Dealing with a client disappearing when it comes time to pay the bill. Feeling uncertain about where your next paycheck will come from because you work for yourself. Losing sleep over the uneasiness of dealing with dishonest customers. Living with the decision to turn down a lucrative position in favor of a life of entrepreneurship. These are a few of the challenges Argentinian entrepreneur Gerardo Gallo has faced in his career, and certainly will not be the last.
Though he has been successful as the founder and CEO of digital development agency FULLServices Network and has seen his platform expand to millions of users worldwide, the path to success has certainly been rocky. As a child, Gerardo was constantly hustling to sell fruits and vegetables just to raise money for fun engineering projects he would work tirelessly on. As he grew older, his interest in the Internet and programming peaked, and he spent hours of his teenage years at friends houses to use their computer as he lived in a house without one. When he was only 15, he lived through a crisis in Argentina. Through it all, he has remained positive and his entrepreneurial and creative spirits have held strong.
A major reason for his consistency and perseverance is due to his mindset on failure. He has come to understand that there is no success without failure, and nothing happens overnight. Rather than becoming fed up with waiting or giving in due to falling short at something, he has stayed persistent and reminded himself that the success will ultimately be a result of his willingness to power through tough times. By fixing his own problems that life has thrown at him, he has been put in a position to help others with their problems and change some of what he does not like about the world. By bringing value to people in bunches, he feels enormous satisfaction and is able to provide for himself and be his own boss.
Now that he has seen a high level of success in his career, Gerardo enjoys influencing and inspiring other people. A specific instance he recalls fondly is an engagement he had with a young man who expressed his anguish about not being able to pursue engineering because his parents wanted him to be a musician. He advised the young man to explain how important their support is to him, and that he truly wanted to be an engineer. As a result, the young man was able to get through to his parents and he is now pursuing engineering with his parents fully supporting him.