January 16, 2025 • 33 mins
Jose Berlangas explores his extensive entrepreneurial journey, detailing the joys and trials of business ownership. The episode emphasizes the importance of resilience in the face of economic downturns and the necessity of maintaining humility and an open mind in entrepreneurship.
• Jose's initial aspirations and unexpected path into homebuilding
• The business insights from his book "The Business of Homebuilding"
• Key elements of land investing discussed in "Dirt Rich"
• The dangers of leverage and high-risk growth strategies
• Importance of flexibility and open-mindedness for entrepreneurs
• Advice for newcomers on pursuing passion and skill in business
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, hello everybody.
Before I play that awesomeintro music, like usual, I just
want to give a littleintroduction to Jose.
He was just spitting bars rightwhen we first met in the
meeting, just getting to knoweach other.
I didn't know when to hit therecord so I just did a rough
start.
He properly introduces himselfa couple minutes in.
But yeah, this is going to be areally good, eye-opening
(00:24):
episode.
He talks about his journey,this real estate tycoon that he
is, and his journey from thedifferent sectors and what it's
done and the risk of leverage asowner and entrepreneur, and so
much more.
I also looked into hisaudiobooks he's going to talk
about later on.
Definitely something to lookinto.
(00:45):
If you want to just get hisunabridged knowledge, I think a
simple credit will do to buzz inthat.
Like I said, let's play thatintro music and hear Jose's
story.
Welcome to the Josh Bolton Show.
Welcome to the Josh Bolton Show, where we dive into interesting
(01:05):
and inspiring conversations.
And now your host Josh Bolton.
I have it recording, so let's doa proper introduction for you.
Sure, do you want to start, orhow do we go?
(01:25):
It's usually I have you, youjust tell your story, kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
All right, all right.
Well, it's great to be here.
As I was mentioning, I am anentrepreneur, I'm an investor, a
real estate developer, builder.
Now I'm a writer.
I'm enjoying this new stage ofmy life where I'm finding it now
(01:48):
important for me to move on toa different part of my life,
which is to perhaps reflect onmy business career by writing
some of the experiences,anecdotes, some of the wisdom
that I've acquired over theyears in the business world.
(02:09):
First of all, I started with myfirst book, the Business of
Homebuilding, which is anindustry that I find extremely
interesting.
I have a love-hate relationshipwith it because I invested
(02:31):
close to 30 years of my life asa residential construction
company, while I was doing otherthings, while I was engaging in
other types of businesses andindustries, but the bulk of my
time over the last few decadeshas been devoted to building
residential communities.
So I wrote this book ascathartic, as a very important
(02:57):
process for me, to be able totell the story as to how a
business that I intended onlybeing a part of for a year or
two at the most, somehow I endedup being involved with for a
few decades, and still am.
As a result, I ended up running, owning and operating a number
(03:21):
of real estate and constructioncompanies a number of real
estate and constructioncompanies but the irony is that
I never intended to do that.
My initial interest, myaspirations and my passion was
more geared towardsentrepreneurship, not
necessarily home building.
So the book that I wrote talksa lot about that industry, but
(03:43):
it's truly an entrepreneurshipguide, other than it's using the
construction industry as thebay, the fundamental concept.
But it talks about how to starta business, how to build a
business, what are some of thedifferent things that need to be
thought of and planned beforeone starts a company of any type
(04:11):
, of any kind, and I enjoy thatprocess quite a bit that I moved
on to more topics now, a littlebit more broader.
Now I've completed a book calledDirt Rich, which is about land
investing, land development,land speculating, and it's not
(04:32):
really only about how to makemoney by investing in land, but
how to honor our roots, how tounderstand how things happen in
the world of investing from A toZ, how it is that our
communities evolve, how it isthat they're built by individual
(04:52):
speculators, developersselecting a piece of property,
selecting the right piece ofproperty for the right purpose.
And this is how thismulti-trillion dollar industry
all begins by selecting a pieceof property for the right
purpose.
And this is how thismulti-trillion dollar industry
all begins by selecting a pieceof dirt to develop your dreams
and your hopes and your businessand perhaps begin your career.
(05:15):
So I talk a lot about thehistory of how this world of
real estate began and I thinkit's a fun book.
I enjoyed talking about it.
It's very provocative.
It makes you think about landand real estate from a different
perspective, so on and so forth.
Now I'm on my third book, whichis more about entrepreneurship
(05:40):
and the mentality and thelifestyle, the life choices that
an entrepreneur must take andmake in order to succeed.
So there it is.
I've spent the last close to 40years owning businesses.
I know I look young, I feelyoung in many aspects, but I
(06:02):
started young.
I started this career ofentrepreneurship as a teenager,
essentially, and one businessled to another and another, and
my obsessive, compulsivepersonality and behavior never
allowed me to stop.
During good years I wasexpanding.
During bad years, I was tryingto figure out how to get out of
(06:24):
trouble and how to look forbetter and newer opportunities
in multiple industries, and ithas been a very, very
interesting, exciting journey,but also a very tough, difficult
, exhausting at times, where itwas never boring.
Where it was never boring,there were many, many, many
(06:51):
times when I just couldn't findthe will or the strength to keep
going, when industries gotdifficult, when economic cycles
were against me, where luck wasnot on my side, which it often
happens to many entrepreneurs.
We perceive things a little bitdifferent when we start a
business, although it is scary,but we always think that our
plan is going to work the waythat we intended for it to
(07:17):
operate, and it rarely does.
In the world of business,everything is very unpredictable
, everything is a surprise,everything is confusing and
everything is challenging.
