Today I had the second Non Disclosure Agreement in place related to my project Connect Mindanao. And it took me quite some time to prepare and scan the whole thing yesterday, only to find out that the secretary of the company I have the agreement with decided to use the original document and not my scanned version, so I had to scan it again.
And Non Disclosure Agreements are weird things, as when I encountered them, someone, as far as I remember the person I had the agreement with, said something like that they are kind of useless in a legal sense. And I guess that is very true, as of course in the end I will somehow incorporate the knowledge someone is giving me, even under a Non Disclosure Agreement. And of course I may use the stuff that someone would share with me. And of course the other party also would do the same. As of course you can’t ‘forget’ things you know, things you have been told. And of course you wouldn’t write a document or something from scratch if you already have some kind of sample. That’s what I learned with KPMG: there is nothing wrong with good copying. But keep in mind, the emphasis is on the word good, not on the word copying. As I also found that copying stuff, especially reports and proposals and things, is very risky and may not give the result you would expect. As, especially when you want to make something ‘custom’, something I normally prefer to do, it is often easier and faster and more reliable to just start from scratch, just use your knowledge.
So yes, I have Non Disclosure Agreements in place now with some people, some companies. And I don’t have Non Disclosure Agreements in place with other people. And I kind of share the same information. And yes, I also even published the basic idea of my project on the internet, so my idea is not fully secret. And I wrote about it here and talked about it with friend.
But still, I was very happy to have those two Non Disclosure Agreements in place. And I hope I will have some more in the near future. As I learned that things like this somehow make clear to people that you are serious, that you are willing to spend the time and effort to create a document like a Non Disclosure Agreement. And the same is true for other contracts and stuff. As it is very easy to discuss something verbally with someone, just share your ideas, your opinions. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty work, many people don’t seem to be willing to do that, do the work.
So even though my Non Disclosure Agreements wouldn’t make much difference in a legal sense, I am very proud that I made them. And I am very happy that my counter parties also took the time and effort to get them in place. As it means to me that they also want to do the work, that they also take the time (and risk) to put their signature on something like a Non Disclosure Agreement.
So yes, my main project in the past where I was confronted with a lot of legal documents like Non Disclosure Agreements fully failed. And actually I was very angry with the person I made the deal with, as I felt fully left behind somewhere during the project. But again, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.”, as Napoleon Hill once stated, seems to be very true. At least I am starting to believe that. And the strange thing is, that as soon as I try to see the good things in everything that happens to me, I actually use ‘bad things’ to my advantage.
So thank you, Napoleon Hill. And all those other people who I felt let me me down. As somehow I am starting to use everything that happened to me, all my knowledge, all my experience, on my way to success.