Ep.202 – Business Blueprints – The Survival Strategy for Changing Markets with Hugo Almeida

Telarus Studio (00:00)
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host Josh, Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus and this is next level biz tech.

Everybody welcome back. We got an awesome business blueprints bringing that session back today on with us here. We’re talking Hugo Almeida of Abitronics. Hugo, welcome on my man.

Hugo E Almeida (00:26)
Josh, thank you so much for the invite. I love this. Love to talk to you about our topic today. Very close and passionate to me.

Telarus Studio (00:34)
So Hugo, we’re gonna have to plug the channel here in a minute because I think you hold a record here that you don’t even know that you hold on the podcast, which is one, you’re another podcaster, so we gotta plug the show here in a second, but two, you are the only person I know that has a 16-year-old content on YouTube. you have, you know content, you know how to do this. So what are the shows?

Hugo E Almeida (00:56)
⁓ yeah, I do.

There’s a young kid on

those videos on YouTube and people are still complaining that I’m using, there’s better cameras out there. I’m like, dude, this was uploaded like 17, 18 years ago.

Telarus Studio (01:14)
That’s, I was like, man, this guy knows his stuff. ⁓ didn’t, legit. So ⁓ walk us through, just let’s frame a bit that, you know, let’s get a little bit of background on you, right? So ⁓ how did you get started in the business? What were the early days like? And then we’ll kind of talk about, you know, who’s Abotronics now, maybe some of the podcasts that you’ve got.

Hugo E Almeida (01:34)
Sure. So, I mean, I go way back. ⁓ My career really kicked off probably in the early 90s. I’m kind of aging myself, but ⁓ I’ve always been an entrepreneur. And I think I probably get that from my father, right? I worked alongside of my father since I was like five years old, Ecuadorian kid, just constantly working with him and coming up with ideas of making money, you know, for the family and stuff like that. at a very young age, I was, I had little businesses.

you know, to help pay bills. But I would say my real, my first real international company, it kicked in in 1994 with the Grupo ABI or the ABI Group, which stood for Almeida Barragan International. That was my first international corporation. And within the ABI Group, I launched a lot of startups because I just love business, right? As an entrepreneur, you just have a passion for people and a passion for business.

So whenever I met someone, and I did travel quite a bit in the 90s all over Latin America, throughout the US and in Asia, so I would meet people, connect with them, and then next thing know, they somehow wanted to do business together. it was a kickstart to the ABI group of companies and eventually creating a division strictly under the umbrella of technology, which I took ABI, which was my two last names, I made a Barragán International and

I just added Tronics one day to make it sound electronical. That was just a division in 1998. And believe it or not, it blew up and it was a small hobby that just continued to grow year over year. And in 2002, it spun off into what today is known as Abitronic. you know, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, February the 14th, and tomorrow marks our 24th year in business. Yeah, so.

Telarus Studio (03:06)
Love it.

Woo, congrats.

Hugo E Almeida (03:28)
Yeah, the early days were very different from what we have today. mean…

Telarus Studio (03:31)
I think

we have a, we have a, here we go. I never get to do sound effects enough on here. I love it. I love it. Congrats.

Hugo E Almeida (03:39)
I love that. Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because we’re spoiled, right? We got technology at our fingertips, Josh. Think about it. You your cell phone, your Google, you name it, you have it at your fingertips. Back when we were starting the business, you had a copper line at the house or at your home office, wherever that may be. So you had a telephone line. If you were lucky, you had a fax line. And our internet back then

was Thomas Registered, it was like a book of green encyclopedias. So when I would receive a fax from an international customer, whatever it was, I would look it up, I find all the companies that either distributed or manufactured it, and then I started making phone calls. And that’s how deals were done in the early days. Obviously.

Telarus Studio (04:23)
I love

it. we talk about this a lot. I mean, I know we’re going to flash forward to all the advancements and you know, the topic of today is this survival strategy that you’ve had. We talked a lot about changing markets, but you know, it’s about not forgetting the basics too. I mean, yes, I could text you. Yes, I can this or whatever, but I feel like voice is still one of the most powerful mediums.

