The Heart of Business

"The Entrepreneurial Odyssey: Resilience in the Face of Risk" with Daniel Marcos

• Season 1 • Episode 6

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When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. But when life hands you a rollercoaster ride through the world of financial innovation and entrepreneurship, you make a podcast episode worth framing. Bringing to the mic the remarkable Daniel Marcos, co-founder and CEO of Growth Institute, we journey through his life story, filled with the ebbs and flows of a true entrepreneurial spirit. Daniel's path, while anything but ordinary, is a testament to his innovative foresight. Daniel shares the philosophy behind Growth Institute, merging the art of chasing dreams with the science of maintaining stability. His outlook on balancing ambition with personal well-being offers a blueprint for listeners navigating their aspirations. Learn from an individual who has walked through fire and emerged with a perspective that enriches not just his own life, but potentially yours, too.
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Resources:
Growth Institute
Find Daniel on LinkedIn
Find Growth Institute on LinkedIn
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Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.

Mo Fathelbab

Hello and welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, and today's guest is Daniel Marcos, co-founder and CEO at Growth Institute. Daniel, what a pleasure to have you with us today, welcome.

Daniel Marcos

Amigo, thank you. Super, super excited to be here.

Mo Fathelbab

I love the amigo. So good to have you with us. You know, you just reminded me of somebody that I really love, that we just lost, who also would greet me with the words amigo, and that's Jorge Cherboske. I don't know if you know him, but he passed recently of medical complications following a surgery. Let's honor him with a moment of silence.

Daniel Marcos

Yeah, I met him from our old days at YEO.

Mo Fathelbab

Yeah, what a big loss.

Daniel Marcos

What a big loss.

Mo Fathelbab

Thank you for telling me, mr, emotional Intelligence and just warm and fuzzy and always gave a loving hug and just an inspirational man. But you too are an inspirational man. Let's talk about you. Welcome again. Let's begin with the very beginning of your journey. So where did you grow up and what was it like?

Daniel Marcos

So I grew up in Mexico, Mexico City. That's why I know Jorge, you know we're all the ACBO. So I started so when I was a kid, I built an aquarium with some cousins when I was like eight or nine and then I sold t-shirts and I did a lot of things. I opened an auto detail franchise, a lot of things when I was young. But then when I was in college, I was looking for a new job, a new business to open, and my father was very worried by the way. I did really poorly in college, Sounds familiar. I had the worst GPA prior to my class and I was looking for the worst of everybody in your-.

Mo Fathelbab

You're always competitive, aren't you? I mean not just the bad grades, by the way important.

Daniel Marcos

This is important. I had the worst GPA in my class and I probably had the highest salary coming out. I'll explain why. Yeah, why During high school sorry, during college, by the way I did like five years of college, not just four, because I failed so many classes, had to redo classes Same here, by the way, five years and I worked three years for a brokerage house.

Daniel Marcos

I was a stock trader. So in the morning I used to go to an office and trade stocks in the market and then at night went to college for three years my last three years. So I was looking for another business and I told my father about my new business ideas and my father was very worried. So he called my older brother and said hey, your little brother wants to be an entrepreneur again and, as always, he's going to lose all the money, it's going to be a disaster and he's going to do poor in college. So why don't you get him a job that at least he gets a desk and he at least has more structure in his life? So my brother helped me get a job in a brokerage house in Monterrey and I worked three years.

Daniel Marcos

By the time I graduate, I was first a trader on the market and then I went to the promotion side to get clients to the brokerage house and I was already operating I don't know $20, $30 million for my clients when I was still in college. But it was good and I was making decent money because I brought $30 so million dollars to the brokerage house and then all the trading. So I was doing decently well. And I graduate and I got a job in Hong Kong working for the Mexican consulate in Hong Kong. I don't know if you remember 1997, hong Kong was leased to China. Yes, july 1st came back to China. Sorry, was this to England?

Mo Fathelbab

Yes, yes.

