Susan Preston, a guardian angel.

See Susan Preston talking about the future of women in business on “The Power of Yin.”

I first met Susan Preston in Rochester, NY. It was the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds Conference Sept. 22, 2006 and she was one of a handful of women among a sea of B-O-Y sharks. She had just spoken on a panel about angel investing, and was standing near an escalator outside the conference room thumbing her Blackberry. I just had to meet her. In my mind she was a rock star in the investing world. A beacon of light in a murky underworld expertly navigated by sharks, rats and B-O-Ys who didn’t want to play fairly with me.

But she looked like she was in a hurry. Maybe she didn’t want a silly little reporter from Miami bothering her after a long, stressful day of speaking, networking, and flying from Seattle (where she had founded the first women angel investing group, Seraph Capital Forum).

Just as she was about to step on the escalator, I called out, “Ms. Preston!”

She looked back at me and she was beautiful. Face smiling, eyes squinting in pure pleasure, not at all perturbed at me for interrupting her flow. Read more…

Global stock markets have been collapsing since the beginning of 2008. Analysts and economists are now looking for companies that are resisting the crash.

My research project on companies from the French CAC 40 stock exchange index* pointed out that the more women there were in a company’s management, the less the share price fell in 2008. A significant coefficient of correlation links the two variables.

“Last year, Hermes was the only large company whose share price rose (16.8 per cent) and it has the second largest feminised management (55 per cent). Companies with a highly feminized management, such as Sanofi (44.8 per cent female managers and a 27.3 per cent share price decrease), Sodexo (43.39 per cent female managers and an 8.3 per cent decrease) or Danone (38 per cent female managers and a 29.6 per cent decrease), declined less than the CAC 40 (a fall of 42.7 per cent).

Conversely, stocks of companies with mainly male management have decreased more than the CAC 40. For example, Alcatel-Lucent (8.6 per cent female managers) saw a 69.3 per cent decrease, Renault (21.7 per cent female managers) an 81.3 per cent fall and Arcelor Mittal (12. 3 per cent female managers) a 67.4 per cent decline.

Read more…

It’s a beautiful day in San Francisco, nothing like the rainy, cold night before when I arrived on a non-stop flight from Miami. The clouds have cleared, the sky is crispy blue and the sun is shining on me as I walk up four steep hills on Mason Street to the Fairmont Hotel, where Cleantech Forum XXI is taking place.

I enter the hotel at the same time as Elias B. Hinckley, energy and resources principle for Deloitte Tax, LLP.

“Have you been to this conference before?” he asks me as we walk down the tropical colonial style stairs of the posh hotel.

“No, I haven’t - but I heard it’s a good one.”

“I hope so,” he says. “My company dropped a lot of cash to sponsor it.”

Tickets for this coveted event are $2,000 - because this is where the masters of the universe are talking about best bets for investments of the future. The Grand Ballroom is packed. Michael Goguen, general partner of Sequoia Capital, Whitney Rockley, principal of Nomura, H. Jeffery Leonard, CEO and co-founder of Global Environment Fund, Chuck McDermott, General Partner of Rockport Capital Partners and Partho Snyal, director of Bank of America sit on a panel to discuss the 2009-2010 investment landscape.

They hail solar, although they don’t expect it to REPLACE fossil fuels…they remind the audience that the last time there was a meltdown in the market, a “little” company called Cisco emerged…it’s during these economic downturns that the most creative companies win their market share…and one of the conference sponsors, NYSE Euronext, boasts 80 Cleantech companies listed on its index.

Seems like a shiny future, no?

Enter the first six presenting companies of the conference (we excluded some specific information so we don’t violate SEC rules in Regulation D):

1. Earthcycle Packaging Ltd, a woman-owned company based in Vancouver. CEO Shannon Boase launched her company in 2005 and with only $800,000 - raised by friends and family - she has designed and built an exclusive distribution channel for a renewable, biomass alternative to plastic packaging, that is already profitable. Her customers include Wal-Mart, Trader Joe’s, Publix and Wegmans. The company won the 20th Annual DuPont Award for Packaging Innovation in 2008, the Globe and Mail 2007 Award for Technology Innovation and Application and the 2007 Packaging Impact Award for Excellence in Produce Packaging, geven by the Produce Marketing Association.

How did Boase get to this stage of her career? She has more than 20 years of international business experience in creating, operating and profitably spinning off technology and financial services start-ups. She successfully operated a $25 million commercialization fund. She holds a BBA in marketing from SFU in Vancouver, a post-grad diploma in Asian Studies from Capilano University and an MBA in Innovation and Strategy from the Theseus Institute in France.

