June 16, 2025 • 47 mins
Join Nick Lamagna on The A Game Podcast with our guest Ricardo Rosales, a full-time real estate investor, entrepreneur, educator and podcast host from Venezuela who is now investing out of Texas! After being a bit lost in his early years, he found some purpose in the military as a diesel mechanic in the US Navy. The oil and gas industry brought him to Texas and after seeing a real estate investor make money flipping homes it gave him the confidence to jump into real estate investing
He borrowed money from his mother-in-law and learned some lessons through the school of hard knocks as he earned his stripes as a contractor and after getting laid off from his job, he became a full-time investor and became an accident landlord and was bit by the cash flow bug owning up to 100 rentals at one time.
Over the years he scaled his business to doing 40-50 deals a month after overcoming adversity in business a hurricane threw some unexpected winds into his sails and caused him to once again pivot his business into wholesaling to pay make his private lenders whole and fell into hiring and training virtual assistants to manage his day to day and scale his business. Today that has become his bread and butter helping business owners and investors through his company Top Of The Line VA. He holds exciting live real estate events for investors throughout the year known as Attend Growth and has one coming up June 27 and 28th in Tampa you won't want to miss!
Topics for this episode include:
✅ Why having a high quality VA is important
✅ Top things VAs can help you with today
✅ How to stop being your own enemy in business
✅ How to rebuild and pivot your business after a setback
✅ Inspiring story of rags to riches you wont want to miss + more!
Connect with Ricardo:
Real Estate Entrepreneurs Podcast
Connect with Top Of The Line VA:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Welcome to the A Game podcast with NickLamonia digging into the minds and.
Experiences of some of today's brightestentrepreneurs in real estate and
business, along with Hollywood Stars, UFCfighters and your favorite rock bands.
People that have figured out howto overcome obstacles, take chances
live boldly, and no matter what theydo, they always bring their A game.
(00:48):
This is the A Game podcast with theestate investing for entrepreneurs, and
the whole point of this podcast is toshow average people that they can achieve
extraordinary things every single day.
There is multiple guests we'vebeen through for the last 350
plus episodes that if you just goback into these past episodes, you
will see athletes, entrepreneurs.
Fighters, business owners, comedians,people of all shapes and sizes that will
(01:09):
tell you exactly how they found a wayto live their best life, financially,
physically, personally, or teach you themistakes that they made along the way.
So you do not have to.
If that was not enough, we haveanother banger of an episode today.
My guest today on the A Gamepodcast is Ricard Zales.
He is an amazing real estate investorwho is now running top of the line va,
and he's helping real estate investors,business owners, and entrepreneurs
(01:29):
grow and manage their daily tasks.
And everything from social media tolead managers to lead generations to
closers, to the executive assistants.
And he is doing it through his teamfrom his old home country in Venezuela.
And he's got an amazing story where he'sbeen through the whole gamut of making
money, a questionable beginning, andthen finding his way through the military
as a diesel mechanic in the US Navy.
(01:50):
And then getting into real estate andhaving a little bit of a bumpy road.
Gotten up to a hundred rentals atone point, figuring out he didn't
really love being a landlord.
Then getting into 40, 50 flips amonth, bringing in a ton of money
like that, borrowing over $50 million.
Hurricane came through,ruined his business.
He had to start over, started gettingback into wholesaling, figuring out
how to pay back those investors.
So.
He's got the true test of anentrepreneur for adversity and he
(02:12):
knows how to pivot his business.
And now he's got a lot of experienceon what to do and what not to do for
all aspects of real estate investing.
And a lot of what he does is virtual.
And part of what he's doing now ishelping you guys not only on the lead
gen side, on the virtual assistant side.
But he's also back to getting inthe real estate game and wholesaling
and helping you guys do the same.
So he tells a really great storywith a lot of detail that really
(02:33):
takes you on a beautiful journeyfor the first half of this podcast.
And then we get into some of the nutsand potatoes of some of the real estate
stuff, some of the mindset stuff,some of the virtual assistant stuff.
So really great guy.
He and I stayed on the call a lotbefore and a lot after, and he has.
Full of a ton of information.
So definitely follow hischannels, follow his socials,
and definitely reach out to him.
All the links are in the show notesand of course the only fee for this
(02:54):
podcast is to please subscribe.
So take a minute, find the A Gamepodcast, real estate investing for
entrepreneurs anywhere and everywhereyou get your podcast on YouTube
and social media as Apple Spot.
If I all that fun stuff and pleasetake a second and just subscribe to it.
Also you will find us on social media.
I please ask you, you scrollingall day on social media.
Anyway, please take a minuteand follow myself and Ricardo
(03:15):
on all the social media.
And the way that he knows that hebrought value to you guys is for you
to interact when I post these clips.
So send him a message.
Give him a like, give him a thumbs up.
Tag a buddy.
Share it.
It goes a long way.
So he tells his people that you guys werea great audience that he bought value to,
and we keep this party going with moreguests to bring you free information.
The whole point here is that Iwanna do deals together though,
(03:35):
so please find me on social mediaand send me the words real estate.
If you would like to talk about doingdeals together, whether that is you buying
properties from me, selling propertiesto me, or finding a way to partner on
some level, or shoot me a text messagewith the words real estate to 5 1 6.
5, 4, 0 5 7, 3 3, 5 1 6, 5, 4, 0, 5,7, 3, 3. You guys have been amazing.
Thank you so much for Ricardo coming on.
(03:57):
I appreciate everybody.
Have a great day The A Gamepodcast, ladies and gentlemen.
Alright, my guest today is an entrepreneureducator, podcast host, business
order real estate investor fightingout of Houston by way of Venezuela.
And after being a bit lost in his earlyyears, he found purpose in the military
as a diesel mechanic in the US Navy, theoil and gas industry brought him to Texas.
(04:18):
And after seeing a real estateinvestor making money flipping homes.
It gave him the confidence to jumpinto real estate investing as well.
He borrowed money from his mother-in-lawand learned some lessons through
the school of hard knocks and earnedhis stripes as a full-time real
estate investor and contractor.
And after getting laid offfrom his job, he went all in.
He became an accidental landlord on hisfirst year, but was bit by the cashflow
bug, and eventually grew that intoover a hundred rentals at one time.
(04:41):
And over the years has scaled his businessof doing up to 40 to 50 deals a month.
He's no stranger to overcoming adversity.
As in business and in life.
A hurricane threw someunexpected wins into his sale.
And caused him to once again pivotinto wholesaling to pay back his
investors, make himself whole andfind a new way to do his business.
He then stumbled onto virtualassistance and became a master of
hiring other people overseas to managehis day-to-day and scale his business.
(05:05):
And today his bread and butteris helping business owners
and investors just like you.
Do the same through histop of the line VA company.
He is a VA master, a huge advocatefor daily habits, exercise, personal
development, and he even teachesyou how to invest in real estate
through his live events as well.
He is our guest today.
I have been followinghim for a very long time.
It's an honor to have him on.
Please welcome.
(05:25):
To the A Game podcast, Mr. Ricard.
Rosales, man, what anintroduction, brother.
Thank you so much, Nick.
I appreciate you, brother.
You make a great podcaster,so you were born to do this.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate it.
Well, you as well, you've been doingthis for a lot longer than me, man.
So for uh, anybody who doesn't.
A hundred percent know your story.
You wanna fill in some of the gaps thatI had, and there are the highlights of
(05:46):
who you are and where you came from.
Absolutely, man.
Um, so look, I didn't come from arich family or anything like that,
although my dad was actually doingokay as an insurance sales agent.
Okay?
He was door knocking and selling policiesto like homeowners in Venezuela, where
I'm at right now, recording this podcast.
So when I was a little kid, Ialways wanted to be like my dad.
(06:07):
Like he was my hero.
Like he was wearing a suit, the tie.
And when I was eight years old,I asked him to buy me a suit.
I said, dad, I want you tobuy me a suit and a tie, and
I want to go to work with you.
And he went and boughtme a suit and a tie man.
And I started going to his office.
So I would say my first job wasto be his secretary's assistant.
(06:29):
And, and back in those days,you know, they used to have
files and folders like this.
Okay.
And each client had one of these,they would just say, Ricardo, go
get, you know, so-and-so's file.
And I will go and, and,and look at the letters.
And I said, okay, starts with aZ. So I knew that was the last
drawer and I would just pull thefiles and bring it to their desk.
(06:50):
By the time I was 20 years old,I was literally running all the
operations in his company and Imean, I started from the bottom.
I was handing handling files, and thenI ended up pretty much processing.
Every source of policies and commissionchecks, and you name it, man, I
did everything in, in his company.
I had a boss.
(07:10):
I didn't think I had a father.
Okay.
And that started causing a lot ofconflicts in between me and him, and the
fact that I was a little bit of a rebel.
Okay?
I, mm-hmm.
I started drinking and partyingat a very young age in Venezuela
is normal for a 12-year-old kid togo start drinking and hanging out
and doing those kind of things.
Right.
So, um, I don't know that that's thecase today, to be honest with you, but
(07:32):
that was the case when I was growing up.
Okay.
Uh, I was just telling some ofthe guys here in the office that
I started driving when I was 11.
Like, think about that.
Right.
You're, you're just a. A child when you're11 years old and my grandfather gave
me the car and he is like, you drive.
And he taught me how to drive.
And, um, the thing aboutVenezuela is back then.
(07:54):
I'm pretty sure today if I gotcaught, all you had to do was bribe
the cop and it was perfectly okay.
You know what I mean?
The cop is the one actually askingyou for a donation, like, yeah, hey,
I caught you doing something wrong.
How about you gimme some money for lunch?
And it's a done deal, right?
So.
It happens still today, by the way.
But anyhow, I was a little bitof a party guy and my dad wa
(08:16):
wanted me to go to college andhe wanted the best for me, right?
And which he thought maybe goingto college and getting a degree
was gonna open up a lot of doors.
And he pushed me for that.
And I just didn't wantto go to school, man.
Not that I didn't want to.
Study.
It's just that I didn't knowwhat to study, I didn't know what
I wanted to do when I grew up.
All I knew was I want to be like my dad.
I want to sell, I wantto be a businessman.
(08:37):
And that pushed us apart.
And I ended up, he claims he fired me.
I claim I left him.
So today we still have thatconversation and he says.
Because I fired you andI said, no, I left you.
I don't know.
You know, so, so maybe itwas a little bit of both.
Right.
And then after that, to makeit a long story short, I
ended up joining the US Navy.
I was born in the US and I alreadyhad a daughter I needed to provide for
(09:01):
her and to make an income and, and Ijust didn't know what I wanted to do.
And when I was a kid, Iwanted to be in the military.
I don't know what it was aboutthe military that I always kind
of like felt drawn into that.
And now that I'm an adult and I'm tryingto, I guess, get my life together.
Why not do it when, when I'mthe one making the decisions?
Not so.
'cause I asked my mom and my dadsend me to a military school when I
(09:23):
was a kid and they refused to do it.
They didn't wanna do it 'cause theydidn't want me to go through the
pain that those kids go through,uh, as far as becoming disciplined.
Right.
So that's how I endedup joining the US Navy.
Man.
One of the best decisions I've ever made.
I fully believe that in our country,in the, in the United States
of America, everybody should.
Pay at least two to fouryears of military service.
(09:47):
It's elective today, but I think if we allwent through it, our country will be in
much better shape than what it is today.
Right?
But anyhow, it's not that way andit's, it's completely voluntary and
I, and you have to qualify, passa test, and all of those things.
So I went and took the test andI qualified and the guy said.
You got all these different choices tojoin the military, what do you want to do?
(10:09):
Because I always push paper withmy dad, like with the policies
and the insurance and all that.
I wanted to do something wayout of my comfort zone, and I
chose to be a diesel mechanic.
I never even changed alight bulb in my life, man.
Like I nothing like, I waslike completely ignorant when
it comes to turning wrenches.
And guess what?
By the end of my career, my Navycareer, I did four years only.
