Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Joe Siegel, founder and CEO of Aspire Legal Solutions, and my land trustee, the largest and fastest growing land trust company in Florida. Our passion is helping people aspire to a better life.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: One of the many ways we do.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: That is by helping them remain anonymous when it comes to their real estate holdings as they build their wealth. But it also extends to everyone else.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: We touch each day.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: We're fortunate to work with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country who share our mission of aspiring to a better life. And we hope others will benefit from hearing their journeys, tips, strategies, and tactics to get there.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: I'm just too stubborn to give up.
I guess that's the military in me. So something I got while I was in the military is that challenges are meant to be conquered. At some point, that gets rewired on your brain.
And I just want better things in life for me and my family as well. Right?
I'm not a guy that.
How do I put it?
I'm never content.
Not that I'm not grateful. I'm grateful with what I have.
But there's always more.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: That's Ricardo Rosales. A mentor and serial entrepreneur, Ricardo keeps his feet firmly planted in Texas and Venezuela. Inspired by his family to transform from Navy diesel mechanic to the serial entrepreneur he is today. Listen in as we discuss how he got from there to here and his thoughts on transformational growth.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Welcome to trust this, everybody. I'm here with Ricardo Rosales, who is an entrepreneur, also a social media star out there in the real estate world.
We've been talking briefly here about how he got where he is today. But I'm going to let Ricardo introduce himself, sort of give us his journey of how he got where he is today and where that is. And, Ricardo, take it away.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Thank you for having me, Joe, and thank you for doing this podcast. You're truly helping a lot of people out there that really want to do what we do, and this is a way of giving back.
Before I tell them about myself, I started podcasting back in 2016, and the reason why I started the podcast is because somehow people in the Houston area started going to my warehouse, knocking on the door, asking for me, and I will come and open the door. And I was like, yeah, this is Ricardo. How can I help you? And they're like, oh, I've been told you flip houses. And I wanted to come pick your brains. So after, like, a whole month of people showing up in my office, my business partner at the time pulled me off to the side and said, look, man, we're going to have to do something about this, because every time somebody knocks on the door, it takes 3 hours away from our life, and then we end up going home later.
And I said, well, dennis, I really want to help these people out. And he's like, well, we got to find another way. And so he suggested that we started a podcast. And there you go, 400 episodes later, here I am.
But thank you for having me. My name is Ricardo Rosales. I live in Houston, in the Houston area. I live in Katy, actually, which is west of Houston.
I've been here since 2005, but what got me here was the oil and gas business.
Prior to being in the oil and gas business, I was in the military, where I served the US Navy for four years as a mechanic.
One of the things that I'll go back even further, I grew up in Venezuela. I was born in the US, but I grew up in Venezuela. And when I was in my teenage years, I was a complete, you know, my father didn't know how to motivate me anymore, and my mother couldn't keep a hold of me. In Venezuela, it's fairly easy to go drink and party.
Literally, if you can walk up to a liquor store, you can buy liquor. So, needless to say, I started drinking at a very young age. I think I had my first beer and my first cigarette because they went hand in hand back then. I don't smoke anymore, thank God. But back then, I was twelve years old when I started drinking. So by the time I was 1617 years old, I think I can say I was a full blown alcoholic, okay? I would just drink for no reason. I don't know what we were celebrating, to be honest with you.
Yeah. Because there were no wins. It was all losses, basically. I was failing in school. I wasn't behaving right. And in my last year, my father said, look, man, I don't know if you're stupid or what, but I know you're smarter than that. And if you pass the five classes out of seven that I was taking in my senior year in summer, because I had failed them all throughout the regular year, then what I'll do is I'll send you to Miami, and in Miami, you're going to go to Miami day community college, and we're going to buy you a new car. And when he said that, I was like, what? Miami? A new car. So I went and took on the challenge. And needless to say, I wasn't as stupid as he thought I was. So I passed all the five classes, and he was a man of his word, man. I remember on a Tuesday, I came in with my degree, my high school diploma, and I said, dad, here's the diploma. And he goes, we're leaving on Thursday, which is two days later. So he went and got the plane tickets, and that's how I got to Miami. I started working for my father when I was eight years old. And he was very voluntary. I was like, dad, I want to be like you. I want to go to the office. He's in the insurance business. He's a financial planner. And he bought me a suit. And I will go to the office. And I was the secretary's office boy, basically. So anything the secretaries needed, I will deliver. By the time I was 20, maybe 1920, I was already running all the operations for the company. I had gone up through the ranks. I had done every single job there was. I was actually selling insurance as well. I was very good at it.
But one thing is I never wanted to go to college.
And my dad, for some reason, he pressured me to go to college a lot.
If I didn't enroll in college, there was a problem. And my thing was that I just want to be like you. I don't want to go to school. I just want to, you know, that drove us apart. Not only that, at the time, I had also. Now I'm in Miami. So he took me away from Venezuela, put me in Miami. Miami is the party capital of the world, man. So I found myself again, right in the same environment, even worse than it was in Venezuela. So now I'm partying. And one day we just had a discussion and I don't know if I got fired. He says he fired me. I told him I left. It was mutual.