There's competitors.
There are too many peopleattempting the same businesses,
whether they are a little bitdifferent or not.
(07:40):
So this world ofentrepreneurship is not for
everyone, and I often talk abouthow you must have the right
personality, the right level oftolerance to pain, to stress, to
pressure, to deadlines, havingyour brain always on, having one
of those personalities thatnever stops, that never has a
(08:03):
moment for him or herself, withclarity, because you are always
overwhelmed with a in order forthings to move forward and be
responsible for other people'sactivities, not just yours grows
, the more things depend less onyour actions and more on
collective efforts of everybodyaround you, and it becomes
(08:49):
harder and harder to controleverybody's activities.
And for that you need a vision,you need a mission, you need a
clear message, you need anidentity that you bring to the
table as an entrepreneur andclarity for everyone around you
to understand what it is thatyou're trying to do and where
(09:13):
are you heading with thisbusiness of yours.
So all of those are things thatentrepreneurs with experience
understand and the new ones willlearn perhaps the hard way.
So, anyway, that is a brief,brief interruption.
I can obviously go on and on,but but that's that's kind of
(09:35):
where I've been spending thelast few decades of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
That's interesting.
That's really good.
I like it.
The biggest one I was curiousabout is you never mentioned any
of the titles of your books.
What were the books titles?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yes, yes, the first one is the business of home
building.
Ok, this is, yes, this is theone that it does not train or
teach anyone how to build ahouse by any means.
Build a house by any means.
It teaches, it talks about thebusiness side of things.
(10:09):
It teaches you and helps youhow to build the business that
builds homes, or that buildsanything else, for that matter.
So that is the first book, andthe second one is Dirt Rich.
That is the one that talks moreabout land speculating and land
investing and land development.
The third one that I'm workingon is I won't disclose the name
(10:32):
yet because it has not beenfinalized but it's really about
just about entrepreneurship, themindset of an entrepreneur and
the mentality, the personalitythat it requires for you to
succeed in the business worldI'm just curious do you have
audiobooks for your books also?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I'm sorry uh, do you have audiobooks for the, the
ones you mentioned?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
dirt rich, yes yes, well, dirt rich.
It will be published in in thenext few weeks.
But, yes, for for the, thebusiness building, that there
are, uh, it's, it's out there,uh, in the ebook version and, um
, I'm I'm hoping to alsotranslate it soon into other
(11:16):
languages.
But, uh, well, I, I suppose Iwill start with spanish being my
, my first language andhopefully eventually it will go
into other markets.
But I essentially wrote thatbook as something that I needed
to do personally, something thatwould help me move on to the
(11:36):
next stage of my life, notnecessarily to sell a lot of
books, although I think that itis a helpful tool for anybody
that's starting a business andthat wants to understand the
challenges, not just the successportion of this career, but the
obstacles and the adversitythat comes with it.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, no, it's the biggest thing, as I've been
doing this podcast for two-ishyears is that's the biggest one?
People like you said, there's alot of people doing the same
thing you're doing, so what'sdifferent, kind of thing.
Um, there's a lot of peoplewanting your position, and what
are you going to do to keep it?
It's true there's it's a veryspecial breed of person.
You can learn it, but generallyyou kind of just need to have
(12:18):
it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yes, yes, yes, because we confuse the meaning
of building a business or theword entrepreneurship.
Starting a business is onething that is very, very
challenging and very difficult.
It's dangerous, scary, it'sspeculative.
But remaining in business, evenif you don't grow, even less
(12:45):
when you begin to expand yourbusiness, that's when most
businesses fail, because thatbuilding a business, growing a
business, is the equivalent ofstarting a business on steroids.
Moment when everything changesthe responsibilities, the
(13:10):
process, the concept, the team,the obligations that every
member need to bring into theequation in order for things to
move.
You're inventing things as yougo, you're creating things as
you go, you're coming up nonstopwith better ways of ensuring
that your business is going inthe right direction, and you
need to not only be veryeffective, very precise, very
(13:31):
intense, but also you need to bevery open-minded.
You need to know that you mayneed to pivot and make changes.
That perhaps are things thatare not working, and a lot of
entrepreneurs happen to be very,very stubborn.
They want things to work oneway, or the highway, as they say
.
If there's not their way, ifit's not the way that they
(13:53):
envision things, and they startgetting discouraged without
realizing that.
No, what I want is for mybusiness to succeed, not for my
ego to succeed.
And removing that arrogance andremoving the ego from any
business transaction and fromthe growth of any business is
important, and not everyentrepreneurship has the ability
(14:15):
to leave that at the front doorand be able to listen to others
and have conviction about whatyou're doing.
But also an open mind to be ableto listen to others and have
conviction about what you'redoing.
But also an open mind to beable to be flexible when things
start getting difficult and whenthe need of new ideas and new
concepts are required for yourbusiness to expand.
(14:37):
So it's easier said than doneand of course, there are
different business models somethat are very intensive in the
growth sector.
Some of them are not.
Some of them are more regionalor local or very specific,
(14:58):
attending one niche of a sectorin the service industry or one
product.
But there are others that cangrow very fast and you have to
be prepared for it.
So bringing in understandingthe business model that you
choose is very, very importantfor you to accomplish the
(15:22):
outcome that you anticipate.
There are many, many ways to goabout it in the business world.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Oh, absolutely yeah, the one joke I always tell
people there's a million ways tothe top of the mountain.
Not all are the best.
So the one thing I've beenthinking about, as you, thank
you, the one thing I've beenthinking about for you, as
you've been talking and youmentioned, you've been in this
game for about 30 to 40 years,so you've seen a few downturns
of the market.
