The Seventh Attempt Method: from no to yes in 7 steps
Seven steps to build a business after a no: say the dream, read the no, test small, choose partners, count the time, learn, and go back to the circle.
No one knows for sure how many times Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez tried, thought about stopping and almost gave up. He tells his own story by a number: the seventh attempt, the one that worked. It didn't work by luck. It worked because it carried inside it everything the six before had taught.
The Seventh Attempt Method is that baggage organized into seven steps. It is not a get-rich formula, it promises no results and it does not ask you to go broke six times before you get it right. It asks the opposite: that you learn from his falls so you need fewer of your own.
Bairo likes to say there are no coincidences and no accidents, only purpose, dreams and execution. The method follows that order. Steps 1 and 2 take care of the dream and the purpose. Steps 3 and 4 put the dream to the test. Steps 5, 6 and 7 are execution.
Step 1 — Say the dream out loud
What it is: writing, in a single sentence, what you want to build, for whom and why. And saying that sentence to other people.
From his life: ever since he was a boy, in Colombia, Bairo told anyone who would listen that one day he would live in Brazil. It wasn't a plan; it was a certainty spoken out loud before there was any road. The road came later, through capoeira, and in 2002 he arrived.
A dream that stays in your head gets no help, no criticism and no customers. A dream said out loud starts finding people.
Exercise: complete, in 25 words or fewer: "I will build ___ for , because ." Read it aloud to three people this week. Write down the first question each of them asks: that is where the doubt your business needs to answer lives.
Step 2 — Ask what is inside the no
What it is: treating every "no" as information, not as a verdict. Before reacting, classify the no.
From his life: Bairo twice heard that an idea wouldn't work, and he reacted in different ways. When he wanted to bring artificial intelligence and augmented reality into the business, people said it couldn't be done. He believed in it, but gave up. Years later, it became a trend. When he decided to manufacture natural-based cosmetics, people said again that it wouldn't work. This time he didn't stop. It worked, and natural cosmetics became a trend too.
That was when he put into words the sentence that became his rule: every no is the ground of a yes.
Exercise: list the last five "nos" you heard about your project and classify each one:
- A market no: nobody wants to pay for this. It is the only one that tells you to change the idea.
- A timing no: the idea is good, but it arrived too early or too late. It calls for patience and a smaller format.
- A person no: whoever said no is not your customer or has other interests. Note it and move on.
- An execution no: the idea works, the way of doing it doesn't. It calls for adjustment, not giving up.
Step 3 — Prove it small: the 14/20 rule
What it is: before spending real money, test with real people. The rule is simple: in 14 days, 20 conversations with people who could pay for what you want to sell. Not with friends who want to please you. With potential customers.
The numbers echo 14:20, the time at which Bairo marked the beginning of what he built, and they serve as a reminder: listen first, then build.
From his life: the salon Bairo opened with his partner, when their daughter was born, did not work out as well as they wanted. But from inside it came an idea bigger than the salon: a course in hair treatments, in a field that only years later found its place in Brazil, trichology. The idea did not come from a spreadsheet. It came from daily life, from close to the people who were already there.
Exercise: book 20 conversations in 14 days. In each one, ask how the person solves the problem today, how much it costs them and what annoys them. Don't sell anything. At the end, ask for a small commitment: a reservation, an order, a "let me know when you open" with a name and phone number. If none of the 20 commits to anything, go back to step 2.
Step 4 — Choose whom you build with
What it is: a partner is a decision as serious as the idea. And every agreement between partners is written before things work out, not after.
From his life: with the cosmetics brand on its feet, Bairo saw the next step, a touchscreen solution. It was his idea. The partners pushed him out of the business, and the idea stayed with them. Years later, on the seventh attempt, he went back to building as a team, with three old acquaintances. For someone who had been left hanging, the word "together" stopped being a detail.
Exercise: before signing any partnership, each of you answer in writing, alone, and then compare: how much money and how many hours does each one put in? Who decides what? How does someone leave, and for how much? What happens if one stops working? Who owns the brand and the ideas? If the answers don't match, the problem showed up in time. Take the answers to a lawyer and turn them into a partners' agreement.
Step 5 — Count in lifetime
What it is: measuring the business in time, not only in money. How many weeks can the cash hold out? How many people depend on this decision? How many hours of your life is it costing?
From his life: with the capital built up in events and digital printing, Bairo joined a company as an investing partner. The business was not what it seemed and did not hold. He went broke again, and this time, he says, fifty people depended on him.
Steve Jobs, as Andy Hertzfeld tells it, convinced an engineer to cut seconds from the Macintosh's boot time by showing that seconds, multiplied by millions of people, added up to entire lifetimes. Bairo thinks the same way: lifetime is the measure of everything.
Exercise: today, build a cash flow for the next 13 weeks: what comes in, what goes out, week by week. Divide the money available by your monthly spending: that is your runway, in months. Also write down your red line, the point at which you stop, change course or ask for help, and decide it now, with a cool head. Before putting money into someone else's business, ask for the numbers and show them to an accountant.
Step 6 — Learn what you don't know
What it is: when the familiar road has run out, heading into the unknown on purpose, with the tools of your time.
From his life: broke, Bairo made the most unlikely decision. Instead of going back to familiar ground, he decided to do what he didn't know how to do: build a currency, a bank, a network. It went wrong, and the very people he had helped left him hanging. He kept going. Later, without knowing how to code, he sat down at the computer and spent six months without leaving the house, learning and building. Out of those months came the foundation of the CEASA Bank platform, built on a company that had existed since 2019.
Exercise: make three columns. In the first, what you need to know and don't. In the second, what you will learn on your own, in free courses such as those from Sebrae, Brazil's small-business support agency. In the third, what you will ask a partner for, hire out, or do with the help of artificial intelligence. Pick one thing from the second column and give it 30 days.
Step 7 — Go quiet and return to the circle
What it is: after the fall, stopping the noise before deciding, taking stock of what each attempt left behind, and getting back in the game.
From his life: there was a moment when Bairo was broke, broken and beaten, but still had a flame of hope and faith. It was in silence, and in the faith he found, that he says he saw his best self. For him, the symbol of that silence is the 1420 MHz frequency, the hydrogen line, which countries agreed to keep free so that the universe can be heard.
And there is capoeira, his first bridge to Brazil. In the circle, the ginga never stops: the body goes, comes back, and never stays still long enough to be taken down. Whoever stops, falls.
Exercise: before any big decision, spend 20 minutes without screens and without conversation, just with paper. Then take stock: for every attempt you have made, write down what it left behind. In his story, the course left method, the idea that came too early left an eye for the future, the cosmetics left proof that he could create from nothing, the partners left the lesson about whom to build with. Your next attempt begins with that list in hand.
If the weight is too much, don't carry it alone. In Brazil, CVV answers for free, 24 hours a day, at 188.
What the method is not
It is not a promise of money. It is not a shortcut. It does not replace an accountant, a lawyer or a doctor. It is a way to get through the "no" without throwing away what it teaches.
Bairo sums it up like this: the seventh attempt carried all the others inside it. Yours can too.