When you're working with the startup, so how much of your do you get involved in the hiring
processes? Do you guys hire stateside as well as overseas? I saw some involvement that may involve
including team members in Central South America and Asia and beyond. Tell me about how you guys
look for talent. Well, yeah, we try to we try to find the right people for the right company.
And we know a lot of people in Central America, which is very cost effective and extremely
for the startups, because one of the things that happens is that when you're starting up,
you need to take care of every penny. Focus on building the right thing the right way and as
fast as possible and try it out. So, so yeah, we try to to connect the founders with the adequate
teams. But most most important before we do the all that we try to to make sure that the idea
polished as it can be before spending any money building. Yeah, yeah, just to take care of your
initial funds. That's very important. Absolutely. That's so with with where you're hiring, I don't
know if you know this. My my vision, right? I don't share it all the time on here, because I'm
usually just extracting visions. But my vision is to bridge the economic gap between North America
and South America. That's what I live for and build for. And that's why I was so excited. I was like,
I got to get Roberto on. I got to talk to him about about all things we're up to.
If you were to real quick, though, before we dive into the full conversation,
three of your favorite business books? Oh, my three favorite business books. Okay, so my number one,
it has to be Del Carney, Del Carney, how to make friends. And then my second. Yeah, yeah, that's
for that's number one, because if you can't sell, you're going to have troubles. You need to know
how to sell your stuff. And this is from 1937, by the way. Yeah, it's a muscle. I get to my kid when
he turned 13. And I've read it a number of times. I always want to read it back again, again. The
second book I recommend that that really was important for me is called The Goal. The goal is
about, yeah, how to execute execution. It's a real good book. I highly recommend The Goal. And my
third book, it's all right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame. I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there. What's up, Vision Pros? Welcome in to Vision Pros Live. I'm your host,
Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business. I'm super excited to have who you may
know as Robbie Palomo on the show today. I know him as Roberto Palomo. And we're going to be talking
a little bit in English as well as a little bit in Spanish throughout the show. And I'm going to
throughout the show. Well, I guess 50-50, no, probably not. More English than Spanish. Don't
worry. You'll be able to hang even without your chat GPT translating everything for you. Okay.
Before I bring Roberto on stage and we talk about business growth and the wisdom from all the
companies he's been able to help set up and the unfair advantage that he has in working with
Central and South American individuals, which creates an economic advantage for any startup
who's trying to get started where the living wage is much lower. The ability to live and provide for
yourself in certain countries is different than trying to live in, well, that's why I live in
Texas and not California for heaven's sake. I couldn't afford to live in California. Thank you.
So the opportunity to grow. One of the things I love about our first initial part of the
conversation was how we talked about being a wise steward of your funding, making sure the
foundation is laid solid before you make investments. That's usually a very important sign for great
leaders. So already impressed with that. Again, I'll bring it back on and we'll talk about his
vision and depth. Before I do that though, of course, I want to help you guys see some of the
other tools that we're utilizing and working with. Patrick Creighton of Laid Back Languages, he
teaches people how to learn foreign languages fast. And now this isn't, you know, if you want
Duolingo, that's awesome. If you're just learning for fun, you know, or just trying to learn a few
quips to the date or something like that, I get that. Patrick has impressed me tremendously because
I do speak Spanish fluently and the ability to learn it fast. You know, I learned it in four and
a half months. I was fluent and I didn't know that until I'd been speaking for 18 months,
but there came a transition anyway, beyond the point. How did I learn so fast? I had teachers
like Patrick Creighton in my life who helped me understand how to move forward quickly. He is an
amazing individual. If you're looking to learn foreign language to help strengthen your brand
or to help strengthen your relationships, it's something that's awesome. He's amazing what he
does. Deteo Publishing, deteopublishing.com is run by Ashley Deteo. She's one of my favorite people
on earth. She's also the best at R&D that I've ever come across. If you're looking for content
marketing, you're looking to launch a book, she's the absolute best. Feel free to go watch a few
previous episodes where I kind of go off probably too much and talking about the praise I feel for
Ashley. She's fantastic. Her systems are awesome. She publishes books for some amazing people.
You might be next. Without further ado, oh, one more thing. We always want to talk about the water
project. So as far as the water project goes, we've got millions of people on this earth right now
who don't have access to clean drinking water. All I'm asking is that you share the message with
other people. If you are in a position to give back, it's an amazing opportunity as well.
