Founder's Story - I Was Worth $5 Million at 23. Eight Months Later I Was Negative $1 Million | Ep. 416 with Leo Pareja CEO of eXp Realty

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Daniel and Leo Pareja, CEO of eXp Realty, unpack what happens when someone finally reaches the goal they have obsessed over for years—and discovers it does not feel the way they expected. Leo shares how becoming the number one Keller Williams agent at twenty-eight left him depressed and confused because nothing inside him changed. From there, the conversation moves through his financial collapse during the 2008 crisis, the mentors who reshaped his identity, and the systems that helped him rebuild. Leo also explains why young people should compress time through hard work, why founders must separate themselves from their titles, and how AI may fundamentally reshape enterprise software and entrepreneurship. Key Discussion Points Leo shares that becoming the number one agent at Keller Williams was one of the emptiest and most meaningless moments of his life, despite spending nearly eight years obsessing over that goal. He explains how conversations with millionaires and billionaires taught him one consistent lesson: do not sacrifice the years when your children are young because those moments cannot be recovered. Leo opens up about the financial crisis, when he went from being told he was worth around $5 million to negative $1 million in roughly eight months. That collapse changed his approach to life, pushing him to stop saying “when I get there” and start giving back, spending time with family, and living according to his priorities immediately. Leo explains why his children's calendar now goes into his schedule before eXp's global calendar and why he expects his executives to make family milestones a priority as well. He argues that young people should work extremely hard and “compress time,” using energy and repetition to gain experience before wisdom and leverage come later in life. Leo shares the advice a mentor gave him at thirty: he was no longer a young prodigy, just another successful person in real estate, and he needed to build an identity beyond that achievement. He explains why selling a company can be emotionally traumatic, because founders are often forced to hand over not only the business but a major part of their identity and professional status. Leo describes how the financial crash forced him to stop relying on natural talent and start treating business as a math problem built around total addressable market, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, retention, churn, and defensibility. The conversation explores Leo's belief that AI is simultaneously overhyped in the short term and underhyped in the long term—and that custom AI workflows could lead to the death of much of enterprise SaaS. Takeaways Reaching the top does not guarantee fulfillment. If your entire identity is tied to one goal, achieving it can leave you more confused than motivated. There are seasons for extreme work and seasons for family, but Leo believes leaders must be honest about which season they are in and intentionally protect what cannot be recovered. Young founders should prioritize proximity and osmosis: get around people who are already doing what you want to do, watch how they think, and put in as many real-world reps as possible. AI may radically lower the cost of building custom technology, allowing companies to replace bloated enterprise tools with workflows designed around their exact needs. Courage is misunderstood. Leo says fear never disappears; courage is simply doing the thing in spite of being afraid. Closing Thoughts Leo Pareja's story challenges the traditional definition of success. He reached number one, lost millions, rebuilt, sold companies, and became CEO of a major public-company brokerage—but the biggest lessons came from realizing that titles are temporary and the people around you are not. This episode is about ambition without losing yourself, taking calculated risks before life ends, and learning to get back up no matter how many losses you take. The best businesses aren't built in boardrooms. They're built by people who just started. Free trial at shopify.com/foundersstory Access your favorite content anywhere and protect your privacy with Proton VPN—get 70% off a two-year plan at protonvpn.com/founder Create without limits with Storyblocks—the human-made stock library trusted by creators everywhere, and get 15% off any annual plan at storyblocks.com/founders. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I owned 14 rental properties. My account had just told me I was worth $5 million. And within eight months, that number went to negative of a million dollars. This is Leo. He bounced back to become the number one real estate agent in the world and the first Hispanic CEO of a major publicly traded brokerage. This is how he rebuilt. So I went from what I thought was success.

