The Blind Spot That Kills Most Entrepreneurs (Ryan Pineda's Brutal Truth)

What you are unaware of is the most dangerous thing in the world. Most people have so much lack of awareness for everything. To think you're doing all the right things and you're not is extremely scary because that person isn't even seeking to try and understand.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Dudan. If you were making $2,800 a month as a minor league baseball player with the Oakland A's organization and moonlighting as a coupon flipper just to cover rent, if you walked away from the diamond into real estate with no license, no contacts, and $10,000 in the bank, and if you've since done over 1,000 house flips, built a media empire teaching millions of people how to build wealth in real estate, without a W-2, your name can only be Ryan Pineda. Welcome, Ryan.

Hey, how's it going? Good to be here.

Going great. Yeah. So I've seen you online for years, but I took a deep dive into you. You are a nice, easygoing, humble, grounded dude.

I'm grateful that that's what you came to the conclusion of after the deep dive.

I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but like, that's what I got. I'd love to start just a little bit maybe about how you grew up and your journey with baseball, if you don't mind.

Yeah. You know, I never thought I'd end up a social media guy or a business guy or any of these things. You know, I just want to play baseball growing up. And so, you know, I was grateful that I was actually pretty good at it and I ended up, you know, excelling throughout every step of the way, whether it was Little League or, you know, making varsity as a freshman in high school and starting at shortstop to then, you know, getting a D1 scholarship and being an All-American to then eventually getting drafted by the Oakland A's. So, you know, it's just like every step of the way I felt like I was going to get to the big leagues and that was my, you know, going to be my, my thing I did for a long, long time and go make a whole bunch of money and be famous and whatever else. And didn't turn out that way. You know, I ended up only making $1,200 a month in the minor leagues, and I soon realized I might have to like work and then start something and get a career or a job or start a business and figure out how to make money while I'm pursuing this dream.

Did you, so let me ask you, did you, do you have the nifty glove or a big hose at shortstop or both?

Well, it depends what level I was playing at. You know, when you're in high school, you're better than everyone, so you got all the tools, right?

Yeah.

By the time I got to college and the minor leagues— in college, I wasn't very good at defense. I was a power guy. I led the league in home runs in our conference, and I was second in steals. So I was also pretty fast. So power.

You power right or left? Bat right or left?

I was a righty-righty. Yep.

Okay.

So that was what I was good at in college. And then you get to the pros, man, you got to switch to a wood bat. Everybody's fast, everybody's strong. And at that point, I actually kind of got better at defense when I got drafted. And so I was pretty good at that front. But yeah, yeah, it just varied throughout my career. But I would say I was always known for my bat throughout my whole life. Not necessarily my glove. And also too, I was a shortstop growing up because I did have a strong arm. But as time went on, my arm was not very accurate. And so I had to, I had to learn how to play second base.

So I have a nephew who pitches at NC State. He's a 96, 97, 98-mile-an-hour fastball guy, and he's got a nasty cutter on him. And my brother says, if you love your kids, you'll teach them to throw right, bat left, and learn finance.

Uh, that's his, that's a good combo.

Yeah, that, that is a good combo. Uh, and then while you were in college, uh, you, you, uh, met your wife and, uh, you got married young.

Yeah. Yeah. I, um, went to Cal State Northridge, played there for 3 years, got drafted. You know, you have to, in baseball, you have to stay 3 years in D1 before you can get drafted. And, um, you know, I ended up. Moving back to Vegas where I'm from. And in the off-season, after a year of playing professional baseball, I decided, I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna go back to school and just finish because I only have a semester left. The A's are paying for it anyway, so who cares? So they let me go to UNLV 'cause I didn't want to go back to California. So they let me go to UNLV for one semester and definitely did not learn anything. But during that, I had to take an elective class, which was canoeing. That shows you what I was learning.

There you go.

I went canoeing and that was where I met my wife in a canoeing class.

Oh, awesome. You watching the World Series right now?

Yeah. Bits and pieces.

I haven't been like watching all the innings, but I mean, I just, I just turn it on when Freddie Freeman's batting.

He's hit like 6 home runs in a row. It's crazy. Oh, it's been my—

it's unbelievable. Yeah. And then, you know, you did baseball and when did you first start, what was your first side hustle?

Well, it's interesting. My first real successful one was flipping couches and that was while I was playing baseball. But before that, dude, I was unknowingly an entrepreneur. You know, I was flipping Pokémon cards, I was flipping cell phones. You know, I started out, I became a realtor when I was 21 years old, just trying to make some money on the side, but none of them ever made real money. So, you know, when I was 24, I started flipping couches and that was my first successful like business.

Okay.

Yeah.

So buy 'em and put 'em on Facebook Marketplace or something like that and—

Oh, that didn't even exist back then. All there was was Craigslist. And so, okay. You know, I would just buy 'em on Craigslist, literally relist 'em on Craigslist and That was the business and it was like, there was no YouTube or TikTok. Well, there was YouTube, but there were, you know, like people weren't like making all this content on side hustles and stuff like you see today.

Yeah.

So no one told me to go flip couches. It just like dawned on me one day after I just bought a couch, you know, to furnish our new apartment with me and my wife. It's like, I bet you I could like probably sell this and make some money and, and far more money than I'm making. Doing what I'm currently doing, which is nothing. And I was like, well, let's just try it. And then the idea was born and eventually that business, you know, I was making 8 grand a month in that, like with very little work.

Wow. So eventually you found your way into real estate and you started flipping homes. And what was the moment or the inflection point where you realized like, Okay, this can be bigger, much bigger than just flipping a few homes and making my ends meet.

Yeah. I mean, the truth of the matter is very few things in my life have I started with these big grand visions. Okay. Like now I would say, sure, I think a lot bigger now 'cause I know what I'm capable of. But you know, I started flipping couches. I'm like, hey, if I could like make a few thousand dollars a month, this would be great. you know, and ended up exceeding that. And when I started flipping houses, I was like, well, you know, if I flip 5 homes at $20 grand, that's $100,000. That is a lot of money. I'm going to be great. And you know, sure enough, my second year I made $200,000 and I literally couldn't believe it. I was just like, this is insane how much money I went to my wife and I'm like, we've made it. Like we literally are so rich. It's insane. And, um, my third year I made $750 grand and at that point it was just like, all right, clearly like I'm gonna be good no matter what. Like I don't need to do anything else. And as far as business, I can just do this forever and I'm gonna be very, very wealthy. Um, and that was kind of the mindset. And then, you know, the next year I made $2 million doing it and it was just like, wow, like who knows where my life is gonna go with all of this, you know? And then at that point you start thinking bigger as an entrepreneur and I'm like, well, I don't think I'm going to all— now I don't think I'm going to only flip houses. You know, I think like I'm good enough to do other things too. And so, you know, you just start exposing yourself to more.

