Accomplished across banking, transportation, fashion, and energy sectors, Alejandro Betancourt López has established himself as a business leader with a distinctive management style. His transformation of companies like sunglasses company Hawkers from scrappy startups into global players hasn’t happened by accident. It stems from specific leadership principles that have proven effective across varied industries.
Through examining Betancourt López’s career trajectory and his own words about management philosophy, we can extract valuable lessons applicable to any business context. What makes his method particularly interesting is how he combines intensity with vision, creating environments where innovation flourishes and results follow. Here are his top five leadership lessons.
1. Assemble Teams That Outshine You
Unlike leaders who feel threatened by exceptional talent, Alejandro Betancourt López actively seeks team members who surpass his own abilities in their specialized areas. He believes the quality of your team is the single most crucial factor in business success.
“I like motivated people. I like talented people,” he explains. “I’m a true believer in teams. I do believe that talent is the most important thing in a company or in a corporation.”
His hiring strategy specifically targets individuals who bring superior expertise. “When I hire people, I take a real hard look at the experience they have. I like to know that they know more than me, that they’re better than me, that they have better knowledge than me in that industry.”
This preference for surrounding himself with exceptional experts has allowed Betancourt López to succeed across dramatically different business sectors. Rather than trying to be the smartest person in every room, he creates teams where specialized knowledge can flourish, giving him the bandwidth to focus on direction while trusting experts to handle implementation details.
2. Embrace Relentless Focus
For Betancourt López, business success demands extraordinary attention to detail and unwavering concentration. He describes his leadership style as one that prioritizes results through persistent follow-through.
“I view leadership as something that, in my case, somebody that cares about making something happen. So I would drive you crazy and I would focus on the task at hand, and I will not leave it alone, to make sure my team gets it right,” he states.
This intensity extends to his communication style with teams: “I’ll be on top of everybody, I will drive people crazy, but we’ll get results. And that’s, for me, there’s no wrong time for a call. There’s no wrong time to be on top of it.”
His mantra could be summarized as: “Focus, focus, focus, and don’t be afraid of winning.” Betancourt López believes many people unconsciously sabotage themselves when nearing success, settling into comfort zones rather than pushing forward. His approach involves constantly challenging himself and his teams to exceed expectations, even when that means creating temporary discomfort.
3. Balance High Risk With High Reward
Betancourt López describes himself as “a very high risk taker, a massive risk taker,” but qualifies this with an important distinction. “I have a good batting average. f”
His investment philosophy embraces bold moves while maintaining overall portfolio balance: “I hit more home runs than I strikeout. I’m very proud of that, that I don’t swing for first base. I always swing for a home run, and I do strike out and that’s a human thing, nobody gets everything perfect.”
This calculated risk tactic has shaped ventures like his early acquisition of ride-sharing licenses in Spain before Uber entered the market, and his €50 million (approximately $55 million) investment in Hawkers sunglasses when it was still an emerging brand. The key to making this work, according to Betancourt López, is having enough diversity that successes can compensate for inevitable failures.
“The ones that go well, pay for everything else,” he explains. “So when you have a portfolio of 10 investments and they’re all very, very high stakes, big returns or nothing, if two of them go well, they pay for the eight and make you a good profit for everything else.”
This balanced portfolio thinking, combined with the determination to see investments through challenges rather than abandoning them at the first sign of trouble, has brought him success across multiple business ventures.
4. Demand Innovation Through Pressure
Rather than accepting conventional solutions to business challenges, Alejandro Betancourt López pushes his teams to think creatively by rejecting the easy answer. His philosophy holds that breakthrough solutions emerge when teams stretch beyond their comfort zones.
“I push them a lot to bring me solutions for new problems, and people tell me it’s very difficult, and I tell them it’s not difficult, that they’re just not trying enough,” he reveals.
This forces teams to explore alternatives they might otherwise overlook: “I push for a lot of out-of-the-box thinking and solutions that are not the traditional solutions for a problem.”
What might seem like intense pressure serves a constructive purpose. It prevents complacency and encourages constant improvement. Under Betancourt López’s leadership, Hawkers evolved from relying solely on social media marketing to developing multiple revenue streams, including retail locations and various marketing approaches, making the company more sustainable for the long term.
5. Value Intuition Informed by Quality Input
While data-driven decision making dominates contemporary business thinking, Alejandro Betancourt López maintains that intuition plays an essential role, provided it’s built on solid foundations of quality information and expert perspective.
“Everything I do is based on intuition and information. Intuition is based on the right information and the right people that surround you,” he explains. “You have to surround yourself with people that are at top of their game.”
He points out that the environments where you spend time directly impact the quality of your intuition: “If I go to the right places and I interact with the right people, I’m going to get good information. My intuition is going to be more tuned up and better.”
This balanced take on decision-making — combining gut feeling with expert insight — allows for quicker responses to market shifts while still grounding choices in reality. It’s helped him identify opportunities like his early investment in AI technology five years ago, which he notes has since multiplied 20 times in value.
For Betancourt López, good business judgment combines this intuitive sense of where value is shifting with careful analysis and expert consultation. His success across banking, eyewear, transportation, and energy demonstrates how effective this can be when consistently applied.
These five leadership principles have guided Alejandro Betancourt López through a diverse business career spanning continents and industries. From transforming Hawkers into the world’s third-largest sunglasses company to creating successful ventures in ride-sharing and financial services, his management philosophy emphasizes talent, focus, balanced risk, innovation, and informed intuition.
While his leadership style might appear demanding, the results speak for themselves. For business leaders looking to drive exceptional results in their own organizations, these principles offer a template worth considering.
