Blaze Your Own Trail - Navigating Crypto: Scams & Due Diligence with Corey Geary

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

About Corey: Entrepreneurship saved my life, before I was an entrepreneur, I was an addict going nowhere except to my death bed and thru chasing the carrot of money it forced me to be in rooms with people leveling up their lives, spiritually, mentally, physically and financially and because of this journey not only has it made me a millionaire but the biggest accolade is it made me sober for multiple years, I have a family now with two beautiful daughters living in Puerto Rico and I do what I want, with whom I want, with how ever I want, and when I want. I have achieved true time freedom. Takeaways Soft skills in sales are crucial for success in real estate and crypto. Mentorship and education play a significant role in navigating the real estate and crypto industries. Community building is essential for sharing knowledge and experiences in both real estate and crypto. Due diligence is crucial in the crypto space to avoid falling victim to scams and fraudulent schemes. Chapters 00:00 The Role of Soft Skills in Real Estate and Crypto 03:10 Mentorship and Education in Real Estate and Crypto 05:54 The Power of Community Building in Real Estate and Crypto 09:09 Navigating Crypto: Scams and Due Diligence Connect with Corey: Website: https://cryptocashflowsystems.com/ Looking for more tips centered around social media and entrepreneurship? Connect with Jordan below: LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join 18K plus other readers: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-you-want-start-podcast-actionable-tips-inside-jordan-mendoza-7dtpe/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therealjordanjmendoza/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clapper: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clapper.vip/jordanjmendoza⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join my LinkedIn Trailblazers Facebook Group: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/linkedintrailblazers⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.blazeyourowntrailconsulting.com⁠⁠⁠ Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I am joined today by Corey Geary, and I'm going to have him tell us a little bit about who he is and what he does today. What's going on, Corey? Hey, man, what's going on, brother? Appreciate having me on today. This is awesome.

Thank you so much. My pleasure. Yeah, if you just want to give a quick, you know, 60 second or less description or bio of, you know, what you're up to today, that'd be amazing. Yeah, man. I currently in living in Puerto Rico, you know, I do crypto full time. So I'm a full time cryptocurrency investor. And we make passive income from crypto and crypto assets. So we're buying hold investors. And I can give you the kind of the full backlog because I started in real estate about 10 years ago and how that transitioned over. But yeah, to date, I'm in Puerto Rico.

I own my own time. And it's been a beautiful journey up to this point in cryptocurrency. is the reason why, you know, I'm able to do this. Awesome. Appreciate that. And so, you know, my favorite part of the show, Corey, is really taking a rewind, just kind of getting deeper context into our guest journey, see what they're made of, what they've gone through to get to this point. So if you could share with everybody, you know, where were you actually born and raised?

I don't know if it could be, could be Puerto Rico or you could have just said, hey, let me, let me go to a beautiful place. But, yeah, where were you born and raised? You know, what kind of kid were you? What type of stuff did you get into? Were you into sports? Do you have any hobbies? And let's kind of go adolescent, like, you know, years up through high school. Absolutely. So I was born in Arizona, although I grew up in Las Vegas.

I was born in Mesa, Arizona. So it's the Phoenix area. We moved to Vegas when I was like 11-ish, 12. I think I was about right before I turned 12. And grew up my teenage life in Las Vegas. It wasn't a good thing, man. You know, I got very heavily involved with drugs and alcohol. I dropped out of school very early. I did end up going back and getting my high school education, which was a good thing.

But it was a very troubled teen life. You know, I grew up kind of without a father. My father was around, but he wasn't a father figure. So he wasn't in the picture very much. And I just kind of did what I want when I was younger, which was not a good thing because I had no kind of structure in place. And that was my youth, man. There's not a lot to tell except for I was just a troubled kid.

growing up in Las Vegas. And that is one reason, though, me not having no boundaries as a child. The one good thing it did for me is that when I got older, I also, as an entrepreneur, I have no boundaries and I'll take a big risk without like,

you know, thinking twice about it because I just, that's just a way I was brought up. And so that part has carried on throughout my adult life. And it's been an absolute blessing. as far as entrepreneurship and making money. But that, yeah, that's my teen. My teenage life was a very troubled youth, always in trouble.