Daniel Marcos

So the those two years the year before and the year after the handover were very, very important years for Hong Kong and all the important meetings of the world the World Bank meeting and all the IMF and everything happened in Hong Kong. Because it was the last year and they all wanted to go to Hong Kong on the last year. So the consulate in Hong Kong had an extra position for two years for someone to be handling all the relationship. As an example, I went to the World Bank meeting and I was in a meeting with Alan Greenspan. I was carrying the briefcase of the Mexican head of the Mexican central bank and I was in the door holding his briefcase and he was in a meeting with Alan Griswold. Well, I was not in the meeting with Alan Griswold, but I was in the room with Alan Griswold, but things like that. So I was the kid in charge of like getting them through special immigration and everything in Hong Kong for two years. So the day Chris Patton was the governor of Hong Kong left Hong Kong, I was there to greet him or goodbye. So it was a very, very important moment in the world and I was there for a couple of years. But here's the important thing. So I go to Hong Kong as soon as I graduate.

Daniel Marcos

I stopped working in the brokerage house and I was already a very experienced trader. I'd been trading for three years stocks and options and bonds and everything. And I go to Hong Kong and I say, okay, great, the little money that I have I want to continue investing in. There was no way to trade from Hong Kong Mexican stock market. So I was like, why not? There's no online operation or anything. I had to call my broker for my broker to do trades over the phone. So I went online and opened an account in E-Trade and started doing trading in E-Trade and that way I realized that you could do trading online. The US already had hundreds of brokerage houses trading online. Mexico had none. After two years in Hong Kong, I resigned to my job, went back to Mexico to open the first fintech, the first financial technology company in Mexico in the internet.

Daniel Marcos

So I was the first one to bring financial information and trading stocks and everything online.

Mo Fathelbab

That is amazing, Daniel, that is I did not know that about you. What an amazing accomplishment. And was that your YEO or EO qualifying business?

Daniel Marcos

That's correct. That's what I qualified for you.

Mo Fathelbab

Yeah, and just for the people listening who don't know what EO is, that is the Entrepreneur's Organization, and the minimum sales requirement is $1 million in sales and you have to be the founder or owner of that organization and, of course, you qualified for that. At what age?

Daniel Marcos

At 25 or 26.

Mo Fathelbab

So that is really impressive. That also makes you one of the youngest members Indeed.

Entrepreneur's Successes and Failures in Business

Daniel Marcos

Let me tell you how that ended. I sold the company to a bigger competitor of mine in Argentina called Patagon, and he so this very. It was a great, it's a great entrepreneur in Argentina. He had already raised $8 million from Chase and he wanted to do a $50 million round of financing. Yeah, I don't know if you have understanding this, but when I started Finances Web, there was no one venture capital or private equity fund in Mexico. It's 1997, 1998. Not one Venture capital didn't exist in the country.

Daniel Marcos

So if you want to raise money, you have to raise money from family, friends and family, or you have to go to New York and raise big rounds. So if you wanted to do a private equity deal, you had to go to New York. There was nothing in Mexico. So this guy raised $8 million from chasing New York and then his next round was going to be 50 million. And the JP Morgan said hey, we'd love to give you 50 million so you could be the leader in Latin America, but if you don't have Mexico and Brazil, you have nothing In Latin America. Mexico and Brazil by far are the most important countries. So they told him open operations in Mexico and Brazil and then come and we'll give you the money.

Daniel Marcos

So he calls me on Friday and said there's a courier on the way to your office, there's a plane ticket going to you, I need to have breakfast with you tomorrow. And I was like you're my competitor, what do you mean that I need to fly to Argentina tomorrow? And he said Monday I'm going to open an office in Mexico City. You want to be with me or against me? Wow, and I'm going to raise 50 million. And I was like, okay, how much? Like let's put a number.

Daniel Marcos

So we end up putting a number. I flew to Argentina over the weekend, we put a number and we signed and I sold my company that weekend. On Monday we flew to New York from Argentina. We did the same with a company in Brazil and we flew to New York that week. We went to JP Morgan and said JP Morgan, here are the agreements signed, we have Argentina and, by the way, here we had Argentina, chile and Venezuela. And then that week he acquired Mexico and Brazil. So we went to JP Morgan and said now we have five countries, give us the money. And we end up raising 53 million from JP Morgan, goldman Sachs, microsoft, intel, carlos Slim, santander best round you could ever ask for Amazing. So we built a really, really big round. At that moment we valued the company at $100 million.

Mo Fathelbab

And again you're 25 years old.

Daniel Marcos

I was 25 or 26. Amazing amazing.

Daniel Marcos

We raised 53 and we went from 100 100 employees. That were the three companies together. A year later we were 1,200 employees. Wow, we went from 100 to 1,200 employees and sold the company to Banco Santander for $753 million back then. So if you just with inflation today it will be like a $4 or $5 billion company. So we got very lucky. We were exactly in the right moment at the right time and that allowed me to really understand scale and be able to be sitting in tables that I didn't have the opportunity at 25. I was buying brokerage houses for $50 million in Latin America. I was negotiating with the Mexican stock market. It was a great experience.

Mo Fathelbab

Well, that sounds incredible. So at that age you sell for that much money. And then what happens in your life?

Daniel Marcos

So I had to stay for a couple of years. For the new entity that acquired us we were nine CEOs, because by that moment we had already opened offices in four other countries. So we were nine CEOs of each of the countries and then we had a management team of five or six people. So when they acquired us there was a list of the 14, 15 people that had to stay for the transaction to go through, and that was one of the 15. So I had to stay for two more years. My earn out was a compromise that I stayed for two years. So I stayed working for Santander for two years. After two years I ended up getting paid and I left. And when I left it was kind of fast because I thought I was going to stay a little bit longer, and then the last months were very uncomfortable. So as soon as I got my earn out I left and I realized at that moment I was thinking what to do next and I had hired a lot of MBAs from Harvard and Stanford and MIT because I was the fastest growing fintech company or technology company in Mexico. All the Mexican kids that went to Harvard and MIT wanted to work for me. So I had internships with all these kids from Harvard and MIT and they used these jargons and PowerPoints that I felt I had no idea what they were talking about. So I felt that my employees knew more than me. They had gone to an MBA at Harvard and I had no idea what they were talking about. So I felt that my employees knew more than me. They had gone to an MBA at Harvard and I had no idea what was that. And so as soon as I left, I told my wife I wanted to do an MBA in the US, just to at least understand what it is. And at the moment already the starting of the MBAs had happened and the next intake was a year later. So I told my wife hey, why don't we travel the world? We have money in the bank, just married, no kids, let's travel. So I said fine, and we traveled like 15 months around the world. We went to around 40 countries, had a great time with my wife great round the world trip. And then we ended up going to Babson, babson Business School. I studied my MBA in Babson. So I landed in Boston, studied my MBA and from there moved to Austin and opened a mortgage bank. I opened a mortgage bank to finance undocumented Hispanics. This was 2004. I don't know if you remember.

Daniel Marcos

In that moment there were a lot of trends in the world, of course, but there were two very, very important trends. One was homeownership in the US. The secretary of HUD was a Hispanic guy, by the way, and he had a commitment to the president to increase homeownership in the USS, especially Hispanic homeownership. So that was a really, really big trend. And the second one, and why Hispanics? The census of 2000 was the first time the US corporate world really realizes the perching power of the Hispanic committee. Until 2000, no one cared about the Hispanic committee. There was no initiatives about the Hispanic Committee. Until 2000, no one cared about the Hispanic Committee. There was no initiatives about the Hispanic Committee. In the 2000, they realized there was like 16 million between documented and undocumented Hispanics with a really, really really strong purchasing power, and that's when all the big corporates started putting initiatives to serve Hispanics.

Daniel Marcos

So I moved to Austin, opened a mortgage house or, sorry, a mortgage bank and I started getting loans to undocumented Hispanics. So I moved to Austin, opened a mortgage house or, sorry, a mortgage bank, and I started getting loans to undocumented Hispanics through a couple of alliances. And then a friend of mine gets a line of credit with Goldman Sachs for 500 million in California and gives me the franchise for Texas. So we started growing really fast. So I opened offices 120 employees, I opened a title company, I opened an insurance company and I was growing really fast. So I opened offices 120 employees, I opened a title company, I opened an insurance company and I was growing really, really fast.

