Welcome back to another episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth with you host Billy Alvaro. We are finally back after a few months hiatus and we have several great episodes lined up for you in the coming weeks. I appreciate you all for listening and I look forward to sharing more tips and tricks of the real estate world each and every week. Today, I'm going to be interviewing Jerome Maldonado from New Mexico. He has a really cool story and when you listen to him, he started off as a contractor, got into the real estate investing game by necessity and now this guy has projects going on, literally all across America, from California to Washington, to Puerto Rico. He has his hands in just about everything. Jerome's secret early on was doing everything himself with cash, his own cash. And he got to a point in life where he realized in order for him to grow he needed to spread his wings and bring on joint venture partners. So if you want to learn about how he's getting involved with apartment investing, these niche complexes that he's putting together and joint ventures, this episode is something you need to listen to check them out. He also has an event that he's going to be hosting in November which he talks about at the end You don't want to miss this one! As always if you need anything come find me at billyalvaro.com and billyssecrets.com Talk to you all soon!
Welcome back to another episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth with you host Billy Alvaro. We are finally back after a few months hiatus and we have several great episodes lined up for you in the coming weeks. I appreciate you all for listening and I look forward to sharing more tips and tricks of the real estate world each and every week.
Today, I'm going to be interviewing Jerome Maldonado from New Mexico. He has a really cool story and when you listen to him, he started off as a contractor, got into the real estate investing game by necessity and now this guy has projects going on, literally all across America, from California to Washington, to Puerto Rico. He has his hands in just about everything.
Jerome's secret early on was doing everything himself with cash, his own cash. And he got to a point in life where he realized in order for him to grow he needed to spread his wings and bring on joint venture partners.
So if you want to learn about how he's getting involved with apartment investing, these niche complexes that he's putting together and joint ventures, this episode is something you need to listen to check them out. He also has an event that he's going to be hosting in November which he talks about at the end
You don't want to miss this one!
As always if you need anything come find me at billyalvaro.com and billyssecrets.com
Talk to you all soon!
Jerome Maldonado (1)
[00:00:00] What's going on everybody. This is Billy Alvaro, the unstoppable BA, and you're listening to unstoppable REI wealth . Today, I'm going to be interviewing Jerome Maldonado from New Mexico guy has a really cool story. When you listen to him, he started off as a contractor, got into the real estate investing game by necessity.
[00:00:20] And now this guy has projects going on, literally all across America, from California to Washington, to Puerto Rico. He has his hands in just about everything. He's a, well-poised, well-spoken incredible human being. I didn't know him personally until I did the interview today, but I got to tell you, he has his stuff together.
[00:00:40] He's well-polished and his secret early on was doing everything himself with cash, his own cash. And he got to a point in life where he realized in order for him to grow into seriously scary. He needed to spread his wings and bring on joint venture partners. And, uh, he talks about the partnerships that he has, how we formulate them, how we get to these niche deals put together and he's doing some really, really big deal.
[00:01:06] So if you want to learn about how he's getting involved with apartment investing, these niche complexes that he's putting together and joint ventures, this episode is something you need to listen to check them out. He also has an event that he's going to be hosting in November, uh, which he talks about at the.
[00:01:22] And you don't want to miss it again. This is Mr. Jerome Maldonado. Enjoy the episode.
[00:01:32] Welcome to unstoppable real estate investing wealth. My name is Billy Alvaro, AKA the unstoppable BA former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt turned professional real estate investor where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems, and secrets. And other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs used to start, grow and scale their businesses, creating massive profits and how you can too.
[00:02:01] And we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of unstoppable REI wealth. I'm your host, Billy Alvaro. And it has been a hot minute. I think I've taken off the whole summer on doing these podcasts.
[00:02:23] I had a, an absolute full plate. And, but I'm back at it now. I got a good group of lineup people that we're going to be interviewing today from New Mexico. I don't know this gentleman personally, but I'm going to get to know him as you're going to get to know them. I'm going to be interviewing Jerome Maldonado.
[00:02:39] Are you a Guinea? Jerome? Are you like me? I got a little bit of Guinea in me a little bit. I love your brother. Let's see. Welcome to the show. Grow good to meet you. Listen, Jerome. You know, I don't, I want to get to know you and have our guests get to know you. So you just give us a little bit of a brief background of how long have you been in real estate investing and.
[00:02:58] Hey Billy. Yeah. Thank you. And good morning to you. Thanks for having me here. So I've been, I got involved in real estate and accident, you know, in 1998. I, um, I started a construction company after, a four year run in direct sales and network marketing. And, um, I got into real estate just to invest in rental homes, just so I have an asset.
