Ricardo Rosales: I Don't Identify as a Real Estate Investor

When Ricardo Rosales left the oil rigs for the unpredictable world of real estate, he unearthed more than just financial gains; he discovered a life redefined by confronting personal fears and the tenacity to scale operations for financial security. Together, we navigate the gritty realities of property investment and how the shift to wholesaling and leveraging virtual assistants like Carla and Carlos revolutionized our businesses. This episode is not just a narrative of triumphs but a raw depiction of overcoming challenges, building reliable teams, and piercing through the facade of social media success.

Amidst the financial turbulence, candid conversations with private money lenders proved pivotal—highlighting the necessity of transparency and the stark contrast between institutional and personal lending. With market conditions dictating the success of our projects, we find solace in the growth that occurred quietly, away from the spotlight of industry expectations. Reflecting back, the lessons learned in real estate investment are invaluable, offering clarity on the essence of entrepreneurship and the freedom it bestows.

Ricardo's insights on playing to your strengths complement tales of personal growth, while the narrative of building loyalty with virtual assistant teams emphasizes the significance of investing in people. This episode is a celebration of entrepreneurial freedom, the beauty of long-term vision, and the sustainable success that resonates with any entrepreneur on a similar quest. Join us for an inspiring journey that transcends the boundaries of real estate and paves the way to true freedom.

With over 1,200 Videos, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things Virtual Wholesaling. SUBSCRIBE NOW!   https://www.youtube.com/@RJBatesIII

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to the titanium vault. I'm your host, rj base the third, and today I'm sitting down with my friend Ricardo Rosales. How you doing, man?

Speaker 2: 0:09

I'm doing amazing, brother. Thank you for having me here, rj.

Speaker 1: 0:13

So you're the first guest that I've ever had on a real estate investing podcast. It says, hey, I don't identify as a real estate investor anymore. So I saw this post on Facebook. I gotta ask you what? What do you mean by that man? What's going on over there? You okay?

Speaker 2: 0:32

I'm a man I'm doing great. Brother, I couldn't be more fulfilled today than I have been in the last I don't know 15 years that I did as a real estate investor. And the reason I made that post RJ, is because, you know, we all get trapped from time to time on Our ego like, yeah, this is who I am, these are the deals that I do, these are Look at my huts, look at my checks and I'm having $200,000 a week. You know, and you know it's all nice and pretty, but there's more to it than just real estate. Yeah, and what I recently realized and I say recently is in the last two years Is that real estate was a stepping stone for me. So I now give you a background.

Speaker 2: 1:22

I started in real estate in 2008 as a, because I was just watching TV. I was seeing people like you on TV Flipping houses and stuff and I'm like man, if that guy can do it, I can do it Right now had a W2 job and I made good money. I used to work offshore oil rigs all over the world. So when I was not on the rigs, I was like you know what? I gotta make money somehow, because I don't want to go be like my friends that they spent all their money on toys and, you know, guns and trucks or whatnot. I wanted to reinvest my money. That's how I got into real estate. Yeah, fast forward, man. You know. I think in between 2008 and 2015, as a W2 employee, I did at least 200 properties in between rentals and flips.

Speaker 2: 2:13

I found out I didn't like being a landlord. I tell you that much. I hated it. Hey brother, same. You know I was like the heck. We've been landlord man, I get it. Depreciation, appreciation. I'm still a landlord by necessity Okay, for tax purposes.

Speaker 2: 2:32

And you know what maybe my dream was to? There's a guy here in town shout out to Blake Jarvrow. Blake, he's the one that kind of like got me thinking big when it came to real estate. He, he used to go to these meetups and and talk about how he owned a hundred rentals and he was making four hundred thousand dollars, I mean a forty thousand dollars a month in Passive income. You know, yeah, I was like man, that's, that's a lot more money than what I make working offshore, risking my life. I want to do that and and that's why I went that route, and you know, I later on I found out that it was not passive number one, right, number two I.

Speaker 2: 3:16

I tried companies that will manage it for me and and I the problem and always ended up on my lap and I Ended up paying more for it than fixing a property than I would on my own. So I took all the properties on myself and then I started liquidating them all because I'm like you know what this is not fulfilling at all and I don't like it. I I hate a victim at 80 year, late, 80 year old lady because their you know sons are not paying the rent or whatnot. So I and I also realized that the same effort that it took me to buy, flip, rehab and and rent a property Was the same effort that I did if I sold it and made a bigger check. So I'm like why do I want to put all these efforts into this long-term you know plan that.

