The Entrepreneur DNA - The Power of Social Media | Ryan Pineda | EP17

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Today I sit down with Ryan Pineda as he shares his journey from professional athlete to becoming a leading real estate investor and influential entrepreneur. Broadcasting from his office, Ryan discusses his initial ventures in couch flipping, his transition to real estate, and how he scaled his businesses to achieve multimillion-dollar revenues. He emphasizes the critical role of social media in business growth and introduces his passion project, Wealthy Way, which aims to teach entrepreneurs how to achieve financial success without compromising their quality of life. Through his experiences, Ryan provides valuable advice on mentorship, the importance of documenting entrepreneurial journeys on social media, and the potential of new technologies like NFTs and blockchain in real estate.   Connect with Ryan: Instagram - @ryanpineda Website - https://wealthyway.com/   This episode is brought to you by Horizon Trust Company. Unlock the potential of your retirement savings with innovative investment solutions from Horizon Trust. Visit https://www.horizontrust.com/justin/ to learn how you can diversify your retirement portfolio.    

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Entrepreneur DNA Podcast. I am with a friend of mine, someone who is absolutely the epitome of what the show is about. Mr. Ryan Pineda is here. And in fact, I'm at his office right now as you're probably watching this. What's up, brother? Good to see you, man. Dude, thank you for allowing us to rock this podcast in your office for The Wealthy Way. I know. We should probably switch seats, but it's all good. Dude, it is totally all good. So let's have the question that I ask all of our guests here, which would be for someone who's either an aspiring entrepreneur or maybe just became

an entrepreneur. What would be your one first piece of advice to that entrepreneur? I'm sure this is the generic advice. So I'll give you the generic advice and then I'll give you the non-generic. So generic advice would be, okay, whatever it is you're doing, go get the mentor, go get the coaching and whatever it is, right? You're going into real estate, go get a real estate coach. You're in selling shoes, go get somebody who sold shoes and learn from them. Like trying to figure it out on your own is just, it's going to take forever. It's not worth it. That's number one. The non-generic advice from me anyways, from what I've learned as an entrepreneur is document the journey on social media right now.

You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking, well, man, I'm busy. I'm starting my business and I haven't done anything. I'm improving. I'm like, I don't care. Just start putting it out there on social media, what you're doing, because it's going to be worth it. Yeah, I agree. You and I have a fun

story about that that we are able to even talk about on your podcast about social media. But I firmly believe social media is not just the way of the future, but it has to be a must in your business as anyone. I have a friend that is a surgeon and he blew up his TikTok that now he is able, he's a plastic surgeon. Right. He's able to charge more than anyone else in Scottsdale by a figure of 3X. And he gets it. And the reason being, very similar to you, he took advantage of the infancy of TikTok here in the States. He believed in it. He knew it was going to work. Crushed it. He has 4 point something million people now who follow him. Wow. And he's a plastic surgeon, not necessarily

an influencer. That's cool. But it drives, now he can 3X what he charges, whatever the numbers is. He's like, dude, you look at my competition. They're literally three times less than what I charge and I'm booked solid. He's a celebrity surgeon now. Which is great, right? But that's the power of whether it's TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube or whatever. Right. Now, listen, I wanted you on here badly because you have a huge history in the real estate space. You are one of the leading influencers and investors across the nation. So that is incredible. But not only that, you have so many other different businesses that I want to kind of dive into. And I really want to highlight

Wealthy Way for you because I know it is just such a passion project for you. And I want to make sure that our audience knows about it, knows what it is. So we are going to get to the Wealthy Way for you because I know it is just such a passion project for you. And I want to make sure that our audience knows about it, knows what it is. So we are going to get to the Wealthy Way. All right, cool. Before we get to the Wealthy Way, talk to us a little bit about the journey about, you know, obviously if no one knows who Ryan is, he did start out as an athlete and we don't have to go through your whole story. But you definitely, from what I'm aware of, you started out in the real estate space. And from there, you have now developed multiple streams of income. What's been your success to doing something like that, where you take one vertical and

then have expanded in totally different verticals, right? How did you make those jumps? You know, I tell entrepreneurs this all the time, that you have to keep going through the ladder of the next big opportunity, right? Because at some point, the current industry or market you're in becomes capped. And so my journey as an entrepreneur has kind of been jumping to the next step. So when I got started, okay, not talking about my baseball career, I was a pro baseball player for many years, but that didn't make me money because I was just making 1200 bucks as a minor leaguer. Okay.

