Shakin' Hands

Ep 62 | Helping Founders Find Their Start - Boris Weinberg

• Jack Moran • Season 1 • Episode 62

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In this episode of Shakin’ Hands, Jack Moran sits down in Panama City with Boris Weinberg, the entrepreneurial force behind PanamaStartups. The conversation explores the raw realities of starting a business in a country where institutional support for startups is still lacking. Boris shares the grassroots beginnings of PanamaStartups, a founder-led movement focused on peer mentorship, community support, and shared knowledge. They unpack the mindset shifts necessary for building in emerging ecosystems, breaking away from dependency, and cultivating self-driven innovation. Listeners will walk away with powerful truths about starting where you are, building community first, and being resourceful when resources are scarce.

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Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. Well, you know the good thing about having a 300 million, people market that any crazy guy just comes up with some something, and he got a million followers, and he can make $1 million a charge, $1 a person, and that's it. I always say to people like, the business idea is way less important than the execution. Yeah, the drive and the passion. Like, you know what the rock is the bedrock or at the bedrock. Yeah. It's like the potato with jokes. Yeah, exactly. A potato with. How do you call that one, Mr. Potato? No. That they send you a potato to your house with, with a message? It's another business like bedrock with the potato. No, no. It's in shards. And that's what you know. That's the what's what's the. That's the testament for me. Or like, the perfect example of. It's like if somebody got rich off putting googly eyes on a rock. But, but but that was a good idea. It was, I guess. Oh, well, inversely. So I think one thing cannot be without the other. Like the you can have a thousand good ideas, but if your execution luck's not going to happen, but you have a lot of execution but don't know what to do every day. Like the most common question I get are you typing this because. Yeah. We started. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Are you going to cut the part where I ask if you started? It's going to happen. No. Not really. Everyone does it. Okay. That's that's why I fell into the trap. Okay. The the question that we get mosaic of people from the anyone, anyone, a friend, whatever is. Give me an idea to start a business. What business would you recommend I do to make money? So that phrase about the idea not being such a big deal, it's not so true. At the end. My my basic line is there is no recipe for success. Whatever somebody tells you he doesn't know, it's not. It's a trial and error. Trial and error, trial and error. And then that's how you learn. You just think it's a luck. What success? No, the the contrary. Okay. There is no you can you somebody if somebody tells you this is the key to success, run away. Yeah. Because there is no such thing. Because there's like a thousand variables. There's obviously luck which comes into every, every business. So yeah, there it is. So I'm going to make you ask questions now. What's your business? We we have well, I'm originally I have a marketing business, a, a traditional marketing business, which obviously has to include now, digital marketing, but it started as a marketing business. But then I went into building communities. So the reason I'm here is because I have a community called Panama Startups, which is, the entrepreneur community of Panama. That would be. But I have other communities. So I like learn the recipe for building communities with that one and started doing another ones. Well, I'm going to pick your brain because we were trying to start a community, and, it has not been easy. Well, we have we have a community for you. You can be part of it is called Panama Nomads. Okay? It's a community for expats living in Panama and all kinds of things I don't want to say bad words with. You can say whatever you want. Yeah, but I'm trying not to. So let me try. Yeah, I, I try, but I give it my best. What are what are the keys to building a good community and fostering engagement within that community? Well, first off, build a community. You you build the community on a common need. You, you know, common necessity, common situation, something they have in common. And then you have to you have to be really energetic because you have to be the power engine of the of that community. I took up all the time doing, saying, chatting, engaging, making people. It's supposed to be a community where people want to meet people, but sometimes they have a resistance to to knowing people. So then you have to do and then you have a community. Let's say you have a community of, of dog lovers, which is like the easiest case. But then in that community, you have a 80 year old dog lover and a 15 year old dog lover. They have different types of, of, hours. They want to work or whatever. They have different habits. So then you have to find the common link when you do stuff that they both would like. So then it becomes more complicated. And then also you have people who want to do whatever they want to do, and you're trying to go, you know, you have objectives, you build in some way. And there are people I don't know groaning. You come in here saying Spanish is doing ground like the electricity that goes to, well, there's a saying in Spanish that they're grounding you. They're like taking your energy away. So that's another deal. But at the end of the day, if you do enough stuff, then you start growing. And when the community grows, it's much