Craig Garcia: It All Began Door-To-Door: Craig Started A Mortgage Company, Survived The Market Collapse, And Committed To Riding His Bike 70 Miles

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. So I have a treat for you guys today. I have a really special guest that I met, I think it's been 30 years ago. We both did the same job over the summer. You might have heard me mention it before when I mentioned selling books door to door. It's with the Southwestern company and that was how we met, going door to door selling books and never ever even considering that this job would give skills that would last a lifetime. And so I'm excited to bring him on because he's been super successful with everything he's done and is now starting a new venture. So I'm excited to get into to that and everything else that we're going to talk about. So welcome to the show, Craig Garcia.

Hey Stacy, thank you so much for having me on. And it's incredible that we've actually been able to keep in touch after all this time. And it is pretty shocking to think back about how long it's actually been. It's been a long time.

I know. Isn't that crazy? When I thought about 30 years, I'm like, that is crazy.

I know, I know, I know. Yeah.

So I would love to have everyone hear more about you. I gave high level, but just go ahead and tell everyone your story and what you have, what you've been up to.

Sure. So yeah, I've basically been kind of a career. It's not, you know, it's probably 25ish years, pretty close to that in the real estate and specifically mortgage financing background. And so, you know, actually in college was introduced to sales through the same program that you talked about, the Southwestern company, you know, did that for several summers and, and actually had a finance degree. Got out of college and really didn't know what I was going to end up doing. And they, and I real honestly I would, I didn't even know what the mortgage industry was at the time. But my, my parents neighbor happened to work for a Finance company and said hey, you should come check this out. And you know, I ended up talking to that company and ended up doing that and started doing home equity loans and consolidation loans and things of that nature. And then you know, that and then, and then kind of graduated into more traditional really residential mortgage financing has been, you know, kind of the, the thing that I've been doing all this time and kind of went through some big highs prior to the real estate run up in the the early 2000s and then you know, had a front row seat actually, you know, worked for a big real estate company, a mortgage lending army. And then in 2006 had the idea to open up my own company with actually a fellow book book guy and we opened up a mortgage company in 2006 right in time to have a. For all the carnage. And you know, and then, and then really we kind of slogged through that and we're and survived and we're still doing it and scratching together deals. In 2009 I kind of had got approached from some people that I used to work with about opportunity I'm still with which is with a different real estate company. It's actually the largest independent real estate company in Florida and called the Kai's company and joining their mortgage operation in a leadership position. And then I've kind of been through that and there's been a bunch of different ownership changes and industry. There's a lot of mergers and acquisitions in this industry and so going through a lot of that different stuff and now we're actually reacting, changing how our business operates again and kind of reinventing ourselves and kind of putting ourselves in a better position for the next 10 years. Let's say it's been a fun, interesting ride.

Yeah, it sounds like it. So okay, I have a lot to talk about you with you on that. I thought we could start off talking about our book selling job first because I feel like you're the first person I've had on actually that has sold books also. And I think that like what you were saying with just everything that you've been through with your career, I'm imagining that a lot of the, the resilience that it sounds like you had to have to get through that helped. Having the book, the book experience.