Speaker 2: 4:14

I know it works, but when I can have it quick, I can have much more more money quicker by just doing flips, and that's how I went from being a landlord into being a fixed and flipper. So In 2015, I got laid off from my multiple six-figure job and I was like 36, 37 years old and I said you know what, man, I already know how to do this real estate. I just got to figure out how to do it To where I can. I can live from it, like because, let's face it, when I, when I was in the w2 world, I was my, my take home was 300 grand Dude, that's pretty damn good.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:53

I Don't know who was gonna hate on a job like that, and that was like my golden handcuffs man. It was hard for me, dude. I did everything I could to get fired and nobody ever fired me. And you know what? I I'm just not gonna let go of this paycheck and but finally the day came in I think I attracted it.

Speaker 2: 5:14

To be honest with you, with the law, I use the law of attraction to to get me out of the corporate world and I Got laid off and they actually gave me a pretty good chunk of money to walk away and I said, okay, what do I do now? I Can do sales or I can do real estate, and I chose real estate because it's what I already knew, what to do. We went from flipping two to three houses at a time. Into 2017, I was doing 47 flips at a time, and this is all in the Houston area, all rehabs so, and in RJ. The only reason I did that is because I Was running away from being poor. That was it. It was not to get rich, it was the opposite. It was like, if I don't buy all these houses and flip them, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my bills, because I had a lifestyle set up for those 300 grand that I was making at the time.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Right and I was like a rapper, you know, I was like I bought a house, a car for my mom, for my daughter, for my mother-in-law. I had to because I had to have a car and a truck a truck for the rehabs, of course, right, right, you know. So I was like man, I gotta make all this money and and I just don't know when my next paycheck is coming. And one thing I realized is that every time I closed on a deal, I Got five grand for as a general contractor, because I I was rehabbing my own houses, and that was upfront. And then on the back end, I will make the profits when I sold the property, right, right. So if I buy five houses a month, that's 25 grand. That covers my salary From my previous job. Right now, all I gotta do is build crews that can rehab all these houses and and keep them. You know, employed it. And before you knew it, man, we build the Frankenstein. And I say this all the time you have to be careful when you build these monsters, because the monsters need to be fed. Oh, yes, and we kind of like found and I say we's because I have partners at the time and we found ourselves in a trap to where we had to constantly be buying and selling properties fast and rehabbing them. So we had a cookie cutter system for the rehabs Most of our houses.

Speaker 2: 7:38

I actually got approached by my sister lives in LA, she's a producer for movies and stuff like that and she approached me back in 2016 and said hey, they're looking for a guy that's doing rehabs. Do you want to audition or talk to them to see if you're a good fit? And right off the bat, I told her I said I'm not a good fit for them because I have a boring product. My houses are all cookie cutter. They all got the same paint, the same granite and at this point in my life I'm not willing to suit me up a little bit for them. So I'm like I'll talk to them. But once I told them what it was and they're like yeah, you're not good for us. But I said, hey, but I got a lot of drama behind fixing and flipping all these houses. So they're like nah, we're looking for people just want to see the backsplash and all these renovations and all that. And I said I know big deal, but that's how we build that fix and flipping company.

Speaker 2: 8:40

And then in 2017, when I thought I was rich dude. I had millions of dollars in my checking account. I had a lot of houses. I had, you know, 60 people working for us directly in our warehouse. We had a warehouse where you know all the leftover materials from the jobs. They go to the warehouse and then you end up buying a little bitty house somewhere and you just use the leftovers and boom, you know you didn't spend money on materials. That's when Hurricane Harvey came in man and what disrupted us was we lost all of our workforce in a matter of 30 days.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Oh geez.

Speaker 2: 9:23

So now here I am and, by the way, I had 20 deals that I was. I was. I had 20 rehabs I was working on, but I had another 27 on their contract with private money lined up already ready to close. So when Harvey happened, I kept most of the guys employed, you know, or they. They actually stayed with me for a while. So I went in close to these 27 projects and within a month all my workforce walked away and now I got 47 projects. I got all of them on private money and I'm just bleeding like left and right. Now I did have money, so I'm like I'm not worried about it, I know in six months I'm going to be okay. So, because the work will die out.

Speaker 2: 10:08

We just didn't know the extent of Harvey and man, six months came about and I'm still struggling to find people to work. 12 months come around and I'm like what do I do? I'm almost broke now, right. And I remember I'm having a few conversations with one of my attorneys and the guys I did just get rid of the file for bankruptcy and I was like bankruptcy, I'm not bankrupt, I'm like I just got a cash flow problem right now, right. And he's like no, dude, you are bankrupt, like you. Like you don't have, like you don't have any more money coming in. Your interest payments are killing you. The best thing you can do is file for BK and wipe it all out and start from zero. And I was like no, I don't believe in that.

Speaker 2: 11:00

I think if I, if I file for bankruptcy, I know I'm going to stick it to a lot of my lenders that I don't want to stick it to. And those guys, for the most part, were working with me through the whole time. You know that's one, one hard conversation to have to come to your private money lenders and amen, I don't have any more money. And, by the way, your house is 50% finished, right, and you give me more time. And the guys like I guess you know, like you know, and some guys took the houses back. They're like you know what? Just give me the property back, I'm good.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Can you give me more time, and can you give me more money?

