Intro
Hi, I am 26 years old Cuban.
5 years ago I had real access to google search for the first time.
1 year ago, I was a broke engineer working for $30/month.
Today, I live in Portugal, I’m an Entrepreneur in Residence at a Venture Studio, and spend my days building businesses.
Here is how I did it…
Origins
First, a little bit of context.
I was born in Cuba in what you would call a middle class family. But being middle class in an extremely poor communist country means you are still very poor. However, my family was rich in education and they passed that down to me.
If one trait defined me as a child, and it was being curious. I read a lot and wanted to know about everything. I was never into novels or fiction books, but I consumed magazines and factual books like water. We didn’t have internet so I spent hours reading random encyclopedia articles or the entire history for the characters in a videogame.
My parents thought I shouldn’t spend too much time in the computer, so all of that was after I had my daily karate lesson and did all of my homework.
In 12th grade, I had to choose a major for college. My dad is a Mechanical Engineer and I’ve always loved tech and building things so, I chose Automation Engineering (which in Cuba is the closest thing to Computer Engineering).
I discovered my passion for coding, executing projects and leading teams. But an extremely outdated curriculum, unmotivated professors, and the lack of practical subjects and resources to learn cool stuff, made me start rejecting school like never before. I started feeling this wasn’t the path I wanted for myself.
With the lack of motivation came the bad qualifications for the first time in my life. I didn’t study at all, and being in one of the hardest majors in my country, that didn’t result well. I doubted myself and my skills and it got worse as every year I had fewer subjects that would really interest me.
At this point, I had been training martial arts for 15 years. I was a Karate black belt. Therefore, I knew I didn’t have a consistency or discipline problem. I was just on the wrong path.
Seizing the Internet
In 2019, for the first time ever, the Dictatorship allowed Cubans to have mobile internet.
For $10 you could buy 1 GB of 3G connectivity. (Yes, you read that right)
I knew how many doors the internet could open for me, so I started investing in it (big decision when the average salary in Cuba was about $25/month). Luckily, I had savings and my family was doing fine.
By chance, a friend drew me into crypto and showed me how we could use it as an alternative to the normal global payment methods, which Cubans couldn’t access.
Trading crypto, my web surfing became a profitable business. We were doing scraping and lots of crazy stuff, but that’s how I made… and lost… and made again… and lost again my first hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
I was doing better at trading than most people. So…
- People started asking me to teach them.
- I made commercial relationships with other people in the space.
- I had my first conversations about economics and business.
And that’s when I knew for sure that I didn’t want to and was not going to be the typical engineer.
Quarantine self-exploration
The market crash of March of 2020 hit me hard. It made me realize I didn’t really know what I was doing.
Then COVID hit, and school stopped for 6 months. I found myself locked in my house with nothing to do.
At home, we were paying $20/month to have 60 hours/month of 0.256 Mbps wifi. (Yes, you read that right again: $0.33/h for a 0.256 Mbps Wi-Fi)
But it allowed me to watch YouTube, which I couldn’t do with mobile data.
No physical job in Cuba pays well, so I was determined to make money online. And I knew I needed to learn what people were doing out there first.
I tried everything on the “How to make money online” lists.
From paid surveys, to affiliate marketing, to getting certified as a transcriber and translator, and every micro-task website out there.
All this while I was learning real trading for the first time and building a community where I taught for free everything that I learned about business to other people who also wanted to escape the rat race. Which got me into persuasive writing and marketing.
With everything I tried, I was either banned because of my location, or needed money that I didn’t have. So I stuck with trading which was the most promising.
In 2021 I was already back at school at the same time I started being profitable. I built a trading team. Learned WordPress and built a trading and crypto blog. Then graduated and went to work as an engineer. We made money trading and lost most of it investing in Crypto at the wrong time.
I realized I was good at crypto trading but really bad at crypto investing. 🙂
Finding my Ikigai
However, at this time, I had already begun learning about entrepreneurship, marketing, business, sales, etc. I found Alex Hormozi, My First Million Podcast, Adam Enfroy, Gary Vee, H-Educate, Euge Oller, Naval, Russell Brunson, and others.
Then I discovered the IKIGAI Concept:
I was good at trading. And It made me money.
But what I really loved was building the teams, creating the trading courses, connecting with people, creating strategies, leading, and the whole entrepreneurial vibe. I wanted to leave a bigger footprint in the world and trading was not going to give me that.
I realized trading was not my Ikigai. What I loved was building businesses.
So, it was 2022. And I had a Trilema:
- I needed money. Since as an Engineer my salary was only $30/month.
- I needed to leave the country. Since I already knew there was no future for me in Cuba.
- I needed to do something that led me in the direction of my Ikigai.
