KGCI: Real Estate on Air - CEO Of 2 Billion Dollar Company: The Future For Real Estate Agents (with Leo Pareja)

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

SummaryThis episode provides an exclusive look into the mind of Leo Pareja, a former top-producing agent who is now the CEO of a multi-billion dollar real estate brokerage. The discussion goes beyond the day-to-day and delves into the future of the industry, revealing the key skills, technologies, and mindsets agents will need to not only survive but thrive in the next decade. Leo shares his experiences of rapid growth, from being the #1 agent at Keller Williams to building a company and being named CEO of eXp Realty.Key TakeawaysThe New Core Skills: Learn why a real estate agent's value is shifting. Leo explains that the future of the agent is less about being a gatekeeper of information and more about being a trusted advisor, a tech-savvy marketer, and a master of human connection.AI as a Partner, Not a Threat: Discover how artificial intelligence will fundamentally change the agent's role. The episode highlights how AI can automate low-value tasks like lead follow-up and content creation, freeing up agents to focus on high-value activities like relationship building and negotiation.The Importance of a Growth Mindset: Hear about Leo's personal journey of transformation. The discussion emphasizes that the key to success in a rapidly changing industry is a commitment to continuous learning, adaptation, and a willingness to embrace new technologies and business models.Building a Future-Proof Business: Get a glimpse into the future of real estate. Leo reveals his insights on the importance of having a robust personal brand, leveraging video content, and understanding the power of a global, collaborative network to build a scalable and enduring business.Topics:Leo ParejaFuture of real estateReal estate techAI for agentseXp RealtyCall-to-ActionReady to prepare for the future of real estate? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and stay ahead of the curve!

Welcome back to another episode of the Gold Barre podcast. I'm your host from Carl's Baranetchi. And on today's episode, we have the one, the only, Leo Parreja. Leo, what's going on, brother? How you doing? I'm doing good, man. Listen, I'll take us back to our origin story. We met about a year ago right here, right around this time during the NBA's final season.

And when we started speaking, I was very intrigued by your entire journey. There's a lot of people that get to success in many different routes and many different ventures. but you haven't been successful in one field. You've been successful in different startups and different adventures that you've taken. So I want to go ahead and just take some time to tell the audience on who you are and what you do and just give everyone a little background

in terms of who is Leo. Well, while we unpack it, I'll be sure to be very transparent because I feel like when you read a resume or you get an introduction somewhere, it's like this finished product that is very unrelatable and unattainable versus it's like it's more, like this, right? So there's, there's starts and stops and peaks and valleys. And, you know,

my story is no different. So let's start with your story. You started off in real estate. How did that happen? I actually give a lot of my journey to luck to the universe. And I feel lucky that I found real estate younger than most, right? And you found it younger than most. Because most people come to our industry as a second or third career. I happen to fall in love with it in college. And then in college, what were you studying for? I have a graphic design degree. I was actually going to go into tech. Really?

Okay. It happened. I went to college in the year 2000. And my freshman year of college, the degrees I was studying to get imploded with the tech bubble blowing up. And so the jobs I would have wanted to go get, making $150,000 back then was big money, just disappeared. So, you know, the companies I was hoping to work for.

were like WorldCom and AOL and these companies that imploded in the early 2000s. And then after that, you were kind of like, all right, let me start looking at something else? Or what happened there? So I actually took an entrepreneurship class my sophomore year and wrote a business plan on what it would cost to start a graphic design firm. And it was about $400,000 because back then you had to buy hardware and servers. It was going to be about a two and a half, three year process to get to break even. And then I read a book by Robert Kiyosaki, called Rich. I have poor dad that kind of, you know, growing up in a very traditional household, no one had

ever spoken to me about leverage of people, time, or money. And I kind of got obsessed with all things of real estate. It's one of those books that kind of like hits you in the face and you just wake up. Yeah. Especially depending on your upbringing, right? Like my kids won't have that moment because like I won't give them an allowance. I make them earn everything. So like we will make a lemonade stand or Natalia was making bracelets that she's going to sell. Right. So I'm in I'm in betting and breeding them a specific way, which is what I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. And my parents were very successful in their very traditional, good education, good job. But unless you were raised around the concepts of leverage, you're just not aware of it.