(10:31):
I was probably the bestmechanic on that ship.
I was in charge of all the power plants,the diesel generators, propulsion engines.
I rebuilt every singleone of those engines.
Worked on gas turbines.
I knew how to align thefuel plant, you name it.
I mean, it was a small ship, so onsmall ships you gotta wear more hats.
It was a mine sweeper, so they call him.
(10:51):
I, uh, wooden ships Iron Man,because basically it, it is
like you almost got no life.
I slept an average of three tofour hours a day probably, and
yes, and, and the, and the other 18hours or 19 hours, it was working.
It wasn't just hanging outand smoking or whatever.
No, it was just literallyturning wrenches, right?
So you build a character when youdo that, you have to be disciplined,
(11:13):
otherwise you're gonna pay for it.
They're gonna make you pay for it, andyou gotta do the best you can otherwise.
Your enemy is the ship.
It's not really anothership firing in today's Navy.
That's the way it is.
It's your own ship is what you gottaprotect yourself against because it's
got a lot of moving parts, right?
So, so you gotta be on point withmaintenance and things of that
(11:36):
nature so things don't break on you.
Right?
And so we learned all of that,and I got out because I didn't
like the politics of the military.
Okay?
In today's world, we're in 2025.
There's still racism out there.
Okay.
And it's very vivid.
We see it in our differentparts of the countries, right?
Uh, well guess what?
In the military, there'salso that, and I'm Hispanic.
(11:59):
Even though I look white and I gotgreen eyes and all of that, I'm still
Hispanic, and there was a lot offavoritism towards some other people that
didn't have the accolades I have, but.
Yet they got all therecognition, I would say, right?
And that helped them advancedin rank, that helped them
advance quicker than I was.
I figured that if I was that good, that Ithought I was, if I put those, uh, skills
(12:25):
to work outside in the civilian world,like we call it, it will pay off to me.
And it did.
I went and left the Navy.
I was grateful for it.
I was never bitter about it, but I knewit wasn't for me long term because of the
politics, the way the politics worked.
I didn't like it, so Ifigured I, I'll go on my own.
Now, one thing is when I was on that ship.
I would see this oil rigs in themiddle of the, uh, Gulf of Mexico.
(12:46):
And I would say, man, I wonder howmuch those mechanics make out there.
You know, it is the same thing.
This is a war ship.
The other one is just a floating shipthat's drilling for oil or whatever.
And I set a goal to find me ajob in the oil and gas business.
And by the time I got out of theNavy, man, I had 19 job offers in
multiple companies in the Houston area.
That's why I ended up in Houston.
(13:07):
Little did I know, man, that.
Oil industry was gonna change my life.
I went from making, I don'tknow, as a, as an E four that I
was in the Navy with benefits.
I was probably bringing 2,500 tothree grand a month into making
six, seven, $8,000 now a month.
And then two years later, I wasmaking north of $200,000 a year.
(13:29):
So I went from nothing beingvery dirty in the on the ship to.
Two years later, travelingbusiness class and going to
nice hotels all over the world.
And being paid forputting my skills to work.
And I had a great 10 year runin the oil and gas business.
I used to work offshore, so I woulddo 30 days on, sometimes 30 days off.
Sometimes it would be on call, so Ididn't really have a rotation, but
(13:53):
when I was not on a rig, I was free.
Most of my friends in the oil andgas business, when they made a they,
they collected a good paycheck.
They will just go blow it on a toy.
They will buy a boat.
Motorcycles, rifles, guns.
That wasn't me.
I was like, man, what can I dowith this money that I'm earning?
That is, it's hard earned because you'reaway from home, you're working still
(14:14):
crazy hours, the responsibilities arehigh because now it's, it's millions of
dollars of equipment under your hands.
That's when I started picking up booksabout real estate, and this is in 2008.
Now it's the meltdown ishappening, and here I am.
I'm sitting on a little bit of money.
It wasn't a lot of money, butI had a little bit of money
and I said, you know what, man?
This flipping houses thing.
(14:35):
So I saw Armando Montelongo on tv,flip a house, and I was like, man,
if that guy can do this, I can do it.
I've done things that are harder,you know, on the ship, in, in the
oil and gas business, buying a houseand rehabbing it and fixing it up.
Should not be rocket science.
It turns out it is.
So I started doing my due diligence.
(14:56):
I learned about harmony loans.
I learned about 70% managed repairs,things of that nature, right?
I went and bought myfirst property in 2009.
I. Actually, end of 2008, a man, everycontractor on the street saw me like
a, like a deer with the headlights on.
And they, they stole my money andI couldn't finish this project.
And it took me a whole yearto flip my first house.
(15:18):
Well, finally I did itand, um, I had a job, so I.
It helped that I had a W2 while themoney was getting stolen by some
people I was producing somewhere else.
Took me a whole year to do myfirst flip and I couldn't sell it.
'cause now it's 2009 and themarket is completely tanked down.
So I became a landlord and thenI was like, oh, maybe becoming a
landlord is the one thing that'sgonna free me away from my job.
(15:39):
'cause I didn't hate my job, but I knewthat I didn't want to be away from my.
Family and my friends all the time, whichI had to do to make some good money.
So I started putting rentals away 'causeI saw another guy that did seminars in
the Houston area, um, educating peopleabout harmony loans and how you could
buy properties with almost no money outtayour pockets and refinancing into this.
(16:00):
What?
Back then it was called blanket loans.
There was none of this DSERthat came around like in 2015.
I just went on a run.
I saw, he said if you got $40,000 a month.
Coming in from rentals, couldyou live, you know, comfortable?
And I had, I'm like, hell yeah, rightnow I don't even make that much.
(16:20):
And you know, I love to do that.
So I bought on his dream.
Okay.
I bought on, it wasn't mydream, it was his dream.
And man, I tell you what,that was a huge mistake.
Now.
I did learn the hard way because I wentand scaled the acquisitions on rentals
and started putting rentals away.
And I didn't know I wasn'tgonna enjoy being a landlord.
(16:43):
I didn't enjoy doing evictions.
I didn't enjoy putting a73-year-old lady on the streets
'cause her son didn't pay rent.
You know what I'm saying?
Like.
There was a lot of those thingsthat I didn't have a heart for,
and I became a motivated seller.
Somewhere around 2012, 2013, Istarted liquidating all my rentals.
I still had a job In 2013, I had theopportunity to interview for one of
(17:06):
the largest service companies in theworld, in the oil and gas business.
And they were looking for a guy withmy profile that had plenty of field
experience, um, had done a lot of jobs,had, uh, done a lot of interventions.
Uh, I used to specializeon sub C, which is.
Offshore, but in the bottom of the ocean,9,000, 8,000 foot of water, water death.
(17:26):
Okay.
So these things are way down there.
I didn't dive into it, it wasall done from the rig, but
that was what I specialized on.
It was like the, it's calledthe deep water equipment.
You know, they made me anoffer I couldn't refuse.
And in that offer, they actually allowedme to continue my real estate journey.
'cause you know how most employers don'twant you to have a side thing like.
(17:46):
We want you to only work for,and they're like, nah man.
We know you've been doing realestate for, for a few years now.
We know it's your passion.
We don't want you to deviate fromthat, but, you know, make sure
that your job is taken care of.
You can get in and out of theoffice as many times as you
can, and I'm like, oh my God.
Bingo.
Yeah, I'm, I'm in, like,what do I need to do?
Right?
Mm-hmm.
So I ended up, uh, as a manager inthat company with over 500 employees.
(18:11):
Uh, running a budgetof $120 million a year.
I started thinking bigger when itcomes to numbers and things like that.
And by that time I had gottenrid of most of my rentals.
I kept maybe like 10 to 20 thatwere really good, but I knew that
replacing my income with the rentswas gonna be very hard because.
350 bucks a month, 450 bucks a monthon cashflow on average per property.
(18:35):
I mean, how many do you really need todo to, to be able to pay your bills and
even put money away and be comfortable?
You gotta have a lot of 'em,like a hundred to 200 properties.
But I knew the headaches of havinga hundred to 200 properties already.
'cause I had already got there atsome point and I didn't want that.
So now this is 2014 15.
Uh, the market has changed.
(18:56):
On a up and now you can flip housesand sell 'em and make a bigger check.
So that's what I shifted to.
I shifted to flipping houses.
I was doing one to three projects amonth, roughly, well, I would say a month.
It was like in a periodof like 60 to 90 days.
It's kind of like a cycle when you boughta property, rehabbed it, and then either
rented it or sold it, and I started.
(19:18):
Educating some of my peers inthe oil and gas business 'cause
they were paying 35% taxes.
And I was like laughing at 'em, waslike, dude, I, I don't even pay 10%.
They're like, how you make moremoney than we do in salary?
And I'm like, I do real estateand, and it is got depreciation
and appreciation and I got separatebusinesses and they got intrigued by it.
(19:39):
And a couple of those guys todayare actually multimillionaires.
They own a lot of properties.
But you know, I started teachingthose guys on how I acquired, you
know, how, where to find them.
How to get the funding, howto get the money, how to do
it without any other money.
And before we knew it, man, we weredoing, you know, we tripled the amount of
properties we were buying at one point.
Um, and in 2015 I got laid off.
(20:01):
You know, the market tooka whole different shift and
I said, you know what, man?
I've already been doingreal estate for years now.
I know what I'm doing.
I know how to flip these houses.
I'm a general contractor already'cause I had to become one by
necessity to manage, you know, all thesubcontractors much better and all that.
I just went for it and, and Istarted going from like two to three
(20:22):
houses, to 10 houses to 15 houses onprojects ongoing at any given time.
And I'll be honest with you,man, by 2017 we reached our.
I would say our pinnacle, somewhere aroundJuly, we were doing north of 40 projects
at a time, and now we had a full blowngeneral contracting company with over
(20:44):
50 people, you know, employed with us.
We had a lot of subs, like theroofers, the acs, all the mechanicals.
We, we subbed it out.
But most of the finishes,the drywall and painting.
Replacing siding, things of that nature.
We handled it ourselves and webecame a machine for acquiring
properties and rehabbing them.
And in August is when HurricaneHarvey came over and disrupted
(21:07):
our business completely.
I mean, it turned us upside down.
Now imagine having that many projects onharmony loans and private money loans.
We were only on interest payments200 grand a month, roughly,
probably a little bit more.
What killed us wasn't the hurricaneitself damaging properties.
It was losing our workforce.
We lost our workforce to, to FEMAand to everything else that was out
(21:27):
there paying a lot more than we were.
And we were like sitting, like sittingdocks, you know, we, we were just
sitting in the, in the middle ofthe storm with no people, all this
money going out because I wanted tohonor my commitments to my lenders.
I kept on making those paymentsfor a few months, but it was just
time before I ran outta money.
I knew how to acquire properties,I knew how to source them.
Uh, we were heavily in, in direct mail.
(21:49):
We had a company called Direct Mail Out.
We did our own mailings, but so we, sofor our friends, that helped us a little
bit with the overhead on direct mail.
You know, at some point I said, okay, whatcan I do to patch this hole and to get
out of this mess that I'm in right now?
And the only thing I couldthink of was wholesaling.
It is just that I didn't knowhow to do the whole transaction.
(22:09):
Like I never bought a property,flipped the contract to somebody
else other than my own friends.
We also had to do it at a scalebecause if you're bleeding.
200 to 250,000 bucks per month.
How can you stop that?
You just gotta do it in bulk, right?
So we went and started learningand we literally started with our
own properties for the most part.
We started sourcing new, new deals andit was a very painful experience, but
(22:32):
we went from being multimillionairesinto not having 50 bucks to our names.
And in, in a period of about threeyears, it was like a slow death.
Literally.
Yeah.
It was like going througha lot of ups and downs and.
Now we're getting into litigationswith some of our lenders.
Uh, a lot of 'em work with us,and, and they gave us plenty of
(22:54):
time to get rid of the properties.
Some of them, they lost patients,some other ones, they just did
what they had to do, right?