What you get to do is you get to see which communities need help, what exactly they're
going to build. And let's say you commit $5 to one of these specific community projects.
The water project tells you what's going on, what's happening with that, how they're teaching these
people how to maintain said solution for years to come. This creates a generational impact that will
certainly have a positive effect on the global economy as children are able to stay focused on
being in school rather than going to search for water that might not even be safe for their
families to begin with. It's something that's near and dear to my heart. I feel in my privileged
state of being able to podcast and being able to connect with business people in the United States,
I would never want to skip the opportunity to help where major help is needed. So with that said too,
if you have a cause that you'd rather see supported, you're like, man, I wish you would
talk about this. Drop a link to the cause and whatever you're watching from and give us the
grace of getting to learn about that. We might contribute to it ourselves. We might talk about
it on the show. When there's abundance, we should be abundantly giving. So with that said,
Robbie Palomo has been a founder of more than 12 companies. So I've decided I'm going to call him
the Baker because he's on his way to a Baker's dozen entities that he's been advising and helping
and supporting, or maybe he's passed that mark. We'll find out in just a minute. But the range
of companies that he's been helping involve tech, involve hiring Central South America,
involve growth in the United States. He's based out of Frisco, Texas. I do have a special place
in my heart for fellow Texans. So there's a lot of, just be ready, have a notepad, have a pen,
take advantage of this opportunity to learn from all the things that he's been accomplished with.
Roberto, thank you for joining me on Vision Pros Live Man. It's an absolute pleasure to have you
here. Hey, thank you so much, Jackson. I'm sure we'll have a great time together and congratulations.
Absolutely. Now, one of the things that some of my audience probably gets frustrated is like,
well, Jackson, why didn't you study his background? Why didn't you articulate exactly who he is?
I understand why you would want that, but I'm not going to robotically point out all the details of
somebody who has something that I value tremendously in business and that's tenure.
You're an old guy. I'm an old guy. I got my gray hairs coming in. How do you summarize that?
15 seconds, you can't, but it's wisdom. That's what's there. So Robbie, based on your background,
what are some of the accolades or the highlights of your background that the audience would really
appreciate hearing and knowing like, oh, wow, okay, that's who I'm listening to?
Well, probably the most important thing to say is that I've failed a lot. I've always started,
I'm very fast at starting it. I can start at any company within a year. I have a
running. I've learned how to do this better every time, but in order to learn that, I screwed up.
I started my first company when I was 22. That company is still around. It's a web
development company. We're specializing in banks in that company. But when you're 22,
you're trying to learn how to hire people, how to sell, how to keep your business going.
How to sell, how to keep clients on board. You make a lot of mistakes and probably that's
one of the most important things. The other thing is that I learned how to make models,
how to test them. And that helps me a lot in order to avoid the same mistake the next time.
So I try to learn from that and to teach, to share this information. I've been a mentor
for startups. I've been a judge for pitch competitions. I've been a university professor
and entrepreneurship matters. But most important probably is that I'm a company builder.
That's what I do. That's what I love. I'm a family man and I'm a basketball player.
We overlap way too much. My first company as well, I was 22. That's just weird. And then this right
here, most people don't know, that's LeBron James breaking the scoring record. So yeah, okay,
I got a fist bump. Okay, cool. We can get along. We can continue this interview now.
That's great, man. And I love that you led with the failure aspect. It's so easy to get caught
up in the hype. And it's so important for entrepreneurs, visionaries, founders to realize
that what they're going into, while it's fun and it's exciting, it's a jungle. It's a journey
that takes some serious chops and willingness to face extreme risks. Am I wrong about that or
do you agree with that? No, I totally agree. Totally agree. There are a lot of risks involved
in starting out. But one thing that I learned is how to calculate the risk. And this is what I
teach my kids. That's what it's all about. Don't take unnecessary risks. We take risk every day.
Make no unnecessary risk. And so what's an unnecessary risk is the first thing I say is
if you're not willing to lose it, don't risk it. If you're not willing to lose something, don't
risk it. Don't risk your family. Don't risk your health. If you're not willing to lose something,
don't risk it. That's one of my rules. And the other one is whatever you're going to win or earn
by risking whatever, it should be worth it. It should be worth your time, your energy,
your mind. So it has to be worth it. So if these two things, if you don't have these two things,
that's an unnecessary risk. That's just doing it because of ego or doing it because of whatever
reason, but not the right reasons. It very well could be. I appreciate that a lot. In fact,
I'm going to reinforce that a little bit. So it's advice that I either received and didn't listen to
early on, or it's advice that I didn't receive early on. I'm not sure which. It's very possible
I ignored it, but I did take the unnecessary risks. And while I still, there's some elements of that,
that one, I don't regret the path. I don't regret the process of learning. I know I had to learn
certain things at a certain time for my life. One of those risks was my family. I ended up divorced.
I think a lot of that did have to do with the unnecessary risks that were involved with the
process. On the same token, I risked my health. I ended up getting a back surgery at 28 years old
because I was spending a lot of time doing this on the computer and not enough time in the gym.
And when I was in the gym, I was going all out playing, I was playing four hours of basketball
with no stretches, and not taking care of myself the rest of the week. And so I share that not as
a pity party, my friends listening in, as a realization that if you haven't yet sacrificed
elements like that in your lives, use this opportunity to say, I'm going to draw a line in
the sand, and I'm going to make sure that I forecast my results faster. I work with somebody
who can help me not fall into those same types of traps. So thank you for sharing that, Robbie.
What's your vision for those that you serve?
Well, I think that one of the first things is be true to yourself. Be true to yourself,
to what really motivates you, and try to make things better. I mean, we're all going to die.
We know that. So for me, what I think, the important thing is to be true to yourself.
The important thing is not how much you accomplish yourself, but what's your legacy? How much you
leave behind for the others, because you know you're going to die, right? So for me, how are
you changing the status quo? How are you changing the situation? How are you changing your industry?
How are you changing your community? And you can make money while making positive changes.
It's not like they are divorced. So I like working with entrepreneurs and with companies
that share that vision. That's not just making money, because making money, and I mean, that's
okay. We all need money. Money is important. It's important to run business, to hire people,
to provide jobs, better jobs. That's important. But also, what are you leaving behind? When
you're gone, what's going to be left behind? What's going for the next generation to build upon?
Absolutely. That's well said. I mean, that's a big part of this podcast, too.
It's one of the reasons why I do it, is these, rather than me trying to do everything myself,
bringing people like you on to share. So it's your fault if people don't like my legacy, by the way.
I'm sure they'll blame. Podcasting is great, because the content will be there for a long time,
and people can adapt to that. Absolutely. Every little one of these episodes for me,
represents a rich dad, poor dad conversation, and an opportunity to dive into somebody else's
experience like that. So, Robbie, what's your vision for yourself? You got a long life ahead.
What else do you see on your horizon? Well, at this point in life, I'm reaching 50. So
on next year, I'm turning 50. And what I really like to do is to teach more. That's something that
I enjoyed while I was a university professor. I really enjoyed teaching. So that's something for
the future that I plan on doing more, writing more. That's also something that I'm planning on
writing a little bit more. I'd like to write short stories for kids. So that's something that I
really would like to do more. And also, have a balance, because working is important, as long as
you have an impact. Your work has an impact. You have to measure that. And also, family is important,
and you also have to measure your impact on your family. And for me, it's important.
I never miss a basketball game. I try not to miss a basketball game, at least a championship
basketball game of either of my kids, be with my wife on important dates, be with my mom.
And family is also important. I think that one of the errors, one of the biggest mistakes that I
made when I was younger, is devoting all the time to build and build and building, and not enough
time on taking care of the people I love, of myself, the community. You can be a fierce player
on your field, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a mean person, or that you have to be like
a shark. You can manage. So I think that's one of the most important things. And that's something
that I tried to do. Help people build stuff, build companies, build ideas, build upon that,
and see how that can grow and expand and have better lifestyles, have better families,
have better communities. I think that's the most important thing.
I love that. To go the opposite direction of what I said earlier, because life is full of paradigms.
We share one truth, I don't drink milk. And somebody's like, oh, he never drinks milk.
No, no, no. I just meant I don't drink milk right now, this month. I'm on a diet. So when I talked
about losing my family and the challenge related to the not preparing or going into unnecessary
gets on the flip side, I had the benefit of being a stay at home dad since my daughter was born.