Yeah. How, you know, I know at least in my journey when I started finding bigger rooms, that's when I had started having bigger outcomes. So what was that like for you? You're flipping homes. You're growing a family and now you've got money in the bank, so it's not like you're worried about having too much month at the end of the money. And so now you can invest in yourself, you can travel a little bit, you can invest in, you know, meet some new people. What was that like for you and how did you come to that so early? Because I see people their whole careers, not find bigger rooms and change their thinking?

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because everybody knows you need mentorship. Everyone knows you need to learn more, right? And I learned that in sports a long time ago, right? Like I hire coaches and I, they teach me things, right? Like guys who have been in the big leagues, guys who have done way more than I could ever hope to. They just know things that I don't know. And what I've realized is over the years, not just in business, but in all aspects of life, especially when it comes to faith, what you are unaware of is the most dangerous thing in the world. And most people have so much lack of awareness for everything that they just don't even know. And that's the scary part. Like it's one thing to know What needs to be done and just like, hey, you know what? I understand that, that, that needs to be done, but like, that's too much work. I don't wanna do it. You know, it's all right, cool. But to think you're doing all the right things and you're not is extremely scary because that person isn't even seeking to, to try and understand. And so for me, I always come from a place now where it's like, man, I, it sounds like I have a lot of conviction cuz I've done a lot of things that have, worked out and been successful, but I also walk around with a level of, yo, there's, I already, already know there's so much I don't know and I need to find it.

When people come to me and they're really conflicted and they're struggling, so we coach, I mean, I've coached 1,000 franchise owners over my career and, and these are sometimes new business owners. Uh, you know, if I wanted to push towards the edge, I would say many of these people are non-entrepreneurs. They're looking for a business model. They're looking for guardrails and stuff like that. But you know, they, that you have to get entrepreneurial when you own your own business. But if they're really conflicted and they're struggling, two things I'll share with them. I said, look, number one, two things can be true at the same time. This can be a great business and it can be really hard for you. You know, you, this person might be a great salesperson and they might be toxic. So, Business owners have to make hard decisions, and that's kind of where it goes back to their, your values and your values break the ties. And I'd love to talk through your values. I saw you had 'em on the website, but what I counsel them to do is I say you need to sit in awareness and sometimes sit, just sitting in awareness and putting everything down. And sometimes prayer, power of prayer can be helpful when you're sitting in awareness because if you, you know, if the music is made between the notes and if you give your head enough space, you will come to the right conclusion. How do you, like, when you, when you have two divergent paths that you need to go to, do you have a process that you go through to make the very best decision?

Yeah. There's a lot of things, right? I think for me, you know, you mentioned the power of prayer and so So much of what I do, I'd like to say all of what I do, you know, that's the main goal. All of what I do should be based upon my faith in Jesus. And, you know, as Christians, we believe that we're indwelled with the Holy Spirit. And so at the end of the day, when you come across any situation, whether it's two divergent paths of business or life or anything else, morality, morality, all of that. Then we actually have what the Bible calls an advocate, a helper, somebody like the best mentor ever to guide us through what the right direction is with this. And, you know, obviously like you either have that or you don't and you believe that or you don't, but that's just for me what I already know to be true and to have supernatural wisdom and discernment can only come from that. But what I'll also say is, okay, so obviously you have the supernatural side of it with prayer and the Holy Spirit. Even on the natural side, having great advisors, you know, people in your life that you trust that can give you great wisdom and feedback on the decision you're facing is huge. Having your own core values is huge and a filter at which you put those through. You know, even for me, like the Bible, so a lot of decisions aren't even decisions. Like at the end of the day, right? It's like, well, no, clearly this is going to go against what the Bible tells me. So it's not even a decision. It's like, all right, cool. Like I'm just going to go down this path. So like a lot of people don't have an objective filter in their life. They have a subjective filter of everything. It's like, well, I believe this. I believe that. I think this is how it should be. I think that that's how it should be. And that's fine. We're all subjective to a degree. But if you put in an objective standard in your life, then not only does it make life much more simple, but assuming it's true, 'cause it's objective, then you have even more confidence when you make a decision because you know it's true. I don't have to wonder whether or not it's true. I think a lot of people struggle with a paralysis analysis and with fear with all these things 'cause they are unsure of if it's true or not because it's all them and their subjective beliefs.

Hmm. What, what, and just so I'm clear, what would be an example of, of an objective standard that you would apply? Because I, I think the greatest, the greatest thing that I've ever given my children is, is my standards. Yeah. And, uh, you have to do on, you have to maintain your standards in the home, uh, with your spouse, uh, riding in the car home from a baseball game or a soccer game. Like your sta— your standards are, are what? Will be indelibly imprinted upon your children, and that's what they're going to carry forward. Yeah. And, and we're not perfect. That's the other side of it. So we also— they also have to give us a little bit of grace because they're quick to remind us. By the way, I think your kids are young. Mine are 26, 23, and 20. But they've got long memories, those things.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you a story, right? So my wife and I got married early. You know, um, and so we went through pre-marriage counseling at the church. And the first thing they taught us as a young engaged couple was this idea of a standard. And essentially it was like, look, you both grew up in very different ways. You both have seen your parents, you know, love each other and treat each other in very different ways. And, you know, how you grow up is going to usually be a set of beliefs that you have, right? Subjectively. Now, both of us grew up Christian, so like we were basically on the same page with most things. But the thing the pastor pointed out to us was like, but number one, like at the end of the day, when you guys have conflict, because you will, there needs to be an objective mediator. There needs to be an objective source of truth. Because if it's just based on your individual subjective truth, then no one ever wins. No, you both are right in your own eyes. But if you can agree to an objective standard, then it's clear what the answer is. And so, you know, obviously in faith, that objective standard is God. That, you know, he is the omniscient, all-knowing creator of the universe, of us and everything else. Like, and we both believe that, we both agree with that. And then he gave us his word, the Bible. And the Bible is so full of knowledge and so many, you know, things that are there to Uh, basically help us live the best life that we can have. They're not a set of rules to prevent us from doing all the, the, the cool stuff. It's literally like the guardrails at which you should live your life to protect you and to help you. Yes. And it's like, I, I tell the same thing is true with my team. Uh, the reason we hold you accountable, the reason that we give you KPIs, the reason that we do these things is not to like set all these rules and boundaries. It's because if you do those things, you will be successful. At your job. And so when God put us on earth, he gave us a job. He said, hey, this is what I've put you on earth to do. Like, we're all looking for purpose, right? And he's like, this is how you're supposed to live. This is how you do your job while you're here on earth in an excellent way. And this is how you avoid trouble. And so, you know, for us, we both believe 100% the Bible is the infallible word of God. And so when we have a problem, we look to see what the Bible has to say about it. And it's not even a pastor. It's not like we put an objective pastor in our life because he's not. And a pastor is still man just like us. Now, it doesn't mean we won't listen to what a pastor has to say. Doesn't mean we won't listen to what another couple has to say. But the only true objective truth that we believe is the Bible. And so a lot of times, almost every time, we can just go to that and say, now, you know how we are supposed to do that, like, especially when it comes to marriage and raising kids, because that was the whole point of what we were talking about before of You know, it's clear the Bible says that it is my job as the husband to lead the family. It is not the wife's job to be the leader of the family. Now, America and culture's got it twisted where a lot of times they like to role reverse. And here's the thing. People can subjectively believe that that's how it's supposed to be. There's no basis for it other than their own subjective opinions. Right? But if I'm going to submit myself to a higher authority, and that's what the higher authority says, my wife and I both agree with that, then this is how it's got to be. Like, I am the leader of the house. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of other things that go along with that. But the point is, it makes it way easier to run our marriage because we just know. There's, it's not, oh, well, you know what? I read this study the other day. That actually I should go do that now.

