The Entrepreneur DNA - Strategies to Adapt and Thrive Across Volatile Markets | Edwin Carrion | EP 26

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

In this episode of "The Entrepreneur DNA," I sit down with Edwin Carrion, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades in real estate and recent ventures in transportation and logistics. We discuss Edwin's approach to business, emphasizing the importance of leveraging one's unique strengths, the critical role of strategic partnerships, and the necessity of having a dedicated team. Edwin shares his journey through various industries, from real estate to gold trading, highlighting key lessons in resilience and strategic growth. He offers practical advice for entrepreneurs aiming to scale their businesses from seven to multi-seven figures, focusing on the importance of vision, proper planning, and learning from economic fluctuations.   ---   Connect with Edwin! Instagram - @edwincarrion78 Website - https://www.edwincarrion.com/?r_done=1  

Hey guys, Justin Colby here. If you're liking The Entrepreneur DNA and you have an interest in real estate, I'd encourage you to go over to the Science of Flipping podcast and start checking some of those episodes out. I've been doing it now for over 11 years and we have over 400 episodes.

So if you have any interest at all in real estate investing, whether it's single family flips or apartment rentals, go over to the Science of Flipping and check out some episodes on that podcast on Apple and Spotify as well. See you over there. Yo, yo, entrepreneur DNA family. Welcome back to another episode.

I have an incredible guest, very dynamic guest. Him and I were actually speaking on stage at an event last week and Edwin Carrion is here. What's up, brother? How you doing, Justin? Thank you for having me here. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was great to connect while speaking on stage.

But for those of you who don't know him, you need to make sure you go follow him on Instagram, Facebook, all of the good things. But this is an expert, longtime real estate investor for about 20 years now? Yes, 22 to be exact. But who's counting? Right? Nobody. Who's counting? You've also, over the last seven, eight, nine years, jumped into transportation and logistics. Yes.

And now you have found the passion to help people because you've done it. You now are trying to help entrepreneurs, seven-figure type entrepreneurs, scale their seven figures into multi-seven figures and bigger than that, correct? Right, exactly. Getting me there to seven or eight figures. Just like I've done it on other industries as well, which we'll touch on in a little bit. Well, so let's go right into it, right? So, you know, you and I kind of are cut from the same cloth, right? We can't just stick to one thing.

I think that's a disease of all entrepreneurs, right, is we find ways to create chaos by going into different verticals. But you have found success doing that. Talk about like how you bridged your success in real estate into different verticals. Yes. And I think it's understanding what is my superpower. And I always talk about this and I try to teach people, you got to find out what is your superpower. And I think to me early on, I i found that my superpower was becoming a visionary

looking at something small and kind of looking at it from the big picture and making it grow to that extent and then having the right people in place to be able to get to that point yeah so you talked a lot about people right so you have the vision and then you have the people to get to the point where you need to get it. Talk about that then. Like, it's easy to have a vision and a passion. This would be really cool to build this out. Or I have this thing I know will work. What are the next steps that people can start talking about taking the concept into practice?

Yes. And I think it starts with, first of all, finding the right person or the right business partner, right? And the reason I've been in different industries, like I was in the gold buying industry, I was in the transportation industry, I'm in the development industry. And in some of those industries, I didn't know anything about that. Like gold mining? Gold buying. What do you know about gold buying? Gold buying.

Gold buying. Buying gold. Buying gold. Melting it down and reselling it. What do you know? How do you even learn that? Well, and again, to me, I was the business development part. And I had to find a technical business partner that knew everything from it.

And that was my business partner. And we're able to grow into a company that was selling over $15 million a year. We were making a million dollar profit per month in that business. No kidding. During a recession. that is incredible and it goes back to you know i'm not big i'm big in investing i don't do a lot with um gold or silver and in those type of things but man i mean obviously it's real you can feel it you can like there's still a very strong play for gold. Oh, it is. Gold and silver, yes. Especially over the past couple of years, it has been downgraded so much that the moment it catches up to inflation, there's going to be a huge spike on that. Just last week, I was reading an article where gold should be at $20,000. Per ounce or per pound?

Per ounce. Per ounce. Yes. So here's more my style style just to relate to you i am a pretty major investor in a gold mine that is actively being mining mined i should say in northern arizona it's a publicly traded company pretty major investor in that but i do nothing like i cut a check i'm out i'm crossing my fingers like I'm hoping this hits. They've already found massive copper veins.

