Two Surfers

04/28/2015 - 09h39

On the list of the 100 most influential people in the world, American magazine "Time" included two Brazilians: surfer Gabriel Medina and businessman and former surfer Jorge Paulo Lemann.

It is interesting that the two Brazilians on the list are both surfers, because life in Brazil and Latin America is not a beach. It is full of ripples and huge waves.

The business environment here is like surfing. Either we surf a wave of opportunities or we face a mad tide that crashes down on us.

Those who have read the book "Big Dream," by Cristiane Correa, about 3Gs, can see that Jorge Paulo Lemann, Beto Sicupira and Marcel Telles always cite the sea. And they take from it the wisdom of a fisherman and a surfer, and apply it to the business world.

The sea teaches so much that Carl Icahn, one of the biggest US investors, defined Lemann as one of the four or five most intelligent people on Wall Street when writing the "Time" profile of the surfer.

For foreigners, the tide changes in Brazil and Latin America are frightening. We who live here distrust the calm, but also don't frighten as much when the waves of the economy revolt and break on us.

From 1985 to 1994, Brazil had no less than 12 finance ministers and seven economic plans to call its own.

All the difficulties and misconceptions of those turbulent years forged a corporate DNA with a huge capacity to resist and innovate, to face adversity and find solutions. This capacity is one of the finest aspects of our economy and our market.

Like any Brazilian entrepreneur, I have fallen many times, but I also learned to be a little like Gabriel Medina in my business, to get up on the board again, to face the surf again and to surf the next wave.

In a crisis, the solution is not to complain or stand still; the solution is to find exits.

In fact, the number of CEOs and business leaders who are surfers in Brazil is huge. There is Marcello Serpa, a leading creative and one of the country's great PR entrepreneurs; Oskar Metsavaht, one of the greatest Brazilian fashion entrepreneurs; Fernando Madeira, CEO of Walmart.com in the US and Latin America; and Marcio Santoro, co-chair of the agency Africa, to name a few.

Surfing, as they say nowadays, is the new golf. I'm not a surfer. I am a businessman and am in advertising, but I imagine that with the sea these CEOs must learn a lot. Patience to wait for the wind, understanding the signs of nature, having a sense of timing, getting up after a fall, controlling your emotions, and mastering courage and fear. Because an excess of courage and excessive fear are fatal in the business world in which we live.

This country, I repeat, is not a beach. It is a business bay with waves for and waves against, on which we need to maneuver with a lot of sense and sensibility. Therefore, we, Brazilians, with or without a board, are all surfers.

Translated by JILL LANGLOIS

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