And that was like a half a million dollars a year, $20, $30 million in production to, jumping up to becoming number one in the world. There's a formula to everything. Everything's a math problem. The big pivot was I would advise people to actually. Leo, I have to understand the feeling when you heard this, by 28, you were considered the number one agent at Keller Williams,

which was the largest brokerage. You could say that you are the number one agent in the world. So the interesting part about that question is it was actually the most empty a meaningless feeling of my entire life. And if I were to take you back when I got into real estate at 19 and I learned that that was a thing I could achieve, I had two singular obsessions when I was about 20, 21, which is one, I wanted to be on NAR's 30 under 30 list. And then I wanted to be number one at Kellel Williams. And it became an obsession. Like for eight years in a road, it's all I cared about. I tracked, you know, and it was it was a fun process because I went from, I wanted to be number one in my office, then I wanted to be number one in my region, then I wanted to be number one in the East Coast and then like slowly climb. And then, you know, I made it to like number four a couple times and number three. But the second I got it, I woke up the next day and it was actually very sad and depressing because I didn't feel different. It wasn't my most profitable year. Nothing changed.

I didn't get this unlock of wisdom or transformational aha. And I didn't actually know what I wanted to do after that because it became such a core driving version of who I wanted to be. And once I got it, it actually almost left me confused. And it's been a really interesting kind of anchor for me because it just reminds me that, you know, no matter what role, I talk about seasons of life. I'm super happily married with two amazing little ones right now. And so the season I'm in, I just don't want to screw that out for them.

Because in that journey, Daniel, I actually got to be in front of 100 millionaires and billionaires. And I got into the habit of asking each one of them, like, what would you do different? Like, what's the one thing you'll tell me? And they all, and mostly, you know, in the early 2000s, there were baby boomers. they all had the exact same reaction, which is don't screw up the time with your little kids. And so that's become a very core thought process of like no matter what chapter I'm in, I've had some really cool titles like number one in the world or founder or CEO of a $5 billion enterprise business.

I get to be on the news. I get to be on big stages. But from that one experience, I also remember that this is just a role I'm playing. And like when I'm taking my last breath, and hopefully I'm an old man, I'm going to be surrounded by people who care about me because I showed up when it was important. And it wasn't like, oh, I'm sacrificing for them. I'm like, no, that's bullshit. Like actually show up and don't forget the important parts. Wow.

The people that we've talked to, like you said, the most successful people almost always say their biggest regret is they missed out on. all of their family stuff. Their kids, recitals, whatever it was, they were just not there for their children, or it even ended their marriage. It had a turn on their personal life. What moment for you, though, where you said, I need to balance these things because I imagine you could not have balance. You could just focus only on work.

Yeah, so for, again, the gift I've gotten that I just think I'm the lucky skin in the world, and it's, I give it to the universe for God, whatever you believe that, that makes you feel good as a human being, is I just had really good luck as a young person. And the luck I had was getting a shit kicked out of me in the financial crisis. So I was 23. I owned 14 rental properties. My accountant had just told me I was worth $5 million. And within eight months, that number went to negative of a million dollars. And I was, you know, in the fetal position, crying, negotiating with banks to take. some of the properties back called BMW and said, you need to come get your car. And I realized in that moment, because as I was driving towards my goals, I always had this thought process of when I get there, I will do X, whether that was like giving back, spending more time with my parents and my family. And I lost it all in literally seven, eight months in dramatic, chaotic

fashion, which again, was not unique. If you haven't seen the movie, I recommend the big short. And I remember when we watched it with my wife, I think I was like, she looked over at one point and I had my shoes on the couch and I was like in a fetal position. She's like, yo, you got real PTSD just watching this movie. But that early experience taught me that it's all a moment in time. It can all vanish super quick. And from friendships and relationships, to like literally the roof over your head. Actually in that moment, my wife, who was my girlfriend back then, we both decided we were going to be mentors with big brothers, big sisters,

because I always thought, when I have more money, I'm going to start a foundation and I'm going to give back. And then it all disappeared. And I realized that like in the hotel gym just now traveling, I was on the treadmill watching my favorite episodes while I get a workout. And the only reason I could do that is because of proton VPN. Without it, I'd be staring at this content isn't available in your region screen, which I hate, and I know you hate that too. All I had to do is change my virtual location. Everything works the

