#61 Build, grow, invest with Cruz Gamboa on scaling your business the smart way

TRANSCRIPT: THE bizval PODCAST
Guest: Cruz Gamboa, Founder and CEO — Ascend Growth Ventures
Host: Graham Stephen, CEO and Co-Founder, bizval

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[00:00:16] Graham Stephen: Okay. Okay, count it down. Welcome to the bizval Podcast, where we talk to founders, CEOs, and investors about building and valuing businesses that truly matter. I’m Graham Stephen, the CEO of bizval, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Cruz Gamboa, the founder and CEO of Ascend Growth Ventures.

[00:00:40] Graham Stephen: Cruise has had an incredible career expanding, you know, Unilever, GE, and Corporate America before stepping out to build Ascend. It’s a firm dedicated to helping founders scale their businesses

[00:00:54] Graham Stephen: beyond the sort of magical $10 million mark, with clarity, discipline, and purpose. Cruz, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

[00:01:03] Cruz Gamboa: Thank you so much, Graham. It’s great to be here on the show, and I’m really looking forward to the conversation.

[00:01:10] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. I mean, we were talking a little bit about this pre-show, and saying, we’re just going to have a conversation. For those of you who’ve listened to the bizval podcasts, it’s about a conversation. So, Cruz, you’ve been in the US now, I think, 22 years, if I remember correctly, maybe a little bit longer, but don’t you want to tell us a little bit about your…

[00:01:29] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, go ahead, with some, with some, you know, interruptions, I, I lived in Latin America for a little while, then came back, yes.

[00:01:38] Graham Stephen: Yeah, fantastic. So tell us a little about your early journey, you know, where did it all begin? You know, a bit about your upbringing, and yeah, how did you get to where you are now?

[00:01:49] Cruz Gamboa: That’s an interesting question. So, look, I’m… I was born in Venezuela, okay, and when I was 14,

[00:01:57] Cruz Gamboa: I don’t know if you remember that guy, like, Hugo Chavez, like, he literally, like, tried to do a coup on the Venezuelan government.

[00:02:06] Cruz Gamboa: And actually, I was… I was watching, like, the planes when they were, like, you know, when they were trying to take over the country, and I was just like…

[00:02:14] Cruz Gamboa: I just need to get the hell out of here. It was just, like, at that moment, I was just like, I’m just gonna get the hell out of here. I don’t wanna live in this country. This is crazy.

[00:02:26] Cruz Gamboa: And, so basically, you know, my mind started solving for that.

[00:02:32] Cruz Gamboa: And, like, literally, when I was, like, 16, 17, I… I… by… completely by accident, I learned about, this program that gave…

[00:02:42] Cruz Gamboa: scholarships to individuals, talented individuals with, you know, you have to go through all of these hoops and whatever, and, like, you know, take tests, and I did all of that, and I got a full tuition scholarship to come study in the U.S.

[00:02:56] Cruz Gamboa: So, that took me four and a half a… four and a half years. And and then, you know, when I came back, because when I graduated, I came back again to Venezuela, and I literally stayed, like, 6 months, got a job at General Electric, well, at first at Unilever.

[00:03:11] Cruz Gamboa: Then I moved to General Electric, and then after that, I never went back. So I… initially, my… my path took me…

[00:03:20] Cruz Gamboa: to sort of the CFO route, so I was in finance. I was, initially at GE, I was a finance trainee, like, they call it the FMP, Financial Management Program. And from there, I, you know, became finance manager, FB&A analyst, then later, I went to,

[00:03:40] Cruz Gamboa: G Capital, and that was just one of the most fantastic experiences I’ve had, because it allowed me to, see a ton of deals, a ton of deal flow, just learn how a lender will look at a company.

[00:03:52] Cruz Gamboa: I was, basically my… so my clients were mid-market, companies, and we did, like, 50 to 75 million loans.

[00:04:01] Cruz Gamboa: So, it was, it was really fun, it was really interesting. I mean, I got to apply a lot of the stuff that I knew on finance, and then I realized that I also like helping these companies grow. That was the thing that excited me.

[00:04:15] Cruz Gamboa: I was like, when we closed the deal, it was not only about closing the deal, but just about getting them the capital that they needed in order to get to the next level. And I always, as a…

[00:04:25] Cruz Gamboa: we had that model back then, like, like, eat what you kill, so when you close the deal, you have to stay in the por… sort of in the portfolio management of the company, so I…

[00:04:35] Cruz Gamboa: It was really… it was, for me, it was a fantastic experience to see, you know, closing the opportunity, closing the loan to the client.

[00:04:43] Cruz Gamboa: And then just kind of, like, shepherding the whole process throughout the years, and, like, how, like, you know, the additional people they hired, the things they built, how they grew, and being able to go through the ups and downs and be there with them. And I think that kind of, like, you know, that…

[00:04:59] Cruz Gamboa: energy somehow has followed me, because… after I did that, I, you know, I became capital markets leader for, GE,

[00:05:08] Cruz Gamboa: just helping all of our clients in Latin America to get funding. So here again, I was another quote-unquote, almost consultant to all of the clients who were trying to look for capital, and, you know, just helping them come up with ways to finance.

[00:05:25] Cruz Gamboa: GE equipment, or to finance the projects, sometimes to even get equity from some of our, sort of, the network of investors of General Electric, sometimes with local investors and whatnot.

[00:05:39] Cruz Gamboa: So, you know, that whole experience ended up taking me into the power industry. So GE had a division called GE Gas Power, and they had the biggest, largest deals, at least in Latin America, and probably in anywhere else, to be honest, because every gas turbine is, like, 30, 50 million bucks.

[00:05:59] Cruz Gamboa: And, yeah, so I got, you know, because of my finance background, my capital markets background, it was a perfect fit, and I was doing the same thing that I had been doing from day one, almost.

[00:06:10] Cruz Gamboa: And, yeah, so that took me to then become CFO of the business, which I, you know, as a CFO, I spend a lot of time doing CFO things, but also, talking to clients and helping understand, like, sort of their needs, and also, most importantly, working with the team to give them financial intelligence to, to.

[00:06:29] Cruz Gamboa: sort of structure our offers in a way that it would be, like, irresistible for our clients so that we could win more business, and that’s what we did. We had a record year, in, you know, the year that I was seen as a CFO between me and the general manager.

[00:06:45] Cruz Gamboa: It became a $2 billion region, when in the past it was, like, combined sales and new units were, like, less than $800 million.

