Nicolas Maslowski, Senior Vice President of PriceSmart, is the guest on the Learn from Leaders podcast with Ricardo De La Blanca. “This crisis,” he says, “provides an opportunity to anticipate the future.”
It has been a career of many changes and trips that of the Venezuelan Nicolás Masloswski, Senior Vice President of PriceSmart, as he tells Ricardo De La Blanca in this episode of “Aprender de los Líderes”, the podcast that through great leaders wants to sow teachings for everyone during the pandemic.
Maslowski, who was also Chief Revenue Officer of Aeropost.com and Chief Marketing Officer of the rum producer Santa Teresa, recalls in this talk his childhood / adolescence in the Soviet Union where he lived “a real quarantine” and was educated under education communist. Back in Venezuela, he began his career with Procter and Gamble, before moving to Santa Teresa where, after obtaining an MBA at Harvard, he projected the company to the international market, which opened the doors to the acquisition by Bacardi.
Learning is crucial. It is the most crucial thing during any change ”, he says now and insists that crises are important in the life of any businessman. “If you see a wall that is going to fall, let it fall so that you have the energy to rebuild. Do not try to stop the wall, you will need that energy to rebuild ”, he recommends.
“There has been an oversizing of the issue of entrepreneurship,” he assures and says that entrepreneurs are given to think a lot about people and not so much about the institutions that are the ones that last. “We should be more grateful to the institutions than we usually do,” he says.
On the crisis generated by COVID-19, he has an optimistic vision. “The democratization of information can only bring good things,” he says. And he identifies three waves of this pandemic that he sees all of them overcome.
He explains that, first, we thought that the blow to the supply chain was going to be so severe that there would be a shortage of food; yes it was affected, but it did not collide. The second wave was that of a run on hospitals, which collapsed due to excess demand, and it happened in some parts, like New York, but it is already under control. And the third was that the amputation of productive activity due to the quarantine ran with the banking system, that the money ran out, and that has not happened either and now it is focused on productive restoration.
But if there is a clear message throughout this talk, it is that of “constantly learning”. For him that is a necessity today. “And learning cannot be forced,” he says.
Listen to the full podcast here:
