If I were 18 years old and the present-day Borja Mera, after 23 years, wrote me a book and gave me the keys to entrepreneurship, I would divide them into four parts: patience, money, the formula for success, and family. Here is the last one and a chapter, though not exact, from my first book, “En Modo Avión, 23 Años de Poder Emprendiendo”.
Nowadays, it’s trendy to move abroad to start a business to Dubai, Andorra, Cyprus, Malta, seeking a place where, for a significant percentage of entrepreneurs, the sole purpose is to pay fewer taxes and thus believe they will make more money. Of course, everyone has their own personal reasons, and not everyone moves for the same purpose. Many YouTubers or influencers have relocated to Andorra simply to escape noise and fame, seeking peace.
I don’t criticize it, I understand it, I’ve suffered it. I have endured it for the last 25 years of my life. I have faced the worst tax audits a person can experience. We’re talking about investigations where the police secretly followed and surveilled me up to my own home. One day, I sensed it, I felt it: a police car was tailing me. And sure enough, three weeks after that incident, three men in trench coats entered my office like something straight out of a James Bond, 007 movie. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I wasn’t there at the time, and I rushed to the office at nearly 200 km/h.
A Three-Way Meeting:
They were looking for fake invoices due to a report filed by a competing company. I learned about this verbally during the audit itself. That same day, I was told that I had been the talk of the tax office the day before (apparently, they had nothing better to do). People have a very mistaken perception of websites and online businesses. Most of us operate with more technological sophistication than any other sector. The market is demanding, and you have to be the best at innovating to stay ahead. Otherwise, you lose. I ended up with 24 million visits per day on my websites. I explain the entire process and much more in this podcast by the guys at Tengo un Plan.
It was a four-hour inspection, with my team present, in the offices at Plaza San Miguel in Gijón. Can you imagine what that feels like? And how it makes you feel when you don’t know what your team might think about you or the company? The unnecessary insecurity it creates is terrible. They took computers, specifically, all the data from Azahara’s computer, the person in charge of administration. It was horrible, one of those chapters no entrepreneur wants to or should have to experience. But it is what it is, and that is always the lesson. It is what it is. Whether you live in Andorra, Dubai, or China, dear entrepreneur, you will face setbacks no matter where you go. They might manifest as a tax audit or something else, but they will happen, with a 99.99% probability. Entrepreneurs are always swimming upstream, against the current.
If you have a problem with money, you’ll have it in Dubai or Andorra. No matter how much you save on taxes, you will end up spending money or facing a different kind of problem. If you struggle with leadership, that struggle will follow you to Tokyo or Albacete. If you have trouble managing teams, you’ll experience the same in Rome or Cuenca. If your sales skills are lacking, you’ll struggle in Los Angeles just as much as in Barcelona. Problems simply change location, they will be the same and will resurface in the same way.
The ending of that tax audit was the most absurd part. After a court order authorized the Civil Guard to follow me home or enter my office like in an American movie, I paid a fine of 100,000 euros. The sad reason? My lawyer told me I had to pay. Simply that. I had to pay because, after everything they put me through, they couldn’t leave empty-handed. Yet, everything on our end was perfectly in order. It’s infuriating to pay just to “smooth things over” with people who handled things so poorly. This is entrepreneurship in Spain, at least when it comes to dealing with the tax authorities. How much easier would it be if they actually helped entrepreneurs instead of keeping them up at night, anxious about their company’s future?
And the ordeal doesn’t end with paying unjust fines. Because then comes the fear of “what if it happens again?” And in our case, we took preventive measures, like hiring family members into the company to try and avoid going through it all over again. It’s crazy, straight out of a movie.
But, getting back to the point the advice I give is actually the opposite of what it might seem. I always flip things around. That’s my specialty, playing with perspective when it comes to entrepreneurship, doing things in a completely different way. That’s how I like to operate. I don’t recommend leaving the place you want to live just to start a business. I love feeling at home.
I encourage every entrepreneur to build their business from home. Tax solutions can always be found, and audits, in the end, aren’t as bad as they seem. Once you figure them out, you understand that it’s all just negotiation, and life is negotiation. Entrepreneurship is negotiating, negotiating constantly with the most important person in your life: yourself. And what better negotiation than one that makes you suffer, that makes you lose sleep at night? Those are the experiences that make you grow. And my friend, entrepreneurship is just that, growing and growing until nothing fazes you anymore. And when you reach that level, you’ve won the game. No one can mess with your mind anymore.
