Nathalie Virem: What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
Marco Antonio Regil: I was going through a personal crisis where I didn’t want to keep working full time under a contract for a TV network. For the first time in my career, I didn’t like showing up for work.
I had enjoyed hosting The Price Is Right, Family Feud, and Minute to Win It, but then they wanted me to do this new program with a producer I didn’t want to work with. As an employee, you don’t get to pick what you want to do. I was reading Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Cashflow Quadrant, Before You Quit Your Job and The Business School — and realized that is exactly what’s happening to me! I was on the rat race, but not really going anywhere — that’s when the entrepreneurial bug got into me.
Nathalie Virem: What does the mindset of a prosperous entrepreneur look like?
Marco Antonio Regil: Well, they do not wait for the government to solve their problems, for a miracle to happen, winning the lottery or getting a safe job. Being a good entrepreneur is learning how to make money work for you: owning your business, becoming an investor and, most importantly, using other people’s resources — it doesn’t have to be your idea or made on your own time, with your own money. One of the most difficult things that makes one even more successful is finding responsible people to be on your team and having them do what they like doing.
Nathalie Virem: I am currently teaching Entrepreneurship at CSULA and all my students want to know exactly what you share during your popular entrepreneurship workshops.
Marco Antonio Regil: We teach people how to face their fears: fail, pitch, build teams, handle objections, manage their and others’ emotions, neutralizing that and moving forward.
It’s a hands-on workshop, not just me talking. We’ve been doing this for 15 years now for Chambers of Commerce, small business owners, universities, etc. I’m going to do one with Mary Kay in Mexico with thousands of people. I love that company. We’ve done it for Herbalife and many others, and at all levels. I still teach the basics of Robert Kiyosaki and Blair Singer too; he is the one who gets into sales. Robert teaches the philosophy and mindset and Blair teaches how to sell and build a team. I did a Master in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica (where Arianna Huffington spoke), and also incorporated “emotional” tools into the workshops.
Nathalie Virem: How is your career evolving? Are you also building a community online in addition to behind the screen?
Marco Antonio Regil: Besides my career in television, we’re going to be doing Family Feud for Univision that’s on the entertainment side. I am building my own digital business around physical, mental and emotional health, which is where my heart really is. I have a podcast in Spanish on my website we started in January and we already have 2 million downloads. My social media content is now mostly about personal improvement. We do a lot of Facebook Lives — people love it! I did a video when Trump was elected: Today Trump Is Becoming President, What Am I Going to Do About It?
My message was, “You know what, I’m not gonna watch TV today because I didn’t vote for him. I don’t agree with his ideas and I’m not going to torture myself listening to him and the media. Instead, I’m going to meditate, take a course at uni, and have one of the best days of my life.” Close to a million people watched, it’s just amazing how many people we can reach through social media.
Nathalie Virem: You have such an impressive professional track record. How do you not stretch yourself too thin emotionally?
I’m not perfect; I’m not a saint. I’m not saying that I never get angry, but in my forthcoming books, I’ll share how my life experience evolved and level of happiness went up when I changed. Not others — it’s internal. I am including anecdotes of how I used to go ballistic taping TV shows when something didn’t go well. People used to fear me in the studios; now the experience is different but I still have a lot of room to grow. Every chapter will end with a lesson on forgiveness: how to change and let go of things that just keep us from living the happiest life we can.
Marco Antonio Regil (born December 27, 1969) is a television personality, public speaker and activist. As the host of the Spanish versions of Family Feud, The Price is Right, and Mexico’s hit show, Generation Gap (Recuerda y Gana), Regil is a constant fixture in Latin households.
Originally published at journal.thriveglobal.com