WASHINGTON–Just how “All In” are you and your credit union? One man who has gone “All In” himself challenged a CU audience here with that question—and it was a challenge he can make now only because of what one credit union did a long time ago.
Gian Paul Gonzalez, who gave up a potential NBA career in order to work with at-risk kids and become a school teacher, told the opening session of CUNA’s GAC that whether it’s in their professional or personal lives, if they expect to really succeed they need to be “all in.”
First, Gonzalez’s story. Gonzalez grew up poor even though his father had played cornerback for the Oakland Raiders. He dreamed of being a professional football player himself, specifically the “Hispanic version of Dan Marino.” But after numerous hits in high school his mother said he could no longer play the game, and he switched to basketball.
He enjoyed success on the hard court, too, playing for a high school team that won a national tournament. He recalled celebrating the championship at a Denny’s with his teammates while they talked about the Division I colleges to which they were headed to play basketball. But Gonzalez, who said he was too small to play his position in college even though he is 6’6”, found only one college would accept him: small Division III Montclair State in New Jersey.
“And when everyone heard that, they laughed,” he said. “But as I was sitting at that table I thought, ‘Just because I’m not going Division I doesn’t mean I can’t practice like it.”
Practice Pays Off
All that practice paid off. Gonzalez scored 1,400 points over three seasons with the Red Hawks and was named a first team All-American. In 2007, he was drafted by the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers and assigned to its summer league team with a potential pro career ahead of him.
And then he gave it all up.
Gonzalez returned to school, earned a teaching certification, and began teaching world history to ninth graders in Union City, N.J. While he was working to change lives, his life changed one day in 2012 when he received a call from the NFL’s New York Giants asking if he would come speak to the team.
Thinking it might even be a prank, Gonzalez said he showed up and found it was a legitimate invitation. He spoke for 20 minutes on what it means to be “All In” to a team that looked anything but Super Bowl bound.
“If you had asked me then how I thought I did, I would have said I failed,” Gonzalez said.
A 'Super' Reception
But the “All In” message resonated with the Giants, who won their remaining games to make the playoffs, and eventually went on to win the Super Bowl 21-17 over the New England Patriots.
Gonzalez–who said the Giants had heard of him from work he was doing–said that when he talked to the team he didn’t talk about football.
“When I spoke to them I asked just one question: what does it mean to be committed? I said let’s use a poker analogy where you push all your chips in. What does that mean? It means you're All In. If you would never do it in the game of poker, why do we do I in our lives? I had them take that chip and sign it and when they saw it ask themselves if they were really doing their best.”
Today, Gonzalez keeps his chip on the desk in his classroom.
On the Monday after the Super Bowl win, Gonzalez said he arrived at school to find news trucks from all the major networks waiting for him. “And the next morning I ran to school to see who was going to interview me that day, and it was nobody,” he laughed.
Gonzalez was invited to New York City for the team’s victory parade, where he saw the Super Bowl Champion t-shirts were emblazoned with the words, “All In.”
A Message Spreads
Gonzalez’s work with the Giants led other teams to call him, including the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, a Gaelic football team in Ireland, and London’s Arsenal soccer club. “They all said they wanted to be All In,” he stated.
Gian Paul Gonzalez speaks to GAC.
It wasn’t just sports teams calling. He has also shared his message with the FBI, WSW Shoes, Verizon, Walmart and branches of the military.
“I don’t think most people really truly understand what ‘All In’ really means,” said Gonzalez. “One person told me he thought I was wasting my time. He said, ‘All In is a great slogan, and that working with students is great, but there’s no profit there,’” Gonzalez related.
“All In is a personal choice that each one of us makes every single day,” he said. “Nobody can do it for us. It’s committing and giving everything. But we know that kind of commitment is a scary proposition. It provokes fear. I see the same fear in the eyes of my students every day. I would ask them, ‘What’s going on?’ And one explained something to me that struck a chord. He said, ‘Mr. Gonzalez if I stay up all night studying and don’t do well, I’m a failure. But if I don’t try, it’s not an indictment.’”
Teacher Makes a Difference
Gonzalez said it was a high school teacher named Mr. Phillips who made a great difference in his life. “He waited for me after school one day. He told me I was doing fine in class. But he said, ‘I noticed you skip school after you lose a game. I think you’re so scared to lose you might never win.'”
“The test of being All In isn’t whether you win,” Gonzalez explained. “You only know if you’re All In after a loss, or a down month, or quarter or year. Do people still show up early and stay late? It’s a true test of commitment. Most people will be committed as long as it’s convenient. But will you be committed when it’s inconvenient? Only one thing keeps you down when doing a push up and that’s your own body weight. Yes, regulations can make things difficult, but at the end of the day our biggest enemy can be what we see in the mirror. We are the biggest reason we don’t go All In.”
A year ago, in Union City Gonzalez opened the city’s first Youth Center. On the first day, five kids showed up, and he said friends told him he was wasting his time. He responded by saying it’s not a waste of time if those five kids don’t join a gang. Now, 1,080 kids are involved.”
The Role of One Credit Union
All of his accomplishments, Gonzalez said, would not have occurred were it not for a credit union.
“My mom was a youth leader at our church. She made just $75 a week,” he said. “We had a homicide happen right in front of us and she wanted to get us out of out of that area. No other financial institution would give us a shot. But there was one financial institution that did. It was a credit union that said we can work that out. I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for you.”
He told the GAC attendees that credit unions and the youth center have something in common.
“The kids at the youth center say, ‘We don’t come to a place, we come to a person’,” he said. “I like to hear the exact same thing about when people enter your doors. At the end of the day being All In is really about being for others.
“I personally believe we get to wear this jersey each and every day,” he said, holding up a youth league jersey for a team named Hope. “There are people in our lives who need us to give them hope. They need to know that there are people willing to fight for them. That’s why you are here this week. They want you to give them hope.”