Welcome, everyone, welcome. I'm Renata Vic. I led Copenhagen for 30 years and today, as an entrepreneur, speaker, and investor, I'm here with my dear friend Luciano Bruno, as host of Vida Longa Cash, bringing incredible guests for deep conversations about what it means to be long-lived, both in business and in our personal life, in every choice we make. Lu, what a delight. Another one here with you and with a great friend of ours today, very special. Introduce yourself and call our guest.
And I'm Luciano Bruno, I'm a nutritionist with a master's and doctorate in food and nutrition. I put functional integrative nutrition into practice, and today it's practice with results. I'm very, very, very happy because he doesn't know this. But when I thought of this podcast, when Renata invited me, the first person who came to my mind was him. And I told him at the clinic, I said: "You are an example that you can have it all." Do you know who's here today?
He was fired at 24. Started in a 25 m² room and built XP, one of the largest companies in Brazil's financial market. Took the business all the way to NASDAQ and changed the way millions of Brazilians invest. But behind the success there is a story of pressure, risk, and decisions few would have the courage to make. Guilherme Benchimol didn't just build a company, he built a mindset. And that's what we're going to talk about today.
Guilherme Benchimol, welcome, welcome, man. What a joy to have Guilherme here.
What an honor, what an honor. This chat with you two is going to be incredible. I want to learn here too, okay? I'm a fan of both of you, right? Luciano has been following me for over 7, 8 years. He changed my life physically, emotionally, and so on. And Renata, a super entrepreneur. We're together now, right, at B55. I go to B55 and you end up being a super inspiration to all women entrepreneurs in Brazil too.
That's great. The nice thing about this podcast is exactly that, we bring friends, business people, people we admire, people we really want to learn from, but it's always an exchange, so it becomes like a big chat here among us. And we always start with a slightly spicy little question. My question is: does an entrepreneur break because they make mistakes or because they can't handle the game all the time?
An entrepreneur breaks because the money runs out and because in the end they run out of cash, right? That's the most practical explanation of all, right? I think the entrepreneur has to manage their finances very well, they have to be conservative, they have to have cash to spare. And I always say that entrepreneurship isn't that complicated. You have to make your revenue always greater than your expenses.
You always have to have a reserve fund because things change. And you have to be very well with your body, you have to be very well with your mind so that you can always do the right things. So having a lot of discipline, so that you keep doing the right things, is what keeps leading you in the right direction.
And starting from that point, tell us a little bit, because with Luciano's unfair advantage, since he already knows you, I'll take this question for myself. What is your routine? I think everyone here knows and admires Guilherme's story, the story of XP, and to bring you to our podcast, which talks about longevity, both of companies and careers, and we, as first CPFs [individuals], who lead great teams, great cultures, so that they are long-lived. I'm very curious. I think many people don't know, perhaps, right? They know you're super disciplined, an athlete, but tell us what your routine is like, what are your non-negotiables, what you've already incorporated into your life so that we can be inspired a little.
Cool. I think it's worth mentioning that my dream, actually, was to be an athlete, right? Lu knows this. I wanted to be a tennis player.
And I remember one time I came home at 15 years old and told my father that I had decided I was going to drop out of school. He said: "Son, I'm glad you decided that, because today you're going to drop tennis, right?" But I always liked competition, testing my body all the time. So, in a way, I consider myself an athlete, right? A very dedicated amateur athlete. So my routine doesn't stop being an athlete's, since every entrepreneur has to have a lot of discipline, you have to learn to make choices, right? You can't, you might want to do everything, but it's a challenge to go out at night, to drink, to eat whatever you want, it doesn't work. You have to, look, I want to be a high-impact entrepreneur, I want to be a high-impact athlete, because that makes me stronger, I have my family, so you have to make choices. And in my life, I sleep between 10 and 10:30 at night. So that's my sleep window. I learned that with Luciano, actually, you have your time there that is the sweet spot.
I wake up at ten to 6 in the morning, have my super coffee, at 6:10 I'm at the gym, right? I do one hour of gym and play another hour of tennis. So that's my normal routine. Then I get home, have breakfast around 8:15, I'm at the office around 9:15. Then my day at the office goes from 9 to 7 at night. I get home around 7:30. Meet the family, have dinner around 8:30, and another hour and a half with the family and my wife. And that's my day from Monday to Monday.
And I notice that we were even commenting here before we started recording how much, when we have firsthand knowledge, we really do what needs to be done. I remember before I started treating Guilherme, I started treating Ana Clara, his wife, wonderful, and he told me at one point: "Will you follow me?" I said: "Let's go and get to know who you are in this story." And since we went, biochemical assessment, genetic test, I said, "Guilherme, you are this here, you..." and you start pointing out who the person is genetically and that this doesn't change, it's modulated.
