Foreign.

Welcome back to lead of the team.

I'm your host Ben Fanning.

And today we're bringing you real CEOs, real stories coming your way to inspire.

Scratch that, just talking about editor.

Welcome back to lead the team.

I'm your host Ben Fanning.

Real CEOs, real, real stories here on leave the team.

Amel imagine you're at 3,500ft underwater, deeper than light, penetrates 10 football fields down in total silence.

And failure means no one's coming back.

Well, that's where today's guest learned how to lead.

Camilo Rueda went from Navy sub rescues to MacKenzie to CEO today of Aeropost, a logistics tech leader powering cross border e commerce across Latin America and the Caribbean.

So in this interview you're going to learn all about pressure tested leadership tools forged where calm is the only path to survival.

Camilo welcome to lead the team, my friend.

Hey Ben, thanks so much for having me here and happy to share a little bit of my story.

Been looking forward to this.

So what was the worst day in your Navy career and how has it shaped your professional career?

So let me tell you.

I was a junior officer.

I was in the submarine force.

I was stationed in a nuclear submarine.

I was standing engineer officer, the watch one day.

And part of what you do as you watch as engineering officer, the watch is you coordinate all the maintenance for the submarine.

And I had a young technician come in and say, hey, I know we're doing a bunch of different maintenance.

We're going to do one extra procedure.

Just have trust me that we're going to do it right so we don't have to do all the paperwork.

Let me just do it.

And at that moment I said, yep, I trust you.

Go ahead and do it right.

And then he came back about 10 minutes later.

He said, it's not going well.

I'll come back again in five minutes.

Because we kind of messed up the procedure, right?

And this is a nuclear submarine we're talking about.

So it's a big deal.

So I waited five more minutes.

He came back and he said, you know, we messed up.

We opened a valve that we shouldn't open up again.

Nuclear engineering, this is a big deal, right?

You don't want to connect pipes that you shouldn't.

And he is, he just came to me and said, you know, it's, everything's close, everything's back to normal.

We have two ways we can go around doing this.

One is just pretend nothing happened.

Or the other one is raise our hand and say we messed up.

And kind of deal with the consequences.

So it was a bit of a moment of truth.

At that moment, I did the right thing, which was raised my hand.

I talked to the captain right away, said, we messed up.

This was a huge deal.

Right.

Because the last thing you want to do as a young junior officer in the Navy is break the trust of the captain.

Right, because he trusts you to take care of the submarine when he's not around, when he's sleeping, etc.

So this was an absolutely huge deal.

And I felt that at that moment, my whole life, Navy career was going to come to an end.

And obviously all the training I had done, everything I put into it, I had really let him down.

And, and, and it could have been something really bad also just for the Navy as a whole.

So that was the lowest point.

Now, obviously, when I raised my hand and I share the truth and I, and I said, hey, I took ownership for it and said, I messed up.

I didn't, I wasn't into the details like I should have done.

I didn't follow the procedure like I should.

I had that integrity to do and the ownership to do it.

And ultimately with the captain, obviously was not happy.

I got more than an earful with a lot of colorful language.

And then I also got taken away from my position for a while while I re.

Did all my qualifications to be able to stand watch again and ultimately ended up getting his confidence back and qualified again.

And the rest of my career went well.

But it was definitely a moment where I thought I had lost everything.

Wow.

Because you knew the consequence of it not being right, is that meaning, I mean, why couldn't it just be swept under the rug?

Like, because you knew what the catastrophic consequence could be if you didn't raise your hand?

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's one of those things like in.

So when we think about the military or the Navy, and this case of the nuclear Navy, there, there's very certain standards that are in place, and they're done to protect it.

In this case, it's a nuclear reactor that you need to protect.

Right.

And obviously the consequence of doing things wrong can be very bad.

So that's why these standards exist.

And it's a standard that I did not meet.

And it came up to me of deciding whether I would take blame for it, admit that I had done wrong, because, you know, once I did that, then at least I wasn't the senior person with the problem anymore.

