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Optimism isn’t just a personality trait in this episode - it’s a discipline. Gustavo Reichmann frames life as forward motion: the future should feel bigger than the past, even as you age. He credits that mindset to watching his 95-year-old grandmother still think about what’s ahead, and to the kind of “dream big” mentality that shaped his career. It’s a reflective throughline for everything else he shares: reinventing himself after 20 years as an executive, choosing partners intentionally, and building businesses designed for long arcs—not quick wins.

Gustavo Reichmann speaks candidly about his transition from two decades as an executive in Brazil to building as an entrepreneur across two platforms: Monomyth Group (US-focused investing, including energy/supply-chain tech like synthetic graphite for EV batteries, plus a food/agriculture investment) and Heat Group (Brazil-based food service rollups centered on brand + experience, including a major barbecue concept and an Italian “dolce vita” experience brand). 

Gustavo explains what pushed him to leave executive life - more ownership of his time and decisions, choosing who he builds with, and staying “in the driver’s seat.” 

Gustavo reflects that where you grow up and build your career quietly shapes how you think and act as a leader. South America, especially Brazil, with its recurring instability, teaches people to be adaptive, resilient, and comfortable navigating uncertainty - skills forged through necessity rather than theory. North America, by contrast, offers the gift of stability: deep institutions, mature markets, and dense ecosystems that reward long-term thinking and systematic execution. His insight isn’t about choosing one over the other, but about combining them—bringing the agility and grit born in volatile environments into systems designed for scale and durability. Even in a globalized world where borders matter less, he believes these underlying contexts still leave a lasting imprint on how leaders build, decide, and endure.

Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:

1. The future-first mindset is fuel: He repeats the idea that “the future is bigger than the past,” and treats it as a life strategy.
2. Reinvention can be a planned chapter: He intentionally shifted from “executive chapter” to “entrepreneur chapter” for the next 20 years.
3. Three drivers for leaving executive life: work more for himself, choose partners, and sit in the driver’s seat.
4. Executives can still be entrepreneurs: He argues entrepreneurship is also about how you operate inside a company - M&A, new ventures, bold bets.
5. Invest where the brand > the current business: If the brand’s promise exceeds today’s footprint, growth upside is “built in.”
6. Build ecosystems, not just outlets: For Churrascada, he imagines restaurants plus retail meat, entertainment, memberships, parks - an expandable platform.
7. Big projects require big capital realism: The US graphite plan is massive (multi-factory, billion-dollar scale) and demands long-term financing muscle.
8. Internationalization follows product-market fit: Heat Group is Brazil-first, but he’s actively planning US/Europe expansion (especially for the barbecue concept) in 2026.
9. Work-life balance through intensity, not perfection: Be fully present—10 minutes with kids can matter if it’s truly engaged.
10. Keep “back to school” as a habit: He likes returning to education every ~10 years to refresh thinking, relationships, and perspective.

Books: Dream Big (Sonho Grande)