What have you accomplished in your professional life/career since your 40 Under 40 selection?
In my entrepreneurial career, I have had a startup burn out, get acquired, and I have bought, grown, and sold an existing business. Entrepreneurship is not an easy path but for me it is the most rewarding. These entrepreneurial adventures would have been impossible without the mentorship I received from numerous talented people. I try to pay it back as much as possible by being available for other entrepreneurs if they need some guidance, and for the last six years I have been teaching entrepreneurship at a community college.
My most recent entrepreneurial endeavor is founding a kombucha brewery, Don Kavi Kombucha, located in Medellín, Colombia. The business distributes bottles and kegs throughout Colombia and operates a brewery and taproom in the Laureles neighborhood of Medellín.
What accomplishments, milestones, or endeavors have you attained in your personal life since your 40 Under 40 selection?
Starting a business in a foreign country was professionally and personally rewarding. I was thrown into the fire and became bilingual.
How did your 40 Under 40 selection help your career?
Confidence. I was on the more inexperienced side of people on the list in 2008 and it was helpful to start networking and later collaborating with accomplished business people.
What is something that you have a new passion for since the time of your induction — either professionally or personally?
I enjoy working with young entrepreneurs in my classes at community college. I teach a class called the Entrepreneurial Mindset where we use case studies and work through eight habits of successful entrepreneurs, as well as set students out to get market feedback. One of the most fun aspects is watching how a student’s business concept dramatically improves from potential customer feedback, as in class they are required talk to 100 possible users of their product or service.
Based on your experience, do you have any advice for today’s young professionals (under 40)?
Because I regularly work with college students, I see many agonizing over what major to choose. Do not do that, your major is not the rest of your life. College teaches you how to problem solve, a skill that will make you valuable in the workplace. One day while doing a delivery in a pet food company I owned, I came out of the customer’s barn and a goat was on top of my nine-foot high refrigerated truck. The customer was not at home and I was stuck trying to talk a goat off my roof. I quickly realized calling a goat as you would a dog doesn’t work, and I started to think what might motivate an animal — food! I went into the barn and found some oats, spread them on the ground, and the goat bounded down. After his snack, I put him in the barn and went on my way. Entrepreneurs will routinely find themselves in situations where Googling is not an option and the problem-solving skills you learned in college are put to the test.
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