Transcript
Speaker: The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market, timeless wisdom, proven strategies, and the deep work that creates lasting success. Like and subscribe to stay aligned with what truly drives results.
Speaker: I want to start off today with a question. What does it look like when a country decides, when it truly decides to stop being defined by one thing? Panama has been defined by the canal for well over 100 years.
Speaker: And look, the canal is extraordinary. It moves dozens of these massive vessels through it every day. 180 shipping routes connecting 1,700 ports flow through it.
Speaker: By any measure, it's one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure in all of human history. But here is what I witnessed on a recent trip to Panama. This is a country that is no longer willing to be defined by the canal.
Speaker: It's going beyond its geography and history. And what I saw there, the people, the alignment, the hunger, the deliberate strategy, reminded me of something that I believe in deeply.
Speaker: And that is, the most dangerous competitor in any market is not the one who's been there the longest. It's the one who has just decided that it has everything to gain.
Speaker: With Panama, they also have the resources to make it happen. There are massive lessons here that every growth-minded person needs to listen to and apply.
Speaker: Welcome to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Churan. Let's get started. I want to talk to you about the room. Business is often talked about in abstractions, strategies, frameworks, market positions, and so forth.
Speaker: But the real work happens in rooms with people sitting around a table discussing ideas. In our room, we have Sandra Watson, the CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority.
Speaker: She's a woman who spent over 30 years driving economic development and has personally attracted over 2,100 companies representing $300 billion dollars of capital to the state, to my state of Arizona.
Speaker: If you want to understand what serious economic development looks like, you need to study Sandra Watson's track record. Next, we have Cecilia Mata. She is one of the Arizona Board of Regents, essentially like the board of directors for the three state universities.
Speaker: She's an accomplished businesswoman and value-driven person. I highly respect her. Cecilia is one of those people that lives in two worlds simultaneously. On one hand, she understands Panama from the ground up because she was born there and she grew up there.
Speaker: On the other hand, she understands the US and Arizona business climate because she chose to succeed there and to live there. Many thanks to Cecilia for making this all happen. She brought together two worlds from the US and from Panama.
Speaker: And in kind of a weird way, just like Panama connects two continents, she connected us and I'm very thankful that she did. Next, we have Dr. Tomas Diaz de la Rubia, who is a senior VP at the University of Arizona.
Speaker: He runs the Office of Research and Partnerships. His presence in our room embodies the seriousness and the gravity of the matter at hand and how important this is for the University of Arizona and the state at large.
Speaker: Next, we have Charles Chadwell, the Dean of the College of Engineering at Northern Arizona University. We have many others here in the room that represent academia, government, and industry.
Speaker: Many of us were invited from industry so we could all understand what's happening there and see what's coming next. This is a room worth paying attention to. This is not a room of tourists or tire kickers. This room is full of people asking, what are the opportunities? Where are the partnerships?
Speaker: And how do we build something here that's real? This should be an awakening to you as a career-driven person, as an entrepreneur, as a business leader.
Speaker: Who is waiting in your room and what ideas are you discussing? So let's talk about what Panama is actually building. Let me give you the facts because in my book, they're they are genuinely compelling.
Speaker: Panama has launched what they are calling the National Agenda for Advanced Technologies. And they're putting down $105 million dollars committed by the government from the president, José Raúl Molino, down to his secretary, Dr. Eduardo Ortega Barría, who is the director of CENESIT.
Speaker: CENESIT is their national science and technology secretariat. The focus... artificial intelligence and semiconductors. Now, you might be thinking small Latin American country, semiconductor strategy. You might be skeptical. I get it.
Speaker: But let me reframe this. Panama isn't trying to be the next Taiwan. They're not competing with TSMC, Intel, Samsung, or anything like that. That's not the play here.
Speaker: And the fact they know that tells you something about the quality of their thinking. What they are building, however, is a position in the semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging. We call it ATP.
Speaker: And they're building a position in AI governance and AI infrastructure to become the trusted logistics and innovation hub for the Western hemisphere. They're joining continents, joining oceans, and they're doing this with AI and semiconductors.