(15:49):
How did you adapt and learn andgrow from those downturns?
Because, especially, I know, in08, and then 2020 was a unique
special too.
That was unexpected kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah kind of thing.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've beenthrough some horrible times and
terrible cycles in, not just inin real estate, but in every
business that I've been in.
I don't know if it's been luckor destiny or by choice, but the
businesses that I've been moredeeply involved in have been
(16:25):
very, very cyclical and veryspeculative, starting with the
energy business where I began mycareer, where I was dealing
with commodities in thepetrochemical industry, building
petrochemical plants forcompanies that had ups and downs
.
In one year we had a plans tobuild a few plants and there was
(16:50):
expansion, and so you had tohire people and train people and
invest and all of a sudden theyturn off the switch and you
have to figure out what to dowith the, the infrastructure
that you created.
Nothing that you wrong, butit's just something you have to
deal with.
Commodities, petroleum andother resources change, their
(17:12):
values change, they fluctuateand businesses have to figure
out how to deal with those, andif you're not a public company
with deep pockets, it's anextremely difficult thing to
handle.
It happened to me.
Uh, unfortunately I won't getinto every business example and
I will not call them failures.
(17:33):
They were experiences in whichthe business did not get to
where it needed to, to to the,the level that it needed to
reach for one reason or another.
Let's call them these downturnsand and economic changes, but I
had several, several uh in inwhen, when those happen, it's.
(17:53):
It's a very terrifyingexperience because, all of the
sudden, your income goes away,the, the, the circumstances
change, but your overhead isstill there.
Your expenses, your investment,your life, the amount of time
and number of years that you'veinvested and devoted to this
(18:13):
project, all of a sudden looklike they're about to fall apart
, and it's not like having a job.
That, yeah, it's scary, buttomorrow you can go and find
another one.
Starting and building a businessis not something that happens
overnight.
It may take you another decadebefore you're able to build
another one successfully and10,000 or 10 million headaches
(18:37):
before you get there.
So it's a petrifying experiencewhen something goes wrong and
at that point, well, it dependson the type of industry, depends
on the level of.
Unfortunately, when I've beenthrough these experiences, these
bad cycles, I was also caughtby another ingredient that was
(18:58):
terrifying, which was leverage.
We were talking about growth.
I happen to have been in badeconomic cycles, operating and
building a business.
While it happened, I was highlyleveraged, meaning I had
borrowed a lot of money to go toexperience the growth, to be
(19:21):
able to achieve the growth, andwhen the economy changes and
those cycles turn and it catchesyou in a growing mode, it can
kill you overnight because allof a sudden, your income goes to
nothing while you're having tosustain a humongous debt,
carrying costs and a world ofother expenses that your company
(19:44):
has to carry.
And at that point it trulybecomes mind over matter.
Your mind needs to startprocessing these issues one at a
time and just focusing onsurviving.
(20:28):
There were many, many days.
Let's skip several experiencesand go to the real estate
business where at some point, wehad an endless amount of
inventory homes for sale, landbeing developed, institutions,
banks, lenders, investors,multi-million dollar operation
with hundreds of contractorsworking simultaneously and all
of a sudden, everything camecrashing down on us and
processing it, understandingwhat's happening was very
difficult, just coming to termswith a new reality where now
your new task was not to growand was not to make money.
(20:52):
It was trying to figure out howto get out of trouble and how
to begin this process ofdecompression and destroying in
pieces what took you decades tobuild, and this is very
demoralizing.
This is very, very difficult toprocess.
(21:12):
It's depressing, and these aremoments in time in someone's
career as an entrepreneur whereyou must find so much strength
within you to just get up in themorning and deal with these
things, when these are momentswhen all you want is to run away
and hide and not have to dealwith all of the problems that
(21:36):
are coming your way, the demandsthat are coming your way, and I
remember those every morning,struggling to just get up and
figuring out how to deal with asituation, how to move things
around, how to negotiate withbanks.
All of a sudden, all of thetime you were devoting and
(21:57):
building a business and creatingsystems and procedures and
dealing with a growing moat, nowyou're devoting it to putting
out fires.
Your activities completelychange overnight.
Now it is how to pacifyeveryone that you owe money and
how to gain time to just live,to see another day and deal one
(22:20):
day at a time, managing things.
And one of the lessons that I'velearned and that I give to new
entrepreneurships is to manageleverage, to understand that
growth needs to be gradualunless you have deep pockets
behind you that are supportingthat growth.
But if you're doing it the wayI did it by leverage and without
(22:45):
much outside capital, it's veryrisky and you have to pace
yourself.
You have to do it slowly andyou have to understand that when
things start doing well, youneed to begin to put money aside
, because we tend to think thatbusiness is going to continue
(23:05):
doing well.
You need to begin to put moneyaside because we tend to think
that business is going tocontinue doing well forever and
ever.
We're just creatures of habitand creatures of simple, simple
mentality and psychology wherewe feel that when things are
doing well, we get greedy andwhen things are going bad, we
(23:31):
fear circumstances.
But there's never a middle ofthe road and we need to find
that middle of the road.
Even when things are doing well, we need to figure out how to
put money aside.
Thankfully, we did in most ofour companies.
Part of the mission was to buildreserves and build resources
and not reinvest everything.
Or well, let's call it notspend everything.
We would definitely reinvest ingrowth, but we would always
(23:54):
have reserves and those reserveshelped us survive those
difficult years.
