In this interview, Franly recounts that he took him from the streets of his neighborhood in Cuba to dream of somingays the name of his company at the Miami Heat stadium.
Miami.- Franly Franco He knows what it means to start from scratch. He was born in a poor neighborhood of Havana, San Miguel del Padrón, passed through the emblematic Lenin school and suffered the wear and tear of compulsory military service in Cuba, a year he remembers as the hardest of his life. With just 18 years he arrived in the United States without work experience, without language and with the immediate responsibility of sustaining himself.
From ATM in a gas station to banker in Wells Fargo, and from there to the final jump: undertake. Together with four friends – all Cubans – he lifted 1 Nation UP, a design, marketing and printing company that began improvising uniforms under a mango bush and today has 21 employees in Miami.
In this interview, Franly recounts that he took him from the streets of his neighborhood in Cuba to dream of somingays the name of his company at the Miami Heat stadium.
“Where were you born and how was your childhood?”
I was born in San Miguel del Padrón, in the cast María Cristina, a humble neighborhood, between Papalote, Trompos and Bola. At eight or nine I started playing basketball and that helped me distract me after school. My high school was in the California cast, within San Miguel himself. There began the exits, the parties of 15 and a cheerful stage because we were close to the Pepe Prieto sports institution, where we played every afternoon.
“Your step through Lenin was important for you, how do you remember?”
My mother was the one who insisted that he did the tests for the Lenin. I studied with my best friend, Fernando, and she wanted to get money to pay us private teachers. I entered 2005. They were the best three years of my life, I made friends who are still my partners today. The school is inaugurated practically new, thanks to funds that came from Venezuela: air conditioning, good food, all impeccable. But in just three years we saw how it deteriorated until it was ruined. That was a hard blow: the evidence of how quickly in Cuba is destroyed everything due to lack of maintenance.
“What did military service mean for you?
It was the worst year of my life. They sent me for a unit in peanut: a day of guard, one day chapeando Marabú, a pass per month. You came from the pre, to dream of the university, and that year I cut everything. Many of my colleagues never resumed studies later. I was about to lose the visa that my older sister had claimed us, because at that time there was fear that if you did not pass the service they did not let you leave the country. In the end I turned 15 in those conditions, until I could fly to the United States.
—How was it to arrive 18 years in the United States?
It was very hard. In Cuba he had never worked. There my life was to study, play, go out with friends. Here suddenly I had to pay rent, invoices, everything in a new language. He hit me strong, but at the same time it was comforting: in a few months I could have things that were a dream – a car, a cell phone, food without worries. I started in a gas station as a cashier. The owner, Gustavo, a Cuban who had lived in Venezuela, supported my sister a lot, told us that this was not our job, that we studied. And thanks to him I could enter the Miami Dade College.
After two and a half years in the gas station I entered Wells Fargo. I started as a cashier, then I went up. They helped me get licenses and I specialized in finance, investments and business banking. I was there 11 years, with a good salary and comfort that I never imagined: work from home, 30 days of vacation, medical insurance. But within me was the desire to undertake, something that I inherited from my mother and my stepfather, who in Cuba always invented to survive.
—How does the idea of creating 1Nation Up arise?
It all started almost by accident. My wife and I had bought a little machine to make pullovers in the Baby Shower of our first daughter. A client of mine at the bank asked me if I could make your company’s uniforms: more than 300 pieces. I had no how to do it, so I looked for Carlos, who already worked in design. We associated ourselves, and that was our first order. Then Sergio, a computer specialist, Darling and later Oscar, also a designer. In 2019 we officially founded One Nation, starting with the machines in our rooms and even rapping cars under a mango bush at Carlos’s house.
“Was it easy?”
No, the first two and a half years were the toughest: we worked from 7 in the morning to midnight and there was no money to pay us. But we did it for passion, not for money. It was the impulse of wanting to have your own business. We learned based on mistakes, stumbles and sleepless nights. Today, looking back, that stage gave us strength to grow.
“What is One Nation today?”
Today we are a design, marketing and printing company with 21 employees. We help a business from the creation of its brand to take it to the physical: logos, cars, posters, advertising materials. We want to be the largest design and marketing company in the United States. I always say joke, but seriously, we don’t stop until the Miami Heat stadium is called “1 Nation Up Center.”
“Franly, what would have happened if you stayed in Cuba?”
Surely I was in a corner playing dominoes or prisoner to invent. Of those who study mechanical engineering in Lenin, I do not know anyone who today exercises the race in Cuba. There I had no future. Here yes. And if I want something to be our example, it is that: Cubans can undertake, grow and build prosperous businesses if we work with constancy and discipline.