So I know I'm going to do well. It's just how well, right? It's a long-term play. And that's one of the things that I tell a lot of entrepreneurs. A lot of people nowadays are looking for the quick gain, you know, become rich quick scheme that they call it, right? And I think in business, and you could correct me if I'm wrong with that, that, you know, as investors, we look for always delay satisfaction, delay returns. And when we start looking at things that way, I think that's when we really see the

success that we have gained in different industries because, you know, we're looking for that delay gratification. Yeah, I think this is a great point. I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs right now that are microwave society. I want to go build the next bot or the next thing within 12 months. I can go make a whole lot of money or even shorter than that. You and I are a little wiser, a little older. We understand this is a long play, right? Like even for individuals getting into real estate, like you can't say, hey, you're going to go make a million dollars in year one could they is there a possibility they could less but the reality is what you want to do is you want the long play you want to build

a business as sustainable without you exactly um but man gold buying i never even thought about that business hustle are you still in that business or did you i do it for fun it's more like uh people call it a side hustle. To me, I call it a wealth building type of thing. Okay. Because I learned to differentiate my different type of businesses into what it really means to me, right? So to me, my real estate development business is my wealth creation vehicle. My transportation company is my cash flow vehicle that creates my cash flow and then my business education business where i

teach entrepreneurs how to scale and grow is my legacy business meaning that i'm able to teach people so that i continue that legacy passing down through generations of teaching others and teaching others how to continue growing and becoming successful in their own way you know there's something very empowering and you know this to be true when you teach someone they can teach others yes right and i saw that yesterday i'm taught one of my members who ultimately has become very successful in real estate investing they now are teaching other people their kind of tribe how to go create a meetup and how to go hold one of those things and speak on stage so it's a very

cool thing that that we do as educators and people in that space. Talk about your logistics and transportation, right? That's your cash flow business? That's my cash flow business, yes. How does that even work? As a real estate developer, right, what do we do? We buy land and we find an architect. And it takes a long time to get to the end product.

And at the beginning, all we have to do is continue putting money in and money in and money in. So when I fell into the transportation business, when I had that opportunity to buy that company, I realized that the moment that I go out there, buy a truck, put that truck on the road, I'm collecting money, I'm getting paid every single day from that truck. So it becomes a cash flow cycle, meaning that every day that the truck runs, money comes in, money comes in. So I liked that play when I really started looking at the different vehicles that I wanted for me in my life. And a lot of people look at real estate as a cash flow business whenever they go into the rental side, right? To me, whilst the transportation was a cash flow side. Yeah. So is there still cost? I mean, you have to assume so, but just because I know nothing about this. The cost of a truck, a tire blows out, breaks, all these things, right?

Yes. That's all on you. You bought the truck. The owner has to service the truck and make sure, replace tires, all that. Yes. Are the margins good enough to have that kind of maintenance? Because when you and I buy houses, it's a little bit more straightforward, right? Like you remodel the home. You make sure the AC is good. The roofs are good, the windows are big ticket items.

There's not kind of that maintenance over time, over usage, if you will. Is that a pretty expensive model? It is, but also is a good return on investment model if you know how to do it right. There's always different niches on everything, right? And I think when we start specializing in different things, you start being able to increase your profit margins into everything that you do. So to us on the transportation side, and when I say us as my business partner and I, a couple of things that we do different is, number one, we're on the refrigerated side, meaning that we only move refrigerated goods. Number two, we only work on the northeast of the United States. So now we're condensing our market, right? We're becoming smaller, but we're becoming the bigger shark in that little pond.

Yes. And we don't buy brand new trucks. We buy used trucks and with good service records. So make sure that they're well-maintained. We keep the trucks for a short period of time, maybe two or three years max, and then we're able to sell them to our own drivers. So we have a very nice business model that gives us enough profits. It's all a little bit vertically integrated to some extent. Yes, exactly.