Have you ever read the book Four Quadrants by Robert Kutaki? I read everything's ever written. Cool, cool. So I love that entire concept. We get that later from the employee to the self-employee, to the business, to the investor. We see a lot of real estateings nowadays kind of following the whole like, I call it the hamster wheel. So that's kind of an interesting concept to go down to.

But you get into real estate. You start off buying property, right? You were doing it more of an investment. So I read a lot about investors, and that's what I wanted to be. And I found a mentor. I'd asked somebody to mentor me. They actually flat out turn me down. I offered to work for free, and they still turn me down.

But he said, if you're serious, call this guy, and I call this guy. And he told me to, that he could teach me everything I wanted to know, but to wire him 10 grand. And I was, you know, 19 freshman in college. And I said, that's not possible. I don't have the money, but I'm pretty stubborn. So I sold my worldly possessions and wired a stranger all my money without telling my friends or family.

And the vast majority of my worldly possessions at that point was a car that I had bought and paid for. And we went into a deep mentoring relationship for a year where basically he had me learned the psychology of sales. Like we make emotional decisions, justify them logically. and, you know, moving people to yes, like identifying ready, will, and enable, and then going into your sales pitch, right? I think a lot of people spend a lot of time not identifying if somebody's ready, willing, and enable, and then going down to your value proposition. So I became a

student of how the sales process works. And towards the end of a mentorship program, he said, you have to get your real estate license because as an investor, you need access to the MLS and you need access to comps, which I never wanted to be a realtor. But again, I didn't know what I didn't know. I got my license. The gentleman who turned me down the first time gladly took me because he had just bought the KW franchise for my region. And that's how I got into the real estate business. And then you get off as a real estate agent. And from there, you kind of worked a way up to becoming the number one agent in all of color Williams. Like talk about that. Yeah. So that was a 15-year run. I started like everybody else does, doing whatever you can with your sphere of influence,

right? And, you know, it's super important for people to hear because, again, people hear something like I became the number one agent in the world. Well, I started selling when I was 20 years old and couldn't grow facial hair and people thought I was 15. So, you know, I always say play the hand that you're dealt in the season of life that you're in. And for me, was I was a college student. I got in an argument with my landlord. I spoke to the broker and he said, why don't you get pre-approved, see what you can qualify for. I didn't think I could buy, but I had bought and paid that car off, so I had great credit. I did a non-occupant co-borrow with my dad as an FHA loan, and I told my dad that I needed to borrow 3% for eight hours. I negotiated the purchase price.

I got the seller to pay all the closing costs. My dad gave me the money in the morning. I went to the closing. I got my commission and I paid my dad back. And I rented out three rooms for $500 a piece, realized I had no longer had a housing payment and said, holy shit, this is what I'm doing with the rest of my life. So that summer, I sold 11 houses to my fraternity brothers with one little script I wrote. I only had one transaction under my belt, which was my own. I said, let me show you how to pay for your kids' housing. And, you know, I did all that in 2002.

And so by the time we all graduated, everyone sold their houses at peak market between 2,000. 2004 and 2006. That was a nice little payday for you. And them. So, you know, I always talk about that little voice inside your head that tells you're you're too short, you're too fat, you're too young, you're too old, you're too this, you're too that, right? It's, it's unfortunately, mostly the program you might have gotten in your surroundings, but that's the only thing that holds you back, right? So it doesn't matter what market I'm in, what country I'm in, what state I'm in. I always hear, well, but here it doesn't work. I'm like, no, you just, if I could sell someone a house without facial hair.

When I looked 13 years old, you can sell them a house with 7% interest rates because I did too. But now your strategy as a real estate agent, it wasn't to go tackle commercial, you didn't do any luxury. You went all volume. Talk about the strategy used to go from just selling college rentals to going out there and becoming number one. Yeah. So it's interesting because I became quote-unquote successful, rather, quickly, like in the first year of being in the business, I was top of my office, ranked in the, in the region, if you will. But it was interesting because even though I was doing like $20 million

a year in volume, which back then was a big number, I saw the people at number one or, you know, through 10 and said that looked really unrealistic. Like I was like, 300 deals is just, I don't, I don't, it's not in the realm of possibility. They're just different. They're special. They're this, they're that. And then the financial crisis happened. And I learned all kinds of lessons about money and leverage, not being over leveraged and giving stuff back and a lot of crying and buggers. But when I realized, like, everything is temporary. Like, and I'm super grateful for that lesson that early on in life, right? Not with a wife and kids. It was, it was, I learned that it's all temporary and it can all go away overnight and to really be present in the moment. And they go. And they go.

