3 Consejos para Crear un Negocio Exitoso desde 0 (Fundadora Goiko)

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because of what he saw in you when you were a child. -Throw the card once, throw it, because until people get to your place, you won't know if you're doing it right or wrong. You can have ideas from Singapore, Japan, the US, wherever you want, but in the end, the last check is the local audience. -Dania, we were just talking about your whole career, how it is to be a woman entrepreneur, which we were just talking about now.

But Sergio and I are talking about the amount of calories that we have put into Goico. Yes, I've been a client, I already told you, I've been a client and I've consumed a lot. I think I've consumed all the loyalty programs of Goico. All of them. But what's behind such a big brand? What's behind such a big success as Goico?

It's true, it's not just calories what's behind. I would say that what's most behind is people. I'm sure this has been repeated with any of the guests that have brought, any of the entrepreneurs. When we look back and they ask us, what is the great secret of success? You can always start with people. Because if we hadn't managed to put in the same boat the people who were with us from the first day, we would never have been able to get to what we built. And it's not just the people who work at Goico, the people who support us internationally,

Influencers, for example, clients who were like you, Sergio, using those loyalty points. So for us it's very simple: it's people. There will be other things, but without them we wouldn't have reached anywhere. Daniela, if you had to tell us what moves you now to keep working, to keep striving, to keep doing what you do every day, what is it that drives you? People. Also?

I think so. In fact, I have discovered, I am very much about defining the purposes of each one of us, of our life, that we know that the purpose can change, can migrate depending on your needs at every moment of your life. And I have discovered that for a while my purpose is to see people who are with me grow. It's something we did in Goico and it's something that filled me. And in fact, it's something that I took from Goico and I still do. I currently also have an agency, a consultant,

And there is no harder gasoline for me in the mornings that I have to wake up to fight with the brown that I have mounted, to know that the girls are doing a job, girls, sorry, because they are mostly women, the boys are doing a wonderful job and they feel proud of what they are creating. So yes, for me it is still people.

I think that many people are watching this podcast and they are starting to have a team, even us. We are starting to have a team, but it's not because we wanted to, but because the situation has become like this. And you talk about people, you talk about people, but for me it seems the most difficult thing. How do you manage to transmit that poison, those desire to grow, to your people? I think that energy is contagious, right? And when we, as energetic entrepreneurs, arrive at the office...

People are filled with energy too. It's super contagious. Just like the days we get down, that negative energy is also contagious. In my case, we are two founders of the agency at the moment. And the day I'm down, she wakes me up. The day she's down, I wake her up. We know that energy has to be maintained and has to be sustainable over time. The day we as entrepreneurs don't sit down, that need to...

to do things right, to keep growing, to impact, people will realize and they will leave. It's that simple. So we must be the first examples, right? Of leadership, of energy, of being able to transmit this to the people who are with us so that they feel that motivation. Motivation is not money, usually, in teams. It's true, yes, there's a pay, there's a salary, and we have to generate money to be able to move forward. But normally, the recognition, the motivation, the desire, the challenges, are what keeps people united and fighting towards the same place.

Have you been down recently? Of course. I would say that in my history in Goico, it was always quite... up, but quite... inclined. It wasn't a smooth climb, but a very hard one. And we had very few failures.

We were recovering the failures we had very quickly. Well, there was a downturn in sales. Marketing teams came out to solve it, to make a brutal campaign, I don't know what. Photo of Kevin Bacon. Photo of Kevin Bacon. And up again, right? And now that I had to undertake, that I in Goico, well, you know that I carried everything that was the brand, the communication, the marketing, that I also had to learn it, let's say, on the way. But here I had to start, not from scratch, because I think that entrepreneurs never start from scratch, maybe the first time, nothing more.

But I had to learn about finances, operations, human resources, things that I didn't do before. They weren't within my functions.

