Thyerry Mendes

Meet Thyerry Mendes, Driver Acquisition Team Leader (Brazil) and Inner Drive Award winner 2022. Originally from Campinas, in Brazil, he describes himself as “very determined and committed to reaching goals and objectives”. Here’s his story, advice and inspiration.

How I joined inDrive: In March 2019, I joined inDrive, first as a driver acquisition agent. I started working from Campinas in online recruitment. At that point, it was a freelance home office job only for commissions, which is not so common in Brazil. I was used to sales work, so it was pretty easy. My first week I was hesitant: nobody knew this company. But I believed in the proposal and put all of myself into it.

The first week I did about 50 registrations, and it was very nice money. And I started focusing more and more, and results started coming. The most successful point, though, is that we have a great offer; we have a great pitch, great benefits; a strong sales proposal. Drivers really get excited about this, and the results are still coming month after month.

I showed some great numbers in the first weeks, and the team invited me to the office to get to know them. When the São Paulo launch came, I saw this as an opportunity to be officially hired. I started working in São Paulo in offline recruitment. Inside Brazil we have several cultural differences, so I helped to align communication. We built a team and reached the goal of launching São Paulo within a few months.

And after that, my first big challenge came. To be officially hired, I had to go through the probation period. Not only that, but I was asked to launch a city by myself. It was a new experience for me, because it was my first time traveling alone in a city where usually you don't go on vacation or anything like that. I needed to get to know people there, run a hiring process, build my team and my strategy. I spent a month and a half, and I managed to recruit drivers and activate the city.

Previous experience: My father had a local grocery store and I spent my teenagehood working with my family. Growing up, at 15, 16, I started taking some responsibilities like sales, managing, customer service.... Later I worked in a logistics company as an operational assistant. We had a small fleet of ten to twelve cars, and I used to manage this small delivery operation.

A good investment: When I was 14 or 15 years old, I had a small salary and was saving money to pay for my drivers’ license in a few years. But I met some missionaries from the church and felt really frustrated by not being able to communicate with them. For the first time in my life, I met Gringos in person and just couldn't talk to them! It was very sad. So I started looking for an English course and found one a few miles from home. I went there to see the conditions, and spent all my savings on the course and the materials. When I got home with a small pack of books and no money, my mom was super mad at me. But in fact, it was one of the best things I did in my life. Without English, I would not be here, for sure.

Biggest highlight: Launching the city (Feira de Santana) alone! The São Paulo launch was very exciting too – communicating this new business in the biggest city in the country.

Another highlight was when I got promoted to driver team leader. I took a while to understand the dynamics of a management role. The challenge is to communicate and engage a big team of people. During peaks, I can have between 50 to 60 people on my lead, counting agents, supervisors, specialists and deputies. So this was one of the most interesting exercises, to not be so attached to the operational stuff that I used to do, and delegate that.

I guess this was one of the greatest learnings so far, to develop myself, learn to teach and develop people, and to create leaders – supervisors, managers. It's so inspiring to see the progress of the team and how unique each one of the employees are. I feel proud when I look at my team now.

The biggest challenge is running multiple launches simultaneously… with, say, 20 people traveling the country doing business, a lot of unexpected things come up. Of course, we plan and build a strategy, we do everything in advance, but while you're executing your strategy, the market will provide a lot of unexpected situations – like GR problems, PR problems – and we need to think fast. And there are operational issues with employees: someone you are counting on in some city gets sick and you need to come up with another person, and you need to care for the guy who got sick. I’m used to it, and I've found some kind of calm... And this helps me to think precisely about what to do in these situations.

For a good work environment, you need to have clear goals, clear values, and be transparent and honest while talking to the team. In Brazil, people are not always straight to the point when we need to talk about problems... This is something I work very hard on with my team: Better to just speak; you don't need to hide anything, we will solve it together.

Also, the sense of really being a team: we have leaders and managers, but we’re here to do things together, because then we are stronger and we can do more. If I were to do things alone, I would be really limited, and this cooperation is something I appreciate a lot.

What plays an important role in career success? Having great colleagues, great managers and great mentors. I had great leaders who provided me with context, with information, and with good challenges. They say, “this is a huge and important task, but we trust you and know you are capable”. This is so important, and I really thank my early managers in the company and in my life for it.

Best career advice: "Stay humble, stay strong; Work hard and smart, dream big and never give up". I know it is a cliche, but I feel that I received this advice at the right moment of my life.

Work-life balance It's something I'm still learning. I think that we need to identify the priorities in our lives at the moment. Of course, it's always great to have a sport to do, to visit the gym and keep a healthy diet… I’m trying to improve myself, on this point!

Motivation: I keep myself motivated looking for the next big challenge, goal or maybe a new way of doing things.

Advice for dealing with setbacks: Be calm, and don't be too over-reactive. Try to understand why it happened and what we can learn from it. I guess this is the most interesting process – in the startup business, we call it iterations, where we integrate the knowledge we got from the previous failure, and apply it to the next set of tasks. Learn from it, understand it, and have a clear action plan.

Favorite inspirational saying: "We don't even need to risk the adventure alone, because the heroes of all times have already gone before us. The labyrinth is already known, just follow the Hero's footsteps." Joseph Campbell, in The Power of Myth.