[00:06:54] Cruz Gamboa: So it was a… it was… it was a big scaling success. So, all of that, you know, led me to other opportunities, then became business development, sales, became the,

[00:07:09] Cruz Gamboa: back then, you know, I wanted to start going more… I was kind of, like, I was really interested in not only doing, like, gas turbine stuff, but I also wanted to do more, like, clean energy type of projects, so there was an opportunity to become the decarbonization leader for the Americas. I took it, so that was… that was a really interesting opportunity. Then…

[00:07:29] Cruz Gamboa: Then after that, I, you know, I went into a startup, and then I opened my company. So that, that is the, sort of.

[00:07:37] Cruz Gamboa: the complete, the complete history of how I got to where I… to where I… to where I am. But I, you know, as you can see, there’s a…

[00:07:46] Cruz Gamboa: there’s just something that has been… there’s some, like, breadcrumbs along the way, right? I left breadcrumbs to get to where I am.

[00:07:54] Cruz Gamboa: First of all.

[00:07:55] Graham Stephen: I mean, it’s… it’s…

[00:07:56] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:07:57] Graham Stephen: It’s fascinating, and sorry to interrupt you, but I mean, I think when we first met, you know, our stories are quite similar in many ways, you know, as having started career in corporate, and I think…

[00:08:08] Graham Stephen: you know, it’s quite interesting, like, nowadays, it’s quite binary. Are you in corporate, or are you entrepreneur? You know, the two are kind of, like, mutually exclusive, but I think… I think it’s not so much about that, it’s… it’s actually an evolution and a growth, and even if you’re in corporate.

[00:08:22] Graham Stephen: if you take the opportunities to learn and grow and discover different things, it’s not as though you land in a job and you stay in that for the next 30 years. If you’re naturally curious.

[00:08:33] Graham Stephen: and you’re wanting to figure out how to do different things, there’s a ton of opportunities, and if you just kind of, as you say, follow those breadcrumbs, it kind of leads you down a path. You don’t quite know where it’s going to end up one day, but it’s about being…

[00:08:47] Graham Stephen: Having a mindset, I guess, that says, hey, if an opportunity presents itself. Do I take it or don’t I? And making those decisions. And it seems like, through your background and your career, that’s pretty much what happened, you know? From the days as a 14-year-old kid saying, hey, listen, I want to get out of here, maybe that was your initial motivation, through to where you’re at now. It was that sort of…

[00:09:08] Graham Stephen: Yeah, following the breadcrumbs.

[00:09:11] Cruz Gamboa: A thousand percent, and I will tell you more. I will double down on what you said, because a lot of people say, but Cruz, like, you know, you’re a corporate guy. You know, at some point, that was one of the things that people told me.

[00:09:22] Cruz Gamboa: And I was just like, yeah.

[00:09:24] Graham Stephen: I was, but I was just not like any other corporate guy, right? Because I was working with clients.

[00:09:30] Cruz Gamboa: I was actually… at some point when I… I worked at NBC when it was owned by, General Electric, and for example, I was part of the business development group.

[00:09:40] Cruz Gamboa: doing, just incubating, new companies. So, right there, I was being, sort of a startup.

[00:09:49] Cruz Gamboa: employee or a startup, not a founder, because I didn’t found them, but I was supporting the growth of them.

[00:09:56] Cruz Gamboa: so it… that’s been a part, like, something that has been always a part of, like, what I did, and, like, I’m just keep, like… Yeah. I’m just, like, I’m doing therapy right now with you, okay, Graham? So, so, I’m… I’m remembering my, my, my gas power.

[00:10:13] Cruz Gamboa: years with General Electric.

[00:10:15] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:10:15] Cruz Gamboa: And now that I think about it, it’s, you know, I was pretty much doing… I mean, I had free reign. I was just doing whatever I thought I needed… needed to be done. I mean, I had very little supervision. I mean, I was lucky enough that I closed a couple of big deals. My first big deal was an $800 million deal.

[00:10:36] Cruz Gamboa: And, it was, it was, like, redefined, like, it totally redefined the way we did business in Latin America. Then I supported another project that was, like, $1.2 billion. And then I had other smaller ones. I took…

[00:10:52] Cruz Gamboa: a client from, like, zero. Literally, I was thinking about that yesterday, to be honest. This company in Argentina had, like… it was a very successful family in the agro business.

[00:11:06] Cruz Gamboa: But they wanted to be in the power business. They understood the magnitude of the power business, and they just wanted to be part of it. But they had no experience. So I literally sat down with them from where they only had, like, a PowerPoint, okay, to helping them identify the right resources.

[00:11:24] Cruz Gamboa: To helping them identify what, like, what would be a strategy for bidding. to helping them identify, like, how much money they would require, what were their risks, okay? Then to navigating GE so that we can actually help them and take a certain amount of risk that was still palatable for GE, and it would make their deal, financial.

[00:11:46] Cruz Gamboa: To actually getting all of that executed. to actually getting the financing from the banks, to actually getting our money, because we actually ended up helping them a little bit, so getting our GE’s money out of… out of that deal, and doing a, you know, basically creating a syndication for that opportunity. So, I helped them from, like, zero to a billion dollar companies.

[00:12:09] Cruz Gamboa: And I was like, and I somehow, I somehow, I forgot about that, you know, Graham?

[00:12:13] Graham Stephen: But, you know, fortunately, you weren’t in Jack Welch’s bottom 10%, so you didn’t get fired at your performance review, so you had a little bit of…

[00:12:28] Graham Stephen: headroom, so to speak. But, I want to just dive in a little bit, you know, I think something you spoke about earlier, you said that, you know, you… you had this philosophy at GE that, you know, if you invest, you stick around, and you… what were the words you used?

[00:12:44] Graham Stephen: you kind of have to get involved in the business. You know, and a lot of investors aren’t like that. They’re passive investors. They invest, and then they kind of step away. But I guess that did a couple of things. One is you had to have conviction in the investments you were making, and then you…

[00:12:59] Graham Stephen: technically, I guess, had skin in the game, even though it wasn’t your own money, there was definitely emotional skin in the game in those investments, so…

[00:13:06] Graham Stephen: Maybe if you could just talk a little bit about how did that culture kind of… influence things. I mean, you could have been at another investment firm where it was, like, passive investing, but do you think that shaped a little bit how you… how you think about the world?

[00:13:20] Cruz Gamboa: I gotta tell you that my experience is very unique, Graham, because General Electric is very much a company that, at least that the General Electric of the past, did not reward, like, risk-taking to that degree.