They foreclosed on the propertiesor we didn't back over to them.
We work with 99% of 'em.
There's always that 1%that is never satisfied.
Uh, but that's justpart of business, right?
Um, at the end of the day, Ididn't put a gun on somebody's
head to loan me the money.
(23:15):
Um, they did it willingly and I signedon the dots and I signed personal
guarantees and things of that nature.
And then I dealt with thatas issues started coming up.
Right.
So we cleared our plate, andnow in 2020 before pandemic.
Now we're putting a good size ofamounts under contract for wholesaling.
(23:35):
And the pandemic made us do it virtualbecause we all got locked down.
We know what happened, and thenwe started putting houses under
contract while we were locked down.
Right?
And I, I started training guyshere in Venezuela on how to do it.
And when it worked, like the firstfew words, I was like, wait a minute.
This is a whole different animal.
I wanna do more of this.
(23:57):
It's less overhead.
I'm just flipping paper and no riskbecause I don't have to sign for loans.
And that's how became, we became, Iwould say, arguably one of the largest
wholesaling operations out there.
I'm not gonna say the largest one.
'cause there's some bigones out there, man.
There's some guys that aredoing hundreds of deals a month.
But for a mom and pops, you know, having20 to 30 properties under contract at
(24:18):
any given time was a pretty good, andI think the most we got was to about
67 deals under contract at one point.
But of course that's when themarket was going up, right?
So every, everybody.
Looks like a rockstar whenthe market is going up.
You know, if you ask that question,maybe today or two years ago when the
market started tanking, that's whenthe real people kinda like came out,
(24:38):
you know, and you knew who was realand who was not, because those that
dealt with adversities in the pastare the ones that are able to thrive.
So that's, that's my story, man.
So that's where we are today.
Now we have a VA company,we do real estate events.
Uh, we still do some, uh, wholesaling.
I'm actually cranking out.
A whole new wholesalingoperation, uh, as we speak.
I just put a brand new teamtogether today and we start lead
(25:00):
generating this afternoon actually.
So if you have been kicking yourselfthat you didn't start investing in real
estate sooner, whether you're beginner,intermediate, or advanced, any way you're
looking to get it on a residential,commercial, land development, wholesaling,
fix, and flips, whatever it is.
Let's find a way to get you involved insome projects, get you some properties,
whether you wanna sell some propertiesto me, whether you want to buy some
properties from me, whether residential,fix and flip, cash flow, multifamily,
(25:23):
whatever it is you're looking for.
Let's figure out a way to getyou involved or find a way for
us to partner up on some deals.
Reach out to me on any ofmy social media channels.
If you go on www.nic.com/links, you'llsee all the different ways to connect
with me and figure out how we canstart to work together, make it happen.
Everybody that invests inreal estate always just says
they wish they did it sooner.
(25:43):
Best time to start is today.
Very cool, man.
I think you have an incredible storyand there's, there's a lot of different
things in there that I think we couldgo on a bunch of tangents about.
Absolutely.
One of them being, I thought you hadan interesting phrase in there that you
said when you are working in the Navy, I.
The enemy is not the other peopleshooting the missiles at you.
It's protecting your own ship.
That's right.
(26:03):
It's your own ship.
That could be your enemy.
And I feel like that that is a goodanalogy for our minds and our bodies,
that a lot of the times when we get intoreal estate, we think it's all these
other things that are gonna keep us.
But 99% of the time what I talk toinvestors, they're their biggest enemy.
And I know you're big on personaldevelopment stuff, so talk a little bit
about that side of it, because I thinkwhen people hear your story, they think
that there's something different and it'slike, no, man, everybody has their things.
(26:26):
It's a matter of like.
What's up here that you're tellingyourself and you're doing, and new
investors don't want to hear that, butthat's really like the biggest thing is,
you know, protecting yourself from yourown enemy, which a lot of the times is us.
Look, Nick, you, you know this man,and hopefully the people listening to
your podcast will relate to it as well.
We are our own worst enemies.
We are.
I mean, it's not, the other is ifyou think other people are causing
(26:49):
your situation or your state ofmind or whatever, go the wrong way.
Then you have a victim mentality.
That's it.
So it all starts with us, and I'vealways said this and preached it,
and I learned this from someone else.
I cannot remember who.
I think it was Tony Robbins.
He says, the external world is areflection to your internal world, meaning
external world, meaning the riches,the money, the material things, right?
(27:13):
If you are not internallyright, how do you expect for
that external world to grow?
Right.
So you have to grow inside,before you grow outside.
When I was going through allthose, um, setbacks, okay.
'cause they were all setbacks.
I look at everything froma positive standpoint.
I got a story to tell now.
If you met me in 2017, Ididn't have a story to tell.
My story wasn't where it is today.
(27:33):
Maybe I could have told you astory from the Navy in the oil
field, but that was, that was it.
Like there was nothing big about that.
I was like.
Okay.
Where were your setbacks?
I don't really have that many setbacksother than being away from home or
being on a ship, you know, for months.
But that's not a setback, that's justa situational thing in your life.
When my business started crumbling.
(27:54):
Okay.
'cause that's really what it started.
It started justdisintegrating, number one.
I didn't know who to talk to.
Like I didn't have somebody Icould pick up the phone and say.
Hey, Nick, what would you do in this case?
I didn't have that.
I didn't believe inmentorships at the time.
I didn't believe in surrounding myselfwith maybe people that were at a higher
level than I was because my ego was big.
(28:18):
I was the guy actually people wascoming to for questions and answers.
When it came to real estate in my area.
I had an ego and, and I thinkthat's what the universe.
Literally fixed for me at the timeis that, put that ego in check.
Right?
But one thing that I did have fromthe military days that I learned
is that when you have adversities,you just gotta keep on moving.
(28:40):
And I learned that from Chief Hallett.
He was my, I would say, ultimatesupervisor on that ship.
And every time we run into a problem,he will ask me, how will you do it?
And if I told him, and he didn't thinkit was the the way he would ask me again.
Is there another way that you can do it?
Can you think about that?
And so he made me look at challengesfrom multiple angles, right?
(29:01):
He also taught me to focus on what I couldcontrol if I didn't have control over it.
Let's say an engineblew up and the piston.
Not on the ship because he hasn't arrived.
Well, I can't, I can't control that.
I gotta wait for the piston to come tothe ship so I can install it, right?
But in the meantime, what is itthat I can do to get that engine
ready to receive that piston?
(29:22):
That's what you can control.
Go focus on that.
And I saw my challengesin the real estate side.
The same way.
I didn't have money,but I did have a roof.
I have vehicles.
I had things that I could do.
And I also had a gym in my housebecause I do believe in exercising.
And I remember, man, this one day Iget up at three o'clock in the morning
and look, I'm not a morning guy.
(29:43):
I'm not the guy that wakes upat five and it's fired up about
going to exercise or whatnot.
I'm not.
I'm a seven to eight o'clockin the morning kind of guy.
Well, this particular morning,man, it's three o'clock.
I wake up and, and Iknow I can't go to sleep.
So I said, okay, I'm gonnastart my morning routine.
It's 3:00 AM I'm just gonna start earlier.
So I went in, I read 10 pages of a book.
(30:05):
I went upstairs, put on TonyRobbins, uh, and there's also this
other guy called even Carmichael.
He's got the 10 Rules ofSuccess, a, a YouTube channel.
He is amazing.
Everybody should listen to that channel.
And I start exercising, lifting weights,you know, I'm getting my blood going and.
I guess my wife got up and, andshe was like, 'cause my gym was
like just over the, the masterbedroom on, on the second floor.
(30:28):
So she went upstairs to check me out.
She's like, what are you doing?
She opened up the door.
It is like 5:00 AM and I'mhere I am and sweating.
I. I'm in the zone, man.
I'm, I'm watching Tony, youknow, I'm lifting weights.
And she's like, what are you doing?
And I was like, what does it mean?
Like, I'm, I'm, I'm exercising.
She's like, no, yougotta go get a job, man.
And I was like, I'm sorryman, just close that door.
(30:50):
I'll talk to you later about that.
I finished my routine and then I wentand talked to her and I said, look,
what do you mean by getting a job?
Look, we got no money.
Like, we don't have money for food.
We don't have money for this.
I was like, look, I'mgonna figure something out.
You're gonna have.
Money for gas, for food andall those things is gonna
come in one way or another.
But you think a job is gonna help me livethe lifestyle that we live right now.
(31:10):
We had acquired a lifestyle of a richperson, so when you're rich like that,
you, you don't spend less than 30 granda month on stuff, you know, on mortgage
and cars and things of that nature.
And she looked at me and shesaid, I guess you're right.
And I was like, look,let me continue to work.
I'm working on myself.
That's why I'm exercising right now.
That's why I'm putting the rightinformation on my head so I can deal
(31:30):
with the challenges that we have.
We just gotta keep pushing, right.
I told her, I said, look, when you'rein the middle of hell, we got hell.
I mean, I knew I wasin the middle of hell.
Is that where you stop?
No.
You have to keep it movinguntil you get to the end.
That's exactly what I'm doing right now.
So she understood the message at that,that time and, and I kept on pushing.
And one way or another, I, I figuredit out and money started coming in
and I started cutting on expensesthat I need to have anymore.
(31:54):
And, you know, you balance thingsliterally left and right and before you
know it, you are out of the problem.
So personal developmentis like taking a shower.
You gotta do it every day.
Every day.
Look, the, this morning Iwent to bed early last night.
I went to bed around 9:30 PM Uh, usuallyI go to bed around 11 this morning,
it was eight o'clock in the morning.
(32:14):
I didn't wanna get up.
I felt like, man, I reallywant to sleep another hour.
But then I say, you know what, man,if I sleep another hour on a Monday.
I'm gonna start the week wrong.
I gotta get on my, on my routine.
So right away I went in, Istarted reading my pages.
I went in and did my journal.
After the journal, I went inand started doing some weights.
It's hard to get there.
(32:35):
That's the thing is when you wakeup and you don't wanna do the
things you're supposed to do.
Because you feel like, ah, Iwant to rest a little bit more.
But once you do it, man, youfeel like a $10 million check.
You know, you're like all fired up, yougot energy again, and now guess what?
I'm ready to conquer the week.
So, you know, you just gotta do thethings that put you uncomfortable.
When you are in comfortablesituations to keep 'em moving.
(32:55):
So I learned that in themilitary and that's what helped
me push through the hard times.
And even till today, we still dealwith challenges on a regular basis.
Clients that live, people that don'tsign up when they're supposed to
sign up, um, you know, whatever.
You know?
Okay.
What's under your control?
What I can do is.
Continue to read, continue to exercise,continue to surround myself with the
(33:16):
right people and take all the steps thatI need to take to become successful.
And the other thing I do today is Ifind mentors that have what I want
to have so they can lead me the way.
Right.
It is quicker that way.
That's one of the majorchanges I've made in my life.
It's, I, I look for thosethat have what I want.
And then I said, all right, man,how much is it to, so you can
coach me on, guide me, right?
(33:36):
And then I'll take it from there.
That's awesome, man.
So when we talk about now you're pivoting,you're doing all like the things that
people need to do to survive in business.
When you hit a roadblock,you find a way around it.
And now I think another naturalprogression people make is they get
their own business going and then theywant to get some of their time back.
And of course the old days of like,you need a warehouse, and employees
(33:57):
and 4 0 1 ks, like virtual assistantshave changed that where you can
literally be a business owner.
And run an entire businessand you don't have to break
the bank on all these things.
And I think the misconception is ifyou're paying people five, $10 an
hour, they're not good at what they,I actually see both sides of it.
I see people go, I'm justgonna hire a VA for $5 an hour.
And I go, and you think that's gonna just.
Like you have to know what todo first before you go do that.
(34:19):
But then the other people arelike, you get what you pay for.
But there is a magic mix.
People are making it work, andthere's a way to start to scale
your business, get your time back,and really be more efficient with
very talented, reliable people.
