Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / She Built a $2 Billion Business From Her Garage Desk | Trixy Castro

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She Built a $2 Billion Business From Her Garage Desk | Trixy Castro · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  I started Genesis with a phone and a desk, an actual ratty old
• 0:03
  desk that my mom had in the garage.
• 0:05
  Do you want to know how I started raising money?
• 0:06
  This was really as big time. Tell me I'd walk up to people
• 0:10
  and be like, hey, do you invest in real estate?
• 0:12
  Honest to God, within one month I was making more cash than both
• 0:16
  my parents come by. That's insane.
• 0:18
  That's when I knew, wow, yes you can.
• 0:21
  Some of the greatest moments of my life were helping others get
• 0:26
  their win. Genesis ended up becoming a $2
• 0:28
  billion annual origination debt fund, and then she sold that to
• 0:33
  Goldman Sachs. I saw these groups going and
• 0:36
  buying two or three or four or five houses a month, and I kept
• 0:39
  thinking, wait a second. If you do the math and you
• 0:41
  understand how leverage works, you could be turning that into
• 0:44
  15 homes into 20 homes. This is the reason that most
• 0:48
  people will never be successful. They're afraid to fail or
• 0:51
  they're afraid to even try. And so they give you all these
• 0:55
  reasons of why they can't do it, why it's not fair or why.
• 0:58
  And you're just like, don't you see it?
• 1:01
  No. Welcome back to the Hannah
• 1:04
  Hammond Show. I'm here today with my dear
• 1:05
  friend Trixie Castro, who is literally the epitome of the
• 1:09
  American Dream and an absolute boss lady and just such an
• 1:14
  inspiration to me and so many other women and men out there
• 1:17
  alike. And you have really shown the
• 1:20
  world that anything is possible with the determination and the
• 1:23
  grit to just create whatever dreams that you have and make
• 1:26
  them happen. And especially in a man's world
• 1:29
  of real estate and finance and commercial lending and debt
• 1:32
  funds, institutional capital and all this.
• 1:34
  So for those of you who don't know, Trixie Castro, she is the
• 1:38
  founder of Genesis Capital and Genesis Auctions, which Genesis
• 1:42
  ended up becoming a $2 billion annual originations debt fund.
• 1:47
  And then she sold that to Goldman Sachs.
• 1:49
  And same thing with Genesis Auctions and built all of this
• 1:52
  starting from just herself and a phone.
• 1:55
  And I have no idea how you did it.
• 1:57
  And I'm so excited to hear because this stuff's hard.
• 2:00
  Like I'm building a capital firm right now and I don't know how
• 2:03
  you built it. So big and so fast.
• 2:05
  So super, super honored to have you on the show.
• 2:07
  Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
• 2:10
  I love everything that you're doing and truly congratulations
• 2:13
  on everything you're doing. It's so cool.
• 2:15
  You too, and I can't wait to dive into your new show, your TV
• 2:18
  show. So many fun things.
• 2:19
  So many things. So let's go back.
• 2:21
  You know, people look at you now.
• 2:23
  You have it all. You're beautiful, you're
• 2:25
  wealthy, you have an amazing family.
• 2:27
  And I always try to bring people on the show that truly represent
• 2:30
  the highest standard in all areas of their life because.
• 2:33
  Because riches without all of the other stuff is poverty to
• 2:37
  me, right? And so you truly have built all
• 2:40
  of that and you did it without any handouts and from a
• 2:43
  immigrant family from Colombia, right?
• 2:46
  Go Cuba, Cuba. So yeah, take us all the way
• 2:49
  back. And I know you know, where did
• 2:51
  your entrepreneur journey start for you?
• 2:54
  And how did that progress to get to where you are today?
• 2:57
  So it's such an interesting kind of story, right?
• 3:00
  Because I look back on it now and I'm like, wow, I am so
• 3:04
  grateful that my parents had the courage to come to this country,
• 3:08
  right? And so they came here from Cuba
• 3:11
  and they had, you know, nothing. I was born here.
• 3:13
  My sisters were born here, but my sisters are 10 and 11 years
• 3:17
  younger. So there was a whole life that
• 3:19
  was lived before that. And, and it was tough.
• 3:22
  And I remember it, two years old, life was tough.
• 3:25
  And my mom found an ad in a newspaper, straight old school
• 3:29
  who's how old I am. And it was for a live in
• 3:32
  housekeeper. And so she went to the interview
• 3:35
  but the nanny didn't show up or the babysitter I should say.
• 3:38
  And I went with her. And I remember that moment like
• 3:42
  it was yesterday and it was so crazy.
• 3:43
  She was so nervous she was doing this, but she pushed past the
• 3:47
  fear. I saw her push past the fear and
• 3:50
  get the job same day she, my dad and myself move into these
• 3:54
  complete random strangers guest house.
• 3:58
  Like talk about grit and resilience.
• 4:00
  She was like no, I want a better life.
• 4:02
  I was thrilled because they had the biggest backyard I'd ever
• 4:05
  seen in my life and turns out they were an immigrant family as
• 4:09
  well. They had come from Italy and he
• 4:11
  had made his money in banking and invested in real estate.
• 4:14
  Fast forward all these years. So crazy how exposure really
• 4:19
  does impact us. So anyway, I share that with you
• 4:21
  because so yes, I grew up in a guest house and it was the most
• 4:24
  amazing experience for me. Why?
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  Because I had exposure to what was possible because here was
• 4:30
  another family that had made it happen for themselves and that
• 4:34
  showed me what was possible. And not going to lie, I saw this
• 4:37
  woman, her name is Josie. Her closet, which today I now
• 4:40
  know was Chanel. Back then I was like, oh, it's
• 4:43
  heaven. All these beautiful dresses and
• 4:46
  shoes and bags. And as a child, as you know, 3
• 4:49
  or 4, I thought, wow, that's so cool.
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  I want that. And, and I think so much of us
• 4:54
  have to hold on to that childlike spirit right where
• 4:56
  you're like, oh, it is possible for me.
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  And so Long story short, at 14, we get our first house, our very
• 5:03
  own first home. We move to Camarillo, which is
• 5:06
  an hour away, which is like completely different, new
• 5:08
  friends, new high school, new all the things.
• 5:10
  So I go out for two different sports.
• 5:12
  So I'm like, oh, that's how I'll make friends, right?
• 5:15
  And I make the two teams and I'm like, this is amazing.
• 5:18
  So cool. Except for each sport was like
• 5:21
  $1000. There's no way that my family
• 5:23
  could do that or that they would even ask and put that kind of
• 5:26
  burden. By this time, I have two younger
• 5:27
  sisters. And I'm thinking, OK, I really
• 5:30
  want to, like, do the thing. I want to play the sports.
• 5:33
  I earned it. So how am I going to do it?
• 5:34
  What resources do I have? Because I knew I couldn't get a
• 5:38
  job at 14. Turns out you need a worker's
• 5:40
  permit, a ride to this, that or the other.
• 5:42
  So I'm like, what do I have? My younger sisters had Crayola
• 5:46
  Magic markers. My neighbor had a computer, so
• 5:49
  old school computer paper with the bubbles on the side and
• 5:52
  Crayola Magic markers. I made business cards for
• 5:55
  Trixie's tutor time, went across the street to my sister's
• 5:59
  elementary school, found the principal, explained to him that
• 6:03
  I had this new company, what I was doing, and asked him for the
• 6:07
  introduction to the second and third grade teachers.
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  Made that my sweet spot. And honest to God, within one
• 6:13
  month I was making more cash than both my parents combined.
• 6:17
  That's insane. That's when I knew, wow, yes you
• 6:21
  can. And where there's a will,
• 6:23
  there's a way. And that was my yes, you can
• 6:25
  moment, right? And thank God for that principal
• 6:27
  who probably never thought about it again.
• 6:28
  But it impacted my life, right? It showed me what was possible.
• 6:32
  And having that moment for others and helping them find
• 6:36
  that for themselves has become a really big thing for me, along
• 6:38
  with housing. And we'll get into that.
• 6:40
  But anyway, I saw that and I thought, this is really cool,
• 6:43
  let me expand. Hired my mom as my driver and
• 6:45
  went to other schools. So then, you know, Fast forward,
• 6:49
  I'm old enough to get a job. I walk into a Wells Fargo Bank
• 6:53
  and they're really key into the story because they gave me a job
• 6:56
  as a teller. I was terrible, which is like an
• 6:59
  accomplishment because there's three buttons as like deposit, a
• 7:02
  check, cash and withdrawal. And I screwed it up every time
• 7:06
  because I was so fascinated with the largest depositors.
• 7:10
  I wanted to understand, what do you do?
• 7:12
  How do you make your money? And I categorized them in my
• 7:16
  head. It was a real estate groups, the
• 7:18
  tech groups and the gamblers. You had the gamblers.
• 7:21
  I could probably figure out how to count cards.
• 7:23
  Not trying to go to jail, so that's out.
• 7:25
  Tech was very new, but I was very fascinated by it.
• 7:28
  Right. Although, if speaking candidly,
• 7:30
  I'd still be on my BlackBerry if I could.
• 7:33
  And real estate it was. And so they were coming with
• 7:37
  wads of cashier's checks, right? And hiring young people to go
• 7:41
  and be the runners at the courthouse steps.
• 7:43
  So I thought, this is really interesting.
• 7:44
  I want to go see what they're doing.
• 7:46
  And that's where I saw the opportunity because I saw these
• 7:50
  groups going and buying two or three or 45 houses a month.
• 7:54
  And I kept thinking, wait a second.
• 7:55
  If you do the math and you understand how leverage works,
• 7:58
  you could be turning that into 15 homes, into 20 homes and how
• 8:02
  do we do that? So I get a meeting with the CEO
• 8:05
  of Wells at the time. How?
• 8:08
  Persistent. He put it this way.
• 8:09
  It was so bad he thought I was ready to babysit his kids.
• 8:13
  Really it? Was like, well, how many do you
• 8:15
  have? I'll babysit them, but I'm
• 8:16
  actually you're meeting. So I go through the whole thing,
• 8:19
  which was basically became the genesis model, right?
• 8:22
  And I'm explaining it to him and I'm like, we Wells Fargo, we
• 8:25
  need to do this. It's a niche and and like this
• 8:29
  is where having that stars in your eyes and being young came
• 8:32
  in handy because I still was coming off the high of the yes,
• 8:35
  you can. So what I heard him say was
• 8:38
  that's a great idea. Go do it yourself.
• 8:41
  That's probably not what he said.
• 8:43
  As a grown up, I'm like, he probably was like, again, who
• 8:46
  let you in here, right? And so that's exactly what I
• 8:49
  did. So I thought, OK, I'm going to
• 8:50
  go figure this out. I'm going to go figure out what
• 8:53
  to do to become really great at that because I see what these
• 8:58
  tech groups are doing. I see that these real estate
• 9:00
  groups are coming out and creating incredible businesses,
• 9:05
  but that could be bigger and I can see that the big banks don't
• 9:09
  really understand that they need the money fast.