Hugo E Almeida (04:50)
You’re right. I agree with you. think one of the most important things and historically, at least in my career has been when we’re face to face, you know, there’s ⁓ an atmosphere that’s created around the conversation and you feel it, you know. There’s nothing like being in front of a customer or in front of a human face to face having an open discussion. You know, I get it. Technology is really cool. It saves a lot of airfare miles and

you know, a lot of money because video conferencing makes it so easy or using your phone, whether it’s a WhatsApp or whatever app you have on your phone, it makes it so easy. But there is nothing like being in front of a face to face conversation with you.

Telarus Studio (05:36)
So Abitronics took off. ⁓ Walk us through now, what do you do today? Who do you serve? What are you known for? What makes you different? Those kind of things.

Hugo E Almeida (05:47)
Sure. ⁓ So in the early days, we were a global distributor. That’s what we started. So procurement. We have sold probably now to over 43 countries, six different continents, always technology. ⁓ We supplied a lot of major service operators throughout Latin America. So the thing is, Latin America today really buys direct in whether it’s Europe, whether it’s Asia. not so much through our US channels.

So it’s changed, the global game has really, really changed for us. But we still have that pillar where we began procurement and we procure quite a bit now for the government of New York City. We are certified by the government, Port Authority, New York State, Jersey, Massachusetts. we do bid on quite a bit of projects and we do supply quite a bit of hardware in the tech sector for the governments.

The second really pillar today that we still have and we’ve had for many years is professional services. You know, we have a small team of technicians. I mean, we’re all technical here and we all get our hands dirty at one point or another. We can design out, you know, wireless technology throughout a building. We can design out surveillance throughout the outside of a campus or inside of a facility. You know, we can build out AV rooms. I mean, we do all of the Port Authority rooms in New York City and

or the New Jersey area, and we maintain those. So procurement, professional services has always been the core of where we came from. But our third pillar, which is kind of where I spend most of my time, Josh, today is technology advisory. And I’ll tell you, I love that area. I love it because Abitronics was never a VAR. If you remember a lot of the old telco companies, you know, there was a lot of guys that spun off into their own value added reseller where they resold a

maybe a PBX or some hardware, and then they maintained it. We were never that company. We supplied a lot of the VARs, all of the connectivity materials. But the IndiTechnology advisory, I love it because you’re not really selling anymore. You’re having conversations. And I enjoy that part. You sit down, you converse with the owners of a company or IT manager or CISOs or CTOs, and you discuss how they secure the environment, how do they collaborate.

What softwares do they use? How do they communicate? You know, in every conversation, because there’s no pressure on anybody, there’s always a necessity. And that is where we shine as Abitronics. We really bring that value of the expertise in certain areas of their business. Once you listen, once you understand what their needs are, you you bring like two or three solutions to the table.

So it’s wonderful. enjoy it. And obviously it’s like the new norm of what used to be, I would say, an old school bar, right? So it’s an industry where it’s growing for us. I enjoy it. My entire team loves what they do. And yeah, it’s going great.

Telarus Studio (08:44)
Yeah.

Love it. Love it. You know, it’s funny. It’s there’s been all these parallel channels ⁓ from a distribution perspective, right? You you’ve got the Ingram Micro’s, these, you know, these, these guys that are the DSTs, the Ingram Micro, the TD Cynics is the arrows. And you had your VARs, your SIs, you know, you had all these different channels and then you had this TSD thing that nobody knows about, right? And here we are many, many, many years later.

Hugo E Almeida (09:19)
you

Telarus Studio (09:22)
And it feels like it’s all kind of converged and it feels like this really is the modern distribution channel. So feels like, you know, we’ve been saying like, Hey guys, ⁓ we’re here. This is real. The wall goes down. And so I love, you know, you brought up a good point earlier of, you know, we’re going to chalk these up. If I had a little like ding sound, every time you do a golden nugget here, we talked about voice medium, obviously being a key, the face to face connection. I think it’s just so easy to escape that.

Hugo E Almeida (09:34)
You’re right.

Telarus Studio (09:51)
It’s not the easy button to go out of your way to get in person, but it is the most effective button. So big call outs there. Walk me through then, okay, you talked about 24 years, right? I’m thinking this 24 years of staying power, right? You don’t get by for 24 years if you suck. So ⁓ I guess you could, but that’s not your case. So ⁓ you’ve gone through so many different market cycles. When you and I were catching up, we were talking about the different market cycles.

