Becoming a “T-Shaped” Professional

Episode Transcript

Kelly: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. I’m Kelly Ryan Bailey, and this season, we’re talking all about The Great Resignation. The global pandemic disrupted so much for so many, and one of the largest effects has been on where, when, why, and how we make a living. We’re taking a look at why people have been shifting jobs, paths, and careers at such an accelerated rate and how leaders from different industries are navigating this challenging time. Hope you enjoy this episode.

Hey skills nerds, with me today is Peter A Cabral. Peter is a faculty member on Digital Mobility Future of Cities and Disruption at Singularity University. He is also the Managing Partner at Mount Olive Partners, a serial entrepreneur, author, and a startup business advisor in the areas of urban [00:01:00] mobility, disruptive technologies, big data and artificial intelligence.

I was really looking forward to having Peter on the show after our first discussion, where I learned about his bicycle sharing business in Brazil and Argentina. And we went down a rabbit hole on the topic of future mobility and smart cities. Thank you so much for joining us today, Peter.

Peter: You’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kelly: So I wanted to go ahead and kick us off just by hearing a little bit more Peter, on how you got started in this, is it the mobility industry? Is that how you would refer to it?

Peter: Indeed, the transportation, public transportation, mobility industry. I was working in several projects related with cities, censoring data, censoring data generation, things such as parking enforcement, data management, speeding enforcement, data control, vehicle control, vehicle access.

 When you speak about cities and when you study cities and when you work big [00:02:00] projects for cities, everything is sort of integrated. And I was sort of like at the very early start that led to the digitalization of public services. So that was incredibly exciting for me.

The very first opportunities that I saw were directly related with public safety and mobility was directly linked to that. And data generation and the utility or the consideration of data or utilization of data as a real tool, a business tool, something that could potentially improve people’s lives. Something that could potentially generate businesses, generate opportunities.

So we’re at the very early start of all of that. And I noticed that cities were incredibly great in a lot of cultures mainly pivoting on individual forms of transportation. Particularly motorized transportation. And when you look at big cities, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San [00:03:00] Francisco and certainly South America and Europe and Africa and Asia and so forth.

I saw that there was a tremendous opportunity in turning cities, in what I call a sweeter mobility concept. A concept where folks would, and this is an expression that I use often, and folks would sort of like occupy public space and generate a social development and social opportunity in terms of whether it’s linked to cultural development or cultural activities or even economic development.

And I truly believed in that and my vision was perhaps the bicycle, a simple, you know, vehicle that we’re all accustomed to could potentially be a tremendous form of transformation when you talk about, you know, midsize, large mega city development concept. And at that particular moment, when I started to study bicycle sharing and sharing opportunities in general, there weren’t many opportunities or there weren’t many projects worldwide. Forget about the US or North [00:04:00] America or even South America.

The only project that folks knew about that was actually sort of under development was in Paris and you know, Paris was a different sort of city. It was a city that was already accustomed to concepts where pedestrians have their place in city development, city concept, or urban development concept. In New York and other cities in North America, South America were extremely far from that.

But I did trust, you know, we could potentially lose with something really cool about it, you know, in terms of deploying the bicycle as a form of transportation and start educating folks on sharing as opposed to ownership. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite get the financial resources to make it happen in New York City, but curiously, I connected with some folks in South America and we managed to make it happen in Rio. So I locked my door to my apartment and just moved to Rio and made it happen.

Kelly: That is so interesting. I mean, it’s so to think back, you know, as [00:05:00] someone also that grew up near New York City, just to think back when the bicycle sharing wasn’t a thing. It’s hard to remember actually now, but I’m sure there’s a lot you can tell us when it came to the infrastructure of that city and now these other cities that you’ve worked with and what was the undertaking, the idea of just why the bicycle to begin with? And then also, you know, what were the layers underneath? Let’s try to make bicycle and bicycle sharing a thing. What else would need to be changed so that folks could actually navigate the city scapes on a bicycle?

Peter: Wonderful. Yeah, I mean the cultural aspect, irrespective of geography. Right. Irrespective of whether you’re talking about the mega cities, such as Rio de Janeiro or a mega city like Saint Paul or New York City, Paris, Madrid. The cultural aspect with regards to why would I share, right?