Yeah, I mean I. Let me start by saying this about the books, the book experience. I mean for me it was definitely the best thing I could have done up to that point in my life I think because I was literally not a very. I was, I mean terrified isn't really Too much of a stretch to say that. I was terrified about public speaking. I was not good with that. My freshman year of college, I had to do a presentation up in front of the class and literally like choked and to the point where the professor came up and said to me afterwards, hey, are you okay? You know, I mean, that was pretty rough, like consoling me in the hallway after the class. So it was definitely, I would say that sales wasn't exactly my natural inclination. I knew some people that had sold books and had done well. It seemed like something that somebody who wanted to be successful would do and undertake. And I saw what they had done. And so I think that that gave me the confidence that, hey, I could figure it out. I think the lesson there is the way that that program is set up. You put yourself in a position where you have to figure it out. Like, you know, you're the program. Hey, for those of that don't know, this company's been around post Civil war times. And they would recruit college students from around the country, they would bring them into Nashville, they would put them through a week of a boot camp to try to train them on being a salesperson. And the whole key was that you would take a group of students from one area and they would go and relocate for the summer and to where they didn't have all of their normal distractions and friend groups. And so you had a lot invested in being successful and you had little distractions from your normal day to day life. And honestly, it's really hard to undo that decision once you spend all that time and effort and now you're many, many miles away from your home and, and you're there and it's hard, but it's either quitting and giving up and going, or you figure it out. And so, you know, I really went through a lot of emotional discomfort to finally get comfortable enough to, to do a sales job where you're knocking on doors and talking to people and facing rejection. Heck, it's crazy as it is. We were doing that 80 hours a week, six days a week. But I don't see how else I would have actually done that if I hadn't done that program. By the time we were out of college, I was holding recruiting meetings on campus with you and we were recruiting other college students and I was giving presentations and, and then, and there's just. I don't see how else I kind of would have gotten through that. So it was definitely a big, a big growth area for me.

Yeah, and I love that you Brought up emotional discomfort, Craig, because so common for people to feel discomfort and then not to push through, just to, like, stop. Right. And it's that idea of. Of feeling it and then figuring out a way to get through that. Do you remember, like, how that, how that worked for you?

Oh, I remember my first week after a whole day of rejection and not being successful and not making any sales and driving my car back on this country road in North Carolina. Pretty sure I shed some tears and just, I can't do this end up. And then you kind of get over that a little bit. And then. And then I think the, the one thing that they teach you and it gets drilled. And this definitely is. You can't control who buys. You got to control the things that you can control. So stop worrying about that result. And so the only thing you can control is how many people can you talk to. So I just kind of, you know. You kind of, you know, but it's hard because you're out there to try to be successful. So every time you're not, it feels like it's a hurt. But then finally you figure out a way to disconnect that feeling and just focus on. Okay, so, hey, as long as I can talk to this many people and let me just focus on. That's the goal, the controllable goal, then it got easier. It never goes away. You learn how to play the game with your own emotions a little bit. And that, that was something that helped, but definitely had some breaking points.

Yeah, I love, I love how you explain that, because it sounds like you got through the emotional discomfort by focusing on the numbers of people that you were going to see. And then that helped your mind sort of give it a goal. So it wasn't spinning when you didn't get the result you wanted.

Definitely. I didn't know if I could succeed at how many sale at a certain number of sales, especially when I was experiencing the opposite of success. But I could succeed at that goal. You know what I mean? I could definitely, hey, I could knock on a certain number of doors that day, and at least if I could, could succeed at that. That was something. You know what I mean? And so let me just focus on that. And then the pressure comes off a little bit. You're having success. You're actually, you're actually. Even though you haven't sold anything. Hey, I successfully talked to the amount of people I set out, I was going to set out to talk to this morning, and there's a confidence building thing. It's that old thing when you have a checklist or a to do list, every time you check something off, there's a little psychological win. And that's a confidence builder. And so just the fact that you're doing the thing that you said you were going to do helps your confidence level, which actually results in a more effective sales presentation. So. Yeah. So that definitely was a big breakthrough.

Yeah. I love that you just said doing the thing.

I didn't even plan that, Stacy.

It was really good. So I love that. So.

Yeah.

So you looked at it as a psycho. I like the word that you were worded that to psychological win just by hitting the number regardless of what the goal was. It sounds like.

Yeah, yeah.