And the biggest thing that I will leave before we move on to something else besides transportation is that you cannot make money with one truck. A lot of people think, you know, buying a truck, they're going to make millions. In order for you to be able to start making some type of money in the transportation business, you have to have at least five trucks. That's what I think that the minimum start happens when you have to start with at least five trucks. And that's the minimum. So let's say someone said, Edwin, I saw your episode. I went out and bought five trucks in a perfect world, which you and I know is not going to be perfect. What type of income could someone expect in a perfect world

on having five trucks? On average, we're generating like around $10,000 per month per truck. Okay. And that's net or is that gross? That's like around net. So if you have 50 grand a month, that's a nice living. I mean, there's a lot of people watching this and listening to this right now that would love to be making 50 grand a month. Yes. How much does it cost to buy one of those trucks? It could cost anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000. So is there a faster way to break into that industry than having the money to go buy the truck?

You could invest into transportation companies, but I wouldn't recommend that at this moment, today, right now, because the market is very volatile right now. So there's cycles in everything.

There's cycles in real estate, there's cycles in transportation, there's cycles in gold, in all types of industries. And right now, on the transportation side, we're at the bottom. Just during the past year, over a thousand of transportation companies have gone out of business.

And huge transportation companies, because during the COVID era, everybody decided to become a truck driver and get into the transportation industry. And buy that one truck. Yeah. So what causes the economy to fluctuate in the transportation logistics? The amount of cargo, because of COVID, there was no cargo coming in. So it means there was no products to be moved. And that happened while you have a bunch of people going into the market, meaning that the supply and the demand, there was more supply than demand. That there was more trucks than got to be moved. Yeah. So everybody that doesn't understand business, that doesn't know how to do the right numbers

and forecast the right numbers are moving loads at a loss. And that hurts everybody else that understands business because now you have to compete with that. Yeah. It's a loss. Like it's a race to zero. Yes. And that's unfortunate.

I mean, you and I have been in the real estate business a long time. We can make some arguments that to some extent, the competitiveness of the real estate business a long time we can make some arguments that to some extent the competitiveness of the real estate business yes becomes a race to zero right there's so many people so many wholesalers so many people marketing for deals it's almost impossible to find any deals now because there's so many people now out there marketing exactly and then people are like well i gotta buy something so they buy that flip because they have to buy something and then they are like well i gotta buy something so they buy that flip because they have to buy something and then they lose money because you know the seller's like well there's 50 other people making offers on this home so i'm going to give it to the person that offers the

highest right and then they lose money and then there's a lot of unknowns whenever they start flipping or try to wholesaling and they lose their bought-offs. So 22 years in real estate? What was your real estate journey like? Left the Marine Corps in 2002 and had no idea what I wanted to do, right? Like a lot of young people at 22 years old, we don't know what we want to do. To me, one of my goals was to go back into the government side and become a CIA agent or a FEI agent. I wanted that and I lived that for the past four years prior to that

while I was guarding the American embassies. But then I asked my mom, what should I do? And she's like, become a developer. And she put in such simple terms the business model that I think, as entrepreneurs, sometimes we tend to complicate things, right? And she just told me, I'm like, mom, what is a developer? I had no idea. She's like, oh, all you got to do is buy land, build a house and sell it.

Very simple model, right? When you look at it that way, I'm like, this is awesome. Buy land, build a house and sell it. I mean, how hard could that be, right? Yeah. So that's when I started, 2002, 22 years old, left the Marine Corps in debt and was able to raise some capital, bought my first piece of property and I started building on it. And I was so fortunate enough

that I bought two properties almost for the price of one. I was able to sell one of them for the same price that I bought both of them and I got the second one for free. So I put a house on it and I think you have to be the right person at the right place at the right time. And that was me coming out of the Marine Corps. 2002, real estate was at the bottom and it's starting to go up and I was able to ride that wave. And I made a lot of money real quick. In two years, I was able to have over $20 million worth of assets in real estate. It's a lot. Positive. You talk about right time, right place. I mean, I think that plays in to everything.

Yes. But you still went out and did the work. Yes. You can't deny that, right? Like anyone could have wanted to be in real estate, but you went out and did what needed to be done to go buy the assets you had. How did that transition going into 2008?

It transitioned that I grew up so fast because I was young. I'd never had that amount of money coming from a very humble background. And to me, all I was about, I was focused on the money. All I wanted to do was become a millionaire, was have a lot of money. And I was just working 60, 70 hours per week. You know, wasn't healthy, didn't have good relationships. I was over-focused, working, working, working, working, making money, making money, making money. And 2008, within two weeks, the market just changed completely.