Hugo E Almeida (10:04)
Yeah.

It’s up.

Telarus Studio (10:20)
In those 24 years, what’s the biggest lesson that you’ve learned about staying alive long enough to just keep winning?

Hugo E Almeida (10:29)
That’s a let me tell you that’s a that’s a great question, but I guess if I were to summarize Everything and every change in every wave that has hit us ⁓ And and again not only hit us around like whether it was economies whether it was tragedies whether it was You know different economies globally that affected us directly, you know, it’s also

technology, the different waves of technology. So first and foremost, I think as an entrepreneur running any company, I think you really need to stay nimble. And the flexibility of, and again, we’re a small company, so we’re able to readjust and realign very quickly. The bigger you get, the harder that becomes. You we all saw that during COVID.

So I think staying nimble and being extremely flexible is huge. The other thing I’d say I’d really learned in these 24 years is to listen. Now, everybody might be nodding their head and saying, yeah, of course, right? It’s obvious. But I mean, not only listening to customers, employees, the people around you, but listening to what’s happening in the industries, listening to the trends and listening to what’s around the corner.

You you really need to be in tune to be successful. You need to be in tune with what is happening around you. So listening is a key component to the success. And finally, it’s something I always say, Josh, and when I give talks, I always say, and this has kind of been my whole life, and it’s I think it’s important for many owners, entrepreneurs and tech people out there is you got to learn to get comfortable being

uncomfortable and what do I mean? You know, you gotta push yourself outside of those little limits where we’re feeling really comfortable. You have to because that is where the magic really happens Josh. It’s when you’re out there going in an area and in a space that you’re still a little uncertain about. Eventually that becomes comfortable, right? So you keep pushing yourself to the next level of uncomfortness. But that truly is the magical space. And when you can accept and become

You know comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s a win-win win So those are I would say those are like my three components of any change that may happen and it’s gotten us through 24 years of constant maneuvering, you know

Telarus Studio (12:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. You know, ⁓ kind of when I was growing up and you’d watch these infomercials of, know, buy my kit, listen to this thing. And I just felt like some of these pieces of advice were just, it felt so surface level. like, there’s gotta be a secret. There’s gotta be more to it than that. It can’t be it. But you know, if you’re being in this, you know, going in for me, you know, this is year 13. ⁓ it’s, it’s the consistency. It’s played a long game.

⁓ The being comfortable, being uncomfortable. I love that because if you’re not, you kind of put two good points together. If you’re not flexible and nimble, then you’re never going to move into this zone of uncomfortable and you’re just going to get lapped and somebody’s going to come in and steal your customer because you weren’t thinking outside the box.

Hugo E Almeida (13:32)
Definitely.

Absolutely. You know, and

I should throw another word in there and it’s patience. know, if you have a great game plan that you truly believe in and you’re analyzing everything out there in the market and you really feel like you have that solid game plan, you know, it’ll happen. But patience is a key component as well because sometimes things don’t happen, especially in this industry. They don’t happen overnight, you know.

Telarus Studio (14:13)
Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (14:14)
Whether

it’s a sale process or a recovery process, it doesn’t happen overnight. So get used to that part of it.

Telarus Studio (14:20)
Well, you

you, you bring up another good point that maybe I want to pull a thread on a little bit. wise man taught me, ⁓ you know, growing up in this space of sometimes you’re to want to react really abruptly and some, some, some customers or some people are going to do some things that are going to make you really mad. And you got to remember that you can’t unsay things. I mean, it’s a great life lesson, let alone a business lesson. But I mean, if you play, you play that long game on the business side, how many times have we maybe wanted to react to a customer and be like,

Hugo E Almeida (14:42)
True to that.

Telarus Studio (14:48)
What do mean you’re not gonna buy it? This is so clear cut, like you’re a moron for not doing this, but those are the words that you keep inside and don’t say.

Hugo E Almeida (14:51)
Yeah. ⁓

man, that is so true. That is such a true statement. And I have been there a bazillion times. ⁓ as a young sales guy, ⁓ I had to travel. I was pretty much out of the country two weeks out of every month, right? And all over Latin America. And there’s one thing that you’re faced with when you travel and you try to sell to engineers.

