I mean, as a former lawyer, I can definitely second that. You know, I think a lot of times people go into a happy relationship, think, oh, everything’s gonna be fine. It’s never going to go bad. But when it does go bad, if it does go bad, you definitely want a contract in place. And it sounds like that experience, one you learned a lot.
And so it gave you the confidence and the know how to start your own company. But also you witnessed the value of your uncle participating in an organization that was not his company. You know, networking, meeting people, bringing back ideas to the company. And, you know, maybe a foreshadowing of your involvement with EO. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that kind of gave you the idea to get involved in EO in the way that you have?
Joaquin Cordero: 10:39
Definitely. I definitely see that parallel that you mentioned. I was always seeing him when I grew up and he was a boxer, he started his career. He should probably have him on his podcast. Already asked him to be in mine, but he was like Forrest Gump and he started his career as a referee of boxing.
So he refereed for Evander Holyfield, for Foreman. So these big boxers and I always looked up to him and saw him traveling all over the world, meeting these great figures in so many countries, world leaders. And I and I picked up on that and I, you know, I was always thinking like, you know, it would be great to be able to be of service to others and to be able to have these great relationships with everyone and seeing how people would approach him and, you know, invite him to participate in business deals and whatnot. And the funny thing is, when I was confirmed for the position to be chair, he was the one who congratulated me most. He invited me and my dad and some friends to have dinner with him and I, and I was really grateful for him.
But yeah, those are things that I picked up early on in my childhood. And I see that parallel very well.
John Corcoran: 11:50
So after the cable company you started to start, you decide to start Lumin. What was that like? Was it that difficult going back to your uncle who groomed you all these years and saying, I want to go out and start my own thing or. I think it was around the time I think he’d also sold the, the, the cable TV channel at the same time.
Joaquin Cordero: 12:11
Yeah. The goal was always to, to sell the channel and we were focused on, you know, making the most of it. We started transmitting from one cable company to over 400 cable companies in Guatemala. Guatemala has a very strong cable coverage in the country. Finally, we were able to sell it and we sat down and he gave me some list of opportunities of the other areas of the company that I could look up on.
And I had started a couple of businesses, you know, one was importing this victory. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Wine decanters. They use the Venturi effect. I saw them when I went to Jacksonville to visit another uncle who was the first lung transplant of Guatemala.
That was probably like 15 or 20 years ago. And he was like, look at my decanter. And I tasted that wine. And it felt like, wow, this is so amazing. I’ve never tasted wine like this.
So I started distributing that and I sold it in Mexico, in Argentina and Chile and Central America. I wrote that way very well. A great learning is when it was already positioned, a big distributor came in and took it away from me and they’re like, thank you, but no longer thank you. So that was great learning.
John Corcoran: 13:23
Importance of contracts again.
Joaquin Cordero: 13:25
Again. Yeah. Yeah. And I lost my train of thought.
John Corcoran: 13:30
So you were, you were, you were talking about how you got to starting lumen after your uncle. Oh yeah. The company. Yeah.
Joaquin Cordero: 13:39
Yeah. So he gave me some mushrooms and I said, you know, I think it’s time for me to start my own business. I always had it. I remember when I graduated university in Monterrey, I had started climbing there, and I thought, I want to be the owner of my business, and I’m able to travel 2 or 3 weeks a year without having an issue to go climb and do what I’m passionate about. So I had that on the back of my mind all the time.
My wife had started a sandwich store that grew to four locations, and I was supportive of her by that time. I said thank you to my uncle and I started a production company, Audiovisual Production Company, which was Lumen Films. We had a great learning from that because it was really hard to work with the agencies when you know, you know how it is. We saw it like that when we were young and we were like when the product was good, it was the agency that did a good work and it was bad. It was us that didn’t do a good job, and we thought, we need to have a relationship directly with the marketing guys because we’re having this intermediary Intermediaries, you know, it’s not the best option.
So we started the advertising agency with the risk that most of our clients were advertising agencies. Today, I can say that was a smart decision because now business happens throughout the advertising agency and this one shares to the other areas, which is media, which is production and all the rest. But I started, you know, with a partner, we started a couple of people. It was a beautiful startup back then and we grew up. We are now 25 souls, not a huge business.
We participate in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and we do a lot of communication for Central America. We have some clients we have had for 16 years. We it’s almost my daughter’s age. They say that kids bring bread under the arm. And, and I have clients who have been with us for 15 years, like Danone and other brands.