You know, I got arrested multiple times in my teens. It was no good. I kind of started shaping my act up a little bit, my 20s. I went to music college. I played guitar. I was playing around a bunch of different bands in Hollywood. I did that for a while. At the very least, I was trying to do something with my life by that.

point. And then, yeah, man, by the time I was in the 20s, early 30s, I had discovered blackjack dealing, which is kind of, I know sounds kind of funny. But dealers make really good money with very little education. You can make, you know, six figures and above. And I got into that industry and I was in that industry for about 15 years, way too long. 15 years. Yeah, that's a long time. Way too long. And I'm 47. now. So just kind of give you full. Yeah, but anyways, it was way too long. And it was, it was good, but I got comfortable, right? And I was still doing a lot of, you know, drugs and alcohol. I was an alcoholic man for the majority of my life. And this kind of leads into the next

segment is I got into real estate because I was watching that show flip or flop with Terracomous. I'm sure, you know, a lot of your listeners probably know that show. And it was really big in like 2016, 17, 18. It was like huge. And so like we'd watch that show me and my girlfriend at the time. And she was a part-time realtor. And I was, you know, full-time dealer. She was part-time dealer. And she's like, why don't you flip a house so I can list it? Like I was literally the conversation we had. I was like, I don't know. It seems easy enough. These guys, you know, do it in 20 minutes and make $80,000. How come, I can't do that? I had some money saved up at the time. And literally, I was running around my neighborhood the next morning. And I saw one that

bandit signs fix and flip buy price had a number sell price or arb had a number i stopped in my morning run i called that phone number it took me eight months to buy that house and uh it took me eight months to flip that house and uh it was a success that's what that was my first real estate deal and it was a good thing i got in the real estate because i was chasing the dollar but i tell people real estate saved my life because i was going nowhere right i didn't have any purpose i was a drug addict I was an alcoholic. And by being around people who were life-minded, people who were trying to get better spiritually, mentally, physically, I was joining masterminds after I got in the real estate, you know, had mentorship. It, you know, it changed me on a very deep level.

And now I'm sober for multiple years. I have a family and I live in Puerto Rico. The journey to get here was the journey was real estate, although crypto is what is a reason why I'm here and what keeps me here. but that journey was real estate that had created the person who I am today. And it was an absolute blessing that I got. God knows how to basically push me in the right direction. And yeah, yeah, it was really remarkable, man. I'll kind of give you my real estate story, though.

On my third deal, I lost a bunch of money. And that set me back. And that's what forced me to join the masterminds, hire a private mentor. and yeah, and then I built a seven-figure wholesaling fix and flip company. I also kind of trail-brace the Novation Nation, where we basically taught nationwide, novation dealmaking to investors. And that was what was kind of our stick, if you will,

for a very long time. You know, at my height, I was doing anywhere from 40 to 60 deals at a time. And I had multiple employees, 15 employees, I think at my height. And that's what leads me in my next part of my story is in 2020, man, I realized that I had built a prison. This prison made me a millionaire. This prison made me, you know, quit drugs, alcohol, get a family. It made me level up every part of my life, spiritually, mentally, physically, and financially.

But I had built this massive prison, man. And I was working 14, 15 hours a day. I was in multiple lawsuits at any given time. We were in a lawsuit with the attorney general because of a homeowner. I mean, hiring and firing like crazy. It was just, you know, not what I envisioned my life to be at the end of the movie. And so I took a step back. And I know if any of your listeners have ever read the book,

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, highly recommend it. The book teaches you how to stop clawing your weight in life to success and start letting God or the universe guide you in your life. to success. And I already been dabbling with crypto at that time. And I was having some success with it. And I feel like it was God who kind of pushed me in the direction and said, hey, you know, maybe you should take this more serious, start treating it the way you treat real estate. And I did. I joined crypto masterminds. I hired a private mentor, started going to events. And by the end of 2022, I started making so much money in the crypto space and passive income that it paled in comparison

to the real estate company. And that's what I did shut it down to move to Puerto Rico. So that's kind of like, there it is. There's like the whole. Sure. Yeah, and I appreciate the context there. And we're definitely going to unpackage it. There's a lot of different storylines to jump into. So the first one, I guess, you know, you had a 15 year career in dealing, like in poker, right? So what are what are some, or blackjack? So what were, what were some of the, the I guess biggest lessons that you learned doing doing that for 15 years is there like don't get comfortable like I got way too comfortable for way too long I ever read the book the outwitting the devil by Napoleon Hill and he talks about drifting in the book it's a great

book drifting is what I was doing through life just partying doing the casino nightlife job thing I mean it was in it was like living the rock star kind of dream if you're that's what you want back then and that's what I did want back then unfortunately but that was what I did for 15 years. I wish it would have been a smaller portion of my life like, you know, five years would have been plenty in that space. It's just that, you know, like I said, I got comfortable in there and then eventually, you know, I wanted more when it came to money. I was like, man, you know, I was making like 140 grand a year when I quit there, but I was like I wanted more. I started, you know, longing for more and I was like, I didn't know what helped what helped you?

