Episode 501: Blessed with Naivete and Half Full Attitude with Gus Gonzalez

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Okay, this afternoon we're going to have some fun talking with Gus Gonzalez. Hey, Gus.

Hey, Larry. How are you?

This is, I'm great, thanks for asking. And you know, we want to dig deep in your head, Gus, and find out what you've learned about winning. All of those nuggets, all that information that you use to navigate life now. But we're took you paid a big price to get them. And like we were talking before earlier, you know, the kinds of things you know to be true because they work for you. They work with other people that you've coached. And it helps form your processing of situations, opportunities, good things, bad things. And you allow you to navigate life in a way that you can overcome bad things, take advantage of good things, and you can't, you know, even if it's something devastating, you can minimize it, you know, you can kind of keep it, box it up to where it doesn't impact you the rest of your life, you know, and so it get your eyes back, you know, even if we all have things, we're all flesh, we're all emotional and prone to have someone pull our chain and even road rage, you know what I'm saying? But when those things, when things happen, you know, you get all, all wrapped up in it. It's like, how quick can you, the fact that you get out of your mind, mad over something or frustrated with something and they said explode or something, does it really matter? What matters is how quick you can reel yourself back in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's put myself back in a box before I do some harm to myself. Like the employee who worked with the airline, I just read this this morning up in Newark. He got in a fistfight with an NFL player. I think he's an NFL ex, NFL wide receiver. This guy's at least a foot tall.

Not a good idea.

And somehow they got into it and it was actual fist fight at the airport. The guy came out from behind the ticket counter and they were going at it. And guess who, guess who got the crap beat out of him? Ian Blowy hundred pounds lighter and one foot shorter. You know, there's times where you need to say to yourself, whoa, so he not only got a beating, he got fired. And so, you know, we all have to learn these things that, you know, sure, you can show yourself out and strike back. But sometimes the one that gets harm from that is yourself. In fact, most of the time, you make it worse for yourself. So, Gus, we're going to dig into those things and your background. Where are you right now today? Let's get lay the land.

I'm in the panhandle, Seagro Beach, Panhandle, Florida. We're building a home here, a house here. We call this home now since the pandemic. Well, we used to live in Atlanta. Well, we're out of Miami. I was originally born in Venezuela, out of Miami, moved to Atlanta, and here I am now panhandle of Florida. Lovely place to be.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. Yeah.

On the beach, it's just beautiful. The sand is white. It's just gorgeous.

Yeah, you'd think you're in some kind of Caribbean.

Perhaps so.

Absolutely. But you don't have to fly for it. So it's nice to walk out your door. There you are.

There you are.

You know, Gus, talk about now, all of these moves. One thing in life, as you go through moves, there's events that happen that are usually not necessarily good, that drive you forward. And, you know, we learn more from the things that go wrong in our life or people do to us or companies do to us or countries do to us. And restrictions. We have things that are taken away from us. So what got you going out of Venezuela? I think most of us can kind of imagine, but let's specifically someone living in Venezuela and leaving for, I guess, opportunity in Miami. What was behind that? And what did you. What stage of your life were you okay?

Our situation was a little bit different because I'm 58, right. So my dad was an entrepreneur and he had a business. I mean, upper middle class, right. So he had a business. He would import vehicles from the US To Venezuela and sold them. And so he had a couple of stores. So he decided that it would be a good thing for us to learn English and that kind of thing. So he moved, kind of moved the family to Miami. And he would go back and forth. Eventually that led to a divorce. My parents divorce. He went back. My mom stayed in Miami. And then I went back to work with him and then decided to come back. And he was kind of a little bit of politically driven, but I knew that I wanted to do something big. I just didn't know what. And I thought that the US was definitely the place to do it now.

How old were you when that move first happened?

The very first time I was 14. And then I went back for a little bit, worked with my dad a little bit and then came back at 26 again.

Yeah, and that's a traumatic age to be uprooted and moved to another place. I went through it, you know, father's in the Air Force, so.

And imagine, imagine adding that a different language altogether where you know, you're, you know, you get into high school and with like no English. I mean just a little bit. But anyway.

And so how long did you, what was the best thing you did to overcome that and to get settled and get well?

Let me tell you, I think I've been blessed this, this kind of weird, but I've been blessed with either naivete or just a and half full attitude in life since I can remember, you know. So I never really dwelled on the negative aspect of this. I met new friends, there was a bunch of other people because the financial situation was really good in our country. It was a bunch of other people in my same situation that we kind of became friends, you know, and we kind of made it alive. So it wasn't really that traumatic for me because of that. And I can look back now and see how, man, I never really focused on the negative aspect of it.

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And so immediately you, you got in with a group.

Yes. Yeah.

And so you weren't alone.

Yeah, I wasn't alone exactly.

