Heroes in Business - Tony Lopes, Author, Founder Dirty Boots Capital

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Tony Lopes, Author, Founder Dirty Boots Capital is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances entrepreneur community and host of the Heroes Show.  Mark Victor Hansen Library nomination

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. That's right, and that's the best form of transportation, flying in. We don't drive, we don't walk, we don't crawl, we fly in. Why? Because there's so much excitement around this show and the shows that we continue to put on for quite a while here. And again, it's always exciting. And please continue the feedback, especially when I had on the century chairman of Century 21 of Canada. So make sure you check out

other past episodes by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. As you all know, the only place where entrepreneurs align. All right. I'm sure many of you know, freedom's at risk, right? Well, we've got somebody who's going to share some of the secrets of what you can do. We have with us Tony Lopez, author, founder of Dirty Boots Capital. He could be reached at dirtybootscapital.com. And he is also the author too of Freedom at Risk. So Tony, let's jump in. What does it mean to you to have the freedom of risk? Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on, David. I truly appreciate this opportunity.

For me, my story is no different than a lot of folks out there. My parents were hard working people, Americans. They actually migrated to this country from Portugal. So they were immigrants. They got their citizenship. They worked very hard, just like a lot of folks out there raising their kids. And so their mantra to us was always go to school, get an education, get a good job, and you'll be set for the rest of your life. And that worked out fine for me until it didn't. And for me, that ended up during the telecoms bubble where I ended up getting laid off. I had an engineering degree. I had a master's degree. I thought I was flying high and I was set for the rest of my life. But getting laid off was a rude awakening. And as you can imagine, I wasn't financially independent at that time.

And so at that point, I realized the rules that I were taught had changed, right? The rule of going to school, get a good education, get a good job, and you'll be set for the rest of your life didn't fully apply anymore. So I needed to change things up. And that's where I ended up. I did need to get another job to pay the bills, but that's when I entered into real estate. And I just really exploded from there with my financial independence and ultimately was able to retire at 44 through real estate investing. That's excellent. Excellent. I love it. Tell me about now, you know, we hear all this about artificial intelligence and that. How is that taking place within your industry? Yeah. So we look at, man, AI is artificial intelligence is just changing every single

industry. It's definitely changing real estate today and how we do things. But for a lot of folks out there, the way I look at AI is to look at it, to compare it to the Henry Ford assembly line that he established back in 1913. His goal and the goal of AI is to establish more efficiency and more affordability around a product, both for the manufacturer and for the consumer. And so back in 1913, with the Henry Ford assembly line, it achieved that. But it also eliminated a lot of blue collar jobs that were working on the assembly line. And at that time, it was okay because those blue collar workers, to a degree, they were able to find lateral jobs or they were able to find higher paying jobs by

retooling themselves. So that's what happened back then in 1913 era. Today with artificial intelligence, white collar jobs are at risk of being eliminated because AI is starting to replace some of the work that software engineers are doing, some of the work that, say, contract attorneys are doing. Some of the work that's happening within marketing and social media is being replaced by artificial intelligence. Some of the work even within journalism, right, is being replaced by artificial intelligence. So these high, high skilled, highly paid white collar employees are at risk of losing their job in essence. And so what opportunity do they have to move up the pay scale? Probably very little opportunity.

It's more so a lateral move or unfortunately, in the terms of AI, those white collar employees may actually be moving down the pay grade as a result of AI. So that's something I work to educate folks on and help them step into it and understand where they are. Excellent. Again, you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. You know the place to go, alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. We have Tony Lopes with us, author, founder of Dirty Books Capital. And you can reach him at dirtybookscapital.com. And the book is really, it's Freedom at Risk.

I mean, that's what it is, Freedom at Risk. How, Tony, did you retire, what would you say, at the age of 44? Correct. Yeah, it really started. So after I got laid off, I had to get another W-2 job, as we call it. And so at that point, I had to start saving up some extra cash to be able to put down a down payment on my first property. And then from there, I started reading a lot of books, started to really follow a lot of folks who were doing what I wanted to do and start learning from them. And so from there, I got into investing more into real estate, building some spec homes, buying some more multifamily properties.

Yeah, I got to the point in my life when I was 44, I had to make a decision either stay at the corporate job or exit the corporate job and just continue on with my real estate because that was really providing the freedoms, the financial freedoms and the personal freedoms in my life that I wanted to enjoy. What are some other secrets we could do to get financially independent? I mean, there's just so much pressure that's out there and stuff like that. How do we weed through it? And, you know, I mean, there's no quick way to do it. So what can we do right now? Yeah, so the first part I share with folks is, and is what I teach in the part one of my book,

is I work to educate folks that it's not just one singular thing that is stealing our financial or our personal freedoms. I do have a lot of folks who will come at me and say, you know, well, Tony, don't worry about it. After a Democrat leaves the White House and a Republican comes in, everything will be okay and things will be back to normal. And I share with them, no, that's not the case. It's not just whether there's a D or an R in the White House. And so in my first part of the book, I broke it out into multiple chapters.