And it’s probably globally, and it’s not just Latin America, it’s probably globally, right? Engineers know everything. You could come in and tell them that this is not gonna work in that environment, and they will contradict you because it’s not what they learned in the books. And so I always say, the theory and it is reality, right? So it’s difficult because it’s sometimes…

You just gotta bite your tongue and you’re like, okay, I get it. I respect your decision and fine, if that’s what you believe. I just agree with them. I make my point, but…

Telarus Studio (15:59)
play the long, yeah, you, you,

you play the long game and that will come back. That, that guy or gal will not be there. You are multi-pronged in that account. You come back and they will need your help. But if you burn that bridge and you know, diss this guy in the meeting, that doesn’t look good. Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (16:04)
You do. It does. Yeah.

You don’t want to burn bridges. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right about

that. You know, a mentor of mine many years ago said, you know, Hugo, you want to make them your hero. You want to make them the hero. And I didn’t quite get that because I was young. was kind of like a shark out there as a sales guy. Just want to close every deal. But he as time went on, I understood exactly what he meant by that. You know, sometimes when there’s friction out there,

Telarus Studio (16:28)
⁓ love that.

Hugo E Almeida (16:44)
or you have someone that is contradicting you, you know what? Make them the hero. Make them the hero. They’ll soon flip quickly. And next thing know, they’re your ally. So it was a great strategic lesson I learned. Great little word of advice that he gave me many years and I still to this day use that.

Telarus Studio (17:05)
I love it. ⁓ You and I were talking a little bit about, you know, the business changed dramatically for you, obviously for a lot during COVID. Walk me through maybe, you know, we talked about, this kind of builds a little bit on, we talked about adapting and just being ready for whatever. What did you do early during COVID that helped you survive and just come out even stronger?

Hugo E Almeida (17:25)
Yeah, so, you know, I go back to what I said earlier about being nimble and flexible. you know, you learn this over so many changes that have happened over the last, I don’t know, 20, 30 years, right? I lived through the dot com era. We survived through the 9-11 days. The Mexican crisis, because it was a big, we had a big market. know, Mexico and Brazil were two huge…

markets for the United States. each one of them had their economy hurt. It was hurting for a time there and it hurt us. Ecuadorian, same thing. All the bank crisis that we went through and I had a lot of money and a lot of customers that were very large just freeze everything. Imagine that there’s no more revenue coming in because everything’s frozen in the country you’re doing business in and you still got to pay your vendors within the US. So things like that, the US recession, the home lending crisis.

And the mothership of all, COVID. That was a real devastating blow to everybody, globally. But again, I go back to the word listen because I had my eye zoned in on what was happening. ⁓ actually, was in South America, just had got back right into the country as they closed the borders. But I was following the trend of Asia and it was going right through Europe.

And I was like, you know, it’s a matter time before it happens here. But what happened, it happened so quickly that when it hit the US, it hit the Americas. So imagine running an operation where we were always diversified internationally as well as domestically. And all of a sudden, every market you do business with shuts down. So what do you do? And, know, as an owner of a company, I…

You know, was back in my office by myself. All the employees are home at this point. And I’m just like, Lord, here’s another curveball you’re throwing at me, you know, and not just me, but everybody that’s that owns a company. And, know, I’ll never forget this, Josh, and I and I have it here on our board. No one’s allowed to ever erase that. And someday I will frame it. I sat back and, you know, I’m I’m a positive individual and I always.

thrive on finding that opportunity within whatever may happen, you know, because you know with every problem there is absolutely always a solution. It’s just figuring that stuff out and you got to be clear-minded. You got to think things through but they’re there the answers are there. So I’ll never forget I sat back on my chair that and I am telling you I was like, oh my god hundreds of thousands of dollars a road and I mean what happens right? So I got up off my chair and three things hit me.

Telarus Studio (20:00)
Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (20:19)
You know, I said the way you view things, the way you think things and the way you actually always create things or invent them. said they actually it’s a time where you need to, you know, review. And I mean, review your personal and all your corporate stuff. You know, rethink everything. You had to look at everything differently and say, well, how could we dive down into this layer, you know, and kind of rethink how we pay some vendors or even get paid? Start talking to them now.

