Who is Gil? The short version 

Gil was born in Managua, Nicaragua.  In 1980, at the age of 8, due to the Nicaraguan Revolution, his parents sent him to the United States.  His parents weren’t rich but Gil never felt poor because they made many sacrifices for him. His mother was a housewife, and his father was an engineer.  In addition, Gil had a very supportive extended family.  He was raised during the first part of his life in the U.S. with his uncle, a doctor, and his aunt, a nurse, in the U.S.  He learned English and the American culture very quickly because his aunt was from New York.  Finally, at the age of 15, his parents moved to the U.S., and they made great sacrifices to survive.  His father took odd jobs at a gas station, convenience stores, and as a security guard to put a roof over the heads and food on the table of his family. As the years passed, his father became a college professor in the United States.  This helped Gil understand the importance of education.  He says, “my father told me something, they can take away everything from you, but they can never take away what you learn.” 

Another important influence for Gil were his grandparents. Both of his grandparents were poor and they both became entrepreneurs after starting from zero. He only met one of his grandfathers, but later in life, the story of his grandfather helped Gil gain the confidence to become an entrepreneur.  One of his grandfathers did not have a formal education; he was a shoemaker but later became a real estate investor and a successful farmer in his homeland. With the money his grandfather made, he sent all his kids to study abroad in Mexico, France, and the United States and left an inheritance of over 150 acres of land and properties.  His other grandfather, whom he never met, was also poor before becoming wealthy.  The revolution of 1980 in Nicaragua caused his family to lose some of this inheritance.  Also, since his parents moved to the U.S., they never worked the family inheritance. Much later in life, Gil took possession of some of these properties to build his net worth. Gil always refers to his grandfathers as mentors. Family played an important role in Gil’s life.

At a young age, Gil learned to understand the importance of money.  At the age of 16, he wanted a car but his family could not afford to buy him one.  Gil’s dream was to continue to play baseball, but instead, he took a job to earn the money he needed to buy a car.  His first job was washing dishes.  One year later, with a little help from his father and the money he saved, he bought his first car.  Since the age of 16, Gil has never stopped working.  At the age of 17, he took a job that would change his life forever.  Gil started working as a stock boy at a clothing store in Dadeland Mall in Miami.  He was eager to become a salesperson, but since he was not 18, he was not able to take the job yet.  As soon as he turned 18, he became a salesperson for Cignal, a high-end fashion clothing store.  By one year later, he had sold more than $150,000 in clothing.  He always refers to this experience as one of the most valuable because he learned how to sell and how to market.  His boss, Glenny Saavedra, taught Gil how to add value for customers, follow up, and how to build relationships.  About that time, Gil describes, “First, we handwrote every detail about each customer in a Rolodex.  We knew what they bought, what they liked, their birthday, and more information.  When we got new merchandise, I would call up my customers.  When we had promotions, when it was their birthday, when it was the holiday season, I would call up my customers.  We did not have Facebook, WhatsApp, nor Instagram.  We would pick up the company phone and rotate one phone line between all the salespeople.  In fact, two of my friends also sold more than $100,000 in clothing with me.  Those two friends later became business partners and investors later on in life.  This experience in business made me realize the importance of data, follow-up, and relationship management. These are things that business schools don’t teach. Many businesses don’t realize the importance of data and cultivating data.” 

 

While working as a salesperson in the clothing store and going to high school, Gil took an internship with an attorney.  Gil was not a good student in high school. He was a D student who almost didn’t graduate.  But Robert Gluck, the attorney he did his internship with, served as a mentor. Robert had dropped out of high school and obtained his GED.  When Robert told Gil his story, he became motivated and understood that anything was possible.  Gil begged his principal to let him graduate from high school.  His principal asked Gil why he wanted to graduate.  Gil told him, “Two weeks after graduation, college starts, and I want to go to college to become an attorney.”  Gil asked the principal a key question that he uses in business today, “What needs to happen for me to graduate from high school?”  Gil would use this question for the rest of his life in the business world.  He always asks himself what needs to happen to move forward with this deal, transaction, or agreement?  Gil went to night school, attended school on Saturdays, and he finally graduated from Miami Killian Senior High.  Since Gil did not have good grades, his only option was a public college, Miami Dade Community College, now Miami Dade College. 