those were like giving back, right? Like I always said, when I have X, I will do Y. And then I realized that X could disappear in an instant, right? And so like the summer of those six, my accountant told me I was worth $5 million. I had like 14 properties. I was 23. I thought I was God's gift to real estate,

but I was just a creature of a market, right? I had a heartbeat and a license and slightly more hustle than the average person. And then it all disappeared in a matter of six months. And then that's when you kind of look at yourself in the mirror, said, okay, am I, am I going to go do something else and quit like a lot of people did? Or is this, this, is this the place I want to like plant the flag? And short version is I got on the phone and tracked down the top agents in the country

that year and asked him if I could come visit. And like six out of 10 said yes, which one became a super kind of pivotal learning moment for me that I think the most successful people who have accomplished the most are actually some of the most giving and approachable human beings I've ever met. And that, you know, the amount of times I've said that and then people don't actually call me is shocking. Yeah. But I'm actually super available and responsive, right? Yeah. Like you text me like, hey, I'm going to be in town. I said, yeah, sure. Put on my calendar. I'll be over there. Yeah. And so when I went and visited all these people, I had a huge aha, which is they're normal. They're human beings. They put their pants on one leg at a time.

In a lot of cases, I kind of felt I was actually slightly higher IQ than them. But there were experts at something specific. They came up with a niche specialization, and they did it better than anybody else, and they built a system, and they were consistent with it. So this is as the market's melting down. I asked smarter, wiser people that lived before me. what happened and they said just follow the money this has happened before this happened in 92 with s andl and it happened you know 10 years before that and so i learned everything i could learn about collateralized debt obligations and what fanny and freddie were and where they kept them and within like a three or four year period i was the number one kalm's age in the world doing more aure than anybody in the country so you became kind of like rio expert like that was your thing

Well, and it's one of those moments where in my market, if I still wanted to be in real estate, it was probably a good idea to get into it. And it was interesting because as I got really specialized at it, I'd get calls from people who said, I want to do REO too. And then my first question is like, well, let's study your market, right? What percentage of your market is foreclosures? And what's your average price point versus what's the average price point of an REO? And then you can actually back into it. We're like, it's not even worth it. Right?

The economics, the average price point, what it costs? Because Ario was a business that unless you did volume, it didn't make a lot of sense. Because you have to then build out systems and hire people that you don't normally need to do for real estate, right? Like it's actually asset management, right? So it's cradle de grave inspections, weeklies, construction management. So it only made sense if you hit certain scale. There's a lot to impact there because you keep bringing up the whole theory of, hey, if you want to go out there and do something, just find the person that's already doing it. learn from them and then model their success.

And it's been my entire life venture in terms of going out there and finding the person that's two steps ahead of me and just going ahead and just replicating what they've done. So you graduate to become number one agent at KW. And then what happens when you're at the top? Is it a matter of like, I'm already here what's next? Or is it kind of like, I'm just going to keep crying until I stay here. Yeah. So I again, lots of lessons learned I'm grateful for, especially at a young age. like I've had singular focus for a lot of my life.

And I'm grateful for it kind of gives me tunnel vision. So like at one point, my singular goal was to get to 30 under 30. And then number one. And what I realized is that nothing changed. Like the feeling was actually very empty and meaningless. Like nothing changed inside me. I didn't feel different.

And from the business perspective, it actually wasn't my most profitable years, right? Because I was obsessed with a metric of units or volume, right, versus net income, right? Or most time available, right? So those moments have like reminded me. It's like it's truly the journey, not the destination. And, you know, it's all finite. At the end of the day, stuff comes and goes.

And it's like, what experiences do I get to have with the humans? care about. Perfect. And now you graduate from real estate we could call it. You kind of step out of the sales role. You now get into financing. How did that happen? So, you know, I was the NAREP's national president pretty much just by happenstance that I, that's when I got very involved in the industry. And I had this somewhat informal role due to my proximity to the capital, where if Gary Acosta couldn't get on a plane, you know, overnight for a meeting, he would just send me and I would take notes. You were like the state representative in a way. Very informal.

It just last minute. If they could make it, they would send me. And again, I was in my 20s, so like very uncomfortable for me where I was like, are you sure it's okay if I go? And he said, yeah, just take notes. And I found myself like in the White House with the control of the currency and the head of FHFA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and VA, you know, 300 person like all hands on deck meeting where they were designing CFPB and Dot Frank and Wow.