With Volkswagen. We started working in 2018. So we love the fact that we have relationships that are long, and most of our employees I have are nine, ten year old employees. I have some who have been here for 14 or 15 years. And I love that because, you know, there’s such a cost in having to bring in new people and train them and get the hang of the business and the culture instead of developing them to become better, better at what they’re already doing.
John Corcoran: 16:02
And you also.
Joaquin Cordero: 16:04
Electric. Sorry about that. Mitsubishi Electric, the air conditioning. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 16:08
Got it. And then I heard an interview where you said that you have 6 or 7 employees that are also rock climbers. Is it? Yeah. Do you hire for that or did they get interested in rock climbing because the boss is interested in rock climbing?
How did you end up with so many big portions of your employees? Are rock climbers also?
Joaquin Cordero: 16:29
I love that man. You know, I guess the first one. It was my digital strategist. She is a Venezuelan who lives in Mexico, and is the only person who works from home in our company. And I met at the crack.
So we were climbing in Amatitlan, which is our home where we climb. And I met her and I asked her for belay and she started belaying me. And I asked her, what do you do? And she said that she was on social media and she worked for one of the big ones, BBDO. So I asked her if she would be interested in coming to work with us.
And she was. And she’s been here with us for a long time. That was the first one. And then the rest. I started taking them to climb to the gym, and then we started to go to the crag and, and you know, there’s four of them who we started doing that with.
And last year I took them to Monterrey, to my, you know, it’s my second home, Monterrey. I come back every year after I started there. It’s one of the best places in the world to rock climb huge roots, beautiful rock. And I took them there for ten days and we climbed beautiful climbs with, you know, they did some clients that are over 900ft tall. So 12 hour hard climbs and they started like three years ago.
They’re already, you know, doing intermediate hard-ish things for someone with not so much experience. But that has been a great bonding for us.
John Corcoran: 17:56
You’re going to have to bring him. You have to bring him to Yosemite here in California. Take him to El Cap.
Joaquin Cordero: 18:02
Oh, I love that. I tried a cup once. I have to go back. You did? That’s in my list.
Yeah, I tried it in 2017. I only climbed one third of it. I was not prepared. You know what they say when you have a hard decision to flip a coin. And the time that the coin is in the air, you already know what you want it to fall.
And that’s your gut feeling telling you what to choose. And I was throwing that coin all night long thinking, I have to get down. I have to get down. Finally I got down something that really moved me that day. One is I was not prepared to do that.
So I’ll be better prepared next time. Hopefully after my service as chair, I’ll be able to go back the day before I called my daughter 2017. So that’s seven years ago. So she was probably eight or so and I said, my love, tomorrow I start climbing. It’s going to be some days. We’re counting that it’ll take us five days to go up.
I just wanted to say, you know, that I’m here, whatever you need. And she was kind of joking. And she said, daddy, do me a favor. Yeah. Please tell your friends that if you fall down to the ground to pick all your pieces so I can put you together, that really hits me really hard.
And, you know, I was thinking about it all the time going up, and I was like, I’m not prepared for this. What am I doing here? In the end, I told my team we were four guys and I said, guys, you know, we’re going to be. I’m one of them who had already decided to go down and I was the second one who decided to go down. And I said, you know, guys, I’m going to be stopping you. Take all the things that you need to go up.
We’re going to go down and I’ll come back another time. It’ll still be standing there. That’s a good thing about those wells. And they finally did it. You know, it’s amazing just the way.
Imagine we were thinking about spending five days there, which is a lot. You know, it is that normal that normal people take, you know, the record is like four hours.
John Corcoran: 19:45
Yeah. It takes a few days to get up there, right? Yeah.
Joaquin Cordero: 19:49
Yeah. So it takes a gallon of water per person. There were four of us. So four gallons of water per person per day. So it’s 20 gallons of water that you take up.
Wow.
John Corcoran: 19:58
Imagine that. That’s crazy.
Joaquin Cordero: 19:59
These huge bags. That’s plus the portaledges, the ropes, the equipment, the food, everything.
John Corcoran: 20:05
And you carry all that stuff with you.
Joaquin Cordero: 20:08
The only way you take off is the water weight. Because you’re peeing throughout the rock. It smells like a lion’s den when you go climbing there. But the number two, there is a poop tube that you take up, and you and you bring it up so that that way it still goes up. You know, it’s very uncomfortable.
