Shakin' Hands
Welcome to 'Shakin' Hands,' the podcast where entrepreneurship meets fascinating stories from the most intriguing minds today. From proven business practices to groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, Shakin' Hands' is not just about the handshake that seals a deal but about the shared experiences and values that unite us all. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone who loves a good story about overcoming odds, Shakin' Hands' promises to deliver compelling content that shakes up the conventional and celebrates the extraordinary.
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Host: Jack Moran
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Shakin' Hands
Ep. 69 | Impact That Pays Back - Diego Diaz
In this episode, Jack sits down in Panama City with a Forbes 30 Under 30 social impact founder who leads ISTMO, a movement that turns recycled plastic and community action into a lifestyle brand and platform. The conversation touches on the creative agency, the recycling operation, the Impact Festival, and an app that rewards responsible actions. They dive deep into Panama’s early stage path to find funding, why bootstrapping, and how to structure capital without losing the mission. Brand clarity is a recurring theme, as it determines whether you’re positioning yourself as a marketing partner, an operator, or a tech platform, so that investors and partners know what they’re backing.
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Host: Jack Moran
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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 Baron and this is Shaking 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. There's like no rules, just talk about whatever. And okay, it's just going to go all right. Perfect. I mean, maybe this is not the best. So let me let me try. I'm gonna. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna do my best even dealing with it for, like, fuckin couple couple days now. Okay. Here's is way better than a couple of people. Okay. So perfect. But they've all been fun. Cool, cool. Is the festival your main business or. No, no, no, we have, you have a brand called emo. We started selling t shirts made from recycled plastic that created a community. And then now we have a recycling system go with Ocean Foundation, and we are going to open soon our own recycling facility. And, that help me, create awareness of, you know, sustainability, recycling and all that and all these big companies, sorry, toxic pet taxi meat. And now we have an agency to manage, sustainable budget sustainability budgets. And we do marketing campaigns. And now we are also building an app called React Responsible Actions that's going to give you tokens for good actions. So every time you recycle, every time you donate blood, every time you go to a cool festival, every time you do something good for the ecosystem, you're going to get points. It's like carbon credits, kind of like, oh yeah, something like that. Yeah. So the idea is to create these online community and group of people who want to create impact connected with the companies that we're creating, do it together and have a bigger impact. What do the, tokens that they're, they're generating, what can you recycle by catch by cash? Oh, and the budgets of marketing and sustainability, which I have seen from big companies, 60% of that, the use of literally stupid shit. And the idea is to use that to actually create a token so people can gain the token and use it, like, for example, in the marketplace that you can buy rice, you can buy something in the supermarket, or you can use in your favorite coffee place. You create a network of responsible allies. I call them. And those places are responsible allies and places that you recycle. Basically, you're going to mean people. And yeah, you create like a whole community scenario. And now I'm becoming like a startup that in Panama, when you talk to a investor about startups and and save for notes and convertible notes, it's like, yeah, I was like, what the fuck is that? I want to pick. I want to get paid my dividends in the first year. So don't talk to me about paying dividends in 100 year. What the fuck is that safe note. So yeah, it's, it's something I have just learned. Becoming a startup, how to do it, how to raise capital. So now we are in that process of of raising capital to try to make the whole technology of the whole thing better, to then sell it in different places. Someone else told me about that. The other day that like here, when you're raising money, like you said, you have to get the dividends in first year. I mean, the is in the US that are have a 25 year like negative cash flow plan. No no no it's I'm just we just we just started or. Yeah we've been on. Oh shit. Okay okay I mean no. Yeah okay. So here it is. So we mentioned when I went to Colombia, they still they, they have done and they have a five foot building just for entrepreneurs. And you just still they tell you the reality of a startup. A startup is a company that doesn't pay dividends, dividends, what they do, they bring money from different investors, from the United States, from different places. In the time that they invest in the company, that company doesn't pay dividends. So all they do is reinvest for growth. So it's good for a country to have startups because they solve a this specific problem. So the idea is all these these companies, they start paying these startups and you create more opportunity for growth, you see. And it's better for the country because, hey, if I'm going to if I get money from the United States for an investors and I use it for growing Panama, I'm going to create more jobs, more opportunities, we're going to solve the problem that we are solving as a startup. And for example, what they told me is that in Colombia, this big, don't I don't want to say the name, but, there was a famous startup in Colombia, and they started working with the government because the government