QRM and, you know, I'm visibly uncomfortable and all of a sudden someone would be like, and what do the Latinos think? I was a designated ombudsman for our entire people. So, you know, I was in the room when I saw that finance laws were going to change. I saw an opportunity, right? So, and I think life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react to it. And early on, again, dumb luck based on, you know, traumatic experiences early in my career. It's like we can cry and say, woe is me. Life isn't fair. Or it's like, okay, do I, I think there's only two choices. Do you still want to do this? And if the answer is no, then go do something else, which is,

also a concept that I'm okay with. It's okay to say you don't want to do this anymore. Correct. And two, if you want to do this, these are under the rules and engagement and I'm going to go in. Right. Like for me, it's super binder. What are like the four corners of the box? And I will go do that. I love it. And then what ends up happening with the finance company? I know even scaling it. What was the product itself? What was the service? It was it was private lending for residential buy fix and flip investors, right? I saw that there was going to be a huge demand for houses to be fixed up. And I knew that with the trid change. you weren't not a lot of borrow money from banks anymore.

Period. Full stop. Right? So the ability to repay is a great thing that came from the financial crisis. Like it should always be there. But unfortunately, it blocks out, you know, every person who's going to buy, fix, and flip with no cash flow, right? So an entire industry came up of it.

But before, you know, I started that business, it was very much a mom-and-pop business. And, you know, we scaled it to kind of very institutional approach. Now it's a very competitive, very institutional business with the Blackstones and all the big funds participating in it, but we were able to build the biggest regional player in the East Coast. Amazing. And then you set out of that role? Did someone? So I started, we built LOS technology from the ground up because it was a niche.

So there was no product to go buy off the shelf. Okay. And while we were building that, we needed public record data, which led me down this conversation. that I needed to acquire data. It was very clumsy and expensive and cumbersome. And Remind was born completely by accident, by necessity. And then we realized we could spin it out. And so I went to go focus on that.

And for those that are listening, Remind is the next venture that Leo gets into, which is a software company that you ended up getting acquired with. So it actually was born out of like complete accident. In all my businesses were always born out of like eating my own dog food, right? which I you know now that I've I'm on the other side I'm an exited founder a couple times my wife and I invest in startups and we advise startups you know that's that's probably the most important ingredient for me it's like domain expertise I feel like we just went through a 10 or 15 year run in in startup coolness that is is very much no longer nearly as cool as it was because it was

all about raising big, big rounds and just talking the talk versus like, do you have product market fit? Is it a scalable business with interesting margin? Is it defendable from competitors? And kind of like that truly bootstrap mentality that I think is what, what's the coolest thing about this country? But, you know, we went through this hyper growth, large round, like the epitome of like soft bank just pouring stupid its amounts of money into businesses that don't make financial sense. And so it's I love seeing folks that are domain experts, right? Like my biggest pet peeves when I see someone who is there to disrupt an industry and didn't grow up in it, didn't understand it like real estate is my jam, right? Like yeah, I take pride in the fact that I'm

probably the only CEO of a publicly traded company in how. housing that actually sold homes. And like, not like I did it three times as my summer hobby. Like, I was the best in the world at what I did. And I love it and I understand it. And so everything I build is to empower the agents through a platform to let them build their biggest dreams. I love it. So now let's get into EXP because it's really interesting to bring that up. Glenn was in the same shoes in the sense that he was a CEO that was serving as a previous agent. He was number one in Washington State with his team back the day and now you're kind of taking over that role and honestly like this is very new like this just happened what the announcement was two weeks ago what's it like going from your previously the

the CSO the chief strategy officer now you're the CEO what's a transition like for someone that has been through your experience and has gone your journey so I think it's it's more external facing than what I did before so day-to-day I was very involved operationally and I very much still am so I would say that the folks that didn't know me, I may be a newer face to the company, but the folks who were internal or highly plugged in knew that I was very involved operationally. I think, you know, the moments and leadership depend on the external factors. Like right now, I think my number one thing is to make sure that the agents know we have their back. Like, we're about to go through probably the largest shift we've experienced in housing period in our