[00:13:36] Cruz Gamboa: Like, risk-taking had to be socialized. You know, it had to be, like, you know, you have to have a lot of grown-ups in the room to, to support something that was, that was risky. It was, and it took a lot of, a lot of convincing, a lot of aligning people, etc.

[00:13:51] Cruz Gamboa: For me, it, it, the first deal that I closed, the $800 million deal, it was a big power plant, it was a matter of survival.

[00:14:01] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? Because I, you know, back then, I was married to this woman who was Argentine, and she wanted to live for a few years in Argentina, and, like, I got transferred to Argentina, just to… because I wanted to, to please her, I guess. And, so we…

[00:14:17] Cruz Gamboa: there was nothing going on in Argentina. There has been… 5… At that point, it was, like, 5 combined cycles.

[00:14:26] Cruz Gamboa: Each for $800 million. It’s like $4 billion that we just… he didn’t see… didn’t even participate.

[00:14:33] Cruz Gamboa: I think. They only sent, like, I think it was just a quote or something like that. It was not even… they were not even part of the bid, okay? So, I understood, and my boss said, like, hey, we’ll give you a couple years, okay, to develop this market, but if not, you’re coming back.

[00:14:49] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? So for me, it was about… it was about survival. I had to do it.

[00:14:55] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:14:55] Cruz Gamboa: And I think if you, if you want to take the, Sort of the wisdom from the situation is that when you… When you are in… in…

[00:15:08] Cruz Gamboa: When you put yourself in a situation where it’s really scary, Okay? That’s where you have the biggest opportunity for growth. And even if it doesn’t go your way, because it could have… it could have not gone my way, okay? I could have not have closed a deal. Let me be absolutely clear, I got lucky, okay? Well, lucky. I mean, I did a lot of work.

[00:15:28] Graham Stephen: Perfect.

[00:15:28] Cruz Gamboa: Which, you know, one day we can talk about, like, how it affected me, but so… but it could have gone the route of…

[00:15:36] Cruz Gamboa: Me not being able to close the deal. And then having to decide whether I was going to maybe not come back, go somewhere else, you know what I mean? It would have been a different reality, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

[00:15:52] Cruz Gamboa: Because what happens?

[00:15:53] Graham Stephen: happened is.

[00:15:53] Cruz Gamboa: happened, and I can assure you that all of that fear, all of that stress that I went through.

[00:16:00] Cruz Gamboa: in a way, it felt really bad and scary at the time, but it really, it really made me who I am today.

[00:16:08] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:16:08] Cruz Gamboa: Does that make sense? It was not about the results.

[00:16:12] Graham Stephen: about a month.

[00:16:13] Cruz Gamboa: the journey.

[00:16:15] Graham Stephen: Absolutely. I think, you know, it’s… you know, sometimes whether you succeed or fail in the traditional sense is a matter of luck and timing and circumstance. But that ability to kind of deal with what’s in front of you.

[00:16:30] Graham Stephen: and make a decision around that, good or bad, I think is… is actually the entrepreneurial spirit, right? Is, you know.

[00:16:39] Graham Stephen: dealing with what’s in front of you. It’s a bit like the breadcrumbs, you know. Yes, you can plan ahead, but that only… that’s only possible to an extent. So, I want to move on a little bit from that. So, you’ve been at GE, you’ve been in corporate,

[00:16:54] Graham Stephen: you know. was there anything in that sort of corporate journey? And you had a lot of success, but what in the corporate space started to frustrate you? What were the things that kind of…

[00:17:06] Graham Stephen: kind of led you to say, maybe I want to step away and try my own thing.

[00:17:13] Cruz Gamboa: That’s, well, this is certainly feeling like therapy today, Graham. So, I’ll go there, okay? So, first of all, I love GE… I love my years at GE. They were great.

[00:17:26] Cruz Gamboa: Okay And, I learned so much, so I am absolutely a hundred, a thousand percent grateful, okay, of my experience.

[00:17:36] Cruz Gamboa: And I have so many friends, mentors, and people who, like, really, like, shaped me, okay?

[00:17:44] Cruz Gamboa: And I have people that were assholes, and they also shaped me, so I’m also thankful to them. Okay? So, I will say that towards the end, what…

[00:17:54] Cruz Gamboa: what was happening inside of me is that I was feeling that I had… in a very strange way, I had had this very entrepreneurial career within General Electric.

[00:18:05] Cruz Gamboa: kind of, like, covertly, you know what I mean? Like, it was not supposed to be, like, this entrepreneurial, but I was kind of, like, doing my thing, because I was getting lucky, so people were, like.

[00:18:14] Graham Stephen: In entrepreneur, how about you?

[00:18:16] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, like, just let him figure it out, because they knew that I had a good, strong financial background, I understood risk, okay? So when I actually, identified an opportunity, and I took it for our management, they knew that there was a there there.

[00:18:33] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:18:33] Cruz Gamboa: And they knew that I thought it through. And they knew that they… I mean, they just needed to get on the same page.

[00:18:39] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? But they trusted me in making a good, sound decision

[00:18:45] Cruz Gamboa: To do business, and for the company.

[00:18:49] Graham Stephen: Yep.

[00:18:50] Cruz Gamboa: So, I think that that worked for a while, okay? That worked well for a while. I, I mean, I have my ups and downs, of course, but it worked really well.

[00:19:01] Cruz Gamboa: At some point, what happened is that… Somehow, especially towards the end.

[00:19:08] Cruz Gamboa: I think it had to do maybe with the dynamics of what was, like, the companies possibly splitting

[00:19:14] Cruz Gamboa: It just became, like, to me, it just became too frustrating. I, you know, I was… I joined the, the Carbon Solutions team, and I was working for… by… for an amazing manager, Eric Gray, which I, you know, I totally, like, respect him, and he’s just an amazing person, but just the environment

[00:19:36] Cruz Gamboa: around the company was just not good, you know? And I had so many people that were, like, trying to pull me in different directions.

[00:19:44] Cruz Gamboa: And I just felt like, this is just… I don’t… I don’t feel it anymore. I felt like I was getting misaligned.

[00:19:51] Cruz Gamboa: with the company. Like, I, you know, I wanted to do something, and the company was not… no longer providing a space for me to grow.

[00:20:01] Cruz Gamboa: I wanted to make it big in clean energy, make it, you know, sort of like I wanted to do bigger things, and I felt that it was… there was always

[00:20:12] Cruz Gamboa: somehow we always found a way to, to make it more complicated than it needed to be, okay?

[00:20:18] Cruz Gamboa: And, And then some of it probably was something, at the personal level. I was, I was just not,

[00:20:27] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, it’s just like, I love… there was a… we were no longer aligned, and that happens, you know? That happens with… in… in relationships, with your partner.