2. Trip Convergence Ltd, a New Zealand-based company founded by one-man show Paul Minett (who adds he doesn’t have the expected accent!). His theory is that traffic congestion can be solved by creating “meeting places” for car poolers, rather than what his competitors offer - databases that match people to pre-arrange their trips.

“We call it flexible car-pooling,” he says, although the concept is yet an unproven theory (Kemila’s unsolicited opinion - which means he’s probably not ready for angel or VC funding. Most angels are looking to see proven concepts before throwing in a round of funding). The plan is contingent on dedicated parking lots with separate areas to go downtown, to the airport, to the universities and so on (1 million people within 10 years, all of whom will be paying $1/day). Pre-screened members can participate, “to weed out the crazies,” Minett says.

Each time you provide a ride, you get a credit that you can trade in the future - kind of like carbon credits - everything is tracked through an online interface (the company owns exclusive rights to this)…and Minett’s theory is that these credits will be subsidized by the government to enhance economic growth, to meet climate change regulations like SB375 and to get re-elected.

3. IQ Wind, an Israeli start-up in the wind energy ecosystem founded by Gideon Ziegelman. His presentation is a little too heavy on the scientific explanations, so to summarize, the company is “developing a breakthrough gear technology that can retrofit 10-year-old existing wind turbines to increase their efficiency and improve their reliability.”

According to his research, the direct retrofit market is about $8 billion and the direct annual market for the new turbine opportunity is estimated as $6.5 billion (2008).

The company is not yet profitable, but the optimistic Ziegelman expects to be cash-positive by 2011. His competitors include Voith, NuVinci and Hansen.

4. Ener-G-Rotors, Inc, a New York-based company that commercializes devices “based on a near frictionless expander that turns low temperature heat into electricity, opening up a new market in waste heat and changing the technology landscape for solar thermal and geothermal installations.”

Serial entrepreneur Michael Newell says the company (his 4th since 1984!) harnesses waste-heat from industrial sites, combined heat operators and commercial buildings, and it’s on target to continue growing with a $400,000 grant just secured last month. His management team includes a CFO who raised $40 million in equity to commercialize patents he bought from GE to build a plastics company; his president and founder and the  inventor of the technology both have years of experience in electrical and engine design, including 20 years working on Stirling engines.

Revenue was $30,000 over the last year and should be in the multi-millions by 2011. They’ve got “conversations going on” with Proctor & Gamble (oooh), IBM and a few other big guys…we’ll have to keep tabs on them to see if they land any contracts…

5. Windsight, LLC, based in Ann Arbor, Mich. offers a transformational atmospheric measurement system that will “greatly enhance the accuracy and timeliness of site assessments and improve decision making regarding turbine maintenance and efficiency for operational wind farms.” Peter Tchoryk, Jr is the CEO and he says, “It’s easy to love wind energy…but it’s not without its problems. Millions of dollars are left in the wind every year. Eighty percent of existing farms are not meeting the energy quotas they predicted from site assessments due to non-optimal turbine placement…without the ability to forecast winds accurately, there’s inefficient wind capture.”

In short, the company is offering a solution by directly measuring air molecules.

Competitors include LMCT, Catch the Wind, SgurrEnergy and Sodar/MET Towers.

Tchoryk’s background provides a sturdy foundation for the company, as he was CEO of Michigan Aerospace Corporation for five years. He received his Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1994 and his bachelors from GMI in 1986. He’s got three patents and six pending.

6. Green Wizard, LLC, an online marketplace and workflow solution for the sustainable construction industry based in Charleston, SC. Sounds like a company that should target the depressed South Florida real estate industry! Founder Adam Bernholz has the presentation for his software company completely memorized…impressive…and the application made use of open source tools, however, the company is not yet cash-positive and as of this report, their web site functions on Safari, but not Firefox! Not a good impression for a software company, in my humble opinion.

But to their credit, they’ve got a heavyweight management team including Jerry Lepore, who has 30 years technology leadership experience, including BenefitFocus, a 500-employee software company serving the health care industry market; and Teri Watson, who has 25 years experience building products and supply chains.

January 27, 2009
Report by Kemila Velan, Ethical Markets Media, Director of Communications

The second annual Carbon Markets North America 2009 was held in Coral Gables, Fla. January 15. Among the 150 registered attendees were private equity investors, entrepreneurs, energy and utility officials and policy makers all concerned about the future of carbon emissions trading, a controversial way of tackling global warming.
Read more…

by Kemila Velan
December 19, 2008

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of GOOD Worldwide, opened the third and final day of the Sustainable Brands International conference Dec. 9-11 at the posh, newly renovated and re-opened Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, where Hybrid drivers received $10 off valet parking.
Read more…

Salvador Castaneda, founder and CIO of CloudLINK, a commercial aircraft television business, was self-funded to start, and then received angel funding through friends and family networking. Like a typical 21st century entrepreneur, Castaneda connects virtually from San Francisco to his teammates in Tucson, New York, London and his fiancée in Brazil.

