Pedro Pires

1. You are the founder and managing partner of The Loyal Advisory Company. Can you tell us a little about your role, your journey and your professional experience?

My current responsibilities, as a managing partner, are mainly to ensure the company's organizational maturity and, in another dimension, to create incremental and disruptive change that will allow Loyal to grow in an international context, from its operational bases in Brussels and Lisbon. The future will involve increasing the impact and relevance of Loyal's stakeholder management consulting services to its clients in the European market.

My professional path until today is, like everyone else, singular. Today I understand that our professional path does not begin with the choice of a higher education course, but through a process of self-knowledge that, in my case, began before. I think that from the age of 13/14 I already had some predisposition to develop my own projects or to direct a great part of my energy to "build" something. At the time of selecting a college degree, I opted for Economics, at the Faculty of Economics of Porto. The word "entrepreneurship" had not yet been massively coined in Portugal and the deepening of knowledge in economic or management matters seemed relevant to me. The structuring of critical and analytical reasoning were the assets taken from the college years.

Later, I started my career in Advertising, something that was not foreseen or planned at all. However, it was an excellent school for understanding human behavior and the incentives that drive it. Then I consolidated a consulting experience, which included strategic planning, creation and direction of an intelligence unit and, finally, business development responsibilities. I think this path was critical for my first experience of entrepreneurship to have some success soon.

2. What are the main business areas of The Loyal Advisory Company?

Loyal Advisory is a very focused company and therefore has only one business area – stakeholder management consulting, which applies strategic project resolution or operational execution. These projects tend to have a reputational, policy or behavioral change scope.

3. How did the idea of creating the company come along?

It arises from the will and risk taken by the founding partners to create a company specialized in stakeholder management in the european framework, because we understood and understand that it is an area with little expertise and few operators.

4. In what sense does The Loyal Advisory Company make innovative management?

I think Loyal seeks to innovate on three levels:

• In the consultancy it provides to its clients: we use stakeholder listening and the elements that result from it to solve business challenges;
• In the organizational dimension: since 2014, all consultants can decide autonomously where they work. That's why we call base what others call office. A base is not where the mission is executed, it is where you go when you need to train for the mission to be executed. We are, therefore, prepared and working in a network (supported by digital tools and human resources policies);
• In applying a more entrepreneurial mindset of consulting: we risk more than traditional consulting.

5. What distinguishes The Loyal Advisory Company from other consultants?

It is the use of the stakeholder management perspective to solve business problems and a more entrepreneurial and risk-oriented mindset than traditional consultancies.

6. How has the company evolved?

The company's evolution has been one of growth and consolidation of skills, processes and differentiation. We are in a more mature phase, where it is clearer to us in which projects we make the difference and where we do not create value.

7. As an entrepreneur, what challenges have you found along the way?

My conclusion, which has evolved over time, is that those who undertake tend to see things a little differently. That's why I don't review myself from the perspective of the challenges along the way because, honestly, I can't distinguish the bad moments from the victories – they are a continuum.

I would say that the main critical point for an entrepreneur is to be self-motivated. In a recent documentary, Michael Jordan claimed that at one point he made up that an opponent would have insulted him just to get ahead in the next game. I think an entrepreneur is less impacted by the reality of the facts than by the ideas/perceptions he generates and that, like Michael Jordan's example, he sometimes projects himself to be mobilized.

8. How do you see entrepreneurship today?

It seems to me that we went from eight to 80. If in my college days I was one of the first to have an entrepreneurship class, and in english, looking back it seems to me that there weren't many incentives or guidance in Portugal to undertake. An “entrepreneur” didn't have a high social recognition and that made me realize that I could only have my own company later.

However, I think I was fortunate not to live with the reverse pressure, that of having to leave college at just over 20 years of age and having to succeed immediately (nowadays mainly through technology). This pressure makes most of those who undertake don't choose to acquire critical bases before doing so. Even today I remember the recommendation of that entrepreneur teacher: “if you want to open a business, invest the first seven to eight years to get to know the sector in a relevant company in it”. I've been concluding that it's a good recipe.

9. You are also a martial arts instructor. How did your interest in this activity come along?

The interest in martial arts arises from the need to develop and overcome from the individual point of view, since the whole previous course was associated with collective sports. More recently, martial arts have become a tool for developing the leadership dimension and, through the crossing with management and consulting knowledge, they have also proved to be an important source for executive leadership training focused on stakeholders.

10. As an entrepreneur, and being PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS leader in the development and export of digital billboards and multimedia kiosks to the international market, what relevance does digital have, in your opinion, in the strategy and internationalization of a company?

Digital is, at this moment, a necessary condition for any business, but it is not a sufficient condition. I think companies should try to project the economy of the future. And the economy of the future involves predicting the behavior of the various agents.

The future will continue to be based on human behaviors that will be enhanced/supported by digital-based technology, above all. In conclusion, invest 50% in knowing/predicting behavior (e.g. Behavioral Sciences) and 50% in digital-based technology.