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The number 1 podcast in Spanish in the wonderful world of franchises.

Brought to led by its host, Rafael Alvarez.

We are live from the 85th floor of the 1 World Trade Center

So, get ready, the show is about to begin.

Greetings, greetings, greetings, saludos.

Franquicia podcast live from the Mahagor Trade Center on the 85th floor.

Today we have a very, very special guest.

I've been so lucky to have him as a friend.

I know him for quite a while already, but he's a very smart, bright person that has been working very hard.

I would like to introduce to you the CEO and the co-founder of Tres Payroll, which is the first Latino payroll platform in the United States.

My wife speaks only English and with my kids we speak English and Spanish so it's crossing all the time.

But anyways, thank you so much for the invitation.

I have so much energy after the merengue that we were listening and connecting culturally.

Thank you for taking the time for accepting my invitation.

And I always enjoy that and have a great time when I have a live guest here, someone in person, compared with having it remotely, right?

Let me stretch you, my friend, because I cannot do this.

I'm literally, literally trying to keep myself together, but The moment that I just walk and saw the building,

And then you walk to the elevator, everything, and then the views, I'm trying to keep myself calm with these beautiful and outstanding views.

So I'm very, I know that you are not from New York City.

You came all the way from Houston, Texas and it's always a pleasure to have you here in the city.

And also maybe I should really start by thanking you for sponsoring and participating in an event that we just organized a couple weeks ago here in New York City and you came to support us.

That event was Franquicia Fest, the first Latino, the biggest franchise expo in the US.

We did it at the Marijuana Peace Hotel in Times Square.

And your company was 1 of the exhibitors, Tres, you know, payroll, so I want to thank you, my friend, thank you.

Well, actually, I'm getting a little confused here because I'm like, who's thanking who?

Like, we left the convention with this feeling of, thank you for giving us access to the franquicious conversation.

It's not that I don't want to be part of the franchise business, it's just that I didn't have the opportunity years ago that someone will bring me into the conversation so I can get educated as a Latino and Understand a huge potential that is in this industry.

So it's a it's a great contribution to the economy overall

But I went out I mean you guys have a great a great platform.

We're gonna be talking about it in a few minutes.

But before I do that, I always like to start by getting to know our guests.

I mean, I would like people to get to know who really is Gustavo Suarez.

Tell us a little bit more about your background.

I don't know if I was made in Bogota, but for sure I was born in Bogota.

And then that was the first 17 years of my life until I migrated to the United States.

I guess you grew up in Bogota, you went to regular, what, primary school, middle school, you went to high school?

finished high school, then you didn't do high school yet?

You know, usually when you migrate at that age...

Well, they told me, Gustavo, don't say that you finished already high school in Colombia because I graduated at the age of 15.

So even at 17, I could still sign up as a high school student so I can learn English.

But then at the end I was like, no, I'm just gonna take ESL classes and continue my path from there.

When you came to the United States, You came by yourself with the family?

So the first job, I mean, I think that when you don't have any job offers, you create your own job.

that's what we do as immigrants in the United States.

So I was not getting paid at the Catholic church to play at the mass.

But once in a while, they were telling me, Gustavo, there is a wedding.

And then I was earning, that was my first few dollars in the United States how I earned some money and a few weeks after I migrated I started my first or I was involved in my first business venture.

So you came by yourself here in the United States?

Wow that was must be painful, leaving the whole family over there.

A few, I remember like if it was yesterday, it was on September

meaning what, a few months after, what happens?

And imagine, you know, being by yourself.

So this is a great moment for everybody who's watching and listening.

Take a little brief moment to remember that first Christmas, first New Year, and knowing that there is a reason why you're here and why you migrated to this country.

So I always like to say I'm also an immigrant.

I wasn't born here, but I like to say that we immigrants come with a lot of dreams, right?

Always ready to conquer the world and 1 day achieve the American dream.

So tell me some of those dreams, I mean, that you really came.

So I think there is a misconception that when we say, I wanna build wealth, that our goal as entrepreneurs is just money.

And money, money, money, money, money, money, but in reality, money is not really our goal.

We wanna take a project from nothing when nobody else believes in that project and make it into something.

We want to make our moms, our dads, our abuelitas, we want to make them proud.