[00:03:15] So I never really considered my. I never went into it for quote unquote, the professional career. Right. And, I started investing just to have assets that worked for me and I had some rental income coming in and it was my little security blanket. And so one rental home term, two rental homes turned into a little commercial building that I bought for my business.
[00:03:33] Not really as an investment, but for my business. And that commercial building had five units went in and renovated a small little village. $250,000. And I decided to do another one because it worked so well and I had tenants paying for it. And I was doing this on the side of everything I was doing full time, which was a lot of concrete work at the time.
[00:03:55] And still today, we still have a concrete company today. We've been running that same company since the late night. And then I decided, Hey, why don't I start building homes? You know, I have a construction company and do a little bit of real estate. We'll build a few homes and, uh, and see how they roll.
[00:04:09] And they were good. My first home, I made a little over $80,000. So it was successful. I decided to double down on it and do a couple. And then we, since we're buying a couple of retail centers, I thought, why don't I try to build one? And so I bought a piece of land and I built a little retail. And then I built another one than an office complex.
[00:04:28] And, um, like any entrepreneur, you know, when you see profits and you see reward in something, you start pushing in that direction. And so I moonlighted and real estate aggressively back in 2002, 2003, 4, 5, 6, and then the recession hit and we got caught a little bit within retail and office, but our subdivisions had done well.
[00:04:48] And and so I pulled my foot off the pedal for a little. Revamped what I was doing, went into Phoenix and started buying a lot of distressed assets, single unit, real estate, and multi-family fourplexes and lo and behold, I didn't know that stuff was going to grow so, so much. And so aggressively over a decade, it was a blessing in disguise.
[00:05:06] I did, I bought that stuff really as a means to service debt on bad assets that I had acquired had built over the recession or just before the recession. And, um, and it became a market that. I fell in love with, and then we continue building houses again, starting about 2012 and then 2016. Uh, Billy, I decided I needed to get a little more bold again.
[00:05:29] Um, we had gotten a little conservative. We softened up our business run for a number of years just to clean up 2008. I think a lot of people did that. In fact, some people never came back. Yeah. And we can stay running our company. We got into franchising. I ended up owning a bunch of subway stores, some other companies to service debt on some of our real estate.
[00:05:48] And then in 2016, we made a big run at it. And this year we have about $70 million of real estate on the books for the year. And it was going to be a good year. Next year is going to be a great year and we've been able to partner with some great people and our asset base has grown for sure. We're excited for where we've come in the last, uh, five years, uh, where we're moving over the next, uh, the next decade.
[00:06:10] So good backstory to fill me in on what you've done. Question regards to construction company. You still have that business up and running. I do. Yeah, I have guys out today right now. In fact, I was dealing with that just before we got started on this podcast. So let me pick your brain a construction, right?
[00:06:27] So are you, are you considered a paper contract that we would be sending everything out? Would you have your own. People on the crew that are actually working. Both. So, so I'm a paper contractor on my homes. Um, we do use our own crews for concrete work, so, but we have full crews. So we have, you have a lot of government jobs that we do a lot of, uh, high-end industrial concrete work floor, um, ADA stuff.
[00:06:51] And then we have residential clients as well. So we're putting driveways, foundations and patios and so forth. And so on the absolute best when it comes down to the concrete, anything that has to do with that. Everything else you outsource. Yeah, we do. And you know, we'll do it. We'll pick up a little bit of like the grade work, we own tractors and stuff like that.
[00:07:12] So we, um, we run a lot of our own tractors, do a lot of our own pot, add sites, drainage, hydrology stuff, stuff like that. But everything else we do outsource when we're, uh, building new construction. Um, I consider myself more of a paper contractor because we're subbing out 95% of the entire build minus the, the concrete work and actually everything that we do right.
[00:07:32] So everything that we're doing in Arizona, where we can, that I'm doing it in Washington, state of inner beauty, California, everything that I do beyond the state lines of New Mexico, I'm a paper contractor. And in fact, I'm hiring contractors now and we're doing a cost plus models pay out our contractors.
[00:07:48] So we're not even on paper contract anymore. And a lot of those were, they were the developer. And so we'll do more. I'll do the entitlements and then we'll hire a general contractor to go and facilitate the work. Now you said you're in multiple states in those states, you do in a single family track homes, or you combination with, uh, with commercial properties or like, what are you doing in these other states for building.