Speaker 2: 11:35

And some of them did both, right, right, some of them did both because they didn't want to get stuck with a property that was unfinished. I remember one guy he had $3 million with me. He walked away with all his properties, fixed, all of them. But there were other people that didn't do it because they didn't give me more money and they didn't give me more time. So what they took, what they took, and then we did, didn't lose, and things of that nature. And that's what forced me to become a wholesaler.

Speaker 2: 12:04

See, I wasn't. I wasn't even like I was doing lead generation and I was negotiating all my properties, just like you do, but I was doing it for me. I wasn't doing it to wholesaling and I didn't really understand wholesaling at the time, like, like what it is today. You know where you can do it at a scale and you can do multiple contracts and create a massive operation just out of wholesaling. I wish I would have known that before I got into flipping, because otherwise I would have never gotten into flipping. So we went and started doing wholesaling and just to pretty much pay our debts and and continue the lights on you know, keeping the lights on. But something started happening which is somewhere around, I would say, 2019 to 2020. We started wholesaling at a scale, so now we're having 20, 30, 40 contracts in our hands at any given time.

Speaker 2: 13:02

And but I wasn't fulfilled because I was doing it with people that were mediocre, like I would leave money on the table every single time because these people didn't go 100% and and I would. I just didn't know how to fix it. And you know, you can talk about hiring new people. We did that, creating new processes to for interviewing people. We did that paying a salary and a commission. We did that paying commission. So I mean, I tried everything in the books and everything all my friends were doing. One thing I found out about my friends is that they were all full of shit because they were all rebuilding their operations every six months to a year. Okay, every single one of and I'm not going to main drop anybody here, but we all suffer from the same illness but we didn't show that on social media. In social media, we're all, we're all supermans and and we're all killing it, right. But when I go to their office, I'm like, hey, dude, how come you only got three guys here right now? Oh, I just fired them all yesterday and you know I'm starting back up, right so what I realized is that some people were real good at moving fast and failing forward moving fast and I said, okay, if so, and so is doing this and so, and so is doing that. That means I got to adapt and do the same.

Speaker 2: 14:25

But I run off the vision traction organizer, okay, and I use the EOS system. And one day, rj, I remember at that time you and I were doing some deals together that for some reason we could never close. But I was just frustrated because I have some of your deals, I have some of my deals and I have some other people's deals. And I'm looking at this pipeline is one and a half million dollars to collect, yeah, and if we came close, 20% it was too much and I'm like we didn't collect a million bucks or $1.2 million. Why? How can I fix this? And I'm looking at my vision traction organizer, right, and the only thing that has been constant in my business up to that point where my two VAs Her name is Karla and her, his name is Carlos, their brother and sister and I said, how come I haven't put more time and effort into training these two guys to do what I do and started doing it virtually Right, and that was the day before I said I'm gonna quit being a wholesaler, okay, so I said I gotta think about it because I don't know what I'm gonna do next, like if I don't wholesale.

Speaker 2: 15:40

And I just got tired of retraining people, training and training, and training and training. And at some point I'm like, okay, I just trained half of the Houston area. Now they're my competitors, right, or collaborators, however you want to put it, because sometimes we'll end up collaborating. But I wasn't in the education business, I wasn't charging for it, I just had a platform for my wholesaling business and I will train these guys and in a way, we both make money. And I said this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take I already have seen one guy do this successfully, and that's the one thing.

Speaker 2: 16:18

If I can see somebody doing it, I'm like, okay, it's possible, I'm gonna go for it. I seen this guy his name is Amir, and Amir had already been working with Egyptians closers and I said, okay, I don't know anything about Egyptians or Egypt, but I am from Venezuela. I'm from here, from the US, but I grew up in Venezuela so, and I have ties with a lot of people there. So all I have to do is find people that have good English, that are trainable and that are hungry to make money. So I got these two guys, carla and Carlos, to start building me a little army of like textures, because at the time I was doing text messaging Right, and that worked. So we were flooded with leads. And then I'm like, okay, I gotta get them to be closers now. And we started training them to be closers and that worked. And then, okay, now we gotta this poll these deals, we gotta show them how to be this poll people.

Speaker 2: 17:17

And before you knew it, I had a team, look like of 20 to 30 people working for me on my wholesaling operation. It wasn't perfect, but it was working. And for the first time I had been making more money than ever before because I was keeping more of the money. So if I made a hundred grand, I was keeping like 70. And I'm like hold on a second on the, on the. On my previous life I made a hundred grand but I kept 20, maybe maybe 20. Maybe you know, I'm like, shit, I'm better doing this. I'm doing less deals is less stress, and I'm doing it from overseas, which it cost me a lot less money.