you what helps you go get more like what were some of the because you know 15 years you you probably picked up some skill sets or you at least strengthened some skill sets over that over that time right or else you wouldn't have reached that kind of six figure level 140k years so what were some of the things that you took from that 15 year investment of your time and energy and you know some of it in good areas and some of it in bad but like what were some things that you think had helped you over the next decade in real estate. I would say the number one thing was sales. As a dealer, you make your money from tips.

Especially if you work for the type of places I used to work for, they're 100% take your own joints is what they're called. And you make your own tips. Most of the places in Vegas don't do that. They pull their tips. But like you make your own. So you eat when you kill, you have to go out there. And why you're taking people's mortgage money,

why you're taking their kids college fund, why you're taking their, you know, their food money. Literally some of these people are just betting everything they have. It's an addiction that they have. And you're out there,

the one facilitating this habit. You have to put on your best show. You have to put on, you know, just your best, you know, sales skills that you possibly can, you know, muster up and put the show on and act on. So they tip you. So they tip you.

And so I was always like, you know, as far as a dealers in the casino because when I was there, I was like, man, I'm here to work. I'm here to make money. I'll party when I'm out of here and I'll do whatever I want when I'm out of here. But when I'm here, I'm going to make money. I'm going to go out there and work the floor as best as I possibly could.

And I did. I got really good at it. My conversation skills got really good. My people skills got really good. And that carried over into my entrepreneur journey, even until today. Like even today, you know, we're still entrepreneurs. We have an education company that teaches crypto to real estate investors and entrepreneurs like. And so like all my businesses that I've owned, including locking up real estate deals,

you need to have sales skills. 100%. And sales and marketing, if you can learn those two skill sets, you'll never be broke a day in your life ever again. I don't care what your, what business you have, the what you're selling or marketing to is just the widget. Like when we were doing real estate, that real estate was just the widget. Yeah. And so that's the really cool part about that, those skill sets. If you learn those, you're good. Yep.

Yeah, 100%. So what were, was there any tells? Was there anyone that walked up and you could almost like see it on them that, hey, this is going to be a bad tipper or this is going to be a good tipper? Was there anything that you saw like on a consistent basis? Not if you didn't know the person from like, because you got to be careful. You don't want to stereotype somebody by the way they look because then if you do that you can shoot yourself and a lot of dealers do that and i think it's in a lot of a lot of different

sales industries people will stereotype oh he doesn't have money he doesn't like nah be careful you do not know who has money and who does not have money i mean now these days like i wear i wear a t-shirt and flip-flops everywhere i go like i don't wear any expensive jewelry out maybe you could look at me and go okay maybe he does maybe he doesn't but you know don't stereotype nobody because when you do you you know you can shoot yourself from the foot but if you once you know somebody sure you know there's a lot of different tells even through conversation that you know if this person is going to what we used to call them a george so if someone who's a tipper is a george so whether they're going to be a george or not you can usually tell uh once you get to know them a little bit and you really start having some in-depth

conversation or a lot of times we'll push off a table or if i was pushing into a table the dealer in front of me it'd be like hey george and seat number three it's like okay i know exactly where i'm I'm going to be focusing a lot of my time and energy at because the dealer already before me, it kind of like, you know, you know, maybe he tipped the dealer before me. And so, and then you have your regulars. And obviously with your regulars, you know who's going to tip but who's not going to tip. And then the guys, if there's, don't tip, you don't spend too much energy on. And you focus just on the guys who are going to tip because you only have so much time.