So I've been there for the processes. And while we have limitations of access due to shared
custodies at this point, the ability to be intentional with my parenting has always been
my top priority, dad first, entrepreneur second. And it's a huge blessing. In addition to that,
you mentioned education. So we're going to share something on the screen real quick, because we
would love to have your influence further, no matter if that's five minutes, entertain me on
this show about it, or you're working hand in hand with us long term organized the trabajo
for Latinos. This is our group for Latinos to find work, to know how to get the job interview
skills that they need to learn that fiber and upwork exists and canva exists and train them on how
to do that, to get language classes from people like Patrick, to really, again, help bridge that
economic gap from South America and North America. And we have plenty of space in there.
If you or you know people who can help with the process, we need more doctors involved with the
hospital, right? We have lots of people who need help. We need more people coming in there and
leading the way, not just the gringo, you know, like, but people who are more relatable, in that
essence. You know, I've done this for a long time. I've been building that for more than eight years
and talking to people in Argentina, Uruguay, et cetera, trying to get a site for it. I'm so happy
that Cynthia and the team, they now represent the branding side of it, and they're able to show by
example that this is possible and that this is something that could be awesome. So I just want
you to know you will always be welcome in our community to throw some wisdom down.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll be very glad to share information or to help out in any way I can.
Thank you, man. That'll be great. That's an awesome project, too.
You know, I love it. Speaking of that legacy and balance you talked about, we don't have the
program launched, but it will be the name of our app, V, Balanced Entrepreneurship. That's what I
keep that in my mind at all times, so I never lose sight of it, and that's why we'll name the program
that. But in addition to that, the thing you said about legacy, what I work on is when I consider
going into companies, I think about my kiddos. I think when I work with this company, is this a
project that I'll be excited to talk to them about someday? Is this an entity that I want to talk to
my children about in the future? That's the number one thing that I'm excited about.
That's the number one determination. I don't look at it's not the brand, it's not the industry,
it's more the person who's leading the way with that. And me saying, if I align with them and my
kids asking me about that someday, is that a relationship that I'm going to be excited to
influence them and help them see what types of depths of opportunities exist in the world for
them, too? So, sounds like you're doing the same thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's trying to...
Networks are very important and building relationships and human interactions.
Right now, I believe that a lot is being lost and being 100% digital. And I think that having
those skills, having the human skills, is what really build relationships and can build
communities. That's the way to do it, by understanding each other and being able to talk to each other,
to being empathetic about it and understanding the problems of the community.
Absolutely. That's another strength that I'll... I don't want to get into race stuff,
culture stuff that I'm a little bad on my league in from a diplomacy standpoint, but one of the
things I love about Mexico and going there with my recent ex-wife, we were down there
and we had a little campfire cooking elote, cooking corn, makes the whole neighborhoods coming.
And they all know each other and they're all participating. We're playing loteria together,
playing bingo together and kicking the soccer ball together and everybody's hanging out with
each other. And my neighbor is here in my apartment complex. I've knocked on their doors,
tried to get to know them. It doesn't work. It's not the same as what's down there. There's a
balance that can exist. There's soft skills that need to be relearned in our environment. If we
want to achieve the best community, the best lifestyle as possible, we have an opportunity
to level up on that. Robbie, I'm going to switch gears real quick for you. I'm going to stop taking
the mic so often, but what would you say is the worst leadership experience that you've ever seen,
been a part of, experienced? What does that look like? What should people be aware of in terms of
bad leadership? Okay, so one of the worst leadership experiences I have seen and had to manage,
it was when one of the co-founders of one company, I was an angel investor.
And one of the founders was all about appearances,
how things seem to be and not actually how things were.
And I had a problem with that because the whole team started to build upon
possible outcomes, but not reality. A lot of show, but no substance.
And that is a fast way to lose trust. That's a fast way to...
Yeah, so that's one thing I had to manage because I believe leadership, one of the most important
traits that I try to convey and share is be true to yourself and be true to... There's no shame in
saying, I'm starting from scratch. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in saying,
I'm trying to close my first client or there's no shame in doing it. But when you try to
build up an image that's fake or that's just a facade that your team learns that
and you don't know what's true. You don't know what's real.
Oh, awesome. I'd say that that's one of the worst leadership experiences I have seen.
