November 14, 2024 • 41 mins
In this episode of Inside The Deal Room, Gabe Bowling sits down with Ryan Maya (IG: @ryanmayaa), a successful e-commerce entrepreneur and former member of the Cardone Capital Mafia. Ryan shares his incredible journey, from starting his own e-commerce brands, Beyond Braid and Professor Pickleball, to generating over $8.5 million in revenue. Discover the pivotal lessons he learned working under Grant Cardone, why he believes in the power of mentorship, and his unique investment strategy that combines scaling a business with smart real estate investments. If you want to know what it takes to build a high-income business, make strategic investments, and cultivate a winning mindset, this episode is for you.
Links:
- Website: thedealroom.io
- Circle Community: thedealroomcommunity.com
- Schedule a Call: Schedule a Call with Gabe
- Ryan’s IG: @ryanmayaa
- Ryan’s Brands: Beyond Braid, Professor Pickleball
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, what is going on everybody?
(00:06):
Welcome back to another episode of Inside The Deal Room.
My name is Gabe Bowling.
In today's episode, I have an incredible guest speaker, Ryan Maya.
You guys are going to learn a lot about him.
He's not your traditional guest that we have on here that's going out and buying multifamily
deals.
He's actually my best friend and one of the ex-Cardone Capital Mafia members alongside
(00:28):
of me.
Ryan, thank you so much for being here.
I'm super excited to get into it.
I am really excited to do this because we just like to see growth on both sides.
Yeah, it's a completely different script.
You're doing business and e-com and making a bunch of money selling fishing line and
(00:51):
pickleball paddles.
We'll get into it.
I'm doing the real estate thing, but we all started at the same spot, which is Cardone
Capital.
Why don't we get started with just introducing yourself?
I think a lot of people don't know who you are right this second, but they should know
who you are because you're kicking ass in life and making a bunch of money at a very
young age.
Why don't you just introduce yourself and catch everybody up to speed with who you are
(01:13):
today?
Yeah, so I'm 27, live in South Florida.
I own two e-commerce brands, Sporting Good Brands.
One is called Beyond Braille, which is fishing equipment.
One is called Professor Pickleball.
During 12 months, we've done eight and a half million in revenue, trying to do 10 million
to close out the year.
(01:33):
Brands five years old started it while I was working for, or actually before Grant, Cardone,
but it kind of just evolved while I was there.
Eventually decided to take the leap of faith and said, hey, let's see if we can go make
some real money.
Did.
It's been working, knocked on wood so far, a little bit, made a little bit of money.
And then the longterm vision is own assets by real estate, have that pay for the lifestyle
(01:57):
and build wealth that way.
I've realized coming up, it's really hard to do both.
Yes, you can.
There's anomalies like Grant who built the business and bought real estate at the same
time.
Very, very, very rare to do both.
I realized the fastest way to make the most amount of money is probably to do it through
my business, make a lot of money.
(02:17):
And alongside while I'm making money, invest with guys like you who have access to deals
and who are in it full time, let that money go to work and then eventually sell my companies
and then go buy more deals.
But yeah, I like cars, I like sports, businesses, I guess, I have two of them.
I like making money.
I like real estate.
And I make a lot of videos, stuff like this, right?
(02:41):
Content is what has made me the most money and what I push a lot of people to do.
Like I pushed your ass to make some videos and do podcasts and stuff.
And you've been one of the few people who I actually have like, a lot of people ask
me for advice and I never do anything.
All the times I think, or most of the times you've asked me for advice, you like nine
times out of 10, like go and implement it.
And I think that's why you've had success is like, you actually listen and then go do
(03:05):
shit, which is amazing.
Well, I appreciate the kind words.
So that's awesome that you're here.
Congratulations on your success.
Let's back it up.
Did you grow up super, super, super well?
You're healthy and you're used to having all this money or like, where did you grow up
from?
What was the childhood?
I know you played a lot of baseball.
Why don't you just walk everybody through your story?
(03:26):
So middle class family, middle class Jewish family, Cuban Jewish family.
When I was younger, my dad had his own business.
I would say did very well still in the upper middle class area.
Like we, I knew growing up some very, very rich friends and my brother had some like
very, very rich friends like billionaires.
So we saw that lifestyle.
(03:47):
But we were always kind of like, I guess the poor family out of them, but we were like
very comfortable middle class.
My dad had a successful clothing business.
Oh, 809.
His business kind of collapsed on itself and a lot of things changed.
And that was probably when I was like nine or 10 years old.
So we went from BMWs to Toyotas, private school to public school.
(04:13):
But still like my parents provided every single thing I could ever ask for.
So nothing like by no means where we broke, we were just average middle class.
But like that sometimes I feel like nowadays I see that as being worse than broke because
you're stuck in like this cycle.
But that's another story.
But yeah, my dad has his own business that inspired me to be an entrepreneur.
(04:33):
I sold candy in middle school, sold iPhones in high school and college and then started
my e-commerce business in college.
So yeah, I mean, I didn't have like a rich uncle, I would say learning from my family
in some ways helped me back because you see your family and like you can only go as far
(04:55):
as they can if you listen to that mentality or mindset that they have.
Right.
So I had to look beyond that.
That's what like I loved working for a grant for and I think was the biggest thing I took
away was just the ability to expand our mindsets and think way bigger.
But again, like my parents gave me everything like anything I could have ever had they have
given me.
So that was amazing.
(05:18):
But again, to go to the next level, it's like you kind of have to separate yourself from
that and take the responsibility within yourself.
Say hey look, I want more out of life than just a middle class family like go to work
nine to five, pay the bills, nice house, whatever.
We want more than that.
We want time freedom.
We want financial freedom.
We want 10 cool cars and working for grant gave us that unlimited mindset that we could
(05:42):
have whatever we want.
So that was a really pivotal point in life was like that was right after college was
getting exposed to that.
So I realized, hey, I don't want to be middle class.
I want to do more than that and knock on wood.
I feel like we're kind of on the right path.
So you just got to keep going.
You played a lot of baseball, right?
(06:03):
You went to college, played with some.
How important was playing sports and like the leadership and being able to be on a team
and all the stuff that you do in baseball?
How important was that in later years like running a business or running a team?
Yeah, I mean, the team is like sports teaches you a lot of basic life skills that are super
(06:25):
important that I feel like non athlete people don't have like showing up early.
Team responsibilities, knowing how to work on a team communication.
Like you get those basic skills from sports without even realizing it.
And when you go into the business world, you're so far ahead of people who haven't done that
without even realizing it.
(06:45):
So I played baseball up until college.
Basically my senior, my junior and senior year in college, I was a pitcher is when my
business is act, I started making like some real money thing one one month I did like
60,000 in sales my junior year and I did 11,000 in profit and I was just like, I'm probably
I just made more than like my college coaches.
(07:06):
Like that's insane, right?
And I did really well those two years.
There was a potential chance of maybe going to the next level and signing a professional
contract like maybe right.
And I just knew like the gap between where I was to get to the actual major leagues where
you would make money was there was no chance.
(07:26):
So I was just real with myself and I said, Hey, like, we had a good run paid for college
have no student loans, no debt, I actually got I actually made five grand my senior
year in college.
And that's it hung it up.
I was like, I want to go make money and start learning business or grow my business that
I was running.
And that was the decision I made.
And I think a lot of student athletes should like do that analysis with themselves and
(07:50):
know when to hang it up.
Because I know guys who play baseball until they're like mid 30s or they're low 30s and
they just wasted not wasted, but like you could have probably done something else for those
10 years to get ahead in life.
So it's just a it's just a reality check.
I get it love for the game.
You only have one opportunity, but sometimes you just got to be real with yourself and
be like, All right, we're done with this.
(08:11):
Let's go into the real world and make some some real money.
You know.
Well, thank you for that.
Before we go into the transition into working at grants.
When I first got to know you showed me your little paper book of like your net worth and
how much cash you had and all that fun stuff.
I think it's extremely important for everybody listening because it's probably not normal
(08:31):
for them to be so good with their money and like saving it and tracking it.
Can you walk us through is that something you learned through your family or is it like
something you just found on YouTube?
Because it may be going to a little bit more context on what we're actually talking about.
Yeah.
So like here, I'll just I'll pull it out for everyone to see.
Right.
So this is a Jewish symbol for good luck.
(08:53):
So I am Jewish.
The stereotype of Jews being good with money is not a stereotype because it's just the
truth.
Right.
I don't know why our religion just we grow up talking about money.
We know how to make money.
Like I don't know what it is.
It's not a stereotype.
It's like it's the truth.
So I don't know what the infatuation was from a little kid like giving my dad a back massage
(09:18):
when I was like eight years old or washing the car and I would get 10 bucks and stick
it in my little thing.
Right.
That's what I was obsessed with and even selling candy for cash, etc.
So like I've always paid really close attention to money even through high school.
Right.
I had bought this little toy safe that I still have right now.
I always keep cash in there with stack the cash and I would just watch it and then in
(09:40):
college when I started making like a few thousand bucks a month, I started tracking my net worth,
tracking my assets, what money I had and what accounts, etc.