“We talk on Skype whenever we can,” he says. “It’s a remarkable tool.”

But voice over IP is just the tip of this high-tech entrepreneur’s iceberg. When your business career starts in the oil industry, the doors to the latest and greatest technology open wide, and they led Castaneda to Mexico, where he started one of the country’s first Internet service providers. This experience led him back to Silicon Valley, where he tried to convince ol’ skule broadcasters that the Internet would be the next major entertainment distribution plateform. This was in the mid-1990s, practically light years ahead of his time.

In 2009, we can see Castaneda’s foresight in web sites like Hulu.com, Veoh.com and other online networks that stream anything from films to TV shows to commercials. Still a few steps ahead of the game, Castaneda is now playing with technology that will bring Internet content to airlines.

“We are positioned to close a partnership deal with one of the largest companies in the world in the next 30 days,” said Castaneda, a Mexican-American born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. “This deal includes an investment in the company.  This will trigger additional investment from strategic partners who are standing in the wings to see if we pull this off.”

A team of the usual suspects - investment bankers, VCs  and money managers - will tap into other sources of funding for CloudLINK, meaning the money will be flowing from this point…the most difficult milestone for any business.

“We tried the VC route and found they are looking for deals that they can sell from day one,” said Castaneda. “They are not risk takers.”

Not many people ARE risk takers, including many Hispanics who take the conservative route when it comes to work - full-time plus health benefits. And yet, it is in our cultural DNA to take risks. Just look at all the Mexicans who risk their lives to cross the border; the Cubans who arrive by flimsy rafts; the Puerto Ricans who left their Caribbean comforts for a chance at a better life in the NY concrete jungles.

“My message to Hispanic entrepreneurs is start a business with no expectations from the VC crowd and be prepared to stay in business, get traction, and find a path that suits your needs to target investors,” said Castaneda. “I believe from my own experience that Hispanics will have to rely on the vital assistance of angel investors to start up and use this path for strategic partnerships with companies who serve the Hispanic marketplace.”

Kemila: The name of this series of interviews with Hispanic entrepreneurs is called “Census 2050,” which is based on Census projections that Hispanics will be half of the US population by 2050, and creating the businesses of the future. You are the first person I am interviewing that is a Hispanic entrepreneur. Can you tell me how you grew up and a little bit about your family?

Sal: I was born and raised in San Francisco. My mother was born in Dodge City, Kansas. My mother’s parents came from Central Mexico to the US in 1917. They were both victims of the Mexican Revolution on my father’s side. They were aristocrats and the guerillas confiscated their land. The Villa Zapata revolution was all about agrarian land reform.

On the other end of the spectrum, my mother’s parents were very modest farmers and the guerillas confiscated their food and they were facing starvation. My maternal grandmother was one of six sisters. They were already here by 1917 - they started the migration long before that.

My grandfather was the first welter weight and the first Pachuco, the first zip suiter of that era. He and my mother were classic Frank Sinatra bobby soxers. Alfredo went on and was a swimming champion and was a peer of Johnny Weismiller, the original Tarzan. They were lifeguards together as children. Alfredo went on to earn his PhD at the University of Iowa on a swimming scholarship and went on to Texas and became the first American born Hispanic tenured at Stanford. He was the first Hispanic head of psychological association in 1951 and one of godfathers of childhood testing in the US and he was also the godfather of the Bilingual Education Act.

As for myself, I was born and raised in San Francisco in the Mission and I live now in the Castro. My father became a crab fisherman, my mother had four children. I went to a Catholic school. In 1966 (I’m 58 now) I graduated from high school hoping to go to Notre Dame and I took a job loading trucks, then ended up getting drafted. I spent one year training in Texas and the following year in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. I returned home and became a major part of the anti-war movement. I was co-founder of a juvenile legal defense program. I did that for two and a half years. I had 2,000 juveniles released to my custody.

Kemila: Do you know Sandy Close? She has a program called The Beat Within for juvenile hall kids? She started up Pacific News Service and New America Media, which is an ethnic media newswire.

