How Gen Z approaches money

In this episode, Jack sits down with Diego Andres of Smart Boston for a conversation centered on money, mindset, and the power of human connection. Diego breaks down how Smart Boston is using street interviews and real conversations to understand how Gen Z thinks about wealth, relationships, confidence, and personal responsibility. He shares why he believes proximity, curiosity, and the willingness to feel uncomfortable matter more than resumes, credentials, or trying to look polished too early. The episode also gets personal, as Diego opens up about depression, loneliness, early entrepreneurial losses, and the hard lessons that shaped his perspective on leadership and success. It is a sharp, high-energy conversation about rejection, self-awareness, and what it actually takes to build a bigger life from the inside out.

SmartBoston
Diego Andres

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Host: Jack Moran

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Transcript

Diego Andres 0:00

What's your biggest weakness with money? A lot of them say it's food, clothes, and that those are like the top two food and clothes. Um, and then we ask the following question where do you think that comes from? A lot of them actually say their parents. A lot of people blame their financial stress due to their parenthood, like how they were raised. So I've realized that a lot of youth doesn't take initiative of their own faults. They can easily like blame, like, oh, it was my environment.

Jack Moran 0:33

Welcome to Shaking Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the pumpkinness, please like, comment, subscribe, and share in order to keep the pumpkin scrum. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jim from Random, and this is Shaking Hans.

Diego Andres 1:11

So I I always ask everybody at the end, I was like, um, and maybe we could save this for the for the podcast. For game. Um, but he's like, I I always ask everybody, like, what's the best uh advice you could ever give the youth? Um, and sometimes even what's the best financial advice you could give the youth? And he said, be social, network with people, shake hands. Like, if you're looking to expand and grow nowadays, um, you need to shake more hands because opportunities come through other people. And and then this is my part. I realized this recently, I said people actually don't apply for jobs anymore. Like, resumes are kind of irrelevant. Uh, you have to network for jobs. That's the way to do it. And and from all the people I've learned, it's like it's it's who you know, it's not what you know, because you can learn that easily. But who you know is more important because it'll put you through doors that you could have never had access to in the beginning.

Jack Moran 2:10

So, how would you recommend getting a job from zero, starting from zero?

Diego Andres 2:15

Well, you gotta first find what you like to do. And if you could find what you like to do, um then you go find the people that do that. Go network. One thing I learned from this very successful lady, um, she she has she's like a fashion designer or a creative designer, but she's also in corporate. And a really great advice she gave me when I interviewed her, she said, um, well, I asked her, like, what's the best way to network nowadays? She says, go to nonprofit organizations. Just go to all these events that you can go to, even if you have to pay for a ticket, just just go and network with people. You don't know who you're gonna find. And in a non-profit organization, a lot of people there are either the donors or the peer either the donors or the people in the committee or um people that like are just there to help. And so it's a very supportive environment when you go to a nonprofit, um, and everybody there is genuinely willing to help you. You know, they really want to help you. And so if you just go to nonprofits and shake hands, introduce yourself to people, dress nice, like that's the easiest way of doing it.

Jack Moran 3:27

I like that you keep saying shaking hands, it's uh giving us a good promo for the uh shaking hands, that's right. Good promo for the uh podcast. Um so give me like a little bit of a rundown on the like what you're doing right now.

Diego Andres 3:41

So I interview the youth. Well, it's a difference between interviewing the youth and I also interview millionaires. Um I so Smart Boston is an educational platform where we talk about money and mindset. So our motto is it's for Gen Z's by Gen Z. So it's a company built by the youth. There's really nobody uh that's like doing it that's older than Gen Zs. It's just a group of Gen Z's. And the community platform is meant for people to get educated on what it looks like to be successful. And I think a big thing of what we do when we interview the youth is we we're just doing research. We really genuinely want to know what people think about money, uh, relationships. And a big thing too is you know, you get to network with so many people outside in Boston, it's like it's so diverse. Um and and when we ask for interviews, it's a very easy way to connect with people because what I've realized is what interviews do, it subjugates your own ego and allows the person to be highlighted in the moment. Just kind of like what we're doing here in the podcast. You're subjugating your ego and you're allowing me to be the star of the show, right? So same concept when we do interviews. Um, and I think the big thing is you first we do research, but we also make them look really good on camera. So big reason why we ask the same questions over and over again is because we generally want to know people's answers to these questions. And I think the first one is always, are finances important in relationships? I can only count three people that have said no. Everybody else, 99.99% of all interviews that I've done, yes, it's important in relationships. And then I also ask, um, do you do you have a money management system? About 80, close to 90% don't have a money management system. But finances are important, but they don't have a system. And so that's another thing that we're realizing as a generation. Like, yes, you can think money is important, but you know, one thing I learned from my mentor, he says wealth is a system. It's really just um when money comes in, you have to have tasks for that money, so it automatically comes in. And real wealth is also like what you decide to keep after all the income you've made. Because if let's say you uh uh uh Jack, let's say you actually decide to count all the money you've made in your entire lifetime from the first check you ever got all the way till today, you accumulate all that money, it's it's it's a good amount of money, I'm assuming so. And what uh we ask people is like, how much do you have left out of all that money? And I think that's the real the real kicker for a lot of people. You make a hundred percent of the money and then you spend all of it.

