Joel Gandara 11:00
Yeah, so my dad was an electrician, like a technician in Cuba and electrical shock government-run, you go there and hit your radios fix. So the initial thing is, he started fixing radios and TVs back then you would do those sort of things. Now they’re so cheap, you just buy a new one. But when a TV costs you like a month’s salary, right, you fix it, so or more. So my dad would fix people’s TVs. Finally, he got a job in Oakland, California at a not-for-profit, religious radio station, Christian radio station, and it paid very, very little, I think in 1980, he was making three $4 an hour. So we are always very poor. My mom went from being a physics teacher in Cuba to cleaning hotel rooms at the Sir Francis Drake hotel, and, but happy, you know, my mom was just, they’re both just so happy to be working and have any kind of job. And that’s how they started. They eventually both worked at that radio station and worked there for about 20 years, and made very little as a not-for-profit. I remember my dad always telling me, if you could just go to school and become a schoolteacher, you’re gonna have it made they made $30,000 a year back then. And he thought that was so much money.
John Corcoran 12:04
You actually, you know, you and I around the same age, you got into buying and selling Garbage Pail Kids, which people of a certain age listening to this might have heard of them. But it was like a baseball card inspired by Cabbage Patch Kids, which were really popular like today; it would be like Pokemon are popular as far as cards go. How did you get into buying and selling?
Joel Gandara 12:27
Luck and curiosity. On the weekends, we’d go to my grandmother’s house in Alameda, California. And then, in the olden days, there were still some corner stores around, and we would go all the cousins like a mob walkover, and this is in fourth grade. And we’d walk and get an ice cream or cookies or whatever. And I remember spending my little bit of money on a couple of packs of these trading cards because I thought they were funny. And I got him. I opened them up. I thought they were so cool. So on Monday morning, I took them to school. And in my city where I grew up in Hayward, California. We didn’t have those there yet. Nobody knew about it. Because when I took them to school, everybody went nuts. And they started offering me money for him. These kids all had money. I did not because my parents worked at a Christian radio station. They paid for the Christian school that I could go to. But all those other kids didn’t get it for free or cheap. They paid so there were wealthier families. You could tell me nice shoes. I had Payless shoe source shoes. And I had parents that were hand-me-downs. But finally I got to get on par with them and get some of their money by giving them something that they wanted. And so these cards, I don’t know the math on it. Let’s say they were five cents each sold them for like 25 cents. And when I had a good 150 cents, and when I had the rare atom bomb, or one of the ones people fat Matt are the ones people really wanted, I’d get $1 For these and to me that represented the world because my parents had never given me $1 They weren’t just kidding me money. So in fourth grade, I bought my own transformer. It was my first real toy other than like, because every time it was Christmas or birthdays, my parents would tell me to tell my family if they asked what you wanted, say you don’t want any toys. But if they want to give you clothes, you’ll take that right. It’s what we needed. So I hardly had any toys. So I got to buy myself in fourth grade Omega Supreme, it was the biggest transformer base. And it was like $50 and I bought that myself with my own mouth. It was one of the most proud moments of my life.
John Corcoran 14:13
What were your What was your parents reaction to that? Did they know that you’d saved up money? Were they supportive of it?
Joel Gandara 14:19
Yeah, they’re not. They weren’t bashing it or saying that was crazy or anything. They go great. Make money. We need to make money. I saw my parents hustle. My mom, after work would make food and sell it to people in their church. My dad would. Aside from having that full-time job he would do electrical job if you needed to switch light switches or things like that. He would take plastic piggy banks that were like horses or a soccer ball or a baseball and drill a hole through put a rod but why is it a and treat a lamp?
John Corcoran 14:51
But these days you could make a killing on Etsy did it out of his trunk
Joel Gandara 14:54
And yeah, sell it for $10 or whatever. Make a few bucks on each one. So I always saw my parents hustling like that. And I saw my uncle, who was a mailman and he was more established. He got here in the 60s at 15 years old. And he was a mailman. And he would go to the flea markets and garage. He would buy stuff for garage sales, and take it to the flea markets, I learned from seeing all of them do that stuff.
