It doesn’t matter how big or small the action was, what counts is that in that moment you realized your own power amidst the context of the world. Often there’s an instance in life when someone has found their voice and others listened, or a moment when a relationship has shifted, or when someone has just point blank refused to do as they were told and got away with it. In the Be More Pirate workshops, the answers are usually focused on a time when a person has stood up to something or someone they felt was being unjust, when they’ve pushed back, when they’ve fought their corner, held their nerve or just said no, and in return the world gave way, backed down, yielded or said sorry.

Try to find the moment or moments when you first understood your own influence or when you clearly saw your own potential to create and shape the world around you. It’s not something you might have thought about before in this way or might immediately remember, but give it time and you will.

Give yourself a chance to let this one sink in. If you’re going to reinvent your future, it won’t be by doing what you’re told but by rewriting your own rules and being more pirate. So forget your preconceptions of pirates and have no fear about what’s to come. With those ideas of yours, that phone by your side and this book in your hands, you have all that you need at your fingertips. These figureheads, new and old, made their own way and amassed vast influence (and often vast fortunes) to make a huge and reverberating dent in the world around them. We’ll learn the techniques of ground-breaking pirates of old like the ‘Pirate King’ Henry Avery, ‘Black’ Bartholomew Roberts and the legendary Anne Bonny, and compare them to their modern-day equivalents such as Elon Musk, Chance the Rapper and Malala Yousafzai. Be More Pirate looks past these clichés and analyses their innovations, organizational systems and team structures that have become a global standard of good governance and their pioneering work on branding and reputation management which predates the universal principles followed by best-in-class marketing and communications today. They have been popularized and presented as pop-culture pastiches that don’t resemble the true picture. Over the years, pirates have acquired a mythical status. “It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.” – Steve Jobs

Be more pirate by sam conniff allende