Entrepreneurs are just people who refuse to give up.
“Why stay at the foot of the mountain when you have the ability to climb to the summit?“ This is a phrase that’s always inspired me. Some may wonder what it means but think about it carefully: why hold yourself back when you know you’re capable of something more?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how time is running out. Maybe because of the pandemic and the time we all had to reflect and ponder. Or maybe because I am rapidly approaching the Big 40. But I feel like the moment to make my mark on the world is coming and I can’t put it off any longer. Either way, I want 2022 to be the most interesting year of my life.
Why? Because I have decided so.
After two years in a kind of limbo, I am setting 2022 as the year when everything is reactivated, professionally and personally, and you can, too.
It’s not arrogant or unrealistic to aim for the top of the mountain. Things can always go wrong, of course, as the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 clearly taught us. But what is an entrepreneur if not a person who simply refuses to give up?
And the thing is, all the entrepreneurs I know – Latinos who know what it really means to live in crisis – are exactly like that. We don’t shrink from external circumstances. Does life give us lemons? Sometimes, yeah, but when it does we take out the tequila and have a party.
Latin America has not stopped being the troubled region that it has always been, even more so taking into account the effects of Covid. Nevertheless, in 2021 more Latin American unicorn companies emerged than ever before ( Kavak, Clara, and Incode to name three). Others even reached the New York Stock Exchange (Brazil’s Nu, for example).
We remain in an extremely volatile environment and global crises often hit our region worse than others. But that’s why Latin Americans are known for our ingenuity and inventiveness. Latinos are specialists in fishing in troubled waters.
True, we still do not know what will happen to Covid and its new variants or what opportunities will open up in the coming months. But what we do know is that we have always survived. Our longstanding culture of hard work, along with the stubbornness of mules that all Latinos are born with, force us to get ahead.
Yes, 2022 will be a wonderful year, but it depends on you and me to make it that way. Stop admiring the mountaintop from the foothills and starting climbing towards that summit!
Happy 2022 and much success to entrepreneurs everywhere.
By Pablo Fuentes