easier to handle. The beginning is, is, the most difficult. Yeah. So that makes sense. How to, like, have a successful community. Once you have people in, how do you get people? And I'll give you I think this will be like an interesting episode and kind of a fun exercise, because this is something that I'm actually dealing with as a problem that I'm dealing with. So to kind of give you a little background on my situation, I'll send you the invoice. Yeah, for sure. I'll pay it if you give me the solution. It's coaching. Yeah. I which I don't do. So we, we have a product that is not just, in my opinion, very valuable. It is very valuable. I've utilized the product and it has had a profound impact on the bottom line revenue of my company. But my mentor, that offered this service to me had always done it for free. So we started within my own company to start basically offering this coaching and mentor ship to our employees. And we saw more people experience the exact same results that I experienced, before we brought it to my company. And so we are trying to monetize that, that product and, and, you know, the people that are involved within it are already pretty successful. So it's more of a philanthropic project where monetizing it to grow it and give that, those frameworks and those tools and make them more accessible to more people. But although I recognize this immense value, I recognize it from the minute I met this mentor. And within six months of meeting this person, I added $20 million. That's an actual number,$20 million in pipeline to my company. But I am trying to charge $35 a month for someone to get in and experience this coaching that I'm experiencing every single day. And I can't get people to pay $35 a month. Is it something to do with my messaging or what? Well, of course, it's much more difficult when your, your, your community is related to a product like the communities I was talking to you about as the need. You don't have to talk to people about your product. You have to talk to people about their need. So a need to to improve your your income is is very difficult to sell today because you have a 100,000 people, some of them or most of them, not really. It's not really effective telling you that they will make you grow your income. I can see like ten hours a day about growth hacking and making my my followers. I can get a million followers in one day and they really it's really, really tough because they send you a lot, a lot, a lot. So I would look for the need that is not product related first and try to get them on the human side. Make them you is like the the conferences we do for for Panama startups. I many, many times I learned that during the during the years. I don't invite people who are going to talk about broke. Never, never invite, never, never invite people. I never even invite people who work in a company. They have to be entrepreneurs. They have to understand our heart or what we go through then and invite them. And they if they want to sell their idea or something, they got to first talk about an interesting subject that everybody relates to everybody needs or a tool that you can use. And at the end, okay, you can tell them, okay, if you need this, call me, this number or these are my information. So so people right now are very resistant to sales. So if they feel that your approach is selling them something, they'll be out immediately. So you gotta go the, the human way, that connection way on the human level, like, like, well, in my case, I'm not selling them. Mostly I don't sell them anything in Panama. In Panama, no matter I don't I invite them to events which they definitely benefiting. But but I give them a lot of free stuff. Like if they're in a WhatsApp group, they're getting all the time advise from everybody what to do, where to go or whatever. They getting information of the events all over. Not only my events. That's another thing. If you do a community, don't only send them information about you because they're supposed to be there for a need, so you're not the only one to satisfy that need. So if you want to be like that, they trust you. Then you got to give them advice in general about what to do in, in, in, in general related to that need. Of course, if you have a dog, you don't want to talk about, about, I don't know, construction. Okay. And you had to talk to the subject, but I could tell them I'm not going to go with one brand. That is the only one, like, like sponsoring me. I'll try to to put it in in a in a under the. That's a notice. It's not so noticeable that I'm advertising and and so it's like like like marketing that, that when people get the SEO or whatever, they can read some information and then they're on your web page, but they didn't search for your product. They search for some information. So, so to take it to the next step, like we our messaging is not transactional. Like, you know, it's not clickbaity like learn in 60 days how to make $20 million on your pipeline. We project a unique set of values, which I've always I'm allergic to. The people that you're talking about that are like to have the two whores next to them and they're driving the Lamborghini. You know, I wasn't even talking about those, but those are worst. Yeah, they're they're ones that don't have the bling. And they're still trying to screw you. So yeah, ours is. So we believe that, you know, soft skills are more important than anything in entrepreneurship. Where and I've talked about this on a bunch of episodes this week, but we see people in the entrepreneurial ecosystem all the time that have went to Harvard. They're these Ivy League MBAs, and they have these unbelievable hard skills, but they don't have the mindset to survive as an