Jack Moran 6:35

I'm like, where the hell did all that go?

Diego Andres 6:36

Yeah, exactly. And that's that's I kind of went on a tangent, but you know, the interviews, great, the interviews really bring out uh the research too of like you know, our youth, our our generation really doesn't know what's happening with our money, you know. How did Smart Boston start? It started in 2023. Um, my mentor actually started, uh he's the founder of Smart Boston. He had the vision where there was something lacking in the in the system, in the community, where it it just it wasn't hitting right. Like you can go to all these great places and learn, but the learning never stuck to you. It never like was ingrained and like, yeah, this is some sort of teaching. It's a it's very logical teaching, is what's been happening. Where, you know, I'm not knocking school down at all, but you go to school to get good grades, and you're supposed to memorize a lot of stuff, and you get graded on your memorization, but that doesn't change your life. Um, so he started this platform, Smart Boston, where smart people meet, and it's a place, it's like a hub to meet smart people in the city. And from then, you know, he pulled me as the director of marketing um like about a year ago, and then from then I kind of had that creative thinking of like, you know, I I'd love to interview people too, because I saw Hard Knocks, School of Hard Knocks, and he was interviewing a lot of people and it was very inspirational. And I was like, you know, I could I could do that too. And then from there I just went on and I started interviewing people in the streets, and it developed to a point where now it's like it's the culture and the company, you know. You come to the company and you're learning about it. Best way to, you know, get educated is to learn about yourself. So when you go out to the streets and like try to talk to strangers, it really tests your social skills and it really tests how you are with um other humans and how you can make other people feel comfortable. So it's a lot of a lot of that stuff.

Jack Moran 8:43

Is that part of the curriculum that you guys have? Is going out and interviewing people? Is that like one of the tasks that you're required to do to build out that skill?

Diego Andres 8:49

I would say so, yeah. Yeah.

Jack Moran 8:51

How many interviewers are there?

Diego Andres 8:54

It's close to about 10 and a couple that are more frequent. Yeah, close to about 10. And it to grow, of course, it's gonna like get bigger and bigger. But uh, you know, what it did for me was it made me realize that there's no limits to the number of people I can meet. Because at this point, like you you go to Boston and there's an infinite amount of people to meet as an individual, right? You can just go to Newberry Street or go to Boylston Street, anywhere that's popping, and you're gonna in in a in a span of maybe a couple minutes, a hundred people are gonna pass by you. And so you get to choose who you want to talk to, you know, that's kind of the thing.

Jack Moran 9:39

How do you break the ice with a person?

Diego Andres 9:43

It's actually really simple. I just I I actually I learned this from a friend of mine, too. This is after doing it for so many times. At first, I would like think that the more you explain to the person, the more they'll hear you out. But actually that's the opposite. The less you say, the more the stranger will actually like listen to you. So I just go and I say, Hey, and I pause, I say, Hey, you down for a street interview? And they have to actually think like street interview, they've never heard of that. So the human mind is genuinely curious and it's gonna say, What is it about? Or they'll just say short, and and a good chunk of them will say, No, I don't have time, thank you though. You know, so you just kind of you kind of level it level it out on those those areas, you know.

Jack Moran 10:37

What sort of connections are you starting to make like from that data that you're getting back from these interactions?

Diego Andres 10:43

Uh what sort of connection?

Jack Moran 10:45

Like, how are you connecting that data to a realization that you're having? Like the feedback that you're getting from those interviews or those interactions. Have you connected the dots on like this is how people are in their day-to-day lives, or you know, they have this veil up or they have these defense systems?

Diego Andres 11:02

Yeah, I would say a big thing is, for example, the last question we asked them is like, what's your biggest weakness with money? A lot of them say it's food, clothes, and that those are like the top two food and clothes. Um, and then we asked the following question, where do you think that comes from? A lot of them actually say their parents. A lot of people blame their financial stress due to their parenthood, like how they were raised. So I've realized that a lot of youth doesn't take initiative of their own faults, they can easily like blame, like, oh it was my environment, you know? And then it it it's really it really depends on the person, but for the most part, uh it's everything is self-inflicting. Like, if you look at all the problems you've had in your life, it's all because of you, like it's not external. We may think it's external, but um, one thing I learned from my mentor, he says, Life happens uh through you, not to you. If you think life happens to you, then you're gonna blame everything outside. Like, hey, this happened to me, she did this, he said that, I got a parking ticket, all these things to complain about. But in reality, all these problems have it happen internally, and then it gets represented externally into the environment.

