In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Andres Garzon, an award‑winning business coach and head of acquisitions for National Diversified Funding Corporation. Garzon shares a personal narrative of early entrepreneurial failures—poor due diligence, inadequate training, and lack of systems—that taught him the value of mentors, advisors, and business coaches. After several setbacks, his fourth venture succeeded, launching his coaching career. He emphasizes building businesses that can operate without the owner, treating the company as a cash‑machine that generates returns to fund further acquisitions. His overarching advice is to model successful people, absorbing patterns of behavior through influence. When reflecting on his younger self, Garzon stresses listening to one's inner voice amid external noise, linking this insight to his definition of happiness: aligning actions with personal desire and helping others. He recommends Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge for its focus on incremental daily actions, and cites Buckminster Fuller’s quote about beauty as a test of solution correctness. Listeners are directed to connect with Garzon via LinkedIn, his website (andresgarzon.com), or email (training@andresgarzon.com). The episode also includes a sponsor plug for Authors Unite.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Andres Garzon with us. He's an award-winning business coach who is the Australian head of acquisitions for National Diversified Funding Corporation, which is a US-based private equity firm. So welcome to the show, man.
Thank you, Tyler, and thank you for inviting me to your show.
Of course, man. Grateful to have you here. We'll jump into the first one. The first question I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
The best story from my life, and I guess the underlying message can be carried along with it, is that looking at new ways of doing things always it pays off. When I started in business around 20 years ago or so, 20, 21 years, my first few ventures were complete failures. I failed at doing the due diligence on suppliers I was going to be doing business with. I failed at knowing how to train people, how to recruit them. I failed at creating systems in our company. I failed at doing planning. I failed in so many areas. However, I kept on when one of the businesses would— we would have to close it down, you know, and we'd have to go back to investors and say, look, we lost the you lost your money. And then we need some more money to get another project off the ground. And so every time that we would go and do our next venture, our next business, I would take some of the learnings that I had and now I would do things a bit different to the time before. And after about the third the third business that we had started, then we, then I started really appreciating the help that I could get from advisors, mentors, and business coaches as well. And so I started now implementing things that I hadn't done before and doing things different. But the key is to that I just kept on trying because I knew I wanted to be successful in business. And all these failures meant that the fourth business became really, really successful. And from then onwards, I then also started my coaching career and I was able to start coaching business owners and bring to the table that wealth of resources of failures that I had along the way. Which gives me a huge range to be able to assist clients in what to do and what not to do as well. So I think that's probably the biggest story of transformation that I could share.
Yeah, I always say, man, that failure is literally a part of the equation for success. I don't know anybody who just succeeds, you know. Like, let's try it. It's a, it's a part of it.
So, um, that's right, Tyler.
So, uh, next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
The most valuable piece of information is that for, for anyone in, in business, the focus should always be how, how to build an enterprise that can operate without you as the owner. If you're thinking about a business as a cash machine, the machine has to be built in a way that the owner has enough time to go and acquire other machines, other cash machines. And so the key is to focus on the return of cash that the business is giving the owner. On a monthly, quarterly, yearly basis. So that cash can then be allocated to acquiring other assets, other businesses, or other types of assets. And so when the focus becomes that, then it becomes easier to build that enterprise around the owner. So then it does become a cash machine and the owner can go and acquire other assets.
And it could tie in, but what's your best piece of like overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Overall business advice. It's always to find someone that— find someone who's already doing what you want to do. Apart from being in business, I've had over 20,000 hours of coaching experience, so one-on-one coaching with people, with mainly business owners. And what happens after you've been doing this for a while is you start picking up patterns of behavior from different people. And as much as we want to see ourselves as individuals and We all have commonality in lots of our patterns. We're all human. And so the power of influence and the power of modeling, which is how our brain works, is something we need to be aware of. And so by finding people and surrounding ourselves with people who are already doing and reaching the outcomes that we want to accomplish, then we're allowing the power of influence to flow into us. And it really— I haven't seen any case that after someone investing enough time around someone who's already reached the outcomes that they want, that they don't get it themselves. That's what I see the vast majority of the time.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
There's a few there, Tyler Wagner. So the one piece of advice would be to pay even more attention to that voice within me. That guiding voice has power. Lots of the time, especially in the current market conditions, in the current situation in our world where we have so much availability of external influence, it's easy to forget or to put that voice aside and not listen to it because of all that influences coming out from the outside. There's so many ways that are, you know, people are telling each other what to do, how to do this, uh, the, the way to do it, or, or the way to, uh, to show it. And, um, and so we're, we're not finding it as easy to just listen to, to that inside voice and, and be guided by that. So that's one of the— that would be the advice I'd give my younger self.
And, um, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
In my opinion, the key to happiness, it's related to the last question you had, which is listen to that inside voice and let that voice tell you what it is that you desire, what it is that you, how it is that you want to invest your time that will make you happy and follow that. So do what you want, how you want, and when you want it. And if that type of activity in some way helps others, then that will create even more fulfillment. And so understanding yourself, understanding what it is that makes you happy, and designing your life around that is the key to it. I believe that if you follow that formula of focusing in and figuring out, finally asking yourself what it is you desire and consistently following that, then you'll be more and more fulfilled.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So I'm on a pattern of listening or reading about a book a week. And so I have several books which are in my favorite list for any listeners that are interested. I could give a list as well. One of the most powerful books that I've read is a book by Jeff Olson called The Slight Edge. And it's powerful because of the message of being able to attain not only happiness, but anything that you desire by following the formula of the small steps within the amount of time that we have available. And so he goes in-depth from an analytical, specific point of view of how to attain that.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote. So, you know, I have a few that I like, but the one of the— not just the one quote, but different, he's got different quotes, are from Buckminster Fuller. And so one of the ones that I enjoy the most about him is that if you're working on a problem, he never thinks about beauty, but when he's finished, if the solution is not beautiful, he knows that it's wrong.
Very interesting. I like that.
Yeah. Yes. Some really powerful work from Buckminster Fuller. And he's got some great books.
Awesome, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question that I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
People can find me on LinkedIn platform, or they can also go to National andresgarzon.com. So, so that's, that's our website. But yeah, they can connect with me on LinkedIn or they can write an email through to our Andres Garzon website. So that's training@andresgarzon.com.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for hopping on.
Tyler, it's been a pleasure and thank you for inviting me to your show.
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