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Right now, ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two-year plan when you go to ProtonVPN.com slash founder. P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-P-E-P. dot com slash founder for 70% off a two-year plan that's protonvPN.com slash founder it's it's doing it in the moment and so like when it comes to giving I've always told people like just give to one person and that could be way more impactful than writing a thousand dollar check or a hundred thousand dollar check my wife and I did start a foundation once we had money but whether it's spending time with loved ones or a cause that you care about. Like I now reverse engineer everything. So

when I plan the 2027 calendar for EXP globally, my kids calendar goes in first. My kids spring break, all the all the things that we can plan ahead of time. And again, like every, every school drops some nonsense on you two weeks out. But I've also created a culture. that my people understand that that's actually my priority. Where if I'm like, hey, I'm canceling today and I'm no longer attending a single meeting because it's my kids this, they understand that that's my priority. And I think it's shown a version of leadership that is different than what you're normally expecting at a public company.

Very real story. I had an offsite with my executives. And there was an executive who looked really upset. And I was like, what's wrong? And she said, I'm missing. seeing my kids move into college. And I was like, why are you here? This is insane. She goes, well, I know that these only happened once a quarter and I didn't want to miss it. I was like, if I catch you doing something like this, I will fire you. Like this, this is a terrible judgment

call on your part. Like you should have just told me because you can't undo that, right? Like, you can't forget that. And again, none of this is wisdom, right? Like, I miss some of my best friends' weddings and bachelor parties. And Daniel, for the life of me, I can't remember. It was so important that I didn't show up. And so the gift I feel I got is I got that really early and I screwed up like friendships versus like my kids. I remember the crash of 2008. Unfortunately, I lost my job and I had to live in a tool shed. So although I didn't lose homes, I definitely lost my dignity and my motivation. It was just like you. It gives me PTSD when I think about how horrible that experience was. When you think about agents and executives and people that you come across who have that young, excited, motivated energy, like they're 19, 20s, early 30s, maybe they don't have a family yet.

They're just super motivated to get to that number one, Mark. How do you talk to them without stifling that motivation? Well, no, this is where I sound maybe a little schizophrenic and I talk about seasons. And I said, I think the world actually is too soft on young people. I think you should work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, because youth is wasted on the young, right? Like, energy is a superpower. When you're producing a show like Founder Story, the amount of content we push out is massive. YouTube, audio, social clips, TV, every piece needs music, B-roll, sound effects.

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and every download directly supports a real working artist. Head to storyblocks.com slash founders to access human-made stock media library that's essential to my workflow. For a limited time, they're offering 15% off any annual plan, and that discount is only available through my link. Again, that's storyblocks.com slash founders for 15% off annual plans. There's a really interesting concept of, you know, when you're 19, all you have is energy. And so I can create more output now in two hours than I could at 22 and 12 hours.

That's kind of the gift of life of experience and wisdom. But when you don't have any experience and wisdom, when you have this time, so go do shit, right? Go put in reps. And I tell young people to compress time as much as possible. So whether that's in real estate, that means to join a team in entrepreneurship, go join a founder that you want to be like when you grow up. because I think the best teacher in the world is osmosis. Just, you know, to quote Hamilton, just get in the room where it happens. And just, you know, I was a sponge and I always seeked out mentors.

And when the meeting was over, I'd call them and kind of get the replay or walk with him, be like, hey, let's go to lunch. And why did you ask that then? Why did you pause? How did you know they were going to say that? And you realize that there's a framework, a tactic, a structure to a conversation. And that only comes from experience. And you can't read it. You can't buy it.

You can't attend a seminar. You have to be in the opportunity, in the transaction, have it blow up in your face. And I encourage young people to create as many experiences as possible. I am the biggest proponent of osmosis. I could have never been successful in business if I didn't work for somebody else, unless I had raised millions and millions of dollars, which I don't think was ever going to happen. So I am totally with you. Some people are like, I never want to get out of a job.

I just want to go into business and I'm with you. Something was told to you at 29 that changed your perspective. What was that? So I had a mentor who was transformation in my life. And he took me under his wing or paid attention to me because I was like 23 and doing pretty well. And actually where we developed a real respect and friendship was with my hustle. Like I remember it was after the crash. He was a very well-heeled investor during the financial crisis.