This is prior to Uber, right? So we’re talking about, [00:06:00] Uber was the largest evangelizer you know, when it comes to sharing economy, right. I mean, cause it’s something so present in our daily lives, but this was way before. We’re talking about 2011, 2010. Technologically, even though you didn’t quite have the technology or the tools to even deploy apps, So you were still working on WAP solutions, access protocols, or wireless access protocols that could actually port that technology onto a mobile phone.

Mobile phones or smartphones weren’t necessarily as common as they are today. Right? I mean in certain cities that I currently work other projects, for example some in Paula Rio, you have more smartphone shifts and actually people living in the city, right? I mean, that’s how propagated and how common those technologies are today, that wasn’t the case back then. So the cultural aspect was key. You know, we had to evangelize and convince folks that [00:07:00] sharing was important and that sharing was the pillar.

Whereas you start to care for not only your potential, the other user, they will also contribute to your wellbeing while utilize the system, because if you take care of the bicycle today and eventually take care of the bicycle tomorrow, and you start to develop a certain habit, you get to the point where you get off your subway stop and you need to have a bicycle to go to school.

Well, you need to have a bicycle to go to work. So you want to have that dependability and reliability on the system, and you understand at a very early stage that that doesn’t rely solely on you. Other folks also have to take care of the bicycle sharing program, the asset as a bicycle, as a vehicle.

And that’s sort of starts to click and people start to do wonderful, wonderful things. And that’s contagious. Contagious is an interesting term now, you know, the middle of what we’re living today in terms of COVID, but we saw it at a [00:08:00] very early stage that doing good makes someone else, and if you manifest that onto a city wide environment, socially, that is you actually incentivize someone else to do as good or even more so better than you did. Right?

So that person, when you pick up a bicycle at a subway stop and you cycle onto your university, your public school, or your office and you clean it after you’re done and you attach the bicycle onto the station, if someone else sees that, cause the demand was so high, that folks would actually line up and wait for an available bicycle.

Right? So they see you taking care of the bicycle and they’re like, wow, he needs that bike, I need this bike. Right. And that’s such a beautiful feeling. So that cultural aspect is very important. Folks start to understand that you can actually have access to things and not necessarily own things.

[00:09:00] Right? So in the United States and even more so in Brazil, the very first sharing experience, as an integrated piece of what we call today the sharing economy, was the bicycle experience. The bicycle sharing experience. So if you think about in cultural terms and in terms of developing a certain habit, socially that is, if there was a failed experience, chances are that other solutions that didn’t quite make sense at the time would perhaps fail as well.

So I knew that I had a tremendous responsibility in turning key, the cultural aspect, because I knew that we were at the brink of doing something really big. And I knew that the sharing economy was here to stay. Once we started to convince folks in cities like Rio de Janeiro, and this is not necessarily attached to geography or Rio as a tropical city and you don’t see the same thing.

You know, every city has its own [00:10:00] particularities.

And we see this with every sort of sharing experience, whatever the solution may be. Folks start to understand that while sharing, while promoting access, you’re building something really big because you’re actually building on a concept of civic concept, a concept of collective sharing, collective care for the city, collective care for others.

And while you do that, and folks start to utilize the bicycle as a true means of transportation, and they start to integrate the bicycle with other modals, whether that’s the bus, whether that’s the subway, or whether it’s a form of individual transportation, we’ve seen folks riding their cars or motorized vehicle, motorcycle, onto a certain spot, and then they would get a bicycle to do their last leg.

And that happens in such an organic fashion, it just makes so much sense. So once you evangelize a city at a social [00:11:00] level, you have to work on the public service, public policy aspect side of it, you know. And then you have to develop tools, whereas public services and public entities develop an educational angle, whereas not all you incentivize the utilization of the bicycle, but you also provide the tools.

So one can do so in a fairly safe fashion. Talking about New York City now, for example, prior to the internet.com explosion, they were experiencing worldwide and certainly New York sort of transformed itself after that. I mean, we all remember the cyclers and the bikers that were delivering messages and packages in New York City.

And honestly, as familiar as I was with a bicycle as a form of transportation, I knew that I could not dialogue, I could not feel safe in a bicycle. As comfortable as I was in an [00:12:00] urban environment, such as New York back then, I just knew it. I couldn’t. And very few people could actually venture and utilize the bicycle in a sophisticated city, like New York City in 2008, 2007, 2010, as a true form of transportation.