I had raised it up and, and with my CEO, we could actually Come up with a solution that was the right solution.

In that case, I was to do a report, raise it up, and make sure that this wasn't actually something that was really catastrophic.

It was not.

But at least, like working with my CEO, we could actually come up with a real solution on it.

Well, it's really interesting because the amount of pressure you must be under when there's a nuclear reactor at stake, and then you're taking that nuclear reactor and you understand what could happen to it, but then you're also putting that nuclear reactor on a submarine and sending it thousands of feet below the surface.

There's just not a lot of room for mistakes.

And if you make a small mistake, you got to surface it quickly.

Right.

Because it can really snowball.

Yeah.

And I think that's one of the big things with the.

Especially with the nuclear Navy.

It's around having really clear standards, and part of the standards is all the training that goes around it, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, the Navy and the military relies on individuals to make the right decisions.

Right.

So I think one of the biggest lessons learned there, I mean, there's actually three lessons learned that I got from this situation.

One is really just prioritize all the time on what's the most important thing here.

The most important thing was to do the maintenance right.

And.

And I unfortunately didn't go into the details I needed to go to right off the bat.

And so that was a mistake.

The second big lesson learned was around integrity.

And in doing not what's easy, but what's hard.

Easy would have been, I guess, swept it on the rug, even though the consequences could have.

That could have been huge.

But the hard thing was raising my hand and taking ownership of it.

And that's the third thing.

It's taking ownership of it.

Right.

Like, never in my mind did I blame the.

The sailor technician that recommended doing this.

I realized right away that my role was to make sure we did the maintenance right and just to.

To.

To stop it and do it right and have the, the right procedure in place.

Right.

So those are ultimately the three things that I think are important in, in high pressure situations.

Because when you're in a high pressure situation, you're a lot of times you think about just the results, but it's not enough.

Right.

It's really thinking about, are we.

Are we doing things right?

So I think those are the big lessons learned I learned from, from that situation.

So now you're CEO and you have this perspective.

What do you think most CEOs misunderstand about pressure.

I think one of my least favorite sayings in the world that I hear some leaders say sometimes is don't bring me problems, bring me solutions.

Yes, I've heard that, because I hate that saying because that creates a culture where people want to hide the problems.

Right.

They don't want to bring up the problems.

And so a lot of times they try to solve it on their own and they just can't.

Right.

And maybe the consequences aren't as huge as a nuclear submarine, but they can be pretty huge.

And people are scared to bring those problems up.

Right.

And I think what, what I like to say is something completely different is bring me the problems and let's solve them together.

Right?

So if you can quickly identify those problems, identify, you know, the help you need to solve the problems, I'm happy to problem solve.

There's other people in the organization that are happy problem solved as well.

And we could solve them a lot faster than if you're trying to solve them by yourself.

Right.

So I think real ownership is raising those, those challenges that you have, raising the problems, escalating to the level that you need to and then solving it together.

Right.

You don't want to create a culture where people are hiding problems or afraid to say the truth.

So for just some sort of color about the story that you just told, what is the cat.

What are the, what are the catastrophic potential catastrophes that could come from a problem with a nuclear sub?

No, I mean, so the nuclear, actually, the nuclear Navy has a almost perfect safety record in that there's never been any sort of problem with the nuclear reactor.

I mean, this is the biggest thing.

Right.

And so, and that's done through the standards, the maintenance, the training, etc.

Right.

And so you're just trying to make sure that that, that reactor, that nuclear reactor is operating correctly and, you know, radioactivity, materials, etcetera, Aren't escaping the actual reactor.

That's ultimately the goal.

So you want to make sure that you're doing everything correctly.

Right?

There's a zero percent tolerance.

Exactly.

It has to be perfect.

But if it, like if the nuclear reactor melted down or it leaked radiation or something, it'd be catastrophic for the people on board, for the world.

Right.

I mean, this is exactly, exactly, exactly.

And that's why there's actually a lot of companies and, and McKinsey was one of them.

Right.