And we went and bought a bunch of real estate after the crash. And I did the work and he kept most of the upside, which is how it works when you're young. And it was a great deal for him. And we created lots of value during that time period. And he was like, I called him uncle. because he walked in to a lot of banks and co-signed me and said, this is my, this is my boy. But I remember when I was turning 30, he sat me down at lunch and he goes, just a heads up, you're no longer this child prodigy phenom that you've kind of crafted an identity around.

You're now just an average, successful guy in real estate. So you better get pretty good at something else and create a different persona. And I think where it was interesting was around identity, right? And that's where, you know, when people just make their career, their identity, you could have some really traumatic falls. Because that's not who you are at the end of the day. Like, you were multifaceted. I'm a father. I'm a son.

I'm a husband. I'm an advocate. I'm part of multiple communities. And I just, I see it often where entrepreneurs become like super one dimensional. and even if it goes perfect. This is another really interesting heads up I got from a good friend. I was about to sell my first company. And he gave me a hug and he goes, hey, this is going to be the most dramatic experience

of your life. I said, how do you, what do you mean? It's like this is what I've been driving towards. He goes, it's going to suck no matter what. M&A is brutal. Like their job is to hurt you and take from you and the other side and the bankers. And so no matter if the outcome is what you expected it or more than you expected, When you actually sell a business and I've sold three, you actually give away a big part of your identity.

And on the very first one, you'll learn basic shit, like have an email address that has nothing to do with the business. Right. Like I have a personal email at leopereja.com, which I, but like when you sell your first company, they're like, okay, hand over your email. I'm like, hey, that's how I log into like everything. Like, what do you mean? It's my bank. Like you actually hand over all of it. And especially if you're a big deal in your industry because you've crushed it, you lose that.

Because all of a sudden people that you thought were friends, they were professional friends. But you're no longer have status in that in that world because you're no longer the founder and CEO. You're just like the guy who took over your company or the gal who now runs your company. It's her company now. Right. So there's some, there's been some very. interesting life experiences of who am I? What am I? And outside of being a founder. After the crash, going back to that, and then you said, you now had this new connection and

relationship with someone who changed your life. What changed within you, though, that you said, going forward, I'm going to do this differently? Yeah, well, I mean, that was one facet of it, right? That was just for investing versus one was being a student of history and just realizing that I was, I thought I was really good at real estate. I thought it was special. What I didn't realize, I just had a real estate license during the greatest real estate bubble in the history of the world with slightly more hustle than the average person. And then I was like, oh, I like, I'm actually not that good at lead generation conversion funnel follow up process. Like, I was flying by the seat of my pants. And then the next chapters became,

about total addressable market, CAC, LTV, you know, leverage, retention, churn, like actual systems and processes, realizing that there's a formula to everything. I often talk about that everything's a math problem. And I think building a business to even being at your ideal weight, it's like caloric deficit. You don't want to eat less, work out more,

Like, you need to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. If you want to have a business, you need to create more revenue than expenses. And that's normally a factor of lead funnel to lead conversion to client retention. And so the big pivot was, I'm good at something and it's kind of natural or I'm like gifted at it versus like, no, it's a math problem. How big is the total addressable market? How do I capture a unfair share of the marketplace at a unit acquisition cost that makes sense? and how do I scale it for the long term and get defensible so not someone can't go oh Daniel built a cool mousetrap let me go take his cheese now I hope no one takes my cheese

I'm gonna do some math because I need to protect my cheese and you're right and also there's so much competition nowadays well I spent 10 years in my life in tech and um like a service business is easy right in my opinion because service businesses normally are completely geographically tied so take your favorite fill in the blank, Daniel, like, there's math for everything. Like, if it's a deli or a coffee shop, people won't drive more than a mile, right? Like, maybe a gym for your kids versus you. Like, it's, it's proximity based to your life. Um, real estate, like, you can only serve up to maybe 30, 45 minutes away. Like, you can't be driving two hours one way for an appointment.