Right.

It's like, no, that, that's not, but that's what, that's how everyone else lives.

And we wonder why there's so much confusion in the world because I can find validation for any of any cockamamie opinion online to support your position, whatever your position is. I mean, you can find a podcast, an expert, or a blog or an article that's going to say, see, we should be doing it this way. You know, I mentioned that earlier. So we have a set of values that we use in our business. It's CARES. It's community, accountability, respect, excellence, and service, or servant's heart. And you know, your values break the ties. And I counsel these new business owners. I said, you're gonna get into a situation where there's a conflict and people need to understand when you introduce yourself to the market, how you're gonna resolve conflicts because you're gonna, some, you, you might have a job and you're 30% at fault. And you know, you might, you might, there's stakeholders involved, there's employees, there's your customer, there's all these people involved and you've gotta decide. You go back to your values because it's not clear. Do I pay for this? Do I dig my heels in? Like, you know, but if you're a community-based business and your reputation equity, which is just our relationship with people that we haven't yet met, matters to you, then you need to resolve this conflict and maybe even be the bigger piece of resolving the conflict because that goes right back to your values. And so you've got to have a set of either principles, standards, values, or beliefs that everybody agrees on. That's the way that we're going to resolve conflict. That's the way that we're going to break ties in our marriage or in our business relationship together. And I'm telling you, it's so powerful because, I mean, one of them is respect. Well, We run a call center and sometimes franchisees have a bad day. And if they call and they're abusive to a call center rep, then like that, that gets a call from me, a surprise call for me to say, we would never talk to you that way. We've never talked to you that way. We would never talk to you that way. And we can't really tolerate— I don't know what the answer is, but I know what it isn't. Can you please not do that again? So it's just, it makes it really easy for us to manage the relationship piece of our business.

100%. Gotta have core values and standards.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. As you moved forward, so now you're, you, you're, you're gaining confidence. Yeah. You're, you're providing, which is a big role for us as husbands, fathers.

Yep.

Parents. You're providing. So that gives you the, gives you a little bit of headspace to do something different. And then all, and now you found your way to social media. So did the business, did the social media grow before the business grew, or did the business grow before social media grew? And how did those work together?

Yeah, the business grew first. And it's funny because, you know, we're talking about 2015 was when I started flipping houses. 2017 was when I made $750 grand. 2018 was when I made $2 million. 2020 was when I actually started making YouTubes and, and got on TikTok. And so I had already done quite a bit in business, um, in sports, you know, in, in a lot of things in life. And, um, been married for a while at that point too. Uh, you know, so the business started first and I, I tell guys this all the time because now obviously social media, everyone knows social media is important in business now. And so any new entrepreneur I meet, they're like, yeah, dude, I gotta be on social media. I gotta, you know, build my brand. That wasn't a thing people said 10 years ago, you know, not even really 5 years ago. Like people were saying it to the way they say it today.

Everybody needs a personal brand. I don't care if you own a plumbing business.

Yep. And so it's like clear in the current world and the future world that, you know, being online and having a brand is gonna be vitally important. But here's the thing, it, with, with knowing that it becomes harder and harder to break through. And so when I first started on TikTok 5 years ago, 4 years ago, dude, there was no entrepreneurs on it. They all thought it was a joke. And I was like, well, I think it's actually going to be pretty big. And I went all in. I was dancing. I was doing whatever, like there was no blueprint. Nobody was teaching you how to do it yet. So I'm over here testing things and ended up working out for me. Got a million followers in like a year and a half or something. And that in turn fueled my YouTube because people saw me there. That then helped my podcast when I launched it. So it all definitely played together. But the key was, look, I could have perfect timing, which I believe I did. But if my content sucks, if my track record sucks, then it doesn't matter. Lots of people still tried during that time, but they They just were boring. They're not inform— like, no, why would I listen to you? Right? Like, yeah. So I tell that to people now today because they're like, well, I gotta start the brand. I'm like, yeah, ain't nobody listening to you, dude. Like you, you, you haven't done anything. And I go, the stakes are so much higher today to be great at social media than they were 5 years ago. The content, the quality, the edits, the information people are giving, The entertainment, everything is at a much higher standard today. And to stand out, and there's more videos being made, there's more everything being made, and that's going to continue to be the case. So in order for you to even stand out, it's not like it was 5 years ago. I would've said 5 years ago, hey, like, yeah, I think it's decent to start it now because it's going to help you as you build your thing. But today I'm like, I actually don't know that it's worth your time, especially starting out right this moment. I think you need to spend every ounce of energy and dollars and resource into getting this business off the ground and crushing it. And once that happens, then sure, you know, you could start making some content and everything else, but like the reverse is impossible to happen today. You will not be in the business space if you're trying to be like a guru, a guy who's on a podcast. Now, if you want to, if you got like, um, water bottles and you go make content for your water bottle because it helps you sell, that's totally fine. But I think most people, when they're business people and they think of social media, they want to be the guru and you, you just not.

