During the Stanford GSB LBAN Program Latino entrepreneurs benefit from several, incuding:

  • Learning. Entrepreneurs will learn from two key GSB professors, including Professor Huggy Rao and Professor Jerry Porras. The books you’ll purchase serve as the foundation for the course going forward including Scaling Up Excellence and Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
  • Network. Entrepreneurs will expand their networks greatly and go from offline to online real quick to continue connecting, supporting each other and doing business with each other. I’ve written previously about networks. Networks is your networth.
  • Mentor. Entrepreneurs get to pick a discipline they are interested in getting more mentorship from. In my case I chose finances and was provided Martin Espinosa, a leader in finance, risk, and compliance with an American multinational technology company.
  • Assessment. Entrepreneurs take an assessment that gives you as the CEO key data points to help you become better. The assessment was done by VRT Management Group.

All of the deliverables you feel instantly, except for the assessment. Given that the assessment is a timestamp in space, I read it again this weekend to ensure I didn’t miss anything from over two years ago.

It’s a long document that outlines your strengths, weaknesses and like a magic ball it reveals what we may or may not know to be true. It goes after your egos and breaks down what you’d be better at as CEO. I read between the lines, relooked at the graphs, and digested even more so slowly this time around. Today, I wrapped up re-reading it as the suggestion of the author and discovered areas that I missed before.

The lesson here: it’s good practice to reread complex documents (especially those designed to make you personally and professionally better), an old poem or old letter from time to time to reflect on not just where you were, how far you’ve come, but where you are today to be more decisive and keep closing the gap.

David Molina is an American entrepreneur, founder, and blogger. A son of Mexican immigrants, a former farm worker and high school drop-out, he went on to be the first in his family to attend and graduate from a university and earn an Officer Commission in Infantry. Molina has been a founder, co-founder and launched a wide range of companies and organizations including a veterans nonprofit, featured in multiple news outlets including The Bend Bulletin, Portland Business Journal, Univision KUNP-TV, Humans of Tech, and The Seattle Times.