• 9:11
  Velocity was very important and if we could work the math
• 9:15
  backwards, we could do something really cool and we could create
• 9:18
  regional jobs. We could come in and really do
• 9:20
  some stuff. So I spent years in Year 5 or 6
• 9:23
  years hitting the pavement, really understanding every
• 9:27
  single part of the deal, every single.
• 9:29
  I was the underwriter of the processor, you name it, all the
• 9:32
  things, and started Genesis with a phone and a desk.
• 9:35
  An actual ratty old desk that my mom had in the garage because I
• 9:39
  was used to. OK, let's not focus on what we
• 9:41
  don't have. What resources do we have?
• 9:43
  She has a desk she no longer needs.
• 9:46
  I'm going to take that. Forget the part.
• 9:48
  She didn't talk to me for two weeks because she was so mad
• 9:50
  that I left this amazing teller job at Wells.
• 9:54
  You know what I mean? But it was like my passion.
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  And I wanted to go in and I wanted to do it.
• 9:59
  I wanted to figure out how I could help grow their dream,
• 10:04
  their dream of doing what they were doing.
• 10:06
  But I needed to add value. And I knew I was young, and I
• 10:10
  understood that I didn't look the part.
• 10:12
  I understood I didn't come from the right bed.
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  Trust me, I heard it. I understood that.
• 10:17
  Your name's Trixie. Yeah.
• 10:19
  Yeah, it really is. My parents were new to this
• 10:21
  country. Trixie Castro.
• 10:22
  I don't want to tell you that is what it is, right.
• 10:24
  And I understood that. And I chose.
• 10:27
  I remember. I remember it like it was
• 10:28
  yesterday. I am going to take that noise
• 10:32
  and I'm going to fuel it for what I want.
• 10:34
  And that's when I learned to set the vision.
• 10:36
  Here's what I want to build. And it was far greater than what
• 10:40
  I was capable of seeing because I wanted to light the world on
• 10:44
  fire. And I knew a couple things.
• 10:47
  I knew that I had to be really, really, really good at the
• 10:50
  thing, right? And the thing happened to be
• 10:51
  real estate. And I had to be better than
• 10:53
  everyone else because everyone speaks the universal language of
• 10:57
  make me money, right? So if I could master that, I can
• 11:01
  get in the game. Do you want to know how I
• 11:03
  started raising money? This was really as big time.
• 11:07
  I went to Rotary clubs. I went to anywhere that people
• 11:11
  were having lunch and had time to have lunch.
• 11:14
  I went to a deli near my house now called Brent's Deli, and I
• 11:18
  had a little booth and I would bring deals and I'd be
• 11:20
  underwriting them and I'd walk up to people and be like, hey,
• 11:23
  do you invest in real estate? Honest to God, I created a
• 11:26
  little fractionalized lending play and I would go drive every
• 11:29
  property I did every I would read the appraisal and try and
• 11:32
  find things wrong with it, right?
• 11:34
  Like how could this go sideways? How could I figure out a way to
• 11:38
  prevent things from getting pulled out from underneath me,
• 11:41
  right? How many ways can this go wrong?
• 11:43
  How many ways can it go wrong for them?
• 11:45
  And how can I mitigate that and how can I add value?
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  So it was really much like the boots on the ground operator and
• 11:52
  I learned so much. I mean, there's so much that
• 11:54
  comes from that. And you know, I, I've shared the
• 11:56
  story before, but then, you know, I'm a big girl and I get
• 12:00
  the very, my very first employee.
• 12:01
  She's a 14 year old girl working for a prom dress.
• 12:04
  And I'm like, what, who are you wearing the prom with?
• 12:06
  You're like 10. Where's your mom?
• 12:08
  What's happening? Who's this boy?
• 12:09
  Right. And and then we hire her best
• 12:12
  friend 'cause she gets the lead to the high school play.
• 12:14
  Bye. Bye, birdie.
• 12:16
  Then I hired my nephew who I paying gas money.
• 12:18
  So this was my dream team. So somebody please tell me that
• 12:22
  you have to have all the resources in the world.
• 12:24
  Absolutely. No, that's the same company.
• 12:26
  We ended up selling the Goldman Sachs.
• 12:28
  So I mean, it goes to show like, it doesn't matter where you
• 12:31
  start, right? And so as a result of getting in
• 12:34
  there, I had it maybe a little bit tougher as I should, right?
• 12:39
  Because I was new, I had to earn my stripes.
• 12:41
  But I didn't look at it as a negative.
• 12:43
  I looked at it as like, OK, these are smart people, they did
• 12:47
  something right in life, whoever they are, right?
• 12:50
  So let me learn what I can and let me filter out the noise.
• 12:53
  And I think that magic lesson helped me a tremendous amount
• 12:57
  because I was able to take what I wanted to learn.
• 13:00
  But the negativity, just tune it out, right?
• 13:02
  That that was something that I learned early on, which my mom
• 13:05
  was really good about kind of drilling in my sisters and in
• 13:09
  our head. And so as I'm going through
• 13:11
  this, I'm realizing, wow, this is like really cool and really
• 13:14
  fun, but really, really hard. Hi, my name is Trixie.
• 13:18
  Please give me hundreds of millions.
• 13:19
  Just kidding, Just kidding. I need billions of dollars.
• 13:22
  I promise I'm going to do a great job.
• 13:24
  Wasn't going to fly. So how do you backfill for that
• 13:27
  and how do you go to the source and how do you go to the well
• 13:30
  that has this big pocket of money when it wasn't a trend,
• 13:34
  right? It wasn't what was going on in
• 13:35
  the space at the time and it wasn't very male dominated
• 13:39
  industry and it wasn't you know, I hate come on and we're going
• 13:42
  to meet you where we are right. The world's changed, thank God.
• 13:45
  And so I remember this one moment where it was tough and I
• 13:53
  had to go raise money or it was the end of the road, right?
• 13:56
  And I remember thinking, that's OK, I'm going to follow the
• 13:59
  money. Where's the big money?
• 14:00
  New York. Wall Street.
• 14:02
  I had never been to New York, Hannah, Never I I had never
• 14:06
  been. So I get in, get fly there.
• 14:09
  I get out of the cab and the guy's like, well, where do you
• 14:12
  want to go? Or get in the cab, I should say.
• 14:13
  He goes, where do you want to go?
• 14:14
  I said Wall Street. And he goes, OK, where?
• 14:18
  I'm like where the bowl is. Yeah, where the bowl is.
• 14:21
  Because that's what I'd seen on TV.
• 14:23
  Honest to God, that's how naive I was.
• 14:25
  But how hungry I was. So here I am with my suitcase in
• 14:29
  New York. I didn't even think through.
• 14:31
  Let me drop it off at the hotel, right?
• 14:34
  Yeah. And I am determined.
• 14:36
  I'm coming back with the money. I am not letting go.
• 14:39
  I'm not coming home empty handed.
• 14:41
  There is no other choice, right? So Long story short.
• 14:44
  So I'm like, OK, I go to the bar because everyone's going to come
• 14:47
  down. But before I did that, I have to
• 14:50
  tell you, they're at the time there was a bull and there was
• 14:53
  this what fearless girl? She's now been moved in front of
• 14:55
  the New York Stock Exchange. And I remember standing, it
• 14:58
  makes me cry, and looking at that little girl.
• 15:01
  And if you see her, she's like facing the bull and she's
• 15:04
  fearless. And I remember thinking to
• 15:06
  myself, I want to be that girl. I want to be her That's
• 15:10
  fearless. That stares whatever comes her
• 15:12
  way right in the eye and pushes past it.
• 15:15
  I want to be that for everyone who's been told they're
• 15:18
  different, different. And that was that makes me cry.
• 15:21
  That was something I promised myself.
• 15:23
  And you know the end of the story.
• 15:25
  We raised the money, we did the things, ended up selling two
• 15:27
  companies within six months of each other.
• 15:30
  But that moment meant everything to me because it was, yes, it's
• 15:35
  going to be hard. Yes, it's going to be
• 15:37
  challenging. No one promised an easy road,
• 15:39
  right? I chose to be in business.
• 15:41
  I chose to be in this big boy league and I want to create a
• 15:46
  path for others. I want to be that fearless girl
• 15:50
  and I held on to that moment when it got tough.
• 15:53
  So people ask me all was it easy?
• 15:54
  Of course not. Nothing's easy, nothing's easy.
• 15:57
  But I held on to that in those moments.
• 15:59
  Being able to allow yourself to do that right and being able to
• 16:03
  say, you know what, I am vulnerable in this moment.
• 16:06
  It is hard, but I'm going to hold on to that.
• 16:09
  I'm going to align with my vision.
• 16:10
  And it was really cool because going through that makes you
• 16:15
  tough, but it also makes you want it so.
• 16:17
  Bad, Yeah. I didn't want mediocre, I wanted
• 16:21
  the best and I wanted us to be the best and we needed to win
• 16:24
  and we needed to create something that was bigger than
• 16:27
  just ourselves. And part of that was going and
• 16:30
  talking to my borrowers saying, hey, what are the challenges
• 16:33
  you're going through? They told me about the issues
• 16:37
  they had. They at the time lacked
• 16:38
  inventory. They needed more inventory,
• 16:40
  right? So in my head, I'm like, OK, if
• 16:43
  I'm lending you money and you don't have anywhere to go place
• 16:46
  that money, that becomes a me problem.
• 16:48
  I got to be very risk of risk. Let me go fix that, right?
• 16:50
  And so it was how do we create an environment where we can also
• 16:54
  dispose of the assets? And that's how Genesis Auctions
• 16:56
  was born on a post it note. OK, at least it was a giant
• 17:01
  sticky notes. I wrote out the business model
• 17:03
  and those giant, you know, notes that you put in the entire
• 17:06
  conference room because I sat there and I said, I'm going to
• 17:09
  tune out the noise. Forget what the competition's
• 17:11
  doing. I'm going to do what I know is
• 17:14
  the best for both sides. How can I create and how can I
• 17:17
  bridge that gap? And I think that's been a big
• 17:20
  kind of storyline for me in my life, being able to bridge the
• 17:24
  gap right on so many things, even culturally, Even so many
• 17:27
  things that like, you're just like, well, I understand both
• 17:30
  sides. How do we make it come together?
• 17:32
  And that's how the auction company came to be, which was
• 17:35
  Genesis Auctions, later became Hudson Marshall.
• 17:38
  Later we sold a Fidelity national title.
• 17:41
  So it was, it's a wild ride. The coolest thing is we're all
• 17:44
  still friends. Everybody doesn't have to work
• 17:47
  together because everybody's learned, hey, I know what I
• 17:50
  want. We can work together.
• 17:51
  We all come together. We're coming together for some
• 17:53
  really fun projects. We just filmed like a women's
• 17:55
  round table and stuff of how bunch of girls that weren't
• 17:58
  supposed to beat the odds built something super cool.
• 18:01
  But it really resonated with me to see the joy in their eyes,
• 18:06
  right? And so here we go.
• 18:08
  We do all the things. We do the hard stuff.