John Corcoran: 20:26
Oh, geez. So. Oh, man. Well, while we’re on the topic of rock climbing, you gave this speech at the Global Leadership Conference Entrepreneurs Organization earlier this year in Hawaii, where you talked about doing hard things, and you also talked about this experience that you had of being on the, you know, climbing one time, getting attacked by a swarm of bees and being prepared for the crazy things that happen to you, and then using that as a metaphor for life and for business. Can you talk a little bit about that story that you told in that speech?
Joaquin Cordero: 21:02
Yes, of course. That was a life changer for me. You know, it’s one of those things that you think, oh my God, I almost died. This was a wonderful world that we had had for a long time. Now it’s called the Bee wall.
I don’t know why, but … But we knew that there were bees there, and we decided to go there and to put out a little fire so that, you know, the smoke would keep them down. It was a huge, huge Beehive and we started opening the route. So I was, you know, drilling the vibration through the rock and it started to make them nervous. And they came out and they said, you know, we’re not happy that you guys are here.
You should leave. We continue that. And they started singing. One of my friends, the one who was below me, I was ten stories up, so probably like 30m up. And I saw him being attacked and I thought, oh my God, you know what they say, if you see your neighbor’s beard being cut, start watering yours.
And that bees started to come up after he was able to get off and, you know, roll down the mountain. And the bees started to come up through the rope. And I had like five bees in front of me. And I started feeling their stings. It felt like cigarettes being put out on your face.
It’s long story short, I had to go down. So it was like, if you’re going through hell, keep going. Because I knew the beehive was down, but it got so intense at one point that for minutes I was just doing this to my face and killing all the bees that I had. Doing this in my hands and filling my hands with bees and killing them repeatedly while I tried to pendulum very little with the short rope that I had. At one point, my friends didn’t see me because there was a ball of bees that they could see, and it was dark for me because I was, you know, full of bees.
And then I thought, nobody’s coming to save you, right? Like I would look down on my friends who were running away from me, but they couldn’t do anything. There were no helicopters, cell signals. So I had to go down through the hard place up. At the end, I had to jump from four stories at 12m, 36ft, and I broke my ankle.
I broke my neck, the C4 fissured it and at one point I was already trying on the ground floor. I was trying to take all my equipment off and I was not able to take the harness off. And I thought, you know, this is it. I’m going to die like I’m ready. I want to see the end of the tunnel quickly because this is not comfortable.
And in that moment, someone did come to save me. A friend who was 30m left put up another route. He came down, rappelled. He had a gas drill, a gas drill. He threw water, the gasoline, and he lit it up.
Luckily, he was a smoker and he had a fire. I went into that fire like it was holy water. My friend.
John Corcoran: 23:48
He lit a fire because the smoke scared away the rest of the bees or something like that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Joaquin Cordero: 23:54
Yeah. Because the beehive was right. Right where I fell, like, right below there. And that’s how we were able to get away from it. But it was a funny thing, when I got to the hospital, all the rides in the car were taken away.
All the little things which now I know it’s not, not a good thing because they’re pumps. And when you pinch them to take them out, you put all the venom in. So that’s why they use tweezers from below. And, it felt like my skin was burning. Like it was tremendous.
I had to come down from the rope and I burned my two fingers to the bone from that fall, from the friction. And in the hospital, the doctor said that he had put something in it for an elephant because my throat was already closed. I was not able to breathe. I don’t know why it took so long. Probably that day I took an anti-allergenic because if not, I would have died.
And when they passed me to the room, my now wife, then girlfriend and three cousins who were also studying in Monterrey, they took like a couple hours taking all the things that I had not taken out and that the nurses didn’t take out. And they counted over 400 things, mostly behind my ears. They’re very organized because, you know, you don’t want to bother them, but they will go to all the black places, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I would have them going to my nostrils. I would have them when I was screaming.
They would. They stand inside my throat and I would have them go into my ears as well. The worst was the noise that they would make when they got stuck between my hair and the helmet. It was like the RPMs of them. It was.
It was. I had post-traumatic stress disorder for like six months. I would wake up at night, you know, like taking this away from me. It was a great experience. It was a very tremendous experience.
And the funny thing is, you know, a couple years ago, I went back to Monterrey and we went with some friends and we were climbing this four pitch route, five pitch route. So we were 120m, 360ft off the deck. These are the pitches, you know, it’s like a rope length. So this was like four rope lengths. And when I arrived at the anchor, five bees came down.
