Back here with Guilherme, who last week covered his whole journey from the beginning, his frustration at not being able to continue, but obviously life goes on and he found a way to get where he is today. The idea of this part two is to talk exactly about that. Welcome back, Guilherme. Let's continue. A pleasure.
Well, you mentioned there was that small frustration, you end up going to study. How exactly does it happen when you — I don't know if that's the right term — are prevented from continuing to play tennis, or your father takes away your dream of being a tennis player, and you obviously had to move on with life? What exactly happens from there?
Yes, I was very frustrated. I'm trying to remember the emotions here, but it was a moment because in adolescence you basically have school and your sport, right? You don't have — you have your friends, right?
Yeah, who are either from school or from the sport.
Yeah. And you're finding yourself in the world. So tennis was maybe the place where I felt comfortable, because I painted — I thought that I had a good canvas, that I painted a good picture, right, so to speak, right?
I painted a good picture, that's how I saw myself.
That's how I saw myself. So when you feel that you do something, that you think you do it well, when they take that away from you, it takes away your ground.
And you're left, you need to know where to go, right? Which direction to turn, since everything of yours, imagining... based on the boys and girls I trained at the age you were, if you took that away, what am I going to do with my life, right? More or less, what am I going to do with my life? Am I just going to study?
Silv, I remember that at that time you didn't have internet, you didn't have any of that. So I recorded the Masters finals. I would spend the weekend watching the finals of Ivan Lendl with... with Boris Becker, with...
I've played with Wilander, you know that?
You played with Wilander? I played a first round of doubles at the Junior World Championship at Orange Bowl. Wilander and Nyström. Joaquim Nyström. I lost to him 6-0, 6-1 in the first round.
I'd sit there watching, examining the technique, copying it in the mirror. So my life was basically tennis. So I was basically left without ground. I remember my reaction was, how am I going to get money, because I need to get a coach, have a clinic, and then you think of an uncle who has a bit more money, a godfather.
Ah, in the end it was a summer dream. That had no foundation, right? And so life starts to happen and you start finding other hobbies, right?
Uh-huh. And then, exactly, you start studying, right, economics, Fundão, right, and off we go. Red Beach. At Red Beach. Yeah, but it was FERG, FERG at Red Beach. FRJ. FRJ at Red Beach. Red Beach.
Then I did economics, I was good at math. So...
So that part about your father, the little seed he planted? No, he influenced me — he influenced me toward medicine, but medicine didn't really suit me.
I was good at math and I attended a lecture at PUC about the financial market, I found it interesting, decided I wanted to learn. I think maybe a bit — a bit a consequence of tennis, okay? I'm thinking about this right now, right? The thing of wanting to master the art of money, of wanting freedom, of power. In my childhood nothing was ever missing, but I also never had anything extra. So the thing of — my parents may have been separated, my mother was in a financial situation that wasn't very good, and I think maybe a bit of tennis. So, look, I need to learn to deal with that, to master the so-called money. And I thought that economics was the fastest path in that direction. Then I got into the Federal University, right, which was free, is free to this day. And then I started working right away, right? Started working at 18 years old.
And I remember that right after that I said: 'Look, Dad, from now on I support myself, you don't — I don't — don't worry anymore.' My salary was 700, 800 reais, it was my money. Uh-huh! And I started chasing it. And I remember that at 20 years old, 20 years old I moved out on my own here in Rio de Janeiro, and I started taking on problems. I started saying, look, I need to learn to fend for myself and it's not living with my parents that I'm going to be able to do that. And then at 24 years old I was fired from the...
That story, I wanted you to get to it. Yeah.
And then I was fired from the... which was a big defeat off the court. First big defeat. Big defeat. The big defeat. And...
It hurt as much as the father-and-son thing.
I think it hurt just as much. Yeah. Yeah. And above all because you don't want to disappoint your father, right? So I remember that I...
You had already disappointed him once, right? Once on the father-and-son side.
But I remember that I came home one day scared, I told my father that I was afraid because I had heard some rumors at the brokerage that there were going to be cuts, there were going to be layoffs. Then he said: 'Guilherme, relax, good executives like you are never let go.' Now my father had no experience in the business world, he was a doctor. And he wanted to give me advice, comforting me, 'hey, relax, nothing's going to happen because nothing's going to happen to you.' And I was fired. So my reaction was, wow, I'm not good. Yeah, I'm not good.
If you were good, you would have stayed. Because Daddy said the good ones stay.
And then I remember my father — my father was really bothered by this, to the point of — a father never knows exactly whether his child is competent or not at work, right? So I remember my aunt — I have smart cousins, very studious and all, so that climate settled in the family, like, is Guilherme good or is he a — is he a fraud? I remember that cloud hung around a bit. I said: 'Look, I don't want to live in Rio de Janeiro anymore. I'm ashamed of myself, my friends, my parents, my aunt.'
That was strong, then, right?
It was strong. Very strong. And I said: 'Look, I want to — I want to be an entrepreneur. I don't want to — I never want to suffer again what I suffered. I want to start my own business in a place where nobody knows me. And I may go bankrupt, but I will have control over my life.'
Look, Porto Alegre was...
It was far from Rio. You didn't want anything near Rio.
No, Porto Alegre — the real story, maybe one I've never told, is that I had a girlfriend in Santa Catarina. Ah, that's the never-told truth, okay? Yeah. That would be more or less close, right? Yeah. Then the city — I knew the city a bit, knew it had a high GDP, it was a city where people were quite polite, the fixed cost was low, so it wasn't so expensive to start a business. So I put those things together and said: 'Look, I want to go there and... and I want to go there.' And then I found a partner from Rio Grande do Sul, I was 24 years old, he was 25. We rented a little office and we started XP.
It was basically just us. And I think that when I started being an entrepreneur, I think maybe the fierce tennis spirit came out. That thing of that shout, that thing of...
And that word is new, right? Because I don't remember it from when I played or trained — that came later, right? But I think it captures it well. And I don't know how you'd say that in Portuguese, how would you say 'grit' in Portuguese? I don't know. Hunger, claws. Hunger for victory.