How did you control. Okay. Cause this is new. I've been having we mentioned before, I'm creating a formula. Not creating, but through the interviews that I'm doing, I am, I'm discovering a formula that people have for how they do the thing. And it's funny hearing you talk about what we did at Southwestern, I'm like, oh my gosh. There were. They were perfect at the formula. I mean, obviously they've been doing it for forever. But that whole. Yeah. Like one of the common pieces of the formula is surrounding yourself with like minded people. Right. Which we did. Another piece is educating yourself, keeping that open mind, able to not have an ego and actually like take things in essentially. And. And then the other one is. Yeah. Focusing on the numbers and not looking at rejection as rejection.

Yeah. And the other part of that's. There is the more people that you're involved with, the more people that know about your commitment, that definitely helps too.

Oh, right. Like the accountability piece.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easy to let yourself down. It's not as easy to let these other people that you traveled out there with. And I can tell you that that that definitely helps me today too.

Yeah. What is the best way that has worked for you in terms of that accountability piece? Keeping yourself accountable.

For me, it's involving other people. If. If I know something's got to get done and I know other people are relying on me and there's a finite deadline and there are consequences if that deadline doesn't get met, that's a very high probability that I'm going to follow through and make sure that that gets done. The more nebulous something is, the less of a deadline, the less people know. Probability that that's going to get done and followed through on drops pretty significantly. Yeah.

And what was your best way. What has been your best way to have that be like the case in terms of you feeling accountable towards others. Has it been like a weekly check in, a daily thing, or what's been your strategy for that?

I guess it depends on whatever the situation is. Yeah, a regular check in definitely helps and if you can even artificially build some consequence and usually there's consequence to whatever we're working on anyway, but, but usually that, that definitely helps.

Yeah. What kind of consequences?

It can be simple stuff. I mean, like in our business, we're dealing with people who are trying to change their life, they're trying to move their home. You know what I mean? There can be, I mean, that's a really stressful, emotional time for a lot of people. So certainly anytime it's involving a specific situation and, you know, you've got, you know, a family and they've got to move their life and they've got kids and all that stuff, I mean, that's, that's an easy one. But if you're trying to work on a project that's going to help one of your employees, that employee's going to feel, or, you know, that partner is going to feel let down. And that's just the way I know that works for me. I don't like letting people down and I don't want to feel like I let somebody down. And so you try not to put yourself in a position where you're over promising and in a position to do that. But then sometimes it's good to make a commitment that you don't 100% know that you can deliver. It's not a bad thing to do sometimes. You know what I mean? I mean, you know, I try to avoid that a little bit, but, but it is good to do that sometimes because then it pushes you to kind of go beyond a little bit to try to make sure you figure it out.

Yeah. Are you saying. So is it your client that's the thing that's holding you accountable, like currently. Is that what, is that what I.

Would say that's the, that's the simplest thing. But I mean, but, but sometimes it's, you know, it's the client, sometimes it's the, the partnership that you have with somebody that you're working with, whether that's an employee or whether that's a business partner. There's a number of different things. Or, you know, or listen or the, you know, or the owner of the company. You know what I mean? So.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So, sorry for the listeners. I have to switch gears for a minute because I want to Go into this more. Craig, are you cool with me? Can we talk? We talked last time about your b. Are we, Are we, Are we good talking about that in this case?

Yeah, sure. Okay, cool.

Just because I want to switch. I want to figure out your accountability piece formula because I think that bike riding is, you're doing with your, with your riding is like also similarly aligned with what you've done with your. All the different career and books and all that stuff. So do you want to kind of give a, give a summation of, of that and then we can kind of talk about that for a minute?

So it's fun. I'll tell you a funny story. So I've been working for a long time. There was a number of years, and I think this was leading up to my oldest son being about 9 years old. And there's probably the whole time he was alive, I probably had not been on a real good fitness track. Mostly working. My focus was. So my son is nine and we enrolled him in karate. And so be a day where the students could bring their parents in or somebody else a guest in to do like this fitness challenge. And so it's really funny because so I go there one Saturday and it was like, how many push ups can you do in a minute? How many pull ups can you do in a minute? How many sit ups can you do in a minute? And then you run a mile, which is just like it's in a strip plaza and all you're doing is running around the building like four times and that's a mile. So I hadn't been doing much as far as fitness goes. So I'm doing this with like a bunch of nine year olds.

