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Ep 247: Alex Pardo:First Real Estate Deal Story

October 25, 2022

Ep 247: Alex Pardo:First Real Estate Deal Story
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Transcript

0:01 All right. So that gives me permission to spend I think $1,500 0:09 it can get expensive. I love my bride. Hey, I'm not stepping in the middle of this one. No, 0:17 no, no Don't Don't don't. I'm just gonna wait. We're just gonna see how long this lasts. Because he got about three or four now, so 0:28 you gotta make me look good with the editing man. Like work your magic make me look good. All right. 0:33 Oh, man. Yeah, I'll make it nice. Look nice and shiny. For the cloud above your head. 0:41 Hardcore. Everybody's shiny. Not just me. Oh, cool, Jake, because he was licking his lips. Hardcore rabid when he's licking his lips. Hello, cool. J is always licking his lips. I gotta watch that again. I gotta watch that coffee show. Okay. So thank you so much for doing this. I don't know where this idea came from. It must have been it's got to be a Jesus thing. I was sitting down racking my brain trying to figure out how can we motivate people to take that first step? Whether it's with me, or whether it was with us or anybody? How can we get them past and one of the things that just kept coming up was people's excuses, like, and everybody had a different one. And I was like, How can we really like, combat that? And I said, Why don't we? Why don't we create a community of well known and aspiring, you know, to be great entrepreneurs who've done their first deal, and let them tell their first deal story from their perspective. And it's my hope that as, of course, I interview clients or students, but as anyone around the world wants to get into real estate, they can come to my first deal story podcast, and relate and get past whatever has been holding them back. 1:56 I love it. By the way as as an aside, and oh, we're recording this already. And Leon is going to work his magic as an aside. Make sure have you guys gone live yet? Have you gone public with the podcast? 2:09 We did a live to announce the podcast. It's okay. Soon what? Last week 2:15 you have it? It's not published yet. 2:18 It's not it's not published. This is super important. Your first episode should be an episode about who you guys are. And what you just highlighted right there. The motivation the why behind this podcast, you need to tell that story but elaborate on it. Episode In other words, Episode 000 or episode zero episode one, however, you're going to call it needs to be when somebody goes to my first deal, story.com podcast, and they need to hear who you guys are, and why you created this podcast. So basically what you just told me, but like, make a story out of it. And that needs to be episode one. Yes, yeah. Thank you don't just launch into like, Hey, here's Greg Pineo kind of thing. Because people what's this podcast about kind of thing? 3:07 Yeah, no, I think that stuff. I'm glad you said that. Because we were actually going to interview each other because we both have different first deal stories. So if we can do that, first what you said, do that first, and then we'll start it with hours and then going everybody else's. So we start with like six episodes, but the whole thing tells us so I'm glad you said that. That's yeah, 3:27 I mean, obviously do whatever you guys want. It was it would just be my strong suggestion to make that first episode speak to a person about hey, who or who's Brittany and Leon? And why, like, what's this podcast about? Why is it unique? What's different about it? Hmm, 3:41 yeah, we gotta get our thumbnails and artworks to look as great as yours, man. 3:48 That's just leaning on the right people, man, I have noise in my body. 3:55 So he needs to make some more money. That's what he trying to say you got. 4:00 He's got this. He's got this. 4:03 But he really does. I'm really proud of 4:05 allocate funds towards that goal to do that. Yeah. 4:09 Okay, so the structure of this podcast, it's fairly shorter. I mean, go please elaborate till you're sorry, I don't want to do that a disservice at all by cutting it off. But the structure is introducing Well, of course, we'll introduce ourselves and just a light touch of who you are to us, then we'll ask you to introduce yourself. And then we'll just go into the find, get close framework of your first deal where you break down how you found it, how you got it, how you close it, how it worked for you. And then the last question will be pertaining to what was a limiting belief that you had to overcome or that you even still overcome to this day to you know, to stay engaged in the state to stay moving forward. Okay. So that simple and then we'll ask how people can of course reach out to you. Or ask questions. And that's it. Easy. 5:07 I'm in your hands. You know me. I'm an open book. So you guys lead the way and I'll follow love. Love it. Love it. Right. Your hair your your hairs good Leah's gotta get his hair. He's got a little something up here. I don't know now. 5:23 I told him he was a little fuzzy we got we gotta get Leon faded up a little bit. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Well, I'm just kidding. I'm just I love our coaching group and that's what you need. All right so you want to you want to pop off or once you 5:45 pop off. Let me step on you real quick. Yeah. Let's go. All right. All right. All right. All right so let's do this. No, 5:55 I'm sorry he never asked me. 5:57 He says Leon and Brittany Thompson 6:02 this is the this is going to be the vibe with this podcast. Because she's killing it super like, I feel like it was rigid. I want to have fun. I want 6:12 to laugh. Have fun. Yeah. 6:15 There we go. All right, let's kick it. All right. 6:23 All right, guys. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. My name is Leon. I'm Brittany, and welcome to my first story.com. We were pleasure to be here with Alex Pardo. Yeah, yeah, let's go. He's gonna be killing it today. And he's gonna tell us a little bit about his story. It's such an honor to have him here. He's actually one of my personal mentors, bringing out personal mentors and coach from, he'll tell you a little bit about how we found him that we got connected to them. But guys, it's my honor. My pleasure to have Alex Pardo on this podcast today. 6:55 We're going to build it to ad lib a little bit. 7:00 You guys are amazing. I gotta tell you, and you know, I've, I've been on a number of podcasts before. And I don't know that I've ever been as proud to be on one as I am to be on this one. Because I've just, I've been able to walk alongside you guys for the last couple of years. And there's been so much growth and maturity. You guys are incredible people you have huge, huge hearts, both of you. And it's just, it's just awesome to support you and watch you guys grow. 7:27 Oh, man, thank you, you're 7:29 the bomb. I mean, I feel like we should redo the intro just to make sure we give him more credit like because he's 7:40 a special effect button 7:46 Well, we're gonna have some fun you, thank you for your time. We appreciate you being here. And I really can't wait to dig into your first deal story. So, you know, without further ado, tell them who you are, where you are. And let's let's get into this thing. 8:01 Will I will keep this as brief and short and sweet as possible. And then you guys feel free to prompt me along. Like you said, this is your show. And I'm just grateful that you guys are kind of leading the way here. But yes, name's Alex Pardo. Born and raised in Miami, my, my background my entire family's from Cuba. However, my sister and I were born here in the States, we were the first ones. And you know, I don't have a I don't have a bone chilling kind of rags to riches story. And I also don't I was very fortunate that I didn't grow up in poverty. You know, I was a middle class family. I got a lot of work ethic from my parents, you know, my parents came from Cuba when they were younger. And so obviously, they experienced communism, and what's that what that's like, and, and I think they just instilled in me an attitude of gratitude. My parents are not entrepreneurs, you know, they always worked for someone. But one thing they did pass along, they pass along a lot of great values and qualities, but one of those was to just be very grateful for what you have, I think too many times we are focused on the things we don't have. And we need to lean into more and just be grateful for what we do have. Now having said that, that's not to say that, you know, you don't, you don't need to have ambition and go after the things you want. Because it's out there for you. You can have whatever it is you want. If you're very intentional, you surround yourself with the right people and you put the work in, but yeah, so anyways, you know, for me, I think I was kind of hit with the entrepreneurial bug when I was, I don't know, 1112 years old. I've shared this story many times before, but I would. I was always into sports and baseball, and I would buy baseball cards and I would flip them for like an extra 50 cents or an extra dollar. And I kind of liked the idea of buying something and then making a little bit of money. I didn't know it was called the wholesaling at the time. And then fast forward, I don't know, seven, eight years. You know, I got into college. I started doing pretty well in college and then I had companies like Johnson and Johnson and General Electric that were interested in me. So and that sounds super fancy, but trust me there's nothing hadn't seen sexy about it. At the time, I thought I was like, like the Coachella. Like, I'm all about this, I got it. And then like I didn't. And then I got a job with GE. And I remember like, this is not sexy. This is not glorious. You know, I was averaging, I don't know, at 22 years old that was working for corporate America, I was averaging 7080 hours a week. And yeah, and I've always been someone, Britney Lyon that I've been pretty decent. I'm bad at a lot of things. But I'm pretty good at a couple of things. And one of those things is, knowing what I want and then figuring out how to reverse engineer the process to figure out how to get to where I want to go. And I looked at my boss all the way up the ladder to where one day I aspired to be. And it was just so clear cut for me, I'm like, that's not the kind of job I want. That's not the career I want. And that's not the lifestyle I want to have, you know, where you barely get to see your family, you know, holidays, you're working. It just it wasn't that wasn't for me. I always knew God had something bigger for me. Anyways, finished off that two year program. I went backpacking around Europe, and it was in Europe, while I was $7,000. In the whole, I was financing the entire backpacking trip on my credit card, where a buddy of mine invited me to a marketing for deals bootcamp. And, and I attended that bootcamp and did my first deal two months later, so I'll kind of pause there because I'm sure you guys have some questions. 