Daniel Marcos

And then 2007 came the subprime and I was shut down in a week. One day I got a call from Goldman and said, hey, no more. And I was like what do you mean? No more? I have 150 loans in the pipeline and I have 120 employees. And we had a program that we bought the house for our clients and then sell it to them two years later. We had like several divisions, yeah, and they shut me down in a day. Oh my God, yeah, it was really bad. I fired 120 people in one week. Yeah, it was really bad. I fired 120 people in one week.

Mo Fathelbab

So that was probably your first failure professionally, based on everything you've shared so far.

Daniel Marcos

So I had failures when I was but it was your failure. Yeah, but that was my big failure and it was.

Mo Fathelbab

It wasn't your failure, but it was something you probably saw as a failure.

From Loss to Redemption

Daniel Marcos

It was a big one. I got depressed. Indeed, let me tell this because it's important Most of my investors were in Dallas. I had raised money from investors, put all my money, we built a big company, right, we were 120 employees, we had a big scale-up, yeah, and I had opened the mortgage bank at the title company and everything. We were the only Hispanic-owned title company in the state of Texas. So that gave me some government contracts and we started scaling like a typical scale-up, with all the big things, and then we had to shut down.

Daniel Marcos

So I went to Dallas to tell my investors that we need to shut down the operation. And it was a very long meeting we probably was five or six hours meeting that we share all the data and everything and we realized there was we had two options or change to the US market because the subprime was destroyed. We had to go to the prime market or shut it down. There was no other option and we decided to shut it down because we were building it to help Hispanics buy houses and if the purpose was lost just being a typical mortgage bank, we were not the best operators, so it was not worth it. So I shut down the business and there was a million dollars to close the operation. We had lines, of credit, credit cards, leases, everything. So we said, okay, great, we lost all our money. But then there's a million dollars in debt. So each one has to put money to close. And everyone looks at me and said you're the operator, that's an operating debt, you pay for it. So I have put all my money.

Daniel Marcos

So I had no assets. Everything that I made from the first one I had put on the second one and then I had a million dollars in debt. So I called my wife and said so I called my wife and said hey, wait for me, awake, I have to drive from Dallas back. Let me explain to you what happened. I came back and said first we decided to shut down the company. A good thing is no one's going to sue me or anything. So everyone shake hands and sign a document, we're fine. But my salary was attained to the company. So I have no salary. There's a million dollars in debt that I'm accountable for. I have no assets. I lost all my money and, by the way, we have a work visa attached to the company. So no company, no work visa. We have a couple of months to get out of the US. Oh my God, it was not. It was not pretty conversation.

Mo Fathelbab

No no.

Daniel Marcos

And of course I got into a big depression. And of course I got into a big depression. I had gained a lot of weight in the last months. I was in a bad mood, so I did have much relation with my daughter.

Mo Fathelbab

It was it was not a good moment and and how did you, how did you come out of that depression? How long did it take you like six months, six months so many things happened.

Daniel Marcos

First I didn't understand this could happen, but I was waking up every day 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, sweating cold. My wife used to change the sheets every night because when I woke up everything was wet. Imagine the stress sleeping and many times I woke up crying. My wife woke me up because I was crying in the sleep. So it was a bad moment and I used to come down to the living room and just lie on the sofa in a fetal position and just cry or feel bad for myself and it took me probably a month or so kind of just doing that and then I said, okay, great, I need to start turning my life around and for me, exercise always has been the first thing that turns my life around.

Daniel Marcos

Whenever I'm doing something wrong, I realized I stopped doing exercise. I started gaining weight. So I said, at least I'm going to go out and run. So I used to leave my I'm going to go out and run. So I used to leave my house two, three o'clock in the morning just to get out because I had another thing to do. And it was interesting. I started walking and just seeing the sun come out and breathing and walking.