entrepreneur. So I think the intrinsic values of our community is, first of all, identifying belief systems, identifying like being aware of the experiences that you've had in your life and how those experiences influence your decision making and your actions today. And by understanding that you can say these are the ones that have a positive effect, and these are the ones that have a negative effect on my my are holding me back. And then giving them the methodologies to reduce those limitations or get over those limitations. Building the confidence and the the positive belief systems that you can do it. And those soft skills before going into the fundamentals of business. And I think that another big value for us is, aligning your business with your passion and what your interests are. You know, there's a million businesses, like, okay, you're can make money wholesaling real estate or, day trading or and these businesses are attractive to people because they're like, oh, all these people are making money from their passion is making money exactly. Does their passion. And it's very difficult to succeed, in my opinion. It requires so much energy to be successful as an entrepreneur. And it's very difficult to put in 100% of your energy into a venture if you are not intellectually stimulated by that venture. So that's another piece is a lot of people have a difficulty knowing themselves and identifying their purpose and then creating taking those business fundamentals and matching them up with a person's passion. So that's something that I haven't really seen much out there. And I think that I'd say, I mean, maybe I'm like drinking my own Kool-Aid, but I think it's a good value proposition. But still, I've had some difficulties. Well, you need first. First? Well, the first thing I would do in my using my marketing skills is this. This in the sense that you have a 6 billion, market or whatever market, English speaking or whatever, then you have to find some niche, start with some, start targeting some type of people that have because you still haven't told me the need, the what is the need of these people? What why are they why would they will buy this? They because you're selling a solution that is kind of complicated. That requires a long explanation. And that's one thing I haven't seen your communication. You obviously you probably found some way to reduce the the pitch, but who who is this person that needs to for that? He has the passion for something, but he doesn't know how to convert it into a business or the other way around. The other way around is much more difficult. If you're doing a business and you don't have a passion for it. Many people talk about this. This is this is one of the basics of, of of entrepreneurship, ikigai, whatever you want to call it. It's it's a, it's a basic about finding your energy, not even finding your passion. Your passion has to be aligned with what you know how to do, what you're good doing and what the market wants. That's there. The the we we change the subject like the 323 legged stool. If if one leg is missing, you will fall down. But you know, if we just want to make some, funny things for our, for our conferences. So we're whenever we be quoting Japanese history. History. But but the sometimes you find people they just not passionate about nothing or then those people are not for you. You have to find who is this people that I can, that I can solve their problem first. Who are they? Where are they? How can I reach them? Maybe there are people who fly kites. I'm just saying something crazy. Whatever. Because what we do, we also recommend a lot when you do studies about your target market is other activities they like besides what you're looking for. So then you can find other people that are there, like flying kites and maybe all the people like flying kites. Also like entrepreneurship. I'm just saying something crazy, right? For example, that we found out that people who wanted to be in Panama startups also also like to go a lot to the movies and also like to do a lot of sports. So then if I want to get to my audience, I can go put an ad on, on a movie theater or I can do movie night. So related activities. Right? But then you got to find out what is the common thread of your people that you want to get to. Because, you know, that's what I'm saying. The market is two too huge. And then you losing a lot of time targeting the wrong people. Maybe I'm telling you something you already know, but, it's the basic very the very basic of of building the communities, finding the like. I'm telling you, the common thread of these people that want to get together in your case is a knowledge based solution. You want to give people knowledge. So you got to find out who are these people who want to acquire knowledge, who doesn't think they already know it, who think it's important for them so they will pay for it. Because we don't charge to be a member of the community, we we charge for the events. We charge for the conferences. We charge. If you want to have a mentorship with charge, if you want to do your business plan, but we don't charge you to be a part of the community, we don't do that. We we think it's a great idea. The, the, the, subscription based model is very good, but I haven't even tried it. I think it could work. Maybe at this level where the people already saw what the product is, they like it. They're going to the conference. I tell them, okay, you just have to pay $20 a month, and then they will include you one conference and you can get into the web page or whatever. No, all the services, it will include it. It will be good. But in the beginning, without them knowing what it is, I will tell them pay upfront. I they