Jack Moran 12:31

And I think it starts like in the beginning, kind of a little bit external because you're a blank slate when you're a child. Yeah, and then those experiences kind of define how you process information, and then like the rest just happens internally from that like makeup or that personality, that psyche that you develop through those early experiences. Yeah, which makes sense why a lot of people blame their financial issues on those impressions that happened as a child.

Diego Andres 12:55

Yeah, it you know, I think one thing that humans love to do is we love to be in proximity with people that are just like us. So a big thing that doesn't cause us to like grow and change is because we're around the wrong people. And then I I would say because proximity is is really power. Proximity is power. You hang around the right people that have the right intentions, you're gonna get motivated to want to like do more and be more. But a lot of us growing up in our environment, we're not that that inform and that information or those types of people don't show up because we don't explore. You know, if you stay in your hometown and you don't outgrow it, if you don't like go to a different place and meet more people, if you stay comfortable in your zone, that's all you know. And if that's all you know, you don't know what you don't know. And you know, I would say the same thing with money. Like, you gotta go talk to rich people, you gotta go talk to like wealthy people, see how they think. Um one thing I learned from this mentor of mine, uh, he was another guy in real estate. He told me this one day, and it was very interesting. He said, Diego, do you know how I know how prepared my mentees are when I'm teaching them? Um, I was like, no, tell me. He's like, I know how prepared they are based on the questions they're asking me. Because if you're asking me a certain question, that means you want to know the answer. A lot of the youth don't ask freaking questions. We stay quiet, and that's a big issue. Like, we need to ask more questions.

Jack Moran 14:38

How are you breaking in and finding these new mentors?

Diego Andres 14:41

So it's it it comes down to doing the street interviews, which is like a big thing. And I think now the brand is being built to a point where you know people are coming to us, they're they see what's happening with Smart Boston. It's a combination of really being fearless, going out there, and when you see somebody interesting, like go and talk to the person. The worst they can say is they're busy and they're or not interested. Um but a lot of us are just scared of rejection, you know?

Jack Moran 15:19

How do you build that credibility so that they give you their time?

Diego Andres 15:23

Great question. I would say well, definitely posture uh looking them in the eye, keep your chest up, and come with certainty, uh come with confidence. A lot of very I would say all the wealthy people that I've ever met respect, you know, the like if if you're young and you want to grow, don't be embarrassed that you're driving a little Honda or like a Toyota or something. Like that they all started there too, you know. So it's really it's really about being certain that you know, that you know you need to be around these type of people. If the wealthy person sees that you're certain and you're excited and you're asking great questions, like having a great attitude goes goes so far. That's like the key to success is like a great attitude. You may not know the skills or you may not know the knowledge, you may not know exactly what you need to do to be great in this industry, but if you have a great attitude about it, like you'll learn that on the way. That's that's the key, you know. And these wealthy people love a great attitude.

Jack Moran 16:37

I notice you ask everyone uh how much money they make. Why is that like important to people? Important to the audience, why is that a metric of success?

Diego Andres 16:47

It definitely establishes it establishes like a thermostat. Like, like, whoa, he's making this much, she's making this much. And being a platform where we talk about finances, um, it's it's important to understand like where people are at financially. That that's that's something that I think is important to ask because like I've met a good amount of Gen Zs that are making great money. Like uh two days ago, I just interviewed this kid. He's 23 as well. He's in sales. He does like HVAC Supply, he has his own company, and he'd be great to interview here, by the way. HVAC Supply Company, and he does sales, he does a lot of home improvement. He netted he netted close to a million, uh half a million dollars at the age of 23. And a lot of people that make great money, like they don't mind being asked how much they're making. And a lot of them might not want to tell you the number, but the whole idea is if I can get a number out of you, that establishes some sort of credibility for the brand too. Like, wow, we're interviewing great people, like we're actually we got great people on the channel. And the number, what it does to the audience, it makes you think, like, oh, that's possible. Oh, he does that, she does that, and she's making that much. Okay, if she could do it, I think, I think I could do it. And it just it's a comparison. Humans love to compare themselves to other people. So when you create that almost like atmosphere of like, how much are you making? How much are you making? It builds credibility big time.

Jack Moran 18:35

Have you always been interested in psychology? Uh it seems like you're very cognizant of the psychology of this process.

