Frequently Asked Questions
Twenty questions for anyone who wants to know Mario beyond the personal landing page and the professional profile. The personal landing page says who he is; the professional profile, what he does; this FAQ answers how he thinks, why, and what he lives from. They come in five layers, from the map to the center, in the first person.
Where it all comes from. Questions 1–4
What keeps something from breaking when conditions change?
I asked it in an industrial plant, before I knew I was asking it. It came back at a debt-negotiation table, when I founded a company, while managing a portfolio, alongside footballers and clubs, and in front of a classroom.
The answer was almost never where everyone was looking. The problem rarely lies in the part that fails; it almost always lies in the relationship between the parts. Over the years a second, deeper question appeared, and today it orders the first: what is all this for, and for whom?
It wasn’t a bolt of lightning. It was a series of experiences with real consequences. I have watched things that seemed solid collapse, and I have had to stand where someone must decide what to protect when everything can no longer be protected. Those decisions are not made with a spreadsheet.
From there came something I have not been able to unsee: a company, a position or a fortune are means, not ends. When someone places their worth in what they have, life can take it all away without asking permission.
The Greeks had a word for this: metanoia. It does not mean to improve; it means to change the way one sees. I chose it because it describes what happened to me before it describes what I do. First it was a book, then a firm and, in the end, a vocation.
Anyone looking from the outside will see a collection of leaps. I see a single question changing places.
What holds it together is not a career plan but an order: first the person, then what they build, and finally what they have. I apply that same order to a company, a fortune, a club or a student.
My projects also answer to a single three-layer architecture. ineXorable is the intellectual layer: how to understand the world. Hágase Tu Voluntad (Thy Will Be Done) is the spiritual layer: why to live. The Metanoia Group is the operational layer: how to act. They are the same idea seen from three places.
I restructured USD 20 million in debt, led the sale of an industrial company, founded a microfinance firm that grew to more than twenty branches and ended in an acquisition, and I have managed my own capital for years. Three lessons stay with me.
The first: crisis does not create fragility; it reveals it. Bad design is invisible as long as reality cooperates.
The second: structure comes before results. A portfolio built only for good times cannot go on the offensive when the bad times arrive.
The third, and most personal: what you build must never become what you are. A profitable company that depends on its founder never being absent is not a company; it is a bottleneck.
How I think and where I decide from. Questions 5–9
I hold roles with those names, and I exercise them gladly. But the core of my work sits at another level: not in the decision, but in the design from which one decides.
Advice depends on who gives it. An architecture works regardless of who inhabits it. That is why my work consists of bringing structure where there is talent, clarity where there is complexity, and sustainability where there is accelerated growth.
I don’t say “high performance” because of football alone. I say it of any system that has to keep working when the environment stops being favorable: a person, a company, a fortune.
Because what is built outwardly cannot exceed what is ordered inwardly.
The person comes first; then, what they build; last, what they have. Inverting that order is the quietest way to become fragile. When someone thinks “I have wealth, therefore I am someone” or “I hold a position, therefore I am worth something,” they rest their entire identity on variables that can be lost.
I have seen it in brilliant people who fall apart when they lose their position, because at some point they confused what they did with who they were. And before that order there is a prior one, which for me holds everything up: God, Being, Doing, Having.
Because there the margin for error is zero, the winner takes all, and the pressure is not episodic: it is permanent. There is no draft version of a mistake.
Football taught me something I later saw everywhere: there are clubs with twice the budget that systematically lose to others spending half as much. Money does not produce performance; internal coherence does.
I work in that ecosystem as a FIFA agent, as a consultant and as a researcher. It is also one of my passions. What works there, under that pressure, tends to work anywhere.
I don’t do it for the credential. I do it because I need that capability for what I build.
I am pursuing my doctorate at the McCombs School of Business, where I research how AI memory can transform advice and strategic judgment. Conventional consulting forgets: every session starts almost from zero. I am interested in advisory work that accumulates, where each conversation improves the ones that follow.
I don’t believe AI replaces judgment. Processing faster is not the same as deliberating better. When intelligence becomes abundant, what is scarce is no longer the ability to think: what is scarce is sound judgment.
Several important things, and I am glad of it.
I used to believe the key was to anticipate the future better. Today I believe the key is to depend less on getting it right. I used to believe everything had to be optimized; today I believe one must first ask whether it deserves to exist. And I used to carry the illusion of controlling outcomes; today I know I answer for what I sow, not for what I reap.
I try to examine my own convictions with the same rigor I apply to other people’s. Sometimes I manage it. I am a little wary of anyone who claims to have definitive answers, starting with myself.
What I write and how I accompany others. Questions 10–13
I write so that others don’t have to stumble over stones someone has already pointed out. My books are not a collection of topics: they are the same question looking at business, money, marriage, fatherhood, truth or faith.
I give them away because I believe nothing fully belongs to us. If something I have learned can serve someone, I would rather it reach them without barriers: as a PDF, free of charge and with no sign-up.