Tech, you could build the coolest thing in the world. And if it's scale super fast and it's great economics, Google goes, thank you. Like, I'll just build it, right? I have a better funnel at the top. And Amazon's famous for it where, like, they have a product and they'll put under Amazon households or basics. You know what I mean? So just understand. And by the way, like, that's the goal of capitalism, right?

When like arbitrage, in my opinion, is an efficiency in market, period. And as a segment gets more sophisticated or gets larger or more established, the margin, naturally gets compressed, right? That's what happens. And so that's also part of the game of an entrepreneur. Like, just be okay with that. Sometimes the movie ends through consolidation or through acquisition or through just like that opportunity's in there.

And we're probably living through a phenomenal moment in the death of most SaaS as we know it, right? I think AI is grossly overhyped and underhyped all of the same. time, which is like a weird schizophrenic sentence, right? I, and I think most things are overhyped in the short term and underhyped in the long term, right? Like, have you been sitting on a business idea? Let me tell you something. I've been selling on Shopify since 2012. I started with a men's grooming line, built out a full skincare brand all on the same platform. And the thing that blew me away from day one was that everything I needed to actually start selling was already there.

I didn't need to piece together five different tools or hire a developer. Shopify had it already. The moment that first customer was ready to pay, the checkout just worked. No friction, no drop off. And when customers come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. That was huge for me early on because every completed sale built my confidence that this thing was real. And because Shopify handled the setup and the checkout, I wasn't stuck troubleshooting my own website.

I could actually focus on building the brand, creating new products, running campaigns. That shift from figuring out of the tech to actually growing the business, that's when everything changed for me. With Shopify, nothing stands in between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash founders story. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash founders story. We're on version 17.

and V1 was an iPod that allowed me to make some phone calls. This thing today, like, I just got into the country using it. It's got my credit cards. It starts my Tesla, right? Like, it's so far removed in version 17 than it was in V1. And I think we're seen already some of that over hypeness in AI. And I think it's fascinating because if you look historically at almost every transformation of technology and I would put the steam engine and trains and.

the internet in 2000, which I visceral lived through that cheese moving. That's how I ended up in real estate. It created a massive overinvestment, which followed by a massive crash. But the infrastructure that's left over afterwards, whether it was laying railroads across late 1800s, I think we had like 118 railroads. And like 30 years later, we had four, right? But the, the railroads laid, created the foundation for like Western expansion in like the economy that we have today. You know, Pets.com famously crashed and billions of dollars of revenue evaporated in the early 2000s. But it was that fiber optic cable that we laid across the ocean that gave us high-speed internet, which changed everything, literally everything. So I think that's what's

happening. And the one really real part of AI that I'm witnessing, experiencing, and again, this is, I was a non-technical founder who founded a tech company, which is a very small club, which is actually really imbred a lot of insecurity in me because prior to that whether it was real estate or lending or anything happening to do, you couldn't bullshit me like

I could just go down to the courthouse and see the permits were pulled if a contractor told them to something. I'd walk around with the tennis ball at construction sites and just put it on the ground and I'm like, well, if this thing rolls, we have a problem and I don't need to be an engineer to figure this out.

In tech, I couldn't look at the code myself, but now with Codex and lovable, I can get into GitHub and I can do things. And I think it's really changed the process flow of, I can get a frontline person who understands the workflow to build the wireframe for me,

and then I give it to engineers to make sure it's SOC2 compliant and it's scalable and it's on the right database schema. But I do think we're gonna witness the death of most enterprise SaaS. I think most enterprise SaaS is over-engineered because you're one of many customers, and it doesn't do exactly what I wanted to do. And I think most businesses that have some decent scale,

are going to be able to build their own workflows. And that's going to be a massive disruption to the world. Yeah, I always laugh when you ask them, what are you building? And they're building the exact same thing to solve the exact same problem. I don't even know how most of them get funding. I was listening to a recent C-suite of a publicly traded company that's involving social media. And then I was listening to a debate around that this person typically never creates something new. They never start something new. It got me thinking about there's power in not being the first. And I imagine when you're publicly traded, there's even more power many times in not being

the first and only doing it once it's already been proven by somebody else. Yeah, this is a great question. Actually, when I talk about AI with agents because they all have the same kind of like anxiety around it, right? I think every human being on the planet has anxiety around it, especially the way it's marketed. And a couple of thoughts. Like the people overhyping it are the ones who are financially incentivized to create massive return.