And the reality of was you got to reinvent yourself. And if you could not reinvent yourself and then go back to being nimble and flexible, if you could not reinvent your business or think outside of that box, you were not going to survive business. don’t care what industry you were in. You were not going to survive. What we did, Josh, is as a matter of fact, look, I’ll share this with you. Here’s one of our brands that came out of that review, rethink and reinvent, you know? So, but, it’s, but it’s interesting. What we did is

Telarus Studio (21:14)
There you go.

Hugo E Almeida (21:19)
It was such a need. It was a scary time because, you know, none of us had a crystal ball. You know, we can’t see what’s about to happen, but it was real scary to see what was happening in just the New York City area. Right. It was happening all over the world, but we were here connected to the New York City, Northern New Jersey area. So I started picking up the phone. And obviously we have a lot of contacts in Asia, you know, and there was every everyone in Asia pivoted. If you if they were manufacturing some piece of hardware and tech.

Telarus Studio (21:30)
Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (21:48)
They were all of sudden manufacturing masks. They were producing digital thermometers. Believe me, they pivoted. So what we did is I started reaching out to New York City government and it wasn’t about really wasn’t about making money. It was more about helping and having the resources that you can actually help. And believe it or not, in a month and a half, we did more than our annual revenue the year before in a month and a half.

But it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t about the revenue. It was about really helping. ⁓ no kidding, I sold 35,000 camouflage bandanas to a hospital, because the doctors had no masks and they still were in front of patients. So we pivoted. Now, I knew this wasn’t a long-term gig. This was very short-term, but we were able to help.

Telarus Studio (22:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (22:43)
thousands of people in New York City. And we did receive a little award, which to me, it meant the world to me because we did play an important role and we did good for as many people as we could possibly help during those short two and a half, three months of real chaos. And you would hear it in the voices of the people calling you. I mean, New York City government calling my house at 930 at night and their voices is crackling. Again, we didn’t know what was gonna happen in a month.

Telarus Studio (22:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hugo E Almeida (23:13)
But thank goodness things recovered and here we are today, know, it pulled us through and as things got better, we started realigning everything because the, you know, the, business world did change, you know, from that point forward, you know, it’s never the way, the way things were educated on how an entrepreneur does business, you know, throw that book away because it was completely revised during COVID.

Telarus Studio (23:36)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I love that story. I love the example. It’s awesome. I didn’t know that. ⁓ Is you and it builds obviously on this idea of just when you think you’ve seen everything, ⁓ you haven’t. And the universe has just taught us this. Just buckle up, buddy. ⁓ Just be ready. Right. So, you know, this idea of resilience and, know, how do I as an entrepreneur, how do I take risks?

I went to calculated risk, but how do I, you know, de-risk the business on, you know, how do you balance these two things? It’s wild.

Hugo E Almeida (24:06)
Yeah, it’s, you know,

yeah, it was crazy. know, it’s ⁓ definitely was crazy times, but I’m glad we’re through it. And I pray that we never see something like that ever again. You know, it was horrible.

Telarus Studio (24:23)
How is you kind of reflect back on that, right? So think about massive lessons learned there, huge fundamental shift for you and a lot of others. How did that season kind of change you? Did you manage people different after that? Do you manage cashflow different after that? Do you manage customer relationship? Like what ⁓ clearly a piece of you changed, a of everybody changed that season? What changed for you and kind of how you carried that forward?

Hugo E Almeida (24:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a pretty awesome question, Josh. But the way I probably changed and the way I went about looking at things afterwards was probably, ⁓ I definitely was a lot more patient. Obviously we learned a valuable lesson, right? We learned how wonderful health and life is. within three weeks, it could change.