And there's people to show you. The great thing about that is kind of like getting started in a new industry or a new business. There's always people have been there before, new community. There's always people they can show you the ropes. And I remember when we went started our aborted expansion plan into the uk, we were going to build a big financial services organization over there and some of the guys went over there earlier and thank goodness they did. They went over there early, they drove all over the country. They learned how things Worked. And so when I got there, it was just a matter of talk to Greg Fitzpatrick. Basically. Yeah, you know, what do we do now, Greg? And he's, you know, show you how the trains and how the underground worked and how the buses work. You go in here, you do that and what. I don't know what I would have done without it. And so what you came into this thing. In fact, you know, what comes up in talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, they get an idea for. It's one thing to grow up and not have a family that'll support your idea. You know, I want to be a swimmer, I want to be this that the other. And you're on a ranch in Montana, you know, shoveling, you know, hay out of the stalls with the horses. But you really want to be a diver, let's say. And then knowing there's no pool for 1,000 miles or something. So. But a lot of it's a similar experience with all of a sudden you get this crazy idea for a product somewhere. And if it's new, nobody's ever thought of that in your circle, but it's pretty much always going to be a trade group, an association, and that it's in a similar type thing where you can go and pick the brains of people who have gone down that road or a version of it. It was kind of like, kind of like Elon Musk did with the space program and all of that stuff, you know. And so as you. He never can get a space engineer because they, you know, someone did. He had to be the chief guy, study to be it because none of them would jump in because they thought it was such a crazy idea. And you know, a private, what they said was a private person will never be able to afford to figure out how to fund it. You know, it needs to be a country. And so they would not join his what they, you know, Hindenburg operation. They were sure was going to go down in flame, you know, and so when you start off on a new thing. But even he picked up got way down the road by talking to people who were in the industry and had the experience. And he was able to fill a lot of the lower level position with people with experience. And so as you got into, so you got a new experience, but then your dad goes back to Venezuela and you went with him. How old were you then?

So I stayed behind for a while, but I was really. I didn't. He paid for my college. I just didn't finish it. I just didn't take advantage of it. I mean, I was really a mess in terms of I was a dreamer, but I had no backbone, you know, I didn't have follow through, I didn't have the character that I needed to, to stay with something. So I decided to kind of punish myself and eventually move back to Venezuela where I had, where I knew I had to get a job with my dad, which was not going to be easy, Right. Because he was very strict when it came to that. Right. So I was 21 when I, when I went back and 26 when I eventually came back to the States. So I was there for five years and I worked with my dad for a little bit for about a year and a half and then I talked him into why don't we open up a rental car business. Because since I was young, right, like I said, I had these ideas. I was, I've been like a serial entrepreneur type person, but I just, I guess I didn't have those tools. But I started a lot of things. I just didn't know how to finish, but I started a lot of things, so I got him to do that. So we bought 12 cars, moved to an island in Venezuela. There's an island called Offshore Margarita Island. And I started up kind of by myself. You know, I hired a guy that was going to be the mechanic and I bought a Mac, one of the first Mac computers and, and just kind of rented those things out. Didn't know anything about it. I just kind of did my own field research with what was out there and that's how I got started doing things on my own.

And talk about some people go through their life. I mean, that's a point we need to address. Some people go through their life and they've started and stopped and haven't followed through and they disappointed themselves.

Yes.

And it's important. You need to speak to them about what you learned about starting that way, which is not that unusual when you're young, starting that way, but basically growing a backbone, growing the toughness, getting to the point where you could not only just fantasize about a business opportunity, you could. And by the way, I haven't done a good job of introducing you billion dollar earner, you've produced on your team, you've helped mentor three more billion dollar earners, you have over 70 offices. And so just in the financial services side of your business, you've had a lot of other projects that you've done along the way on the entrepreneurial side to kind of tailor along with it. So you continuing to pick up new experiences and we'll get to that later. But early on, this experience, what did you learn from that? What happened? And talk about the. Say something to the people that know they are at the point where they haven't demonstrated they've got enough backbone. But you said character to stay with the idea basically, to keep facing the challenges when it gets rough.

Absolutely. I think that there is a tendency with people like I used to be. I don't want to say people like me, but people were of thinking, okay, let me try something else. Because this is. This is not working and it's not me. The thing is not working. The market is not cooperating, the product is not there yet. Something outside of yourself. It is so easy to blame things outside of yourself. Right. And because I think there's two. Two tendencies to either blame everything on yourself and just beat yourself, beat the crap out of your own self, or blame nothing on yourself. And you say it's everything, it's outside of me, and it's somebody else's fault. Is the government, is the regulations, is the people the competition or whatever. Right. So what happened to me is that I transitioned from blaming other things and. Or people and not so much people. To me, it was most. I don't know. This is not working. Let me try something different. This is not working. Let me try something different. To getting to a realization that I needed to develop grit, to persevere, and then I needed to look at what I was not doing.

Right.

And that to me was the. It was a. It was like an epiphany. It was like, I can tell you right now, it's a before and after in my life where I realized, dude, you need to change. You know, you need to change. And most of the change was really character based, were things that, you know, I really needed character development. And so I realized it didn't beat myself up for it and just put a plan in place to grow in those areas. Let me give you, I mean, quick example. I was late to everything.

Okay.

And I decided one day that I was never going to be late again to anything, that I was going to be early. Right? And so I became kind of obsessive about that. But when people used to tell me, dude, Gus, you need to change that you're late, I used to think they were silly. You know, one of my mentors told me, gus, it's about honor. And I literally laughed out loud. What does honor have to do with, you know, being a little bit late to a meeting? You know what I'm saying? And then But. But then when I was able to connect those things, it kind of opened up a whole new field, like a whole new world opened up for me.

And what do you think was a primary thing that caused that to happen? Usually epiphanies happen when you're in a pressure cooker environment.

Yes.

And, you know, your. Your standard way of dealing with things, of bailing out don't work.

Yes.

You know, or have you done it too many times and you start to get ashamed of yourself and can't find a real good excuse to bail out? And you start, you know, you start investigating other options of, like, how can I deal with it? Oh, I'm creating this. How did you. What would you point to?

Absolutely. There were two things that would almost, almost happen simultaneously. Right. One is a person.

Okay, hold that thought.

Yeah.

All right. Because this is a great place for us to break. Thanks for setting this thing up. Thanks for that information you gave us. And I am excited about getting into this because what we are going to be talking about on the next one is the epiphany that all high achievers have. Sometimes they have it young in the life, sometimes later. But you're going to go through it if you're ever going to mount anything. So we're going to talk about that in the next one. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much, guys.

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