The city just wasn’t friendly to do so. So you have to work very strongly in parallel to the social aspect. So you develop public policy and when you develop public policy, you also develop tools, bike lanes for example, areas where you do some traffic calming, right? So you reduce speeding in certain areas of the city or at certain times, right. And this is, again, this is not a phenomena that we see in New York.

I saw this in Rio. I saw this in Saint Paolo Brasilia, Beunos Aeris, other big mega mega cities in South America. And you bring other things as well. You bring public lighting for example, you bring other benefits, things that will make [00:13:00] folks feel comfortable out at night. Things that will make folks in cities like Rio de Janeiro feel comfortable getting off your university at 10:00 PM. Walking, getting a bicycle, riding their bicycle onto a hub and getting onto a subway or a bus to get home.

Right? So we already have two elements, city and the cultural social aspect. That third pillar, let’s just call it financing, it’s essential. We’re very lucky to work with incredible visionary governments and incredible public leaders, public elected officials, that really saw an opportunity in transforming their cities.

And you work legal tools. You work legal instruments that will allow you to produce, administer, provide a service at zero cost or zero investment from the [00:14:00] public sector. For example, I developed, and this was one of the very first experiences even prior to city, in New York city, I developed a concept where, and this case was actually a bank. The bank would sponsor the program, sponsor the bicycles.

You see this grew in Saint Paulo. And again, this is not directly tied to a particular geography. Whereas you had certain rules, they don’t one must abide to, in order to advertise or provide a message public, or deliver a message to the public through a piece of public furniture.

For example, a bus stop or public clock. So the rules were very clear about that. The city would in turn offer to the public sector, the opportunity to advertise, the opportunity to connect with the consumer society or the public in general. So [00:15:00] was sort of a creative offset which, generated, or let’s just say formulated, the investment public sector the sponsorship branding sort of model that ended up being a reference in other countries.

This were the three essential pillars that were key to make it happen and to have the experiences that we have today, 10 years plus later.

Kelly: As you were describing the what really struck me was that this sort of process what you’re describing especially something so new like that, first of all, to me, it crosses over industries. Like this seems me like you could take this into any area of innovation that you’re working on, right?

I mean, especially those early days when it is a brand new concept when infrastructure isn’t available, when the data and technology isn’t there, when people’s minds [00:16:00] just aren’t ready to accept this idea, right? That’s always that first stage of innovation. And what I love to hear is as you went on with this experience, with this journey, you know, there was so much other innovation that came because totally new path, no one ever went in this direction before.

So you had to sort of like figure things out. And the things today that we completely take for granted, you know, sharing, obviously, as you said, was completely new through this bicycle experience. But nowadays, you know, we think of like how many of us out there are sharing in a fashion sense. Like we’ll rent clothing when we go to certain locations or for work or whatever.

Like there is so much that has done in my mind, especially during that timeframe that has changed a lot of the way that we live, because you spent that early moment in time. You know, you had already been thinking, this could change the way people think about community.

This could change the way they think about sharing. My mind blown, so I really am [00:17:00] so thankful that you shared that.

Peter: No, I’m so thankful for the, you’re right on point. I mean, I really did have that vision. I really thought that, you know, democratizing access to alternative forms of transportation would make cities friendlier. We see it now, the end result is what we see today. And you know, just going back to your initial comment, that single area we have, you know, the sixties of sure you’re familiar with the framework. And you know, so we have visualization as the very first step, and then we have deception. Then we have disruption. Then when we have the monetization. Then we have materatization, and democritization. Right. I saw a real opportunity to digitizing public services. No one really trusted, no one really thought that you could change the way that a big city like Rio or Saint Paulo, or you know, other cities throughout the world could actually or adopt the bicycle or adopt a [00:18:00] sharing solution an alternative form of transportation, but then you make it happen.

So then you have a proven concept that could be utilized across the segments as you very well put. And you sort of like paved the way for other solutions, such as Uber and Ifood and other services that rely on the very same concept.

And as you do so, you show people out of the things different. And these new businesses there started to monetize other businesses, take money away from businesses that were from the analogic culture. So pre digitization, right. And that’s sort of a change that we see throughout the world that It doesn’t stop.