• 18:09
  We, you know, got Oak Tree to invest in Genesis for $250
• 18:13
  million the first time. I'm like, guys, this isn't going
• 18:16
  to be enough. We want to place billions.
• 18:18
  Being able to hear yourself say that, being able to figure out,
• 18:22
  OK, but how are we going to place this money?
• 18:24
  How are we going to mitigate that risk?
• 18:26
  How are we going to stay true to our underwrite our underwriting
• 18:28
  guidelines? How are we going to stay true to
• 18:30
  the culture that we've built? How are we going to also go and
• 18:34
  dispose of all these banks and servicers issues on the other
• 18:37
  side of the house, right? And how are we going to like
• 18:39
  kind of toe that line and how are we going to be able to
• 18:42
  handle it with market conditions And when things shift because
• 18:46
  all of a sudden you start to see, oh, wait a second, the
• 18:48
  people that are going to buy off of me on the auction platform
• 18:51
  are overpaying. I don't want want to lend them
• 18:53
  money. That's a risk, right?
• 18:54
  And so you're mitigating all of that.
• 18:57
  And what I realized is so much of my joy came from seeing the
• 19:01
  seeing these groups win, creating the local jobs, being
• 19:05
  able to say, wow, OK, you took your portfolio and you scaled
• 19:08
  it. Here's a better way.
• 19:09
  Here's another way to make more revenue.
• 19:12
  And I realized that there's so many common business threads
• 19:16
  that nobody tells you. So I started, I want to say like
• 19:21
  2012 writing them down, these old like moleskin note notebooks
• 19:27
  of like, this is what I'm going to tell people one day.
• 19:29
  This is what I wish I had heard. Oh, this is how you handle it.
• 19:32
  Oh, you mean you actually can like create these different
• 19:35
  things to make life easier, right.
• 19:37
  And so that wanting to be that fearless girl and being able to
• 19:41
  say I want to be here for other people has kind of been a theme
• 19:45
  for where we are today, right? So it's it's been an amazing
• 19:49
  riders, you know, so many twists and returns and so many, you
• 19:52
  know, things that it's it's just I'm so grateful and I'm so
• 19:56
  grateful to be able to create a place where people can come
• 20:01
  today and say, I want to learn more, right.
• 20:03
  And so that comes from not just me, but friends that are more
• 20:07
  successful and incredibly successful in different areas
• 20:11
  and putting it all together on a platform.
• 20:13
  So it's been really, really cool and I'm so grateful.
• 20:15
  But that was just warm up. There's so much to unpack level
• 20:21
  at all and that and that your platform now is success unlocked
• 20:24
  yes so before we dive into success unlocked, which I am
• 20:28
  super excited about I'm like I wanted that name you beat me to
• 20:32
  it no it's such a. Care we can share?
• 20:33
  Yeah, I love it. I, I yeah, it's, it's it's
• 20:36
  amazing because what we're taught in school doesn't help us
• 20:41
  do anything right. And so it takes people like you
• 20:44
  and like me. I was actually at Robert
• 20:46
  Kiyosaki's house last night visiting him and he was telling
• 20:49
  me about see tell it was it the Rockefellers or whoever back in
• 20:54
  the day created the school system was like, we cannot teach
• 20:58
  about money and entrepreneurship in these things like because we
• 21:01
  have to build employees, right and.
• 21:03
  That makes so much sense. Yeah, that I think about it,
• 21:05
  right. That makes so much.
• 21:07
  Sense he's like, well, who would your employees be if you're
• 21:09
  teaching everyone to be an entrepreneur?
• 21:12
  So anyway, so but you, you need and yes, everybody's got
• 21:16
  different skill sets and entrepreneurship is not for
• 21:18
  everybody, that is for sure. And but we should at least have
• 21:24
  the opportunity to learn what the what's out there and what we
• 21:28
  could create. And if we feel called to that
• 21:29
  and drawn to that and that fits our personality type and that
• 21:31
  fits our dreams, we want to go for it.
• 21:33
  Like we need to have that education and access because it
• 21:36
  all comes down to access and proximity to the knowledge and
• 21:39
  then the people to be able to go and actually execute who, not
• 21:43
  how, right, Because we have to wear all the hats when we're
• 21:46
  getting started and learn all these things so we can have the
• 21:48
  respect and understanding of the business.
• 21:50
  But at some point we have to hire an amazing team to continue
• 21:53
  to grow and scale. And for you at that time, it was
• 21:55
  your 14 year olds that were and you were training them and
• 21:58
  leading them and, and helping them become leaders.
• 22:00
  So, but going back to when you, you know, just some of the
• 22:05
  principles that were highlighted as you were talking, and because
• 22:09
  I always think of like, what are the secrets to success?
• 22:11
  What are the laws? What are the principles that if
• 22:14
  people follow, they will become successful no matter what.
• 22:18
  And I even see this when I post on my stories and I'll put, you
• 22:21
  know, my team posted the other day.
• 22:22
  It was like, here's how I became made my first million in real
• 22:26
  estate and it was the exact process that I followed, you
• 22:28
  know, bought a bought a house right away when I got a sales
• 22:31
  job, use my Commission to buy a one bedroom condo, renovated the
• 22:34
  condo while I lived there, rented it out on Airbnb once I
• 22:38
  sold another property and then bought a 2 bedroom condo on the
• 22:40
  next one. And then rinse and repeat.
• 22:42
  And then you can sell it in five years and not pay any capital
• 22:45
  gains tax on $250,000 if you're single.
• 22:47
  And you can become a millionaire pretty easily and actually live
• 22:51
  in the properties. And the amount of excuses that
• 22:54
  people comment and oh, well, you can't renovate a house when you
• 22:58
  live there. And oh, I can't move my kids and
• 23:00
  my family to a new house. And Oh well, it's really hard to
• 23:03
  get a down payment or not everyone can get a sales job and
• 23:05
  make a Commission. I was like, this is the reason
• 23:08
  that most people will never be successful.
• 23:11
  All it is is that all people want to do is create an excuse,
• 23:16
  be a victim and say some reason why they can't have that.
• 23:20
  That's not for them, they can't do that, blah, blah, blah, blah,
• 23:22
  blah. And then people like you come
• 23:25
  aboard and you were against all odds.
• 23:27
  You had every excuse in the book to not be successful.
• 23:30
  And you just said, I see you fear I'm going to make you my
• 23:34
  friend. I'm going to focus on the
• 23:36
  signal, not the noise. I'm going to focus on my true
• 23:39
  north, what I want to create. I'm going to figure out a way to
• 23:42
  do it. I'm going to figure out who I
• 23:44
  need to build relationships with around me because I know I don't
• 23:47
  have the resources. But you had the all you had was
• 23:51
  the exact signal of what you wanted to create.
• 23:53
  And you did not allow any excuses to get in your way of
• 23:56
  what you were going to build. And that is what it takes to be
• 24:00
  successful. And people think that they need
• 24:02
  some amazing thing, but like you just need a relentless
• 24:06
  commitment and grit to be focused on what you want to
• 24:09
  create and the right relationships to be able to go
• 24:11
  build it like you did a. 100% and I have to tell you so much
• 24:14
  of it is exposure. I saw my mom in that moment and
• 24:17
  many times after face fear. But I saw my grandma who came
• 24:21
  from Cuba who didn't know how to read or write.
• 24:23
  She used to sign her name with an X or a thumbprint.
• 24:26
  And I thought, they're working so hard and they have so much
• 24:30
  love, but that doesn't translate into dollars.
• 24:33
  So I had to learn that it was OK to want to make money.
• 24:36
  It was OK to want to be successful, to be able to cast a
• 24:40
  wide net when you get there, right.
• 24:41
  And so that was a shift. But I learned early on, so much
• 24:44
  of it is up here. I talk a lot about mindset
• 24:47
  because what you said is exactly spot on.
• 24:50
  You have to be willing to filter out the noise and be OK doing
• 24:54
  that, right? Because so many, many times,
• 24:57
  even in real estate, right. I was just speaking at a
• 24:59
  conference yesterday. You want to go into a market,
• 25:03
  You want to go into an emerging market, You want to go into a
• 25:05
  market where you're going to make more money.
• 25:06
  Yeah. You're not going to have the
• 25:07
  headline saying and applauding you.
• 25:09
  It's before all of that comes, right?
• 25:12
  You have to be willing for people to be like, huh, what?
• 25:14
  Why are you talking about that? What are you talking about?
• 25:16
  You're wrong. You're wrong.
• 25:17
  You're wrong. And if you can stomach that,
• 25:20
  right, and if you can understand that 90% of the time, in my
• 25:23
  experience, it's them telling you about a them issue, It's
• 25:28
  where they come from, it's their own fear, right?
• 25:31
  So when you can learn to identify that they may mean
• 25:34
  well, they may have all the love in the world for you, but
• 25:36
  they're coming to you out of a place of inexperience or of
• 25:40
  devastation or something that has to do with them.
• 25:44
  And if you can filter out, take the love.
• 25:47
  If there's love, some people don't right, have that love for
• 25:50
  you. But if you can decide for
• 25:52
  yourself, that makes sense. I want to apply that in my life.
• 25:55
  But taking that big scare away is so critical because so many
• 25:59
  times what I see entrepreneurs do is make a bunch of excuses
• 26:02
  like you said, but it's really just fear.
• 26:05
  It's just they're afraid to fail or they're afraid to even try.
• 26:10
  And so they give you all these reasons of why they can't do or
• 26:13
  why it's not fair or why you know, and you're just like,
• 26:17
  don't you see it? No, they're used to.
• 26:20
  They're stuck there. Yeah, and literally it's never
• 26:23
  been because I can see back in the day, like even in my when I
• 26:27
  was growing up, I just had books, you know, and I, I could
• 26:30
  read books and I'm so grateful that I had books.
• 26:32
  Now people have access to AI clones of all of the greatest
• 26:37
  leaders in the entire world that they could FaceTime all day, you
• 26:40
  know, for free pretty much, or like a $10 a month subscription
• 26:43
  and YouTube university and every single book and all of these
• 26:46
  seminars and masterminds. And you know, once you get into
• 26:49
  the paid thing, but the education is free now.
• 26:51
  Knowledge is free. And it used to be so hard to get
• 26:54
  that access. And me and you have a similar
• 26:56
  story. And the we had our own rich dad,
• 26:58
  poor dad awareness at a young age.
• 27:01
  I was 7 when I met mine and that was my wealthy family friend,
• 27:06
  you know, was a friend that they had money and they had the nice
• 27:08
  closet and the horses in the backyard and the beautiful home
• 27:10
  and the vacation house and the yacht and all these things.
• 27:13
  And I was like, how do I get there?
• 27:15
  But that access and that belief of like somebody did it and we
• 27:21
  what, what is my family doing that doesn't have that?
• 27:24
  And what are they doing that does have that?
• 27:26
  And I asked the same questions. How did you make your money?
• 27:28
  It was, I own my own business. I invested real estate and some,
• 27:31
  you know, with stocks and investing.
• 27:33
  And ultimately it was entrepreneurship and investing
• 27:35
  was the past. So I was like, I'm going to be
• 27:37
  an entrepreneurship and investing.