I think we take more firsthand knowledge and say: "Is that all I have to do?" Since when did you start adopting a healthy lifestyle, what changed the most and what are you most vigilant about regarding that?
Yeah, I think I always had a healthy life, except maybe from when I started the company until about 13 years later, right? I know that's a long window, but when you start a business and how I started was very hard, so I dove in headfirst with a lot of intensity and ended up abandoning the rest.
But it wasn't possible. I think I lacked a bit of maturity. I think all the competition, all my competitive instinct that I put into sports, I put into entrepreneurship. And I ended up, that pendulum swung very much in the direction of 'I need to make the company succeed.' And I ended up abandoning the rest.
Which is a hyperfocus. Did you hyperfocus on the company?
I did hyperfocus. If I could go back in time, I think I would have done it differently and I think I would have gone even further, right? Because you can balance things, but I think you need a degree of maturity and I think 20 years ago you didn't have perhaps the level of information we have today.
So I think my immaturity with my hyperfocus and perhaps the lack of information, that combination ended up leaving me very much being the dog chasing its tail, you know?
Actually, more like the tail chasing the dog, you know? That thing you can't control, but life leads you and you keep doing what you think is possible, but without knowing the dimensions that are actually on the table. And then, after we met 8 years ago, I think the genetic test really showed me who Guilherme is, right? My difficulty controlling myself with sweets, my difficulty having stable sleep. So you learn all that when you see the genetic test. I remember you started reading my genetic test and you started telling me who I was without me opening my mouth. You said: "Guilherme, if you don't sleep at this time, you're going to sleep badly. Guilherme, with sugar, when you start eating sugar, you eat more and more sugar and you have..."
Right? You have a compulsion for sweets. And then you started presenting various data and I said: "Wow, so it's not just willpower, it's knowing yourself and knowing how to press each button of your body."
And then I think that, combined with us starting to have performance indicators that every entrepreneur ends up being obsessed with, right? So, when you know who you are and you start knowing these indicators, I think that combination allows you to improve at every stage of your body, at every stage of life, right? And then we improved a lot. I remember when I met you, my weight I think didn't change that much, but I went from maybe 15% body fat, maybe even a bit more, to today seven, eight, something like that, right?
You know we talk a lot about the entrepreneur, CEO, executive, especially the CEO, when you ask about the company's main KPIs, they can answer off the tip of their tongue. Everyone knows what the revenue is, EBITDA, CAC, NPS, all the necessary indicators. And when we ask about the indicators that measure the health of who manages, they hardly know how to answer or know how to interpret it in the same dimension that they know how to do that with the company. I've been bringing a lot of this kind of reflection and content, because leading a long-lived company, in my view, passes first through self-leadership, right, of the leaders who are at the front of long-lived companies. It's a bit incompatible to think that an inflamed leader, let's think like this, an inflamed leader, without knowledge, who studies the market a lot and little, is capable of managing and, above all, of inspiring, right, the people who are there, to first put their own masks on and then be able to put the mask on the company. You, as a great reference in entrepreneurship, right? I really wanted you to bring a view that we haven't done yet, this deepening here with any guest. The market is changing a lot, right? Entrepreneurs are seeking, including, to make this reading, because everything is happening in a very dynamic way. How do you see it, right, today, having many times been, as a great example, negligent, as you said, with your health, given a sprint, perhaps, that today with more maturity you take a breather and say: "Wow, maybe I would have done it differently, right? Do you think this is just ephemeral, right? Or are people actually understanding the need to reprogram the role of leadership so that the companies are also reprogrammed?"
No, you were talking here, right? And I was reflecting on... I think it was much more difficult for me to perhaps develop body awareness and get where I wanted than perhaps to bring the company from zero to here, okay? Because when you build a company you delegate many things.
When we talk about our body, it's non-delegable, we have to do it, right? So it's a thing of you have to be conscious, you have to want to. But, like, I have no doubt that today I am much more capable than I was 20 years ago, even knowing that back then I was much younger. So I have much more vitality, more energy, more disposition, I'm more focused. And I think you only acquire that when you start learning to take good care of your body and you start learning these indicators that need to be very good, right? Whether it's the sleep indicator, the cholesterol indicator, lean mass indicator, things like that, they are the indicators that guarantee that you're strong, you're healthy. So, there's nothing better than waking up in the morning after a good night's sleep. But how many entrepreneurs sleep well at night? How many? Very few.