So your activities need tochange when an economic
environment occurs and, believeit or not, they happen to many,
many industries, more than whatpeople think.
Whenever there are, there isuncertainty economic uncertainty
(24:17):
, now that information isglobalized and now we know
what's happening in the MiddleEast, we know what's happening
in Asia, we know what'shappening in South America.
If there's a war that breaksout, if there's an economic
issues in another side of theworld, if there is some
uncertainty, business owners andinvestors tend to get a little
(24:40):
bit concerned.
People buying homes, peoplebuying goods and services,
people going out and all of asudden, business owners begin to
suffer.
Some of them don't even knowwhat's happening or why their
sales are slowing down and theyneed to keep up with information
and understand that, even ifyou own a little mom and pop
(25:01):
shop, anything can affect it Anew competitor, currency
exchanges, economic changes,elections, interest rates, the
environment of the media thatmight be feeding us with
something negative at anyparticular time, which is what
(25:21):
the consumer index reflects.
If consumer confidence drops,our business may drop, and all
of us, as entrepreneurs, need tounderstand that things can
change overnight and that weneed to be prepared for it.
Hopefully they won't.
As they say, you know, hope forthe best and prepare for the
(25:42):
worst, and that's the way thatbusinesses need to be ran.
The more I stay in business,the longer I am, the more
cautious I become, because now Iknow that things do happen and
the younger, the newerentrepreneurs are perhaps too
optimistic.
It's great to be positive, it'swonderful to have a positive
(26:04):
outlook in your business and inthe future and in the economy,
but it's also smart to know andto understand and agree with the
fact that those good times maynot last forever and bad years
and bad cycles do occur.
Once you experience a few ofthem, you begin to become a
(26:27):
little bit more skeptical,perhaps just cautious and
careful in the way that youapproach each decision.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, that's.
I'm working for, um, a youngcompany right now and they're
they're growing like crazy.
And that's where I keep tellingthem on my, hey, you need to
set something aside or, like,delegate more.
But, um, they're like, oh, it'sjust Josh or whatever, and I
think so.
It's interesting to see he, theguy I am working for his
(26:58):
business taking off in a seasonwhen it normally doesn't take
off.
So he's like this is great.
I'm like, well, let's see whatnext year does.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, of course, every businessand every industry is different.
There are some exceptions,perhaps, and even those are
difficult, but whenever youinvent a new way of doing
something, a new concept, a newproduct, you want to move fast,
because copycats will be outthere very soon trying to
(27:31):
duplicate what you're doing andyou want to gain as much market
and as much credibility in thebrand as possible.
There are some exceptions,where time is of the essence and
you need to grow and expand,but even those, they need to be
done carefully and they need tobe done with a plan, with a plan
of attack.
So, yes, the growth is adouble-edged sword and it is
(27:56):
something that needs to be wellthought of according to your
industry and according to whatit is that you do, so that you
can better prepare for it.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's a big one.
I talk with the owner about, ohMike, your industry that he's
in.
I'm like it's generally safe,but there are going to be
seasons where you it's like aboon and bust kind of thing.
But there are going to beseasons where you it's like a
boon and bust kind of thing.
He's kind of listening to me,he's, he's very stubborn, has to
control everything, and I getthat too.
(28:27):
But it's like, dude, it's alsogood to listen to some outsiders
not all of them, but some wherethey actually have your
interest in mind.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
So well, some leaders , entrepreneurs find it hard to
listen to other people's advice,and I don't blame them.
This is another irony thathaving that perfect middle of
the road where you're not toostubborn, where you're not so
square minded as an entrepreneurand so obsessed with your
(28:55):
reality but at the same time,you stay your ground and you
follow your mission and youdon't change your model just
because everybody's giving youopinions, because it is easier
for outsiders to find solutionsto problems.
By nature, it is always easierfor us to fix someone else's
(29:18):
problem because we don't bearthe consequences of the outcome.
So, as an entrepreneur, youwill always hear everybody
telling you how to fix problemsand how to find these solutions
and how to improve and how togrow and how to expand and how
to make more money.
But they don't have yourbusiness as their priority.
(29:40):
It's not their livelihood.
So you need to mix and matchpieces of information.
You need to be open-minded,listen carefully, pay attention
to opinion, different opinionsfrom the people that you care
about and that you respect andsomething I always say listen to
(30:05):
opinions from people who havedone it, who have been there and
done that not fully, becausenot everybody has gone through
your journey or dealt with yourprecise examples of businesses
and activities, but they'vetraveled the difficult journey
(30:27):
of building a business.
I hate to listen to people whohave never done it.
It's very easy for everyone totell you how to improve your
operation when they've neverdone it before.
So be careful to who you listen.
To improve your operation whenthey've never done it before, so
be careful to who you listen to.
And then come up with your ownconclusions.
(30:48):
Create your own dish, your ownsalad of information the good,
the bad and the ugly and makeyour decision.
Don't operate based on somebodyelse's decision, because if you
fail and you didn't follow yourgut instinct, it's going to
hurt a lot more than when youfail based on your own decisions
.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Oh yeah, jose, the meeting's about to end, so,
before the meeting cuts off, isthere anything you want people
to know or go to?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
No, no, no.
Visit me at joseberlangacom.
It's been an incredible journey.
I always recommend this younggeneration, this new generation,
to not wait too long before toget into an industry because you
like the industry, becausethere's an interest, a deeper
(31:44):
interest, in just making money,but, at the same time, find
something that you happen to begood at, because that way you
have much better chances ofsucceeding.