We want to make our friends from childhood proud.

We want to be a great example of values and principles for our community in the next generation.

So I can continue on the list, but big picture, that's what it is.

So what was your first business venture here?

What was your first business that you established?

So in Texas, we call it 99 cent store, but I think here in New York, they call it La Bodega.

It's very tiny, very small, but, And then you sell also the phone cards.

And my job was basically to make sure that we had inventory to run all of the finances, operations, Excel sheets, and clean the floors, the shelves, and make sure that everything was organized.

So, wearing all the hats when you got your first and all your business ventures.

That was actually my first business venture.

I called my dad and I'm like, hey, dad, I need some money.

We're gonna potentially buy a business and whatnot.

At the end of the day, it was a family member who funded it.

I was fortunate but not on the second 1 on the second 1 It was my entire like my actual mom and dad their entire family Lifetime money, they sold properties everything boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom And they send me all the money.

They say like, this kid is going to be somewhere.

Probably about a year and then we sold it and got a return from it.

So, once you do that, you're like, I know everything about business.

I don't need to go on, I don't need to do an MBA, I know everything.

So how long did it took you then after you sold the first 1 to launch the second 1?

So I actually got a job after, and I remember they asked me, what are you, what are your skills?

And I'm like, I know how to clean, how to wash, how to vacuum, how to use computers.

I'm here to have fun and to learn and to work.

So like I started in that, in that company and next thing you know, they wanted to build a franchise system.

And we ended up buying 1 of the locations and then they didn't really have the tools for a franchise.

So they never got, I think, 4 stores, which that goes to the point that you've got, creating a franchise is not just going and getting people to buy locations and it's another business, a completely different business.

So anyways, unfortunately we got into this venture and unfortunately because of the business, the financial outcome that my family lost their entire funds under my management.

But because of that, I think we feel the cost of what we're here today.

You became, you gain experience, you don't buy experience, you have to earn it, right?

But tell me something, at the same time that you were launching and running these businesses, were you in college?

And that was actually the reason my dad said you're going to the United States but you're going to get your education.

And in Colombia, it is not even a question for you to get a college degree.

Same with many countries in Latin America.

But I was signing up for classes, and guess what?

You're running a business, you're thinking about Friday, I don't have any money, I'm broke, I'm negative, X amount of thousands of dollars in the bank accounts, how am I going to figure this out?

Just imagine, how are you going to deliver it on your homeworks and projects and so I was failing every single class.

So I started with business and then I think I did accounting a little bit and anyways all of that collapsed, collapsed, collapsed, collapsed and it got to a point that I say, ya no mas, enough is enough.

Then I went and thanks to a mentor I signed up into an engineering school and I became a petroleum engineer from the University of Houston.

Petroleum engineer, wow that's interesting.

With what intention to, I guess you wanted to go back to Colombia and work in that field or stay here?

So I was very fortunate to find this mentor.

He worked with him and he's an executive, a global executive in the oil and gas industry.

And then I was this kid that wanted to just take over the world.

And I told him I want to be part of the oil and gas business.

And the nature of business is petroleum engineering.

So he probably thought that I was just bluffing.

And then from there, you got a job in that field or you got a job or you just focus continue focusing on building your own businesses?

So I worked for actually 1 of the largest drilling companies in the world And then that's when I realized that I had some type of leadership skills.

Like a week after I started working, they told me, Gustavo, yeah, I think that you have what it takes.

Do me a favor, go fire 20 of the welders.

And I say, I don't even know these people.

They have like, figure it out, you have 24 hours to do it.

So they saw something and then after that, they assigned a rig, an oil and gas rig.

They wanted to take me, they offered me to a job in Saudi Arabia and then I say no, I mean I have also business here in the United States, the family, so I took the chances on my entrepreneurial career and here we are.

So, I noticed, I know that you and I met, I believe before or while we were doing the, we're part of the Latino Business Action Network, the LBAN program.

As I always mention, people ask me like, Gustavo, what do you think?

And I'm like, you got to be very careful.

of Latino entrepreneurs throughout the United States.

And it is dangerous because it will transform your life, your personal life and your business life for good, but not just in a slight transformation.

The more you put into the network, the more you invest, it will completely change the perspective for good and enable you to build national, if not global companies.