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When Gil arrived at college, he analyzed the syllabus. He concluded that if he took the maximum number of classes, in a year and a half he would be able to graduate with an Associate degree, and he could go to a four-year university.  Unfortunately, there were several obstacles in his way.  First, Gil did not have money to go to college.   In fact, he had to take on several jobs, use credit cards, and take out student loans until later, when he was able to obtain scholarships.  Second, when Gil took the entrance exam, he scored poorly, and he had to take five remedial classes.  Gil knew this would delay his plans to finish in a year and a half. So, he went to talk to the Director at Miami Dade College and asked them if there was anything that they could do for him but the director told him there was nothing they could do.  Of course, Gil was persistent and told them, “It’s my time and my money and in the end, if I fail in normal classes, I lose my time and money and not the college.”  Shortly after, they told him that he could take two remedial classes that were either fail or pass classes and since it was summer, he could take these two classes in five weeks.  Undoubtedly, Gil passed the classes, and a year and a half later, he graduated with honors with a 3.8-grade point average, literally an “A” student.  The only classes he had obtained Cs in were math classes.  Ironically, Gil decided to become a finance expert later in life.  Gil recalls studying every day. sometimes until 3 a.m. As a result of this, he did not go out or enjoy his life too much during this time.  Notably, Gil realized that what is difficult in the beginning, becomes easier in the end.  

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After leaving Miami Dade, Gil had scholarship offers from numerous universities including NYU and other prestigious universities.  Despite this, he decided to continue his education at Florida State University.  While at Florida State, Gil maintained his A average, but he lost his scholarship because he joined a fraternity, Delta Tau Delta.  Nonetheless, Gil held two jobs while at Florida State and took on student loans.  As a matter of fact, joining a fraternity and losing his scholarship was one of the best decisions he had ever made. Why? His big brother, Patrick Mannion, was the President of the 200 man fraternity at FSU and he taught Gil a lot about leadership and how to become active in numerous university organizations.  Gil states, “Most people think a fraternity is all party and drinking.  Yes, that happens.  However, a fraternity is like running a business.  Every Sunday we had an executive team that would meet to discuss budgets, review academics, review community involvement, discuss plans, and other topics.  Being active and taking a leadership role as Head of Academic Affairs in my fraternity helped me understand how to run a business.” In fact, Gil participated in numerous leadership academies via his fraternity and learned a lot about leadership.  In his last year of college, Gil returned to Miami and finalized his bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations at Florida International University. 

After graduating from college, Gil did not have too many jobs offers.  Additionally, he was uncertain about whether or not he should go to law school for numerous reasons.  In his last year of college, Gil was working with immigration attorneys, political action groups, and a lobbyist to U.S. Congress to help obtain legal status for Nicaraguans and Central Americans living in the U.S.  Without a doubt, he did not like politics.  In the midst of all of this, a lady he knew approached him and asked him if he wanted a job recruiting students from the U.S. to study for the University of Mobile Latin American campus in Nicaragua.  Even though Gil was born in Nicaragua, he was foreign to Nicaragua as a resident of the U.S. for many years. Unfortunately, Gil did not have too many options.  He took the job recruiting students from the U.S. to study in Nicaragua. Eventually, this job became a big turning point for Gil. First, Gil got to work from Brickell Avenue, Miami’s Financial District. Second, he had to report monthly to three people in Brickell Avenue who were on the board of directors for the University of Mobile’s Latin American campus.  Those three people were Henry Howard formerly, head of BAC Education Finance, one of the largest student loan providers in the U.S., Mr. Roberto Arguello, head of Community Reinvestment Act for Northern Trust Bank, one of the most prestigious private banks in the U.S., and Mr. Roberto Zamora, founder and President of Latin American Financial Services (LAFISE), today one of the largest financial conglomerates and banks in Central America and Miami.  When Gil met these three individuals, everything changed.  Immediately, Gil was entranced by the finance industry.