And I still like before I would do our back in the day in college, I did it month over
month.
Now I do it every few months, but it's just crazy to see the growth.
There was some down months there when you make an investment or you do something, but
(10:03):
yeah, you have to pay attention to the money and like check that shit.
I check my bank accounts probably twice a day, which is twice or three times a day, which
might be excessive, but you need to be checking it at least once a day just to like see what
you have coming in and going out.
And I feel like so many people don't even do that.
They ignore it.
Like they're scared to look at it where it's like if you want the money to grow, you have
(10:24):
to check it every day.
What's coming in, what's going out, what's going left, what's going right.
And I think it's just a skill that I think I'm blessed to have is paying attention to
the money and what the money is doing.
I encourage so many people to do that because so many people are scared to like really look
at their finances and what is happening.
And I'm not perfect.
(10:45):
Like there's still things in my businesses and personal life that I can get better at,
but I feel like I have a really good understanding of what I want to do with my money and where
it's going.
Like me and Gabe were having this conversation yesterday.
Like I want to buy an expensive car.
I don't know if I should.
I don't know if I shouldn't.
I love cars.
It's expensive.
It's two grand a month, whatever.
But at least I'm checking every day and checking in on it and giving myself insight to make
(11:07):
these decisions, whether it's the right decision.
Yeah.
Love that.
I think it's really important because I'm willing to bet most people that are listening
to this episode right now, if they had to be honest with themselves, the last time they
checked their account was probably a week, maybe a month, whenever rents due or whatever
they're trying to pay for.
But yeah, you got to check that shit daily, man.
(11:29):
Let's transition to Cardone Capital.
Is it?
I'm looking for a job.
I'm going to work for this random guy.
Did you know him?
What was the process there?
I just finished my baseball season.
I was sitting in my college apartment with a month left on the lease.
I was like, all right, it's time for real life.
I had purchased Grant's book through a funnel that I got on a Facebook guy that's saying
(11:53):
invest in real estate.
And I read it on our last college road trip.
And I got really intrigued by the how to create wealth investing real estate book.
And I saw his book was on my coffee table.
I had just purchased a course to become a real estate agent.
I looked at it for like an hour and was like, this is not for me.
And I saw that and I was like, all right, I think their offices are in Florida or South
(12:16):
Florida looked up his website, saw that he had some job openings.
One was for sales, customer service and investor relations.
I thought sales was like a sleazy gimmicky.
I didn't know about sales.
Big mistake there.
I thought maybe made a million dollars there.
True story.
Customer service I didn't want to do and then investor relations was in the real estate
(12:37):
division.
So I was like, okay, cool, let's try that.
Long story short, I completely bullshitted my way in the door.
When I say bullshitted, I mean, like I presented myself well as a young hard worker, which
in hindsight now that's literally what they look for because they have really good training
tools to take young hard workers like myself or whoever else walks in the door hungry and
(13:00):
can fit them into a mold that they're looking for.
So you could say I got lucky, got the job and yeah, just started making calls, started
learning about real.
I literally had no idea about real estate or the job.
My first day on the job, I remember I was put on the task of responding to emails of
the general inbox and I didn't even know how to use Gmail where like Grant and the COO
(13:26):
was forwarding emails they were getting and I was just replying back to them, not knowing
what I was doing and then someone came in there like, yo, you're not doing this right.
So it's again, another quick little lesson.
Sometimes people overthink things, just jump into things and learn trial by fire is the
best way to do it.
And then fast forward, I took that job pretty serious.
(13:49):
It was what I was thinking I was going to do.
I became the top capital raiser there and I had sold my e-commerce business while working
there.
In fact, it was a little kind of wonky, but for a while there, I was very serious and
thought I can grow my career there, but then kind of realized like, hey, I think I might
want to go another direction and be my own boss.
(14:11):
Again, this is where we're like 21 years old.
We're like fresh out, we're kids.
We don't know what we want until you start getting some of these experiences like we
got.
So it was great.
Working there was great.
We learned a shit ton.
I know that's where you and I met and met a bunch of cool people, learned a bunch of crazy
shit and we're taking those skills that we learned and applying them in our own businesses
(14:32):
now, which is like, I think all you can ask for is learn, apply and grow up.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a really good, a lot of people want to like skip the hard work and get the
entrepreneur.
I want to be my own boss, make all the money right this second.
But I think working there for, you were there for three years or something?
Three years?
Two years.
Two years on the dot, I was working when I was running my businesses and my business on
(14:54):
the side and trying to grow it.
It was wake up at 5am, go to the gym till 6, work on the business from 6 to 7.30, leave
at 7.45 or no, sorry, leave at like 7.15, drive 45 minutes to work, get to work at 8,
role play for 20 minutes, study, do the other shit that we had to do, meetings, blah, blah,
(15:17):
on the phone all day, break at one or lunch break at 12, work on the business from 12
to 1, come home at 6, 7, 8 o'clock, eat for like 30 minutes, work on the business for
like three hours.
And I did that every day, probably for like a year and a half, which it got to the point
where I was so mentally exhausted.
Like I literally got to a breaking point where I just couldn't do it anymore and it was quit
(15:41):
or like I couldn't sell my business or quit the business because the business at that
point was doing like a million and a half in revenue in like six months.
And that is what told me just go for it.
Like you could always go get another job.
But yeah, it was like two years of just like brutal work, like really, really hard working
days.
But how important do you think like that two years, I call it the sacrifice years or the
(16:03):
years and the trenches, how important do you think that was correlating to the success
that you have today?
Like going in, building the business that you're building, making the decisions to grow
it to $20 million a year.
Do you think that you would have been able to even think that big or make those types
of decisions without being on the inside of an organization like that?
Because a lot of people don't want to go work a nine to five or a nine, whatever they call
(16:27):
it, the nine to five and they want to be their own boss.
But we did that, we both did that.
And we pretty much got our like MBA in life, business, money, real estate and a bunch of
stuff and it's correlated into a lot of success on the after or after the fact.
Do you think that was pretty important for you?
The reality is, is most of the time you have to endure like a good amount of painful years
(16:53):
before you get to like chill out a little.
And right there's seasons in business where sometimes you're going to be working really
hard.
Sometimes you could take a little bit of more time.
Like I went from working super hard, then it got a little bit easier, then work super
hard, then hired some people got a little bit easier, then it's like, all right, now we
want to go to the next level.
(17:14):
It's going to be another ramp up of working.
But yeah, a lot of people skip, a lot of people think you start a business or you start a
YouTube channel or you start making content, it's going to happen overnight.
Like I literally was just talking to my buddy, helping him with content for his business.
I'm like, you need to make a YouTube video once a week for like the rest of your life
(17:35):
or for the rest of the time you have this business, whether that's 10 years, like it's
not you're going to make four YouTube videos and you're going to be rich.
It's like something you have to do every single day.
And like people just sometimes don't realize the amount of actual work it takes to make
something work.
Sometimes people get lucky and do have success with minimal amounts of work.
(17:56):
But most of the time it takes a shitload of work and hours and trial and error to get
something to remotely work.
Like I'm lucky.
The reason my I feel like, yes, there's skills that I've had and developed in my business
and things I've done right, but I feel like every business has some sort of luck aspect
to it.
So like I'm, I'm lucky, but the more you work and the more hours you put in, the, the, the
(18:19):
bigger or more opportunities you give yourself to become lucky and get lucky, like you, right?
You're, you've taken a bunch of risks and tried a bunch of different things, giving you a better
chance to be lucky that one of them works.
You know, that's I think that's just business in general is just you have to try a bunch
of shit.
I always say to try a bunch of shit and see what works best for you or what even works
(18:42):
in general.
And then you just kind of double down and go down that path.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Thank you for that.
All right.
So getting out of Cardone Capital, you learn real estate to a degree and you learn the
wealth formula.
And I want to kind of, because there's going to be investors that are trying to go down
the active route.
They're going to be like, okay, well, I don't have a business that makes eight and a half
million dollars, but there are investors that will listen to this and they're in a very
(19:04):
similar position where they are to make a decent amount of money.
They have a business where they're a W2 employee, they love what they do and they make good
money and they're just looking to be the investor.
Can you break down the wealth formula in your eyes and how you're going to be using it with
your main vehicle and then investing with me, investing in the other people's deals?
How does that work for you, for the investor side of it?
(19:26):
Yeah.
I mean, again, as I alluded earlier, it's very hard to run a business, make a lot of money
or work for or have a high income job, make a lot of money and do real estate at the same
time because they both pull you in two directions.
If you are a business owner and you make, and this is something that at Cardone Capital,
I saw so many people investing so much money, I was like, why don't they just go do deals
(19:49):
themselves?
They'll make more money because most of the time, if you do a deal by yourself the right
way, you could make more money.
You keep 100% of the profits instead of a profit split.
But the odds of one, you finding a deal, knowing the brokers, you being able to underwrite the
deal, do the debt, get the insurance, the odds of you doing a deal correctly at that
(20:10):
size, it's nearly impossible to actually do and have the bandwidth to still make money
in your other job.