11:29 Wow, backpacking through Europe. Okay, that sounds good. So far. It sounds like a very fancy story, I must say. 11:39 So, let me let me clear something up. Let me let me prove to you how non fancy this was. I had slept I have legit, this is true story. I have pictures. I have slept under a bridge. I have slept outside of a hostel door. I have slept on the floor. I have slept in hostels with strangers, six inches from me. We were not when I tell you, we were like roughing it. We were legit. roughing it. I've slept under the rain. So don't Don't get it twisted. We were not staying like in nice hotels, or even the holiday ends. Like we were roughing it for three and a half months. But I was single I was young. And it was a different time in my life. So I'm grateful for that that chapter of my life. 12:22 Well, I think that's so cool. Okay, and now, and we're gonna touch on how you get introduced to this course and how you were able to do your first deal. And so I want the audience to kind of hear something. Y'all may not think like me. But when I hear if I didn't hear about you backpacking, and I just heard, a friend invited you to a meeting, and you ended up getting involved and you end up getting a deal. I will say, Man, you had a pretty easy, but I felt like in hearing you speak if you rewind that a little bit if you include that time. I mean, I don't know if I'm speaking incorrectly here. But I'm sure while you were backpacking, there was some there was some self develop some personal development that you had to be experiencing? And 13:05 yeah, no, so let me just share something I think this will be this is important to add for, for context. You know, you're right. I think the way I kind of just quickly glossed over a lot of the pain points. It sounds like, oh, this dude was like living life, going from country to country, he comes back to Miami, he doesn't deal. Let me just share with you that when I left Ge, I was 25 years old, I moved back into my parents house at 25 years old. And I don't know about you, but that's for me. That's not how I drew it up in my head. It wasn't like, Oh, I'm gonna graduate double major, I'm gonna go work for this great company. And then I'm going to quit and then move back into my parents house with not much money to my name. In fact, quite honestly, I kind of felt like a bit of a failure at that time. But I knew that there was something bigger for me. I just didn't know what that was. And I was kind of trying to figure myself out if that made any sense. And so I had this opportunity to go backpacking. It's interesting. You said personal development, because up until and I don't think I've ever shared this on my podcast, which is really interesting. I was 25. At the time. I had probably read. I could count on one hand, how many books I've read, from the age of one to 25. My when I was 25, backpacking around Europe, I read a handful of books, thinking Grow Rich, thinking Grow Rich being one of them. And that was the genesis of like, me getting immersed in personal development and having this like deep desire to be the best pet person I could possibly be. Hmm, wow, 14:38 that's so good. So it just the highlight the importance of no matter if you didn't start getting into personal development and speaking to the audience, no matter if you didn't start getting into that personal development, whether you entered real estate or before you into real estate, it's a non negotiable it has to happen to have that six That's so I hope that people hear that, that they don't hear bits and pieces. You can't cheat it that you there's some some, some might some real estate in the mind that has to be rewired, literally, whales have to be dug, stuff got to be removed, stuff got to be planted in order to assist on that journey to success. So I wanted to make sure that they were blessed by that piece. So they hear your story, but then they hear in the underlying, okay, 15:27 more about thinking Grow Rich is also to about growing inside. Yes, not about just growing your wealth and growing things that you possess, it's about growing in your mind, what's in the tongue, this six inches of real estate, you know, between your ears? Yes, 15:42 that's valuable. And that's so well said Leanna. Britney, I appreciate you guys filling in the gaps, because that is the most valuable real estate you could possibly possess. It's what's in between your ears, because it's one of my favorite quotes. And I don't know if it was Thomas Edison, or I'm probably butchering, who said it, but whether the man that thinks he can the man or woman that thinks he can or thinks he can't. They're both right. So choose wisely. That has always resonated with me. 16:07 100%. And it's biblical to think of so as he so I mean, it comes the wisdom conference that you can, you can only get so far through. So thank you for