Sal: Yeah, Pacific News Service has been around quite a while. Life took an artistic turn and I became a graphic artist and a radio DJ. I applied to the University of Los Angeles film school. I had an extensive portfolio of oil paintings. UCLA at that time was very prestigious. My father got sick and I came back to San Francisco. I didn’t see a very good future in film, though. I was attracted by Moctezuma Esparza, he was one year ahead of me. I have mixed feelings about him, although he’s someone who gave me encouragement. I took care of my father who was dying in 1971. I decided to go to law school and find my own path in this life. It was a difficult struggle. I ended up going to Berkeley Law school. I didn’t want to be lawyer, I didn’t have business skills, and I thought I could start out in law and broaden and expand that education. I was hired by El Paso Natural Gas in 1977. Silicon Valley didn’t exist. The semi-conductor was just born, Intel was just born. I took this job in the oil business. I thought, “Gee, they’re giving me a shot.” I was hired as a specialist to negotiate oil for native Americans so I was able to use my bad Spanish. It was the wild, wild west. If you’ve seen “No Country for Old Men,” that was the kind of landscape I was in.

Then I got this opportunity to work with Native Americans on a reservation. I was hired by another company in the oil boom. I became head of business development, managed seven offices overseas. I managed an expiration budget. It was the most enlightening experience because my Hispanic background was so helpful. I look Jewish, Arab, Italian – anything but a typical Hispanic. But it was a chance to practice my pithy Spanish. I came back to California in 1985 and I was married at the time and my ex-wife wanted to pursue graduate dental studies at UC San Francisco. I couldn’t find a job with Chevron, so I landed a job with Oracle Corporation. I had no tech experience, and I had this amazing interview. The lady said, you have no tech experience, and I said you’re right. I wrote my own business plan, and I said if you’re interested, call me.

I set up five companies for Oracle. That’s how I got started in the technology business. In 1994, seeing NAFTA born in front of my eyes, and my godfather’s brother was the head of Stofer Chemical in Mexico. He tried to get me to work for him but I was too afraid of Mexico. I was afraid there was not enough infrastructure and legal system to promote business, but with NAFTA it was a real opportunity. We started the first independent ISP in Mexico. My business partner was a Mexican citizen who was the former head of Citibank and American Express and he was introduced to me by the first US Hispanic president of Chamber of Commerce. I started Montero Communications. My business partner and I got to visit all the governors in Mexico and visited the industries there, which all needed technology. I thought, what an opportunity. I funded the business myself to get started.

Unfortunately, the value of the peso in 1995 triggered off 40% interest rates, inflation, and it killed off business opportunities and capital. It dried up for my business and clients. I came back to the U.S. in 1996 and started working for a company called Creative Labs. I proposed to them their future was based in developing entertainment networks to highlight their products and they would sell everything on the Internet. They thought it was ridiculous. They hired me, fired me, hired me. I could write a Mel Brooks comedy over what happened. They took my product, fired me, hired me back. He was a software developer. The US is going digital HD. There’s going to be different signal opportunities to capture data. We just want a little niche to target this market.

We raised capital and we invested through private placements which was a wild process. All the VCs thought this was a really great idea. Where are you going to capture this data? The VCs said, when you can show us how it’s done, come back. We’re working on the web, broadcast type television. Entertainment portals. We made web look like portals. This was in 1997. I was actually working with Mark Cuban who had a company called Audio Net. He’s amazing in terms of self-determination. He’s got the strongest will of any guy I’ve ever met. I worked with him to get the first entertainment network organized and my employer thought I was nuts.

Because of my partner’s fundamental grounding in mainstream broadcasting, we built our business model around day parts. It was called InterMedia and it was 100% built by two Hispanic guys. This is when people were talking about push and pull and banners and pop-ups. I put my bet that IP technology would be the underlying carrier for broadcast. How are you going to change this coast to coast? And I said it would happen with IP. That blind, wild faith came from my experience in Mexico. In 1994 Internet was introduced in the US and I was talking Mexico and it was like selling snow to Eskimos. What’s that, what’s that gonna do?

I started seeing this could be an entertainment platform. We kept alive by doing private placements.

Kemila: What are private placements?

Sal: They are a way of raising money, selling stock in your company without your stock being publicly traded. This was a very common practice and a liberal practice. A limited amount of shares were offered to a limited amount of individuals. They had to follow rules. In the late 1960s it was like the wild west and a lot of people took advantage of this exception and legislation changed in 2000 after the bubble burst because there was so much abuse. We did limited public offerings to family and friends. We got friends of friends. We rented some rooms and hotels and went from house to house and that’s how we got family and friends together. Broadcast.com (which was bought by Yahoo!) actually triggered it. The first day of its public offering it went from 0 to 100 in one day. It triggered this whole IPO phenomenon. That was a really wild error, people were doing public placements. It was like a gold rush.

Kemila: That isn’t anything different from an angel investment.

Sal: An angel investor can invest in a start-up in a variety of ways. An angel can become an equity owner and stock can be exchanged for a cash investment. Some angels do it in a form of a loan or investment. In my current company, CloudLINK, angel investors made pretty significant investments so we gave them equity interests and they were issued stock certificates, private placements use a circular document which are used to find an investor. An equity investment is legal as long as it’s not a public offering. An angel investor is an investor and takes no role or participation in the investment.

