Leonardo De Aguiar is a young, innovative Entrepreneur and Business Owner. He grew up with a family that is deeply rooted in business. They instilled the values of hard work, dedication and the desire to contribute to society positively. Leonardo is currently operating as the Founder & CEO of INTUEAT INCORPORATED. He has spent the last three years building a Food & Beverage brand in Denver, Colorado, and has expanded to South Florida. He is looking to expand to additional markets in the near future. INTUEAT is an innovative digital marketplace connecting high-end private chefs and hospitality professionals to diners who want fine dining on-demand. Leonardo leads a small team of highly skilled and talented individuals who are assisting him in the expansion of INTUEAT to the national stage, as well as successfully closing funding rounds to ensure the viability of the company. Leonardo was Brazilian-born and now resides in Denver.
What were the challenges he faced on his journey to success?
INTUEAT’s journey to success is still ongoing, but he would say some of the biggest macro challenges that they’ve faced is the initial COVID shutdown of the food and beverage industry, which delayed a go-to marketing strategy for them. They are also navigating through a recession at the moment, trying to align themselves with their target consumers during this time, which has been a recent challenge they’ve been facing. On a micro level, he thinks a lot of the challenges they’ve faced early on were just figuring out who they were as a brand, where their focus should be, and the alignment of that. Really building into its identity and making sure that they have the team and are recruiting the right candidates to drive this vision forward.
How did he overcome these challenges?
He thinks at the end of the day, each challenge is unique, but the outcome to conquer said challenges are also unique. Overcoming these challenges goes back to his internal core values for Leonardo and the overall company. The way he overcomes a lot of these challenges is through his ambition and passion for what he is doing and what INTUEAT is doing for consumers. He always faces each challenge head-on and breaks it down by chipping away at it. Being able to make the decisions that need to be made, even if they are hard choices. In a startup, you’re surrounded by a lot of people, and you become attached to them, so making certain decisions can be really challenging, he said. Some of the hardest decisions to make were having to overcome factors such as reducing team size and deciding who to let go and rescoping the company. Those were all very hard decisions to make, and he said you have to remove yourself in a way from the emotional side and look at it logically. You just have to look at it as this is what the company needs, and this is how we’re going to survive. That’s how they overcame those challenges as well as his inability to let INTUEAT fail.
What were the lessons learned along the way?
If he had to narrow it down to three lessons that have been the most impactful, he’d say the first one is how to make those difficult decisions and not let them get under your skin. Ultimately when you are making these decisions you have to put the company first over anything else. The second lesson which is equally as important as the first is that he has learned throughout this journey the importance of implementing servant leadership into their growing startup. Culture plays a large role in productivity in alignment with dedication from team members. So learning how to be a better leader while empowering those around Leonardo and making sure that they grow has been a huge lesson for him that he thinks has perpetuated such incredible outcomes and is very important. Lastly, the third lesson that he has learned is organization and scoping out being proactive rather than reactive. He thinks one of the biggest lessons specifically comes into play as they mature into a larger startup is to be extremely organized. You can’t make everybody happy and you can’t grow in every direction, but you have to be very strategic and stick to that scope of work in order to make progress instead of creating whiplash for the entire team. You have to stick to your roadmap and that’s how you truly make progress in a startup. You have to think of what will drive the organization to the next level.
Advice he wishes he knew when starting out and would like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?
What he’d like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs is that as the founder you and the company are more intangibly connected. Many entrepreneurs think if they take care of the company or business that they will be okay, but it’s actually the other way around. You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of the business. Because for a long time, they are the business. This also feeds into being wary of burnout and mental health issues, which is extremely common among entrepreneurs. Keep in mind that big things happen in small steps and celebrate all of those small steps. In summary, every entrepreneur is going to face challenges that put them outside of their comfort zone. The way to succeed as an entrepreneur is by overcoming those challenges. Even though you will face hurdles, it’s important to always remember to celebrate the wins as well. Lastly, always be determined and have that self-discipline. Know your breaking points and be very aware of what it’s going to take.
If you would like to get in touch with Leonardo De Aguiar or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