probably said no. I think because it's an innovative concept, they don't really know what it's about. So if your, if your, magnet is not good enough, you do the process of the funnel. I know I'm talking theoretical crap, but it's definitely my problem, not the clients. For sure. Yeah, it's never going to be the if if the client has the problem, then you had to change problems. Yeah, you had to change your service because the client is the one who makes the final decision, right? Yeah. It's really good advice and like it already is. Queuing some ideas and and it's pretty intuitive. And a lot of the things that you're saying are like, sometimes it's very easy to say that some people call me the theory guy because theory is really easy to just blur out, but then do it. So that's why I say like Panama startup is is also a startup. We already been ten years, so we'll way faster our time to to be like big. But we're in a small market, which is the difference. We have plans to grow and to be in the bigger market to to be in world wide or whatever. But it's it takes time, it takes finances, etc.. So it's possible. But that's what I'm saying. Theory is very beautiful. Practice is a is a is a hit in your face. Oh yeah. Practice is one theory realizes that. It's that it's just theory. Right. Well, I will stop with the free consulting. Yeah. I'll giving you your audience some information, and then. Then they can chat me up and, I'll charge them, and then we get a commission. This is the this. You're getting commission. This is the first time that I've just been selfishly asking questions on the podcast. I always like to be someone's first. What is how did you get into this business? How did you start developing communities? Is that your first business that you started? No, no. Like, oh, you like my my business really is marketing. It was always marketing and events, doing events. I always enjoyed it along. I started doing parties and, concerts, electronic music, that kind of thing. Then the people of the parties got old and they started doing businesses. So. So the same audience I grew with my audience. So now they needed, business advice and oh, also here in Panama, the, the party scene has moved strangely a lot. I cannot connect anymore with 16 or 18 year olds. I don't even want to maybe be in a village, like in a room with 3000 people, sweating in hot, open bar that you have to wait 45 minutes to get a drink for $10. Okay, so. So that's the way I. That's zigzag. Zigzag got to got to the marketing thing, and then, I've been, well, I, I study something that doesn't exist in the US that's like a mixture of advertising journalism and, audiovisual production. Well, so and those are divided, I think in the USA, they teach you everything separately. Yeah. So you just end up knowing a little bit about everything, which is good and bad. And then so I just started developing businesses and see what fit, what work and that, that business of at the end that mainly I do events which is, the thing that I'm doing now and the communities are directly really the community is like a step back of the execution where you have your audience already in. It's it's I started throwing out ideas about startups in different events, in different like in different universities, and they didn't work. And then I say, well, I'm, I'm just going crazy selling stuff to who I'm talking to. So I just okay, let's go back and build a community first, and then I can sell the stuff to the community with like, captive audience. I know, I say like, it's a captive audience. Oh, yeah, I already have the audience. Yeah, it's a captive audience that I just tell them, okay. And they're they already have an emotional bond with the community, so you can sell them stuff easier because they they trust you. Of course. I'm not saying you're going to sell them crap. Yeah. I'm saying that if they need a lawyer, if they need, an accountant, if they need all the things they need to devote a lot of their attention and you can give them and there is and you're giving them a recommendation, you give them then someone that you already knows works, etc., etc.. So. So that's the way you go back to the community. You build the community and it's like the best. I recommend it to everyone, because you have people that you can right now the social media has is no longer a way for startups to to advertise because it's too, too cluttered. It's crazy crazy. So I used to put $20 one week before the event, and I got 50% of the sign up from social media. Now I get zero, even if I put $200, because, you know, big corporations or whatever got into it and now it's crazy, saturated. So so the only way to work right now is either you have a database of emails that you can do a mailing of your, of people who are interested in your product. So it's not spamming. Or you can build a community and then start people call other people. It happens more in Panama nomads than in the other one that that people get recommendations. So they write me, please add this person, please add it. So we get free members without using any. I don't have any advertising for Panama. No much. For example, we have 800 members are in Panama. It's like, a great community, good group, a good group for for WhatsApp, which I also I don't want to advertise any company here, but right now, one of the tools that we can, the only tools that we have is WhatsApp. So you can do a WhatsApp group, add people, write them directly, people you need to come out of the basic stuff because if not, you won't be seen if you're small. So you need to poke them in the eye like hello, remember me? That's the truth. Sad. Sad but true. So you got to do it. And obviously, like, I'll give you an example, which is