So talk a little bit about how you'redoing that and what you're doing
there with top of the line va. SoI've been using VAs for years now.
My first VA. Came in in 2017sometime, and all I needed was
(34:43):
somebody to work on my websites.
That's it.
I just needed somebody to makethe websites and so we can have
online presence for our wholesalingand real estate business.
Uh, his name was Carlos.
He actually worked with me untillast month, so it was about
an eight year run that we did.
Uh, amazing.
I love the guy.
He helped me build thiscompany from the ground up.
And then the second VA I had wassomebody to uh, handle my social media.
(35:06):
To do the post and, 'cause Iknew I wasn't diligent about it.
Like they would tell me, you gottapost x, X amount of times today.
And I was like, I forget about that stuff.
Like I'm not even payingattention to my phone.
You texted me earlier, I wasn'tlooking at my phone, man.
I'm very bad with my phone.
So those were the first twopeople, but what happened was
somewhere around 2020 to 2021.
(35:26):
I believed in having an office,uh, like a physical office.
I had one in Houston where Ihad about 10 dispo managers.
'cause we grew exponentially,our wholesaling business.
What I realized is that we werefailing miserably, I mean, in selling
properties, you know, on time.
And the reason why is becausethe people I was finding, not
(35:46):
all of them, but a good majority.
They weren't putting a hundred percentof the effort, I think it was because
they weren't hungry enough in a way.
Some of them were mediocre, you know?
And I remember having, I had likethe $1.8 million in assignments and
I told them, I said, look guys, ifyou guys close this money in 90 days,
aside from your commissions, yoursalary, I'm gonna grab another chunk.
(36:07):
It was like 300 grand.
And I'm gonna give it to you guyson bonuses 'cause I'm thinking
they're gonna go work for that money.
They're gonna be, you know,motivated to collect that money.
The truth is, they weren't willingto do the things they needed
to do to collect that money.
I. Was make more phone calls,talk to more people on a weekend.
I'm looking at my CRM and I'm lookingat all this money on the pipeline
(36:29):
and I'm like, man, do I need toget on the phone and start calling
myself and sell some of these deals?
And I did, and I assigneda few deals right away.
And my dispo guy, Cesar, at thetime, he was also doing the same,
but the other guys weren't doing it.
So I wanted to try something different.
And so I showed up to theoffice and I fired everybody.
I only kept Cesar and Shane at the time.
Mm-hmm.
(36:49):
But I say, guys, this is not working out.
I appreciate you.
I don't wanna waste your time anymore.
Um, if I gotta sell these dealson my own, I don't need you guys.
So this is not personal.
This is business.
So I let him all go and I talkedto Caesar and I said, look man,
this is what I think I want to do.
'cause I, I really thought atthat time, Nick, I was gonna quit.
I thought about quitting the business.
I was like, I. MaybeI'm not good for this.
(37:11):
Maybe I'm not, you know,maybe the universe is pushing
me in a different direction.
I don't know.
But I said, look, I got these two guysin, in Venezuela, Carlos, and Carla.
Okay.
Um, they're amazing.
And what I'm gonna do isI'm gonna ask them for help.
I'm gonna ask them to hire five morepeople like them to help you with the
process and so you can sell more houses.
(37:33):
And he's like.
Let's try that out.
And man, within a week we were alreadyassigning more properties and so I went
and did the same with acquisitions andalso acquisitions was working better.
And before I knew it, I hadlike 20 VAs on acquisitions
and 20 VAs on these positions.
And we were cranking allthese deals out from overseas.
And I was like, well, Idon't need an office anymore.
(37:55):
Like why am I gonna keep an office herewhen my guys are actually overseas?
So I started kind of like.
Cutting down on cost and thingslike that and putting more
into the overseas operation.
And before I knew it, man,we trained closers for both
acquisitions in this position.
Some of 'em are still with metoday, and we ran our business
a hundred percent virtual.
(38:16):
So these guys in Venezuela thatnever been to the US are putting
houses under contract and sellingthem to American people, right?
So when people say, well, it isjust the VA or whatever, well look.
I could be a va. 'cause Iwas raised in Venezuela.
I was born in the US butI was raised in Venezuela.
So if you ask me, I'm fromVenezuela and my first language
(38:36):
is Spanish is not English.
So that makes me the perfectqualification of a va, right?
So when people talk down on peoplefrom overseas, they don't know what
they're talking about 'cause theydon't know really what's driving
these people to go do that job.
Also, can they make a good livingand have a good standard of living
in the countries that they're from?
(38:56):
I'll tell you what.
Some of my guys here in, in Venezuela,they live much better than some of
the guys that I've seen in the us.
They own their own apartments.
They uh, they drive their own vehicles.
Yeah.
They're not making hundreds ofthousands of dollars, but the exchange
rate helps 'em big time and for themmaking a couple of grand a month here
in, in Venezuela, it is like, it is,they're like almost like rock stars.
(39:18):
I, I've seen some of those guys partyingon the weekends and I'm like, oh my God.
You know, they're making it rain.
Right.
I found a way to operate.
I would say cheaper, right?
Because the exchange, so anemployee in the US right now costs
maybe three to four grand a month.
We can provide a full-time personthat's got a college degree, most
likely, or a university actually a, awhole bachelor's for 1297 per month.
(39:39):
So how is this person different thananother one that's on another country?
Right.
They're not.
I love that.
So what are some of thekey things right now?
I know you're working, it was mostlyreal estate investors, but now I know
you're doing a lot with like executiveassistants and all kinds of stuff.
So what are some of the top thingsthat you're seeing right now?
People are outsourcing these VA forexecutive assistants, uh, and also
video producing, like this podcast,like we have some podcasts from, uh,
(40:00):
friends that are in family like youand I. And we're actually onboarding
one today that he said he had a. Greatin-house team, but he realized how much
money his in-house team is costing him.
And I had a conversation with him.
I said, brother, I can do thatfor almost a third of the cost
that is costing you right now.
And his eyes got wide open.
So I showed him some examples of thethings that we're doing, and he is like.
Sign me up because he can now repurposethose people for something else that
(40:24):
brings more revenue to the businessas opposed to be spending it on money,
on video editors and things like that.
So we do a lot of video editing, alot of podcasts, uh, distribution,
depending on which platform you use.
We have a couple of platforms we'refamiliar with that we recommend to people.
We also do executive assistanceanywhere from checking your emails, uh,
scheduling appointments, paying bills.
(40:47):
Whatever it is that your needs are.
Everybody's needs are different, right?
So executive assistants are theones that we are deploying the most.
We also have lead managers slash.
Property evaluators.
So these guys are evaluating propertiesand qualifying leads for you to close.
Right?
We have some cold colors, although Idon't really like providing that service
much 'cause it has too many variables.
(41:08):
The data has to be good, the location hasto be good, the cold color has to be good.
And then.
Whoever is hiring the cold caller hasto have a process to close those leads.
So for that reason, that's a veryinconsistent business in our world.
Right?
So I'd rather stay away from it, eventhough I have some good cold callers.
And we also do some IT stuff like emailsetups and go high level, you know,
(41:30):
integrations and, and things that, nothingthat I haven't had to do for my business.
Right?
So I was the first Guinea pig.
I was like.
We need a CRM.
Okay, let's go get this thing.
And then, okay, we needto, to automate the CRM.
All right.
Now what do we do Now?
A lot of these things, we'vebeen doing it in-house already.
My friends and students, like I,I have students in the past, they
(41:51):
were the ones asking me for VAs.
'cause they knew that part of mysuccess in the wholesaling side.
Was my VAs.
So they're like, well Ricardo,we know you got your VAs.
How about you provide me with a va? Right.
And before I knew it, man, I hadto disintegrate my real estate
team just to service other people.
But I kind of liked it because Iwanted to take a break as well.
(42:12):
So you get burned out andburned out is a real thing.
I got burned out sometimein, in 20 22, 20 going to 23.
I was literally burned out.
I was closing on deals and I wasn'treally happy about the deals closing.
It was more transactional.
But my students were asking for these VAsand I was quarterbacking it to them and
they started to have success with my guys.
(42:33):
So I'm like, you know what, man?
Maybe this is my calling right now.
So I started letting go of theseVAs to other teams, and some of them
are still using them, so they'recompletely integrated on their business.
I only ask, how are you guys doing?
Are you guys doing anyclosings or whatever?
'cause we pay my, our guys bonusesand we charge it to the customer.
So that's the only reason why.
(42:54):
And also to check on thehealth of their business.
Like more than once I have to stepin and talk to some business owners
and say, Hey man, I think yourinfrastructure is not set up the right
way, or maybe you should change thisand save money here and put money there.
So I wanna see my clients succeed and Ido the best I can to help 'em out do that.
So, but like everything.
I got the urge again to get back in it.
(43:15):
So I'm starting a, a whole brand new realestate operations actually today, so we
should be lead generating this afternoon.
That's awesome, man.
So for people that are interested inhearing more about all this, talk about
how do they connect with you to see ifyou can fit their needs for capital line
va, and then talk a little bit aboutthe real estate stuff you're doing too.
Yeah, easily, man.
Top of the nba.com.
Just go there and schedule an appointment.
(43:37):
We believe all of theclients are different.
You know, there's not a onesize fits all it, it doesn't
really exist in our business.
It's all depends on your needs.
So we connect on a call, welearn about your business, we
understand what you need, and then.
We build somethingtailored to that, right?
Or if it's just an executive assistantor whatnot, those are easy, but
(43:58):
that's how we we're servicing people.
So just go on the website, top ofthe nba.com and schedule a call.
Mar will talk to you and she'sreally good at finding I. What
are the needs of somebody rightnow as far as what we're doing?
We have the Real Estate EntrepreneursPodcast, which you have to come
on board, uh, at some pointalready extended an invitation.
And then we also have the Real EstateEntrepreneurs event attend growth.
(44:21):
We got one coming up in, uh, June27th, 28th in Tampa, in Florida.
So hopefully you canmake it to that, Nick.
It's gonna be pretty cool.
Where we put 200 experiencedreal estate investors, I ask the
speakers to give us their best.
It's like a mastermind.
Okay.
And then we do a GOGI dinner wherewe raise money and we give it
to the staff of the restaurant.
We do, um, a couple of cool things,but like we go party and stuff like
(44:44):
that, that like to go party, you know?
Uh, but yeah, it's kinda like,like having my own mastermind, but
it's not a year long mastermind.
It's one of those things that wedo every three or four months in
different areas of the country.
We're gonna be doing the one in Tampain June, and I think the next one
will be either September or October,somewhere on the northeast, probably
New Jersey or something like that.
(45:05):
So, and then our real estate we'restarting to wholesale again and do
innovations and I mean, it's, it is,once you learn real estate, it's like
a bicycle is, put it down and you canpick it back up whenever you want.
We submitted some offers last weekon some deals that were on the
market and they were accepted.
So now we're going for off-marketdeals, which, which are the
ones that we like the best.
(45:25):
Right.
And you know, I stillgot a couple of rentals.
Uh, my wife is actually theone that handles all of that.
I don't really mess much with it.
I'm not a good landlord.
I, I never liked it.
She's not in love with it either, butshe's okay doing it, you know what I mean?
And I'm, I'm grateful for that.
And.
I'm re-engaging in real estatebecause I think my burnout time has
come to an end, so I'm re-energized.
(45:48):
Um, our VA company's kind oflike going on its own right now.
It was like almost vacations forme and I focused on a different
project, which is our VA company.
And now that everything has, thebases are set and everything is
kind of like where it needs to be.
Now we can grow from there, but at thesame time, why would I not do real estate?
Which is something I know how to do.
Like been doing it forever, since 2008and I want to get engaged back in.
(46:11):
I think right now it's a good time.
So I think that's fantastic, man.
I tell everybody the realestate is like the mafia.
Once you get in, good luck getting out.
Very hard to get out back in.
Look, look, even everything I do is,is a real estate vertical, right?
It, it's, you know, VAs and the eventsand the podcast and all of those things.
That's all real estate.