And they did this little movement in front of me that I immediately recognized. I had already seen it like 20 years ago. And then they came down and started working on my heart, and I was like, four beats. And we were four guys and they were only engaging me. And I said, guys, you know, these bees are not really happy that we’re here.
They have their home here upstairs and they don’t want us to continue. We should go down. Oh come on, bees are not going to stop us like my friends who already knew the story, right? I’m like, hey, guys, I have already gone through this. We cannot jump from this, from this height.
Okay. We’re going to have to go down. We went down. Nobody got stung. So I feel I’m a little of a bee whisperer now.
John Corcoran: 26:52
A bee whispered. Oh, what a crazy experience, man. Well, let’s let’s. I’m mindful of the clock. We’re kind of running out of time here.
Let’s talk about your involvement in EO. So, you know, you’ve served in a bunch of different roles. President of your chapter now in the global board of directors. Talk a little bit about what you get from that. like it’s a substantial contribution of time?
Thank you for that, by the way. You put in a lot of energy. You have to travel, you have to go to these board meetings, all kinds of different stuff. Why do you do it?
Joaquin Cordero: 27:30
That is a great question, my friend. And, you know, it’s funny because when I heard about EO the first time, it was from a business partner and he would, you know, he would talk about his experience, he wouldn’t tell you what to do. So he would, you know, talk about what is your key takeaway after this meeting. I was like, wow, what book did you learn that from or what did you read? Or and he talked about this organization and he told me, when your business goes over $1 million, I’m going to invite you to come over. Because I had just started my business.
I joked that he should have said 10 million so that I would be retired by now, but it’s not the case. And I worked really hard to get over that million so that I could participate. So I started in 2012, and it was funny because since day one in January, they invited me to this breakfast and they kind of like told me of all the opportunities that I could do. They spoke about the pol, they spoke about this MP and MIT and whatnot. And I thought, there’s a lot of it.
John Corcoran: 28:29
Lots of acronyms for different things. Yeah.
Joaquin Cordero: 28:31
You’re right. The entrepreneurial master’s program from MIT is the entrepreneurial masters that we do. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 28:37
Which I’m in the middle of. I’m in the middle of that program as well. It’s a great program at MIT. Three year program. Yeah.
Joaquin Cordero: 28:44
Oh I’m glad. The path of leadership is because of this organization, one of the greatest things that it has is that we have a lot of volunteer members. It’s a 20,000 member organization. You’re a volunteer member. Thank you for your time as well.
My friend is a member. And we have over 2000 member volunteers. And since day one, they told me the guy in membership in Guatemala had been the membership chair for seven years, and they didn’t want to change him because he was really good. So when I got in, he said, you’re going to be my, my, my. Who is going to be after me?
I’m quitting this year. So I started co-chairing my year one and as I got more involved, I learned so much from it. Like being in Guatemala. I learned how to manage boards. I understood more about boards or white boards exist.
Then I passed to the regional side being in committees. So, you know, I got so engaged. I learned so much from it. I started to apply it in my company and my business. So I say that I was really lucky because in 2012 I got in and I went to MP in 2013, graduated 2015.
And a lot of what they tell you in MP is to get out of the operational side of your business and to be able to become the visionary of your business. I joke that I took it to heart and I just never came back to my business. I don’t know what they’re going to do with me next year when I come back. Yeah, but I have been lucky all my years that I’ve been, you know, I’ve been at the service of the organization, and it fills me with going to all the events that we go to. Learning from all the great teachers that we get access to, being able to have contact with people from all over the world, that’s amazing.
Understanding different cultures, you know, making time with them to deliver results. That’s been amazing. I get energized from serving others and I feel that’s what has kept me so engaged. But there’s also a side that it serves for me. Right.
And it’s that growth that I’ve had. I always say that I owe the culture of my company to EO, because a lot of the culture that I applied here is from what I learned at EMP and from from many others. And I would have never thought that I would be a chair of the organization. I probably said, you know, I want to help on a regional side, understand more about the region, but it’s a beauty about EO that it puts you in uncomfortable positions. It puts you to do things that you’re not normally doing. It challenges you to new ways of leadership because these are leaders that you’re not paying them, but you have to convince them of doing it for the greater good and what not.
So. And all the training that we go through, I did Global Leadership Academy. If you haven’t done an original Leadership Academy, it’s a great thing. I did it in 2015 as well. I was drinking from the fountain, as they say, in 2015, and I did the original Leadership Academy in 2022.