Speaker 2: 17:57

So at that point I started getting students like people that I ate. Ricardo, I seen you doing all these deals and you're doing it virtually. Can you help me do it? And I'm like sure, man, pay me 15 grand and I'll give you three months of my life, cause now, at this time I'm done doing it for free. I'm like I'm not gonna do this shit for free anymore. I'm out of it. If somebody wants my time then it better be worth it. And they're like sure.

Speaker 2: 18:21

So they paid me the 15K and I trained them. They started implementing. That's the good thing. When you got a student that pays you and you tell them to do something, guess what they do? They go do it so they can actually baby. That's absolutely Cause. Now they got skin in the game right.

Speaker 2: 18:37

But one thing got me was they started like hey, but by the way, can I get one of your VA's? And I'm like I can't. Like those are my VA's, you gotta go train your VA's. They're like well, but you find me one and I'll train them, no problems. So little did I know.

Speaker 2: 18:55

The universe started pushing me on that route and I just couldn't say no to those guys, cause now I'm like they're right and I'm giving in the process, the systems and processes, but I'm really not giving in the whole solution. So I started producing VA's for other people on the call, calling and texting and you know this PO VA's and all of that and one day we got in 20, it was late 2022. We had a hundred VA's already deployed for a bunch of my students, but half of them were for me because I was still running while with the wholesaling. But it was hard for me to walk away from wholesaling because I mean, think about it If you do five deals a month and you're doing 10,000, a pop or 17K a pop, that's still 50 to a hundred grand. That revenue is still pretty healthy. So if I change my 50 VA's for that, I will lose the revenue from the wholesaling, but now I gain it from a whole different business that I don't know anything about.

Speaker 1: 20:08

Right.

Speaker 2: 20:09

So it took me a while to transition into that. And then that last quarter of 2022 was horrible. So we started having a lot of clients drop VA's left and right and I'm like I was started absorbing them on my own operation and for about three months I had a hundred VA's on my payroll with no income coming in, and that hurts. Yeah, you know, it don't matter what you pay your VA's, it's still a five to six figure payroll and they were all virtual. So it was very hard to like create a good culture. So I said you know what? I'm gonna take it a step further. I'm gonna get me an office and I'm gonna start replacing the virtual VA's for people that are going in the office. And one day I'd wake up and now I have 50 VA's going to the office. They're working for guys like you and me and other people, and that made me kind of like step away from my identity as a real estate investor, because now, if I had kept that identity, I wouldn't be able to serve the people I'm serving today to the highest level.

Speaker 2: 21:23

It's hard for me to give you my best. This poll guy, rj, you know what I'm saying. Like you call me, say Ricardo, I need a this poll guy. And guess who the best this poll guy is working for? It's working for me and I'm like how do I give this guy up? Man, like this guy is worth golden. But I know you got 40, 50 deals on your pipeline and here I am only handling maybe five or seven. I'm like you know what man? Just go work for this guy, man, because you're going to be better off on that operation that you're going to be on my operation.

Speaker 2: 21:52

And don't get me wrong, I'm still flipping a couple of houses and I'm not doing any wholesaling right now or even lead generating, because my focus is to serve other people today. I feel that's my calling. I feel that that's where the universe pushed me into do it. The only the other thing is I see now a virtual assistant, as I see as a house.

Speaker 2: 22:16

So when you buy a house and and and you fix it and and you rehab it and then you rent it, then you get your cash flow three hundred, four hundred, five hundred bucks, depending on on what that the location and type of property or, why not, va is no different. But I don't have to sign for a loan, right? I don't have to manage contractors. I just have to hire well, and then I got to train them well and guess what, as soon as that VA is deployed. Now I have cash flow and it's also a sellable business Because it's a human resources business. It's not really a Real estate business where, if you have a package of houses, guess what? You and me are knocking that guy down like crazy.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Right.

Speaker 2: 23:03

Oh, you think you got five million dollars worth of houses. No, in RJ's mine, in my mind you only got two man. So right because that's what we're willing to pay right. But if I have a real business that has real processes and systems and has a human resources person and you know it's got a manager, he's got Supervisors, we have people all the time listening to the calls all the time. So Now I can grab that business in five to ten years and say you know what I can sell this?

Speaker 1: 23:34

I love that man. I want to go back to the part where you were flipping and and Harvey hit, because what's funny about that was? There's nothing really funny about it, but what's? I resonate with your story because ours is very similar, unfortunately. You said if you'd known about wholesaling, you wouldn't have done that. I knew about wholesaling. I was just dumbass. I Got myself in this almost identical amount of trouble there where it's like, hey, I owned all these houses. I had cash flow issues which mean crews were leaving, finding other work, diverse scenarios, right, you know, hey, I had crews in Hawaii. Some of the crews move away from Hawaii and move to another location, just all kinds of craziness. When you had those conversations with your lenders I know I approach it as, hey, we can either do this together I'm gonna need more money, I'm gonna need more time, but no matter what, I'm gonna make you whole is that a similar type conversation, yeah, with those lenders?

