Like any other city, Denver also boasts a thriving entrepreneurial spirit. As a matter of fact, we celebrate it annually during Denver Startup Week. This one-week celebration shines light on local economies across the world and the inherent role that remittances play in boosting local innovation and entrepreneurship globally. It's a great way to meet like-minded individuals who share the same business interests and passion as you.

Speaking of which, our guest Susana González is here in The Commons on Champa. The Commons runs on shared ownership. This incredible community continues to give expertise, time, funding, and volunteerism to build and support Denver’s entrepreneurial circle. Suzana is spending her time getting involved and continuing her quest to bring Denver’s rich entrepreneurial community to her hometown back in Venezuela. Let's hear from her in today’s episode.

 
---

Listen to the podcast here:

Energizing The Spirit of Entrepreneurship in Local Communities Worldwide with Susana González
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In a recent episode, we talked with Jodi Fischer of the Adelante Foundation about the entrepreneurial spirit in Honduras. The entrepreneurial spirit can be found in a lot of different cities. Blessed to live in Denver where we have a really strong entrepreneurial spirit. My guest today, Susana González, is here in Denver at The Commons on Champa, which is Denver’s entrepreneurial hub and a place that anyone with that spirit can come drop in and work and talk with other like-minded individuals. Susana is here to talk about her quest to bring the entrepreneurial spirit to her town in Venezuela, where there’s a lot of interest in starting businesses.

 
---
Susana, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be talking here with you and getting to know the Denver side scenes and the community that I think is very lovely and I like it very much.

 

Yeah, I love our community here too. I’ve said before in other episodes, one of my favorite weeks here is our Startup Week, which is in the fall every year and we have tons of people and it’s the place where you see people that are doing stuff about their problems as opposed to people that are just complaining, which there’s plenty of that elsewhere in the world.

 

I think this is the first time I hear somebody saying that entrepreneurs are those who do instead of complain and I love it. 

 

Yeah, for sure. 

 

I think you have said something mind blowing to me. That’s the spirit.

 

Now, Susana, you notice this spirit in your hometown. Explain the observations that led you to the path that you’re on right now.

 

Well, the thing about Venezuela is that we are culturally in this type of mindset that we like to do things, like if there’s something wrong in the office, we will clean it, we will fix it, we will just do it, it doesn’t matter that it’s not our job to do it but it’s the mindset that people take responsibility of things that are happening around. And then we have this strange political situation, economical decline, and people decided that they needed to do things to fix the reality and I think those two things together created this very entrepreneurial mindset, where everybody wants to start a business, everybody has an idea, because everybody needs money, and seems attractive enough.

 

So you’re observing, and I think most people listening are probably familiar with what the situation in Venezuela is like, this spirit of people, the average Venezuelan, as you’re observing, is someone that’s saying, “Okay, we’re in this tough situation, we had all this stuff happen over the past couple decades, now, I wanna do something about it. Now, I wanna help build everything back, I wanna build something that’s gonna make what I see around me better.” Is that accurate?

 

It is kind of in a way.