Since Gil had not studied finance, he decided to continue his master’s degree at FIU in public administration and finance.  In his last year working on his master’s degree, Gil was offered an opportunity to work for John Hancock Financial Services. 

At the age of 25, Gil took on his first and only paid job in finance. Working for John Hancock was very challenging because he had to target high-net-worth clients.  After all, Gil did not come from a wealthy family, nor did he have any wealthy friends. As a result, he started targeting middle-class folks.  Clearly, none of these people wanted to buy life insurance, nor invest in mutual funds.  Also, Gil was barely surviving financially. He could not pay his student loans or credit cards and was lucky to have gas money.  Consequently, many friends and family criticized him and told him he should find a regular job. Nonetheless, Gil did not stop.  Instead, he began listening to motivational audios from Anthony Robbins, Zig Zigler, and others. This helped out down the road with his businesses to train salespeople on how to stay motivated even when the wind is not blowing in your direction. In addition, they helped Gil realize that the only person you should listen to is yourself, if you believe in yourself and if you stay positive. Gil did not stop and continued trying to build a clientele in financial services with many financial challenges.  

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While Gil continued doing financial analysis, he realized that many people were in debt and that most people had a mortgage.  Gil started to realize that if he could save people money, he could convert them into mortgage clients.  However, John Hancock did not offer mortgages.  Therefore, Gil tried to venture off on his own and after one year, he failed.  He had a childhood friend at Mass Mutual, Charles Murias, who was facing the same challenges and they got together and decided to team up to sell term life insurance and mortgages.  They searched for a mortgage lender and secondary market trading company in Brickell Avenue that specialized in mortgages that would be willing to work with them.  They both decided to go work for Bankers Securities Corp. in Brickell Avenue on a commission-based basis. They had to pay for the office space for some time because they were still selling life insurance. The owner of the firm allowed them to sell the life insurance and offer mortgages as long as they paid for the desk space.  Eventually, after one year, Gil became very successful in mortgages. Shortly thereafter, he became Executive Vice-President of the firm.  On the contrary, Charles took a different route and became a very successful proprietary trader and portfolio manager on Wall Street, and today is the owner of HM Global Management, who has joined Lazard Asset Management. Later, Charles would become a key mentor for Gil on Wall Street and in New York. 

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At the age of 29, Gil decided he wanted more, and he decided to launch his own mortgage lending and investment firm, KGFA Capital Partners, today known as KGFA Capital Ventures.  Jack Kelly, Michael Jui, Johan Sotomayor, and his sister, Rosie Zapata all invested either time or capital into the venture.  In fact, Jack and Michael were both salespeople with Gil at Cignal when they were 18 years year old. By the time Gil was 35, he had built a salesforce, multiple B2B relationships, and generated sufficient capital to create a net worth in excess of $1 million across several asset classes.  From the age of 25 up until the age of 35, it was all upward for Gil, despite financial challenges.  He recalls that if he would have stopped when people criticize him, he would have never gotten so far and created a dream life.  By the age of 30, Gil had traveled the world, lived on an island in South Beach, owned sports cars, dined at fine restaurants, and surrounded himself with successful people.  Furthermore, during this time he took executive education programs at Harvard Business School in Marketing and Finance.  Imagine, Gil went from being a D student in high school to an honor student to Harvard Business School. By and large, he knew what anything was possible if you put your mind to it.

Nonetheless, the party came to an end for Gil with the Great Recession of 2008-2009. In 2009, Gil found himself in a worse position than when he had graduated from college or when he initiated his career in finance and entrepreneurship.  To a great extent, Gil was an inexperienced entrepreneur. As a result, he had too much debt, his loan portfolios had defaulted, and companies he had invested in were failing because they were aligned with the real estate market such as a led manufacturing company, kitchen cabinets, and others.  Gil states, “In order to succeed, you need to fail. Most successful entrepreneurs will fail several times before they become successful.  There is no blueprint for business success. The only way to learn is by failing. These experiences will teach you how to do it better next time and how to avoid major pitfalls.”