[00:20:36] Cruz Gamboa: with friends, I mean, sometimes you just change, and you’re no longer the same person, and then at some point towards the end, I had a couple of situations that happened with clients, and the way that they were handled, and it was just like the…

[00:20:50] Cruz Gamboa: just… the way… it was more about the, like, the culture that I was experiencing. I was just like, I don’t want this.

[00:20:59] Cruz Gamboa: You know, it’s like I exhausted my… my… my stay. Let me put it that way.

[00:21:04] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:21:04] Cruz Gamboa: And then I know… and then I was starting… I felt like I was checked out.

[00:21:09] Graham Stephen: Most, mostly.

[00:21:09] Cruz Gamboa: checked out, you know? And, and as a leader, and as a person. I didn’t want to be checked out, you know? Because that’s not who I am. I’m always all in, okay? That’s what… that’s what… that’s how I like to be. My number one value is authenticity.

[00:21:26] Cruz Gamboa: Right? and integrity, with not only integrity with the things that I do, but with integrity with myself, you know? Being in alignment, like, what I’m doing is what I want to do, you know?

[00:21:36] Graham Stephen: I didn’t even…

[00:21:38] Cruz Gamboa: Because that’s, in my opinion, that’s how you get the $800 million deals close, because you believe.

[00:21:43] Graham Stephen: Yep.

[00:21:44] Cruz Gamboa: Right?

[00:21:44] Graham Stephen: You can’t be half pregnant in life, you know?

[00:21:47] Cruz Gamboa: You’re either, like, you’re either doing it or not doing it, but kind of doing it is not good.

[00:21:53] Graham Stephen: You’re gonna be all in,

[00:21:55] Cruz Gamboa: You’re in, yeah. it doesn’t… and it doesn’t matter what happens, because people are like, well, you know, you’re not… I don’t know.

[00:22:01] Cruz Gamboa: You’re not Elon Musk. Sure, you’re probably not either. So does that mean that you’re good or bad? I mean, that’s not how I define my own success.

[00:22:09] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, yeah. So I just think that we just need to be clear, and, like, what success means for us.

[00:22:15] Cruz Gamboa: And when.

[00:22:16] Graham Stephen: to be clear.

[00:22:16] Cruz Gamboa: on… on… on… whether at any point in time, the thing that we’re doing is the thing that we’re choosing, okay? Because that, ultimately, that’s what allows us to go to bed.

[00:22:27] Cruz Gamboa: And have a good night’s sleep, and not be overly thinking.

[00:22:33] Cruz Gamboa: About our situation, try to blame it on others, or play the victim, which is even worse.

[00:22:40] Graham Stephen: Ultimately, I guess that’s what growth is, right? You go on a journey. And… and growth is being able to recognize when your path needs to change directions, or it needs to converge, whatever the case might be. And it’s not that GE suddenly became bad, or you became bad, or whatever the case might be, it just meant that you were growing on… on different paths, and… and…

[00:23:03] Graham Stephen: you know, you probably woke up one morning with kind of a feeling in your gut that, like, hmm, now’s time for me to venture into something else. And you followed that, so…

[00:23:13] Graham Stephen: what… what happened next? Okay, so you, you left the corporate world, and you end up now at…

[00:23:21] Graham Stephen: Ascend. Okay, so tell us a little bit…

[00:23:24] Cruz Gamboa: There was a… there was a… there was an important…

[00:23:26] Graham Stephen: There’s a gap in between, right?

[00:23:27] Cruz Gamboa: There is a gap, yes, because I left because I left, I left to, to a startup. Because I already kind of knew that that was… I… I was, I was an entrepreneur. I wanted to be in a startup.

[00:23:40] Cruz Gamboa: I knew it was risky, and I didn’t care, you know what I mean? Because I… I mean, I’ve taken risks my whole life, and I figured that it didn’t matter what happened, I was gonna be okay.

[00:23:52] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah. So I, I left for the startup, and, like. Believe it or not, the first day that I was in the startup, something happened.

[00:24:00] Cruz Gamboa: That I was just like, holy shit. I made a bad decision.

[00:24:06] Graham Stephen: The first day into the job.

[00:24:09] Cruz Gamboa: I just realized that just the… the… the… how I… In my excitement.

[00:24:17] Cruz Gamboa: I had missed a couple of things. I have missed how misaligned that team was, and how misaligned they were.

[00:24:25] Cruz Gamboa: Vis-a-vis myself.

[00:24:28] Graham Stephen: Yeah. And.

[00:24:29] Cruz Gamboa: So I just went through the… I just went through the process of, of trying to… I was actually like, well, maybe you are getting ahead of yourself, and I just kept going.

[00:24:38] Cruz Gamboa: And, and I just keep finding more and more and more and more evidence towards the end. I mean, we were going to do a capital raise, and if you remember, like, the Silicon Valley debacle happened, so the market for…

[00:24:54] Cruz Gamboa: Startups in general dried up, and you know, we were back to…

[00:25:00] Cruz Gamboa: having the conversation with the same existing investors, and they had a different idea of what the company should look like, and it was just, like, not good. That whole thing was not good in a way, but it was the best thing in the world, because it then, you know, it forced me to say, you know.

[00:25:17] Cruz Gamboa: This is also not for me, eventually I left. Okay? It was, like, 6 months. Because I… the thing is that the company was in Colorado, so it was just really bad that I was going to work at a place that I wasn’t even aligned. I… I just didn’t… I didn’t see the path forward at that company.

[00:25:37] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:25:38] Cruz Gamboa: So I came back, and I was just like, holy cow, what should I do? Then I started looking for jobs. And…

[00:25:44] Cruz Gamboa: between you and I, I just, like, well, and the people that are gonna watch this, I just didn’t feel it.

[00:25:51] Cruz Gamboa: I didn’t feel it. I was just like, I didn’t see any jobs that excited me, okay? And back then, my ex-wife used to be like, well, but you gotta, you gotta find… just do something, just get something, and I was just like, no, I get you.

[00:26:05] Cruz Gamboa: But I just, like, none of this excites me, and so, like, within a month, a friend of mine, just out of nowhere, he’s like, you know, do you remember that deal that you helped me, you know, when I was trying to do this, like, you know what? Now we’re gonna close it, so can you come and help me do this M&A transaction? So I went and did that for…

[00:26:24] Cruz Gamboa: Probably, like, 9 months. And then, like, coming out of that, I… I started connecting with, you know, a company as a fractional CFO company, and I was just like, yeah, but I’ve been a CFO, I could do this. And I actually… I thought it was… it would be fun to start working with different clients, so I started doing.