was like, okay, if I give this contract to a startup, they're going to reinvest it for grow. If I go to a normal company, they just going to do it and pay dividends. I don't want to make rich, but with I do with this, I want to actually help solve something bigger and create more opportunities for jobs and stuff like that. So I believe a lot that we as a country need to invest morning startups, but we need to educate investors that startups are companies that solve problems and they burn money. They actually talk about like burn rates. You get how much is your burn rate in Panama? You say, do a normal investor like a I have a burn rate of ten K per month is like, what the fuck you? So that's not a successful business. So yeah, it's it's a different plan to, different it's not like other countries here. People, those in, they don't know too much about this industry that is coming. And I think that every now they everything needs to be digitalized and, yeah, I, you need to push the do you need to show the society that we need to invest in more startups. Where are people raising money from right now? Is it typically from the government or is it from US investors or local investors, local investors right now, from the people who want to start for the seed capital, you talk to local investors and bottom up, they're there. I mean, their seed programs like swell aware that you can is that the city of knowledge, seed of knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. See that's how you have knowledge. Yeah. And yeah. You talk you you you participate in the programs and they help you raise capital. I mean, at least it's seed capital. Also, they have something called send a seed that you can and do your, their, their program. And they can help you raise capital a seed capital to and some angels, but some angels that actually believe in the idea and, and that's where we want to do right now. Like talk to the specific key partners for us. For example, a guy who has a recycling company, he's a good investor for, for our company because this is smart money, so that he has to package all that up to then raise capital outside of a of Panama. It's very interesting coming here and like getting exposed to the entrepreneurship community. We've obviously done this podcast in Miami. We've done it in Charlotte. We've done it in Charleston, we've done it in Denver, Colorado, we've done it in LA. And we've gotten to see all these different like entrepreneurial cultures. But what you see pretty often in the US is there's a lot of people that their entire business is just raising money by incredible. Like they have an idea, but their focus is not on like growing that idea. It's just about raising money. And and there's so much money available. Like they you have all these funds and most of the funds are not invested. So like 80% of that fund isn't even being deployed. That capital is not even being deployed. So for me, it's crazy because this is like a domino effect, because when you have technology in your business, the idea is to put more money to grow it and make it more scalable. But it doesn't. Your numbers are in red. So for me, it's it's weird to think like that, but no, I'm understanding why. It's because you want to make it massive. All your technology needs to be everywhere. So it's something that I'm getting used to to understand and when I started talking to some books, they told me that, yeah, yeah, Diego, if we invest in in your company, we're going to talk to the next week. So our equity will have a better exit. And you think if you, Sequoia invest in your company, then another big bank is going to invest in you. And then he goes, it's like a domino effect. I don't know, it's crazy. For me, it's we are used to the in the normal business of yeah making your whole money and have a profit. You pay dividends and by but with technology's totally different scenario. Yeah. And you see like what I'm impressed about here is like when you talk about burn rates. We had this girl on the podcast two days ago and she's like super proud that she raised like $4,000 of her own money. And she's like, and that will that will float the business for the next year. Yeah. And so for me, that's crazy because in the US, to run a business with $4,000 for the year is like unheard of, right. My burn rate's $40,000 a month. Wow. You know, like and so our shareholders are they want their biggest focus is bringing down that burn rate. So what's impressive to me about Panama is because of that lack of capital. You have a lot of entrepreneurs that have learned how to effectively bootstrap a company with very little Capital One, which is, which is a very valuable skill set. I mean, the idea of all I have five years doing bootstrapping because I didn't I knew at some point that I wanted to raise capital to I wanted to implement technology. I didn't know how to do it. After five years ago, and I was okay, I'm not going to raise any single dollar. We're going to find a way to raise it to to make money. And that's why I because I started, I started I mean, we haven't talked about this, but my idea is, is more is like brand is more. So we are focus of our mission is to create a community of responsible humans. Responsible humans is someone who want to create impact in themselves and their surroundings. So the problem that we are solving is that people want to help, but they don't know where to start. Literally. They just they literally text me, you see, my phone is over there. They literally told me, Diego, where can I participate in the day? How can I help the turtles? How can I help recycling? How can I help with this? I cannot, so we have brought a community of people who want to help, and now I'm connecting with the companies they want to create marketing campaigns to create, impact campaigns. So the marketing budgets for the companies to actually carry an ad campaign are huge. And that's why I started like talking to the to the marketing agencies that work with these big brands