John Corcoran 15:14
Yeah. Now, I know, you eventually get a job, and you’re earning $6 an hour. I believe it was working at a shoe store. And you had an older colleague at that shoe store who needed to borrow some money. And so you ended up lending him some money at a profit. Now, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone or interviewed someone on the show, who had such a sophisticated lending operation you eventually had about $40,000 That you loaned out, which is just insane. Take us through how that ended up happening.
Joel Gandara 15:44
It’s funny how you just have to be prepared for opportunities. If I go to the corner store, and I’m willing not to buy the gum, or the candy or the whatever to buy these cards, that turned out lucky. But I had to have $1 or two or whatever that cost. I hope I made a whole garage sale flea market business. And again, I had to have money in hand. And then in high school, I was a senior I was 17 years old. And my friend Terrell, he was a former minor league baseball player and we knew each other because we both worked after, after high school, he was a full time guy there. We worked at this shoe store. And he had kids on the way or a kid on the way with his wife, 24 years old, I was 17. And he knew that I was pretty smart with my money. And he’s, by the way, not like my parents had money. We did not live in a good neighborhood. Nothing like that. He just knew that I worked a lot. And I made as much money as I could. And I saved it. And at the time, I probably had $3,000 in the bank. And Terrell said, Joel, I need to borrow $500 You think you can help me? And I said, Okay, how will you pay me. And he said to me without me thinking that this could be a business, I was just trying to help out a friend. He said, I’ll pay you $50 every paycheck until I’ve paid you $550 And he’s so I wet you’re gonna make $50 in profit, and I don’t have to work compared to everything else. I was doing like working every day in high school, I was selling chocolates every day in high school, I made $30 a day profit from that. I went to work after school. And now I could just give you my money which is sitting in the bank doing nothing. And you’re gonna give me $50 We did it. And that day or the next the next day at school, I told my friend Armando and everybody they’re gonna believe what happened at work yesterday, my friend asked me for money. I’m gonna take it to him tonight. And he’s gonna do this, and he’s gonna pay me $550. And that same friend said, Would you do the same for me? And they go, you want to borrow? Okay, sure. And I lent him the money. And then he borrowed a couple of times later after he, you know, he paid me back and he needed to borrow more. And then he told a few friends. I never approached anybody. And I never set the terms ever. I always said, Okay, what do you want to borrow? How will you pay me back? And what’s the total? So people will pretty soon it’s started turning into, hey, I need $2,500 I’ll pay you 3000 Over the next few months. Okay, sure. And quickly within I was at 17 years old. By the time I was 1920. I’d have $40,000 on the street. I was working full time plus, I was doing overtime and double time, I was working a lot. And everything went to that and to just saving. And quickly at 22 years old, I put $32,000 down and bought my first house and moved to Los Angeles. Thanks to all that hustle, but also just saving all that money.
John Corcoran 18:16
Yeah. How did you get into purchasing clothing samples and later selling them? Because that that at some point in that trajectory, you start doing this?
