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Capitalism is in crisis, and we can see the symptoms all over the place. Maybe the core cause of these is that society has seen capitalism as only a money-making machine for a few. But as a founder, a business owner, or an entrepreneur, do you believe that it is possible to do good as well as to do well?
I'm Ramon Estrada. I'm a Founder CEO Coach who helps founders and their businesses grow. I welcome you to "business is art."
This is a show about successful entrepreneurship.
Unlike other shows about successful entrepreneurship, we only explore the founders' and leaders' journey from purpose, mindset, strategies, and tactics to making an impact and achieving exponential growth.
Join us on a weekly podcast to explore and learn from those great creators and business innovators who managed to stay on course with their vision to make a positive impact in the world while being exemplary leaders in their companies, communities, and families.
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Godspeed!
Creators & Guests
What is business is art?
This is a show about successful entrepreneurship.
Unlike other shows about successful entrepreneurship, only we dig into the founder’s and leaders’ journey from purpose, mindset, strategies, and tactics to making an impact and achieving exponential growth.
Capitalism is in crisis and we can see the symptoms all over the place and maybe the core cause of this is that capitalism has been seen as only a money making machine for a few, but as a founder, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, do you believe that it is possible to do good as it is to do well?
Narrator:Business artists learn how to channel their purpose, vision and talents while navigating the proper strategies and tactics in their companies to impact the world for good. No more business as usual. I'm Ramon Estrada and this is Business is Art.
Ramon:Let me take you back when I was in high school, maybe 25 years ago or so.
Ramon:I'm in Mexico City and I am a teenager full of ideas of Idealism and I am listening with my friends to the history teacher. He's taking notes on the on the green board about this guy named Robert Owen. He was one of the first, let's say, major industrialists in Manchester around the early 1800 and what he did was wonderful. He was taking in his hands a manufacturing company that produces textiles and let me quote the kind of context that he was leaving from the book The Enlightened Capitalist by James O'Toole. The children who worked in such meals tended the machines round the clock for 12 to 14 hours at a turn and were boarded in shifts in barracks where it was said the beds were always warm.
Ramon:Those children were as young as 5 years of age, but in the 18th century, that was more likely to be considered a sign of progress than exploitation. So I was a teenager and I was listening to this. I'm from Mexico City. I'm from Mexico, a developing country where kids usually work, unfortunately, instead of going to school. So I'm thinking, hey, this happened almost 200 years ago and in some countries, we are in the same stage as back then and the important part of what Robert Owen was doing, and let me go back to my history class, is that he was changing the way the man of this, this factory was taking place.
Ramon:He took the kids out of work and he decided to create schools for them. People were sleeping in barracks, the barracks were open 24 hours and there were people sleeping all day long, taking the different shifts and sleeping in the same beds, so the beds were always warm. So what he did is he created housing, he created hospitals and the most important part is that Robert Owen was doing this while being the most profitable business in England back then. I will go back to this character because I really would like to dedicate at least one more episode to him, but let's think about it. Is capitalism only about money?
Ramon:It's only about doing well, but for whom? For the shareholders? And I think that let's first realize that everything in life has a cause and an effect. The effect that we are seeing right now of how capitalism is in in the world has to do with the cause that usually there has been a lot of greed, a lot of ambition from industrialists, from business owners, from people owning the capital and they were only wanting to make more and more money. So we see right now a lot of problems through these but it has to do with the cost.
Ramon:What's the cost? 1st, let's think about something. If we only think that businesses need to provide for the investors returns and nothing else, then we have the consequences here that businesses are not that popular no matter that the startup movement is going up that many young people want to start businesses but I see that as a whole, the rich people are not that popular or at least the people that created the money through businesses and it has to do with the mindset. For every result that we see or that we want to achieve, we have to do some things, We need actions. So for a certain result, we need to do something, right?
Ramon:We have tasks, we have habits, and all these things that we do come out of somewhere, right? From our mind, from our mindset, from our decision to do these things. But if through our let's say, our mindset is being built by what? By our environment where we are born, the country, the culture, even the language that we speak, by our education, by the way we have been fostered by our parents, by the way or or by the schools where we attended and it has also been nurtured our mindset, our way of viewing the world, our way we decide to take some actions comes also, is is also nurtured by our experiences, by by by the kind of history that we have faced. So if our result if the ultimate result is only money, it means that somewhere in our mindset, money is the only important thing to achieve right now.
Ramon:So instead of having the desire of achieving not only money but something else, let's say good jobs for our employees. Let's say, extremely good, products or services for our clients. Let's say, a good environmental policy for everyone because it's also for the shareholders as well as, yeah, the proper returns for the shareholders. But if we think money or impact as a whole, the way we are going to be doing things in business is going to change quite a lot. It's not the same and it's really important to say something that sometimes when we only think about money, the goal is money and that's the end and everything we do goes towards that direction.
Ramon:I have been involved in launching several companies and I have an MBA. I can tell you that when you think about money, you think about increasing the prices as much as you can and selling the most, the most units or products that you can. So the revenues are up, right? As well as lowering the costs as much as you can. Maybe even lowering the quality to the lowest possible or paying the employees the least possible.