So I quickly, not quickly, it's actually taken me a while to realize that I need to focus
on making more money in my business where I can make hopefully multiple seven and eight
figures in my business and then you invest that money with someone like Gabe or whoever
(20:32):
else you want to invest with, but Gabe has good deals.
Yes, I am endorsing Gabe, I am biased.
But like you invest with someone like with him or whoever else that is in the deal flow
every day and is talking to the brokers, the debt quotes, the insurance guys, because they
have their pulse on the market like I don't, I like you have to pay attention to this shit
(20:55):
just like the stock market, you have to pay attention to the market if you're going to
be investing in it, Gabe's laughing because like we, I just sold all my stocks and stocks
are an absolute fucking nightmare.
But like if you want to actually make money in investing like you have to have your finger
and your pulse on that shit.
And I've realized as a high income earner myself, I like think it's just better to have
(21:18):
put your money with someone who's doing it full time, they'll take better care of it
than they, than you will.
And you have peace of mind and can focus on your business.
So again, back to seeing all these people investing with Grant, I now realize why they
invested with Grant is because they wanted to stick out what they were good at being
doctors, lawyers, business owners, because they make way more money there and just let
Grant and team do the work because they are industry experts and they're in the deals
(21:42):
every day and they're still going to get good returns and make good money.
So like at the end of the day, it's you got to pick your poison, but I think the wealth
formula for me is make a lot of money in my business, invest in real estate along the
way, if I sell my business one day and make multi seven eight figures, great, you take
more of that money invested into real estate and make more passive income to buy all the
(22:04):
fancy shit like cars, boats, houses and watches and vacations.
What would you say some of the most important things that you learn from working at grants
that you still apply today?
Maybe it's like principles with your own money, principles about staff or decisions that
you make, what are like the big takeaways?
Attention is currency, right?
So no matter what industry you're in, if you have the most attention, you will likely make
(22:27):
the most money and just be loud and repetitive with your marketing.
I think it's a lot of the marketing principles.
And then again, it's some of the mindset stuff like, dude, you can go as big as you want,
as long as you have to have that bigger thing.
And you just can't limit yourself.
Like if someone like Grant seriously can grow that big, he makes you truly feel like anyone
(22:48):
can do it.
So I think that's just something I try to remind myself constantly of is like, dude,
we can grow this thing as big as we want.
Like there's no, there's no, there's no, like I could become a billionaire.
It's a, I have, and Gabe points this out to me all the time that I have flaws of not planning
and having a clear path, which I'm working on, but I could easily become a billionaire.
(23:12):
Anyone watching this could become a billionaire.
There's no limit.
You just obviously have to put a plan in place and pick the right vehicle and that vehicle
is going to be for whatever is best for you.
But yeah, I think attention and mindset stuff is probably the stuff I still use from Grant
every day.
Very cool.
All right, let's move into mentorship because it's a little bit different.
(23:33):
People will join The deal room community to learn and get trained and then go out and
do deals or maybe get deal flow from investor as an investor.
For you, how important is mentorship and getting around other people that have already done
what it is that you want to do in your everyday business?
Because it applies to everything, whether it's The Deal Room and deals or what you're doing.
So I'm going to use my girlfriend Denver, who which Gabe knows very well as an example
(23:55):
for this and I'll use it myself.
I was very reluctant to invest in mentorship because again, I might be frugal, might be
cheap, might think I can just do it myself.
I've had that mentality for a really long time and it's probably helped and hurt me in
certain ways.
This year, I made my first investment into mentorship for Amazon FBA because while I
(24:15):
was making seven figures on Amazon, I really didn't know the landscape that well.
So I found a group that like it's 10 grand a month, 10 grand a year to be a part of the
group.
And I was like, I really need, I want to, if I'm going to plan to take an e-commerce business
to 100 million dollars a year, I probably should get a better understanding and foundation
of this.
Since joining that group for 10 grand, my business has, I think like, there were up 150% year
(24:39):
over year.
So did it pay off?
I would say so.
My girlfriend as an example, she invested $20,000, which is almost all the money to her
name in a sales program, betting on herself and taking that education that she was going
to go make more money because she wanted to, she wanted to shrink the time it was going
to take to learn this stuff.
(25:00):
And she just invested another three grand in another coaching mentorship that's going
to again compress the time.
And then we spent $1,000 on another coaching call with someone in her industry.
Long story short, we spent all that money, a couple of things clicked for her.
She made 15 grand in one month from going like 0, 0, 0, a hundred bucks, a couple hundred
bucks, and then made 15 grand in one month.
(25:21):
And like, she's just so good at compressing the time and willing to invest.
And I'm learning that from her.
So like it's, it just, every day it makes more and more sense to me that just, hey, people
who've done exactly what you want to do and it'll shorten your time because time is like
truly the only valuable currency we have.
So you can shorten the time that it takes for you to learn something or do something,
(25:45):
just pay to do it, especially if you have the means to do it, just pay to play.
That's it.
Yeah.
You either pay with time or pay with money.
And something I want to point out is the, the two different examples, you're in a different
spot in your business where you have an exit, because there's a lot of people that like
they see the business owner that does a million dollars a year, joined a program and then now
they're doing a million five or $2 million.
(26:05):
And it's like, okay, well, that's a lot easier to make that decision internally to like, let
go with 10 grand to then get another million dollars in the business.
Like people can make that decision.
But then Denver, completely different spot, brand new to business, doesn't like almost
all of her money, that's a really big decision.
What was the process?
(26:26):
Because I know that, I know for a fact you were involved in that decision making process
too.
So how did you guys get comfortable enough letting go of almost all of the money and be
willing to bet on yourself?
Cause that's like the biggest and most uncomfortable thing people will, will run into.
So she went to this conference, this, it's some sales girl, they call themselves the
(26:48):
sales girls.
She went to this event where they upsold their program, which was 20 grand.
She calls me and she says, Hey, I want to, I think I'm going to buy this.
I don't know.
What do you think I should do?
And to me, being completely honest, I thought she was completely batshit crazy.
I was like, you're going to spend all your money.
Like you're nuts.
(27:08):
Like you're gullible, you're nuts.
They're selling you.
Like I can't believe you.
But then when I really thought about it, right?
That's our X card own mafia, a little blood in us, you know?
Look, if she doesn't do it, right?
She doesn't pay the 20 grand to learn the sales skills that she truly felt she was lacking.
What happens?
(27:29):
Right?
And then when I get there, I can show her some Grant Card on videos and who knows how
long that will take for her to actually learn the material and start making sales.
Or she spends the 20 and then she keeps $20,000, which if you have $20,000 to your name in
like your late 70s or your late 20s, you're broke.
You're flat broke.
Or if she invested the 20 grand, worst case scenario, she invests 20 grand, doesn't learn
(27:54):
a single thing.
She has no money.
She's still broke.
Like that's worst case scenario.
Best case scenario is you invest the 20 grand, you actually learn a shit ton, you make $100,000,
$200,000, $300,000 and it was worth every single penny.
Right?
So, and we just kind of did that analysis.
So we're like, if you don't do it, you're going to be in the same position, which at
(28:16):
that point she felt very, very stuck in her business and it was very frustrating.
And we're like, if you do do it, it could pay off and you could actually really learn
sales and really make some money.
And then we kind of just like looked at each other on FaceTime and we're just like, fucking
do it.
Like, what's the worst thing that can happen is you lose 20 grand, 20 grand is no money.
Yes, 20 grand is a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things of where we want to
(28:38):
go with our lives, 20 grand is no money.
So we just said, go do it.
And it's drastically paid off because she's developed as a person, she's developed sales
skills, she's developed leadership skills, all from that one investment.
So like it's, you have to invest in yourself.
That's the biggest asset you have.
Yeah, I tell people this, I'll do two things.
(29:00):
So number one, can anybody take a skill set away from you?
No, right?
Because once you've learned something, it's in your own head.
So it's like, that's nothing.
It doesn't matter where you're at.
You can go broke, you have a lot of money, you develop the skill set and that's invaluable
if you apply it.
Number two, you've seen this and the reason that we even made this investment was because
(29:20):
of you and our business.
We invested a whole lot of money and forward future looking money to a partner that came
in and it completely compressed the timeline.
What would have taken us, I don't know, four or five years and a whole lot more money than
what we invested through mistakes and learning mistakes, we've compressed down into a six
month timeline and now we're on track to do a whole lot more.
(29:43):
And that's like a skill to do, like to have the guts and knowledge and feel to invest
in these things that'll make you better.
I'm sure there's a lot of things out there that, like I get pitched things all the time,
courses, people and like, I say no to like 95% of them.
And that's just me being skeptical.
I think they're like, to a certain extent, if you say yes to too many things, it's you
(30:06):
really have to vet who you're investing with because some people will give you more value
than others in terms of education, partnerships, et cetera, whether they're too big, too small,
don't have enough time to put into you.
So you do have to be careful, do your due diligence, but it's a skill that I'm trying
to get better at is investing my money and things that will buy me my time back, help
(30:28):
me with education to further grow my businesses.
It's a tough skill to learn.