Right? How many entrepreneurs have back pain or eat badly or feel weak throughout the day? Many. So, if you start to realize that the foundation of your life is exactly your body and your mind and you keep them in high performance, that guarantees that you keep having more and more business longevity, longevity in life. Obviously you'll have more quality of life, you'll live longer, you'll do more things and you'll deliver much more results. So that's what I've been realizing along the way.
But it's a change you noticed after you started executing. Because when you say, for example, back then, if you could go back, you would have done many things differently, because today perhaps you know the impact of a healthy body, a body at full steam in what you're executing also in your work. And perhaps back then that wasn't so clear or perhaps it wasn't a priority. If you were to go back to that time today, what would you do differently that you said, I would do differently if I could go back? What would you do differently regarding 26 years ago, 30 years ago?
Yeah, I think, like, from a physical point of view, you have to be... I think life is simple, right? Sleep well, eat well, and exercise well. And you have to be good with your family and your friends.
If I have those four things balanced, you'll be able to do the rest well. And I think in my case I didn't balance those things. So for 12, 13 years, I ended up leaving the pendulum very much focused basically on the company. My wife, in fact, was my intern, worked with me at the company from Monday to Monday for 11, 12 years. So we dove headfirst into this business. So that pays a big price. You deliver, but after you become more mature, you realize that you could have done the same thing with much less effort or perhaps done much more, right? So why? Because you do it, but perhaps you do it tired, perhaps you do it with less focus, with less energy. And every entrepreneur needs to feel self-confident, right? And I understand that the best way to be self-confident, obviously, is the mind.
And the body, right? If you're not, I'm not saying you have to be ripped, that's not it, but if your body is in place, you feel strong, firm, you're sleeping well, you'll have a more armored mind and you'll be able to get through the adversities that entrepreneurship always imposes on you. So, if I went back in time, I would have taken care of this much more carefully. It's a pity I only understood this again, even having the mindset of an amateur athlete back then, the information wasn't so widespread. So, even though I was curious in this aspect, I perhaps didn't open up to understand more about these doors.
And you know it's something very simple, right? Me being on the side there too, we're all here entrepreneurs, right, Luciano? Luciano is also an incredible entrepreneur. It's a very simple thing for those listening here, which must be put into practice, because it's new for everyone. It's new, guys, don't be scared, because what we're dealing with here are young people, right, three young people who are saying that 20 years ago, right, they did sprints, perhaps wearing down the machine too much, while we could have perhaps moderated the pace better. Remembering that our entrepreneurial career is always a marathon, not a sprint. It needs the sprint too. You can't romanticize and think we'll never sprint. It needs it, but I can't do 42 km of sprint. I have to have the sprint moment, the more balanced pace moment. But a very simple thing, talking openly with the team. I think the day it really clicked for me was when the team told me: "We're not worried about whether you're doing well or not. You always get here and tell us: 'Today I didn't sleep well.' That to me was such a colloquial, simple thing like, guys, today I'm not doing well, man, I didn't have a good night's sleep, I'm not doing well, I'm even in another situation, overtraining, man, I trained too much, I'm super tired, blah, blah, blah. That dissipates a bit, right, the reading of the players, right, man, was my idea not the best? Did I not structure the idea well? Or the audience was in a situation of greater vulnerability, because we are human, we all have our good days and our not-so-good days. So, leadership still has this taboo, right, and this concern about not showing vulnerability. And that makes the team often feel very pressured by something that can be easily dissipated with simple dialogue. So I wanted to hear from you, what in your opinion, right, who already has a very consolidated history, but is now coming back, right, to work through B55 on the goal of fostering entrepreneurship in Brazil. So with your experience, right, and being today at a moment where you know yourself more, invest more and more in this self-knowledge agenda, what for you sustains someone for 25 years, right, thinking that the person is starting today and will have the opportunity to be from entrepreneur to entrepreneur, not only with you, but with everyone in the program. What do you think in terms of discipline is the playbook, let's say, right, that an entrepreneur should follow?
Look, I'll tell my case, what motivates me to stay firm and super focused on the company, and we're turning 25 now, on the 12th, the 11th of May, next week, 25 years, I turn 50 in July, right? So two very meaningful dates. I think it's the pacts you establish with the people who are part of your project. Obviously believing in a mission is also super important, but I think more than that are the people who join you, you commit to them, you commit to making things work out more and more. In my case, I think that's more important here even than the mission.
Yeah, you attract people from the market, you see the intern growing. Today the company has 8,500 employees, 20,000 external advisors. The pleasure it gives me to see people growing in life, transforming into better human beings, and us creating ever more solid pacts that we're just getting started and there's a lot of room. That doesn't allow me to stop. That leaves me super focused for us to continue making this energy keep getting stronger. Obviously, 5 million clients. So there are different pacts. You have a pact with clients, you have a pact with employees, a pact with partners, and everyone says: "Look, we're just getting started and we're just getting started." So that doesn't let you.