It's.
Every now and then I will bringa business owner that is in a
(46:32):
different industry just so we cancollaborate and share some information.
But you're right, it is like the mafia.
Once you're in, man, it'svery hard to get out.
Well, I would love tocome on your podcast man.
I would love to connect insome other stuff as well.
It's been awesome having you out today,you sir or somebody who brings your A game
to everything you do in life in business,and this podcast has been no different.
You definitely push your A gameto the A Game podcast today.
(46:54):
Sir, any final thoughts before Ilet you go about your busy Monday?
Go for your goals guys.
And goals without actions are just dreams,so take action and go make it happen.
Thank you so much for having me, Nick.
Thank you for coming on.
Ricard, Zales, top of the line va.
Have a fantastic daysir. I appreciate you.
You.
Welcome to the A Game podcast with NickLamonia digging into the minds and.
Experiences of some of today's brightestentrepreneurs in real estate and
business, along with Hollywood Stars, UFCfighters and your favorite rock bands.
People that have figured out howto overcome obstacles, take chances
live boldly, and no matter what theydo, they always bring their A game.
(00:48):
This is the A Game podcast with theestate investing for entrepreneurs, and
the whole point of this podcast is toshow average people that they can achieve
extraordinary things every single day.
There is multiple guests we'vebeen through for the last 350
plus episodes that if you just goback into these past episodes, you
will see athletes, entrepreneurs.
Fighters, business owners, comedians,people of all shapes and sizes that will
(01:09):
tell you exactly how they found a wayto live their best life, financially,
physically, personally, or teach you themistakes that they made along the way.
So you do not have to.
If that was not enough, we haveanother banger of an episode today.
My guest today on the A Gamepodcast is Ricard Zales.
He is an amazing real estate investorwho is now running top of the line va,
and he's helping real estate investors,business owners, and entrepreneurs
(01:29):
grow and manage their daily tasks.
And everything from social media tolead managers to lead generations to
closers, to the executive assistants.
And he is doing it through his teamfrom his old home country in Venezuela.
And he's got an amazing story where he'sbeen through the whole gamut of making
money, a questionable beginning, andthen finding his way through the military
as a diesel mechanic in the US Navy.
(01:50):
And then getting into real estate andhaving a little bit of a bumpy road.
Gotten up to a hundred rentals atone point, figuring out he didn't
really love being a landlord.
Then getting into 40, 50 flips amonth, bringing in a ton of money
like that, borrowing over $50 million.
Hurricane came through,ruined his business.
He had to start over, started gettingback into wholesaling, figuring out
how to pay back those investors.
So.
He's got the true test of anentrepreneur for adversity and he
(02:12):
knows how to pivot his business.
And now he's got a lot of experienceon what to do and what not to do for
all aspects of real estate investing.
And a lot of what he does is virtual.
And part of what he's doing now ishelping you guys not only on the lead
gen side, on the virtual assistant side.
But he's also back to getting inthe real estate game and wholesaling
and helping you guys do the same.
So he tells a really great storywith a lot of detail that really
(02:33):
takes you on a beautiful journeyfor the first half of this podcast.
And then we get into some of the nutsand potatoes of some of the real estate
stuff, some of the mindset stuff,some of the virtual assistant stuff.
So really great guy.
He and I stayed on the call a lotbefore and a lot after, and he has.
Full of a ton of information.
So definitely follow hischannels, follow his socials,
and definitely reach out to him.
All the links are in the show notesand of course the only fee for this
(02:54):
podcast is to please subscribe.
So take a minute, find the A Gamepodcast, real estate investing for
entrepreneurs anywhere and everywhereyou get your podcast on YouTube
and social media as Apple Spot.
If I all that fun stuff and pleasetake a second and just subscribe to it.
Also you will find us on social media.
I please ask you, you scrollingall day on social media.
Anyway, please take a minuteand follow myself and Ricardo
(03:15):
on all the social media.
And the way that he knows that hebrought value to you guys is for you
to interact when I post these clips.
So send him a message.
Give him a like, give him a thumbs up.
Tag a buddy.
Share it.
It goes a long way.
So he tells his people that you guys werea great audience that he bought value to,
and we keep this party going with moreguests to bring you free information.
The whole point here is that Iwanna do deals together though,
(03:35):
so please find me on social mediaand send me the words real estate.
If you would like to talk about doingdeals together, whether that is you buying
properties from me, selling propertiesto me, or finding a way to partner on
some level, or shoot me a text messagewith the words real estate to 5 1 6.
5, 4, 0 5 7, 3 3, 5 1 6, 5, 4, 0, 5,7, 3, 3. You guys have been amazing.
Thank you so much for Ricardo coming on.
(03:57):
I appreciate everybody.
Have a great day The A Gamepodcast, ladies and gentlemen.
Alright, my guest today is an entrepreneureducator, podcast host, business
order real estate investor fightingout of Houston by way of Venezuela.
And after being a bit lost in his earlyyears, he found purpose in the military
as a diesel mechanic in the US Navy, theoil and gas industry brought him to Texas.
(04:18):
And after seeing a real estateinvestor making money flipping homes.
It gave him the confidence to jumpinto real estate investing as well.
He borrowed money from his mother-in-lawand learned some lessons through
the school of hard knocks and earnedhis stripes as a full-time real
estate investor and contractor.
And after getting laid offfrom his job, he went all in.
He became an accidental landlord on hisfirst year, but was bit by the cashflow
bug, and eventually grew that intoover a hundred rentals at one time.
(04:41):
And over the years has scaled his businessof doing up to 40 to 50 deals a month.
He's no stranger to overcoming adversity.
As in business and in life.
A hurricane threw someunexpected wins into his sale.
And caused him to once again pivotinto wholesaling to pay back his
investors, make himself whole andfind a new way to do his business.
He then stumbled onto virtualassistance and became a master of
hiring other people overseas to managehis day-to-day and scale his business.
(05:05):
And today his bread and butteris helping business owners
and investors just like you.
Do the same through histop of the line VA company.
He is a VA master, a huge advocatefor daily habits, exercise, personal
development, and he even teachesyou how to invest in real estate
through his live events as well.
He is our guest today.
I have been followinghim for a very long time.
It's an honor to have him on.
Please welcome.
(05:25):
To the A Game podcast, Mr. Ricard.
Rosales, man, what anintroduction, brother.
Thank you so much, Nick.
I appreciate you, brother.
You make a great podcaster,so you were born to do this.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate it.
Well, you as well, you've been doingthis for a lot longer than me, man.
So for uh, anybody who doesn't.
A hundred percent know your story.
You wanna fill in some of the gaps thatI had, and there are the highlights of
(05:46):
who you are and where you came from.
Absolutely, man.
Um, so look, I didn't come from arich family or anything like that,
although my dad was actually doingokay as an insurance sales agent.
Okay?
He was door knocking and selling policiesto like homeowners in Venezuela, where
I'm at right now, recording this podcast.
So when I was a little kid, Ialways wanted to be like my dad.
(06:07):
Like he was my hero.
Like he was wearing a suit, the tie.
And when I was eight years old,I asked him to buy me a suit.
I said, dad, I want you tobuy me a suit and a tie, and
I want to go to work with you.
And he went and boughtme a suit and a tie man.
And I started going to his office.
So I would say my first job wasto be his secretary's assistant.
(06:29):
And, and back in those days,you know, they used to have
files and folders like this.
Okay.
And each client had one of these,they would just say, Ricardo, go
get, you know, so-and-so's file.
And I will go and, and,and look at the letters.
And I said, okay, starts with aZ. So I knew that was the last
drawer and I would just pull thefiles and bring it to their desk.
(06:50):
By the time I was 20 years old,I was literally running all the
operations in his company and Imean, I started from the bottom.
I was handing handling files, and thenI ended up pretty much processing.
Every source of policies and commissionchecks, and you name it, man, I
did everything in, in his company.
I had a boss.
(07:10):
I didn't think I had a father.
Okay.
And that started causing a lot ofconflicts in between me and him, and the
fact that I was a little bit of a rebel.
Okay?
I, mm-hmm.
I started drinking and partyingat a very young age in Venezuela
is normal for a 12-year-old kid togo start drinking and hanging out
and doing those kind of things.
Right.
So, um, I don't know that that's thecase today, to be honest with you, but
(07:32):
that was the case when I was growing up.
Okay.
Uh, I was just telling some ofthe guys here in the office that
I started driving when I was 11.
Like, think about that.
Right.
You're, you're just a. A child when you're11 years old and my grandfather gave
me the car and he is like, you drive.
And he taught me how to drive.
And, um, the thing aboutVenezuela is back then.
(07:54):
I'm pretty sure today if I gotcaught, all you had to do was bribe
the cop and it was perfectly okay.
You know what I mean?
The cop is the one actually askingyou for a donation, like, yeah, hey,
I caught you doing something wrong.
How about you gimme some money for lunch?
And it's a done deal, right?
So.
It happens still today, by the way.
But anyhow, I was a little bitof a party guy and my dad wa
(08:16):
wanted me to go to college andhe wanted the best for me, right?
And which he thought maybe goingto college and getting a degree
was gonna open up a lot of doors.
And he pushed me for that.
And I just didn't wantto go to school, man.
Not that I didn't want to.
Study.
It's just that I didn't knowwhat to study, I didn't know what
I wanted to do when I grew up.
All I knew was I want to be like my dad.
I want to sell, I wantto be a businessman.
(08:37):
And that pushed us apart.
And I ended up, he claims he fired me.
I claim I left him.
So today we still have thatconversation and he says.
Because I fired you andI said, no, I left you.
I don't know.
You know, so, so maybe itwas a little bit of both.
Right.
And then after that, to makeit a long story short, I
ended up joining the US Navy.
I was born in the US and I alreadyhad a daughter I needed to provide for
(09:01):
her and to make an income and, and Ijust didn't know what I wanted to do.
And when I was a kid, Iwanted to be in the military.
I don't know what it was aboutthe military that I always kind
of like felt drawn into that.
And now that I'm an adult and I'm tryingto, I guess, get my life together.
Why not do it when, when I'mthe one making the decisions?
Not so.
'cause I asked my mom and my dadsend me to a military school when I
(09:23):
was a kid and they refused to do it.
They didn't wanna do it 'cause theydidn't want me to go through the
pain that those kids go through,uh, as far as becoming disciplined.
Right.
So that's how I endedup joining the US Navy.
Man.
One of the best decisions I've ever made.
I fully believe that in our country,in the, in the United States
of America, everybody should.
Pay at least two to fouryears of military service.
(09:47):
It's elective today, but I think if we allwent through it, our country will be in
much better shape than what it is today.
Right?
But anyhow, it's not that way andit's, it's completely voluntary and
I, and you have to qualify, passa test, and all of those things.
So I went and took the test andI qualified and the guy said.
You got all these different choices tojoin the military, what do you want to do?
(10:09):
Because I always push paper withmy dad, like with the policies
and the insurance and all that.
I wanted to do something wayout of my comfort zone, and I
chose to be a diesel mechanic.
I never even changed alight bulb in my life, man.
Like I nothing like, I waslike completely ignorant when
it comes to turning wrenches.
And guess what?
By the end of my career, my Navycareer, I did four years only.
(10:31):
I was probably the bestmechanic on that ship.
I was in charge of all the power plants,the diesel generators, propulsion engines.
I rebuilt every singleone of those engines.
Worked on gas turbines.
I knew how to align thefuel plant, you name it.
I mean, it was a small ship, so onsmall ships you gotta wear more hats.
It was a mine sweeper, so they call him.
(10:51):
I, uh, wooden ships Iron Man,because basically it, it is
like you almost got no life.
I slept an average of three tofour hours a day probably, and
yes, and, and the, and the other 18hours or 19 hours, it was working.
It wasn't just hanging outand smoking or whatever.
No, it was just literallyturning wrenches, right?
So you build a character when youdo that, you have to be disciplined,
(11:13):
otherwise you're gonna pay for it.