[00:08:10] So we have a lot going on. So we're doing singles, not track homes. We're redeveloping real estate in the Seattle market. We're in a small dense area. So we're buying real estate that was built in the seventies, eighties, we're leveling it and we're doing dense development building vertical. So we'll take one lot and turn it into four, six lots.
[00:08:30] And we go in and try to buy up an area. So we have 25 homes that we're doing in there, their cottage style homes, what they call them with their sexually smart. Semi custom homes that were sold for a million bucks up in the Seattle area, just a little over a million dollars actually. And so we have 25 of those ones going up right now and we don't have to short plat them.
[00:08:51] It's just a code that we found a little niche in that area that we found we can go in by a single law without showing a short plat, which means subdivide the lots for those of you guys who are new in the real estate game. And we can go in without doing, going through a six month process of short platting and.
[00:09:06] Uh, redesigning the layout of the parcels and we can build four to six homes, five feet apart, and the real dance would go two story, two little two-story houses, 1,350 to 1,650 square feet. Those are a cool little business model, great little profitability. Uh, we make a few hundred thousand dollars per home and I'm a great little business model then down in Palm Springs, uh, we're catering to the.
[00:09:31] The clean energy economy, that's happening over there with a windmill and solar farms. And then it's a big cannabis, marijuana growing area. So they're building in Palm Springs. They're building out subdivisions of, uh, of warehouses that are growing marijuana. It's crazy. You go in over there and it's just, uh, I had no idea you get a contact right off the bat, right?
[00:09:55] Yeah, real contact. I mean, you just roll down your windows when you drive to these subdivisions and you just get fumigated the smell. It's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And so, so we have a few homes going up. We're testing the market over there. So we test the market. We don't go in aggressively.
[00:10:10] We're doing three and then I have lots for three more. So we're doing six, a lot of the money that we do though, Billy, from those subsidies. It's a great way to generate capital, right? You quit capital because it doesn't take a lot of time, uh, to buy land and build houses, but we can generate a few million dollars.
[00:10:27] And then we deploy that into multifamily, a multiunit real estate. And the great thing is, you know, about multifamily real estate is you can deploy a tax before. Yeah, or it's free depending on how you, depending on how you, uh, you set your capital up and your accountant advises. But we're able to take that money and all of those profits and not pay any taxes on them in the immediate timeframe and put our money to work for us in multiunit real estate.
[00:10:52] And we have cashflow, we have passive income and so on buying. And we're building some of those apartments new, um, we're doing a, an affordable housing model that affordable housing model. Billy's been awesome. I'll tell you, uh, municipalities are loving it. I was on the. With a municipality. I won't tell you guys a municipality yet.
[00:11:09] Cause I got to get in there. First we're exercising. I was on the phone with one municipality yesterday and they were getting a little resistance. And I started talking about this affordable housing model that we're talking that I'm talking to you guys about. And all of a sudden the tables turned 180 degrees and I, I sat back and I go, well, look, what's your need for affordable housing in your area.
[00:11:30] You know? Do it on housing. I mean, affordable housing, not an issue. And then all of a sudden they started backpedaling and it's what we're experiencing. A lot of municipalities nationwide. We start talking about affordable housing and being giving back by building these things they're receptive. So it's been a home run in that regards and we haven't, haven't had a lot of friction.
[00:11:52] So we're excited about. Let me ask you this because you just went over a lot. You gave a lot of really good information. I'm sure to listen. It's going to have a million questions. I have a million questions. So I want to back up to your Washington projects because your whole, your Washington you're in Palm Springs, less affordable housing piece.
[00:12:07] You didn't tell me to stay, but I'm assuming it's in another state. So first of all, how were you Jerome? All than auto. How are you sitting? We are sitting in New Mexico and figuring out where to invest in these other states. Do you have people in the area that you're joint venturing with that are bringing you these deals?
[00:12:23] Or what are you doing to actually go in and find, cause this thing in Washington is a niche, right? I mean, you found out you don't have to sell the body and go through the variance process. You could level and build cluster homes. And that's like a tremendous value in play where you say you're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a each property pulling it out.
[00:12:40] How did you find out to do that in that particular area? What was that price? I did it. So a little bit of everything you do is luck, but it's exercising your day to day contacts, right? So I've always given an example of the real estate game is like harvesting a garden. You got to plant seeds and never really know like one market that I want to get into is the Dallas Fort worth market.
[00:13:00] Again, I was there, I left it and I know it's a good market. I liked that area. I lived in San Antonio, but like currently just happened to be a gentleman who follow me on social media. I did know him through an investment group that we that we. Uh, business together in prior years and and like any good relationship they're developed, right?