Do you still get butterflies in your stomach on day one?
That's so good. Do you still have fear? Do you have fear?
I have fear. I have fear. But I think it's that fear that keeps you alert, not the fear that freezes me. I've been through so much, so many crises, so many difficulties, so many ups and downs, so many things that seemed like they were going to go very wrong. And you have to keep calm and in the end, the only thing beyond saving in your life is death. The rest, you'll find a way. So when you focus on the issues, you might take a little longer or a little less, you'll find the way out, whatever it may be, right?
You know I learned something from you, that if we're talking in a consultation and you said: "Lu, every time I need to make a very important decision or I have a big problem and I need to think about that problem, I run, I go running." Then sometimes when there's something very important, I tell Artur, I need to run now. I need to run, I need to decide something. Do you still do that?
I do that, sometimes I do. I run less than I used to. I was a super ultramarathoner back then. But in the end you have to oxygenate your head, right? You have to, like, so running always brought me insights. Sometimes you get very focused on the problem and the solution doesn't come. Sometimes you go for a run, you sweat and the solution appears, it appears, it simply appears in my case. So, the thing of being... I love being in contact with nature, I love, I love doing it, I love sweating and that inspires me, that makes me see the photographs better. There's nothing worse. It's rare in my life. I remember only if I get sick, very sick. But I exercise from Monday to Monday, right? Some days more intense, some days less, but that keeps my body alert, my mind sane, that allows me to concentrate.
I was going to say exactly that, how much you concentrate on exercise, which is another thing that caught my attention too. One time Guilherme told me, I asked him: "Guilherme, what do you listen to when you run? What music do you listen to?" He said: "I don't like listening to music when I'm running." Why don't you like it? Because you get so focused on that activity of running and focusing on executing that task that music is a distraction.
Yeah, what I always do in sports, which is super difficult, right? I think perhaps the biggest challenge we have in modern times is staying in the present, right? Because there's so much noise from every side, right? So we stay a lot in the past and the future. That brings anxiety. And the best way to control anxiety is to stay in the present. So when I'm running, when I'm playing tennis, I try to stay focused on the step, on the little number on the treadmill, on the tennis footwork, on the ball coming. That...
A fixed point for balance, right?
Almost that. That's it. And then you stay there one, two hours and it feels like you took three days of vacation because the mind disconnects. And then in my case, that inspires me afterwards.
In the ultramarathons it was like that, for example, on the ice, everything you've done.
Yeah, because you stay in, you have to try to stay in the present. And it's super uncommon because you're doing something, you're thinking about what you're going to do or about what you did and went wrong. And then you're not in the present. And in my case, these therapy moments that sport brings me, is exactly me staying focused not on the music, but on the small gestures I'm doing there, whether moving and feeling my breathing, feeling my body, feeling my sweat, seeing my shoe, seeing the tennis ball, that connects me with the present. And after I come out of my, let's say, my trance, things happen, right? I think each person is different, right? I think this works for me, right? So I think that moment of perhaps one to two hours a day of staying there afterwards allows me, right?
I think each person is different. We've been talking a lot about individuality, this also happens a lot in our careers here, how important it is for us to understand as leaders the individuality of each of our collaborators, bringing it to the team, but the message is very strong which is to focus on yourself in a world where we do receive distractions and are constantly with our heads in the past, in the future. It's cool, right? How do we control ourselves in a super stimulated world.
Yeah. And the issue of entrepreneurship, right? And you know this well, Re. Like, the entrepreneur has to have discipline, they have to be very skilled at knowing how to allocate their energy in the right sequence, right? So they have to be very focused, it's a very focused training, because it's not doing what you want, it's doing what needs to be done.
So you need to be calm, you need to be serene, you need to be seeing clearly what needs to be done. You're going to, you tend to command larger teams, you have many people who mirror your behavior. So you need to be centered in all of this. If you're not centered, if you're not very serene, very lucid, the commands will be poorly made, you won't have focus, you'll start doing things out of order and you end up tripping yourself up, right?
What was the hardest decision you've ever made in your life, business-wise?
Business-wise, it was... it was firing people, like, for 10 years I never fired anyone at the company. I had a child, a company was a family. What a crazy thing, right? And I think also because in my case I started a company from scratch and then you eat a lot of salt with many people who start with you and then I had, I didn't have this preparation to believe that that person who ate salt with me 10 years ago no longer fit and that it was important to change and I worked for them, right? And that's not healthy long-term, right? So I called myself a meritocratic company, but I didn't know how to implement that in practice. And I think the first, like, when I started changing the team, that was very hard, like when I saw that I needed more prepared people and I confused competent people with committed people.
