The end of next month, July, will be the end of the 13th year of Webber’s Ed. This is amazing considering that the success rate for first-time business founders is only 18% and most start-ups (70%) fail in the 2nd to 5th year of being in business. I think that this is even more remarkable when you think about the fact that I came from education like all of you. Believe me I am no business expert, which may be more evident than I think. Ha ha, no worries. I just have a higher threshold for pain than others.

But as I reflect on the past 13 years, I think one of the major things that made us successful, and kept us going, besides my masochistic leanings, is my passion for promoting education in Latin America. However, I am not sure that I ever told you the story of how that all came about.

Of course, as some of you know, I am half Mexican and grew up in Texas, so I think that was the start of it all. I love telling my students the story of how I would go home from elementary school and tell my father that the kids at school were making fun of me because we are Mexican. My father would get outrage in his eyes, a quality I inherited from him, and he would shout, “You tell them that our people were building empires while their people were still living in caves!!” Now that I think about it, that is probably where my passion for anthropology and archeology comes from.

However, the real linchpin was in the year 2000 when I decided to sell my truck, my furniture and all my belongings to backpack the route of Che Guevara around South America. A former student, who I am still very close to and was the best man in his wedding, had offered to let me stay on their ranch in Argentina where his father had retired to, whenever I wanted. The Latinos are always very generous with their offers of accommodation but even with that, I think they were very surprised that I took them up on the offer and stayed on the ranch for a month to learn enough Spanish to get around Latin America. The workers on the ranch could not understand why I had left a perfectly good job in the USA to come and live and work with them on a ranch in a house with no electricity, no heat and no hot water. The patron, my friend’s father, couldn’t explain it either, so he told them I was writing a book. I think they all thought I was fleeing the law or just a bit crazy or both. However, after my time on the ranch, I wound up spending another month backpacking and camping in Argentina, a month up the coast of Chile, a month in Bolivia, a month in Brazil and then a few weeks through Uruguay and back to Argentina. That did it for me. I had found my own utopia! Or really, as close as I will ever get.

Since then, I have taught in Venezuela and spent 7 additional years working in Malaysia and Sudan. In 2010, I returned to Latin America and in 2012, transitioned from full-time teaching to establish Webber’s Ed. Now, 13 years later, I am sharing this story to illustrate the significance of pursuing one's ambitions. I aim to assist others in finding their ideal job and achieving a sense of fulfillment in their lives.