• 27:38
  I have no idea. And I'm scared as hell.
• 27:41
  And I remember my first closing too, I was terrified, shaking
• 27:44
  like one of the market crashes and I lose all my money and it
• 27:47
  was $25,000. But you just push through that
• 27:49
  fear because you know it's in the direction.
• 27:51
  And you have to hold on to that belief that you're either going
• 27:54
  to win or you're going to learn something and you're going to
• 27:56
  take that lesson and nobody can take that from you.
• 27:58
  And you're going to use that to reiterate and continue to grow.
• 28:01
  And you just can't be afraid to fail.
• 28:04
  You have to see it not as failure because the only true
• 28:06
  failure is if you actually quit and you just stayed relentless.
• 28:10
  And I'm sure you ran into a lot of times and Roadblock box and I
• 28:15
  would love to dive into like, what were those moments in your
• 28:19
  journey where you felt like quitting or you maybe almost
• 28:23
  didn't make the decision because you were so terrified?
• 28:25
  Like I still have a brick on my head.
• 28:27
  My mentor calls and bricks. Like, we're all walking around
• 28:29
  with bricks on our head that are holding us down.
• 28:32
  And most of us don't even have the awareness of it.
• 28:35
  But I still have a fear of losing somebody's money.
• 28:37
  And so you were just like fractionalizing notes and
• 28:41
  raising money at the coffee shops and going straight to Wall
• 28:43
  Street and walking out with $30 million.
• 28:46
  And I'm over here, like still afraid.
• 28:49
  And I'm aware of the aware of that, but still afraid of, I
• 28:54
  don't want to let somebody down or I don't want to lose
• 28:56
  somebody's money out of something that I can't control.
• 28:58
  Like this market, shouldn't, you know, right here, right?
• 29:00
  Clients and some different people, my network, they're
• 29:02
  like, I lost $300 million of investor capital.
• 29:05
  And I'm like that. I don't know how I would get
• 29:08
  through that. So like, what were those moments
• 29:09
  in your business journey and how did you push through that and
• 29:12
  keep going down the path because you had to in order to build
• 29:15
  that company? No, you absolutely have to.
• 29:17
  I will tell you though, that fear, this becomes healthy for
• 29:20
  it doesn't go away. Like I still have that and I
• 29:23
  panic and I but I've learned, like you've learned to channel
• 29:26
  that into being really prepared and to doing my diligence
• 29:29
  because you don't walk into anything unprepared and knowing
• 29:32
  you, like I know you, you want to be the best at everything.
• 29:35
  So you dive in and you go down a rabbit hole if you have to, to
• 29:38
  make sure that you're the best and that you've, you're fully
• 29:41
  prepared. And I think that's a big part of
• 29:43
  what's missing in so many different businesses.
• 29:46
  The business owner is like light.
• 29:48
  I'm positive and I want it. Yeah, but you got to put in the
• 29:51
  work and that's part of the work, right?
• 29:53
  And so for me, doing that work and being that boots on the
• 29:56
  ground never left. I'm still that same girl.
• 30:00
  I'm going to get on a plane and go view and walk it and do all
• 30:02
  the things because I have to see it for myself because I hold
• 30:07
  that responsibility right and I want to do the best job
• 30:10
  possible. And so when I'd get into these
• 30:12
  situations where it felt like all of the odds were against me
• 30:16
  and the challenges were overwhelming, and I'll give you
• 30:20
  some examples of that, I would hold onto the vision, right?
• 30:24
  What I was trying to build and why that fearless girl moment in
• 30:29
  moments like that. And I remembered, you know what,
• 30:33
  I am the person doing the work. And you can have a little bit of
• 30:36
  like AI am the person. I know what I'm doing, right?
• 30:38
  I am not sitting here in an ivory tower.
• 30:41
  I'm actually going and doing the thing right.
• 30:43
  And I think so many times as women especially, you're just
• 30:47
  expected to do it. Well, OK, that's great.
• 30:50
  But there's others that aren't. So I'm going to capitalize on
• 30:52
  that. And so I think I'm going through
• 30:55
  some of these challenges. It was hard.
• 30:57
  I'm not going to lie. It was not easy.
• 30:59
  It's never, it's never pleasant to have to see.
• 31:04
  The world isn't puppies and, you know, flowers.
• 31:09
  It's not. There was one time, I'll tell
• 31:11
  you that I went to a large institution for a year and I was
• 31:16
  showing them, first of all, you have to have, in this particular
• 31:19
  scenario, you have to have two different groups.
• 31:21
  You can't have a monopoly, right?
• 31:23
  And so they had to give business to another incumbent.
• 31:26
  Hello. And I was showing them the
• 31:28
  numbers and I was showing them that I could outperform the
• 31:32
  competitor who was already in their shop and they would yes me
• 31:35
  to death and they would not. And they'd get my industry
• 31:38
  information and they would utilize it.
• 31:39
  And sure, that's all great and dandy, but I'd go back and like
• 31:43
  you, I'm not just like, hey, whenever you get around to it,
• 31:46
  No, I'm asking for right, I'm in it for an entire year.
• 31:49
  I mean, I wish I focused a year on anything.
• 31:51
  You know, I would do it. And I couldn't get it through my
• 31:53
  head. Why?
• 31:54
  And I kept beating myself up like, Oh, I should have said
• 31:56
  this or, or maybe I had a bang out of place, all these
• 31:59
  ridiculous things that weren't real because I couldn't really
• 32:04
  wrap my little naive brain around the fact that the world
• 32:06
  sometimes isn't fair and it's sometimes isn't a level playing
• 32:10
  field. And so you just got to learn and
• 32:12
  understand the game you're in. So I thought, OK, if it's really
• 32:17
  that because I want to Pollyanna believe that, like it's really
• 32:20
  not that. It's really something I did
• 32:21
  because I can deal with that better.
• 32:23
  It's my fault somehow, right? And I thought, you know what?
• 32:26
  Maybe I'm just not what they're used to.
• 32:28
  Maybe I just don't look like what they're used to.
• 32:32
  Maybe you don't. Yeah, maybe.
• 32:33
  It's really as simple as that. I didn't think so because I'm
• 32:36
  showing you dollars in revenue and I learned early on that you
• 32:40
  speak the language of making people money.
• 32:42
  It usually works, and it's not working this time.
• 32:44
  And I'm going and I'm even bringing cupcakes and I'm like,
• 32:47
  good God, these are great. And I'm doing all the things.
• 32:52
  And I thought, OK, so I went to one of my borrowers who looked
• 32:56
  exactly and had all the criteria that they were used to.
• 33:01
  And I said, hey listen, I need you to come.
• 33:02
  This is what I think is happening.
• 33:04
  I hope I'm wrong and just come and you know, whatever.
• 33:08
  They signed in 8 minutes. Who not how, baby?
• 33:11
  But the bigger learning lesson was how many times he had to
• 33:14
  redirect them in that conversation.
• 33:17
  They were like, oh, why So when you're so amazing?
• 33:19
  And he was like, yes, but she's the expert.
• 33:21
  He had to redirect them something like 10 or 11 times.
• 33:24
  And it broke my heart. Not, I mean, I was thrilled.
• 33:27
  Listen, I was like, I'm happy, thank you.
• 33:29
  Amazing, right? But it broke my heart for all
• 33:32
  the other people that weren't what others are used to, right?
• 33:35
  Back to that fearless girl. How do we open up the floodgates
• 33:39
  that way so that people can just be on their own merits?
• 33:43
  And how do we create those opportunities?
• 33:45
  So it's never left my mind. But yeah, there were challenges.
• 33:48
  And yeah, if you can't, they don't let you in through the
• 33:50
  door. You go in through the window.
• 33:51
  And yes, I was very resilient and gritty, you know, like,
• 33:55
  we'll figure it out. But I think so much of that is
• 33:58
  being able to say, OK, this fear is real.
• 34:01
  I am scared. I am feeling the thing right.
• 34:04
  But is the fear because it's someone else's fear that's
• 34:09
  being, you know, put on me? Is it fear that I'm going to
• 34:11
  fail? What's the reality of being able
• 34:13
  to, like, navigate through that, right?
• 34:16
  Not try and shut it down because then it just shows up somewhere
• 34:19
  else. But actually navigate through
• 34:22
  that. And it's so important because as
• 34:23
  entrepreneurs, we are not taught that.
• 34:26
  We're told the opposite, that you always have to be on, You
• 34:29
  always have to have it together. You can never complain down,
• 34:32
  which I'm not saying you should. But my point is it's isolating
• 34:36
  because then at the people at the top, all they, everyone
• 34:38
  talks to us how great everybody is and how great they're doing.
• 34:42
  Well, what about the real stuff? What about the hard stuff?
• 34:44
  What about the moment that you wanted to quit?
• 34:46
  What about the time that I had a competitor tell me he was going
• 34:49
  to put me out of business? And he very well could have.
• 34:52
  Again, what resources do I have? OK, yes, he's been in the game a
• 34:57
  long time. Yes, he can put me out of
• 34:59
  business. Yes, he has a very big wallet.
• 35:01
  But I want it. I want it more than anyone else,
• 35:06
  and I'm going to go with that. So what can I do?
• 35:08
  What can I do? You saw how the story ended.
• 35:12
  There's always that, hey, what do I have?
• 35:14
  And you got to dig deep and get past the noise.
• 35:17
  But if we can teach people that they can have their yes you can
• 35:20
  moment. So good.
• 35:22
  I was just at a conference in Salt Lake 2 days ago and I saw
• 35:26
  Tim Grover speak and Jesse at so to speak and to comment on what
• 35:30
  you said about fear. Tim Grover said that he had
• 35:33
  someone come grab them and say, OK, this is fear holding on to
• 35:35
  you. And if you try to pull away from
• 35:37
  it, it's just going to pull right back and resist and you're
• 35:40
  going to stay stuck and you're not going to move anywhere.
• 35:42
  But if it's instead, if you just lean into it and make it your
• 35:46
  friend and say, OK, fear where you taking me?
• 35:48
  Because what where your fear is is actually the exact golden
• 35:53
  path of where you should be going.
• 35:55
  So true, I never thought of it like that.
• 35:57
  You're absolutely right. Yeah, and, and that's what I
• 36:00
  realize is people think I'm afraid of this, so I shouldn't
• 36:03
  do it. But it's actually exactly the
• 36:05
  opposite, which is why I'm so afraid of like getting married
• 36:07
  and having kids. I'm like, that's probably what I
• 36:09
  should be doing because it's my biggest fear.
• 36:11
  And after he said this thing about that, I was like, oh,
• 36:14
  that's so good. And everything in my life that I
• 36:16
  have been so afraid of if I push it, like public speaking, the
• 36:21
  biggest fear of my life. And now I'm starting to speak on
• 36:24
  stages and do that. And I'm like, OK, no, this
• 36:26
  actually is a calling of mine. And that that fear actually has
• 36:29
  the answers of where you should be going.