Daniel Marcos

I started feeling really good, hearing audio books. I remember hearing audio books, I remember, and I start getting back to feeling great and have ideas and read again. And then I got, of course I got several calls from people that matter, right, and that's when you realize who really matters in your life. And I would say I had three calls that really were the ones that that were important. Um one was my parents. They sent me a letter, um, and the letter said that there was a lot of things on the letter. But at the end they say life gives you very few moments to learn fast. And today life is giving you a great moment to learn, but you have so much pain that you don't even want to talk about it. You're not learning, so we need to talk about it so you learn. So I called my parents and said I'm in, what do you recommend? They said why don't we hire a moderator to help us have, like an intervention and let's have a conversation? So we hired a guy my mom does yoga and all these retreats and stuff like that and there was a guy that leads a community in Montana. It's a community of people that live in the mountains in Montana and we hired this guy that is the leader of the community to come to Austin for two days and we got in a room with my parents, my wife, this guy and myself for two days and it was rough but that helped a lot because we put everything on the table. We talked everything. There was, of course, divorce conversations with my wife and that was kind of touching bottom and pulling back. The second was a good friend of mine.

Daniel Marcos

He was the first employee of Google in Latin America. He was the head of Google in Latin America and he called me and said hey, why don't you become the CEO of Google Mexico? Google was just starting in the region and I was like I'm a terrible entrepreneur, I'm a terrible manager, I just broke my company so I cannot do it. And I hang up the phone. He calls me back and said what do you mean? Like you're one of the best entrepreneurs in Mexico. Like this is perfect for you.

Daniel Marcos

So I got into the process of getting interviewed by Google and, by the way, at the end it did not work. They called me and offered me head of operations, not CEO, after all the process and it took like six months. By the way, the hiring process of Google is crazy. They flew me, like to six countries, gave me 16 interviews in six months and then at the end, said here's the result we really like what you've done. We really like your management style, everything.

Daniel Marcos

There's one fear you do not understand the core values of Google. You do not live the Google core values. So we could not give the CEO position to someone that doesn't understand the core values of Google. So we want to give you the head of operations of the country for a couple of years and then two years we'll make you CEO.

Daniel Marcos

And at the moment I was already starting my consulting business. So I had to shut down my consulting business to do that and I was like I was thinking of staying two or three years in Google to go back to entrepreneur life. This is going to be. I have to be at this five or six? Yeah, I'm not willing to do that. And, by the way, the payment for the CEO was less than half of the CEO and I was already making with my consulting close to the CEO, so I had to do a downgrade, down payment or a downgrade of my payment Very big. So I declined the CEO position and it was, by the way, up to today. I'm not sure I did the right decision, because being the CEO of Google Mexico would have been a great experience. And then the third call that was important was Vern Harnish.

Mo Fathelbab

Vern Harnish, our friend Vern. All right, I had a feeling that was coming.

Daniel Marcos

Yes. So Vern coached me on my first company and I started learning with him Rockefeller Habits and all these things. And he called me and said hey, I've never had a good coach in Latin America. Why don't you coach in Latin America? And I was like Vern I don't trust myself to be an entrepreneur. How do you want me to coach someone else Like I'm an entrepreneur that went broke, and you want me to coach other CEOs? It makes no sense. And he said that's precisely why you went through such a rough moment and you've seen both a really big high and a very big low. You're the perfect person to coach other CEOs. Yeah, and I said, vern, but I need a job, I need to put on the table for my kids, I need to pay the school of my daughter and I was going to go back to Mexico to get a job.

Daniel Marcos

In that moment, that was 2008, 2009. The US was really bad economically and I was. I need to go back to Mexico to get a job. I had no visa. So Vern said, okay, go to Mexico, get a job. And then how are you going to pay the million dollars of debt? By the way, he said, with your salary, you will not be able to pay the debt and the interest on the debt. And I was like you're right. But today I'm not thinking about that, I'm just thinking about putting food on the table for my wife and my kids. And he said why don't you coach on the weekends? And whatever you make on the weekends, you pay your debt. And I was like that's a great idea. I'm going to get a job to pay my life and on the weekends I will coach.