If you like the business andyou're good at it, when you
combine those two, that's theright formula for improving your
potential, improving yourchances of success.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Wonderful.
I love it.
Thank you, Jose.
This has been honestly aneye-opening conversation with
just the information you werejust giving me.
Truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Thank you, josh.
It's great being here, greattalking to you, and I hope we
can do it again soon.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Definitely.
Hello, hello everybody.
Before I play that awesomeintro music, like usual, I just
want to give a littleintroduction to Jose.
He was just spitting bars rightwhen we first met in the
meeting, just getting to knoweach other.
I didn't know when to hit therecord so I just did a rough
start.
He properly introduces himselfa couple minutes in.
But yeah, this is going to be areally good, eye-opening
(00:24):
episode.
He talks about his journey,this real estate tycoon that he
is, and his journey from thedifferent sectors and what it's
done and the risk of leverage asowner and entrepreneur, and so
much more.
I also looked into hisaudiobooks he's going to talk
about later on.
Definitely something to lookinto.
(00:45):
If you want to just get hisunabridged knowledge, I think a
simple credit will do to buzz inthat.
Like I said, let's play thatintro music and hear Jose's
story.
Welcome to the Josh Bolton Show.
Welcome to the Josh Bolton Show, where we dive into interesting
(01:05):
and inspiring conversations.
And now your host Josh Bolton.
I have it recording, so let's doa proper introduction for you.
Sure, do you want to start, orhow do we go?
(01:25):
It's usually I have you, youjust tell your story, kind of
thing.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
All right, all right.
Well, it's great to be here.
As I was mentioning, I am anentrepreneur, I'm an investor, a
real estate developer, builder.
Now I'm a writer.
I'm enjoying this new stage ofmy life where I'm finding it now
(01:48):
important for me to move on toa different part of my life,
which is to perhaps reflect onmy business career by writing
some of the experiences,anecdotes, some of the wisdom
that I've acquired over theyears in the business world.
(02:09):
First of all, I started with myfirst book, the Business of
Homebuilding, which is anindustry that I find extremely
interesting.
I have a love-hate relationshipwith it because I invested
(02:31):
close to 30 years of my life asa residential construction
company, while I was doing otherthings, while I was engaging in
other types of businesses andindustries, but the bulk of my
time over the last few decadeshas been devoted to building
residential communities.
So I wrote this book ascathartic, as a very important
(02:57):
process for me, to be able totell the story as to how a
business that I intended onlybeing a part of for a year or
two at the most, somehow I endedup being involved with for a
few decades, and still am.
As a result, I ended up running, owning and operating a number
(03:21):
of real estate and constructioncompanies a number of real
estate and constructioncompanies but the irony is that
I never intended to do that.
My initial interest, myaspirations and my passion was
more geared towardsentrepreneurship, not
necessarily home building.
So the book that I wrote talksa lot about that industry, but
(03:43):
it's truly an entrepreneurshipguide, other than it's using the
construction industry as thebay, the fundamental concept.
But it talks about how to starta business, how to build a
business, what are some of thedifferent things that need to be
thought of and planned beforeone starts a company of any type
(04:11):
, of any kind, and I enjoy thatprocess quite a bit that I moved
on to more topics now, a littlebit more broader.
Now I've completed a book calledDirt Rich, which is about land
investing, land development,land speculating, and it's not
(04:32):
really only about how to makemoney by investing in land, but
how to honor our roots, how tounderstand how things happen in
the world of investing from A toZ, how it is that our
communities evolve, how it isthat they're built by individual
(04:52):
speculators, developersselecting a piece of property,
selecting the right piece ofproperty for the right purpose.
And this is how thismulti-trillion dollar industry
all begins by selecting a pieceof property for the right
purpose.
And this is how thismulti-trillion dollar industry
all begins by selecting a pieceof dirt to develop your dreams
and your hopes and your businessand perhaps begin your career.
(05:15):
So I talk a lot about thehistory of how this world of
real estate began and I thinkit's a fun book.
I enjoyed talking about it.
It's very provocative.
It makes you think about landand real estate from a different
perspective, so on and so forth.
Now I'm on my third book, whichis more about entrepreneurship
(05:40):
and the mentality and thelifestyle, the life choices that
an entrepreneur must take andmake in order to succeed.
So there it is.
I've spent the last close to 40years owning businesses.
I know I look young, I feelyoung in many aspects, but I
(06:02):
started young.
I started this career ofentrepreneurship as a teenager,
essentially, and one businessled to another and another, and
my obsessive, compulsivepersonality and behavior never
allowed me to stop.
During good years I wasexpanding.
During bad years, I was tryingto figure out how to get out of
(06:24):
trouble and how to look forbetter and newer opportunities
in multiple industries, and ithas been a very, very
interesting, exciting journey,but also a very tough, difficult
, exhausting at times, where itwas never boring.
Where it was never boring,there were many, many, many
(06:51):
times when I just couldn't findthe will or the strength to keep
going, when industries gotdifficult, when economic cycles
were against me, where luck wasnot on my side, which it often
happens to many entrepreneurs.
We perceive things a little bitdifferent when we start a
business, although it is scary,but we always think that our
plan is going to work the waythat we intended for it to
(07:17):
operate, and it rarely does.
In the world of business,everything is very unpredictable
, everything is a surprise,everything is confusing and
everything is challenging.
There's competitors.
There are too many peopleattempting the same businesses,
whether they are a little bitdifferent or not.
