Ep. 25-Victor Maya: From Poverty To Building a Culture That Wins

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's guest is someone who I've had the honor of meeting through really incredible connections, who was gracious enough when we first met to help me out with a little bit of my own business strategy. And then we finally met in person a few months ago through our another buddy Evan Stewart at his Obsessed conference. And he's a small business owner in Oklahoma City. Roofing and water damage restoration experience throughout the entire southern United States, and he's positioned himself as a major player in these industries for both residential and commercial clients. He believes in impacting a person's life with his services and talents. His hobbies include reading, writing, teaching, studying human behavior, developing his relationship with God, and studying with his family. Victor Maya, welcome to the show.

How you doing?

I'm doing excitedly happy to see your face in person again. It's been about 2 months since we last saw each other.

Oh yeah.

So welcome back. So I know that one of the things that I loved talking to you about was your own backstory, was your history of coming from where you started and to where you're at now. So for those people out there who are just hearing about you for the first time, let's spend a few minutes just on that, on your, on your story. And your experiences.

Yeah, I cut off for a little bit, but you were saying about my backstory. So a little bit about me, man. I mean, I was just talking about this a couple of days ago to some book editors, and literally, man, I mean, I was talking about my story, and literally, I want to, I want to tear up a little bit, man, because I was like, I always go back to the past, uh, because of where I started, you know. I mean, people always talk about coming to, uh, you know, starting from poverty. And I always ask myself is, what is poverty to them? Because poverty can mean a lot of different things. And going back to my past is, I remember being in Mexico, taking a shower with a cup and a bucket. And all I remember is dirt roads everywhere. So, you know, I mean, a lot of people would think about it like, hey, I got it real bad. And don't get me wrong, I always go back to my past is that I didn't have it that bad as my brothers and my sisters. They had the worst. You know what I mean? I was always called the mama's boy. And literally, that's what I was. I was a mama's boy, you can say. And my mom, you know, she came here to the United States as an immigrant. And the reason why was because she got tired of the life in Mexico. A little bit about my mom, she used to go fishing at night, just to go and fish to feed my brothers and sisters. And she got tired of that, you know, living in poverty. So, I mean, she did whatever it took as a mother. So she got to the United States, then after that we came along. And there's two things I always remember, man, when I passed the border. Well, not when I passed the border, when I was a kid. One of those moments was when I was 7 years old. I remember arriving to Houston, Texas, and seeing all those glass buildings and saying to myself in Spanish, like, Man, aquí voy a hacer algo grande, which, let me translate that, that's, I'm gonna do something big here. And I always ask myself, man, like, why did I do this? Why did I say that to myself? One day I was journaling, man, and I journaled to myself, it's like, duh, Vic, all you knew was dirt roads and taking a shower with a cup and a bucket. You thought you were another planet. And literally that was one of the moments, and the second moment was when I was 10 years old. It was my mother, man. My mom, she used to work 2 or 3 jobs all the time. And my mom gets home one time at 3 in the morning from late work. And I hear the door open. And I go running to her. And I'm saying, "Mom, mom, mom, mom." She's like, "What happened, son?" And I'm saying, "Mom, I need 2 luggages." And she's like, "For what?" And I said, "Mom, so I can fill them up with money and get us out of poverty." Literally, when I was a kid, that was my whole goal. It was to get us out of poverty. And literally, I mean, I always look back to the past because as I'm writing, one of those moments that I remember when I was a kid, it was my mom when we used to go grocery shopping. My mom used to tell me in Spanish, "Hey, son, tell the cashier not to pass $120 because that's all we have." So it was very embarrassing all the time to tell the cashier, it's like, hey, that's all we can take. You know what I mean? We can't take all this. We can only take this. And then I remember walking from the grocery store about 3 miles to the apartments with a shopping cart, because we didn't have a car. And so literally, I mean, we were risking ourselves all the time getting robbed, which my sister one time got robbed for her food stamps. And literally, I mean, always remembering that, and I'm like, which I'm thankful for them, because I always say something that they can't take away from me, you know what I mean? What I always, what I'm talking about while I'm writing my book right now is about being in the hood, but also having books, being book smart but also hood smart. It's what I call it. So that's a little story about me, man, when I was growing up as a kid.

