We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Axel Gonzalez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Axel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

It is funny how a business idea can show up from anywhere, many people would say that they can come up form an “unresolved problem”, but there are advantages to develop businesses from and “poorly resolve problem” instead, which is my case. When I came up with ComienzaEnUSA (which means “Start in USA”) it was mostly because I already had a long background of entrepreneurship in a third world country, I thought I was going to easily succeed here in the United States and found out how everything was different (different from Latin-American countries). The new horizon regarding business dynamics, taxes, licenses, and so on needed to be looked up with a different point of view; money flow differently, the time has a different value, return of investment can be a tricky matter, and above all, planning is king. I got fascinated by the change of mind-set that was needed to launch and carry-on a business here in the States, I discovered how, for many US-foreign, to begin operations in USA was a need, and many unanswered questions were holding them back from launching. The result is easy, I created a friendly service that you can rely on to start your business within the USA.

As a Business Thinking exercise, this was a great challenge, the big players in this market had years setting up the rules, but this environment left many potential clients aside, it was an interesting process to detect the pain-points of people that weren’t attracted by our competition which happened to be a many-million a year market. And guess what, as I have witnesses in many Business-Thinking processes, the results were very human-based, we just needed to solve them.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

On the contrary of what most people would think, to be a Business Advisor is mostly about listening than showing off knowledge on your business expertise, there is no doubt on how being an Industrial Designer had provided the skills of detecting current to-improve factors of the business and forecast any given series of steps to reach the desired goal, what people seems to like the best is how human-based this situation can get, most people think that I am all into finances (because of my FIU Business School “Certificate”), this are actually tools and a language for important matters, nevertheless, the key factors for success are human-driven, many businesses rely on the acceptance of their products or services by the customer’s mind. I usually become the person that founders of a company go to in order to analyze their business idea in way similar to how you would tell a friend, It’s a matters of understanding the core concept to create or enhance the rest, even though my office will help with the financial forecast, tax planning, and the rest of the business plan, I remain focused on the final user, process and the added value. It’s one of those processes in where the problem and why the problem exists become as fascinating as the solving part of it, nowadays it known as Business Thinking which has been part of the Industrial Design career since decades ago.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Who doesn’t pivot in life? My story is quite simple, I launched my own firm, for +15 years was number one in my home country, then social and business environment went downhill, making my company crash. I moved (to USA), and that is where pivoting is mandatory, it is mostly in your mindset, a fresh start in a new place is a real challenge, if you bring your experience as a raw plan of action you fail because what works in your home country does not necessarily works here in the USA, you need to plan things in the American way and use your experience to learn, being humble will help you to open doors.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

The dynamics of the business helps me to always be in touch with my clients, my brand offers services that require permanent contact, bookkeeping, business consulting and so on, it means that every client (small business) stay with us for at least 7 years, our staff is trained on the most advanced customer relationship tools, and other software that helps them to offer the best service to our clients. Our success is based on two main factors, it is a balance between automation, which allows growth and scalability, and a personalized service, that allow to keep our clients within the road to success, that means that every client could feel like we are always available and have no idea how many other clients are in our portfolio.
In this case the brand loyalty happens just by doing our job well, clients recommend our service to their friends, and we become a point of reference for many new investors and entrepreneurs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://comienzaenusa.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comienzaenusa/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/comienzaenusa/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/comienzaenusa/
• Other: www.axelgonzalez.com

Image Credits
I asked Edwyn Garcia, (Director of the Marketing Agency we always hire), he came up with the idea of taking me to a different environment for this photo session, away from the city skyline, buildings and office background that I always seems to be immersed in, I loved the idea immediately, so he prepared all the production and asked me to show up at Matheson Hammock Park in South Florida, where the photoshoot took place, photography credit to Edwyn Garcia