Yeah. I think, you know, there's a lot of people, uh, and I've had people ask me to mentor 'em and they're, you know, I want to be a, I want to be a motivational speaker and I want to do all this stuff, but they haven't done anything. They haven't built anything. I, I don't know. I don't know where their road rash comes from or their scabs come from or their learning comes from to be authentic inside of that. But I mean, it's very appealing and there is a precedent because some people just hit it and they get very social media famous and they monetize. And yeah, I've been looking at statistics of how much advertising dollars are spent on with social media and social media influencers. It's massive and it's growing. It's probably going to double by 2030. So there's a market for anybody who can get attention or anybody who can get eyeballs out there. You know, I'm— we're working on it here now. But I mean, we have built, at least at times, one of the fastest growing franchise platforms in North America. I mean, we're a very fast growing platform and bringing, you know, hundreds of business owners into our 6 brands, now 7 brands. And so for me, doing the podcast, doing the social media, doing the speaking engagements, It's basically a, it's a high funnel activity. You know, I can get in touch with CEOs of people that own, you know, 100 million square feet of real estate and we have services for them, but they're interested in being on the podcast. So for me, it's, these are connection tools, my book, my speaking, all of these things. But without the underlying business, I'd be getting 3 views on a YouTube video and I'd get tired of it. Pretty quick. Yeah. But, but it's content and it's content that we put behind our wall for everybody to, you know, for candidates to consume. And so it's, it's really, really valuable. But again, you know, we had to stand the business up first, I think, before, and then, you know, it's, you know, this isn't our first rodeo, so, you know, we do have some credibility in the industry before that. So interesting. Interesting. So today, and I've looked at a lot of your stuff and I've seen your journey. So are you in diversification mode now or are you in concentration mode with your business? Are you going deep or are you going wide right now? Because I think businesses pulse like that. We sometimes, so I sold a business I built over 25 years in 2019. We had 240 locations. I sold it to a big franchise platform. And man, within like 3 years I had 41 K-1s from investments and all. It just made a mess of it. I mean, just, you know, and by the way, you know, 2 or 3, 4 home runs in there. You know, a couple of losers and then everything else was kind of a push or a little gain or something. So kind of like a normal— Yeah, like a normal private equity platform. You're going to have a couple of home runs, you're going to have some pushes and You're gonna have a couple where you're gonna eat some, you know, eat, eat, eat some crow. But, but now, you know, I'm back in concentration mode. We're building a platform, we're building a, a net, we're acquiring businesses, we're putting 'em into a franchise platform. We got sophisticated high net worth owners coming in up into the hundreds of millions of dollars sales just in a couple of years. And, you know, so where are you right now in, in your business? Are you in a contraction or are you in, in a focused contraction mode? Are you in a, divert, you know, leveraging all of your assets and being diversified?

Yeah, good question. So when I first, let's say from 2015 to 2020, all I did was flip houses. I didn't own a stock. I didn't do anything but buy real estate, flip most of it, keep a couple rentals. And that was my whole plan. Just keep reinvesting in my business and it paid off Pretty good. 2020, I start investing into my personal brand. So I'm like, all right, let's go do content. Let's invest into this space. And so, you know, I built out this team and media and everything else, and I'm still doing real estate obviously along with this, but you know, that was my focus. And then that then led to going very wide, which I learned wasn't a great idea. Um, but you know, you live and you learn. So I went super wide and then started spinning off lots of businesses because, you know, people would ask me like, dude, you know, do you guys do anything like this? And I'm like, well, we do now. You know, do you, you got this, this, and this. And so, you know, you launch, I, I launched so many things and a lot of 'em, you know, were interconnected to real estate in some way, but you know, they're still just totally different things. Right. And so you start, Do an education that has nothing to do with real estate. Learning how to like build an education company. It doesn't matter that we teach real estate. Learning digital marketing, learning how to coach, learning how to throw events, learning how to sell digital products and build funnels. Like it has nothing to do with real estate. So, you know, that was a learning curve. Then we started all these different businesses in all these different industries. And so I did that for about, um, 4 years. Then I came to the realization after, you know, had success with some, totally flopped on others. You look at the time, the resources, like you said, kind of with the K1 story. Yeah. You're just like, dude, managing this many things is not, and I'm the operator, so they're not even investments. You know, I've always just invested into my own stuff. Right.

And, well, if something goes wrong, then you're, you're, now you've gotta put all the energy into it.

Yeah. And so, you know, you do that and, you know, I'm grateful I did it because clearly, you know, some, some were home run, just basically like you said, like some were home runs, some were pushes, some were Ls. And basically to this point now where I've come to is like, you know, using the word contraction, I think that that's a good word. And, and most people would have a negative connotation to it. But it's really just pruning is the word I've been using like this. 2024 has been a year of pruning for me, you know, essentially just focusing on the things that we know work, that we know are going to be good for a long time and just dominating those. And so like today, in terms of the business, instead of flipping houses, you know, and I flipped hundreds and hundreds of homes and it's been great for a decade, but when interest rates doubled and I'm sitting there with $20 million of flips going on, guess what? A 10% drop is $2 million plus holding cost, you know, and everything else with property sitting. So all of a sudden you lose, you know, a few million bucks and you're like, yeah, I didn't like that. Even though it's been great to this point, I have skills that I don't need to necessarily do it that way anymore. And so we start wholesaling, which, You know, for those who don't know, instead of buying the property, we just sell the contract to other flippers. And so we just make a little arbitrage, a little spread in between. And it's, it's actually, I shouldn't even say little. In, in a lot of cases we end up making more than the flipper makes. And so, you know, I switched the model to that. And so like now we're just doing a ton of that. It's very low risk. It's way more scalable. Everything about it is better. You know, we still have education with education, you know, dude, we spread out to lots of verticals in education. I was teaching this, you know, we had a social media education, we had just general business and look, we made tens of millions in education. And, you know, it doesn't mean that, um, the ones that I stopped doing are failures. It's like, dude, we made millions selling coaching on social media, but you look at the resource it takes to do that versus like the bread and butter has always been teaching real estate. And that, that it's the 80/20 rule, right? And it's like, do we need to be doing all these little things? Like if we just only focused on making the real estate coaching the best possible, like it's just going to keep getting bigger and better and everyone's going to get better results and it's just going to be that. And so, you know, we've basically done that now. And then the only other thing that, at least on the business front, we got the nonprofit too for Christian entrepreneurs. So like, I'm obviously very passionate about that.

I'd love to hear more about that.

Yeah, for sure. The only other thing on the business front now, so you got real estate investing, you got real estate coaching, and then we have real estate lead generation now. And that was never like on my radar to do that. I just started, you know, I've been generating leads for my own company for years in various ways, but I started doing Facebook ads and they've been amazing. The best thing we've done to this point. And so many of my students like wanted it and I was like, well, you don't have a media team and a copywriter and a media buyer. Like it's just, you, you, I can't teach you how to do it. It's just the team is too big. And also too, you don't know how to make ads. You don't know how to like speak and, and be on camera. And they're like, well, can you just like do it for us? Can we just use your ads? I was like, huh. That's an interesting idea. And I just thought about it and I was like, well, that would be so easy for us. Like, I already have it all. We just gotta run an ad in your market.

Yeah, man. Gym Launch 2.0.

And people have told me that, that that's similar to what they're— I didn't know, but it was just like, that makes a lot of sense. Let's do it. And so, um, now I think the lead gen could be bigger. Than everything, because everyone needs leads and they got to keep buying them. It never stops. So yeah, those are the 3 main verticals now, but it's like we've contracted big time to go build those out. And now also too, everything that we're building out is recurring revenue. Like, you know, you're in the education space. And so the problem with education is that, um, you know, people buy it once and they've learned. And it's like, yeah, you can keep them in and, and, and keep them in for like cool things like the community and experience and, but it's hard. It's hard once somebody's learned something. Education's churn is insane.

Yeah.

But the moment you start packaging it all together with lead generation, with softwares, with tech, it, it starts to make it way more sticky.

Yeah, man. And look, so lack of focus leads to a lack of greatness and People, one of the things that I had to learn when I got a little bit too diversified was I wasn't paying attention to my risk profiles. So I would, even though I was an investor or an advisor, if there was potential risk to me inside of the business, if something went wrong, then I would feel compelled to jump into it and make sure that it was going the right way, which meant, you know, oh, maybe I need to jump on a 30-minute call once a week, or maybe I need to, pay more attention more closely to it. And at the end of the day, you're just, I was doing, you know, 30 hours of 3-minute meetings, you know, dealing with other people's problems that I, you know, had given some money to or, you know, taken some equity from. And it was all equi, you know, as I was taking equity from people. And so I felt like I owed them.

Yeah.

You know, it, but the reality of it is, is not everybody can do it, man. And if they couldn't do it and I saw it clearly, then I'm like, well, this, people are going to get hurt here if I don't help these people get this business sold or, you know, help them manage it to the ground or manage it to somebody else. So yeah, it got to be, so I just decided in '22 to go back and start operating again. And that's when we went out and bought all these companies and I just said, okay, I'm going to operate again and, and, and get really concentrated and just, you know, I sold my business when I was 50, started this platform when I was 53. So, you know, I'm like, I got a little bit more in the tank. I'll just one more ride. I'll just do one more ride. I have a personal question for you. Well, it's not, it's personal to me, not personal to you, but I'm very interested in the answer to this.

Okay.

Building your business and all of the things that you've done, if there was a skill that you had not learned to do yourself, one or two skills, and, and it would've really impaired your success, what would those one or two things have been that like were core? Like, You didn't want to delegate, you just didn't want to hire people. Like, what did you learn to do that was really at the core of your success?

Well, you gotta learn a lot of skills, as you know, to be good at business, right? Delegating is a great thing and I feel like I've done a good job at that. But I won't use delegating as the answer for me anyways, because delegating came natural to me. I know it's hard for a lot of people. But I never wanted to do anything. I'm just like, dude, I'd rather somebody else do this.

What about like a technical skill? Did you, did you learn how to do funnels? Did you learn how to do?

Yep.

So that's what I was gonna do.

Yep.

So that's what I was gonna get into.

It's like delegating was natural, so I wouldn't say I had to learn that. Because also too, I played in team sports, so it's just like, yo, I gotta depend on other people. Like it's common sense. Build a team. Sure. But what I had to learn that I never knew I had to learn was sales and marketing. And you know, like with sales, right? I mean, everything in business is sales and I had to learn to negotiate deals and sell people on investing with me and everything else. And like, I just didn't realize that was a skill. And honestly too, even when I started to build a sales team, I just didn't realize people weren't naturally good at sales. Once again, I was like naturally good at understanding how to create win-wins and why someone would want to work with me and offering deals that benefited both parties. And you know, that came natural, but still I had to learn how to sell in the right way. But then marketing, to your point, was the number one thing that I just never wanted to do. I never wanted to do content. I did not want to have my face out there. I didn't want to do funnels. I didn't want to be a guru. I hate making ads to this very day. I didn't want to learn how to do any of it. And I actually, and I think most guys who do this, like I remember, so I was obviously a successful flipper and you know, I had all these digital marketing guys like, hey dude, you know, you should start coaching. And I'm like, okay. They're like, we'll build your funnels. We'll, you know, do like build your webinar. We'll do all this stuff. And I'm like, perfect. Do it. Delegate. I'm a delegator. And then they always failed. And so we never, you know, I started doing education in 2018, that year that I did $2 million, because so many people were asking for it. And I actually went to my first business event, uh, it was 10X Growth Con, and I saw Russell Brunson talking about it. And I'm like, that makes sense. I'll write a book and I'll make a course. I wrote a book and made a course. And so I'm like, turn on the freaking evergreen webinar and let it rip. And guess what? We sold one course that year. And I was like, dang, this ain't worth my time. I'll just go flip houses. Like, this is stupid. And 2019, same story. Nothing really happened. And it only got reignited because of social media. So I, you know, I started doing organic content and then sure enough, that's what changed it all. You know, we did $700K that year in education without a funnel. Like it was just—

Okay. So you put your offers right in your posts.

Yeah. I'm like, just, just book a call with the team. That's it. That was the funnel. Just book a call. Nothing crazy. And we ran no ads, nothing. And I did that for years, no ads. And I just made good organic content. But the reason I bring all this up is because I see a lot of guys who, um, in my experience, agencies, um, when it comes to a unique digital product, I just have never really seen 'em work that great for somebody starting out. I've seen other people who are already established and so, you know, they hire somebody to like go run a very specific thing and they already got a sales team dialed in. They already got good products and offers and so they're able to do it. But for the guy who was like me, who's like, I know nothing and I don't want to learn anything and I don't want to do anything. You do it all. It was always rare for it to work.

Yeah, that's been my experience, man. Wouldn't you hate to be like a hugely staffed agency right now in the last 2 years with AI just gutting you and people, you know, you were, you had quarter million worth of content that you were making for this company and then they hire some kid from Stanford and next thing you know they're banking it in 8 seconds and they're just, yeah, it's just showing up. I mean, I, you know, we're, um, I don't know if you know Mike Koenig, man, but he's an AI guy. He does a lot with Tony Robbins and those types of people. I've got him coming to our homecoming conference. We got 400, second homecoming conference, third year and second, we're our first year trading. We're only our third year in business. We got 475 people coming to conference.

Nice.

And I just, I made the, I really felt like I needed to get stock our whole system into AI tools for building their personal brands in every, I mean, we're, so, you know, if you join us, you operate a fencing business or a temporary walls rental business or a, you know, something like that, a designery kitchen, bath, and closet business in a local town somewhere. But like you still need to build a personal brand. But you know, there's 5 AI tools that you can create, you know, off of a 60-second, 60-minute video, you can create everything that you need. To put links to really help yourself. And, but like those skills, man, they are not native to people in my generation. And it's, we really gotta stop and learn these things.

Well, and let me add to that too, like, you know, my journey with, let's just say now digital marketing since digital marketing all is part, they're all part of the same thing of what people are trying to do with personal brand and everything else, right? Because I remember when I was coming up, um, 2015 to 2018, like, you know, that first GrowthCon and everything else. Uh, it was this interesting era where, you know, all these digital marketers were just spending all this money on paid ads, running evergreen webinars, and they were literally printing money. Like if there ever was printing money, they were doing it because they, they go spend $300 to get a customer and they'd make $1,000 on a course. There's no fulfillment. And it was possible because ads back then were so cheap relative to what they are today. And then, you know, time goes on, people figure it out, ad costs start going up, trust starts going down. And then I like to say this is the rise of, well, and even before that, right? Those guys were all new doing it digitally. Before that, you mentioned Tony Robbins and all these guys, they're just holding live events all day, every day. Yeah. And that was the model. Hey, only live. Preview events, all this stuff. Then it became virtual events and webinars and everything else. And then I like to say during COVID was when the rise of, let's call it influencers, really started to happen where it was like, oh no, you gotta better, you better have some good organic content because that's where people are building trust. And so, you know, all these guys who just only had paid ads but never had any real content, they all died. And then all of a sudden, um, you know, that lasted for many years. Like I made millions with no paid ads, no funnels, just making good organic content. And then now as we go into '24, going into '25, I think we're in a different era now where you actually need to have both. And if you don't know how to make great organic content and do digital marketing and funnels and, and all those things, you just can't be in the education space.

Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. You've got a new product coming out, Cashflow 2.0.

Yeah.

What's that all about? Because I need cashflow.

We all do, right? You know what's funny, right? Is, so it goes back to outdated ideas. So in real estate, there's this perception that rentals are how you get cashflow. You know, if anyone ever says cashflow in terms of real estate, I think we would all immediately think about rentals. And I think the biggest reason that is, is because like Rich Dad Poor Dad and Robert Kiyosaki, because he's promoted that idea for a long time. And so people bought into, but here's the thing. When he made that book and, you know, I don't know when it was published, but in 2009, 2010, 2011, it was absolutely true. I mean, like the average home here in Vegas was $100,000. It would rent for like $1,200, $1,300. And you know, that same house today is worth $500,000 and you know, it rents for $3,000, right? Right. Now here's the thing.

Math's not as good.

Yeah. That I can't buy that house today for $500,000, the same exact house and rent it for $3,000. I will lose so much money. So, you know, the idea of like getting passive income and retiring off your rental properties, is not true. Like for anyone starting out here recently, it's true for people who did 15 years ago, but they could actually build it 15 years ago in a profitable way and let it keep appreciating and doing it. But you can't even start from the beginning right now building it that way. It doesn't, that's why Airbnb and co-living and all these things are popping up because people are trying to find a way to do it. But you start looking at all this and you're like, man, there's other ways. There's easier ways to make money than going through all these hoops. You know, so long story short, I started to think about it. I was like, well, man, I've been flipping and wholesaling for the last 10 years and it's been very passive for me. You know, I spend 1 hour a week at that business. It runs itself. The other thing that's crazy about that business is I don't have to like actively make content or work it for it to stay relevant. In education, I do. I stop making content and ads and everything, like it dies. But over there, dude, it does not require my face. It will just do what it does. And so it got me thinking like, and you know this, the best, like cash flow is always from a business. It's not from a rental property or even a dividend or anything like that. The best cash flow you will ever get is in being the owner of a very profitable business. Right. And you know, it doesn't mean you can't, you could be the operator too, but like, you know, plenty of owners make millions just from their business owning it. So I was like, man, we, we got it twisted. Like if people really want to get cash flow in real estate, they need to just get a wholesale business that's, you know, at some point automated for them. And with tech and everything else today, it's so much easier than ever before. And Even like, I'd love to get your opinion on this since you're in the franchise game, but here's what I started to think about. Having started a lot of businesses and you talked about risk profile, here's, this is my argument for why I believe wholesale is the best business period. And I've tried a lot of them. So if I was looking for an investment to get cash flow, I would look for 3 things. So first thing I would look for is something that gives me massive returns, right? Something that, that gives huge returns. That's very scalable returns too, right? I think we would all want that. The second thing we'd want is something that has low risk. We want something that, you know, it's like, man, our risk is super limited with this opportunity, right?

Yeah.

And then the third thing would be something that has low time and low time, meaning time to actually get it started, get it going, get it producing, get it profitable. And also time that it takes to like scale to like a big level. Cause there's plenty of great businesses that, you know, they're not going to be profitable for years until, you know, it just is what it is. Right. So high returns, low risk, low time. Those are the 3 keys that everyone would look for in an investment. And, you know, I ran it through like lots of different things and it was like, all right, like take a rental property, for example, massive returns. Not for cash flow. It's not, you know, you might make 3% on your cash, 2%, 6%, 4%. Like it's terrible cash on cash. Risk. There's high risk with rentals. You gotta take on debt, you got tenants, you got repairs. There's a lot of risk. And then time. It takes a long time for that thing to finally pay off and make you money. So it's actually very bad from a cash flow perspective as an opportunity. Now, this is why you see a lot of people like my friend Cody Sanchez talking about, hey, buy laundromats, buy franchises, buy business. And to be fair, as far as cash flow goes, it's absolutely better than buying a rental. It's like, all right, well, let's take a laundromat for example, right? Okay. Massive returns. I mean, much better than rentals, but like a laundromat still is going to be capped by its location. Like it just kind of is what it is. Like maybe, you know, it is what it is. A Risk perspective, you know, there's a level of risk. Maybe you have at least, you know, you got your equipment, your people, but it's, you know, it's not like super risky at the end of the day.

Or low employee count. So there's less risk.

Low employees, you know, buying the business isn't going to cost you a ton of money if you go that route. So it's like very marginal risk, but still it takes quite a bit of capital to get it going. And then lastly, time. Like if you buy it, it's probably already producing, so you're going to probably get instant cash flow. If you start it, it might take a little bit of time to get profitable, but you know, Overall, time to get what you want isn't that bad. That's why like a laundromat's a great opportunity. Now let's talk about the wholesaling business and how it fits. So to recap what wholesaling is, for those who don't know, it's like, all right, well, wholesaling is just simply finding good deals from sellers. And instead of buying them yourself, fixing them up, you just sell the contract to another flipper. You make the spread in between. Our average wholesale fee, just to give perspective over the years, has been over $30,000. So like, we're not talking like you just make like $1,000. We're talking like big profits on a deal. So when we think about massive return, okay, well, number one, we don't even have to invest money into it. Like you just find deals, right? Your cost is going to be basically your marketing to find deals.

Yeah.

So the returns are like, infinite really, because you don't have to put capital to get the return.

Are you doing a same-day close? So you don't, same-day close. So you, you basically have the contract, but you never have to take possession.

Correct. We never have to put up capital. We never have to do anything.

Got it. Yep. Yep.

Beautiful. So the returns are massive.

Okay.

The risk. Well, there's like no risk. You don't own any properties. You don't have any, you don't need an office. You don't need a space. Your, your real risk at the end of the day with wholesaling is just simply marketing. How are you going to buy leads? Like that's the risk. So there's almost no risk. And flipping houses, by the way, obviously super risky, but wholesaling is not. And then lastly, time. How quickly can you start getting— dude, you could start getting leads tomorrow and doing this. You could, you know, wholesaling is the fastest real estate thing there is. You could close the deal in 30 days and make $20,000. I don't know of any other business that people could just do from home that could legitimately legally make $20 grand in 30 days, like net. We're not with, with no cogs, no employees, you know, and obviously you can hire employees and I do, you know, I have salespeople. I have, you know, yeah.

Does somebody have to go out there and close the deal with the seller?

No, you can do it all over the phone too.

Okay.

So it can be done anywhere in the country. You could do it in Mexico. So like, I just kind of look at the business model of it and I've been doing it for 10 years and I'm like, huh, there's a reason I've stayed with this for 10 years and I've shut down other things. The other things just don't, they're just not as good from a business model perspective in that profile. So long story short, it's just like, all right, if you want to start something that has massive returns, low risk, and very quick return on getting the money, wholesaling, and it can be delegated. It can be built without you having to do it all.

So you asked about that model inside of franchising. So franchising has massive scale.

Yep. You, you are more locations.

Yeah. I mean, you're, you're, you're, it's the fastest way to scale any business. You take other people that invest their time, energy, and money, and they take your business model and they stamp it out in a new market.

Yep.

The risk I would say is high. When you're emerging, because first of all, the business model needs to work for most people. So if you've built a business that only you can run because you're really skilled at it, but you, you, it's a, it feels like a jet airplane to people. Only 90, only 0.2% of people can fly a jet airplane. You gotta give a, you gotta, you gotta give them a business that's good for people.

Yeah.

Well, and yeah, so, and then we centralize so much of the business functions, call center marketing, all of these things. So like they, They sell, they fulfill, they build their name in the community, and we keep it as simple as possible. At scale, franchising is incredibly low risk because you've got 500 families that have invested a huge amount of money for them into this business, and they will fight like hell to, to, to not go outta business. So like, I mean, you know, there's restaurants that killed people in the '80s with botulism, and they're on every corner today. I mean, it's, it's French, you know, franchise systems that have the, you unit economic model correct are very, very hard to kill because people will fight to stay in business.

'Cause they got so much skin in the game.

Yeah. And then you got time. Like, look, you know, we, we've launched 220 new businesses in about 18 months. We would've never been able to do that with our own capital and our own, right. You know, it, so, so you can do it really fast. But I'll add this in for discussion. What's the durability?

Yeah.

What is the durability of a business? Because I mean, I don't need to get rich fast, but I want to get rich for sure.

Yep.

So, you know, like if I'm successful in building this company and these brands, and now we've got $2 and $3 million businesses owned by families all over the country, you know, in 1,000 markets or 2,000 markets, which, you know, we have a 2037 plan. $5 billion in sales, 2,000 owners, you know, given a million books to children. Yeah. You know, so we're, we're, we build reading rooms with Ben and Candy Carson, Carson Scholars around the country in, in school. It's a big pa—

that's awesome.

I, I only came outta retirement cuz if I can find a purpose. So for me it's children's, children, children's education, veterans, and then really creating economic freedom and financial security for families on Main Street USA because, you know, that's, That's where it's at. Families need businesses. Businesses are a high-class asset. They move with inflation. They keep you safe. You can't get downsized from them. Like, you might want to take a little bit more risk on, but create a whole amount of certainty for you and your family. And franchising is a really safe way for people to do it. So, you know, from a durable perspective, it's, you know, you know, businesses, all, many businesses can get disintermediated. And the reason that I really didn't operate in a lot of other spaces was because I saw obsolescence in, in things. I mean, there's obsolescence in fitness, there's obsolescence, you know, there, I say you'll never find a Homefront Brands nestle comfortably between a Blockbuster Video and a Curves. You probably don't know what a Curves is, but it was a fitness chain that had like 10,000. Yeah. For just, you know, Curves.

Yeah.

Yeah. For just women.

Yep.

Yeah. So, you know, like the durable nature, there's gonna be 100 million more people in this country by 2050. New houses, there's a housing shortage. I mean, property services is the most durable thing you can get into, and supply and demand curves in our favor because less kids are doing these things. So, you know, it's, it's, so if I'm going to, if I'm going to get into something, I like to have elements of it that are fast cash. If I, if I can build adjacencies around my business for fast cash, maybe I own a payment processing business, you know, that takes a clip. Maybe, you know, I own this podcast and, you know, I've got an event that we're doing our first event next year out in Phoenix. But at the end of the day, it's like the blocking and tackling of helping these families be successful and build stable businesses that are meaningful for them. Like that is, that will be durable. And, you know, and people will pay you a lot of money for a business that, uh, is very difficult to kill and that is recurring revenue to it. So, yeah.

Um, would you say, so a couple of things on that front. Um, so most of what I hear is you're talking from like the franchisor perspective in terms of like, yeah. And I, I 100% agree. Would you say that, how does the equation change for a franchisee?

You know, I think it's the same. I mean, franchising's a leverage play. We share the expense of, of acquiring customers, of building a brand, of building learning management systems and tech stacks and all of that. We all pitch in.

Right.

So, you know, there's over 880,000 franchise establishments in this country. 1 out of 9 million people work by or for a franchise system in this country.

Yeah.

It's 1 out of every 8 people that are employed. So, yeah, I didn't mean to do a franchising commercial here, but like that— No, no, no.

I think it's great.

You pulled my cord.

And yeah, I, well, you know, like I think about, there's been one wholesaling franchise that's like sold and been successful.

Yeah.

HomeVestors.

Yeah.

And you know, people still, you know, there's people who still run those franchises and, you know, do you do collaborations with other entrepreneurs? All the time.

Yeah. All right. Gun to your head. We just, you know, first time we met. We, you know, we can't leave the room until we come up with a collaboration. What would it be?

A collaboration in what way? What do you mean? Like starting a business together?

Yeah. Like we have to start, we can't, they won't let us, they won't let us out to eat dinner until we decide what business we're gonna start.

Well, um, you know what's interesting about what I'm doing now is it's very tiptoeing the line of being a franchisor. Because for example, right, what I was talking about with wholesaling, the whole thing is like, hey, you know what? At the end of the day, if you're trying to make cash flow on real estate, start an automated wholesale business. And so people are like, all right, great game. How? And I'm like, okay, well come to this workshop and I'll teach you how we do it. It's 9 hours long, right? So anybody can go to that. It's cashflow2o.com. You know, you guys can check it out, but at that workshop, just to like reveal what happens is, you know, I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know. Cause there's only like 3 components of wholesaling, marketing, getting leads, sales, you know, closing the deal and locking up the deal. And then dispositions, finding the buyer for the deal. That's it. That's it. There's no construction. There's no other fulfillment. There's nothing. Yeah. And you know, the question becomes, okay, so how do I do that? And it's like, well, I give them an entire system. I'm like, all right, well, you can buy leads from us and this is how you're gonna do that. It's my brand. My face, my everything. Okay, cool. Here's our sales process. You know, you close deals this way. Okay, here's how we go and sell the deals. It's very, you know, so it's, it's so close to franchise because they're getting my leads. You know, we're doing the marketing for them, which franchises do in a lot of cases, right? Sure. We're teaching them our system, our process. But the only difference is we let them, you know, take 100% of their profits. We let them, have their own brand and name on their business and all that stuff. But if you were like, how should we collaborate? I'd be like, well, we might as well go franchise this thing and go build it that way and take a rip off every deal too. Yeah.

I mean, HomeVestors, they had a big fund, so they also provide capital for the people to buy their houses at 65%. You make 19 offers or 20 offers, you get one deal. I mean, it's a good system. I mean, really, really was. It did really. I know a lot of people that were in it. I actually went through the process back a long time ago.

So you wanted to buy a HomeVestors franchise?

I did. I looked at it, man, because, because I've done a lot of real estate. I mean, everywhere I've been through the Southeast, I've ended up with office buildings or homes or whatever it is. So I've just—

you're still, you're still in real estate with franchising, right? And so it's like, in a way, it's more leasing for us.

We only have one brand that has a physical location.

The rest of them are all I mean, so, but I'm talking you're, you're, you're servicing real estate, right? That's what your brands do.

Oh yeah. Yes, sir.

Exactly. Right. So it's like people are never gonna stop buying and selling homes. Like, you know, the real estate industry as a whole is a great, whatever you're doing, whether you're cert, you know, one of my friends, his name's Tommy Mello, you know, he's got A1 Garage Doors and he's, yeah, I know Tommy. He's just killing the game. They're like $600 million or something.

And yeah, he's, he's a monster, man. I've, I've spent time with Tommy out there in Phoenix.

Yeah. And it's just like, he's, you know, he's like, bro, there's a housing shortage. Everyone's gonna need a garage. All these new houses need garages. They're gonna need their garage replagued. We ain't going nowhere.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll see him next week.

I might be, are you going on his podcast? What are you doing?

I'm doing Genius Network.

I don't know what that is. I'm, it's a little group. I'm seeing him. When am I seeing him? I'm seeing him like in a couple of weeks too.

Okay. Yeah, I did his podcast. We did, actually did his, he did mine, uh, and I did his like 4 years ago. Wow. It was before he blew, I think he was doing like 30 million when, when we first met.

What a bump.

And, uh, then I check back in with, I check back in with him and he is like, I'm at 300. Like, wow.

You're like, oh. Yeah.

Yeah. He's awesome.

He's already sold half of it for, you know, whatever he's selling for hundreds of millions.

Yeah, he does. He does good and he earns it and he, he, he's, he's worth, he's worth that. It's worth every penny with him. And he's very generous too. Oh yeah.

Actually. Oh yeah.

He's, he's helped me. He's helped me a lot. So, well, look, I gotta be respectful of your time. I think we're a little bit over, man. I apologize for that, Ryan, but man, this has been so great to meet you. I really appreciate the conversation.

Yeah. Appreciate you having me on, man. Means a lot.

Yeah. I got one last question for you. All right. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

Um, you know, we didn't talk about the nonprofit really, but you know, for me, like my purpose is to help entrepreneurs meet Jesus. Like at the end of the day, making more money and all that, it's whatever. you know, getting more views and all that stuff. Like, it's cool. I want to get better at everything I do every day, but, you know, none of it matters if they don't meet Jesus. And, you know, the one thing I would say to entrepreneur or, you know, anyone listening is, you know, and I said it right at the very beginning, like a lack of awareness is the number one thing that kills you. And the thing that most people are unaware of. Is what happens after this life, because eternity is far longer than the time here on earth. Okay. It's like this time here on earth is like this. Eternity is infinite, right? And most people would agree that, you know, hey, I think something happens after we die. You know, even atheists are like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, but I think probably something happens. And, you know, most people would agree. Yeah. There's like a spiritual element to us as humans and, you know, there's things that we can't explain, but they happen. And there's things we feel that we can't explain that happen that seem to be spiritual. And then I think there's also people who maybe say, yeah, I believe there's God, but, you know, they kind of leave it at that. And they're like, well, I think I'm a good enough person. I'll, you know, if there is heaven, I'll go, right? That is the dumbest thing anyone can do. I just want to make this so clear because you asked what's going to change someone's life. That is literally the dumbest thing you could believe because it goes back to your own just subjective idea of what happens in eternity. You're going to really trust your subjective idea for the creator of the universe and what happens after this and where you spend eternity? How dumb and foolish is that? It's the equivalent of, you know, you go start a business and you're like, well, I think my business will succeed because I'm a nice guy. It should work. Yeah, I'm sure it will. Go try it. You're going to fail. So this is the point I'll leave with. Like, you know, I believe it's Jesus and I'm all in. Okay. And I believe that the Bible is 100% true. And I think everyone should, but at the very minimum, start investigating and searching and seeking truth about what happens after this. Because the 2050 plan, yeah, it's going to come up way quicker than we all think. It's coming up 15 years from now. But man, I'm looking at that eternity plan because that's like way, way, way, they're not even in the realm of being close to as important to each other. And most people are unaware that that's like how big of a gap that is. And so hopefully that brings awareness to people. Not to scare 'em, but it's just like, bro, you better know what you believe.

Yeah. Amen, brother. Perfectly said. Perfectly said. The great Ryan Pineda, thank you so much for being on today.

Cool. Appreciate you, bro.

Yeah, man. This has been Ryan with Jeff Dudan and we have been On the Homefront. Thanks for listening.