Incubation Mindset

In my Intro, I gave an overview of my background, upbringing, and the major positive influences that had a great impact and laid a strong foundation for me to eventually become an entrepreneur.

What's an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is an intermediary between producers and users, and those providing services, including himself (or herself) and those who are served, depending on the business model. Sometimes, the business is a hybrid of both selling products and providing services.

The term was coined after the Christian Reformation of the 1500's, a time of both combination of struggle for economic and political independence along with religious upheaval. There always had been for millennia, many entrepreneurs, but the modern entrepreneur was born in protestant households, a combination of spiritual revival, autonomy and desire to fulfill supply and demand needs.

Eventually, the influence was so powerful, and the impact so transformational, that entrepreneurship was one of the core engines of the industrial revolution, and each economic revolution thereafter. The growth and eventual conquest of the pinnacle of economic output and financial importance of the United States was in no small portion, due to the immigration of protestant families of all classes who had a high level of work ethic and desire to succeed (Please refer to Max Weber and "Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", and not to "Das Capital" of Marx). If you want to understand more of economics, delve into "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

Thus, the word entrepreneur has the combination of "entre" (between parties) and "preneur" (the one who takes an opportunity). An entrepreneur was born into, and continues to be between "a rock and a hard place".

Even further, we have very little room for mistakes, as our businesses grow, a one percent move in the needle of decision making, can bring either outstanding or very negative results.

My home upbringing, formal education, and my personal and professional experiences, provided a strong background to successfully "incubate" my entrepreneurship.

Yet, it was difficult to be directly influenced by ideal role models. The last entrepreneur in my family had been sent into exile by Cuban communists back in the 1960s before I was born.

The only entrepreneurs I could be influenced by, were the black market hustlers in my Old Havana neighborhood, and the role models I could find in my deep history readings (I'm a history enthusiast), in Fortune, and other business periodicals, which I began to read during my teenage years.

Some of my ancestors on my mother's side, had been merchants from Oviedo, Asturias in Spain, then immigrant traders in the center of Cuban commerce of "Cuatro Caminos", where road, sea and train transportation united with warehousing. Later on, their children would become architects and real estate developers and investors in Cuba.

I also grew up with a feeling that it would be up to me, to someday sort of pick up where they left off, and to reconstruct the family fortune. We were high middle class, and had built a patrimony with a strong work ethic and hard work as foundation, like any of those approximate 500,000 professionals and their families that left Cuba in the 1960s.

I also knew it was impossible to do it in Cuba, and that Miami was my destination. There, I had the human capital, the infrastructure, support needed to make my dreams come true, and all I had to do was to go through all business college studies like a regular American student, learn the business language, culture, especially the professional lingo, and work at different small, medium and large businesses in different roles (which I did from 1998-2006).

During those years, one of the most transformational lessons I had to learn, was the meaning of "duties as assigned". This term is widely used in the corporate world (which we call Corporate America), to let us know that a full flexibility is expected from us, and that our job transcends traditional roles, duties and responsibilities, and goes beyond into unlimited opportunities.

The way I saw these jobs, I would get pay to learn on-the-job, meaning I was truly overpaid. I would be given a list of duties and responsibilities to eventually earn my upkeep.

In addition, I would be given as a bonus, the opportunity to learn additional skills, new tools, and experiment everything I was learning at school, this time in real life settings, and design my own professional development program.

To make things more exciting, occasionally, I would also be rewarded with recognition (diplomas and plaques), rewards (money bonuses, corporate family trips), perks (paid new automobile, cellphone, snacks, access to C-Suite Executives), promotion (more exciting jobs and tasks, ambitious plans) and pedigree (I worked at several Fortune 500 companies and a Big Four Accounting Firm).

I also learned that true business leaders find ways to invest at least 70% of their time in planning, protection and prevention, 20% in the daily, weekly, quarterly and annual implementation, monitoring and improvement of their projects, businesses and operations.

Finally, true leaders only budget 10% of their time to putting out fires, and any deviation of these ratios results in more pivoting, restructuring and the quest for deep transformation.

An entrepreneur has to be even more exact and practical in his/her decisions, and proper use of time, since innovation, resulting in incubation and more growth and transformation is always at the top of the agenda.

This dual role of both being the visionary and manager brings a lot of conflict to entrepreneurs.

There are many areas of conflict by department: Strategy, Marketing, Finance, Talent and Systems. I specialize in challenges, opportunities and conflicts related to Finance, but consulting in all departments, to make sure that a change in one area does not adversely affects other key areas.

Based on my Maxims (business education and insight), I think that a challenges not overcome and missed opportunities, always result in deeper and more complex problems.

Finance is the department that clearly exposes the deficiencies in any business, since you cannot hide poor sales, uncontrolled costs and expenses and a negative bank balance.

Since each business is founded by human beings, that have both strong and weak areas (not clinically weak, but require improvement), the business will give the opportunity for entrepreneurs to mature, learn and grow, beginning with his/her financial literacy, education and maturity.

Entrepreneurs always look for more money, capital, loans, when in fact obtaining more funding, without proper controls or at the wrong time, can drive a business and its owners into bankruptcy.

Entrepreneurs, regardless of the industry where they operate, always ask me questions just like:

• What is the best way to fund a business or investment?
• What is the difference between funding a business and a long-term investment?
• How could they efficiently keep track of sales, costs, expenses, and profits?
• What are the most practical ways of measuring performance?
• How would partners, investors, financial institutions assess this performance?
• How long does it take for a commercial enterprise to build bank credit?
• What is the best way to finance expansions, real estate acquisitions and invest in talent?
• Is it better for them to compensate themselves as employees or as investors?
• What are the best ways for foreign investors to qualify for a US VISA?
• Should they prepare a business plan, including and executive summary and financials? When is it the right time to prepare an executive business plan?

The answers to these and many more questions, I will be answering in this Max Incubation blog...stay tuned.

PD: Don't forget to subscribe, soon I will be sharing many tools, invitation to webminars and seminars, and a select face to face opportunity to help you incubate ideas into real businesses for those loyal subscribers!

If you think you are too important to subscribe, because your time is too valuable, think about the value of a mistake you can prevent, an opportunity you can capitalize on, a tool that can help you take your business game to the new level.

At the foundation of every great entrepreneur, there is great humility, studious curiosity, desire to learn and respect for what others contribute to the "cause".

This is for all of us!