I had to do things on the side. So the first real successful entrepreneur journey I had was flipping couches. And so, you know, I start flipping couches and, you know, it goes from a thousand a month to 2000 a month to 4,000, 6,000. I got it's up to 8,000 a month. That's real income. Yeah. That's real money. And I was like, this is great. I'm killing it. Well, after about a year of doing that, I realized, man, this is kind of it. This is how much I can make doing this. Now, granted other people, since I've talked about couch flipping and kind of made it famous, they've

figured out how to make 20, 30 grand a month, but, like there's a cap. It is, that is what it is. And so I started to look at other opportunities and I fell into house flipping and I said, well, house flipping something that, man, if I could just flip one a month and make 20 grand, I'll be making a quarter million dollars a year. That's amazing. And so, you know, by year two, I got to make an over 200 grand. And then I said, dude, this house living thing could get even bigger. I could make over a million dollars. And so, you know, year three, I made 750. And then year four, I made $2 million.

And I was like, wow, this is great. And, you know, over the years, I've scaled it. And, you know, we've been anywhere two to four million. And this year, you know, I think we're somewhere above four million. But, you know, at the end of the day, I realized house living even had a cap of like, man, this is kind of it. Yeah. There are guys I see doing 10 to 20 million.

And, you know, there's the hedge funds and Zillows that are doing way, but they lose money, right? Totally. So, you know, I'm like, this is kind of it. And I don't really want to go expand this to other markets and everything else. So what's the next stepping stone? Well, on my entrepreneurial journey, I start getting into social media. You know, this was about two and a half years ago. And I said, I think this is the next frontier to not only itself make money as an influencer, but to draw all the traffic to all the other businesses, right? And so, you know, I go down this journey, you know, and let me also add this. Each time you go to a new step, you always have to sacrifice something from the previous step. And so when I went from couch flipping to house flipping, I had to completely give up couch flipping, even though it's making eight grand

a month. It's a great business, right? When I went from house flipping to social media, I didn't give it up, but there was a transition where we definitely made less money because I wasn't the one closing deals. I wasn't involved as much. And so I was willing to accept that transition period until I trained up my replacements so that I could pursue the social media thing, which at the time wasn't making any money. Right. Right. Right. Anyways, it ends up working out the way I thought it would. Um, you know, and it allowed me to start building these other businesses that are much more scalable, more profitable, better cash cycles and everything, you know, so I get into the education business and, you know, education, you know, now makes anywhere from one to 2 million a month. And, you know, I start building different verticals in education. And I still believe I haven't even come close to hitting the education cap. I think that we could definitely get education to three to five million a month. Right. And so we still got a long way to go with that before I'm like, okay, now what? But even then, even though I'm still

growing those types of businesses, I have other businesses as well, I'm looking at, okay, what's the next step above that? How do you get to a hundred million? How do you get to a billion? And you start to see these different verticals. And for me, it all leads back to tech. You look at all the richest people in the world as basically tech. And for me, it all leads back to tech. You look at all the richest people in the world, it's basically tech. There are some, you know, I think there's only one guy who's not like tech and it's the Louis Vuitton owner. I always butcher his name, Bernard Arnault, I think is his name. And it's like, well, he's basically tech because his t-shirt costs 10 bucks and he charges 3000 for it. So his margins are tech

margins. So, you know, I'm thinking about it and I'm like, well, I do believe that crypto and real estate are going to merge. I think that this blockchain thing is going to be massive. And so, you know, I create my NFT tykes and, you know, it's the number one NFT. I was just going to say, congratulations. The number one NFT. Yep. Number one NFT in the world at launch. And, you know, it's been ultra, ultra successful despite everything going on in the market. Sure. So, you know, I'm looking at that and I'm saying, man, these are literal nine figure billion dollar opportunities if I execute correctly. And so, you know, that's kind of the next stepping stone for me is like I'm in the tech space and doing that stuff. But here's the thing, everything that I have is,

is always going up to the next stepping stone. So, you know, for an entrepreneur listening to this, I just would say, don't try to jump to step four, like, Hey, let's get to eight grand, 10 grand a month. Okay. Now let's figure out how to get to 20, 30 grand a month, and then a hundred grand a month. And then maybe you get to a million a month. Like, you know, most people that would be very happy to make 20 grand a month. A hundred percent. A hundred grand a month. Like most people, like 99% of the world would be excited to make 20 grand a month. But I just kind of get bored being at a cap. I'm like, what am I going to do next? And it's not that I want to take over the world or be the biggest

and baddest. I'm just like, literally, I want to see what I'm capable of. You're a classic entrepreneur. There's always something else that you can go out and conquer and you believe you can conquer it. So you go attempt and try. And I'm sure there's been failures on your part. I know there's been failures on my part. Doesn't mean we stop or quit. I think you highlighted something that we were just briefly talking about. People want step four. They want to be Ryan Pineda on step four. Yeah.