So kind of shape you're in.

So literally at the end of the running and it's like brutally hot. It's. It's south Florida, it's July probably. And I literally end up throwing up in a bush all these. I can't keep up with these nine year olds running a mile. And I literally went home and I had to crawl and got into a fetal position. I felt so awful on the floor in the living room. So shortly after that, the company that I work with that they had joined this fundraising event for raising cancer money for cancer research. And it was at the time, it was a cycling event where you would commit to riding a certain number of miles and you would commit to raising a certain amount of money. And there was people in a room and they were saying, hey, so this is a month after that or something after my karate debacle and the owner of the. Of the company is in the room with me. And he said, oh, yeah. And he goes, absolutely, we're going to participate. I'm going to do it and I'll ride the 70 miles. And it was a 70. And he was saying, hey, we're going to ride a 72 mile bike ride is what it was. And I. And he goes, yeah. He goes, it's not that bad. You sit on a bike for five hours, your butt hurts a little bit, no big deal. And I'm like, well, if he's going to do it, I guess I'll try. So I committed to seven. I committed to it kind of like, you know, blind. And it was six weeks away.

Oh, gosh.

So six weeks away. And they're like, so you have a bike? I go, well, I have a bike in my garage. So I go, look at my garage. And I have a beach cruiser. Literally a beach cruiser that I haven't ridden. It's got. The tires are barely hanging on. So I go out that Saturday and, you know, and I ride 20 miles on my beach cruiser.

Oh, my gosh.

And then it became so literally, I just. And then I ended up borrowing my sister's bike and I ended up renting a bike for the actual event. But by the time that that day rolled around, ended up riding 72 miles. And it was, it was a. It was a. Actually, it was a fantastic experience. I mean, this was. The Miami Dolphins put this thing on, and there's like thousands of people that ride in this event. And so you're in this huge group. I'd never really experienced anything like that before. And, you know, we rode like from West Palm Beach City Place in West Palm beach all the way down into the Dolphin Stadium. And I just enjoyed it so much that that became my regular. My regular exercise thing. I don't love going to the gym. It's not exactly my thing. I do not like running, but I do like cycling. And so that's kind of become my thing. And then. So you definitely, you know, so I would say if you want to tie it back into what we were talking about before, you know, hey, I had a deadline. You know, I had a group of people I had committed to it. I committed to it financially. And then you figure it out. And then I will tell you that. Then I joined a club. Now I cycle with a group of people that fell off a little bit since COVID because they disbanded. It got back together. But there's still a couple people that I ride with. And I will tell you that still, there are days where I don't feel like necessarily getting up and doing it, but I know those guys are going to ride. And I still, still. There's still an accountability piece there that absolutely helps me still get out there and do that, even though I love it. There's just some days you're just not as motivated. But, yeah, so that's been probably seven, eight years now. Oh, wow. And so, yeah, no, it's definitely. And it's definitely helped me as far as my health. I was clearly not in as good a shape as I. As, you know then as I am today. So.

I love that. I love that story, actually. And it sounds like you had a significant. Why from you probably remembering throwing up. I think that probably helped too, is you had a reason to want to do it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

When you said, I will try. Because that's like, not something a normal person does. Like, you're not. Not riding, like, having the beach cruiser saying. Not saying you're not normal, but, like, you know, like, in terms of being like most. A lot of people would say, oh, that's way too far. I'm going to start with 20 miles or, okay, I'm going to. You're committing to 70. You're probably an experienced biker. I'll do 30. Whatever it is. What do you think got you to say, I will try?