[00:13:18] It's not something like, Hey, I meet you and I we'd go out and we'd do a business venture together. This gentleman would send me information, asking me questions about his single parcel developments that he was doing, these, uh, 4 million, 3 million, $2 million homes on. And as the market started to shift before the.
[00:13:35] Pre pandemic. I got really curious and I said, this guy's really, really building this stuff out. And just through my social presence, he, uh, reached out to me. We didn't know each other prior. And he started sending me a bunch of stuff and he was nervous, but he was working for Microsoft full time and wasn't really used moonlighting and building.
[00:13:51] And so he was asking questions curiously about, you know, my opinion on stuff. And so he got my attention after about a year of this sending me this information. And then I think it's a big question that he asked me. Do you really think the market's going to fall apart? Even in markets like Seattle, and this was pre pandemic when the market was scaling aggressively and we as investors.
[00:14:14] Going into investing with caution, knowing we went through in 2008. And so I ended up partnering with Ramirez and a good guy, you know, real simple guy. He's a Jordan hard worker. And he's the one that actually knew the codes and he didn't even know him because a lot of this was new. The municipality had just adapted these the June before we started this, we were one of the first contractors to go in and tackle this new code. It's still. So there's very few people that are doing it. In fact, we're working through, through minor logistical items with the city. So there's a lot of red, red lining on plans and so forth that we have to go through. So there's some hurdles painful hurdles that we have to go through together with the city and we're figuring them out, right.
[00:14:58] Our architect is. And I think this is what some people are afraid of. You know, they say, well, I'll do that. Yeah, it's catered out. Right? I'm more of, Hey, once it's figured out everybody's in there. And so I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the guy figuring it. So a lot of business is having the foresight to see something.
[00:15:16] And then second being able to take action on it. Methodically, right? It was something that we saw the need, we took action on it and we were willing to go through the pains and hurdles to make it happen because we knew the profitability and we're actually making a little bit more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars on each home.
[00:15:31] We just have a great business model up there. Just work just a little niche area that we do. Yeah. And so your role is oversight on construction because that's your background and is it money? Or is it just a construction site? Tell me how that joint venture is looking a little bit of both. You know, I wear a lot of hats, so we're doing all the entitlements on Ramirez just happens to be an exceptional partner in that regards.
[00:15:52] He's probably the best one that I have that most people don't know entitlements with people. We might say, entitlements, I know people are going, what the hell is that? That's everything it takes to get to permits so you can build. Um, so the entitlements are dealing with the city. If you're planning and zoning, Utilities, your water, your sewer, all of that stuff, dealing with the plat itself, where you have a surveyor come in and plant your homes.
[00:16:15] And then you architect work and everything associated with it from civil engineering, all the way down the line to where you can go into the city and say, okay, here's my finished plants, engineering, all my water, my curves, my gutters, my grading drainage, everything here it is. I need permits. And then you get your entitlements.
[00:16:32] Those are your title means. And rain. This happens to be pretty spectacular, that stuff, although I was helping him yesterday on a multi-family deal that we're working on in the, uh, Northwest as well. And they're stuck on the commercial land that he's not familiar with yet. Right. That I've been doing for years.
[00:16:47] So I bring it to his attention. So together we were able to come in and him and yeah, we're able to leverage off each other. So the hat I wear is I helped out with that. Um, he deals with a lot of it site. And then I fly out, I look at land, we underwrite it together and it's good to have a partner like that.
[00:17:03] He's real analytical. I'm more of the assertive driver that drives things. And I'm the catalyst behind a lot of it. I'm the guy that every day is making the moves, putting the phone calls. And I still do. I do a ton of phone calls, Billy. I talked to the engineers. I'm pressing people every single day.
[00:17:20] That's my job. I feel like that's my job. And I'm I make these projects go I'm on the go guy. I'm the guy going and sending out the emails, the follow ups, the phone calls, and just pressing, pressing, pressing forward on projects. That's an important part of it. Yeah. It's probably one of the most important parts that a lot of people in every business, they just fall short.
[00:17:38] They don't know how to follow up a fall through. And those are the two keys, not the only keys, but two keys to success in growing any type of thing. Nope. Absolutely not hands down. People don't realize, you know, that, that follow up is huge as far as time and getting things going and the follow through on it because people talk about it and then I'll even have partners.
[00:17:59] Sometimes we'll talk about it and I'll say, I'll think they're doing something two days later. I'll check and follow up. Where are we at? Oh, I thought you were going to do it. Yeah.