Joel Gandara 18:25
Yeah. So around 19 or 20 years old I was in I was I was in the Bay Area, San Francisco area. And I was going to garage sales and just looking for whatever I could and I found a guy selling jockey underwear brand new in the package. And this was in a nice neighborhood in Alameda, California. And that it didn’t make sense. You know, you go to garage sales. It’s a bunch of junk. This had jockey tablecloths, jockey flags blowing in the wind. And the guy looked good, like a professional salesman. They wouldn’t solve this. And he says, I’m a sales rep. I’m independent. I work for jockey, but I can do whatever I want with these. I buy the samples every six months, I go to Vegas, I do the trade shows I sell to Macy’s and all the big stores, I get my millions of dollars in orders, I submit them to Jack and then I’m stuck with the samples that I bought. He said, But I buy him real cheap. So I’m here for three bucks. And look at them. They’re worth 1314 each brand new in the package. And I talk them down. I say I buy a lot of them because I wanna take it to the flea market. How can you how low can you go? It goes to $1.50 cuts it in half. And then I My hands were shaking. I was a kid. He was a grown man. And I said, I’d like to buy them all if you could go to $1 and he says, You know what, kid, I like your hustle. I liked you to get to take this to go to the flea market. I have a son about your age. He’s inside right now. And he’s playing video games and I’ve offered him all this stuff for free. Always there. Every time I go, Hey, just come out here and do it. You get all the money and he doesn’t want to do it. So I like what you’re doing now. $74 go hustle. And then every six months he called say Joel, I’ve got more samples. I got 2000 samples, I got 2500 samples, and I bio for $1 Then I discovered eBay and I got rid of the flea markets and we’re sitting outside for eight hours and son. I started selling them on eBay and that group and then fast forward a lot of years I started a company underwear company.
John Corcoran 20:01
It’s amazing how many entrepreneurs in the last 20 years got started on eBay. And now I have a 13 year old who’s just made his first sale on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. So it’s exciting to see it continue. Right, you know, and eventually, you imported an apparel brand from Mexico. How did that come? Yeah.
Joel Gandara 20:18
So here’s what happened. I remember thinking about a full time job, I got a part time job, and I do eBay. And eBay would mean that I’d go to the post office, at night or on the weekends, or whenever I could go. And it was great. The numbers were phenomenal is very profitable, but but within small, gross numbers. So I remember thinking, if I could just find another jockey sales rep, that would have been my solution, and another one, and then if I could get them all in the country, and I asked the guy all the time, but can you get me in touch with other reps all around the country. And he didn’t want to do that, because he didn’t know he’s in a gray area. So he never connected me. However, I said, I’m going to start searching on the internet. And I found a brand selling really well on eBay. And I tried to get the products and they couldn’t it was so hard. I finally found the distributor they had in Alabama, and he was very unprofessional. I spoke to him on the phone, and they ordered $500 on the phone $12 apiece he sent about to me that these things were swimwear, underwear slash swimwear, and they’re selling for 40 $50 on eBay, with an auction setting where they go up back then. And I bought $500. And he shipped me the box, I get so excited, I open it and half the stuff are missing. And I call the guy and he goes, Yeah, I didn’t ship you everything. I love it so fine. Will you send it later? And he says no, I’m not gonna send it, I screwed you over, I’m keeping your money. Really, totally total idiot because then I just did a chargeback on my credit card. They actually gave me all the 500 back. And I go, that’s great. I got the stuff. But now what this is this stuff sells. And I looked through the tag and I made in Mexico, and there’s a phone number. And I call that factory never made an international call in my life at that point. And I had to get operator assistance which cost me $55.
John Corcoran 21:53
To make the phone call younger kids need to understand that it used to cost more money to call longer distances. I actually had to explain the concept of long distance. So one of my kids recently about how like it costs it cost more.
Joel Gandara 22:03
I think that you’re right, and operator assistance $55 For a short call. So I call this factory in Mexico, I speak in English and the guy says, I’m the owner of the brand and you are answering my prayer of 20 years where I’ve been waiting for someone that speaks English. He asked me to speak English I go Yeah, I speak it fine. And he says this is it. I wanted someone who speaks English and Spanish that’s in this underwear world. And I could connect with and sell too. I ordered $2,400 on the phone, sold it all out on eBay within a week at like 567 times markup. It went phenomenally well I emailed them. I said I’ve sold it. Let’s keep doing this. Within a few years, I was buying over a million dollars a year from him. His annual salary is all on eBay or else Oh no. Then I started growing it because I started going to trade shows in Vegas and selling wholesale he started oh, by the way, that guy in Alabama could have made a killing off of me. He was selling to me for $12. And I was happy that factory sold to me for $4. And so I grew a wholesale business around it started going to Vegas.