• 36:32
  And so you did so well of just pushing into that and leaning
• 36:36
  into that. And then the second thing that
• 36:38
  you said is I want it. You wanted it more than he
• 36:43
  wanted it. He may have had more resources,
• 36:45
  he may have had bigger pockets, he may have had more experience
• 36:47
  and track record and all of those things.
• 36:50
  But you cared the most. And that was what Jesse Itzler
• 36:53
  said on stage that I took away from.
• 36:55
  That is exactly what you just said.
• 36:57
  He goes you could be a billionaire financially and have
• 37:01
  0 spiritually and a billion times 0 is 0.
• 37:05
  Or you could have a billion spiritually or billionaire
• 37:07
  spiritually and have $1.00 financially and a billion times
• 37:11
  1 is still a billion. And he's like, not everyone is
• 37:14
  going to have the most money or build the biggest company
• 37:17
  because there can only be one best looking person in the room,
• 37:20
  1 smartest person in the room, 1 most connected person in the
• 37:24
  room, whatever. But everyone can be a
• 37:27
  billionaire spiritually and everyone can care the most about
• 37:31
  whatever it is that they are doing.
• 37:33
  And that will make them a billionaire in what what they're
• 37:35
  doing and like how much they care.
• 37:37
  And that's just shows what you just shared is you cared the
• 37:41
  most and that showed through. And that was what allowed you
• 37:45
  that. And pushing through the fear and
• 37:46
  making fear your friend allowed you to go find a way, no matter
• 37:50
  what, regardless of the threats, regardless of the entitlements
• 37:54
  or the accolades that these other people that were your
• 37:58
  competitors had. And you just used it to blow
• 38:00
  them out of the water and and create it.
• 38:02
  I don't think I realized it at the time, you know?
• 38:05
  But I'm so grateful that I went through.
• 38:07
  I'm so grateful for every adversarial moment because it
• 38:11
  taught me I had to lean on myself and I had to trust my
• 38:16
  gun. Every time I've screwed up, I
• 38:19
  went against that Spidey sense. I didn't trust my gut because I
• 38:23
  let myself believe whatever narrative I was thinking about
• 38:26
  the moment, which was usually something like, oh, well, they
• 38:28
  know more. Oh, that they're pros.
• 38:30
  Oh, they've done this. So I who am right?
• 38:33
  Who am I kind of moment every time that's when I screwed up
• 38:36
  because I didn't stay true to that.
• 38:38
  So I learned, OK, if I want to get kicked in the face, don't
• 38:41
  you know, hold on to that Spidey moment?
• 38:43
  And so it's so critical to know that because so many times that
• 38:48
  fear can be to your point, you said it so beautifully.
• 38:53
  It can be a director of where you're supposed to be going, but
• 38:56
  you hit on something. This is your calling IA 100%.
• 39:01
  That resonates with me because look, I didn't come from humble
• 39:06
  beginnings, which I'm so grateful for and and have this
• 39:10
  moment of I'm not going to be bitter.
• 39:12
  No, it was just a way of life. There's just gratitude.
• 39:16
  It was I have all the love in the world and I'm so grateful.
• 39:19
  Who what does it matter if this yard is there?
• 39:21
  Mine, it's a yard I get to play in.
• 39:24
  And if we can like remember that, you know what I mean?
• 39:27
  Because I think as kids you have those moments and you want more
• 39:30
  like you at 7, you saw something and you were like, wow, that is
• 39:33
  so cool. How do I go do that?
• 39:35
  As adults, we're like, that's so cool.
• 39:39
  Not how do they have that? How come they have that and I
• 39:42
  don't? Somewhere along the line, it
• 39:45
  starts to get jaded. And so we tend to, as we grow up
• 39:49
  in life and in business, separate ourselves from those
• 39:52
  types of people, right? Because you want to continue to
• 39:54
  grow. But the part that people don't
• 39:56
  talk about is it can be very isolating.
• 39:59
  It can be very lonely. For me, when I sold my
• 40:01
  companies, it was weird. I mean, honestly, because it was
• 40:04
  like so much of my identity and so much of my.
• 40:08
  Drive was to go accomplish the thing because we were building
• 40:12
  something so cool. And it's for the team, it's for
• 40:14
  this, it's for the family, right?
• 40:16
  For me, the money wasn't the driver, right?
• 40:19
  I think if that had been the goal, I would have been like,
• 40:22
  amazing. No, that was a way to keep score
• 40:25
  of the game. So of course I want to win.
• 40:27
  I'm competitive, right? But the driver wasn't that.
• 40:31
  So to me, I felt like, well, the story's not done.
• 40:36
  Why aren't we democratizing real estate investing?
• 40:38
  Why aren't we providing an opportunity for someone like my
• 40:40
  mom, who made it to the 10th grade in Cuba, to have the same
• 40:43
  opportunities as someone like Hannah, who's a seasoned real
• 40:46
  estate investor? How do we go change that?
• 40:48
  How do we go create regional jobs?
• 40:50
  It wasn't finished for me, but the world was telling me, well,
• 40:55
  it's finished. And I'm like, no, how do you
• 40:56
  know how I feel? Right.
• 40:58
  And so that was really hard. And I wish that I had talked to
• 41:02
  somebody about that. Because not knowing what you're
• 41:06
  getting into when you've been just fighting for so long leaves
• 41:11
  you with this sense of like, well, I'm almost a little bit
• 41:13
  lost. And that was the first moment in
• 41:15
  my life that I can tell you that I felt that sense of like, I'm a
• 41:18
  little bit lost and I didn't know how to process that, right?
• 41:21
  And I didn't know that that's what I was feeling.
• 41:24
  I had to like, sit in that for a minute and then ask myself, OK,
• 41:27
  why are you feeling a little bit lost?
• 41:29
  And what is missing, right? And when I first started in
• 41:33
  business, there was no moment to process.
• 41:36
  There was no strategy. It was necessity and sink or
• 41:39
  swim, right? So I was used to that, but I
• 41:41
  wasn't used to this, like, OK, now you have to make a big girl
• 41:44
  decision. What is it that you're missing
• 41:47
  and how do you do that? And it came back to what do I
• 41:49
  feel called to do? Which is interesting because I
• 41:52
  see that, you know, kind of that theme coming up with people.
• 41:55
  And so many times we just think we just have to white knuckle
• 41:58
  grit and push harder and just ignore what we want.
• 42:00
  So if you feel like having a family is in the cards for you
• 42:04
  and it's scary, absolutely it might be in the cards for you.
• 42:07
  It's your choice, you know what I mean?
• 42:08
  And it's your life. And to be able to be vulnerable
• 42:11
  like that is so cool. And I think that that's so
• 42:14
  inspiring to people. I really do.
• 42:16
  So I applaud you for everything that you're doing getting on the
• 42:19
  stages. And you kick ass, by the way.
• 42:21
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 42:22
  Thank you. This is why I'm so passionate
• 42:24
  about helping people realize their potential.
• 42:26
  And that's really the purpose of the show is realize your
• 42:28
  potential in business and in life because life it's all
• 42:31
  personal, right? People are like, oh, business
• 42:33
  versus personal. Like it's all personal and I saw
• 42:37
  because I was operating from scarcity for so long in my life
• 42:41
  and I thought the money was what I was searching for so I could
• 42:44
  feel that safety all right. But when I became a millionaire,
• 42:48
  I still didn't feel safe. I still didn't feel loved, I
• 42:50
  still didn't feel seen, I still didn't feel heard and mostly
• 42:53
  from myself. Like I still felt unworthy at
• 42:56
  the end of the day and I still felt terrified for the next day
• 42:59
  and, and didn't enjoy any part of it and was just accepting
• 43:05
  that hustle, grind suffer way of being.
• 43:08
  And I realized I don't want to live like this.
• 43:11
  Like I can do it, but I don't want to.
• 43:13
  Like, why, why can't I build something great and actually
• 43:17
  enjoy the journey? And not to say that there's not
• 43:20
  going to be hard challenges and storms, but why can't I enjoy
• 43:23
  the storms if I'm going to go through them?
• 43:25
  How do I embrace them and actually love them and, and not
• 43:29
  have it be a miserable process? Right.
• 43:30
  And so that's when I started investing in masterminds and
• 43:34
  investing in my, myself. Oh, I actually have a level of
• 43:38
  money. I should actually invest some of
• 43:41
  this in myself and my own education and network and
• 43:44
  relationships. And that's when I've joined that
• 43:47
  mastermind. And this talk was called Life
• 43:50
  after the exit. And I was expecting to feel
• 43:53
  super inspired because I was a young millionaire.
• 43:57
  All these people in the room were older than me.
• 43:59
  They had sold their companies. Most of them were tech
• 44:01
  entrepreneurs. So they had huge exits.
• 44:04
  And I get in there and the speaker's talking about suicide
• 44:08
  and depression and they don't know who they are anymore and
• 44:12
  their lack of identity. And they just grinded for 50
• 44:16
  years and thought that this would make them feel happy.
• 44:19
  And they now they feel more miserable than ever.
• 44:21
  And what do they do? And I was just like, oh shoot,
• 44:26
  that's going to be me if I don't change something.
• 44:29
  Because I realized, and that was my epiphany moment, that the
• 44:32
  money is not going to change my internal state and how I feel
• 44:36
  inside. And unfortunately, most people
• 44:39
  don't ever get to understand that because they work their
• 44:41
  whole life to try to get the money and they don't, they never
• 44:44
  do. Or every time they hit a goal,
• 44:47
  they do exactly what I did and just push the goal post forward.
• 44:50
  Like, well, then Tim Grover talks about this in his book
• 44:52
  Relentless. You have this insatiability.
• 44:54
  It's like, oh, I hit this goal and then it's immediately
• 44:57
  followed by now what? What's next?
• 44:59
  How do I do more? Now I got to take on more.
• 45:00
  Now I have more problems that I don't know how to solve it.
• 45:02
  I got to figure out how to solve them.
• 45:03
  I got to take on more risk and more pressure and more reliable
• 45:06
  responsibility and isolate myself even more from the rest
• 45:09
  of the world because you're continuing to elevate the
• 45:11
  standard. And that's what I dove heavily
• 45:15
  into the the inner work and like figuring out what is my calling,
• 45:18
  what is my purpose? Because for everyone who thinks
• 45:21
  that money is going to fix it all, it's just not.
• 45:24
  And you have to be living for something bigger than yourself.
• 45:27
  And when I started to actually give back and think who am I
• 45:31
  here to serve and how can I help people, that level of fulfilment
• 45:36
  was unlike any amount of zeros. And I haven't had a lot of zeros
• 45:40
  in my account, but I could just imagine.
• 45:42
  And, and I see it in my world of because I have amazing
• 45:45
  relationships and amazing network of people that have done
• 45:48
  amazing things like yourself and I've seen it in them like the
• 45:51
  giving back piece and having that impact is everything.
• 45:54
  It's everything and and you give back every day and that's huge.
• 45:58
  But to me, I agree with you. Some of the greatest moments of
• 46:01
  my life were helping others get their win, you know, and I
• 46:05
  didn't mean to invest in all sorts of other entrepreneurs.
• 46:08
  I did. I saw myself in them and I'm
• 46:11
  like, oh, careful, pothole. Oh, try it this way.
