We were lucky to catch up with Eric Zurita recently and have shared our conversation below.
Eric, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
My aunt was a baby on the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, a Cuban exodus that changed the fabric of Miami. Not long after, my godfather became a balsero, braving the Florida Straits on a makeshift raft for a chance at a brighter future. And my father fled the island when I was four, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. We weren’t able to reunite with him until three years later.
My parents gave up their careers as chemical engineers in their homeland to clean houses, install fire alarms, learn the locksmith trade, and employ many other odd jobs in Florida. They learned a second language deep into adulthood and worked their way into owning a real estate business as well as a couple of properties, only to lose everything after the ’08 recession. Most people don’t lose everything they’ve worked for. They survived it twice.
Resilience is in my blood. Latino immigrants are some of the most resilient, entrepreneurial people in this country. We face obstacles in every part of our lives and overcome them through the power of family, community, and personal adversity. Getting to the U.S. is a grueling journey for most of us, and that’s only the beginning.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I started Pa’lante Rum with my family. My first job was as a barback when I was 15. Since then, I’ve been in the hospitality industry in one way or another, from barista to server, fine dining host, and craft cocktail bartender. I’ve done it all.
In my mid-twenties I worked for an organization in DC funded by Big Alcohol, and on nights and weekends I was bartending at a local craft distillery. I was researching the alcohol industry during the day, and thinking about brand and product strategies the during of my free time. I told my family we should start a rum company together.
I grew up with Cuban rum. My dad made rum for the biggest Cuban producer back in the ‘80s, so my idea of the spirit differed greatly from what my friends growing up thought it was. To me rum was always a mixable spirit that you could also sip on, versatile depending on the length of aging. To my friends it was pirates and parties where the drink was cheap.
We started Pa’lante Rum to change consumers’ perceptions of what rum is, from both a product and brand perspective. Chemically, rum contains more flavor compounds than any other distilled spirit. It has the capacity to be complex. And culturally, rum is vastly richer than other distilled spirits. We felt we could bring a great product to market while building a brand around it that authentically represents Latino culture.
Our culture is vastly underrepresented in the industry, and the brands exploiting it for profit aren’t owned by people from our community.
To make our rum, we partnered with a close friend and former colleague of my dad’s. Jorge’s PhD in chemical engineering, vast knowledge of the Cuban rum-making tradition, and his extraordinary palate make him one of the greatest blenders in the world. The distillery in Chiapas where he’s been working for over two decades has been around since 1948, a Mexican-family-owned outfit that has only ever worked with sugarcane in a country known for its agave distillates.
Mexican rum, Cuban tradition. That’s what makes Pa’lante special. And our name, meaning “onward” in Spanish, is a rally cry for our community to always keep moving forward, pushing toward a better future.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
- Perseverance
I had the idea for Pa’lante in my head for 5 years before I began acting on it. The first thing many of us have to persevere through is our fear of getting started. Pushing your doubts aside and believing in yourself is hard, but the work that comes after is even harder.
It took me two years to build Pa’lante — the product development, brand design, team building, supply chain, etc. — before I could bring it to market. Building anything takes patience and fortitude. From working three jobs to fund our first steps to making costly mistakes, we’ve endured some difficult times. But the true test of whether you should be building something is if, through the absolute worst times, you still don’t want to quit or work on anything else.
If you can persevere long enough, you will reap benefits, whether they be financial or the wisdom acquired throughout the journey. My best advice on how to acquire this skill is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations as often as you can, and never run away from them. Enduring discomfort will build your perseverance muscles.
- Communication
I cannot stress enough how important it is to be a good communicator. Expressing yourself well when speaking and writing is the key to building solid relationships, just the same in business as in our personal lives.
But it’s not only about language skills, rather also about other components of communication, like transparency and kindness. The ability to hold empathy for others is going to make you a better communicator just as much, if not more, than mastering a language.
Read and write as much as you can. That’s all I can prescribe.
- Focus on strengths
It’s always good to be self-aware and know your shortcomings as a leader or a company. I used to think I should spend a lot of time improving on my weaknesses in order to become a more well-rounded leader. However, I have found it is a better investment of time and effort to build up your strengths and use them to your advantage as much as possible, rather than focus on your weaknesses.
Your biggest strengths will be what set you apart from other founders in your industry. These are what you use to raise money, build a team that activates around your vision, and ultimately lead a business to success. The strengths of whatever it is you’re building are what will set it apart from competitors. Highlight them. The wider the gap between your company or product’s value propositions and competitors, the better.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
My parents, being typical immigrants strict in their pursuit of “The American Dream,” bought me so many business books over the years I thought most of them sounded like they were written by academics and psychologists rather than real founders. It wasn’t until recently, during my time getting Pa’lante off the ground, that I read what is now my favorite business book ever: “The 4 Disciplines of Execution.”
The most impactful nugget of wisdom I received was that I was running my business completely wrong. This book taught me how to achieve goals as an organization. It’s very easy to set goals, quite another thing to execute them. I’m still in the early stages of implementing 4DX in my business, and it is way easier read than done, but it is well worth the effort. The results are already speaking for themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ronpalante.com/
- Instagram: @ronpalante
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezurita/
Image Credits
Joseph Blum Paola Toledo Gonzalez Ismael Mendoza Galdamez