until, okay, now the new trend is to create impact with marketing budget, a sustainable campaign and the budget the budgets were bigger and they started, selling that idea. And that brought me a little bit of money. And now that I want to digitalize, it's like, great, we have traction. We have sold a a lot of money for 400,000 and last year. So we have traction. We have a good idea. And we talked I wanted to implement that. Then we have to, you know, the point system, you know, and I, I started talking with a big company a Heineken. They have a soup category, a soup beer called Crystal. So Crystal they, they told me the ideal I want to create a campaign for, to help a create awareness about helping the nature. And we want to create a recycling program. And I was like, okay, perfect. We want to do this. We know create in the in the city different points that you can recycle when you recycle your game points, those points you enjoy to to exchange for the clothing and for beers. And guy the campaign was successful. They build the technology because they have the money to do it. And I was like, I just tried to it. Yeah, it was like my MVP, my minimum viable product. And when I saw that that technology was doing something good was like, no, we have to replicate that idea. And, offered that on a platform to different companies. And that's what we're building right now. And now I'm raising capital for it to focus on the idea. But that idea is going to develop my clothing, run my recycling system, my agency and my festival. And that's the whole idea. What are you going to use, the money that you raise? How are you going to deploy it within your company to grow the company? Right now we need to invest in technology. And, while our main focus right now is technology and, our recycling facility, because we just gain a contract in Panama Pacifico. But if this logistics center and their become is the place, are we doing our festival? They are becoming an Echo Park industrial Eco-Friendly Park Logistics Park because they want to apply to green funds. So the idea is that we just get the contract to do the recycling in the whole area. And there are 300 seats, 360 companies that we going to recycling their waste compact and and sell it. I make money from the waste and and yeah, that's that's the goal that's actually cash flow. And in order to help people bring more waste to our we create the loyalty program because from there the revenue regenerate from the waste. We, we, we want to use a percentage for the token so people can recycle more. Interesting. How did you get into this, man? I'm, I'm a surfer. We, I started in imaginary. This was this idea. Started in my ID five years ago, when I was my senior year in the university. I studied in Windward in Surf Technology, Boston. No way. Yeah. Sister went there. I'm from Massachusetts. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, he. Yeah, man, when was he was crazy? Real? I started as an interdisciplinary engineering. Really? Until desire for. What the fuck is that? I just remember I saw this in, like. Okay, so yeah, we're going to study interdisciplinary engineering. You tell us. Good. And I remember I was like, in the club like, hey, what do you do? Interdisciplinary engineering. Diego, nice to meet you. But yeah, that was not for me. And I changed into entrepreneurship and, and and business management because I felt it that the sometimes the engineer, the focus more on what it can be solve in what they have. The inntrepreneur goes a little bit beyond the bucks. So when I started talking to my professor or, the one who got me into this, he told me, Diego, if you want to create something, you have the idea. Then you hired the engineering. I was like, okay, you are an entrepreneur. And that's why I started doing entrepreneur. So my senior project, Deloitte, I and that time they used told me they used to call me the upper number because I, I made two apps in the university, man, and they both fail. I lost a lot of money and my professor was like, oh, fucked ups, do something that is you. Something that connects with your purpose, the person that you are. And because I'm a surfer as well, I get fucking recruited about. I'm not going to make it app and and I that that time there was something call a four ocean. It's like a bracelet that you buy it and you help clean the ocean. Yeah, I remember that. I like that idea, but it really is like you buy one or you, you know, buy more. And I started doing some research and I saw that you can use plastic to make clothing just like this. I was like, you know, I'm going to do this idea. Create the whole market, the the whole business plan, pitch the idea. I was like, okay, we're going to create a brand called Ismail Isthmus is Isthmus and Panama is an isthmus. So it was a perfect name. So it was good. When I graduate, I was finishing college. My, my I remember was like, okay, you have two options. Stay in New York, work I an opportunity that I, I was I got or go to Panama to start a a T-shirt business from from recycled plastic man. So and you told me like you go to Panama like I think you really felt it. And I came to Panama and the first day I came to Panama, I met a guy from United States that. And he told me, Diego, what do you want to do for your life? Really? The first day, super random. The guy told me. I told like, I have no idea. I just started from college to these my birthday and I'm creating. I want to start a business. A t shirts made from recycled plastic. The guy was like, bro, my best friend is the one who made the T-shirt from recycled plastic. I was like, Holy shit! Bam! He gave me the the the number. It was so crazy that the guy who was his contact, he used to live in Las Vegas. Bro, I'm. I'm a deep Raider fan. I'm like, that's my shit, man. I'm a Raider fan. And I remember the first thing I took to the do the guy in Las Vegas. Like, I have no idea what I need to do business here because I'm a Raider fan. And the guy was like, oh, me too. And we started a