So the way I looked at everything moving forward, once we knew we survived the business side of ⁓ the company and the employees were back, the way I looked at everything was a little bit more, listen, there’s a lot of other important factors in life than just work. And I’ve always had a really good balance of life between business and personal, but it made me really appreciate a lot more, our health and stuff like that. And so I was patient, I was a lot more patient. I became a

a much better listener. I always talk about that, but I did, I became a lot better listener because I think it’s important. I love to hear the ideas that my employees have. Listen, as an entrepreneur, you don’t know everything. And that’s just reality. Early on, you may think you know everything, but as you get older, you realize there’s a lot to be learned and I like to listen. And you’ll always learn that about me that when I’m…

a one-on-one conversation. I enjoy conversation. I enjoy talking about business, technology, just life lessons in general, but I love to listen. I’ll always listen to what you have to say. I’ll think it, I’ll process it, and then I’ll respond. The other thing is I today move extremely strategic. because I think I listen, I’m patient.

So every move that we make today is a really well thought out strategic move, whether it’s in the industry, whether it’s a new marketing campaign, or whatever it may be, even if it’s a new business venture. I look at it so that if I do move forward with it, it was well thought out and 90 % it will work. And finally, I absolutely, I surround myself with success.

I think that’s so important because when you’re at this level, you’ve been through many years of fluctuations in economies, changes in the industries, people around you. You want to surround yourself with positive influences. I think that’s incredibly important because you become what you’re surrounded by. And in such a fast-paced environment that you and I work in, you need to be around those type of people to be successful. So I would say that.

Those are the four key components that I saw the change in me. Probably a lot more. If you ask my wife, I’m sure there’s a longer list.

Telarus Studio (27:52)
That’s fair. There’s always got to be a list. ⁓ Okay. So, thinking about this, as we think about technology, right? Look, we bucketize technology. If you look at the little plug to the Teleris solution map, if you think about, got UC, collaboration, got security, we got cloud, got network, we got all these different things. You’ve seen a lot of changes in these and you and I were talking a little bit in, I know you know a lot about collaboration. We can talk about collaboration, we can talk about any of the tech sacks, but I think these probably general principles will apply.

Hugo E Almeida (27:54)
Yeah.

lot.

Telarus Studio (28:22)
⁓ What are two or three changes that actually made you modify the way that you were selling, delivering, leading, having customer conversations, things like that?

Hugo E Almeida (28:36)
Yeah, I think, I guess for most of the tech advisors, and I don’t know, this is a personal thought of mine is we all saw what COVID did to, prior to 2020, March of 2020, there was a lot of meetings, a lot of discussion of what cloud communication kind of looked like.

what the collaboration piece of it was like with video conferencing, how it could benefit an organization. You know, and it was so difficult to convince people. After May of 2020, you didn’t have to sell that solution anymore. It sold itself, right? But I think today, and that’s specifically speaking about the, you know, unified communication space, some of the contact center space as well.

But today, think the most important thing is understanding the differentiators here at Abitronics. All of our employees were fortunate enough that everybody’s pretty techie. Everybody loves technology, whether it’s the AI, the security side of the house, you know, the collaboration piece of it, contact center side, you know, but it’s we really pride ourselves on understanding all the technology because some people will say, yeah, but it’s all the same. But it’s funny because yet all are not the same. So

It’s important as a technology advisor to understand the differentiators, right? Between companies A, B, and C. They all claim to do very similar stuff, but it’s how they do it. And the other thing in the industry that I, I mean, this is just something that I guess was instilled in me back in the 90s when corporations like your Bell Labs, even Lucent Technologies, they took a big portion of the profits.

and they reinvested into research and development. I was a big fan of those years. And I enjoy when I have conversations with CXOs from these service providers and I find out that they’re reinvesting profits into R &D, whether it’s AI, whether it’s the next trend that may be around the corner, it won’t be happening for another two, three years. I like that. And those are companies that I love to align ourselves with because

They have a vision. They’re chasing the pact. They’re trying to lead that pact. And I think that’s incredibly important as a tech advisor to understand. So yeah, we could talk about security, AI, contact center space, or the customer experience, whatever it may be. ⁓ But the truth of the matter is that no matter what any of those subjects that we choose, we got to really understand who’s the players, what are the differentiators, how do they service the urine customer?

Telarus Studio (31:25)
Well, guess we’re, we’re at the final thought here. So, ⁓ let’s, let’s say we’re, you know, you’re, you’re, coming up on the anniversary here. ⁓ if you could, if you could go back and give Hugo of 24 years ago, ⁓ one piece of advice.

Hugo E Almeida (31:32)
Yeah.