And I look at God, like I look at you, I look at Denver, people around me who are doing
these things and it helps me think like, okay, how can I further invest or find a mentor,
pay someone to help me?
Because I know it'll like nine times that I think nine times or 10 times out of 10, when
you invest in your education, like there's only positive things that come out of it.
(30:51):
It's very rarely do you get negative consequences from investing in yourself.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
All right.
So let's move back into a little bit real estate, then we'll wrap it up.
So for you as the investor, let's go through the deal.
As an investor, what do you look for, number one?
And are you open to, like there's people listening to this, you're an investor, would you be
(31:15):
open to investing in other people's deals?
And then number two, what defines a good deal for you?
Like what are you looking for?
I mean, at this point, dude, I've had a lot of opportunities to invest in a lot of deals.
To me, it's just trust.
Number one thing is trust.
I invested a hundred grand with In What It Gaves deals.
And I really didn't even look at the deal.
Like I barely looked at the deal.
(31:36):
I don't even think I looked at the numbers one time.
I said, yo, is this a good, I literally ask Gabe, is this a good deal?
Should I do it?
I'm just a little bit of convincing to just get over the hump of actually just parting
with the money.
Because that's just how I am as a person, right?
I literally just told you I'm getting better at investing.
But now looking back, I literally told Gabe last week, I'm like, shit, I wish I would
have put like 250 or 300 in that deal.
(32:00):
So it's just trusting the person who's operating the deal, making sure they have a clear vision
for, oh, balloons.
Clear vision and exit plan for the deal, location, it's got to be a sick location.
If you're in Florida, there's very few locations that aren't really good locations.
(32:20):
And right, you have that basic return, return parameters, I think minimum, right?
1.8 to like 2x over like three to five years is probably a good threshold.
And then if the deal cash flow is great, everyone loves cash flow monthly distributions is,
I think the greatest thing you can do as a syndicator if you're watching because people
love to get paid monthly.
(32:41):
That's why I'm asking this question.
Just so you know, to give you context, there's a lot of people that will listen and the investors
will listen to like, okay, I should probably do that as well.
But the main profile of this is going to be the operator.
One, there are investors everywhere.
There are probably investors in your phone that you don't even know.
You have to ask, you have to be willing to have these conversations with them.
(33:01):
But get the information like what does the investor look for out of an investment opportunity?
And the first thing Ryan said was trust.
Like I don't even, like the deal is great, but if I don't trust you, I'm not even going
to look at it.
That was really important.
Yeah.
And the fact that the syndicator or the person bringing the deal has skin in the game always
(33:24):
makes me feel better because right, they're putting up their money as well.
If they're just trying to, there's people in this industry that they need to do these
deals to make money.
And I would like watch out for those people.
Someone like Gabe, right?
Gabe has his education business, which is where he's going to make most of his money.
And then obviously he's investing in deals.
One to grow his portfolio grows name.
(33:45):
And that's like the end game for both of us is to invest in real estate.
I know a bunch of other people that are just purely syndicators and need to make their
money through management fees, through aggressive splits, and those are the people I would be
weary of.
So if you have a person who's giving you a reasonable split, they're putting money in
the deal and you just trust them and the deal looks good.
(34:08):
It's in a good location.
There's like, it's at the end of the day, it's the biggest thing is trust.
Like if you say, would I invest with them because they're putting their own money and
I trust them, then you should do the deal.
Like it's the decision should be that simple.
Cool.
Let's wrap it up with whether it's real estate or the listener that's just trying to get
(34:30):
into, you know, create wealth for themselves, make more money, have more freedom, do better,
do more with their life.
What would you say the best piece of advice you could pass on?
Say it's the 20, the 22, the 25, the 30 year old that's really trying to create something
out of their life.
That's something you find yourself telling everybody.
(34:50):
I know content is going to be one of them, but what else?
Yeah.
So making videos and putting whatever business or line business you're in, putting it on
video, that's I'll touch on that in a second.
But I think it's if you're young and you don't know what you want to do is just to try a bunch
of different things in a bunch of different verticals and see what sticks.
(35:12):
Like Gabe, for example, when we were working for Grant, he saw me having some success with
e-commerce, Gabe tried e-commerce and miserably fucking failed.
Gabe realized e-commerce is not for me.
It's something he tried.
He put it on his belt and then he moved on to the next one.
Right?
So I think and he tried a few other things there and just realized like, I don't need
(35:33):
like, we didn't have success.
I don't like this business.
It's just not for me.
Right?
So people are scared to try things and fail either because they're going to be judged
by friends or family.
Like I had another friend.
For example, he's trying to grow his TikTok with his music and right content.
He's doing the content thing and he literally texted his brother who's my friend and said,
(35:55):
it's embarrassing trying this and only getting 60 views.
He's like, I want to stop.
But like, who the fuck cares?
Why is it a bit like you just have to stop caring what people think and just keep innovating?
I told it.
This is the message I told him like, dude, yes, you're getting 60 views, but one, you
never know that next TikTok you post can literally get 50 million fucking views.
(36:17):
Your song goes viral and your life literally changes forever.
It's that easy nowadays.
So I just told him like, stop giving a fuck.
Just keep posting it.
Keep posting.
Try different angles.
Right?
Try different things.
He plays golf.
I'm like, you should sing your song and play golf at the same time.
It's random, but it's a different angle.
So it's just trying a bunch of different things and seeing what sticks.
(36:39):
That's what I do every day in my businesses is like, we tried different creatives.
Different product images.
Everything is A.B.
Testing to figure out what works best and then you roll with what works best.
So try a bunch of shit.
See what works best for you.
Double down on that.
And then yes, content is huge.
Whatever you decide to double down on, everything, every business nowadays can use some sort
(37:01):
of video attention through TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, wherever it is, ideally all platforms
and just put your content out there.
Put your services, your business, your education, your products out there and promote
it on video.
And just don't kick like you're going to suck it first, but it's okay.
You're going to get better.
Gabe's first videos were absolutely horrendous and we literally laugh at them.
(37:23):
So were mine.
I laugh at them.
Like it's just the reality.
You're going to suck it first, but eventually you get really good.
You do podcasts like this.
You have people come out to Tampa in a huge room full of 100 people because you started
making videos online and started reaching more people.
That's what gaved it.
Right?
So you just got to start.
You're trying shit and make a bunch of videos once you figure out what you want to do.
(37:45):
And don't quit.
Don't quit.
Yeah.
If you don't quit, you can't fail.
Yeah, that's a good one.
You saw that on Instagram.
All right.
Last thing, we'll look back at this five years from now and this is a little bit different
on how I'll end every one of them.
I think you're a little bit different because you have a lot more context to what we're
doing.
Everything you know about us, me and Alicia and the business that we have today, what
our big mission is, what advice would you give us over the next like five years?
(38:10):
Are we doing the right thing or are we thinking too small?
Something that we can look back on five years from now and be like, damn, I'm really happy
you said that.
My honest answer is I'm like a little bit jealous of you guys because you have a much
clearer, bigger vision than I do on how to get to a billion dollars, which is, again,
(38:30):
I want to figure out how to do that for myself and for myself.
And I see that you guys have more or less a clear vision on how to get there.
I don't know.
You guys are in the right vehicle.
You guys are good people.
You're building fucking crazy businesses.
I don't know if I have advice to give you.
I'm just kind of like, I want to see how I can hop on that bandwagon.
(38:54):
It's like, do I sell my businesses and join Gabe?
I don't know.
But I don't know, man.
I think both of us are going really big places.
How important do you think it is to have a good fucking friend in your life?
Say that you can just FaceTime at any given second.
You can be like, hey, man, this is what's going on.
Give me the real shit.
I'm trying to find more of that, right?
(39:15):
Because me and Gabe do that all the time where we just call each other and we'll talk on
the phone for like an hour on what's going on in our business, what's going on in his
business, how do we troubleshoot it.
And it sucks that we can only do it through FaceTime.
We're only five hours away from each other.
I told Gabe he needs to make more money so he can move to Fort Lauderdale because South
Florida is expensive.
But yeah, you got to find, you got to, like, that whole, your network is your net worth
(39:39):
is like, it's so cliche, but it's so true.
Like if you find a group of people that, like for example, I told Gabe this story, I went
to a coffee shop yesterday.
There was a guy who owned like 30 car dealerships.
Another guy who pulled up in a Rolls Royce and the other guy was wearing a $100,000 Rolex
Daytona.
Like that little circle, those are power players.
I'm sure they're all sharing ideas of what they're doing.
(40:02):
So like just having friends that are in the same mindset as you and doing things in business
and life and progressing, not just doing the same shit they did from high school.
Like you got to find more of those people.
And I like it's so cliche.
You hear all the time, but it's like, it's the absolute truth.
You just got to get around winners.
And sometimes you got to pay to get around winners, which is okay.
(40:23):
All right.
So I forgot that I didn't even mention this.
Where do people find you or where can people buy pickleball paddles or braided fishing
line?
People find you.
The website for fishing equipment is beyondbraid.com or go to Amazon, buy something and leave
a review for me.
That always helps.