Yeah, that's probably it. I thought I was going to leave the mic alone,
but what you just added, we live in a world where image has become so valuable and so important
to people that a lot of people are creating these facades, I would even say on accident.
Now there's people who do it on purpose too, but when you build a phenomenal website because you
were given an amazing template and then you're able to use ChatGPT or put together basic common
interests by modeling Nike and what Nike says about their shoes and you come out with shoes
and you're able to model all the same things that you're doing on your website.
You're setting a precedence of expectations for people that they're going to judge you based on.
And you're right, it is one of the greatest things that kills reputations that people
don't realize. You bring the team in, the team's expecting to be working for Nike,
but you don't have any infrastructure whatsoever. And now there's a fight because you tricked me
and I thought that was this, et cetera. That's the transparency game. It comes down to those soft
skills of communication. Well said, man. I hadn't thought about that from the way you said it.
If you facade, if you put a facade on and your team members will start putting that facade, whoa,
that's an exponential problem. What's the best leadership experience if we were to go in the
opposite direction? What have you seen in terms of best leadership experience?
Well, that'll be hard to pick because I've worked with so many amazing founders and each of them
has had their own styles and some of them have been awesome and lead by example guys that they,
one of my oldest friends and my first co-founder, he was 17 when we started working together. So
he's turning 44 today. So he's a jolly guy. I mean, he's very knowledgeable. He knows about 26
different programming languages and he's great in cybersecurity, but he's a jolly guy.
He can work at times for banks. We have had the team, we have had to work for
days and nights and solve them issues that were potentially dangerous for the bank or having
cybersecurity threats that needed to be taken care of. He would stay with the guys
days and nights working on the issue and everyone would be happy.
The challenge was taken in such a good way. Everyone's excited to face the challenge together.
So he's a great team builder and everyone is always happy right now.
He has his developers and he has for tacos and he brought some PlayStation games and that's it.
So that is something that I really admire in his leadership style. He works so hard.
Even though he oversees a team, he can just say guys do this or guys do that, but when this is
going to be more work than usual, he's always in and he brings the pizza or he sends pizza because
we have guys working remotely, different places. He's a great team builder and he's a great
team remotely, different places. It's funny because if he has pizza for the guys working
in the office, he sends pizza to the guys working at home. That's awesome.
Another example of leadership is in another of our companies, we build smart stores.
It's like the Minority Report movie where it does who knows who you are. So we do that.
It's like a retail tech company. We don't go into the part of actually recognizing you because of
privacy issues, but we know how many people are sitting inside the store and depending on how many
customers you have, we change the music and we change the digital signage and we can send
promos depending on how many people are in the store. So we do that.
My co-founder and high school friend, he was one of those baby geniuses.
His leadership style is opposite to my other friends and his leadership style
is very math. But he hires his team, his development team with challenges. He keeps
on challenging the developers and the team and they love it. When there comes this intellectual
challenges, things I wouldn't know because he's a tech genius. But I see his leadership style and
it's totally different and we don't have a discerning on the team. We have had the same
guys together for 10 years because they love to build, they love to invent. They love it when
we have two patents and that was a huge thank-you for everyone on the team. They were like,
hey, this is good. So two different leadership styles and both of them are very true to themselves.
I think that's an important thing. Lead by example on the one side and lead with challenges,
challenge the mind of people and making them part of building something new and having them
become part of the success of the company on the other side. I think those are two great examples
of leadership that I've seen very closely. Oh, dude, I love that. That's my favorite
best leadership experience we've had to date because of the parallel of the two different,
the harmony that exists with two different styles. But based on a clear vision and identity
that created a culture where people then gravitated towards belonging. That's so cool
that they both did that in different ways. We as leaders all have the opportunity to do the same
thing, figure out, okay, what do we want? How do we want this office environment feel? How do we
want to facilitate that? Also, that was really cool how he's remembering to send the pizza to the
people who aren't physically in the office. That reminds me that as entrepreneurs, we have the
opportunity, one of the funnels I see a lot of entrepreneurs forget about is their in-house
funnel. They're clients that work side by side with them every day. The people we hire, the people
we bring on as team members, that's our frontline. If we're not taking care of them, how are they
going to turn around and take care of the people that we're trying to bring in as our ideal
prospects? It takes a diligent energy and investment of time and resources to pay attention to your
teammates. Yet, there's also an abundance that comes from doing so. Thank you for sharing that.