Speaker 2: 24:44

Yeah, and honestly, rj, I'm gonna be completely transparent. You know, I don't I don't have to hide anything anymore. I I don't think I ever hide it, but I did kept it in the dark for a while until one day I felt like that elephant was on my back and I neither let it out. And I Went on Facebook one day and I just made a big-ass post about it and I said you know what things are, not what they look like, you know, and, and it was just me releasing that. This is where I'm at right now, and and and this is what I'm doing to to fix it right, but I will. I'll go to.

Speaker 2: 25:21

Every lender was different. Number one, it was all private money. So he wasn't, it wasn't Institutional money by any means. So if he would have been a harmony lender, that's a very hard conversation. The harmony lender is gonna execute. When that note is done, it's a done deal. Then they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna sue you for deficiencies and if you you don't have money to pay it, there goes the judgment. Boom, no big deal, right.

Speaker 1: 25:46

So that's the harmony lender.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Probably my letters are different, because this is regular people with their own money or their 401ks or whatnot. I've made a lot of money. These people in the past I mean these are, these were not new lenders, these were lenders that been working with me for three or four years already, and some of those guys Actually retired their wives because I made them so much money. I Honestly so two of them something. My wife is retired because of you and I said okay, perfect, good for you. That means business is going well. What happened was they? They all start working with me, but eventually patience runs out. 24 months goes into the deal. Man, that house is still in there collecting dust. You can't finish it because You're in a dark place. You cannot find people, your cash flow is gone, you don't have reserves anymore, american Express and those guys are no longer on your side. You know and and I Just have to say they man, you, you guys either continue to work with me and wait until I'm done, or you do what you gotta do.

Speaker 1: 26:58

It's funny. I I did a video review of a closing that I did in 2018 and inside of the closing I am actually talking about, I had two properties sitting on the market in Denton, texas, and someone in the comments said dude, you had a property sitting on the market in 2018. What would you? Would you mess up? And what they don't understand is it's just because the market was super hot didn't mean that everything Was perfect for every real estate investor, right? We still had issues with cash flow, with finding labor, with getting material, like when you took on the amount of inventory that you and I had. I don't understand what's going on in my office.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Doesn't smoke alarm.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Yeah, smoke alarm going off. But but no, I mean there's. There's issues, like in our circumstances, where we had just too much volume going on. Yeah, you ever feel pressured to do that much volume because of, like you said, friends, social media, no no, rj I Number.

Speaker 2: 27:58

I'm glad you asked that question. We got big and nobody knew who we were. Nobody, because we were not on social media, we were not the members of the local RIA. I Was just the guy that had a job, that got laid off, that was trying to pay bills, that was it. And I knew how to find properties and I knew how to raise money. So Let me tell you how we got to social media.

Speaker 2: 28:25

One day I One of my private lenders says hey, I'm gonna send somebody to your office. And when your private money lender says I'm gonna say somebody to your office, you open the damn door and you receive the person right. So these I come seen. And they're like I'm looking for Ricardo. And I say that's me, can I have a seat? I'll say sure, what? How can I help you? And I'm thinking you know, this is another private money lender or something like. That is somebody that want to learn how to flip houses. And they're like how do you find your house? This guy starts drilling my head and I'm giving him all the information and they're like how many houses you got on the contract? And I showed them my board and at the time I had. I had, like I don't know, 15, 10 houses on the contract and they're like how do you get all these deals? And they were all 70% deals, all of them. And I'm like I just do marketing and I answer the call because we did a lot of mailers at the time. I answer the call, the phone call, when the call comes in, and we go visit the property and, boom, we get the deal done. The guy leaves.

Speaker 2: 29:29

The next week another guy shows up. This time this is these other guys like on announce, and they knock on the door. I open the door and I'm like what's up? I'm looking for Ricardo and I'll say you're looking at him. Well, how can I help you? Ah, so, and so tell me, you're flipping a lot of houses and I want to learn how you do it. And I'm like, all right, man, come on in. So all this time, like it happened like 10 times, rj and I will drag my business partner at the time, dennis, into the meetings and it will give these people like two hours of our time and then they'll leave and we never see them again.