It’s exponential. And then you start to dematerialize things, things lose physical concept or the physical aspect or link that we had prior. And that’s really what I study and I contribute and I look forward to doing [00:19:00] at a city-wide environment.

Kelly: I feel like you just described the perfect steps to take if you want to be a social impact entrepreneur or intrepreneur right. I think like leading the way in innovation doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be your own business anymore. Right. There’s so many different ways to define that.

But I think of, as you were just saying that, I was starting to think of the changes that are being made in the world based on the innovation that’s happening, not only in mobility, but then like you said, how it started to expand out. Right. I mean, I’m sure part of your thoughts had to do with Taking care of the environment when it came to automobiles versus bicycles.

But then you start to think of the community and the aspect around, you know, that sort of involvement, which also breeds additional innovation, as we all know, like it’s just there’s so many pieces to this, and that might seem a little heavy to some of our listeners, but I really find that fascinating when [00:20:00] you go down this road of trying to figure out something, that’s a completely, I say road, I mean, this is like the unpaved road, right? I mean, this is like you went down direction that no one else had gone down. You know, this podcast of course is about skills. You’re also a teacher.

So you probably have a lot of insight into, what about you, you know, maybe if we could even talk about specific skills, but I say it’s about you cause skills sometimes are really more about, you know, your right. What about you was something that was just great at making you able to go down this uncharted path?

Peter: Great question. You know, Kelly, I often reflect a lot about the person that I am today and I’ll talk about these two things. I’ll talk about being a generalist and I’ll talk about being the centralist, but I want to take it to the onset and you know, I was born in a a war torn country.

We were expectorated, I [00:21:00] left the country as a kid and you know, conditions of unrest and just civil conflict. We moved to Portugal, I was very young. My parents weren’t Portuguese. They were born in Angola, or my father was born in Angola.

My mother was Portuguese. You know, and they just didn’t quite get accustomed to, I guess, Portugal as a country. Couple of years later, they ended up splitting, divorced. I was raised by my grandparents and then eventually made it to the United States as a teenager. And why am I telling you this?

Cause, you know, I reflect a lot about that. I reflect a lot about the world that I knew, the world that was shown to me, the world that was taught to me at school, the world that I saw on TV, or I heard about it on the radio or that I saw in the very few movies that I had access to, was a world of scarcity.

 And you know, that’s the world that I knew.

And then the world was local. The world was linear. The world was [00:22:00] small, analogic. And more so, the little village that I in Portugal, probably about 50,000 folks live in that city at the time. And One of the things that I’m sure they make a big difference today, and they made a big difference in my upbringing in early teenager years, academic years and professional years, is that I always try to be a bit of a generalist.

But in the good sense, not in the sense that you know too many things, but you ended up not knowing anything.

But in the sense where you learn things and you seek for truth and you seek for wisdom, you seek for knowledge, and you have this sense where you understand what’s valuable about this and that. And you end up being able to cross reference things and connect the dots. And when you do that, I started to realize that not only [00:23:00] you could potentially become analytical in your particular vertical of knowledge, but once you could bridge that at the very early stage prior to the .com days, when I started to understand more so the potential of digital technologies, and I understood that the world was getting smaller politically, socially, economically.

I knew that not only had to be really good at analyzing and understanding things, but you also have to be really good at cross referencing things and connecting the dots. Cause that’s really what could turn you into a critical powerhouse.

Once you become critical about something, and once you learn how to criticize something, you learn how to improve something. Better something. Design something. All of that, in sort of like a consolidated fashion makes you creative and makes you a solution [00:24:00] provider. Someone that seeks answers where others in their vertical see the problem.

So how many verticals of expertise do you have to have in order to find one, two or three problems? Well, you need as many verticals of expertise as you potentially need to solve that problem. That seems simple. But if you have the ability to cross reference, connect the dots and really understand in a multidisciplinary fashion how to do so, you really get a sense of leadership. You’re leading. You’re a thought leader, and you’re not only looking up down or down up, you’re looking outside of your organization. You’re looking outside of your business group community, you become a leader and a visionary.