(07:40):
So this world ofentrepreneurship is not for
everyone, and I often talk abouthow you must have the right
personality, the right level oftolerance to pain, to stress, to
pressure, to deadlines, havingyour brain always on, having one
of those personalities thatnever stops, that never has a
(08:03):
moment for him or herself, withclarity, because you are always
overwhelmed with a in order forthings to move forward and be
responsible for other people'sactivities, not just yours grows
, the more things depend less onyour actions and more on
collective efforts of everybodyaround you, and it becomes
(08:49):
harder and harder to controleverybody's activities.
And for that you need a vision,you need a mission, you need a
clear message, you need anidentity that you bring to the
table as an entrepreneur andclarity for everyone around you
to understand what it is thatyou're trying to do and where
(09:13):
are you heading with thisbusiness of yours.
So all of those are things thatentrepreneurs with experience
understand and the new ones willlearn perhaps the hard way.
So, anyway, that is a brief,brief interruption.
I can obviously go on and on,but but that's that's kind of
(09:35):
where I've been spending thelast few decades of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
That's interesting.
That's really good.
I like it.
The biggest one I was curiousabout is you never mentioned any
of the titles of your books.
What were the books titles?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yes, yes, the first one is the business of home
building.
Ok, this is, yes, this is theone that it does not train or
teach anyone how to build ahouse by any means.
Build a house by any means.
It teaches, it talks about thebusiness side of things.
(10:09):
It teaches you and helps youhow to build the business that
builds homes, or that buildsanything else, for that matter.
So that is the first book, andthe second one is Dirt Rich.
That is the one that talks moreabout land speculating and land
investing and land development.
The third one that I'm workingon is I won't disclose the name
(10:32):
yet because it has not beenfinalized but it's really about
just about entrepreneurship, themindset of an entrepreneur and
the mentality, the personalitythat it requires for you to
succeed in the business worldI'm just curious do you have
audiobooks for your books also?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I'm sorry uh, do you have audiobooks for the, the
ones you mentioned?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
dirt rich, yes yes, well, dirt rich.
It will be published in in thenext few weeks.
But, yes, for for the, thebusiness building, that there
are, uh, it's, it's out there,uh, in the ebook version and, um
, I'm I'm hoping to alsotranslate it soon into other
(11:16):
languages.
But, uh, well, I, I suppose Iwill start with spanish being my
, my first language andhopefully eventually it will go
into other markets.
But I essentially wrote thatbook as something that I needed
to do personally, something thatwould help me move on to the
(11:36):
next stage of my life, notnecessarily to sell a lot of
books, although I think that itis a helpful tool for anybody
that's starting a business andthat wants to understand the
challenges, not just the successportion of this career, but the
obstacles and the adversitythat comes with it.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, no, it's the biggest thing, as I've been
doing this podcast for two-ishyears is that's the biggest one?
People like you said, there's alot of people doing the same
thing you're doing, so what'sdifferent, kind of thing.
Um, there's a lot of peoplewanting your position, and what
are you going to do to keep it?
It's true there's it's a veryspecial breed of person.
You can learn it, but generallyyou kind of just need to have
(12:18):
it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yes, yes, yes, because we confuse the meaning
of building a business or theword entrepreneurship.
Starting a business is onething that is very, very
challenging and very difficult.
It's dangerous, scary, it'sspeculative.
But remaining in business, evenif you don't grow, even less
(12:45):
when you begin to expand yourbusiness, that's when most
businesses fail, because thatbuilding a business, growing a
business, is the equivalent ofstarting a business on steroids.
Moment when everything changesthe responsibilities, the
(13:10):
process, the concept, the team,the obligations that every
member need to bring into theequation in order for things to
move.
You're inventing things as yougo, you're creating things as
you go, you're coming up nonstopwith better ways of ensuring
that your business is going inthe right direction, and you
need to not only be veryeffective, very precise, very
(13:31):
intense, but also you need to bevery open-minded.
You need to know that you mayneed to pivot and make changes.
That perhaps are things thatare not working, and a lot of
entrepreneurs happen to be very,very stubborn.
They want things to work oneway, or the highway, as they say
.
If there's not their way, ifit's not the way that they
(13:53):
envision things, and they startgetting discouraged without
realizing that.
No, what I want is for mybusiness to succeed, not for my
ego to succeed.
And removing that arrogance andremoving the ego from any
business transaction and fromthe growth of any business is
important, and not everyentrepreneurship has the ability
(14:15):
to leave that at the front doorand be able to listen to others
and have conviction about whatyou're doing.
But also an open mind to be ableto listen to others and have
conviction about what you'redoing.
But also an open mind to beable to be flexible when things
start getting difficult and whenthe need of new ideas and new
concepts are required for yourbusiness to expand.
(14:37):
So it's easier said than doneand of course, there are
different business models somethat are very intensive in the
growth sector.
Some of them are not.
Some of them are more regionalor local or very specific,
(14:58):
attending one niche of a sectorin the service industry or one
product.
But there are others that cangrow very fast and you have to
be prepared for it.
So bringing in understandingthe business model that you
choose is very, very importantfor you to accomplish the
(15:22):
outcome that you anticipate.
There are many, many ways to goabout it in the business world.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Oh, absolutely yeah, the one joke I always tell
people there's a million ways tothe top of the mountain.
Not all are the best.
So the one thing I've beenthinking about, as you, thank
you, the one thing I've beenthinking about for you, as
you've been talking and youmentioned, you've been in this
game for about 30 to 40 years,so you've seen a few downturns
of the market.
(15:49):
How did you adapt and learn andgrow from those downturns?
Because, especially, I know, in08, and then 2020 was a unique
special too.