So always pay attention to the source of the fear, right? Fear mongering is, that's the reptilian brain in our evolution. Like that thing is designed to keep you alive and nothing makes you pay attention more than fear. Like so always remember that. Two is that I actually say in AI, I think we're in our Myspace era. There's absolutely nothing that says that. open, and again, like, when I said this six months ago, Daniel, people were like, oh, I said,

open AI is probably not going to make it. I think now when I say people are like, yeah, that kind of is starting to feel pretty correct. Like, if I had a bet right now, Gemini is the winner. They have the most resources. And that's kind of what happens in life, right? They have the most cash, the most top of the funnel, right, for delivery mechanism. They can, they can make it free. And then they choke out the competition, right? And so, famously, I would say Apple is that. They normally aren't like the iPod was like, you know, there was other ones out there. The Palm Pilot, you remember that one?

Like Nokia owned the Blackberry owned the market, right? Like the iPhone was revolutionary, but it wasn't like the first cell phone, right? Nokia and Blackberry had dominance. But then they made a couple experienced tweaks and where I think they've, One is the ecosystem. So companies with market power that have ecosystems. And then that's where that was the big lesson I learned when I spent time in tech. It was like also understand who can put you out of business overnight.

Right. Like if you're even if you found a green space and no one's touched it, let's just say you execute. Who can kind of tiptoe in and move your cheese overnight? And again, a lot of times that's how you get acquired. Right. But famous, there's been many famous case studies where they were negotiating with an acquire and the counter acquire goes, well, you just push the past the point of build by. And after this, I'll just build it. Right. So there is a, I will pay X dollars to not have to go through the

R&D process, but past a certain point, I'll just do it myself. This all reminds me of who moved my cheese, which I haven't read in 25 years. I've heard this as a great acquisition strategy to get connected with the company who you'd want to be acquired by and build some sort of relationship with them early on. But it sounds like to me that could also be at your detriment. I could tell you five stories on both camps that played out beautifully and disastrously, right? There is always the risk. So it's actually a good segue because I often get asked by like a founder who reaches out cold and says, hey, I want to show you something and they get on my calendar and they're like, hey, I need you to sign India. I'm like, did you bump your head? Like you cold reached out

to me. You have absolutely no idea what's on my road. app. So I literally have a policy where I won't sign a single one, right? Because again, even more as a public company, I don't want to put myself in jeopardy where I create liability because I have no idea what you're going to show me. And it often happens where someone shows me something. I'm like, oh, buddy, like, I've already built it. Like, I'm turning it on in a week. And I think that actually happens because, like, society creates opportunities and, like, you're not the only one who sees that opportunity. And so a lot of times, times. I feel like I've been on both sides where I felt like a bigger company copied me. And now that

I've been the big companies, like, oh, I didn't comprehend that big companies. I have like 200 engineers and tens of millions of dollars in R&D budgets. And we're seeing the same bottlenecks and paint at scale. So we're also trying to solve that. So there has to be a level of fearlessness that comes with entrepreneurship. And, you know, the little guy always has the advantage of speed. right? It's like I can just move faster because I'm willing to work 12 hours a day and you know my senior engineers prior not versus the two kids in a basement like the thing that's kept me motivated and awake at night for 24 years are the two kids in the basement who can move my cheese because I just didn't see them coming. And I was the two kids in the basement once so I I know

the feeling and but you can't control what you can't control. So I would advise people to actually form that relationship early. I was just recently at Can Lions. And at the event, there was a lot of C-suite mixing with a lot of people who were titled themselves as creators. These are social media creators. And what I saw is a lot of the C-suite are seeing themselves as a creator. It's like their goal is to build a social media presence themselves, which uplifts the company also builds a lot of trust and authority. back to the company. What are you seeing or what are you hearing out of all the C-suite when it