So this idea that you had when you crossed over, you saw these big glass buildings, and you said to yourself, "I'm going to do something big." What was that like? So you were how old at that time?

7.

You were 7 years old. And to have this concept, have this idea of building something big, like, what were the next steps? What was your commitment? What was your life like, right? Going to school, learning English. Adjusting to a new culture, a new country, what did you have to commit to? What did you have to have your mindset at every day in order to get from where you are then to where you are now?

I would say doing more. Doing more and learning more. I mean, that was always my thing since I was a kid. I knew that to be different, and especially where I was at, looking at the other students, I used to be in honor classes, and literally in honor classes, all those kids, you know what I mean, they were smarter than me. The only thing I could do is repetition. I could repeat myself and do them that way. So literally everything that I learned was through repetition. And like you said, I mean, what did you have to do? I remember being with one of my best friends when I was a kid. He used to always look at me because I used to always do— like, let's say the teacher said, hey, Victor, only do one page. Well, they told everybody, hey, only one page. I used to do two. Then they'd be like, hey, you only have to do this. I did three. Like, I always did more than what was required. And my friend always asked me, like, Victor, why are we doing this? Why are you doing this? And I used to always tell him, like, you see, man, the difference is that those kids in that class, they more likely got it made, man. They got maybe a father or mother that's going to pay off their college. Or, you know, I mean, they got it made. Maybe after they're done with school, they don't have to work. They don't have to work as hard. And literally, I told him, me and you, we have to do this, man. You know what I mean? We're in our house, like, living like sardines. I mean, we have to do this, man. We don't— there's no its or buts. That's always been my separator, is that.

Yeah, and that's really, really deep because as we experience people around us, especially right now, that we you're going around speaking, myself in my practice as a therapist and a coach, there's a lot of people that come to the table with an excuse-based mentality of either that entitlement of that what they think should be coming to them, or they're not willing to put in enough work consistently to accomplish whatever it is that they are seeking out to accomplish. So when you talked about this repetition, right, the first thing that comes to my mind is my memories of being an awful student. I barely graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. And I was going through my parents' divorce at the time. And similar to you, there was some financial struggles going on in my family. And I realized like the things that helped me the most were the people that I surrounded myself with, mentors, people from my synagogue that were one of my youth directors that helped give me scholarships to different programs, but people that were committed to my success as much as I was committed to my own. But I didn't even have my own buy-in fully then. It was just the fact that other people saw my potential. And here you are starting off at 7, 8 years old, fully committed to your own success, to take care of your family, to do whatever needs to be done. And you even came up with a way of solving your problems, which is by repetition, right?

Yes.

Yeah. So can you imagine like what would it be like if people out there, and maybe this is the theme of our conversation, is repetition committing to the long game about singularly minded focus on a specific area of your life, and just running that over and over and over again, going to get an outcome of success way more than just trying to throw like a shotgun approach at it.

I agree. Now, one thing I do want— I would say, you know, I mean, you just got to keep it real, you know, because one thing I always say is seeing other entrepreneurs, especially on social media, A lot of people will always talk like everything has been up here. And literally my life has been like, like, I mean, like this. I mean, like literally, like I told you, my book and my message is conquer. You know, I'm teaching, I'm gonna be speaking about how to conquer your life, your finances, your health. I mean, everything. 'Cause I have walked all kinds of things, man. From, like I said, I mean, being from the hood, I learned different methods, different things that other people never been around. Like I'm writing my book about, you know what I mean, hanging around with drug dealers and hanging around with all these guys that, you know what I mean, that they didn't care. They did whatever it took to just get something. And literally there's something to learn from there. And everything I learned in the streets and also everything that I done wrong, you know what I mean, from Conquering addiction, you know, I used to be a cocaine addict. So I conquered that. Conquering my health. I used to be 230 pounds at one point. You know, I mean, we're talking about conquering, especially, you know, I'm married and the stuff that I've done towards my own wife, you know, that I hurt so much, you know, from infidelities to everything you can talk about. You know what I mean, all that stuff. So how I was able to conquer that, you know, being a father, you know what I mean, I used to always be away from my kids. I used to always put my business in front of my kids. So it was always, I used to only see them 3 or 4 times a month. And literally how I was able to conquer that. So literally, you know what I mean, it's literally about being real, you know what I mean? So I don't want to ever come along because I always see people coming along like, Oh man, it's always been like, look at me, you know? I mean, it's been beautiful. I'm like, no, it hasn't, man. That's why one thing I live by is I treat people like everybody's broken. I don't care, because I know I got friends that are way up here that are multi-millionaires, and I only met one billionaire. And then a couple of friends are way down here. And I always tell them, everybody has different struggles. So literally, if you want to see somebody else's struggle, just get close to them. Don't ever envy no one. So, I always say that is, if you want to see my mistakes and his mistakes, just get close to us and you won't envy us at all, man. Trust me, because we all have missing structures. So, I'd rather talk about that, you know what I mean? I always say the real things, you know?

