Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2011. The Twitter-specific details (followers, “unfollowing”, accounts run by up to 15 people) reflect that period; Twitter has since become X.
I know not everyone will relate to this, because some people really do consider themselves gurus in their field. That’s not my case, so my ego doesn’t need professional treatment, at least not yet. Every person has their own strengths, and a subject they can talk about because they know it, because they work in it, because they live it every day. That certainly gives them a point of view that is sometimes different from others, or even clashes with them.
Nobody holds the absolute truth. To some people we’ll be wrong on certain points, and to others we’ll be spot on. On our site we try to advise entrepreneurs who have a specific goal, a dream, so we try to point them in the right direction and give them guidelines and tips to get there.
In the same way, we approach investing from common sense, not from financial analysis and chart studies. Here I will say that, even though I’m no guru, we’ve shown dozens of times that technical analysis and analysts’ recommendations miss more often than a fairground rifle. Common sense will always win.
Who’s behind this blog?
Well, behind this blog there’s a person, exactly like behind any other blog. A flesh-and-blood person. Someone serious about business but with a joking character, someone who gets things right and wrong like everyone else, who sometimes gets angry and goes through the usual human troubles: illness, heartbreak and so on.
I admit (and I don’t want to sound smug) that I give good business advice, because I come from a family of business owners. Some of my relatives were very successful in business, and others failed as many as three times. I’ve watched my father fall and get back on his feet three times. So when I talk about the mistakes an entrepreneur shouldn’t make, it’s simply because in my family we’ve already made almost all of them, but we’ve never given up.
In fact, I’ve sometimes published articles about mistakes to avoid in business precisely because I’d made them myself, or was making them at that very moment.
As for investing, honestly, I’m good at it because my motto is: “Better to be wrong and not make money than to be wrong and lose money.” I know it sounds like a line from a Wall Street movie, but the truth is I don’t like risk, and I try to make stock market investing a safe investment. When I don’t see things clearly, I’m the first to close positions and move into fixed-income products until the storm passes.
Like anyone, I can’t be good at everything, and my weak spot seems to be interacting on social media. I’ve been advised that, to give a more professional, more serious image, I should open my own Twitter account to talk with users, and use the blog’s account solely and exclusively to post links to the articles we publish.
According to the experts, that would give our blog a more serious, more professional image in the eyes of users. The problem is that, besides not having the time or the desire to manage two accounts, THAT’S NOT ME. I don’t usually have much time, but when I do, I like interacting with users. In fact, some of them are practically friends by now. I like to joke around, and sometimes I even get into controversial topics, which translates into losing followers. I just hope those people weren’t following me for my taste in music or my opinions on abortion, politics or religion.
What I think of a movie star, or of a member of parliament (or one under indictment), doesn’t take an ounce of credibility away from how good or bad I may be at the subject I write about on the blog. I’m no “Judas”, and I’ll always say what I think, simply because, like every other Twitter user, behind an icon, a name or a brand there’s a flesh-and-blood person, not a robot, a guru or a god. It doesn’t matter whether that person has 400,000 followers or 10: there’s a person there, and in the case of big networks, as many as 15 people running the same account. Besides, kissing up was never my thing, although I respect those who enjoy it.
I won’t name the brand in question, but about a month ago something happened that made me laugh. An “icon” from a website, let’s say a reasonably successful one among Spanish sites, started following me. I asked them a question, and not only did they not answer, they unfollowed me. They got scared. They must have thought something like: “My God! An icon that talks!”
Well, to me, that person, icon or brand showed not only a great deal of arrogance and stupidity, but also a huge lack of respect, because those of us who don’t see ourselves as “pop stars” usually answer and sometimes ask questions. In other words, we talk normally, like flesh-and-blood people. If giving a more serious image means I have to stop being myself, I’m sorry, but I’d rather give a less serious one.
If I ever turn into something like that, please do me a favor and let me know.
And to those who consider themselves gurus, with all fondness and affection: there are professionals who can help you get over that kind of complex, which in some cases comes from some kind of trauma or is a defense against an inferiority complex 😉
Featured image: JD Hancock, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