So I ended up leaving his office. And for a good year, I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do. I was sleeping on my mom's couch.
The future wasn't all that bright. And I saw a commercial of the US Navy on tv, and I saw these guys dressed in white. I had a daughter already, so my daughter was born when I was 19. And I was like, I need to provide for my daughter. I need insurance. I need a paycheck, and I'm not having any of those right now. So you know what? I'm going to go visit the recruiter at the US Navy office. And three months later I was in boot camp going through the whole process. And I thank God that I joined the navy back then because I don't know what I was going to do with my proper. I had the proper guidance.
I didn't know what to do, honestly. I was very young and lost, and everybody wanted the best for me, but I just didn't know what I wanted for myself. So joined the Navy, had a great time. Two years into the navy, I realized I didn't want to be in the military anymore because of the way the politics work inside of the military. And I also realized that the skill set that I had acquired while I was in the navy by becoming a mechanic, I was a diesel mechanic. I could apply that outside and make a lot more money as a mechanic on the oil rigs working offshore. So I set my sights on going to work on the rigs, and as soon as I got out, I had, like, 19 job offers to go to any multiple companies here in the Houston area. That's how I got to Houston. I was stationed out in Corpus Christi on Ingleside, and moved to Houston, started working offshore, and I started having an amazing life. I mean, I was flying business class. I was going all over the world, running what we call, well, heads and Christmas trees, and I was a service technician. Later on, I became a senior engineer because of the experience that I acquired, not because I went to school and got a degree or anything like that.
And in 2008, when the world is ending, I literally bought my first investment property.
And I saw a show on tv called Flip this house. And I saw these guys flipping houses, and I was like, man, if they can flip a house and make 40 grand, I can do the same, because in reality, it took me a lot to go and flip a property. I mean, to make the same amount of money that a guy will make flipping offshore. It was like three months worth of work. If $40,000 on a flip. I said, man, if they can do that, I can. And I had a lot of good things going on for me. Number one, I had a w two job. So hard, money lenders and banks love throwing money at us. It was a steady job, and it was a multiple six figure job. So everywhere I applied, they're like, you're approved. Go get you a house.
Needless to say, the first property I bought, I used private money without even knowing it was called private money, because I just called my mother in law and said, hey, I need $50,000. And she's like, I got it. She loaned me the $50,000, I did the flip, and I became a forced landlord. On that first flip, I learned everything the streets can teach you. Okay?
It was horrible. It took me a whole year to get the renovations done. Every contractor that was a thug on the streets showed up on that project and took my money.
You name it, man. A $25,000 project turned into a $50,000 project real fast. And by the time I was done, I wanted nothing to do with real estate. To be honest with you, I was just sick and tired of it. But I don't know, I guess I'm too stubborn to quit. So I went in and put this house for sale, and next thing you know, nobody's buying, because now it's 2009, so nobody's getting approved for a loan. Banks are very reserved, and my agent kept on telling me, Ricardo, you need to put this for rent, because everybody wants to rent it. Now. At the time, I was all in for probably about 60 grand. I bought that property for $13,000. Okay? It was a house on pier and beams that fell on the side, basically. Like, the foundation was so bad, we had to strip it completely down. The lady had 67 cats in that house. We counted them, because when we took possession of the property, all these cats were coming from all kinds of places.
And by the way, that house almost got knocked down by the city. When I showed up at the property the first day, there was a crane sitting in front of the property with a bulldozer, and they were going to bulldoze the house. And I was like, please don't do it. Let me go talk to the city. I just bought this property. So, needless to say, the city saved me, and they allowed me to rehab it.
Yeah, it was horrible. It was like one of the worst feelings ever. But anyhow, I finished this property a year later after all the headaches, and finally I rented it and kind of turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That house was rented for four years at $1,000. It was $900 at the beginning, and then I raised the rents to 1000. And basically I paid cash for it because it was my mother in law's money. So when you look at the rate of return on that property, it was astronomical. And not only that, after four years, I sold it for $100,000 or something like that. So I collected collectively in between the sell of the property and the rents, almost something like $150 to $160,000 on a project that I put $60,000 in. So at the beginning, it was a nightmare, but four years later, it turned out to be a slam dunk. Right after that property, I went on to do a Bunch of other projects. I got to a point where I accumulated over 100 properties.
I hated it. I didn't like it. I didn't like being a landlord.
There's something about me.
I bought IntO the dream of passive income, and being a landlord is not passive. I don't care what anybody says, it is not passive. It's active income, okay? Because you're always fixing something, you're always evicting somebody or something is happening, especially if you have a large portfolio.
We started getting rid of all of the properties, by the way, I did all of this while I had a w two, so I had a w two job, and I was doing real estate almost like full time.
I became obsessed with it, that's why. And I just kept on putting properties away, and properties away.
