CHAPTER 3

What Is Entrepreneurial Mindset?

Only the limits of our mindset can determine the boundaries of our future.

This chapter will focus on the entrepreneurial way of living and answer the question of: What is entrepreneurial mindset?

Entrepreneurial mindset is composed of six main concepts and can be summarized as the art of the following:

Understanding the entrepreneurial mindset is so important that I have dedicated a complete chapter to each of the six main concepts in Part 2 of this book on How to Act Like an Entrepreneur.

Quite often when I speak to young aspiring entrepreneurs, I turn to my own life experiences and path to entrepreneurship as a way to bring it down to their level and motivate and inspire them to believe, that if I can do it, so can they. With that in mind, I have shared my own account of the mindset of an entrepreneur as follows:

Identifying and attaining goals: My father was a strict man, and I learned much about work ethic, responsibility, accountability, earning your way through life, paying your dues, and so on from him, more by example, than by anything else. For as long as I can remember, I had always wanted to follow his footsteps. He was my role model. He was a true entrepreneur. He had a full-time job, ran multiple businesses, was always doing things himself or would have us, his kids, do it with him, and he was not afraid to take on new challenges. All of this, after being an extraordinarily successful political figure in his home country and losing everything and being forced to start from scratch, after being exiled to the United States by a dictator. This was the foundation for what would later become my inspiration and goal in life. To become an engineer. I never had the goal of becoming an entrepreneur until later in life and, in fact, it was almost forced upon me. But, I always knew I wanted to become an engineer, and the path was not easy, but I persisted and attained my goal. It took me a little longer than most, but I did it. In fact, it almost never happened. You see, due to the strict nature of my upbringing and the tremendous responsibilities placed upon me and my older brother at such a young age, I lost accountability and lost focus on my studies. This happened shortly after my father was shot and paralyzed during a robbery attempt at one of his businesses in a dangerous part of the city in 1981 and continued through the early part of my university term. After the robbery, he was confined to the intensive care unit (ICU) and the hospital for many months, and our responsibilities, which were already great to begin with, grew even more. My father could no longer discipline us and ensure we stayed on track, and I took advantage of that fact. I did not know what to do with this new-found freedom, and it got a bit out of control. My studies suffered greatly, and my future was in jeopardy. I did not know what to do.

That is when, after finally realizing for myself that my dream of becoming an engineer was hanging by a thread (some time in 1987), I decided to meet with the associate dean of engineering at the university college of engineering. He was kind enough and understanding enough to listen to my plea, sympathize with my situation, and believe in me. He gave me a second chance, but the path he laid out for me was not easy. It was called academic bankruptcy. All my credits (I had probably accumulated enough credits to be considered a junior) were wiped out, and I would have to start all over again. Kind of what my father had to do after he was exiled, except that I was failing at the time and he had already succeeded. That individual’s name is Dr. Michael Phang, and as I wrote in the acknowledgments, I will be forever grateful for his support. The process was not easy, but I did my part and earned mostly outstanding grades going forward and obtained my degree in architectural engineering in 1996, a full 12 years after I first enrolled. I had dropped many classes during my first term, which started in 1983, taken several years off to work full time, then accepted academic bankruptcy around 1989, and went to school part time while also working part time. The reason I include this account is to show that if I can do it, if I can attain my goal, after all the mistakes, hardships, and hurdles self-afflicted or otherwise, so can anybody. Never give up on your dreams and your goals. It is never too late or too hard if you really want it and work hard to attain it.

Aside from the goal of becoming a professional, and an engineer, to be more specific, which proved to be a very challenging task due to my many setbacks and disadvantages, to say the least, I have since become much better at identifying and attaining my goals. I make it a point to write them down and date them and take actionable steps to pursue them and have had particularly good success following up and attaining many of them. Following are some of the goals that I have set out for myself, throughout my career, and life, both professional and personal, with a brief description of how I have fared to date in my pursuit of each:

Entrepreneur: President and founder of DLG Engineering, Inc. (DLGE). DLG Private Ventures, Inc. (DLGPV) and Genesis Structural Engineering, Inc. (GSE)

Real estate investor: I bought distressed properties, lived there for at least two years, and sold them for a profit: Townhouse #1 (50K plus profit), Home #1 (285K plus profit), condo hotel (46K profit), transition home (30K plus profit), townhouse #2 (90K plus profit), studio condo (10K plus profit) and one BR condo (current rental property).