comes to publicly traded companies? No, that's, and I think that's more of a very good take on society, right? Something I say a lot is marketers ruin everything. And again, it's a feature, not a bug. It's like it's not a diss at marketers. And I'll walk you through kind of like the emotional feelings of it. No lie. I've said that many times before. So I'll let you continue, but I can totally probably relate to what you're going to say. So, so, you know, I remember fist fighting my brother to pick up the phone because someone was calling on that one phone in the kitchen with the long wire, right? We were excited when the phone rang. And then callers ruined that, right?

Email came out late 90s, open rates were like 70, 80%. You could pretty much sell anything if you could get an email list big enough. Tom Hanks made a movie about it when he got mail, right? how it's like an entire rom-com was about the concept of an email. It's the last time you read your email manual, right? Like it's, we've become numb to it. And, you know, radio killed the TV killed the radio star. Everything's about attention.

If I were to take the average human right now, and this is what I would say to any other CEO who's, like, I create six pieces of content per day. No, 12 pieces of content on six platforms. we push out a ton of content. I have two podcasts, one non-industry, one industry, one that I do myself. And I speak in public about the subject often. But I tell agents all the time, like, open this thing up, go to screen time and show me where you spend your time on the top three apps. If you are not creating content for your audience in the same medium, and depending on

the audience, it's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, chat GPT is getting up there into the top three or four, right? So that's also a data point that I say to any entrepreneur, right? Figure out who your ICP is and then figure out where their attention is. And you are the brand, right? You are the personification of the brand because there is no trust in the world right now. Right. Like that's our logo, but that doesn't mean much to someone who does who, like my customer are agents. And so I create content for agents and entrepreneurs all day long. When they are ready to a buying decision. They've already formed a digital relationship, right? I often say I'm in a one-to-one and one-to-many relationship. At scale, I'm in a one-to-many digital relationship with

hundreds of thousands of agents in my industry. My goal would be the 1.4, but I'm not naive and think I have that much reach, but it's definitely a couple hundred thousand, right? Then you can have a one-to-many, one-to-one personal relationship with folks that also carry influence. So I would I would advise, any public company CEO is like, okay, once you understand your avatar, then understand the people that influence them, right? So whether that's collabing with those folks of influence or just making sure that when you think of the product service industry, that they've also created a real engagement to you. And I think the most exaggerated examples of that are Mark Zuckerberg and Elon who over the last decade have become the brands themselves, which by the way, I think there's

single point of failure and there's you know the the founder on trap is also a real real concept but i think i'm a pretty good example because i'm not the founder of the xb our our founders very much still around but he's done a really good job of being able to transition the the baton if you will and i think why it worked is because i took a very forward facing approach of brand building First Hispanic CEO of a publicly traded major brokerage, which means all these millions of people that then look up and say, he represents us. If he did it, now I can do it, right? I see it. I can then be it. What weight, though, did that carry? So it's a very real part of my identity. I'm Latino. I was born in Latin America. I moved to the States while I was 12. I've been an advocate in

Congress. I've spoken to legislators my whole career about it. But I think representation and just the visual portion of it is so, so real. So I grew up in an industry predominantly that didn't look like me. There was there was there was not a single Leo and I was growing up where there was a mentor who produced at my level, let alone ran a public company. And I can tell you that anytime I'm in a large setting, some little Latino kids. It comes and tells me how important it is to see me in the seat because it does make it more real for them. But I was also super aware growing up that I wanted to be number one comma that happened to be Latino. It wasn't the other way around for me.

