Ben the Advisor

Hey, well, welcome to the Finanzas con Corazón podcast, where money meets meaning and where wealth is measured by more than dollars. I'm Louis Barajas, certified financial planner, author, and wealth and business manager and founder of the Finanzas con Corazón movement. Now today, I have as a guest somebody that I'm following on Instagram and TikTok. And every time I see his content, it is just incredible. It's so funny. It really hits the heart of the, for the Latino. And some of the work that I do is, as people realize that I tie, uh, finances and culture together. And so today's guest is someone who's built a powerful platform by telling the truth about what it means to be first generation. He's an educator, advocate, content creator. And voice behind Perez the Advisor. As son of the Mexican immigrants from Salinas, California, Benjamin Perez uses social media to inspire conversations around identity, education, mental health, masculinity, and purpose. His mission is simple but powerful, to remind our community that they're not alone. Benjamin, welcome to Finanzas con Corazón.

Thank you so much for the invitation, Louis Barajas. Appreciate the support as well. I'm very excited to be here and just, you know, to share a little bit about my journey and just to, you know, have a great discussion.

Absolutely. I'm going to encourage everybody who's going to listen to just jump on and follow you because your content is absolutely just spot on when it comes to our Latino culture. But, you know, for people who don't know you, why don't you share a little bit about your story, where you come from, and kind of what got you to be doing the content that you're doing. And then, you know, we'll talk about your goals on what you're doing and how you're changing people's lives.

Thank you. Yeah. I'll say a little bit about me. Born and raised, like your name, in Salinas, California. I'm not sure if you're familiar where the area's at or if you've been around there, but it's in the Central Coast. It's a big field working community. So there's a lot of immigration coming in from Mexico, Central America, the Philippines, et cetera, historically, who've gone over there to to work the crops, no, como dicen, trabajar el field. So work on the fields. And my parents came to that region to essentially do that, right? Because there was work. And yeah, growing up there was awesome, was never knew about anything else aside from like the world that I lived in, being a first generation, et cetera, right? So born and raised there, very prideful people who are from that area are very prideful. Somos muy orgullosos. From where we are. I mean, we're the salad bowl, right, of the world. I don't want to go into, we feed the country, but it's, you know, there's a lot there, really proud of hardworking people who instill all those values in the community, in the generations, et cetera. And also, but yeah, first generation, I'm a father of two little young traviesos. And I currently live in South Bay here in the Bay Area in San Jose. I moved over here for college and I've been here ever since. So I like to say that I was adopted by the Bay Area, but still my heart and core is from Salinas. So yeah, it's a little bit about me, right? Right now I'm just hooked with the World Cup. I'm a futbolero de corazón. I love sports, but specifically I love football. So that's kind of like what I've been like in the zone right now.

Fantastic. So let me just share with you a quick story about Salinas. So I wrote my very first book, was a long time ago, probably before you were born. It was like 25 years ago. It was The Latino Journey to Financial Greatness. It's about overcoming limiting cultural beliefs about money. And I wrote the book and it was in Spanish. I got a phone call, well, my wife got a phone call, something like 20 years ago and said, we would like for Mr. Barajas to come and speak And in Salinas, we call it the salad capital of the world. And there's like, and I had written my book, all my books are in English and Spanish. And we would love, but we don't have any money to pay him, but we would talk to like at least 300 to 500, we can get 300 to 500 field workers at the high school to show up where he would do a presentation and talk about what it is about money and culture and belief systems for Latinos. And my wife says, well, they're not gonna pay you, And I go, babe, I go, I don't care. Vámonos, let's go. We'll drive up, we'll stay somewhere. And we get a phone call from them like hours later. They go, hey, one of our compadres works at a view. And then they said, works at a place called Pebble Beach. Does your husband golf? And I was just learning golf because where I grew up, I grew up in Boyle Heights in East LA where we use golf clubs as weapons, man. We didn't know how to golf. But I had just learned because I was on this national board and they were playing golf and I had to learn. And my wife says, "Yeah, yeah, he plays golf." "Oh, well, the compadres, they're the guys who maintain the golf course. They're going to get him at the lodge there. We're going to get you guys 2 nights and he can play 1 round of golf." And the people who don't know about golf, Pebble Beach is one of the most expensive places you can play. I don't know, back then it was like $600. My field worker compadres, how I got paid to go speak in Salinas to, it was actually about 450 field workers. There was, they paid me, I got to stay 2 days at the lodge, which I think is $1,000 a night. And they paid for the golf for 1 round, which is like $600. So there was, I was hooked up, man. The Mexicanos hooked me up in Salinas. So it was a lot of fun. Okay, well then tell me about now what work you're doing I mean, if you're not doing the social content or what you were doing, like your education, just give me a little bit more context on just kind of your career path and then share with me what you told me earlier on what happened in COVID and how you started your social media content and how you're changing lives. But I want a little bit more depth about you. So when people are listening to me, listening to you, you know, your education, the work that you are, how, how did you get the name? And Perez is the advisor, Pat is the advisor.