Completely different. Yeah, and it's easy to get tangled up in that when you don't have much experience, right? The person arrives early, the person leaves late, the person is committed, the person is there, but the person doesn't do what needs to be done.
And then you who are there, you also don't have a comparative base that's so large, to the point of starting to realize, hmm, could I get someone much better? Then, little by little I made some changes and I started realizing that an area that was just a problem, after I brought a different person, more experienced, what was a problem became a solution. Then I started learning to deal with that better. I think there's even a human aspect, right? The human being thinks that giving feedback or changing a person or showing the person that their cycle has ended, you're doing harm to that person, right?
And in the end, many times it's good, right? Because if you're not happy, the person isn't happy, right? But these separations are difficult many times, right? It's difficult in marriage, it's difficult in dating, it's difficult at work. So like, being able to interrupt relationships and do that in a way that isn't an affront against the person, right? That isn't cruelty, but a mature conversation. That's something I suffered a lot with.
And what would be the characteristic that would make you cut a relationship and that would catch your attention positively on the flip side? What's one characteristic that you look at and say: "This doesn't serve me anymore"? And something that would be a very important characteristic of someone you would hire or a partner, an entrepreneur.
Look, a person to work with me, they need to be a solution, they can't be a problem. Not that we can't debate the things that don't work, but I need to have someone who solves, who brings solutions, who is proactive, who solves, who does what needs to be done. So it took me a while to understand that. So sometimes, when I was immature, I wanted more than the people. Then the person was there and said: "Man, how come this guy isn't doing what needs to be done?" And then I would go and push the person. And I think in a company you need a group that pulls together, each person has their role in the company and each one brings... and it's exactly the combination that makes everyone complement each other and the team become outstanding.
And what would make you cut the relationship, not want that person anymore?
Someone who doesn't solve. The opposite. So it's someone who doesn't solve, someone who, right, you... every entrepreneur has their annual goals, their semi-annual and annual goals. Today at the company I have 5-year goals, right? So I need people who are capable of transforming these goals that we call impossible goals into concrete things, right? So that creates a meritocratic environment, it's not bad, right?
We who have led large companies here, moments, right, especially big moments. I want to find out later how that issue of allying, right, with a possible competitor went, but we deal with that. We deal with moments where the goals are clear, the delivery needs to happen and it opens up a very nice space to neutralize subjectivities, right? Because when leadership sets clear goals, illuminates the path and at the same time has a mobilizing culture that values people, right, that doesn't value blood in the process, but rather, we need to deliver the extraordinary, you end up doing a natural selection. That happens, it's a natural selection. What I really wanted to hear from you, which I think is something people are very curious about, is this: the entrepreneur in themselves, they have a different intuition, right? We started there, we literally, right, roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty, get in there, build, have passion, what we do is visceral. And as the business grows, we face more and more challenges to keep that intuition alive, because it needs to be kept. It's very important. This is a characteristic that I always have the opportunity, I tell entrepreneurs, don't let your intuition die, right? Of course you have to arm yourself more and more with data, with logic, with good teams, right, with strategic plans with plenty of clarity, but don't lose your intuition. I wanted to ask Guilherme, right, how do you protect your intuition, and if you see that this is a somewhat peculiar component of entrepreneurs.
No, super. Intuition helped me a lot, but I think after a while, that intuition, when you have a company, in my case the company became very complex, right? There are many business areas and you end up having a very refined intuition in that which you saw being built from scratch, right? That's one part, right? So I started there as an investment advisor, had some success. So in that world I experienced the whole journey from zero to the present, but the company became much more complex. So I think the care is, intuition is important, but the entrepreneur is very entrepreneurial, they are very instinctive.
After a while, that company becomes very complex. The entrepreneur likes to decide fast, they don't have much patience, they are impatient, they want to follow their heart. And I think after a while that behavior gets in the way.
There's a curious fact, right? When we went public 6 years ago on NASDAQ, one of the banks that was part of the offering, on the day we chose our investors who would enter the offering, they said: "Guilherme, look, you as controlling shareholder, founder and CEO is a sure bet, because you convey confidence and so on." But read this article here from Harvard. And the article said the following: when a founder stays as CEO after you go public, 3 years later, in 60% of cases, the founder does worse than if there were an executive. In 6 years, in 90% of cases, the founder who stays as CEO is worse than an executive. And what's the moral of the story? When you go public, the company becomes even more complex. You have to deal with quarterly presentations, you have global stakeholders, you have many other things. And the entrepreneur is very instinctive.