[00:26:43] Graham Stephen: mad.

[00:26:43] Cruz Gamboa: And, and then I also met this other guy who’s still a friend of mine, Daniel Marcos, and he talked to me about scaling up, and I was just like, what is scaling up? And I realized that there was this framework by Vern Harnish.

[00:26:59] Cruz Gamboa: on helping companies scale up, and quite frankly, it was nothing new, because a lot of the stuff is stuff that I covered in my MBA. But what I really loved about it, it was that there was, there was some…

[00:27:11] Cruz Gamboa: A framework that was organized in steps, and it had, you know, sort of a methodology, and there was a community, more importantly, right?

[00:27:20] Graham Stephen: And.

[00:27:20] Cruz Gamboa: so I, I, I kind of, like, Attracted myself to that. Got certified, and then I started looking for clients to work with. And initially, I wasn’t really clear, like, what kind of clients I wanted, you know?

[00:27:35] Cruz Gamboa: And then it was like, I wanna… I gotta say, maybe, like, towards the end of last year is when I really became clear that I… I… I wanted to help,

[00:27:45] Cruz Gamboa: Entrepreneurs between, say, 3 to 10 million dollars. because I… as I studied what happens for, you know, during that phase, which is post-startup, post-survival stage, right? Now you have a company that is cash flowing, somehow, maybe not so much, but it’s starting to hit a constraint.

[00:28:09] Graham Stephen: That, basically, that, that…

[00:28:11] Cruz Gamboa: constraint is… it can be several things. It could be the constraint on… The leadership mindset.

[00:28:18] Cruz Gamboa: It could be a constraint in the way that you’re thinking about organizing, your team.

[00:28:24] Cruz Gamboa: it could be a constraint… it could be different things, right? It could be people, systems,

[00:28:30] Graham Stephen: technology.

[00:28:31] Cruz Gamboa: your network. Maybe your network, you don’t have a network big enough to just get to the next level. You don’t have the skill sets to market yourself. You don’t have a scalable offer because you didn’t really know what a scalable offer was. So all of those things become the way to get yourself…

[00:28:49] Cruz Gamboa: out of that situation and into the next level. And for some… in some industries, like SaaS companies, they just grow so fast, and for them, it’s not 10 million. For them, probably that constraint is a lot later, okay?

[00:29:02] Cruz Gamboa: But in general, I think if we took an average, it’s probably between 3 and 10. That’s where these growing pains happen, when people get stuck.

[00:29:12] Cruz Gamboa: And I just… and I felt that I… I could help them a lot, because I… I’ve been on the other side of… I’ve been on the, sort of, at the end of the… of the rainbow, right? It’s like when you’re a quarter.

[00:29:23] Graham Stephen: That’s true.

[00:29:24] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? So, I understand, like, how the thing needs to look like, and, like, what should be, like, your, you know, like, your leadership, your ultimate leadership style, you know, as sort of managerial. So, but you can, like, back into the existing situation and start making the changes.

[00:29:41] Cruz Gamboa: in yourself, in your company, in your financials, in the way you sell, right? In the way… in the execution rhythms, in the systems that you have today, in order to get you closer to that.

[00:29:53] Cruz Gamboa: And I felt that that was an easy putt for me, because I… I mean, I’ve done systems, I’ve done process, I’ve done leadership, I’ve done all of those things, so I had a lot to say about these topics. So that’s why I’m.

[00:30:06] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I think, importantly. you know, if you… you kind of need to know where you’re going, and you… that’s where corporate helped you, is you kind of knew what the end game had to look like. And I guess, you know, we had an interesting conversation around this with some other guests a few weeks ago, where we spoke about the difference between a million dollar business and a $10 million business, and

[00:30:26] Graham Stephen: You know, it’s fascinating, because somewhere around the $1, $2, $3 million mark, there’s a mindset shift that’s needed. And very few businesses are actually able to move beyond that. I think

[00:30:36] Graham Stephen: you know, only 95% of businesses stay under $10 million, so… so it’s actually that mindset of saying, do I want to go beyond being, let’s just call it.

[00:30:47] Graham Stephen: There’s nothing wrong with it. If my choice is to run a lifestyle or a small business that supports me and a few people, great.

[00:30:53] Graham Stephen: that if that business owner has that fire and that ambition to grow it into something more, then actually, usually, they need a little bit of help and guidance, and I guess that’s… that’s where you come in. And Cruz, I want to just kind of delve in very quickly, like, what… what makes your approach

[00:31:09] Graham Stephen: different, you know, so… so why, you know, people can go and read Scaling Up, they can go and read the books, they can do all of that, but why are you different to other, let’s call it, advisors or coaches, or whatever you want to call it, out there? Tell us what, you know, what makes you special.

[00:31:28] Cruz Gamboa: That’s a great question, because it’s a question that I ask myself every time, you know, because I don’t want to be like everybody else, I want to do my own thing and be different, you know, and be… have, like, my own blue ocean strategy.

[00:31:40] Cruz Gamboa: So, so what makes me different, number one, is that I believe that

[00:31:46] Cruz Gamboa: everything starts with mindset, okay? So, if you ask me for help, Okay? And then we…

[00:31:55] Cruz Gamboa: make a plan. We define what the constraints are for your company. We put a plan in place on how you’re going to

[00:32:04] Cruz Gamboa: You know, put execution rhythms with your leadership team. You’re going to take this person from this position and put them there, or just exit them, okay?

[00:32:15] Cruz Gamboa: Or you’re going to invest in an upgrade to your CRM system, because it’s going to give us more information so that we have a better understanding on who your real clients are, and like, you know, what is the profitability profile of all that. And if you make all of those plans, and you don’t take action.

[00:32:36] Cruz Gamboa: I wasted my time. You wasted your time.

[00:32:40] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:32:41] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? So, if… You are… really… Committed to growth, but you’re an asshole to your people?

[00:32:51] Cruz Gamboa: And they check out, because you feel like you need to be a hero in your own business, and you need to do everything.

[00:32:58] Cruz Gamboa: And you are micromanaging and making sure that whatever everybody else didn’t do, you do. You do it.

[00:33:06] Cruz Gamboa: Then… you’re not helping me, and you’re not helping you, so we’re both wasting our time. So, if you don’t have the right mindset to grow your company.

[00:33:16] Cruz Gamboa: I mean, no amount of, like, EOS, scaling up, or whatever system you choose is going to save you.

