Gustavo Rodea Public Speaker from Wilmington, NC

Picture this: a seventeen-year-old kid steps off a bus in America. No English. No money. No plan. So he did the only thing that made sense — he burned the ship. Twenty years later, he is the author of The Immigrant Investor, a million-dollar business owner, a fifty-property real estate investor, and the guy standing on your keynote stage. Nobody saw that coming. Least of all him. Gustavo Rodea came to America at 17 with no English, no money, and no safety net. He opened his first business at 22 out of sheer stubbornness, grew it for over two decades, rebuilt it from near-bankruptcy during the 2008 recession, and crossed one million dollars in revenue — before pivoting to build ILM Investors, a real estate company with 50+ active properties across Coastal North Carolina. No trust fund. No shortcuts. Just the immigrant mindset and a refusal to quit. He is the author of The Immigrant Investor: Building Wealth the MexiCan Way — a raw, real business memoir about what it actually takes to go from working a midnight factory shift to closing fourteen real estate transactions in a single year. His talks are funny first. He will make your audience laugh. And somewhere between the taco jokes and the punchlines, they will realize he has been talking about their lives the whole time. Gustavo speaks on the Immigrant Blueprint — a practical, battle-tested framework for building businesses, careers, and communities from nothing. His core message, The MexiCan Way, is built on 7 values forged from real life: Faith, Trust, Growth, Family, Community, Integrity, and Legacy. These are not buzzwords. They are the principles that took him from a furniture store floor to keynote stages across the Southeast. ( will travel out of state) He is the co-founder of the Latin American Business Council with the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, a Wilmington 40 Under 40 honoree, and a WilmingtonBiz 100 recipient. He is the right speaker when you need your audience to laugh, think, and leave the room fired up to do something different. Perfect for: Corporate events, company kickoffs, leadership retreats, school and university assemblies, chamber of commerce events, community gatherings, fundraising luncheons, and diversity and inclusion programs. ?? The Immigrant Investor book coming soon . Learn more at ImmigrantInvestor7.com and GustavorRodea.com.