crazy or, or a mailing list for Panama start ups is we send emails every day to the people, but it's not Panama startups sending people any member and sending the emails. Any member of the community can send an email to the whole community. Of course, we read them before, but we send emails. People receive emails from Panama start ups every day with a promotion, with somebody selling stuff, with somebody asking for for something. I need this or I need that people. It's a collaboration. That's a good thing. We don't get people logging out. We don't get like, if you get a newsletter what, more than once a week you will go out for sure because you have your your mailbox is like crazy. But we don't get people getting out. And then also people show me sometimes here's here's my inbox Panama start up, Panama start up. But they don't go out because they're saying, okay, I read the subject if I'm interested, I really if I'm not, because sometimes I get clients. That also happens. The people I'm asking for a photographer, but somebody reads, I do, I do like marketing and I read, oh, this guy needs a photographer. He probably needs also marketing. So I write him, hey, I if you need marketing for your photos you're going to take, I'll help you. And so it's like it's something in motion that is really, really effective. So it was very difficult finding a free service online that does that, that I'm saying, which I will not promote. Where, where have you seen marketing? How is marketing changed from when you got into the business to where it is now? Now that's a whole show me it's a nothing like it, nothing that I have. And especially now, of course, I'm not talking about the most favorite subject of everyone, which probably they hear a lot in your in your podcast about entirely artificial intelligence. So once that came into the game where. But it's a funny thing like how creative can I really be? At what point are humans really a little bit more creative? At what point the the consumer really needs creativity or, or just wants the information? If you see the the most successful advertising in the US, they're all going and bringing like animals, talking animals or something that makes it more empathic because if not, it's it's rational. Rational is is never better than emotional in my opinion. But there's no way to go. But I always still make an emphasis on something that we do. I make an emphasis to the clients that let's include always something, and then 101 contact effort which is and call an activation or I don't know how you call in the US, but it means something you do life with people and interact life because if you if you do that, so you do an ad and you get 30,000 clicks or whatever. You don't really know how many of these people are really at the end of the funnel. It's maybe whatever. But when you go and you touch a thousand people one by one and give them something and explain them or show them the product, work, you know, whatever it's like, and you're going to make a better, impression on that person. And it's more probable for that person to buy your product. So really, your question is huge. So call me on another day. We'll have to have far too. Yeah. Because really, it's really, really you can even relate it to totally different. What? What do you see internally or personally as your biggest limitation to growing for yourself, not for your business or the industry, but fear of fear of losing money? I don't I'm always very it's it's part of my personality. But I'm very careful with the money and the sometimes with business you can do it. Really. You have to. And I've had investors in my businesses. Sometimes wise investors are really also stingy. So it makes it more difficult. But that's I think that would be like I started businesses 20 years ago that if I would have put money, I would be in another on another level. And there are people who came much after me doing the same thing, but they they went all in and they're big. So I chose a conservative way, which is nice for your health or your health of mine, but is not the best practice for businesses. You gotta you gotta put the money where your mouth is. What's the biggest horror story that you've encountered to date as an entrepreneur, you have to define a horror story. You mean like a business? That's like a well, I'll give you an example. I myself, I try not to not to tell the people that come to us that that idea sucks or the idea is not going to work. Don't do it. Don't give me money to do your business plan sometimes. Are you in? Because we have a in every business plan. When we do, we first meet with the person to assess what? What is your idea? What are you trying to do? And sometimes I've thought like, hey, don't, don't do it. But sometimes I've said, I've thought that about projects that end up getting money and not doing nothing but doing something with the money or or at least trying. And maybe I'm destroying a dream. I don't know. So I got a guy from some the interior of the country, and he came to me and I want to do a wallet, because I was seeing this TV show somewhere that wallets are going to be the next thing. So I want to do a wallet. I say, great, so do you know how to program? No, I don't know how to program. Okay. So you have $60,000 to pay someone to program this wallet? No, I don't have 60,000. Do you know what a wallet is? So some people just so I didn't do the business plan for this guy, but you find a lot of people that just maybe saw something or I, they're excited about something, a tendency and, you know, we we we tell people a lot like you got to find it, okay? You have the idea. You want to work, you have the energy. Find some partners, find somebody who can teach you. Where really