So I went straight from working in submarines in the Navy to, to going to McKinsey and, and a lot of companies really Appreciate bringing leaders in from the, from the nuclear Navy because of this track record because they know they have individuals that are, that are, that study hard, are intelligent, can problem solve and at the end of the day the integrity piece as well, right.

You want somebody that's going to tell it how it is and not sweep things under the rug even, even if they messed up.

Right.

So I think that's why ultimately many companies proactively look at Navy, Navy submarine officers to, to join the ra.

So it makes sense to me because you've been through such brutal training, you've been in high pressure situations that they're going to want you as CEO.

But to me you still got a problem in that you got thousands of people that have not been through nuclear sub training, they have not been in thousands of feet of underneath the water.

Right.

And been in these high pressure situations.

So what are you, how are you thinking about instilling what you've learned or what you think so important to people that are never going to be in a submarine or even nuclear reactor training?

My, my, my first move is always the same, is really work with my senior leadership team, right.

So I think any organization, no matter how big is a reflection of the senior leadership team.

So, so here currently at Aeropost, the senior leadership team is, there's six of us.

It's my leader of hr, Finance, Ops, Technology and in the company I was at before, which is an E Commerce, also had my senior leadership team.

So it always starts with spending a lot of time with the senior leadership team and making sure that we're aligned on the culture that we want.

Right.

So we're aligned on making sure we have a transparent organization that we're open minded, that we take time to align on decisions, accept, etc and I think a big portion of it is just the role modeling.

So everyone sees how we operate, that we're willing to have very difficult discussions but that we're willing to take the time to line on, on, on, on the ultimate decision that we take, that we're willing to take time to really problem solve, that we're also open to our mistakes and all the time talking about what we're doing well and also opportunities to improve.

So it always starts to start with the extended leadership team.

That's the first step and that's when I go into an organization the first six months is really just working with that team more than anything else.

And if you get that team working in an effective way, it starts bleeding down to the culture of the, of the rest of the organization.

So that's definitely so really prioritizing.

It sounds like, yeah, you have thousands of people in the city that you need to lead and you need to shape the culture, but really doubling down, tripling down on the people that are closest to you, that are, that are the high influencers inside the organization that you have access to and then letting them lead by example throughout the organization.

Yeah, I think that's the first step because you do see a lot of other organizations where that senior leadership team is not aligned.

Right.

Where that senior leadership team has a lot of infighting.

And as soon as you can expect the rest of the organization to behave in a cooperative way to work as a team, if you can't even get the top five, six, seven people of that team working as a high performance team.

So that needs to be number one.

Right.

And part of that is also make sure they have the right incentives.

Incentives are aligned, making sure you're going to stick around for a while as well.

Because effective leadership teams take years to really develop and really become high performing.

So, so that, that definitely has to be step one.

And then you can start, you know, working at different level layers of the organization, but always has to start from the top.

Wow.

Very, very good.

Start there.

Now I want to, I want to bring it back to your submarine nuclear reactor days.

It would seem like you all have a very good process for handling pressure and keeping people calm, cool and collected.

When a team is panicking, what's the first thing a real leader should say or do?

I think that the first thing is really to have perspective on the situation.

And people in general tell me, I'm very calm, a very calm leader.

And I always start with the reality that, you know, most situations are not life or death.

Right.

Like in the submarine, some could be.

So that's a different scenario.

But when you take it out of the military and you think about a work situation, most situations are not life or death.

And if you start with that perspective that, hey, we're here to make the company as best as possible, we're here to learn, etc.

But this is not life or death.

So if it doesn't turn out the way we think it is, will, will be able to, to take.

I'm just imagining your team saying, hey, Camila, we got this real problem.

Oh my God, I don't know what's going to happen.

And you're like, look, unless there's a nuclear reactor about to melt down, do not panic.

It's.

I mean, it's.

Yeah, it's, it's it sounds funny, but it's, it's a reality, right?

Because again, most situations, even though, even if it doesn't work out the way you think it's going to be, again, the company is going to be fine, that people are going to be fine.