They're gonna make you pay for it, andyou gotta do the best you can otherwise.
Your enemy is the ship.
It's not really anothership firing in today's Navy.
That's the way it is.
It's your own ship is what you gottaprotect yourself against because it's
got a lot of moving parts, right?
So, so you gotta be on point withmaintenance and things of that
(11:36):
nature so things don't break on you.
Right?
And so we learned all of that,and I got out because I didn't
like the politics of the military.
Okay?
In today's world, we're in 2025.
There's still racism out there.
Okay.
And it's very vivid.
We see it in our differentparts of the countries, right?
Uh, well guess what?
In the military, there'salso that, and I'm Hispanic.
(11:59):
Even though I look white and I gotgreen eyes and all of that, I'm still
Hispanic, and there was a lot offavoritism towards some other people that
didn't have the accolades I have, but.
Yet they got all therecognition, I would say, right?
And that helped them advancedin rank, that helped them
advance quicker than I was.
I figured that if I was that good, that Ithought I was, if I put those, uh, skills
(12:25):
to work outside in the civilian world,like we call it, it will pay off to me.
And it did.
I went and left the Navy.
I was grateful for it.
I was never bitter about it, but I knewit wasn't for me long term because of the
politics, the way the politics worked.
I didn't like it, so Ifigured I, I'll go on my own.
Now, one thing is when I was on that ship.
I would see this oil rigs in themiddle of the, uh, Gulf of Mexico.
(12:46):
And I would say, man, I wonder howmuch those mechanics make out there.
You know, it is the same thing.
This is a war ship.
The other one is just a floating shipthat's drilling for oil or whatever.
And I set a goal to find me ajob in the oil and gas business.
And by the time I got out of theNavy, man, I had 19 job offers in
multiple companies in the Houston area.
That's why I ended up in Houston.
(13:07):
Little did I know, man, that.
Oil industry was gonna change my life.
I went from making, I don'tknow, as a, as an E four that I
was in the Navy with benefits.
I was probably bringing 2,500 tothree grand a month into making
six, seven, $8,000 now a month.
And then two years later, I wasmaking north of $200,000 a year.
(13:29):
So I went from nothing beingvery dirty in the on the ship to.
Two years later, travelingbusiness class and going to
nice hotels all over the world.
And being paid forputting my skills to work.
And I had a great 10 year runin the oil and gas business.
I used to work offshore, so I woulddo 30 days on, sometimes 30 days off.
Sometimes it would be on call, so Ididn't really have a rotation, but
(13:53):
when I was not on a rig, I was free.
Most of my friends in the oil andgas business, when they made a they,
they collected a good paycheck.
They will just go blow it on a toy.
They will buy a boat.
Motorcycles, rifles, guns.
That wasn't me.
I was like, man, what can I dowith this money that I'm earning?
That is, it's hard earned because you'reaway from home, you're working still
(14:14):
crazy hours, the responsibilities arehigh because now it's, it's millions of
dollars of equipment under your hands.
That's when I started picking up booksabout real estate, and this is in 2008.
Now it's the meltdown ishappening, and here I am.
I'm sitting on a little bit of money.
It wasn't a lot of money, butI had a little bit of money
and I said, you know what, man?
This flipping houses thing.
(14:35):
So I saw Armando Montelongo on tv,flip a house, and I was like, man,
if that guy can do this, I can do it.
I've done things that are harder,you know, on the ship, in, in the
oil and gas business, buying a houseand rehabbing it and fixing it up.
Should not be rocket science.
It turns out it is.
So I started doing my due diligence.
(14:56):
I learned about harmony loans.
I learned about 70% managed repairs,things of that nature, right?
I went and bought myfirst property in 2009.
I. Actually, end of 2008, a man, everycontractor on the street saw me like
a, like a deer with the headlights on.
And they, they stole my money andI couldn't finish this project.
And it took me a whole yearto flip my first house.
(15:18):
Well, finally I did itand, um, I had a job, so I.
It helped that I had a W2 while themoney was getting stolen by some
people I was producing somewhere else.
Took me a whole year to do myfirst flip and I couldn't sell it.
'cause now it's 2009 and themarket is completely tanked down.
So I became a landlord and thenI was like, oh, maybe becoming a
landlord is the one thing that'sgonna free me away from my job.
(15:39):
'cause I didn't hate my job, but I knewthat I didn't want to be away from my.
Family and my friends all the time, whichI had to do to make some good money.
So I started putting rentals away 'causeI saw another guy that did seminars in
the Houston area, um, educating peopleabout harmony loans and how you could
buy properties with almost no money outtayour pockets and refinancing into this.
(16:00):
What?
Back then it was called blanket loans.
There was none of this DSERthat came around like in 2015.
I just went on a run.
I saw, he said if you got $40,000 a month.
Coming in from rentals, couldyou live, you know, comfortable?
And I had, I'm like, hell yeah, rightnow I don't even make that much.
(16:20):
And you know, I love to do that.
So I bought on his dream.
Okay.
I bought on, it wasn't mydream, it was his dream.
And man, I tell you what,that was a huge mistake.
Now.
I did learn the hard way because I wentand scaled the acquisitions on rentals
and started putting rentals away.
And I didn't know I wasn'tgonna enjoy being a landlord.
(16:43):
I didn't enjoy doing evictions.
I didn't enjoy putting a73-year-old lady on the streets
'cause her son didn't pay rent.
You know what I'm saying?
Like.
There was a lot of those thingsthat I didn't have a heart for,
and I became a motivated seller.
Somewhere around 2012, 2013, Istarted liquidating all my rentals.
I still had a job In 2013, I had theopportunity to interview for one of
(17:06):
the largest service companies in theworld, in the oil and gas business.
And they were looking for a guy withmy profile that had plenty of field
experience, um, had done a lot of jobs,had, uh, done a lot of interventions.
Uh, I used to specializeon sub C, which is.
Offshore, but in the bottom of the ocean,9,000, 8,000 foot of water, water death.
(17:26):
Okay.
So these things are way down there.
I didn't dive into it, it wasall done from the rig, but
that was what I specialized on.
It was like the, it's calledthe deep water equipment.
You know, they made me anoffer I couldn't refuse.
And in that offer, they actually allowedme to continue my real estate journey.
'cause you know how most employers don'twant you to have a side thing like.
(17:46):
We want you to only work for,and they're like, nah man.
We know you've been doing realestate for, for a few years now.
We know it's your passion.
We don't want you to deviate fromthat, but, you know, make sure
that your job is taken care of.
You can get in and out of theoffice as many times as you
can, and I'm like, oh my God.
Bingo.
Yeah, I'm, I'm in, like,what do I need to do?
Right?
Mm-hmm.
So I ended up, uh, as a manager inthat company with over 500 employees.
(18:11):
Uh, running a budgetof $120 million a year.
I started thinking bigger when itcomes to numbers and things like that.
And by that time I had gottenrid of most of my rentals.
I kept maybe like 10 to 20 thatwere really good, but I knew that
replacing my income with the rentswas gonna be very hard because.
350 bucks a month, 450 bucks a monthon cashflow on average per property.
(18:35):
I mean, how many do you really need todo to, to be able to pay your bills and
even put money away and be comfortable?
You gotta have a lot of 'em,like a hundred to 200 properties.
But I knew the headaches of havinga hundred to 200 properties already.
'cause I had already got there atsome point and I didn't want that.
So now this is 2014 15.
Uh, the market has changed.
(18:56):
On a up and now you can flip housesand sell 'em and make a bigger check.
So that's what I shifted to.
I shifted to flipping houses.
I was doing one to three projects amonth, roughly, well, I would say a month.
It was like in a periodof like 60 to 90 days.
It's kind of like a cycle when you boughta property, rehabbed it, and then either
rented it or sold it, and I started.
(19:18):
Educating some of my peers inthe oil and gas business 'cause
they were paying 35% taxes.
And I was like laughing at 'em, waslike, dude, I, I don't even pay 10%.
They're like, how you make moremoney than we do in salary?
And I'm like, I do real estateand, and it is got depreciation
and appreciation and I got separatebusinesses and they got intrigued by it.
(19:39):
And a couple of those guys todayare actually multimillionaires.
They own a lot of properties.
But you know, I started teachingthose guys on how I acquired, you
know, how, where to find them.
How to get the funding, howto get the money, how to do
it without any other money.
And before we knew it, man, we weredoing, you know, we tripled the amount of
properties we were buying at one point.
Um, and in 2015 I got laid off.
(20:01):
You know, the market tooka whole different shift and
I said, you know what, man?
I've already been doingreal estate for years now.
I know what I'm doing.
I know how to flip these houses.
I'm a general contractor already'cause I had to become one by
necessity to manage, you know, all thesubcontractors much better and all that.
I just went for it and, and Istarted going from like two to three
(20:22):
houses, to 10 houses to 15 houses onprojects ongoing at any given time.
And I'll be honest with you,man, by 2017 we reached our.
I would say our pinnacle, somewhere aroundJuly, we were doing north of 40 projects
at a time, and now we had a full blowngeneral contracting company with over
(20:44):
50 people, you know, employed with us.
We had a lot of subs, like theroofers, the acs, all the mechanicals.
We, we subbed it out.
But most of the finishes,the drywall and painting.
Replacing siding, things of that nature.
We handled it ourselves and webecame a machine for acquiring
properties and rehabbing them.
And in August is when HurricaneHarvey came over and disrupted
(21:07):
our business completely.
I mean, it turned us upside down.
Now imagine having that many projects onharmony loans and private money loans.
We were only on interest payments200 grand a month, roughly,
probably a little bit more.
What killed us wasn't the hurricaneitself damaging properties.
It was losing our workforce.
We lost our workforce to, to FEMAand to everything else that was out
(21:27):
there paying a lot more than we were.
And we were like sitting, like sittingdocks, you know, we, we were just
sitting in the, in the middle ofthe storm with no people, all this
money going out because I wanted tohonor my commitments to my lenders.
I kept on making those paymentsfor a few months, but it was just
time before I ran outta money.
I knew how to acquire properties,I knew how to source them.
Uh, we were heavily in, in direct mail.
(21:49):
We had a company called Direct Mail Out.
We did our own mailings, but so we, sofor our friends, that helped us a little
bit with the overhead on direct mail.
You know, at some point I said, okay, whatcan I do to patch this hole and to get
out of this mess that I'm in right now?
And the only thing I couldthink of was wholesaling.
It is just that I didn't knowhow to do the whole transaction.
(22:09):
Like I never bought a property,flipped the contract to somebody
else other than my own friends.
We also had to do it at a scalebecause if you're bleeding.
200 to 250,000 bucks per month.
How can you stop that?
You just gotta do it in bulk, right?
So we went and started learningand we literally started with our
own properties for the most part.
We started sourcing new, new deals andit was a very painful experience, but
(22:32):
we went from being multimillionairesinto not having 50 bucks to our names.
And in, in a period of about threeyears, it was like a slow death.
Literally.
Yeah.
It was like going througha lot of ups and downs and.
Now we're getting into litigationswith some of our lenders.
Uh, a lot of 'em work with us,and, and they gave us plenty of
(22:54):
time to get rid of the properties.
Some of them, they lost patients,some other ones, they just did
what they had to do, right?
They foreclosed on the propertiesor we didn't back over to them.
We work with 99% of 'em.
There's always that 1%that is never satisfied.
Uh, but that's justpart of business, right?
Um, at the end of the day, Ididn't put a gun on somebody's
head to loan me the money.
(23:15):
Um, they did it willingly and I signedon the dots and I signed personal
guarantees and things of that nature.
And then I dealt with thatas issues started coming up.
Right.
So we cleared our plate, andnow in 2020 before pandemic.
Now we're putting a good size ofamounts under contract for wholesaling.
(23:35):
And the pandemic made us do it virtualbecause we all got locked down.
We know what happened, and thenwe started putting houses under
contract while we were locked down.
Right?
And I, I started training guyshere in Venezuela on how to do it.