And I went bankrupt. I lost everything because I was extremely over-leveraged in order to be successful that fast. How old were you then? I was 27 years old. Yeah, that's young. 28. I think the audience needs to understand there's a long journey in this.

It's kind of what we were talking about. The length that you can be in the game helps you win the game. Yes. It's not timing the market. It's time in the market, as we all know. And obviously, you've done very well with real estate in the macro, which we all know. And obviously you've done very well with real estate in the macro,

which is your entire career. And you've had segments like the first couple years you did really well, but then you lost it, right? Yes. How did you rebound from the loss of the economy? My biggest rebound was going into the jewelry business like we spoke about earlier. Oh, that was during that time?

That was during that time. And it was nice to learn that a lot of people think they only could make money during a good economy. But at this time, I learned that you could make money during a good economy

and a bad economy during a recession. And I made millions during the recession. And that's how I was able to get back to realize that once I sold my business in 2014,

I sold the jewelry business in 2014, I sold the jewelry business in 2014. I was retired by the time I was 30 years old and I went back into real estate development, but I went back where I left off. And that's one of the things that we have to realize that we don't always have to go back to the beginning, to the humble beginnings. You know, we could start at a different level in our game if certain circumstances change. And that was the exact thing for me, that when I went bankrupt, I was starting to build multimillion dollar homes. And I always said that when I go back into real estate, I'm going to continue here. So when I was able to save my jewelry business, I went back into building

multimillion dollar homes. And even today, we're going to go some point between the next couple of days, we're going to go take a look at something miami yes that's great you know the the nice part about multi-million dollar homes you're really you're really playing in a market that like the people who have money are still going to be playing in that market yes and there's a lot of people that always live at that level regardless of the economy right a lot of times those players during a bad economy, they make even more money. Yes.

So when everyone else is having a hard time buying a $500,000 home, you have someone easily able to pay cash for a $5 million home. Exactly. And it's because a lot of times those business owners or those people can make more in a down economy. So let's transition over into your passion project,

what you're doing now for the last couple of years. You're still in real estate. Yes. Doing that full time, still buying land developing the whole thing i know you just sold off a piece of land uh last week you told me which is god it's on the contract yes there you go love that but now you're you're really showing your the season that you've been able to go out and go scale businesses you're showing others the viability of taking a business that you have up and running, not newbies, not how to get into business, but people who are making money, sales are coming, cash registers ringing. You're showing them how to actually start to scale the business. Yes. Let's start from the beginning.

What does that look like? What should people be knowing about how to grow and scale a business? It always starts when I said, you know, keep things simple. And it starts with the basics. And a lot of entrepreneurs don't start with the basics. And I always ask, I remember when you and I met, there was like over a hundred entrepreneurs in that room. And I asked them a lot of questions. How many of you are entrepreneurs? The whole room raised their hands. And then I asked them, how many of you created a business plan? And only five people out of the whole room had a business plan.

And I think it's extremely important to understand that in business, if you don't know where you're going, you will eventually get there. Meaning that if you don't have a right vision, if you don't know what you want to achieve in life, you're going to get there eventually, but it's going to take longer than when you have the vision written down and you have the specific measurables and everything else of how you want your life to be. Yeah. So most entrepreneurs, as someone who coaches other entrepreneurs in real estate, they just are like, put their head down and go.

Yes. Are you seeing that to be true? Like, I don't care what we're doing. We're just going to go as hard as we can, work as hard as we can, make as much money as we can with no real game plan. Yes. Are you seeing that to be true? Like, I don't care what we're doing. We're just going to go as hard as we can, work as hard as we can, make as much money as we can with no real game plan. Exactly. And that's what is happening. That's, it's happening. And then, uh, they're not able to sustain that because I always understand now that it's not hard to make money. It's very easy to make a lot of money, but the hard part is to keep that money. And if you don't have a good

strategy, a good game plan on that, you're not going to be able to sustain that. So give the listener or viewer, you know, the shorter version of really what it will take for them to start to scale besides just the business plan. What else is in part of building your business to scale, right? It takes someone from 1 million to 5 million. What does that actually take? Yeah, it takes having the right people in place. And I always talk about people. And I used to use back then before I went bankrupt, the title of self-made millionaire, right? And I stopped using that because I really understand that you can never do, you can never amount something big if you're doing it by yourself. You need a team of people.