Right? But they're not willing to be Ryan Pineda on house couch flipping first. That was couch flipping 10 years ago. My point being is they want the 10 years Ryan Pineda where you're making the money Ryan Pineda is making now, they're not willing to go through the journey to get there. They don't want to take step one. They want to go straight to step four. That's the

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horizontrust.com forward slash Justin and discover how to amplify your retirement savings with the power of alternative investments. Don't just plan for retirement, pave the way to a wealthy future with Horizon Trust. But you know, here's the thing I will say. You definitely do have to put in the hard work and learn the hard lessons. And you're gonna go through ups and downs and failures and everything else. I've failed many, many times.

But I will say, if somebody watches me today and they know my story, they know everything I'm saying, they should be able to do it way quicker than 10 years. So maybe they can get to step four really fast. Maybe step one only takes them a couple of months where it took me a couple of years. And then step two takes them instead of six years, it takes them two and then et cetera. And that's the function of learning from someone like yourself. You get to cut to the front of the line, right?

I mean, that's the reality is you've done it. So you can say, here's the mistakes I made. Don't do that. Do this instead, right? So talk to me about the different ventures that you have done and why you choose the different ventures, right? As I said, you're a leader in the real estate space. If everyone doesn't know that, obviously you can go follow Ryan anywhere and you'll learn very quickly. But there are ventures that are way outside of real estate. We just talked about Tykes, for example, which is NFT. There's a connectivity there because you do believe some of this crypto and some of this stuff is going to connect to real estate, but we can go into the wealthy way. You have the education we just talked about. And so what makes you go down

these paths and choose them as a way to a make income, but also as a venture that you really believe in and want to go down? You know, I was actually thinking about this the other day. So I, I just created a website for our like parent company. And so, you know, our parent company is just called the Panetta company. Right. And so you could just go to panetta.co and that just shows all of our businesses and it's actually more so a recruiting website for anyone looking for a career because we're just hiring so frequently. But as I was like developing the mission statement for that website, I'm like, what is the central theme to all these different businesses? Like you mentioned,

we've got a ton of them. I've got a CPA firm. We've got e-commerce stuff. I've got a women's mastermind. You're like, how does this guy have a women's mastermind? He's a dude. So I started to think, what is the central theme of everything I'm doing? And the reality is all the businesses have basically been around helping people make more money in one way or another and live more fulfilling lives. And the wealthy ways about that, the masterminds are all about that. At the end of the day, if I can help people make more money through these different ways, and then I can also teach them to do it in a way that is fulfilling and not just work, work, work, go grind, grind, grind,

then that kind of resonates with me because that's what I've done. I've just figured out how to make money in lots of different ways while still maintaining balance and having fun. You know, I golfed this morning. I'm golfing Friday. I golfed on Monday. You know, I hope you're getting good, bro. You golf more than anyone I know that's not retired. I'm basically retired now, but, um, you know, no, I think, uh, like even golf, golf is a thing where I made it a business. I was posting the other day, you know, I have this thing called golf with Ryan. It's just a stupid entrepreneur thing where I'm like, I don't know. People might just pay to golf with me. I don't know. Like let's test it out. And in the last year, golf with Ryan

has made almost 300 grand. And I'm like, man, you know, this is is a pretty like at this point your membership yeah no at this point i am a pro golfer yeah you know you're getting paid that's the definition of a pro but uh speaking wise skill wise i do think i could also at some point play professionally too like and that's not just like some random thing like i know what it takes to be a pro athlete. Yeah. So I don't know. I just like challenges, man. But why would I get in these other verticals?

I think I just enjoy like helping people make money. I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy kind of. Is there anything wrong with just going for a money grab as an entrepreneur where it may not be connected in your place? I think for me, that was couch flipping. Okay. Like couch flipping was a hundred percent that I'm like, this is literally just about making money. Yeah. You know? And I think even house flipping was that way. I'm like, real estate didn't interest me in the way that I know a lot of people are very passionate about it.

