Lee and MARIA discuss:

• The comfort-zone-pushing and problem solving principles behind Maria’s entrepreneurship

• How elite athletes’ mindsets can inform those of us striving for business success

• Demands from the telecoms industry and how Weaver Labs are looking to change the landscape of the sector

• Pros and cons of creating a business with as many as 4 Co-Founders

Links & references:

Lee Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecooperrecruiter/

Maria Lema: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-lema-b6b67a1a/

Weaver Labs: https://www.linkedin.com/company/weaver-labs/

Get in touch: lee@extrology.com

Episode highlights:

“One of the things that my parents always taught me is to just shake it off and move on. My brothers and I had to do that, and I think it made us the people we are today.” - 5:25 - Maria Lema

“I always found systems very interesting - how systems operate and how something can respond to an input. In anything, from industrial engineering to even architecture, everything at the end of the day can be treated as a system.” - 9:30 - Maria Lema

“I would definitely encourage everyone who's doing their bachelor's degree to find the time to do a little internship here and there. There is a massive gap from what we learn in the classroom to how we apply that in our works.” - 11:55 - Maria Lema

“My brother is an entrepreneur, I have my own business, and my younger brother has a very entrepreneurial mindset. So I would attribute it to my parents, to the fact that they have always taught us not to stay in the comfort zone and try to seek other ways of solving problems. ” - 15:30 - Maria Lema

“Telecoms has become like a utility, the same way that you move into a new home, you open the tap and expect water to come out. However, the regulatory framework is not quite there in terms of trading it as a utility. I think that is great. We need a market in expansion. We need competitiveness and we need more telecoms infrastructure companies, not less as we treat them like utilities.” - 24:15 - Maria Lema

“Essentially, what we do is allow for different networks built by different payers with different infrastructure owners to be integrated, be shared and be reused, so we have a much more effective use of the resources.” - 28:55 - Maria Lema

“You need to show the business the value that telecoms brings. They are not going to respond to me saying ‘Oh, Wi Fi, oh, 5G’ - no one cares about that. They just want to see the value, and that's where the conversation needs to go.” - 32:30 - Maria Lema

“Quantum communications is something that really excites me. There's so little that we know yet and that can definitely disrupt the space.” - 39:20 - Maria Lema

“I have a huge admiration for elite sports people. They understand that there is no overnight success, there's incremental success, there is working hard. If you show up, you get the results. If you don't, you don't. That is something that I try to apply everyday into my personal and professional life.” - 42:35 - Maria Lema

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