[00:18:09] Yeah. So tell me, when you go through this Jerome, how are you structured the financing? Private money. Are you syndicating? Are you doing a combination of both? What does that look? We're doing a combination of all of it. So the subdivisions I've self-funded my whole life. I'm a debt free company. I fund a lot of the residential builds myself.
[00:18:29] Congratulations. Yeah. And we started small dating, quite a lot of dantic wasn't out buying Lamborghinis and stuff like that. I have like milestone watches. We drive nice cars, but we're, we've been humble. We stayed in the same house for 18 years. Thank God. We were going to build a big giant house right before the recession and glad that we didn't.
[00:18:47] So we've let things roll out slow. And I think part of that Bailey was that I went through a lot in my twenties in business. So in spite of, um, wanting to go buy fancy stuff, I was able to just stay, stay clean. And humble in regards to how we get stuff. And I created a modest lifestyle that I still live today.
[00:19:05] I feel like, you know, in so many ways, um, in fact, my wife tells me I need to do a little bit more for myself, but I think once you start having that driving direction, um, you just feel like your money is more well-placed in assets that. So I just kind of drive it in that direction, but yeah, it's in, um, I finance a lot of my stuff through institutional money.
[00:19:25] So in early years, until 2016, Billy, I didn't use any private money at all. I didn't raise capital. I didn't syndicate. I would just take the capitalized. I will go to the bank. I put a project together. I do all the, I get the plans designs, and I will ask for a loan, um, and just using institutional money. I was limited though, to what I could do with my capital and I don't care what anybody says.
[00:19:47] It doesn't matter how much you make. And we were making a lot of money. I felt, um, you're limited. You can't grow to a level that you want to. So in 2016, I made a little pivot and I thought to myself, look, I was 2016. I was in my young forties and I said, you know, it's time for. And make a hard run at this.
[00:20:04] If I'm going to do this and retiring and set myself up forever. And so I started looking and educating myself and what I tell people is it doesn't happen overnight. So I started in 2016, looking into syndicating, trying to understand it, trying to raise capital. It wasn't something where I was just out frivolously, just running after people's capital.
[00:20:23] It took me two years. Billy of like hard research, really understanding, networking, trying to really figure out the syndication game. And in 2018, So the first time I brought in capital and I was modest with it, I had like a $15 million project that brought in like a million dollars. It was a little tougher than I thought at first.
[00:20:42] Um, because people didn't know me. I was just starting to get my name out. First time in history. I created a social media platform. I was on Facebook in February of 2018 for the first time in my life. And, um, I started doing social media stuff. And so we, um, so I started pressing out my social presence back in 2018.
[00:21:00] And now we're starting to raise a little bit of capital. I'm still using a lot of my own capital it's. It makes things go quicker. I'm able to make a little more money and get institutional money. Um, we have a 104 unit redevelopment project I'm doing in Phoenix right now. I bought an old office building with a buddy of mine, um, Kyle Mitchell.
[00:21:17] And, um, we're taking that into we're converting it into 104 units. One bedroom multi-family apartment complex. And so we. We raised about a million bucks, 1.3, and the project's going to be valued at about $17 million when it's all said and done. And we're just getting ready to break ground here in the next 30 days.
[00:21:36] So you married congratulations to that deal by the way. So you married the syndication of little over a million, and then you went out. Bank financing for the rest. Correct. What people don't realize is what you can, when you go in your project's worth something, once you get your entitlements and your plans, that's what people don't realize.
[00:21:56] Oh yeah. I don't need $17 million to build this project out. Right. So that's the value of X, what we're comping it out at, based on current comps in that area. Right? So on valuing that property at $70 million based on what other projects are selling. Conservatively right now. And so I'll go in and let's say it costs me $10 million to build out the whole project.
[00:22:16] I can go and tie up the land, get all the entitlements, raise a million dollars, maybe put in a million of my own money, um, into the project. And for a couple million dollars, I can get the rest financed at 3% interest rate or better. And I have very little out of pocket money's cheap right now. And so I won't raise any more capital than I absolutely need to Billy, because I can just get cheap money from the bank.
[00:22:39] So that million dollars you just indicated, just give the listeners some understanding of how you put them together. Is there a pref or is it straight equity? What is that? So this one we did straight, uh, this one we did just dead on and we just get straight debt. Um, we gave them four options on this. Uh, they could come in four where they got paid monthly on a smaller amount for like $50,000.
[00:23:00] Give them 10% or people came in over a hundred thousand dollars. We're willing to get paid out at the end of the project, then we give them 14% on debt. Um, it was a little hard to raise Billy. I'll tell you, um, raising on debt, you really have to have a solid project and a good reputation. People want a little bit of equity.