Anyhow, 2015 came around, and I was now flipping, like, two or three projects at a time. I had my job, and I had some houses because I hadn't gotten rid of a lot of the rentals. I didn't like being a landlord, and that's when I got laid off. And now when I got laid off, I was almost making 300,000 plus a year.
But I live also like a guy that made that much money. I don't know if you understand that. I had the house of a $300,000 guy. I had the cars of a $300,000 guy. So my living expenses were about $25,000 a month just to pay bills, okay? That wasn't to get rich. And when I lost that income, I was like, okay, what do I do now? I had money, and I could sustain myself for quite a while, but I'm like, I know this money is going to run out if I don't do something about it, and I don't start creating income right away. And that's when I started flipping at a scale, and I figured that if I buy five houses a month as a general contractor, which I have become already from the first house, in the first house, I had to learn how to be a general contractor, pull permits, get my bond, my insurance, all of that. In the state of Texas, you don't have to be licensed, so it's easier to do that.
And I said, okay, if I buy five properties a month, I'm just going to reverse engineer my salary. I just take five grand apiece as a general contractor, and here I am, I got my 25, I'm covering my bills, and then I make my money on the back end when I sell them, or when I rent them or rehab them. And in between 2015 and 2017, we went fast, and I say we because it was a group of us it was two partners that I had Brian and Jose shout out to those guys, and then later on, Dennis came on board, and then the Carlos. So we have a group of five or six that we were buying all these houses and refinancing them out and flipping them and wholesaling some to some of our friends. And, man, we became a machine. I think we bought something like, I don't know, 200 houses in less than two years. And by July 2017, I thought I was rich.
I'm like, man. Because, yeah, I was flipping 40 to 50 houses a month.
We had that on inventory, and then we had the cruise for that. So we had grown our general contracting company to where we had 50 to 70 people on staff every week. We were paying all these people to fix our houses, and we became fully integrated. So we owned our own mailing company, because that's how we used to market for motivated sellers. At the time we're sending letters, I figure if I can control my marketing and I can control my spend and I bring it in house, I'm going to save some money by doing that. And substantially, I was doing that. So we started doing our own marketing.
We were doing our own general contracting. And then the one thing we didn't do is we were not agents like, we had an agent on the team, but we didn't care for that part of the business. We saw ourselves more as real estate investors than anything else.
Somewhere around 16 and 17, I ended up buying two of my partners out, and they kept some of the properties, and I kept some of the liabilities. Moving forward, we had raised something like $15 million worth of private money, so we had more money that we could deploy in our projects at the time. And that was one of the reasons why we grew so fast, is because we had money sitting on the sideline that we knew we could use. And as long as we could get good deals, we just had to go figure out how to fix them fast enough. Right?
And that's when Hurricane Harvey came to Houston in August 2017. And it was chaos. It was horrible. And at the beginning, I didn't think of anything. I said, okay, we got money in the bank. We got all these projects. We got all this private money. Nothing is going to happen. And what I didn't know was that a month after the hurricane, I was going to lose all my crews. And now it's like a duck sitting in the water. I mean, we had all these properties, no work being done on them.
And all the private money, roughly was 10% a month on all the loans we had, I remember we used to pay $250,000 a month on interest only. And I said, okay, in six months, we should be okay. Well, six months went by and we were not okay. And the projects were still halfway. And next thing you know, twelve months go by. Now my private money lenders are really scared. Like, they're asking me all kinds of questions.
And I was still paying this interest, but I just couldn't get enough properties moving. The other thing that happened was we lost a lot of our equity on our deals because there is 300,000 homes flooding the market now that are being fixed and flipped.
So a house that where the after repair value was 270,000, now it's 210. So I'm under the water with a harmony loan, right? So luckily, we were able to satisfy, I would say, 99% of the loans, but there is always that 1% that they're never satisfied, and they're going to come against you.
And they had all the right to do so. I don't blame anybody that took any of those actions, because that's what they're supposed to do. They're lenders. And I was the borrower, period.
Long story short, that forced me to become a wholesaler because I couldn't flip these houses fast enough to get off these loans. But I still needed to make money, not only to pay bills, but to sustain myself and to get off all those projects.
And we had scaled the flipping business, but I didn't know what it took to scale a wholesaling business. So we started getting into the wholesaling, and we started marketing nationwide.
And next thing you know, we're wholesaling 40, 20 houses a month at $17,000 an assignment fee. And that helped us big time get over all those hurdles. But it took us four or five years to get out of it, to be honest with you. And at some point while I was in the wholesaling business, and I don't want to get too much into the wholesale portion of it, I started building an overseas operation because I was tired of mediocrity here in the US. All the people that became part of my team, they came hungry, but then somehow they didn't act on it. And that was the same illness a lot of my friends were having that were wholesaling at the, you know, I started growing an overseas operation, and then I started having students asking me for help with my overseas people. And that's how my VA company literally started. It was something I had that I didn't know I had. And now is the core of my business today. So I'm not doing much real estate, to be honest with you. I'm only doing two projects, which, in comparison to what I used to do in the past, is nothing.
