Jan 13, 2022

Cotacochi, ECUADOR – “Is that music I hear in the distance?”

I gratefully stopped my slow and erratic descent to listen. My legs were burning, and my mouth was dry. The clouds had rolled in and visibility was at a minimum. Working hard to slow my breathing and calm down my beating heart – I strained to hear the sound.

(For those new to this thread, my wife and I have been traveling Mexico and Panama and are currently living and exploring Ecuador. You can find those back issues here.)

Some kind of music was drifting up the mountain to where we were. “Why in the world would someone carry and play a device this high up in the mountains?”, I thought. Geez – it’s hard enough to hike with a light pack!

We were hiking/climbing in the northern part of Ecuador.

Like everywhere along the spine of this country, the valleys are high and the mountains higher. Quito the capital, is itself situated at over 9000 ft, in a series of narrow valleys that run north and south. East and west of the capital tower huge mountains and volcanoes, several close to and over 6000 meters!

We are now almost 2 hours north of there, in the Cotacochi/Otavalo region. The valleys are bigger and the Volcanoes closer and omnipotent. Most are shrouded in cloud as they reach 5000 meters and more into the sky.

We had started our hike at a beautiful, remote lake called Mojanda. It was created when the volcano blew its cone some 200,000 years ago. Surrounding the lake is a caldera of ridges and peaks. The top of the closest and “easiest” peak, known as Fuya Fuya was our hiking destination.

Fuya Fuya, appropriately means something like; “F...-ya, F...-ya” for 2 challenging sections you need to navigate in order to reach the summit.

Even though we have been living at altitude for close to 2 months, the climbing up had me breathing heavily and my heart pounding. When the sun shone – it felt hot. When the clouds rolled in, the temperature dipped and you felt like you need to add another layer.

Fortunately, unlike our hikes in the Cajas mountains, near Cuenca, the trail was easy to see. But just like every hike we’ve done in this country, they don’t seem to understand the idea of switchbacks….

So, the trail leads up – at whatever pitch the terrain offers.

As we approached the top, we were grabbing tufts of grass as a handhold in order to maintain purchase with the slope. All the while, the clouds rolled in and out. And I was thinking, “I hope it doesn’t sock in and start raining. That’ll make the descent heinously slippery!”

Turned out, our descent from the top began in fog. Perhaps it was for the best. I wasn’t able to discern how big a drop it was to the sides, if one strayed too far from the trail.

The music became a little more discernable as we descended further. Then the fog lifted a little. The lake became visible in the distance, with dark spires silhouetted behind. There looked to be a group of people way down on a small hillock, but I couldn’t be sure.

Then the fog came back in and the source of the music remained a mystery.

When we finally arrived back at the lake and road, imagine our surprise at finding a group of musicians milling about. Turns out, they were a group from Peru, who had decided to drive up to this lake, hike up 20-30 minutes with their instruments and record a music video.

My wife somehow persuaded them to play for us, right there, on the shore of the lake. The haunting sound of the flutes, drum and guitar, with swirling fog, huge mountains, was enchanting.

I couldn’t help thinking of both the creativity of the music and the idea of recording themselves, in a setting that reflected perfectly, the sound they were producing. Whenever I have heard such music, where we were then, was exactly the kind of place I had imagined would inspire such a sound.

High, remote, magical.

Think too on the effort these musicians undertook to produce their recording.

The road from the nearest village is an unrelenting 12 kms in length. Constructed of cobblestone, allegedly to prevent erosion from the downpours that occur, it is still so bad and eroded, it took our driver almost an hour to navigate.

Then, they would have had to hike/climb up a kilometer or so, with an elevation gain of several hundred meters. That’s not easy at 11,000 feet.

I can only think, however, how much more powerful will be the final product of their video and how much more attractive it will be, both to sell and to promote their brand.

How many other musicians go to this effort? How many business owners? What about you?

What are you doing to make your brand, company, services unique, special, different from all of your competitors? This one thing, your difference, your “super” power is what makes all your marketing efforts sizzle and helps you attract the best customers, patients, clients. If you don’t have this “market dominating position”; unique selling position”, your efforts at marketing are sabotaged before you even begin.

This is why, helping our clients discover, craft and build their unique positions is one of the first things we do with them. Like building a house, the foundation is critical to the integrity and longevity of the structure that comes next.

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To your health and success.

The “Profit Accelerator” Expert
StreetSmartsMBA.org

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