And if you keep being very instinctive in something increasingly complex, you generate entropy and that gets in the way. So, when you start a company, you have to be 100% entrepreneurial, you have to be crazy, right? You're very instinctive. That dose of entrepreneurship, it has to change as your business becomes bigger and more complex. Obviously you have to always keep the entrepreneurship, but you have to become more and more a structured person, a structured company, so that you don't keep making decisions the same way you made them 20 years ago.
Because in the past the person would come to my desk, no, not that, not that. But in such a complex company, you can't see things anymore and then you start doing things that don't make as much sense anymore. So I think it's important to keep the instinct, but with care. And I think you have to know where your instinct really makes a difference, because you dominate that. Because you're not going to dominate everything in a company after a long time.
Things become, there's a certain polishing and it's super important what Guilherme brought, because there are stages, right? So there's the initial stage where you really are the entrepreneur, you do it and if you don't do it, it won't pass to stage two, okay? Just like if you're already at a super advanced stage, went public, became, did a deal with a strategic partner, it's no use continuing to play, right? I joke about the story of the board and the pawns, right? How do you position yourself? There are some moments where you're just repositioning the role of each pawn. There's a moment where the game is a different board. So that reading is important. The rules of the game changed, the position of the pawns changed, or the board changed. There's a moment where the company really reached a point where we say: "Man, it's a different board, it's a different game, there are different rules, play differently because we won't be able to do it." If you don't have that reading, you do it wrong, right? But what I think is the hardest thing about entrepreneurship is that the formula keeps changing.
So like, the formula that worked, worked, but it may not keep working anymore.
Success requires innovation, as controversial as it may seem, because everyone looks at success and tends to look and say: "But what did I do up to here? How am I not going to use everything that brought me up to here?" It brought you up to here, but it won't necessarily take you to the next one.
So like, I had to transform myself as a character, in quotes, the entrepreneurial Guilherme of today isn't even close to the one of the past. So like, I need to have the competence and the humility to trust a person that I think is more prepared than I am, learn to ask the right questions and let the person decide. So it's another way of leading, it's another way of executing, right? And it's difficult because we start as executors, we get our hands dirty, we execute, then you have to learn to delegate, to build a team. So there are several stages and decentralize, and that's the hardest thing about entrepreneurship. But I think everything starts with having that awareness, right? When you start having the awareness that you're going to have to be, you're going to have to be a chameleon and you're going to have to learn to be who you're not.
And nowadays even more, right? Because everything is so dynamic, becoming irrelevant, everything is so fast, everything is so fast nowadays. And I think that not just growth, we talk a lot about growth, but survival, it depends on being a chameleon, on reinventing yourself all the time, because things are absurdly dynamic. What do you think is harder, growing or sustaining?
I think both things are totally difficult, right? Everything in entrepreneurial life is difficult, right? There's nothing that was easy in my life until today. I think sustaining is harder. Sustaining is harder. I'm thinking off the top of my head because sustaining is... and growing. Sometimes you can, you get that burst, that sprint and you grow, right? But you grow on a tightrope. Growing on a tightrope is easy, right? You have a growth peak and that doesn't hold. So growing, right? You used a phrase that I thought was super cool, which is to become irrelevant, irrelevant, becoming irrelevant, right? How do we, how do we manage our ego in a way that we are humble enough to become irrelevant in a company? That's, that's super difficult, but super important. How do we put the company first? How do we not...
But do you think that's an entrepreneur's dream?
Without a doubt. My dream is that in everything I do, one day I'm irrelevant and I work to make that happen. Because the day that happens, many things won't depend only on me or only on my decisions or my point of view or my perspective. Today that's what I strive for, that's what I'm seeking in everything I do, for things to work more and more without my decisions.
And I see, for example, that XP today is huge. And you still, you told us here, you leave home at 9 and come back at 7. You're no longer CEO. What do you do today? I notice that today...
So you can choose more of what you do in your day. When you're no longer CEO, you choose the battle you want, the task you want. What is that like today?
Ah, there's a phrase that Jorge Paulo Lemann told me, and I think he had a great influence on the fact that I'm no longer CEO of the company, right? He used to say something like this, right? He used to say: "Guilherme, look, the CEO chair is small when you're the owner."
Wow, what a phrase. What an impactful phrase, right? Well, hold on, man. When there's a chair more important than the CEO's, because when you're the owner, when you're the CEO, you have to do a lot of rituals in the company.
You have to be an accessible leader. Everyone wants five minutes, which are never five minutes, right? You, anyway, you have a lot of routines. And you can't often go deep into topics you think are important and stay on those topics for a long enough time. Why? Because you're the owner, you have other obligations as an owner. And as long as you've done your homework, because the challenge of being irreplaceable is understanding your bar of people.