Diego Andres 18:43

Yeah, I would say, see, that's the biggest, that's the biggest wall you'll ever hit as a business owner, from what I learned. It's like psychology is the beginning of all success because you know, you could have some good mentors. Yeah. You could have um a business that's running and maybe it needs better sales, better marketing, or let's say the marketing sales is doing great, right? And you're you're it's a steady income and you're making great money. But then you as a business owner, you want to scale the business. The biggest issue every business owner will have when it comes to like actually growing their business is their own psychology. It's just a belief system. So if if you don't know, you should find somebody who does and be humble about it. A lot of business owners think they want to know everything, or that they should know everything, and they don't hire the right people, they don't look for outlets of how to grow and scale a business. So your psychology will always be the biggest barrier you have to like your success. You can have the best marketing, best sales, but if you don't have the right leadership to keep the people, like they're gonna leave. So the companies are made out of people. And if your psychology is not healthy, not in place, you'll be going against yourself too, internally. And like, if you're not even leading yourself, how can you lead other people?

Jack Moran 20:19

So, where does your primary income come from? Is it from smart postin?

Diego Andres 20:22

Yeah, I would say so. Uh, we get booked interviews. Um, and as the channel keeps growing, it gets bigger, you know, you get to you get to do more. Um, we want to also develop a podcast segment to the to the channel. Um, but a big a big channel of how we're making the money right now is actually we're building the network first. We want to curate an audience to see, we want to build a community first and then ask the community, hey, what do you want? What would you like to see? And then from there, you know, we'll be developing courses, and of course, having a vast community, you can have memberships and things like that. So the real big vision is to bring the youth to a space where they feel safe, that they can learn the right things, and not be taught logically, but emotionally. Like, hey, for you to actually change, you need to you you need to experience the right emotions. And I think the principle of our teachings is the subconscious mind. So the conscious mind is another word for consciousness is awareness, subconscious is below awareness. So a lot of people are are unaware of their results, they're just unaware of what they get from life. And because they don't know this information, they're gonna point outward and they're gonna blame everything outside of them. And so in Smart Boss, and you come in and you get educated and you learn the process of what we do, um, you get to learn that everything is a programming in in life, from business to careers to building relationships to managing. Your money to romantic relationships, it's just patterns that you have to observe. And when people become aware of that, then it's like, wow, this information is so valuable. And and I genuinely think it's a very valuable information. And so we'll be able to curate an audience on people that just want to learn, want to grow. And then you just you know rub shoulders with the right people.

Jack Moran 22:22

So you say that you guys are trying to bring down bring together a group of smart people. What makes a smart person? How do you define a smart person?

Diego Andres 22:31

Well, it's all a belief system. So if the person, let's say, doesn't have the right information, but they go to the right people and they're humble enough to learn, that's being smart. Because like nobody knows everything, right? Like, I don't know everything, I don't know how to set up a whole podcast. So for me to be smart, I'll get somebody who does. Like, that's being very smart. You you use leverage, you use other people that know what you don't know, and be humble enough. You know, a lot of people think smart is like book smarts, memorizing, having a lot of information. No, it's just having the right network, having the right people in your environment.

Jack Moran 23:11

What do you think the biggest challenge is for you guys to grow?

Diego Andres 23:20

I don't think there is. I don't think there is. I I would say it it always comes down to your psychology. As the leader, if you can't lead, if you don't have certainty, if you don't feel like you're worthy of leading, that's a big, I would say big milestone for the youth, even like millennials, like starting a new business, getting into a new space and wanting to work with people and hire people. If you're not certain about what you're doing and you don't have the right leadership to lead people, it's it's your psychology. That will be your your biggest failure everywhere you go.

Jack Moran 23:56

Have you always had such a positive belief system, or is that newly cultivated?

Diego Andres 24:00

No. It's like like I said again, it's it's being around the right people. Proximity is power. Um, I learned that from Tony, Tony Robbins. He's like, proximity is power because if if you don't know something, you need to go find the information. The the greatest gift you can ever get as a human is curiosity, because if you're curious, you're gonna naturally go and seek the information. I don't have to do that for you. The person's just gonna go and do it. So if proximity is power, what that means is and I think I would piggyback off the question you asked later, uh earlier about the finances, why I asked the number. It's because if proximity is power and people see that we're interviewing millionaires in the channel, they know, damn, this is possible. I can do this. It's just a matter of finding the person that has done something that that you don't think is possible. And when you see them do it, now you think, oh, this is possible, right? Like the four-minute mile. Nobody thought back then, you know, you your heart, your heart would explode if you did a four-minute, uh, you did a mile under four minutes until somebody did it. And then now high schoolers are doing it. So it the belief system is your limiting um capacity. It's like it limits you from even achieving more. If you generally didn't think you could make, you know, $10 million, you would never go out and reach that goal or even try to get to $5 million. You you would stay at whatever number you think is possible. But if you genuinely think you can make $50 million, the person's gonna find a way to do it. Like, how can I do it? You ask the right questions.