And I realized that I had a lot of weaknesses in finance, which is something that happens to many women, honestly. We are not interested in finance, we don't get into studying, training, and therefore, we get into those troubles from time to time. And there came a time in my agency, where I had not controlled the numbers, and we are having some very strong cash flow problems, right? Because, of course, I am now in a sector where clients pay 60 and 90 days, but I have to pay salaries to 30, right?

And the guys have to charge. And I faced that, having the agency, and there came a time when I got crazy anxiety. I mean, I had never suffered panic attacks. And I remember that I ended up twice in an emergency. And when I got to the emergency, the guys in the emergency said to me, Miss, are you going to be okay? Here's the psychiatrist so you can talk to him. You don't have anything else, just stress. And obviously, in those moments where you're so overwhelmed by what's happening, people feel it. The rest of the team, maybe you're not...

giving the cover with the financial issue because the idea is that they don't feel that there is a problem, but they do feel it, they feel the tired energy, the stress, the anxiety that one is living and hey, and that generates a lot of frustration and a lot of imbalance in the team, right? So I remember that after that moment that we overcame it, I remember that I even did a full program in the IS to train myself in this type of thing and we put a CFO, a girl who has made my life much easier,

Later on, we improved the environment, improved the culture, and we started to gain confidence in the team. We have things under control. It's okay, nothing's going to happen, we're going up.

But yes, this type of bacha was perhaps the strongest. Then, every time we pitch ideas to big clients, every time they tell us no, it's a downfall. It's a downfall in the team's spirit. So how do you mitigate that spirit of the team? How do you make it again? Let's go forward, nothing happens. That's a punctual mistake, but we're going to keep doing wonderful things. There will always be these challenges in the life of an entrepreneur or a company. But Daniela, what a crazy thing, because this happened with Brancroft, right? It didn't happen with Goico. No.

You had already reached the peak of your entrepreneurship, you had managed to sell a brand that is a huge success, and when everyone can think: "You've already achieved it, you don't have to worry, you don't have any financial problems for the rest of your life",

That's when all this stress comes in. Anyone who hears it will find it quite shocking. How could your biggest moment of stress labor have been outside of the most demanding project? Totally.

It's incredible, but it's like that. Because in the end, when you're in a company that's growing, well, Goico, for example, there were experts in every area. There was a CFO that when we started to grow and we had many families, let's say, to our responsibility, there was a person with the necessary knowledge to make these decisions and to tell us where to go.

At this point, I couldn't have a CFO in this company in such a short time. I couldn't. I couldn't afford it at the cash flow level. So we put it in later, and if we realized it was too late, it wasn't too late, but it was late. We should have done it before. So, yes, problems can come at different times in your life, in different enterprises, no matter how big or small they are.

In Goico, of course there were problems, but there were many of us who were able to fix them in the most important moments. Daniel, which figures would you say make your life easier and that we should invest in when we are growing? Figures like the CFO or some kind of person who could help us?

Without a doubt, someone from finance, I would say that he is the first if you do not have financial skills. Of course, the idea is to look for people who complement you, right? Because if you are a crack in finance, then wonderful, you already have it, right? If you are a crack in marketing, wonderful, you are ready for it. But to me, finances, marketing, which in my case is what we dedicate ourselves directly to.

And then a salesperson. A salesperson, hey, not everyone sells well. And it's not the same thing to do marketing than to do sales. I think we have that very clear here. A person who really wants to sell ideas, who likes it, who likes to meet people, who likes to expand, let's say, that ocean that we have, I think, is key in a company.

So, marketing and sales, how did you see that difference? Of course, because I love marketing and I'm fascinated. I go, I do my marketing strategy, I want to send these messages there, I want to send these messages here, I do wonderful ads in Meta, I do ads in Google, whatever, I create a funnel, but there comes a time when I have to sell it, at least in my case, because I'm in a B2B company now, which is different from B2C.