You need the right people to help you achieve that. And to me, one of the biggest things was that I realized that at one point in my life, I was getting stuck. I was hitting a ceiling. I was getting to a few million, and I wouldn't be able to get past that ceiling. So I had to figure out what do I need to do? Who do I need to surround myself in order to be able to pass to that ceiling and get to the next level in my life? And it happened by having that vision that, to me, my vision was very small since the

beginning. And when I put that in writing, my vision was a few million and I thought I was going to be happy with that. But then I started becoming aware and surrounding myself with different people that were at different levels. And I had to figure out what do I need to do? What do they do in order to get to that level? And it was very simple, you know, having the right vision in place,

having the right people in place, having the right systems and processes in place, because along the way, I realized that I no longer want to work 60 hours per week. I want to be able to work five hours per week. And I did that during my jewelry business. I was making a million dollars profit a month and I was working five hours per week week and I learned the system of putting the right systems putting the right processes putting the right people and me being able to just be the visionary and not having to do all the hard work so the way I look at that is always people right so I do a keynote speech on people being the thing that goes from good to great. You saw a part of that. Is this just a hiring thing?

Is it a development thing? Is it a leadership thing? What components are the most important parts for someone to be able to go from good to great, from a million to five million? It's having people that are smarter than you and it's also having people that believe in your vision. So that's why everything ties in together. It's not just about hiring because i could go out there and hire just anybody sure that could be good at something but maybe that's the person is not the right fit for my

business yeah so that person has to be have the same vision that i have and i have to have the same values that i have and to me i think values are extremely important for a company to have starting with you know what are your values? Do you only use those values within your business? Or are those the values that you live your life with? Meaning that the moment that you finish working, are you still using the same values in your day-to-day life? What I see is people get to a certain point and they take the foot off the gas.

I've done this in my career where my real estate business was running at a pretty high level and I've kind of healed out of the day-to-day and I find anyone who's looking to grow they get to a certain point and they feel like that same trajectory is going to continue without them I don't that I don't believe that to be true and I just usually will typically look at some of the most influential successful entrepreneurs from the Elon Musk elon must steve jobs warren buffett like they're still in the game right steve jobs passed rip but you get my point like there are famous stories of him being in the meetings being a part of it forcing the team to go get the the certain glass for the new apple shops like he didn't have to be that integrated, but he was.

And that's what helped build Apple into what we now know as Apple. Yes. Right? Are you finding there's a lot of people that go to one to two million or three million, and then they kind of like, oh, I made it, and then they take their foot off the ass? Part of it, yes. And they become comfortable. They become comfortable at their stage in life.

And it's okay to be comfortable at certain stages in our life because we work for so hard for so long. We grind hard for a very long time. So we get to the point that we want to break. But at that moment, once you realize, okay, break is over, how do we get to the next level? And that's what we really need to get back into and change things around because sometimes we're only as good as getting that company to a few million dollars, or maybe we're good at only taking that company to 10 million dollars but then we need somebody else to help us get to that next level to the next 10x totally and and you can't get anywhere without having a coach someone who's been there and done that before you can't have how are you ever supposed to know how to get somewhere if you've never been there before

right and i know you do a lot of this coaching. Where can they find you and find more out about how to get in your world so you can start helping them going from a million to 2 million to 5 million to 10 million, whatever it may be. Yeah. I mean, the best way is find me on our social media channels, EdwinCarrion. EdwinCarrion78. Or just go to my website, EdwinCarrion.com.

And I have a free book that I wrote, which is Nine Secrets to Build a Successful Life and Business. And you could get that one on myninescarrien.com. And I have a free book that I wrote, which is nine secrets to build a successful life and business. And you could get that one on my nine secrets.com. Okay. I love that. So nine secrets.com social media for sure. Yes. What would be a warning shot you would give entrepreneurs? Like this is a mistake I made. This is what I see people make, do not do this thing. Here is your warning. What would that be? I think the biggest one is that don't follow the money. The second one, don't become over-leveraged. I think that's a huge mistake that a lot of people make, especially nowadays that the government is giving away a lot of money, a lot of grants,

that people become over-leveraged. And the reason I've been able to sustain my businesses after the 2008 meltdown was because I learned that I'm never going to be ever overextended anymore. Yeah. What do you think about debt? Do you have a different view on debt? Good, bad, indifferent? Do you still take on debt? Do you not take on debt? Now I like debt. When I went debt? Now, I like debt. Okay. When I went bankrupt in 2008, I hated debt because that's the reason I went bankrupt.