Professorpaddles.com.
The brand is Professor Pickleball.
(40:44):
Or if you just DM me on Instagram, I'll give you some shit for free.
Take me up on that, please.
My Instagram is RyanMaya and my YouTube is RyanMaya.
I talk about e-commerce business and all that kind of stuff.
More on YouTube.
So look up RyanMaya everywhere on social media.
You'll find it.
Thank you so much for being here.
And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for another episode.
I'll see you on the next one.
All right, what is going on everybody?
(00:06):
Welcome back to another episode of Inside The Deal Room.
My name is Gabe Bowling.
In today's episode, I have an incredible guest speaker, Ryan Maya.
You guys are going to learn a lot about him.
He's not your traditional guest that we have on here that's going out and buying multifamily
deals.
He's actually my best friend and one of the ex-Cardone Capital Mafia members alongside
(00:28):
of me.
Ryan, thank you so much for being here.
I'm super excited to get into it.
I am really excited to do this because we just like to see growth on both sides.
Yeah, it's a completely different script.
You're doing business and e-com and making a bunch of money selling fishing line and
(00:51):
pickleball paddles.
We'll get into it.
I'm doing the real estate thing, but we all started at the same spot, which is Cardone
Capital.
Why don't we get started with just introducing yourself?
I think a lot of people don't know who you are right this second, but they should know
who you are because you're kicking ass in life and making a bunch of money at a very
young age.
Why don't you just introduce yourself and catch everybody up to speed with who you are
(01:13):
today?
Yeah, so I'm 27, live in South Florida.
I own two e-commerce brands, Sporting Good Brands.
One is called Beyond Braille, which is fishing equipment.
One is called Professor Pickleball.
During 12 months, we've done eight and a half million in revenue, trying to do 10 million
to close out the year.
(01:33):
Brands five years old started it while I was working for, or actually before Grant, Cardone,
but it kind of just evolved while I was there.
Eventually decided to take the leap of faith and said, hey, let's see if we can go make
some real money.
Did.
It's been working, knocked on wood so far, a little bit, made a little bit of money.
And then the longterm vision is own assets by real estate, have that pay for the lifestyle
(01:57):
and build wealth that way.
I've realized coming up, it's really hard to do both.
Yes, you can.
There's anomalies like Grant who built the business and bought real estate at the same
time.
Very, very, very rare to do both.
I realized the fastest way to make the most amount of money is probably to do it through
my business, make a lot of money.
(02:17):
And alongside while I'm making money, invest with guys like you who have access to deals
and who are in it full time, let that money go to work and then eventually sell my companies
and then go buy more deals.
But yeah, I like cars, I like sports, businesses, I guess, I have two of them.
I like making money.
I like real estate.
And I make a lot of videos, stuff like this, right?
(02:41):
Content is what has made me the most money and what I push a lot of people to do.
Like I pushed your ass to make some videos and do podcasts and stuff.
And you've been one of the few people who I actually have like, a lot of people ask
me for advice and I never do anything.
All the times I think, or most of the times you've asked me for advice, you like nine
times out of 10, like go and implement it.
And I think that's why you've had success is like, you actually listen and then go do
(03:05):
shit, which is amazing.
Well, I appreciate the kind words.
So that's awesome that you're here.
Congratulations on your success.
Let's back it up.
Did you grow up super, super, super well?
You're healthy and you're used to having all this money or like, where did you grow up
from?
What was the childhood?
I know you played a lot of baseball.
Why don't you just walk everybody through your story?
(03:26):
So middle class family, middle class Jewish family, Cuban Jewish family.
When I was younger, my dad had his own business.
I would say did very well still in the upper middle class area.
Like we, I knew growing up some very, very rich friends and my brother had some like
very, very rich friends like billionaires.
So we saw that lifestyle.
(03:47):
But we were always kind of like, I guess the poor family out of them, but we were like
very comfortable middle class.
My dad had a successful clothing business.
Oh, 809.
His business kind of collapsed on itself and a lot of things changed.
And that was probably when I was like nine or 10 years old.
So we went from BMWs to Toyotas, private school to public school.
(04:13):
But still like my parents provided every single thing I could ever ask for.
So nothing like by no means where we broke, we were just average middle class.
But like that sometimes I feel like nowadays I see that as being worse than broke because
you're stuck in like this cycle.
But that's another story.
But yeah, my dad has his own business that inspired me to be an entrepreneur.
(04:33):
I sold candy in middle school, sold iPhones in high school and college and then started
my e-commerce business in college.
So yeah, I mean, I didn't have like a rich uncle, I would say learning from my family
in some ways helped me back because you see your family and like you can only go as far
(04:55):
as they can if you listen to that mentality or mindset that they have.
Right.
So I had to look beyond that.
That's what like I loved working for a grant for and I think was the biggest thing I took
away was just the ability to expand our mindsets and think way bigger.
But again, like my parents gave me everything like anything I could have ever had they have
given me.
So that was amazing.
(05:18):
But again, to go to the next level, it's like you kind of have to separate yourself from
that and take the responsibility within yourself.
Say hey look, I want more out of life than just a middle class family like go to work
nine to five, pay the bills, nice house, whatever.
We want more than that.
We want time freedom.
We want financial freedom.
We want 10 cool cars and working for grant gave us that unlimited mindset that we could
(05:42):
have whatever we want.
So that was a really pivotal point in life was like that was right after college was
getting exposed to that.
So I realized, hey, I don't want to be middle class.
I want to do more than that and knock on wood.
I feel like we're kind of on the right path.
So you just got to keep going.
You played a lot of baseball, right?
(06:03):
You went to college, played with some.
How important was playing sports and like the leadership and being able to be on a team
and all the stuff that you do in baseball?
How important was that in later years like running a business or running a team?
Yeah, I mean, the team is like sports teaches you a lot of basic life skills that are super
(06:25):
important that I feel like non athlete people don't have like showing up early.
Team responsibilities, knowing how to work on a team communication.
Like you get those basic skills from sports without even realizing it.
And when you go into the business world, you're so far ahead of people who haven't done that
without even realizing it.
(06:45):
So I played baseball up until college.
Basically my senior, my junior and senior year in college, I was a pitcher is when my
business is act, I started making like some real money thing one one month I did like
60,000 in sales my junior year and I did 11,000 in profit and I was just like, I'm probably
I just made more than like my college coaches.
(07:06):
Like that's insane, right?
And I did really well those two years.
There was a potential chance of maybe going to the next level and signing a professional
contract like maybe right.
And I just knew like the gap between where I was to get to the actual major leagues where
you would make money was there was no chance.
(07:26):
So I was just real with myself and I said, Hey, like, we had a good run paid for college
have no student loans, no debt, I actually got I actually made five grand my senior
year in college.
And that's it hung it up.
I was like, I want to go make money and start learning business or grow my business that
I was running.
And that was the decision I made.
And I think a lot of student athletes should like do that analysis with themselves and
(07:50):
know when to hang it up.
Because I know guys who play baseball until they're like mid 30s or they're low 30s and
they just wasted not wasted, but like you could have probably done something else for those
10 years to get ahead in life.
So it's just a it's just a reality check.
I get it love for the game.
You only have one opportunity, but sometimes you just got to be real with yourself and
be like, All right, we're done with this.
(08:11):
Let's go into the real world and make some some real money.
You know.
Well, thank you for that.
Before we go into the transition into working at grants.
When I first got to know you showed me your little paper book of like your net worth and
how much cash you had and all that fun stuff.
I think it's extremely important for everybody listening because it's probably not normal
(08:31):
for them to be so good with their money and like saving it and tracking it.
Can you walk us through is that something you learned through your family or is it like
something you just found on YouTube?
Because it may be going to a little bit more context on what we're actually talking about.
Yeah.
So like here, I'll just I'll pull it out for everyone to see.
Right.
So this is a Jewish symbol for good luck.
(08:53):
So I am Jewish.
The stereotype of Jews being good with money is not a stereotype because it's just the
truth.
Right.
I don't know why our religion just we grow up talking about money.
We know how to make money.
Like I don't know what it is.
It's not a stereotype.
It's like it's the truth.
So I don't know what the infatuation was from a little kid like giving my dad a back massage
(09:18):
when I was like eight years old or washing the car and I would get 10 bucks and stick
it in my little thing.
Right.
That's what I was obsessed with and even selling candy for cash, etc.
So like I've always paid really close attention to money even through high school.
Right.
I had bought this little toy safe that I still have right now.
I always keep cash in there with stack the cash and I would just watch it and then in
(09:40):
college when I started making like a few thousand bucks a month, I started tracking my net worth,
tracking my assets, what money I had and what accounts, etc.
And I still like before I would do our back in the day in college, I did it month over
month.
Now I do it every few months, but it's just crazy to see the growth.
There was some down months there when you make an investment or you do something, but
(10:03):
yeah, you have to pay attention to the money and like check that shit.
I check my bank accounts probably twice a day, which is twice or three times a day, which
might be excessive, but you need to be checking it at least once a day just to like see what
you have coming in and going out.
And I feel like so many people don't even do that.