• 46:14
  Oh, wait, wait, I screwed up there.
• 46:16
  Don't do this right. And I was like, wow, I have
• 46:18
  failed a lot. I'm actually thinking, I'm
• 46:20
  trying to think of a creative way to show all the failures.
• 46:23
  You know how people have like the trophies, if you will, for
• 46:26
  the winds, Like I want to show the failures because I learned
• 46:28
  more through those than the winds, right?
• 46:31
  And so being able to normalize that a little bit and to meet
• 46:35
  people where they are and to be able to add value goes back to
• 46:38
  that list. I was telling you, I started
• 46:39
  making in 2012 of what can I do? How can I?
• 46:43
  Because I knew I was going to win.
• 46:44
  I wasn't, I was relentless. I wasn't going to ever give up.
• 46:47
  I didn't care who was in front of me or what they thought about
• 46:50
  it. To me, that was noise.
• 46:52
  Let me block that out. But I'm going to hold on to, I'm
• 46:55
  going to come back and I'm going to be that fearless girl and
• 46:58
  figure out how I can help the next person leapfrog, right?
• 47:01
  Because there certainly wasn't that accessibility at that
• 47:04
  point. But to your point, so much of it
• 47:06
  is exposure, having that aha moment and being able to create
• 47:12
  for yourself, right? Look at what you have in front
• 47:14
  of you rather than woe is me, Here's what I'm needing.
• 47:17
  Not to say that there aren't real needs, right?
• 47:20
  We see that. But if you have a problem and I
• 47:23
  have a problem, we have to figure out a solution for
• 47:25
  ourselves. So why not figure out the
• 47:26
  solution for others too, right? So some of the biggest wins come
• 47:30
  from the problems and the mistakes.
• 47:31
  So we can say that in business, but it doesn't feel that way in
• 47:35
  life, right? And we forget that we're the
• 47:37
  business. So you being able to say I am
• 47:40
  the business I'm going to invest in myself is so incredible and
• 47:43
  so refreshing because we're applauded for the exact
• 47:46
  opposite. The world's changing now, thank
• 47:48
  goodness. But even five years ago, it was
• 47:51
  everybody applauding you for being the first one.
• 47:53
  They're the last one to leave, you know, grinding, working till
• 47:56
  your fingers bleed, having no life, no vacation, right?
• 47:59
  Like all the things. That's what I heard.
• 48:02
  And I would see these people in front of me and I was like, I'm
• 48:05
  not trying to be that miserable, unhappy, unhealthy, just all the
• 48:09
  things. And I'm like, that's not who I
• 48:11
  want to be. So I think to your point, we all
• 48:14
  have that moment as an entrepreneur and as a person who
• 48:17
  do we want to be and then chase that.
• 48:21
  Did you know, did you have it so crystal clear that you were
• 48:24
  building to sell or did the business evolve and you were
• 48:27
  just building to be the best? But like, because they always
• 48:30
  say manifest everything, like you have to know exactly where
• 48:33
  you're going, exactly what you're creating.
• 48:35
  But then there's also this level of God's in control and we don't
• 48:38
  really have the control over everything.
• 48:40
  And I'm curious when you started the business where you like, I'm
• 48:43
  going to sell it to Goldman Sachs someday or some
• 48:45
  institutional player or did you just want to be the best you
• 48:48
  could be in that business? It was survival.
• 48:50
  It was necessity and survival when I started, and it took me a
• 48:54
  minute to get out of that thinking and to realize that the
• 48:57
  sky wasn't falling right. So a lot of times for many of us
• 49:02
  entrepreneurs that survival serves us well in the beginning,
• 49:07
  but then you can't really live that way right After a while,
• 49:10
  it'll deplete you. And so that was a huge shift for
• 49:14
  me. It's not like someone sat down a
• 49:16
  fairy godmother and said, Hey, tricks, Let me explain this to,
• 49:18
  you know, it was, you know, hitting my head against a wall
• 49:20
  and realizing once I made that shift, then I truly this isn't
• 49:24
  like made-up. Then I could see clear it was
• 49:27
  that shift of like this panic that I had of like right, that
• 49:32
  once I could quiet that and like make peace with that, that I
• 49:35
  don't need that. It served me to get me to hear
• 49:37
  about need it anymore, right? Then I could see clearly, but
• 49:41
  no, in the beginning, I don't even know who Goldman Sachs was.
• 49:43
  I, I had never even been to New York, like I told you.
• 49:45
  So I was like, it was so far out of my reach.
• 49:48
  And then what I learned was I would try and explain to people
• 49:52
  in my circle, family, friends, all the things they didn't get
• 49:55
  it. And so I started to realize, oh,
• 49:58
  I really shouldn't talk about it in that way.
• 50:01
  I should go find others that are doing things in other arenas
• 50:06
  because I don't see anyone in my space at the time, right, doing
• 50:09
  it. So how do I go learn?
• 50:10
  And so that's part of how the expanding the circle came.
• 50:13
  It wasn't like this conscious decision of like, Gee, I'm going
• 50:16
  to go. It was just I need to learn
• 50:17
  more. And I've run out of resources to
• 50:20
  learn from. That changed my thinking because
• 50:23
  I started to see what was possible, right?
• 50:25
  And I started to see what it could be.
• 50:27
  But once I realized this is so cool, I can solve this problem
• 50:32
  on a national scale and solve this problem and solve this
• 50:36
  problem and I can create it in a really big way.
• 50:41
  Then it was like there's no stopping.
• 50:43
  Then it was go in line with the best because we're doing
• 50:47
  something that is revolutionary and I want to be the best at it
• 50:51
  for my clients, for my team, for my borrowers, for the industry,
• 50:55
  right? And so like to me, it was always
• 50:57
  very personalized, right? It was very like, how do you
• 51:01
  revitalize neighborhoods? How do you do these different
• 51:03
  things without losing yourself in the process?
• 51:07
  So for me, it was different. Everyone's driven differently.
• 51:09
  For me, the money, not saying I don't like my look, I've had it
• 51:13
  both ways much. Easier, right?
• 51:15
  Choose it every time. But the money just highlights
• 51:18
  who you are. I wanted to help.
• 51:20
  I always wanted to help. Didn't matter if I had a dollar
• 51:22
  or not. I saw growing up my parents
• 51:24
  having very little, but they were the first to help people.
• 51:26
  They dedicated their lives. My parents would be helping,
• 51:29
  feeding almost all the things that they didn't even need to
• 51:32
  have, just good humans. And like that resonated with me
• 51:36
  because I always remembered. But for the grace of God go I.
• 51:39
  I am so lucky because all this could be gone tomorrow.
• 51:42
  But what can't be taken from me is I have the ability to know I
• 51:45
  can create something out of nothing.
• 51:48
  Once I saw that shift, Sky's the limit.
• 51:51
  Someone's going to make the money.
• 51:52
  Why not me? Why not you?
• 51:53
  Why not us? And so getting, allowing
• 51:57
  yourself to think that and to feel that and then to run after
• 52:00
  it, that's step one. But once you get past that, this
• 52:04
  is what I share with entrepreneurs all the time,
• 52:06
  you're unstoppable because a lot of it is just up here and, and,
• 52:10
  and we're limited in our exposure, right?
• 52:13
  We're limited. We don't know.
• 52:14
  And so we're going to believe whoever's in front of us,
• 52:16
  especially if that same message is 3 or 4 times, right?
• 52:19
  But just like we get targeted by ads, right?
• 52:21
  And you're like, oh, it's a sign I got to buy the thing with the
• 52:24
  human brain. In the same way we get targeted,
• 52:26
  we start to hear whatever it is that we're upset about, right?
• 52:29
  And instead of that, it's stopping and saying, OK, I'm
• 52:32
  upset about this situation, but maybe it's meant because I'm
• 52:35
  supposed to go solve for it, or maybe I'm supposed to build off
• 52:38
  of that. So that's been a huge one for me
• 52:41
  and like and building culture and building teams really
• 52:44
  important to me because you want to be able to not just have
• 52:48
  people understand the vision, but they need to want it too.
• 52:52
  And sometimes where I went sideways was I believe in them
• 52:56
  so much. And this happened to me quite a
• 52:58
  bit. I believed in them and I saw
• 53:01
  their potential. And I'm like camp counselor,
• 53:03
  like you can do it right? Because that's so much of who I
• 53:06
  am. But their actions were
• 53:08
  continuously telling me they didn't really want it.
• 53:11
  They were telling me what I wanted to hear.
• 53:13
  They're really good at regurgitating what I was saying,
• 53:15
  right? And I was dummy believing that
• 53:18
  instead of looking at their actions.
• 53:20
  And I struggled with that with Hires.
• 53:22
  I struggled with that with even like repercussions of that,
• 53:26
  right, because I didn't want to put someone at a disadvantage.
• 53:30
  Well, that's not how it works in business.
• 53:33
  You have to be willing to make the call, the harsh calls.
• 53:35
  You have to be willing to RIP the Band-Aid, right?
• 53:38
  And I learned that death by 1000 cuts much worse, right?
• 53:43
  Much worse. But that was a process.
• 53:45
  And so in that scenario, I learned to create buffers,
• 53:49
  right? And to create a little bit of
• 53:50
  insulation of like, this is my blind spot.
• 53:53
  I really want to believe in people so badly that I'm
• 53:56
  believing the nonsense they're telling me, even though in my
• 54:00
  wise mind I know their actions are showing me something
• 54:02
  different. So I was transparent with my
• 54:05
  team. Hey guys, let's build around
• 54:06
  this. I don't want to make this
• 54:08
  mistake again, right? Because after it happens over
• 54:10
  and over and over, it's a me issue.
• 54:13
  Yeah, I have the same issue. It's bad big time.
• 54:16
  OK, so how do you, because I'm going to do this right now.
• 54:18
  It's like building the team and the culture and the people and
• 54:21
  you know, with my newest company and I believe in people's
• 54:26
  stories and energy, right? I want to be around people that
• 54:30
  and I, my mentor has taught me like you have to hire people
• 54:33
  that are aligned with the values.
• 54:34
  And if they're not aligned with the values, it's going to rot
• 54:37
  the whole one rotten apple rots the whole back, right?
• 54:39
  And so and EOS talks about if you can get everyone rowing the
• 54:42
  boat in the same direction, then you have infinite capacity to do
• 54:45
  whatever. But I also struggle to really be
• 54:49
  able to identify what their values are in a quick way before
• 54:52
  hiring them and seeing how they actually work and operate and
• 54:55
  all these things. So like maybe I think the answer
• 54:57
  might be for me is I need to hire someone to replace myself
• 54:59
  in operations or HR to handle more of the hiring and the
• 55:06
  vetting on the front end. So I don't have the ability to
• 55:10
  make so many like mistakes in that.
• 55:12
  But how did you handle that? Like, how did you identify great
• 55:14
  talent? How did you structure your
• 55:16
  interview processes and your management process within the
• 55:20
  company to continue to get everybody to row the boat in the
• 55:23
  same direction and recognize when people weren't?