John Corcoran 22:59
It’s so funny, but that that lesson right there, you know what could have been a major setback could have been depressing, he could have been so angry about it, it ends up being this catapult to a much more profitable business for you.
Joel Gandara 23:13
Yeah, because it’s either one I’m gonna give up and get in the corner and cry and stay living in poverty and poor or I’m gonna get out of this. Remember, I’ve always wanted to get out I grew up knowing where I came from. So I wanted to get out of that and get into a more comfortable place. Now you want to hear something that causes depression, legit depression. Nine years later, I’m buying over a million dollars from this company in Mexico. You know, the Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki book, which I love. My dad was a poor dad, and he still is. And this guy in Mexico, the owner of this factory in brand was my rich dad. And I mean, I love the guy, like my dad. And I learned so much from him. I wanted my dream was to one day when he’s ready to retire, buy the brand from him, keep the factory in Mexico keep the distribution going. I mean, that brand has a name, which is a person’s name. Can’t say it. But he, my friends, would call me that name as if I was that person. Because that’s how I was part of that brand. I lived it breathe. It’s all I could think about. Well, he can’t. We’d see each other in Las Vegas all the time, twice a year for trade shows, even with our wives one time by that I was married. And one time he came and spent 10 days in my house with his wife, and it was beautiful. We just had the time of our lives. And he said to me, you know, you’re like a son to me. My son doesn’t care for this business like you do. So you’re you know, it’s a special man, I was on top of the world. And when he got back, he told his son about how well I was doing. And his son shortly thereafter, actually asked me if he could use all my photography, which at the point at that point, I’d spent over $100,000 on photography, so he could sell a little bit just in his area just a little bit easy. And within a week, I was told that I lost my territory of Europe, where I was growing the business tremendously and making hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year net profit and really growing it. So there was a depressing moment there, would he? And then on top of that, he then started emailing my customers directly in the Sunday. Yeah, yeah. Hey, we want to form a relationship with you. We know you buy from Joel. But hey, we want to talk to you. And that was a moment of absolute depression, I spent about 24 hours knocked out in bed. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t move, I thought it was over. And I realized something. I had a fake business. I did not own the brands or the products, I own the products because I buy them. And I store them in my warehouse. And I had employees, and I had all that brand on this one channel.
John Corcoran 25:31
That’s one supplier. Yeah.
Joel Gandara 25:34
And then I didn’t own the customer’s data. I was wholesaling. So I was this middleman that I could just be removed, they could talk. Fortunately, I built really good relationships over the years with the stores. And in one day, I got bombarded with emails, and it was all my customers forwarding me that email directly from the sun, saying, Hey, this is unethical; he’s trying to contact us directly. We want to respect you. And so it showed me that at least I had that faith, you know, that loyalty from my clients, but man, I went into a short term depression, I’d say about 24 hours where I got sick.
John Corcoran 26:04
And that is awful. And did you ever have a conversation with the rich dad, the owner of the factory, about it.
Joel Gandara 26:09
Back and forth? And they just would deny and say, no, no, no, you believe it or not? He said, You had a conversation with my son on the phone. And you gave him that territory of Europe? And I said, Why would I do that? I am netting hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And I just started a year ago with Europe. Why would I give it away? I don’t know. But that’s what you told them. So you know, they tried this.
John Corcoran 26:28
So then why? What did you do next?