And my whole focus is to help other people grow their businesses with our services in the VA business. So that's a little bit of where my journey.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: And by VA, you mean virtual assistant.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Virtual assistants, yes.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So, number one, I want to go back to, you said you can't find people who stay hungry. Know John Morgan of Morgan and Morgan. He's written the book, you can't teach hungry. What do you think has kept you hungry?
What is it in you that keeps that drive going?
[00:23:56] Speaker C: Man, that's a great question.
I'm just too stubborn to give up, I guess that's the military in me. So something I got while I was in the military is that challenges are meant to be conquered. And every time we had a challenge while I was in the navy, in the engine room, we had to conquer it no matter what.
It didn't matter how long it took. And we did that over and over and over again. So at some point, that gets rewired on your brain, and I just want better things in life for me and my family as well. Right.
I'm not a guy that.
How do I put it?
I'm never content.
Not that I'm not grateful. I'm grateful with what I have, but there's always more.
And I guess I haven't reached a point in my life to where I say, okay, that's enough. I'm not going to go even further. I'm just going to stay where I'm at. I'm still young. I feel myself that I'm in my prime right now. I'm 45 years old, so I thought I was in my prime when I was in 35. And if I compare my 45 against the 35, I'm much better now. I have more wisdom. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've learned from them.
I stay away from a lot of the mistakes I made in the past, and I just want to do better for me and for my people also. I have a large team, and I want to see those guys win, and I want to see them achieve, know, get to their dreams, especially overseas. Buying a car in Venezuela, for instance, for us, you and I, you can wreck your credit today completely. Your credit can go to 400. You can still go buy a car financed from somebody. Somebody's going to finance you. That does not exist in Venezuela.
It doesn't matter if you have good credit, bad credit, it's cash, period. And the joy I get from my team members when they go buy a car, I'm like, wow. Because owning a vehicle there is actually a huge milestone, especially if you bought it yourself.
So I'm going through that right now where I'm seeing a lot of the people that started working with me two or three years ago. They live a better life. They're part of the 1% locally because they're the best paid people in the country right now. When it comes to a call center, they're buying vehicles, they're getting their own apartments, they're moving out of their parents houses, which is not for the Hispanic. That's very normal to stay in your house until you're 50 years old, so you can still be with mom and dad. And I see these guys doing things for themselves, and I get a lot out of it. So the more I can contribute to their success, the better it is for me.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Well, and it sounds to me like a lot of what you've said is experience learning. I mean, you had college, of course, and my dad has always said, look, there's two ways you can learn, and either one is going to cost you a lot of money, but one will be more painful. You can learn in a classroom and that's going to cost money, or you can learn in real life and that's going to cost a lot of money, but it's also going to hurt, usually to go through that, it's going to hurt your pride, it's going to hurt your sanity, your emotions.
And it sounds like you've been through that, but you've been resilient, and you pivot. So what made you decide this latest pivot to being a VA company out.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: There listening to the universe, Joe? So one thing I learned is I'm big into self development.
If I show you my books, I got books, I read them every day. I put ten pages at least.
I love this one. Buy back your time.
It's an amazing book.
I highly suggest this one. Fast, like a girl. Right now I'm on a 36 hours fast, and I think I'm going to do a 72 hours fast this week.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: I'm big into fasting for health purposes and clearing my mind and all that, but I'm big into self development. That's where I was going.
One of the things that I learned, especially this book, the Alchemist by Paolo Coelo. I read this book years ago. This is back in 2006. I still remember the day I finished the book, because I finished it going from Australia to Singapore when I was in the oil and gas business.
And once I finished the book, I understood a lot of things about life.
I was laughing, like, uncontrollable, because now a lot of things that happen in my life made sense. It's like the day you find out why you're here or something like that.
I finished this book, and I was like, oh, my God, now this makes sense. Now I know why I went through this. Now I know why my journey in the navy was so tough. Now I know all of these things. It was because he was getting me to a better place. And throughout the years, when I didn't listen to my instincts is when I made the mistakes.
But when I listened to my instincts is when things went very smooth. So I had a few of my students come to me and say, ricardo, can you service me with your people?
And at the time, because they were part of my operation, I was no like, they're my guys. Why would I give them to you? I trained them and this and that, but they kept on coming back and asking the same question. So I saw it as the universe is sending me a message. I need to serve other people right now with the people that I have, as opposed to serve myself.
So I had to make a shift.
It wasn't easy for me, Joe, because I had to shut down literally a multiple seven figure wholesaling operation to build a brand new VA company that I know knew much about.
But eventually I said, you know what? I'm just going to do it. And it's the best thing I've ever done now.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:30:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: I hear from you, I hear a growth mindset.
You want to grow. And I think that's a theme I'm seeing in this podcast series when I'm talking with folks, the ones who have that wanting to learn, wanting to grow, knowing they don't know everything, knowing they don't know what they don't even know yet.
And reading and learning has been very a central theme that I see that continues to run through everything that we're doing. What is something that you had to unlearn that you thought you knew maybe 510 years ago? What's something you've had to unlearn in that time?
[00:31:27] Speaker C: A lot of habits, bad habits.
