Jorge Colindres: Family First
Jorge Colindres is the chairman and CEO of The Registry of Aruba which was founded in 1995. He is also founding chairman of San Marino Aircraft Registry which was established in 2012.
MIAMI IS MY home, and it’s been that way for the past 30 years.
I have a pretty well-set routine each morning – the first thing I do is check my emails accompanied by a nice cup of beautiful, flavoured coffee at around 7am. High mountain 100% arabica from either Guatemala or Honduras. I do the grinding myself.
My life at home is with my wife and my dog Mr. Rufus – he’s a Havanese, the only Cuban breed. We are celebrating his ninth birthday today – he got some treats. He’s a good son. We take him for a walk in the morning. He follows me everywhere when I am in Miami, even the office.
I drive to work every day. I love driving especially in Miami with the beautiful skyline. It's a seven mile drive and you can look out over the whole bay.
My mind is always on though. It’s my personality. I am always looking for new opportunities, new business development: How can we grow the business? And how can we do better?
“I am very close with all five of my children. We enjoy being together a lot.”
I’m a very active person when it comes to business, of course along with the great support of my children; David in San Marino and Alexandria who runs Aruba. They are my left and right arms. I’m a little bit old school, so they bring a new flair to the registries.
I am very close with all five of my children. We enjoy being together a lot. Across all our offices we are close to 40 employees, but we also have about 100 consultants spread across the globe.
For me it’s a very simple approach: we work very long hours, sometimes 14/15 hours per day and we try to make our office as homely as possible. I don’t regard my staff as employees. I see them as a team working together. Some have been with us for over 20 years.
It’s not magic to have long-lasting relationships; you have to listen and get to know them. They need to feel they are part of a family and appreciated.
If you don’t re-engineer yourself often enough in this business, you are going to lose your credibility and momentum. Without loyalty it becomes very difficult for a company to grow.
We’re a small company so we have to be very careful of how we do things. Aviation is a small industry – everyone knows each other. So I make sure I treat my people like I would treat myself.
At my computer, I get briefings from the different departments about how things are going and how many planes have been registered. We have a meeting every Wednesday, at which we discuss everything from e-security services to special projects.
I travel a lot, meeting government officials, ministers, aviation authorities and visiting commercial clients all over the world. We have some very large fleets - in Kazakhstan we have nearly 40 large aircraft.
The fun part of the job is going to air shows, conferences and seeing your friends. It’s not what you take from aviation, but what you give back to it. We’re a family-owned company and our name is our trademark, so we like to give back to the industry.
We are experiencing tremendous growth. I don’t know where the last three months have gone. We have three new operators undergoing commercial certification in San Marino and four in Aruba – just in 2019.
One thing I see is our clients being extremely appreciative of our being personal with them. When you treat them like anyone it just becomes another business. We put our heart and soul into this opportunity.
"We’ve been around a lot. It’s all about people. My first client, from 30 years ago, is still with us. Friendship and making sure they feel part of a family – for us it is not just a business."
"We’ve been around a lot. It’s all about people. My first client, from 30 years ago, is still with us. Friendship and making sure they feel part of a family – for us it is not just a business."