That was unexpected kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah kind of thing.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've beenthrough some horrible times and
terrible cycles in, not just inin real estate, but in every
business that I've been in.
I don't know if it's been luckor destiny or by choice, but the
businesses that I've been moredeeply involved in have been
(16:25):
very, very cyclical and veryspeculative, starting with the
energy business where I began mycareer, where I was dealing
with commodities in thepetrochemical industry, building
petrochemical plants forcompanies that had ups and downs
.
In one year we had a plans tobuild a few plants and there was
(16:50):
expansion, and so you had tohire people and train people and
invest and all of a sudden theyturn off the switch and you
have to figure out what to dowith the, the infrastructure
that you created.
Nothing that you wrong, butit's just something you have to
deal with.
Commodities, petroleum andother resources change, their
(17:12):
values change, they fluctuateand businesses have to figure
out how to deal with those, andif you're not a public company
with deep pockets, it's anextremely difficult thing to
handle.
It happened to me.
Uh, unfortunately I won't getinto every business example and
I will not call them failures.
(17:33):
They were experiences in whichthe business did not get to
where it needed to, to to the,the level that it needed to
reach for one reason or another.
Let's call them these downturnsand and economic changes, but I
had several, several uh in inwhen, when those happen, it's.
(17:53):
It's a very terrifyingexperience because, all of the
sudden, your income goes away,the, the, the circumstances
change, but your overhead isstill there.
Your expenses, your investment,your life, the amount of time
and number of years that you'veinvested and devoted to this
(18:13):
project, all of a sudden looklike they're about to fall apart
, and it's not like having a job.
That, yeah, it's scary, buttomorrow you can go and find
another one.
Starting and building a businessis not something that happens
overnight.
It may take you another decadebefore you're able to build
another one successfully and10,000 or 10 million headaches
(18:37):
before you get there.
So it's a petrifying experiencewhen something goes wrong and
at that point, well, it dependson the type of industry, depends
on the level of.
Unfortunately, when I've beenthrough these experiences, these
bad cycles, I was also caughtby another ingredient that was
(18:58):
terrifying, which was leverage.
We were talking about growth.
I happen to have been in badeconomic cycles, operating and
building a business.
While it happened, I was highlyleveraged, meaning I had
borrowed a lot of money to go toexperience the growth, to be
(19:21):
able to achieve the growth, andwhen the economy changes and
those cycles turn and it catchesyou in a growing mode, it can
kill you overnight because allof a sudden, your income goes to
nothing while you're having tosustain a humongous debt,
carrying costs and a world ofother expenses that your company
(19:44):
has to carry.
And at that point it trulybecomes mind over matter.
Your mind needs to startprocessing these issues one at a
time and just focusing onsurviving.
(20:28):
There were many, many days.
Let's skip several experiencesand go to the real estate
business where at some point, wehad an endless amount of
inventory homes for sale, landbeing developed, institutions,
banks, lenders, investors,multi-million dollar operation
with hundreds of contractorsworking simultaneously and all
of a sudden, everything camecrashing down on us and
processing it, understandingwhat's happening was very
difficult, just coming to termswith a new reality where now
your new task was not to growand was not to make money.
(20:52):
It was trying to figure out howto get out of trouble and how
to begin this process ofdecompression and destroying in
pieces what took you decades tobuild, and this is very
demoralizing.
This is very, very difficult toprocess.
(21:12):
It's depressing, and these aremoments in time in someone's
career as an entrepreneur whereyou must find so much strength
within you to just get up in themorning and deal with these
things, when these are momentswhen all you want is to run away
and hide and not have to dealwith all of the problems that
(21:36):
are coming your way, the demandsthat are coming your way, and I
remember those every morning,struggling to just get up and
figuring out how to deal with asituation, how to move things
around, how to negotiate withbanks.
All of a sudden, all of thetime you were devoting and
(21:57):
building a business and creatingsystems and procedures and
dealing with a growing moat, nowyou're devoting it to putting
out fires.
Your activities completelychange overnight.
Now it is how to pacifyeveryone that you owe money and
how to gain time to just live,to see another day and deal one
(22:20):
day at a time, managing things.
And one of the lessons that I'velearned and that I give to new
entrepreneurships is to manageleverage, to understand that
growth needs to be gradualunless you have deep pockets
behind you that are supportingthat growth.
But if you're doing it the wayI did it by leverage and without
(22:45):
much outside capital, it's veryrisky and you have to pace
yourself.
You have to do it slowly andyou have to understand that when
things start doing well, youneed to begin to put money aside
, because we tend to think thatbusiness is going to continue
(23:05):
doing well.
You need to begin to put moneyaside because we tend to think
that business is going tocontinue doing well forever and
ever.
We're just creatures of habitand creatures of simple, simple
mentality and psychology wherewe feel that when things are
doing well, we get greedy andwhen things are going bad, we
(23:31):
fear circumstances.
But there's never a middle ofthe road and we need to find
that middle of the road.
Even when things are doing well, we need to figure out how to
put money aside.
Thankfully, we did in most ofour companies.
Part of the mission was to buildreserves and build resources
and not reinvest everything.
Or well, let's call it notspend everything.
We would definitely reinvest ingrowth, but we would always
(23:54):
have reserves and those reserveshelped us survive those
difficult years.
So your activities need tochange when an economic
environment occurs and, believeit or not, they happen to many,
many industries, more than whatpeople think.
Whenever there are, there isuncertainty economic uncertainty
(24:17):
, now that information isglobalized and now we know
what's happening in the MiddleEast, we know what's happening
in Asia, we know what'shappening in South America.
