The entrepreneurial adventure begins
My name is Carestiato Virginio, I am the owner and CEO of this company called Cael, which is a company that deals with industrial automation and that is selling components to automate production processes in industries, in companies in the sector of food, textile, wood, marble, food beverage and any business activity that needs to automate a production process.
The company was founded in 1985 and I was the first employee, two years later in this company. Over time, the company has increased its dimensions, with (a growth which hasn’t been exponential, but continue, which led us to a present reality with 12 people employed. In the work environment I started by doing the factotum. In fact, I switched from order management, to managing the packages that were to be shipped, to making the invoice, rather than the first administrative note. So I had, therefore, the chance, that I consider important, because it has allowed me to see all the aspects of the company’s organization.
I already thought that the company could become bigger than it was at the beginning. So I used to answer the phone with different voices, depending on whether I was answering as administrative or as order manager, rather than as warehouse worker. This, to make the customer think that he had a supplier with a bigger size than the one of the company in its early days.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to become part of the company, at first as a partner with a small share of stocks, and then gradually making more steps, that I consider recklessness sometimes leads you to do, and then acquiring the shares of the company until becoming, today, its owner.
Recklessness because, in my opinion, if there is too much conscience, certain choices are not made and, therefore, recklessness leads you, because you do not know, to do steps, that maybe today, with the awareness of the risks involved, could be more difficult to accomplish. These are steps that must be born from inside, though; there must be internal stimuli, which are not those of earning money, but are those of reaching, maybe, a different position in the society, keeping, however faith to the ideals important for the person. That is, always trying to respect people, because maybe we’ll find out then in other areas: I believe that the respect for the people must be the main thing that a company should carry on, and respecting their employees first.
The money to start
Recklessness, recklessness in doing the entrepreneur in my opinion is useful, there is a basis for not knowing, which is necessary and which must be combined with the part of knowledge. There must be a balancing, but there must also be an internal stimulus of the person. Therefore, the recklessness is deciding to take over the shares of a company, not having the economic availability to do it and addressing, therefore, to the institutes of credit that, we know they finance you, not on the basis of projects (like in the USA, where they finance the project), but on the basis of economic certainties, the ability to pay the loans back later. Here, the banks in this sense help and they were still a decisive point in allowing me to do the acquisitions I have made of the company itself.
Recklessness is deciding to accumulate very high levels of debt sometimes with a ratio of 1 to 100. This, to me, is part of the recklessness. And I don’t know if it can be part of the bravery. I believe that bravery is linked to conscience and that, therefore, sometimes recklessness must predominate over bravery itself.
A negative and a positive event
The acquisition of a company involves sometimes making choices which can prove to be positive or negative and in the history of a company, in the entrepreneurial path, these things always happen. The important thing is understanding how to overcome the negative ones and how to make use of the positive ones. I believe that positive or negative events, are always linked to people, so a positive event is determined by people who can give a positive contribution, and a negative element can always be the person who, instead, hinders the pursuit of a goal. So, in my case, I would say that the negative event was having met some people who slowed down some company development processes, but the positive element was having met people who, instead, accelerated this same process.
So, I think it’s important to know and surround yourselves with collaborators with which you can always have relationships and comparisons, to be able to move forward and pursue a goal, which is the one of the company, but also the personal one.
Doing business in Italy
Being entrepreneurs in Italy or being entrepreneurs abroad, and if it is abroad is it for us Europe, or is it a foreign country even farther? I believe that being entrepreneurs in Italy is important, because for the little experience that I have, but that anyway I have matured, at least in Europe, Italy is a Country that has had domains, but it has also been dominated. This has brought a culture into the population, which is, if we want to see it well, a bit split between south, center, north with some differences that are nevertheless important, socials and that should be respected. However, our being used to overcome obstacles, helps us, remain thoughtful, preserve our own identity and try to face and overcome the obstacle without be conditioned by a mass of external factors, which can be seen as a merit, especially if given by an entity that can be called State or anyway from a system that safeguards you, but on the other side it becomes a limit because as soon as we find an obstacle we do not know how to overcome it.
So entrepreneurship in Italy means fantasy, it means culture, it means respect for our Country, which can have extremely strong peculiarities, when compared to other Countries, even to Europe, but they are characteristics that make us well known in the world. We still live of some reflected light, of these great people who have brought our Made in Italy outside Italy. We should start reworking on it, because it is important to be able to export not just pizza and mandolin or the bad things of our Italy, it is also important to export beautiful things.
Italy has been a dominated and dominant Country in history, in the most recent history we have, in some way, been the China of Europe; that is, it was the Country which had production capacity at low cost and where everyone came to invest to make us work. Today, sometimes, we are complaining about China and what China can take away from us, the truth is that we can take a lot from China if we look at China like all the other countries, trying to steal and acquire those information, those technologies that are part of each country, which can enrich ourselves in producing and doing business at higher levels.
The key traits of an entrepreneur
What does being an entrepreneur mean for me? It means always respecting people, because respecting people involves respecting the environment, respecting the country where you live, leads to compliance with a system. We entrepreneurs have a duty to give, in my opinion, also education, then act with respect and teach, within one’s own company, education and make people understand “our freedom ends when the one of the neighbour begins”. I think it’s an important thing to communicate at all levels and that perhaps today in our society is put a bit on the sidelines.
Being an entrepreneur does not mean getting rich and making money, it means starting with ideals and one consequence is, if one then succeeds, gaining an economic return, but first and foremost it means pursuing one’s own ideal.
The future for the new generations
What is the legacy we leave to our children or to the young people who are coming? Young people have an advantage, which can be a disadvantage: they live in a world that is projecting them at very high speeds and that forces them to keep up with this speed. We have definitely had slower implementation times of our projects, and this allowed us to also pass through these last decades in which the technology led us to important developments, managing to have the capacity to acquire this technology. Young people are forced, today, to run and this running often leads them to be linked in a group and no longer have their own individuality.
I believe that it is necessary that within the group, everyone has his own thinking head, each one carries on his own belief and must not necessarily conform to stereotypes dictated by the consumerist world, from fashion or whatever. One’s self is important, it’s important to bring it beyond these concepts, that somehow make it the wealth of the entrepreneur. Here, there is the contradiction, because more and more they push us to consume, to use products, because these products must be sold, but at the same time they make us fall into stereotypes, so if we don’t have that model, that kind of dress, that clothing, the world around us does not recognize us as a subject.
I believe that the message, that needs to be given to young people, is to remain oneself, to try not to comply, but to have a personal identity, an ideal to carry forward and to be able to use everything that is today the world of electronics and of what surrounds us in their advantage, not become its victims. Because, we need to have the tools to live better, we must not support the tools that force us to run after the events. So the message to young people is to look around, be curious, understand what’s going on, but not necessarily be a passive part of the herd. Sometimes we need the herd, but we need to be one of its active parts.
IP Crew