Kemila: But that’s not entirely true because I’ve talked to others, who have invested and take more of a “guardian angel” approach where they help in the development of the entrepreneur and the company.

Sal: I agree. I tried to give you a definition, but you’re right, angels can be participants and he turned out to be a pain in the butt.

Kemila: LOL. Did he become a control freak?

Sal: Yeah, he was a control freak and incompetent on top of that. I have a wonderful business partner who has taken four companies public. He was a senior partner at many law firms. He was in the film business, and was an executive producer on many major Hollywood films. He was tired of law and made a series of investments, and of course my partner and I were majority owners. He tried to be a businessman without taking off his lawyer clothes. He was picky and anal. You never know about people – human dynamics are the number one headache of any business. They play such a major role in the dynamics of being an entrepreneur. Cohesion is a necessity. Differences in opinion make for the richness and texture of experience you don’t get in working for a company. Major fundamental differences come out like a jack in the box in an entrepreneurial situation. I’ve had four start-ups and they’ve been pretty cool. If someone has a personality flaw it comes out. You try to deal with. Our angel was asked to leave. We bent over backward to accommodate him but it just didn’t work out. It was a loss for both of us but it had to be done.

Kemila: Even in that experience you definitely learned. Nothing is ever a loss, you always learn from every experience especially as an entrepreneur. You have to feel out the chemistry of different people and sometimes they don’t show their true colors until you’re in the thick of business. I experienced this last week and I was the one with the big problem. I had to take a step back and be honest with myself and figure out how do I handle myself better in business situation. Most of my life I’ve been a journalist, just asking people questions and taking notes and now that I have this difference, I have to be more diplomatic, which has never been part of my personality. It really shows you who are when you take on this position in life, I think.

Sal: You have hit the theme that has sustained myself and my partner. If you have the conviction and devotion to become an entrepreneur you have to find out who you are and recognize your strengths and weaknesses. A Brooklyn guy taught me this. He was a little ahead of me from taking four companies public. He said the biggest problem we have is humanistics. It’s gonna be our number-one problem. If we can overcome that, we’ll find a way of succeeding. My partner is 66 now. He and I took this journey. We have grown and matured and have mastered this theme of humanistics over and over. It makes our relationship unique and creates a foundation for a business partnership over eight years. It’s a way of dealing with personality problem after personality problem. It’s the number-one thing that I’ve experienced and the two key questions is:

WHO ARE YOU AND WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

Kemila: LOL! Those are the two questions I always ask every entrepreneur! That’s been on my wall for a really long time.

Sal: When I met Steve, I said I’ve been plagued by these questions all my life. And he said me too, we embraced each other and we were man enough to answer those two questions. We’re in alignment with the most powerful advertising and media buyers on the planet and major captains in the industry – very difficult people with monster egos. The real message is how we got there. We get asked this question all the time, if I think they’re really going at to benefit from the answer and I’ll look at people right in their eyes. When you know who you are, you can answer the second question who you want to be. You can be lucky in business and never ask these questions. But in my case, to go where I’ve gone, I’ve had to ask these two questions all the time. In my case, I found the ability to articulate the truth when I need it. It gives me a day to day ability to allow people to see the inside and outside of me. In a company I operated in FEAR and politics. I still have to a certain extent, but we set the rules by answering those two question all the time. We use honesty to lead us every step of the way. It gives me and my partner a tremendous amount of self-respect. The people who believe and trust in us. If you can find that feeling and send out that vibration, you’ll always be a winner and you’ll never fail. You see the Walt Disney movies growing up, but if you can live and breathe them, they’re totally liberating all the time.

I have four masters degrees and they were only incidental, they are not a reflection of my intelligence. My real intelligence is my emotional intelligence. My partner was a concert pianist at the age of 12. He’s artistic and analytical at the same time. We go back to over and over, we always analyze them from the humanistic standpoint and that’s basically a euphamism for emotional intelligence.

I can give you all the MDA analysis. It’s the human intelligence and that comes from the history I recited, my father being a boxer, my family coming up during an identifiable period of discrimination in this country, but I never suffered because of the wonderful self-image my family gave me. I was always a happy-go-lucky kid.

I’ve had disasters with other business partners. When we sit down and do business with other companies and talk to partners, we look at the dynamics – who are we talking to, what are their personalities, how are we going to encourage them to make a decision in our favor, that has nothing to do with ROI and balance sheets. It’s all about understanding and assessing the people you’re dealing with, understanding if you have a realistic chance of succeeding and the ability to maximize your ability. It took me eight years to learn from my partner. The only way I could master this was by asking myself questions. Is my way unique? Practical? Impractical? If my partner has similar sensitivies, they become so sharp and so keen. That’s how we laugh through strategic partnership, taking it to the next step and actually launching it and realizing this dream we had over the last eight years. Why are we putting ourselves through this? Are we fighting windmills or are we…I learned what I was good at, not good at, over and over and over. It’s humbling but so liberating when you can see areas where you need to improve. It only works if those improvements will enhance those two questions.