Well, it was definitely because, you know, there was other people there that were doing it. And this guy who had. He wasn't a cyclist, you know what I mean? He was actually a runner, so he was definitely in some shape. But I would tell you his confidence that, you know, hey, oh, yeah, you can do it. You just gotta, you know, it's not that big a deal. It's just something you kind of will deal with. And the fact that some other folks were doing it. I said, why not give me something to do? There are times I'll try to take something on it if I haven't done it before, I guess so.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. How about you tell me your best book story?

Well, this is something that kind of carried over from books and it just became relevant later. And so I've been telling people this story for years, and then you'll see where I'm going with this. Part of the thing when you're selling books is you could bring other people out there to sell books in subsequent years and you could recruit a team and you'd make some money off of those sales. And some people did a lot with that. But anyway, we're at this recruiting meeting and there are a lot of experienced people who have recruited huge teams in this meeting. And they were having this conversation. These are college kids from all over the country, really were at this meeting. And one of the kids was a 19 year old who had just done his first year. He was the rookie of the year, big honking kid from Texas. And they were talking about going and opening up this new recruiting area at this college. I think it was Texas A and M where they hadn't been before. And that. And this 19 year old kid was saying, well, I'll go there. Well, nobody's going to go there with you. So I mean, how are you going to do that by yourself? And he kind of looked at all these guys and he was probably the most junior guy there and he just said, I'm a battleship brother. Just like that. And I. And I've been telling that story, oh my gosh, forever. And that kid is the governor of the state of Oklahoma.

No way.

That was Kevin Stitt.

Serious?

Yep.

Oh my gosh. I love it. Wow, what a cool story.

People that worked have known me for a long time. They've heard me tell that story and then suddenly one day it's like, hey, I know that guy. That's the guy.

That is so cool. I'm a battleship brother. I love that.

I'm a battleship brother. Yeah. Never forgot it.

That is the best.

That is so cool.

All right, so we're going back to your career, which. Whatever happened to the other book guy that you opened the company with in 2006?

Did you guys. So he's so. It's funny because he, he's not. And it's, it's Gene who you know. But, but he's very successful. He had a successful property flipping rehab, you know, property rehab business. And, and so we kind of got together to kind of leverage his contacts and his knowledge. And my contact, my knowledge he had. His was more on a different aspect of the business than mine was. Mine was more traditional residential mortgage, banking stuff and his was more investment and private lending and you know, had a lot of contacts there. So he carried on his business, you know, went through a tougher period of time too. But, but, but he's been very successful. He and his partner were actually on one of these HGTV flipping shows. He's still doing very well.

That's great.

But you.

So once, once your company, the company that you had I think was 2006 to 2009. Once that sort of Once you got moved over into the other one, that's when you guys sort of separated in terms of.

Correct. Okay, that's right. Yep.

Okay. And then let's talk about that business for a minute. When you had that business, how did you get through that? Because, I mean, that was the hardest time. I know in my staffing business. We were in construction. Oh, my gosh. That was like a really. A really hard time. Just in general, like, how did you get. How did you get through that?

