Keith Hegidio: The Power Of A Basketball | The Business Blast Podcast #303

Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Keith Hegidio with us and he is a relationship manager for Five Arch Funding Corporation. So welcome to the show, Keith.

Hey, thanks a lot, Tyler. Thanks for having me on this morning.

Of course, thanks for hopping on, we appreciate it. Um, we will dive in. The first question I have for you, Keith, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Well, Tyler, one that really sticks out to me is really, you know, you never know what's in store for you in life. You never know the plan. You never know the plan that God has in store for your life. My whole life, I grew up playing basketball, right? Ever since I was a little kid, I slept with a basketball. I ate basketball, woke up basketball, practiced before school, played all the way through high school, had colleges looking at me. And I really worked hard at it. This, I was for certain God had given me this amazing athletic ability to glorify myself. You know, I really even thought that I had a chance of, you know, getting paid to play basketball one day. Well, going into college, I made some bad mistakes, changed some of the courses of my life, and basketball was no longer an option. Years later, 5, 7 years later, I got very involved in Atlanta, Georgia, in an inner-city youth ministry, Christian outreach. But what I was doing is I was facilitating this by coaching these young community leaders and the kids that they're bringing in, coaching them and playing basketball with them and setting up games. One day, I had no reason what brought me there. One day, literally out cutting the grass, all of a sudden I had an epiphany. It hit me. And I said, oh my goodness, this gift wasn't given to me, this athletic ability wasn't given to me from God to serve my own purposes. It was given to me to serve his purpose. And that was the ability to connect with these 16, 17, 18-year-old gangbanged inner city kids that would have never related to a 32-year-old white guy for any other reason other than the fact that I had a little bit of game, right? That was what God gave me in order to be able to connect with these young men and try to do something to help them with their lives.

Yes, man. Thank you so much for sharing that. I can relate so much to the basketball, dude. I was so into basketball when I was younger, so I love it. The next one I have for you, Keith, is what is the What's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Okay, well, you know, I've been on and off in this industry for about 15 years. I've learned a lot from many different levels and just different specifics in the industry. But I say overall, and probably overall in life, and probably overall applicable to any business, but especially I'd say the private finance real estate investing community that I'm in, it's a lot smaller than what you think. I would say 6 degrees of separation. Me and one of my partners started one of the largest wholesale real estate companies in Georgia in the early 2000s when we were relatively young. The economic shift, I call it, came about 2008, and I had to go back and get a real job, right? But what I found at that time was we differentiated ourselves from the rest of the competition by acting with honesty and integrity in everything we did. At this time, a lot of people were inflating value, doing things that were unethical, and we never got caught up in that. I think that even speaks tenfold. The older you get, bigger of a platform that you're on, the smaller that community gets, right? And then in this industry, there's enough money for everybody, enough opportunity for everybody. I say just always act with integrity, um, do what's right at all costs. Really, the rest, everything else will work itself out.

And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.

What is my overall best piece of advice? I would say, you know, just each day, never get stagnant. Each day, just try to improve. You know, I heard a smart man tell me one time something along the lines, and I'm probably gonna paraphrase and probably goof it up, but that's part of who I am and what I do, right? So then I'll probably go back and improve on that, I hope. But essentially, he said, just improve, right? Improve every day, even if it's just 1%. Look at that, if you improve 1% every day, which is nothing, right? We can all do that. At the end of the year, look where you'll be. You know, from stock market perspective, you'd be up 365%, right? Pretty much anybody would take that. Really, the second thing I want to say too, and this is something that I've seen that I've struggled with from looking back, you know, actually, you know what, I'll hold that. I'll probably leave more to the next question.

And so yeah, the next one would be, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

I think it's just stay the course. Stay the course. See things through. In my life, and I think we see this with a lot of people, I think that my parents' generation were probably pretty good at it. I don't know if it's right, wrong, or indifferent, right? But, you know, they used to go to work and they would be there 20, 30, 40 years. We don't see that anymore. And I don't know if that's necessary because from moving around a little bit, you get exposed to different experiences and learn more. And I want always seeking knowledge. But how many, how many tasks or jobs, whether it's professional, career-related, or even personal, even maybe you want to finish your book, right? Or your New Year's resolutions, they never happen unless you just stay the course. But it's amazing, you know, between the 1% thing and staying the course, virtually anything's accomplishable over time.

And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

You know, I don't know if I— I think you could probably ask me that next week and it would change, and next year and it would change, right? But right now I would say definitely do what you love, right? And from there you'll be happy. Far too often we get caught up in materials, material things. I live in a very materialistic— out in California, Southern California, very materialistic, expensive area. And so many people get so much pressure put on them and it forces them to do things out of necessity, right? I'm a firm believer if you do what you love, you know, you'll really be happy. And then And the other thing that Tyler really, I think, is that it's our calling to be of maximum service to others. If we do those 3 things, do what we love, and we're generous, loving, and help others, maximum service to others, by default, we will be happy people.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number 1 thing you learned from that?

The best book that I've probably read is Going from Good to— No, you know what? I'll tell you what. I was going to say Going from Good to Great, fantastic book. Let me take that back. Recently Strength Finder. Um, it's pretty fantastic. I'll share this, share that with a lot of people. Um, I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to read the book. Great book, very simple, very quick read, right? But what it's really talking about is find and identify your strengths. Our whole lives, at least I was, especially in sports, and you can probably relate to this too, I was taught that I needed to focus on my weakness, right? Learn to dribble with your left hand better, learn to shoot a left-handed layup better, right? Where A right hand was an issue. And of course, there's probably a little bit that needed, but this book really teaches you to focus on what you're good at. And between that and effort, it's almost like a compounding effect. You can reach levels of that, focusing your efforts on what you're good at. The effect, the results will be a lot greater than it would be if you focus those same efforts on something that you're just really not good at or cut out to do, right? So when you hear some of the best leaders of this world They talk about the basis, you know, that I'm not that smart. What I've done is I've just surrounded me with a bunch of smart people. Well, they are smart, but also what they've done, I think, is a key part of this is that they focused their efforts and energies on the areas that they are strong and good at, and then they've hired and supplemented the areas of their weaknesses. So they've really tapped into it.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

Well, my favorite quote is by one of my friends, good friends, Heath Turner, and it goes something like this: the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get. There's somebody else may have quoted it before him, but I'm gonna give him credit.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?

Uh, you can find me online, LinkedIn. It's, uh, pretty much stay on LinkedIn all the time. Uh, first last name Keith Aguirre, K-E-I-T-H H-E-G-I-D-I-O with Five Arches Funding Corp. Or you can even shoot me an email if you like. First initial, last name at Gmail. Yeah, I was interested in what I had to say today.

Perfect, man. Thank you again for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Tyler. My pleasure.

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