The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Christine Valdes Shares Her Real Estate and Leadership Journey

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Christine Valdez Shares Her Real Estate and Leadership Journey Christinevaldes.com About the Guest(s): About the Guest(s): Christine Valdes is an accomplished real estate investor, entrepreneur, and capital partner who has spent several decades building a successful career. Her journey began with a role earning minimum wage and evolved into senior leadership positions overseeing large, geographically diverse sales teams. Christine’s leadership approach is centered around resilience, data-driven strategies, and nurturing high standards alongside human connections. Beyond her corporate role, she is actively involved in real estate investing, exploring opportunities in passive investments and capital raising. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss delves into the inspiring journey of Christine Valdes, a dynamic leader in the world of real estate investment and entrepreneurship. From her humble beginnings earning minimum wage and navigating life as a single mother, Christine has transformed into a formidable force in both her corporate role as a sales executive and as an active real estate investor. Her story is a testament to her resilience, strategic foresight, and unwavering commitment to personal and professional growth. Christine shares her vibrant journey from her first investment in real estate during a booming market in the late 1990s to her recent endeavors in capital raising for innovative land development projects. She offers insightful perspectives on balancing a demanding career while actively pursuing lucrative investing opportunities. Key topics include her leadership philosophy centered on stewardship, the strategic development of geographically diverse teams, and her experiences with multifaceted real estate projects that highlight her adaptive approach to leadership and investment. Key Takeaways: Leadership as Stewardship: Christine believes leadership is an opportunity to steward individuals towards personal and professional growth. She emphasizes leaving people better than she found them. Real Estate Investment: Christine’s journey into real estate highlights strategic investments in different markets, focusing on value-add opportunities and capitalizing on off-market deals. Adapting to Market Changes: Even with market downturns, Christine stresses the importance of continually exploring real estate opportunities and adapting to fluctuating market dynamics. Balancing Career and Investments: Despite her success in real estate, Christine continues to lead a large sales team, demonstrating her passion for leadership and ability to juggle multiple high-stakes roles. Continuous Learning: Christine’s approach to personal development involves extensive reading and application of practical insights, underscoring the importance of lifelong learning. Notable Quotes: “My responsibility is to help them be better, be a better person, be better at their role when they leave.” “I tell people, there’s a lot of money out there, don’t worry about money…sometimes the money is an opportunity specifically for you.” “There’s always gonna be someone that’s gonna say it’s not the right time to invest.” “Leadership is stewardship… I’ve been given like this gift to do it.” “It was before they knew… live in the house, fix it, and then after two years, sell it so there wasn’t any capital gains.”

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Today, an amazing young lady on the show, we're going to be talking to her about real estate investing and some of the transitions and things that she overcame in her life and all that good stuff. Today, we're joined by Christine Valdez. And she is an active real estate investor, entrepreneur, and capital partner. And she's going to talk to us about her journey through life, how she got in the field she does and how she helps other people achieve improving the quality of their life. Christine Valdez's leadership philosophy was shaped long before executive titles and boardroom conversations. She began her career earning minimum wage, learning early the importance of resilience, responsibility, and consistency. Over the past three decades, she worked her way into senior leadership,

developing hundreds of professionals and leading large geographically diverse teams in high accountability environments. Known for blending data-driven strategy with genuine care for people, Christine builds cultures where high standards and human connection coexist. She speaks candidly about the realities of leadership, confidence, built after action, consistency, over motivation, and the responsibility that comes with influence and offering practical insight for leaders navigating pressure, growth, and uncertainty. Welcome the show. How are you, Christine? I'm great. How are you, Chris?

I am excellent. It's wonderful to have you on the show. Give us dot coms or websites, socials, wherever you want people to find. out more about you on the interwebs. Yeah, you can go to Christine Valdez. That's Valdez with an S.com. Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Christine Valdez on LinkedIn. Give us some of the oversights that you do there at the website

and services you offer and activities you're up to. Yeah, you know, on my website, I do post any capital raising that we have. We actually just closed on a land development deal. So any investors that are looking for passive investments, if there's one that comes across my desk, that I think is a good opportunity. I will post it on there.

And then sometimes I do give some education on real estate investing. Passive investing. That's a little bit more active than lazy investing. Yes, it is. It is sometimes lazy. It is sometimes lazy. I'm just passively doing. Yeah, I'm passively mowing the lawn, honey, here in the hammock with margaria, my hand.

Give us the overall details. So you'll hope you'll probably be maybe doing future funds in the future. You oversee a team now of real estate investors? Yeah, I don't oversee a team of real estate investors. I'm actually still at a W-2. So I'm a sales executive. I lead a large team of salespeople, unlike other real estate investors who leave their job

because a lot of people go, okay, I'm going to start my own business, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do real estate investing, and they go all in and they leave their job. I actually didn't leave my job because I love what I do. So I try to manage the, you know, 80 hour a week with looking at different properties while my husband runs his business. And so it's a very

busy life. But, you know, things come across my desk where they say, hey, you know, do you know anybody that would be interested in this fund or this multifamily syndication or this, you know, fix and flip fund, et cetera, et cetera. So tell us about your journey. There was a time where you were a single mother living on, I think you said, tell us about what your journey was to your life and how you got here. Yes, I was. I was, you know, you go through this journey where I went through college and I'm going to be a doctor and you go through school and then you get yourself in the situation. You know, when you're in your 20s, you enjoy yourself a lot. And I did get myself in a situation where I did have a child and it was just her and I.