In the corporate world I was plagued by politics, I would carry my heart on my sleeve, sometimes I would have great success, I was always building things for other people and not being really connected to myself, I could hide these feelings, but when I became an entrepeneur I could show these feelings. I could use these feelings to further my aim. But they have to come from the right place. You can’t be false with people and succeed.

What I really wanted to be? A happy person who could take criticism, but also be able to face the truth. You may not win every situation, but you won’t lose, it will keep taking you.

And that’s my story, man!

I’m building a TV network for commercial aviation. The U.S. domestic aviation carried 670 million tickets. The US aviation industry is getting bad press but it’s an enormous growth period. It’s going to be a billion passenger industry. Media is becoming a major growth industry in the U.S. I was able to combine my interests in art, entertainment and technology with my business.

I look around for other Hispanic entrepreneurs in this part of the country, and I see many climbing the corporate ladder, but a small amount that are entrepreneurs. The number of Hispanics foreign or US Born, still very small community in the US. You would think that number would be much larger. If I meet the rare Hispanic entrepreneur, I embrace and hold them in the highest respect. I get to see up and coming Hispanics climbing the corporate ladder. I was on that track and I knew what it was like and I knew it wasn’t for me. The way to succeed in this country is through an accumulation of wealth. I came from very modest blue collar family. When I worked in the oil inudstry, I got to see a global cross section of self-made people, political appointees, I was always amazed at the class of people appointed to ministries around the world – such a different class of human beings. Some weren’t always nice, but the ones who were nice, always asked themselves those two questions:

WHO ARE YOU AND WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

They were able to express themselves.

Here’s a San Francisco kid, I go to Latin America and see people running businesses in Venezuela, Colombia, I see doctors and lawyers, whereas here, they think Mexican-Americans are all illegal immigrants. The vast majority of people thinks that.

Kemila: Yeah, that’s what our mainstream media is showing…

Sal: My parents own land in Mexico and they spoke three languages and they would say, ‘Ah, there’s no middle class people in Mexico!’ To be around your peers who have professional, artistic and cultural people – to see the renaissance people. You see the disparities. My undergrad was in Latin American studies because my father’s parents were educated aristocrats, migrated here and had to start all over. And the other side came over as impoverished farmers. I wanted to know why Latin America was underdeveloped. I got the degree to answer these questions because everything was so confusing. I managed a company in Spain for five years. I had such a wonderful time with them. All the idiosyncratic things come from Spain – the wild temper, machismo comes from Spain. And they treated me wonderfully. Hispanics are making achievements in gains and getting political recognition but not enough accumulation of wealth. To be successful in this country, you have to be independent. The entrepreneurial route leads to financial independence. Once you have that, you have the position of making independent decisions. You also get stature and respect in your country. When you go to Latin America and see self-made people who own companies, I worked with people who made steel. I loved seeing the independents and seeing an entrpeeneur in Latin America is much more difficult than here. You don’t have the rule of law like you have here, they don’t have the capital there, but they still do it.

Kemila: I spent four months in Central America and I ran back to the U.S. because I knew it would be too difficult to start something up over there. I grew up very suburban and took it for granted.

Sal: When you ask those questions, I wanted to go through this life answering this question and I didn’t want to end this life in self-doubt so I said I’m gonna follow the entrepreneurial path, if I succeed, if I don’t succeed in my goal, I’m still fine because I’ve erased this doubt.

Kemila: I woke up freaked out because my plan wasn’t going as I wanted it to. I tried to change my attitude and I realized I had to just ride it and part of the bumpy ride I signed up for.

Sal: You cant be a voice in the wilderness, you need support, that’s the genesis of my partnership with the Latino Film Festival. I thought they were so disorganized. I loved the Latino Film Festival, I saw Mitch stand up and say he would take over and get us over this hump. I said I don’t have time for these kinds of hysterics, and they sought my help and I gave them some business plans and models, and I learned what Mitch was doing, the problem with him is there are not enough entrepreneurs as a base, but there are plenty of companies trying to market to Hispanics, so in the course of the years, Mitch knows what I’m going through and vice versa, we have a mutual support club. I have people who think I’m absolutely crazy, and others who look at me in amazement that I can sustain myself. If you have some support and encouragement – that’s the reason I’m talking to you.

