A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
Success Starts in Your Mind - Bruno Drummond - S6 - E12
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👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Bruno Drummond
Website: https://drummondadvisors.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdrummond/
What does it take to go from the bottom of a Brazilian favela to building multiple international businesses?
In this episode, Bruno Drummond shares his incredible entrepreneurial journey, from selling baked goods in high school to founding Drummond Advisors and multiple SaaS and real estate businesses across the U.S., Brazil, and beyond.
Bruno opens up about growing up in difficult environments, developing a relentless growth mindset, and why learning languages and acquiring knowledge became his path forward. We also discuss leadership, parenting, health, mental resilience, and why your mind can either become your greatest ally or your biggest enemy.
This is a powerful conversation about pressure, discipline, growth, and building a life with intention.
What you’ll learn:
• Why mindset determines entrepreneurial success
• How Bruno built companies across multiple industries
• Why knowledge is the key to long-term growth
• The importance of family structure and intentional parenting
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Welcome to a Founder's Life. I'm your host, Leo Gastetna. On this show, we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. This podcast is sponsored by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. I'm joined today by Bruno Drummond. Bruno, thanks for joining us. Would you like to introduce yourself to kick us off?
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Leo. And thank you very much for inviting me to be here. It's such a great podcast. I'm a big fan. And uh it's amazing how this has been growing on me to be here and uh spend some time with you. I think it does it's morning for me, but it's afternoon for you. But I'm giving you a little about talk a little bit about me. I'm I'm an entrepreneur since high school, probably. I used to bake stuff and sell at high school, so I have money to play games or do something in the weekends. And from there I was able to I was born in Brazil, raised there, moved to Canada, then moved to US, where I am right now, calling from, and uh managed to establish a few companies in the US in 2003 to 2005. Entered in a construct selling products to uh big uh retail companies such as Lowe's and Home Depot. In 2005, I left that firm. Then I went to a Big Four environment, what we call corporate America. And then after that, established uh found Drummond Advisors. It's been in the market for uh 15 years now. From that, we had been able to spin off a few other businesses. Track is uh one of the businesses that uh it's a compliance SaaS software where we manage all the compliance of our clients and so forth and so forth. We have VA Assets, it's a company that uh manages uh real estate for clients and our investments in real estate. And we also have uh Daibo, which is another SaaS company that um managed uh what we call back office. Daibo is basically doing business through your back office. That's the whole idea of. And it's also a SaaS model with a lot of human interaction, which is gonna be the game change for the future. AI is here, it's not gonna go anywhere, but uh, human beings are gonna be here to help us, everybody, to navigate in the AI, making things happen faster and simpler. And um, being around, it's uh it's a fun thing to be founder and moving towards a different environment. Uh Drummond Advisor is basically a service company. Then we're able to manage, build something as a SaaS company. It's a total, total, totally different idea. It's software, engineer, product, and then dive is another spin-off of that. And DAS it's investing in real estate. So the idea of um managing business that it with a different mindset, this is what I'm facing right now. Like every time I have different hats in different different businesses, uh, we have to see how we can create value in different businesses. DAS it's a 10 people enterprise. Roman device is about 300, racks about 40, and dive is about 20 as we speak. As we navigated this uh environment, you have to deal with uh life because life is a push and pull exercise, and there's a lot of uh things that you need to do to get better into not just to produce, but to be the leader that other people's feels like to be around you and move forward in uh in their lives.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. So great, great introduction and uh glad to have you here. Talk to us a little more about your journey that brought you to where you are, and then a little bit more about what your company is really doing and what you're doing for your customers.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I was born in the uh I don't know if you know Leo, but uh in Brazil, there is what we call these slams, right? It's a it's uh the neighborhood that um have what we call middle class, in low, what we call poor people, whatever you want to call them. But uh I was born in the bottom of the slam. Slams are communities that uh live in the in the mountains or in the neighborhoods inside the city to serve the middle class or the upper class. Okay? Very common in South America and so on and so forth. Um usually my family was a middle class, low middle class, and um I couldn't feel I wasn't part of that. I want to do something better, bold, and have um a fulfillment for life. You know, this is a moment in my life, and I was young, I was 14 years old to say, listen, I don't want to be here. I don't want I I I'm not part of this. I want to be bigger and bold. And since 413, 14 years old, I'm working in my person to have this global and growth mind to create value and move towards being a better person, you know? And when you have a growth mind, you end up bringing people