Photographer: I turned a hobby in amateur photography into a philanthropic endeavor by printing my photos on aluminum and canvass and donating them to charitable organizations to be sold at silent auctions with the funds going to a worthy cause for the Cuban American Bar Association (CABA) Art in the Tropics, Miami Bridge, Art From the Heart, and Habitat For Humanity.

Author: I took my experiences and accumulated knowledge and wrote two books on entrepreneurship: Engineer to Entrepreneur: Success Strategies to Manage You Career and Start Your Own Firm and this one, TAP.

Writer: I wrote magazine articles for numerous industry publications such as U.S. Glass Magazine and Architects’ Guide to Glass and Metal.

World traveler: I have quite a way to go on this goal, but it is one of the more exciting ones that I have remaining, of which I am very much looking forward to. I have taken a prop plane and landed on a glacier on Mount Denali in Alaska; I have traveled to Punta Arenas (Chile) and soaked in the vistas of Torres del Paine; I have tasted the finest chocolate in Bariloche (Argentina) after river crossing the Andes mountains; I have traveled to the islands of Hawaii and seen the sunrise on Mount Haleakala; I have traveled to the Isthmus of Panama and walked on the gates of the locks of the Panama Canal; I journeyed to England and walked inside the ruins of Stonehenge; I have tasted limoncellos in Positano (Italy) and a tall glass of Guinness in Dublin (Ireland); I have stared up at the Sistine Chapel in Rome (Italy) and walked on the grounds of the Roman Colosseum; I have admired the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and gazed down on the city of lights from the Eiffel Tower in Paris (France), to name a few. This, to me, is one of the most rewarding benefits of entrepreneurship. The means and freedom to travel.

Not being afraid to take risks: Leaving my first job was difficult. I had been there for over 13 years, and it was the only discipline of engineering that I knew how to do. I was scared and did not know what to do. I set my fears aside, trusted my preparation and the knowledge I had gained, and decided to make the move. It was not easy, and I felt lost at my new job, at first. I was so afraid to fail that I offered my new boss to start me off as an entry-level engineer. I did, however, have the confidence in my work ethic that I would eventually learn another discipline of engineering and become productive. I even thought I could bring my own specialty and knowledge to the benefit of my new firm. Suffice it to say, that my fear was unfounded. Once I had established myself in that new firm, the time had come to make another move. I did not feel I was being treated fairly or properly compensated for work origination that I had brought to the firm. It was during the time of what is now referred to as the Great Recession. By this point, much of the fear and doubts of whether I can be successful had subsided, and new fears of starting my own firm and being responsible for others salary and livelihood took their place. I thought I had a good plan. I had proven that I can train a team to meet the quality of work I had been used to and that clients respected and trusted me. Suffice to say that that decision too was a good one. Another example of a huge risk, which I have recently just recovered from, involved a purchase of a high-priced condominium unit that needed a total remodel. It was to be the purchase of our dream home. This ended up being the riskiest financial decision of my career due to a series of unexpected setbacks and hurdles. The risk eventually paid off, but not after a huge financial scare, and it only paid off due to a combination of preparation and mitigation. I go into further detail about this risk in Chapter 5 on mitigating financial risk.

Focusing on investing, not on consuming: Thanks to my upbringing and my father’s influence, I learned the value of money early on. I did not grow up with much money to begin with, and part of my frugality comes from having that as a foundation, but I have always looked for value in what I spent my money on. Most people are consumed with having the latest and best of everything. No pun intended. I am not built that way, and if your plan is to become an entrepreneur, and unless you come from, or have access to, wealth, you should not either. Do not even get me started on the cost of buying a nice house, new car, paying for a wedding, designer clothes, the latest electronics, and so on. I never craved the fancy car (with the exception of my very first purchase, and I still managed to keep it for 10 years), fancy house (with the exception of my last and current property, which I intend to live in for a very long time), or fancy clothes that most in society today do. I no longer accumulate material goods. I never did much, to begin with, compared to most. What I did, instead, was focus on my education, utilized my 401K, invested in a business and in real estate. I did have to furnish and decorate many rooms of all the properties that I invested in, and I must confess that I enjoyed decorating them with items I had purchased. I have owned about 12 properties in my lifetime thus far, and at one point, I owed five at one time. All of them investment properties, except for one, my homestead, which changed often. Most of the properties I invested in began as my homestead and then turned into investment properties that I rented out. I have since sold most of the investment properties and have divested most of possessions that I had accumulated, some of which remain in a storage unit. For the most part, my wife and I maintained multiple homesteads because of both coming from prior divorces with properties of our own and accounting for a blended family with rotating custody of the children. Of all the investments that I have made, starting a business has been the most rewarding. Lately, I have focused much of my spending, which I like to consider an investment in my own betterment, into travel.