I explained how politicians steal your freedom, how the education steals your freedom, how the economy can steal your freedom, how society itself, how we ourselves put our freedoms at risk. And then also the fifth chapter is about the monetary system, how the monetary steals our freedoms. So once they have that quick education around there, I transition to the how-tos. Because I went through extraordinary means to make sure that the book was not doom and gloom. I wanted it to be about hope and opportunity and the fact that we can and we need to achieve more freedom for ourselves. And so the second half of the book is all about the how to's, how to achieve more financial freedom. And I go through a bunch of all our car type menus to say you can achieve more financial freedom. If you are working your W2 job, that's okay. I get it. Not everybody is cut out to do real estate investing. That's okay. But you also have the opportunity to invest in dividend

paying stocks to create some extra cash flow for yourself, right? You have the opportunity to invest in what we call in the business asymmetric plays, things that have very little downside, but tremendous upside. You can think of that as maybe like cryptocurrency, right? And again, not everybody may relate to cryptocurrency, but that's an example. There's many other things. Years ago, it used to be agriculture. Agriculture was very cheap. And now the price of investing in agriculture, that has just increased significantly. So agriculture used to be an asymmetric play, you can get in at a very low cost, with tremendous upside, that used to be an asymmetric play. So we go through a lot of financial opportunities. And people can just pick

off that a la carte package, what resonates with them. I'm not pushing any agenda to say you have to invest in real estate or in stocks. I leave it up to them to do that. And then I also do the same with personal freedoms. Now we know a lot of our personal freedoms are achieved by our financial freedom, but there are some personal freedoms that we can offer ourselves without fully having financial freedom just yet. And so a couple examples of personal freedom would be simply planting a garden in your backyard. I have a garden, I have a huge garden in my backyard, we're probably going to harvest somewhere between 300 and 400 potatoes this fall. It's going to be our largest harvest.

But for us, there's peace in our lives and our mind when we go out to the garden to work in the garden and water the garden. Because now our mind isn't being filled with everything in the mainstream media and what the politicians are spewing out there. We have some peace in our lives and in our mind when we go out to the garden. And so we know where our fresh fruits are coming from and our fresh vegetables are coming from. And there's some there's some personal freedom that we gain from that, knowing where our food is grown and coming from. And that's just one example I share in the book. So I give a lot of personal, again, an all our car package for personal freedoms. Excellent. Excellent. We've got time for one more question. I think this is important too. It's always about getting an early start, right?

With investing in that. So what kind of secrets can you share either for young children out there or parents right now that have young children to be able to raise them and be like, become financial independent. One of the major things. So there's probably two. So I'm going to give you two things today. One is value. Today, there are, I think, young people who go to school, come out of school with a degree and unfortunately aren't able to offer value. Let me tell you, I work with a lot of businesses. I do a lot of consulting. I have a business myself. When I go and hire employees and when others hire employees, we are looking for today, first and foremost value. What can that individual bring to us now? Not, you know,

what the individual is going to learn from, from us, but what they are bringing to us in terms of value. And I'll give you an example. I have a niece, she graduated college with a journalism degree, very smart young lady. But going forward, and tying in the artificial intelligence piece, right, going forward, artificial intelligence has the opportunity to basically steal her job away from her. But for her, she needs to start to build more value into herself. And one way she can build value is by creating a huge following around her within her social media. I think that is one area that folks neglect today. Because if you have a huge following, in this case, my niece, who's in journalism, if she has a following of 200,000, 300,000 people, how valuable do you think she becomes

in terms of the company she goes to work for, for journalism? She now produces a story or gets a story. She can put it out to her following. And now that following watches. There's 200,000 eyes on that story. There's more views. There's more clicks. There's more advertising dollars coming into the company that she's helping to generate for the company. That's value. Okay.

So number one, value. Number two, just got to increase your following out there on social media for young people today. That is so important. Excellent. Fantastic. Again, Tony, it's been a pleasure having you. Thank you to member Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author for nominating you to be on the Alliance's Hero Show. Tony, you help people understand the difference between personal and financial freedom and prepare for the spread of AI. That's a hero. Make sure you connect with Tony. You can go ahead and reach him at DirtyBootsCapital.com.

You can get his book, Author of Freedom at Risk. Freedom at Risk by going to Amazon. Thank you again, Tony, for being part of the Alliance's Hero Show. Thank you so much, David. You have to be a victim too.