Speaker 2: 30:02

And one day Dennis is like dude, you realize that we're teaching all these people that we don't even know who they are, and we're giving him two hours. And then you and me don't get home until like 10 or 12 pm At midnight because these guys took two hours away from us. And and I'm like, yeah, that is what I guess is the universe is telling us to give back, and I don't want to quit giving back to people if that's what the universe wants. And he's like, yeah, but there's a better way. And I was like, how just, let's just talk on YouTube, man, and put it out there, right? And I'm like I Don't know anything about YouTube, dude, or a podcast or anything like that. I didn't even know what a podcast was. And he's like look, man, I follow all these people. Let's just do something like they do.

Speaker 2: 30:48

And in 2016, we started our podcast, which used to be called the renovating richest podcast, because it was all about rehabbing and stuff like that. And every time somebody came to the door, we say go watch the 40 episodes we got out. Then you call me if you need me, and that's how we got into the whole social media. But, dude, I had a videographer back in 2016, worked for me full-time. Who had that? Nobody. And and it was just because we wanted to, like, give back. That's how we got into the whole social media thing.

Speaker 2: 31:21

Then we started being invited to the local Ria's Like, and I realized, when we went and spoke and we told them everything we were doing these people, they and you you felt this way before. They thought you were God and and and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm just a regular guy just pursuing my, my dreams, right. So it all got big, you way before we were even on the spotlight locally, you know. And then I started realizing that there were other guys in other cities doing the same thing and I started connecting with them and that's why I met guys like you and you know a bunch of other people Steve and Carlos, and you know the guys in Florida.

Speaker 2: 32:07

I mean, there's so many of them out there and they're not on social media. Man, we were not. And we quickly realized we were one of the biggest games in town when we started networking locally because of you know, everybody talks so-and-so is doing this, so-and-so is doing that, and when they see our operation, they were like man, you guys are fully integrated. You do more than most of the other guys are doing. I just didn't know how to do it different, and it all came from necessity, rj, it wasn't because I wanted to be rich or something like that. I was just running away from being poor man. That was it.

Speaker 1: 32:47

There you go. I want to ask you about the VAs that are working for you now. Why do you think the VAs are more loyal to you than the Americans that were working inside of your office? You know hand-in-hand where you were training them. What? Where does that loyalty come?

Speaker 2: 33:04

from. I don't know that. I will call it loyalty, but I will call it being hungry. So my guys in South America are hungry. They want to buy a car, they want to buy a motorcycle, they want a better apartment. They want to be able to take their family to have a good lunch or dinner on the weekends. They want to be able to afford.

Speaker 1: 33:29

Does that?

Speaker 2: 33:29

mean.

Speaker 1: 33:29

Americans are not hungry.

Speaker 2: 33:31

No, they're not, Brother, 80% of them are not. I would say probably is even higher than that. It's nice, and don't get me wrong, RJ. We are born here in this beautiful country, man, and we got everything in our hands. Do you want a car? You go get the car you want. It's financed, you know. Do you want a house? You go buy the house of your dreams. It's financed. So you can finance everything here, not over there. Over there, they have to save enough to buy their first vehicle or to buy their first apartment. So when you tell them you're gonna make $15,000, $2,000, $3,000 a month for them, that's like what? Like there's no jobs here that pay that much. So it's not loyalty, but it's the opportunity that we're giving them that creates that hunger for wanting to learn how to do this job. Now, what keeps them loyal is the culture we build inside the office. Like, for instance, do I do crazy stuff, bro, in my city.

Speaker 2: 34:37

So my call center right now is in Maracaibo, which is on the west side of Venezuela. It's very hot, okay. I have like a 7,000 square foot office, roughly, and this is brand new, brand new office. We just moved in there last week actually, and every morning, the first hour of the day is the pay yourself hour. So we all get together, we read a book it's like a Bible study we dissect the book and then they go to work. Well, that hour is on me, that hour is not on them. They're not coming in an hour early to do that. They're coming in the hour they're supposed to start working to go through that training. I buy them breakfast.

Speaker 2: 35:18

I got a girl yesterday that went to do their nails. They don't pay for that. I pay for that, right. I love that. Right. I had a girl and another guy that would go there to cleanse their aura and to get them aligned and their chakras aligned and all that. And whoever wants to believe in that, they can believe it. If somebody says I don't wanna be a part of that because that's against my religion or whatnot, hey, no big deal. We're not here to judge, but I'm doing things that are gonna separate me completely from the other call centers that are in the city.

Speaker 1: 35:56

And so you're building that morale and the energy inside of the office. I mean that's important. Did you think you had that with your American wholesale and team? We did, we did.

Speaker 2: 36:06

But it's just harder, man, it's when some of the expectations they wanna have what you have, RJ, Right? So that's yeah, they want what you, they want your belts, but they don't wanna work for the belts, Right yeah absolutely. They don't wanna go to battle for the belts either.

