First Thing He Learned – If You Want to Make Money – You Work with Miguel Illidge

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Weidell and let's get going. I'm here with Miguel Ilage from Miami, Florida. Hey, Miguel, how are you?

I'm doing amazing, coach. Thank you for asking. Enjoying the weather in Miami.

And I just found out and talking to Miguel, I was down at the Perez Art museum yesterday, right across the street from where he lives. I didn't know. I didn't know he was that close.

I probably saw you walking around from my back.

You probably saw me, yeah. And so next time I'll let you know when I go down. But anyway, Miguel, this is fantastic. Congratulations on going over the million dollar income level in your business. It's just an extreme high achievement. And you're a young guy. How old are you?

I just turned 40 two months ago.

Just turned 40. And you look younger than that.

That's good.

Miguel is from Columbia. We're going to hear his story and tomorrow he's flying back to Columbia. And he was telling me that he goes back and forth quite a bit and we were talking about, you know, I told him I heard it was a great place, but he said, well, you know, as long as you stay safe. And I found out he owns his own bulletproof car.

Just in case.

Just. Just in case. Yeah, and just for when he's in town, you know, so he's not down there that much. But when he's down there, he likes to relax, he likes to be safe. And so we all live different lives. So this is, Miguel is the first guy I know that has his own bulletproof car other than the president, you know.

So.

Anyway, Miguel, just to give people a little bit of background, you have had all kind of experience with market research, commercial manager, account manager, real estate specialist, things like that. But in 2013, you got into financial services as an apprentice trainee. And starting at the bottom, within two years you had moved up to where you had your own operation, which is amazing. And within one year, you had opened three more locations, which is incredible. That was 2016 by three. Yeah. 2015, you had your own 2016, you'd open up three. And now at this point, you've got 13 more locations and 13 more on deck scheduled to open this year. So congratulations on your growth. And you're always a lot of fun to talk to. You always are high energy and it's just great to see you continuing to have success. It shows you're doing. You got A good, great foundation, and you're doing a lot of the right things. So talk. Let people know where you came from and where you got that entrepreneurial spirit and that drive. Take charge yourself. Make things happen. Where did that come from?

You know, Larry, that's a great question, because my. My desire to do something big with my life didn't start a couple years ago. Since I was a kid. Since I was a young kid, I remember, look, I'm from Colombia, from the north coast. It's called La Guajira. It's a very. It's a. Like, it's a desert and it's a. Is it for a frontier with Venezuela. Okay, Venezuela.

Okay.

So there is a lot of traffic, not traffic in drug trafficking, smuggling. There are things like that that happens in the borders. Yeah, I am from there. My dad never did something like that. My dad is an engineer, and my mother was a homestay mom. But when I was a kid, I used to see the other kids and dads with the beautiful cars, the beautiful homes, having fun and traveling and having all the stuff that I wanted to have, and I didn't know how to get them. I was like, thinking, why my dad doesn't have those things. So I used to ask my friends, yeah, that's hilarious. So what does your dad do? And they said, oh, he's a merchant. Oh, I didn't know what a merchant meant. So, yeah, he's a merchant. So, okay, I want to be a merchant. Merchant was a drug dealer, basically drug trafficker for them. So I didn't know what drugs were or anything, but I just saw that they say, oh, he's a merchant. So I used to say, I want to be like this guy. I want to be like this guy. I want to be like this guy. And then one day, my sister explained me, said, no, no, no, no. You don't want to be like that. Because those. They end up in jail. I said, why? They're merchants. I said, no, no, no.

They are merchants.

They work with this, and this is illegal. So I was like, oh, wow. So. So I grew up seeing two ways of making money in my country, basically, in where I'm from. One was being a merchant, and the other one was being in politics, which I didn't like. I never liked politics. My dad was independent, was a civil engineer working as an independent person. Sometimes we had money, sometimes we didn't. But it was a good life. When I went and I moved to Bogota, the capital, we have to move. You know about the bulletproof car is fun but it has a reason behind it. My dad was kidnapped.