functional lifetimes, right? So for people that don't understand like with what's going on with buyers and by side commissions and agency, the last time we had to shift this big was probably in the 90s with buyer agency. And so the one thing I'll tell everybody is this two shall pass. Historically and at disproportionate rates, people choose to use agents. These are just facts. single largest purchase of their life on average three times the most expensive thing they'll ever do and if you just kind of equate that to any other life decision people choose to have professional representation right so um what what it'll look like in 24 months no one actually knows but what we can historically look at is it's saying having expert representation is something people want

and you know from my specific seat where I sit it's we have your back we have the capital and the infrastructure and the the systems to scale and pivot to support whatever it is you guys actually end up needing right so I'm predicting 12 to 24 months of of chaos and experimentation just because that's like how things adjust like the two-year-out is kind of really clear in my head that there'll be two or three different, four or five different models that work depending on your price point, your market, your personality, your business model. And from here to there, it could be messy and could be a couple hundred that people attempt. But I don't have to like be creative and picture it. I just look at the listing side, right? And the listing side agents have

been competing in a, you know, multiple vendor situation with different models and different value propositions with value, you know, very structured presentations of you get this for that and I charge this for that. We just on the by side haven't developed that muscle and I expect us to very quickly. Correct. And now where do you see the role of the agent being with everything that's playing out? Do you see them transitioning more into a listing side learning the necessary skills that's actually required of them to go out there and sell property? Or do you see them adapting and just shifting their buyer models to go out there and build their business? I think it depends on the agent and their current business model. What I do know for a fact is over a 30-year period, the low side transaction count

is roughly four million transactions between resale and new construction, and the high side is roughly seven million, right? So you can pinpoint, you know, the last two peaks were 2021 in 2006. The last two valleys were last year and this year and 2009, right? And previous to that was like 1995, right? So there is a floor because real estate is human condition. right we fall in love if we make little people we need more space less space death divorce and a couple promotions along the way dictate every move like no one wakes up goes it's 2.5% today it's a good day to move it's like yeah we need more space because we're expecting another human or my my human passed away and i now live in a big house by myself and this isn't functional or you know reasonable

so there is a floor and then the max it tends to be a combination of support supply and affordability. So I think there's three quotients to the math problem, supply, demand, and affordability. And I think what happens is you wake up and say, I need to move tomorrow, and you either buy a rent depending on what you can afford. Perfect. And now in regards to just brokerages in general, how do you adopt with EXP being such a big company to everything that's happening over the next few years? That's probably the more interesting question. Right. So I actually describe us as a platform that allows real estate entrepreneurs. is to build whatever size dream they want.

Right? So that means I get to serve multiple avatars, right? One is the statistical average agent who sells seven, six, seven homes a year, maybe full-time, maybe part-time to where I feel honored that I get to partner with the most productive teams in the world, right? Today, actually, on my way here, we just dropped our top 250 team awards and top 50 individuals and our global awards. But if I were to take our top 250 teams and isolate them, they are sold over 69,000 homes.

Wow. They would be the fifth largest, most productive real estate company in the United States. Right. We're number one in by a huge margin. But what that tells me is like, you know, the smartest most entrepreneurial business people want the tools to scale whatever size business they want. And the brokerage business is a tough business. It's a thin margin business. So back to your question, I think if some of the predictions on disruption are true where there's commission compression, it's going to be harder to make money in this business.

And, you know, the advantage of scale and a asset light business model like the one we enjoy, you know, there are legacy players that just don't have that. And so, you know, I've been since March 15th, I've been getting calls from large independence. We had in brokers LLC here in Miami, Claudia joined us last Friday, 500 agents. And she's been in business for 20 years, family on business. But she said, hey, like, A, Miami's become a world city. I want access to a global platform. B, I just can't compete with the scale of the technology you offer. And now I have this global network of people to mastermind with and get best practices from.

The cool thing is for someone like her and others who I'm talking to, they get to fold in something they've developed and built and kind of can reap this reward for all the hard work they've done by, you know, getting rid of fixed expenses and personal liability, handing that over to us and partner with us on top line revenue. So you're working with agents, team leaders, broker owners. What's the global platform at scale? What does that look like? So currently we're in 24 countries and we're, you know, we slow down when the market slow. down on opening new countries, but, you know, we are the single largest platform on the planet that sells homes. Like, collectively sell over 500,000 homes in 24 countries. And I think we're just getting warmed up, right? So it's the flywheel network effect where folks get to plug in and leverage a bigger platform themselves. So, you know, I just think our most interesting days are ahead of us.