Kemila: It’s not just a couple of people, I live in Miami which is full of Hispanic entrepreneurs. There’s a ton of Latinos with ideas but don’t have the infrastructure like San Francisco.

Sal: That’s interesting because when I think of Miami, I think of Cubans and the entreprneurship. Silicon Valley is a machine. The infrastructure is there. Whatever you need to pump it up – PR, capital.

Kemila: I was in San Francisco during the dot.com boom. I worked for Latino.com. Do you remember that?

Sal: I used to scan all the Latino sites to see what was going on. They were all cute, no advertising base. I would look at my watch to see how long they would last.

Kemila: Ours started in 1995 so it was really old, so we thought we had it in the bag, but it was QuePasa.com that did really well. They went public before we did. We watched them crash and burn. I got laid off Jan. 25, 2001, I thought of it as the most interesting day of my life and I was happy because I was being released from the madness.

Sal: When I was kid, San Francisco was like New York, a lot of working class, you had the whole spectrum. This is such a weird place it’s skewed with the white urban professional. That’s how you cut your spurs. I can see your path, it’s an evolutionary path. You didn’t run to a corporation with your tail between your legs. I was a corporate princess. I was paid enough so I looked prosperous enough so I had the illusion I was middle class and I was in love with that paycheck!

Kemila: I never worked for a corporation, they were always start-ups, it was always hands-on learning, you never make much, they pay you bare minimum and it was enough for me to get by, I was always a writer. Here in Miami is a whole other crazy story to be told because being a woman in a patriarchal culture, things are not as easy as they were in San Francisco. I have a lot more burden of proof. Over there it was OK to be a woman and here, it’s like, ‘Who are you? What are you talking about?’ It has helped me get thicker skin. And it’s not just Miami, it’s in LA too. I pitched an idea to some guys, I had money in my hand and they didn’t take me seriously.

Sal: That’s the key – it’s a process, this whole entreneurial thing. You’re gonna get to where you need to get because you understand the process. If you have that inner conviction and believe, you’ll get there, I sound like a recorder here! That’s what has sustained me the last eight years. My partner told me a wonderful child’s fable. A store from Greece: there was a man who lived in Cyprus and he was a silversmith in a village who owned a palamino stallion, and everyone said, “You’re so lucky” and one day his palamino ran away, and they said, ‘Oh, how awful you lost this horse!’ And he said, ‘Oh! Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.’ Then the palamino came back with a whole fleet of palaminos and people said, ‘Oh, what great fortune you had!’ And he said, ‘Ah, maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.’ A war broke out between Greece and Cyprus and the son couldn’t go to war because he broke his leg. When you know who are and who do want to be, then these bumps don’t faze you, each experience made you tougher and sharper and you staid the course and now you have a better skillset. These setbacks became lessons. If you let these bumps defeat you, you’ll never realize your goals.

Kemila: And this is exactly the message of the superhero and that’s why I’m glad Stan Lee is the first guest on my writing workshops, I don’t know if you’re a fan of comic books, but can he fight the villain and stay true to his own self. It’s a comic theme – are you going to the dark side? It’s usually your own brain, it’s nothing outside of you.

Sal: This question – when I was 19, when I was drafted, we were told over and over, there’s always an alpha in every unit and I was what the hell is an alpha? I went AWOL, and they still had discrimination, I ran away and got arrested, I ran away to Mexico as punishment I got put in the infantry, I got put in combat and it turns out that I was the alpha. What that meant was that only in combat I was the most assertive. In combat everyone lost their minds, but no matter what happens, when you’re attacked or ambushed, you’re always in shock, my father was martial artist, I didn’t experience the shock, so I said, this is what we’re gonna do and they would still be immobilize, and then I would say, I’m gonna go do it and then they would say why did you leave us? It turns out this whole myth about the alpha, well it’s not a myth actually, it’s derived from wolves, wolves have lifelong family, they’re very clean, there’s a hierarchy, it was recently discovered the wolfpack stays in this structure, the beta keeps all the relationships in place. The beta makes peace, has the respect of the alpha.

Kemila: Yes! When you have both yin and yang energy that means you’re a true master.

Sal: I would calm everybody down. You’re right about yin and yang. I was always the person who took the first step. That was the source of my legitimate authentic leadership. I took the first step so quickly and dramatically it would shock everyone, but I had to shock everyone to get their attention, but then when I came up with the plan, I had to nurture people in a variety of ways, I had to be calm and reassuring, and other times blindingly focused and respond to rage with rage, if it called for something less, I never knew who was going to back me up. I was always the first one to counter the enemy. It was never the same two people who would come to my aid.

The story about the hero and these values, in the business life, those things are still operative here. My partner is the alpha and the beta. He’s a Jewish Clint Eastwood. He can play both roles. One thing is in the business context. When I was in life and death situation, the dynamics are very similar.