Speaker: Here's why this matters strategically. The global semiconductor supply chain has a critical vulnerability, concentration. Too much of it flows through very small geographies.
Speaker: The CHIPS Act in the United States was written precisely to address this. It includes the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund. There's $500 million dollars there to create ecosystems in countries with the right conditions.
Speaker: Panama is positioning itself to be one of those trusted partners. In essence, Panama is aligning itself to emerging trends. This is something we discuss a lot on my podcast.
Speaker: It's doing so by understanding what the trends are, knowing what their value is, what they have to offer, and then closing the gap. Brilliant. So let's talk about the trends. What are they?
Speaker: Well, global AI dominance. Semiconductor supply chain issues, shifting demographics and changes in in globalism. There's so many others, but these are the top four.
Speaker: What about their credentials? What are they known for? Well, let's talk about that. Panama is number one in logistics infrastructure in Latin America. It is number one in efficiency and starting a business in Latin America.
Speaker: It is essentially the gateway to South America, but it's more than that. It has 23 free trade agreements covering 59 countries, representing almost 60% of all global GDP.
Speaker: The US dollar is legal tender there, so it eliminates any currency risk for international companies doing business there. They have a mature banking framework. They are also one of only three countries that is carbon negative because they receive 70% of their electricity from renewable energy sources.
Speaker: Two other things. The one is they have six massive internet backbone fiber optic underwater cables that flow through the canal.
Speaker: These cables connect 95% of all the internet. So they are essentially at the nexus of information and trade, pretty massive. They also have an amazing airport. The Tucumán Airport is among the best connected airports in all of Latin America.
Speaker: So this isn't a developing market that's stumbling towards being modern. This is a country that has quietly built a world-class logistics and financial infrastructure and is now pointing that in the direction of the technology economy.
Speaker: This is a lesson for all business leaders and entrepreneurs. Have you identified what trends you are aligning yourself with and what are you doing about it?
Speaker: Here's where it becomes relevant to the people in that room, to Arizona and to you. At the Technological University of Panama, UTP, they're establishing a center for advanced semiconductor technology known as CTASC.
Speaker: So they're aligning their entire national R&D platform towards microelectronics and printed circuit boards. They're doing the work, they're rolling up their sleeves, and the Panamanian government is funding this framework to enable students from Panama to go to these universities in the States, ASU, U of A, NAU, and so forth, and get degrees from there to come back and apply them in Panama.
Speaker: Brilliant. They also have partnerships with the Chip Integration Technology Center in the Netherlands and Chiba University in Japan. This is not a press release. This is a deliberate talent pipeline being built with long-term intent.
Speaker: When you put Senator Watson in a room with Panamanian officials, the president, and so forth, someone who has helped attract TSMC and $265 billion dollars of investment, and you put all the leaders of the universities, like I mentioned before, real things start to happen.
Speaker: This is a deliberate talent pipeline that is being built from the ground up because they understand that you need to have the talent in place when you these companies put their foundations down.
Speaker: This isn't a finished deal, but it's the beginning of a conversation that will compound into something significant if everything is aligned. This is how real economic development happens.
Speaker: Starts in a room with a shared question, ideas discussed, and people decide whether they're going to do something about it or not. Brilliant.
Speaker: So this is the lesson for you. Partnerships. Do you have the right partnerships in place to deploy your vision? And if you don't, who needs to be in that room and how will you get them there?
Speaker: This was an idea i thought about when I was sitting in one of these rooms and I noticed the conversations that were happening and the level of excitement.
Speaker: There was some trepidation, as there always should be, but also asking the right questions. One of the things I heard when I was in these rooms, in the corners, maybe it wasn't discussed on Zoom,
Speaker: the main stage is this idea of Singapore. So the idea is that Panama wants to become the next Singapore or the Singapore of the West.
Speaker: So I want to talk about this because i I think it deserves a serious analysis rather than just kind of casual dismissal. So let's talk about Singapore. Singapore is the example of what happens when a small nation has a vision, makes an uncompromising decision to to make it real, and brings in the resources to feel the whole thing.
Speaker: If you think about Singapore, It competes globally on quality, openness, connectivity, and especially the rule of law. Then it executes it with precision over decades.