Joel Gandara 26:30
So next, after that depression, I had a mentor who got me out of it quickly, within a day. He said, Look, Joel, yes, you are backstabbed. Yes, that sucks. But you’ve built that relationship with the store buyers, haven’t you? And you’re the one who goes and flies out to see them. And you’re the one writing them handwritten cards and sending him Starbucks cards and building the relationship and under-underpromising and over-delivering, you’re the one doing that, right? He built me up a letter, I go, Yeah, I do that. And he goes, go start your own brand. Nobody’s ever gonna take it away from you, and you’re gonna make way more money. And I go, I don’t know if I could do that, you know, all those limiting beliefs. And I worked myself up over a few months, I got a brand. I developed it. In fact, my clients helped me develop it. I told them what was going on. And I said, I just need to know what you would like me to make you. And they said, make us some of the stuff that the Mexican company does. Obviously, it’s not illegal, just change the name. It’s not, you know, I can make a new brand. Yeah, yeah, it’s completely, and we copied some ideas. But then we developed a whole bunch of new stuff, literally, with my customers giving me samples that would send me samples and say, we used to buy this from this company, but they don’t make it anymore, or they’re too expensive. They don’t deliver on time, or their quality is bad. Can you make us this, and I put it all together, and I made a collection, I spent $80,000. I was very nervous. Because here, it might all get taken away tomorrow, I spent $80,000. I had two little kids at the time. Now we have four but back then we had two little kids. And who would have thought it worked. Within 13 months, we did over a million dollars on that and went to the next brand or did kept developing brands. And then I started buying my competitors. And my whole you know, my customers who are buying wholesale from me, and even some of my vendors, I bought 14 businesses in that industry over a few years.
John Corcoran 28:11
And that so did it eventually evolved to become more Oh capital or is that a separate business? How do you how do you to draw?
Joel Gandara 28:18
Yeah, so I had a company, it was an underwear company. And every time I’d email anyone, they got you on an underwear company, it was very distracting. And I wanted to talk to you about a T Shirt Company. I want to buy this company that sold jeans, and everyone’s butcher and underwear company. I go you know what, forget it. I’ll form a capital company. It’s all my money. And the name is a castle in Cuba that the Spanish built 500 years ago. It’s not the Morro Castle, it’s in the pay of Havana. It’s a beautiful brick, grey brick structure. And so it’s called Morrow capital. And that’s what the logo of it is. And it’s just intended to buy businesses and get away from the underwear world that I thought it was just kindergarten, the people laughed. Apparently, they still laugh when you say there’s proof.
John Corcoran 28:56
So from this, it’s sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh, but I felt like you gave me permission. So, you know, I can think of a couple lessons. But I don’t want to provide them I want you to provide them. So what are reflecting back on that, you know, really dark period in your life? What are a few takeaways or lessons that you take from that experience? Or ways in which you would do things differently if you could? Yeah.
Joel Gandara 29:24
Early on, when I started having some success with that brand and Mexico, I told him because I said, Ah, I could do some amazing things because I’m finding what competitors are doing. I’m watching them on eBay. I see them start their auctions at 999. And they’re finishing at 40 $50. There’s a huge demand for this subsection of special underwear, special swimsuits, special shorts, and I made the mistake of going to that factory in Mexico and go and say Hey, can you make me a brand, my own brand this is early on very early on. And they said no, we don’t do that. But what ideas do you have? We’ll make them for you under our brand. You know, it was early on, and I brought them, I went and spent all this money buying all these samples, and I knew that we’re going to crush it because I knew the customer. I’m very I’m not very smart, but I’m very observant. And I saw what people like I saw I was answering all the customer service emails, I was doing everything in the beginning everything packing every order.