Yes. Well, all my life trabajando as a community college student, I started my first job during that era, like official job. I mean, I had worked like, you know, cash and todo eso, like clean offices or as a waiter, etc. Pero ya, like así bien, education. So ever since in community college as a tutor, porque no trabajo de weekends, I'm like, great. I worked in the mall before, I worked retail, weekend sucks. I want to do tutoring and you get paid well, limited hours, no weekends. Empezó así, no? And then ever since then, I just still kept getting connected towards the education. I was young, but parents would call me maestro, and I was like, wow, I'm not a teacher, but this feels great. ¡Señor! ¡Señor! And I'm like, I'm 19. So it was a lot of fun. Empezó a gustarme, and, you know, I transferred to San Jose State, and I still stuck with it, no. And then as a bachelor student/moving into graduate student for my master's, I majored in Spanish, porque la idea era ser profesor, so it made sense to me to still be the tutoring, teaching students math, English, etc., or tutoring in this sense. And after that, I got a job on campus to be an advisor or not really an advisor, but to be an assistant coordinator for one of the offices that I was really interacting with because I was a student leader. So fast forward all of that, I was an advisor at San Jose State University or coordinator for student organizations, for students like Latino students, students in fraternities and sororities, you name it, a little bit of everything there. And I was like, wow, you can, This is a job? I didn't even know this. Like, as a first gen, you know, it's like, you can be a higher education professional? I didn't know what. You know, my psyche, you can be a teacher, you can be this, a doctor, a bombero, et cetera. So not that exposure of career growing up, not to mention community college. So there was a lot of learning there. And I was like, wow, I really like this. This is a lot of fun. So after that, I left San Jose State and I started working at an organization, a charter school organization to to work with, who's supporting students to go to college or supporting students who are in college. And specifically in East San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, I'm like, okay, this is pretty cool. Like, this is a way for me to give back, to learn how to provide support systems para las familias who are navigating what I navigated at some point or what my parents also navigated in a lot of like unknowns for us. And I'm like, I think I would love to do that so I can continue being that person who helps them find those resources, para que sepan lo que están navegando, and all that, right? And talk about money. I got the opportunity there to show parents about saving, the importance of saving, and like those college savings plans for their students, what that meant, you know, all those things. So little by little advising students, then I became a manager, and then I continued to move up into this idea of leadership. So really learning what leadership is as again, someone que mis papás, or no one in my family being the first one. Like I have a lot of family, a lot of family as a Latino, as immigrants and Mexicanos. And I was the first one from the whole fam born in the US who went to college and who actually graduated. There's a lot of cousins who did go to college, but it was for whatever reason, they weren't able to complete their degrees. So I was the first one. So that was a lot of pressure too, but there was a lot of learning and a lot of unknowns, like I'm telling you. So as an advisor and as a person in leadership, there was a lot of unknowns. All the things that I knew what to do, what to do as a worker was what my parents taught me. Like, oh, éste, échale ganas, don't talk back, be able to be responsible, be this, be on time and all those things. I'm like, okay, okay, hard work, échale ganas, hard work and all that. But without all of that, also comes with sacrifices, no sacrifices like mental health sacrifices, physical sacrifices, things I'm like, wait, but like, I feel the urge to say something, to speak up about this. I don't agree with this, pero en mi mente, no, tienes que quedarte callado. But si tú hablas, if you talk, then you're a bad person. So all those things, all those things that as growing. So when it comes to the social media, you know, I was in a devising world working with students, then we hit pandemic, llegó la pandemia, boom, the world shuts down. I don't have access to meet with my students anymore. I don't have access to meet with the staff that I'm working with. You're just home. And, you know, home and with a lot of things to just be using, which is a lot of us were just using our phones, watching TV, and no haciendo nada, no, quote unquote. So I started always remembering like mis tías and family friends would always be on Facebook Live or my wife would be watching some makeup tutorial from someone on social media. I'm like, what are these things? What are these lives? You know, guys, yo uno. So I'm like, let's, you know what, let's, let's try this out. What if I start doing Instagram lives and I start talking about something educational, something that's like related to college, something like if I would have been giving a conversation in front of students, I can do that in an Instagram live and more students can see it and they can see it from their home if they're in college and they're like wherever they're at. 'Cause again, I have students from all over the Bay Area. If I can do an Instagram Live, then anyone from the Bay Area, from my students, can see it. This is great. And then I learned that's Instagram creative feature where you can invite a guest and you can have, you know, you're up here and your guest on here. You can have more of like a conversation interview. It's kind of like what we're doing right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is awesome. Let me bring some friends, some colleagues to come and share their story about whatever topic, whether it's like academics, whether it's college, whether it's being the only Black person in their classroom or in their field, or being the only Latino in, or from their family going to a university out of state. Que nunca habían hecho eso. So no one in the family had ever done. I'm like, this is awesome. There's so many opportunities here. So I started bringing people to come in and talk, have conversations for them to share a little bit about their journey. Share their purpose. So simple as that, right? So my background is education, college access, college persistence. And on the other side, right, almost 6 years as a content creator/influencer about education, but also about my story. And one of the components of my life or my core values is humor. As a Latino, me gusta mucho humor. My family's from Sinaloa. My other side of my family's from Colima. So I grew up with my side of the family that's in Aloha, and they're always just making fun of people, always making fun of you, la carrera, like we say. And then the tías are always yelling at us, you know. So there's always like that component of like the family piece that I'm always trying to share on my content, the cultura part, where I kind of throw in the humor in the mix now too. So have fun too. And then A lot of people tend to gravitate towards that as well. And I use it more of a strategy now. I'm like, okay, see, tú me vas a seguir for the funny stuff, then you're also going to watch the other stuff. And the other stuff is also very important for me. When I share about my journey or when I talk about mental health or when I was previously— like yesterday I posted that I had an interview the other day and then it didn't go well, like a job interview. And I'm like, I'm going to share those things too. Because, and then if you're following me for the funny stuff, you're gonna also get to consume the other stuff, the more personal content. And that maybe you'll learn something or maybe you're like, mm, okay, whatever. But you saw it and you might think about it at some point. Like, ah yeah, look at this, Esteban, about masculinity. So that's kind of my strategy now, but overall it's just having fun with it. And I think people, there's been a lot of support coming from that.