And when it worked, like the firstfew words, I was like, wait a minute.
This is a whole different animal.
I wanna do more of this.
(23:57):
It's less overhead.
I'm just flipping paper and no riskbecause I don't have to sign for loans.
And that's how became, we became, Iwould say, arguably one of the largest
wholesaling operations out there.
I'm not gonna say the largest one.
'cause there's some bigones out there, man.
There's some guys that aredoing hundreds of deals a month.
But for a mom and pops, you know, having20 to 30 properties under contract at
(24:18):
any given time was a pretty good, andI think the most we got was to about
67 deals under contract at one point.
But of course that's when themarket was going up, right?
So every, everybody.
Looks like a rockstar whenthe market is going up.
You know, if you ask that question,maybe today or two years ago when the
market started tanking, that's whenthe real people kinda like came out,
(24:38):
you know, and you knew who was realand who was not, because those that
dealt with adversities in the pastare the ones that are able to thrive.
So that's, that's my story, man.
So that's where we are today.
Now we have a VA company,we do real estate events.
Uh, we still do some, uh, wholesaling.
I'm actually cranking out.
A whole new wholesalingoperation, uh, as we speak.
I just put a brand new teamtogether today and we start lead
(25:00):
generating this afternoon actually.
So if you have been kicking yourselfthat you didn't start investing in real
estate sooner, whether you're beginner,intermediate, or advanced, any way you're
looking to get it on a residential,commercial, land development, wholesaling,
fix, and flips, whatever it is.
Let's find a way to get you involved insome projects, get you some properties,
whether you wanna sell some propertiesto me, whether you want to buy some
properties from me, whether residential,fix and flip, cash flow, multifamily,
(25:23):
whatever it is you're looking for.
Let's figure out a way to getyou involved or find a way for
us to partner up on some deals.
Reach out to me on any ofmy social media channels.
If you go on www.nic.com/links, you'llsee all the different ways to connect
with me and figure out how we canstart to work together, make it happen.
Everybody that invests inreal estate always just says
they wish they did it sooner.
(25:43):
Best time to start is today.
Very cool, man.
I think you have an incredible storyand there's, there's a lot of different
things in there that I think we couldgo on a bunch of tangents about.
Absolutely.
One of them being, I thought you hadan interesting phrase in there that you
said when you are working in the Navy, I.
The enemy is not the other peopleshooting the missiles at you.
It's protecting your own ship.
That's right.
(26:03):
It's your own ship.
That could be your enemy.
And I feel like that that is a goodanalogy for our minds and our bodies,
that a lot of the times when we get intoreal estate, we think it's all these
other things that are gonna keep us.
But 99% of the time what I talk toinvestors, they're their biggest enemy.
And I know you're big on personaldevelopment stuff, so talk a little bit
about that side of it, because I thinkwhen people hear your story, they think
that there's something different and it'slike, no, man, everybody has their things.
(26:26):
It's a matter of like.
What's up here that you're tellingyourself and you're doing, and new
investors don't want to hear that, butthat's really like the biggest thing is,
you know, protecting yourself from yourown enemy, which a lot of the times is us.
Look, Nick, you, you know this man,and hopefully the people listening to
your podcast will relate to it as well.
We are our own worst enemies.
We are.
I mean, it's not, the other is ifyou think other people are causing
(26:49):
your situation or your state ofmind or whatever, go the wrong way.
Then you have a victim mentality.
That's it.
So it all starts with us, and I'vealways said this and preached it,
and I learned this from someone else.
I cannot remember who.
I think it was Tony Robbins.
He says, the external world is areflection to your internal world, meaning
external world, meaning the riches,the money, the material things, right?
(27:13):
If you are not internallyright, how do you expect for
that external world to grow?
Right.
So you have to grow inside,before you grow outside.
When I was going through allthose, um, setbacks, okay.
'cause they were all setbacks.
I look at everything froma positive standpoint.
I got a story to tell now.
If you met me in 2017, Ididn't have a story to tell.
My story wasn't where it is today.
(27:33):
Maybe I could have told you astory from the Navy in the oil
field, but that was, that was it.
Like there was nothing big about that.
I was like.
Okay.
Where were your setbacks?
I don't really have that many setbacksother than being away from home or
being on a ship, you know, for months.
But that's not a setback, that's justa situational thing in your life.
When my business started crumbling.
(27:54):
Okay.
'cause that's really what it started.
It started justdisintegrating, number one.
I didn't know who to talk to.
Like I didn't have somebody Icould pick up the phone and say.
Hey, Nick, what would you do in this case?
I didn't have that.
I didn't believe inmentorships at the time.
I didn't believe in surrounding myselfwith maybe people that were at a higher
level than I was because my ego was big.
(28:18):
I was the guy actually people wascoming to for questions and answers.
When it came to real estate in my area.
I had an ego and, and I thinkthat's what the universe.
Literally fixed for me at the timeis that, put that ego in check.
Right?
But one thing that I did have fromthe military days that I learned
is that when you have adversities,you just gotta keep on moving.
(28:40):
And I learned that from Chief Hallett.
He was my, I would say, ultimatesupervisor on that ship.
And every time we run into a problem,he will ask me, how will you do it?
And if I told him, and he didn't thinkit was the the way he would ask me again.
Is there another way that you can do it?
Can you think about that?
And so he made me look at challengesfrom multiple angles, right?
(29:01):
He also taught me to focus on what I couldcontrol if I didn't have control over it.
Let's say an engineblew up and the piston.
Not on the ship because he hasn't arrived.
Well, I can't, I can't control that.
I gotta wait for the piston to come tothe ship so I can install it, right?
But in the meantime, what is itthat I can do to get that engine
ready to receive that piston?
(29:22):
That's what you can control.
Go focus on that.
And I saw my challengesin the real estate side.
The same way.
I didn't have money,but I did have a roof.
I have vehicles.
I had things that I could do.
And I also had a gym in my housebecause I do believe in exercising.
And I remember, man, this one day Iget up at three o'clock in the morning
and look, I'm not a morning guy.
(29:43):
I'm not the guy that wakes upat five and it's fired up about
going to exercise or whatnot.
I'm not.
I'm a seven to eight o'clockin the morning kind of guy.
Well, this particular morning,man, it's three o'clock.
I wake up and, and Iknow I can't go to sleep.
So I said, okay, I'm gonnastart my morning routine.
It's 3:00 AM I'm just gonna start earlier.
So I went in, I read 10 pages of a book.
(30:05):
I went upstairs, put on TonyRobbins, uh, and there's also this
other guy called even Carmichael.
He's got the 10 Rules ofSuccess, a, a YouTube channel.
He is amazing.
Everybody should listen to that channel.
And I start exercising, lifting weights,you know, I'm getting my blood going and.
I guess my wife got up and, andshe was like, 'cause my gym was
like just over the, the masterbedroom on, on the second floor.
(30:28):
So she went upstairs to check me out.
She's like, what are you doing?
She opened up the door.
It is like 5:00 AM and I'mhere I am and sweating.
I. I'm in the zone, man.
I'm, I'm watching Tony, youknow, I'm lifting weights.
And she's like, what are you doing?
And I was like, what does it mean?
Like, I'm, I'm, I'm exercising.
She's like, no, yougotta go get a job, man.
And I was like, I'm sorryman, just close that door.
(30:50):
I'll talk to you later about that.
I finished my routine and then I wentand talked to her and I said, look,
what do you mean by getting a job?
Look, we got no money.
Like, we don't have money for food.
We don't have money for this.
I was like, look, I'mgonna figure something out.
You're gonna have.
Money for gas, for food andall those things is gonna
come in one way or another.
But you think a job is gonna help me livethe lifestyle that we live right now.
(31:10):
We had acquired a lifestyle of a richperson, so when you're rich like that,
you, you don't spend less than 30 granda month on stuff, you know, on mortgage
and cars and things of that nature.
And she looked at me and shesaid, I guess you're right.
And I was like, look,let me continue to work.
I'm working on myself.
That's why I'm exercising right now.
That's why I'm putting the rightinformation on my head so I can deal
(31:30):
with the challenges that we have.
We just gotta keep pushing, right.
I told her, I said, look, when you'rein the middle of hell, we got hell.
I mean, I knew I wasin the middle of hell.
Is that where you stop?
No.
You have to keep it movinguntil you get to the end.
That's exactly what I'm doing right now.
So she understood the message at that,that time and, and I kept on pushing.
And one way or another, I, I figuredit out and money started coming in
and I started cutting on expensesthat I need to have anymore.
(31:54):
And, you know, you balance thingsliterally left and right and before you
know it, you are out of the problem.
So personal developmentis like taking a shower.
You gotta do it every day.
Every day.
Look, the, this morning Iwent to bed early last night.
I went to bed around 9:30 PM Uh, usuallyI go to bed around 11 this morning,
it was eight o'clock in the morning.
(32:14):
I didn't wanna get up.
I felt like, man, I reallywant to sleep another hour.
But then I say, you know what, man,if I sleep another hour on a Monday.
I'm gonna start the week wrong.
I gotta get on my, on my routine.
So right away I went in, Istarted reading my pages.
I went in and did my journal.
After the journal, I went inand started doing some weights.
It's hard to get there.
(32:35):
That's the thing is when you wakeup and you don't wanna do the
things you're supposed to do.
Because you feel like, ah, Iwant to rest a little bit more.
But once you do it, man, youfeel like a $10 million check.
You know, you're like all fired up, yougot energy again, and now guess what?
I'm ready to conquer the week.
So, you know, you just gotta do thethings that put you uncomfortable.
When you are in comfortablesituations to keep 'em moving.
(32:55):
So I learned that in themilitary and that's what helped
me push through the hard times.
And even till today, we still dealwith challenges on a regular basis.
Clients that live, people that don'tsign up when they're supposed to
sign up, um, you know, whatever.
You know?
Okay.
What's under your control?
What I can do is.
Continue to read, continue to exercise,continue to surround myself with the
(33:16):
right people and take all the steps thatI need to take to become successful.
And the other thing I do today is Ifind mentors that have what I want
to have so they can lead me the way.
Right.
It is quicker that way.
That's one of the majorchanges I've made in my life.
It's, I, I look for thosethat have what I want.
And then I said, all right, man,how much is it to, so you can
coach me on, guide me, right?
(33:36):
And then I'll take it from there.
That's awesome, man.
So when we talk about now you're pivoting,you're doing all like the things that
people need to do to survive in business.
When you hit a roadblock,you find a way around it.
And now I think another naturalprogression people make is they get
their own business going and then theywant to get some of their time back.
And of course the old days of like,you need a warehouse, and employees
(33:57):
and 4 0 1 ks, like virtual assistantshave changed that where you can
literally be a business owner.
And run an entire businessand you don't have to break
the bank on all these things.
And I think the misconception is ifyou're paying people five, $10 an
hour, they're not good at what they,I actually see both sides of it.
I see people go, I'm justgonna hire a VA for $5 an hour.
And I go, and you think that's gonna just.
Like you have to know what todo first before you go do that.
(34:19):
But then the other people arelike, you get what you pay for.
But there is a magic mix.
People are making it work, andthere's a way to start to scale
your business, get your time back,and really be more efficient with
very talented, reliable people.
So talk a little bit about how you'redoing that and what you're doing
there with top of the line va. SoI've been using VAs for years now.
My first VA. Came in in 2017sometime, and all I needed was
(34:43):
somebody to work on my websites.
That's it.
I just needed somebody to makethe websites and so we can have
online presence for our wholesalingand real estate business.
Uh, his name was Carlos.
He actually worked with me untillast month, so it was about
an eight year run that we did.
Uh, amazing.
I love the guy.
He helped me build thiscompany from the ground up.
And then the second VA I had wassomebody to uh, handle my social media.
(35:06):
To do the post and, 'cause Iknew I wasn't diligent about it.
Like they would tell me, you gottapost x, X amount of times today.
And I was like, I forget about that stuff.
Like I'm not even payingattention to my phone.
You texted me earlier, I wasn'tlooking at my phone, man.
