My name is Steve Benitez. My company is Bo’s Coffee and I’m the Chief Executive Officer.
Three words to describe as an entrepreneur; first is unrelenting; second is focused; and third is strategic.
I started Bo’s Coffee back in 1996. When I was traveling around the world, I would always frequently go to coffee shops because I really like the experience I have in coffee shops. I felt at that time the experience was lacking, or there was an absence of that experience back in my hometown. So I wanted to take that experience and share it with my community.
The biggest challenge was acceptability. Since the coffee shop experience was totally new to the community. It was not easily accepted. People were not familiar with the products that I offered. They found it expensive at that time.
I didn’t treat as a business. I treated it as something I really wanted to succeed. It was a passion of mine. So I did everything that I could.
My perception of Bo’s changed. It became a platform – a platform wherein we can plug others, social entrepreneurs, to grow with us. It gave me more meaning in my work
And so my mantra, going back to your mantra, at that time was success means nothing if you can’t take others with us.
So I’ll take this opportunity to tell university students, that number one, you need to know what want to do. You need to know what you want to achieve. Or at least you need to know what you want to get into in business, if you wanna get into business.
I always believe that to be better is to learn from people who better than me. Personally, I would go and meet people who are better than me and learn from them.
If I wanted to go out, or if I wanted to have money to go out with my friends, I had to work for it. In other words I went into business. I sold shoes. I sold watches. The money I made I used to go out with my friends because my allowance was just enough for my lunch and my dinner. And so, if I wanted to pursue anything outside of that, I had to work for it. And so the value of hard work and the value of resourcefulness were something that I learned in college.