Yeah, no, man, listen, I wanna share with you that I, back in the '80s, I was working at a really big firm with people who were making millions and billions. I had made it outta the barrio, got my degree from UCLA, got my MBA at Claremont Graduate University, became one of the first, if not the first Latino certified financial planners in the country. And I ended up making it out, man. I went to Newport Beach and then I end up coming back to the barrio that I had tragedy strike in 1990, right? And then when I got back to the Bay Area to help, remember I'm thinking, well, I'm gonna go help the familias in East LA. I'll open up a financial planning firm. Uh, back then there was no internet, there was no social media, there was no iPhones, right? And they all, everybody said, well, there's no financial literacy. So I figured I'm one of the first Latino CFPs. I didn't know it then, but went back and said, I'm gonna help this community learn. And then I realized, I go, I wait. When I went back and go, financial literacy wasn't gonna help the poor. It was the mindset. There was the cultural beliefs, and I didn't know how to attack it. I just didn't know how to attack it. And during that time I went to the Ice House. Um, it was, uh, dude, I was bummed, man. I was, I was not making a dent in our community. I was, I opened up a, uh, my office above a seafood restaurant on Whittier Boulevard and Indiana. The next street over is Calzona. There's a restaurant and my office is above. Right in the hood, right in the barrio. And then I go see, somebody gave me tickets to see George Lopez, the comedian, right? And back then he wasn't the George Lopez, the famous George Lopez. Hardly anybody would go see him. He was dealing with difficult issues, but I saw him and he did this, let's say 10-minute monologue, but like 2 minutes was on Latinos and finance, Latinos and money. And it was so, it was like, it was hard-hitting, like in your face, but hilarious. And when I see your content, I know you're funny, but I know that there's a learning lesson. And in that lesson, when George said stuff about Latinos and money, but it was kind of embarrassing because it was stupid, the shit we were doing. But at the same time, we were doing it and we were laughing. I was like, qué pendejos somos, no? And then I realized, you know, I got to change my methodology of how I'm approaching and we're trying to reach the Latino community in the barrios. And so I wrote books about culture and Latino. That's why the first book, if you, you know, I'll send you a book and if you don't have one, I'll, you know, you'll send me your address and I'll send you a book. And I've got a brand new book coming out called Finances con Corazón. And I realized I can reach them. So when I start, you know, there's a few content people out there, the few that I can name, but you're one of the ones that even though you have son chistosos, But they're not meant to be funny, but they're funny. But at the same time, if you pay attention to what you're saying, there's truth in the funniness, right? It's funny and it's sad at the same time. Some of the shit that you do, I sit there and I go, it's funny, it's hilarious, but that's some of the shit that keeps us down or some of the shit that doesn't allow us to grow or to learn or to be uncomfortable. And, and then I love some of the stuff that you do that's serious as well. So I think you've got something that, um, you're doing that you just haven't touched upon, whether I think there's a book coming or you're gonna be on some television, you're gonna be on some sitcom or somewhere because tienes un pegue that you're doing the same thing. And when I see you, I think this is what people need to hear because the only way people who are struggling out there, the Latinos that aren't highly educated, the immigrants, uh, uh, Eating my mom and my dad. My mom got pregnant with me at the age of 15, had me at 16. You know, my parents are immigrants from Mexico. Same thing. They weren't farm workers. You know, my dad has a wrought iron shop. He was a welder. And I realized that we all come from poverty and we have poverty mindset and poverty thinking. And sometimes we need to be aware of that. And sometimes it's hard to say that unless you do something funny and hopefully they're kind of learning that. There's learning lessons in the stuff that you're doing. But I want to go deeper into how you've expanded. I mean, you were a Spanish major. Is your master's in Spanish as well? What's your master's degree in? In Spanish?

Yeah, it's in Spanish as well.

Yeah. But you talk about subjects for Latinos, you know, about humanity and you talk. But one of the things that you do talk about that I think right now that, dude, I'm going to be quite honest with you. I've been actually talking to my son about it. I think there's a crisis among Latino men. You know, more Latino men are going to jail. You go to colleges, there are more Latinas than Latinos in college, right? Latinos are, you know, if there's going to be any kind of suicide, it's going to be Latino men over Latina women. You know, I think that there's a crisis among men in America right now, and I think there's a bigger crisis among Latino men. Tell me, how have you expanded in this role from being a Spanish major to be able to give advice on masculinity and health and all the areas. What are you doing that you're so in touch with that? Because you are in touch. Like, to be able to be funny, you either got to be reading stuff, learning, or you have this observation skills that most of us, that a lot of people don't, where you see the funny stuff in what guys are saying, but you're seeing what needs to happen. How have you gotten to this point? What are you reading? What are you learning? Or, ¿desde chiquito estabas así? Like, you know, How have you gotten here? And then what do you see the challenges right now with Latino men?