are our our first advice most of the time is work. First, start working in a company that is related to the field you like or your interest in. Learn under money. Make mistakes on their money, save money. And then when you've done all these things and you have a couple of years and you found like in this sector, some real problems, these companies has some problem that is not satisfying the the audience or the public. Then start your business, not quit. Start your business, start doing it at nights, weekends, whatever you want to do. It's still keep living on the company's money. And then when you're selling and when you can live on the sales of your startup, then quit. But don't. Don't because you don't know how many people quit. Six months later, they're looking for work because they don't have enough money to survive. So so my my advice usually is, is that one it's two to learn about the problem you want to solve. It's going to cost you a lot of money and time. So go work for someone who's related to that area and learn there. That's like well, it's not obviously all the time, but it's possible to do it. If you see many of the people who are solving problems, like some people are solving minuscule problems, like the connection between this and that, they found out because they started working in a company and they saw that the company had this problem and couldn't solve it. So they just found a way to program something else that held them. And sometimes they sold their product to the company where they worked. So it's like win win for everyone, right? Do you think anyone can be an entrepreneur? Yes. But not successful entrepreneur. What is it? What is required to be a successful entrepreneur? Well, we do a whole conference called do you have the the start the entrepreneur DNA. So the first thing you have to you have to have is tolerance for not knowing what's going to happen. Instead, at the umbrella. I don't even know that word exists in English, but it means that anything can happen and you're not in control because you're small. Whatever you want to be able to not get a paycheck and then survive because all the income is up to you. You got to be willing to do every job in the company. You got to be willing to mop the floor if it's needed. Not that nothing is yucky for you because you got to you got to be doing everything. So there's some things that not everybody tolerates. We do this, this, this conference. And some people have come up to me. I want to thank you because you showed me that I got to work in a company because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be able to take all this. And we've been doing this for ten years and experienced all the ups and downs of startups. And I can tell you it's it's a very tough road. So not you got to you got to be able to keep yourself motivated at all times by yourself. Nobody's gonna be there's no coach, giving you a massage or telling you you can do it. You gotta you gotta motivate yourself. You gotta find in yourself motivation to keep going when the things really go bad, which is probably going to happen. You would accept all the nos you're going to get and keep going. So it's it's not for any kind of mentality. It's a, it's a really, really fighter mentality. You got to be a real fighter. And and always that's why it's so important to have a motivation. So what is what is we're talking about passion or whatever. But we said we tell people whatever your motivation is that you can find to to keep you going, use it. If it's okay. I want to shut up. Everybody that's telling me you cannot do it, that's a motivation. They say it's a petty motivation, I don't care, it's a motivation. And I'll keep you going. And then you will show everybody that you were right or something like that. So not not everybody's going to be a successful entrepreneur. But I think you've probably heard that answer before. Yeah. Not an original subject. There are some questions that we get. One answer that there's, some questions that are mixed and that's a mixed one, conflicted. Some people say, yeah, some people say no. Yeah. They say yes. They haven't been in this business. Yeah. Or long enough. Well, it was funny because there's a generational gap there. Strange that, you know, if I'm not, I'm like X or or whatever. I, you know, but if you ask Gen Zs mostly we'll say yes to that answer. Anybody could be an entrepreneur because they have it really easy. If if you're like, I went to a conference where all the people were like Gen X, but with money from families with money. So for them, there's no way to fail. Okay, I'm getting the money, I'm doing my thing and I'm I'm in my house. I travel, then I come back, I sell some more wallets or versus or whatever and that and of course, how can you not be successful? It's so easy. Then you get the other side of the coin. If you go to like people who are killing themselves to make ends meet, then that's another story, right? So depends on who you ask. Yeah. What? What if you had$1 million of guilt free capital to deploy? How would you deploy it within your company? Well, I think I think my company needs mostly needs structure, so I would probably I, like I told you before, if you give me $1 million, I would probably spend like 100,000 and save the rest and hire not so expensive people. That's not necessarily a good idea, but you're asking me what I would do, so. But the truth is, yeah, you build more structure so that the company can grow. I'm a I'm a, I'm a solopreneur. And have you heard that? Yeah. Well, I'm a solopreneur, and I hire people for the different things I need on a like event basis. Freelancers? Yeah. People who I need volunteers or whoever I need for depending on what I need