Designing the Future: CEO's 7 Pillars to Successful Business Creation
Pamela Ayuso is CEO of Celaque and author of Heptagram.
Seven is considered a universal lucky number for those who believe in numerology.
Seven is an essential number in designing business strategy for Pamela Ayuso, CEO of Celaque, and author of Heptagram: the 7-Pillar Business Design System for the 21st Century.
“Seven is an essential number in designing business strategy for @PamelaAyuso, CEO of @Celaquehn, and author of Heptagram: the 7-Pillar Business Design System for the 21st Century. #womeninbusiness”
The Guatemalan-born Ayuso, who moved to Honduras before attending undergraduate and graduate schools in New York, is now a real estate entrepreneur in Honduras.
The mother of three young daughters says Celaque is valued at $50 million and is a company that develops office and residential buildings, with a broad portfolio of properties. Ayuso is also a children’s author and a keen business leader helping others by offering the seven pillars of success.
“I really want other entrepreneurs not to face the same obstacles,” says Ayuso, who also managed operations for Alianza, another successful real estate developer in Tezucigalta, the capitol city of Honduras.
“You have to have robust systems and be flexible enough to handle evolution and change,” she says.
Change has been disrupting and augmenting women-owned businesses in the past year, with changing demographics among entrepreneurs.
“Change has been disrupting and augmenting #womenowned #businesses in the past year, with changing demographics among #entrepreneurs. #femaleentrepreneur”
Simply Business reports, “The past year saw a 13% increase in female small business owners—one of the largest increases in several years, according to Guidant Financial and the Small Business Trends Alliance. Men still comprise 68% of small business owners. As a combined group, 41% of small business owners are baby boomers, 46% are Gen Xers, and 13% are millennials. Studies have shown that women like supporting women-owned businesses, so female entrepreneurs can benefit from that added marketing.”
Girl Talk HQ reports, “Statistics show that women-owned businesses have been on the rise in recent years. In 2019, women-owned businesses made up 42% of businesses. Compared to 1972, during which women-owned businesses made up only 4.6% of the businesses, the growth is impressive and inspiring (American Express).”
The report continues, “And on top of women’s representation, there are also more business opportunities arising for women of color who want to become entrepreneurs. Women of color own half of all women-owned businesses, and generate 23% of revenue generated by women-owned businesses (American Express). Hispanic and Latina women own 18% of all women-owned businesses (NFIB), and Asian-American women owned 9% of women-owned businesses (American Express),” Girl talk reports.
Ayuso is part of the trend of growth for women entrepreneurs, a path she began leaning toward early on.
After graduating from Ithaca College in 2002, with a degree in finance and accounting, Ayuso went to New York City to work as an auditor for Ernst & Young for three years.
“It was an amazing experience,” says Ayuso, who then went on to Columbia University’s School of International Affairs in 2005 to earn her master’s in international finance. After earning that degree in 2007, Ayuso went to work for a hedge fund in asset management for a year.
“I decided to come back to Honduras because I wanted to do something to develop the promotion of my country,” Ayuso says. In 2008, she joined her husband, Jose Azcona’s company, Alianza.
Managing operations there until 2017, Ayuso built the operations side, including accounting and project management. It was then she joined Celaque and became CEO.
“I learned how to become an entrepreneur,” Ayuso says. She also learned how to write a children’s book, publishing Alicia and Bunnie Paint a Mural in 2019.
“We read stories to my girls every night,” says Ayuso, whose daughters are 5, 7 and 9 years old. “So I became inspired to write about them and for them. The book is about creativity and resilience. Those are two of the most important characteristics we can teach our children.”
““I learned how to become an #entrepreneur,” @PamelaAyuso says. She also learned how to write a children’s book, publishing Alicia and Bunnie Paint a Mural in 2019. #careersuccess #womeninbusiness”
Her next book project was her new book, Heptagram, which she researched and worked on for more than a year, Ayuso says.
“When I set up operations for Alianza, I felt like I had no information, no guidance. So I started researching and experimenting. I do have a business degree and I do have tools, but I learned so much, I decided to publish,” Ayuso says.
The bottom line is that everything is a system, Ayuso says, and she decoded the design in seven steps. What the book covers are these seven pillars:
Build the right organizational structure based on timeless principles and new concepts.
Define business processes, which will ensure consistency and quality.
Use IT to automate and make your workflows foolproof.
Analyze metrics to measure success.
Manage your organization with trust and communicate well with your team.
Allow room to evolve and change as new ideas, needs, and trends develop over time.
Grow and scale with this newfound freedom.
““When I set up operations for Alianza, I felt like I had no information, no guidance. So I started researching and experimenting. The bottom line is that everything is a system,” @PamelaAyuso says. In her new book, Heptagram, she decodes the design in seven steps. #entrepreneurship #management”
“There is this other layer that is not just about goals and getting things done,” Ayuso says. “We do live in complexity and have to learn to work with it.”
For women entrepreneurs especially, this guidance is crucial, though Ayuso says, the book is designed to assist all entrepreneurs regardless of gender.
Forbes reports, that Lauren Maillian, CEO of digitalundivided found in their most recent report, ”that while more Black and Latinx women are building high-growth companies, they are receiving less than half of 1% of total venture capital funding.”
Writing the book during the pandemic, Ayuso says, she realized the seven pillars of design held up in that chaos and shift. “You can’t be rigid or the business will break.”
Her insistence on the need for data and metrics is simple. “If you’re building a machine and not measuring how a machine is working, you are blind,” Ayuso says. “You need metrics to detect patterns.”
Research backs up that contention.
“A growing number of businesses are using big data analytics to gain a deeper understanding of their customer. According to the University of San Diego School of Business, the practice takes data from sales records, social media feeds, email stats, and website analytics and breaks it down into a form that helps business owners personalize their marketing to individual customers,” Simply Business reports.
A key element in building the structure of the system is “you need to start with basics,” Ayuso says. “We form hierarchies. When you have a team, how do you organize as a team? Layer in processes and systems.”
She adds, “Entrepreneurs are just solving one problem after the next. Take a step back, design processes, implement strategies and you will have more time to think because of less time putting out fires.”
““#Entrepreneurs are just solving one problem after the next,” says @PamelaAyuso. “Take a step back, design processes, implement #strategies and you will have more time to think because of less time putting out fires.” #womeninbusiness #advice”
This is also the theme at center of her next children’s book, Amanda & Sofia’s Adventure In The Forest, set to be published in 2022. “I wrote it during the pandemic and it’s about problem solving resilience.”
Her best advice, though, she says is for her own daughters. “You need to take care of yourselves. Don’t follow anybody else’s path, not even mine.”
“Author and CEO @PamelaAyuso ‘s best advice, though, she says is for her own daughters. “You need to take care of yourselves. Don’t follow anybody else’s path, not even mine.” #lifeadvice #strongwomen”