Daniel Marcos

Six months into it, I was making more money on the weekends than on the week. So I resigned to my job, went full-time as a skating up coach and he was game changer. He was really, really important and, by the way, the best therapy I could have ever done help all entrepreneurs scale. Because I changed companies. We really made significant changes and every time I used to get out of the office with my clients I was like, oh, I really know how to scale companies, like things that I was recommending, starting to work, and I started getting a lot of confidence in myself. It was the best therapy I could have ever done to really figure out that I was a good entrepreneur and I knew how to scale companies. I love it. I love it. That's how I started coaching companies and, by the way, just quick story, four years later paid all my debt. I was making very good money, but I was traveling 250 nights a year.

Daniel Marcos

But I was the only coach in Latin America and I was getting all the big family business in Latin America. I coached the biggest sugar cane company in the world, the biggest roast company in the world, the biggest palm oil company in the world, like a lot of big companies that are family-owned in Latin world, the biggest roast company in the world, the biggest palm oil company in the world, like a lot of big companies that are family owned in Latin America. But there was no other good business coaches and then still there's very, very few good business coaches in Latin America. Um, so I went to burn and, by the way, my second son was born and my wife said hey, I cannot be a mom like a single mom and you're never here, right? And whenever I was home, I was so tired that I was not mentally there. So she said we need to do a change because if not, it's going to be. You need to be a father.

Daniel Marcos

So I went to Vernon and said I need to resign. I need to go back and do something that I travel less. And he said what are you going to do? And I said I want to do the same, but online I love what I do. I just want to bring it online. That's when online education was blowing up. So we built Growth Institute. Vern said, okay, don't leave you and I do it together. And we built Growth Institute. That's how it all started 12 years ago. Wow, wow.

Mo Fathelbab

So a couple of things that that I'm struck by is really about your parents. First, your father in the beginning and his, his concern about you being an entrepreneur, and I wonder if he saw maybe what you're doing is gambling in some way. If he had more of a traditional, like I grew up and you know you're supposed to be an engineer or a lawyer or a doctor or whatever. Uh, so was it similar in that regard?

Daniel Marcos

yes, so my father has a phd in economics from nordic, so for him, having a son that was doing very poorly in school, didn't care about about school, and then was an entrepreneur and he knew and he realized that I was a very, very undisciplined executive if you want to call it right.

Daniel Marcos

I was very undisciplined in my school. I was very undisciplined in my sports, in everything. So he knew that if I was not very disciplined I was going to be a disaster in business. So he saw that very, very clear. And that's for me, working for the brokerage house and then the consulate, it was game changer, because I never understood the discipline and the structure of business and when I worked for someone five years, it really gave me a lot of structure. It gave me a lot of discipline. It gave me a lot of discipline. It really showed me how things work and how you take decisions and all that.

Daniel Marcos

So my father, I think, got it completely right. And, by the way, if he had called me and said, no, you cannot be an entrepreneur, you have to get a job, that would have not gone well. So he knew what I needed and then he knew the best way to get it and then called my older brother that I admire very much and said hey, why don't you get a job for your brother and coach him Right? And my brother did that.

Risk-Taking and Growth Institute Philosophy

Mo Fathelbab

So that's amazing and impressive all at the same time. The second observation I have is how enlightened that letter from your parents really. You know that is not a common thing in any country, but you know to say, hey, what's the lesson and how do we move on? And we're going to support you. That really struck me. Can you talk more about that?

Daniel Marcos

It was not easy, by the way. So the moderator I fired him a couple of times.

Mo Fathelbab

He came back.

Daniel Marcos

I had divorce discussions with my wife and with my parents. It was not good, but they said if we don't put things on the table, we're not able to be able to learn. So the first day was really bad. We went back to when I was a kid and, by the way, I was a kid that had a lot of accidents. When I say a lot of accidents, it's a lot of accidents, I'm burned. You see, I have a lot of accidents. When I say a lot of accidents, it's a lot of accidents, I'm burned. You see, I have a burn here, my hand, my stomach, my legs. So when I was one year, 11 days typical kid of one year I was learning to walk.