I was extremely over leveraged. But then I had a good friend of mine that told me, Edwin, having debt is great in order to continue growing. I was doing everything cash, but cash runs out. Yeah. So you have to come to a point in your life to realize that debt is good if you know how to use it wisely. And how to use debt wisely is that at least, you know, no more than 30, 40% of debt in your portfolio, meaning that in case you lose 50% of your revenue, you're able to still cover those debts. And that's one of the things that I always look at from now on.

Yeah. Do you suggest people take on debt, business debt, to build their business and scale their business from a million? I'm just using a fake example, a million to five million. What do you say? Hey, you need more leads. You need more marketing. Instead of using the cash reserves, take on debt, whether it's a credit card, business line of credit, whatever that is, use debt to go bring in more. Or would you not and tell them to use the cash reserves? Oh, no, I would tell them to use debt as long as they're able to forecast and able to afford to pay off that debt. So it comes down to an ROI, right? Yes. They're using that. They're leveraging other people's money by credit cards to be able to bring in more leads to have a conversion cycle so that you can go get

that cash back, right? Exactly. It's the cash conversion cycle. Yes. Where in business would you recommend people not to use debt, right? Meaning, you know, I'm not in a business that has any type of machines, but what do you say if you are, don't buy machines with debt because there's no ROI per se on that? Or would you buy them with debt because there could be an ROI? Well, no, there is an ROI in machines, right? And we talk about the transportation side, that a truck is a machine. So there is an ROI on that. If I wasn't buying more trucks and using debt to be able to buy trucks, then I couldn't continue growing. So debt is good for buying machines because also has another upside that we didn't talk about, which is being able to depreciate those assets.

That's right. And being able to save a lot of money on taxes, right? Which is another whole topic. But it's the best topic, right? Because it doesn't really matter how much you make. It matters how much you keep. Yes, exactly. That is true.

That is true. It's how much you keep, right? So depreciation, you can use that in the travel and logistics? Yes. On the transportation, yes. You depreciate the truck 100%. You could depreciate 100% the first year if you wanted to. I think I did that.

My accountant had me do that with my Range Rover. Yes. It was the first year I took 100% of that depreciation all within the first year. Not the same thing when you buy a yacht. I was able to depreciate my yacht 100% and be able to use that as a business for having events, business events, topics, teaching events, all of those things. Yeah. There is a total, and that is a whole nother episode, right? There's a hack within business that you guys all should know. And this is probably why you need to reach out to Edwin so he can start to teach you guys these hacks. But again, it isn't about how much

you make. Having a business go from 1 million to 5 million is great, but if your profit margin's in the single digits, why did you go through all that brain damage, headache, growth, training, retaining, et cetera? How many trucks do you have right now? In total, we have 40 trucks, but we manage around 80 trucks. So you own 40 and you manage 80? Yes. What do you do from, what is the management? The management, I think I explained a little bit at the beginning that we keep the trucks for a few years, but then those trucks are sold to our drivers. Drivers, yeah.

So our drivers need somebody to service them, meaning that to give them work. Sure. To give them loads, to, you know, to do their paperwork, to do their payroll. So we take care of that. So we charge a fee for that. So now we become like a broker for them isn't that funny in the real estate world like wholesalers and whatever you're just kind of a middleman you can but even in the trucking and there's a very similar function that

you're able to play in the truck industry it just goes back to there's just so many great hacks right and i say that because like i probably would never get in the trucking for me to there's just so many great hacks, right? And I say that because I probably would never get into trucking for me, but there's so many businesses that can create a lot of money that have the very similar levels of real estate. Like you can translate that over into trucks. You can do it into jewelry. You can do it into cars. You can do it into all this.

There's similarities to all this. Yeah, I think it's understanding what are the verticals that your business can provide at this moment. That's what a lot of people don't understand. They're always so focused into one thing that they're doing. But, you know, you hit a ceiling. And in order to kind of continue going past the ceiling, you have to figure out what are the verticals that I could implement in this business? You know, what else can I do with my business that is going to relate to everything that I'm doing that I could provide additional services to my business?

