Summary

An immigrant entrepreneur shares their journey of overcoming language barriers, cultural adaptation, and professional setbacks to establish successful businesses, drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs' resilience.

Abstract

The narrative details the immigrant's experience of moving to a new country without knowledge of English and facing the monumental task of assimilating into a different culture. Despite initial struggles, the individual found entrepreneurial success by leveraging personal passion and education to start an online business importing Spanish food. The journey includes the sale of a successful platform, the challenges of a tapas tour business, and the development of an app aimed at providing a concierge service. The story underscores the importance of perseverance, learning from failure, and the impact of Steve Jobs' philosophy on staying true to one's dreams and inner voice amidst adversity. The entrepreneur's ultimate goal is to inspire and guide young entrepreneurs, emphasizing that the path to success is fraught with obstacles but is ultimately rewarding.

Opinions

The author believes that passion and the desire to help others can drive one to overcome significant challenges.
Entrepreneurship is seen as a path to financial independence and personal fulfillment, born from persistent effort and refusal to give up on one's dreams.
The article conveys that networking and learning from others' experiences are crucial for business success.
Steve Jobs is held in high regard, with his life and words serving as a source of inspiration for the author, particularly his resilience in the face of being fired from Apple.
The author emphasizes the importance of not letting others' negative opinions deter one from pursuing their entrepreneurial aspirations.
The journey of entrepreneurship, with its highs and lows, is presented as a rewarding experience that shapes an individual's character and career.

The Journey of an Immigrant Becoming Entrepreneur

Life lessons to overcome the challenges of starting a business as a foreigner

My first interview ever/Image credit of Author

When I decided to move here I knew it was not going to be a walk in the park. I could not speak English and barely knew a couple of people.

You really need to change the chip, if care is not taken you could rise or sink. I am sharing my entrepreneurship journey and how I overcame it.

Becoming an entrepreneur

I had never thought of starting a business while growing up. Nobody is born to become a nurse or a chef. We all make choices in life growing up.

Learning a new culture, system, and language takes time but when you have the passion to be better or help others become better, that passion makes you overcome any challenges.

I got a job at a restaurant and then the twin towers got hit. That was truly life-changing for me and lots of people, the economy, and jobs were washed away.

My only goal at work was earning enough to survive, but I knew then I could do something else with my life, and between working and learning English, I started my first online business importing food from Spain “that I missed so much”.

Setting up an online store was not easy but I was passionate about it, applying my business degree background and attending a course on online business. My dream became a reality.

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”- Steve Jobs

Moving forward

After three years with Spanish Essence, I sold the platform to a competitor since I moved to a smaller town and had other priorities.

Moving back to San Francisco ignited again my entrepreneurial spirit and I started a tapas tour business with my former contacts in the city. We ran the business for six months and it was not what we expected in terms of success.

Then I decided to move away from food. The goal was to create something useful and more with the times we were living.

Then is when Citipozt was born, an app first focused on hotel guest type of concierge in your city. I hired only on “equity” a co-founder, marketing manager former “Trip Advisor” employee, former “Pandora” advisor, and a dev team overseas “they got paid”.

The first year of work was hard and then we decided to start over. We built a centralized Yelp with fewer categories and locations and easy and fast scrolling.

We implemented an uber tap at the time to facilitate users to get to locations as well as keep the user longer in the app.

Because we had fewer categories and locations it was easy to refresh new businesses on the platform.

Long history short after angel investment, the board wanted to go another direction that I did not agree with and I left. Citipozt did not make and it went under shortly after I left.

Now my goal is to inspire young entrepreneurs and help them achieve their dreams by guiding and providing my experiences of failure.

Follow your dreams

From that point, meeting people and networking became a must for me.

A business is born like a dream probably months or years before it can be given birth. It’s the fruit of sleepless hours thinking, analyzing, dreaming, and imagining the experience of having your own, growing up, and being free and independent financially.

A company is the fruit of the effort of not giving up, who and we are not willing to let anything or anyone steal our dreams of freedom!

“Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice.”- Steve Jobs

My inspiration

This morning I had the opportunity to watch and hear Steve Jobs's speech again at the graduation ceremony at Stanford University. I’ve seen it before, but usually, when something is so good that it’s worth it, I have no qualms about listening to it or reading it two, three, or as many times as necessary.

Steve Jobs is one of those characters I admire not for his ability to generate wealth (only) but for his personality and the deep wisdom that emanates from his words.

In his speech, Steve remembers how he started the Apple company in his garage and two years later the company had 50 employees and was worth $200 million. But that’s not the impressive thing.

Did you know that Steve was fired in 1985 from his own company by the board of directors? If you can measure what this means, it will be hard for you to get out of wonder as it happened to me. Steve Jobs was removed from the company because some of the directors said that “his ideas were dangerous for the company.” And they took it out!

Steve Jobs’ story has an end that I love. Steve did indeed leave Apple and although it seemed that he had been “robbed” of one of his greatest treasures that he himself had created, he did not decline or surrender. It is said that Steve, already with more experience, has formed two companies that have transformed the history of technology, one of which is Pixar, the Disney cartoon company, and Next.

And not only that, his success and his invincible entrepreneurial spirit led him to create products that have impacted the technology market: iPod's creator, iPhone, the iMac computer, the iTunes, and another series of products whose great successes we all know.

Undoubtedly, Steve did not let himself steal his dream, and today we remember him as the most recognized leader and businessman, even as Bill Gates’ eternal rival in creativity and commercial genius.

“The journey is the reward”.- Steve Jobs

The bottom line

Dreaming of a business means getting around a thousand difficulties in shaping the project. People often specialize in negative phrases like: “it won’t work”, “someone else tried and couldn’t”, “that business has no future”, “you’re going to lose your money”, “you’ve never been able to do something right”, “you have no experience”, “the crisis is very strong”, etc.

But if you look carefully, these phrases almost always come from people who have actually never done it, because maybe they haven’t even tried.

But this article aims to convey the opposite message and encourage you to believe and continue dreaming that you can achieve it. Giving up is very easy. Not trying is too easy, too. But dreaming big and not letting anyone steal that dream from you is a real challenge.

Today I am not a millionaire, failed many times but learning from those mistakes is what keeps me going to help others not to make the same mistakes.

Do you have an idea in mind? It doesn’t matter if it will take you 6 months or 2 years to get there, keep trying, keep believing, keep learning, and don’t allow anyone! steal your dream.