I know I spoke to Glenn about this a few years back, but there was always this concept that people have of a global MLS, where you could be in Paris, you could list a property there, and then immediately you have access to it right here in Florida, for example, to go out there and get compensated and sell a property over there. I know the software component isn't actually the biggest issue. It's more so getting and collecting the accurate data. Is that something that you have planned for the future, or do you see that being a reality? or? Yeah, so, yes. The answer is I have plans and it is very much software as well. You know, just even like if we were to give it an example, right? I can almost go to the NAR stuff. Like it's funny when people say some make a statement and then I'm like, okay, how? Right. Like, I'm not going to use a buyer's agent anymore. I'm like, okay, cool. How are you going to unlock that door? How are you going to fill out the contract? Like there's just, you know, kind of SOP question. I would have like you were free to use an attorney but that cost an hourly rate, right?

Have you ever hired an attorney right to purchase agreement, right? There's just mechanical things that come with it. So for the international one, it's absolutely on our roadmap, but it's like, okay, what price are you seeing and where? Right. Like if you're logged in through a US ISP, do you see it in dollars or like if you're in Mexico City, do you see it in pesos? Good question, yeah. Right. Do we see feet? Do we see meters? So like real time conversion and like are we doing it pegged at a daily rate, a real-time rate, because currencies fluctuate. So I'm very in the weeds of how do you deploy that at scale. And then leveraging technology kind of brings into AI.

How is the XP integrating AI into their offering what you're doing? Yeah. So we've integrated AI into just about everything we do. So, I mean, we have a full chat bot that has every, you know, SOP and rule. Like you can log in right now and ask it how to write a, contract in New York, which is different than Florida and what broker you need to talk to. But I believe that technology, the people that leverage technology will beat the people

that don't leverage technology. I love it. I don't believe that one thing will change the world. Isolated, right? So I think it's a sequential process, right? I've sold real estate long enough that I remember filling out a three page push hard agreement like white, yellow and pink, which you never saw. And then I remember sticking that into a fax machine that would most of the time eat it up and crunch it up because it was thin.

Yeah. And debating with the agents at the brokerage I had about getting email addresses and setting up websites. Like real life conversations I had in my 20s were like, I don't know this internet thing's going to work, right? Correct. So, you know, there's been, I think, moments in history in my functional lifetime, like the internet and then mobile, right? Internet and mobile were two different things because the internet was stuck to a wall that accelerate how we do things, right? Correct. And I would remind everybody that three years ago we couldn't stop talking about blockchain,

how everything was going on the blockchain. I feel like AI is very much like everything is AI, AIAIA. And I just think it's going to take a little longer than we thought, but when it's here, it'll be like, I can't imagine. life without it. So I use, you know, chat GPD as almost the companion over Google now, right? Because I can talk to it in natural language, which, you know, when my kids ask me all these random questions, because there's seven to nine right now, I go to chat GBT because it's, it's, you know, conversational. But, you know, it corrects my grammar. It, you know, proofreads my email.

So they're, and I don't know that there's a perfect use of anything yet, right? It's, okay, how do you, what I invite people to do is make sure to play with stuff and try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. And then, you know, I see it creeping into every facet of life. I love it. So just to kind of summarize everything, your entire journey from being number one at KW to starting your own private lending company to getting acquired and selling reminds and now becoming the COVXP, you're probably one of the most well-experienced people in our entire industry at your age because you're certainly, you're, you're, you're, you certainly. you're still very young. And it's kind of funny, we have like a similar pathway in terms of I was in college, I read Rich Dad, poor dad, no medical school.

I wanted to go out of my way to start my own thing. So I got my real estate license. Keller Williams as well. And then from there, I kind of went on my way, became an Arab chapter president. And then from there, 30 into 30. So we have a very reflective thing. And the fact that you are Latino and you're Colombian as well. I think it's a very special thing for me to have someone to look up to in terms of the possibilities

for this industry. looking back now knowing what you know, what's your advice to the younger generation? What would you tell them knowing everything you've been through as an entrepreneur? So yes, thank you for saying I'm still young because I do feel young. I'm 41. But again, I think I'm probably one of the youngest CEOs of a S&P 600 company. So the advice is around that, right? Like, I did, you know, personal growth development in, like, 18 because my dad pushed me to it.

