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Key Takeaways Opportunities will find you if you’re prepared to acknowledge them.
The only person who can prevent you from starting a business is you.
Tenacity is more valuable for a founder than any amount of connections.
I’ve traveled to over a hundred different countries in my life. Many of these places lack the relative comfort and safety of North America. But I’ve also seen this lack of a social safety net drive people to accomplish amazing things.
Nearly everyone in the developing world is an entrepreneur — because they have to be. The problems they deal with on a daily basis are more immediate, so they’re under greater pressure to innovate solutions.
Most North American founders I’ve met are never truly in danger of falling through the cracks. If their startup doesn’t work, most can move back in with the parents who probably paid for them to attend business school.
But in places where failure is not an option, people work harder to make their dreams come true. I’ve seen it more times than I can count — but the clearest example is a man named Juan Carlos, the first friend I ever made outside the United States.
This is his story. I’m sharing it with you to illustrate what he taught me about pushing through obstacles so that you can remind yourself not to give up when you encounter them.
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