Yeah, great question. I don't think I've ever been asked a question I see, which I think is really good. Like, I'm reflecting as you're saying it, but first off, you know, thank you so much for the, the los halagos, no, when it came to like the George Lopez example. I definitely, you know, as a cultura, no, we tend to make fun of the stuff that we're struggling with, no, as a way to cope. And como dice Chespirito, right? Mira el lado amable, no te enojes. You know, so it's just like, it's kind of like a cultural thing. Like we may be struggling, like suffering, pero we can laugh about it. We'll make fun of it, et cetera. Like, I mean, growing up, we may get fun of like our insecurities, right? We make fun of like, if you're darker, if you're bigger, if you're this, if you're that, that's your nickname. You know, your biggest insecurity, it might be your nickname. So it's, I'm not saying it's like the correct way, but I'm just saying it's kind of like how I was raised. So when you talk about masculinity, honestamente, Spanish major, I took a lot of classes when it came to culture, Chicano studies. Because of the Spanish major, I had to take a lot of like literature or culture classes from Spain. But I was always interested to learn about Latin America. So really learning the history and the culture and the literature in Mexico and Colombia and Puerto Rico and Cuba, etc. So I took a lot of that, but that's not masculinity, you know, the authors, Although a lot of the mentors or professors who I really looked up to within these classes that I'm telling you about, mainly they were women, you know, and some of them would name, right, sexism, etc., and like really highlighting voices who were kind of like silenced throughout literature. But that still didn't really give me what you're asking. I think overall, ever since I was a little boy, I've always been one thing, which is emotional. Okay, you know, I've always been an emotional person, and as a little boy, I was an emotional little boy. Llorón. As a little kid, my parents would tell me, that's a llorón. Like, we would go to a restaurant and you scream. And I was like, oh man. So with that, like, growing up, I was told as a little boy, okay, you know, the famous phrase, los niños no lloran, los hombres no lloran. So as a little boy, I had to learn to hide those emotions. I had to learn to swallow the tears. I had to learn to, even though I would cry, I had to battle my own self to not demonstrate or express that. Porque men don't do that. Because I never saw my dad cry. Because I saw the men in my life, which is like my tíos, my grandpa, my father, none of them would cry. So why do I cry? I can't cry. I can't, you know, you're not so una niña, right? That's the mindset that I kind of grew up with. But then that emotion as a teenager, it flipped on the other side. Now I'm not crying, now I'm pissed. Now I'm a rebel. Now I'm angry. Now the emotion of anger was something that I didn't know how to hide or control. So that kind of got me into trouble. This idea of speaking up, but speaking up with irresponsablemente, without the responsibility of what your words could do. They can harm, they could inspire, they can moderate, but they can also cause pain. So as a teenager who's an emotional, who always been emotional, who has had trauma growing up, I just exploded, right? So emotions. And then as a college student, I would say there was a specific class, and shout out to Chicano Studies class, Professor Pizarro. I took a class in Chicano Studies that was about learning how to heal, or like how he named it, we all had baggages, how to navigate your baggages our baggage, tus traumas, so you can go help the community. And his philosophy was, how are we here to go make a difference in our community when we haven't helped ourselves? And I was like, what is this class about? What are we talking about here? I thought we were going to learn about like Chicano studies about this or the communities, the society or something. So the whole class, every class, we had to share our story. And every assignment we had to write about ourselves. And I was like, I hate this. Every class someone is crying. Like, I don't want to be here. The classroom was in a circle. Like, todos los asientos, the seats were in a circle. So we always had to watch each other share a story. And I'm like, we had to sign up and I signed up at the very end. I'm like, I'm not going to do, I'm going to do it at the very end. I don't want to do this. I want to avoid this because I've never done this before. I've never like expressed my things to people. I always kind of keep it within. It came to the last class, right? When we had like the last day of class and I had to share my story and I was like, damn it. And I shared my story and I promised myself I'm not going to cry. Nah, no ni madres. And yeah, I was— there was something that I couldn't control, something coming out of me. I don't think I've ever really cried like that ever since. The tears of like maybe 22 years of hiding those, internalizing those tears were coming out that day. It was intense. It was a lot. I started temblando. But after that day, I just felt like I stepped out of the classroom when the class ended and I felt like this weight was removed from me. And I started learning more about like, wow, all I did was write about myself. And the person who was like the protagonist was my father and me. Like there was a lot there that I was able to heal something about me and I was able to fix in a sense this relationship with my father. And after that, like our relationship was much better, stronger communication, not who I would've loved, but better than whatever it was. So I definitely was really happy about that. And then again, through social media, through work, because again, working with communities and working with students, you know, you get trainings and all that. So I learned about mental health, I learned about trauma within the work. You know, it's not that I went to study it. And then really, I've always been a person who's adapting, open-minded, and learning has always been like my dad. This is the things about my dad we would always tell me, "Nosotros somos estudiantes de la vida." You're always going to be learning. You're never because you have a master, yeah, you know everything. No, no, you're always going to be learning, always evolving, and that's okay to learn. And I learned that from him when he was— when I was a little boy, who he was wasn't who he was when I was an adult. He also evolved, he also learned, he also changed, he also fought his own struggles, even though he didn't get the support systems and the knowledge to do it in a different way, you know. But he learned because of life experience.. He had that mentalidad to reason, shift. So I took those from him. Like, I learned that also from him. And I've always tried to evolve and learn and grow. And like, who I was as a 22-year-old, it definitely not looks like now that I'm in my 30s. I look very, I think different. Of course, I'm not perfect. Of course, I make mistakes. But all those experiences are very important to me because as a person who's worked with young boys or young adults who are Latino or just men, young men, Um, I do see how, uh, myself in, in how I like how they are. Like, for example, if I'm working with the student and I hear from the teachers or whatever that, oh, he never listens to me. Oh, he's not responsive to my teachings. Oh, he like, like working with him to see where they, where he wants to go to college. Okay. He doesn't, he's not interested. He's like low morale. Like he doesn't care. And I'm like, it's not that he doesn't care, it's because you don't understand him. You're not really listening. You're just putting on him and getting him in trouble. Maybe his community or his house situation is something that he's always experienced getting yelled at. Maybe he's going to some tununundin. So my approach to young boys or when I'm working with students, male students, has always been an approach of like, We're just two guys talking, así como tú y yo ahorita, like us right now. And I'm here to just learn who you are and what is it that you want to do. And I'm here to support you on what you want to do, not me telling you what's best for you. I'm here to learn. You want to go to a CTE program? You want to be a construction worker? You want to work as an HVAC? You want to work with cars? Or you do want to go to college? You tell me what is it that you want. We'll figure it out. No, like, oh, I need to have good numbers for my institution to say, oh, that kid went to UCLA or CSULA or the community college over there. So my institution or my school can look good versus he doesn't want to go there. He doesn't even know why he wants to go there. Maybe he has to get himself in debt and in a semester, in a year or whatever, going to drop out. So this idea of masculinity— pardon.