Speaker 1: 36:25

Dude, and I say this all the time I mean, we have had so many people come through with titanium investments, and what I have seen more than anything is is that they want the instantaneous gratification of closed deals and checks without putting in all the work and the knowledge that's needed to get there. And so what I'm curious about is is how have you gotten people in another country to be great at closing deals and dispositions and things like that? Because, dude, a lot of people here struggle training someone that's sitting right next to them on how to do acquisitions in this position. So what training processes are you like putting these people through?

Speaker 2: 37:13

So I invested a lot of money into that. Okay, I hired a lot of the great people that are in our space. I hired Sonia Ray for lead managers training. I hired Max. You know Max very well. Actually, I didn't hire Max Max and I came together to do a collaboration. This was like two years ago when he was transitioning away from working with Steve and he was like, hey, ricardo, I don't know what to do right now and I'm like, dude, I got all these VAs and I'm training to be closers. Do you want to collaborate on that? And so we collaborated. It just didn't work out. And the reason why it didn't work out, I think it was the timing. The timing was completely off. But the good thing for me is he got to train a lot of my VAs and I recorded all those trainings. So now every single one of the new VAs, they're going in there and they're training with Max, sonia. I think we also got Corey Geary's Novation Nation training, so my VAs know how to do innovations. The Rainmaker, too. What's his name? Art of.

Speaker 1: 38:21

Phoenix.

Speaker 2: 38:22

Yeah, rich Wander's trainings. You know we bought those too. Even though Corey has his way of doing things, rich Wander's had his way of doing things. So I try to get my hands, since there's many training and I pay for them. I'm happy. I will happy pay for them because one thing they learn from each one of those guys it makes them much better. So that's what I did, man. I invested some money in trainings and also personal coaching from those guys to my team, and Sonia trained my team for at least a whole year. That's amazing and silently she doesn't say anything about it. I don't know why she should more, but she did an amazing job and my guys are better because of her, you know.

Speaker 1: 39:11

I'll tell you why. She probably doesn't say that I just had the opportunity to go out to Vegas and train Ryan Panetta's team on closing, virtually because they've always done belly to belly appointments. So he's like hey, rj, come out and it was like dude. When I got the call, I was like dude, this is huge, we can leverage this. Like we get to train Ryan Panetta's team. And then it's like you go and you do it, and then afterwards it's like so what am I just gonna go around and brag about the fact that I trained Ryan Panetta's team? You know what I mean? It's like what are you saying about it when you don't sound like you're bragging? You know, it's kind of a weird thing. I think it's just part of the nature of business, like it's a cool opportunity and she's a killer.

Speaker 1: 39:53

Closer right, I was on stage with her at Wholesale and Live in 2022. And I think she got multiple deals during that whole event. She's great. So, dude, you've gone from landlord to flipper to wholesaler and now you're an educator and you've got the VA services and everything like that. Is this where you wanna stay, or are you always gonna be changing?

Speaker 2: 40:19

No, I believe I'm always gonna be changing because I am an entrepreneur by heart. So I think I will do a flip here and there, you know, when the right opportunity shows up. I still have private money available, so it'll be dumb for me not to do it. I my goal is to focus not so much on the education, it's more on the VA company. So I'm laser focused on that because I believe I can get to about 600 VA's in the next two years. And if you multiply our average revenue from a VA somewhere in between $1250 to $1500 a month, you multiply that time 600. That's a pretty chunk of change, yeah. And then at some point I will sell the company. We as entrepreneurs, we can take the companies up to a certain level, but at some point you gotta let somebody else come in and take over and make it bigger.

Speaker 2: 41:19

I'm not one of those guys that is gonna treat I have never treated my business or businesses as my babies Never have Like I've already bought and sold companies in the past and bought out partners and stuff like that. So I'm not really attached to a business, but I was attached to the real estate investor figure, like, and even when you go to my events. We do affirmations. I am a real estate investor and I will do the best that I can do to serve people, to help them transitioning to a better life. And you know, and even on the and this is this happened on the last event I did, which I got done, doing that affirmation and I didn't feel it and I'm like this is weird, you know, like I'm like what the hell is going on with me. I'm changing now. Now my mentor, robert Allen, who you know, he started as a real estate investor and when he showed me the inforpreneurial world, I said what am I doing as a real estate investor when there's this other world out here that produces a lot more money and gives you more freedom?

Speaker 2: 42:33

Because, let's face it, when I was a rehabber, yeah, I had an amazing operation. I loved what I did at the time, but I was in a rat race. I was trapped in a big ass cage. Then you go from that to wholesaling at a scale. It's no different. It's no different. What I've always looked for is for freedom, not so much money. Money is important. It's like oxygen. Try to go without it and see how far you go. I wanted freedom, I think for the first time in my life, I've achieved that.

Speaker 1: 43:14

That's awesome. Here's the thing, Entrepreneurs we get started to achieve that freedom that you're talking about. But you're right, there are moments where we let our ego to a title that we basically gave ourselves. It's hilarious, right.

