Jose Prendes left Cuba as a teenager with his mother and sister, to Ecuador. They did not know if his father could join them. After 5 years with the help of a Cuban-American organization, his family moved to Miami. He studied English, attended college for a few years, and started working. Jose described his first impression of America, that everything was clean and organized. As an organized person himself, he loved that. As he started his family, he began an online pet retailer. It was growing until Hurricane Wilma hit Miami and destroyed his building. The wind actually pulled the roof from their building, and the rain ruined all of their inventory. Out of that destruction, Jose created an online retailer, PureFormulas.com, a $40 million per year online health food company. He how his focus on quality, his ability to persist beyond disaster, and how to engage customers allowed him to build his $40 million company.   Kent(1:35): You are in beautiful Miami, I’m up here, it’s 15 degrees below zero up here with wind chill in New York. What’s the temperature down there?   Jose: It’s pretty nice. Actually 64. It’s nice and crisp and very sunny. It’s a nice day.   Kent: Jose, tell us a little bit about your background.   Jose: Born in Cuba, I left Cuba in 1995, lived in Ecuador for 5 years. After Ecuador, came to the US through a Cuban/American organization that helps Cubans come to America. So I came here in 1990 and started working, learning English, went to college but didn’t finish.   Kent(2:25): What did you do while you were in Ecuador?   Jose: In Ecuador, we went to Ecuador because that was a country that took us in as political refugees, me and my family. While I was there for 5 years, I went to High School and I also went to College for two years then I came here. I continued here, college for another two years, actually I didn't finish, that was what I was doing in Ecuador you can say almost waiting to come here, but of course we were attuning with our new lives.   Kent(2:54): Which was a bigger transition, kind of going from Cuba to Ecuador or Ecuador to Miami?   Jose: I would say Ecuador to Miami. It was a bigger transition.   Kent: What was the process to getting to Ecuador and being able to leave Cuba?   Jose: I wasn’t really involved in the things which my parents were doing to get us out of there. I think it was just applying through embassies for a visa. I think it is refugee status or something like that. It was a long process. We tried through a couple of countries. So finally Ecuador accepted to take us in.   Kent(3:36): When did you first begin to get an entrepreneurial sense?   Jose: I think I have always wanted to do it. I don’t recall exactly a point in my life where I thought this is what I wanted to do. Something that I always wanted to try, it started in my early 20’s maybe. If I could pinpoint a time in my life it would be my early 20’s.   Kent(4:01): What was your first impression when you came to America?   Jose: Everything was clean and organized, if I could put it in one sentence. I really liked that, it’s just different. The traffic, everything. Everything had a different way of working very organized, very structured. Latin American countries like Cuba and Ecuador is not the way things are. That had the initial impression on me. Kent(4:27): When you came to America from say Cuba or Ecuador, did you feel like you were trying to reinvent your life?   Jose: Yeah, from here to Ecuador it was kind of hard. I had lived in the same house all my life. Same friends and same Neighbors. Going to another country was a huge change for me. Also my dad had to stay back in Cuba. He had to stay behind so we just left Cuba, my mom, my sister, and I. It was a little scary because we did not know what was going to happen, but my parents decided they had to do it that way. My dad joined us after a couple years.