You know, it was not easy. It was a pretty rough time. I mean, you know, we were. We were trying to scratch together whatever deals we could. And I would say we. Listen, we survived. We weren't thriving at that time. I'm going to kid anybody. It was very difficult to do regular loans. There was not a lot of demand for regular mortgages to buy property or it was so hard to qualify at that point. It was just tough. There were a lot of people that, you know, that couldn't get regular loans, that wanted private loans. And so one of the things that we ended up doing was really figuring out a little bit of a way to search and find. I did a little, through a little almost detective work and reaching out, we were able to make some deals happen kind of out of nowhere. It's funny, at that time I took a class, an online class on search engine optimization. And at that time, I had optimized the term hard equity loans. I think was the exact term number of years. Now, but if you were. If you were anywhere and you were searching and you searched for that particular term in Google, my company would come up in the number one position. And it was like, you know, it was like, you know, you follow these techniques. You had to do some work, you had to do some posting and stuff like that, but it did end up working. And so we would get calls from people looking for the. For, you know, hard money loans all over the country. And the best story and then what we would do is, okay, so now we knew we need. We had somebody that was needing a loan. We would try to. We would ask them the questions about, hey, kind of equity they have in the property or what were they trying to buy, figure out whether there was a possible deal there or if it was realistic that somebody would lend the money. And if the terms that the person would accept were realistic for the market, and if it was realistic, then we would try to find a lender. And so we had a tool that would help us look through public records. And really it was just a matter of like searching through public records and then seeing. Because when you lend money or you borrow money on a mortgage, it's a public record. It's recorded in public records. And so I remember doing a search. We had somebody that called us. They were halfway through building a house in Hawaii, and they. The, you know, their lender went out of business. They were in a position where they had this property that was going to be worth a lot of money when it was totally, you know, finished. But it was a. They needed a $900,000 loan on a property in Hawaii. I never been to Hawaii. I don't know anybody in Hawaii. But we were able to find a lender that we just called out of the blue. Hey, how you doing? I saw you done some private loans in the area, and we have somebody that's interested in the loan. We would love to kind of put a deal together, and we'd like to earn a fee and, you know, the borrower will pay that. And we ended up being a pretty nice $900,000 deal together in Hawaii just out of thin air. And we did. That was probably the best story like that. We did some other. We did lots of other things like that, but that was kind of the most exotic one. But that was kind of neat.

Yeah, that's so cool. I love that. Because most people would have not even considered taking something like that. And the fact that you did and then we're able to do it, that's like, that's amazing.

It was pretty neat.

Had you. Was it. Was it easy? Like, in terms of when you had to make the calls, did it happen right away or did you have to call a bunch of people to make it happen?

No, you had to. You definitely had to. You had to dig in and make and, you know, and make. Make a bunch of calls. And sometimes, you know, you know, these people are, you know, certainly anybody that's, that's the lender on that side of things is not somebody of, of no substance. They had enough money to do private lending and a lot of times lending out significant sums of money. And so talk to a lot of people, because sometimes they don't know you. They don't want to talk to you. They're busy people. They're, you know, they're. They've already got contacts, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, you had to do some sifting through and try to reach out and talk to. Talk to as many people as you could at that time with the way the situation was. You had the time to try to make something out of whatever opportunity that you had, because there weren't as many opportunities. You just had to kind of pick and choose what you wanted to put the time into. If something was not really even possibly realistic, you just couldn't put any time into that, because if you had something that was realistic, you were going to have to put some time into it and maybe you'd be able to make something out of it, but you just didn't have that time to waste because you had to. So you just try to focus on the high probability stuff.

Yeah. So what do you think kept you motivated during that time?

I mean, yeah, motivation was pretty. You know, we have. I've got two sons, you know, at that time, they were. There were little back then. I mean, at that period of time, I think my oldest was four, three or four. And my youngest was diagnosed with. On the autism spectrum, insult to injury. That was on top of everything else that was going on, Business crumbling around us and the industry completely in turmoil and the economy in turmoil, and that all was kind of happening at the same time. And so there was a lot of fear in immediate need. It really wasn't hard to be motivated. It was more. It was harder to kind of figure out keeping your emotions in check, you know, with everything that was going on.

Yeah. So with keeping your emotions to check, it's like. Do you mean like a. Controlling your attitude in a way. I'm trying back to book days. Right. Where it's like, are you. Are you using the. The somehow keeping it fun or you, like, what are you doing to actually. Or is it focusing on numbers or what. What did you use to. To keep your emotions in check during that?