That’s when I noticed that, while creating my trading community and blog, I had already gained some experience with Web Development, SEO, Branding, Copywriting and Marketing. Plus, I had my engineering and coding experience from my major.
I could pack all of this knowledge into a web development service for small businesses.
So, I took the name from my business community and launched BizWarriors, my web development and SEO agency for small businesses.
I became the CEO of my 1 person company. 🙂
Proving them wrong
Up until this moment, it was hard explaining to my family and friends why I spent so many hours just watching YouTube or reading random blog posts. The comments:
“Why don’t you focus on what you studied in college?”
“Why don’t you get down to earth?”
“You should stay with engineering, you will have a great salary in another country.”
… You may have been there too.
But I knew I had the soul of an entrepreneur. So I started applying everything I knew on BizWarriors, trying to get my first customer.
In 2022 I got accepted into two Masters’s Courses related to Economics and Technology in Italy and Spain. But I couldn’t get my visa because of bureaucracy and corruption in Cuban embassies.
My girlfriend at the time had finally managed to leave the country to study and the distance was too much for us.
Things in Cuba were getting worse by the day.
Then, I got my first client.
With one 15-day project, I earned more than my entire year’s salary as an engineer. AND my client was delighted. This was proof of concept.
I doubled down on every skill that I had. If I was focused before, now I was locked in. My routine was: work → study → exercise → work → sleep. Everyday.
Escaping Communism
I knew the best way to leave Cuba was with a work contract. So I started applying to every Web Development and Webmaster job I could find.
Some days I applied to over 100 job posts since I knew that many of them were not even going to receive my resume due to my location. And many others were going to discard it after reading “Cuba”. I even got some job offers but they required me to be on-site in the US or Europe, which was impossible.
That’s why I focused on Spain and Portugal, the easiest European countries to migrate to for a Cuban.
Two months and a couple of failed interviews later, in April of 2023, I got an email. It was an interview offer from Angry Ventures, a Venture Studio based in Portugal.
The first interview went pretty well. There was good rapport with Michel (the recruiter) and I was confident since it was an entry-level WordPress developer position, and I already had sufficient experience. I’m also very polite and always smiling, which he remarked as a major trait in me. He told me they wanted people who would bring good energy to the team.
(Note: a smile and good manners will open countless doors in your life.)
A couple of days later, I met with Fernando, the CEO.
It seemed that Michel had spoken well of me. We were talking about my past projects. And then, in the middle of the interview, he says – “All good, but I don’t see you as a developer.”
My first thought was – “another failed interview”. However, I was confident that I was qualified, so I instantly started arguing why I did have the knowledge and experience they needed.
He let me finish, and then said – “I understand what you say, but I stand by my opinion, I don’t think you are a developer.” – After a pause, he continued – “I don’t think you will be happy sitting in your desk coding in ten years. I think you have a different potential than that”.
I was stunned.
He then explained why he thought I could bring more value to the company in a different role, and told me he was going to think about it and get back to me in the next days.
5 days later, he sent me a proposal.
If I agreed, I was going to join the company as Entrepreneur in Residence. I would have to do some web development tasks. But under his mentorship, I was going to work on business development, operations, marketing, sales and management.
In the first stage, I would start remotely, and then, if we gained trust. I would move to Portugal to continue with new challenges. It was exactly what I wanted to do, and more. So, in May of 2023, I started my new job.
Living the dream
In this role, I’ve done market research, created marketing and biz-dev strategies, drawn entire Go-To-Market plans, worked with and managed awesome teams, hired people, created international business partnerships, and built projects from the ground up.
In September, we started the process for my visa and in December of 2023, I finally got it.
Today, I live in the beautiful district of Porto, working as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Angry Ventures, and the Chief Revenue Officer for some of our child companies.
I went from being called a “daydreamer” and “wasting time” on the internet, to being in a full-time business role founding and growing companies in Europe. We could say I’m living my dream.
Lessons learned
This was supposed to be just a section, but I realized it should better be a post on its own.
If you are interested in reading about the lessons that change my life, go read the full blog post.
What’s next?
Even though you have the right to enjoy your wins, achieving some dreams can’t stop you from working for the rest. This is even more real now that I’m still young, finally in a free country and a world of possibilities just opened.
For the rest of 2024, I want to achieve financial security for my family and finish the year in the best shape of my life. Now I have no excuses. I just need to continue to learn, execute, grow and network.
All the long nights and hard work will continue to pay off. And I’m pretty sure that yours will too.
I leave you with what has been my phone wallpaper for the last year and a half.
It helped me to stay focused and never give up. Maybe it will do the same for you 😉
Wish you only success, see you around!