You have at each table, so much energy, you know, so many hours in the day, right? And so, like, you want to make sure that you do it. You want to do it smart. Yeah. Yeah, and I would assume too in that role, like you've got to be a chameleon meaning you've got to be able to adapt to every person, every nationality, because especially if you're working in Vegas, I mean, you're talking about international hub. So what would you say are some of the coolest conversations that you've had with people at your tables? Because I'm sure you had to meet people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life. I'll give you one story.

Yeah. So this, and the funny part of the story is because this guy was also my biggest tipper and one tip. I dealt with this guy. He bought him for like $2,500. And I ran him up to like literally $170,000 in 20 minutes. I push off the table and he throws me $3,000 for a tip. It's great. Like, oh my gosh.

You know, it's one of my biggest one-time tip I ever got, dropped in my box. And I come back from next day, he's still there. And they're like, oh, yeah, he lost it all back plus another 70. I was like, holy crap. And then like the next day after that, he was gone. And then I found out within like a week of that time that he was in prison because he went to jail for embezzlement. So that $70,000 was embezzled money from the company he was working for or working with. And he got caught and went to prison.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, she went from $170,000 in profit in 20 minutes to losing that money. that he was, he should have walked from that table. I mean, who knows how much he had stolen and maybe $170,000 wasn't enough. Maybe he needed $250 or $500 to, like, make good on whatever he was trying to make good on. But he went to prison for embezzlement. So that was, that story stuck with me really well just because, you know, he was my first big tipper. And I've had multiple tips after that. They were a pretty good size.

But he was one of my first ones. So I always been making me with a prison for freaking embezzlement. What the hell? So, Corey, you know, some of those soft skills that I just mentioned had to have been beneficial as you started in real estate, you know, because you are meeting people face to face. You're shaking people's hands. You've got to maintain eye contact. You've got to build relationships. I mean, essentially, real estate is the definition of sales and marketing, right? If you're not visible, if you don't have great customer service, if you're not cordial, then you're probably not going to have as many transactions at the end of the year. as you wanted to have. So can you talk a little bit about how that 15 years, you know, pretty much in customer service? I mean, you're in customer service.

You were in hospitality. You know, you were in sales. You know, how did that translate as you got into leaders, to the real estate sector? Absolutely, man. In the beginning of real estate like anything else, you're building your business from the ground up. So I was the acquisition guy, right? I'm the marketing. I'm wearing all the hats.

So I'm the one talking to home. So in the beginning, it's going to be you out there, you know, grinding, hustling, you're the one talking to homeowners. You one locking up those deals, getting the contracts. And so like, that's where it really, really was an easy transition for me to go right into that role because I was used to talking to strangers. I was used to talking to people who had issues and problems and hearing their problems out. And that's what you need to do in real estate. You need to be a listener. You need to be a problem solver.

you have to be there for the homeowner. You're there to fix their problem. You hopefully have the solution to the problem. And that's what it's all about. And we get paid for fixing problems. And so that's where it was really, really beneficial is because in the early days, it was, you know, okay, homeowners were my cell skills. It was needed most.

And then after that, obviously, I kept to continue my sales education. I went through John Martinez education. I went through spin selling education. And so I didn't stop like, you know, moving forward on my sales skills just because, you know, I had good people skills. I feel like that's what the casino gave me was really good people saw skills, but the actual sales skills to handle a conversation and drive it forward to a desired result was something I was still lacking a little bit of. And a little bit of, you know, training and we were good to go. in fact, I'm still a student sales to this day. It's always, you know, ongoing. And so in the early days, yeah, it was homeowners where it was beneficial the most. Then it turned into where it's more B to B with, you know, relationships of building the business and like, and, and negotiating with other contractors or affiliate partnerships or whatever may be, even when I started the, the real estate mastermind and I created my course, you know, getting that out to the world and figuring out how to get marketing. correct all that stuff came into play and i can say it's funny and now that we even we try and we were

crossed over to like crypto and it's a different space but different asset class but a lot of the same skills cross right over like you know us growing this mastermind is the same cell skills i learn and marketing skills i learned from growing in and scaling the real estate mastermind there's really no difference in the two except for the once again the widget i'm selling right and that's where it really transfer we're transferred over. And plus when you in the beginning too with your buyers, you got sales skills too. It's a different type of sell skill. When you're talking to your buyers and it's just usually about numbers and negotiating their pain is, you know, they need more properties to flip or they need on rental property or wherever maybe that is, you know, their pain and you

have to be the business guy on the other end to be able to solve that, that business need with your buyers. And so it's just a different, it's just a different hat. of a sales skill hat you got to put on, whether it's going to be the buyers in the real estate company or the sellers in the real estate company or if you're trying to figure out how to sell an education around that platform. So it's, yeah. Very cool. Yeah.