You have to study, you have to prove yourself wrong every single day. You have to fail. You have to fail again. You fell better, you fell faster, you fell forward. It’s a never ending cycle of failure, accomplishment, [00:25:00] what is it that I have to improve? What is it that I know that I should know more about?

 What is it that I don’t know that I don’t know? Right. That’s really important. You knowing what you don’t know, and you being okay about that, and creating space for you to learn that.

Always learning. Adults also need to learn. Adults also need to study. We come from a system where we think that, we study, we go to our normal, you know, studying academic lives, wherever has that opportunity to do so, wherever does not have that opportunity, or there’s not want to seek to a certain degree of specialty, in technical specialty or craft.

You know, and then we set ourselves for deontological boring life. I’m going to work this, I’m going to do this for the next 25, 30 years of my life. And that’s epic, I’m going to retire and I’m going to move to Miami. Right. You know, I’m 47 years old now. And [00:26:00] that’s not the life I want for myself.

That’s not the life I’ll teach my two kids. That’s the life that was stopped to me. That’s life I saw my parents living. So lifelong learning and that appetite for knowledge really starts within, and there’s an implied disruption, self disruptive, associated with that.

When I say generalist, there’s actually a term that I liked better, which is the T-shaped professional. So you have the T, the vertical line and horizontal line, And that’s exactly what it is. You have that depth, but you also have the width. I like the T-shaped professional better than the generalist. Cause people don’t know that a generalist was actually, you know, the guys that we study about and the guys that we venerate today, were all generalists. Davinci was a he was a true polymath. And we don’t teach them in school anymore.

We think that polymaths is something that’s just, you know, a good freak of nature that happens once in a million whatever, or one guy or another guy, or we could all [00:27:00] be polymath, and we could all reach for that level of wisdom and collective knowledge, if we really bring that onto an awareness level that we lost way back.

So, and the other thing is the essential aspect of it. an essential list is very key. And this is something that I struggled with. This is something that I’ve learned more so in my adult years. And that I still struggle. But it’s key. And it’s through the struggle that I find the wisdom and I find the truth and I find the strength to continue in being innovative, which is to be essentialist enough, simple enough in your way of thinking and your thought process, whereas you focus on today.

And while focusing on today, you that you’re a collection of experiences, by default you own everything that you’ve [00:28:00] experienced. You don’t need to relive all of that. But you do need to know where you come from and what your experiences were because that conditions you to choose in your first principles when you approach a problem, what is it that I’m going to solve this problem.

And sometimes the answer is so convoluted. Because very seldomly, we are essential enough to think about it today. And we’re always projecting, you know, how is this going to impact or create or this or that or tomorrow, you know. And I find that that when we ground ourselves in today, I know it sounds a bit philosophical, but this is your first principle formula to solve a problem.

You need to solve a problem that hurts today. And your solution is only as good and as competitive as you can actually replicate that and offer sustainability to your solution. Whether that’s tomorrow or the day after. So in your first principle approach, when you [00:29:00] think about the root of the problem, when you think about the cause of the problem, and if you isolate that today, your mindset is one where you’ll find the right tool and you’ll find that approach to actually deploy a sustainable solution that provides real value.

So those are the key two things that I value and that I think are important. And that define me as a person. The other stuff, it’s all, you know, I don’t want to say cliche, but you know, it’s the same thing that we hear everywhere.

You’ve got to be resilient, you’ve got to have discipline, you got to show up every day. Strength, inner peace, the mentality, the mindset needs to be there, but at the end of the day, those are tools, right?

The framework, the groundwork, what really sustains that, it’s the two things that I just told you about. Does that make sense?

Kelly: Yes, it totally makes sense. And I’m so happy you even shared going back to your upbringing, because I often find [00:30:00] that a really interesting aspect into the way that we see life today and the way that we with whatever our professional and personal journey looks like. And so I really appreciate you’ve shared.

I think there’s so many nuggets of information in there. You know, I am sure that people will be taking away a huge amount of value from those descriptions. To me, when you something like that, that’s actually so tangible, as opposed to that, you know, sort of those cliche things that are like, ah, yes, the planets aligned and, you know, I was successful.

It’s more, there are actual things, you know, there’s an actual, you just made it feel like something could understand and potentially walk through. So I really appreciate that. It is no surprise to me at all, that you decided to add teaching to your whole slew repertoire portfolio of [00:31:00] things. How did you decide to go down that path and why singularity?