And that just gives you a little bit of peace of mind, right?

And I think that's also like, I'm a big proponent of, you know, the growth mindset.

And if you think about the growth mindset, it's, it's all about, you know, every situation is a chance to grow.

So even when things don't work out the way you thought they were going to work out, at least you learn something in the teamworks, learn something that, that, that they'll be able to build on in the future as well.

So, so I think that's definitely, I think that's definitely step one.

I think number two step there is just like, just a lot of communication.

I think in kind of these high pressure situations, not having a good day or some external factor happen and the company is suffering a lot is just communicating kind of your thought process.

This is the way I'm thinking about solving it, the way as a team we're going to solve it.

I don't have all the answers today, but this is, this is the way that, you know, that we're thinking about it.

And for example, during COVID one of the things that helped me and my team kind of survive and thrive during those times was just the constant communication there.

You know, in March 2020, I started having daily coffee chats with the whole organization.

I would just shift them to groups, but I didn't know what was going on necessarily.

Nobody knew, but at least I could communicate.

This is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it and really help the team understand and have, have more of that peace of mind.

As, as a CEO, do you have like a default thing that you do to help you stay calm or help you maintain this?

Like you say that you're known for being out of a calm, cool, collected leader.

Is this just something innate to who you've been since you're on the playground as a little kid or did you develop it?

Yeah, I mean, I, I developed and I think today, today and where I'm at, my career, I mean, maybe, maybe before it was early in my career, it was a little more kind of reactive and it was a bit more innate.

Today I'm just really conscious about the kind of the learning mindset concept and really understand that we want situations to go well, but we also know that when situations don't go well, it is just a learning experience to become better.

And I think if the team, my senior leadership team, understands that and practices that, which they do, and the organization as well, then you can just use those stacking learnings on top of each other.

So I ultimately have my notebook where I write my to dos every day.

And you know, normally in situations that are more stressful, I'll write, you know, positive messages to myself, remind myself kind of the journey I'm on as a leader and really understand that I'm going to control what I can control.

The things I can't, they're just going to be learning experience are going to help me be a better leader in the future.

Yeah, it sounds like every chief executive officer also needs to become the chief perspective officer.

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

And I think that's also tied to what we originally talked about is also priorities.

Right.

Because it's very easy for everything to seem like it's the end of the world.

If you actually focus on the most important things, it's going to be a lot easier.

You really focus your energy on those.

So you've been a CEO and a submarine pilot who's harder to lead startup teams or deep sea divers?

It's a good question.

I would say part of it is very different.

Right.

So you're your, your Navy folk were very trained in this specific tasks that you had, right?

So these are, whether it be the Navy divers I worked with or the submarine sailors, they were very well trained.

So they were kind of the, the best of the best in that specific task.

Right.

So in that case, a lot of it was, you know, you could really trust them in their knowledge and what they were doing.

Right.

So it was more like, I would say a square problem.

Right.

Like it was relatively, let's follow these rules, let's do this training and we're going to complete the mission.

Right.

In the startup world, I would say it's just so much more dynamic, right.

There's so many more things that are out of your control that happen on each, each basis.

And then you're also, your teams are going to be in general, like they're more generalist, right.

They're not going to know exactly how to solve the problem because in a lot of the work that we're doing in startups, it's a new problem solved.

So it's just a lot more dynamic.

A lot more things that are happening that, that you see that you feel like are out of your control.

So that becomes just a.

A bigger challenge in a lot of.

In a lot of cases.

Yeah.

Love that.

When.

What is the mood when you're thousands of feet below the surface knowing that, hey, this.

A lot of things could go wrong down there.

And I mean, are people just.

Is it just a very intense environment or people, like, are trying to act like it's not.

Yeah.

Situation being that far below the surface.

Yeah.

On.

On the submarine.

So on the.

On the longest days.

So my longest time underway underwater with the submarine was close to 50 days underwater.

And so that's a long time to be kind of out of off the grid and then on.

So on the submarine, you.

You try to have fun.

Right.

