Today, with the permission of Beatriz López and EmakumeEkin, I will start this blog post naming them and two great entrepreneurs who I wasn’t able to enjoy live and direct the last 20th of May but, fortunately, I could do it thanks to Beatriz and EmakumeEkin. I am referring to Toti Martínez de Lezea and Mónica Carratalá. Their words and way of thinking, as well as the ones from other people who got the chance to “meet” them, allow me to insist again on the fact that an entrepreneur person is not only the one who starts a business but the one who also shares a way of living and an attitude that is traditionally of an ENTREPRENEUR.
The first thing I would like to highlight about Toti Martínez de Lezea and Mónica Carratalá is that they are good trained people with a desire to improve themselves. They have always stated their goals clearly and it has contributed to support their fight and effort, oriented to get the results they wanted. But is has not been easy. It has not been a bed of roses.
Reinventing and retraining is “something” that has been with them, not in vain; they have also been the main witnesses of the “movie” called CAMBIO (CHANGE). In that movie, they had to make decisions that allowed them to move on and to take paths that, sometimes, they didn’t even have planned. In any case, they had to take them in order to make their dreams come true.
The truth is that life sometimes puts us obstacles that we have to overcome and/or face, because waiting for things to happen is NOT the solution (at least always). That attitude belongs to entrepreneur people: those who know that waiting is not a proper characteristic of them; those who think that it is better to be productive, to move on, to innovate, to have new ideas and to have a vision of the future; because it is their attitude, an attitude of people who lead their own life. They are people who instead of seeing obstacles they see CHALLENGES to overcome and take advantages.
I believe that in the life we choose to live in (not the one that we are meant to live), not everything is seen with rose-coloured glasses and ends lovely. However, what really stands out in that path we choose to follow are the people who walk with us. Sometimes they have the nickname of dream thieves, those are the ones who make it difficult and spoil our way a little bit (until we realize the role they have), but others are the ones who help us, encourage us, open the door for us, they are with us whenever we need them (and even when we don’t): those are our angels, not only our business angels, those who appear in the right moment or when we look for them, but the real angels, those without which it would be more difficult to make our dreams come true.
Beatriz, let me borrow a couple of sentences you underline in your interview. One is by Toti, which says: “never stop believing in yourself”. You are the owner of your actions and, if you don’t believe in yourself, who is going to do? You are the most important person in your life. If you are alright, the people who love you, who depend on you, will also be alright; if you are not, they won’t either. I have been told this more than once, and honestly, that’s one of the biggest truths I encourage you to practice starting today. Thank you, Toti and Beatriz, for bringing that sentence again to my life. The other one is by Mónica, and it reminds us that we can’t allow absolutely anyone to tell us that we can’t do something. If someone is really determined to do something, what’s stopping them? Thank you too, Mónica, for your thinking.
I started this post asking for permission, and I will end it asking for another one, in this case the permission of all of you. Because I want to dedicate this post to a person who, specially these days, is showing me that being an entrepreneur is the attitude that makes a person to wake up every morning leaving aside their problems and looking ahead willing to change, adapt himself to a new situation and keep being a part of the cast of main characters who know that the strength of a true entrepreneur person lives in him. This post goes for you, Kristian.
Keep moving on and being the leading role of your own movie.
Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.