• 55:26
  So I didn't at first and I kept hitting my head against the wall
• 55:31
  and being like, but I but I believed them.
• 55:34
  But I tried so hard. I invested in them.
• 55:36
  I did all the things right that I wished someone had done for
• 55:40
  me. Didn't matter.
• 55:41
  That's not where they were and that's not who they were, right?
• 55:44
  So I was making it about myself, not realizing and certainly not
• 55:48
  intending to is completely innocent, but that's not what
• 55:51
  they wanted. Their actions showed me.
• 55:54
  So after I finally realized, I thought, like, you know what?
• 55:58
  I don't know how to do this. I am not good at this.
• 56:02
  That doesn't mean that I'm not good at other things, but I'm
• 56:05
  not ready to let go of the operations because the company
• 56:09
  wasn't at that point yet, right? Sometimes it still takes the
• 56:12
  owner in there driving and pushing it, right?
• 56:15
  And it wasn't at that point, I knew that, right?
• 56:17
  How? Far in were you at this point?
• 56:18
  When I realized it, why I kept like failing on this and like
• 56:21
  over and over and over, I was now presented with big bucket of
• 56:25
  money and I needed to scale quickly.
• 56:26
  And I knew that if I wasn't in it, it wasn't going to scale
• 56:30
  correctly. I needed to be in there at the
• 56:32
  foundational like scale up, right.
• 56:34
  But I knew that like now I'm being and put in a position that
• 56:38
  I'm putting myself in that I got to scale quickly.
• 56:41
  I've got to build teams really fast.
• 56:43
  How long? Sorry to interrupt you, but how?
• 56:45
  How old was the company and how big was your team at the time?
• 56:47
  My team was probably about 14 of us, which is manageable, but I
• 56:51
  had hit my head against a wall and now I needed to scale to
• 56:53
  like. I'm at like 25 right now.
• 56:56
  It's hard hitting my head against a.
• 56:58
  Wall no. But I really like hit my head a
• 57:00
  bunch of times, like over and over and over and like sometimes
• 57:03
  with the same people and then I wouldn't want to hold them
• 57:05
  accountable because I felt bad. I know that's me.
• 57:08
  What is wrong with me? This is it's not you, it's me,
• 57:10
  right? It's so bad.
• 57:11
  Well, and you need when you're small like you rely on your
• 57:14
  people so much because you can't.
• 57:16
  And you can't. Work anymore hours of the day
• 57:18
  because I worked them all. And you care about their kids
• 57:21
  and their things and you know all of that.
• 57:23
  And that's great in the beginning.
• 57:24
  But also there's another part of it that not everybody wants to
• 57:28
  put in the hard to work, right? So anyways, to answer your
• 57:30
  question though, I was like, I am going to go find someone to
• 57:34
  help me and to teach me this. And one of my first investors.
• 57:37
  You have to meet her the next time you're now, you're going to
• 57:38
  love her. Doctor K is an amazing therapist
• 57:43
  and she was one of my first investors.
• 57:45
  And I said, look, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 57:47
  I have to scale da, da, da, da. And I walked her.
• 57:49
  Can you come in and be that buffer?
• 57:52
  And I had her sit and help with the interviews and help.
• 57:56
  And then it was like the other way, right?
• 57:58
  So then it was like all these like red flags, but it really
• 58:00
  taught me what to start looking for because I had never looked
• 58:04
  at it that way. I looked at it as like, can you
• 58:05
  do the job? Can we work together?
• 58:07
  OK, great. Next I didn't look at it as
• 58:10
  like, OK, your actual moral compass matters, you know what I
• 58:14
  mean? Because I just figured everybody
• 58:15
  was going to want to do a good job because they told me.
• 58:18
  Yeah, and that's how you were. You expect them to be like you,
• 58:21
  and they're just not. And they're not, but they're
• 58:22
  telling me all what I want to hear.
• 58:24
  So anyway, so that's how I did and I just really had help,
• 58:26
  right? I really did.
• 58:27
  I got a recruiting I, I really wanted to learn because I knew
• 58:30
  this was an issue for me. And then I started to create the
• 58:33
  buffers because like, no matter all that I did, I just still
• 58:36
  sucked at that. I still did like it was not
• 58:38
  something I could tell you. Oh, I'm so good at it now.
• 58:40
  No, I just created the buffers because I'm like, you know what?
• 58:42
  I'm going to hit my head against the wall or I'm going to really
• 58:45
  build this leadership team that's going to help me, right?
• 58:48
  And we're going to grow in scale.
• 58:49
  And I opted to do that. Did you hire from the top down?
• 58:53
  Meaning at this stage you're, you know, 15 people, 16 people.
• 58:58
  Did you go and hire ACOO second in command and then hire from
• 59:03
  there? Or did you go have an operations
• 59:05
  manager as your next hire, like from the bottom and, and grow
• 59:08
  your way up? Because I'm in that position
• 59:09
  right now too, where I'm just like, oh, part of me really
• 59:12
  wants to go get a bad ass COO and that's amazing.
• 59:15
  And it's going to execute on the vision and help me and be, be
• 59:18
  my, you know, be there alongside me.
• 59:20
  But then I also have that fear of that's a lot of money out of,
• 59:24
  you know, Hannah Hammond's pocket, right, because of the
• 59:27
  company's still in in do and it's a big risk.
• 59:30
  It's a big rest to take. So I'm like, well, maybe I
• 59:31
  should just hire an operations manager, a middle level person
• 59:34
  and, and slowly grow from there. And of course, I've got multiple
• 59:37
  mentors and they all kind of have different opinions on that.
• 59:39
  But what did you do? So I did it both ways.
• 59:41
  So I had two companies at the same time, right?
• 59:44
  So now I'm growing 2 behemoths at the exact same time.
• 59:46
  So I did it both ways and both were fails epically and you had
• 59:49
  to pick yourself back up and do it again.
• 59:51
  I did the hire the amazing person on paper that like I
• 59:54
  wished I had gone to school and all these amazing things and
• 59:57
  that didn't work out and I hired from within and tried to grow.
• 1:00:00
  I did it every which way. But I think what I learned that
• 1:00:03
  I could share with you, that was the biggest take away that I
• 1:00:06
  wish. It sounds so simple.
• 1:00:08
  It's learning where the company is, how much of the company
• 1:00:11
  day-to-day grind still needs you, right for the revenue and
• 1:00:15
  the growth and then the operations like I just segmented
• 1:00:18
  out and then if I could fill that role and still be involved
• 1:00:22
  and pull them up, that's great. But in the end, you have to
• 1:00:24
  still bring in that top layer, especially if you're going to
• 1:00:27
  sell. Yeah.
• 1:00:28
  And then so it was like it was a learning process, but I did it
• 1:00:31
  both ways and both ways were hard.
• 1:00:33
  And I think it's just every single company is going to be
• 1:00:35
  different and every single founder is going to be
• 1:00:37
  different, right. But what?
• 1:00:38
  Do you think what ended up working for you?
• 1:00:41
  Just finding the right seat was that those just weren't the
• 1:00:45
  right people and that didn't work out.
• 1:00:48
  And when you found the right person, then it started working.
• 1:00:50
  Or what would, what do you think was that switch where it
• 1:00:52
  actually ended up working and you started to scale in the way
• 1:00:55
  that you wanted to and build the culture and the team that you
• 1:00:57
  needed to? I think it was a combination of
• 1:00:58
  both and part of it was a me issue.
• 1:01:01
  Part of it is I didn't really want to let go, right.
• 1:01:04
  I said I did, and I thought I did, but I was so used to just
• 1:01:07
  being the cleaner upper. Yeah.
• 1:01:09
  And doing the thing that when there was a problem, it was
• 1:01:12
  like, oh, I'll just do it myself and that I'll just do it myself
• 1:01:16
  kept killing the ability for the other person to come in and
• 1:01:19
  scale it. The other piece of it is I
• 1:01:21
  didn't realize the qualifications that were truly
• 1:01:24
  needed because I hadn't been exposed to stuff like that and
• 1:01:27
  to people like that. So once it was the right person,
• 1:01:30
  to your point, in the right seat, then I could slowly take a
• 1:01:33
  step back. But I was very transparent with
• 1:01:35
  them of like, hey, listen, these are my tendencies because this
• 1:01:38
  is all I know. I really want to go focus on
• 1:01:41
  this. So you and I need to have some
• 1:01:42
  communication on AB and C. And I think we just gradually
• 1:01:46
  did it that way. That worked much more
• 1:01:48
  effectively. But I've made every mistake in
• 1:01:50
  the book, every single one. And it just, for me, it came
• 1:01:54
  down to knowing that part of this was a me issue for me at
• 1:01:57
  that time. I didn't know what else to do.
• 1:01:59
  That's just, it was like ingrained in my DNA, right?
• 1:02:02
  But we would have never scaled. We certainly would have never
• 1:02:04
  sold. Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  How important were mentors in your life?
• 1:02:08
  Like did you have because I have a couple really key mentors that
• 1:02:12
  I meet with very frequently and then I have some paid coaches.
• 1:02:17
  I consider a mentor a non paid person and then I've coached
• 1:02:20
  like a paid person. But how like did you just school
• 1:02:24
  a Hard Knocks it your way through and hire the right
• 1:02:27
  people and bring, you know, bring people in as you need more
• 1:02:30
  resources like this person to help you with interviews and
• 1:02:32
  things like that? Or did you have key mentors or
• 1:02:35
  coaches by your side, or an Advisory Board or something to
• 1:02:39
  help you with your clarity along the way?
• 1:02:42
  So I think that for me, I knew so little that everybody was a
• 1:02:46
  potential mentor. So I got used to just learning
• 1:02:50
  to ask and learning to want to learn, right?
• 1:02:53
  And really being able to think outside of my bubble because my
• 1:02:57
  industry was so small, if you will, that there, who was I
• 1:03:00
  going to go to, right? And what I learned was a lot of
• 1:03:03
  times some of these advisors would see me as a workhorse.
• 1:03:06
  So they'd be like, oh, well, we're just going to ride her
• 1:03:08
  coat tails. So then I felt like burned,
• 1:03:11
  right? So I'm like, OK, I need to be
• 1:03:12
  more careful. That happened quite a bit.
• 1:03:15
  And it kind of came down to a lot of me of like, I need to be
• 1:03:19
  able to hold my value and my truth of what I'm trying to do.
• 1:03:23
  But I looked at trying to find mentors.
• 1:03:26
  I don't know that I necessarily realized that that was the name,
• 1:03:28
  if you will, like, you know what I mean?
• 1:03:30
  But I would seek counsel all the time.
• 1:03:33
  Even at a dinner, I'd pull out my moles can be like, do you
• 1:03:35
  mind? And if I write down these notes.
• 1:03:36
  So to me, anyone that had accomplished something
• 1:03:39
  successful was fair game to go and ask a question to right and
• 1:03:42
  to try and learn from. And then you just picked what
• 1:03:45
  was signal from that and what was noise and.
• 1:03:47
  Everybody, it was everybody. It was like, let me, if I was,
• 1:03:49
  if I knew 3%, I mean, if I was the smartest person in the room,
• 1:03:53
  wrong room, get into a different room, right?
