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The Road of the Entrepreneur is Paved with Mistakes with Marcos Moura, Ep. 41

Apr 12, 2018

You know you’re talking to a real entrepreneur when one of the first things they say is “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” The journey of the start-up business owner is one paved with mistakes and missteps, but on this week’s episode of Just the Tips, Dean and I are talking to someone who has come out the other side and is now killing it. Marcos Moura runs Amada Senior Care a franchise brand that is on track to do $75 million in revenue. And to hear him talk about it, he’s so humble, discussing the way running a franchise company is really not just about your own success, but about helping other entrepreneurs succeed. Which is, coincidentally, what Just the Tips is all about, too.

Mistakes were made

I had to ask Marcos to provide us some examples of mistakes he made earlier in his career. And he told us about how he was a mortgage broker in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2007 and 2008, when the housing bubble burst and the market tanked. So he was basically at Ground Zero for the downtown, wearing a “Kick Me” sign on his back. And as Marcos says, it was a lack of humility that ended up getting him. He and his partners were making so much money, they thought they were smart and savvy. But if they’d really been paying attention to what was going on inside and outside of their business, they would have recognized what was coming. And Marcos talks about something that a lot of our listeners could probably relate to: Carrying around that failure as though it was a flaw in him, like it was his fault.

How Marcos turned it around

So if the 2008 crash was a defining moment in Marcos’s career, I had to ask him how he didn’t let it define him. And what Marcos says is really interesting: It wasn’t a book or a mentor or a life event that suddenly changed things for him. In fact, it was a series of small steps, small changes in habits that got him to success again. He likens it to losing weight: It’s going to be the little changes you make that add up to a big change in your life. That, and as he says, you have to work your ass off. This is a really inspiring episode of Just the Tips that you won’t want to miss.

The Death Star wins

Marcos also talked about some of his crazier mistakes, from branding misses to his own “Star Wars” moment. He told us about how he started a video game retail franchise and painted Game Stop as the Empire with the Death Star, and his own company as the retail alliance. But in his story, Luke misses the drop, and the Death Star incinerates planets willy-nilly (i.e. Game Stop won). But he talks about the one key mistake he made was not making sure the franchisees were a good fit. He said they were just ready to take money from anyone who had it, without understanding their audience.

A New Hope

One of the key changes for Marcos was working with people who he knows are a good fit, who are good people, and who make you excited to go to work every day. As Marcos says, you should have a “no assholes rule.” And I think listening to this week’s episode, you’ll hear what a good guy Marcos is. He’s so open about the mistakes he made in the past, and how he changed things with his present company, every entrepreneur should listen to this week’s episode of Just the Tips.

Outline of This Episode

  • [7:01] Marcos’s first mistakes
  • [12:08] How Marcos turned it around
  • [19:58] Big franchise mistake
  • [25:00] Marcos’s new approach
  • [33:03] What Marcos has learned at his new company

Resources & People Mentioned

Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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