It's all helpful, right? I mean, I think there's, yeah. None of it was unwasted, you know, information or experiences because, yeah, I mean, if you can communicate effectively with people, like you said, it doesn't really matter the vertical. It doesn't matter the product or still, you know, or anything like that. you can have success for sure. So let's talk a little bit about real estate in general.

So I know you mentioned you kind of, you know, you were in the real estate sector and then you went full into crypto. But do you, on the personal end, do you still own real estate? And is real estate something that, you know, for listeners out there, would you say, hey, you know, if you want to get started investing in anything, real estate is definitely a great vehicle? Oh, it's a great vehicle. as far as like trying to get off the ground and really starting to get your your net worth you know going in the right direction

I mean if you have no money obviously wholesaling is an option novations is a great option it was a part of a tool a strategy in the tool belt there and you know when you start getting some capital fix and flipping you know I've made some really big spreads on fix and flips and then if you want to generate some more long term but there's nothing wrong with rental properties it's not really my stick and I do I do own a couple houses still in Arizona, but I had sold the majority of my rental portfolio for crypto because this is the opportunity right now. We're at the beginning of the market cycle. This is where the bull run is starting out is right now with the Bitcoin ETF just getting approved, the Ethereum ETF just getting approved. The Bitcoin having just happened about a month ago. The next year to year and a half is very critical. And this is where the opportunity is. I wanted to make sure I'm all in here. But the answer to your question is, no, I'm not. done with real estate. We have a saying we want to use cryptocurrency as a wealth creation tool

and use real estate as a wealth preservation tool. And so we want to go back into real estate at the next market cycle top, which will be sometime in 2025. And the great part is now, is we built this community of 100 and we have 190 members in there now. It's been awesome, including Robert Allen, Robert G. Allen, the billionaire, he's in there. We're teaching him crypto. Like, and we're going to be able to go into these guys as deals because these guys, We got apartment syndicators in there. We got mobile home park guys in there. Obviously, we got fix and flippers and wholesalers and everyone else.

But like, I only want to be the money in deals from now on. I never want to find a deal ever again or run a deal ever again. Not that I won't ever. If I need to, of course I will. Like, I want to make sure I'm humble in that way. Like, those are skill sets that I have that help me never be go broke. But ideally, this moving forward, I only want to be the money in deals. And I want to invest in good deal.

but that only will start after 2025 when we're taking profits and taking chips off the table in the cryptocurrency markets. Very cool. Very cool. So what I'm hearing is, you know, the time is now, right? If somebody is listening or sees this conversation or a clip of this, you should inquire about, you know, how you can get involved in the cryptocurrency space. So what would be, you know, the one action for someone that's like, you know what? This, after hearing, this, it sounds like there's some urgency in Corey's voice. Like maybe I really should take this thing seriously.

What should they do? Yeah. I mean, besides, you know, reaching out to me to find out more about our community, if you want to just do one action and one action alone, that's very easy. And this is not financial advice, but you could just go buy Ethereum. That's it. The ETT just got approved, but trading has not gone live and it won't go live for another two months.

Okay, in between a month and two months. And so the parabolic price movements of all the different layer one blockchains, all the stuff that's built on Ethereum, Ethereum itself has not moved yet. Ethereum did a little bit. It went from 2,900, up of 3,600. I think it's at 3,800 today. But we're expecting it to go probably anywhere from a 5 to a 10x higher through this market cycle. So that's going to be the easiest move if you want to just go and take action on something.

And I will say this, if you're watching this podcast or hearing about this podcast, you know, listening to us six months from whenever this date came out, it might be a little bit late because if you get, if you get involved in the site in the, if you get involved in this asset class at the wrong time of the cycle, you can really lose a lot of money. You have to be careful. So if you come in and buy the top of these assets at that when the bear market comes, you will lose 75 to 99% of your economic value. So you want to make sure you ride this stuff up. And then you're selling when, you know, it comes time. But most people do it backwards. Most people come in and buy the top because that's when it's like the next best thing since sliced bread again. But it's the old Warren Buffett saying you buy when people are fearful and you sell when they're greedy. And that holds more true in crypto than anything else because crypto loses so much value in the bear market.