And it was this moment of clarity, if you will, where, you know, nobody has it figured out. Like, and, you know, I got it from being in, like, a Tony Robbins type event where you see 65-year-olds who ran public companies, you know, share their fears that are exactly like the ones you have because it's just that little voice inside your head. So I would tell young people to say yes a lot, right? Like I said yes when Gary told me to show up and be his representative. And I said yes to getting on a plane and showing up to conferences and just being in the room, right? Like my goal was always to be the least experience, least interesting person in the room and just listen as much as possible. But what I do tell young people, and again, it could be controversial because I know a lot of people think differently. but I think time and energy is your greatest weapon, right?

When I was 20, 21, 22, I could work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and I did that for a decade, right? And I don't want to glorify hustle and grime because I think that was pretty toxic of the last decade. But in the sense that I didn't have little people that I would be ignoring and a partner that I would be ignoring, it was like, that was the weapon I had, which was time and energy. And it allowed me to compress time. Like, I feel that in my 20s, I probably worked what people do in two or three decades. Two decades, yeah.

Right, so I was able to, you know, to quote Malcolm Gladwell and Outliers, I was able to get to my 10,000 hours of mastery much faster than most people can. And if you look at, you know, top performing anything in life, sports, athletes, entertainment, right? They normally start much younger and do it in a more concentrated way.

So I didn't just work 12 hours a day. I actually went to a lot of seminars and modeled and role played and like studied it. And like my language is very intentional. The way I say things and do things is very on purpose. My leadership style is tens of thousands of hours of practice. Right. So I would I would not waste my youth. Right.

I heard a quote that as I've gotten older makes a lot more sense. which is the youth is wasted on the young. And it's, you know, I'm so grateful for the luck part of my story, which is I fell in love with this thing early. And I had amazing mentors, right? Yeah.

Who poured into me and like, I just said yes. Like, you know, the one in particular who would just take me places and it's like if Mark invited me, I was going, right? And he was the one who introduced me to the regional bank president

when I wanted to borrow a big, line of credit and he co-signed me right and gave me that hands up but what what I what I what I can tell young people is if you show interest and you show hustle and you show willingness and you know since we're latinos ganas right you can actually like people who are who've made it in their career and journey they love to pour into people like that right when you reached out and we had similar stories, I've always made myself available to you because I relate to your story. And true story, last time we went out to dinner with Ariana, she's like, oh, wow, he's ahead of you at your age when you were on your journey, which is super cool because I have very high

expectations of you. Right? So, but like when you can relate to another human being, whether it's backstory or otherwise, but to me, what I see in you is that same level of drive, right? I just never wasted my time and stuff that had no ROI in what I wanted out of life. Yeah. And just to kind of piggyback off that, I just downloaded an app. It's amazing by the that's called Stoic, and it's a journaling app.

But as soon as you open up your iPad or your computer or your phone, tells you how many days you have left to live. And that to me is just such like a whoa, you know? And they're calculating it up to 90. So for me, it's kind of like, listen, I just turned 30. I have another decade in me for me to really go out there and just get more experience in what I want to do. And then from 40 to 50, I could just enjoy that skill set. And there's just so much to what we have going for us, which is time.

And I tell everyone that's at this age of 20 years old and they haven't figured out life and I'm like, that's okay. I'm 41. I don't think I figured it out. My dad's 82 and he hasn't figured out, right? What I would say to people is there's seasons to life. Right. And like, again, the one I'm grateful to luck is that I didn't. waste the first one because I just obsessed with getting as much information to make decisions,

right? And like, now I'm in the season professionally where, you know, most people hope to get to, but like my number one prior is my family. Yeah. Right. So like as soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go pick up the kids from school and I'm going to take my son to Jiu-Jitsu, right? And nothing, there's no meeting schedule that affect that. I'm going to go home, make dinner and then I'm actually going to get back on calls. But there are parts of my journey that I'm not willing. to sacrifice because I have my priority straight. I love it. But if I had not worked as hard as I did to give me the leverage and position that I'm in

right now, I would not be able to pour into my children and wife like I can't now. Yeah. So just to kind of summarize, we have education, a huge importance on personal development, mentorship, coaching, just finding someone that has already reached your level of goals and just finding out what you could do to go out there and do that. and setting up really good boundaries in place. Any less words of advice from anyone else listening to this podcast on how they could go out there and better themselves? I would find the person you want to be most like, but not just study them professionally, also personally, right?

Like the amount of people that I early on thought were what I wanted to be had horrible personal lives and their kids didn't speak to them. So that to me is not winning.