This is the first article I’m writing for TIMES8. And what you’re about to read will likely never be shared on LinkedIn.
I want to create a clear distinction between those who consume ideas and those who want to understand what sits behind them. The philosophy. The decisions. The mistakes. The way I see career and money.
Here, it’s just me. The version of me in a tank top and flip-flops at any time of the day, probably with an espresso sitting next to me. And with very little filter.
The completely unfiltered version only exists in person. And if you ever repeat anything you hear, I’ll deny it.
For those who have worked with me, I’ve never been someone who hesitates to speak. To disagree. To challenge. To recognize when something is done well. Not always in the most corporate-friendly way, I admit.
But what would probably surprise most of those people is that there was still a filter. Yes, there was. Less than what corporate environments expect, but far more than what I actually thought.
I’ve always had strong opinions about how things work inside large multinational companies. And over the years, I started noticing patterns that repeated themselves with uncomfortable consistency.
Politics overriding merit.
Relationships overriding merit.
And, depending on how things evolve, merit becoming irrelevant altogether.
Promotions that only make sense to those who signed off on them.
Dismissals no one can clearly explain.
Consistent performers leaving, while others move forward without delivering at the same level.
At the time, I didn’t have the structure to organize these thoughts. But the feeling was already there.
Across more than 20 years working across different regions and cultures, I’ve witnessed situations that could easily fill a book. Maybe one day.
With that context in place, we get to the central point of this article: was there a moment when that discomfort turned into certainty? A real inflection point. A seed that, years later, would shape how I see career, income, and personal sovereignty?
It took me more than a decade to fully organize that answer.
At the time, I had no clarity about what was changing. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it logically. But looking back now, it’s clear that something shifted quietly. Internally. A change in how I defined what it really means to “do well.”
Until then, success meant building a solid corporate career: joining a strong company, learning, delivering, going slightly beyond expectations, getting promoted, and repeating the cycle.
Eventually, you get there.
And it worked. For years. It worked well enough for me to believe that was simply how things unfolded.
Until it stopped working.
The year was 2013. I was in my third year at Avon.
It was my first real experience leading a team in a demanding environment. I had replaced someone who had been let go for performance. There was pressure from the market, leadership changes, system implementation, uncertainty, and difficult decisions right from the start.
And we delivered.
I built a strong team. We transformed key indicators in the fragrance category. Service, inventory, cost. The balance started to come together.
I promoted people. We were recognized. We became a reference inside the company.
We had support to keep moving forward. And even though some egos around us were uncomfortable, the environment created by the new director favored those who delivered, challenged, and pushed boundaries. Exactly the kind of environment that drives people to grow.
First year: rating 2.
Second year: acceleration.
More results. More recognition.
Rating 1, reserved for a very small percentage of people who exceed expectations across the board.
Looking around, even beyond my own team, I saw talent emerging everywhere. Everything pointed to continuity.
But nothing is more constant than changes you don’t control.
It was then announced that there would be a change in the presidency of Avon Brazil, as part of a broader leadership restructuring in Latin America.
And with that came something familiar to anyone who has been through it: new people, new priorities, and new circles of trust forming before any real evaluation of what already existed.
The new president announced a change in the Supply Chain leadership. He would bring someone he had worked with before in Avon Colombia.
That led to the departure of the current director, who had spent the previous two years building structure, improving the environment, and delivering results.
Soon after, some of my peers started leaving as well. By choice.
I didn’t fully understand their reasons at the time. They had been around longer. They knew what was coming. I still believed performance was enough.
My previous experience at Bosch, across Brazil and South Africa, had been stable. It hadn’t prepared me for an environment where politics could shift quickly and reshape people’s reality.
The day I met the new director, he reviewed my background, asked which football team I supported, realized it was the same as his, and said jokingly:
“We should promote this guy immediately.”
That was probably the only time we shared a spontaneous smile.
A couple of months later, already starting to understand what was happening around me, I went on vacation.
When I came back three weeks later, someone else was in my role.
Sitting in my chair, leading my team.
No warning. No conversation. No prior alignment.
I was called into a meeting and told this was “for my own good.” I was being given an opportunity to prove myself in a new context, within a project that went in the opposite direction of everything that had been built until then.
In practice, I was being moved into a role with no real authority, while internal dynamics, driven by existing relationships, reshaped the team.
The gap between what is said and what actually happens became impossible to ignore.
The energy I had before disappeared. The sense of purpose faded. What had once felt like a place of construction turned into an environment of slow erosion.
A few months later, I was let go.
No clear data. No real discussion. Just vague explanations and one final sentence that stayed with me:
“I’m sure you’ll become a great director one day.”
Up until that point, I believed consistent performance created some form of protection.
It doesn’t.
You can deliver. You can build. You can be recognized. But you don’t control the context you operate in. And when that context shifts, everything can be rewritten faster than you can react.
At that moment, I had already made significant financial commitments. Among other decisions, I had just bought an apartment close to the office. I was positioned for the long term.
Being let go simply wasn’t part of the scenarios I had considered.
Three weeks later, I had four job offers. Two of them from senior managers who had left before me.
The team was strong. The market recognized that.
Financially, I didn’t go backwards. Quite the opposite.
But that’s not the point.
My mental model had broken.
Treating a corporate career as a stable destination had become, to me, a dangerous assumption.
A career is not a destination.
It is a tool.
It was during that period, between 2011 and 2013, that something started to form. No name. No method. No clear structure. But a very clear direction.
If the game can change without warning, relying entirely on it is not a strategy.
Years later, that experience would evolve into the Lumena Method and the Leeway Method. The first inspired by environments where leadership structure drives growth and performance. The second shaped by moments where control was clearly not in my hands.
From that point on, my relationship with career, income, and decision-making changed.
It became clear that the goal is not simply to grow within the system, but to build something that does not depend entirely on it.
Build margin. Build options. Build control over your own decisions over time.
Today, I call this personal sovereignty.
Back then, it was just a feeling I couldn’t ignore.
If you still see your career as a destination, it may be worth pausing. Not to agree with me, but to answer, honestly, a simple question:
If your context changes tomorrow, how much of what you decide is actually still yours?