Yeah, no, no, no, you're talking my language. So listen, we're going to go deep here because, uh, it's been a while since I've talked to somebody who can talk straight. So look, what, what separates me from the, the, the profession that I'm in— let me just give you an example because you are— you'll understand. I'm doing financial planning. In the financial planning industry, everything is about a product, man. Either you— if you're gonna be a financial representative or whatever, or Salesperson, you gotta sell shit. You gotta sell mutual fund, you gotta sell insurance, whatever. But when I went back to the barrio and then I, you know, I had a lot of write-ups, like LA Times did a story on me, Wall Street Journal, I did, I got a lot of rights. 'Cause I was working with billionaires and I went back to the barrio to work with our community, right? Who didn't have any money. And I would sit there and they would come to me and a person would say, Señor Barajas, le digo a usted, yo quiero que mi hijo vaya a colegio como usted, que sea usted un ejemplo, a role model. Okay, señora, bueno, we want to save for college, for my son to go to college, right? So I start thinking about my parents. My parents wouldn't even know. I mean, let me tell you, I was the exception already. I think God put something in me that I was going to make it no matter what, because none of my friends went to college. I'm the first person in my family to go to college as well, right? And uno ya lo trae, and it's rare. You're the exception too. If you're the only one out of your family that made it too, you're the exception. Ya traemos salud. So the thing is, we were seeing something, but the rest of us were struggling out there, right? So, but I see them and I realize that I said, well, how old's your— ¿Cuántos años tiene tu hijo? How old is your son? He goes, well, tiene 11 años. Okay, well, he's got like 7 years. Now I'm going to share with you what the financial planning industry teaches you. Okay. Oh, okay. 11 years. That means he's going to go to college around when he's 18. We have 7 years. What college would he like to go? Well, what college did you go to, Mr. Barajas? UCLA? Oh, UCLA has, this is what the tuition, this is what the books, if he's gonna be living at the dorms, is how much it is. He's gonna need this much per year. You're gonna need, and then you go back and then you do the future value, present value of money, and then you figure out, then you have to select the portfolio. Vale madre, because the problem is the odds of this kid going to college or not going, graduating from college, because in East LA when I was growing up, we had Garfield and Roosevelt High School who would play football against each other would fill up East LA College Stadium with like 20,000 students, but yet we had 60% dropout rates. And then I realized this is all bullshit. I said, "Señora, what is it that you want?" "I want for my kid to go to college." "I understand that. That's great." I said, "But okay, look at Gary. What do you, I don't want him, I don't want to have money as an excuse not to go to college." Now I'm going to share with you something, Benjamin. That whether that family had $1 million in 8 years saved for the kid to go to college or not a dollar to go to college, none of my friends who actually graduated from, that I met at UCLA, none of their parents helped them out. They all graduated with, they figured it out. It, that wasn't what's gonna get 'em to graduate. So I went and I thought, okay, well, and then here, and I'll backtrack a little bit. And my brother who's 11 years younger was already a teacher in East LA as a teacher teaching English to junior high school kids. And he would call me, he calls me Louis, and then it was Roberto. And he goes, Louis, I have 30 students. And when I have parent-teacher night, only 2 or 3 parents ever show up, right? I live in Irvine, California. When my kids were little, my wife said, hey, we have to go to the kindergarten where the parents, because we gotta decide which kindergarten my daughter's gonna go to. Kindergarten, all they do is color, right? Why do we need to go to the first day of the kindergarten? We have to go because they fight over the kindergarten over here in Irvine. It's all white people. We were the only Latino family. And I show up for like 25 kids. There's like 70 people there. Ahí van los abuelitos, the parents, and all, you know, all the Asians and the white, and we're the only Latinos. And I'm thinking, this is crazy. So then I would ask the lady, I'll go back to this story. I said, "Señora, what do you really want?" And I said, "Well," and I said, "Mira, cierra los ojos. Close your eyes and tell me what you see." And she says, "Okay, I see my son, that he graduates, that he's in a, he's got this little hat and this long dress." And I go, "Una cachucha." And he goes, "A cap and gown. Se dice cap and gown, sí." And he goes, "Cierra los ojos, sigue manteniendo los ojos." and he's climbing up some stairs and some tall blonde man in the scene in college is giving him a diploma. The man's like 6-foot-something and he's a white man is giving him his diploma and he crosses the stage and he goes, you want your kid to graduate from college. You don't want to save money for him to get into college. Because Latinos that I knew were all going in, but nobody was graduating. If they went, they went from the ones who graduated from high school, went to East LA Community College and none of them finished. And the ones that did would go to Cal State LA or, you know, Cal State LA and like would be 2%. So I said, okay, so what factors require them to be successful? And I said, well, señora, can you do me a favor? Can you come back and bring me your kids' report cards? 'Cause then I thought, se me prendió pinche foco, you know, if this kid's getting straight A's, if he's the Benjamin or the Louis Barajas, He's gonna, he's gonna do okay. But if this kid's getting Cs and Ds, but the parents quieren que su hijo va al colegio, then what am I saving money for if he's getting Cs and Ds and barely making it through where he's even gonna, may not even make it through high school because there's such a big dropout rate? And I said, and also, can you ask his math and English teacher? Because I figured, I realized that math and English, if those two skills were strong, they would carry him through when he got to UCLA. 'Cause dude, when I got to UCLA, holy shit, I was like a straight A student in high school. Got to UCLA, I suffered to get Cs and Bs because I wasn't, I was dealing with a different crowd when I was with different students. Yeah. So I said, can you get your math? And I had them. And then we found back then, it was called, now it's called Now Discover Your Strengths. But I knew a person at UCLA who was a dean at UCLA who had a self-esteem assessment for, for high school kids. So we were using those self-esteem assessments to see if they had high self-esteem, 'cause we felt that if they had high self-esteem and high grades and good scores in English and math, that they had a really good chance of going to college. And then having the parents get engaged, not be one, to be at least one of those parents that was going to parent-teacher night and knew that back then that UCLA was like, you had to go through, or the California school system, the A through F program. Now I think it's A through G or something.

Eighth grade, yeah.

Right? And so, and if the kids had Cs and Ds, we didn't say, "Ah, este güey no va a ser nada, he's not gonna go to college." No, we said, "Okay, well let's take the money, the $50 that you were gonna give me to put in a mutual fund to save him to go to college, why don't we use that for a tutor to teach, to help tutor him to get his grades up?" Because if we got his grades up, he would have self-esteem. And then we connected with an organization called TELACU, in East LA who would send the kids to the mountains, to Big Bear, where they would have, they would take Latino kids and have them climb like telephone poles and walk across wires. Obviously they were harnessed. That just, not the Mexican way, but with harness.

Yeah.

And give the kids self-esteem to be away from their parents, right? For a week. And so we use money for that. And that program would cost like $200 and we would save money for that instead of putting it in a mutual fund because what good did it do us if we had a portfolio of investments for a kid who didn't have the knowledge, ability, skills, and habits? KASH. Knowledge, ability, skills, and habits. Not only to get in, but to get through and graduate from college because vale madre if they didn't graduate, who cares? You know, like you said, you had a lot of friends who started. And then it became to, then I saw, then I realized, at least In the barrio that I lived in, a lot of parents, when the kids were older, one lived in one bedroom and one lived in the other bedroom, but they lived together because everybody was broke. The whole family lived together and the parents wouldn't divorce 'cause they didn't have money to go to an attorney to get divorced. And I would do financial planning. They would come to my office, do financial planning, and I would say, well, I would ask them, Señor, señora, on a scale of 1 to 10, where's your marriage? And the men, eh, Yo soy mejor esposo. I go, I work out on my wallet with you, but I go to work, I come back, I give my wife the paycheck, I take a little bit, and then I go with my friends drinking, but I give her my entire paycheck. And he said, I'm a 9, bien macho. I'm a 9 or a 10. And I would ask the woman, I go, la verdad, señora, from a 1 to 10, where would you say your husband is? And I would say, sometimes they would tell me a 4. Es que lo que pasa es trabaja toda la semana, no lo vemos, y luego nos deja el cheque. Sí, pero se va con sus amigos el fin de semana, se pone bien pedo. And what is he showing his kids? So then at the end of the day, well, how badly do you want to be together and save for retirement or get to a point where you was putting money away for the future? Because if right now, you know, you're planning to either get a divorce or separate, or like Latinos weren't even divorcing, they were like people are sometimes too poor to divorce. And then we would sit there and I'd say, you know what, fuck, you need to— let's get— with the money you're going to give me, let's get a, um, let's hire a marriage counselor, a Latino Spanish-speaking marriage counselor. That's a better investment for the family, right? And that's what we would do. Just wanted to show you how I approach everything, man. So that's why, like I said, I'm, you know, I've done very well because I've been doing this for 40 pinche years. And one of the things that we do, this is all I write about. And that's why you and I kind of are kindred spirits. When I see your stuff, me da risa, but at the same time I get sad because some of the stuff that you do is I see the, you know, from the Sinaloa, your familia from Sinaloa and the things that you do. But I still—