Yeah. And especially coming from, like you said, you studied psychology in the past and as a therapist, I know one of our mutual coaches, Coach Michael Burt, talks about the term of good for all time zones, right? And I think that's exactly the theme that you were saying that like, can you walk around as an entrepreneur, as a business professional, as a human, as a husband, as a dad and connect to everybody that you need to connect to. And they can feel that similar connection back to you and be able to, right? And then be able to get the value that you can bring them in. And the value is not about how you can make them more money, but like just a true human connection.

I agree. I agree. I agree 1,000% with you on that.

And I think that's lacking out there, right? Especially in this entrepreneur space, as you were talking about with social media and people hyping themselves up. Pat Hilton and I have this conversation all the time about, right, these fake poses that people are putting out there and they're not showing like what it really takes for the brick and mortar around us to be built, right? And you're in the construction world. So you see the foundations that are shoddy and things are built up upon foundations that are, right? And you have to come in and fix these things with water remediation and roofing to make sure, but metaphorically speaking, those are right if our own foundations aren't secure. If we're letting things into our life, right, we're gonna have a completely damaged property.

Yes, I agree. That's why I always say it's about business. You know, I mean, I always say every field of knowledge is different, but they're connected and they often rhyme. Because your industry with my industry, they rhyme, and they're somehow connected. And literally what you just said is basically, today I was talking to one of my friends who works for this roofing manufacturer, which is the biggest roofing manufacturer in the world. And one thing I was telling him is that right now I'm already scaling my businesses so we can expand. And he told me like, "Vic, it took you a while." I go, "Yes, but I want to make sure my foundation is just steady. It's great.". Because one thing I don't want to do is scale chaos. Because it's very important you don't scale chaos. And many people just want to go do this, but without scaling their businesses correctly, they're just gonna learn how to make money so much. I mean, I've seen it happen all the time. They go up and then they just come down. And literally, you're talking about construction. I mean, that's just it. I mean, it takes so long for things to grow, especially in the industry that I'm in. A lot of people want to learn how to do commercial roofing. A lot of people want to learn how to do restoration, especially large losses, because there's $1 million, $3 million in one deal. And what people don't understand is the same way that there's a lot of money involved in the business that I'm in, it's great. A lot of people always call me, ask me all these questions. I'm like, hey, you know, your business can go— you can get one job, that's great, make this much. But if that job goes wrong, it'll bring your whole company down. Your whole company goes down, like, that's it. You're done. Because of one building you did wrong. Because people don't play, you know what I mean? You're dealing with a person's asset. They're not gonna just sit there and watch you ruin their assets.

Absolutely. So, what structures have you put in place that you've learned from starting off the company to where you are now that have helped you protect both not only your assets, but also, to protect the people that you're working with to help them grow? Because I know that you and I are very likely like-minded when it comes to the people that we're working with. We want them to be like-minded with self-care and growth. So what are some of those things that you've put into place into your companies that have helped initiate that?