[00:33:23] Cruz Gamboa: Okay?

[00:33:24] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:33:24] Cruz Gamboa: So, I believe that part of the initial process that I do with my clients is just to get clear in, A,

[00:33:33] Cruz Gamboa: do… what is your vision? Like, what is it that you want to build, you know? So that we can… so you… I always say this, this is probably, like, the fourth podcast I’ve said it, is I said to them, like, place the order. What is it that you want? Be clear, and be bold, okay?

[00:33:48] Cruz Gamboa: And then I… I get to see what they… what they want, the founders, right? you know, if they have a really big vision about the future, or if they have a vision that is just much smaller, you know, some of the…

[00:34:04] Cruz Gamboa: Limitations and the mindset and the negative beliefs are gonna show up when we do that exercise, and we talk about them.

[00:34:13] Graham Stephen: Yep. Opening.

[00:34:14] Cruz Gamboa: It’s like, hey, you know, here’s what I’m seeing, and And then, you know, that person has two options.

[00:34:21] Cruz Gamboa: Either their desired is bigger, That their own ego or their ego is bigger than their desire.

[00:34:35] Cruz Gamboa: You choose. You’re either like, you know what? I want to build this shit. Like, what do I need to do? I need to change, I’ll change.

[00:34:41] Cruz Gamboa: What do I need to do? I need to hire a person, I’ll do it. What do I need to do? I need to delegate more? Yes, help me, you know?

[00:34:50] Graham Stephen: I’m guessing that’s a big filter for you. If the ego’s bigger than desire, you walk away.

[00:34:55] Cruz Gamboa: I walk away. I’m not interested, because it’s not a good testimonial for me.

[00:35:00] Graham Stephen: Yeah. You know what I mean? It’s not a good… I’m not gonna help you.

[00:35:03] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? It’s not going to help me grow my, my, you know, my company. Because you’re not upgrading…

[00:35:10] Cruz Gamboa: success in your business, then it just doesn’t… it just… it’s not… we’re wasting our time. I’d rather put my energy on people that are committed, and… and they want to do this thing, and they want to…

[00:35:24] Cruz Gamboa: They have the desire, their desire is bigger than their ego. That is… that is…

[00:35:29] Graham Stephen: Can I just summarize that for you? I mean… You’re… you’re about… start with mindset, okay? And mindset captures a bunch of things, okay? And then desire is linked to mindset, obviously.

[00:35:45] Cruz Gamboa: 100%.

[00:35:45] Graham Stephen: And then…

[00:35:46] Cruz Gamboa: conversation. Yeah.

[00:35:47] Graham Stephen: Yeah, and then action. I mean, I think you use somebody who’s lived that through your life, whether it’s moving from Venezuela to the US, whether it’s, you know, changing careers and all of that, so I think a big emphasis on action.

[00:36:00] Graham Stephen: And the framework is just a framework, and I think, you know, without dwelling on this too much, I think a lot of coaches and advisors, like.

[00:36:08] Graham Stephen: you know, focus too much on the framework. The framework’s important, make no mistake, but the framework without mindset and action is absolutely meaningless. And I think, you know, from what I’m hearing you saying is that’s what makes you special. You focus on mindset and action.

[00:36:26] Graham Stephen: With the framework as an enabler, rather than the other way around.

[00:36:30] Cruz Gamboa: I have a… I have a… I have a clear, a clear four-step, what I call the four…

[00:36:36] Cruz Gamboa: pillars of scalable growth. It’s a framework that I… it’s my own framework that I designed as I looked at scaling up, I looked at EOS, I even participated in the implementation of Souls and systems when I.

[00:36:51] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:36:52] Cruz Gamboa: a CFO for a company, okay? And I’ve looked at all of that. And what I realized is there’s, like, only 4 important things.

[00:37:01] Cruz Gamboa: And that… I say it like that so I don’t forget them, so it’s easy for me to talk about them. The first one is your vision and mindset.

[00:37:08] Cruz Gamboa: We need to get that dialed in day one. At the same time, we also need the tactical, so we’re obviously going to… we’re going to look at what the constraint is, and we’re gonna try to identify

[00:37:17] Cruz Gamboa: the constraint, and then address it as soon as possible, okay? Why? Because my number one job within the first 90 days of our engagement is to free you up.

[00:37:30] Cruz Gamboa: If you are freed up as a founder, as a CEO of a company, then you have more time to think more strategically, so now we’re leveraging you, right?

[00:37:40] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:37:41] Cruz Gamboa: So that is… that is what I do the first 90 days, is about free the founder. That’s my slogan. Free the founder, right?

[00:37:48] Cruz Gamboa: Yeah, so at the same time, during those 90 days, the thing that we’re doing is just getting clear on your financials.

[00:37:54] Cruz Gamboa: Because here’s the one thing people don’t know, and I can tell you because I, you know, I’ve been a CFO, and I’ve looked at other people’s, books, and I’ve seen this problem over and over.

[00:38:05] Cruz Gamboa: Every business is leaking cash.

[00:38:09] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:38:10] Cruz Gamboa: Every business. So, if I’m able to… and I have some really, really cool tools, by the way.

[00:38:16] Cruz Gamboa: If I’m able to show you where you’re leaking cash within the first 90 days, help you execute it, okay?

[00:38:24] Cruz Gamboa: And help you free the cash. and free your time as well, what have I done? I’ve basically paid for myself within the first 90 days.

[00:38:34] Graham Stephen: To use self-funding!

[00:38:36] Cruz Gamboa: I’ve self-funded! But that’s the thing, see, I… that is the thing that I also, you know, tell my clients, we need to… we need to change our mindset to, like, oh, I need to make all these investments, and they’ll come. No, it’s like…

[00:38:50] Cruz Gamboa: It needs to be a client acquisition… a client’s finance acquisition strategy. So they need to pay for you. They need to pay for your stuff.

[00:39:00] Cruz Gamboa: I mean, you need to create value. I mean, it’s an even exchange, right?

[00:39:04] Graham Stephen: Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:05] Cruz Gamboa: Both things are true. And then once we get clear, and we develop the action plan for cash, for finding the… for identifying and removing the big constraint, I free you up.

[00:39:17] Cruz Gamboa: That’s when we start having the conversation on strategy and execution.

[00:39:21] Graham Stephen: Hmm, only then.

[00:39:23] Cruz Gamboa: Because strategy and execution is different than tactical. Strategy… well, it is and it isn’t. But strategy and execution is about, like, really looking at the whole thing, and then just trying to get you differentiated

[00:39:36] Cruz Gamboa: And trying to get you to, in, like, one or two sentences, being able to say how you’re gonna win.

