experiences, a little bit of practices, a little bit of jokes and fun stories that

I share again with the first intent to give a little bit of a gift to my kids.

And then why not to distribute that to the world.

Then the second one I, I wrote that's one I won't publish.

But yeah, I will leave it here for again, maybe my kids to

read at some point in time.

When I found out that I was about to be laid off, I thought about many things and

one of the things I thought was, Hey, this is a great opportunity to test this idea.

How would it look like if I would write a journal about that journey?

And that's what I did.

So it's a hundred thousand words or something like that over more than a year

telling the story and telling this story.

From the perspective of how I was feeling on each of the days, depending

on what was happening with announcements with how I saw the colleagues with

how I felt about it myself and which means that it's quite unfiltered.

It's quite raw, which means that some people would get probably very sensitive

about some of the things that I wrote and that is no need for that, right?

So that's why I decided not to publish it to keep it as memories of mine.

I love what I wrote, to be honest.

I think that's, that there's some gold there and I can, The one thing I can

do is just recommend people to journal about pretty much anything that they

want to journal in their lives, but especially if they are going through

a situation like that, it's such a powerful tool, such a powerful tool.

It helped me greatly going through the experience and yeah.

So that was the second one.

And now I started another one, which is still bare bones idea.

Now it's a little bit more on the field of fiction.

But interluded with business administration.

So I'm talking about leadership using an animal story to, to

illustrate some of what happens.

You're even more prolific than I

thought.

And I will not even tell you the ideas.

I already noted down to write next all over the place.

Okay.

And the apps you're developing.

So that's something I had an idea because of my coaching practice.

I noticed that is a little bit of a gap on how coaches are Getting trained,

getting certified around the world.

And this is still on the hypothesis.

So I'm not going to share much details, but that's the

problem I'm trying to solve.

So I'm thinking about my fellow coaches and their struggles as they start

in the career and how I could help.

Before we go into that, so who would be ideal kind of person that could.

Go on a growth journey with your coaching.

What would they be looking for?

And like what end result, what situation might they be in?

What end result might they want?

And yeah in, in what way could you help their journey?

Most of the people that have significant results with me, they

come from senior management positions.

So they already sorted out a lot of A lot of stuff for themselves

and already realized that it's time for them to stand up as leaders.

So they are trying to change their practices, change some of their

behaviors in order to, to change managing groups to leading teams.

That's what most people have benefited working with me.

Usually they are Having some very clear goals for themselves, though.

Sometimes they're not.

And one of the things that I do is I help them finding different alternatives

to get to those goals and keeping their accountability in order to get that.

That's quite clear.

And in terms of what's next for you in terms of corporate what are you

looking for from your next position and what, where do you see that going?

That's a great question.

One of the things that I am making a point again is that it's a leadership

position where I have responsibility for the development of other talents.

That's part of the job for me.

Otherwise, it's not really interesting and because of everything I told

you about my technology background that's what I want to play, right?

So you can decide, okay, I want to focus on people.

I am a people manager, but what is the scope?

And for me, the scope is technology, especially with all

this digital transformations happening across the globe.

across companies companies of all sorts of sizes.

That's where I feel I belong.

Hopefully this this next job, this next opportunity I'm going to take

on will lead Both the company to change the processes considering a

digital mindset not only implementing technology for the sake of technology.

So we are really talking about transforming businesses while

doing the same for the people.

I think even in technology, Rob, to be honest.

It's sometimes scary how much people are a little bit behind in this change curve

with technology advancing so much faster.

And I will be very happy to help them get into the curve attaching and grow much

faster than they have been doing so far.

It seems to be a recurring theme of how technology can

multiply so much quicker.

While Theoretically people could change quicker.

There's so many barriers to that.

Technology doesn't change anything.

And so I mentioned to you, I work with supply chain management

for the last four or five years.

15 years ago, I was working in finance, the kind of technology that we had

back there 15 years ago, right?

A little bit of robotics process automation, a little bit of

workflows automation in general some algorithms, maybe a few.

Dashboarding technologies visualization tools, everything that already

existed 15 years ago could have transformed supply chain back then.

Now people talk about generative AI, and I will tell you that people

are still not even using that technology from that long back.

And they hope to make the jump because they are still betting that the

technology is going to solve the problems.

No.

The people are going to solve the problems.

This is where focus is required.

And that's not easy at all.

You need to think about their fears.

You need to think about their concerns.

So you need to think about their personal needs about upscaling, about rescaling.

It's a complex ecosystem.

And if you can do that, then the kind of productivity that you

can enable is out of this planet.

Even with the most simple of the platforms and tools.

There's so much potential in people.

Everything in organizations is set up from when we had factories.

And there's the hierarchy and then this flow and people are like the

whole thing of human resources is people are seen as resources.

What we almost need to do is change and start from now.

And you build around the people but that's a bigger discussion and One

that's not going to change anyway.

Will beg to disagree, Rob.

It will change.

It may be taking some time.