Well, let's put it this way. There was a period of time where I was, you know, it's funny, I was listening to the gentleman that you had, you know, one of your. One of your other podcasts and his, his was a similar story. Definitely was using some alcohol to kind of get to a better, you know, I mean, calm your mind or whatever. At the end of the day, during that period of time, I realized it became. It became more of a thing and like there was too many other things to deal with in my life, wrestling with, with alcohol and whether I should and shouldn't drink. And it became a. It became more of a thing in my life and I just had to eliminate it and so just didn't have time for. So I think getting off, getting away from that was definitely helpful. You know, try to seek out different ways to keep my mental state strong. And listening to motivational things. Certainly that was helpful. Motivational things. I think, you know, I probably didn't do quite enough, but I. But that was. That was always. That was always part of the thing. But one of the things that helped was definitely getting away from. From the alcohol.

Yeah. That's amazing. Do you. It's funny, I just found my. My Zig Ziglar tapes, the cassettes from.

Oh, wow.

From the college days. So, yeah, I'm just thinking of that. When you're saying listen to motivational stuff, did you. Do you have any favorites nowadays that you listen to that keeps you. Your mind nourished?

You know, audible is a great thing. I have the Audible app and I have a whole library of stuff, and there's things that I go back and, and listen to. One I've listened to many times is. And I, right now, drawing a blank on the name of Darren Hardy is the author. The title is not coming to me, but it's. I've definitely listened to it a number of times. I would love to hear some of the old stuff that we used to listen to back in the book days, but I don't. I don't have those.

I know. I was trying to decide what to do with it. Is it the. I'm looking it up right now. Is it the compound effect?

That's it.

Oh, that one. Okay.

That's exactly it. That is exactly the compound effect.

Thank you, Stacy.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Well, yeah, and I love, I love that you were able to see that alcohol was not great for you, and then you were able to.

Too.

So what do you think were your biggest learnings from. From that company? Because the thing that I'm trying to show people is all have things that aren't successful. Right. And it's the matter of when you're making a decision to do something, it's not thinking, oh, is this going to be, you know, successful always? It could be. What am I going to learn from this, you know, either way, if it's a, you know, dependent on the outcome. So I'm just wondering, what did you learn from that experience?

If you look at your assets, don't take them for granted. I think what I learned is that tomorrow is not promised. I mean, that was, for me, I had probably six properties. There was this assumption, a string of success, you know what I mean, coming out of school, actually, there was another situation which didn't end in success that you know all about, but then a lot of success, a lot of good things, good situations, and maybe Being too assumptive that all that stuff was going to continue, and you put too much stuff at risk, that there's certain things that happen outside of your control. And I think I've learned to be a little bit more careful in our business today. We just went through a period of time where there's lots of people in the mortgage business. The last couple years with the drop in rates after Covid, and people have done very well. And right now, the opposite is happening. The whole system is tightening. Every mortgage company in the United States was hiring like crazy in 2020, and now a lot of that stuff's being unwound. So things cycle. And so when you have success and you've got assets that you do what you can to protect those things, save your money for a rainy day. Don't assume that the good times are going to last forever. You're going to go through ebbs and flows, and if you can protect yourself a little bit more, that's. You're going to be glad that you did that. I guess.

Yeah. What do you think is like. Let's say you've given such great advice already, but let's just say you have one piece of advice for everyone. What would be your biggest piece of advice in regards to doing the thing? And doing the thing is. I mean, that's why I brought up your biking. Because it's anything. Right. It's opening a business, it's selling a business. It's starting saying you're gonna ride 72 miles on a bike.

Yeah.

When you just have a cruiser, you know, it's literally anything. What do you think would be your number one piece of advice?

You know, for me, I think that the, you know, and this is just. I think something that works just very naturally for me. Maybe it doesn't apply to everybody, but I think that if you have a kind of a curiosity about wanting to understand how something works, if you want to know and you can figure it out. So if you want to be successful enough, you could figure it out. You will figure it out. If you apply yourself enough, you can do it. So you got to pay attention. You got to talk to the right people. But I think it's the. Yeah, it is probably deciding and then trying to be a student about whatever you're trying to. To do, and then that can help you do the thing. Yeah.