Jack Moran 25:40

So, how does someone break into that mindset? Um, you know, how do they cultivate that possibility thinking? Um, how how do they break into those channels with those people and get that proximity with interesting people? How did you do it?

Diego Andres 25:58

You know, it's being open to new information, being open to feeling stupid.

Jack Moran 26:04

That's where it starts? Yeah. Is just that openness. Yeah. Is that how it started for you?

Diego Andres 26:09

It definitely did. That's how I met my mentor. Um, I was I was 17 and he had this whole community where um we did we did network marketing, and the whole business model was you bring more people, they get the memberships, and it was an actual product, it was a travel product. The the the concept is like you work at a pizza shop, you get free pizza, you work at our airlines, you get free tickets, you work at a gym, you get a free membership. You work at a travel company, you you should get about free travel. And I think that was like the concept. And when I understood that, I was like, network marketing, what it did for me was it didn't make me money, but it allowed me to understand that having a network is more important than having an idea. Because if you have a network, the idea comes after. Like ideas are free, you can get ideas all day long. But when you have the right network, you can really expand what you want to do. And so when I met him, you know, he was the leader of the pack and he was doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes that you wouldn't think of if you weren't a leader. Um, I felt genuinely stupid because the the things he was saying, and even the people that were, you could say his lieutenants, like they were growing to his level and they were doing all these things. The way they spoke, I was like, I need to be around these type of people. Like in network marketing, everybody was just so happy, genuinely so happy to be around other people. And I was like, why is everybody so happy? And so I had to find out. I was like, this is a nice culture. I like what I'm seeing here, to the point where we developed a relationship where now it's we've known each other for like seven, eight years now, and I've been learning a lot about uh leadership, and and till this day I still feel stupid. Like, like there's so much to learn. Um, and I think that's like the journey everybody should strive for is like learning is a never-ending pursuit. You should always want to learn more and more. Think of like all the people that are 65 and older that are retiring. Their lifespan shortens so quickly, and and people actually die faster when they're not pursuing anything than when they're in pursuit of something. Because when you're not in pursuit of anything, um you just give up. You give up on life. Like what what else what else is there to live for? But when you're in constant pursuit of something that you love that brings passion to you, um you wouldn't be working a day in your life, you know? And so feeling stupid, it should be every day, you know. You should be learning something new every day.

Jack Moran 28:51

So this openness that you have that's led to you being in proximity with these interesting, interesting people, is that a natural um quality that you have, or that's something that you learned over time?

Diego Andres 29:02

You definitely learn it over time. I don't think anybody is born with the ability to just talk to anybody. You have to know, you have to make mistakes. You know, a lot of the times, even during high school, when I was building relationships with other people and even like having girlfriends and stuff, you would know what to say and what not to say. Like, oh, I shouldn't have said that. Or maybe I said that too early. And you just observe and think and and correct yourself. The the biggest difference that our generation is gonna have nowadays is being human because a big thing of how this technology is evolving, AI, we talk about AI, like the whole world is talking about AI, of how it's gonna change the whole economy. A lot, like, I think more than 50% of jobs will just be wiped out in in a couple years or even less. So the thing is, you know, AI can come here and disrupt, yeah, that's cool and everything, but it won't take the human out of people. It will never be a human, like like we are. Like the interaction you and I have here right now, AI can't take that from you. And so if AI is giving you all the answers, generally speaking, our generation, as technology improves, our cognitive ability decreases. And so we actually get stupider when we rely more on technology. A big importance of why we would even want to learn social skills and how to shake the right hands and meet the right people, is because like that's the the most valuable skill. Like, I can go talk to a billionaire right now if I want to and ask for a job, and he might have something for me. But that's because of my social skills, of being confident and being able to like go talk to somebody and shake their hand.

Jack Moran 30:54

Um so should everyone be doing street interviews, or how can they break into this world and start being more confident?