But yeah, that would be the easiest play. if someone's watching this or hearing about this, hearing this podcast, you know, shortly after this interview, just go buy Ethereum or that's what I would do, they have a financial advice. And otherwise, if you want,

you know, the 10xes, the 20xes, the 50xes, the 100 Xs, well, that's what we do. We're investing in brand new layer one

blockchains that are emerging in this bear market or at the, well, now we're kind of the end of the bear market that have been emerging, that are still emerging, and we invest early, early because that's where the real gains are made. If you would have got an Ethereum on day one, Ethereum launched at 30 cents a coin. It hit $5,000 a coin on the last bull run. Ethereum did

$15,000 next, meaning if you would have put $1,000 in Ethereum when it launched last cycle, I'm sorry when it first came out, you had sold sold last cycle. You would have made $15 million off of your $1,000. Cryptocurrency is the highest appreciating asset class, the mankind if you know how to play the game. And so you've got to be very careful. It's a highly volatile asset class. But it's an asset class. And if you study it and learn it, if you really learn it, there's a lot of money to be made here, a lot of money. Now, if you don't want to learn it, team up with somebody who knows what they're doing. The same thing when I didn't real estate. After I lost all that money on my third deal, I was like, holy crap, I need to like join masterminds,

hire a private mentor. And that's what facilitated my business. success. This is no different. This is absolutely no different team up with somebody who's already kind of got the know-how. If you're wanting to really get, you make some serious money in this asset class. So easy quick hit. Go buy Ethereum. That's the easy quick hit. Yeah. No, very cool. And you know, a couple things you've hit on multiple times has been mentorship. So, you know, talk about, you know, a mentor in your life that, you know, that means a lot to you. And, you know, what, role have they played in your world? So I can give you a few, you know, I would say my biggest mentor who I respect in the real estate world would be Sean Terry. Sean Terry was like critical

to my success. I mean, he, I joined his mastermind. He was like the first course I bought too. I did. I think he flipped the freedom. That was the name of the course. And so like, and he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a embodies all the values that I've grown to, you know, I love and grown into. So that's what I still love Sean to this day as a mentor, as a person, even though he, he does real estate, although he does stocks. He's a stock guy and he's a real estate guy. In the crypto space, man, I, you know, there's a few of them that I have.

At the top of my head, I would say probably Richard Hart. Richard Hart is definitely he embodies the ethos of crypto, crypto. he's also an entrepreneur heart. He at one point had a company with 150 employees in it, and he sold that company, but he was in mining Bitcoin back in 2011 when he was getting 50 Bitcoin a block. And so like he just, he wrote a book for people how to get wealthy.

And he's just, so in the crypto space, I would say he was probably the most instrumental to my success in movement in crypto. And then, yeah. And I also say, I want to say Robert Allen too has also been massive, just a mentor in general, even though he's in our community to learn crypto, we learn a lot from him about business. Like the guy is just, I mean, he's in his 70s and he's done over $1.5 billion in business.

And he's, you know, really specializes in the teaching space, the education space. And so like he's, you know, he's awesome. I mean, we meet with him weekly. So, yeah, I love it. Yeah, very cool. I love that. Yeah, it's so important that we, A, recognize, you know, mentors and coaches and, you know, give them credit, you know, and let them know how they have impacted us. You know, it definitely always goes a long way.

So another thing that you've mentioned is education. You mentioned that when it came to real estate. One of the things that, you know, helped is when you launched the education side forces, membership, things like that. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of building community like that and what the upside is if you have that versus if you didn't have that in place? Yep. Well, the first thing, if you become an expert in something and you create wealth, you know, something significant of value and you've put in 10,000 hours into that, into that skill set or business. if you've done that, you're doing yourself, you're doing not only

yourself a disservice, but also all the potential students and people's lives you can change by not offering that part of that service up where you will teach people how to do what you did. So the biggest aha for me was like when I

when I kind of cracked the code on nationwide novations and we got really good at it. And people were reaching out to me all the time. And I was, you know, you only have so much time in a day. So obviously you need to start charging. And yes, that's what we did.