I'm so glad you brought that up because I think that's. And I don't know how to phrase this yet with the formula, but there are so many people that come about things with an ego. Right. And, and aren't willing to just learn it all. And I do think that is one of your key things is just not having that ego, being able to just like consume the information and have that curiosity and be a student. How do you think you get yourself into that mindset? How do you, how do you lose that ego and just realize, okay, this is a new thing and I'm going to just keep an open mind?

Well, I really, I mean, this has served me pretty well in my life and I think I got it from, I mean, I got it from my mom. I don't like being wrong about something that's got a. Got a right or a wrong answer. So I, and it's funny because I don't say that I know unless I'm really confident. But even when I'm really confident, I will, I will take the approach with people because, you know, nobody likes to talk to somebody who's a know it all. But if you approach somebody, even if you know and you approach, hey, listen, this is what I, this is, I think this, I might be wrong, but this is what I think and here's why. And let me see what I can show you to back that up. You can get far with somebody. And I guess so. I think wanting to be right and feeling kind of a need to be right, there's. I don't, I don't want to be too adamant about something because, you know, even if I feel like I really know it, then it turns out I'm wrong. Then I was. Then, then that's embarrassing. I mean, there's so much stuff to know. I mean, how can you know? You can't know. I mean, even if you just take one topic, whatever it is, you know, it's just so many things. I mean, the level of depth of knowledge that some people have about certain topics, you'll never, you'll never get there. You know what I mean?

And as hearing you talk about that, I'm wondering, there's a lot of people that will say they don't want to look dumb, right? So they'll either pretend they know more or whatever it is. How do you get yourself to not even worry about that and just to have that level of curiosity and the open mind that you have when you're approaching something like that.

Yeah, I guess I don't worry about. I mean, I know enough that I can talk to somebody about what I would think about a particular thing if a set of circumstances were true. You know what I mean? And then and then say, so let's, let's figure that out. If that. Are these things actually true? I mean, you know, you don't really have to know everything. You just have to want to know how it works, know how you could get an answer. And it's funny because knowing stuff is one thing, but knowing stuff helps you find solutions. But a lot of times there's a person involved in whatever solution it is, too. And sometimes it's a matter of finding the right person. So, you know, I don't, I don't know. That sounded a little incoherent to me as I say it all. But I don't worry if people don't. If I'm talking to somebody and they don't think I know what I'm talking about. I mean, I'm kind of admitting that. So what are they going to do? Use that against me? Hey, here's what I'm trying to. Usually you're trying to help somebody figure something out. You're trying to help somebody accomplish something or they're trying to help you. And I guess you're just dealing with people, and as long as you've got a good intention about your interactions with them, whatever that may be, if you're open about, hey, this is my intention, this is my desire, or, hey, I'm trying to help you with this, and you're just communicating with somebody.

Yeah, I love it. You just have that open mind and you're not. You're looking at it from a beginner mindset almost, and not tripping up on knowing everything that you need to know, essentially. Yeah. I love it. Well, Craig, this has been so much fun talking to you, and I am really grateful that you took the time to do this with me.

Hey, honestly, Stacy, it's been super cool, and I didn't know if I would have anything to bring to the party, but, you know, I think you ask a lot of good questions and hopefully there's, you know, the stuff that was taught to me. There's always something that somebody picks up from listening to somebody else's story sometimes. So hopefully it's worthwhile.

Oh, yeah. I think that there was a lot. I'm actually really excited. Oh. If people want to kind of check out what you're up to, where can they. Can they see all about you?

So I'm going to have some changes coming with our website and everything. You could find me on Facebook. Craig A. Garcia on Facebook. That's probably the simplest. That's not going to change.

Perfect. Well, awesome. Well, thank you so much.

Thanks Stacy.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show, but even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothething callcast co or email usello the thingpost podcast. Com.