Accumulating assets, not liabilities: I must credit Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, for this way of thinking. He made it so clear to me. Assets put money into your pocket, and liabilities take money out of your pocket. Why would you ever want to accumulate objects that take money out of your pocket? I differ a bit in his thinking of homes and cars as strictly liabilities. I believe objects can be both an asset and a liability. If you buy a car and keep it for 10 years, as I have with both of the cars that I purchased when brand new, it certainly will not appreciate, but you will save seven years of car payments, which you can use to invest and still have equity in your car when you decide to sell. If you buy the ugliest house in the nicest neighborhood, and fix it up using sweat equity over time, and make it your homestead, you will have accumulated value and appreciation with the equity in the house when you sell or if you take out an equity line. I have tried not to carry credit card debt, and if I do, it was used to invest or pay for improvements on those investments. I reduced most of my monthly liabilities to the minimum and getting by with the basics with the occasional splurge. I am content to spend my money on things that add value.

Specializing and becoming an expert: If I would have never pulled on the tiny piece of paper, in the halls of my college of engineering building, seeking clerical work for a small specialty engineering company, I may never have become an entrepreneur. After all, I was studying architectural engineering, and I wanted to design buildings. As it turned out, that clerical job exposed me to specialization. An area of engineering not even taught in school. Sure, the structural principals are the same, but the intricacies and application of them are quite different and unique. I found myself working for a small firm that I had never heard of, practicing a discipline of engineering that I never heard of. What I did come to find out was they were working on some of the most important projects in the city and for some of the biggest contractors. I stayed there for over 13 years and gained enough knowledge to become an expert in the field. That propelled me, gave me the strength and knowledge to start my own firm. That specialty also insulated me during the period starting in 2008 that has now come to be known as the Great Recession. A time when engineering firms were laying off engineers by the boat load. I was able to not only survive, but thrive by having a specialty, being the best at what I do and offering my services for cheaper while having more experience than my competitors. If it were not for that decision, to stay in that specialty, I would not be where I am today, as an expert in my field. In fact, I could very well have been one of the many highly qualified engineers that were laid off during the Great Recession, through no fault of their own.

Not being afraid to fail: Instances where I found myself close to failure include: after my father’s accident when it was a difficult time in his life and mine. He was a successful business owner and entrepreneur in his own right. He was shot and paralyzed during an attempted holdup while working at one of his businesses late at night in a not-so-safe part of the city. This period tested my resolve, but I was able to overcome, and I persevered.

The time, while at the university, that I found myself at the crossroads of my life was not easy either. I had just accepted academic bankruptcy and would have to start my academic career all over again, six years after I started. I could have quit and thought about it plenty of times, but instead I persevered.

One instance that tested my perseverance and an example of how I had to improvise adapt and overcome after starting my own firm was the time, about four years in, that I lost my top three employees in the span of a few months. This occurred during what is now known as the Great Recession. The good part about the Great Recession, when it started, was the abundance of highly qualified engineers available and willing to work on a new field, to them. The bad part about the Great Recession, when it ended, was the abundance of offers those same highly qualified engineers started receiving. I had to regroup, take on huge financial losses, and rebuild my firm. But, I persevered.

Do I consider myself now to be in that latter part of that definition of an entrepreneur? Being able to do things now that most people could not by doing things earlier in life that most people would not? Yes, I believe I am. Do I consider myself successful? Yes. Have I achieved success? In the true spirit of entrepreneurship, the answer is no. No, because my definition keeps changing. There are still more mountains to climb, more problems to solve, more knowledge to be gained, more success to be had, and more goals to be attained. I would not have it any other way.

In summary, and to answer the question: What is entrepreneurial mindset? Entrepreneurial mindset is about being resilient, chasing, and never giving up on your dreams or yourself. It is about taking risks and reaching out beyond apparent limitations. It is about investing and making sacrifices to reach your goals. It is about constantly learning and bettering oneself and becoming the best at what you do. It is about associating with like-minded individuals. It is finding ways around problems. It is about building and nurturing relationships and building and nurturing a brand. It is about not doing something just for the money and giving back to the community.

Chapter 3: What Is Entrepreneurial Mindset?

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