Full-time businesses. Yes. The key, though, has to be people. Yes. You can't go do what you do or I do what I do without people. No, definitely not. So what's your point to hiring? What's your point to finding those people? What do you give those people? What do you pay those people? It's all over the range, but I think to me, it's going back into making sure that they have the right values that fit with your business, with your company, your company values. Make sure that they're going to fit the culture within your company. And make sure that they're capable to carry on the job that you're going to give them.

Yeah. Do you pay them salary? Do you overpay them? Do you give them equity? Equity? No, we haven't done that equity yet. None of my businesses up to now. But what I have done what i have done

salary commissions i'm a huge believer as far as commission uh because to me i think my life has been based on commission meaning that um if i want more money i have to make something greater that's right i want to my own philosophy curious to see what you say on this is if i want to build my real so this is what i've done in my real estate business. I brought in, not brought in, but basically for the last nine years, I've trained and groomed someone to basically run the entire business like day to day. Like even the property that we're going to go see in Miami, I'm going to look at it with you, but I'm not going to make the decision he will because every single property that we ever do runs through him first. Right. So I never step on his toes because I gave him that role for a reason so if i step on his toes i take away his power his confidence whatever make sense yes but i gave

him 30 of everything i do as long as he stays with me so if he ever leaves if he ever thinks there's a better opportunity he's walking away from 30 of of the apartments, the single family rentals, the fix and flips, all of it. Right. I find that holds retention and gives people what they want so I can free up my time to go do things like this on a Wednesday. Yeah. To do shoot this podcast with you. Right. Do you feel like that would be an advantage for you to be able to find the right people and hold them and retain them longer moving forward?

Yes, no, definitely. And I love that. I love that model as well. I have tried that, uh, to find people like that for the real estate development side, especially now that I live in Columbia in South America. Sure. But you have to find, again, going back into the right person that's going to believe in that vision, right? That is there for the long term versus the short term and it has been hard for me to find the right person to be able to do that but i truly believe in the model yeah i i think that's the

best model i tried doing that model back with my with my younger brother back you know back in 2010 2011 when i was in the in the jewelry business and he turned out that opportunity and he missed that in a lot yeah you should have taken on that so give give people to leave people with like maybe three things on the entrepreneur space business ownership space that they should be focusing on to go for growth and then i'll tell you guys make sure you're following him make sure you go get his book right now is it the nine secrets for a successful life in business nine secrets to or for a successful life in business make sure you get his free book totally free follow him on social media um but let's leave them with like three things that you can give them

to start to grow and scale their business okay i always start with faith make sure that you have faith in in something i believe in god so to me talk about God, right? And God made me as an equal image of him. So I have a huge belief in myself. Sure. And if you don't believe in yourself, you're not going to get far. I think that's the biggest one out of anything that you could tell anybody. Number two is have the right vision. Figure out what your vision is. Why do you want what you're trying to go for? And it's not about the money because again, I was focused on the money and I went bankrupt because I didn't have the right vision. My vision changed when I really understand that it was because I wanted to accomplish all my childhood dreams. I wanted to have a Lamborghini

and I wanted to have a million dollar house. So the vision has to be something that's attainable and achievable. You start looking at that. So that's number two. So faith and the vision has to be something that attainable and achievable. You start looking at that. So that's number two. So faith and the vision. And number three is get surrounded around the right people. Have a great mentor, somebody that you look up to, somebody that you want to be like, and have the people that work for you believe in your vision and share your values with you. And I think those are the basic ones.

I love that. Again, make sure everyone's going to follow him on all his, what's your Instagram handle? EdwinCarion78. EdwinCarion78. Facebook? Same thing. Same thing. And nine secrets for... Yeah. The website is EdwinCarion.com. You'll be able to get the book right there. Perfect. I love that. Very simple. Definitely free. Absolutely free. It's been a pleasure having you, Perfect. I love that. Very simple. Mine is absolutely free. Absolutely free. It's been a pleasure having you, bro. I know you're making a really big impact. You and I are probably going to be doing some real estate stuff together. Excited to have you on and let's go get it.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Justin. Absolutely. All right, y'all. That is the end of the episode. Stay tuned for the next guest on the Entrepreneur DNA. Peace.