The masculinity too. Yeah. The masculinity too, like in that part, like what you're naming about the father giving the money and et cetera. All those emotions, like I said, that I experienced, the content that I do share that might be funny related to masculinity or not funny, it's based on my experiences or what I saw or what I've seen, right? Like, what I still articulate and I make connections to today, to an original question about men, Latino men, and like mental health. It's very true. It's very true. That's why I love to share that type of side of me too, the vulnerability side, porque ¿Cuánto en nuestras vidas conocemos a otros guys who come to us and share that they're going through stuff? Yeah. It's really rare. Even today with my brothers, I got to, we're just brothers, somos tres hermanos. I don't think we kind of talk like that. You know, we don't really talk like that. And I'm like, why not? You know, so my purpose with Page Two is to model some of that vulnerability. And it's okay to not be okay, but it's okay to, To not be okay, but to not ponerte en una oscuridad and just hide yourself. And again, like what I did as a kid, just ignore those emotions and just continue pushing hard or pushing through. Porque that's gonna come back. It's gonna come back at you and much harder. And if you're using alcohol to like ignore, you're worse off. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, we talk about Finding Sin Corazón, but I want to have you talk a little bit more about and then we'll get into some of the finances. Share with me, in the last, as you know what's going on with the administration in the last couple of years with a lot of the uncertainty, you know, I'm over here, like I said, I'm US citizen, born, raised here, been to the best schools. I've worked with billionaires and I'm walking around with my passport when I'm traveling because I don't know if they're, somebody's gonna stop me, right? And there's a lot of uncertainty around, especially with men. And what changes have you seen since COVID right? COVID was different. Everybody was afraid. Everybody was afraid they're going to die. You know, are we going to be here? You know, I was drinking more and eating more. In fact, if you take a look at my pictures from like a few years back to now, I've lost like 60 pounds. I'm still trying to lose it. Porque, va, nos vamos a morir. And I make great pancakes, dude. I like my family. And I would make pancakes every weekend. But I'm home now every single day. I would tell my wife, "Get us pancakes. I'll make you my famous pancakes." And then, you know, I would smoke one cigar on a Friday with a little bourbon, and then it became Friday and then became Saturday. Then it became, well, here it became Thursday. And, you know, we were going to die. And then 2020 to 2026, right? Where right now it's a completely different world, especially for Latino, Latino men, hardworking guys. Um, what right now, and since, and I don't know how often, how you engage with your audience or who engages with you. Is it more women or is it more men? What do you sense right now? What's your feeling about what's happening right now in our world, at least in California, right? At least in California, you know, you and I are both in California, but in our world with Latino men and what you're seeing, ¿qué sientes? That Latinos where they're at right now, what do you feel? Are they hiding? Are they more loud? 'Cause I've gotten louder. This is what got me out of it. The reason why I'm doing what I'm doing is because of what's going on. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be doing this. So where are we at right now?

That's a good question. Yes, definitely pandemic. A lot of us gained weight, right, during that time. Not the best habits. I do remember Bethmo was friendly to all of us. I think now, Ali, when I think about the Yo también, you know, I have the privilege to be US-born, so I don't have to, not that I don't have to, but maybe there's a lot of things that like immigrants live on a day-to-day that maybe I don't think about it every day. You know, I grew up obviously in a house of immigrants. My family, todos, not mis tíos, all of them, like I saw their experience. As immigrants, but I saw it and I might have lived certain things with them for sure. Pero, if I walked through the streets throughout my life, I never ever thought about like, oh, no tengo papeles, me puede pasar esto. I never lived with that fear. So with folks who are navigating that throughout their lives, not to mention today, I cannot imagine the toll on their mental health and anxiety that they have lived throughout their lives. Today, right, with that, now everyone looks the same. You know, remember when they had the gun for COVID? Let me measure your temperature. Now they can pull the gun and be like, oh yeah, you're all brown. Yeah, you're all Latinos, you're all the same, you're all this, so, or that, or criminals or whatever. It's definitely scary. I mean, don't get me wrong, like in my perspective, whenever I've taken the kids to the park for the, like, por aquí, And I'm walking, typically before all this nonsense started happening con esta administration, I'm like, I'm not going to take my wallet, whatever. Let me just take my phone, whatever, and my keys. Now I got to take the wallet. I got to take this. I got to take that. Because I think about like, whoa, you never know, right? I've never seen it happen. Pero estos weyes vienen en carros que no son cops' cars, right? These fools can come from anywhere. So it's definitely pretty scary when it comes to education, like the students themselves. Themselves, like from college, high school to college, I've seen more interest in students in, like I was mentioning earlier, wanting to find fields where they can just get money faster or just overall start working already. Because like in their minds is, why do I want to waste my time in college when maybe my family needs me now? Maybe they have a family member who they lost a family member because of the situation, or maybe their family members or their parents They're scared to go to work because of the situation and their status. So the son, mainly the young men, have been the ones like, okay, I'm going to take that responsibility. I'm going to take that initiative. And I've heard kids or young men tell me, I need to work. I'm working. And I'm like, where do you work? I work this, I do that, and do this. I'm like, damn. So who am I to come and talk to you? You should go to college because that's the thing that the Americans do.

Yeah.

