Friday, November 5th, 2021, 10:30 (Argentina Time), 45 minutes: “collaborative workshops – team”
That was the invite description of what would then be the best meeting of our lives; at least of the ones we’ve had so far (we hope there are many more meetings like this one). 🙏🏼
Out of the 5 guests of the meeting, there was one person, “Luis”, who we hadn’t met. And the reason for the meeting was that he could meet Say Hi! to assess the possibility of collaborating and working in projects within the organization he belongs to.
There were high levels of anxiety, and uncertainty. It was our first meeting with this international organization (we can’t name it, but it is a big, big one, at global scale).
We carefully prepared that meeting, thinking about all the details: “It has to be friendly with a human side”, said one of us, “with tears in our eyes”, added another one, and we cracked up. Regarding the “human side”, we only got ourselves to tell that we were 3 female partners, with children and that we lived in Córdoba, Argentina. After that, we started explaining what our shared interests were and what was the extent of our services. At that point, Luis asks us to go deeper into ourselves (yes, exactly what you are reading): who we were, what we did, how our children were named… Go figure… that’s when a journey of pure emotion started.
We told him about Chapu, Jaz, Martu, Carmela, and Sara and Simón (the twins). We shared with him about our passions, our enthusiasm to undertake our business despite the context. Also, we spoke of the good decisions we’d made and the lessons we’d learned, as if we were having a conversation at a cáfe, in two languages, with people we’d just met and in a context that was supposed to be a meeting to discuss our pitch deck. After we went back to talking about the pitch and the cases, it was the time for the moment of truth: feedback.
At that time Luis took the floor and with all honesty he gave us feedback that immediately put us in context: what we believed was our best pitch sale, it wasn’t (OMG!). However, with extraordinary generosity, he told us what he thought were our best differentials: Being brave enough to embark on our own business, to create something of our own in order to “give it all”, that our essence was being “interdisciplinary”, and the last point, and the kindest of all: being able to empathize with others “is something that you live as it was happening to you, and you show it.”
You can imagine that at that point we could not hide how excited we were. We couldn’t stop smiling, and we just wanted to rush all over to Washington, D.C. to give that good man a hug. Because that man, being who he was, saw us as “people”, he saw our project and helped us value what we didn’t dare to tell since we believed it wouldn’t be “interesting”.
We won. It was our best meeting ever, no doubt. We gained confidence in who we are and on what we plan together.
Magic keeps on happening ✨
Thanks, Juli, we couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, Gastón, for your trust in us and for extending networks with such generosity. Thank you, Luis, for that “coffee”, that active listening, and that invaluable feedback; we hope we have the chance to show what we are capable of doing.
Manu, Lau, and Cata.