The main thing, I would say the main thing, the main thing, the main thing, and that main thing is culture. It's just a Culture, that's my number one weapon. That's what I was saying this last Thursday when I was speaking in downtown and literally that's what I was talking about, is culture. Culture is my number one weapon and it goes down to that. My team understands our core values, they understand the mission of the company, we all come in different colors, different sizes, different genders, but we do believe in the same thing of the company's, you know, mission and they also align with the core values. So literally that's the number one thing. If you want to say what's the main thing that you want to implement into your company, that's your number one weapon, is culture. And literally it starts with that. Everything else falls into that because that's your foundation. You're talking about pillars, I mean you got to build all that on that foundation. 'Cause people always look at my companies like that, like, "Man, dude, I mean, your culture is strong. Like, all these people that you have, they come in and they come with batteries included. How did you do that? How did you create that?" And I'm like, "Man, it's a long process." You know, it's literally a really long process to do all that, and it all starts with one person. That's you. So I always use this, one of my mentors once told me, a long time ago when I was barely starting, he goes, "Victor, let me ask you something." And then I said, "Yes." We're eating, we're having a, you know, we're just eating somewhere at a restaurant down in Dallas. And he told me, "Victor, look at yourself in that mirror." There was a mirror right there in the restaurant, because I was asking him about some advice because he owns a huge company. And he said, "Victor, let me ask you something. Will you hire that person you see in the mirror?" Because literally, If you see a B player right there, don't expect to be hiring A+ players or A players. It ain't gonna work that way. If you're a B player, that's all you're gonna attract is B players and C players. So I challenged myself after that. I was like, man, I gotta become an A+ player. I gotta become an A+ player so I can attract A+ players. And that's how it works, man. I mean, I can't say anything else. I can tell you everything from different structures, of the company, but I'm just going to go to the main source and that's that, it's the culture of the company.

So what are some of the things that you started doing for yourself to become that A+ player?

Well, one of the things is I always go back to the whole person theory. That's the main thing, uh, when it comes to my personal life is, uh, knowing how to hit all 4 parts, which is the mind, the heart, the body, the spirit. And it's very important because I kind of look at myself as a performer, like a professional athlete, you know. To perform right, I gotta be right. So for an example, this morning I wake up, I spend my time with God. I mean, I'm a Christian man, that's just me, you know what I mean? That's just, that's just who I am. So I give 30 minutes of my morning to God so that I can connect my You know, hit my SQ, spiritual intelligence. So that's connecting myself to a higher power. Then after that, I hit my IQ, which is my mind. So I read 30 minutes, 45 minutes a day. Every day I do the same thing. There's not a day that doesn't— that I don't do that. Then the third is my EQ. That's my heart. So I show love to my family. You know, I'm the one who drops off my kids. It's very important to me to drop off my kids because I get to talk to them. And there's a reason why I always say it's very important to spend time with your kids, because at the end of the day, hey, I'm not taking this with me. I'm going to leave it to them. So I got to be coaching them and teaching them as they're growing. My kids are teenagers right now. Their coach is me. I coach my kids. I train them. They know business. They know about life. They know about health. They know about so much different things that they're not teaching in school. So that's my responsibility, you know, so that's my EQ. And then from there, like later on at night, I get home, I get home about 5 o'clock, by 6 o'clock go hit the gym. That's my PQ, that's physical intelligence. So that completes the whole person. And literally it's every day, it's every day, it's not just some days, it's an everyday thing. And that's how I can stay in high performance. Because literally, I can always say, can I give my team what I don't possess? There's no way. You know what I mean? There's no way you can give to your team what you don't possess. It doesn't work that way.

And doesn't that go back to the simplicity of what you were saying before about repetition, right? People talk about entrepreneurship as this really sexy thing in 2019, and the truth of the matter is, is that there has to be, and there is, incredibly boring, monotonous, repetitive tasks, and those are the ones that build that foundation. Foundation, like you said, in all those 4 quadrants, specifically not only in our business, but in our personal or spiritual or psychological and emotional health. The people out there think that it's these one-off retreats or these one-off conferences or a one-time trip to go do yoga, but it's actually monotonous in a way.