From 2009 to 2013, Gil took on odd jobs and tried business ventures in other industries. For instance, he tried to become a club promoter at South Beach, he attempted to create a social network for professional models, and he traded stocks to get by.  But this was all just too unstable for Gil.  In addition, it was a continuous failure. During this time, Gil was trying to defend the properties he owned.  Since he could no longer afford attorneys, he defended himself in court.  He was investigated by the Florida Department of Financial Services and in the end, all came back clean.  Gil was very proud of this. This later helped him reenter the finance industry and to demonstrate to future customers that Gil’s companies conduct clean business. His prelaw degree came in handy. Eventually, in 2012, Gil filed for bankruptcy.

That same year, one of these ventures he worked with was able to obtain a loan online at midnight.  Gil was impressed with how fast a loan could be done online.  A great friend, asked him, what are you good at? Gil told him, finance.  His friend asked him why he didn’t get back into it and Gil began to realize that from 2009 to 2013, everything he did was leading to nothing.  Gil was always researching information and studying markets and trends.  When he saw how personal loans were being done online and how the internet was changing the way business was conducted, Gil was hungry to learn more.  In 2013, Gil determined that one feasible venture would be to provide business financing online to growing businesses.  However, entering this industry was not like mortgage finance or traditional financial services.  Gil took one year to learn about how to build websites, online platforms, SEO, SEM, PPC, and the tech world.  Surprisingly, Gil acquired new knowledge about internet technology and internet marketing on his own.  By and large, he had major setbacks in front of him: he had no office, no capital, and no friends who could back him up financially or who wanted to take risks.  But this would not stop Gil from taking on the risk of forming this new venture.

In late 2013, Gil told himself he needed to get back out to Brickell Avenue and find the survivors. Gil knew that many companies in Brickell had shut down and many of his friends in Brickell were broke just like him. In brief, many were gone and disappeared.  At the same time, he knew that there were some who survived.  He reached out to his initial three contacts whom he had reported to while working as a recruiter for the University of Mobile. After the second call, Mr. Roberto Arguello gave Gil the opportunity to have lunch with him at McDonald’s.  After sharing his idea with Mr. Arguello, Gil obtained the assistance that he needed.  It was not capital, it was office space and to serve as an incubator.  Mr. Arguello had known Gil when he first started his career and he believed in him. He knew he would be successful.  In addition, Gil had previously hired Mr. Arguello’s firm, CEO Advisors to serve as an advisor to KGFA Capital.  Mr. Arguello would allow Gil to use office space within CEO Advisors to launch his new venture offering business finance online.  Indeed, Gil continues to be thankful and grateful for the assistance that Mr. Arguello provided him with.

Even so, Gil still faced challenges.  He had no workers, no website, no funding to support deals, no salespeople, and about $500 to his name.  Gil asked Mr. Arguello to help him obtain capital, but Mr. Arguello told him to prove his business model worked first.  After two months, Gil obtained his first contract with a business funder to fund deals.  After three months, Gil closed his first transaction and made $3,000.  This allowed him to stay afloat.  Furthermore, Gil started to teach business classes at a local college at night in Miami to make some extra cash. He did this for one year in 2013. Gil says, “It was tough. At 9:00 a.m., I would dedicate time to Lendinero, and at 5 p.m., I would be in rush hour traffic to start a class at 6 p.m. and finish at 10 p.m. to get home at 11 p.m. Until one day, I asked myself, if I spent from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on my business, could I make more income than what they pay me for teaching? My answer was yes.  That day, I quit teaching and started working from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. for Lendinero.”