I used to smoke. I don't smoke anymore. I quit smoking maybe twelve years ago.
I used to drink coffee with a lot of sugar. I don't do sugar anymore.
I still eat sometimes desserts. Okay. That's me. I quit sugar altogether, but I don't pour sugar as I used to anymore.
So it's all about changing your habits. Fasting is part of it. I had to learn how to fast, so I had to unlearn how to eat a lot.
I'll tell you this, man, if I didn't eat lunch by 11:30 a.m. I was hangry, I would turn into a monster. And the reason why is because I got used in the military. By 1130, I had to eat lunch. And then the same thing happened in the oil field. By 1130, I was eating lunch. So 15 years of eating lunch at 11:30 a.m. If I didn't do it, my body was going to tell me, you got to go eat. You got to go put the food in your mouth. And I had to learn how to unlearn, how to do that. So that's when I started fasting. I actually started fasting back in 2018, and actually, maybe earlier than that, it might have been late 17, early 18. And that was one of the hardest things I've ever done when I started. Now, to me, is easy. I just don't eat, and no big deal.
I believe I have conquered fasting up to a certain point. I can do a whole week of water, coffee, and green tea, no problems.
Yes.
And it's all here. It's all mental.
Removing yourself from the environment as well. Right? Like making sure you're not going to restaurants. And if my wife is cooking here, I'm like, come on, don't do it right now. Or maybe I'll go outside and exercise while she's cooking. That way I'm not smelling the food. Right.
So you got to create an environment for the things that you want to do. And I believe to unlearn things as you unlearn things, you have to learn new things and replace the old ones with the new ones.
Otherwise, if you take something old, but you don't put something new, it creates a void.
I don't know if that answers your question.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely.
And that's also one of the things. Building habits is a big theme that I always hear.
What are some of your habits? Let's sort of go through a day in the life.
From the time you get up, time you go to bed. What's, what are some of the habits you found that help you grow and succeed and keep going?
[00:34:27] Speaker C: Habit number one, practicing being grateful. Every morning, as soon as I open my eyes, the first thing I do is I thank God I am a person of God.
And I thank God for a new day, a new opportunity for my health, for my family, for my kids, for my wife, for my company, for my team members. I don't call them employees, they're my team members. We work together and multiple other things, the good, the bad, and the ugly, because not everything is pretty that's happening in our lives. Sometimes we're having setbacks and things of that nature, but like I said, they're meant to be conquered and challenges are meant to be conquered. So that's the number one thing. Number two, I read ten pages of a book every day, okay? And that's helped me grow internally.
And I didn't like reading, Joe.
I was, I guess I put reading with studying in the university, and I could care less about going to school. So at some point, I started liking reading because I realized I was growing internally. And a lot of people don't realize, but their external world is a reflection to the internal world.
So the more you grow inside, the more you're going to grow outside.
So I do ten pages of a book. I exercise on a daily basis.
I don't look at my phone before 10:00 a.m.
I don't. I have my phones with the face down. I don't let it distract me. I don't care what's going on in the world.
Social media, I don't look at it.
Why do I do that? Is because, honestly, if something bad is going to happen, somebody's going to pick up the phone and call me and let me know, hey, this happened to so and so. Whatever. Can you help or can you be here? But other than that, what am I going to see on social media? One of the mistakes I've seen, people, especially on my team, they wake up and the first thing they do is they boom. They look at the phone, and now they see bad news. So let's suppose, Joe, that you wake up in the morning, you look at your phone, and now one of your best friend's parents just passed away.
How does your day start?
It's horrible, because now you're feeling sorry for that person and for what's going on, and now you cannot get that thought out of your way. Now, what happens is when you wake up in the morning and you pay yourself first, you read, you practice gratitude, you go exercise, you go all of these things, you're paying yourself first, and then you receive news like that, now you're in better position to receive the news.
And whether you knew at 07:00 a.m. Or at 10:00 a.m. It's just 3 hours of difference. What's the big difference, right? Not only that, by doing that, we're also controlling the phone.
We are supposed to control the phone, not the phone, us.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Right?
[00:37:46] Speaker C: And 99% of the people are completely controlled by what's going on in this thing.
Okay?
So I do that for self control. Like, you know what? I'm not going to pay attention to my phone until 10:00 a.m., now after 10:00 a.m. I start returning calls. I look at my social media.
Even in our office in Venezuela, we don't start working until 10:00 a.m.
So we work from ten to seven as opposed to eight to five or. No, it's ten to seven. And I do that in purpose. I'm like, guys, you have three or 4 hours in the morning to take care of yourself.
And when you come here at 10:00 a.m. Just be ready. Let's just go hit it, and then we'll leave a little late later in the evening, and no big deal. They don't care that they actually like the schedule better. Some of the guys going to college, they actually schedule their first classes in the morning, and by the time they're done with the classes, they can go to the office and work a full day.
So those are some of the things I do in my daily routine.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Well, now, surely you've had some people, family, friends, acquaintances, who have said, why are you fasting? Why are you doing whatever you're doing at the time? Why are you wasting your time doing this?