[00:23:17] And so anytime you do an equity raise where you give people a small percentage of equity, based on what they're putting into the project, people tend to like that a little bit more. It secures their money a little bit stronger. When you're raising debt, you got to have a reputation. You got to have a good reputation and.
[00:23:31] You got to have a track record. People got to trust you. They got to like you and trust you in order to raise a straight debt on real estate projects, especially when raising debt and you're not securing it with the assets. So you're really believing in unsecured debt is a very tough way to go to the end investors.
[00:23:49] Yeah, toughest people get dollars. I had to race and it wasn't that hard, but still, I mean, I hate, I don't like begging for money at all. I don't like asking for it. I am. I feel like I'm beyond it. I feel like people want to come in and work with me. Great. I love to have them to definitely utilize their capital and grow, but I'm just at a place in my life where I got a big for money.
[00:24:07] I just, I'm not going to do it. You know, we're strategically set up right now. Cause I, I looked at your Facebook and your Instagram, like your. You're really out there at the presence. Are you specifically strategically going out and consistently educating people to raise money from them or not really?
[00:24:23] You just like when you have a need, you just go to your circle and try to raise it. What is that? Yeah, w I'm not going to like, uh, investors need ups and that stuff I probably should be in a gate. You know, you've got so much time allocated and, uh, with the pandemic, we, I never really got that outreach. It was something that we were going to do last year in 2020, start making a stronger outreach.
[00:24:43] Going to, um, investors, meetups, which I encouraged people to do. It's one of the things that's been advantageous for Kyle Michu, Kyle Mitchell. Who's one of my business partners of he came in out of the golf industry. Did have a ton of syndicating experience. Didn't have any syndicating or apartment experience.
[00:24:58] He learned it and he was able to raise capital, not from a social media presence. I mean, he has a very small social media presence. But he was very active in the community that he was investing in. He made it a point to go to, uh, investors, meetups, meet people and network with, uh, other people going to events.
[00:25:15] People were syndicating. Um, and there was other apartment guys. And so he was very successful that way. Um, I just go out and, um, you know, I just hit my, my social presence when I do it. Um, we have a good email list and, um, and because I'm partnered with good people, like Ty Lopez, we own a lot of real estate together.
[00:25:32] I just partnered him with him only on real estate transactions. Um, we're doing some stuff down in Puerto Rico together, some big giant builds, and then we own some, uh, industrial warehouses together. And through my social presence, we tie Lopez. But it's that outreach and networking that really has made the raising capital possible for us.
[00:25:52] I love it, man. It seems like your success not broadened across America. It is predominantly because you have really good partners in the areas that you're investing. Yeah, for sure. They can make you a break and good partners, a bad harvest, man. If you have a solid individual, you that's adding value. You know, you guys can go to the moon together, but if you have somebody who's just not able to put it together, it can be a disaster.
[00:26:14] No, it can. And that's Billy hands down. I, I tried partnerships from the early nineties when I got in. I just, I promised myself I would never do it. I remember my mom going to a trade show with me, not with me, but she showed up to support me at a trade show. I was doing back in like 1990. And I was, I kept partnering with people and I think like my parents aren't entrepreneurs, they're not business people, but my mom's a pretty, she's a little, she's a little Spitfire for sure.
[00:26:39] And, um, I don't remember. She just came, she was funny to keep partnering with these people. She'd given him money. She was even afraid he can't do it by yourself or what? And I was like, I mean, she told me straight out like that in front of her and I think. Much as we hate to give our parents credit for some of the stuff there's truth behind a lot of what parents see, it has been a parent.
[00:26:57] I see it. Right. You know? And so I think she saw that I had a little bit of a weakness in the nineties where she felt like, I felt like I needed somebody and I did. I felt like I needed somebody, but I was getting taken for a lot of profits. And so at that point in time, I said, you know, she's right. I can do this on my own.
[00:27:12] And that's when I went a hundred percent independent and I didn't do partners until 2018, um, ever, I didn't know, no partners in 2016. I, when I started doing. Change. I said, look, if I'm going to grow and I'm not going to kill myself and have a heart attack doing this because it's a lot of work doing it on your own, I need to find good people.
[00:27:32] And so my outreach was to do that, to partner with people. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what I needed to do in order to make this work. Um, I didn't want to have an infrastructure of staff to do it with, because I know how it is like running staff. I've had hundreds of employees and, um, and I knew that I didn't want to go there.