John Corcoran 30:17
So he knew about styles, you know, about, you know, trends in the apparel business that sort of
Joel Gandara 30:21
I knew enough. Yeah, and, and so I remember sending him those samples, and they made the collections. And we absolutely crushed. I mean, crushed it, like, a huge percentage of the business now became my new designs. And I’m not a designer, but I could see what’s out there. And I could say that that seems to be selling. Let’s try it out. Well, it transformed their business, not just here in the US, but all over wherever they had customers in Latin America, those were their best sellers. That’s a mistake I made. Because I didn’t have the confidence. I didn’t have the coaching. I never had a coach at that point. I didn’t have you been a mentor at that point early on, where I could say, Hey, I got this opportunity. I just went ahead and did what my rich dad said. And there I lost out. But you know what, I made a portion of that, because I did buy at a low price and wholesale and retail, they got to make all that money. But I’ll tell you this, but on a good side, another lesson was to not feel sorry for myself things bad, bad things are going to happen, they will happen. That’s fine. It’s if you get don’t get caught up in the moment, step back, detach from that moment, and say, Okay, what I’m here, I need to get here. So I just got lowered a little bit, I could still get there. Let me work toward it. But I think we get into a cycle of feeling sorry for ourselves, that knocks us down. And then any opportunity that gets presented, we knock it down, we have a good little angel on one side telling us positive things. And we have a little devil on the other shoulder saying the negative things. And I let myself sometimes get in that rut of letting that negative voice talk to me. I’ve learned a lot about that through a lot of ups and downs. We’ve mentioned a little bit here. But yeah, it’s all been learning, you know, you either earn money, or you learn the lesson. And I’ve learned a lot of lessons.
John Corcoran 31:56
I mean, even that, you know, first initial initial purchase, where the guy ended up screwing you over and you had to charge back your credit card, which led to a whole, you know, realm of opportunities, that was a big setback, which led to great opportunities for you. And not that we’re focused on this. But oftentimes you hear the son takes over the business and you know, has no experience and then it collapses later. Do you know what happened to that son, after
Joel Gandara 32:22
I’ve talked to the two districts, I’ve talked to a distributor or to after who’s I don’t know if their their main dish, or it’s just someone who sold, they said that the sales went down, when I brought out my brand. I know some of those customers stopped buying it. They told me they go when we pick up your brand, we’re dropping that when it’s going to replace it. On top of that, what they probably didn’t expect is that I buy 14 players in that industry. A lot of those were their customers. And trust me, I’m not ego driven. But a little bit, you know, if the math makes sense on this acquisition, the gravy is that I got to immediately remove that brand. New, I’m the owner. Now we’re not bringing in that brand. We’re replacing it with all of mine. And so that was part of it that stole their thunder, and dropped them down a little bit from from where they were, again, that was a really drove me but it felt a little bit good. And in those moments.
John Corcoran 33:10
You look back on your life. And you think about all these opportunities that you’ve had for you, which certainly wouldn’t have come to you if your family had not made that fateful decision to get on the boat and brave going across the ocean and landing in the United States. What are your reflections on that on the opportunities that have been brought to you and and you know what your life would be like with the family members that you know now, sadly, you you don’t even know because they’re going up and inside of Cuba?
Joel Gandara 33:41
Yeah. Well, for years, we would receive letters back and forth. Some of my letters didn’t get there, because I tried to sneak in like a $10 bill. They don’t even know their mail, you know, so we’d hear that they couldn’t tell us the reality, they would just tell us, in subtle words, what we’re going through. Now it’s different. We have Facebook Messenger and stuff, we can talk to cousins, and aunts and uncles we hear a little bit more, but they’re still guarded the way they speak because everything’s filtered. But so one day wholesale client of mine from the Northeast came to visit me in my warehouse, and I had I sold the business, I don’t have it anymore, but I had a massive American flag hanging from the rafters in my warehouse. And they said, Well, they’re American, probably 10 generations American, probably. And they said, Why do you have that big old flag here? And I go, what? And that made me realize, Oh, you’re not fortunate enough to know other other than this, you think this is normal? I know how blessed I am to be in this country. And I know the opportunities that I have are phenomenal. It’s it’s, you know, what my family wouldn’t give to have that. So I’ll share with you something I’ve prepared. And ever since I was a little kid, I have a constant reminder. First of all my parents talk about Cuba and what we went through and, you know, share things like sometimes we went to bed hungry so we could give you that glass of milk, you know, things like that. And it’s only gotten worse since then. But I haven’t lost sight of that. And I think a quick shortcut to happiness is having gratitude, right? And I think about this every day, and it’s, I walk into my closet. And, and I have a reminder, and it’s the shirt that I had on the boat when it came from Cuba. And what this does for me, is, it tells me Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s why I’m here. That’s what my family went through. That’s what I went through, right? So I’m the trauma of the ocean and all of that. And I’m here for a reason, my 15 cousins that I don’t know very well, would die to have this opportunity. And one of what if one of them would have become a superstar and be amazing for society? And here, what am I going to do? sit around and watch TV, drink beer, and not work hard and not get ahead and not be a great father? No, I’m here. I’m the representative. I’m the chosen one, I’m going to make every single day count. And I understand that everybody has my story. But if you can find a way to pinpoint something physical that you can say, Yeah, that’s the thing. That’s why I’m here on this earth. And that’s your why. And that can guide you for the rest of your life, I think you will have an amazing life.