Daniel Marcos

Uh, this guy was painting the garage, went to have lunch and let a bottle of thinner open. I don't know. You remember paint was very thick before you have to mix it with thinner before you paint. The guy left and left a bucket of paint open and a bucket of thinner open and I grabbed the bottle by mistake. I was trying to stand up something like that when I was a kid and he went through the floor, went to the boiler and blew up. Oh, so I was burned 83% of my body, uh, in third degree burns, and I lived in the hospital for almost a year, um, and then, when I was five months old, I went through some stairs and then I crashed several cars when I was younger, so I had a lot of accidents, um, and, and that was part of what came out there, right, I was always going, taking a lot of risks, yes, so that's, but so this is the what I wanted to get to exactly that word.

Mo Fathelbab

Uh, you took a lot of risks and to me, I think part of entrepreneurship is either taking risks or managing risks, or something about risk is really important. You know, I remember when I first left my job, you know, as executive director of EO, and what a risk that was. You know, to just go out with no income. That was, you know, to just go out with no income. So do you think you would have accomplished all you accomplished, irrespective of the dip that was really out of your control, without being the risk taker that you are?

Daniel Marcos

So that's an example. Let me walk you through. I continue to take risks but now I see the bad that could happen. Before I couldn't even see the bad right. I felt I was untouchable, I do everything and now I take more security on the back. I'll give you an example.

Daniel Marcos

When I was a consultant I was doing really well economically and then I told my wife I want to be an entrepreneur again. My wife gets depressed because she knew all the drama that happens with a scale-up. So we had a conversation and we went back and revisited a lot of the things that we've done and, as an example, my wife said hey, the stability of the house is your consulting. Um, so don't shut your company of consulting. Continue doing several clients. You have a minimum income to the house and that way I know sometimes growth easy to will not be able to pay your salary like any other startup, and those months I want you to continue having that salary right or that other income. So we kept the consulting and that has sometimes deterred my growth on Growth Institute but has given me a lot of stability financially and that company continues to do really, really well and I fund most of the growth from Growth Digital. I have funded with that, with consulting. We've never got really big investors some friends and family, and I fund a lot of that myself.

Daniel Marcos

And then, second, we as scaling up. You know, scaling up, we, we, we ask that our clients have six months of cash in the bank. That's one of my rules of scaling up on cash, you need to have options and having money in the bank is important. Yeah, so my wife said you ask your clients to have six months, I want to have six months. So we opened an account that I could not get money out for the business, I could just put money in. That I could not get money out for the business, I could just put money in.

Daniel Marcos

And before I started Growth Institute, I had to put six months of cash in the bank for the house. So whenever I was not able to get cash from the company, there was still cash for the house. So I continued to take risks. But now I see the bad that could happen, being there and make all these things to make sure, when you things don't go the way you plan, you have a fallback plan or you have other options. As an example, we have two houses. We have no mortgages in the houses so we don't want to be able to depend on me paying a mortgage being an entrepreneur, so those kinds of things, and that has helped significantly through my life after that. So I do take risks, but much more educated risks, always with a fallback plan or a plan B up there.

Mo Fathelbab

Yeah, I love the tension between risking it all and growing faster. Or you know what? What? I'm gonna put my family first and maybe not grow as much. But you know what? How big do we really need to be?

Daniel Marcos

yeah, yeah, before I couldn't understand that. For me it was impossible to think about that. I would just grow, grow, grow everything. Money, money, money, grow, grow, grow. And that was a problem. Yeah, that's with cars. I used to go very, very fast.

Mo Fathelbab

Uh, today I haven't had a crash in 20 years 25 years knock on wood amazing, but but it's very it's.

Daniel Marcos

It's just the way you attack life. Um, in everything you do, um, there's a phrase uh, the way you do anything is the way you do everything, and it's clear, it's very clear. I used to do everything to the limit and sometimes you miss the limit and you had accidents and you lose your company and you go bankrupt and all these kinds of things.