All right. Let's pretend that this is the last opportunity that you ever have, Robby, to share
one powerful lesson with visionaries that they can learn from your experience. What would the last
lesson be? Well, the most important one for me is don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to
fail. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I think many people say this, but with social media around,
I find that many founders are terrified of making a mistake because of how they would look on
Instagram or Facebook. Really, it's not that important. It's not that important.
I would say that the world is being changed by people who are not afraid to make those mistakes,
who are not afraid to go out there and do things. If you're doing it for the right reasons,
I, for instance, I don't believe in blame. I don't think that blame is... I don't think it exists.
The blame that someone's blaming you for this... Dude, I mean, unless you're doing something bad on
purpose, you believe that you're trying to do something good or leave something better than
you found and you made a mistake. That mistake, if you're trying to do something well, you're
trying to do good for someone else or for yourself or for your company, and you make a mistake,
man, that's okay. It's not what to blame. It's better than just sit and do nothing.
All right. I would say that one of the most important things that I would tell fellow
entrepreneurs is stop paying so much attention to what other people think,
to how you look on your social media or how you look outside. I mean, it's important. You have
to have a marketing department, of course, so you have to do sales. You have to do that. I'm not
saying that that's not important on the commercial side of things. If you don't sell, then whatever
you're doing is a hobby. But what I mean is when you're really starting out, you can't be afraid
to fail. You have to know that, oh, sorry, that you will fail, that you will make a mistake or
several mistakes. And that's not the problem. The problem is, are you able, willing, capable of
making this better, of understanding that mistake? Why did it happen? How can you make it better?
Can I all try again? Do you have the resilience to do that? And the other thing is never wait for
ideal situations. They never come around. Nothing is ideal. I've had so many good founders that they
lost their moment because they were looking for ideal, ideal time. No, it's not done. No,
we have to try it out, go out and sell it and say it, be truthful, say, hey, I think we still
can develop this, this, this, and this, but would you like to try it? And some other good founders
have done just that, have just gone and tried things out and say to the customers or to clients,
hey, I'm building this. Do you want to be a part of this? And then that's how you do this. Ideal
ideal is never around. In my experience, it's when you send me out this form to get to know each other
better, I recall this experience that, you know, Central America is a beautiful place. Now it's
beautiful. It's awesome. Everything's nearby, good people and stuff. But when I was growing up,
I was raised in Central America. I was born in Pittsburgh. I'm a Steelers fan.
We haven't had such a good season this season, but I still have a Steelers fan. But I was raised in
Central America. And when I was a kid, the whole region was in the middle of civil wars and we had
like two earthquakes and floods. And so I learned how to live with uncertainty. And when you asked,
you asked the question in the forum, and I remember this time when I was starting out, I was
with one of my first companies and I was going to visit a client in Honduras that
that's, so I took a bus. It's like a nine hour ride on the bus. And of course I had my cowboy boots
on because I, at the time I always had my cowboy boots on, my jeans, my jacket, my computer. And
then when we were reaching this San Pedro Sula in Honduras, one of the mid-cities, we were stopped
by a group of, by a community that was, they were revolting because of water. Actually it was
because of a water situation. So they were revolting. So they helped our bus. They held it hostage
as part of their business for the government. So there it was with 30 other people on the bus.
And during the night they had all this, that the army tried to come in. They couldn't and they
had, they were shootings and they were, and they would come in and hit the bus with sticks and with,
you know, like this image of Frankenstein being followed by all the, with forks and sticks.
With forks and stuff like that, yeah. Yeah, hitting the bus and
jowling to us and screaming. So we didn't sleep at all. They would, you know, they would-
Rock the bus too.
Yeah, they rocked the bus. It was a very bad night. I managed to send some messages to my
family and say, hey, I don't know what's going to happen here. But every next morning, so
around 5 a.m. in the morning, I picked and I saw that the guys were, they were exhausted because of
the night they had had. The ones who were holding us and giving us hostages, they were exhausted.
So they were asleep on the sidewalks, on the side of the roads. So I just grabbed my computer.
I opened the door of the bus because the driver had kept it shut.
And I said, I'm walking. Willing to run with my cowboy boots. Yeah, not ideal. The situation,
those were not the ideal shoe word. That's not what I would have to run away from a hostage
situation. That's what I had. And that was the window of opportunity.
So I took it and I said to the guys on the bus, hey, look, guys, I'm out of here.
If anyone wants to come with me, okay, now is a good time because these guys are exhausted.
They wouldn't be able to follow us. They won't be able to follow us. So if it's now or it's never,
or it's, I don't know.
Which knows what.
Yeah.
Yeah. So the only thing is that if you come and we need to run, I'm not going to wait for anyone.
I'm going to run. So that's the only thing that I really need to say right now because
we don't know what's, how long, how far we need to walk or run.
And sure enough, five or six people say, okay, we go run.
And we started walking. That's how we escaped. And the guys who stayed on the bus, they had to wait
to be rescued like 24 hours later. And so same thing.
How fortunate, how fortunate that they were rescued. You know, you don't know the outcome.
You'll never know the outcome. You never know the outcome. And the same thing happens when you're
starting a business. And you're not going to be able to do that. And you're not going to be able
to start a business. The ideal situation will never come. If you have to run with boots, do.
If that's what you got, go.
Absolutely. I love that. I got your quote here, two of them. I think the last one there, but,
but don't take unnecessary risks and don't be afraid to fail. Right. Huge. I love the harmony
in what you're talking about. And the world of non-musicians often misses the reality
that harmony means you have two different notes of two different levels, right?
The ability to have seemingly opposite realities combined, even discord is a fantastic
course of music. And so when it comes to building, right, knowing how to apply the wisdom that
Robbie just gave us in your life as a visionary, knowing where it applies, when it applies, how to
pull that all together. That's, I know, I hope that you develop a strong sense of intuition
within yourself. You only know when you have the boots on, you only know when you're in that thing
that you have to escape. It may not be as clear as a bus being rocked by people. It may be even more
dangerous and more scary than that. We don't know. I can't predict what's going to be ahead for you
in your life, nor can Robbie, but if you stick to the principles, you'll typically end up with a
better outcome than if you don't. And there is a sense of long-term value from living by what I
would call the law of the harvest as we tie all of this together. And that's, you're going to reap
what you sow eventually. And if you believe that and you trust in that, then you can survive the
tougher times where other entrepreneurs may fold the cards and decide, you know, well, let's not
move forward with this. So with all that said, last thing I'll cover is you talked about blame.
And I agree wholeheartedly. Any decision I've ever made that has led to a less than exciting outcome
or an awful outcome, whether it was a lawsuit that occurred or whether it was $67,000 that didn't get
paid to me, you know, not mentioning a specific number for any reason, but whatever has not
happened, it was my responsibility to start that relationship to begin with. It was my responsibility
to cultivate that relationship at a different capacity. I was the one who chose to take the
contract. I was the one who chose to work with those individuals. I'm the one who chose my
relationships in life. It is always, I always have responsibility in the circumstances that I'm in
and the moment I turn that over to others is a moment I become a slave to whatever decision,
whatever thing I've given that I've given authority over the rest of my life. Right. And the only
person I'm willing to turn my will over to is God. And I'm very willing to do that. That's just my
personal take on it. This was awesome, Robbie. We do have to shut down fast because I got kiddos to
get to tonight. But this is so good. Vision Pros, if you have any questions for Robbie, any comments
about this, by all means drop that in the comments. We'll make sure to tag him and let him know.
If you want to be a Vision Pro, if you want to be a guest on Vision Pros and share your vision with
us and with our audience, then by all means, definitely feel free to apply. And then all the
resources we talked about, we'll be putting them in the landing page as well. So you can access
those. Feel free to subscribe for updates as well. Robbie, this was amazing. Thank you so much for
joining us on Vision Pros. Thank you, Jackson. I had a great time and I'm happy to help. Happy
to help if anyone wants to just bounce ideas around or want to learn a little bit more on how
I started startup or how to build custom lab without failing at the early stage because
you might fail. You will make mistakes. Just look me up on LinkedIn and drop me a line and we can
chat. I'm almost open to chat. Vision Pros, take him up on that. He said, don't be afraid to fail.
Right. Don't be afraid to reach out and see what happens in that regard. Robbie will be doing the
same with Operturri Andares. I'll see you there. Everybody have a great, great Christmas. We'll
see you before then. Bye-bye. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into
Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an
excellent day.