there's a combination of many factors right so if you got a look at success not only in the business life but I think everything that you do and I think you know I would say that you know definitely hard work I mean when you ask about you know people who work closely to me they will say that hard work I'm well known for that and one of the leadership traits right the right thing to lead by is is you gotta practice what you preach right and na and that's why you know people are surprised when
they work when they walk around the different bright star in the world how they see in many cases were called one of the hardest-working companies in the world and our customers love the fact that they can always count on us I think on a personal side I've been blessed you know blessed by having a good family blessed by you know having the you know having had the choice to do whatever whatever I enjoy you know one of my other hobbies that I have or my other jobs that I have is running Bolivia's largest professional soccer
team so and we've been able to do things that have never been able to be done such as taking the national team to the World Cup which is almost an impossible task and we're about to learn my early age so I think you know definitely hard work being in the right industry we go back to bright star you know when we got into the world of mobile telephony that was back in 1997 which was the start of a goob no back then I think they were selling about 20 million forms a year this year there's
indeed a market has grown to 1.6 billion mobile phones a year so been in the right place I think entrepreneurship is believing that you're capable of achieving a certain set of goals right and my first job when I graduated college was I was flying back you know most international students due to our current immigration system that we have today you know you're forced to leave the US or you're here for a very short period of time so I was flying back and then I met a I met a person in the plane who was the
president of the Bolivian Federation the Bolivian soccer team just in the plane by pure coincidence and then by the by the time we landed in the past I was six hours later you know we liked each other he offered me the job to be his second person in command my parents were a bit disappointed because they you know those are our norm jobs you don't get paid but it was pretty neat to be the second person in command for the leading sport in my country and nobody had been trying to make it to the World
Cup for more than 70 years and what that gentleman told me you know was that everything is possible so we actually was the first time ever you know that Brazil had ever lost a game that was against us in a qualifying round or we beat Venezuela 7-0 which was the largest defeat as a visiting team in the history of Latin America so you know taking Bolivia to the World Cup or being the second person in command definitely told me that everything was possible so so when you fast forward and you come back to the US
to look for a job and you end up buying a store you know you think you're capable of anything you set yourself some pretty hefty goals or just hey I want to be I want to have the thousand stores why not it's the same thing as I want to take Bolivia to the World Cup and that taught me you know that pretty much I said you know it's it's you gotta believe in yourself you know you gotta have good goals and and you know as long as you work hard and you have clear ideas and
you have a good team you know you're able to achieve stuff that otherwise you know you you don't think you're capable of achieving it's very very strange that you find a company that was founded in Bolivia in a small landlocked country of seven eight million people to actually you know become the leader of what we do in Latin America and then it's hardly ever define a Latin American company coming to the US market is backwards traditionally have European or American companies who go into Latin America so this was one of those in which a Latin
American company came and then after that we did Asia you know and then after Asia we did Europe and now we're doing Africa and now we're in 61 different countries and and you learned the challenges of you know running a global company it's as much as it sounds great I mean it has a set of challenges right set of challenges in terms of know how can you really be global but how can you truly be a local company providing local services and how do you find the right management howdy how can you run a company
that doesn't stop I mean it's 24 hours a day you know well well it might be Sunday in the US you know it's already the beginning of the day in Australia or it's actually mid afternoon in Australia so those are things that were learning that we find and I find it fascinating you know in terms of trying to keep a global organization motivated you know to continue to try to be number one of what we do we've done is something it's a little different right I mean traditionally you know we were a distribution company and
we become the number one Wireless distribution company in the world we sell you know many many millions of mobile phones but then we decided to transform brighter into a services company so we started becoming supply chain solutions company so we start fighting with companies that we we had no idea we were with we compete against IBM we compete against Accenture we compete against ups and we want to be number one in that industry then you know after that would be we also got into the insurance business and insurance business is one where you know your
cell phone today is your most prized possession so you want to insure it versus it gets lost gets damaged and all done so we bought a small insurance company and our goal is to be the number one insurance company in the world we entered a buyback and trading business so what does that mean is at the end of you to your contract with your carrier you walk into an AT&T or Verizon or t-mobile shop and we're going to buy that use phone from you and we want to resell it into market in that one were
number one in the world that took us a couple of years you know we enter into the retail business you know we when you walk into any target shop in the u.s. priced or running it so we want to become one of the leading you know retail outsourcing companies and then lastly nowhere in the in the financial services so we bought a few banks and now we're in the process of financing smart phones to consumers who otherwise you know cannot pay to have the 600-700 it cost you to get in so events are were number
one the number one distribution company in the world and were the number one pie back and trading company in the world we still have four other industries that's that keeps us excited and keeps us motivated that we are far away from being number one in the world so our goal is you know every every business you know every industry that we enter or go to strive to be number one in the world and and that keeps you know that that gives my group of of colleagues and employees all over the world highly motivated because those
are you know those are hard calls to achieve but we've proven that we can do it in some industry so that keeps us going you know as a leader as an entrepreneur how this has been you know my primary job you know what you try to do is always to hire great talent you know so you try to surrender try to surround yourself to talent that's better than yours and you know that's have been my personal goal I mean so that way you try to work a little less and and I think you know so
far so good you know you're able to recruit great talent of actually employees that come and can teach you a lot you know in terms of other people that have learned you know how to run bigger companies as this has been the only job that I've had you know it's been right running a soccer team and I'm running brighter and putting it to what it is today so for my personal goal I definitely you know you know is recruit great talent then also you know from a personal goals obviously family it becomes quite important you
know in terms to be able to provide as much time as your family needs you know which is easier said than done and then also you know now that now that I bought Bolivia's largest a football team or soccer team you know is how do you make it one of the leading teams in the world and and that one exam quite a challenge but you know we're better every year we get better so that definitely keeps me and very very excited came a you know a Wooden Nickel a Negroponte you know who's to run the
MIT Media Lab called a group of us he was at that point Larry from Google he was a Rupert Murdoch from NewsCorp he was a founder of Red Hat and they set up that in the table and they say I want to make this I want to make computers or laptops available to everyone I want to be able to do it for under $100 the original name was with $100 laptops if we didn't get to 100 laptops we go to 180 dollars but if you look at the best thing that we did apart from giving
kids I think over five million computers in emerging markets and allowed them to be connected to the Internet but we've given the world is if we've had the price of laptops drop dramatically after we introduced and it's fair to say that because of what we did the emergence of netbooks exist today and that is you know we took away I would say all the unnecessary things that went into computer into laptop to make it accessible and affordable to everyone so you know the joy and the pleasure of walking into your wife for example and seeing
that every single kid has a computer and every single kid is connected you know it's I mean there's no better I called an ovarian cycle period on the internet and the Internet is the only democratic means source of information where it doesn't matter how rich or how poor you are you're accessing the exact same information so I took a lot of pride in in being the leader of that with Nikolas and and seeing millions and millions of kids who otherwise would never have access to the Internet today you know just be better students you know
be better brothers to be better you know be better citizens and understanding you know what the whole worldwide Wow I think the Kennedy schools Cannock school students you know you're privileged your British to be one of the best if not the best teaching institution in the world and therefore you know I have a higher degree of responsibility in terms of grabbing what you've learned in this last for six or and many years that you've been here and being taken back to your community to your country you know to the companies that you're gonna end up
working or make any perspective you know you're most likely you'll be in the project in the public service arena so therefore you have high expectations and what works in business in terms of you know setting yourself to have the goals and believing you can achieve you know be the best for what you do that applies whether you're a politician or that applies for your public servant whatever it does gonna be you