I was not. I'm like, I'll flip houses. Can that make money? Cool. Let me do this. It's self-serving in not a malicious way, but flipping houses makes Ryan Pineda, Justin Colby a lot of money doing it. There's not necessarily the altruistic, I'm helping others by doing it. I guess you could paint a picture. We're making neighborhoods better and cleaner.

You could paint the picture, of course. Right. But what I will say is, yes, this was kind of the path that everyone has to start on starting out, right? Now, if you're fortunate enough where you can build a business that is really, truly revolved around helping people and making money, great. But couch flipping, sure, every business exists because they solve a problem, they help people.

House flipping does do that. But for me, after I got through that, I started to realize, man, there are other businesses that are a lot more fulfilling and make a lot more money, just kind of like what I talked about on the ladder. I would much rather teach all these people to flip houses because it's way more fulfilling, plus it makes way more money. So why would I not do that? So wouldn't you agree that that is a, I'm not going to say the right word, but like,

there's a transition, right? When you first get into entrepreneurship, I know I did because I was broke, broker in a joke. I know you came from starting to make some money, but you become an entrepreneur and you're like, I need to make a lot of money now. That's kind of the motivator. But as you start to make a lot of money, you can transition into, well, that's not nearly as fulfilling as helping. Because I know that that's happened to me where I got into real estate in 2007. I didn't become an educator until 2014

because I was about like, I want to serve me, which is making the money. But then it became to your point where you're like, okay, it's cool, but I want something else that is more fulfilling. And that happens when it happens. And that's why you've gone in education. We want to start talking about wealthy way, but that's at least for me. Isn't there some level of like, I would make the argument, it's okay to come out and spend the first year, two, three, four, five, just let's go make a lot of money. Because if you, you know, if your cup is full, right, that's how you're able to give the others. But if your cup is not full, very challenging to be able

to give to others. Yeah, 100%. So let's get into the wealthy way. I know it's one of your newer ventures. I know it's definitely probably the most passionate you are about probably all your projects. Maybe, maybe not. But let's talk about The Wealthy Way a little bit. Tell us a little bit about it right now. Yeah. The mission of The Wealthy Way is to help people not go broke trying to get rich. I like that. I just see it all the time, man. In the pursuit of getting rich as entrepreneurs, we go broke in other areas of life. We give up on our health. We get out of shape. We stop going to church. We have no faith.

We, you know, neglect our wives, our husbands, whoever, our kids. And, you know, you just kind of put all these things to the side in the pursuit of money. And it's a very easy trap to fall into. And I've seen it time and time again. And so the more I saw it and the more that people kept asking me, they were like, Ryan, how the heck do you run all these businesses? And then you golf this morning and you did it again. And you're still, you know, I see you holding Bible study every Wednesday and you're doing

like, how, how is it even possible? And I was like, well, I've been asked this a million times. When I get asked a million times, I just create something that gives the answer to the solution. But instead of charging for it, like a lot of my other education, I was like, you know what, this one's like actually super important that everyone gets. So I'm going to just create everything for free. And so, you know, I created the wealthy way, which is kind of this brand and I'm building everything around it essentially with what I do, because I want people to know this because nobody's really known for this. Most entrepreneurs

on social media are really a part of the grind culture. And, you know, hey, in order for you to get ahead, these are the things you have to do. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm passing a lot of people really fast doing it my way. So I'm going to teach people a different way, the wealthy way. Right. And, you know, the way it started was last year, I created this course. I also spent six figures developing software for a morning planner so that people could be accountable and create goals and the goals and everything, the way you use the planners based on the course so that you know exactly why it works and how it works. And I use the planner every day. It's what keeps me accountable. It's a planner I've actually

created for years and I've used myself cause I didn't like any of them, but it started out on a Google sheet and that was how I tracked everything. And I did that for years and then my tech team created it into software. And now we're building it into a mobile app and other things. But along with that, I created another course, which we're releasing free. I rebranded my podcast to The Wealthy Way. And I got a book coming out December 13th for The Wealthy Way that I'm super excited about. And the whole mission is like, literally, everything I do within The Wealthy Way is free. And I tell people this all the time, there's no upsells or anything. I have no problem selling you on anything. I will sell you,