along. It's a what we call tag along. People are coming and they like the idea and they move forward with you. And then as you grow, you you are able to make people around you grow with you. And uh so the only way you can grow coming from that that um that environment, it's knowledge, right? You obtain knowledge and you apply that knowledge and you create value. That's about it. So you obtain more knowledge, you practice that knowledge, you create more value. So it's a cycle. There is no way I can go and buy a lottery ticket and start wait for that to win one day. It would take me 40, 50 times or 50 years trying, but I'm not gonna get there. So that exercise made me having um a constant idea of learning. So from there I started learning English, from there I started learning Spanish, different language, so I can be positioning myself as a professional, as an individual, somebody different from the pack. And I never liked the idea of um let's put it this way, what we call go with the flow. I always think and I observe things and say, listen, is this right? Why people are going that direction? I mean, there's other options here. Maybe when you think for out of the box, sometimes it's risky, but as risky, it's very rewarded. Does that make sense? And from then on, I was able to apply this in in my life. And when we when I put together Drum and Advisors in 2010, I was the solo founder, which is something that I don't suggest anybody to be. I didn't know that because you have ups and downs. And with ups, you can't share with anybody, and downs you can't share with anybody, too. And it's frustrating not sharing ups and downs. You know, sometimes you need some a co-pilot or someone to help and be that guy or that cheerleader or that I can make you to be best, be the next person, be better person. And uh when I did that, I was with that idea say, hey, we have an opportunity here. We have big, big entities, what we call big fours. Those big fours serve companies enterprise level. Companies that are 100, 200 million dollars above in revenues, and there's no one serving small to mid-sized companies when they do cross-border transactions. And why is that? Because when you do a cross-border transaction, it doesn't matter the size. If you're small, mid, or large, you're gonna go through the same process, same documentation, same steps, right? It's the same thing as you're going to do a visa for a country. Doesn't matter if you're Microsoft or you're a small company, you need to go through, acquire that visa. You're gonna go through the same form, the same, maybe you have some, you may pull some strings or red tape, as American says, because you know someone inside of the console. But uh, listen, it's the same thing. Why? And I asked myself, why there's no one doing for small and mid-sized companies? Which in some countries, they're the ones that have the most number of employees than the big corporation enterprise. So, with that, I established Drummond Device to help companies in America coming in or going abroad, small to mid-size, looking for companies from zero revenue to $25 million in revenue. That's the a little two-minute uh presentation of that. And and we are solving this problem, and we grow 35% year over year just solving that problem.
SPEAKER_02Congratulations.
SPEAKER_01That's great to see things the the day is zero, but it's pure service. We have over a platform of service and six service that we provide to our clients. Okay?
SPEAKER_02That's uh great to see. I mean that's uh impressive growth. Congratulations on that.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Talk to us a bit about what family looks like for you.
SPEAKER_01Family it's a poor value, not just in life, individual, but also at inside of the firm. Because in the end of the day, we hold ourselves accountable for everything that we do. And that's the spirit of family. So, and very important, family, it's so important that we our entity has one of the core values, family sense. And I pushed that through all the way. The fact that it's very important is I didn't put it that in. The team created back in 2021, we made a list of items of core values, and they picked that. So family sense, it is on on our DNA, on the business, on the individual level, that's a different different thing that I I manage very carefully. So I I have some processes that uh that I I work a day-to-day base. I'm uh very fortunate to have a two relationship. So I was married twice, and I have kids with both of them. And I manage their relationship very well. Manage to first thing that I do is make sure that uh they are covert in terms of all needs necessarily whatsoever. And they live in different cities and so on and so forth, but we keep a routine to talk to each other. My I have two two kids, 17, Isabella, and uh uh six years old Theo. I talk to them on a daily basis together. I see them together once a month. I spend time with them, quality time. There's no cell phone. I'm not shifting my time with them. I have very private life, so nobody knows where I am except my kids. I travel 120 flights a year. I have, I don't have any social media, so I don't have to create any issue. My kids know where I am, they track me everywhere I go. We keep a really tight, as the Americans say, we we keep a really tight, tight ship here and routine. And it's very interesting because they're they've been growing, not exposure to the success of the business as much, which is really good, but uh in a very cohesive relationship between three of us. We talk to grandma every day, we talk, we go to study. My daughter has math issues, teach math on a day-to-day base. The little one, I take him to school, I spend 10 days with him on a monthly base. So that's a priority. And I keep many steps to make sure that uh they can grow, they can acquire the skills, and they can see me as reference to have the growth mindset that they need to do. Not to live today's life, but the future life that they needed.