relationship. So I get the the product. It was very nice t shirt, for example, I brought into Panama Shoe success. I brought 200 units very small. They sold in that week. Then in 2019 I order like 1000 units on this big number in Panama, and I sold it in three months during the pandemic. So the whole started the whole movement and then necessary. It was our first company. They talk to you all. We want to do a collaboration. Let me see how your products, I was like, okay, we have the t shirt. We can do something very nice. We do it. The oh my God, deal. Your prices are really expensive. I was like, yeah, because you're not buying this t shirt. You're buying a brand, you're branding movement. So we're going to connect your t shirt with a campaign of recycling. So that started a whole thing. People recycling. They get the t shirt. And then after that a lot of companies started telling me, like, Diego, I want to I want to do a collaboration. Coloration, coloration, coloration and when we grew, we grew. And a lot of people started telling me, Diego, okay, now it's time to recycle. Where can I give you my, my, my plastic bottles? Then we did an, recycling system. But this recycling system started as a business because in order to have a successful route, you need to talk to these, you know, communities. And at the time when I approach them to different companies, I'm not saying the name. They relate to me. Diego. I know there's money in the waste management. How can I, you know, give me something back. You know, coin, they say, you know, they want the money back. And for some, just give me like, no no no no no no, this is this is a nonprofit. So now we created a recycling system that is a nonprofit that you collect taxes and money from these big companies to do the recycling system. And that waste that you generate, you we create, we have a recycling center that we collect the waste and come back and we and then we make money from the waste to 100%. Yeah. So you guys collect the raw materials as a nonprofit and then that goes and becomes your. Yeah, your raw materials for your recyclable manufacturing. Exactly. And we merge and we market everything as a publicity movement because I just took took this big companies like, okay, Coca-Cola where they had, you know, pay a billboard that's so boring, pay a recycling electric truck. And that creates impact. And that's the whole idea. And that brought me into, Panama. See, if you go if you of the area to me because they want, they want to order me some shirts and they to me. Diego, do you have are you are you want to do do you want to do a a festival? I was like festival. Yeah. Do a sustainable festival. Like, okay, let's do it. Panama was a big client. Of course I'm want to say yes. See, you experience I say yes. I was like, okay, fuck, how am I going to do this? Then I talked to some friends that they do festivals. We do 5050. We start the whole project. Then I discover that these big, this big companies, they have bodies from if for events and sustainability. So it was the perfect place to, finance the whole project. So now is going to be our third year. And for example, I remember that the first day, the first festival, we wanted to buy a recycling electric truck. And I was like, everybody is having the or no buy something with gasoline. Literally cheaper diesel use normal is not less. If we want to be sustainable, we have to do it right. We want to buy the recycling truck, the electric recycling truck. And we managed to gain some money for the festival and we, pay the down payment for the, the, the, the recycling, the electric truck. And it was very nice, but. And the recycling truck is now collecting waste. We know. No, I yeah, man. What do you think the power is? Of course branding. Why are more companies like taking this approach to marketing? I see that in the brands is a way to communicate your idea, and it helps your consumer connect with the brand. So the idea that we're becoming more and more successful, that the car competition is a whole storytelling people for a they fell in love with the why. So if you communicate your way very, very, very well, people is going to connect with you. So because the guide who I'm partnered up with, with the the guy from the recycling business, you're in Panama, he's selling me. The idea of your brand is help us. He's he's attracting all my clients because you're doing something that is connected with the purpose with why. And and I see that is very nice that people actually connect with the why and not with the product. And I beginning my first product, many was shit I know and I so reading the book of Shoe Dog, they they went from Phil Knight from Nike. He started the he I read it that like the first product he made, it was not that good. But he's put it out in the market and people love it. For some reason you might. The first the same thing happened to me, people. I was like, I had a T-shirt. I mean, it's nice, comfortable, but I don't know. It's not the best product. People love it and and yeah, you you have to put your idea order and see how people are going to react. And if they connect with the purpose. You don't sell the product, you sell the purpose. And that's the whole idea of creating a brand. You look at a lot of these things like, you know, your first shitty product and you laugh about it and you talk about like when you were in college, you had two apps that were didn't go very well. How do you how why did you not let and how did you not let those, those failures define you and you are still able to overcome those speed bumps and find this venture that is nous, you know? Sounds like it's extremely successful. Oh, well, no dream. We were just start it. We're starting and and but it's been good, you know. And the whole idea is because it's going to sound crazy. But what I feel is part of my purpose. So. But it's very gruesome telling you this, but it's I feel it's something very connected to me because, look, now that I look back, when I, I, I don't, I