The naysayers, how do you handle when people like that don't pay attention to them?
[00:39:24] Speaker C: Joe, I tell them, look, man, like my cousin, okay, my cousin Julio, I love him.
He's like my little brother. I mean, we are brothers. We're just cousins, but we grew up together, so he's one of those guys, why are you fasting? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I say, for mindset purposes, for health purposes. Oh, you're going to pass out, Julio, I've been fasting since 2018, man. Nothing has happened to me. I'm in perfect shape.
My health is. I'm a little overweight. Not a little, but a lot right now. But if I went and got me a blood test done, and the doctor said, I don't know why you're overweight, because your blood sample is perfect. You have the blood of an athlete. And I think he had to do a lot. When I had asthma as a kid, I was taking a lot of steroids, so he might have to do something with that. But he's one of those guys. And you know what? I just don't pay attention to the naysayers, period.
Their opinion of me is a reflection of them, not me. So as long as I understand that I'm okay, as long as I'm true to myself and I know what I'm doing, I do things not to please other people. I do things to please myself well.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: And that takes me sort of the next question. So where have you found those quality relationships? Because we all have mentors in our lives. We all have people we look up to. What channels have you gone to to find those people, to give you those inspiration, to give you those ideas and sort of that inspiration for you?
[00:41:09] Speaker C: So, man, YouTube is huge.
Every time I want to know about a subject, I just go on YouTube and I type about it. Especially when I'm going to do a long, fast. I start looking for people that have fasted a month or two months or three months and I start looking at their stories and that gives me a lot of, I would say, encouragement to go do my long fast. Okay. Because if they can do it, I can do it as well. I'm one of those guys, if I see you do something, Joe, I'm like, okay, if Joe can do it, so can I. Because I've just seen it's. He's able to do it. I'm going to go for see. I have two of my mentors today. One of is George Valdez. He's actually in the Orlando area. He lives in Lake Nona. He was one of the four founders of the Medellin cartel. And today he's one of my business partners as well. We partner up on a mastermind called billion dollar streams. And my second, well, I wouldn't say my second, they're both number one. In my mind, it's Robert Allen. I don't know if you know Robert Allen.
Robert Allen, he's an author. Billion dollar streams, multiple streams of income, nothing down.
He's one of the most well known guys in the country when it comes to real estate. He's the godfather of the godfather of real estate educators. So they're both my mentors and I pay them, number one, because they're not free, but number two, they guide me into a lot of what not to do and what they would have done better because now they're both, I believe Jorge is in 668 and Robert is 74.
So I seek for their wisdom.
You cannot learn experience.
You can only earn it. Right? So, um, I follow what they say to a certain extent, and I surround myself with the right people. I'm also part of a mastermind called the family mastermind, which is out of Tampa, Florida. And I would say it's about 200 people of the top educators and real estate people in the country are part of it. So I'm a firm believer that you become part of the average of the people you hang out with.
And I invest into getting in groups like that, masterminds and things of that nature. So that's how I do it.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: How much would you say you're spending a year, roughly? You don't have to give me exact on education like that. Masterminds, it's six figures.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it's six figures. It's no question sas, because I'm in three different ones, and each one of them is like 20 grand apiece, and then personal mentorship is like $30,000 apiece.
I think the most I've done in a year was about $200,000.
I'm not there right now, nor I want to be. I want to be only in one mastermind, which is the family. Family is amazing. I highly suggest it to you if you want to become a part of it. It's by invite only. There's no website.
It's crazy. It's 200 people, but there's no funnel for it. Like, no way to find it.
It's word of mouth, and it's by invite only.
And I also have Robert and George now, who we run a mastermind together, where we teach people how to add multiple streams of income to whatever they do. So I see real estate as a stepping stone. Joe, a lot of people, when we're new in real estate, we believe real estate is the ultimate vehicle for wealth creation and preservation and things of that nature. And I believe that for many years, actually, my identity was, I am a real estate investor now. That's not the case anymore. I had to undo myself from thinking, and I had a conflict of personalities because of that.
For a while, I was like, am I a real estate investor or not?
I'm second guessing because I'm not doing the amount of deals I was doing at some point.
But now I'm finding myself doing more marketing, more sales and marketing. I'm in another avenue, and I believe in going all in. Like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to put all my efforts into it. And I had to make that shift thinking, okay, I'm not a real estate investor anymore. If I do real estate deals, that's a different thing. But I'm not going to identify myself as a real estate investor anymore. I'm going to identify myself as an entrepreneur in sales and marketing. So I had to make that shift mentally and verbally as well so I could accept my new identity and say, you know what? It's okay not to be a real estate investor because there is another world out here that it's just as profitable. It's amazing.
And it actually has a lot less headaches than the ones I had when I was a real estate investor.
Believe it or not, thanks to being around all these mentors and all these masterminds and asking people the questions, how do you make the shift? And all that? I was able to do that.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: So let's talk about that, that shift. I mean, basically going post real estate investor for the longest time, I look at myself as well. I'm a lawyer, and I'm always going to be a lawyer, and I can never be anything but a lawyer. A lot of people, you get into that box of yourself and your self vision.