So I'm like, wow, you know, so it's like, again, going back to that whole story about teachers not understanding these kids. You need to understand these young men. These young men have had this. They, if I saw it growing up, they're seeing it today. And my situation when I was growing up is very different than what we see today. So these, these kids have lived or young, young, younger generation lived as kids through COVID. And now they're living this economic climate— sorry, not economic, this political climate. I cannot imagine everything that they have to navigate and what is a 19, 20, 21-year-old young man be thinking about responsibilities, family expectations, and pressures. It's definitely a lot now. And going back to the mental health piece, I cannot imagine how much of that is taking a toll on them. To try to stay strong, to try to be there for their parents. That's why, like I said, like content like that I do is very important to me because when I do touch about mental health, I'm not just putting content so I can get more followers. I'm putting content. If that would have been the case, Louis, if I care only about followers, I would have done content. I would have done the funny dances. I would have been shirtless. I would have taken a whole nother nonsense.

Okay, maybe not shirtless, but—

Provocados. Yeah, yeah, yo hubiera hecho otras cosas. I would have, I have said no to a lot of, uh, uh, companies who reached out to me to sell their products. I'm like, why do I, who am I going to be over here selling a product about, uh, juice or vitamins or whatever? That's not what my content is about. Like, Este vato hablando about masculinity and then selling vitamins. That's, I'm not, that's, I hardly sell products on my content. I really don't sell any product on my content, except if it's like something related to education, then I will mention it, uh, or I will collaborate with them, pero, you know what I'm saying? So like I, all this stuff is very important in today's world. I mean, as myself, right, as a father and a husband, and also who really cares about the family. My mom, et cetera. It's really hard because currently I'm unemployed. I've been unemployed for almost 5 months now. And it's rough. Like, I also am thinking about, like, when you think about money, I'm thinking about money. I'm like, damn, I gotta get unemployment money, pero te dan básicamente cents. Here you go, live with this kind of money. And then the rent and all that. So I'm also stressed and I'm also thinking, I'm also wondering what's next for me. And it's really, it could be very stressful specifically when, as a male, the idea that we have growing up is that you're the provider, that you're the one supporting, you're the one who has to be the head of the household, right? Whether that's called machismo, masculine, whatever. That's what I learned. Obviously, my wife and I were both like, it's a partnership, right? We support each other financially, emotionally, todo. But I also have that urge to try to get a job and try to find that job. But I'm also secretly thinking in my mind, I'm like, you know what? I don't want— I just, I want to get a job because me merezco, like I've been working hard. Like I do also want to get something that I feel like it's going to check all the boxes where I can still make a difference, et cetera. So, yeah, so that's definitely navigating all that right now. También, it's been a little bit of a roller coaster.

Yeah. Do you mind if I do a little coaching right now with you? Just a little coaching. Yeah. Let me, let me just share with you. So I get a lot of people who don't, who I get them to make really good money. And, and so most of the, there's, there's kind of 3 prongs. Imagine there's 3 circles that we can join together and you have to do what you love to do, what you're passionate at doing. Okay. That's one, one of the three. You have to do what you're passionate, what you love to do. Now, American Idol, years ago when the very first, when they had Simon Cowell, the worst judge, right? The meanest judge. And people would come in. At the very first show, they would put the really bad singers and the person would sing all out of tune. And you hear that, you see the judges looking at each other like, what the hell? And Simon Cowell says, young lady, who taught you how, Who told you you can sing? Oh, I love to sing, but my mom, my mom thinks I'm the best singer in the whole wide world. Well, you gotta love it, but you gotta be good at what you love to do. Okay? So not, you just not love what you love to do. You gotta be good at what you do, you know? So I mean, I love to sing, but I suck, right? I try, I have two left feet. I hate to dance. I don't wanna do that. But you know, this is what I love to do, but I gotta be good at what I do. Okay. Now there are people out there right now because, right, let me just share with you with AI and everything that's going on. We have to, as Latinos to make it, we have to be very entrepreneurial, dude. I left and I didn't create a financial planning firm. I created my own job. I created my own job on what I love to do and what I was good at doing. But the problem, I wasn't making any money at it. Now you can go to a lot of swap meets, right? A lot of swap meets. You know, I don't know if you have swap meets up north, but when I grew up, we had swap meets. Where people would sell, they would make galletas and your tía would go and get a little swap meet post and pay her like $20 to get a little post and then she would sell cookies and barely even break even. Just because you love what you do and you're good at doing it, if you're not making money, that's just a hobby, right? Right now, you know, maybe you're not making a lot of money because right now you said, shit, you know, maybe you did the post and then you did some ones that she stole. Some people told you, dude, you're good at that. Because the reason why you're here It's not because I saw you talking about shit. I saw you because you're good at what you do. And I see that you're enjoying it, but you haven't figured out how the third step is, how to monetize that. Right now, we got to take a step back and say, I know I can't, I know I can't, but if I could create and live off of this, how would I create a business being a content creator who loves what he loves to do and is good at it? 'Cause I'll tell you what, dude, you're great at it. Tienes algo. Tienes algo. Now you and I need to meet a couple times and figure out how do we build a business around that? How do we build the Benjamin Perez ecosystem, right? Like for example, if you were to go and see my ecosystem, you're going to see that I have Business Management Lab. I'm a business manager to Latino entertainers. That's what I do to musicians. Some of the most iconic musicians in the world. And I'm a financial planner, international private wealth advisors. And I'm also, we do kind of like the AAA of the business management where we do tax for like Latinos in Latin America, could call US Latin Tax Group. But it all started for me. And then I created what I do, Louis Barajas Inc., which is Finanzas con Corazón, where I don't know if we can see back here, but I have a bunch of books here that I've written and I speak and I get paid to speak, right? When I first started, I would pay somebody if they would let me speak right now. I ask, you know, if they want to pay me, it's like $25,000 to speak for an hour.

Wow.