Peter: Well that the message that I read or that I understood, or that it was delivered by single area was the most straightforward message that I have yet to hear it or that I have yet to experience. You know, it’s almost one of those things.

Yeah. I knew that, yeah, it makes sense. And it’s almost like I needed that. I needed to understand that our world is not local anymore. It’s global. Our world is not linear, it’s exponential. I needed to understand that. The opportunity, the abundance and the prosperity and when I talk about prosperity, it’s not like our founder talks about, Peter Diamandis, it’s not a life of luxury for all. It’s just a life of opportunity. It’s a life of one having the opportunity to Excel and do what he likes to do. And be a real driver of change, whether that’s in his family, his community, society, country, worldwide. I mean, we all pick our fights. [00:32:00] We all have our fights, but we have the luxury of picking them and singularity, his message was exactly that.

He said, listen technologists, folks that understand technology, folks that understand the digital world, folks that understand the social aspects and the philosophical aspects associated with the employment of technology, because these are real drivers of change. So if we drive change society, need to think about things such as social impact.

We need to think about philosophy. We need to think about the philosophy of technology. You know, we need to think about the social aspects of the points, certain pieces of technology. right? And that was really the only outlet that, that message came across really clear to me. So the fascination started there.

I sought the opportunity to become, you know, an expert and I was lucky and fortunate to [00:33:00] participate in a selected process. And that’s when things sort of like consolidated and started to make sense. With regards to my seeking to share my view, my seeking to, and I don’t call it solely teaching, but just sharing my view.

It’s cause I really think that there are space, there’s plenty of space for folks that not only can dissect something to you from a first principle standpoint, but can show you in a constructive fashion how you engineer that particular solution and all how that solution can drive a business, can drive change in society, and how that solution makes you see better Oh that solution can be, you know, migrated to the cities. How is it that we can shape government around that solution, the future of governance, how is it that we can impact our lives. [00:34:00] Right. Which SDG resonates with you? What is the sustainable development goal that you think about every day?

 Everything that I do, I worry about energy. I worry about energy consumption. I mean, we have to think about as a consumer, whereis this particular asset going after I’m done with it? Recycling is not enough.

I mean, we were raised thinking, recycle, recycle, you know? That’s great. But we started way too, way too late on that. Now we have to be conscientious about, do I need two, do I need three of those? Where’s that going after I’m done with it? Science materials, are these the strongest, the best materials that we can make more friendly in our environment?

The company that I’m buying the stuff from, let me read about that company. And I’m not sure if I like that company. If I like their values, if I care for their mission, they just seem to be a little, you know, I don’t think they care too much about me or my community or my country [00:35:00] or the resources that my country has to offer the world.

So these are things that we’re more conscientious about today. How sustainable, resilient, safe, more humane communities, cities, societies, countries ?? I mean, this is the urban century, right? There’s about 55 or 60% of the world living in big cities now.

And by 2030, 2050, we’ll have 75%. We have every year, there’s two or three, four more mega cities popping up, right? If you continue to do so, architecture 2030 says that by 2030, if we continue to grow, it’s expected that we’ll have a new city popping up every single month for the next 40, 50 years.

Kelly: An interesting concept for sure to think about things that way. And I love, know, when you even described the knowledge sharing as part of your work with [00:36:00] singularity, I love how you describe it that way, because I think all of us can think through our various educational experiences.

And there may have been some times within those educational experiences where we wished that the person sharing their knowledge or teaching us something or where we were learning with someone that had been through that experience. You know, I think there’s just a lot to say about that and a different way to share and absorb that information when someone can really walk that. I have lot of teachers say they learn as much from their students as their students learn from them. Have your students taught you anything?

Peter: Indeed. I mean, everyone that I talked to whether within the singularity environment or business associates, stakeholders that I interact with. I mean, I treat everyone as a student and I put myself in a teacher position also. So I’m also a teacher and a student. And I learned a great deal on my day to day basis.

I don’t see myself talking from a [00:37:00] pulpit, you know, speaking or the owner of truth or the owner of this or the owner of that. But I’m provocative. I may not have the best idea in the room every single time, but you ought to prove me wrong. You ought to prove me that your idea is the best in the room. That your thesis is the best in the room.