[00:27:49] I didn't want to have the, uh, the, the payroll stress above Matt and infrastructure that I've had in the. Um, managing hundreds of employees. And so I thought, let me partner with good people. Let me give away some of the profits. I bet you, I can do more with it like this. And so I've, I have in my outreach now isn't like partners.
[00:28:06] We're not trying to pay a mortgage anymore. Right? Like when I was in my twenties, I was trading my life together. I was partnering with people that were the same situation. I was. And so we were all just trying to make a living. So in those circumstances, it's hard sometimes to have a partner when you get to a place in your life where it's not really about the money to pay a mortgage and put food on the table, but more so you're building a lifestyle, you're building a real business, or you're doing it because you, uh, it's, it's more of the behind the challenge to see if you can.
[00:28:35] And your. Generational wealth. Um, it becomes a little bit different. And so there's less greed on the table. People are not in survival mode. And if you get with good people that you know, for a couple of years and you know what their motives are, their ethics are, um, then you can drive it. Right? And so my business partners are that they're people they're not trying to pay a mortgage.
[00:28:53] They're people, they love the game and they want to build this game. Um, and so they, yes, yes. At the end of the day, we all want. But we're able to do it in an ethical fashion. So I feel like I have some really good partners. Each of them have, we all have our flaws, including myself. I don't think anybody's perfect.
[00:29:09] So you've got to overlook some of the flaws that your partner don't have pick up the pieces and hopefully together you have qualities that you guys can leverage off each other. And that's the goal. Yeah. It sounds like also a lot of these partners you've been friends with them or have known them for quite some time before you guys decided to do some sort of a joint venture.
[00:29:28] Is that accurate? They're not people that go back to my childhood. There are people like Ty and I, we met in 2000 2 16, 17, and, um, and really doing stuff for them out of the goodness of my heart. And I had a motive, you know, I was doing it because I wasn't asking for anything, but I was doing it on behalf of.
[00:29:45] And the team in lieu of working with them. Right. So I created partnerships by giving a little more of me without asking for anything. And, uh, when you do that, they, you surprisingly, how surprising, how things kind of flourish together, right? Yeah. That's a huge statement that. Young entrepreneurs and even seasoned entrepreneurs just don't get, they're always looking what's in it for them.
[00:30:08] And you really need to just give without asking for anything in return. So, I mean, if people aren't watching that are watching this, they don't know who Tai Lopez is. The guy has a tremendous presence on the internet. You went out and you just say yes, gave him an offering. I guess he was looking for help in something.
[00:30:23] And you just offered your service. Something like that. Yep. Yeah, it was, they were, they didn't really have the real estate stuff down. They were trying to put an investment group together for their e-commerce brands. And so Alex, Dr. Alex mere ties, number one first business partner in all the big brands he would come to me.
[00:30:41] Tyra was how the celebrity status. When I was around, Ty was real tough because of the amount of people that were always around us. But I was always invited back for like investors dinners and I, the very first one where it was just four people and it was just more for Hadrone, you know, we don't really know real estate.
[00:30:55] You want, you want to come and take a look at it? I'd love your opinion on the real estate. Take what we're doing it. We're looking at these little mobile home parks. I sit back and I was underwriting my husband. Good God. You know, and they would ask me that. I thought I killed my honest opinion and. It was something that we're just not there.
[00:31:11] You know, when I went in early in early years and they respectfully listened to me and then they would ask me, you know, what my, how I would position stuff. And, um, and I would tell them, and I was very honest and I fly back out on my expense to go listen to the more their investors, you know, more their investors.
[00:31:28] More of their investment offerings in early, early, early offering years. And I was just there. I was present and I was around. I try to be around everything I could possibly be around. And I tried to give back as much as I could. And I feel like I'm an integral piece of the infrastructure that was originally created through, um, retail e-commerce ventures, wiser Alexander, and some of the early companies.
[00:31:50] Right. So that's how. Because I didn't ask for anything like me and my own plane flag to pay for my own hotel rooms. And I was just a part of it. And now I have ownership in almost everything and that one little sector, that's like one little piece of my life. I've got that times 10 and other sectors.
[00:32:05] It's amazing. Congratulations, bro. Congratulations. Yeah, you a very calm soft-spoken individual, but I think you're a fricking animal.
[00:32:16] You definitely make you happy. So listen, you have an event you're gonna be hosting along with Thai and a bunch of other people. Tell, tell the audience about the event. When is it? What is it about? We do it every year. It's real estate domination. Um, we're in Las Vegas, Nevada this year we were supposed to do in Las Vegas last year, but we landed up doing it virtually from Chicago.