allowing us to go deeper there and sharing and being transparent there. So now now we can talk about how you found God in closed closure for still, of course. So how did how did we get from backpacking to now I'm sitting in this training, there's this a ticket thing that you had to purchase? Yeah, 16:36 so check this out. So I'm an Ibiza. And I'm 25 years old, I'm single, I'm with another buddy of mine. We're partying. We're in Spain. And once a week, I would stop into an internet cafe. And I would check my email. And in this email, good friend of mine, Regan zollars who I've had on my show, send me he said, Hey, there's this. Dave Lindell, who's a big commercial apartment guy at the time was putting on a two day bootcamp in Atlanta called Marketing for deals. It was $997. Now, again, for some people, that may be a lot of money for others, that's nothing for me, that could have been $97,000. Because I was in debt. I didn't, my net worth was negative $7,000. And I was moving back in with my parents, as soon as this trip was over, like just not a good look. Right? So but I knew that, to me, that was like, we have these defining moments in our life, where you can like, take the road less traveled, as Robert Frost talks about or you can go this way. And for me, I'm like, if I don't do this, what am I going to do and the pain of actually going out and getting a job was greater than anything else I could face. And so I said, I'm gonna do this, because I've always been interested in real estate, one of those handful of books that I read, when I was out, there was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, like so many others. And so I was very intrigued by real estate. And I, you know, we've all seen that quote, of what percentage of millionaires and billionaires have real estate in their portfolio. And so I knew real estate was it for me. And so I said, Okay, if not now When, right? Like you can't just talk about it, you got to be about it. So paid the 997 put it on my credit card, I think it was like a $10,000 limit up at that point now was that eight grand so I had a couple grand left for some marketing. And it was all about marketing for deals, door knocking direct mail, cold calling, there wasn't text messaging back then. But those are the three main ways that they taught marketing for deals. And I got back home Brittany and Leon. This is so ghetto, but it's the truth. I'm careful, I'm gonna keep it real. It was a binder, this it says marketing for deals, right. And there's different marketing ways to do deals, postcards was in their yellow pages, like stuff like that. There was a pre foreclosure letter. It was a very simple letter. I literally, I didn't even think to just open up the binder and then take the thing out. I literally ripped it out of the thing. I went to Kinko's and I made copies of these pre foreclosure letters. That became my first direct mail campaign. I send out 320 Something Pre Foreclosure letters, and it was so ghetto because you know, when you make copies, you can see the black three. I'm not even kidding you. It was so ghetto. Oh, man. But that's what it 19:25 was it perfect. No, I love that. Oh, wow. And just for just this one second. Let's talk about it. So how many types of letters how many marketing strategies did you implement and read it? I just need clarity in this. Just give it to me one more time. 19:43 That's it. 1111 and it wasn't even like I sent out 30,000 pieces I sent out like 320 Something Pre Foreclosure letters. I went to a company. One of the things I learned at that boot camp a company called the foreclosures daily, which I think is still around. I bought a pre for Foreclosure lists from them. I went to a to Office Depot, I bought some envelopes. I got some stamps. I went to FedEx, I printed out a bunch of copies, a bunch of copies. And then literally at my parents dining table, which they still have is where I started direct mail. 20:16 Yeah, wow. That's one thing that I want our listeners to really understand is that you've got Alex Pardo here saying that he focused even in the beginning on one channel of marketing. There's so much gold in that. Yes. Like don't get distracted trying to spread yourself fan Yeah, trying to do 10 different things in marketing, focus on one thing get really good at that be positioning precision is what's the key? Yes, it's precise, know your marketing, and get really good at it, become an expert in that, then grow and develop and, you know, expand and add more things to your portfolio? 