{"id":729,"date":"2017-04-07T11:12:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T18:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/futuresharks.com\/?p=729"},"modified":"2020-06-27T16:23:48","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T23:23:48","slug":"yoel-j-gonzalez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futuresharks.com\/yoel-j-gonzalez\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Designer Yoel J Gonzalez"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yoel J Gonzalez is a young self taught ui\/ux designer, photographer, a creative thinker & entrepreneur, from the beautiful city of Miami.Over the past years he has worked with a variety of clients and startups.Getting involved at a very young age in design gave Yoel the experience and knowledge to understand every corner and aspect of the artistic world.<\/p>\n

City where you\u2019re from:<\/strong> Miami, Florida
\nHobbies:<\/strong> Drinking Coffee & Outdoor Photography
\nFavorite quote:<\/strong> Think Different; Steve Jobs
\nTwitter:\u00a0<\/strong>https:\/\/www.twitter.com\/yoeljgz<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey Yoel, why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?<\/h3>\n

I never thought I’d be the man I am right now and I never thought that I will become an entrepreneur. Why so much negative thinking? I had to leave Cuba my country of birth at a very young age (7). That change affected me in different ways, one of the hardest ones was the language. Being a kid without knowing the language at school was difficult. It brought me many problems with teachers and fellow classmates for a couple of years. My mother started to take the good things away from me. As a reward, she uses to tell me that I had to start learning English. From that day on I started to be more responsible with school. Being more disciplined guided me thru a path that at age 12 I was basically doing everything by myself. Fixing my room, doing homework and going to school by taking public city buses. Along the way I saw that it was difficult for my mom to help me out with my expenses. From there on it was hard for me since my state (Florida) doesn\u2019t allow childrens with age 12 to work. I had to stay weekends without going out with friends and much more. I finished my 8th grade and decided to apply for a local semi-private high school named Miami Lakes Educational Center without knowing if I was going to being admitted. Weeks later I got accepted. In Miami Lakes Tech, it where things got different. While in freshmen year, I was taking a class that it was mainly about how to prepare yourself for college and what it takes to being an entrepreneur. On one of our main projects was to create like your dream business. I didn’t took it as a dream and sadly I failed that class. I don\u2019t have any regrets of failing it, why? Because along the way I was putting every little detail that I learned from it into an idea that I started to evolve. With my knowledge in computer graphics that I got by self watching tutorials videos on Youtube (Thenewboston Channel) I started my own web & design business with my best friend. Along the way, me and my friend separated. I continued with the adventure that I embark myself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Who were your biggest influences? Was there a defining moment in your life?<\/h3>\n

Back then the only influencer was my mom. She taught me how to do everything by myself, which sometimes is a bad thing because you start to feel that you’re alone in this world, but she is my mom and I knew she was doing it for my good. Deciding to leave my part-time job and to drop out of the local community college I was attending, to move and to study in a new school (Academy of Art) on the other side of the country was the best decision i\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n

What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?<\/h3>\n

Currently I\u2019m working on my own startup that I co-founded with my uncle which is Obtem and doing on the side branding projects for upcoming startups or business. Obtem is an on demand delivery app where clients can order anything from there local merchants and have it delivered to them. I came up with idea when I came back from San Francisco. One night I was watching a movie with my girlfriend, and she randomly told me that imagine a company where at this current time (1am) could bring us anything that we order. Right after she told me that something inside of me sparked. Back in San Francisco I had the same idea but I wasn’t sure that it was going to work out in my home city (Miami) so I didn\u2019t put that much attention. I jumped out of the bed and started to contact my friends that I knew that after telling them the idea they will fall in love with. And yes they did. Next morning we scheduled a meeting to start planning out everything and Obtem was founded.<\/p>\n

How is your product\/service different and unique? What has been your favorite moment with it? What\u2019s the vision?<\/h3>\n

Obtem is an on demand app where by the position of the user the app itself will display a list of all the local merchants he has around. Giving the opportunity to order from them. On the other side the associates our couriers will accept the coming orders and execute them by going to the selected merchant and buy the products. All this happens while the client tracks the order. It’s hard to point out one favorite moments when you are working with an amazing team. But I will point out one, launch day. We were all nervous that day when we’re about to click the submit button to launch the app into the app store.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If you do Facebook ads, what types of creatives\/campaigns do you use (we like specifics)? If you don\u2019t, what untapped marketing channels do you take advantage of?<\/h3>\n

One of the campaigns that helped us to reach potential clients in our current zones, were Facebook ads. The type of campaign we did were download now ads. Where we target certain strategic areas that we knew people was in the need of a delivery service.<\/p>\n

Did you experience failure along the way? What did you learn from it?<\/h3>\n

Thru Obtem we had minor failures and most of them were internal. I had to take some hard decisions as a founder that everything was for the best of the company.<\/p>\n

Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.<\/h3>\n

The best advice I can give to those who are reading this article is do what you love. If you have an idea inside of your head don\u2019t fear by thinking that no one will like. There’s always that one person that will love it. One thing I learned was to ignore those will reject your idea, those that after you tell them that you want to create something, the first thing they will said are \u201c oh you are not going to make it\u201d, \u201cit\u2019s hard you are crazy\u201d etc. Ignore them, we know is hard because most of those people are your friends and family members. You cannot have one foot in the ground and the other in the boat. What I mean by saying that? Is that you gotta go all in. Take risk, you will fail sometimes, but learn from it. Sometimes the hardest decision you can make are those who will change you.<\/p>\n

At Obtem we use the technique growth hack is basically trying to find many different channels to put your brand out their. Mostly without spending too much on ads. All business have different ways of advertising. We currently working with word of mouth, local SEO and Facebook\/Instagram ads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Teach us something about {internet marketing, social media ads, fundraising, sales funnels or another topic} Can you recommend any favorite websites to learn that topic?<\/h3>\n

Currently on my spare time I like to watch The Futur podcast videos from Chris Do and his fellow mates. They talk about mostly business designs and how to succeed.<\/p>\n

While working on your project, have you come across any interesting bit of knowledge that you\u2019d like to share? (i.e. any new research finding, any new platforms, some novel management technique, etc)<\/h3>\n

At Obtem we use the technique growth hack is basically trying to find many different channels to put your brand out their. Mostly without spending too much on ads. All business have different ways of advertising. We currently working with word of mouth, local SEO and Facebook\/Instagram ads.<\/p>\n

What daily habits do you have that allow you to perform at your peak?<\/h3>\n

Driving every morning to Dunkin Donuts for an Iced Coffee keeps me up with all my tasks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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