Speaker 2: 43:31

We bought it from somebody. I don't know from who, but we bought it from somebody.

Speaker 1: 43:36

I'm going to go be a real estate investor. And then it's like, three years later, maybe you don't want to be a fix of flipper anymore, maybe you do want to be a wholesaler. Maybe you don't want to be a wholesaler. Maybe you learned about virtual assistant businesses and you want to go do that, but you're clinging on to this title. Also, I think entrepreneurs struggle sometimes, admitting like, hey, I failed at that, but I can still be great at something else. But I failed at that business. You and I don't have a problem with that. You and I walk around and we're like, hey, dude, fuck me in a landlord, that's it. I think you're clever.

Speaker 2: 44:12

You know who I kept away from jumping to our side as real estate investors was our boy, Pat Hilton. Pat Hilton came to me one day and he's the Ricardo. I've been thinking about doing wholesaling. Everybody's telling me to do it and I was like Pat, don't fucking do that. You're a great entertainer. You are good in your videos. You need to build on that platform and look at where Pat is today.

Speaker 1: 44:41

He's running a seven-figure operation, not in real estate. He should have never even contemplated going to real estate because of exactly what you said and he didn't fall into that. Now, dude, he's speaking. He's the emcee for every big event out there. He's the guy that you hire. Plus, he does all my videos. So I love Pat for that man.

Speaker 1: 45:03

Lastly, I'll say, ricardo, before I let you go man, first and foremost, thank you for coming on the show On short notice. We're both in family, mastermind. I had a need to fill the day and you jumped at it. I know you've been traveling and you're tired, so thank you so much, man. Lastly, I'll say is the first time that you and I spoke at an event together. I stood in the back of the room and I listened to you and brother, I was blown away by your energy and your presence on stage. You're a real one man. You inspire a lot of people. So keep doing what you're doing and I'm glad that you found the freedom that you've been searching for, man, and best of luck on your journey there, and I think you'll exceed your goals there of getting to those 600 VAs. I don't think it'll take you as long.

Speaker 2: 45:49

No, that's a short-term goal, it's not the long one. So we're working on that, you know. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of time. You know a lot of sales, a lot of training, a lot of investment. Every time we get a VA started it's an investment we have to do. It's not just hiring somebody. You got to buy computers, the new desk, office space, you know the whole nine yards. So you know we're running a real business and we plan accordingly. So we know I don't want to do what a lot of people in our space do, which is I want to get to 2,000 deals a year. It's an ugly amount of deals.

Speaker 2: 46:30

Number one you know all the new Western people like that. We got big infrastructures right. But I want to set expectations that are achievable and that are. You know I'm not saying I'm not going to dream big, I'm dreaming big. But hey, hold on a second. Before we run we got to crawl and then we got to walk and we got to learn how to jog, you know, and then eventually we can go run that 10K marathon. So I'm on a marathon and I'm not on a sprint. That's another thing, rj, I used to be on a sprint all the time and I got myself out of that mindset. I said you know what? I'm out of the sprint. I'm in a marathon. I'm thinking 5, 10, 20 years from now. This is where I want to be. I'm out of the sprint game because sprinting is too tiring.

Speaker 1: 47:18

Dude, you know what's hilarious you brought up earlier in the episode about. You know that there's 2021, 2022. We tried to do something. It was right after that event that we both spoke at. We tried to get the deals together, but at that time we were doing anywhere between 60 to 90 deals a month.

Speaker 2: 47:37

I'm crazy and it was miserable.

Speaker 1: 47:41

I mean, there was a point time where it was just like there were so many deals and so many people and so many JV partners and so many title companies and so many title issues and transaction coordination and all of that that it wasn't fun. The money didn't matter. And at that point time, when money doesn't matter, then you've lost the point of being an entrepreneur. The whole point of this is that you're making money to achieve freedom, and so if you don't even care about how much money you're making and you're miserable, then you've lost the point. And so we've actually just scaled it down just a little bit. And now it's so much better. And guess what? We make more money because there's less people involved.

Speaker 1: 48:23

Of course, less deals, less people, but guess what? It's not like we went from 60 to 90 to like five. It's like we just scaled it down just a little bit and now we found a sweet spot where it's like dude, now we're a well-owned machine and everyone's happy and we have fun in here. We don't have people quitting and going in and out. It's like our team now is tenured. It's like almost everybody here besides the people that are brand new have been here coming on the podcast. It's been a long time coming. No, I appreciate you.

Speaker 2: 48:58

I got to get you on mine next week now, brother, so let's chat offline and we'll go from there, man, thank you for having me here, rj, and I'll see you soon. I owe you.

Speaker 1: 49:07

So, yes, I'll definitely be on there. Make sure you like this episode, give us a five-star review and we will see you next week.