SPEAKER_02Sounds like uh, you know, with the changes, you've you've still found uh a way to uh have a good balance with the kids. And how does health look for you?
SPEAKER_01Health, um very important. I think there's three things that are healthy is uh it's push and pull exercise practice. If you take too much vitamins, you need to do more exercise. If you need to take more exercise, you need to hydrate more, and it's a bunch of inputs. I keep telling people that uh healthy, it's more than 110 inputs that you need to manage to be healthy on a day-to-day basis. The first thing that I do, I want to make sure three things. One, I sleep well. I need to have a really nice, a really nice, pretty good night of sleep. It doesn't have to be like a nine hour. I can't sleep that long. I sleep between six and maybe eight hours. More than that, I I get grumpy. I don't know about you, but I I think after the 40s, if you wake up in the morning and you're not feeling any kind of pain, it's you're dead, you know, Leo? Because you spend too much time sleeping, I feel like that. So I'm a quicker wake up early, get the things done, run, do some kind some kind of card in the morning, some kind of uh, you know, weight lifting, something in the morning. I try to work out at least five days a week. And um, and the other thing is I try to keep very light meals. And at least during the weekdays, I try to have uh intermittent uh fasting. So I eat until seven, seven I have until lunch. With that, it gives me focus, a lot of focus during the morning time. So that's where I produce, I uh I produce in my 120-130%, which is really nice for me. I feel like that I'm very productive in the mornings. In the afternoon, it's a different time because it's different time zones. I have people from West Coast calling me and so on and so forth. And and people in Europe is already watching soccer because they they're at 6 p.m. and they are doing other things in life and so on. In India, my team in India is already sleeping. So in the afternoon, I usually take it easy and goes on, goes after. Assuming that I spend time in the East Coast. When I'm in the in Portugal, then I have to adjust that to a Portuguese time zone.
SPEAKER_02And um, what do you like to do for fun?
SPEAKER_01For fun, I do like to do a lot of uh hiking for fun. I like to party, like be with friends, go out and chit-chat and so on and so forth. People energize me. Okay, and be in the nature also energize me. And um another thing that energized me is just relax. Like I'm gonna go for a walk in two, three hours. And outside of this, the phone very disconnected. I'm very I can say I'm very happy that I can disconnect it from this world. I managed in 2019 to be without the phone for 19 days. That was great. And um I'm I lost three friends because he they didn't get my message. They after I got the new phone, I lost the phone. It wasn't that I I turned it off. I lost the phone and I was in a truck, and I couldn't get a new phone while while I was gone.
SPEAKER_00And uh my friends are like, why you don't answer my my message or so on and so forth. I say, no, no, I didn't have my phone. And it's like, ah, you you lied to me.
SPEAKER_01Listen, forget it. Move on. And um, yeah, I think it's a very mental uh break. The fact that you kick in turn off and and come back in two days or three days, it's it's amazing. Um it's a very free feeling of uh fulfillment feeling too, you know. Or like you do, do a little run and come back and energize that. Anything that uh one, take me outside of my day-to-day basis, be with friends, and I'll be in the nature, that's energized me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's all about we need to find what what works for us, and it's it's definitely different for each people, each person. And what for you has been a pivotal moment in your life?