Speaker: Singapore has a GDP that is well over $107,000. It punches over its weight in finance, technology, international trade, and it did it without significant natural resources.
Speaker: For crying out loud, it's the size of Metro Chicago. It did it because of its position in geography, its governance, and its grit. Panama's GDP is roughly 19,000 something.
Speaker: So yes, there's a massive gap there. But here's the idea. What they share is structural ingredients. Panama has that geography.
Speaker: It's literally the connector of these two oceans and two continents, like I said before. It has the financial infrastructure. There are over 60 international banks there, almost $150 billion dollars in banking assets. It has the dollarized economy. It already has these trade relationships.
Speaker: We already talked about the free trade agreements and all that. It has the logistics. It has the canal. It has the ports. It has the airport, all that. And it has what Singapore had still has, by the way, hunger.
Speaker: It has that hunger to make these commitments into reality. Hunger matters. I want to say that again. Hunger matters. Hunger matters in your personal development growth. It matters in a country becoming something that it is striving to be.
Speaker: It all matters. One of the things I observed across companies, markets, and people is that this hunger is often the difference between those who arrive and those who don't.
Speaker: Skill matters. Resources matter. Strategy matters. But hunger, genuine urgency, is that conviction that you cannot afford to remain where you are.
Speaker: That's the fuel that is hard to manufacture. Panama has it. The question for you, how badly do you want it? Survival for you, or is it just comfort?
Speaker: Is this an identity or a costume for your ego? Are you hungry enough to break free of whatever you're dealing with, your own ego, to go to higher levels of success and prosperity?
Speaker: wanna step back for a minute and talk about what I witnessed through this business lens because of this trip. This is where the most transferable lessons live.
Speaker: Lesson one, vision. Vision that actually aligns to resources is rare and very powerful. Most organizations have vision statements that look like something on the wall, but very few have resources that back those visions up.
Speaker: If you look at Panama, they are committing $105 million behind this vision. behind this vision They're funding talent pipelines through these international scholarships. They're changing the regulatory framework to create this AI governance framework that is opening the doors for business.
Speaker: They're actively partnering with Arizona, the Netherlands, and Japan. This is alignment. That is what it looks like when a vision is more than just a poster on the wall.
Speaker: We'll see in the coming years what happens, actually. But what I saw there, what I saw with my own eyes, the conversations in those rooms I was in, this is vision being realized.
Speaker: So the question for you, is your vision and resources aligned? Are you doing what it takes to make your vision a reality? Lesson two, culture.
Speaker: Culture is revealed. by what people actually do, not what they are told to do. I learned this lesson many years ago by a gentleman that I admire very much that worked at Raytheon. And he talked about culture is what people do when no one else is looking.
Speaker: You can have your employee manual tell you what to do, but culture is what's happening in the break room. Culture is what's happening in the machine shop when no one else is there. if you look at the culture in Panama, it's open for business. They've built all these free trade zones and created special frameworks specifically to attract foreign multinational investment.
Speaker: Their regulatory posture towards AI is a risk-based framework and not a bureaucratic wall. They're aligning their internal elements like a workforce development engine and are creating business regulations to make it easy for international companies to move there.
Speaker: The idea with culture is that it it needs to align with your core value. Culture is not what leadership says it values.
Speaker: Culture is what it consistently makes into reality. So the lesson for you is, is your culture really ready to support your vision?
Speaker: Or are your biases and ego putting the elephant in another room? This question about culture is something that is extremely nuanced, but very powerful.
Speaker: Get your culture figured out. Lesson three, people who build bridges between worlds create enormous value, protect them.
Speaker: We talked about Cecilia Mata. She's the one who organized this trip because she's Panamanian. She's also US citizen. She is a brilliant person. And she saw this opportunity to bring these two groups together.
Speaker: I look at people in my world that are bridge builders and I protect them because I understand that having people like that in your life, having people that that see the vision on both sides of the mountain are ones that are prime movers.
Speaker: And just like the people in Panama that she brought to the table, they themselves are bridge builders as well. So you need to look at at, in your situation, who are the bridge builders?