"Hey, I have to sell you to a director at Procter & Gamble, you know? That guy is not going to buy me for the Instagram advertising, nor for the beautiful content that I'm doing on LinkedIn." It's a much longer-term relationship. It's really about showing them that we can take care of them and we are responsible for something as important as communication of a large brand. So, obviously, it will depend on each company, but a person who knows how to sell is, well, for us, it has been vital.

-Dania, where did that entrepreneur agenda come from? What was your first entrepreneurship? -Look, I forget everything. I have a memory problem that I love, honestly, because I'm not a grumpy person. I suddenly get home and I tell my husband: "No, I met with I don't know who." And he says: "But he fucked you up." And I say: "But I don't even remember who he is. I mean, I don't have any problem." But well, several years ago, I remember it was one of the first talks that invited my brother to talk.

And he wasn't even a goiko, he was just a beginner. And he said he had been inspired by his sister to start his own business. Because, when I was a kid, what I did in school was sell pirate CDs. I don't know what they're called here, right? Pirate CDs. When they came out, in Venezuela there's little technology, or it arrives later. And I remember my father was a hacker, almost.

And he had these digital CDs, and I wanted to burn them, make them and sell them at school. To make it clear, your brother, Andoni, is the person with whom you set up Goico, which is the success, right? I mean, for people to know that he...

As in a talk, he said he was inspired to start to undertake, after the Goico thing came out, for you. From what he saw in you, in your behavior when you were little, right? Well, that's what it was like when I was little, but yes, my brother is, in fact, the Goico entrepreneur is my brother. I understand. I am his first fan, first companion, first on the boat, right? But yes, obviously, when I was listening to him, the tear came out and I said...

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And we both became entrepreneurs. I don't know if it was in the way of raising or what, but each thing... Well, you will be the same with me. Wherever we see business, right? Whatever it is, whether it works or not, but wherever it is, we see a possibility of business and improvement. How do you remember those first steps of Goico? Wow, well, we have told this story several times, because people think that, wow, Goico, 100, 120 local stores, I don't know how many there are now, many...

But the first year of Goico was very hard. When Andoni took that place, I remember that he was going to Caracas, at that time I had not come to Spain, and he tells us: "I have this place, what can we do?" My father, Andoni and I sat down, I can design a logo with the name Goico because Goico sounded very Spanish, right? Well, Goico is a Basque last name, although I sound Venezuelan, my grandparents were Basques.

So we're going to put goico, which is Spanish, and make hamburgers because hamburgers are easy. Meat, bread, meat. We didn't know how to cook. I'm an architect, my brother is a doctor. - Young. - Yeah. And obviously it wasn't as easy as making hamburgers. There are a thousand, thousand variants of a hamburger that can go well or go wrong. So the first goico opens with a minimum loan from my father, with his savings.

In fact, with what that goiko was opened, there is no way to open a goiko at this time. At that time we had 50,000 euros, now a goiko costs, I don't know, 400. I mean, it doesn't make sense. Obviously we open it with pure IKEA things. It looked like an IKEA catalog, that goiko grill. And it was very hard. I was studying Master's that year, in 2013, my brother was between guard and guard, he was going to do services for the local. I went after class, I sat at the table that was in the window, to eat, so that people could see that there were people inside.

It's hard to start a business or a hostel when you don't have experience, when you're not from the area, because in the end we were immigrants, we didn't know anyone. We had no idea. I found out that it was an agency and that it was marketing at that level, like three years of Goico.

So it was complicated. But what we did from the beginning was to ask everyone who came, the few that had been there, how they ate, how they had it, what we could improve. And I think that mindset of always being attentive to feedback and not only listening to it, but putting it into action, was what gave us that advantage. We were very quick to implement changes, to implement improvements to the letter, to the place, and people really liked that.

Then, the "twitterers" appeared in 2013. The influencers didn't exist at that time. But there were these "gastrofoodies" on Twitter that we started to meet, they went to the place, they talked about Goico and their voices started to run a little bit. And in fact, today they are friends of the house. In fact, we owe them so much, those guys, who talked about us for the first time.