They ignore it.
Like they're scared to look at it where it's like if you want the money to grow, you have
(10:24):
to check it every day.
What's coming in, what's going out, what's going left, what's going right.
And I think it's just a skill that I think I'm blessed to have is paying attention to
the money and what the money is doing.
I encourage so many people to do that because so many people are scared to like really look
at their finances and what is happening.
And I'm not perfect.
(10:45):
Like there's still things in my businesses and personal life that I can get better at,
but I feel like I have a really good understanding of what I want to do with my money and where
it's going.
Like me and Gabe were having this conversation yesterday.
Like I want to buy an expensive car.
I don't know if I should.
I don't know if I shouldn't.
I love cars.
It's expensive.
It's two grand a month, whatever.
But at least I'm checking every day and checking in on it and giving myself insight to make
(11:07):
these decisions, whether it's the right decision.
Yeah.
Love that.
I think it's really important because I'm willing to bet most people that are listening
to this episode right now, if they had to be honest with themselves, the last time they
checked their account was probably a week, maybe a month, whenever rents due or whatever
they're trying to pay for.
But yeah, you got to check that shit daily, man.
(11:29):
Let's transition to Cardone Capital.
Is it?
I'm looking for a job.
I'm going to work for this random guy.
Did you know him?
What was the process there?
I just finished my baseball season.
I was sitting in my college apartment with a month left on the lease.
I was like, all right, it's time for real life.
I had purchased Grant's book through a funnel that I got on a Facebook guy that's saying
(11:53):
invest in real estate.
And I read it on our last college road trip.
And I got really intrigued by the how to create wealth investing real estate book.
And I saw his book was on my coffee table.
I had just purchased a course to become a real estate agent.
I looked at it for like an hour and was like, this is not for me.
And I saw that and I was like, all right, I think their offices are in Florida or South
(12:16):
Florida looked up his website, saw that he had some job openings.
One was for sales, customer service and investor relations.
I thought sales was like a sleazy gimmicky.
I didn't know about sales.
Big mistake there.
I thought maybe made a million dollars there.
True story.
Customer service I didn't want to do and then investor relations was in the real estate
(12:37):
division.
So I was like, okay, cool, let's try that.
Long story short, I completely bullshitted my way in the door.
When I say bullshitted, I mean, like I presented myself well as a young hard worker, which
in hindsight now that's literally what they look for because they have really good training
tools to take young hard workers like myself or whoever else walks in the door hungry and
(13:00):
can fit them into a mold that they're looking for.
So you could say I got lucky, got the job and yeah, just started making calls, started
learning about real.
I literally had no idea about real estate or the job.
My first day on the job, I remember I was put on the task of responding to emails of
the general inbox and I didn't even know how to use Gmail where like Grant and the COO
(13:26):
was forwarding emails they were getting and I was just replying back to them, not knowing
what I was doing and then someone came in there like, yo, you're not doing this right.
So it's again, another quick little lesson.
Sometimes people overthink things, just jump into things and learn trial by fire is the
best way to do it.
And then fast forward, I took that job pretty serious.
(13:49):
It was what I was thinking I was going to do.
I became the top capital raiser there and I had sold my e-commerce business while working
there.
In fact, it was a little kind of wonky, but for a while there, I was very serious and
thought I can grow my career there, but then kind of realized like, hey, I think I might
want to go another direction and be my own boss.
(14:11):
Again, this is where we're like 21 years old.
We're like fresh out, we're kids.
We don't know what we want until you start getting some of these experiences like we
got.
So it was great.
Working there was great.
We learned a shit ton.
I know that's where you and I met and met a bunch of cool people, learned a bunch of crazy
shit and we're taking those skills that we learned and applying them in our own businesses
(14:32):
now, which is like, I think all you can ask for is learn, apply and grow up.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a really good, a lot of people want to like skip the hard work and get the
entrepreneur.
I want to be my own boss, make all the money right this second.
But I think working there for, you were there for three years or something?
Three years?
Two years.
Two years on the dot, I was working when I was running my businesses and my business on
(14:54):
the side and trying to grow it.
It was wake up at 5am, go to the gym till 6, work on the business from 6 to 7.30, leave
at 7.45 or no, sorry, leave at like 7.15, drive 45 minutes to work, get to work at 8,
role play for 20 minutes, study, do the other shit that we had to do, meetings, blah, blah,
(15:17):
on the phone all day, break at one or lunch break at 12, work on the business from 12
to 1, come home at 6, 7, 8 o'clock, eat for like 30 minutes, work on the business for
like three hours.
And I did that every day, probably for like a year and a half, which it got to the point
where I was so mentally exhausted.
Like I literally got to a breaking point where I just couldn't do it anymore and it was quit
(15:41):
or like I couldn't sell my business or quit the business because the business at that
point was doing like a million and a half in revenue in like six months.
And that is what told me just go for it.
Like you could always go get another job.
But yeah, it was like two years of just like brutal work, like really, really hard working
days.
But how important do you think like that two years, I call it the sacrifice years or the
(16:03):
years and the trenches, how important do you think that was correlating to the success
that you have today?
Like going in, building the business that you're building, making the decisions to grow
it to $20 million a year.
Do you think that you would have been able to even think that big or make those types
of decisions without being on the inside of an organization like that?
Because a lot of people don't want to go work a nine to five or a nine, whatever they call
(16:27):
it, the nine to five and they want to be their own boss.
But we did that, we both did that.
And we pretty much got our like MBA in life, business, money, real estate and a bunch of
stuff and it's correlated into a lot of success on the after or after the fact.
Do you think that was pretty important for you?
The reality is, is most of the time you have to endure like a good amount of painful years
(16:53):
before you get to like chill out a little.
And right there's seasons in business where sometimes you're going to be working really
hard.
Sometimes you could take a little bit of more time.
Like I went from working super hard, then it got a little bit easier, then work super
hard, then hired some people got a little bit easier, then it's like, all right, now we
want to go to the next level.
(17:14):
It's going to be another ramp up of working.
But yeah, a lot of people skip, a lot of people think you start a business or you start a
YouTube channel or you start making content, it's going to happen overnight.
Like I literally was just talking to my buddy, helping him with content for his business.
I'm like, you need to make a YouTube video once a week for like the rest of your life
(17:35):
or for the rest of the time you have this business, whether that's 10 years, like it's
not you're going to make four YouTube videos and you're going to be rich.
It's like something you have to do every single day.
And like people just sometimes don't realize the amount of actual work it takes to make
something work.
Sometimes people get lucky and do have success with minimal amounts of work.
(17:56):
But most of the time it takes a shitload of work and hours and trial and error to get
something to remotely work.
Like I'm lucky.
The reason my I feel like, yes, there's skills that I've had and developed in my business
and things I've done right, but I feel like every business has some sort of luck aspect
to it.
So like I'm, I'm lucky, but the more you work and the more hours you put in, the, the, the
(18:19):
bigger or more opportunities you give yourself to become lucky and get lucky, like you, right?
You're, you've taken a bunch of risks and tried a bunch of different things, giving you a better
chance to be lucky that one of them works.
You know, that's I think that's just business in general is just you have to try a bunch
of shit.
I always say to try a bunch of shit and see what works best for you or what even works
(18:42):
in general.
And then you just kind of double down and go down that path.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Thank you for that.
All right.
So getting out of Cardone Capital, you learn real estate to a degree and you learn the
wealth formula.
And I want to kind of, because there's going to be investors that are trying to go down
the active route.
They're going to be like, okay, well, I don't have a business that makes eight and a half
million dollars, but there are investors that will listen to this and they're in a very
(19:04):
similar position where they are to make a decent amount of money.
They have a business where they're a W2 employee, they love what they do and they make good
money and they're just looking to be the investor.
Can you break down the wealth formula in your eyes and how you're going to be using it with
your main vehicle and then investing with me, investing in the other people's deals?
How does that work for you, for the investor side of it?
(19:26):
Yeah.
I mean, again, as I alluded earlier, it's very hard to run a business, make a lot of money
or work for or have a high income job, make a lot of money and do real estate at the same
time because they both pull you in two directions.
If you are a business owner and you make, and this is something that at Cardone Capital,
I saw so many people investing so much money, I was like, why don't they just go do deals
(19:49):
themselves?
They'll make more money because most of the time, if you do a deal by yourself the right
way, you could make more money.
You keep 100% of the profits instead of a profit split.
But the odds of one, you finding a deal, knowing the brokers, you being able to underwrite the
deal, do the debt, get the insurance, the odds of you doing a deal correctly at that
(20:10):
size, it's nearly impossible to actually do and have the bandwidth to still make money
in your other job.
So I quickly, not quickly, it's actually taken me a while to realize that I need to focus
on making more money in my business where I can make hopefully multiple seven and eight
figures in my business and then you invest that money with someone like Gabe or whoever
(20:32):
else you want to invest with, but Gabe has good deals.
Yes, I am endorsing Gabe, I am biased.