20:55 Yes, this is so so good. And I want to I want to throw out this example, in case maybe they're like, they're like ear numb to what we're saying. Because they've heard that do one thing. And in case they just heard that, think about this, what if you hurt your leg, or there was a foreign object in your in your leg, right, you want the doctor to go in your leg to get it out, you don't want them to go through your ear low through your nose through your hand, you know, through your stomach, you want them to go? And it's just like that with this. 21:23 Right? So I really 21:27 hope they hear that keep keep going, keep going keep going, ya 21:30 know, so. So I remember, I remember being super fearful of just, you know, like, okay, these people are going to call me. And then what am I going to say? So I said, I'm not going to worry about that. For now, let me just get the letters out. Because now I'm putting myself in a position and an environment where I just have to figure things out. And in that manual, there was a script, right? Like, here's what, here's how the conversation should go kind of thing. But there was some natural fear inside of me. But again, I kept going back to, you know, Tony Robbins talks about like, Is the pain of doing something greater than what you ultimately want. And for me, the pain of going out and getting a job was like that was that could have been death to me like that I would have been the ultimate failure in my head. That would have been the story I would have told myself. So yeah, guys, I sent out 300 And some pre foreclosure letters from this foreclosures daily list that I bought. And it wasn't till about four or five days later that calls actually started coming in. And I remember fumbling my way through conversations, stuttering, just sounding like a complete rookie, like making every mistake in the book, not knowing what I was doing. Like I you could tell I was probably reading from a script. And but from that one campaign, I got two appointments. I got to a point. 22:48 Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, we don't want that we don't want to miss this party that I love that we can dissect that this is so good. So how many conversate? Was it? Like, you got two appointments from the two calls you made? 23:02 I must have had, and this was 2005. Right. So whatever it is, you know, 1516 years ago that this was, I probably had, I don't know, 15 to 20 conversations from 300, and some direct mail pieces. And from your conversations, I got two appointments. And I remember, like, I don't want to curse on your show. But I just remember feeling. I was very nervous. Let's just leave it there. I remember. I remember what I remember when I scheduled those appointments. I'm like, I'm going to be meeting face to face with people. And you have to remember I hit a pre foreclosure list. That's emotional for a lot of people like people who are about to lose their home. And I was like, here I am this 25 year old I still consider myself a kid. I have no I've never bought real estate before in my life. And I'm going to meet with them to potentially buy their house, but they're looking at me as like a solutions provider. Yes, yeah. And I remember feeling the weight of that responsibility. You know, and, and so I mean, I'll pause here for any questions you might have. But yeah, I went to two appointments. And the first appointment I went to, I'll never forget, it was an Asian family, beautiful family. They owned the restaurant, and it's called Cutler Bay, a particular neighborhood in Miami. And this was your typical three bedroom, two bath. I think at the time, this was late 2005, the house was probably worth about 160 to 180 somewhere. No, I'm sorry, the house was worth 250. And I ended up getting it under contract for 160. But check this out. Here's what's crazy about this. At that first appointment, they signed over the deed to me. Wow, they signed so check this out. This is a true story. So they were behind on payments. And I essentially thought because one of the things I learned that this marketing for deals bootcamp was there was a speaker on there, a guy by the name of Mark Sumpter. And he'd I don't even think he's in the business anymore. And he was teaching something called the short sales. And he was teaching how you could work with the loss mitigation department of these banks, and you get reduced what's owed. And these people were behind on payments, even though there was equity in the property, I thought, Well, okay, I need to do a short sale here. So I get the contract, I get them to sign over the deed to me. And I start collecting, like the authorization to release information for like, I'm literally at the kitchen table with them. And I brought my binder from this thing I just took, I just took out like the paper in the front that says marketing for deals. So it's like a blank binder. And I'm looking at the short sale checklist. And it says, Okay, I need an authorization to release information. I need this, I need that, and I'm legit looking at this, okay, here's what I need. And then here's the form. And I started collecting everything. And I look back, and I'm like, I was so foolish, because I just didn't know what I was doing. But these people, they trusted, like their situation to me, thank God, I'm somebody, you know, with integrity, right? That I wasn't there to, like, take advantage of them. But like, anybody could have just taken the deed stole the house. Like, I just think of all this, how this unfolded. And thank God that, that I just, I was genuinely trying to help these people. And I was so nervous that like, I was just like stuttering at the meeting. And if you guys know me, I consider myself a pretty confident guy. But at that time, I was just like, I don't know, it was like, What am I doing here? This stranger's house, trying to like walk them through like documents, I need to start a short sale. It was crazy. 