Telarus Studio (31:49)
throughout this journey, now that you know what you know and you’ve put yourself in the uncomfortable places that you have, you’ve built this business, ⁓ what would you tell yourself?

Hugo E Almeida (31:58)
⁓ man. ⁓ Well, ⁓ I would definitely say, listen, Hugo, learn patience early on. Learn to listen. I know I mentioned that several times today, but listening was a component of mine that it was hard growing up and, you know, difficult for someone else to tell you what you should be doing, you know? So it’s critical. It’s a critical component for your success to be a better listener. I think something I would definitely… ⁓

Remind myself or tell myself in my early years is surround yourself with great mentors now for whatever reason I mean my father was my biggest mentor, but I lost him early on I never had I Never had those mentors, you know, there was no LinkedIn, you know There wasn’t these big meetings that you would host in New York City We could find people in your industry and say, know what if you don’t mind I’m a young guy. I would love to be under your wing

You know, it was a little different, but I would say surround yourself with mentors, good mentors. And the last component, which I learned a little bit later in my career was truly think about partnering. You know, we don’t know everything and we nor do we have every solution that’s out there. But sometimes there’s companies out there that have the same culture as your corporation and they could possibly make phenomenal partners, which allows you to tackle much larger projects.

You know, it does come down to a trust factor, right? So have to be real smart about that. I would say, you listen, patience, you know, surround yourself with great mentors, Hugo. And then finally, you know, you know, don’t be afraid to partner with great companies. Look, TLRS.

Telarus Studio (33:41)
I love it. Awesome advice.

Hey, hey, we’ll help you. We love that. Appreciate it. ⁓ So let’s remind everybody we talked about this. You know, we were talking about content in the beginning. You’ve got your own podcast, you’ve got your own channel. How do people find it?

Hugo E Almeida (33:44)
Yeah, I love it. Hey, you guys are great. I love it. I’m very happy, you know.

Sure, during COVID, we launched a couple podcasts. And the first one was really the t20eworld.com. You could find it on the web. It’s on every major podcasting channel out there. you know, kind of went dormant for a little bit there, but it was the 2020 entrepreneur world because everything since then changed. So I was a big fan of, you know, getting information out to the younger generations, right? Educating them on business, entrepreneurship.

and truly life lessons. the second podcast that we just kicked in this year is TechfluencerTalk.com. You can follow us on that. We just started recording again this year. what that brings is technology leaders where we discuss the latest and greatest trends. But you know what we do? We keep it light. We keep it simple so that everyone that’s listening can truly understand it. We don’t get crazy on the engineering side, but we really

we really touch upon all the key components so that everyone that’s listening understands that technology. So yeah, definitely. And follow us on YouTube, know, Abitronics. You know, it’s easy and we’re out there. Just please don’t comment on the videos from 17, 18, 19 years ago.

Telarus Studio (35:18)
I

loved it. Hey, the engineer in me, was like, I could see why this got so many views. I mean, you got nearly a million views on some of these things. like, nobody knew how to put these cables together. Nobody knew how to do coags. mean.

Hugo E Almeida (35:25)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. but I, you

know, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s just amazes me how some of those videos just went wild and, you know, because there’s so many technicians globally that need to understand how to compress a coax, you know, ⁓ a compression connector over a coax cable. Listen, internet, know, a voice data.

Everything was riding on that coax cable. So believe me, I did quite a bit of traveling and education to a lot of technicians across Latin America in the the 90s and early 2000s. But yeah, some of those videos as outdated as I think they are, they’re still the most watched, believe it or not.

Telarus Studio (36:11)
relevant. Yeah, still relevant. You got to give the people what they want. I love it. ⁓ Hugo, awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for doing this. We appreciate the partnership and ⁓ thanks for all you’re doing,

Hugo E Almeida (36:18)
this was great.

Josh, thank you so much. A pleasure to be on your podcast. Thank you.

Telarus Studio (36:27)
All right. Well, everybody that wraps us up for today. Just a reminder, this is dropping every Wednesday, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you’re coming to us from. ⁓ The title of today has been Business Blueprints, the Survival Strategy for Changing Markets. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus Hugo Almeida Abitronics. Until next time. Thanks everybody.

Hugo E Almeida (36:48)
Thank you.