Patricio Quevedo from Argentina, our professional of the month, considers himself a successful man because he has achieved a balance between his professional triumphs, his personal interests and his family life.by Johana Alejandra García and Ana María Restrepo
What is life? According to one of the definitions given by the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, this can be understood as the space of time that elapses from the birth of a living being until his death, but for Patricio Quevedo life has a more general and much more subjective meaning, he sees it as the greatest possibility of learning of a living being, given by a higher entity, which some call God, strength, etc.
On this path we are all guided by different situations and live in different environments that allow us to learn daily and move forward in order to achieve other goals. Many people are in our life for a single moment, but others, like family, will be in it forever. For Patricio, his parents' family was his first support, starting with his mother and her kindness, the Father and all his strength and his six brothers, who taught him that honest work is the surest path to success.
Early years, first apprenticeship
When he was in elementary school, Patricio learned like any child his age, but he also began to relate to the outside world and its difficulties, as well as to games, the discomforts of defeat, the joy of triumph and the rules of a competitive environment, where all that matters is winning.
"I attended high school with a specialty in physics and mathematics, and simultaneously began to work, since a very powerful internal force pushed me to total freedom, and I understood it in my adolescence as economic independence."
At 18 years old, Quevedo already held a position as a specialized salesman and traveled through Argentina representing an industry that manufactured electrical conductors, years later he became independent and sold at his own risk, but the result was not encouraging, because it went bankrupt; however, this experience taught him, as he says, that it was not enough to have good sales skills to be an entrepreneur and that if he wanted to succeed in that field he had to learn a lot. After this event, at the age of 22 he began working as a professional salesman for a telecommunications company that distributed, among others, Olivetti products, later becoming head of sales, manager, director and later shareholder of the company.
Adrian Franco, his friend from adolescence, who has accompanied him in all business ventures for almost 30 years and who currently serves as President of Tellex, also worked in this company. S.A.
On the first of March 1989, the company formed by Adrian and Patricio, Tellex S.A, began activities. In the beginning, he was dedicated to the sale and installation of telephone exchanges and was an official agent of Movicom at the beginning of the implementation of cellular telephony in Argentina.
Accelerated and productive growth
The company began to grow rapidly, they had customers and businesses that did not wait and that made their company gain strength every day. At the offer of a friend of Patricio and Adrian, Herminio Milovich, who was an official of Philips Argentina and responsible for the Security area, Tellex marketed its first CCTV, which was installed in a building of 32 apartments, becoming the most important work carried out by the company.
Due to this, they began to distribute these systems, expanding their product portfolio to lines such as X28 (alarms), Visonic, Epuyen, among others, but it was in 1994 when they opened their first store to sell products and installation materials for electronic security. In this way, the company had expanded its operations to two defined areas such as telecommunications and security.
Continuing along this path, the company was chosen by Siemens, along with three other companies, to be part of its outsourcing program of a line of digital products aimed at serving the SME segment. At the same time, Electronics Line designates Tellex as the exclusive distributor in Argentina for its entire line of electronic security products.
Thanks to this recognition and the participation of the company in these areas, Tellexpress, the supermarket of security products, was born, additionally became a distributor of DSC and Amdeco International, which enabled the growth of the company and its immersion as an ADT dealer program , selling to it through its intermediaries 60,000 alarm panels and more than 150,000 infrared detectors.
Despite the economic crisis that the country experienced at the beginning of the 2000s, Tellex continued with its growth by opening its channel of technological integrations, in order to penetrate the high segment of the market by carrying out works for corporate accounts, and thus avoiding competing with its customers of the indirect channel. It also acquires the business of Cerberus Mc Keon S.A, a Siemens group company operating in Argentina, allowing the company to become the main distributor/integrator of Siemens Building Technologies in Latin America.
Currently the company has offices in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Montevideo, and a plant of 60 direct employees and 300 among the 20 contractors it has approved.
The other side
Although his professional achievements are many, Patricio Quevedo is a man full of interests; a student of the Raja Yoga philosophy of which he is a certified instructor, he affirms that "this discipline was and is a faithful companion of my decision processes in business", in addition ten years ago he is dedicated to the study of Neurolingusic Programming (NLP); in 2006 he obtained the certificate as an International NLP Coach and later as a Master in NLP from the Argentine Neurolinguistic Programming Association. These learnings, although they are part of his personal interests, are also very present in his working life.
"I choose to work from generative collaboration, where the sum of the parts is superior to the whole. That is why I work directly as a coach of different work teams within our business group", under this premise he guides his relationship with his employees, because he firmly believes that "it is key to generate harmony to penetrate the world of my interlocutor and reach an interaction from understanding and not from imposition".
Patricio Quevedo, denotes in his words and actions the importance that his work team has for him and the company, affirms that he is only the visible face of a great team of human beings who for many years have been working with the aim of achieving maximum results in what they do, according to Quevedo one of the engines of the company is quality, to the point of ensuring that "quality is in our nature". Patricio is considered simply as the one in charge of guiding his team and the company towards the achievement of the goals set by the company.
We can see that Patricio is a man who knows how to complement all aspects of his life by maintaining a balance between each of them, although he works as CEO of three companies (TELLEX S.A., TXCOM S.A. and TELLEXPRESS S.A.), he says that it is not necessary to work too many hours to be efficient, but to have a program and respect it, that way it is possible for him to share valuable time with his family, for example his youngest son takes him every day to school, and tries to be at home at 7:00 p.m. for family dinner.
25 years of joint construction
Just as from a very young age he decided to become economically independent, Quevedo also formed his family from a relatively young age, in December 1983, when he was 23 years old, he married Marcela Ricchetti, with whom he will celebrate this 2008, 25 years of marriage. "Life invited me to another experience, coexistence, passionate love, to share where mine is also yours feelings of attachment to the other, and also of insecurities", that is the vision that in these years Patricio has forged on the experience of marriage.
Since 1988 Patricio and Marcela are accompanied by Carla, the eldest daughter, and on March 15, 2004 their second son was born, "Ivan is a new teacher who sends me to continue observing and learning that life is wonderful," Patricio tells us.
In general terms he feels that he is a lucky and successful person, but he explains that this success is not measured only by the accumulation of goods or money, but by the quality of life, understood as satisfaction in all aspects, family, work, economic, professional, personal, etc. That is, to have a balanced existence in which the beliefs, values and interests of the person prevail, "to achieve a life of balance, the Individual has to set goals of high professional content, in the aspects of personal organization, the planning of his weekly work, and a great humility to know how to accept other opinions of criteria that lead him to make the best decision".