John Corcoran 36:07
That’s so great. And thank you for sharing that. That shirt with us. That’s amazing that you have that still on that you can look at it each day. I’m so curious about Cuba as a country, I really hope that one day it’ll open up, and we’ll all be able to go there and experience, you know, all the riches, what it has to offer, and the world would be able to experience it as well. That’s a great transition to my final question, which is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of expressing gratitude. You already mentioned it. But you know, I love to hear people’s stories about peers, contemporaries, maybe others in the apparel industry, now you’re doing more coaching. So maybe other coaches, were both members of entrepreneurs, organization, some other maybe other peers and EO and your forum? Who would you want to shout out? Who would you want to thank for helping you in your journey?
Joel Gandara 36:58
Yeah, his name is Jeffrey L. Jordan, from New Jersey. He’s in the athletics world. He played college basketball, I think for City College in New Jersey years ago. That moment that I mentioned earlier, where I was at the lowest low, it really was the lowest point in my life because I thought, That’s it. I built all this, I was an entrepreneur, I did all of it. I worked hard, I saved every penny, it’s all going to be gone. Because my vendor is going directly to my customers. He’s the guy that forced me to go to his house, you know, my wife went to a barbecue at his house with the kids. And I stayed home laying in bed, not even the TV on just laying there, staring at the ceiling thinking it’s over. It’s over. That’s it. Maybe not today, but it’s over. I gotta go back to get a job. You know, I ever worked with somebody in years and my 20s. And now I gotta go work for somebody. Well, my wife came back and said, Hey, Jeff wants to talk to you about what happened today with the whole thing. And I said, No, no, I can’t talk to them. Tell him I’m not going she went back to his house. And 10 minutes later came back. And she said he insists he has something to tell you just come and talk to him. I could have said no, I’m not going and had been stubborn and an ego. And he goes, forget it that I’m not going to tell them. I wouldn’t be here today. If I wouldn’t have had that conversation. By the way. Jeff has received handwritten letters from me over the years, and occasional tax. He knows how appreciative I am. So this is not weird for me to be thinking about him and thinking because I think about him all the time. Had he not told me he’s the guy who told me those customers buy from you. They like you. You’re the man doing all this, go for it. Don’t stop. Man, I wouldn’t have built that company. I wouldn’t have sold it. I wouldn’t be doing my absolute passion that I do today. And to wrap that back up. By the way, you said Cesar Quintero at the beginning of this. Years ago, he told me Joel, you just got to find your passion. And I thought he was crazy. Because I’ve been able to do what I did grow that business, make money, sell it. Now I’m doing my passion. So a couple of people that I mentioned there that I’m very grateful to there’s many more.
John Corcoran 38:56
Joel, I loved your story. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us. Where can people go to learn more about you and connect with you?
Joel Gandara 39:01
Joelgandara.com That’s my coaching website. You can message me through there. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
John Corcoran 39:04
Joel, thanks so much. Thank you.
Outro 39:13
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