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My Decision to Start My Own Business

Marcelo Cazado, New Entrepreneur

It was January, 2007. I worked for one of the most successful Coca-Cola bottlers in Brazil as an Innovation and Six Sigma senior manager. And I really enjoyed working there, partnering with my team – formed by enthusiastic and committed guys.

It is worth mentioning that contrary to the most entrepreneurs, I never had the itch to start my own business.

But unexpectedly changes started in the company, people were moved from one place to another, new departments were created, other were extinguished and later on, recreated.

As a consequence, a thing turned out to be clear for me, something much more important than the changes that the company was going through: I was not setting the rules, I was not the one behind the wheel and my career was being driven by a group of c-level executives. This was a bit scaring for me, and when I realized that, I knew some big movement would come up as a reaction.

I thought that it is better to risk and to be fully responsible for my decisions in life than try to blame someone else if things do not happen as expected.

Well, if I wanted that level of independence the sooner I started; the sooner things would work properly. So I decided to quit and to start my own business. That is where I am right now, in the very beginning of a new journey.

You dear reader may be asking to you: and what is special about that? The special thing is not about the business itself, or even the product or service this new company will supply to the market. In fact, for me it is the business purpose and the values we are adopting. I understand that values – above all – need to be inspiring and therefore simple. They reflect who we are, how we face life and where we increasingly intend to be. Our core values are five: integrity, discipline, humility, curiosity and humor. We think that a strong determination to pursue these virtues will ultimately take us to excellence. Remember Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

My name is Marcelo Cazado and I am a brand new entrepreneur. My business is a management consultancy company called Andoha. I worked for 3 years at a Coca-Cola bottler in Brazil where I was awarded twice at The Coca-Cola Company Six Sigma Global Expo. Previously, I worked as a business consultant at Accenture for 5 years and at Promon for 5 years as well.

Born in Rio de Janeiro on March 4, 1972, I received a B.A. degree in Economics studies from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1994 and a received a MBA in Finance in 1999. In 2002 I received a Master of Arts degree in Development Economics at Sussex University (UK).

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Posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.