Diego Andres 31:00

And you know, it's really up to the individual. Street interviews is not meant for everybody. I realize that. Because there's a lot of people that have come through the community and they've done interviews, but they don't stay. You know, it's scary. It is very scary. It's very and we've done over close to 500 interviews now in 10 months. And I've come to the point where I realize that as you get better at doing uh street interviews, you get better at articulating yourself, speaking better, um, thinking better, thinking before you speak. Like a big thing that the youth have an issue with is they just say things just to say things. Think about what you're gonna say, have um actually have a meaning behind the conversation. What do you want to get out of this conversation? If you don't have that objective, you're just shooting bullets all over the place and like you're not hitting anything. And so a big a big thing of having that structure, that way of thinking is that when you go do talk to a very important person, you know what you want to say, you know how you want to say it, you know how you want to present yourself, and you're thinking about that scenario in your mind all day long. And you know, it's come to the point where like right right now, and I'm not even trying, you get so good at what you're doing that people now start finding you. And for the past, I would say month and a half now, I've been meeting about one to two millionaires every week, naturally. Like I'm not trying to, it's just happening, but that's because you're becoming that person, right? I'm becoming great at talking to people, so that has to show up some way or another. Like your skills are being rewarded, just keep doing it. And so uh what what was your question?

Jack Moran 32:50

Sorry, what was um I asked if you naturally had acquired that openness, like Ah, yeah.

Diego Andres 32:58

Yeah, the answer is no, like 100% no. I had to learn that. And you did say, like, should everybody be doing street interviews? I I think everybody should be going out there and getting rejected. You should go out there and feel the rejection. Um that's more valuable than getting an interview. Go out there and shake more hands and and get rejected. Um one thing that I've learned that a lot of people do that are like 1099, like independent contractors, like real estate agents, insurance agents, um even people who sell cars, people in sales, they do something that has never worked for the history of mankind, which is they meet somebody, they have a great conversation with you, everything goes well until the end when they pull out their wallet and they give you their business card. Hey, Jack, just so you know, like if you ever thought about moving out of the town or like selling your house or buying something, I'd I'd love to, you know, help you. And when you do that, you just destroyed the whole conversation because the person's now thinking, oh, it was for that. That's why you're so nice to me. You just want me to, you just want to be my agent. Okay, great. Subconsciously speaking, the you know, the other person just feels like, oh, okay, like they put you down in a different level. They brought your status down. That that's not a way to build a relationship. You don't give people business cards just because you build the relationship and you really get to know the person and you actually want to help them and whatever they have to do in their life. Like, how can I help you? How can I actually like add value to you? And then after that, if the person naturally asks you, what do you do for a living, go on ahead, tell them what you do, you know? But that's because um social skills and human behavior, understanding and learning how the mind works, you start off by subjugating your ego and getting to know the person, you know, and be a quality friend to them. Actually make them feel like, wow, this is a great person to have in your network. And and when you do that, it's you know, infinite.

Jack Moran 35:03

Yeah, the business should be a product of the relationship or a byproduct of the relationship, not a prerequisite to the relationship. Exactly. Not your reason for having that relationship.

Diego Andres 35:14

Exactly.

Jack Moran 35:14

If you had to, you had a mentor or someone that's new to the company and they're gonna go interview a millionaire and have to develop a relationship. What would be the three things that you would say are the most important? What is the checklist?

Diego Andres 35:28

The checklist. For an in for a millionaire, it's definitely well, you first gotta meet them in person. Um you gotta know, you gotta meet them in person. Number two, you have to uh study who they are, what they do, look at their social media, what what's their line of work? And then number three, prepare a lot of questions. Prepare great questions that um are interesting, that would gauge the audience, and stick to mindset. That's the one thing that I would say is the most important when talking to uh successful people. You can ask them, oh, what's the right software to use for this, or what books should I read to like get to the next level, or what books have you read? It's great and all, but what if I ask the business owner, what was your hardest point? What was your rock bottom in your career, and how'd you get out of that? If it's all mindset and psychology, people will talk for days. And so if you bring that out from the millionaire and asking these mindset questions, they love they love talking about that. Everybody loves talking about mindset. Even if you don't have a lot of personal development, you still you still could say something. But if I ask the person very specific questions, what book to read, who else should I know, um, you know, what software to use, or you know, how do I do sales? What's your best sales tactic? All these things are very specific and doesn't get anywhere. But if I focus on mindset and psychology, that's the biggest checklist. It's like go stick to those questions and you'll get the best answers ever.

Jack Moran 37:05

So I'll ask that question what's been the lowest part of your journey journey and how did you get out of it?