It happening organically, though. Like I said, they were reaching out to me. And I was all my time is just, I was giving information away from free. And then eventually was like, okay, you know what? I do need to charge for this. And I think people want this. They like this. They could help them scale their real estate business.

It puts another tool in their tool belt. And I was right. I was right. I created the course around it. The course, it took off. We sold a bunch of those. and then I created a mastermind around the nationwide novation strategy, where we taught even like how to run your whole business.

We taught PPC. We taught like, you know, leadership skills on how to run a team. Like it was how do you build this type of business? And I had 50 members in that community. We built up there. And it was great because in that community, we were doing deals together. So there's a great benefit of building community because, I mean, everyone's got everyone's back. And so it was.

It was an amazing journey. And that was the beginning of my, I guess I said, my education type, you know, what a skill set or business experience. There we go. The beginning of my education business experience was through real estate. And then we did the same in crypto. We started making so much money in crypto that when I wound my company down and I even told my real estate mastermind, I look, guys, I'm going to be like, I'll still keep you guys

and answer questions, but like, I'm letting you know, like, I'm dissolving the real estate company and I'm moving to Puerto Rico. I don't want to be a guru. I always want to be a duro and I want to be a fake guy. So we, you know, we're not going to be bringing any more new people into this mastermind. And for you guys, I'll keep serving you as long as you need, but understand that I'm no longer doing the business. And a lot of them are like, hey, man, teach me what you're doing now? I want to know what you're doing now. What do you mean you're doing in crypto like how are you making passive income at this stuff like can you show i want to learn how to do this and that's where that kind of like okay well i i can show you yeah yeah of course and now we have

190 members in that community it is wild my partner dane he's another real estate investor at the time a real estate investor that was kind of going through the same transition as i was going through it's really remarkable and we ended up teaming up and now we like i said we have 190 members in there and it's just been a blast and to serve that community and, you know, teach them what we do and how we do it. Or if they don't even want to like so much to learn, the cool part is they can come in and we'll do all the due diligence and, you know, research and we can show up and like on our Zoom call and be like,

look, push this button here, push this button here. Cool, man, I'll see you in two weeks. And like they go off and crush the world and be the entrepreneur who they are. And then let us do the heavy lifting on, on the crypto stuff. now we get to be a service to them. And it's just, yeah, man, there's nothing better than community, man. It's amazing. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, everybody, you know, Sharon, like you said, you got a guy that, that's done a billion and a half and you get to talk to him. And also, as he's adding value to you, you probably are adding value to him, right? Because there's things about technology-wise or things with social media that maybe he doesn't really understand from a marketing standpoint. So he's like a sponge and he's getting, you know, new information. And so, yeah, it ends up really ironing sharpening iron, but like you said too is. Yeah.

Grows. It grows. And we have guys in our community they've been with for a couple of years now and they're like become crypto experts. We have one guy. He's like an expert of meme coin launches. And so like he would announce all the new meme coins that are actually worth a damn in our community. one guy he he caught one launch he put three grand in and turned into the 350,000 dollars in five days wow and that was all done in our community it's really cool to see that kind of like you know that

that that that living breathing thing that we created from two years ago is it's it's massive value now and everyone is serving everybody it's it's awesome so if i'm gonna say a statement and you just tell me if this is true or false. Crypto is still the Wild Wild West. Oh, 100% true. 100% true. So if you want to blaze a trail,

folks, there is a trail to be blazed if that's what I'm hearing from Corey here. Yes. Now, with that comes opportunity, of course, right? Because you get to be early to something and you can make a lot of gains, but mind you, with that also comes scammers and guys out there just doing, you know, doing everything they can to do you wrong so they can get to your money.

So be mindful of that you have a lot of that. What is the like let's get down to the dark side of crypto, right? So like what would you say is kind of the top like spamming or fishing scheme that's out there right now that people need to be aware of? Is it what's it like, hey, a telegram message or what's that message? You know, like where are these people lurking? Okay. Are massive right now.

They're, they're, they're scamming that they don't, they're not good at what they do. They're paying you off of what other people are buying into those telegram trading bots. So you pay for this bot, you go in and put money in there. They're using that money to pay other investors. And so like, it's just, it's, uh, it's, uh, a Rob Peter to pay Paul type Ponzi system. So that's a big one going on right now. When we get back in the midst of the bull run, though,

you're going to see a lot of the scams that we saw last cycle come back. A lot of the NFT type scams. Not that NFTs are not scams themselves, but there's a lot of NFT scammers. And you're going to see a lot of the Ponzi type projects like Time Wonderland. Time Wonderland was a big, it was massive last site. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars were lost in that Ponzi. And that's another one where people would invest money in.