Why do I recommend starting a business at home?
Because the dots always connect looking backward. And once you master the skill of entrepreneurship, you gain understanding. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made was starting my business from home, from Gijón, from Asturias. Traveling only to see the world and for special operations, but running my business from my origins.
Do you know who I’ve met with the most in my life?
My parents, I don’t know how many times I’ve had lunch with them on a workday, maybe thousands. They’ve always lived close to my offices. Right now, we are in what I believe is our fifth office, and soon we’ll be moving to our sixth, always growing and always running out of physical space. In the past year alone, we’ve doubled in size, and now we’re more than 150 people.
Whenever I could, most of the time, I would go have lunch with my parents and tell them how the company was doing. Who can give you better advice than the people who gave you life? No one. Not even the smartest person in the world can give you better advice than Mom and Dad. It’s impossible, literally impossible.
I understand that not everyone has the best relationship with their parents or comes from a structured family. Maybe in those cases, they have close friends, grandparents, or trusted people nearby. And if that’s an issue, maybe it’s the one you need to work on, just like I have to deal with false accusations. Fears and problems don’t disappear; they just shift to different places.
My first office, I suppose like most entrepreneurs, was my bedroom. And my first employee and friend was David Acuña. Sending him a big hug from down here because I’m absolutely sure he’s watching from up there.
I was saying that the people I’ve had the most meetings with are my parents. They are pure love, and even that is an understatement. They’ve been married for 50 years and still walk down the street holding hands like it’s their first day together. And there’s no better lesson for entrepreneurship, or for life, than this: to follow the path of love, patience, kindness, and understanding.
And who better to surround yourself with than the people from home? The ones who know you, who love you, who truly care about you, not the ones you have to go searching for through an interview. Nothing can go wrong when you bring in the people you love to work with you, the people who feel the company as their own. Because that’s the truth: companies belong to everyone, no matter what the papers say. And papers are just that, papers.
The Family:
They say that Siroko, our e-commerce company, is the business with the most soul in the world. And that’s because we are all from home. Because my childhood basketball friends are here with me too. Because there are so many Asturians in the company, and we Asturians see our region and our city, Gijón, as home, as emotion, as infinite energy.
And what happens when you fill a company with infinite soul, unconditional love, and years of experience? It takes off like a Boeing 747.
There are studies showing that the common denominator of successful companies is having executives who are from home and have been in the company for over 10 years. That’s exactly our case, we’ve been here all our lives.
Artificial intelligence predicts that next year, Siroko will generate more than 100 million euros in revenue, and by 2028, over 1.8 billion. I have no doubt. Siroko will be Spain’s first unicorn without investment funds, private investors, or foreign capital.It’s a miracle that a company, from Asturias to the world, has achieved this. Or maybe not. Maybe its CEO understood that companies grow when you have patience and take care of people. And what’s the best way to do that? Surround yourself with people from home, people who treat the company as their own. Looking back, staying home to build this company was one of the best decisions of my life. Knowing exactly who to recruit, talented Asturians from all over the world, and then taking off from there.
With all the humility in the world, I recommend to entrepreneurs: start from home. Start from Spain, or from wherever you consider home. My home is Asturias, and this year, we’re going to build the strongest brand-football club relationship in history as the main sponsor of Real Sporting de Gijón. Can you imagine what’s going to come out of that? Two Gijón-based entities, full of talent, making a perfect match in values, emotions, and passion. If I had left, this wouldn’t be possible in the way we’re doing it now. First division in 2025.
After traveling the world, I can confidently say that there’s nowhere like Spain, nowhere like Asturias. No matter how much you search, it’s impossible.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have experiences abroad, of course, you should! And I highly recommend it. But never do it just to pay fewer taxes.
That reason alone will only bring you different financial problems, nothing else. It will just move your money problems elsewhere.
Santiago Menéndez, Azahara González, Luján, Daniel Casado, Javier Fernández, Lucas Suárez, Jesús Casado, and Marta Feito are key department heads at Siroko who have been working with us for over 10 years, some for more than 15. Imagine the synergy and knowledge we’ve built over time, like a basketball team that plays brilliantly just by looking at each other. This is our path. Like the Los Angeles Lakers of Magic Johnson, Showtime.
This was our first in-person meeting with a manufacturer for Siroko, in Milan:
From Asturias to the whole world. #ShowTime
Not better, not worse, just our experience.
Borja Mera
CEO of Special Operations at SIROKO