If there's a war that breaksout, if there's an economic
issues in another side of theworld, if there is some
uncertainty, business owners andinvestors tend to get a little
(24:40):
bit concerned.
People buying homes, peoplebuying goods and services,
people going out and all of asudden, business owners begin to
suffer.
Some of them don't even knowwhat's happening or why their
sales are slowing down and theyneed to keep up with information
and understand that, even ifyou own a little mom and pop
(25:01):
shop, anything can affect it Anew competitor, currency
exchanges, economic changes,elections, interest rates, the
environment of the media thatmight be feeding us with
something negative at anyparticular time, which is what
(25:21):
the consumer index reflects.
If consumer confidence drops,our business may drop, and all
of us, as entrepreneurs, need tounderstand that things can
change overnight and that weneed to be prepared for it.
Hopefully they won't.
As they say, you know, hope forthe best and prepare for the
(25:42):
worst, and that's the way thatbusinesses need to be ran.
The more I stay in business,the longer I am, the more
cautious I become, because now Iknow that things do happen and
the younger, the newerentrepreneurs are perhaps too
optimistic.
It's great to be positive, it'swonderful to have a positive
(26:04):
outlook in your business and inthe future and in the economy,
but it's also smart to know andto understand and agree with the
fact that those good times maynot last forever and bad years
and bad cycles do occur.
Once you experience a few ofthem, you begin to become a
(26:27):
little bit more skeptical,perhaps just cautious and
careful in the way that youapproach each decision.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, that's.
I'm working for, um, a youngcompany right now and they're
they're growing like crazy.
And that's where I keep tellingthem on my, hey, you need to
set something aside or, like,delegate more.
But, um, they're like, oh, it'sjust Josh or whatever, and I
think so.
It's interesting to see he, theguy I am working for his
(26:58):
business taking off in a seasonwhen it normally doesn't take
off.
So he's like this is great.
I'm like, well, let's see whatnext year does.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, of course, every businessand every industry is different.
There are some exceptions,perhaps, and even those are
difficult, but whenever youinvent a new way of doing
something, a new concept, a newproduct, you want to move fast,
because copycats will be outthere very soon trying to
(27:31):
duplicate what you're doing andyou want to gain as much market
and as much credibility in thebrand as possible.
There are some exceptions,where time is of the essence and
you need to grow and expand,but even those, they need to be
done carefully and they need tobe done with a plan, with a plan
of attack.
So, yes, the growth is adouble-edged sword and it is
(27:56):
something that needs to be wellthought of according to your
industry and according to whatit is that you do, so that you
can better prepare for it.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's a big one.
I talk with the owner about, ohMike, your industry that he's
in.
I'm like it's generally safe,but there are going to be
seasons where you it's like aboon and bust kind of thing.
But there are going to beseasons where you it's like a
boon and bust kind of thing.
He's kind of listening to me,he's, he's very stubborn, has to
control everything, and I getthat too.
(28:27):
But it's like, dude, it's alsogood to listen to some outsiders
not all of them, but some wherethey actually have your
interest in mind.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
So well, some leaders , entrepreneurs find it hard to
listen to other people's advice,and I don't blame them.
This is another irony thathaving that perfect middle of
the road where you're not toostubborn, where you're not so
square minded as an entrepreneurand so obsessed with your
(28:55):
reality but at the same time,you stay your ground and you
follow your mission and youdon't change your model just
because everybody's giving youopinions, because it is easier
for outsiders to find solutionsto problems.
By nature, it is always easierfor us to fix someone else's
(29:18):
problem because we don't bearthe consequences of the outcome.
So, as an entrepreneur, youwill always hear everybody
telling you how to fix problemsand how to find these solutions
and how to improve and how togrow and how to expand and how
to make more money.
But they don't have yourbusiness as their priority.
(29:40):
It's not their livelihood.
So you need to mix and matchpieces of information.
You need to be open-minded,listen carefully, pay attention
to opinion, different opinionsfrom the people that you care
about and that you respect andsomething I always say listen to
(30:05):
opinions from people who havedone it, who have been there and
done that not fully, becausenot everybody has gone through
your journey or dealt with yourprecise examples of businesses
and activities, but they'vetraveled the difficult journey
(30:27):
of building a business.
I hate to listen to people whohave never done it.
It's very easy for everyone totell you how to improve your
operation when they've neverdone it before.
So be careful to who you listen.
To improve your operation whenthey've never done it before, so
be careful to who you listen to.
And then come up with your ownconclusions.
(30:48):
Create your own dish, your ownsalad of information the good,
the bad and the ugly and makeyour decision.
Don't operate based on somebodyelse's decision, because if you
fail and you didn't follow yourgut instinct, it's going to
hurt a lot more than when youfail based on your own decisions
.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Oh yeah, jose, the meeting's about to end, so,
before the meeting cuts off, isthere anything you want people
to know or go to?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
No, no, no.
Visit me at joseberlangacom.
It's been an incredible journey.
I always recommend this younggeneration, this new generation,
to not wait too long before toget into an industry because you
like the industry, becausethere's an interest, a deeper
(31:44):
interest, in just making money,but, at the same time, find
something that you happen to begood at, because that way you
have much better chances ofsucceeding.
If you like the business andyou're good at it, when you
combine those two, that's theright formula for improving your
potential, improving yourchances of success.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Wonderful.
I love it.
Thank you, Jose.
This has been honestly aneye-opening conversation with
just the information you werejust giving me.
Truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Thank you, josh.
It's great being here, greattalking to you, and I hope we
can do it again soon.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Definitely.
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