Chapter I

He asked: “Do you want to do this with me?”

She answered: “I need to think…” (but her heart was screaming YES).

He was scared of failing again. Shooting and missing the target. But he still wanted to grow. To build. To learn and evolve.

She was scared of letting herself down. Of the great responsibilities in a phase of her life she wanted to be calmer. But she still wished to take risks, to follow her intuition.

He’d been thinking about this for years. He wanted to work with her seeing how well the symbiosis of creativity and desire worked in conjunction. 

She felt an unexpected empathy for him. There was a before and an after. There was a new person whom she wanted to share ideas with and build in partnership.

There were two strong personalities, two creative minds, two spirits of leadership. Everything might go terribly… but the experience of the highs and lows of life had taught them to BREATHE.

He dared to stop and plan. To breathe deeply and look at the accounts. He had the intelligence to feel the growth pains and learn from them.

She had to adapt. Understand just where and how far she might go. Learning to deal with the numbers. Grasping the growth pains and learning new things from them.

Both no longer being young enough for major changes in their own particular ways, idealised, projected, planned, and developed a new pair of shoes. The shoes were put on, adjusted and they began walking in them. Not every step was entirely right. They still aren’t. However, the shoes are for walking forwards and that’s not always the same thing as walking in a straight line.

They walked without crawling as there wasn’t time. The time was for welcoming the other members of the group. Meeting them and motivating them. Teaching them but also knowing how to listen to them, understanding, and, once again, learning. The most important aspect: always maintaining the courage to have a free and spontaneous mind.

He and her were joined by five unusual individuals!

And from up high on a fifth floor in the heart of the city of Faro, under the golden light of a late afternoon and a smooth breeze coming in off the Ria Formosa, a narrative of imagination and empathy took root.

B16 believes
that imagination and empathy
may inspire the change
that your company seeks to bring about.

And thus came the launch of B16 – The Creative Clan: out of the courage of an entrepreneur who wanted to write the first chapter of his marketing and communications agency. Who had the courage to stop for a few months to think, plan and restructure. Out of the freedom given to a new colleague (a friend from times past) to point her finger, define new ways of working, and, above all, bring new members of staff to the agency. And the challenge for five people for whom the question “Do you want to be a Samurai?” was answered with a resounding YES: without any hesitation.