It may be that we don't see it, but it will have to change because The way

technology is going people are going to realize or must realize that the values

the important things are not the things that we have worked the last century.

That's the past.

And what gives me trust, what gives me a lot of optimism is that what we are living

right now is not the first time humanity is going through, we have had these

waves, these cycles in the past again.

Oh, now it's AI is different.

It's more.

If you would go back there 200 years ago, the changes for them were as overwhelming

as AI is right now, it also looked like the world would collapse, and it didn't.

So I think.

One of the jobs we have, me, you, a lot of highly intelligent people

in this platform in LinkedIn.

We have as a job is to help people to move through this change and to

evolve because we know it's possible.

Which kind of goes back to the whole Spiral Dynamics stuff.

Yeah.

Sometimes we have to see the problem.

I always look at in terms of technology adoption in we've had the ability for home

shopping, home working since for about 20 years and it took COVID for people.

There has to be a trigger.

And I think what's happening at the moment is systems are breaking down.

Burnout all of these things, lack of engagement, all of these

situations are creating the conditions for people to change.

But they need to have the trigger generally before people change.

And it needs to be real that's one thing that I talk about often when the

context of change management some change management frameworks, they are going

to tell you the first thing is to raise awareness of the problem, whatever it is.

And what often happens is that people are trying to follow these frameworks,

they're doing their very best, but they are not raising a genuine problem.

They are not elevating something that deserves the attention of any human being.

It's a lot of artificial problems, a lot of artificial needs, and

unfortunately, a lack of transparency.

People lost a little bit the ability To say the things that they want or they need

or how they want to drive because they are afraid of how this is going to look

like external stakeholders or whatnot.

So some sort of a sustainability agenda in place, because

that's what the market needs.

Nobody buys that.

So you need to be clear.

That's what I want.

And this is why I want this.

And that's how you're going to drive there.

Because it's true, because Honestly, authentically, that's what you

want to do for your business.

And I feel like leaders are lacking a little bit that, that ability.

You told the story about COVID, right?

So one thing that disappointed me a lot was.

I was in the meeting after the whole COVID thing was over.

And then an executive mentioned that it was time for all of them to realize

that the travel for a two hour meeting over the Atlantic was not required.

That they could do a zoom meeting or a team's meeting, whatever it is.

And it just got me thinking, it really required COVID for you to figure out that.

It's not possible, the technology is there for the last 10 years, man.

And you're spending time Companies time, resources all sorts of money

investments blocking other people's agenda, making it harder for everybody

because you need that COVID to tell you.

We can do better.

Yeah it's crazy, but it's, I think one of the problems is constant

stress, constant just busyness.

It's like on a treadmill just constantly.

And that creates a environment where people can't think.

And there's never stopping to think and never stopping to look up.

And yeah, so it's all kinds of craziness, which we all pick

apart every day on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

You probably heard that everybody should do 20 minutes meditation every day.

Very busy.

People should do 60 minutes.

It's always the people that need it most don't.

So we've talked about your growing circle of capacity,

skills concerns, responsibilities.

So now I'm looking at where is the comfort zone for you now?

What's the challenge?

You've overcome so many challenges.

You've assimilated and become this much, so much more capable

competent, confident person.

What's at the boundary of Eduardo now?

Very good question.

I think it definitely has to do with this coaching practice that I'm building

that is again and glad that we are talking about it because I can openly

say it's not a plan for tomorrow.

It's not something that I'm doing to get up and running like next week.

That's my next 10 15 year plan.

That is a lot that I have built into that plan that I want to happen

for me to develop as a coach, as an individual to reach to certain

milestones and then extend my impact.

But that's definitely the.

Boundary for me, the border for me.

That's where I feel very uncomfortable.

The part of building your own business.

I'm grateful to have so many amazing people around me, especially after I

started contributing in LinkedIn, I got in contact with so many people.

Outstanding entrepreneurs that share the stories how they did, how they plan

and et cetera, but it's definitely the place where I feel most uncomfortable.

And that makes me very excited.

I shall be watching your journey for when you make that change, Okay,

so last question is so anyone who might be looking to hire you as a coach or a

corporate that's looking for a leader that can solve the kind of problems that you

do, where should they reach out to you?

My LinkedIn page.

I have organized it in a way that it's very easy to set up some time with me.

You have straight there in my profile, the Calendly link, and we can quickly

get into an hour conversation, 30 minutes conversation, whatever it is.

And even with coaching clients, I always tell my clients and other clients.

Come and spend an hour with me interest free because we need to see if it's

a match on both sides, and that's how it works for companies as well.

That's why we do interviews.

So get in touch go to my profile, go to my calendar book some time and let's talk

okay.

Thank you For being so generous with your time.

It's been great to understand your journey and to get a sense of Who you

are what you do and where you're going

I had a feeling it would be fun to do this with you rob and I can say I

was right So for whoever is also watching and thinking should I get together with

Rob in one of the sessions, go for it.

Okay.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so

much, Rob.