SPEAKER_01I have many. And usually uh the pivotal aspects of life that you remember are the ones that uh shift you to a different direction that uh made you what you are here today. I I lost my father very young, I was 23 years old. So with that, you lost the what we call the your safe net per se. And when you lost, when I lost that, you were like, hey, I just there's only four moving forward option. There is no looking back and saying, listen, this is moving forward. That was great. I love that. I was Isabella, my daughter, I remember one day that I was she was about 11 months, she was already walking around, and I was getting up, I was leaving the the the bathroom, I opened the door, and there is this little kid looking at me, and she just smiled, and I was like, it's my daughter. And that moment was the the moment that I connect, that this is seven months into she was already born, eleven months after she's walking, and I open the door, and I see her six in the morning looking at me. That's where there is a wake-up call. Because kids, they're very attached to their mums until like two, three, four, five years. They don't know who is dead. They don't know who what is that guy in the house, correct? Which is understandable. The connection with mother is much greater than we have, right? And it's okay. We're not here to judge that, we're not here even to describe that. But then look at her and say, oh my god, there is no moving forward, there is no moving back, just moving forward. That's the option. And having someone to care for the rest of your life, it's something that um that it's a pivotal to your life. And feeling that listen, if this little one here needs me until she can be on her own, and and then that that changed. Changed how you drive, changed how you work, changed how you you teach her things, a lot of things. And that that's another pivot moment in my life. The business were not that great in 2014. We lost like three or four clients, the biggest client, we're just a boutique business, and you're like, wow, should we uh fire people or should we um should we try to look for new clients and so on and so forth? And well, we can pull the plug and let's move on in life. That's also understanding how to deal with the people moments in life. I I love to be against the wall, Leo. And that's when you are against the wall is when you have more strength because you can push yourself through through the issues and move on. And that's myself. People, when they get against the wall, they freeze, correct? And sometimes I just I think the American has that uh name, uh clutch, correct? Uh is that correct? When you play soccer, you play kind of the clutch moment. I'm very good at it. Is that clutch or no glitch? How do you say that? I I keep forgetting that. It's like clutch, clutch, is that right? The word?
SPEAKER_02I don't know a hundred percent sure. That's that must be a very American term.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's I will I think it's clutch. Clutch is anyways, there I think there's a word for that. But I I I'm very comfortable against the wall. That's where I feel more comfortable, you know, on moments that I need to to perform the best, you know. You need to be at your what they call a game, correct? I know that uh that's that's that's uh that's a that's an American phrase, correct, Leo?
SPEAKER_02Definitely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. When you're in the brick, when you're in the brink to to deliver that, I feel the most comfortable, high rate is calm, I'm not sweating, we just move, push forward, and people are like, seriously, yeah, seriously. Uh give me one piece of advice you would give from a sparring entrepreneur. I think the I think that it's very important for every entrepreneur to believe in what they are doing. Okay. This is first thing. And how you can manage your mind, because your mind is your big it can be your ally, but also it can be your greatest enemy in your mind. Your mind is the greatest enemy when you do business, right? Because you need to convince them first before you convince the other person to create value. So you need to be very focused on what is your mind doing to you so you can succeed. Because when you manage your mind and have some kind of growth mind, growth path, there's no one can stop you. And you don't want to be stopped. Because you're not, in that case, you're in the moment that it's what we call flow, and then you bring people with you, and then you go on. So manage and understand your mind and how your mind reacts in moments of stress, happiness, calm, because then you can understand how you evaluate yourself in terms of uh outputs. I think that's uh very important. I think our minds, because how we we were uh our childhood, our experience and uh what we see today's days, our mind gets a little confused um in that it's probably the number one today for you to succeed. And that's why people say, oh, entrepreneurs, they they're so close, so close, and then they drop to be to get a success. They they built this beautiful product and they didn't get to the next level. All these rationales that uh people put or created for unsuccess stories, it's actually in their minds. And I see this because I had I was able to purchase two or three businesses in the past of very good, successful entrepreneurs. And I I took them from whatever they did and multiplied twice, three times, four times. It's not about the fact you have the idea, it's just you push it through it. And that's the difference between you push it through it and you don't push it through it, is the unsuccessful stores that you see it.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Well, thank you. I appreciate you sharing your uh your your path and your opinions. And talk to us uh how people can find you.
SPEAKER_01You can find me the best way, not on Instagram, because I'm not there. So I'm gonna tell you LinkedIn. You can go LinkedIn slash be drummant. Are you gonna be seeing me, follow me there, or you can uh connect on drummingvisors.com. My email, all the information is there. Okay, my profile is there.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. Uh appreciate joining us. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to follow us, subscribe, and tell your friends. Thank you.