and I will tell you it costs a lot of money to work with me in whatever fashion. But The Wealthy Way truly is no upsell. Yeah. Well, I think that's the altruistic thing that I think is needed in our space. We just were talking like there's a lack of it because everyone is trying to get money, essentially. That's what most entrepreneurs is the grind. Go make a bunch of money. So I applaud you for coming out with something like this. I think it's needed for all entrepreneurs. Doesn't matter your vertical real estate or otherwise. Um, if you could give advice to an entrepreneur who may have that dream, but may not see the financial future for it, right? Wealthy way would be a great point, right? Where it's a passion. It may not create as much money. Would

you, what advice would you give to that person? Do you follow the passion? Do you try to make money first so you can give to that passion? Where do you go? What's the right starting point for someone? I think there's something called the hedgehog concept in a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins that's really good. And it just basically takes these three circles. And this is how you determine whether or not what you're doing is, you know, basically going to be your maximum opportunity for you, right? So the first circle says, you know, are you passionate about this? The second circle says, can this be an economic driver for you? Third circle says, can you be world class at this? Okay. So if there is any activity that you do that fits all

three of those circles, it's right in the middle where they all intersect, then you're going to be extremely happy doing it. You're going to crush it and you're going to just love everything about it. Right. So it's like, for me, we were talking about education, right? Am I passionate about educating people? Yeah. That's why I make content all day. I love it. Okay. Am I really good at it? Yeah. I like to think I'm pretty dang good at it, right? There's that. Can it make me a lot of money and drive my economic engine? Yes, it can. Boom. So education fits all three boxes. Therefore it's something I should definitely be focusing on doing heavily. You know, house flipping was that way. I was good at it. I like it. You know, it can definitely make a lot of money. But for most people, they're stuck in a career that maybe

only fits one of those, right? It makes them money, but they don't like it. And they're not even that good at it. They just, they work the job. Or maybe they're passionate about something, maybe it's music, and their dream must always be an artist. And yet they don't do it because they just can't make money doing it, right? And so my point is, if you're starting out, if you can find something that hits all three boxes, you're gold. But the odds are you're probably not, at least initially. And you're going to find yourself over time. And so if you work a job right now that you're pretty

good at, maybe you're not super passionate about it, but it makes you money. You can keep doing that while you pursue these different hobbies and things that, you know, are your calling, you know, for years, you know, when, even when I was flipping couches, I wasn't making, I mean, I was making pretty good money, but it's not like I loved it. It was just kind of a job. I was serving. I was doing mission trips. My wife and I used to do Sunday school. We did that for years for kids.

And it's just like that stuff was where I got my fulfillment when couch flipping wasn't fulfilling me. So I think that you can still get your fulfillment in other things outside of your work. I agree emphatically. And I probably take the argument that if you follow something that you really enjoy, you can find a way to drive the economic, right, to the point of social media. Social media pays now. Yeah. So if you're a great artist, musician, whatever it may be, maybe it may not make you money out of the gate, but you can find ways to drive the economic engine because of how society is these days, right? And you can find a way to drive money.

YouTube's a great example, right? YouTube pays great content providers for great videos. So, well, let's wrap it up with just the simple question of the best piece of advice you've been given that has changed your entrepreneur direction. Hmm. You know, I've had a lot of good advice recently. Um, what has changed my direction is a good question. You know, Cardone told me something, um, a couple of months back that stuck out and it was something i kind of knew but needed to be

reinforced you know a lot of times we need to hear something over and over again before we take it serious and you know he basically just said that like dude marketing is it supersedes everything unbelievably and i was like okay like explain so he started to explain how his number one job is to market like crazy, get on social media, talk, promote his events, raise capital, all these things. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, yeah, that, that really is the biggest thing. When I look at all my businesses and their success, it's because of the amount of marketing I've done through content and everything else. And, you know, if I really want to impact people and reach more people and grow my businesses and get more opportunities, it can be simply summed up into how do I become

a better marketer? How do I create more content, give more value? And if I just do that, everything else falls into place. I don't even need to think about the rest. Love it. Love it. Well, dude, thank you so much for gracing the podcast. This is going to be incredible for all entrepreneurs. Doesn't matter the vertical. If you don't know Ryan Pineda, make sure you are following him. And most importantly, I think you want them to go to the wealthy ways at wealthyway.com. Yep. Yep. You can get all of our stuff, wealthyway.com. Right on brother. Why appreciate being on. Cool. Appreciate you, man. Yep. You can get all of our stuff, wealthyway.com. Right on brother. Why? I appreciate you being on. Cool. Appreciate you, man. Peace.