Really?

Yeah, when I was 14 years old. So he was kidnapped. He was there, kidnapped for two months. And then when he got rescued by the army. But before he got rescued, we have to pay the gorilla. The gorilla kept the money. They asked for more money. Then he was rescued. When he was rescued, we moved from La Guajira to Bogota, which is the capital. In the capital, my sister had her boyfriend. My other sister had a boyfriend. And then they got engaged and I started. I started a relationship with my brother in law. He was a stockbroker.

Ah, okay.

How old were you now at that moment? I'm twin. I'm 18 years old. 18, 18, 19.

How old were you when your dad got kidnapped?

14. I was 14 when he got kidnapped. Wow. So when we went there to Bogota and I saw this guy working and he saw that I was hungry for making money, I also always, I want to make money. I want to work on this. I want to learn about that. He told me, why didn't you learn about stocks and I can teach you? And I said, why? I don't think that you can make money on that. I said, what? And he showed me how much money he was making. He was making a lot of money. A lot of money. Meaning in that moment, probably it was like 20 years ago, he was making probably $100,000 a day. A day.

A day?

Yeah. He was one of the top stock brokers in Colombia back then. So I saw a way to make money legally. So I stuck to this guy. I learned from him so many things. One of those things that I learned from him is that you work to make money. You don't just wait to see how it happens. And then they moved here because of security reasons. They moved to the United States, to Miami. I was doing some businesses in Panama. I had a nightclub in Panama. Then I came here for vacations. And in those vacations, he convinced me to stay. He said, hey, you wanted to learn about stocks or the stock market, what I do, why don't you stay? I said, no, I have a club in Panama. He said, are you making money in the club? He said, no, no, I'm not making any money. They want you to move here and that's it. And you always ask me to learn. Now I'm telling you that I'm going to teach you. I said, you know what? I'm going to stay. I worked for my brother in law for the first three years. At the same time that I was learning from him, I Was working as a delivery guy for a liquor store. I was. I remember one day I did. I moved a business from one store to another for $75. For $75, I moved an entire store, a clothing store, from one place to another just for $75. That.

You had not learned the lesson about negotiation yet.

I didn't know anything. They told me, hey, do you want to do something on the. On the weekend? Say, yeah, we'll pay you for $25 if you move all those clothes from here to that place. I'll say, okay, I was moving close. I am that tired. Like, right? All bruises and everything. So in that moment, the financial crisis came here in 2008. It hit. This guy lost a lot of money and he closed the business that he was doing in stocks. He closed his own business. And I had to find a job working at a restaurant. So while I was working with him, I'm working part time on the weekends. I was making like around $4,000 a month. Then when I started working at a restaurant, I was making seventeen hundred dollars a month. So I had to figure a way to make up a little bit on the money that I was making. So I decided to work one restaurant in the morning from 9 to 4, and then one restaurant at night from 4:30 till 10:30 every day. So, Larry, I was working every day from. I was waking up at 6am in the morning, going to bed at 11:37 days a week.

Now, were you married at this time?

No. Single. I'm still single. Yeah.

Okay. Single.

Yeah.

So working hard.

Working hard just to survive, not to make money. Because I was making like around $2,800 a month. But I was. I had to work like that to be. To at least have something to pay my car, to pay my apartment, to pay, to live by myself, which it was in an efficiency, a small place. And since the people that I was surrounded with was people from the restaurant, the cooks, the cashiers, the bosses, I started thinking like them. So I didn't have furniture. I didn't have furniture. I have an inflatable mattress. And I was living like, bad, bad my neighbors, there were people out of jail. So I was crazy. But you know what happened? My sister was working for Merrill Lynch, a financial institution here in the United States. And she was taking the Series 7 exam. Since she had to study, she asked me, can I go and stay at your house for a couple days, four days, let's say, so I can study there. Nobody's going to bother me. I can pass the test. I said, sure, come, but bring you a mattress. That's what I told her. I was like, okay. So she brought a mattress, and she stayed up for four days. At the end, she passed the test. And pay attention that I. At that moment, I realized about the licenses. So I knew about the licenses. So she passed the test. But then when she went back to her house at home, she called me and she said, why are you living like that? I said, how am I living? So you're living, like, in extreme poverty. I was like, no, Miguel, you don't even have furniture. I said, I don't need furniture. That's what I was thinking. I don't need furniture. What do I need furniture if I work every day? I just need a bed to stay. And she said, no, no, no, no. You have to change your life. I was like, yeah, okay, help me find. Change my life. I don't know how. A couple months later, she called me and she said, hey, I'm going to introduce you to my friend. He can get you get licensed. I was like, what license? She said, the securities license. I was like, okay, so how much do they pay? And she said, no, they don't pay if you work, they pay. If you don't work, they don't pay. I was like, commission? No, no, no, no, no, wait. I want to make like $50,000 a year or something. And she said, look, stupid, Go get licensed. And then you can't work with me at Merrill. I was like, okay, so that makes sense. So I went. I got licensed at the company that I'm working with right now. And then going, I. I needed to learn. I was licensed, but I didn't know anything. So I started going to the office, to the.

Was this Colombia or the United States?

Oh, it was here already. It was here. United States.

Yeah.

So I was going to the office.

When did you move here?

I moved here in 2007.

Okay.

At the end of the year. And a year later, it was a crash, right, okay. Market crash. So I started going to the office to learn about investments, insurance and everything, just to go and apply for a job at a bank. Like, I don't know, JP Morgan Chase, bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, things like that. And by going to the office one day, I noticed that the guy that was training me, my broker, he was making, like, around $300,000. And then I asked my sister, how much are you making there? Are you bank? And she said, 77,000. And I was, I. I told her, but this guy is making 300-00-0. And she said, yeah, you're the one who wants to work for Mer Lynch. I was like, really? Then she said, yeah, why don't you try there? And you don't like it. You can't work with me here. I said, okay, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try the thing. I'm gonna try. I started going to the office, and little by little, like, setting up appointments and going on appointments with the broker. I didn't want, you know, that one thing that I learned is that I. I wasn't listening to the guy. I wanted to do it my way because I was thinking, I'm old enough. I'm an adult. I know how to do my things. But I wasn't getting any results. One day, the meetings are on Tuesday. So one day on Tuesday night, I called the guy. I said, hey, William, I'm going to take some time off from the business. I'm going to get stronger in my mind, get some. Like, some. Breathe some air, and then I'll come back in a couple months. And that's why he said, if you believe anything that I say, now is the moment that you have to be closer to the office. And I was like, huh? He said, where are you? And I said, at the gym. Come to the office and say, no, no, I'm working out. Clothes. He said, come to the office. Like that. So I went to the office, I sat with the guy, and I was like, okay, so I'm here. I said, miguel, you want to have my results, but you want to work the way that you have always worked in your life, in other things, and you're not working like I'm working. Basically, you want to have my results, but keep your old lifestyle, like with your friends and everything, right? Then he said, if you work like I work and you do things that I do, things that I tell you to do, you're going to have the results that I have on Berger. And I asked him, you're. So you're saying that I'm not getting results because of the way that I behave? I said, yep. Just like that.

Yep.

And you know what happened? I went to a meeting.

Was this Willie?