And the Hafana is different things that you do.

Like there's ceremonies that you do on the submarine whenever you cross the equator.

Right.

So that's an event that I remember actually with, with our submarine.

We were, we were right close to the equator and the captain took the decision just to literally just cross the equator.

It wasn't necessary because where we were going didn't really require dipping it, but we did it.

So we would do the, the, The.

The whole ceremony.

There's a big, you know, it's kind of a sailor tradition when you cross the equator.

So we did that and, you know, just clean fun, but something different, you know, at a normal day.

So you're not popping champagne?

No, there's no alcohol.

No alcohol on ships.

But you're trying to do those things better.

And whether it be like, I mean, we would watch, you know, at that point, it was 20 years ago, so we would get movies in these, you know, small cassettes and TV series and dvd, stuff like that.

So, you know, we would.

The officers would get together after dinner every night and watch a movie or watch a series and just doing that type of things just to.

To try to avoid the monotony.

Right.

Because it can be a lot of days under sea away from family, that can be tough.

So you try to have as much fun as you can.

And there's no connectivity down there.

Right.

In terms of you're not.

You can message your family, your friends.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I assume it's still the same.

But what it was is, you know, a submarine every so often comes up to the surface to clear message traffic, just make sure that everything's okay, and you get message traffic back.

And so when we were not on a mission, we were just underway.

That's the time we would send emails out.

So you could send an email out, but it would just go out every 12 hours.

Right.

So every 12 hours we would clear messages.

So we would send out all the emails and then receive all the emails and then it could be another 12 hours, 24 hours before you receive more messages.

So definitely wasn't.

You were definitely disconnected.

I assume it's still that way because at the end day you're underwater, so there's not too much that you can communicate through the water.

You would just take advantage of the times you would come up to clear messages with your periscope.

Camilla, you have so many different areas that I want to talk about, so I'm going to skip around a little bit here.

So you, you go Navy, you go submarine.

And I literally could spend the whole time talking about that.

But I wanted to ask about McKenzie because you were.

Sounds like you had a lot of success there.

But what I'm curious about most is what did you learn from McKinsey during your days there that being a CEO could never teach you?

Yeah, I think, I mean, without sounding like a, like a cliche, it really is about solving problems, right.

So with, when you start off a project at McKinsey, no matter what type of project it is, the first thing that has already been done is really define the problem, right.

Are you working at a manufacturing plant that needs a full scale transformation to improve throughput and cost?

Right.

Or are you working in an environment where you need to change the supply chain to drive better quality levels?

Right.

So the first thing that you know, and Companies don't contract McKinsey until they really have identified the problem as a huge priority for the company.

And it's a line from the CEO on down.

Right.

And so that's ultimately what sets most of these projects up at McKinsey for success, because you've really defined the problem, the team comes on board, you develop a team that's, that's structured to solve that specific problem.

And then you work really hard in a very kind of structured way with the, with the client, with the team to do that.

Right.

So I think.

And then at McKinsey you're doing this at scale, so you're doing from, you know, one massive problem to solve and you're with a team and three months later you've kind of solved that problem, half the organization, then you move on to another one, you move on to another one, and you move on to another one.

So you get this kind of muscle about just identifying the problem, really structuring it and then solving it right.

Where it's different when You're a CEO, right.

You're having a lot more kind of day to day issues pop up.

You're normally solving one problem that's going to take you years to solve.

And just kind of this McKinsey iterative around problems, different problems, different industries, is really what develops a really good muscle for you to be a Leader.

Outside of McKinsey, were there any exercises or tips or strategies that you use when you're at McKinsey that you found really useful to help you hone in on what that problem is, or maybe how to determine even those moments where maybe a company hires you to work on one thing, then you quickly realize through this framework or decision making that, hey, we're working on the wrong problem and we need to shift gears.

Yeah.

I think, you know, I think one of the things that McKinsey really taught me is to use these, these frameworks that, that work.

Right.

So.

So for example, there's, there's a McKinsey framework that I always say is my favorite, which is one around change management.

