Who is Bruno Souza? The story behind the Digital Wealth Lab Mentorship

A two-bedroom house and a lot of grit

In 1999, my family moved from Brazil to the United States, wanting to give me a better opportunity. We lived like cockroaches where my grandparents, my parents, my uncles from two sides of the family, and my aunts would all live in a 2-bedroom house together. There were so many people living in this little house that we put up plyboard in the living room, laid down air mattresses to section it off and create more living space.

My family lived like this for 3 years, in a country where they didn't speak the language, didn't have any skills, but what they had was grit. 3 below-minimum-wage jobs ranging from pizza delivery drivers, to cooking pizzas, to Dunkin' Donuts, to bartending and construction, 60-70-hour work weeks, and a hell of a lot of saving. 3 years later, everyone was able to move out and buy an apartment.

The beautiful part was that I never heard my family members complain once about their grueling work.

They came from a place where economic mobility didn't exist. But in the United States, anything was possible.

This was the first "leg" that began to prop me up - seeing that as immigrants in a strange land, we could conquer - it began to instill the belief in me that anything was possible.

A short-sale sign in 2008

Fast forward a few years to the 2008 housing crash. By then, my parents had upgraded to a house. One day after coming home from school there was a sign that our house was up for short sale. I had no idea what that was, and when I asked my parents, all hell broke loose.

The pressure of having to maintain a home with a variable APR was crushing them financially. But, rather than complain, rather than be victimized, my father did something I never imagined - he switched careers.

He bought an HVAC book, which is like a 4x4x8 of Bibles piled up in thickness, and an English dictionary. I'd get home from school, do my schoolwork, and my dad would get home late at night and go straight to his office to study and learn English at the same time.

I'd wake up for school the next day, and he'd be in the basement, asleep in his books.

And again - never once did I hear my father complain. Because to him, this was his opportunity, his privilege.

And, thanks to an Obama program helping bail out sinking homeowners and my dad's determination, our home was saved and he successfully switched careers.

The same 50 excuses

As I grew older, I started to develop resentment for weakness. For every person I met that had 50 excuses as to why they couldn't succeed, I would look at my parents who would use those exact same 50 excuses to succeed.

It taught me that life was about perspective.

Some parents take risks because they want a better future for their kids - like mine when they left Brazil.

Others don't take risks because of their kids.

What it boils down to is that you need to make a choice: are your excuses going to be what moves you forward or what holds you back?

And sure, life is complex. But I'd argue it doesn't matter because trying to factor in all complexities overcomplicates decisions. And if you look at the outcomes there are only two possibilities - you're either moving up in life or you're not.

And so a binary approach, a simplification of decision making to always be moving forward, is what I adopted.

Because if my family, with 0 savings, 0 skills, not even the language, could make it - what was stopping someone else?

All these experiences are what gave me the "belief" that I could become a millionaire, that I could build something epic, that success was possible.

Why I started the Digital Wealth Lab Mentorship

I do this because growing up, I didn't have entrepreneurs around me. And when I became one, I felt alone.

Everyone in my life was pushing the 9-5 path on me - get a job, get a degree, get a house. But I knew that life wasn't for me because it seemed insane. It reminded me of the Matrix movie where the machines use humans as bio-batteries but in this case it was the rich and powerful elites using humans as debt-batteries.

The idea of spending a lifetime in debt - 30 years on a house, 6 years on a car, 40 on student loans - just seemed insane.

Then having another full-grown adult dictating when I would work, when I could have days off, when I could take vacations - to me it felt like modernized slavery.

Around this time, people were saying "yolo" as their excuse to party and get drunk, but to me it became about building an epic life. Like, if I got one shot on this earth, why would I spend it being "average" or living a "debt slave" life?

I was going to build freedom, retire my parents, retire my spouse so that she wasn't spending her life having to pick between being present for her kids and making another man rich.

The community I never had

And this mindset made me feel isolated - so starting this mentorship became about building that community of people who were ambitious, craved freedom, wanted more for themselves.

The point of the mentorship is to have students walk away from the program as competent, independent business owners.

Why I market and inspire aggressively

And whenever I saw someone procrastinating, or making excuses, or upset that they had to work 12 hours, I would look at them with pity because they were too blind to see the gift they had. In this day and age - with AI, and online businesses - that gift is greater than ever and yet there's no shortage of people who find an excuse to be a victim.

So yes, I'll aggressively market and aggressively inspire because I desperately want people to wake up to their inner potential. Because if I don't do it - the world will continue to infantilize them, teach them that they're powerless, teach them that they should play it safe, teach them that they can get something for nothing. And a world like that breeds victims and breeds weakness.

What you do with the gift of life

And so, as silly as it sounds, to quote Mewtwo from back when I was a child, "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are," and I hope everyone else can absorb this wisdom and push themselves to achieve the things they never imagined they could achieve before.