How was it? I mean, how was that trip for you to make that mindset?
[00:47:33] Speaker C: It was hard, man. Look, let me tell you this, and I completely understand what you're saying. I can relate to it 100%. I remember when I was teaching some of my friends how to flip houses, I will tell Carlos, because Carlos was one of those guys that will come look at a property and say, ricardo, this is a tear down. We have to knock it down and build a new one. And I said, carlos, we're not builders, we're fixing flippers. Remember that?
That was my identity at the time. I was a fix and flipper. So anything I would touch on a property, it was a fix and flip. Even though he might have been right, we might have had to turn down the property and build it back new. I didn't see myself as a builder. I saw myself as a fix and flipper. So throughout the years, I had to evolve onto somebody new. I had to become a new person. So I went from being a landlord number one, which is the first thing I scaled into a fix and flipper, and from a fix and flipper into a wholesaler, and from a wholesaler into an educator, and from an educator into an entrepreneur that runs a VA company and a software company now.
So it's a constant evolve. I've been evolving throughout the years into a new identity.
It's like butterflies they're not butterflies forever.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:58] Speaker C: They become butterflies later on. Right. So they have to shed the old skin and grow into a butterfly. So I believe we are like that.
I believe what I've done good at is that I've recognized when I'm being pushed to another direction, as opposed to say, I'm just a fix and flipper. Because if I would just stick to the fix and flipper, I'd still be there, probably. And I'd probably be miserable because I don't enjoy flipping houses anymore.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: I hear that a lot, too, from entrepreneurs.
It's not bored easily, but you do get tired of what you are doing and you're ready to try something new because you do have that growth mindset. You want to try something else.
Yeah.
[00:49:47] Speaker C: And at some point, we flipped houses that people thought we weren't going to be able to flip, like fix it. We complete rebuilding. And then at some point, you're like, okay, what other project am I going to conquer now? I guess it got to a point to where I didn't have to prove anything to anybody else anymore but myself, right?
And then because of the challenges that we started encountering ourselves inside, like Harvey in 2007, 2017, and having to move to being a wholesaler and getting rid of all those properties and wholesaling to just be able to pay bills, I've been evolving by necessity. It hasn't always been like, okay, I'm now going to be these, because I guess it's cool to go get rich being a wholesaler. No, it was by necessity. I had to do that. Otherwise I would have went bankrupt. Actually, I had three different attorneys. My attorneys tell me, you need to file for bankruptcy, literally. And I was like, no, I'm not bankrupt. I just have a cash flow problem because I was never bankrupt in my mind, Joe. Never. And I'll tell you this story. I had this beautiful house, Bolton trails, and that house, my wife and I built it from the ground up. 4500 most exclusive subdivisions here in the Katy area.
Both of my children were born there.
But throughout this whole time, this is where I'm going through a lot of losses. And I remember waking up at 04:00 in the morning, one morning. And I'm not a morning guy. I'm not the guy that wakes up normally at four or five on its own. No, literally. But that day I just woke up and I said, you know what, I can't sleep because I was going through a lot. And at the time, I had no money in my checking account, nothing. Like, I went from making half a million dollars a month to not having $50 on my bank account. Actually, all my accounts were overdrawn. They were in the red. And I wake up and I was like, all right, I guess I'm going to start my morning routine earlier today. So I went and picked up my book. I read my ten pages. I had a gym in my house. I went upstairs, started exercising, and, like around 530, I noticed the door opens in the gym, and it's my wife. And she picks her head in and she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, what does it look like I'm doing? I had Tony Robbins on the tv, and I was like, in my hour of power, I'm sweating because I'm lifting weights.
And I'm like, what does it look like I'm doing? And she's like, you need to go get a job.
And I looked at her and I said, a job?
All right, let me, do me a favor. Close the door, and I'll talk to you later about that. She left. I was furious. I'm like, a job? There's no way I create jobs. So that's my ego speaking. So I continue to exercise.
And when I come down, she was doing breakfast.
I talked to her, I said, look, what is it about me getting a job? She said, well, we don't have money right now.
Our accounts are in the red. We don't have money for food, for gas, for this, for that.
And you're out there exercising, right? So you should be looking for a job. I said, look, what I'm doing is part of my morning routine.
And if I can continuously do what I'm doing right now, to be consistent in those things that we think don't matter, when it matters the most, we're going to get out of the situation.
Just give me some time. Don't stress over the money and change your face because you worrying you're attracting the wrong things.
I'm not asking you to be happy about the situation we have, but I'm asking you not to give me more of the negativity because I already have enough with what I got going on to have you feel that way. Plus, that's not helping me. Getting a job is not going to pay for this house ever.
It just doesn't happen. This is a million dollar home in Texas. A million dollar home is like a $3 million home in Florida.
The taxes are 3.8% a year. I was paying $20,000 a year just on taxes. So she looked at me and she said, you're right.