Right.

So when you're trying to drive change, you need to make sure that people are trained.

There's role modeling in the organization.

You have the formal mechanisms in place and you've also created a change story or create a conviction.

Right.

So that's, that's a framework.

Whenever I tackle a change management problem, I use that framework and I say, are we addressing every single point?

Right.

When I think about strategy today in companies, I normally use two frameworks.

One is the growth flywheel.

That really helps about how do we drive growth in the organization, make sure that it's this virtuous cycle.

And then, and then the other one I use is kind of the hedgehog.

It's like, what can you actually be the best at?

Right.

And so those are kind of.

That reminds me of a good degree to bit correct.

It is, yeah, exactly.

Like the flywheels, like your work, you got to work really hard to get everything in motion.

But if you put the right pieces in, the effort gets less and less over time.

Because like you say, it's a virtual cycle.

Yes.

Things are kind of building momentum on one another.

And part of that is the fact that today, I mean, it's probably, it's probably always been, but I think today more like as a company, you have to be growing.

Right.

There's no such.

Unless you have like a very small kind of company that you're just happy to have there.

Like either you're growing or you're dying.

Right.

So it's so capitalism.

Yeah.

So.

Or else.

Yeah, it's.

It's either.

Yeah, it's either.

You're getting better, you're getting worse.

Right.

And so that's, that's part of the mindset.

So I think, I think ultimately, I think what McKinsey has really driven me is like, you know, look for those frameworks, because most of these frameworks that, that are well known, whether they be from good to great or some of the kind of the McKinsey specific frameworks, like they've been developed over time looking at a lot of different companies.

Right.

So whenever you, you're going to attack a problem, really think about, you know, which framework do I know that can help me organize this and structure this problem better?

So on a more personal note, why walk away from McKinsey when most people are trying to get in there?

Yes.

So at that time, so I started at McKinsey in the Atlanta office, and then I transferred to the Bogota office.

I was in Bogota, Colombia.

This was 2000 and 2015.

Right.

And at that time I was 35.

And I ultimately wanted to be a CEO.

I wanted to lead my own organization and what I thought at that time, and I got an opportunity to, to be a CEO at 35.

And I said, you know, this is my ultimate goal.

So I could either start now and learn or I could, you know, continue to be in McKinsey five or 10 years and then have my first CEO opportunity at 45.

Right.

And so for me, again, with Priority being CEO, decided to do that now.

And now this is why today I've been a CEO for more than 10 years.

Now I'm 46.

And I feel like obviously I also could have continued learning a lot at McKinsey, but I've learned a lot of things these last 10 years about being a CEO.

Things that have worked, things that haven't worked.

And I'm a lot better today than I think I would have been if I hadn't been a CEO so early in my life.

Yeah, no doubt.

Experience is a great teacher.

And if you want to, like, if you had that sense of clarity of yourself, hey, I don't want to be a long term sort of lifetime consultant.

I want to be CEO.

Then you can start to look for those ways to accelerate your path there.

I mean, but what in the world, I guess you were at 35, being age 35, being a CEO, were you having to rely on your, your tools you learned in the Navy to handle pressure?

Because there is no greater pressure in a company, right?

No, it Was it was nice then because it was, it was the, the combination of, of having been in the Navy and then the McKinsey really set me up for success when I got there.

And it was an E Commerce Latin America startup.

It was a really nice time because at that time I was CEO just of the country and then I was regional CEO for the company.

And I had a lot of autonomy so I could try a lot of different things.

And it was complemented by a time where E Commerce was booming, the company was doing really well.

So I was able to just try a lot of different things and it was a really nice time for me to develop my, my style and, and, and also kind of these frameworks and the way, the way I work now.

Well, I'm really curious about Aeropost because it's an interesting business.

It's the way I think about it is I compare it to say Europe doing business there, Virginia, Latin America.

Latin America.

The infrastructure is not always great, the roads aren't always good.

The government situation can, can change, the rules can change.

There's a lot to navigate there.

