Its history, but above all its vision, has much to contribute to a professional audience such as marketing and communication.

The past of Juan Pablo Escobar -The only male son of Colombian drug trafficker and criminal Pablo Escobar- is a worldwide known. But its present represents the capacity for transformation towards the purpose that each one feels or the value they want to contribute to society.

We were able to listen to him in the first congress LQDVI Corporate, of the Foundation which really matters. A meeting in Madrid that brought together professionals from the company with the premise to disseminate values ​​as emotional tools to strengthen the leadershippromote corporate culture and reflect on social issues of relevance.
In this context, Pablo Escobar’s son granted a few minutes of his time to Reason.WHY To maintain a conversation in which he was close and sincere, he transferred his vision of brand management, the real purpose or the impact of prohibitionism.

RW. When did you stop trying to repair the past to start leading your present?

That incredibly reparation of the past continues, because you daily discover victims or people who suffered the violence of my father. It is something I can’t give up and still in that work. But, in parallel, I build my present and, therefore, my future. I have not only stayed with my gaze in the past because You can’t go forward looking back. However, I still feel the responsibility and commitment to continue talking to my father’s victims until you find the last one. That will be the day when the past is definitely behind.

RW. That vital experience will have somehow configured your mind differently from the norm. Is your response different from others about what really cares?

I care about respect, love … you have to respect yourself, but also others, their ideas, their beliefs and life itself. The value of respect has been lost and we have become accustomed to missing socially. They are values ​​that must be recovered, but I think they have not been lost in a limbo. How to do it? Practicing them and being their example. And this goes very much from love, because respecting someone you are demonstrating love for the other.

RW. For several years you have tried to create this legacy through communication. It is inevitable to ask you why and, assuming that you have had a strategy or a plan to continue advancing, what has cost you most to get on that path? And what has surprised you the most?

The most beautiful thing is that there is no strategy because, every time I tried, no plan worked. I learned that you have to do things with my heart and the only thing that matters is the intention behind what you are doing. When I took the stress of seeing that the plan was not being carried out, or that the strategy was not working, things began to go much better.

We are talking about brands and I must say that I bring one of the most negative on the planet. But reverse that would have meant acquitting my father. Simply, we each bring a brand as people and we must be recognized as individuals and not as co -responsible for our parents’ actions. When children commit a crime, parents responsible for it, but should not be the other way around. I have assumed the moral responsibility of my father’s crimes because I feel it is the only way to heal and be able to look forward without stirring the past from hatred or resentment. Through the search for forgiveness I do not want to foster the oblivion of these stories, but quite the opposite. Memory is important, but not giving that space to forgiveness is also a mistake because you would be perpetuating within you the pain that the perpetrator has caused.

RW. You talk about being genuine, without a defined plan for everything to flow. Can brands absorb this approach to you? Because within a company there must be strategic plans, but sometimes you can sin a bit impossible purposes or values. Or it seems that all companies have to have a purpose …

I understand that there has to be a plan, but I feel that the authenticity begins to be lost and overact. People are not idiot when you perceive brands, so everything goes better when they do it in a more natural, more human, less surrounded by machiavélico machines or thoughts. I return to the origin: what matters is the intention of what you do and I think that is what people will perceive. What intention did you say something or launched a campaign, where did you want to point?
I am not an expert in brands, but I am an expert in handling the most negative brand of the planet And I think, within everything, I have had some success in that aspect. But I have done it from the example and the heart, not from the strategy. I stopped memorizing speeches just because that adds stress to my life that I don’t need. If I know what I mean and behind everything there is a good intention, I don’t have to prepare a speech.

RW. Especially because you have a truth, right?

I don’t have it prepared today. If I have to consult the truth, there will always be. I do not have a script to follow, I simply adapt what I tell to the public that will listen to me. Because you are not going to tell entrepreneurs “Behave yourself”.

RW. Well…

Well, that would give for another conference. But I do believe that youth is always more potable for change because they are about to decide what they want to do or what their dreams are. With entrepreneurs appeal to other things, telling points of the story with which they will feel identified, such as questioning what success is. Because sometimes we don’t ask ourselves that question. Or one that I think is more important: How long and how much is enough? What is the limit of your company, of your ambition? Have you put any limit? How many millions in the account do you feel satisfied? And if there is no roof, be careful with the size of your dreams is not going to be that they return and crush you.

RW. One last one, perhaps it is a somewhat conflictive issue and you can not answer but, lately, in the business context, chemistry, drugs, from a cognitive prism, are being understood. Even spiritual. Is there a difference between drug trafficking and drugs? Is there a future in which the drug can be a tool?

We have stigmatized drugs. There is a plan and strategy to demonize these substances. We agree that drugs are not good, but the one that kills more lives per year is legalized and is alcohol, which is everywhere and nothing happens. I do not invite us to prohibit alcohol again. We have been experiencing as a society for almost 200 years with the issue of legalization and prohibition and with drugs I feel that we have used the wrong strategy.

The right thing would be to declare peace to drugs. I do not say that they are good, but with alcohol there is already regulation, education and prevention. Three things that you do not get in illicit drugs and that makes them more harmful, to the point that you find cocaine with fentanyl. Not being regulated, you are guaranteeing that they are of the worst quality for the consumer.
And when you continue with these strategies, you always hit the same wall. The prohibition means curiosity. Hopefully some judge prohibits my books (laughs). It would be the best way to demonstrate that what prohibits is the most appealing. Declating the prohibition of a product is not knowing the mental instinct of a human being.

RW. The apple of Eden.

Of course, I want to go to Eden to try that. The example is perfect, from there we come. And ignoring that is to encourage others to continue consuming, destroying their health. Education is the most effective tool to face the issue of drugs. I I am in favor of the regularization of all kinds of substances. 4 million people die a year according to WHO because of drugs and 3.8 are for alcohol. Prohibitionism is what guarantees a very high profitability to drug trafficking products, which are very cheap to produce but are more expensive because someone says that must be prohibited. That is why I seek urgently someone who prohibits my books.

RW. Hopefully it happens, we will be very aware.

It would be like prohibiting Spanish omelette. Do you think it will stop selling? Its quality will go down, its price will increase and corruption will be generated because everyone will want to continue consuming the tortilla. Curiosity disappears if we remove prohibitionism.

With the paradox we stayed.
If you prefer to hear the interview by podcast, here you have it: