You Winning Life Podcast Ep. 189- "Be A Pioneer" w/ Jose Berlanga

All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the You Winning Life podcast. And as you know, Jose is going to be spending some time with us, and I'm really excited to get into some of the topics that, uh, we've, we've pre-gamed for you. And it's, it's, I'm hoping that instead of just hearing the story, which, you know, that usually our guests are already on other podcasts and you can hear a lot about them there, that we don't want to repeat the wheel and just have you pick any episode. It is just the same old, same old. Um, so really excited, Jose, for, for our conversation today, and thank you so much for spending time.

No, thank you so much for having me on your show, and, and I, I love the idea of, uh, trying to go outside the box and talking about a few fun things that the world of entrepreneurship brings to all of us. Yeah, great to be here.

Thank you. So, you know, this idea of being an entrepreneur, I like first starting off with everybody's definition because I've been learning that it can go in so many different ways and how over the last 10, 15, 20 years someone defining themselves as an entrepreneur or calling themselves entrepreneurial has evolved. So I first want to start off with your personal definition of what you define an entrepreneur is and being entrepreneurial.

Yes, yes, that's a wonderful question because as a matter of fact, now that I'm in the middle of my third book and it's all about intrapreneurship, it talks about the definition itself, what it means. The lifestyle, the choices, the identity of a personality, the pros and cons, how one begins. Are you born an entrepreneur or do you turn into an entrepreneur according to your circumstances? The preparation that it requires, which I would love to talk a little bit about. But getting to the point, the important issue here is understanding that entrepreneurship has become a much, much broader term than what it used to be decades ago. Back in the time, it used to be starting a business. Okay. Now it's become a choice, a life choice that can transfer to so many different topics, bringing a know-how, a type of expertise and going on your own and turning it into a profitable way of sustaining yourself. So there, there's a number, a list of types and styles of entrepreneurs. There are the creative ones, there are the technical ones. They are the ones who studied a career, studied a career and, and turned that knowledge into a business. Professionals like doctors, attorneys, architects that took their craft and turned it into entrepreneurships. Now you see people like that, that are in just about— if you like fishing, if you like surfing, if you like to talk with you, you like coaching, it's not necessarily about the money. Sometimes it's about inventing, being creative. Doing something that you enjoy, providing value to someone, and making a living while you're doing that. We've— we now live in a new generation where we get to choose and better understand not only what we're good at, but what we like doing. This didn't exist in previous generations. In the past, it was all about how are you going to make a living? How are you going to support yourself? That was the only question that mattered. Where are the opportunities? Where can you find a job? And that was the way that we were brought up. That's the way we grew up. That's how we were trained, just to support ourselves, to support our family, period. Your likes, wishes, desires, or dreams, nobody cares. And they didn't matter, not even to us, because we were not taught that this was an important part of our life. As we have developed as a nation and as a world in better understanding what it means to be happy, not just to produce, but to live a quality life, to live a quality, not only personal, but business life, we still have those opportunities at a greater level than we used to. Yes, there are, there's probably the largest percentage of the population that is forced to go and deal with a job because they don't have an option. They have to get up and do what they have to do to support themselves. But when you start young enough before you have all those financial obligations, now there's this sector of entrepreneurs that have the option to choose what they want to do and do it almost without a boss, without having to report to someone. If any of us that are lucky enough to identify what we like doing and combine it with another important one that we forget, something that we happen to be good at, because there's that other problem. Sometimes we want to do something that sounds appealing and that it's a dream of ours, but we just don't have the right talent that comes with it. So being an entrepreneur is a combination of being productive, of doing something that you enjoy, something of providing something of value to society, to humanity, improving the way that something is already done, or perhaps creating something that no one really understands, creating markets, while making a living while supporting yourself with it. I think if any of those components are missing, then it's either a hobby or it's a job. But in order for it to be a full-blown entrepreneurship style activity, it has to conform all of those put together where, where you are in the business of being competitive, of being able to deal with competition, with being able to deal with adversity and, and, and others being part of this particular environment where you're not the only one, but being able to still be successful at whatever you're doing and turn a profit. Whether you want to, unless you are a nonprofit organization, that's another big one that a lot of us like doing certain things. But if you're not making a profit, you're not going to be able to stay in business for a long time. So, so I think there's a wide definition. Now there's even styles entrepreneurship. Now it's categorized by the lifestyle, by the technical, by the inventive and creative, by the professional, by the serial entrepreneurship like myself. I'm one of those people that was not talented enough. I was not born with any one given talent. I just like the art of the deal, wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, looking for opportunities, finding something that I could make a profit out out of something that I could turn into a business. I'm not one of those people that is enamored by any given industry or product or particular sector. I wouldn't mind if I'm selling cups or computers or shoes or cars or briefcases or homes or anything or furniture. I love doing things right. I am OCD. I am obsessive compulsive in whatever it is that I do. Which is something that I'd love for us to talk about, to wrap it up, because there are something that I talk about in this book that I'm writing is that although nowadays, don't be fooled by thinking that you don't have the particular aspects and characteristics of an entrepreneur, because those have changed. You can be any type of personality and still have the ability to be a successful entrepreneur. It's not all about being the money guy or being about the inventor or being about the creative or being about the good manager. You have to have a little bit of everything, but there are ways to compensate your weaknesses in other much, much, much modern ways and still have a successful business. So don't be fooled if you don't think you have the personality nowadays. Anybody and everybody can attempt this life of an entrepreneur, but there are many, many types and some have a very specific objective and desire. Some are just looking for opportunities to make a living and to make some money. So, and everything in between. So yeah.

Well, it's interesting because I had a conversation the other day with a client who is at the threshold of their job, of their career that they've been in. And we were talking about like, what would it be like if they went back to school, they're still going to go back to school to learn a new trade, or maybe an adjacent trade to what they're doing in that, in a similar field. But then they're still going to hit a threshold in a couple years, right? Yeah, that's gonna be a threshold for income, there's gonna be a threshold for time, there's gonna be a threshold for energy. You can't guarantee that the people you're going to be working with then are going to be better, nicer, more, uh, caring than they are now. But at a certain point, I find that these questions and conversations that we don't have, right, like the way you started off with saying is that back in the day, it was you go, we're trained, society typically is trained to go out into an industry, produce, perform, do that until you retire. That's what it is. And I find that it's my job as a therapist, especially as a therapist working with entrepreneurial-minded people, even if they don't realize that they are, because I'll take my, my mentor, Rick, who we were just talking about, who passed away recently. His whole thing was, if you take accountability for your life, and define core values in which to make those decisions on, you're not— you're being entrepreneurial. So therefore, the outcomes are always led by my core values. The outcomes are already led by my passion, my mission, my purpose that I've decided. So I'm finding with like this conversation I had, which is so apropos to what you're saying, is that no one's ever asked this person these questions. So what happens if you do go back to school, you get a different degree in an adjacent field, you then 5 years from now, we're going to have the— what's going to hold us back from not having the same conversation 5 years from now? Yeah, right. And the next question I asked them was, what's wrong with your industry that you see that's making it more difficult for your job or other people in your particular position that's holding them back from being as efficient, as successful, or as capable? And that led to a wide conversation of like, oh, well, if we had this technology, or if this, or if this industry wasn't 20 years behind, then this would be different. And I think that's what you're talking about. What I heard you write is if you can, if you can challenge someone to solve that problem that they may have insight on and bring that to the marketplace, that's the entrepreneur, right?

Correct. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Creating opportunities and, and the challenges change depending on the type of industry and depending on your personality. Some people run into different types of challenges while starting and building a business because we all lack something. I'm a big proponent of being a very well-rounded person before you take off, before you start as an entrepreneur. Many people tend to think that just being good at one thing is enough to succeed. Hey, I'm a great physician, so I can start my own practice and I'll be a successful businessman. Or woman, or no, I'm a great engineer, so I'll start an engineering firm, or I'm a great builder, I'll start a construction company. And it's not enough. It's not enough. You have to know, yes, you don't have to be an expert in everything, and it's enough to start. But a lot of what I talk about is the preparation, the mental preparation in understanding what owning and operating a business is all about. And it takes many areas. It takes the numbers, the software, the administrative, the technical, the legal, the product, the distribution, managing others, understanding a little bit about psychology, understanding your market, understanding your competitor, understanding your product and how you're going to make this product different, differentiate yourself. What is it that's going to bring the, the attractiveness to whatever it is that you're trying to sell to the public so that they choose your product. So it's not enough just being good at one thing. One of the challenges I see personally in growing and building a business these days is that more and more people are attempting it. Number one, the saturation in whatever industry. I mean, it used to be that there were some industries more saturated than others. But nowadays, everyone wants to be their own boss. Everyone wants to attempt, or not everyone, but many more. The percentage of people attempting to start and create something is greater than it used to be. And the barrier of entry has gotten very next to none. And anyone that wishes to start a business doesn't take that much. It's just an idea. It's just a concept. So the execution and the constant modernizing, pivoting, and adjusting and fixing even the empires that we see today, the big companies are always trying to modernize and continue to improve. Even the Facebooks and the Apples and the Amazons and the monster companies of every industry, the titans of their own industries. Every year they're trying to figure out how to come up with something new and something better or their audience will get tired and someone else come back and will come in and eat their lunch and take over their business. So it's a very active world right now. It's a very, very fast-paced world of business, and it's only going to get faster.

Yeah. And I can see it in two industries that you, you're, you have your hands in. One is coffee, right? And one is real estate. Where I live in South Florida, and my joke is, is that people, everybody, everybody has their job and they're also a realtor in South Florida, right? That's kind of the— and I'm not sure if it's the same in Houston or if it's the same in like LA and all these other places that— what do you do? I do this, but I'm also a realtor. Right? And, and the commitment to that identity, the commitment to the education, the commitment to the field is, is very minimal, right? Um, I think the statistics just came out. I, I saw a post that there's, I don't know, whatever percentage of whatever the number is in America of realtors, a very large percentage of those realtors of the total number in 2024 did zero deals. Yeah.

Yeah, people that only have their license, their real estate license, and they don't really exercise their— they're not active. But that unstabilizes industries when too many people that are not serious about it come in and mess it up somehow at some level. And that is certainly a part of it. Yes, in the industry, not just— I think there are several industries, but real estate is perhaps the number one. I would say real estate and restaurants where everybody wants to own a restaurant, open a restaurant, and, uh, and highest failure rate of an industry too, within what, right, within 2 years it's the highest failure rate of being closed. Uh, the same is for construction companies. When the housing market in real estate and the economy heats up and it comes to a level where everything is selling, everyone wants to jump in. Everyone, people who have no clue, they think they underestimate what the complexities of this industry are. Even as a broker, as an agent, I am a developer and I deal with much more complex areas of the industry like land development and multifamily and single-family subdivisions that sometimes take 2, 3, 4 years to put together. And by the time you're done, the circumstances in the economy are very different than when you started, than when you began to conceive the idea of this business. So by this time, whatever your plan, whatever your numbers were based on, this development are different. And most people that get in, they think that this is like opening a shop where You know, you open the door and next morning you're selling stuff. And in real estate, it takes a lot longer. But people don't realize not only the number of steps and the number of things that can go wrong in the business, but when the industry is hot, everyone wants to make money because that is one of the issues. One of the— getting back to your question, one of the challenges about entrepreneurship is that it's misunderstood. Entrepreneurship It's not a quick way to make money. This is what it's perceived as. Most people that get into this lifestyle, this choice of being their own boss, of starting their own business, is for the wrong reasons because they want to own their time, they want freedom, they want money, they want success. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. That is not the reason why you become an entrepreneur. You become an entrepreneur because you want to help, you want to create, you want to learn, you want to provide, you want to come up with a new way of something, solve a problem, and bring something to the world that is of value. And of service. When you go under these new parameters, this second set, this second list of items, by nature, you understand that those come with headaches, with setbacks, with a learning curve, with making no money, with a lot of sacrifice. And nobody goes in thinking that entrepreneurship is a process. They come in thinking that I want to make money, and if I don't make it right away, it's not working. While it's quite the opposite. As a matter of fact, if it's not working, that means I'm getting somewhere, I'm learning, I'm making progress. So to me, failing and setbacks and adversity in the business world is not only necessary, but it's part of the journey. You cannot walk through a desert and not get hot, or you cannot walk through the forest and not run into a few scary animals and scratches and perhaps get hurt. It is part of the entire process. And most people don't understand that it is extremely normal for your day to be horrible, for having more bad days than successful days. In business, you have this random good day But a bunch of bad ones, a bunch of bad ones. But all those bad ones are helping you get somewhere. You're identifying what's working, what's not working, how to do something better, how to improve the process of things. But you are creating systems and evaluating the way that a business should operate. So absolutely not when you're immediately targeting success. And looking for immediate gratification, you're in the wrong business. That's when you better get a job and then you'll get an immediate paycheck. Yeah.

Yeah. I see it as that sifting and sorting process, right? That if someone— because most of those bigger companies, for them to actually be profitable, right, is so much later on. And even when they're showing that they're doing well, but they're not, so to speak, turning a profit, they're still getting people to invest in them and they're still getting— and they're still growing even though they're So it is a completely different way of looking at that immediate short-term profit. But I do believe this. I do it like even therapeutically, you know, people— I have to write it in my intake forms for the session. There is a high opportunity that you're going to cry, be upset. And I even joke with my clients that they're entitled to give me one middle finger, F you, Jason Wasser, a month. When I call them out on something so spot on that they don't like it and it's hard for them to hear, but that my job is to push those buttons. And if they're not okay with that, they shouldn't be showing up in the first place. So I very much agree, whether it's at the personal, internal, emotional, right, psychological level versus this more global impact level in entrepreneurship, that, that there is an impatience that I see.

Absolutely right.

And impatience with the process.

And it turns into eventual fatigue, fatigue of trying to get somewhere and you're not quite getting there as fast as you anticipated. You're not even on the right track sometimes. You're going backwards. But, but believe it or not, somehow, even though you— it doesn't feel like it at that moment, you're making progress in, in entrepreneurship. You are solving problems. You're creating systems. It is a tough, tough equation every day of trial and error. And most of those attempts are not necessarily going to go perfect. And little by little, you start tweaking them and coming up with better ways to integrate those activities into a less probability of failure, and increased probability of success in every movement that you make throughout your your everyday activities. But there are moments, many, many, where you just want to scream and throw the towel and figure out why is the world against you and why is nothing working the way that you anticipated. And it gets frustrating. And if you don't have that stamina, that, that persistence, that endurance of pain and rejection and resistance from the world because the market is not listening, because sales are not happening, because your team is not responding, because your results are not coming out the way that you are attempting to make them happen, because there's mistakes, there's errors, there's delays, people didn't show up managing. And when it's not one thing, it's the other. There's always something going wrong.. And as the leader, unfortunately, you are the one dealing with all of the bad stuff. That's the other part that the entrepreneur doesn't understand. The— your employees or your team may be focusing on the fun stuff, the things that are working, the things that are doing well. They don't need your attention. They're moving along. The ones who are having trouble, who have headaches, who are not moving forward, or stuck somewhere, those are the ones coming to you so that you help them resolve and move forward. But you nailed it. I mean, sometimes as long as you can quantify the progress that you're making in the business, you can keep growing. You can keep raising capital depending on the model that you chose. Yes, there are some businesses that are supposed to start making money in the short term because there's nothing inventive or creative about it. If you just open a tire shop or an ice cream shop or a cafe, a deli, or a gift shop, sooner or later, I mean, you're expected to start making money relatively soon. But if you came up with a new software or a new technology or a new way to go about and doing something, whatever it is, you have time. You just have to show that even if you're not making money, You're making progress. So there are business models that require different levels of progress at different points in time. And as long as you can show something for it, you may get— you may be able to get the support of investors because they see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the beauty of this country. We live in a country of dreamers where there is more risk capital out there than in any other country in the world. We live in a place where as long as you have a good idea and you're making progress and you can show that you're getting somewhere, even if you're not making money, but you are moving forward and you're solving problems and you're perfecting the process, it's, uh, it's relatively easy to go capture some more capital. That's how we've become the country that we have become.

Wow. Yeah. And I want to go back to a word that you talked about, just capitalizing on what you're just saying. A few minutes ago, you used the word leverage. And I'm a big fan of that. I'm a big fan of simplicity, probability, and leverage, right? Simplicity is how am I going to get this done in the simplest way possible? Move out all the chaos, really be laser-focused, right? The probability is if I do it this way, if I'm laser-focused, if I have my very clear goals and action steps and standard operating practices or procedures, rhythms and rituals down, then I'll very highly likely do it. And the third part is leverage, is who can I bring in? Who can I partner with? Who's going to help me do it except for me having to do it all by myself? So I think that ties into two things you were saying. One is, yes, we need to know a little bit about different aspects of our industry. So for example, I'm a therapist, but I also need to know a little bit about billing. I need to know a little bit about marketing. I need to know a little bit about how to process money and all those different things, which I didn't know. When I started graduate school until I bought an iPad. And when I was in a group practice, I'm like, hey, office manager, show me how to use the billing program. Show me how to use the scheduling program. Show me how to bill insurance. And back in the day, and what happens when it gets denied? And I kind of took that upon myself for a little bit before I jumped into my own practice, right? And then I found way more efficient way of doing it than that, which was by leaving insurance and not having to worry about that and only going cash. But I know a little bit about marketing. I know a little bit about editing podcasts. I know a little bit of— but I'm not going to sit there and do it all day because I know that's not where my purpose, my talent, and my potential is.

Yeah.

So what would you say when it comes to that entrepreneurial journey? Like, I always hear, like, if you're already thinking that you need to hire someone to help you, you're already probably 4 steps behind upon that. But where would you say, like, where that leverage comes in as far as knowing enough or thinking that you know enough about the purview of the other aspects of that industry versus leveraging the partnership with someone else or another business or another team or another consultant or another someone or even independent contracting somebody? Where would you say that, like, people can get more insight on that and know when to make that switch?

Yeah, no, that's great because it can be this, this question can be approached in different ways and I'm going to take it a step back, which is I've known some of the most successful businessmen and women that I know had got into businesses that they had no clue how they operated, and they built empires. They— you don't have to know a whole lot about any business. You have to understand entrepreneurship. In other words, you have to understand what are the components required for any given industry or business sector to work successfully and then put them together. You need to be the Lego guy. You don't need to be a piece, one of the pieces of the Lego. Number one. But I would start by the process of understanding. When you start a business, first you have to understand why are you trying to get into that industry? Why are you trying? What are you bringing? To the table that you think may make this enterprise successful? That's the number one step. Number two step is understanding for that business, for that industry, what ingredients do I need in order for it to be successful? Awareness. Sometimes we feel that, hey, I'm a good doctor, I can open a medical center. Or I'm a good, you know, technician or mechanic. I'm gonna have my own shop. We feel that having a certain know-how is enough without understanding. No, no, no, let me take a step back. What is a repair shop? Who works in it? How does it happen? Where do I need to bring money and start a number of questioning. Who's going to sell the product? How am I going to bring customers? How am I— how much money do I need? How much space do I need? So you need to understand everything that the business is about and what is it that you bring to the table to that business. Because at that point, you will then identify what it is that you don't have, what it is that you bring to the table, and what are you missing. Many entrepreneurs forget this initial evaluation. They go and get a rent a space and start signing contracts and then realize that, well, I didn't have enough of this or enough of that to make this successful.

There's no customers showing up. They didn't market.

Yes, right. Exactly. Or wow, now I ran out of cash. I didn't realize I was going to buy the— have to buy the parts in advance in order to— I can't— people are not willing to give me a deposit. So now I can't repair their cars because they're not giving me the money in advance. So now I need cash. People don't plan or research the steps in order for a, for a business to be successful. Because once you do that, now you understand what you need to go get. Okay, so I need capital, I need this amount of capital, I need someone to go get the sales, I need an expert in doing the things that I'm not going to be doing. Or if it's a small business, at least you'll understand what are the things that you personally need to do, because there are instances in which you you can't afford any employees on a, in a startup. But at least you become aware of what those activities will be.

Yeah.

Now, what in the next stage is, yes, what is an area that I absolutely could not be doing myself because I don't know how and I have no interest, but at least I know it's necessary for me to become successful. That's when you either figure out how to raise capital to hire that person, or partner. You know, I've done businesses where I will give a percentage of ownership of the company because I don't have money to pay them for them to take over an activity that I don't think I can handle myself. And so on and so forth. You start brainstorming and getting creative to fill in the blanks. But you can start the business. My whole point of this conversation You cannot take on and take off without completing the task of identifying what are the pieces of the puzzle that need to be in place before I start a business. I cannot turn on the engine of the car unless I make sure that the car has tires and an engine and it has the steering wheel and it has all the right components you know, the chassis and it has everything that a car needs to have. Otherwise, why take off? And many of us tend to do that because in the world of entrepreneurship, there is no manual of operations since every single one of them is different. We just take off and then realize what we forgot.

So in an industry, I just want to go back to this because you've decided, like you said, I don't have an allegiance to a particular industry, and that can change and evolve. So, you know, I'm curious, coffee is one of the, one of the industries you're in.

So, well, yeah, right.

So at that time that you decided that there's something that's missing in that, what was it that, like, you know, for example, that you saw or perceived in that industry that was missing or that would be able to be taken advantage of that would be beneficial for you, obviously, but also beneficial for a consumer, which would benefit you. So what did you see at that time? So I think that's like a good simple example, right? We have Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, that second wave coffee. And then people are now back into that third wave where people are like, oh, I want to know the farm and I want to know if it's organic and if I want to know it's fair trade. And that's now, right, the small, you know, are they roasting the beans on site versus, you know, which is me, the snob. I want to know where my beans are coming from and who's roasting it and, you know, are they treating everybody well? Is it organic? Organic. What was it for you that you saw that when that first popped up? What was the things that you were thinking about seeing, noticing that, you know, because I think coffee is a good— because we all drive by Starbucks, we all drive by a Dunkin' Donuts, and we also drive by the independent shop here and there. What was that for you that you said, hey, I want to focus on this, here's what I— and, and what you followed down that wall?

As I was mentioning earlier, everyone's experience is a little bit different. Incidentally, Starbucks was a main factor in putting us out of business, why we started selling our stores and getting out of that business. We had a small chain of coffee houses and ice cream shops, Italian ice cream shops that were becoming, that were growing and becoming very successful. But at the time, we were very leveraged. So we were, I mean, we needed the sales. And when Starbucks came in years ago, back then in the '90s, or They open source everywhere and it took a lot of our business where we were upside down all of a sudden and with all the leverage, it put us out of business. We were forced to sell some stores and close some. So out of already a company that was valued for several millions of dollars, we were gone very quickly. One of my many stories of my setbacks and experiences for not calling them failures. But, but I, to answer your question, I am not the, getting back to identifying who you are, what you are, what you bring to the table. Historically, I have not been the visionary side of the business. I have been the one who comes in to fix the process and build the business and organize the business. The first shop was already there. I did not start the first one. I came in because I had experience. Many of the opportunities that I've had in my life as an entrepreneur have been the technical or the creative with guys who know me and know my work ethics, my understanding of the business world, and they come to me to partner or to bring in the help in to build, start and build and develop the business. So phase 2, later, yes, we began to perfect the process, the beans with the product, the customer, the distribution. We even started selling to grocery stores. We started building the business and improving it. But I was initially not the person who was the technical or the visionary. I was the guy who looked for these opportunities to make them bigger, to grow them, to expand them, or improve them. Eventually, yes, I started some of my own businesses with my own concepts and so on and so forth. But that was part of my forte. And although I'm a proponent, I'm always pro creativity in your model because of the competitiveness of the world, the difficulties in making an impact in any given industry, you have to come in and go through the process that you mentioned, figure out what it is that I'm going to provide that people are going to be excited about and that are going to see as an innovative, fun, and different product that they will want to participate. But in my cases, it's been simpler. It's just been coming in with a few exceptions. For example, I'll use the housing, the residential family business, which I started from the ground up with my brother. We started pioneering. That's a perfect example because we came in and started a company in the '90s when the inner city was very forgotten. A lot of teardowns, dilapidated, graffiti, scary neighborhoods. There were very few inner city neighborhoods, not only in Houston, but in a lot of metropolitan areas. Because during the '60s, '70s, '80s, everybody moved to the suburbs. The bigger developers, it was much more fun and easier to buy lots in the thousands. They, the economies of scale worked very well. We're coming back and tearing down 2 houses here and 3 houses there to build another house. It wasn't worth their time. So we came in at a time where nobody was attending that market. In the '90s, we began to notice that, hey, traffic is getting horrible. Clubs, bars, new cool restaurants are coming up. People are driving back and forth to the inner city. Maybe people are ready to start living in the inner city other than the uber-expensive neighborhoods that already existed. So we started visiting the transitional neighborhoods. And our model began by building very inexpensive homes, value, providing value in areas that were very close to the, to downtown inner city where all the action was, and trying to market them in neighborhoods that weren't very appealing. So we had to go through that process of understanding How— the big question was, what can we sell it for? What can we sell a house for in this transitional neighborhood, on this ugly block that has nothing but teardowns? And how do we promote it where people see that there's going to be a change and that the neighborhood is going to improve? How do we sell it as an investment? So initially, believe it or not, here comes a punchline. When we began selling homes, the first handful of houses or few dozen homes, we weren't selling a home. We were selling an investment. We manipulated this product. And by the way, it's gorgeous, beautiful elevation, beautiful architecture, beautiful finishes. Yes, it's in a questionable area block. Of the inner city, but it's changing. Look at all the things happening. Look at us buying land, and before you know it, this neighborhood is going to change. And we started saturating some of these areas and building more and more until now the inner city is a cumba. 30 years later, they're incredible neighborhoods, very, very well established. But we were the pioneers, and that was the trick. Envisioning that— what that took, a lot of vision and a lot of courage and a lot of, uh, risk. Oh yeah, uh, to go in and buy some properties in areas that weren't proven and that weren't attractive. And little— and by the way, we didn't make money on the first couple of dozen homes, you know, we were just building and breaking even, but we knew we had something because people were buying That's the critical mass, right?

That's the building that delayed, you know, the foundation is the first 10 to 15 homes, even if you're breaking zero. But it's proof of concept that people want this, and then you can go and grow an economy of scale. I think that's what I want people to hear from what you're saying. And I just, you know, having been in Dallas back and forth the last couple of months visiting my mentor, and my cousin lives there, like, I see that happening as a great example. Like, there are places that I've driven in Dallas on one side of the street, there's these like 2, $3 million homes. And on the other side of the street, there's like a dilapidated home and it's literally just crossing the street and it's the same neighborhood. So I know that's happening here in Miami, like Wynwood and some other places that you've been used to, you would never go down to and you would always leave by a certain part of the night if you were there. And now it's right, just completely shifting.

And back then it was— if you've seen that now, back then it was horrible. It was one house and surrounded with scary stuff. And it took vision in it and it took a real risk. Yeah, doing something like that. And that is the heart of entrepreneurship where you just have to try something and figure out how to make it work. But little by little, we compromised and even lost a little money, but you nailed it. We were proving that this concept concept was there. And we were, we were confirming that people wanted to live in the inner cities and in proximity to downtown. And little by little, we grew that, that proof of concept into a real business. And one day, it started spitting cash. Like, you have no idea. One day, we didn't even know how or why it happened. But we started building enough enough in any given neighborhood where people started understanding, okay, it is changing, I guess.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden everybody wanted to be there.

And as, you know, seeing behind you, you have a Statue of Liberty, and you talked before about how America has this—

this—

our country has this benefit to people who are taking these risks and they're willing to invest in risk. The word that comes to me that maybe would sum up everything that we're talking about is being a pioneer, right? So you were a pioneer doing this in an area that exist and taking that risk. Then the people who are willing to buy that home slash invest in that, we're being pioneers because we're going to move out of the suburbs and we're going to take a risk and we're going to either buy this property as a risk because it could be speculative and it could go right and it could not go anywhere, or they're going to even move there and be the first person on their block.

Yes, it goes that way, right? Absolutely. The consumer also has to, which, which is buying is the equivalent of the people who bought stock early on on Amazon or crypto in 2011. Exactly, right. Okay, the innovators, the visionaries were the ones who created it, but the, uh, part, but part of the smart, uh, group were the ones who invested in it early on. Yeah, they were houses that we sold for right around $100,000. Those houses now are worth a million bucks. $1.2 million now, you know, 10, 12 times whatever they were back in the '90s. Yeah. So I get, I mean, incredibly shocked to see that the same square footage or even smaller square footage on these homes are selling for over $1 million where we were getting $98,000 for them, right? Gosh, when we broke $100,000, $102,000, $103,000, and. And now I see builders in those same little neighborhoods that are building houses over $1 million. And in, in the land aspect, the same. I mean, when we were paying $1 a foot, you know, under $2 a foot, now it's over $100 a foot.

Well, that's what blows my mind about the real estate world. So I grew up in a relatively middle-class, nice neighborhood, and people are now moving into that neighborhood and knocking down the homes Right. The Million Dollar Knockdown.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

The older ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

These are homes that are built in this, let's say, between the '50s and the '80s.

Right.

They're nice homes.

They're—

some of them are actually very nice homes, but some people are coming in like, nope, it's a land, it's a knockdown, and I'm going to put an extra million in it and then build something from scratch. And to even have that vision and to say, I'm even going to get my money out of that, even if I choose to live there for 5, 10 years. In an already elevated price, that's a risk. So I could see this when someone is deciding a career that's super saturated or an industry that's super saturated or to move into a community that's super saturated. And I think that's maybe where the risk aversion, the mental health side and where are, how risk averse is somebody.

And there are two ways to succeed. You either Either repeat the same thing that others are doing and you outwork them. There's A or B. You outwork them or B, you figure out some difference, some niche market that nobody is attending. In most markets, something is being overlooked. Even in some of the— a different formula, a different sauce, a different concept, that you innovate and bring to market. So you either— and that is probably harder. You need the outworking part, believe it or not, is perhaps the easiest way to succeed, which is what I did in many cases, because not everybody's willing to work 18-hour days, 7 days a week, and just go crazy trying to be there for your business, for your employees, for your clients, for your financiers in businesses. The success part of it is that not everybody is willing to put the amount of effort and do what it takes to succeed. And that's where the opportunity is. When you're not the inventor, when you're not the creative type like myself, right? I haven't invented anything. I just have to outwork people, right?

Right. And to figure out what that missing component is. There's a pizza place here that is award-winning. Um, they also have a fully dedicated gluten-free kitchen. Yeah, you wouldn't know that the pizza there is gluten-free, but you're paying between— for a plain pie, for a personal pie, you're paying between $17 to $24. And if you get one of these more expansive pies with these different toppings and different flavors, you can be paying up to $35 for a personal pizza.

Pizza, right?

Yes. For a large pizza at Domino's. Yeah, yeah.

And, and there are customers for, for everything if, if it's done right and if it's marketed right. So I, yeah, I, I believe that there's a little bit of, uh, for, for everyone out there, it's all in the execution.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm like, I know the whole story recently with Walmart's making these knockoff Birkin bags. I don't know if you saw that, right? But people are buying. But in order to get a Birkin bag, right, you have to go to the store, you have to work your way up. You can't just go in for a lot of these high-end stores. You can't just buy the high-end product off the top. You have to be already in that system and work your way up in their products in order to eventually get better, right? So it's fascinating because those companies aren't struggling no matter what the economy is.

Oh no, right?

The Louis and the Pradas and the— right, the—

yeah, the same concept. It's— they're acquiring following the Ferrari concept. If you were to walk into a Ferrari dealership and want to order a new car, nope, absolutely not, not possible. You don't— you have to be an existing customer for years in order to even order one. So they will— they'll recommend, hey, buy one of our used ones, get acquainted with the product, Drive it for a few years, have a few of them, play with them, learn them, become a repetitive customer. And once we know you and we know each other and, and once you build the, the, the, the, the, the, once you've adapted to the brand and created the loyalty, then maybe we can talk about ordering one, which, by the way, might take 2 or 3 years to get.

Right. Right. And I love that from the perspective of, right, even just me as a therapist. I remember getting into an argument with— well, they got into an argument with me recently about how I don't take everybody that wants to work with me, that I have prequalifications that will determine whether I'm going to want to work with them, that whether I'm going to enjoy working with them, whether I'm going to be able to work with them without having one or both of my hands tied behind my back while they're saying, help me, help me. But the parameters they set up for me to work with them is is, is this, which I'm not willing to do. And I remember a medical doctor recently at a workshop I was teaching said, uh, you know, because I left insurance and I'm very picky with who I'm seeing, that he's like, well, how are you being a helpful medical professional versus like, you know, like he just couldn't fathom. And I asked them the following, I'm like, do you own your private, the practice you're working in? And he said no. So, okay, so you're an employee. Do you get to take, determine which patients you see and which patients you don't see? No. Do you have— and it's just this different mindset going back to we started of there are people who have a job and have a career, they're happy with that, and they can't fathom that someone can have standards or expectations that are mutual on both ends. Like Ferrari saying, we want you to represent our brand equally. It's not just we're going to give it to you and you're going to be driving it, it's great. No, no, you have to represent the level of what our brand represents. And that takes a long time for that relationship. Relationship to be built. Yeah, well, that's a whole nother vertical of entrepreneur mindset.

And it's wonderful when you reach the level of success where you can choose and select who you want to work with. Yeah, because in the early stages, unfortunately, you have to take everything and everyone, which I did, survive. But, but it is wonderful once you get to actually enjoy your business because this is the end game. This is the goal that eventually it, which by the way, not everybody understands. We have to pay our dues at some point. Part of this initial stage of being an entrepreneur is that you will have to do a lot of things that you don't enjoy doing. And I don't think many entrepreneurs are prepared for that. They think they're going to do an activity that they want that they like, that they chose, but they don't understand that it comes with a lot of other activities that are unpleasant, that are not exciting, and that they need to be done or the business fails. But eventually you will phase out of those and hand them over to other people. If everything goes well, you can start tweaking and improving, pivoting, where you can start being more selective And that's where we all want to get. As you mentioned, now you get to work with whoever you want to work under your schedules, your parameters, and your system. And wow, is that— is that crazy? The significance, the meaning of success is not just financial freedom, but it's the freedom to act and to be how you want to be within your business, run it the way that you want to run it and still it be successful. So congratulations on that. That's how it should work. And that's what we're all working towards. But I, but I, but I tell you, we can't expect it to happen overnight, which is what most people want.

No, I graduated in 2005 from graduate school. So it's been that process. But I really do focus and I joke with my clients that they, they know that I genuinely I really love them because I'm only willing to take clients that I can fall in love with therapeutically, that I'm in love with them, their mission, I'm in love with their purpose, I'm in love, right? And maybe they're not sure what that is, but I'm excited and eager to partner with them for life sometimes, right? It doesn't mean that they come to me every week, and it doesn't mean they're coming to me every month, but I want to be their last therapist, that they know that as long as I'm working, they can reach out to me in 2 years, 5 years, 7 years, and call me versus having to find someone else, which is very common. But I do see that, you know, as that mindset. So, so as we wrap up, I just want to give you an opportunity, just, I know you've written some books and for people to get in touch with you and what, what, you know, and if they're interested in hearing more, where should they go and what, what books should they buy?

So, oh, well, joseberlanga.com, my website. I've written two books.

Books.

The Business of Home Building is one, which is really an entrepreneurship book, but it uses residential construction as an example of how to start a business, how to build a business, how to consider things that you may forget while designing and putting your business together, which is what we were talking about. At least understanding what it takes to really operate a business successfully because many of us skip steps in the process, and that's what this book is about. I know it sounds very, very specific, The Business of Home Building, but it's really for anyone who's in business, any entrepreneur, anyone who ever wants to start anything or even invest in real estate. And then my second book, which is coming out in the next few weeks. It's called Dirt Rich, which is about land investing, land speculating, land development, the meaning, the value of land in everything that has to do with real estate. It gives— it honors land as the main ingredient of this multi-trillion-dollar industry of real estate, cities, developments, neighborhoods, uh, metropolitan areas, they all began with someone selecting a piece of land and going from there. Everything that we know within the industry of real estate, it all starts by someone making the right selection in the right location of a piece of property to start developing it and turning it into something.. And I just give a lot of explanations and meaning to what it takes to build and to develop in the world that we live in. So it's been a fun process.

Congrats.

Congrats.

It's very exciting to even write one book is a big deal. But to know working on your third, that's incredible.

Yeah. Now working on an entrepreneurship book, which is more the mentality of the world and entrepreneurship, which has been a passion of mine.

Awesome. Which is so— which is the purpose of us collaborating and talking today. So first, again, I want to thank you so much. And two, if anybody, right, if you've been listening to this, like always, please, please go and check out all of our guests and their platforms and follow them on social media. You know, I'm sure that if you had any questions or wanted to be pointed to the right direction, I'm sure José will be more than happy to point you in the right direction, or a book or a podcast or stuff like that, you know, that inspired you, or or if there's any partnership ideas or possibilities or ways to get involved, I'm sure, right, that they can do that as well. So, um, so everybody out there, first of all, thank you again for listening. Um, and Jose, thank you for, for, for joining.

Thank you so much. It's been great being here. Hope we can do it again.

Looking forward. All right, see you guys in the next episode.