[00:39:42] Cruz Gamboa: what are the things that you’re not gonna do, so that when you stop doing them, okay? And make the changes, because sometimes it’s not easy to stop doing something that is actually generating cash for you. It’s painful, but it’s also something that you need to… you need to either, like.

[00:39:58] Cruz Gamboa: like… Change the nature of the thing so that it… it is aligned with your company, or just abandon it.

[00:40:07] Graham Stephen: It makes a huge…

[00:40:08] Cruz Gamboa: not part of your strategy. If you have a strategy, you need to stay true to your strategy, right?

[00:40:13] Graham Stephen: Absolutely, yeah.

[00:40:15] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? You’re wasting… most importantly, you’re wasting your energy, your mental energy. So if it’s… if it’s something that is generating cash, but it’s not taking a lot of your cash.

[00:40:23] Cruz Gamboa: go ahead, do it, keep it, we need it, right? But if it’s just taking an inordinate amount of time, and it’s not… and just because you want to keep some customers happy, for example, but it’s not generating you cash, then absolutely abandon, okay?

[00:40:36] Cruz Gamboa: In the end, in the end, when you… life is about making choices. You…

[00:40:42] Graham Stephen: It’s trade-offs, yeah.

[00:40:43] Cruz Gamboa: It’s trade-offs. You stop doing that, and you open space for something bigger. So we need to identify what that something bigger is, so that we can make that transition into the thing that you can actually scale.

[00:40:54] Cruz Gamboa: Within that pillar, we very much talk about what it looks like to have scalable offers. Scalable offers means that they can be delivered

[00:41:04] Cruz Gamboa: without you. Right? That’s the thing. They can be delivered without you.

[00:41:10] Cruz Gamboa: And that is something that a lot of founders have a problem with, goes back to vision and mindset, so that’s why we want to address it then, so that we can be like, yes, you understand that we’re trying to create a company that runs on its own. It doesn’t depend on you. That’s why we need scalable offers, right?

[00:41:27] Graham Stephen: That’s also where ego gets in the way sometimes, right? Because as much as owners say they want to grow, their ego stops them from doing that, because they want… a lot of founders feed off that, like, I’m the boss, I’m the CEO, I’m doing everything, and if they’re unable to, kind of, they make that mindset shift from.

[00:41:44] Graham Stephen: you know, feeding off that energy as to all… as to… opposed to building something that lives beyond you, that’s… that’s very hard, right?

[00:41:54] Cruz Gamboa: Very hard, very hard, and I’ll tell you this, in a lot of… and this has…

[00:42:01] Cruz Gamboa: This has something to do with… learn… Learn beliefs, okay?

[00:42:07] Graham Stephen: And…

[00:42:07] Cruz Gamboa: So… When you have a belief, that belief generates a thought, and that thought generates a feeling, that feeling generates a reaction, that reaction generates results.

[00:42:18] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? And the problem is that when you have a negative belief, like, for example, my team sucks. I hear that all the time, by the way, I’m sure you’ve heard it too. So my team sucks is I can trust them.

[00:42:33] Cruz Gamboa: I feel like I’m very upset because I have to do this work on my own, but I’m gonna do it.

[00:42:39] Cruz Gamboa: Then you do the thing that your team should have been doing, because you have a belief, okay? And then your team is like, you know, they see you stepping in into every little, you know, what I call firefighting everything, and like.

[00:42:52] Cruz Gamboa: you know, kind of like micromanaging them, doing the things that they were supposed to do, and then just telling them, why didn’t you do it? I did it for you. And then you start making them feel bad instead of coaching them. Then they check out, and they’re like, you know what?

[00:43:05] Cruz Gamboa: Graham, just tell me what you want me to do. When somebody tells you that. you’re done. That person is already looking for another job, because that person is no longer engaged.

[00:43:16] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? And what ends up happening is a lot of the employee turnover at companies

[00:43:22] Cruz Gamboa: in this range happen because the belief, from the mindset, from the entrepreneur, that they have a shitty team.

[00:43:35] Cruz Gamboa: Okay? And that they are the only ones that can solve the problem, or save the day, right? And if you start with that belief, then how the hell are you gonna create a scalable company? That makes no sense.

[00:43:50] Cruz Gamboa: It’s that rescuer mindset. I’ve got to be the rescuer, and nobody else can do it better than me, right? It makes no sense, if you think about it.

[00:43:59] Cruz Gamboa: You know, putting that aside for a second. The final pillar is about leverage, what I call intelligent leverage.

[00:44:06] Cruz Gamboa: And it connects with the things that we just discussed, people. We need to think of people as leverage, not as just tools. They’re leverage. If you use a person.

[00:44:15] Cruz Gamboa: If you have the right person, with the right skill set, and the right attitude. they’re gonna crush it, okay? With the right supervision, the right, you know, payment incentive structures, and all of that, they’re gonna crush it. And you wanna… you want people to be happy working with you, so that

[00:44:32] Cruz Gamboa: ultimately, they go above and beyond, they do their job correctly, they actually tell you, maybe we should do it this way, we should change the way that this workflow works, because it’s, you know, I can…

[00:44:43] Cruz Gamboa: I think that it could be better like this. They’re helping you. In a way, right? So you need to treat them, you need to treat them with respect, you need to, you know, make sure that they feel excited to come to work.

[00:44:55] Cruz Gamboa: Excited to help you, and most importantly, that they understand what the mission and the objectives are for this day, for this week, for this month, for this quarter, for this year, and for 3 and 5 years in the future.

[00:45:10] Cruz Gamboa: If you’ve done that. about that, you know, guess what’s gonna happen? They’re also, in their brain, they’re gonna solve for the actions and behaviors that they need to do in order to get them aligned with you.

[00:45:21] Cruz Gamboa: And there are some that are not going to make it. That doesn’t mean that the whole team sucks, okay?

[00:45:27] Graham Stephen: Yep. I mean, it sounds so simple when you put it that way, right?

[00:45:32] Cruz Gamboa: It is simple. We humans tend to overly complicate things, but yeah, I agree.

[00:45:37] Graham Stephen: What did Stephen Covey say? The seven habits, you know? I mean, you talk about leverage, he talks about making the circle of influence bigger, you know? But Cruz, I mean, I guess we could be chatting, you know, all day. I mean, it feels like we’re just getting started, and we kind of have to bring it to a close. I think we’re going to have to…

[00:45:53] Graham Stephen: have a follow-up, and for our listeners, I know we’re going to meet up in Boston in a few weeks’ time, so maybe we’ll continue the conversation over a coffee, or a beer, or whatever that looks like, but I think as we wrap up, I’ve just got a few sort of quick-fire questions for you, just sort of, like.

[00:46:11] Graham Stephen: one word, one sentence answer, first thing that comes to mind. I’ve got five questions. The first one, what’s the biggest leadership lesson that you’ve learned over the last 20, 25 years?

[00:46:24] Cruz Gamboa: It’s about them. It’s about them.

[00:46:29] Graham Stephen: It’s about them. Wow, I love that. I mean, it’s not about… and that’s that whole ego mindset thing again, you know, it’s not about you, it’s about them.

[00:46:36] Cruz Gamboa: It’s not about you, it’s about them. Yeah, because when you… because that’s, like, the best antidote for leadership fuck-ups, believe me. It’s about them.

[00:46:45] Graham Stephen: I think that’s the title of a book. I mean, you can compete with Mel Robbins. Every book, or a book that every founder should read.

[00:46:58] Cruz Gamboa: Oh, that’s a great, great question. Every founder should read 3 books, in my opinion. 100 million dollar offers, $100 million leads, and 100 million money models.

[00:47:12] Cruz Gamboa: I love those.

[00:47:13] Graham Stephen: poster books. I love Hormosi.

[00:47:15] Cruz Gamboa: He’s just so practical, you know? He’s… and clear, and A lot of, business books, are really good.

[00:47:24] Cruz Gamboa: but they’re just packed with a lot of, like, very overly complicated stuff. He just makes it simple, you know?

[00:47:30] Cruz Gamboa: I love that.

[00:47:31] Graham Stephen: that makes it simple is really compelling, you know, and I think, you know, there’s a lot of people who would be naysayers against, let’s call it, you know, whether it’s Homozy or whether it’s whatever, but I think

[00:47:41] Graham Stephen: I think there… there are gems out there that you can really take and apply and… yeah, practical, you know, it’s stuff that is not just theory in a textbook.

[00:47:52] Graham Stephen: Okay, important one. I think… I think I might know what the answer’s gonna be. Coffee or tea?

[00:47:59] Cruz Gamboa: Oh… That’s a… that’s a difficult one. I love coffee, okay? But I, I am, kind of, like.

[00:48:08] Cruz Gamboa: done with coffee. For a while. Because it was, it was affecting my sleep. It was giving me a little bit of anxiety sometimes, you know what I mean? So, I just, like, I’m more like a tea person now.

[00:48:21] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I don’t know, I think something triggers when I hit a certain age, I mean, somewhere in my mid-40s. You know, those 4 cups of black coffee in the morning, suddenly I… my blood pressure went up, I couldn’t sleep, so… so I’ve switched to drinking primarily rooibos tea, which… which those of you who know South African rooibos tea is great for antioxidants and all of that, so maybe we’ll have a cup of tea when I’m in Boston.

[00:48:45] Cruz Gamboa: Absolutely, we shall.

[00:48:48] Graham Stephen: One company that you admire for how they’ve scaled. Could be a famous company, it could be somebody that you’ve worked with.

[00:48:56] Cruz Gamboa: A company that has scaled… oh man, I’ll be, like, Canva.

[00:49:02] Cruz Gamboa: I love that company, by the way. Canva is, like, it’s, like, my number one go-to tool.

[00:49:08] Cruz Gamboa: And, it’s completely… it’s a company that you don’t hear a lot about, but everybody uses it. Everybody uses Canva, because it’s so powerful that, you know, what they’ve created. And they’ve gone from a little, tiny company into, like, a multi-billion dollar company. I love that story of the Canva founders as well, so…

[00:49:27] Graham Stephen: Fantastic, yeah, I mean, it’s amazing, like, who talks about PowerPoint anymore? I mean, I don’t even think AI can compete with Canva, right?

[00:49:36] Cruz Gamboa: It’s kind of hard, but look, I mean, there are other tools. There’s Gamma as well, I mean, there’s, like, Beautiful AI, there’s, like, all these different beautiful tools, so yeah, there’s a lot out there right now.

[00:49:46] Graham Stephen: And last question, Cruz. If you could give your 25-year-old… so this would be last year, right? If you could give your 25-year-old self one piece of advice, what would that be?

[00:49:58] Cruz Gamboa: Enjoy every minute of it. Because, you know what? You’re gonna be fine in the end. It doesn’t matter what happens.

[00:50:05] Graham Stephen: Absolutely love that. I mean, one of my favorite quotes is… it’s kind of a line, but it’s, it’s Mark Twain, it said, you know, cut away the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, explore, dream, discover, you know, it’s… yeah, you’ve got to go out there and just enjoy the journey, rather than obsess too much about that destination, right?

[00:50:25] Cruz Gamboa: There’s only one… there’s only one thing that is certain. We’re not escaping out of here alive.

[00:50:31] Graham Stephen: Death and taxes. Well, Cruz, it’s been absolutely fantastic. We’re recording this on Labor Day, so it is a… it’s a public holiday, but thank you for sharing your journey, your insights, just the humanity and the simplicity. It’s… it’s… I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation.

[00:50:56] Graham Stephen: For our listeners, you know, if you’re running a company in the $3 million to $10 million space, and you want to break past that sort of growth ceiling, please go check out Ascend Growth Ventures at

[00:51:08] Graham Stephen: I’m not going to spell it out, we’ll put the link in the comments, but ascendGrowthventures.com. And as always, if you’re building a business and want to know what it’s worth, or how to make it worth more, either head over to bizvalglobal.com, or reach out to Cruz, I’m sure he’ll point you in that direction as well.

[00:51:23] Graham Stephen: But Cruz, closing thoughts for our listeners, and, anything you want to leave them with?

[00:51:31] Cruz Gamboa: I just, like, I… I… well, first of all, I wanted to thank you for the invitation and the conversation. I, yeah, I think we… you did a great job with the questions and the setup.

[00:51:41] Cruz Gamboa: And, you know, the thing that I wanted to leave behind is very simple, is that, life is good.

[00:51:50] Cruz Gamboa: Let’s just go ahead and build it.

[00:51:54] Graham Stephen: I love it. Life is good, just go ahead and build it. Well, listen, let’s go to compete with Nikes, just do it one day. Thank you for listening, and we hope to see you all in the next episode.

[00:52:09] Cruz Gamboa: Thank you, Graham. Take care, man.

[00:52:11] Graham Stephen: Let me just click India, stop recording…

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