Diego Andres 37:10

I was 16 years of age, getting into high school when I was very depressed, um, actually very ironic, like meeting so many people. I was actually very antisocial. I didn't like talking to people. I realized that depression is caused by the individual because of their way of thinking. It's all internal. And the biggest, one of the biggest sufferings you could ever experience as a human in today's day, modern day, is being alone, being lonely. If you're lonely, you have nobody to exchange energy with. And that was me. I didn't really talk to a lot of people, and I didn't really have a lot of experiences having friends around me. And I generally thought that I was a little too mature for a lot of people. I was like, this is kind of kind of whack. I didn't like school, I really didn't do great in school. Um, by junior, senior year, like it just went downhill. I almost didn't graduate. Then I realized, you know, life is is made up of single days, not weeks or months. You live it day by day. You know, you can't skip a whole week, you gotta live the week. And so it's what you do every day that counts. Um, and so I started to listen to audiobooks. Um, I went on YouTube. I learned about this guy named Les Brown. He's a very, very good motivational speaker. He got me out of depression. I learned about this guy named Jay Shetty. He he taught me that your thoughts is now who you are. If you associate yourself with your thoughts and you identify yourself with that little voice in your head that keeps running, you would literally go crazy. You would think you're crazy. But those thoughts are just past programmings of your environment, of what you heard, of who you were around. It's not you. It's just a consciousness almost like clicking and giving you energy, and you think those thoughts are you. It's not, it's just a programming, a voice that keeps running. Um, and then I learned about this guy, Ty Lopez. These are three influential people that changed my life. Then Ty Lopez taught me that your social network is your actual net worth. Um, and that a big reason why that motivated me to do social media, because I knew that you know, if if you have a great brand, people will know you for that. So my my lowest point was when I was uh depressed and I literally didn't want to speak to anybody, I didn't see a way out, I didn't know um I didn't know what I wanted to do in life. And I was just going through high school, you know, to the point where I graduated high school and I worked my ass off for a full year. I just like worked, worked, worked, saved up a lot of money. And I I I didn't have a lot of friends in my life. I was still very like depressed. I'm like, like, like, is this really how life is? You know, I I go to work, clock in, clock out, go back home, same thing every day. And there was no progression in my life. I think that's the a big suffering people have is like when they don't see progress in their life, it it stunks you. Like it's like you don't think there's a way out. And so I would say the biggest rock bottom for me was a big part was with my second mother. Um, she's like she's my aunt, like my second mother passed away, and I was still in rock bottom, you know. I I think the the biggest pain that I could feel is seeing my family pass away and and not seeing me successful. You know, that that was a big, big one for me. Um because all my uncles and aunts now and my my mom, they're getting to an age where now you got a good amount of seasons left with them, and that's about it. And and I think the the biggest the biggest um pain that I can feel is like letting them pass away and still not see me successful. I I couldn't I couldn't allow that to happen. And so the motivation kicked in and I just had to keep going and had to find something. And then hitting 21, I started an HVAC business uh with a friend. Um his his father and him owned the business, but his father had stage four cancer, he had uh cancer in his lungs and his heart, so he had like 90 days to live. And my friend was taking care of his little brother, his mom got deported, his dad passed away, he became the man of the household at 21, and he had this big business that he was running, and he didn't know how to run it well. And I had a lot of cash saved up from so many years of just working, and we became co-founders, and I that was my first entry to entrepreneurship where I realized oh, it actually feels good to be an entrepreneur, you don't have to have a boss um on top of you, like you don't have to have somebody telling you what to do. And that was my like my first experience with entrepreneurship, and from there I just I just took it, you know, and went off. Yeah.

Jack Moran 42:08

How did that go?

Diego Andres 42:09

It went terrible.

Jack Moran 42:11

How much did you invest in it to start? Is it all your money?

Diego Andres 42:14

Yeah, it was about like 20, 20, 25 grand, and it wasn't much, but back then.

Jack Moran 42:19

That's a lot for a 21-year-old.

Diego Andres 42:21

Yeah, there was definitely something, and I took that big risk. We made a hundred over a hundred thousand dollars that first year. Um, a big thing of why we you know talk about money management systems. Like, we made six figures, but then we looked at our tax returns that same year and we're like, where's the money? Right? Oh, we spent it all, and we didn't even realize it. Because you you think when money's coming in so well, you're just like, oh, I guess next month's gonna be great, next month's gonna be great. And it's we didn't keep any of it. And it from there the business just fell apart. Um, the relationship fell apart, and and you know, I went we went different ways.

Jack Moran 43:00

What would you have done differently?

Diego Andres 43:02

So one thing I learned was um when you start a business, you should always have a vision board of what it looks like, like why you're doing it. Give yourself that question, why are you doing this? And um keep looking at that vision board. You know, we looked at the vision board, we laid it out in quarterly, meaning like every three months we should be accomplishing this, the next three months we will accomplish this. And by the first three to six months, we stopped looking at the vision board and we started deviating to different things, and we got distracted. Um the biggest issue that businesses have when they're hitting momentum is that they get too creative, they stop doing what was already working, and um and then you just deviate you you you deviate the energy to something else, and then it just goes downhill from there. Yeah.

Jack Moran 43:54

Yeah, that's a big lesson.