for a different event. But but it's very important that you bounce off someone like ideas and somebody that gives you a different perspective. Like for example, what I'm the example I give you about agencies. I don't have a connection with agencies I cannot be. The spokesperson for Panama started for the Genesis because I don't speak their language. So I try to find people in that age range that that can do the you can advise me or do the work that we need is to communicate with, with that target. Because right now, especially in Panama, I don't know, probably in the rest of the world. So the agencies are like the ones that are looking a lot for advice, counseling and mentorship because they want to do a business. But they they I don't know why they feel like they need it more than that. All the ones that say, oh, I'm going to do my way, or I did it or I tried it and I failed and I learned or whatever. Right. So, so structure is very important that you find someone that's going to bounce off your ideas, give you a different perspective, talk to you. So if it's not a partner that you don't want to have a partner, at least hire someone that you feel that can do that. So that would be my first investment. I wouldn't invest so, so highly on, on, on marketing, which is like a mistake. But somebody some people say like hiring is also a mistake to do like to grow quickly. So. Yeah. Are you from Panama originally? Yeah. Why do you think Panama is or isn't a good place for entrepreneurs? Well, the the people like the the the Panama ambiance a lot. I would say that the, the ecosystem in Panama for startup is very, very, it's very young or very small compared to other countries. But, you find a lot of startups or entrepreneurs here whose business is not here. It's you, you find. Well, you're an example. Yeah. Like you been here a year doing something and you probably haven't even gone to any startup event here in Panama. Zero. Because many people come here. They like the place, they like the ambiance. The living. The way of living here is very nice, especially if you're in the bubble like we are here in the bubble. Okay. But, but they don't have that. They don't they don't relate to the ecosystem here. And there's a lot of obviously expats, right, who are in that situation. So but for, for doing the startup, you could see it as an advantage to have a small market that you can validate your idea and test it without probably sacrificing too much. See how it goes, make it like a test market. And then you see, oh, here, this is what the comments I got, obviously I think in my in my view, every, every country has a different like, way of thinking. So I don't know how that affect people can tell you, well, it's Latin America, I can tell you people in Brazil think like nothing like a Panamanian, a Colombian doesn't think like a Mexican. So? So sometimes when they say, okay, it has to be like a pretty universal need if you want to test it in one country and see. So it works in others, right? I sometimes I really don't know how they do it. If you validate in the US, like if you go in a small town of the US, like, well you have that situation also there. If it's New York, you're going to relate to people in, I don't know, Idaho, whatever. I'm just I don't know nothing. But but maybe you can go to a city, try it out with 10,000 people, see how it works out, and you won't lose anything because there's a million people here. You don't have that luxury, because if you do an MVP and people don't like it, they're going to talk to each other and the market is really small. They're not going to try it afterwards to see if you fixed it. They're just going to go like I went to that thing and it fell down and it didn't work. It didn't give me what it said or whatever. And then you're out. So so in that sense, it's more difficult than many projects here to grow have been have to go to go to another country. But it's like it's if you want to try stuff, if you want to have a good time, the people come here mostly to have a good time. The the government wouldn't get in your face so much. And you have a lot of banks here. The the traveling is easy to any part of the continent, any part of it. So that's mainly the benefits of not so much of the, the startup ecosystem, which I'm telling you, it's like beginning and we have we have a lot to do. Yet we have we have a lot of projects. We're now that I think that I know if you probably notice that more people are pulling their eyes on Panama, so more, more people from other countries are coming and they're like saying, oh, why don't you have that here? And I can bring the financing to do it, which is always what's going to lack the financing, because there's the people and there's the will to do it. But if you want to do a big project, you're going to there is no there's one VC and a half in Panama, I'd say like one and a half. So, so and they, they maybe give you $100,000 there. That's like their highest investment. Well, for the VCs, right. Then there's a lot of projects that are the best projects you find in technology in Panama. Most of them are paid by family money. For what I'm saying that there's a lot of young people, they go to the US, they like a project, they do it here and they have the money from the family to do it, and then they get money from accelerators or whatever because it's a good it's a good project. But, it's difficult to find the financing. They, we also have grant money, but I think the most that it goes is to $60,000. Well, nonrefundable, which is good. But so people start doing if you're a programmer, you have that advantage because you won't have that costs. We just have a big blockchain event here in Panama. The, the IT canal. And