You have to have a very high bar of people, because if you don't have that — and every entrepreneur had success because he was good at executing tasks and good at a product — that doesn't guarantee you're good with people. You have to forget that. Now you have to learn to have empathy, to sell dreams, to tell stories, to build meritocracy, to have people processes, etc., so that you can learn that there are many more competent people than us in the market. There are many more competent people than the network, than you, than me. But the entrepreneur usually doesn't spend time on this agenda of talking with people. He's worried about the product detail, he's worried about the formula of the... of the forum, etc. And then he ends up not having this parameter of who is good, who is not so good. He doesn't focus on this people agenda and he rarely gets there, he ends up becoming a hostage of his own company. So he used to think that entrepreneurship was freedom, but he became a slave. He is the Kiman.
Right? And I think having that awareness helps a lot, but the fact that I understood that phrase from Jorge is impactful because today I stay at the company from 8, 9 until 7, 8 at night and I get into the topics I think are most relevant. So that's incredible, right? No, it's not everything that's important. There are very few things that make a big difference. Only that many times the CEO spends a little time on what is very relevant, but he has other obligations. I have no obligations. I have no schedule. I have a commercial schedule, I have a board schedule, but my day I try to keep free so that I can go deep into what I think will make the most difference in the medium and long term.
Business arbitrage. We'll talk much more about that. What is it like to reach 50 like this? Is it a dream?
It's not a dream. It's a dream. It's construction. It's not a dream. It's construction. It's a built dream. It's a built dream. About a year ago, I was deep into the artificial intelligence topic at the company for about four months, like four months of my life was just talking to an artificial intelligence team.
And focused on artificial intelligence?
No, focused there. How is this going to connect, the impact of this, etc. So, you can't do that. So, it's very good when you're aware that you have a much better CEO than you, much more structured than you. You help him not make the mistakes you made, and you, as the owner, you go deep into the agendas you think are most important, and you make this partnership with him in a way that you keep raising balls and topics.
Look, I'll say today in front of the greatest entrepreneurs in Brazil and the world, having Starts as our sponsor here on our Vida Longa Cast is something that makes me very, very happy, because Starts is an executive education platform, and in this episode where we have one of the greatest executives in our country, making the link with all this preparation, all this training that Starts gives us is simply incredible. Starts is an executive education platform that connects Brazilian entrepreneurs and executives with major hubs: Silicon Valley, Israel, China. They are totally customized trips, totally customized education programs. I'm a big fan. I'll put the QR code here so you can go in and understand exactly how everything works at Starts. I'll just say one thing: I recommend it. But let's go, the conversation is too good.
I just went through, right, that moment of no longer being CEO of a large listed company, after an extremely successful exit for Nestlé. And I heard a phrase that is very complementary, right, to Lemann's, which really is incredible, which is that it's harder than being the owner of your business — the one you saw being born, saw grow, saw go through all the stages — it's being the owner of your life, right? Because you continue being the owner of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 investments. But again, the field of arbitrage that we've been talking so much about here is something everyone should build from day zero, right? Everything we do is so that one day we can arbitrate where our strategic energy can be better allocated, right? No longer being the main executive, but being the main shareholder, going into other businesses. So, arbitrating your own life is much harder, much more relevant, right, for the choices you make than just arbitrating your business. It's small, right, arbitrating your business when you have a life that demands that you arbitrate all the time. And you talk a lot about the infinite game and we're here, right, in a chat about longevity. What is this infinite game? I'd really like you to tell us here, right? This is very — those who follow you know your concept about the infinite game and how you apply, right, this view of the infinite game in your day-to-day, in your businesses.
Ah, you said, you said something cool too, because life is a breath, right? Breath. Life is a breath. So, besides everything, the entrepreneur is so obsessed — every entrepreneur who made it is super obsessed — that, like, we also have to live life, right? Life, right? Like, I'm focused on my businesses, but I also need to, right? You want to enjoy life a little, you want to travel with your family, you want to... so if you can, after many years, build this engine of people and have a little more freedom, that's also super important, right? And it's also no use arriving there old with many dreams you didn't conquer, right? Maybe to know places, to have other experiences, etc., etc. So, I think you have to keep seeking that balance, right? About the infinite game, like, well, speaking business-wise, I don't intend to have another business in life. I think it's very hard to learn to do more than one thing really well done, for real. So my concept of entrepreneurship is build-to-last. How do you create a company that will continue to exist regardless of you, that will keep improving in the long term? But I think my infinite concept is very much: I want to keep improving as a human being, as an entrepreneur, I want to keep closing my gaps. I still have many gaps that I think can be improved. I have many strengths, so how do I, more and more, have even stronger strengths, at the same time, how do I close the gaps of what I think is not that strong? So, keep improving in life, I think it's a game of believing that you are more and more a better human being, a better entrepreneur, a better father, a better husband. For me, that's my infinite game.