Ramon:So in that way, your costs are in the minimum. So high revenues minus the least of the cost, then you have there a big profit and also you are going to be willing to get paid as fast as possible and you're going to pay your vendors as as far away as you can. So in that way, you can have also a positive way of managing cash. If you only think in this way, in this revenue cost, cash in cash out, you're missing a lot of information and a lot of ways in which you can create a positive impact. But if you think that the goal is as well the path, and let me go back the difference, if you think of money only as a result, then you're thinking that the path is nothing.
Ramon:You are not even considering what you're going to be doing to achieve these results. But if you think that your result, the impact that you're going to be making is way more than just money, you're going to be taking care of where you're stepping of every step in the way and that's important because for sustainability, for not polluting, you need to really think about where your residues, where the, where the employees are going to be working, where your vendors are going to be bringing your products, you're going to be thinking as a whole, trying to make this work in the best possible way for all and this has to do with responsibility as well. Sometimes we think that things happen just for, I don't know, because of serendipity or something, God is coming here to punish us, but we need to be responsible for our acts and it starts with how we think with the mindset that we have. So by now, we have been exploring different aspects about the goal for money or the goal for creating a great company and I want to come here to the different stages that a company can have and this is important to differentiate because if you are working for in a startup or you are the entrepreneur in a startup, the first thing that you are going to be doing is trying to save the company and there the money is the most important.
Ramon:Yes. Why? Because if you run out of money, your company dies, your employees get out of jobs. So it's important, yes, for a startup, you need to make sure that you have a product or a service and to try it and to see that, yeah, there's a feed in what you're doing with the market you're selling. In one way, you need to make the most with the money that you have and to survive.
Ramon:So there, yes, survival is part of the equation. You cannot be thinking about everything or trying to create the most impact when your company is in constant dead valleys and you need it to survive. But it doesn't matter that this happened because eventually you will need to change your mindset and this has to do not only from surviving and keeping this aspect of survival all the time even when your company is already successful, but when your company is growing up, when you have more employees, your team is larger, you need to focus there on sales. Why? Because your product or your service has already been validated, it exists and you need to make sure that you have the right team.
Ramon:And here I come again to this aspect of the barracks in the 1800. You don't want people sleeping in barracks. You want people happy and you want to have the right people in the right seats, and this is basic leadership. Maybe when you are on a start up, you are more managing resources because you are really really worried as an entrepreneur on making things happen, but when the company starts to grow up you need to start changing the way you view the company and your mindset needs to be more open. You need to be able to delegate and you need to manage cash, of course, but you need as well to manage the team.
Ramon:So that's very important. And once your company is growing, you have sales and your company is really scaling up, where you have more employees, you are really working on a different industry, then the problem changes because as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you need to think more as a CEO. You need to think less into the vision and the dream and more into that dream being manifested in this Earth, in this planet, in the right way. You need to make sure that your values are being aligned in the company. Otherwise, you have been creating and growing a Frankenstein, a monster, something that makes no sense.
Ramon:And what effects can happen? What effects can we see when it's only about the money? Well, we can see that we have income inequality in society when the the richest and the poorest, the paupers are, I don't know, 1,000 times or more there's the difference in multiples between salaries or between income. And when, for instance, the rich the rich people, the the business owners are not paying taxes, are trying to reduce and to have all these tax strategies to lower the the money that they are paying. We can see as well gentrification in cities where the people with the lowest salaries are moving out of the city because they cannot afford it because the richest, the ones with more money are living in the best places in the city.
Ramon:Also, we can see that when we don't have environmental policies, pollution is going up. It's not only about making sure that we are okay with the law, we need to go above the law. Remember what I read about Robert Owen. It was okay for kids to work in the 1800. Actually, it was seen, I'm quoting, as a sign of progress instead of exploitation.
Ramon:I don't know but I've never felt okay thinking that a kid, a boy, a girl, especially 5 years, 7 years old just like my kids, where they were working in a factory between 12 16 hours or 14 hours. I'm not okay with that and that happened to me when I was in high school. I thought that businesses were able to change the world for good and that's what has moved me to launch 7 companies and to be here working and for business owners to grow in their purpose, in their values as well as letting them grow their companies. This is the purpose of this podcast. So by now, we have talked about all these different aspects that there's a cause and there's an effect.
Ramon:If we're not seeing the good in the company that we have created, that we are managing, then there's something wrong with the way we are viewing the business and the way we are thinking of ourselves or our company, our teams. None of us is an island. We are all interconnected. COVID just showed us this. Right now, it's really hard to buy new cars because there are no microprocessors in almost all the major car dealers in the world.
Ramon:This is a direct consequence of COVID and also because most of the microprocessors are going to mobile phones and electronics, computers, tablets, all that. So every time that we think about throwing, or or not giving our best because no one will notice, let me tell you, people will notice and a part of you is already noticing it. So let's challenge the way we are thinking about business. Let's challenge the way we are serving our employees, serving the world, serving our clients, serving society, even serving the government and paying a good amount of the taxes that we need to pay because that money is needed for society as a whole. And I really think that we are going to be able to do good while doing well because we cannot do it otherwise.
Narrator:Thanks for listening to Business is Art and if you like what you heard, subscribe to the show, so you'll be notified when a new episode drops. You can also check for more free resources at businessis.art or check your show notes for a link. Godspeed.