Homero Gonzalez grew up just 13 miles from downtown Dallas in a neighborhood with no grocery store and no restaurants. Decades later, his path would take him through the Dallas Museum of Art, SMU, sales, the West Texas oilfields, and eventually entrepreneurship.
Then he put everything he had on the line to buy half of his father-in-law’s struggling painting company.
In Homero’s words, the business was already “in the grave being covered up.” He decided to pull it out and resuscitate it.
In this episode of The Grit Mindset with Matt Rosen, Homero shares the lessons that shaped him—from staring at an empty commission box on the last Friday of the month to the mentor who gave him a set of golf clubs and one year to change his trajectory.
He also shares the question he asks himself every morning: Am I destroying wealth, or am I creating it?
Four years into building his company, Homero describes the business as a toddler—messy, bruised, stumbling, but growing. It’s an honest conversation about entrepreneurship, risk, resilience, and the grit it takes to keep building when success is anything but guaranteed.
What is Grit Mindset with Matt Rosen?
The Grit Mindset is where the people who already broke tell the real version. CEOs whose playbooks died. Green Berets and pro athletes who lost the identity they built everything on. Founders and fund managers who watched the money disappear. Not the LinkedIn version — the specific day it ended, the unglamorous middle, and what the rebuild actually cost.
Hosted by Matt Rosen — CEO of Allata and national media commentator on AI and leadership — every episode follows the story through four acts: who they were before, the break, the rebuild, and the bill.
If you're leading through the next five years, these are the people to learn from. Stay gritty.