When I got into the board, they did a training for all the board directors that are in IMD, which is kind of like the Harvard of Switzerland and on High-performing boards. So they train us because, you know, most of us have boards or have had participation on boards, many, many entrepreneurs, they have businesses, you know, we average $4 million a year in the organization. So not many have boards, not many have that experience. So we trained them all. And that’s been part of the learning right?
This year I went to a chair training to understand more the role of the chair and, you know, some of the teachers. One was Paul Booker, who is a chairman of Nestlé, who leads a 200,000 people organization in in how many countries? Right. Another was the chairman of Lego, who is now a director of Starbucks on the board of Starbucks. So hearing these guys sharing their experience, you sign an NDA when you go into that class.
So, you know, this is one of the great learnings that gives you the opportunity to participate in. And I’ve always seen throughout my experience, you know, in all these leadership positions. I learned about imposter syndrome. You know, imposter syndrome, for those who don’t know what it is, is when you get picked to a leadership position or to do something and you’re thinking, oh, maybe they got it wrong and maybe they should have picked the other guy. And am I able to deliver?
Am I able to bring value to this position where I am. And at one point, a friend and mentor from the organization. You may know him, Brian Brault, who was also chair, I think around 2015, actually, he said, but, you know, he’s always going to be there. The imposter syndrome. And, you know, he helped me figure out, you know, that’s something that’s going to always be there.
You have to deal with it and just move forward. Right. Yeah. And that was helpful. I think the imposter syndrome was harder being president of my chapter than going into the board or being the regional chair for Latin America.
John Corcoran: 33:41
Interesting, interesting. Yeah. You know, it’s funny. You know, we just had a new president come in and she was talking about how nervous she was going into that board meeting. And one of our past presidents who’s got a large, $50 million company.
I remember seeing him after one of our board meetings, and he was telling me that he was more nervous running that board meeting than he was running his company meetings. And I was like, why? I don’t understand why. And he’s like, because they’re not going to do what I tell them to do. Everyone here is running their own company.
They’re volunteering here. So he’s kind of a different skill set, skill set that you have to learn. So I’ve heard.
Joaquin Cordero: 34:19
It is completely.
John Corcoran: 34:20
Yeah.
Joaquin Cordero: 34:21
And you know this organization. I love that saying from Warren Buffett. He says that business happens at the speed of trust. He said it when he bought Walmart. I don’t remember what company he had, but he was able to buy the stock quickly because he had trust in them. And I think he raises trust globally. Right.
You know, we have you call someone in whatever chapter we have and you ask for someone and they’ll pick up the phone and they’ll be helpful to you. And I think that is amazing because the effect you have on the families, the effect you have on the employees. We employ over 5 million people worldwide throughout our 20,000 members. So I think that is something beautiful, you know, in this age, in a time where trust is so relevant and where there are so many things happening on a global scale that we would have thought that, you know, we had passed by now. But there’s still issues happening, right?
And how can we help everybody have better businesses, contribute more socially? And yeah.
John Corcoran: 35:23
I couldn’t agree more. And I actually think that trust will become even more important as we enter this era with AI, where we’re not sure what’s real and what’s fake. You know, if we look online and there’s someone tweeting or if there’s some online personality and we don’t know if it’s a real person or a fake person, then we’re going to go with the people that we know are real. We’re going to know someone who we actually trust. So I actually think trust is going to become even more important in the years ahead.
I’m mindful of the clock. We’re almost out of time, so I want to wrap things up. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here today. Where can people go to learn more about you and Lumen and check out your podcast?
I know you’ve done a number of interviews, mostly in Spanish, but you’ve also done interviews in English as well.
Joaquin Cordero: 36:07
Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, the podcast is a podcast and they can find it on Spotify or on YouTube. I am on LinkedIn, Joaquin Cordero or Joaquin Rodrigo Cordero Crespo. You know how Latinos are like all soap operas with names and whatnot. But also, I have my Instagram if you search Joaquin Cordero, the original name is time.line.traveler, and it actually comes from the lifeline exercise we did the first day we were in Rio.
And on Facebook, I’m also like Joaquin Cordero. They can search there and ping me there and I’ll be more than happy to reply.
John Corcoran: 36:44
Excellent. Joaquin, thank you so much.
Joaquin Cordero: 36:47
Thank you, my friend.
Outro: 36:51
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.