then we had a hackathon there and they were very interesting project that have 15 days to develop something. And they developed really good looking things. So I think we I of course, which already everybody's using the speed of programing is getting so fast that that the investment is going to go lower. You can develop things faster and cheaper because of AI, so more people are going to be able to come up with interesting things without having the need to invest for investment. Well, that's a very interesting perspective there. Like in the U.S., you have this VC race where people some some people just want to go. They just do their what they're doing their business to go to the next round and get more money. They're not they're not selling. They're not bringing value they don't want to sell. They're doing is raising money. They don't want to help people. They became expert in in rounds in pitching to investors. Yeah. We don't have that luxury here, so. Well, we have to do something that really is going to do something to help somebody or work in some way. Right? Yeah, yeah. What would be in this? My final question, what is the single biggest piece of advice that you would give to new entrepreneurs? Don't do it. Know the truth that's out there is hey, keep keep studying and go get a real job. No, the truth is, I think entrepreneurship is really great. People think it gives you more time. People thinks that you are going to have more flexibility. But the truth is, you're going to work if you're really passionate, like you say, you're going to work 24 hours a day on your project because you love it or because you have a real motivation. You want to be successful for every reason what it is. Take care of your family or whatever, or really bring something that you believe is going to help people. Which is the best situation possible. So so so my best advice would be at the beginning, find someone to to to give you guidance. You will say, read a really good book that somebody recommends, but the book is not enough. I'm writing a book by the way. It's almost published. So so by my best advice for someone would be if you want to, if you want to save time and money, find someone who's already doing it and get advice. Especially better if it's in your same area of of development. So so you can save time because they will tell you what the experience was, maybe won't be exactly for you, but but you will be able to find ways to so if you had to choose one it would be that get a really good mentor, somebody that really has been doing it at an entrepreneur that that has a successful business that can tell you the specialty at the beginning or be a part of a community. If you don't have that mentor, maybe try to find a community of support that can tell you the mistakes they've made. They will. This will help you grow a lot faster than if you just go and try to do it yourself. And many people just throw themselves out and do it, which is great. We always tell people, if you if you have doubts, if you're going to stop for any reason, don't. If you if you're waiting to get a mentor and you don't want to start because you don't have a mentor, forget about the mentor. Start. Fail like they say, right? There's a learn on the way, but if you can avoid a lot of hurt, get someone to guide you, the most that you can. And then then you'll get a, a runway to to to get faster where you want to go and safer if people are interested in connecting with you or they're interested in your community, you should. The last one was the last question. Sorry, where can they find sorry, sorry okay. Yeah. It's easy because in English it's easy in Spanish. I have to spell the letters. That's the first one of my startups. That's it. Yeah. So you can find us in all the socials in in LinkedIn. I don't know, I don't want to say advertise again to these people, but, our email list is tougher due to say, I'll show. So, mostly I'm responding on the all the chats in the, in the socials. So you'll find me there. Awesome. And we'll link all of it below the video. Perfect. Beautiful. I hope to hear from all your people so I can sell them books because they're not gonna live in Panama. But soon, someday will have the webpage. The web page. You know, it's like a basic thing to have a web page. We have a web page, but it's just information. So let's hope someday we'll do a blockchain web page. You know, blockchain people are putting a lot of money now for new projects now as they want people to be on blockchain early. So there's a lot of people. DAOs, have you heard of DAOs the Ayo decentralized. Yeah, yeah, they have a lot of money. I'm talking millions and millions of dollars and they're always looking for projects that want to do develop in blockchain. So they more people would be in that in that technology. So I'm not gonna advertise the one that. Yeah that sponsored our event last week. But we we connecting with them and let's see what happens because the, the thing is that I wasn't really clear what blockchain was. But at the end of the day, I don't have to be clear. I just instead of doing HTML or Java or something, you just gotta tell the programmer, do blockchain and these other people will give me money to be able to develop the full product or whatever. Well, so let's hope the web page will be somewhere soon. Sweetie, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks. I hope, a lot of luck. And, would you wanna you have homework to get on Panama Nomads, for sure. And then we'll put you on some conferences. How's your Spanish? Mediocre, but I'm working on it. Okay, good, good. So we can help you with that, too, if you want. We appreciate it. That was.

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