I'm very bad with my phone.
So those were the first twopeople, but what happened was
somewhere around 2020 to 2021.
(35:26):
I believed in having an office,uh, like a physical office.
I had one in Houston where Ihad about 10 dispo managers.
'cause we grew exponentially,our wholesaling business.
What I realized is that we werefailing miserably, I mean, in selling
properties, you know, on time.
And the reason why is becausethe people I was finding, not
(35:46):
all of them, but a good majority.
They weren't putting a hundred percentof the effort, I think it was because
they weren't hungry enough in a way.
Some of them were mediocre, you know?
And I remember having, I had likethe $1.8 million in assignments and
I told them, I said, look guys, ifyou guys close this money in 90 days,
aside from your commissions, yoursalary, I'm gonna grab another chunk.
(36:07):
It was like 300 grand.
And I'm gonna give it to you guyson bonuses 'cause I'm thinking
they're gonna go work for that money.
They're gonna be, you know,motivated to collect that money.
The truth is, they weren't willingto do the things they needed
to do to collect that money.
I. Was make more phone calls,talk to more people on a weekend.
I'm looking at my CRM and I'm lookingat all this money on the pipeline
(36:29):
and I'm like, man, do I need toget on the phone and start calling
myself and sell some of these deals?
And I did, and I assigneda few deals right away.
And my dispo guy, Cesar, at thetime, he was also doing the same,
but the other guys weren't doing it.
So I wanted to try something different.
And so I showed up to theoffice and I fired everybody.
I only kept Cesar and Shane at the time.
Mm-hmm.
(36:49):
But I say, guys, this is not working out.
I appreciate you.
I don't wanna waste your time anymore.
Um, if I gotta sell these dealson my own, I don't need you guys.
So this is not personal.
This is business.
So I let him all go and I talkedto Caesar and I said, look man,
this is what I think I want to do.
'cause I, I really thought atthat time, Nick, I was gonna quit.
I thought about quitting the business.
I was like, I. MaybeI'm not good for this.
(37:11):
Maybe I'm not, you know,maybe the universe is pushing
me in a different direction.
I don't know.
But I said, look, I got these two guysin, in Venezuela, Carlos, and Carla.
Okay.
Um, they're amazing.
And what I'm gonna do isI'm gonna ask them for help.
I'm gonna ask them to hire five morepeople like them to help you with the
process and so you can sell more houses.
(37:33):
And he's like.
Let's try that out.
And man, within a week we were alreadyassigning more properties and so I went
and did the same with acquisitions andalso acquisitions was working better.
And before I knew it, I hadlike 20 VAs on acquisitions
and 20 VAs on these positions.
And we were cranking allthese deals out from overseas.
And I was like, well, Idon't need an office anymore.
(37:55):
Like why am I gonna keep an office herewhen my guys are actually overseas?
So I started kind of like.
Cutting down on cost and thingslike that and putting more
into the overseas operation.
And before I knew it, man,we trained closers for both
acquisitions in this position.
Some of 'em are still with metoday, and we ran our business
a hundred percent virtual.
(38:16):
So these guys in Venezuela thatnever been to the US are putting
houses under contract and sellingthem to American people, right?
So when people say, well, it isjust the VA or whatever, well look.
I could be a va. 'cause Iwas raised in Venezuela.
I was born in the US butI was raised in Venezuela.
So if you ask me, I'm fromVenezuela and my first language
(38:36):
is Spanish is not English.
So that makes me the perfectqualification of a va, right?
So when people talk down on peoplefrom overseas, they don't know what
they're talking about 'cause theydon't know really what's driving
these people to go do that job.
Also, can they make a good livingand have a good standard of living
in the countries that they're from?
(38:56):
I'll tell you what.
Some of my guys here in, in Venezuela,they live much better than some of
the guys that I've seen in the us.
They own their own apartments.
They uh, they drive their own vehicles.
Yeah.
They're not making hundreds ofthousands of dollars, but the exchange
rate helps 'em big time and for themmaking a couple of grand a month here
in, in Venezuela, it is like, it is,they're like almost like rock stars.
(39:18):
I, I've seen some of those guys partyingon the weekends and I'm like, oh my God.
You know, they're making it rain.
Right.
I found a way to operate.
I would say cheaper, right?
Because the exchange, so anemployee in the US right now costs
maybe three to four grand a month.
We can provide a full-time personthat's got a college degree, most
likely, or a university actually a, awhole bachelor's for 1297 per month.
(39:39):
So how is this person different thananother one that's on another country?
Right.
They're not.
I love that.
So what are some of thekey things right now?
I know you're working, it was mostlyreal estate investors, but now I know
you're doing a lot with like executiveassistants and all kinds of stuff.
So what are some of the top thingsthat you're seeing right now?
People are outsourcing these VA forexecutive assistants, uh, and also
video producing, like this podcast,like we have some podcasts from, uh,
(40:00):
friends that are in family like youand I. And we're actually onboarding
one today that he said he had a. Greatin-house team, but he realized how much
money his in-house team is costing him.
And I had a conversation with him.
I said, brother, I can do thatfor almost a third of the cost
that is costing you right now.
And his eyes got wide open.
So I showed him some examples of thethings that we're doing, and he is like.
Sign me up because he can now repurposethose people for something else that
(40:24):
brings more revenue to the businessas opposed to be spending it on money,
on video editors and things like that.
So we do a lot of video editing, alot of podcasts, uh, distribution,
depending on which platform you use.
We have a couple of platforms we'refamiliar with that we recommend to people.
We also do executive assistanceanywhere from checking your emails, uh,
scheduling appointments, paying bills.
(40:47):
Whatever it is that your needs are.
Everybody's needs are different, right?
So executive assistants are theones that we are deploying the most.
We also have lead managers slash.
Property evaluators.
So these guys are evaluating propertiesand qualifying leads for you to close.
Right?
We have some cold colors, although Idon't really like providing that service
much 'cause it has too many variables.
(41:08):
The data has to be good, the location hasto be good, the cold color has to be good.
And then.
Whoever is hiring the cold caller hasto have a process to close those leads.
So for that reason, that's a veryinconsistent business in our world.
Right?
So I'd rather stay away from it, eventhough I have some good cold callers.
And we also do some IT stuff like emailsetups and go high level, you know,
(41:30):
integrations and, and things that, nothingthat I haven't had to do for my business.
Right?
So I was the first Guinea pig.
I was like.
We need a CRM.
Okay, let's go get this thing.
And then, okay, we needto, to automate the CRM.
All right.
Now what do we do Now?
A lot of these things, we'vebeen doing it in-house already.
My friends and students, like I,I have students in the past, they
(41:51):
were the ones asking me for VAs.
'cause they knew that part of mysuccess in the wholesaling side.
Was my VAs.
So they're like, well Ricardo,we know you got your VAs.
How about you provide me with a va? Right.
And before I knew it, man, I hadto disintegrate my real estate
team just to service other people.
But I kind of liked it because Iwanted to take a break as well.
(42:12):
So you get burned out andburned out is a real thing.
I got burned out sometimein, in 20 22, 20 going to 23.
I was literally burned out.
I was closing on deals and I wasn'treally happy about the deals closing.
It was more transactional.
But my students were asking for these VAsand I was quarterbacking it to them and
they started to have success with my guys.
(42:33):
So I'm like, you know what, man?
Maybe this is my calling right now.
So I started letting go of theseVAs to other teams, and some of them
are still using them, so they'recompletely integrated on their business.
I only ask, how are you guys doing?
Are you guys doing anyclosings or whatever?
'cause we pay my, our guys bonusesand we charge it to the customer.
So that's the only reason why.
(42:54):
And also to check on thehealth of their business.
Like more than once I have to stepin and talk to some business owners
and say, Hey man, I think yourinfrastructure is not set up the right
way, or maybe you should change thisand save money here and put money there.
So I wanna see my clients succeed and Ido the best I can to help 'em out do that.
So, but like everything.
I got the urge again to get back in it.
(43:15):
So I'm starting a, a whole brand new realestate operations actually today, so we
should be lead generating this afternoon.
That's awesome, man.
So for people that are interested inhearing more about all this, talk about
how do they connect with you to see ifyou can fit their needs for capital line
va, and then talk a little bit aboutthe real estate stuff you're doing too.
Yeah, easily, man.
Top of the nba.com.
Just go there and schedule an appointment.
(43:37):
We believe all of theclients are different.
You know, there's not a onesize fits all it, it doesn't
really exist in our business.
It's all depends on your needs.
So we connect on a call, welearn about your business, we
understand what you need, and then.
We build somethingtailored to that, right?
Or if it's just an executive assistantor whatnot, those are easy, but
(43:58):
that's how we we're servicing people.
So just go on the website, top ofthe nba.com and schedule a call.
Mar will talk to you and she'sreally good at finding I. What
are the needs of somebody rightnow as far as what we're doing?
We have the Real Estate EntrepreneursPodcast, which you have to come
on board, uh, at some pointalready extended an invitation.
And then we also have the Real EstateEntrepreneurs event attend growth.
(44:21):
We got one coming up in, uh, June27th, 28th in Tampa, in Florida.
So hopefully you canmake it to that, Nick.
It's gonna be pretty cool.
Where we put 200 experiencedreal estate investors, I ask the
speakers to give us their best.
It's like a mastermind.
Okay.
And then we do a GOGI dinner wherewe raise money and we give it
to the staff of the restaurant.
We do, um, a couple of cool things,but like we go party and stuff like
(44:44):
that, that like to go party, you know?
Uh, but yeah, it's kinda like,like having my own mastermind, but
it's not a year long mastermind.
It's one of those things that wedo every three or four months in
different areas of the country.
We're gonna be doing the one in Tampain June, and I think the next one
will be either September or October,somewhere on the northeast, probably
New Jersey or something like that.
(45:05):
So, and then our real estate we'restarting to wholesale again and do
innovations and I mean, it's, it is,once you learn real estate, it's like
a bicycle is, put it down and you canpick it back up whenever you want.
We submitted some offers last weekon some deals that were on the
market and they were accepted.
So now we're going for off-marketdeals, which, which are the
ones that we like the best.
(45:25):
Right.
And you know, I stillgot a couple of rentals.
Uh, my wife is actually theone that handles all of that.
I don't really mess much with it.
I'm not a good landlord.
I, I never liked it.
She's not in love with it either, butshe's okay doing it, you know what I mean?
And I'm, I'm grateful for that.
And.
I'm re-engaging in real estatebecause I think my burnout time has
come to an end, so I'm re-energized.
(45:48):
Um, our VA company's kind oflike going on its own right now.
It was like almost vacations forme and I focused on a different
project, which is our VA company.
And now that everything has, thebases are set and everything is
kind of like where it needs to be.
Now we can grow from there, but at thesame time, why would I not do real estate?
Which is something I know how to do.
Like been doing it forever, since 2008and I want to get engaged back in.
(46:11):
I think right now it's a good time.
So I think that's fantastic, man.
I tell everybody the realestate is like the mafia.
Once you get in, good luck getting out.
Very hard to get out back in.
Look, look, even everything I do is,is a real estate vertical, right?
It, it's, you know, VAs and the eventsand the podcast and all of those things.
That's all real estate.
It's.
Every now and then I will bringa business owner that is in a
(46:32):
different industry just so we cancollaborate and share some information.
But you're right, it is like the mafia.
Once you're in, man, it'svery hard to get out.
Well, I would love tocome on your podcast man.
I would love to connect insome other stuff as well.
It's been awesome having you out today,you sir or somebody who brings your A game
to everything you do in life in business,and this podcast has been no different.
You definitely push your A gameto the A Game podcast today.
(46:54):
Sir, any final thoughts before Ilet you go about your busy Monday?
Go for your goals guys.
And goals without actions are just dreams,so take action and go make it happen.
Thank you so much for having me, Nick.
Thank you for coming on.
Ricard, Zales, top of the line va.
Have a fantastic daysir. I appreciate you.
You.
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