Is it Willie? I went to a meeting with Omar Oropesa. Yeah, Williams up 1. So Omar Pesa said, in a meeting, do you know why Willie and Lorena are making more money than all of you combined? And I was like, I have no idea. And he said, because, William, Lorena are working on a Friday night while you're all celebrating that you're broke. So I was like, oh, he saw me. I was like, what do you mean? I asked Willie, how does he mean that you work on a Friday night? I said, yeah. He said, come on, Willie, we're in Miami. Everybody goes out on a Friday night. He said, no, I don't go out on a Friday night. I go to appointments. Say, willie, everybody goes to happy hour on a Friday night. And he said, I don't go to happy hour. I go to meetings, to train, to get to appointment. And he said, miguel, how much money did you make last Friday night? And I said, money? I didn't make any money. I went to a karaoke. Okay, so how much money do you make, the karaoke? I didn't make any money. I spent $200. And he said, I went to an appointment and I made 3,000. Then he said. He asked me, how many times have you been at the office on a Saturday morning for training? I was like, oh, no, Willie. Saturday morning. Who goes to a training on a Saturday morning? And he said, the people who doesn't go to karaoke on a Friday night. Wow. So every time he was talking to me, I was like. But that helped me understand that I wasn't doing the things that he was doing. And you know what happened? You can see the books behind me. Right? Right. I started reading for the first time in my life, and the first book that I read that I actually have it in my drawer is Think and Grow Rich. I never read that book. I heard of it, but I never read it. I started reading the book, and then I don't remember that book or another one where it says, you want to have the results that someone has. You have to do exactly the same thing that. That somebody's doing or how he's behaving. So I decided to copy Willie on everything he was doing. William didn't drink. I stopped drinking. I'm not saying that I was drunk, but at least on the weekends, I used to go out. I stopped going to parties. The no days off mentality. I had it from the restaurant, but I decided to apply it here. So I did that for two and a half years. 900 days. I know that it's 900 days because I did. I counted it this morning in a meeting. So it was 900 days, no days off, no alcohol, no parties, no nothing. That is. That. It wasn't work, Larry. My life changed. My life changed for I went from making eighteen hundred dollars a month to making over forty thousand dollars a month in just three years. Yeah.

Wow. Unbelievable. Thanks for sharing that step by step process and that wake up process you went through in your own mind. Because. And I want to go dig into this, but the point is, until you go through that wake up, you're never going to be woken up. You're never, you're never going to wait. You're never going to be doing what you should be doing. Can be doing what's never achieving what's possible for you to achieve when you're goofing off. I used. I say this all the time. It's like when you're training a new person. I don't know how good you can be, but I said one thing I know, you'll never be great piddling around. You know, nobody piddles around, goofs around, and then all of a sudden, hey, I'm great. You know, you don't become, don't become the number one anything in the world by cutting corners, goofing off, going to the parties on Friday night and stuff like that. You pay a bigger price. But then the reward turns out to be mind blowing compared to what you thought it would be on the front end. And you found that to be true, right?

The price is nothing compared to the reward that you get. You know, one thing that hit me when I was starting this business, I had a girlfriend. She's an accountant, and she comes from a wealthy family. And I was working as a cashier in a restaurant. One day she tells me, miguel, we can't continue together. I said, what do you mean? She said, yeah, I can't continue having you as a boyfriend. I was like, why not? And would you stop loving me or what? She said, no, no, I still love you. But I'm an accountant. We have a firm. You know that. I have my firm. I can't be going around on my boyfriend being a cashier, a fast food restaurant. That hurt. And you know what people tell me, like, oh, she's just a bad person. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Thank God. She told me that, right? Because I wasn't really paying attention to those things in that moment. I said, she's embarrassed of going out with me because I work as a cashier in a pastel restaurant. And maybe some people think, oh, but that's love and bliss and that, no, that's not love and this and that. She loved me. But she was thinking with her head, not her heart. She was thinking, this guy is not going anywhere. I'm not gonna go anywhere with him.

Right?

We caught in that relationship and. And she's an accountant, right? So I asked her one day, I asked her how much money makes your best client? And she said, 200,000. And I told her, I'm gonna be your best client one day, Larry. She was my accountant when I made 50,000, when I made 100,000, when I made 200,000, when I made 300,000. That moment I was like, am I your best client? She said, yeah, you're my best client. I said, okay, God, this is it. I don't need you anymore.

Fantastic. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening. And do it big.