And, you know, at that point you have to take responsibility. But it's really hard when you're having to pay daycare. my food. I mean, I got myself in a situation where I actually did have to go on food stamps and with the WIC. I got the WIC checks too. So I got my free peanut butter and eggs and milk. I had to, yeah, a big block of cheese. You get the cheese every week. And quite honestly, I was trying to figure out like, what am I going to do? I had a degree in chemistry, but I wasn't getting paid that much, you know, $12 an hour wasn't very much when you're back then to, you know, to raise a child and pay for rent and all of that. So I decided to go into sales. But when you go into sales,

I thought, I'm going to go into sales because it's going to make me a lot of money. It's very lucrative. But you have to start at the bottom in sales. So you get a sales job that's commission only and you're really not making a lot of money. You're like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? But I did it out of necessity and I just really tried really hard to learn my craft and get really good at it. Learn the craft, get good of it, make it work and stuff and all that. And when did you come up and decide you want to get into real estate? You know, it was in, gosh, I think it was a night gosh. I'm going to age myself now.

It was like 1998. And I said, I'm going to buy a house. It was myself and my daughter. I said, I'm going to save money and I'm going to buy a house. I can do this. And I remember my mom kept telling me, you can buy a house. I go, I can't afford to buy a house. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There is no way I'm going to be able to. to buy a house. There's no way. And I kept arguing with this. She goes, you can buy a house. You can buy a house. You know how your mom sounds, you know, when you're that age. And I said, okay, I'm going to start saying, so I was really, my sales were outstanding. I was making more money. I started saving. I said, okay, I'm going to buy out. I kept bidding on these houses. And back then, in 1998, it was it 98? Yeah. Back then, there was kind of a boom in the real estate. And so I wasn't winning any, any bits. I was getting beat out by people doing. larger down payments, cash offers. And I was bidding on one and two bedroom condos. So I decided,

I go, maybe I should buy, maybe I should do something else. And so I started looking at like fixers and I started looking at programs that would help me buy a house where I could, I thought I was low income, right? Because I'm not coming single mom. I don't make a lot of a lot of money. So I realized that each city and each county had these programs in California where you can qualify to get a new house if you're in a certain income because they set aside like five percent of new bills to lower income. And so I thought, oh, great. And then you can get a down payment help. Back then it was down. They'd give you the down payment. If you qualified, they'd allow you. So there was a big high rise in San Francisco. And I think the homes were going for one point something million, the two

bedroom condos back then. But if you were low income, you can get it for 450. What? And the only, yes, the only stipulation was that you had to live there for seven years, that you couldn't sub-lease it, and you couldn't rent it, that you couldn't flip it, couldn't rent it out, and you had to hit this minimum income. So I filled out that application. And then there was almost this, as I was doing all this stuff, there was almost this, I just kept going deep into the research on maybe I could get somebody else to give me more money. And so I didn't qualify for that. I was over by $10. I made $10 too much. But I started, I started looking. I mean, Santa Clara County was like 92,000 was the minimum income to qualify.

I'm like, holy crap. So I started going into it and then I realized, I go, maybe I should just buy a fixer and fix it. And, you know, it was just this journey of deciding what am I, you know, I want to buy a house. I want to buy a house. And it took me down this path of, oh, maybe I can buy a fixer. So I ended up buying a like a house in Oakland. It was a three-bedroom one bath that was, you know, priced one.

way low that, you know, I thought could get, could add a bathroom and you can add value. And at the time, I didn't have enough money. So I got a partner to do this, this house. And the goal was to, and it was before they knew what, before people did this, where they lived in the house and flipped it. So the goal was to live in the house for two years, fix it. And then after two years, sell it. So that there wasn't any capital gains. So that was my first entry into real estate investing. I cut granite in the back. I learned how to put drywall up. I learned how to do tile. I mean, yeah, I learned everything. I mean, when you buy the slabs of granite because it's cheaper and you're cutting in the back with a saw and water, I mean, you're, you know, so I'd work all day and then I'd

come home and then me and my partner would be putting up, you know, he would, he would get the drywall. We'd be putting, I'd hold the drywall in my head. We'd be nailing everything in. So I learned a lot about flipping and fixing houses at that point. Ah, you learn about all sorts of stuff, huh? Yeah. And so after that, did you invest in more homes? Or where did you go from there? Yeah, my career was taking off.

You know, you have to make a decision because the fix and flipping I thought I was going to do, but my career was taking off. And then I met my husband to be at that time. And so I decided to, okay, I'm going to just take a step back and focus on the career and the new husband. And then after that, it was probably about 19, it was probably like 20, gosh, how many years ago, was it like five, six, seven, seven years ago or eight years ago, we decided, we bought a house and we decided to buy a second home. And because I was starting to panic about how much money we were spending. So then we just dove in and bought a second home. And then from there, we just started looking

and we scaled really fast. I think we scaled to a limited partnership on a couple of apartment syndications. We joined Ventured on an apartment. We did a bunch of flips. We probably did six flips. We bought another house in Houston. We bought another house and we moved to Texas. We did all of that in three years.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Just moving right along. Yeah. And so you kind of caught that maybe that wave that was going on around COVID-ish? It was like a COVID, yeah. I saw a little thing on Facebook for join this free class for $17.

So, yeah. Serious. Yeah, it's true. Then it worked. It did work. Yeah. We scale really fast. Yeah.

Now you're at a point where you're raising money. You're doing funds. Is that my. Yeah. Yeah. I partnered with, you know, I started, once you go down this journey and you're in the real estate investment and you start to do these things on Saturdays, you meet all these other investors, you start just, your, your lingo and your understanding of that world becomes

really big. And then you start getting, you start joining different masterminds and different groups and you start meeting different people that are always raising funds. Raising money for either multifamily syndications, different types of funds, money for, you know, money for a company, you know, different things. And then you get approached to raise funds as well. Most recently, I was approached by a friend of mine that I had met through one of these masterminds and she was putting a fund together for a land development fund

where we would actually fund the land entitlement and then once the...