To begin, I recommend Metanoia: Haz tu parte y deja que Dios haga el resto (Metanoia: Do Your Part and Let God Do the Rest), the book where it all began. After that, depending on what you are living through: Arquitectura Empresarial (Business Architecture) if you lead a company, El Dinero es una Promesa (Money Is a Promise) if you manage wealth, Áskesis if you want to put your inner life in order, and 1 + 1 = N if you are building a home. The complete work offers more suggested paths.
Before asking what to decide, I ask where the decision is being made from.
People almost always arrive with a visible problem: falling sales, a team that doesn’t coordinate, wealth that worries them. Those problems are consequences. The question I ask myself is a different one: where is the real misalignment? Not where the person thinks it is, but where it actually is.
And the one I ask them is simple to formulate and hard to answer: is your system properly ordered? Not your company, not your wealth, not your strategy: your entire system.
It makes the most sense with someone who has already built something real and knows, honestly, that the problem is not their effort but their architecture. I don’t look for successful people; I look for people willing to grow. And I prefer to arrive before disruption forces the conversation: architecture is built in calm, not under pressure.
I prefer not to step in when what is wanted is to fix an isolated piece without looking at the system, a prediction of the future, or someone to decide on one’s behalf. Nor when faith is used to bless plans that have already been decided. If the question of the whole system seems obvious to you, it is probably not the right time.
The habit of asking where they are deciding from before asking what to decide.
The idea of someone depending on me makes me uncomfortable. When I accompany a leader, represent a footballer or teach a class, what I seek is that on the day I am no longer there, something remains installed. For me, that is the most demanding test of any work well done: what keeps working when the one who sustained it is gone.
The life behind the work. Questions 14–17
More than fits in one answer. I have been married for ten years, and I have a four-year-old daughter who is a force of nature and my whole life. Much of what I write about marriage and fatherhood I write with them in mind, and with the husband and father I want to be.
My home taught me that a great marriage is not one extraordinary decision made once, but thousands of small decisions sustained over decades. And that a father’s success consists, in the end, in no longer being necessary: the same test I apply to a company, applied where it hurts most.
It also orders my time. No project is worth what it costs if it makes me neglect those I love for the sake of building a life I consider better.
I am a good deal simpler than this page suggests.
I love thinking, and writing about what I think. I read and learn new things all the time; curiosity has been my most constant teacher. I play the piano, compose and play chess. I enjoy football, running, traveling and learning the history of the places I visit.
And nothing compares with memorable moments with my family and friends. That is where I most clearly recognize God as the source of joy.
Honestly: I don’t always manage it. I move forward like almost everyone, a few steps ahead and the occasional one back, trying to make the balance come out in my favor.
What I do is lean on structure rather than willpower. I keep my goals and the principles by which I decide in writing, and I return to them to review and correct them. I practice what I teach in Áskesis: frugality, discipline and faith; needing less, fulfilling what is mine to do, and offering up the effort.
And I try to anchor my identity where pressure cannot reach it. My dignity does not depend on reaching my goals or on proving I can handle everything. I can work with resolve without living enslaved to results.
I learned to separate two things that almost never go together: full responsibility and limited control. I answer completely for what I sow, but I do not control the harvest.
In the hardest moments I stopped needing other people’s approval, because I understood that the only gaze that truly mattered was God’s. That gave me a freedom no result can give.
I also have a practical rule: in moments of discouragement I don’t change what is essential or make big decisions; I limit my actions and remain faithful. And I remind myself of something I also tell others: you can fail without being a failure.
What holds it all together. Questions 18–20
I am Catholic, and faith is not a compartment of my life: it is its center. Everything else—family, work, money, the body, time and rest—revolves, or should revolve, around it.
I don’t impose it or use it as an argument. Those who work with me do not have to share it, and I respect those who see things differently. But it would be dishonest to present myself without saying so.
In my work it is not introduced, not imposed and not sold. I hope it shows in another way: in the quality of judgment, in stability under pressure, and in the coherence between what I say and what I live.
It is not an invitation to do less. It is doing exactly what is mine to do, and ceasing to attempt what was never mine.
There are two distinct transformations. The first changes the map: the way of seeing, judging and deciding. It depends, to a large extent, on oneself. The second changes the center: ceasing to be the foundation of one’s own life. That one is not manufactured; it is received, and it demands cooperation.
I sum it up like this: you change the map; God changes the center. In practice it means working with everything I have, with rigor and discipline, and then surrendering the outcome. Neither the clenched fist of one who fears losing everything, nor the limp hand of one who gives up acting: the open hand.
Toward one thing: turning potential into lives, works and wealth that transcend. I would like to contribute to a generation of leaders in the Spanish-speaking world who don’t need to wait for collapse to put themselves in order.
I believe nothing fully belongs to us: everything is entrusted to us. A child, a company, a fortune, a student, a planet. In the end, what we safeguard matters less than who we become while doing it.
If I am remembered, I would like it to be like this: husband, father, builder, steward, man of faith. Someone who asked what things were for, tried to do his part, and placed the rest in God’s hands.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
If, after reading this, you would like to talk, the door is open.