Mo Fathelbab

Amazing, amazing. That's just a lot of wisdom. So, daniel, before we wrap, this has been an amazing conversation. I love your story. I can't believe I never heard it before, but I do want to hear a bit about the Growth Institute for those out there that don't know what the Growth Institute is.

Daniel Marcos

So here's the philosophy behind it, tutas. So so here's, here's the the philosophy behind it. Um, as you, uh, you understand the old burning of giants and all that. Yeah, and that's one of first teachings you need a village of gurus to grow your company. One guru, one book, does have all the solution, and that's why I've read so much and, by the way, I have a lot of books in your library there.

Daniel Marcos

I know I have a very similar here and continue to be an avid reader. Do I do more audiobooks? But I still read probably 10, 12 books in paper every year, but I probably read 50 or 60 in audio. But we say you need a bunch of gurus. The entrepreneur usually is the only one that reads the book and then you have to lead the implementation of the improvements in your company and we're terrible with implementations.

Daniel Marcos

So we said how can we bring the best business thought leaders to the companies, mid-market companies, in a price and format that makes sense, not just for the CEO, for the full management team? Yeah, and that's what we create Growth Institute. So we go and look for the best business thought leaders and bring them in video with coaching calls and everything to help you implement all these methodologies with less drama and with all your team. And usually, as an example, just give an idea.

Daniel Marcos

People say, daniel, I want to implement scaling up and I'm like great, so you could buy the book for $20. You could come to a live workshop for like $500 for a day. You could come to the master business course for around probably $1,500 per person, but it's a three-month class, nine hours of video, 10 group 10. Group coaching calls masterminds everything, and we give you everything you could implement better. Or you could go into a consulting for a hundred $150,000, right, so you could implement, scaling up for probably three, 4,000, uh, with a lot of coaching and experience that it will be much easier to implement. So those are the kind of things we do and today we have 120 faculty one of the best faculties in the world Harish Salim, ismail, jack Stack, jack Daly, peter Diamandis, tom Peters we have a class with Tom Peters Amazing, amazing faculty. So it's a great way to do your own company university, if you want to call it, or your learning of your team, for a very, very inexpensive price with the best business thought leaders in the world.

Mo Fathelbab

And I'm honored to be one of those faculty. You're one of those, one of those.

Daniel Marcos

I had no idea.

Mo Fathelbab

I was in such good company.

Daniel Marcos

So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun and we've changed so much companies. So, just to give you an idea, we serve around 1,000 to 1,200 companies every year in 70 countries around the world. So we've had people purchasing in like 80, 90 countries, but every year we charge from around 70 countries every year and, interestingly, we've served companies in the weirdest countries that it will be very difficult to have that experience. As an example, we've had two clients in Iran and one day I get a call from one of my team members hey, we're trying to charge this client that their credit cards don't go through the system and I was like, why not? Well, they live in Iran. No Iranian credit card goes through a merchant account in the U S. It's impossible. So we had to get them to pay to a client of us in Canada and then they send us the money, uh, things like that.

Daniel Marcos

But but we've been helping companies all over the world scale and I'm really, really proud of that. We have a lot of companies in India, sri Lanka, bangladesh, indonesia, australia. We have a lot of Australian companies, so the impact has been great. It's been a lot of fun.

Mo Fathelbab

What an amazing story, daniel, really really such a pleasure to be with you today and to really hear your whole story. I'm blown away, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being a faculty of the Growth Institute.

Mo Fathelbab

My pleasure and honor and I love you guys. Every time I have a chance to work with anybody on your team, it's always a pleasure and, as you know, we have a very meaningful and important common friend in Vern Harnish, who I now gather has in fact changed both of our lives. So thank you and a shout out to Vern. Thank you, yeah, thank you Daniel once again. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, my pleasure, and follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on our visibility. So if you enjoyed today's podcast, please give it a thumbs up and we look forward to seeing all of you soon. Thank you again, daniel. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, emil, bye, bye-bye soon.

Daniel Marcos

Thank you again, Daniel. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Emilio Bye.

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Mo Fathelbab

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