don't want to say I have a rough child, but, I mean, I lost my father when I was, like, eight years old, and, man, it was painful. But I remember that that pain. Teach me to become the person that I want to be. That mindset. Okay? I want to make my that proud. So I'm going to become the best. And I started being very thankful. Like I think, yeah, I lost my dad, but I have a house, I have the family, I have friends, I have a school, have a bed. Like, I'm good, I'm good. I don't have in this thing. You. A great week has started and having a lot of gratitude. And that I had that idea, brought me that I wanted to be. I'm so thankful for my life that I want to do something good for that. I want to pay it forward. And I always started praying God, the life, whatever you want to call it, like, hey, I'm going to do something great. I'm going to do something good for the for the world. I don't know how what the fuck I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something great. And, when the idea of Ismail came to me in in college, man, I didn't. I, I, I didn't sleep for like two weeks. It was crazy. And and the whole idea of Jesus trying to make something bad into something positive. What industries? That one. Recycling. You train waste into something positive. You turn waste into a beautiful product. So I feel this connected with my purpose. And for some reason, every time that we have something bad happened. Something would happen. Like when you're, like, literally two weeks ago, I was like, man, how the heck I'm going to raise capital for for the app. Who the fuck 100 finance and app that is going to create points for good action. And and I was like literally walking. And then I received a message for the best year is a bank a watermelon. And I saw like a year ago you just won 25 K to implement the your app will take. Holy shit. It's like life telling you like keep going, keep going. And when when I met the guy from real estate and he literally told me like a I'm my best friends who went through meditation, recycling t shirts. It's like life is that your is helping you, but at the same time is putting you challenges to see if you can overcome them. You see, and that's created with my purpose. I say, okay, I'm entrepreneur, I know that we're going to, so we're going to have challenges, but is this going to help me become the better version of myself and a better, entrepreneur? You see. So obviously you've got a couple different businesses going on right now, and sometimes it's difficult from someone for someone from the outside to kind of see how all the puzzle pieces fit together. But as the entrepreneur, you're visualizing that outcome and you're kind of seeing the path, as it plays out and it, you know, makes sense in your head. But where do you see all these pieces coming together? What does that final picture, what does that like definition of success for you? I mean, it's crazy because right now I'm working of how to communicate my idea, because when I tell people that we are holding company, that we have several, we have clothing, recycling events, technology is very hard. So to people understand. And when I talk to hold holding company, people are like, what the heck? Why? You're holding company. But the whole idea is to create a community, really, of people who want to help and companies who want to help, and we just want to bring them together. That's it. We want to connect people who want to create impact in the world. That's it. Because I believe if you can have to, great means you're going to do something crazy for that, something good for the mind, for the world. And that's the whole purpose and is more back the idea and you this I use the idea of is more because it's a very Panamanian world. We Panama is an isthmus, but an easement is a piece of land that connect large masses and it's surrounded by ocean. I was like, man, my whole name is connection. So my idea is connecting people who want to create impact. That's all. One of my my, my my ideas is to create, a responsible humans hub, literally. And so do you have idea of soul house, soul house. So. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. I want to create the whole the same thing for, for responsible humans, people who want to actually do something good. And the main goal to this is more responsible house. And you met a guy who owns a waste management system and you have a creative, creative agency. You created something good with them and you create something good for the world. That's my whole idea connecting good, cool, cool minds. People who want, I want to sell that. People who want to create impact are the new trend. Are they are the the new the. I want to make responsible human famous. That's the whole thing. And I've when you said before like it's difficult to communicate that big picture message, I think like something I've had to figure out because I experienced the same thing I have like in I had these big goals that I want to accomplish. But when your speaking to someone who's operational, right, like if, well, when you're speaking to visionaries, it's one thing, but it's typically the visionaries are not the one that are helping you with your idea. They're doing their own idea. But when you're speaking to someone operational, they're more concrete sequential. So they don't think in that abstract they're much more in the here and now. And so when you when you speak of these things in the future, it's not pragmatic to them. And they can't rationalize it because it's not in the present. And so what I've realized that I have to do is like for that specific operational person that I'm talking to, I have to say in my own head ahead of time, like, there will be a good fit for this specific piece of the business, and then only talk to them about that one small sliver of the business and the other 50 puzzle pieces, like, don't even expose them to that, because it's just going to overwhelm them and they don't understand. And it's it's like the big lesson is, is