What have you learned for leading a company in these environments that operate across countries currencies and for lack of a better word, maybe operating countries, currencies and even chaos.

And how do you keep everyone aligned?

Yeah, I think, you know, I've been working so these last two years at Aeropos.

Before that I was eight years in, in based out of Bogota and then before that the, the two years of McKinsey Bogota.

So now maybe 15 years in Latin America and it is very volatile and it requires a lot of resilience.

And I think, I think that is like the first word resilience because you could be doing a lot of things right and then from one day to the next, you know, the rules change.

Now a lot of that is happening in the US today as well.

So I think, you know, it's not just a LATAM thing, but it just seems to happen more in latam and it could be a different government comes comes to be.

And so the, the rules change, but very drastically.

I think it can also be suppliers, customers, the way they change.

So I think a big thing is to, to be resilient and know what like the purpose of the mission is like for us specifically we do cross border E Commerce.

So it's all about what you think about all these countries.

They don't have a local Amazon or a local Walmart there.

So what they're looking most of the people that are living there, individuals and companies when they think about E Commerce, they're going to bring that product in from either the US Or China or whatever the case is.

And so you have to, you have to understand how, how the world's changing as far as tariffs.

You have to understand how to build logistics from scratch.

Sometimes these countries, I look at some of the addresses in Costa Rica, for example, it is literally, you know, 10 houses after the white church across the street from the gas station, and that's literally the address.

So how do you actually get a package all the way from a warehouse in China all the way to the doorstep and make sure that the person is receiving it?

So it's a lot of complexity, it's a lot of resilience, but again, just having really clarity around what you need to solve and then prioritizing with your team to do the right things.

Yeah, no doubt it is a bear to tackle, but if that's the specialty of your company, you're really good at it.

You got the people in place, you're able to add a lot of value.

Yeah.

And it's, and go back to the hedgehog concept.

Like when we, when we looked at our strategy a couple years ago, said, what are we the best in the world at?

And at the end of the day, it's, it's this crowded bar that just into these countries.

Right.

So we're, we're purposely not in Mexico and Brazil where there's a larger local E commerce and where a lot of logistics actually build out.

We're in kind of the rest of the countries, especially Central America and Caribbean, where you need somebody to actually invest in creating the infrastructure and logistics to be able to do that.

Right.

So it's very clear we're not going against, you know, these huge players in Brazil and Mexico.

We're really focused on these other countries and we get, we feel like we can be the best of the world at it.

Yeah, do it, do it well.

And you have a brand that represents that.

Exactly.

They're moving there.

Well, I'm curious, what's the one thing that you've built into aeropost culture that you think every CEO could copy?

Yeah, I think, I think I'll go back to what I said.

I think the, our sl, like senior leadership team I call the SLT reports to me are absolutely, we are absolutely today high performing.

We work really well.

We have different points of view all the time.

We get together and we align on decisions.

We call it get in sync meetings, which means if it takes three hours to talk about something where we finally get to a decision, even if it requires disagreeing, commit.

We do it.

We're very hands on.

We don't wait for other people to role model behavior.

We go to the shop floor, we work with the teams.

And, and I think that to me is why we've been able to kind of have the exponential growth we've had, especially this last year as a company and really have positioned ourselves really well.

It's ultimately the secret to have a good culture.

And then again, people see the way we operate and start mimicking that.

And then it also allows us to work with these teams so that they start also having the type of behavior that this, our senior leadership team has.

So starting to wrap this up.

Camilo, since you put so much emphasis on your, your executive team and building that, what are some ways or tips or strategies that you, that you kind of tap into when you're coming into a situation and need to build that team or need you're not.

Maybe even, even if you're not hiring them, you're at least developing them.

And what are.

I guess I'm thinking about what are some things that have really worked for you.

Yeah, actually it's really a different thing than like developing people multiple layer like managerial manager level versus executives to run divisions or huge functions in the company.

Yeah.

So actually I created my own framework that I think is that I always use.

Right.

So I call it the three circle framework for to make sure you have high performing leadership teams.

