Goobye Solar, Hello Solar

My adventure as a renewable energy consultant in solar thermal has been short lived. But it was for a good reason. I recently started a position as Technical Manager at UNEF, the Spanish Association for Photovoltaics. So I say goodbye to solar thermal, and hello to solar PV.

 Back in February I suddenly found myself unemployed. I am happy to say that I did not panic, did not get down or depressed. I moved on to live some very fascinating months in which I reinvented myself. Looking back after a month into my new job, I realize that I managed thanks to 3 superpowers. Allow me to share them with you, in case this short story helps you in the future.

 My first super power: I am a kid of the 80's, North American style. I truly believe that things will always get better, as long as I work hard enough and as long as I have faith in myself. And it is all about songs and movies from the 80s. If I feel down, the music of ''Eye of the tiger'' pops into my brain, and I imagine that I may be down, but never down and out. Oh and I have a revitalizing, optimistic song of the 80´s for any foul mood I may fall into. So when I found myself unemployed, I did not get down, I got straight to work. I started reaching out to people that I believed I could work with, and I started doing some very new things, like working with a digital marketing company and I even started a Master in Big Data. I figured that if I was to be a consultant that already had a few years of experience, I needed to be competitive and bring new skills to the table. I was not afraid of taking on endlesss tortuous hours of learning very new things. By this I am referring to taking on coding and my master in Big Data, it was fun, but it was very hard work.

 My second super power: I listen, observe, read and learn. I try to learn from everything that surrounds me. It is an attitude, like being an eternal student. A long time ago I read the book "Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life" by Spencer Johnson. Since then I always have different potential plans traced in my head. I imagine my future like the branches of a tree, and I think of what I need to do to go up each branch. I had been thinking for years that someday I could become a consultant in renewable energies. It was one of many potential plans in my head, so the day that I needed to activate the plan, it was relatively easy. I also learn a lot from people that surround me. A long time ago, I saw first hand how my friend Raquel Roca reinvented herself to become a well known consultant, speaker and author of two books "Silver Surfers" and "Knowmads: Los trabajadores del futuro" . I saw her transformation first hand, I observed how she did it and I simply copied her methodology. Besides working with incredible intensity, in a self transformation voyage, you have to visualize yourself at the end of the trip. You have to imagine who you want to become. Professional athletes will imagine the perfect race that gets them the gold medal. This is the same. I imagined that I wanted to become a consultant in renewable energy that helped fight climate change, that simple idea was the fuel that got me going.

 My third super power: Good people in my life. By good people I mean both well natured and good professionals. Good people help you when you are in need. You have to surround yourself and be always in contact with good people. It could have been one of the darkest moments in my life, being unemployed at a certain age. However it wasn´t . It is fair that I publicly thank some people. Allow me to switch to Spanish in some cases.

• Gracias Jose Manuel Fernández, por darme una oportunidad de trabajar en tu empresa de desarrollo de negocio B2B basado en marketing digital, MARATUM. Aprendí muchísimo y lo disfruté.
• Thanks Marisol Oropeza and Stephan Abrecht for taking time to chat with me. You inspired me and I was taking you both as role models for my work as a consultant. We were making some exciting plans for the future. I wish you the best with your Solar Heating Initiative and the Solergy label.
• Thanks Bärbel Epp, for giving me a chance to work with you. It was an amazing project, retrieving information from around the world to bring LCOE for solar heat to the next IRENA cost report. It was exciting and I truly hope that it becomes a real game changer for solar thermal!
• Thanks Sören Scholz, Shawn Martin and Harald Drück for taking your time to talk with me and giving me a chance to act as Manager of the Global Solar Certification Network. I am sorry that I left when things were getting interesting and great plans for the future where being developed. I wish you all the greatest success with GSCN!
• Thanks to Christian Stadler, Andreas Bohren, Vassiliki Drosou and Korbinian Kramer for taking your time to talk with me and look into the future together. In some cases our paths did not cross, in others it seemed like we could get some projects going together.
• Thanks Fahimeh Yazdan Panah. You might not remember but in July you made a nice and positive comment about me on Linkedin. I wrote to you that I would use your phrase in an interview the next day….well it sure helped :)
• Gracias Pascual Polo y Andrés Paredes, por dedicarme tiempo para conversar y haberme dado ideas para afrontar el futuro.
• Gracias Ana Gázquez, porque a tu lado mi energía es infinita. Además, he aprendido de ti, viendo cómo has saltado entre la consultoría y las empresas grandes y pequeñas, según surgían nuevas oportunidades. Con tu ejemplo, fue fácil reinventarse sin miedo al fracaso.

 I hope I did not forget anyone!

 So to summarize, I worked hard to reinvent myself. Or maybe it is better defined as speedy professional evolution. I was in the middle of it when I found in Linkedin and advertisement for a dream job. Following with my hyperbolic post, I can tell you that something magic happened. Has it ever happened to you that you see a job description and you think: I could handle this job, I have the perfect set of skills…but I just don´t have any direct experience in this field. 99 times of 100 this happens, you apply and don´t get an interview. However, you know that if they give you a chance, you can do the job. I have I have to say I am very happy that my employer is that 1 in a 100 case. They were able to see that my set of skills, for example managing big technical meetings or working in associations and my past experience in diverse but similar technical fields like solar thermal, were perfectly adequate for the job, although,for example, I had not actually worked in PV plant . So this article is a bit of a fairy tale with a nice ending. But hey! In the movies of the 80´s the good guys always win :)