There is a scene that repeats itself in towns all over Portugal, and almost nobody photographs it. The young person finishes their degree, the family gathers for dinner, an uncle asks what comes next, and the answer arrives with the suitcase already packed. Lisbon. Porto. Sometimes Luxembourg, sometimes London. The mother is proud and sad in the same sentence.
And the town? The town paid for the school, the bus, the sports hall, the maths teacher who stayed late. It invested twenty years in that person. And on the day they are finally ready to give something back, they give it back somewhere else.
So let me ask, and please don't answer too quickly: how many young people does a town train only to hand them over to other places?
Let's be honest about it. The easy answer is that there are no jobs. That is true, but it is half true. Jobs are missing, yes. What is missing above all is a road. A 23-year-old does not leave just because there was no vacancy. They leave because they cannot see anyone like them building something there. They leave because, back home, starting a business looks like something for people who already have money, a surname or a godfather. And when there is no example, the suitcase is the most rational decision in the world.
People are like that. Nobody stays somewhere because of a brochure. They stay because they can picture their own life there, with a beginning, a middle and something to show the friends who left.
The mistake of measuring the opening
For a long time, and not only in Portugal, local development has been measured by the opening ceremony. The investor arrives, the ribbon is cut, the photograph is taken, jobs are mentioned. I have nothing against ribbons. But I have seen enough businesses to know one thing: the opening is the beginning of the audit, not the proof of success.
Picture the conversation a year later.
"Councillor, is the shop still open?"
"It is."
"And who works there?"
"Mostly people from outside. Ours didn't have the training for it."
"And who buys from the local producers?"
"Well… that's handled by head office."
There you go. The photograph still looks lovely on the town hall wall. But what stayed in the territory was a lease and half a dozen contracts. The decisions, the know-how and the margin moved somewhere else.
I am not saying outside investment is worthless. It is worth a great deal. I am saying that a town that only knows how to receive will always depend on whoever gives.
I wrote a few years ago that it matters to know the difference between companies that are growing and companies that are merely swelling. Towns are no different. A town swells when it adds square metres, roundabouts and announcements without adding capability. It grows when every investment leaves behind someone who can do something they could not do before. The first is faster and makes for better photographs. The second is the only one that survives when the investor changes their mind. And investors do change their minds, my friend. That is their job.
The recipe and the baker
I have spent a good part of my life turning businesses that worked into models that could be taught to other people. It has a technical name, franchising, and many people wrinkle their nose when they hear it. They think of shopping centres, logos and entry fees. I understand. But let me show you what sits underneath.
A replicable business is one that somebody has taken the trouble to write down. How it opens, how it buys, how it serves, how the new hire is trained, how the till is closed, what to do when things go wrong. I once wrote that the confectioner's hand may change, but the base recipe, its essence, must be respected. I still think so. And I would add: whoever has the recipe does not need to be a genius to bake a good cake. They need discipline, someone beside them at the start and the courage to put on the apron.
Now look at that young person with the packed suitcase. What frightens them about starting a business? Not hard work; this generation works, whatever people say. It is not knowing where to begin. It is having to invent everything alone, making mistakes with their own money and, worse, with their parents' money. A replicable model removes exactly that weight. They do not have to invent the company. They have to run it well. And running a business well can be learned.
In real life, that is how business owners are made. First you run someone else's model. Then you understand why it works. One day you create your own.
Every place has its own recipe
There is no single solution for a whole country, and be wary of anyone selling you one. In northern Portugal alone, Barcelos is not Boticas and Famalicão is not Mogadouro. A municipality with industrial density, many SMEs and applied training has one question. A mountain territory with an identity like Barroso's and products like Barrosã beef has another, and its first duty is not to spoil what already has value. A low-density municipality with scattered producers needs shared services, and people who can gain scale without having to leave.
Serious work starts there: reading the territory before proposing a recipe. With public data, with the council's own people, with the business owners already there, whom nobody has often bothered to hear. And with a simple question on the table: what could be born here, written down here and grow outwards from here?
And by the way, listening before proposing is not courtesy. It is method. Whoever turns up in a town with a ready-made solution usually brought it from another town, where it did not work either.
The moment is now, but it is not magic
Portugal 2030 opens a new cycle of instruments for entrepreneurship, employment and territorial innovation. It is a window, and windows close. But beware the usual temptation: designing the project to fit the call for applications, instead of using the call to serve the project. Badly spent public money is not only waste. It teaches a whole generation the wrong lesson: that entrepreneurship means knowing how to fill in forms. Make no mistake, I am not against the funds. I am against projects that only exist while the funding lasts.
What I argue for is less glamorous. Territorial bases where a young person finds three things in the same place: a business model that has already proved it works, proper training to run it, and someone accountable for the first months. Where the local producer finds a customer who buys regularly. And where the council can measure, a year later, not how many ribbons it cut, but how many businesses are still open and how many young people stopped packing their bags.
Back to that dinner
Let me go back to that family dinner. I am under no illusion that every young person should stay. Leaving is also an education, and many come back better. The problem is not those who leave. It is those who leave because they had no choice.
You have to do the basics to reach the grand. And the basics, here, are hardly photogenic: data, training, processes and a named person responsible for each piece. It will not make headlines. But it is what means that, ten years from now, the uncle asks what comes next and the nephew answers: I'm staying, I have a business to open.
Every council in this country knows how many students it trained this year. The question I leave is a different one, and a more uncomfortable one: how many of them will be able to build a life here?
Lucas Atanazio Vetorasso, known as O Maestro, is an entrepreneur, author and founder of ATNZO. His work connects franchising, management, negotiation, human behaviour and territorial development.