I just don't have the strength you have inside to go through things like this.
But that's how I handle it, by exercising, by reading the books and doing the things you're supposed to be doing, even when you don't feel like doing them. You see, that morning, Joe, I could have woken up and just felt sorry about myself because I couldn't sleep.
And that's the subconscious mind telling you, get up, you got to solve this problem.
And what I chose to do that morning was, you know what, I'm going to start my morning routine earlier, which means I'm going to have more hours in the day now to go do what I have to do.
That's a true story.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: Well, tell me about the virtual assisting and sales and marketing. What exactly do you guys do now? What is it?
[00:55:29] Speaker C: We're more of a human resources company.
So you're an attorney? Okay, let's say you need somebody to review documents before they get over to your table.
We'll find somebody that pays attention to detail, that speaks English and Spanish, and then we'll make that person your virtual assistant. So we start building other people's teams, but 99% of our clients are real estate investors. They're wholesalers, they're fix and flippers. So what they need is cold calling. They need lead managers, acquisitions managers, dispositions managers, executive assistants.
And that's pretty much the bulk of the services that we offer today. But in reality, I don't want to stick to the real estate business only. I want to branch out to other lanes. We want to service doctors, attorneys, maybe bigger companies under accounting firms and things of that nature, because we can get great talent and we can make it very affordable to people that are operating here in the US. And today we live in a world that's know whether you want it or know. Covid accelerated all of that very fast.
So we see ourselves as a human resources company now, even though it's called top of the line Va.
And we help, for the most part, real estate investors with their operations. So some of the top guys in the country use our services for lead generation and for calling their leads and putting houses on their contract.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: And all of, and all those folks are based down in Venezuela.
[00:57:17] Speaker C: They go to the office, it's an office job.
They clock in and out. We build a culture locally. I just came back from there. I was there last week.
Every time I come back to the US, I'm like, man, I wanted to stay back, but I have my children and my wife here have to. I have to enjoy both, but I'm going back and forth because I love working with my team and being right next to what eventually in the future, maybe I'll move there. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure I want to move to Florida, though.
But I think I see myself living there at some point.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: I think everybody does.
[00:58:04] Speaker C: It seems like not only that, the cost of living is completely different.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: It really is here. It really is here. Well, to wrap things up today, our mission is to help people aspire to a better life.
Who would you say has been your number one inspiration to help you aspire to a better life? You're out there. For you.
[00:58:30] Speaker C: My number one inspiration.
Man, that's a great question because I have a lot of them.
My father is one of them. I wanted to be like him when I grew up.
He's an entrepreneur, and I wanted to be like him. Being a kid, I don't think that's the case today because now I have my business and he has his, and they're completely different businesses. But he was somebody I look up to also. My family, my wife, my kids, my mother, my brothers. My brother has a business. One of my brothers has a business very similar to mine, and I got him started in that, and I coach him on how to do it. He doesn't pay me or anything like that, but I help him a lot, grow his business.
I look up to my family.
We have a good family. No family is perfect. We all have our problems and our challenges and skeletons in the closet or whatnot. I don't think any family is perfect, but I do look up to what my family is doing.
If I had to pick one, I would just pick my dad as an inspiration.
Also, my mother. My mother is my best friend, so she's always been by my side. When I was going through all my challenges, she was the one calming me down and helping me with my anxiety and helping me deal with all those things. She's a life coach, so I am her number one client.
Yes.
[01:00:11] Speaker B: That's helpful.
[01:00:13] Speaker C: It is, but it's weird when it's your, um. I have other coaches now that are part of my life.
Hesuline and Sherman. And there's a few other people that are part of my life now that I look up to and reach out to, and I listen to them. But my mother is number one.
When I have a challenge internally, it's my mother. Business wise, it may be my father or one of my mentors, right?
Yes.
[01:00:47] Speaker B: Interesting.
Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. We're going to have links to a lot of the things that we discussed down in the show notes.
But I want to thank you so much. And I want to commend you for out there, you're not just taking advice. You're also a mentor yourself. And I want to thank you for being out there doing that for people and just doing everything you've done over the years and shown through an example of how you can get out of that box and transform like the butterfly throughout your life. It's not a one time thing. You're constantly transforming your whole life like that. And I want to thank you for being constantly transforming. Yes.
[01:01:36] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me, Joe. And by the way, I appreciate you guys sponsoring pros of real estate in Orlando last year. We had a great time.
I had a great time having you guys there. And hopefully we'll get to do it again soon. I don't know when, but we'll do another one in Orlando. That's a fact.
And also for having me on your podcast.
If I had something to say to your audience is that you always got to be reinventing yourself.
If you're not reinventing yourself, you're not growing. And if you're not growing, you're dying. So step outside of the box, go conquer your dreams. They're possible.
And do the best you can. Don't do it halfway.
[01:02:26] Speaker B: Thank you very much for those wise words. And with that, we'll sign off for today.
[01:02:32] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this edition of trust this.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give.
[01:02:38] Speaker A: Us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
Bye.