But like you invest with someone like with him or whoever else that is in the deal flow
every day and is talking to the brokers, the debt quotes, the insurance guys, because they
have their pulse on the market like I don't, I like you have to pay attention to this shit
(20:55):
just like the stock market, you have to pay attention to the market if you're going to
be investing in it, Gabe's laughing because like we, I just sold all my stocks and stocks
are an absolute fucking nightmare.
But like if you want to actually make money in investing like you have to have your finger
and your pulse on that shit.
And I've realized as a high income earner myself, I like think it's just better to have
(21:18):
put your money with someone who's doing it full time, they'll take better care of it
than they, than you will.
And you have peace of mind and can focus on your business.
So again, back to seeing all these people investing with Grant, I now realize why they
invested with Grant is because they wanted to stick out what they were good at being
doctors, lawyers, business owners, because they make way more money there and just let
Grant and team do the work because they are industry experts and they're in the deals
(21:42):
every day and they're still going to get good returns and make good money.
So like at the end of the day, it's you got to pick your poison, but I think the wealth
formula for me is make a lot of money in my business, invest in real estate along the
way, if I sell my business one day and make multi seven eight figures, great, you take
more of that money invested into real estate and make more passive income to buy all the
(22:04):
fancy shit like cars, boats, houses and watches and vacations.
What would you say some of the most important things that you learn from working at grants
that you still apply today?
Maybe it's like principles with your own money, principles about staff or decisions that
you make, what are like the big takeaways?
Attention is currency, right?
So no matter what industry you're in, if you have the most attention, you will likely make
(22:27):
the most money and just be loud and repetitive with your marketing.
I think it's a lot of the marketing principles.
And then again, it's some of the mindset stuff like, dude, you can go as big as you want,
as long as you have to have that bigger thing.
And you just can't limit yourself.
Like if someone like Grant seriously can grow that big, he makes you truly feel like anyone
(22:48):
can do it.
So I think that's just something I try to remind myself constantly of is like, dude,
we can grow this thing as big as we want.
Like there's no, there's no, there's no, like I could become a billionaire.
It's a, I have, and Gabe points this out to me all the time that I have flaws of not planning
and having a clear path, which I'm working on, but I could easily become a billionaire.
(23:12):
Anyone watching this could become a billionaire.
There's no limit.
You just obviously have to put a plan in place and pick the right vehicle and that vehicle
is going to be for whatever is best for you.
But yeah, I think attention and mindset stuff is probably the stuff I still use from Grant
every day.
Very cool.
All right, let's move into mentorship because it's a little bit different.
(23:33):
People will join The deal room community to learn and get trained and then go out and
do deals or maybe get deal flow from investor as an investor.
For you, how important is mentorship and getting around other people that have already done
what it is that you want to do in your everyday business?
Because it applies to everything, whether it's The Deal Room and deals or what you're doing.
So I'm going to use my girlfriend Denver, who which Gabe knows very well as an example
(23:55):
for this and I'll use it myself.
I was very reluctant to invest in mentorship because again, I might be frugal, might be
cheap, might think I can just do it myself.
I've had that mentality for a really long time and it's probably helped and hurt me in
certain ways.
This year, I made my first investment into mentorship for Amazon FBA because while I
(24:15):
was making seven figures on Amazon, I really didn't know the landscape that well.
So I found a group that like it's 10 grand a month, 10 grand a year to be a part of the
group.
And I was like, I really need, I want to, if I'm going to plan to take an e-commerce business
to 100 million dollars a year, I probably should get a better understanding and foundation
of this.
Since joining that group for 10 grand, my business has, I think like, there were up 150% year
(24:39):
over year.
So did it pay off?
I would say so.
My girlfriend as an example, she invested $20,000, which is almost all the money to her
name in a sales program, betting on herself and taking that education that she was going
to go make more money because she wanted to, she wanted to shrink the time it was going
to take to learn this stuff.
(25:00):
And she just invested another three grand in another coaching mentorship that's going
to again compress the time.
And then we spent $1,000 on another coaching call with someone in her industry.
Long story short, we spent all that money, a couple of things clicked for her.
She made 15 grand in one month from going like 0, 0, 0, a hundred bucks, a couple hundred
bucks, and then made 15 grand in one month.
(25:21):
And like, she's just so good at compressing the time and willing to invest.
And I'm learning that from her.
So like it's, it just, every day it makes more and more sense to me that just, hey, people
who've done exactly what you want to do and it'll shorten your time because time is like
truly the only valuable currency we have.
So you can shorten the time that it takes for you to learn something or do something,
(25:45):
just pay to do it, especially if you have the means to do it, just pay to play.
That's it.
Yeah.
You either pay with time or pay with money.
And something I want to point out is the, the two different examples, you're in a different
spot in your business where you have an exit, because there's a lot of people that like
they see the business owner that does a million dollars a year, joined a program and then now
they're doing a million five or $2 million.
(26:05):
And it's like, okay, well, that's a lot easier to make that decision internally to like, let
go with 10 grand to then get another million dollars in the business.
Like people can make that decision.
But then Denver, completely different spot, brand new to business, doesn't like almost
all of her money, that's a really big decision.
What was the process?
(26:26):
Because I know that, I know for a fact you were involved in that decision making process
too.
So how did you guys get comfortable enough letting go of almost all of the money and be
willing to bet on yourself?
Cause that's like the biggest and most uncomfortable thing people will, will run into.
So she went to this conference, this, it's some sales girl, they call themselves the
(26:48):
sales girls.
She went to this event where they upsold their program, which was 20 grand.
She calls me and she says, Hey, I want to, I think I'm going to buy this.
I don't know.
What do you think I should do?
And to me, being completely honest, I thought she was completely batshit crazy.
I was like, you're going to spend all your money.
Like you're nuts.
(27:08):
Like you're gullible, you're nuts.
They're selling you.
Like I can't believe you.
But then when I really thought about it, right?
That's our X card own mafia, a little blood in us, you know?
Look, if she doesn't do it, right?
She doesn't pay the 20 grand to learn the sales skills that she truly felt she was lacking.
What happens?
(27:29):
Right?
And then when I get there, I can show her some Grant Card on videos and who knows how
long that will take for her to actually learn the material and start making sales.
Or she spends the 20 and then she keeps $20,000, which if you have $20,000 to your name in
like your late 70s or your late 20s, you're broke.
You're flat broke.
Or if she invested the 20 grand, worst case scenario, she invests 20 grand, doesn't learn
(27:54):
a single thing.
She has no money.
She's still broke.
Like that's worst case scenario.
Best case scenario is you invest the 20 grand, you actually learn a shit ton, you make $100,000,
$200,000, $300,000 and it was worth every single penny.
Right?
So, and we just kind of did that analysis.
So we're like, if you don't do it, you're going to be in the same position, which at
(28:16):
that point she felt very, very stuck in her business and it was very frustrating.
And we're like, if you do do it, it could pay off and you could actually really learn
sales and really make some money.
And then we kind of just like looked at each other on FaceTime and we're just like, fucking
do it.
Like, what's the worst thing that can happen is you lose 20 grand, 20 grand is no money.
Yes, 20 grand is a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things of where we want to
(28:38):
go with our lives, 20 grand is no money.
So we just said, go do it.
And it's drastically paid off because she's developed as a person, she's developed sales
skills, she's developed leadership skills, all from that one investment.
So like it's, you have to invest in yourself.
That's the biggest asset you have.
Yeah, I tell people this, I'll do two things.
(29:00):
So number one, can anybody take a skill set away from you?
No, right?
Because once you've learned something, it's in your own head.
So it's like, that's nothing.
It doesn't matter where you're at.
You can go broke, you have a lot of money, you develop the skill set and that's invaluable
if you apply it.
Number two, you've seen this and the reason that we even made this investment was because
(29:20):
of you and our business.
We invested a whole lot of money and forward future looking money to a partner that came
in and it completely compressed the timeline.
What would have taken us, I don't know, four or five years and a whole lot more money than
what we invested through mistakes and learning mistakes, we've compressed down into a six
month timeline and now we're on track to do a whole lot more.
(29:43):
And that's like a skill to do, like to have the guts and knowledge and feel to invest
in these things that'll make you better.
I'm sure there's a lot of things out there that, like I get pitched things all the time,
courses, people and like, I say no to like 95% of them.
And that's just me being skeptical.
I think they're like, to a certain extent, if you say yes to too many things, it's you
(30:06):
really have to vet who you're investing with because some people will give you more value
than others in terms of education, partnerships, et cetera, whether they're too big, too small,
don't have enough time to put into you.
So you do have to be careful, do your due diligence, but it's a skill that I'm trying
to get better at is investing my money and things that will buy me my time back, help
(30:28):
me with education to further grow my businesses.
It's a tough skill to learn.
And I look at God, like I look at you, I look at Denver, people around me who are doing
these things and it helps me think like, okay, how can I further invest or find a mentor,
pay someone to help me?
Because I know it'll like nine times that I think nine times or 10 times out of 10, when
you invest in your education, like there's only positive things that come out of it.
(30:51):
It's very rarely do you get negative consequences from investing in yourself.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
All right.
So let's move back into a little bit real estate, then we'll wrap it up.