Cool. And reaching 50 like this is really incredible, isn't it?
See that I'm fixated on 50, right?
You have, you have the dream of reaching 100.
We're gathering a little group here. There's a group here. Luana promised me that if I reach 120...
The bar has been raised now to 120.
Three. It's the three-digit group here. Well, it's health fund, not life fund. Well, but we have everything. After all, the level of awareness we have today about life is wonderful. For sure, right? And I think it will arrive well, arrive happy, arrive well physically, right? All of that, right?
But you know what's incredible? Ah, well, I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. How do you feel today, close to your 50 years, when you compare with the Guilherme of 30 in terms of health?
Ah, I feel... for me it's another person. Just look at my photo at 30 years old and my photo at 50.
That one with the loose shirt we saw earlier when we started here.
Later we'll put it here, look, for you to see the photo.
What did the girls say to Ana Clara?
Like, daddy, how did mommy end up dating you? I said: "She had vision, my children. She has vision."
Long term, long term, long term.
But another thing, I feel like another person, with another... and it's not just physically, it's... and again, I think there are things that unfortunately only come with time. Actually, I hope I'm wrong about that, okay? I hope that young people at 30 can have the awareness I have today at 50. But you can do things much better, with much less effort, with much more quality of life. I think when you're young, you're a bit clumsy, you put too much energy into things that with less energy you get there the same, right? And I think that being very physically well, very serene with yourself, right, brings you a lot of lucidity, and it's hard to be lucid if you don't have your inner self, right, your body, your mind very well trained, right, very well strengthened, right? And on this agenda, we talked a lot about the self-knowledge agenda, for example, how sport helps you be 100% in the present moment. But speaking of an agenda, possibly, right, from what I know of you, you're a very studious guy. You just cited an example here, I spent four months immersed in studying how artificial intelligence can bring benefits to XP. But what is your study agenda? Where do you like to really put energy? What are the topics you like to study? What's the source you use the most? How do you use artificial intelligence?
Look, I like to study the company's opportunities a lot. So for me that's where I'm most... I think everything in the company is a 7. The most consolidated areas. So I like to be provoking the internal stakeholders about: hey, can't we do more and better? I always think we can do more and better, and we always can. So I like to spend a lot of energy on that, like every month I spend a good amount of time looking at the indicators of the whole company to see who's improving, who's not improving, understanding what each area's priority is. So that feeds me with things that I think I'm good at finding creative solutions.
Alone or with each area person?
No, I think about it and then I send a WhatsApp, send a voice note, sit down.
When you analyze, you analyzing, you, Guilherme, analyzing. You do that alone there, writing, thinking.
Yeah, I do it alone, I call Mafra, who is the CEO. So we have a monthly agenda where we look at the company's indicators, but I like to sit down like this, I have fun like this, a Saturday afternoon, grab a pitcher of coffee, sit in my office and print all the sheets, print about 30, 40 sheets, and I go looking, scribbling notes, and I go looking and... and that keeps bringing me a cool idea option. And I think that fed me.
And today a sole-of-the-shoe shareholder. Sole of the shoe. Today I spend a lot of energy on commercial topics. I think it's even a way to show the team that I'm in the day-to-day, right? So I think my presence as a founder has a very big weight, right? Being a company, being a person who shows their face, the client feels valued, the team feels very well represented.
That is irreplaceable. I visited 250 stores a year, the year has 365 days. And it's exactly this agenda we talk about discipline, right? Because if you stay immersed in operations, the CEO can't do agendas that, in my view, where you talk, where the turnstile turns, right, where it's strategic, where I should be allocating less on execution and more on the vision of the whole. And the vision of the whole you need to be in the operations. When I say sole of the shoe, you need to be at the counter, with the client, with the competitor, with the future consumer, who isn't even your consumer yet, right, with strategic partners. So it's very important to have this agenda and the discipline, right? I had moments where I would block time in the agenda to be alone and say that I need to think, I won't just do it on the weekend, I need to have within my agenda here Monday to Friday, two hours, me with myself to do this exercise, right? Moments where we go to the field, we go alone, we go with the team, we go with the franchisee, that's really fundamental and almost irreplaceable. I do a lot of that and I have a habit, I keep noting things down, I have a lot of ideas throughout the day, so I keep noting them in a little notebook all the time. I end my day with three sheets of paper in my pockets, like. So everything that gives me insight, I register and at night I put it in a notebook and that becomes a sequence over time, you know? Like, how do I pick these up?
