Greetings steemers, I am Felipe Machado Founder of Cirkl, Director of Relationships and Operations at Premium Corporate and Cryptocurrency Trader.
Life is quite a brilliant journey.
Let's start from where comes to mind.
I am from the countryside of São Paulo state, which is known by the capital of the Fat Cattle.
Both parents family were players on the Cattle Industry.
When I was a kid, my dad used to watch Bloomberg tv and influenced me to keep my eye on stock prices and currencies. Making my first BRL/USD trades on my dad because I saw it going down, and him up, that with 9 years old.
Dad was very aggressive on business and Brazil wasn't in a good spot to be that aggressive back then. One of our presidents gave a call to freeze everyone's bank account, taking hold of their money. Obviously, a great part of the population broke, dad lost big time money, if weren't for that I would never be writing this story.
By bringing instability to the house, mom left him. This is where the psychological fun begins on my personality.
Dad wasn't in the agribusiness anymore, he were trading stocks on this moment. Then 2008, BOOM, down to the floor again.
Graduating high school.
Time goes on and it is time to choose a career.
By being very attached to money, lego and numbers, I needed to pick something on that circle, WHAT YOU WANT TO DO KID ? Let's start on Engineering because feels right...
Time to leave the family let's and live in the capital , so I move to São Paulo to study at a catholic university.
I hated my classmates, a bunch of kids on my concept back then, it is interesting how people on the countryside evolve some skills faster because of a closer society and public fear.
On my second year I was invited for an internship position at risk consulting firm, inside the company I had a great reach for research as I loved the financial markets. This was 2011, the same year I start looking at this new fancy strange digital coin called Bitcoin at around 7 dollars.
Mom gave me money to buy a car, but I didn't want a car, I wanted money. Time to trade. Very attached to the oil & gas industry I started trading Stock Options from the biggest oil company in my country, Petrobras, son of my dad, I liked risk. I went from 12k to 75k in three months, then from 75k to 120k in the other month, but it wasn't enough, I wanted more, the million figure, it was so easy, just giving right calls and playing smoothly, I WAS AWESOME. Some news comes up, France announced some shit blowing up, prices went down and my options goes to zero in a few minutes. I got fucked. Lost it all. Whatever, it is lost, time to move on, shall we?
I started working at a hedgefund dealing all the operations area, it was fun for some time than I got bored on the routine, time to find better stuff...
BNP Paribas called me in for a trading assistant position, that I loved it. So it is time to be a banker finally! Meetings, money and hard work.
By being so in love with money and how things were doing, hating university, I wasn't interested in that anymore so started skipping classes and it was like a snowball, I were a very critical thinker, I wanted things to be like I see them, not like others think it is ok, I wanted things to be done with excellence and perfection, so the love for working at the financial system started fading away as I see everything inside the company moving very slow because of corporation compliance.
It wasn't the bank that was driving my love, it was the money game, I liked to sit at the big table, being responsible for 6 billion dollars funds, but I need to build my own company, I don't want to be another worker, that wasn't the life I hoped. I decided to drop out of university because it was making me feel bad, the dream of engineering was over, no school ? No bank job. I had to go. I need to be an entrepreneur, I need control and autonomy.
2015 was a thinking year, I had no job, no work, nothing but time to see who am I, let's start questioning me on everything, why do I think I like this? How do I feel with my life ?
I started having panic attacks and it was very bizarre, the thought of having a heart attack with 23 years old is against the odds, I am a data guy, I can't be having that, WTF is going on brain, Damn. Researching on cure for panic attack... Found out that it was psychological, so I can deal with it with a good thinking line right ? RIGHT! Awesome let's try some mind stuff. The feeling suddenly begins. My chest started to hurt, shit, damn you panic attack, I will fight you, you motherfucker, so I start visualizing mentally what a panic attack looks like, a little pharaoh soldier with a sword walking inside my chest with bad intentions, so decide to fight him. I plant a trap and put him in a crate, the attack is way more quiet now, I feel calm.
The following days nothing comes up. Some relationship fights and feel my chest again, the soldier is trying to escape the crate, I'd better sit on the top of it. Problem fixed. New mind hack and passion discovered. Panic Attack nevermore.
As time goes on I find myself wanting to understand how things really work, taking a step toward the red pill. Looking for Spiritual Enlightenment, my life just gets more interesting each day as I start to see people as Humans and money as God.
During my time at the bank my cousin Fabricio comes back from Chile, he was at this entrepreneur Bootcamp called Exosphere. He was very motivated by the experience he had there, that I had to try... so why not ?
Hydra 3, their next Bootcamp launched, I quickly join as an early bird.
2016 begins and time to live in chile for 3 months.
Hello, Exosphere.
Exosphere HQ is in Renãca, Vinã del mar, Chile.
There I find myself living with 30 awesome people from 12 different countries, biohackers, cybersecurity, programmers, a monk, gamblers, journalists, minimalists, soccer player, cyberpunks, activists, philosophers, movie maker, photographers, designers, engineers and more, plenty of diversity. Exosphere works inside your brain as you go through it, great books and philosophy were discussed during the Bootcamp, Self-Reliance is one of the main driver, that is a fantastic life work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The blockchain and future of civilization were big topics, I started investing money on Ethereum at $1.18 in the because someone in Exosphere was all over cryptos and very passionate about Ethereum code, when I see potential I don't hesitate. Now I am a cryptocurrency trader.
On Exosphere my idea was to motivate others to believe in themselves while working on myself, I was playing the motivational speaker, this is why I started my first startup, Cirkl - Humans Growing Together, where people join to discuss their life problems with a circle of strangers, to give them other points of view and support. Now a days I see a great part of the population lost and scared, I have to do something.
While there we were being mentored by Andy Ellwood on sales workshops, he was the guy responsable for selling Waze to Google and is the Presidet at Basket App.
Back to Brazil I decided to go back to university, but not engineering again, no I can't do that right now, I need enlightenment. Psychology it is, time to master on how human mind really works. This way I can be 100% effective at Cirkl.
During my study passion, Fabricio asked for my specialties on his startup as seeing my background on data analysis, and a great interpersonal communication, now I am in charge of all the operations and relationships at Premium Corporate, a Brand Collection Company, where we are disrupting the fashion industry and making it more affordable and cooler every time, our main client is Jeep today. Our first mission is to expand the brand Jeep inside national territory thru fashion, our Jeep Gear products can be found in almost every Jeep Car Dealership in the country and on the E-Commerce, we support the FCA growth in Brazil.
I manage all types of relationships inside of Premium, dealers, clients, sales team, while developing software solutions for optimization on processes and automation.
Now I found purpose in my life, a feeling that I didn't have in a long time.
GO STEEM
Welcome aboard! thanks for sharing!
Wow Felipe, great story, I loved reading it!
I'm happy for you! :)
It's good to read you found the purpose of your life, I still feel like I didn't find mine and at 27 years old it's not a great thing to experience. I'll continue going forward and look for something that I can do for a while, but it looks to me my purpose in life is just to experiment so many different things without really completing anything and that's it.
Great history! Any difficulties aren't terrible to you. Only forward :)
cool, wang-bot got new firmware ^^