This is what Gustavo is making reference to.

It's just the Latino Business Network program at Stanford University.

When you go and this is at the business grad school at Stanford, so it's a special building, a special little campus.

It's interesting, the dynamic, because when you look at that campus and the whole environment, I don't know, it's like, I like to say, when I went to Stanford, it's like, you can breathe progress.

Every time you take a breath, you go, you can feel the atmosphere.

It's so heavy of technology, of business, trying people, trying to find the next thing.

And it's that mindset that really can inspire.

And the humbleness of the people and the community.

But then the ideas and putting people together to build companies like Uber, Facebook, Lived, and the list goes on.

It's that heart of technology from all over the world.

Tesla, Tesla, I mean, you know, I remember taking classes there.

He used to talk a lot about the PayPal mafia.

He said, why is this PayPal mafia thing that everybody's talking about?

And then the professors, they all, you know, yeah, they all came from here.

There was a group of students that created PayPal, sold it, and now they're all multi, multi-billionaire.

Most of them, you know, Elon Musk came from there, the kids that created YouTube.

Steve Jobs presented his first computers, literally at Stanford.

I used to walk at Stanford, Stanford campus.

And every time I go there, I go for a walk because it's like you breathe and you breathe ideas and creativity and curiosity.

As a matter of fact, I was there recently with my daughter, my youngest daughter.

She's trying to enroll in, you know, she applied to Stanford.

We did a whole tour of the college in California, went to the University of San Diego, UCLA, and also Stanford.

I mean, but definitely, we are very lucky to be part of that program.

And the key here now is to be able to keep telling people that they, to promote it.

The goal was to identify successful Latino business owner like us that are, were generating over a million dollars.

And the idea is to teach us how to now take that million and convert it to 10 million, 10 million into a hundred and a hundred million into $1 million, which is very, very, very interesting.

But besides the Stanford program, I noticed that I don't know what I mentioned, you also were involved in an accounting bookkeeping tax preparation company.

and it was after understanding that all of these failures that I accumulated over the years building traditional small business, Now it was my time to give back.

So telling families, literally, don't do that business because of A, B, and C.

For example, you never being part of the restaurant industry, you never cooked, and then you're launching a taqueria because you see a taqueria that is successful.

So just being able to give that advice, is that it?

Just being able to give that advice to small business owners to guide them, then it really filled my heart in creating that impact in family.

And today we have actually several clients from Melbourne, which makes us very, very, very proud and we manage their finances.

And I say we manage, but we'll talk about it in a moment, but I was forced to migrate from JPD.

So JPD now it's its own entity and so far they're doing a great job, the entire team and the group of executives.

Now definitely, I noticed also at 1 point you mentioned to me that you also had a team.

You build a team in Colombia that is also doing most of the work or doing some of the work.

And before the pandemic, they're like, what do you mean?

You're going to do my accounting in another country?

The largest 4 accounting firms in the world, they have global talent.

Just now we have access to where we can afford it at small businesses.

And then after the pandemic, everybody's like, oh, so it became a norm to hire near shore and offshore for accounting practices, but we've been doing it way before

But I noticed, yeah, you're being so, so, so basically, how long you've been running this company?

So then from here, maybe it's time for us to talk about to you The new venture, the new baby, the new project.

I mean, well, first of all, so people don't know, tell us what is it?

I'm going to say that This baby was incubated and it gave birth from the LBAN program, from Stanford.

So because of that, 1 conversation took to another and I'm like, oh, these people are talking about technology.

And I've been running businesses in a traditional fashion, meaning profits, you save, you reinvest, you don't take vacation, you will also do some cuts in the personal life.

Maybe you start having a good lifestyle, but you can't really grow on a scale.

I remember that we did an event in my house.

You remember that when we celebrated Marc Mandry's 50th birthday and we did a group of Elven?

I remember when this was not even a reality.

It was just an idea and everybody, we gave all the Elven alumni to go up to the stage that I have in my house to...

I say, if you don't throw yourself under the bus, then this is never going to happen.

This was the first time that I announced it publicly.

And I say, we are going to launch the first US Latino payroll platform.

See all Mister Franquicias Podcast transcripts on Youtube

EP. 47: Gustavo Suarez, CEO of TREZ, The First US Latino Payroll Platform