Diego Andres 43:56

That's a big one. The vision board. Um what else? And then choose the right partners, choose the right people. It's like a marriage, literally. You know, you have a business partner, it's literally like a marriage, but not romantic, but it's very emotional with the person. You're you're calling them every day, um, you're with them, you're talking about the business, how things are going, updates. And so you really gotta enjoy the person. You really gotta you got to know who they are, what they're about, their family. Like you you want to know everything. Go to their cookouts, like get to know their family, like investigate, you know.

Jack Moran 44:30

Um how do you not get into business with the wrong partner?

Diego Andres 44:34

So a lot of people are very good at um presenting themselves very highly, and you gotta know how to suss that out very quickly. Um you just you you gotta make sure that first it's like an energy, it's a feeling, it's like an intuition. That can be taught. You can't we can't teach intuition, you just feel it. It's some you just ask yourself this question do I do I like enjoy this person's presence? No, they kind of I I wonder why. And they just go find find out why, and you'll find something. But if you really enjoy their presence, still investigate, like get to know their mindset, what they've learned, um, who they've been around, what college they went to if they did. Um, are they a party person? Do they love learning? Do they are they action takers? Do they love helping people? What's what's that personality like? And then you just you gotta get to know the person. It's like a marriage, literally.

Jack Moran 45:31

Yeah, I think there's a lot of telltale signs. One I'll pay attention to is that language. If you hear negativity or external blame, that's a big red flag. Um, too much um emphasis on money, then they're that that's their highest priority, then the ethics or the relationship won't be the highest priority. So they could burn you if there's you know a better opportunity involved. Um, and then like you said, you you start from the internal and then it externalizes. So if you pay attention to their external environment, you can get a pretty good understanding of their internal. So if you go into their car and their car's a mess or their room's a mess, that's a good sign that they're pretty disorganized and their business is going to be similar to that because the business is just an externalization of that internal or the people around them are bums. Yeah, exactly. Probably again, that's the energy that they're resonating. So those are all like red flags that I would pay attention to in the beginning.

Diego Andres 46:28

100%. That's so big because how you do something is how you do everything. Yeah, it's all a pattern. And you know, speaking about just how the human works is like we're meant to uh conserve energy. We're we're meant to literally conserve energy and take shortcuts. It's because it if you wake up every day and you brush your teeth a certain way, it's subconscious. You don't have to think about it. It's just done a certain way. Um, the way you cook your food, it's done a certain way. You put your eggs on the side here, you put the pan, you turn the heater on or the stove, and you it's a pattern of how you do everything. And you know, if you observe the person's pattern, then you realize that will translate into business. And you're like, oh, no, no, no. I'm okay. We we gotta change that, or you like address it. Hey, I see that car is really dirty, man. You know, I know we want to go into business, but your car's dirty, and they'll probably think you're crazy, but yeah, your car is dirty, and so will the bank account be. You know, it's the same concept.

Jack Moran 47:34

So, final question What's one piece of advice that would you would leave behind for this interview?

Diego Andres 47:40

The best advice I could ever leave for the interview.

Jack Moran 47:45

Or what's the biggest piece of advice that you have?

Diego Andres 47:47

Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of advice. You you you gotta be okay with you you gotta be okay with like looking stupid. You gotta be okay with um I I would say that the best energy you could ever bring out to people is your authenticity. It's really that. Um if you're authentic to the individual and you're being truthful to yourself, you got nothing to hide. And if you want to build a vast network, meet a lot of people like I'm doing, and actually like get to grow your network and and have an interesting life, you you gotta be okay with being uncomfortable. There's there's only one way out, it's being uncomfortable. Because the version of who you are now is perfect for the results you have. Like the version of who you are, even Jack, the person he is now, you're perfect for the results you have. The finances, the the business, the relationships, your emotions, your your physic your physicality, everything is is a perfect version of who you are now. So you don't need to change. You are who you are already. But if you want a greater life, you need to do things you've never done before. You need to be somebody you've never been before and and expand that that version of you. And it requires thinking, effort, meeting the right people, um, feeling stupid, knowing that other people have information that you don't, and just be relentless with knowledge, like get to learn as much as you can. You do that. Um in 10 years, you should arrive. You should be very successful in 10 years, for sure. Like, I don't know who wouldn't be successful in 10 years by just having that attitude. And and something's gonna click within those 10 years. You find the right person, you find the right idea, the business partner, something happens, but it's all energy. So if you're authentic, that's the best energy you could you could ever have.

Jack Moran 49:41

Well, that's some great closing advice and uh congratulations on your success. Appreciate you. Um, I can see that you've had a lot of growth, and I'm sure it will continue with that mindset. And you're 100% right, it all uh originates from that that internal mindset. So you're definitely on the money on the trail. But thank you. But I appreciate you coming out, it's been super interesting.

Diego Andres 50:01

Appreciate you, man. Thank you.