like, you got the operational people and you got the strategy people and like, you got to communicate to them different. No, no, no. It's funny because we know that startup culture, they elevator pitch is around. How do you commit your you communicate your idea in 1 in 1 minute. Man. It's it's been so difficult for me and that's where we're working on right now. On the storytelling, on how are we going to sell the whole package. And yeah, I, I understand your pain because when I talk to some investors, you're like, okay, you're like a marketing agency. Like, no, we're more limited, more of that. Are you a sustainable agency? No, we're more because we have a brand. You what are you. What are you doing? We're literally implementing sustainability, our responsibility into people's. And and I'm and persons. And we're using these digital platforms to make it, better and make it more to have measures. And you're like, okay, okay, so what does it mean? Business. So is being a little bit difficult for me. And I'm working on, on on that right now. But I know that if we manage to do the whole thing better, to have this whole storytelling is going to be good because we have good numbers and everything has been bootstrapped. And yeah, I understand the operational part of money is a little bit too hard, but I think it's part of the challenge that if you overcome, that challenge is going to be good for the business. And it's like the it's very difficult to create one elevator pitch that all people like. If you're going to do that, you have to make sure that that pitch has like right brain language in it and left brain language in it, because you have the abstract thinkers and then you have the concrete thinkers. So you have to have the vision for the abstract people. But then the numbers in that data, in the here and now for the, you know, concrete people. And I've found that, again, it's like I have ten different pitches, elevator pitches based on the personality type that I'm pitching it to. And the real challenge becomes as excited as you are to, like, communicate that pitch. The first step in the most important step is to analyze that audience first, and to be asking the questions to figure out what is that profile of that person and that audience that I'm talking to, and then matching that specific pitch in your arsenal with that, that person. Then, like a builder, send money. And and it is funny because if you talk to someone who understands branding and movement and culture and, and the whole is scenario is like, man, you're creating a whole ecosystem. Yeah. Because you already have the community. You already label your community. You're creating role moving the understand what do you mean in talking to this to someone who his business is waste management is just gaining government contracts to do that. Waste management. And that's my business. And they're big money. They're in the box. Exactly. But I want them to know if you put a brand and technology into your industry, we're going to make something big happen. Because waste waste management is I mean, it's a massive industry. It's a problem right now. I don't know if you notice in here in Panama, there's plastic. There's ways everywhere. So all I'm doing is creating brand, putting technology into an existing industry. And I see that that's like a trend. It's not a trend, but it's what startups are doing and are raising capital to make it faster that you can possibly do it. See, out of all these experiences and all these ups and downs that you've had with holy shit, yeah. Is there been a roller coaster out of all of them? What is the single biggest takeaway that you have from all of those experiences that you would pass along to other entrepreneurs that are just getting started? Man, the whole purpose of this, if you're going to do an idea, do something that really you will always hear this on a podcast in the in the, in the, in TikTok and Instagram everywhere. Do something that you really like, man. Somebody that is going to that you overcome. Because if you start a whole idea for money, their first year, their first month, the first three years that you don't get any money, you want a quick and quitters, they never get it. So if you do something, do that something that you actually like, man, you're going to continue. If you see yourself in the future and you see if okay, I'm going to be the frequency of is more worldwide, I'm going to make this company big. You have something to attach yourself and believe in. It's going to be good. It's going to be. But if you started with just thinking about money, I don't know you have is something starting a business. You become even more spiritual because of a not just spiritual. If you want to become your best version of yourself, you want to be the best entrepreneur. Wherever you need to start reading, you need to workout. You need to be literally become the best version of yourself because your business needs the better version of yourself to make it better. So it's something that it's more than just starting a business. You see concept crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, it's really good advice and I completely agree. If, very simple. If people are interested in your services or in your business or want to connect with you, where can they find you? I mean, the best ways to connect in Instagram, is Montecarlo estamos echo. You can send any DM and really you reply or you can. I I'm starting to become a little bit more an influencer. My, my guys from marketing digital video. You need to become an influencer. I don't want to be an influencer that people needs to listen to you. So now you can text me in Instagram. Diego Diaz with see? See Diego Diaz. See. And you can get my information and and I mean we have a website www.istmo.co. Yeah. That's that's how you can approach me and you can help you put sustainability, a responsibility in your business on your back and your practices. Awesome man I appreciate you coming on. Awesome, man. Yeah. Sick.