You are a woman for me that has demonstrated courage and conviction, you’ve altered your life, you’ve hit the bumps and somehow you’ve overcome your obstacles. God bless writers. I always heard about these things and talked about these things, but it’s much different when you live them. They make a commitment that transcends a job and everybody else’s expectations. They set expectations for themselves and allow the process to take place in order to achieve their expectations. And how that’s done, there isn’t any single way. When I was in a life or death situation – I was wounded twice, shot in the face.

Kemila: Woah! How did you get shot in the face and have no scars?

Sal: The scars healed over time, I had granade shrapnel in my back. This was the real deal, hand to hand. This is the nitty gritty. Who served in Vietnam? The poor whites, the blacks. I’ve very proud of that. I’m proud of all I’ve learned, the sacrifices I’ve made.  I used to own a home, luxury car, I now live in a cottage that was abandoned, I made a lot of money. I’m a happy man. A happy man is self-sustaining. I don’t get up and convince myself to be happy.

Kemila: Well, that’s just the American Dream, isn’t it?

Sal: I look at my friends who are self-made and have a lot of money. They say why are you so happy? I’m not afraid to show what’s inside of Sal Castaneda anymore.

Kemila: This has been an interesting interview because it’s not just about business, we really brought out the humanstics. I’ve had fair share of experiences where you check your personality at the door, and it’s a really bad situation. When I think of how many people are, it makes me sad, and I hope they can find ways to have an outlet so it doesn’t consume their lives – most of the population works full time and hate their jobs. How can you hate it when they’re there 8 hours a day. I think the next generation is trying to re-define it…I don’t think I’m going to work to be miserable all day long. I’m interested in seeing how the Internet plays into that. Will it be real change or just another idealistic movement. Baby Boomer were really optimistic, now is the chance for the two generations come together to make things happen. Hispanics are intergenerational, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out and the conversations we might be able to have in the media on that topic.

Sal: That’s why what you’re doing is so critical. Hispanics overcome obstacles and their best way to financial freedom and emotional nourishment is to get a job. That takes us to one level of personal realization and the role you play in getting these stories is communicating there are other ways and paths. Our parents, they’re immigrants and come with sound, conservative values, but Hispanics don’t have critical mass in entrepreneurship. One of the things that’s gonna happen is I’m going to put a lot of people to work. My leadership style is leading by example. There is a way of finding your labor of love and I imagine you get up and you love what you’re doing. When you can achieve that, you will be successful. Everyone will see it because you’ve got the personality, skills and talent. People will see that energy. I just wanted a little business, a little five person media research company and not this entertainment network for the airline industry, but your role is very clear and critical in terms of being the voice and documenting this message. I go to these Hispanic events, I see these young Latinos getting scholarships and want to work for a company as fast as they can. I’ve been there, so I can’t blame them, but I look back and we know there are other ways. Thank you for listening to my story.

Hazel Henderson is a socially responsible angel investor.

On June 16, 2007, I visited Hazel Henderson in St. Augustine. I told Hazel about Miami, the city I had been living in for the past four years, where women are still caught in a 1970s battle for civil rights. It is so different from San Francisco, Denver, Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill and other U.S. cities I’d lived and worked in.

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December 12, 2007
In the West, Hatha Yoga (primarily the body postures and breathing) tends to dominate our idea of yoga. But many other methods and practices (sadhanas) can bring us to a state of yoga. Simple daily tasks like gardening and cooking can become sadhana if performed with awareness and without attachment to outcome. Art is well suited to sadhana.

Painting, writing, singing, and dancing can become sacred offerings. A useful way to turn creative endeavors into sadhana is to include them in your existing yoga practice. For example, after you finish asana, move into another form of practice. You may find that creative blocks vanish and that your art blossoms. Make sure that you frame the beginning and end of your practice with intentional focus using sound, silence or the mudras.

I have this theory that business can be a “Sadhana.” If everyone practiced business with spiritual intention, perhaps our world will be more balanced. This is my hypothesis.

Now it’s time to find data that backs up my hypothesis. My new angel, Hazel Henderson, has written a slew of books that advocate a more holistic view of business, where the bottom line is divided into people, planet and profit (rather than just profit). I’ve skimmed through a few - “Growing the Green Economy” and “The Politics of the Solar Age,” but it’s “The Power of Yin,” a transcription of a dialogue among Hazel, Barbara Marx Hubbard and Jean Houston, that supports my theory most directly, especially after my experience working in a male-dominated company that ignored people and planet in its mission to gain profit. I am sure there are men out there that care about the planet. Al Gore and the mattress guy are two of them. But I think they are in the minority. Things that are “holistic” tend to be female-oriented.