Well, it's like what you just said about boring. One thing I always tell my kids is It's all about if you can do the boring stuff. The boring stuff is what gets you from here to here, but it's about the boring. People always want the exciting things. I'm like, no, it's kind of like the product. Everybody wants the reward, but nobody wants to go through the process. And literally, it's about the process. Don't fall in love with the reward, fall in love with the whole process. And that is it. It's just lining yourself up. It's like planning. I plan every single night. Every single night I plan. In fact, day and night, I plan at 4:30 in the morning. At 4:30 in the morning, I'm already planning, you know, I already planned my day, I already know where I'm gonna land, I have a setting system. So between 10 and 11 o'clock, I'm doing outbound calls, I'm checking up on my top customers, my Connectors, my Net Promoters, you know what I mean, my, what I call my Surf Club, my help list, social media, you know, getting ready, looking for another showcase event, you know, staying on high-value activities. So, literally, it's about planning too. You gotta learn how to plan.

So, when you first started doing that, right, that specific process of connecting to your clients, about scheduling your day out, about finding new events, and I know a lot of people out there probably struggle with this because either they're A, so stuck in the technician side of their job where they're just being only finding the time to do the services in which they were trained to do in order to help other people, and they don't have enough time to be the entrepreneurial real person, which means going out, networking, connecting, finding places to speak, if that's— So, how did you start that off when it was— maybe, did you start this off when your business was smaller or did you already have a team helping you out to get those things done?

Well, I already had a team. But literally, I got what I call dangerously organized about 2 years ago. That's when everything started happening. About a year and a half, well, let's say 2 years. Yeah, 2 years. I started getting organized, really organized. And it all goes back to getting help. You know, I had a lady named Lori Johnson. She has a doctor's degree on psychology and she literally rewired my neurons, you know what I mean? Little by little. And I didn't know what she was doing, but literally that's what she did. Because I was so busy all the time and she was like, no, you don't have ADD and all this other stuff. What you have is that you're too busy. So literally she's like, what I got to get you doing is how to plan. And again, you asked about my team. I had a team, but again, they were being directed by a leader that didn't have a plan in place, a right, a good plan in place. So if you want to say that what happened, it was 2 years ago when everything started going up quickly. And like this year, I mean, we're We're moving fast, but it all goes back to the vision of the company. And I always say is, here goes the companies and here goes me. The vision, my vision, the companies can never catch my vision because I always say is the companies catch my vision, then we're dying, literally.

So what was that shift 2 years ago? What was that one pivot point that caused that to happen where you went from more of a chaos mode to excessively organized?

Well, it goes back to the shift was the lady, you know, my coach, my executive coach that I had at first. That was my shift. Hiring her was like phenomenal. That's why I always believe it's very important to have someone to coach you. It's very important. I mean, everybody had a coach. Everybody like in Google, CEOs and all, they had coaches. Go and read the book Trillion Dollar Coach. It'll tell you all about that. You know what I mean? How that happened. So literally, I mean, I gotta give credit where credit's due, you know? The information's out there, man. You just gotta pay for it. And I would say, you know, if these people gave it to you for free, I mean, it's bad for you if they're giving it to you for free because you're not gonna take it serious. So that's why I'd rather pay for it. That's why I would pay, you say, Matt Manero, Judge Graham, I'll pay Michael Byrd and Grant Cardone and all these guys. I'll pay them for their services. I always do. That's because it's not for them. They don't need the money. I mean, come on, like right now I think these guys at that Burn the Ships, you know, that AC boot camp, it's $3,000. You know what I mean? You think $3,000 is gonna make a difference in their life? Nothing. It's like, for them it's just like nothing. But it'll be bad for them if they give it to you for free because then you're not gonna take it serious. So literally it was to start doing that. When I started going to boot camps, started attending these conferences and paying for it, that's, that's what really happened.