And I think that was the biggest flex for me. It was like I want to be number one in my market in my industry. And oh, by the way, yes, then I'm also that other thing, which almost goes back full circle in the conversation. of like, I'm not one dimensional, right? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not Latino only. It's, it's one of my many versions of myself that I'm quite proud of. And it's very important to me. I live in Miami. My mom and dad are down the street. I'm, I'm a very proud Latino mama's boy. And, and I fit into this, like, what I believe are the positive cultural stereotypes of my community, but it doesn't define me as one dimension. My wife and I wrote this

book called Unlimited Possibilities. Essentially, it's breaking through barriers that you did not think were possible. What was an unlimited possibility moment in your life? I know you've had many. What is one that really stands out? So it would probably be bouncing back from the financial crisis. So I went from what I thought was success. And that was like a half a million dollars a year, $20, $30 million in production to jumping up to becoming number one in the world. But what would what really like sunk in for me at that experience of first a that like i didn't feel different or feel better like there was this this this disappointment but also that you're never ready so i'll take you back to the first one at the hospital and they're like all right keep it alive

i'll see you later and you're like how am i going to do this so life is like that right like there is absolutely, you've never done this before. And like I wasn't qualified at 19 to sell anyone to real estate because I looked about 13. That's when I grew with the facial hair and I haven't cut it off since then. I wasn't qualified to buy my first house at like 20. I wasn't qualified to sell the volume of real estate. I wasn't qualified to convince Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to let me sell their foreclosures when I was 23. I wasn't qualified to raise tens of millions of from some of the most marquee venture capitalists in the world, I wasn't qualified to be a public company CEO, by definition,

because I wasn't a public company CEO, right? The moment you realize it's like, you're going to die, like 100% chance, you might as well have the most fun and take the most, you know, calculated risk that you're comfortable with because at the end of the day, it's just going to be a fun journey that hopefully as an old man, I get to tell my great kids.

Sounds like this is the best way to get over imposter syndrome. Do you even believe in that? I still have it, which I don't think you can be human and not have it, right? And so also just remember that everybody around you has it. And that's, that's actually a very comforting feeling when you're like, everyone's kind of like that insecure little kid of whatever moment in time you were stuck at, you know, middle school, awkward moment. And like you built your entire personality around that over overcoming that feeling. When you're ever a feeling, and I have an 11 to 9 year old, my 9 year old is big in a jiu-jitsu and he recently competed in a tournament. And the kid that was in the finals had like

a thunderbolt shaved into his head and came out onto the mat pounding his chest like a gorilla. And I got scared. I said, I don't want to fight that 9 year old either. But my son wanted to go home and I sat him down. I'm like, look, he can't kill you. Right. Like actually figure out what's the worst possible scenario. And like the worst possible scenario is death. And in most 99.9% of the things that you'll look at in life, Daniel, that's not an op. That's not one of the possible outcomes. So I'm like, he can't kill you, right? He's like, no. I was like, tap. The fight will be over. Like, just pull guard and let him do his thing and it'll be over. I'm like, and what's the worst thing could happen? He's like, I'll lose. I'm like, okay, you lose every day

in the gym. And, um, but I said, you know that feeling you're having? Yeah. I was like, he's He's like, I'm terrified. I's like, courage is misunderstood. Like, fearless leader is a very common moniker I hear for leaders. There's no such thing as fear. I haven't done scary shit that it were where I was fearless, right? It's actually doing the thing in spite of the fear that to me is the definition of courage. And so that's, I say to my kids, but I also like remind it to myself.

Like, it doesn't matter how many times I've been on stage in front of 5,000 people. Right, right when I get the microphone, I'm like, I got to entertain and delight for the next 45 minutes. And it's just me and a microphone. Did your son win? No, he lost, but he, like, came in second at a huge tournament and was, and the kid who beat him is homeschooled and does it eight hours a day. And I've actually said, I was like, I don't actually care.

The only thing I want you to learn from this is how to lose gracefully. Because the entire educational system is broken, right? Like, we're taught to, like, incrementally get better at stupid shit that we're never going to do again. Right? Like, like, getting up is the game in entrepreneurship and life. It's just like, how many else can you take and just get back up? And that's actually life. Leo, Padeha, CEO of EX, man, this is longer than the conversation I just had with Mauricio, by the way. So I'm going to tell him that. We even had maybe a better conversation. Don't tell him. I don't want him to be upset. I said him a text of where we're done.

Send him a text. Tell him that I said that. But don't tell him I said that. But don't tell him. I said that. No, thank you so much.