[00:32:33] Um, last year we had over 4,000 people opt into it last year, always had about 400 people live, streaming it at any given time when we ran it in real estate domination. Um, this is the third year. So our third annual and it's a great event because it's a non-sales event. You're not going to get pitched on stuff.
[00:32:49] It's a full value event. And so one thing that. No. If you know me, if you've attended it, if anybody that has attended it, I don't bring in Polish speakers, you know, with the exception of my partner, Ty Lopez, um, and a couple other people that have experience on stage almost, uh, I'd say 80% of the panel doesn't have like onstage presence.
[00:33:09] These are just bad acids that actually work in the industry. They're not like Paul speakers, he's a real doers, right? Like these are people that, that I know from the industry. And I say, Hey, I know what mean. Come and speak at my event and teach people what we're doing. And so I have real real estate pros coming in.
[00:33:27] Um, a couple of my business partners, like I sort of talked about Kyle Mitchell and Raymond's dabs. They'll be talking there. Uh, and I got some really solid halts, hard hitters. You know, I got taught all coming in. He's a, he's a billion just kept billionaire status this year. I've been able to watch him like.
[00:33:43] Todd for several years. So I've been able to see him please. He take his company public. Um, I saw him on the New York stock exchange and when they did their, their release and offering, and his stock went over $4 billion and now he's become an Easter billionaire status this year. So Todd will be there to be part of our inner circle.
[00:33:59] So there's just going to be some really cool bad-ass. Is there Ty and I are going to share with you guys. Big luxury flips that we're doing in Puerto Rico, that we're building out. And some of the flips that we're doing, the industrial warehouse space and how we're positioning e-commerce with real estate.
[00:34:15] We'll kind of share with you some insight on that business model. We're going to talk about how we're buying land building houses, how we're deploying that capital into multiunit real estate, passive income tax deferred, or tax free. We're going to teach you guys some cool little tax strategies. Um, so it's gonna be a great event.
[00:34:30] I'm excited for it. It's going to be November 5th, sixth, and seventh at the. I'll give the, uh, and get these folks. They can get them registered, you know? Yeah. I can put it in the show notes for sure. I could have my assistant put that in there and push it out, give them the links and everything else. And, um, it sounds like it's going to be a killer event.
[00:34:49] Yeah, it is. We get good props every year. Um, they're, they're small intimate events, you know, we're expecting about 300 people live. It's not going to be a huge event, probably have about that, that equal amount of people streaming it live. So we'll probably have about 600 people watching at any point in time.
[00:35:02] It's growing. We went from. People three years ago, and nobody's streaming progress of life. 400 people streaming online, 4,000 people opting in. I think we had a total of 1500 people circulate through the entire event has went on. And so I think we're going to have something similar to that this year. Um, but we're doing it live.
[00:35:21] And so anytime you can do things live. Ladies and gentlemen, you guys hear this story. We're talking about this stuff. This is where the networking begins. The events, God asses, good people, doing things that you want to be doing. That's where you meet them. That's where you start forming these relationships.
[00:35:37] And that's where people miss the boat. They don't realize that that small investment into themselves to be there to network is key. That's where you meet good people. Yeah. Networking events, masterminds. Like if you're not doing it, you have to do it. You're going to get to where you want to go, like 10 times faster with a group than if you try to do this shit by yourself, because who the hell wants to figure it out.
[00:35:59] People want to get in touch with you, Jerome, which are handles online, offline. Real easy. Um, I'm everywhere. Just go to Jerome Maldonado. You got my name here on the, under my face. And, uh, you guys go to any social media platform from LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you know, our YouTube channel on Instagram and stroll Maldonado.
[00:36:17] And the number one, um, or our ULR is drone. Maldinado dot. And so really easy to find. And, uh, you guys, uh, Google me, uh, you guys DM me. I'll uh, I'll answer back. You guys have questions, you know, my team's real good about getting with me special on questions. They can't answer. And we're here for you. We're making big moves and we love a good outreach from good people that are doing good things, or at least trying to do good things.
[00:36:39] And so really easy to find you're doing some amazing shit, brother. I really, I appreciate it. But, uh, it was great having you on as a guest. You don't want to get to stay to know you because you have so many that definitely go places. Appreciate you taking time. Yeah, I appreciate you, bro. I gotta get you on stage, man.
[00:36:56] I see that you're you're doing stuff on stage and filling it too. So I get that for sure. Thanks again. Yes. Thank you for having me take care of
[00:37:16] Yeah.