• 1:03:55
  Always. Well, it's just like, that's why
• 1:03:57
  I have the podcast. I get to ask questions from
• 1:04:00
  amazing people that have done way more than me and I get to
• 1:04:04
  share it with the world and teach others and help others
• 1:04:05
  rise. So it hits to both buckets of
• 1:04:07
  the things that I'm the most passionate about.
• 1:04:09
  But it's, it's, yeah, I think the ability, because people ask
• 1:04:13
  me that is, well, how do you know when you're getting all
• 1:04:16
  this input from so many people? How do you know what to take and
• 1:04:20
  what not to like? Well, that's where you have to
• 1:04:22
  follow your compass of signal versus noise and like, what's
• 1:04:25
  your true north? What are your values?
• 1:04:26
  Who, what am I creating here? And then you can identify.
• 1:04:30
  And also another rule that I have is I only take advice from
• 1:04:33
  someone I trade places with in the area that I, that they're
• 1:04:36
  giving me advice, right? So.
• 1:04:38
  Smart. So that helps because although
• 1:04:41
  you know, my someone in my family may have some really
• 1:04:45
  great advice for me, unless I would take advice from them in
• 1:04:47
  that area or trade places with them in that area, then it's
• 1:04:49
  like, thank you. I appreciate the advice but it
• 1:04:52
  doesn't fog up the the brain the thought process.
• 1:04:54
  There so smart. So we have to wrap up here soon.
• 1:04:58
  Real quick though, I want to get into success unlocked and what
• 1:05:01
  you're doing with that and just your whole your whole mission
• 1:05:04
  there. So really quick it is like it's
• 1:05:07
  that fearless girl, right? It's creating all the things
• 1:05:10
  that little trick seeds didn't have coming up.
• 1:05:12
  I sorry, but I love your eyes lighting up when you talk about
• 1:05:16
  this and I always follow that. Like when you ask someone what
• 1:05:19
  are they most excited about and whatever makes their eyes light
• 1:05:22
  up, like you know it's going to be huge, so.
• 1:05:25
  Like it's I'm beyond exciting. So I don't have all the, you
• 1:05:28
  know, all the mapped out plan. I just know I want to help
• 1:05:31
  Hannah. I just know that if I could
• 1:05:33
  create exposure and access and education for people that want
• 1:05:38
  it, it's a game changer. So we do this whole like founder
• 1:05:40
  story that yes, you can moment. We highlight people like myself
• 1:05:44
  that you may or never heard of, right?
• 1:05:46
  Like a plumber that sold to private equity all these really
• 1:05:48
  cool people. Because I want it to be, yes,
• 1:05:52
  you can. It's attainable.
• 1:05:53
  It's relatable. That person thinks like me, they
• 1:05:55
  pulled themselves from here. They did that.
• 1:05:57
  I mean, so many cool stories. And then I go right into like my
• 1:06:00
  version of a master class, right?
• 1:06:01
  But we call it hidden gem so I don't get sued.
• 1:06:03
  And it's like, I could go do these three things because I've
• 1:06:05
  learned that you got to take action, right?
• 1:06:07
  You've got to take action so that you can start changing the
• 1:06:10
  behavior. And so much of it is we don't
• 1:06:12
  know we have to change behavior because we don't have access or
• 1:06:14
  exposure to it, right? So it's an educational
• 1:06:16
  community. We launched April 2nd, April
• 1:06:19
  4th, OK. Two days later we realized, Oh
• 1:06:21
  my gosh, there's an entire Latino community following me
• 1:06:26
  that only speaks Spanish. I need to pivot really quickly
• 1:06:31
  and I didn't realize that so we put together Escuela Nueva,
• 1:06:36
  which is the Spanish version and it's incredible.
• 1:06:39
  It's completely different content and it's been the
• 1:06:41
  coolest thing ever. I mean I'm sitting there.
• 1:06:43
  We're talking about mindset. So we meet think of it as a
• 1:06:45
  business coach. We meet you where you are,
• 1:06:47
  whether you want to learn about investing in real estate,
• 1:06:49
  whether you want to learn about mindset Women's Health, you want
• 1:06:53
  to learn about AI utilizing technology in your business,
• 1:06:56
  whatever The thing is, we're there for you, right?
• 1:06:58
  Like Cam confidence on camera, like so many cool people coming
• 1:07:02
  on the platform to teach, but it's a community.
• 1:07:05
  It's about, oh, you need an introduction.
• 1:07:06
  Oh, you need this. Like right now, this week I'm
• 1:07:08
  filming how to help some of these contractors get ready to
• 1:07:13
  be able to work with the large real estate groups.
• 1:07:16
  So taking cash jobs into real contracts, right?
• 1:07:20
  And we're creating jobs, we're making introductions.
• 1:07:22
  We were just in Georgia 3 weeks ago, something like $4 million
• 1:07:25
  worth of regional jobs. We put together, like so many
• 1:07:28
  cool things that I'm beyond ecstatic.
• 1:07:31
  So a, you have to come, come on, I'm dying for you to come on.
• 1:07:34
  We got to get your story and highlight you.
• 1:07:35
  But it's, it's, I feel like a culmination of everything,
• 1:07:40
  right? The good, the bad, the failure,
• 1:07:42
  but being able to just be that resource for people and I get to
• 1:07:45
  talk about mindset a lot. So it's, it's really fun.
• 1:07:48
  I'm, I'm having the time of my life.
• 1:07:50
  My kids are involved, like everybody loves it.
• 1:07:52
  Now we're doing a lot of stuff in Spanish.
• 1:07:54
  So I realize I don't know a lot of terms in Spanish, like Wall
• 1:07:57
  Street, for example. So I'm like, OK, we got to
• 1:07:59
  figure this out, but it's been so much fun.
• 1:08:02
  That's so in your where can people watch because you have a
• 1:08:04
  free show, right? And then success.
• 1:08:06
  Unlocked successunlocked.com and everything is on the platform.
• 1:08:10
  It's also on YouTube, but on the platform is where it is and we
• 1:08:13
  just started it right. And it's this big scary because
• 1:08:15
  it's new, it's unknown, and it's about pulling really great
• 1:08:19
  people together to be able to just add value.
• 1:08:23
  And it's been, it's been so much fun.
• 1:08:24
  So we'll see where it gets. We'll see how big it goes.
• 1:08:27
  I'm so excited. And what's your Instagram for
• 1:08:29
  those who want to find? You so Trixie Castro and it's
• 1:08:31
  TRIX. Why?
• 1:08:33
  Most people are like, how do you spell your name Trixie Castro?
• 1:08:35
  And again, I'm new to Instagram. I wasn't even on it till about
• 1:08:38
  maybe a year and a half ago. That's amazing.
• 1:08:40
  I know. And it's I'm just excited.
• 1:08:42
  I'm excited for you in this next chapter of your journey and the
• 1:08:44
  impact. And we're so aligned in so many
• 1:08:46
  ways that we we just, I know we'll keep doing great things
• 1:08:49
  together. 100% I would love that.
• 1:08:51
  Well, cool. OK, Rapid fire School of Hard
• 1:08:53
  docs. OK, let's do it.
• 1:08:55
  How old are you when you became an entrepreneur?
• 1:08:57
  14. Crazy.
• 1:08:58
  What line of business are you in right now?
• 1:09:00
  Well, what line of business were you and then what line of
• 1:09:03
  business are you in now? OK, so I was a tutor.
• 1:09:07
  I started a tutor company at 14, and the business I'm in now, I
• 1:09:10
  don't even know how to describe. I'm in real estate, I'm an
• 1:09:13
  investor. You know, we're putting together
• 1:09:15
  this education. I'm just nuts.
• 1:09:17
  How about that? 1A.
• 1:09:18
  Little bit of everything, typical serial.
• 1:09:20
  Entrepreneur, I can't help myself.
• 1:09:22
  What was the best piece of advice you ever received?
• 1:09:25
  The best piece of advice was follow your gut.
• 1:09:28
  I know that sounds so basic, but for me it really resonated
• 1:09:31
  because I wasn't taught to do that.
• 1:09:33
  I was taught that you're here, money is for other people to
• 1:09:36
  make and they all know more than you.
• 1:09:38
  So just go fall in line and follow the rules.
• 1:09:41
  So someone coming to me and it was a coach, actually soccer
• 1:09:43
  coach, saying you got Trixie, you know the right answer,
• 1:09:46
  follow your gut. Stick with me forever.
• 1:09:48
  Who is your hero and why? Oh, for sure, my mom, my mom,
• 1:09:52
  she's absolutely fearless, willing to do whatever it takes
• 1:09:56
  right for her family loves hard, a little bit crazy, but I think
• 1:10:01
  you have to have that right. I think you have to be willing
• 1:10:04
  to just do whatever it to be able to provide the best life
• 1:10:07
  for your family. But a very sound integris
• 1:10:09
  person. What's the number one book you
• 1:10:12
  would recommend everyone read? For me, it was coming up.
• 1:10:15
  It was anything. John Maxwell, for some reason
• 1:10:18
  that's always resonate. I love him.
• 1:10:19
  I love what he it stands for. I love the leadership skills,
• 1:10:21
  but it translates into everything.
• 1:10:23
  So there's so many incredible books for me.
• 1:10:25
  I find myself every year going right back to his stuff.
• 1:10:29
  It's interesting. What was the biggest failure you
• 1:10:31
  have overcame? The biggest failure I ever
• 1:10:34
  overcame? Learning how to forgive myself.
• 1:10:38
  And I failed and I couldn't get past it.
• 1:10:42
  I still struggle with it at times.
• 1:10:43
  Right. I have to make a conscious
• 1:10:45
  effort to like let it go and forgive myself. 2 very different
• 1:10:49
  things, like I couldn't give myself grace and I would get
• 1:10:52
  stuck there and I'd beat myself up and that felt familiar and
• 1:10:56
  normal and then it would seep into other areas of my life or
• 1:10:59
  my business. So being able to say, OK, I
• 1:11:02
  failed, I can let it go. I can forgive myself and I can
• 1:11:06
  give myself a little bit of grace that the reality is I
• 1:11:08
  wasn't trying to do something wrong, I just didn't know,
• 1:11:11
  right? So that was really hard because
• 1:11:14
  you're not, nobody talks about that, right?
• 1:11:17
  But it was it took me a minute conscious effort and took me a
• 1:11:20
  minute. What's the number one thing you
• 1:11:22
  attribute to your success? Yes you can and not hear, you
• 1:11:25
  know. That you could send one message
• 1:11:27
  to your younger self. What would it say?
• 1:11:29
  Keep going, tune out the noise, you got this and trust your gut.
• 1:11:33
  And if you could leave one message with the younger
• 1:11:35
  generation, what would it be? You got this and trust your gut.
• 1:11:38
  Yes you can. You're amazing.
• 1:11:40
  I'm so excited for what's next and thank you so much.
• 1:11:43
  Thank you for having me, of course I love what you're doing.
• 1:11:46
  I love you, you're amazing. Love you.