And then they were they, you know, it was typical. I can't remember his name the Ponzi guy, but you pay you're Rob Peter to play Paul kind of thing. And you're paying old investors and new investors money. And that's very huge in crypto. You just got to know. Okay. So if you're looking here's the one thing you got to do. If you're looking for passive income in crypto, it's there.

and there's a lot of places you can get it, but you need to build a pinpoint exactly where that yield or passive income is coming from, because if you cannot pinpoint it or if you don't know where that yields coming from, you are the yield. Basically, then you know it's a positive. You need to pinpoint down exactly.

How am I making this money? Why is this a thing? They're saying I'm making 70% APY. Where does a 70% come from? You need to be able to prove that yourself on chain, or at least have somebody or, works for money and knows how to do that. You know, don't, don't go to your random YouTuber or your, or your, or your,

or your, or maybe one of your famous crypto YouTubers and rely on their information. And most of those guys are scammers and sales because what they do is they'll buy up a token and then they'll, they'll, they'll shill it on their show. And then after you go buy it, they're dumping on your head. That's one of the biggest crypto scams there is and it's still going on to this day. And those are the, a lot of the bigger, uh, cripple, influence, influencers. So you got to be mindful of that. It's everywhere.

It's everywhere out there. It's because it's the, like you said, it's a while west of finance because there's no clarity around it. Now, the United States is starting to have a little bit of clarity on certain things. In fact, we've seen a little bit of, I would say,

forgiving or forgiveness or kindness towards crypto since the whole presidential election and Trump's going out there and saying he's pro crypto. And like now we're seeing all this like, you know, that's when the Ethereum ETF got approved before. I don't think, I don't think the Ethereum, METF was going to get approved this year.

If it went for Trump saying he was pro crypto, it put the pressure on the Biden administration. And they're like, oh, crap, we need to do something. We're losing a lot of votes here. And so they approved the Ethereum ETF. I'll take it. I'll take it. So yeah, it's it's everywhere, man. Yeah.

So I would say to everybody, you know, just be careful. Just like with everything, whether it's, you know, the scams around taxes or whether it's crypto or whether it's real estate or. bill collector, you know, you always have to be careful. Do your due diligence. You know, don't just kind of click on the first link that pops in your inbox or your DMs and, and spend money on it, you know. So do your due diligence. And then, so Corey, you know, I appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your, your story and journey. And, and one thing I think that can be said is that, you know, it's not, you know, how you start,

right? You know, we all have ups and downs. We all go through stuff. You know, I've been the knucklehead teenager, just like a lot of people have, right? So, but, you know, we can take the lessons and we can extract the things that have helped us and help shape and mold us. And we can leverage that to be the number one thing that helps us get to where we want to go. So I appreciate you taking the time. Where's the place that you want folks to go after hearing this? Man, the best place is my social media is like Facebook.

it's going to be just how it's spelled here, C-O-R-E-Y, Geary, G-E-A-R-Y, or Instagram is the Corey Geary. So it's the exact same, all one word, the Corey Geary. DM me. Like, it's, I answer my own DMs. I don't have a VA on there. You know, if you, if you want to inquire more about what we're doing at crypto, be more than happy to talk about that.

Or if you have any crypto questions, like, I would be more than happy to talk about that, too. You know, I love talking crypto. I talk about it all day. In fact, it's what I do all the day. All I do is family. I do family, God, and then crypto. That's it. You know, not what's going to be God, family, and then crypto.

God's always first. Very cool. Appreciate you, Sharon. That's it. Yeah, of course. We're going to make sure all that gets linked in the show notes. You know, keep blazing your own trail. I'm definitely interested in learning more.

You definitely have gotten, you know, my ears raised for sure. You know, it's one of those things that education is usually what you need to have success in anything, you know, so I need to get educated. If I don't know the info, then I need to go to the experts, folks. If you're looking for an expert to help you along your journey, make sure you guys reach out to Corey. Corey, thanks again for coming on the Blaz Your Own Trail podcast. Appreciate, Jordan.

Thank you. Thank you.