So for you as the investor, let's go through the deal.
As an investor, what do you look for, number one?
And are you open to, like there's people listening to this, you're an investor, would you be
(31:15):
open to investing in other people's deals?
And then number two, what defines a good deal for you?
Like what are you looking for?
I mean, at this point, dude, I've had a lot of opportunities to invest in a lot of deals.
To me, it's just trust.
Number one thing is trust.
I invested a hundred grand with In What It Gaves deals.
And I really didn't even look at the deal.
Like I barely looked at the deal.
(31:36):
I don't even think I looked at the numbers one time.
I said, yo, is this a good, I literally ask Gabe, is this a good deal?
Should I do it?
I'm just a little bit of convincing to just get over the hump of actually just parting
with the money.
Because that's just how I am as a person, right?
I literally just told you I'm getting better at investing.
But now looking back, I literally told Gabe last week, I'm like, shit, I wish I would
have put like 250 or 300 in that deal.
(32:00):
So it's just trusting the person who's operating the deal, making sure they have a clear vision
for, oh, balloons.
Clear vision and exit plan for the deal, location, it's got to be a sick location.
If you're in Florida, there's very few locations that aren't really good locations.
(32:20):
And right, you have that basic return, return parameters, I think minimum, right?
1.8 to like 2x over like three to five years is probably a good threshold.
And then if the deal cash flow is great, everyone loves cash flow monthly distributions is,
I think the greatest thing you can do as a syndicator if you're watching because people
love to get paid monthly.
(32:41):
That's why I'm asking this question.
Just so you know, to give you context, there's a lot of people that will listen and the investors
will listen to like, okay, I should probably do that as well.
But the main profile of this is going to be the operator.
One, there are investors everywhere.
There are probably investors in your phone that you don't even know.
You have to ask, you have to be willing to have these conversations with them.
(33:01):
But get the information like what does the investor look for out of an investment opportunity?
And the first thing Ryan said was trust.
Like I don't even, like the deal is great, but if I don't trust you, I'm not even going
to look at it.
That was really important.
Yeah.
And the fact that the syndicator or the person bringing the deal has skin in the game always
(33:24):
makes me feel better because right, they're putting up their money as well.
If they're just trying to, there's people in this industry that they need to do these
deals to make money.
And I would like watch out for those people.
Someone like Gabe, right?
Gabe has his education business, which is where he's going to make most of his money.
And then obviously he's investing in deals.
One to grow his portfolio grows name.
(33:45):
And that's like the end game for both of us is to invest in real estate.
I know a bunch of other people that are just purely syndicators and need to make their
money through management fees, through aggressive splits, and those are the people I would be
weary of.
So if you have a person who's giving you a reasonable split, they're putting money in
the deal and you just trust them and the deal looks good.
(34:08):
It's in a good location.
There's like, it's at the end of the day, it's the biggest thing is trust.
Like if you say, would I invest with them because they're putting their own money and
I trust them, then you should do the deal.
Like it's the decision should be that simple.
Cool.
Let's wrap it up with whether it's real estate or the listener that's just trying to get
(34:30):
into, you know, create wealth for themselves, make more money, have more freedom, do better,
do more with their life.
What would you say the best piece of advice you could pass on?
Say it's the 20, the 22, the 25, the 30 year old that's really trying to create something
out of their life.
That's something you find yourself telling everybody.
(34:50):
I know content is going to be one of them, but what else?
Yeah.
So making videos and putting whatever business or line business you're in, putting it on
video, that's I'll touch on that in a second.
But I think it's if you're young and you don't know what you want to do is just to try a bunch
of different things in a bunch of different verticals and see what sticks.
(35:12):
Like Gabe, for example, when we were working for Grant, he saw me having some success with
e-commerce, Gabe tried e-commerce and miserably fucking failed.
Gabe realized e-commerce is not for me.
It's something he tried.
He put it on his belt and then he moved on to the next one.
Right?
So I think and he tried a few other things there and just realized like, I don't need
(35:33):
like, we didn't have success.
I don't like this business.
It's just not for me.
Right?
So people are scared to try things and fail either because they're going to be judged
by friends or family.
Like I had another friend.
For example, he's trying to grow his TikTok with his music and right content.
He's doing the content thing and he literally texted his brother who's my friend and said,
(35:55):
it's embarrassing trying this and only getting 60 views.
He's like, I want to stop.
But like, who the fuck cares?
Why is it a bit like you just have to stop caring what people think and just keep innovating?
I told it.
This is the message I told him like, dude, yes, you're getting 60 views, but one, you
never know that next TikTok you post can literally get 50 million fucking views.
(36:17):
Your song goes viral and your life literally changes forever.
It's that easy nowadays.
So I just told him like, stop giving a fuck.
Just keep posting it.
Keep posting.
Try different angles.
Right?
Try different things.
He plays golf.
I'm like, you should sing your song and play golf at the same time.
It's random, but it's a different angle.
So it's just trying a bunch of different things and seeing what sticks.
(36:39):
That's what I do every day in my businesses is like, we tried different creatives.
Different product images.
Everything is A.B.
Testing to figure out what works best and then you roll with what works best.
So try a bunch of shit.
See what works best for you.
Double down on that.
And then yes, content is huge.
Whatever you decide to double down on, everything, every business nowadays can use some sort
(37:01):
of video attention through TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, wherever it is, ideally all platforms
and just put your content out there.
Put your services, your business, your education, your products out there and promote
it on video.
And just don't kick like you're going to suck it first, but it's okay.
You're going to get better.
Gabe's first videos were absolutely horrendous and we literally laugh at them.
(37:23):
So were mine.
I laugh at them.
Like it's just the reality.
You're going to suck it first, but eventually you get really good.
You do podcasts like this.
You have people come out to Tampa in a huge room full of 100 people because you started
making videos online and started reaching more people.
That's what gaved it.
Right?
So you just got to start.
You're trying shit and make a bunch of videos once you figure out what you want to do.
(37:45):
And don't quit.
Don't quit.
Yeah.
If you don't quit, you can't fail.
Yeah, that's a good one.
You saw that on Instagram.
All right.
Last thing, we'll look back at this five years from now and this is a little bit different
on how I'll end every one of them.
I think you're a little bit different because you have a lot more context to what we're
doing.
Everything you know about us, me and Alicia and the business that we have today, what
our big mission is, what advice would you give us over the next like five years?
(38:10):
Are we doing the right thing or are we thinking too small?
Something that we can look back on five years from now and be like, damn, I'm really happy
you said that.
My honest answer is I'm like a little bit jealous of you guys because you have a much
clearer, bigger vision than I do on how to get to a billion dollars, which is, again,
(38:30):
I want to figure out how to do that for myself and for myself.
And I see that you guys have more or less a clear vision on how to get there.
I don't know.
You guys are in the right vehicle.
You guys are good people.
You're building fucking crazy businesses.
I don't know if I have advice to give you.
I'm just kind of like, I want to see how I can hop on that bandwagon.
(38:54):
It's like, do I sell my businesses and join Gabe?
I don't know.
But I don't know, man.
I think both of us are going really big places.
How important do you think it is to have a good fucking friend in your life?
Say that you can just FaceTime at any given second.
You can be like, hey, man, this is what's going on.
Give me the real shit.
I'm trying to find more of that, right?
(39:15):
Because me and Gabe do that all the time where we just call each other and we'll talk on
the phone for like an hour on what's going on in our business, what's going on in his
business, how do we troubleshoot it.
And it sucks that we can only do it through FaceTime.
We're only five hours away from each other.
I told Gabe he needs to make more money so he can move to Fort Lauderdale because South
Florida is expensive.
But yeah, you got to find, you got to, like, that whole, your network is your net worth
(39:39):
is like, it's so cliche, but it's so true.
Like if you find a group of people that, like for example, I told Gabe this story, I went
to a coffee shop yesterday.
There was a guy who owned like 30 car dealerships.
Another guy who pulled up in a Rolls Royce and the other guy was wearing a $100,000 Rolex
Daytona.
Like that little circle, those are power players.
I'm sure they're all sharing ideas of what they're doing.
(40:02):
So like just having friends that are in the same mindset as you and doing things in business
and life and progressing, not just doing the same shit they did from high school.
Like you got to find more of those people.
And I like it's so cliche.
You hear all the time, but it's like, it's the absolute truth.
You just got to get around winners.
And sometimes you got to pay to get around winners, which is okay.
(40:23):
All right.
So I forgot that I didn't even mention this.
Where do people find you or where can people buy pickleball paddles or braided fishing
line?
People find you.
The website for fishing equipment is beyondbraid.com or go to Amazon, buy something and leave
a review for me.
That always helps.
Professorpaddles.com.
The brand is Professor Pickleball.
(40:44):
Or if you just DM me on Instagram, I'll give you some shit for free.
Take me up on that, please.
My Instagram is RyanMaya and my YouTube is RyanMaya.
I talk about e-commerce business and all that kind of stuff.
More on YouTube.
So look up RyanMaya everywhere on social media.
You'll find it.
Thank you so much for being here.
And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for another episode.
I'll see you on the next one.
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