And I’m going to come up with some serious stuff defend my thesis and not because I’m a Singularity University faculty or expert, or because I’m expected to know this or know that because I put myself in a position to learn and I expose myself also.

But also there’s a sense of frankness and there’s a sense of I don’t need the embellishment of the message. There’s a Latin expression.

Fun is the siliceous, she’s bread circus. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the truth. And I know that sometimes folks just want bread and circus, right. Cause that’s what makes them happy. And that’s what makes them [00:38:00] think about, you know it’s all worth it. I think otherwise. I think that for you really understand where you’re at and for you to really understand where you’re going, you need to make an impact.

You need to learn the truth and you need to study the truth and you need to seek things that really create impact and that generate development. Right.

Kelly: I have just a few more questions for you here, Peter. I wanted to ask, you know, what’s the future look like for you and has the pandemic shifted any of those plans?

Peter: You know, the future is the brightest ever. And I’m certainly not a Pollyanna. Okay. I’m certainly not a rose color glass type of guy. But there are certain key points, and there are certain readings and certain elements that proved to me a couple of, you know, absolute truths that are the best ever. For example, we’ve sorta diminished world hunger to a [00:39:00] margin of more so around 10%. I mean, yes, it’s still a lot, but if you look at in the early eighties, in the early nineties, we had more than 35% of the world’s population living with less than a dollar, 92 cents.

We have an incredible amount of liberal, governments, as a political scientist. We have democracies established worldwide. We have folks that have freedom of speech. We have folks that are engaging their local communities, developing businesses. solutions. Getting money to do so.

We have yet to have as much money to fuel digital economy or any other economy as we’ve seen in the past. We have knowledge at the fingertips just about, I’m not even going to say early adults, I’m going to say pre-teen or teenager worldwide. So these are all some really, really, really interesting data points that we must not emit.

So when you [00:40:00] look at all of that, and you look at some of the technologies that are being developed, you can’t think but great things about the human being. I think that us humans will be seriously ticked off by certain technologies and will be provoked so in a positive fashion, by certain technology.

Then it will understand that there are certain things that technology could potentially do better than us today. So what is it that we can do that a of technology or an algorithm can’t do? I mean, I’ll sum it up to one thing, being human, exactly what is it that I told you at the very early stage.

Being critical, being analytical, connecting the dots, it with empathy, caring for the world for your civilization. You know, are a civilization. And finally, we’re seeing ourselves as a civilization and the future is bright for the ones that understand that technology’s here a great, phenomenal tool targeting [00:41:00] targeting to seek solutions for our greatest problems we will solve our greatest problems.

We’ll generate capital solve our greatest problems. And we will, consequently become even so more human because we have machines now that are telling us that there are certain things there we don’t really do as well as machines. We’re not as robotic or as automated or as precise, we are critical and we are inventive and we are creative and we ought to that free in every single being in this world.

Kelly: think that is such a positive message at all. The future is bright. There are still some problems to solve, but it is doable. And I love that you even say this, that you’re not even the rose colored glasses kind of person. And I’m like, I can’t even imagine what you would have said if you were, but Peter, thank you so much for joining us today.

There [00:42:00] are so many, you know, I’m just like thinking of course of all these wonderful sound bites, the quotes that we’ll pass on from our conversation today, that others will just look to. I’m someone who keeps quotes all over my desk and I’m already thinking of a couple of choice ones from our conversation today that will keep me inspired and will join my wall that no one can see here that I’m pointing to in front of me.

For all of you who would like to follow on Peter’s journey, as he continues into this bright future, you can find him on LinkedIn. He is also on Instagram at peter_cabral, and you can find some additional information at mountolivepartners.com. And we will go ahead and link his information from Singularity into the show notes, as well as all of the information on the episode on the website. So make sure to check that out. Again, Peter, thank you so much.

Hope you have a great day.

 Thanks for tuning in to Let’s Talk [00:43:00] About Skills, Baby, a Growth Network Podcasts production. If any part of this episode resonated with you, we would love for you to share it with a friend or colleague who might feel the same. Feel free to reach out to me at Kelly Ryan Bailey on social and learn more about the great events and initiatives we have coming up at skillsbaby.com. Thanks again for spending some time with me and most importantly, have a great day.