And that's how the first year went. It wasn't easy. What happened to reverse that curve? From being a bit tired to seeing results, to starting to make recommendations, and even to start thinking about the second or third place?

Mira, el boca-oreja fue primordial para nosotros. La gente que iba para Goico le gustaba Goico y lo recomendaba. Empezamos a hacer cositas en redes sociales también, ¿no? Que en ese momento Instagram apenas estaba booming, estaba empezandito. Hacíamos cosas en Twitter, hacíamos cosas en Facebook.

Near the first Gódico place was the IE, the Institute of Business, and we had a lot of students who were exposed to come from the United States or Latin America to a gourmet burger. And they didn't have a problem paying 10, 15, 10, 12 euros for a burger. Which here was very rare, right? Here we are really talking about creating a new category, right? I mean, before the burger was McDonald's, the burger, or the simple one, the one of your whole life, but nothing special, it was not a specialty burger.

And, beware, Goico was not the first. There were other restaurants in Madrid, but very small and very independent, that also started making these burgers, but we were starting to educate people on what this product was. And when people understood that this was the highest quality, the best meat possible, the best ingredients, hey, more people started to arrive. So, for the second restaurant, what we did, we took a small restaurant in Conde Peñalver, also in Salamanca,

Reinvesting the money, in a few words. At this time there were no loans, but what was generated from María de Molina, who was the first, was reinvested in this one. And it went very well for this one, it was three tables, and we expanded it, we made a second bigger place. And people started talking about Goico. When people start talking about Goico, then the masses really start to come. And from then on it was, let's say, what we already know, right?

And at that moment when you're starting, you have a blank sheet of paper, you don't know where to throw it. What do you use to expand that message, to inspire yourself? A person who is starting a similar project, how would you recommend them to inspire themselves or create something from scratch?

Inspirar6 is to see other things that are happening. Yes, or what did you use? Because we normally inspire ourselves to other projects that are already working well to bring it here to Spain or to improve it and make it different. How did you do it? Hey, that's a super good way to do it. We don't invent the warm water. We invent the Kevin Bacon, that's how we invent it. But the rest of the burgers...

exist. I'm a big fan, for example, of Shake Shack, all my life. And that's, well, not all my life because it's not that old, but we have been exposed to this type of concept for a long time. In the trips we have made to the United States or in Venezuela itself, there was a lot of gourmet burgers. And we saw that there was space in the market.

In the end, opening our eyes to the world is the best thing we can do as entrepreneurs. To understand that if there are things happening in other places, well, to see if they can be brought, because not everything can be brought. But to see how we can bring it and how we can adapt it. Yes, but how do you see it as a winning idea? Because your brother is a doctor and you are an architect. At what point do you think this is a winning idea? That is to say, an idea that this is going to be a business that is going to give us food for this family.

-Let's see, that's a difficult question, because what is true is that at the beginning we didn't think that Goico was going to be what it did, what we did, right? -What image do you have in your head of Goico? -Look, I personally saw one, two, three maximum locations, but my brother doesn't know what he would have been thinking the first, second and third. I imagine something similar, I imagine. I remember that up to location number 34, 35, every time we told my mother, "No, we're going to open a Goico." She said, "But another one more."

"Are you scared?" And I was like, "Mom, please, they're leaving alone." -We're already at 30. -We're already at 30. But, well, an MVP...

Yo creo que está bastante bien. O sea, yo creo que tampoco hay que irnos a montar. Si vas a hacer un local de hostelería, poniéndonos el caso de Goico, no vas a invertir de la nada, sin saber nada, dos millones de euros a un local. Que hay locales que cuestan eso. Oye, vete con algo sencillo. Lanza la carta una vez, lánzalo, porque hasta que no llegue gente a tu local, tú no vas a saber si lo estás haciendo bien o lo estás haciendo mal. Puedes haberte traído ideas de Singapur, de Japón, de Estados Unidos, donde quieras, pero al final el que te va a dar el último check es el público local, ¿no? Cuando es un negocio local.