Speaker: If you look at the Panamanian side, Dr. Eduardo Ortega Barria up on stage like a damn TED talk was deploying this AI and semiconductor strategy. You have others like Juan Jose Pimental, Walter Cohen, many, many, many others who are all bridge builders among the Panamanian side.
Speaker: Nothing will ever happen unless things reach a critical mass. And we underestimate how often those things begin with one person. So for you, who are the bridge builders in your world?
Speaker: Are you the bridge builder? Either way, you need to spend careful attention to these people. Your business needs it.
Speaker: You know, I've talked about this on my show before, the idea of a weak signal. When I worked with Adam Hartung, we discussed trends, these big global trends.
Speaker: And we often got asked, like, how do you figure out what these trends are? Well, sometimes they're plain as day, like on a headline of a newspaper. But other times, they're they come in the form of a weak signal.
Speaker: These are early indicators that something significant is forming beneath the surface, out of plain view. The weak signal from Panama is the semiconductor supply chain is being redesigned, not gradually, urgently.
Speaker: The U.S., through the CHIPS Act, is actively funding these allied nations to build trusted technology ecosystems. Panama already has the framework.
Speaker: They are already part of something called Paxilica, which is an initiative alongside Australia, Japan, Israel, the UK, I think the Netherlands, and India, and Finland.
Speaker: This is a multinational agreement that's protecting critical supplies and minerals for technology, for readiness and security. They are already building that academic infrastructure I mentioned before.
Speaker: They are attracting the partnerships from industry. And they're doing this with a population of just over 4 million people. Think about that. A country that is half the population of Arizona is making a deliberate national bet on one of the most consequential technology transition in our era.
Speaker: And it's backing it with capital, with institutions, and with international partnerships. This lesson for every entrepreneur should be clear as day.
Speaker: Scale is not required to act decisively. Clarity of vision and willingness to commit are. Panama is demonstrating both.
Speaker: Let's break this down. If you are in business, no matter what size you are, that is not holding you back from acting decisively.
Speaker: Clarity of vision is important because if unless you understand where you're going, all roads will take you there. The idea if you don't know where going, all roads take there. But if you understand where you're going, that clarity of vision, and you have a plan to make it into reality, that's what's going to get you to that next stage.
Speaker: So the question I'm sitting with here after this trip is not whether Panama will succeed. It'll take years to know. The question is, What am I doing in my own business to spot that wave early enough to be in position for it?
Speaker: What assumptions am I still making about where I am, where my value is in five years, in 10 years, so that I can align my business to be when the trend is happening?
Speaker: That's the question Panama gave me, and that's the question that I'm asking you to ask yourself. Are you ready? Are you in position so that when the trend is taking place, you're there?
Speaker: Massive, massive question. Growth, real growth, the kind that compounds into something enduring, requires a decision to stop being defined by what you've always been defined by.
Speaker: Panama is a clear example of this, taking their identity beyond the canal rather than resting upon it. You know, they make about $15.5 million dollars a day through the canal.
Speaker: That equates to almost $6 billion dollars a year. But instead of just relying on that for the next century, They are deliberately making a play into, just like Singapore did, into a domain that is way above their weight.
Speaker: The question that every leader faces eventually is what made you great may not be what keeps you relevant. The market doesn't grade you on history.
Speaker: it grades you on value. And if you look at Panama, they're doing exactly that. They could sit on their laurels and just milk the canal or They can take some risks, put some risk capital um behind it, make some alignments, make some strategy plays so that they're actually there when the trend is there.
Speaker: Panama is hungry. Panama is aligned. Panama is building a man, a plan, a canal. Panama. That old school palindrome reminds me of the fact that they are now redefining who they are.
Speaker: This is a dangerous combination for anyone who isn't paying attention. And it's an inspiring one for those who are. Thank you for your time. i hope you got some value from this. And, you know, I want to ask you, if you see people that are struggling with their own vision or trying to go beyond what defined them initially, send them this podcast.
Speaker: Send them this podcast as a as a gift so they understand that no matter who you are, you can redefine yourself and grow into a new position.
Speaker: Thanks for listening. Cheers.
