The Impact Positive Mental Attitude Has on Success

Mentality is one of the biggest game-changers in the business world. As an entrepreneur, your mindset is what helps you achieve your goals and gets you to the top. How do you keep this mental attitude after starting and hitting bumps? How do you build it into your team from the get-go?  

Bobby Castro, a recent guest on Making Bank, talks about the importance of Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA. Bobby quit school at a young age and started working as a waiter in a restaurant. From there, he learned the importance of being positive and looking on the bright side of things. Starting from the Bronx to having a status as a billionaire, Bobby is proof of how mentality can be one of the greatest tools of success.  

Learn how Bobby used PMA in every one of his jobs, and what it means to embody PMA.  

The Framework of PMA 

From the beginning of his entrepreneurship journey, Bobby didn’t exactly plan his life going towards business. It was more about survival for him, so he started trying out different things to see what worked best. 

“When you get a lot of results, you just keep feeding what works for you. And what works for me is just being positive, always finding solutions because I had no other choice. There was no money.” So, from a young age, Bobby’s results showed that if he was positive, things worked out. Bobby also found out that work gave him an outlet, and that helped him achieve a positive mindset.  

“My mom just became this young mother of many and growing up in a big family comes with a lot of passion, personality, chaos, drama. And it bothered me because it was a major distraction in my life. I just didn’t think it was healthy for me. And my mom got me my first job at a restaurant that she worked at.” This is the place where Bobby picked up his people’s skills. Plus, this job gave him new experiences that weren’t like his home experience with his family – it gave him a different perspective.  

When Bobby would go into the restaurant, he knew that he was creating conversations and looking for ways to find the positive. By simply working, that in itself was the positive thing motivating him. Being able to express himself by interacting with people allowed him to reflect on what he wanted outside of his family and home.   

“Throughout my journeyman, I used to wait on people. I used to just be obsessed by seeing their behaviors, their expressions. And I almost wanted it to be like that in certain ways, because they [were] role models, these customers.” Finding people that inspired him and wanted to make him do better at this restaurant made him look for similar jobs in the future. So, Bobby started as an entrepreneur waiting tables for different restaurants.  

While working these jobs, Bobby became a dreamer. Little did he know that these were the days that were going to set up the foundation of his PMA theory or positive mental attitude.   

Breaking down Positive Mental Attitudes 

As he climbed his way up the entrepreneurship world, Bobby didn’t lose sight of what kept him grounded from the beginning. So, as he started facing more challenges, he applied what he knew worked – PMA.  

“The solution is us. I am my problem. I am my creation. I am my solution. I don’t depend on anybody. It’s my responsibility to be my leader and how I built my business was to create other leaders with that same PMA.” Bobby needed to work with people who had similar values as him, so if other leaders don’t have PMA, then he can’t create with them. Knowing this from the beginning helped him build up the type of company that he wanted.  

As a leader, it’s Bobby’s job to instill that PMA culture consistently. Many entrepreneurs don’t pay enough attention to their employees at the lower levels. They all want to talk about the managers…but they forget about the people that are doing the groundwork. “How do you sell the billion-dollar business? No investors, no, nobody, nothing. I paid attention to this level, man,” Bobby says of recognizing the importance of understanding the bottom levels of his own business.  

By creating a team culture and team that were focused on the same values and goals as himself, Bobby built a company that all about being sustainable. “We had a company meeting all about our culture, all about our goals, everything that happened. And I’m so proud of the fact that when it did happen, it wasn’t just [me]. These were my partners. Hundreds of people got us there,” he says of his success.  

To be a leader, you’ve got to be able to lead with dignity and you have to be an asset to the company as a whole. It’s your whole job to have people like you, respect you, and approach you with ideas. You’re the most important asset – so your mind is either your biggest advantage or greatest downfall.