The Gift of Adversity: How It Can Sharpen Your Mindset & Strengthen Your Resilience
Hello, everybody! 👋👋🏽👋🏿 Since I'm all about sharing stories that inspire, in today’s newsletter, I’m taking a closer look at the “immigrant experience” and how that influences founders.
In Part One, I shared Eikel Inda and Manuel Cassola’s enthusiastic jump into automating functions in the mental health industry with their company, CedrusMed.
Today, in Part Two, I explore how their background influenced their worldview on what was possible in life.
In this article, you’ll find out the following:
🌴Book recommendations from these serial founders
🌴The importance of mindset in turning adversity into motivation
🌴The benefit of not having a back-up option
🌴Let’s go a little deeper with co-founders, Eikel Inda and Manuel Cassola…
USE ADVERSITY TO BUILD RESILIENCE
Eikel questioning how he'd be able to take full advantage of his degree in Cuba
“When I was nine years old, I started working 12 hours [on] a farm so we [could] eat at my house. Nine years old.”
That’s how Eikel Inda remembers his youth.
Some days, he said he would go practically the whole day without eating, just to help out his family.
Manuel Cassola says, “I’m in the same club… I was, basically, raised in a very poor neighborhood in Havana.”
Cassola came from a city in Cuba. Eikel Inda hailed from a suburb, also in Cuba.
A vivid memory for Cassola focuses on a specific toy train – a toy he couldn’t have.
YOUR "LOT IN LIFE" DOESN’T HAVE TO BE YOUR "LOT IN LIFE"
He recalls how, for three or four days out of the year, the Cuban government would put toys in a store. Cuban families would draw a number to get an opportunity to choose one of the toys.
Of course, because Cassola didn’t draw a good number, the few toy trains available were already gone by the time his turn came.
So, at a very early age, he learned to trade up for what he wanted. In this particular case, he started with marbles and, eventually, exchanged his way to the toy train.
“I learned that, through my own means, I could actually reach stuff.”
Manuel playing with his beloved toys to free his imagination
Unfortunately, that fear of scarcity created another behavior in his youth. “You become a grabber at some point.”
Shared humble beginnings helped the two co-founders, who now own CedrusMed, bond.
Their company uses a tech platform to help automate tasks for more than 150 mental health organizations.
DESPITE OBSTACLES, YOU CAN STILL CREATE SOMETHING OF VALUE TO THE MARKET
Inda says the obstacles for Latinos are great. And that’s even before addressing the challenges of entrepreneurship.
“First, you have to learn the language. Second, you have to learn the culture. And the other thing you have to do is you have to demonstrate that you can create something and put that thing out there when you cannot do that in your own country.”
READ BOOKS THAT INSPIRE YOU – AND NOT JUST ONE TIME
Fortunately, at a young age, Inda says he discovered a resource that he would describe as his “best kept secret”.
“There is a book that I read when I was 14 years old that completely changed my life. And that book is “Your Erroneous Zones.”
He said he has many copies of the best-seller by Wayne Dyer. That book helped give him the strength to take an independent path and “create" himself into a different person. It freed him from the plans or expectations that society imposed on him.
Cassola says Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book, “The Little Prince,” changed how he saw the world. Even though he first read it as a kid, he said he still re-reads it once in a while.
FAILURE HAPPENS; FIND THE PATH FORWARD
Those books shaped who Inda and Cassola are, but where they came from shaped their resolve to fight again as serial entrepreneurs, despite mistakes and failures along the way.
As Cassola explains it, “Nobody wants to leave their country.”
But they were forced to find a better life.
Inda says, despite the poverty, “It may look easy but having to [immigrate] to another country is never an easy decision.”
That decision is compounded by another factor, according to Cassola.
NO BACK-UP OPTION CAN SERVE AS YOUR GREATEST MOTIVATOR TO KEEP PUSHING AHEAD
“Something goes wrong… here, then we need to deal with that. We cannot say, okay, I’m going back to my country.” Cassola continues by saying, “It’s a combination of things that makes probably a lot of Cubans successful. It’s not that we’re special. I believe it’s like we have been developing ourselves in environments that… are not favorable. And, at some point, you have a favorable environment like the United States.”
And, so, while there’s a natural resilience that entrepreneurs share, especially those, like Inda and Cassola, who have founded multiple companies, there’s one big difference.
For them, there is no back-up option.
They can’t go back to their home country of Cuba.
Eikel Inda (left) & Manuel Cassola (right): Co-Founders of CedrusMed
INSPIRATION FOR THIS ISSUE:
There are many doctors, lawyers and other professionals who leave their country of birth and come here to the United States.
They end up doing work that they are extremely overqualified to do.
It’s the price they pay for starting over in a new country.
Recently, in conversations with various entrepreneurs, I picked up on a recurring theme.
I learned that Cuba turns out some very talented software and computer science professionals.
For those of us who have always heard about how time has stood still in Cuba in many respects, it may be surprising.
It was surprising to me.
Cuba didn’t exactly come to mind as a hotspot for finding tech talent.
Eikel Inda crystallized the dilemma for the tech graduate or professional there.
He earned his computer science engineering degree in Cuba. He’d been exposed to the teachings of excellent professionals and participated in meaningful research and development projects. But…
Inda asked himself how he could possibly “be successful as a software engineer in a country where one of the main problems related to technology was connectivity?”
And that’s how he arrived at the answer to come to the U.S.
Even for Manuel Cassola who worked as an electronic technician in Cuba repairing color TVs and computers, remaking himself in the United States would be difficult. But he did it, becoming a network engineer and, subsequently, an entrepreneur.
First, they had to find a way out of Cuba. Then, they had to make things work, no matter the challenge.
Sometimes, when you don’t see a way out, it forces you to rack your brain to figure out a solution.
That kind of thinking is indispensable as an entrepreneur.
It creates a four-letter word.
No, not that one.
That four-letter word is spelled “G-I-F-T.”
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