Luckily, he had never shut down KGFA Capital with the Secretary of State and he continued to do business as KGFA Capital Ventures LLC, however, Gil realized that this was not a catchy name and many internet companies have much shorter names.  Furthermore, the target market was not clear.  While bootstrapping the business, Gil realized that many online lenders, known as fintech’s, were based in New York, San Francisco, or Silicon Valley. Moreover, these companies did not have the information in Spanish, nor did they have bilingual personnel. As a result, Gil felt his best chance to enter this industry was to go after bilingual, Hispanic businesses in the U.S.  After searching over 100 domain names or business names, he came up with the name LENDINERO.  Gil explains, “Dinero means money in Spanish, and lend means lend.  The name ‘Lendinero’ clearly states what we do and it’s bilingual. A business name is important. Think of Jiffy Lube, the name says it all in a very suggestive manner – quick oil change.  It has a nice sound or ring to it.  It’s catchy. I wanted to come up with something similar.”   

Finally, Gil built the first Lendinero website on his own with little programming experience and no programmers.  Gil began reaching out to other contacts in Miami and started offering business workshops.  He also placed an ad on internships.com and obtained three interns whom he paid a very low salary and commissions because he could not afford regular salaries. Then, he began to obtain salespeople and build B2B relations.  One year later, Gil was up and running.  Despite the progress, the company was not generating significant revenues, but they were sufficient enough to keep the business running.  Gil states, “First you need to move from survival mode to stability mode, then to success and finally, something significant. Also, while cash flow is important when starting out, you need to make sure that you can bootstrap and survive.” Salespeople had a tough time staying with Gil because he could not offer them a salary.  He only had one star salesperson, Rocniel Ricardo, who started off as an intern.  Also, his cousin Justo Romero helped organize data on the cloud and assist with overall management. In the beginning, Gil would go out and visit countless business owners in the Miami area.  While this helped, Gil knew that this had to come to an end. Otherwise, he would have a traditional business model and not an internet-based business model. Moreover, Gil started traveling to New York and Wall Street to see how some of the funders worked and to obtain funding. 

While meeting with fintech owners, Gil saw how some fintech’s had outsourced to India, Israel, and other countries.  One business lender was outsourcing to his native-born land, Nicaragua. In December of 2013, Gil decided to take a trip to Nicaragua to spend Christmas with his family and to visit some of the call centers there.  Gil was surprised when he saw that Capital One, Target, Kohl’s, Virgin Mobile, and other companies were outsourcing to Nicaragua.  Gil continued to research in other countries, including Costa Rica, Colombia, and India.  In mid-2014 he had the opportunity to work with one of the largest call centers in Nicaragua, Accedo Technologies.  Gil implemented an offshore outbound sales team. By November of 2014, this became a failure.  Outsourcing sales offshore was not working for Lendinero.  Since Gil is very analytical, he decided to analyze all the reasons why it was not working.  He realized that many of these call centers were not for outbound sales, nor for marketing, they are mostly for customer service and inbound calls.  Second, the talent offshore was not trained to work with Wall Street, with online platforms, or to conduct business over the internet. 

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In 2015, Gil made a drastic decision to spend the majority of his time in Nicaragua. He also decided to form his own BPO, Business Processing Outsourcing company, offshore to cater only to Lendinero.  From 2015 to 2017, Gil traveled consistently from Miami to New York, and from Miami to Nicaragua.  He spent countless hours training salespeople and online marketers offshore.  In 2017, Gil was almost ready to call it quits.  He could not understand the work ethics, foreign business policies, and other challenges faced when working offshore.  His girlfriend, now wife, Yahaira Pichardo told him that things in Nicaragua did not function how they function in the U.S. and Gil finally decided to take her advice. They cleaned house and started to hire new people and implement workplace policies as they are done offshore. A new BPO was formed with foreign nationals, where Gil became a majority shareholder. In 2018, Gil began to see the light.  From 2017 until the present, revenues increased year over year from 100-200% per year.  In addition, Gil hired account executives in the U.S. in different states, including Texas, California, Georgia, and Florida.  Offshore and remote salespeople were both working effectively for Lendinero. 