And then I have other stuff, but from me, but I decided, okay, I'm, I love what I do. And so what I call it is not my occupation. I coined a term years ago that I wrote in my books called occupation. It's like, what do I love to do and how do I make money? I got to get you out of your head to say, I got to wait for somebody who's going to recognize my talent. And pay me what I'm available to say, eff it. I'm gonna frickin' make the money. I'm gonna create the money. I'm gonna, because that's again, I'm dealing with mindsets, right? And so the thing is that because you are an educated man, you are a funny man, you are a man that's very empathetic, you're a very man that's very caring, has a lot of feelings. Now we gotta figure out how to make, how to get you to be able to do what you love to do 100% of the time and make a shit and a boatload of money because you deserve it. Because your value, God gave you the same. Whatever somebody else is making a million dollars a year, you have the same everything with you. It's just tenemos que comenzar a pensar poquito diferente. So that's a little bit of my coaching here for you because I think that you deserve it. And we're going to end. We got— we're down like 54 minutes in. I try to stay within 50 to an hour. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions more. At Finance in Coda, we always talk about financial dignity. I want you to tell me what in your mind, what financial dignity means to you.

That's a great question. I was thinking about it like I Googled on like, what the heck is financial dignity? And because I saw— I'm like, qué es esto? And from what I recall, no, like, if you correct me if I'm wrong, isn't like financial dignity Um, how you use your money. I mean, can you, maybe I got it wrong. Can you tell me?

Yeah, no, no, no. Let me tell you financial dignity. Mira, financial dignity is on social media. Vas a ver alguien que te va a decir, I'm going to show you how to make money. I'm going to show you where to invest. You got to buy Nvidia. You got to buy this stock. But he's right next to his Bentley. Puro pedo. He's probably leased it. Or he's in his mansion that is his tío's or somebody, or he's going to show you. And we all think about, oh man, that Latino, that dude or whatever, he's making a lot of money and he's got the joyas and he's got the Bentley and he's got la ruca with him and he's got, you know, and most of us don't identify to that shit. Financial dignity is, look, we want to be able to make enough money so when we go to a restaurant, And let's say you go to a nice, you take your wife and your kids to a nice steak restaurant where you're looking at, oh shit, I hope they order the burgers because the ribeye is like $70. Where we go and you tell the kids, whatever you want, right? Whatever you want. I've got a nephew who's literally outside the door when they took him to eat. You know, he'd order the ribeye. And you know, when I was a kid, we'd order the taquitos because that's all we had a chance, that's all we could order.

Right?

And so we want, we want, to be able to go to restaurants and not look at the prices, but just order what we want. We want to be able to buy, if we're going to buy a used car, buy a new used car, one that's a year or 2 years old. Not because we can barely afford a car, you know, or we're driving around and we got new tires and we don't let the tires go bald longer than we have because we can't afford, because it's either, you know, buy the tires or pay the rent. Financial dignity to me is showing people not only how to make more money, Because when we work in low-income areas, dude, and you have nonprofits, they focus on, I'm gonna show you how to budget and cut more from what you already have already little of. Well, we're already living on beans and rice. It's, I'm gonna show you how to make more money. They're gonna show you how to use credit 'cause you're, what are you talking about? They don't even give me credit cards 'cause I can't even get a credit card. Financial dignity means that you're going to, you know, before Obamacare, you know where Latinos died more? Most Latinos died in emergency rooms because they didn't have health insurance, dude. They didn't have health insurance. It's that every Latino has health insurance. It just requires a certain amount of money and that you get your finances and you're putting a little bit away for your future and that you respect your future self and that we're not, you know, they're not ripping us off on getting us loans that are high interest rate because we have shitty credit. That's what financial dignity is. That's what I call financial dignity. I get it. If somebody wants to go, you want a Bentley, more power to you. But the majority of us, es, we need una vida calmada where we make good money, where we're able to take our kids on vacation, not these staycations where we do maybe Disneyland and that's it once every 2, 3 years. That's what we're looking at. That's what financial dignity is. I just wanted to share with you just like, what do you think financial respect, financial dignity means to you.

Real quick. I do have to hop off in like 2 or 3 minutes. Wife has to go to go interview someone for her job.

We're almost done. We're almost done.

For financial dignity, I think I can summarize it with not having to ever say to my kids, es que no tenemos dinero. You know, no hay dinero. I don't know, like I think growing up, my parents, if I wanted something as a little boy, as a little kid, right? Un juguete, un candy, whatever. They would tell me, es que no hay dinero, no tenemos dinero. And as a kid, I thought like they were just being mean, right? Like, oh, no me lo quieren comprar. But as an adult, I'm like, yeah, we didn't have the money. And it was true. They were not lying to me. I just didn't understand it, right? I didn't really, as I'm just a little boy. So that would be the thing. I mean, to teach my kids financial literacy, of course, right? I still would love to learn more as well for myself. Pero que no, no, si me pide algo mi son o mi daughter, like, que pueda yo proveer, you know, like, orar. Maybe not the ribeye steak, right? But like, if she wants in and out, she wants this, and like, sí, vamos. No, sí, hoy no porque te portaste mal. That's the story. If it's si lo tengo, like, I will want to give them those memories. Tampoco spoiling, right? But like I said, like the memories of que no es que no tenga yo dinero. I feel like that's something that I grew up with, like I said, that still is in my mind. As I am now parenting now.

Yeah, that's wonderful, man. And we're at the end of the hour. I know you got to go as well. Dude, I appreciate your candidness. I appreciate who you are. I think that you're going to be big. I honestly, I think that your time hasn't come yet. I think it's coming. And so thank you for your honesty and your candor. And please, just we'll end here by telling everybody how to find you. How to go to what page and where can they find you?

Yeah, thank you so much for the coaching, for the advice, for the space. Those palabras, honestly, like they come at a perfect time for me. And I would love to do a part 2 for us to meet online as well. And I think there's a lot that I can learn from you. And like I told you, right throughout my journey, I've never really had mentors, but not really ever. Any male mentors, not to mention Latino mentors. So, you know, definitely would love to learn more from you. People can find me. I'm Perez the Advisor. No, I think in any, you just Google it. Ahí lo vas a encontrar. Vas a encontrarme en todo. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Threads. I guess that's a thing now. Not to mention X. Tú me puedes encontrar ahí, es Perez the Advisor. Content that you hopefully can reflect, you can laugh, you can smile. And you can also hopefully connect with something that I may post. So, but yeah, muchas gracias, and te lo agradezco.

Good, we'll be meeting soon. All right, thank you, Bedri. Thank you so much, take care.

Thank you.

Adiós, bye-bye.