And ultimately the first circle has three components to it, which is I need the team to be open minded.

And that means that you're not being defensive, you're hearing feedback, you're really open minded to different experiences.

The second one is radical transparency.

So that within the team we're really open in what we think and with equal transparency, not hiding.

And then the third component of this first circle is this the trust.

Right.

So trust.

Do we have trust in each other?

And I can.

That's a topic I can go way into.

But that's the first standard I said is we're going to work in these kind of these three points of the first circle.

The second circle is making sure that we take the time to align.

Right.

So the most important thing is that as a team, again we can disagree and commit, we can have different opinions, but at some point we get to an alignment and normally we try to have the expert of the topic take the final decision.

And then the last circle here is around kind of the attitude and just the positivity and optimism from the team.

As well, because that needs to exude outward to the rest of the organization.

So the first thing I do is sit down with the senior leadership team and say, hey, this is the standard of how we're going to work with each other.

And then you can also quickly see some of the leadership team may be able to work this way, some of the people may not.

Right.

And so you have to conform that team with the individuals that are willing to work with these three circles.

And to me, that has been an effective way.

And I can also just go into different teams and measure them against the standard of these three circles and normally understand, you know, are they high performing or not?

Do you have an example of where you've been able to apply it and really write the ship using your three circle model?

Yeah, I mean, I used it when I came here to aeropost right away.

So part of the team was here, part of them hadn't been here yet.

We started this on literally like week one when I was together.

We got together with the team.

We actually work remotely because we're, we're across 29 countries, so we're kind of everywhere really.

We got the team together, shared this approach.

Yeah, we deliver to 29 countries across Caribbean, Central America.

So it's a lot of complexity.

But we got this team together and we've started working this way.

And there's some people that were on the team originally that aren't there anymore.

And then I've also been able to bring talent that I know from, that I've worked with before that already know how to work here.

And then this is the approach and we still use it on a daily basis.

Like we have all the time.

You know, I get calendar invites pop up in my calendar.

That's called get in sync.

This is the meeting where we sit down and we, we talk about it.

So we get a solution.

It could take hours, it could take minutes, and you know, it doesn't matter.

The important thing is that we get aligned on, on the decision or the path forward.

Okay.

So that's the meeting.

Subject line is get in sync.

Get in sync.

And when you're, when your team sees this come across their desk, get in sync.

They know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Alignment.

Yeah.

And they'll schedule me all the time.

Right.

And it could be like a one on one or it could be like with the whole team this week, actually, I have my whole senior leadership team here in Miami this week.

And literally our agenda is we have four different sessions that are decisions we need to take.

Those are, those are get in sync where we're going to discuss them until we need to with all the data required, et cetera.

And we're going to get to a final decision that we can communicate out.

To the organization and tying your in sync meetings back to pressure.

One thing about handling pressure as leaders, it's not much fun when you're having to handle all the pressure by yourself.

You feel like the weight of the world's on your shoulders.

And I think these get in sync meetings are a great way to alleviate that in a high pace environment is because when you know you're aligned with people, you're in sync, you're not doing it alone.

And that is a competitive advantage for your company.

If you can, you can synchronize real people across 29 countries to get stuff done for people who aren't in sync.

If these con.

If you're column.

If, if your companies were in sync or the, or your, if your customers are in sync, they might not need you as much because they're not and you are.

It's a huge value.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.

Right.

I think that's, that's gonna, that's a huge component of it.

If you kind of roll all the way back to the Navy, I think, I think one of the things that obviously the military Navy, submarine force is that you, you always know what the, the mission is.

Right?

It's very clear what the mission is.

It's.

There's no other interpretation around it.

So you know, everything you have to do is, is toward that mission.

Camila, this has been a fun one, sir.

Thank you.

Coming on lead the team today and sharing so many great stories about handling pressure, dealing with it, aligning people, companies, change management.

I mean, we've covered it all.

It was a phone today, sir.

Great.

Appreciate it, Ben, really appreciate it.

Good start to the week.