Well, it's interesting how you say that because my own backstory of being, uh, now in the mindset of being an entrepreneur, coming from the guy who was a therapist who believed that I'm only a healer, I'm only the guy who can talk to you, but I didn't see that whole bigger picture of what the capabilities are, not just from a therapy route, but also from mindset and coaching and helping people with their businesses and entrepreneurial families and stuff like that, that when I first decided to take that huge jump, a buddy of mine took 2 years to convince me to go to business finishing school, which is where I met Matt a few years ago. And that was right before he went through, he was going through his whole torch process. He was in the process of writing his book, You Need More Money. And he was just going through that whole thing of core competencies, core values, changing the culture of his company. That whole thing, and I got to witness that from someone who is tried and true and is running a radically successful $160, $170 million a year business, right? So, for me, that first biggest step was the fear factor of going all in of just to a weekend. Like, I've never done that before outside of my field of clinical training, and I felt like such an outsider in the room, even though there were other medical professionals and there are people in commercial real estate and construction and all these different things, but I never saw myself as a person who can compete at that level, for lack of a better word, where the value in myself was, can I take it bigger than just my small office in South Florida? And it wasn't until I started doing stuff like Business Finishing School with Matt and Rick Sapio and then started connecting through that, through actually through Matt, I have a lot of gratitude for because it was through him I met Coach Burt at his book launch at the 10X Conference in Vegas. And then through Coach Burt, I met you, and then I met Evan. My circles and our circles have become so widened because the investments that we have made into ourselves.

Oh, yeah.

It just started with a weekend of me spending $800 to $1,000 for a weekend to be in front of Rick, who is a capital ventures billionaire, to happen to sit by chance next to Matt at the time when he was just attending business finishing school. To now 2.5, 3 years later, have this incredible network of people who I may not have as coaches professionally, but are mentors who I've worked with or partnered with or I'm collaborating with in a way that I never thought I would before. And I think that's the value and the beauty of people out there knowing like, what's the long-term investment is creating an incredible network of people who are also doing similar-minded things to you are and are going to push you and motivate you. To get there because their investment as your friend is that.

Jason Wasser: Oh yeah. No, I agree. No, I agree. And people don't understand that part, man, about connectivity. It's very important. And I always say it's great. It is about who you know, but then when it's more about who you know than what you know, but as soon as you get to meet who you know, you better know something. I always say that. You better know something because they can literally You feel it, you know what I mean? Absolutely. So yeah, I mean, you gotta invest in yourself. You can never go wrong with that. You know, strip everything away from me, but one thing they can't is what I know.

If you had 30 seconds with somebody to share this collective wisdom that you've gained, and you know that you will never see this person again, and you wanna give those incredible 30 seconds of motivation, what would you say to them?

Take the roadmap instead of motivation. That's the most important part. Because one thing I always say is, literally, a roadmap will get you to your destination. It's like I always say, you know, it's great to come with batteries included, which that's desire. Because many people just think about working hard, working hard, working hard. I mean, as my culture, I'm Hispanic, a lot of Hispanics are hard workers. But one thing I always say is that you need the skill and you need the knowledge. Because what happens if you're working so hard and you're going in the wrong direction? You know, you're supposed to be going east to Florida, but you're going west to Arizona. You know, you're supposed to be going to Florida, and literally you're going at a fast pace, a fast pace, going all the way to Arizona when you should be going that way. And literally, but if you have the skill and the right knowledge, imagine those two things plus the passion going to Florida. I mean, hey, you're going to make a big impact. So don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget that you need all three things. And then from there, when you have all three things, you make it a habit.

Awesome. Awesome. So quickly before we run out of time, where can they find you? How can people connect with you?

Well, you can connect with me on Facebook. You can go to— you can look up Conquer Nation or Victor Maya and you'll be able to find me. You also, I mean, if you want to even email me, victor@victormaya.com. Hey, I mean, I'd be more than happy to help you.

Awesome. Awesome. Victor, such an incredible honor to have you hanging out with us today. And I know that there's probably gonna be some more stuff that we're going to want to tackle in the future. So I look forward to us being in touch and getting more incredible depth out of this conversation.

I thought you were going to be like a counselor to me today, man. I was like, all right, man. I mean, let's see what he finds in me, man. I'm all right with that. You know, he's a psychologist. Why not?

We're going to save that one for definitely the next episode as we have more opportunity and more time.

Yeah, I'm freed up, man. I mean, hey, I'm an open book. So if you've got to ask me questions about what I've been able to do or whatever, man. I mean, what I— what problems I'm having. Shoot, hey, I'm not gonna be paying a psychologist $150. This is free right now, man. Exactly.

Take advantage. Exactly.

I know, right? Awesome.

Awesome.

Thanks, buddy.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.