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Gil concluded that if you want to build a business online, you should be able to conduct business from any country in the world. Gil states, “If you have to see clients face-to-face, meet salespeople face-to-face, or meet your support team face-to-face, you don’t have an online business.  The purpose of an online business is to do everything online.” Finally, Gil achieved this by bootstrapping the business.  Today, Lendinero has support staff, loan originators, marketers, web programmers, and recruiters in Nicaragua, the U.S., India, Pakistan, and has hired in other countries, including Mexico and Panama to service U.S. businesses with their capital needs.  During this time, Gil has reinvested the profits in U.S. equities, other internet ventures, real estate, and Lendinero, exceeding a net worth of $1 million in both liquid and non-liquid assets.

During this time, Gil has conducted numerous business workshops in the U.S. and abroad.  He has served as a guest writer for FORBES Magazine LATAM, Debanked, the nonbank finance publication from Wall Street, the Miami Herald (El Nuevo Herald), Negocios Magazine, and other publications. Gil has been featured on TV and in Entrepreneur magazine. 

Today, Gil is active with Lendinero as the CEO.  In addition, he’s an independent business consultant, speaker, and writer.  When Gil is not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife, his son, Gilberto Gabriel, and his parents.  Also, Gil plays tennis weekly and exercises on a regular basis.  He starts his days at 6 a.m. at the tennis court or the gym in his house.  Today, he lives primarily in Nicaragua. Due to the pandemic, he is not traveling much.  Once, the pandemic improves, Gil plans to spend time in New York, Miami, and Nicaragua. 

Gil’s story is not meant to impress you.  Gil feels he still has much more to achieve.  In fact, Gil is very humble today.  He says, “Back then, I would buy a brand-new sports car and eat at the best restaurants in South Beach.  Today, I prefer to buy a used car and I prefer to have dinner at my house.  It’s not what you have in luxury items that counts, it’s how much you keep in the bank or liquid assets.  People buy stuff that they don’t need to impress others.  When you know what you are worth internally and how much you can keep in cash, there is no need to misspend.  Also, the good times don’t last forever and neither do the bad times.  My father always told me, ‘It’s not an upward curve in business.  Save for the rainy days, son, because when it gets tough very few people will be there for you.’ My father is not an entrepreneur, but a wise man. It’s not about the money. Don’t do something because of the money, do it because you enjoy it.  I enjoy the achievement and feeling of helping others become successful.  I know when others succeed, I will also succeed.  I decided to create this website and blog for numerous reasons.  First, my son.  I want to leave something that my son can look back on. Also, I had a lot of information stored in the cloud, on my PC, and in my home, so why not place it on a website where it can be shared. 

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Lastly, my goal is to inspire other entrepreneurs and help them. The road is not easy but if you have mentors or advice, it will be much easier.  I had a lot of great friends and mentors along the way.  I wish I had more. I am not a billionaire. You can read a lot about millionaires, but the fact is less than 1% will become the next Steve Jobs. If you can achieve 1% of what Steve Jobs did, feel good. Having a business is not about living high.  Running a business is tough. It's often said that more than half of new businesses fail during the first year. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), this isn't necessarily true. Data from the BLS shows that approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. These statistics haven't changed much over time and have been fairly consistent since the 1990s. Though the odds are better than the commonly held belief, there are still many businesses that are closing down every year in the United States and all over the world.

A business should allow you to pay business expenses, pay yourself, save money, reinvest in the business, and reinvest in other asset classes. The revenues must be poured into these five areas.  If you can’t achieve this, you need to reassess what you are doing with your business.  I can share with you my story on how I have been able to achieve this. In the end, my purpose is to share my knowledge with others.  Life with a purpose is better than having a life with no purpose. I believe that the challenges and successes I have achieved are not only about making money but about having a purpose in life.  That purpose is to share with others to make their lives easier. It’s never easy, but then again it’s never hard. I always say, if you can implement one idea from what you have read or learned, it’s a success. I hope you can take one of my ideas and implement it. At the same time, if someone else can motivate you to move forward and keep fighting for what you want to achieve, it's a success.  This is what this is all about. ”