"I don't' ride because I am a good rider, I ride because the challenge to leave my fears behind me."
Ismael Abrego
A good friend of mine, Oliver Aponte, introduce me to motorcycles and taught me to ride. He didn't care that I dropped his bike to the ground several times, he kept calm and patient doing his best to help me find my way around something that by the time I considered impossible to achieve, "That it's not for me, I'm not good enough for that." Those were my thoughts, which I know were only fueled by the fear of doing something new and exciting.
Anna my girlfriend by the time gave the best present ever, a voucher to attend a motorcycle class, and it was the beginning of a passion for everything about motorcycling, the two wheels machines in all its styles, but my favorites are the naked street bikes and cafe racer style. The admiration for fantastic professional riders like Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, and the creative builders like Krystal Hess or Keanu Reeves.
"I am not an artist, I'm just a visual thinker"
I always feel a strong inclination to visual arts; I admire the power of graphics that can trigger emotions and capture viewers attention. More by circumstances than planned, during my career, I faced continuously the need to compress lots of complex or technical data into pieces of meaningful information for senior executives that their interest was about the business value and strategic impact for the company. Also, several times that I had the opportunity of working closely with senior consultants from, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, and Accenture, That experience is like an MBA in practice. So summarization and visualization are skills that I developed through the years, and that have become of great help during my roles while developing presentations for "C" and "VP." levels.
"The only path to becoming an entrepreneur is starting a business, any business."
Some friends call me a dreams' breaker, and the main reason for it, is because when they come to me, all excited about an idea, I firmly insist on leaving the thinking behind and start trying it right away, even if is not "perfect" yet. Or because if they ask for feedback I'll be acting as an investor and they have to convince me to put my money on it. And in most cases, I have found that they have no clarity on how to translate that idea into a real business, or because they enjoy the process of dreaming about it, but are terrified about the process of making it a reality. In my experience, the only way to become "something" is to start acting like that. And yes, there will be a lot of failures, learnings, disappointments, economic loses and all those experiences that are not shared, unless that someone is already super successful and then he or she can share all the history behind the current success.
I have personally started some business; some were successful for a time, some a total failure and many are in the making. But the most important thing to me is that I keep trying and learning.
Some of my favorite, podcast about entrepreneurship and business are: "How I build this" from NPR, "Business Wars" from Wondery, and "The Tim Ferris Show" of course from Tim Ferris.