26:39 Well, so all I can say right now, Alex, I have so many questions to dig into. But I want to definitely just pick out one thing that the listeners need to really hear is what I'm hearing from you is you took a massive amount of imperfect action. You weren't waiting to get everything right with a phone script. You weren't ready. You weren't trying to get everything right with how Oh, man, how am I going to talk to him when I get there? Yeah, yes, you were a little bit nervous that you had maybe a little bit of doubt. But you took the action, like you were focusing on what you did not want to do, you said, I'm not going back to not if I'm not going back to that job. I got to make this work. And so with that, you took a whole bunch of action, which man, you probably blessed, so many people because of the result 27:26 of that. And another thing, how easy would it have been? If you didn't have that binder? If you just said I'm just gonna do real estate, and I'm just I'm not gonna invest in myself. I'm not gonna invest in education. I'm just gonna go on this whole thing blind. Yeah, who would have had a 27:43 reference? Yeah, who knows. And I also one of the thing that I think I think I want to mention, because I want to give them credit. My friend, Ray, the guy that invited me to this bootcamp, I remember when I first met with these people, and I got all this paperwork, and I went back home. And I'm like, like, what do I do now? And I had this reference, but I'm like, and he had done some real estate deals prior to me. So I called him and I'm like, Dude, I went to this appointment, I got this deed, I got all this paperwork, he looked at the deal. He's like you did what? And long story short, there was so much fear that I would like fumble this thing up and screwed up for these people and screwed up for myself, quite honestly, because I needed this thing to work, I needed to, you know, to help them and make money at the same time. I brought him in as a partner to this deal. And from that, from that point forward, we kind of like spearhead the whole process together. But yeah, from from there, you know, it was just funny if I would, I could pay to listen to my conversations with the loss mitigation department and what they might be thinking, because I was operating off of scripts from this manual, just trying to negotiate a short sale 48 hours earlier, I didn't even know what a short sale was, you know what I mean? It's like, and here I am calling the bank and they had a first mortgage, a second mortgage and trying to negotiate the short pays. Long story short, we got a successful short pay, we ended up making $44,000 in the deal, which I split with my partner. 29:08 Oh my god. 44,000. Hello, do you know how much the average American makes between 35 and 40,000 a year working 40 hours a week? 50 plus hours? 50 plus weeks out the year? Yeah, y'all hear that? That's real estate baby. Keep going. 29:30 That's it. That's what it is right there. And so that that 22,000 bucks, I made, I took half of that and I put it back into marketing. And I said if I could if I could, if I could make with the help of a partner if I could make 44,000 And I was so naive guys that I thought, Well damn, all my deals from here are gonna be like 40 plus $1,000. My next handful of deals were like, between five and 12. So I don't want to like make it sound like I'm patting myself on the back like I knock this thing out. out of the park, the only reason we were able to like do that is because we actually like negotiated with the bank. And we got them to accept less than what was owed. And we ended up wholesaling it to a cash buyer. And we made a pretty decent spread. But the next handful of deals were just your typical, you know, wholesale assignment fees that I was making, like between five and 12. Grand done. 30:21 So I have a question. You know, me, I'm a details guy, and some of my listeners, or some of our listeners on here is going to be like me, from point from the beginning of actually sitting down at their home to actually closing How long did it take? 30:38 I met with them. End of October of 2005. We closed mid January 2006. So it was about what two and a half months. Hey, 30:49 that's that's incredible. 30:50 Yeah, took me what almost a year to do my first deal. Yeah. And I had no blueprint. So I would, I would have paid 997 All day long, to close in two months. 31:04 Guys all day had it not been for that decision, it probably would have taken me two years to do my first deal. Like I more would have figured it out. But I would have figured it out. Like with a lot more brain damage a lot more like just lessons learned. Mistakes, probably money lost. So invest in yourself. That's the best. I was just talking to my daughter, you know, I'm talking to my daughter. I'm teaching her about money and being a good steward of money. And I'm trying to teach her. She's four years old, I'm trying to teach her the best investment, you know what an investment is. And I kind of like define what an investment is. I try to break it down for I said, the best investment you can ever make. I said you know what it is she goes houses because she's heard me right? I said, No, it's in yourself. So that's it. 31:50 But that's the one person you can bet on that you're always gonna be there is yourself. 31:54 Yeah, that's it. That's it. And you, you gotta have it. You guys know, we're believers, right? You got to have this unwavering faith. One thing, one thing is to bet on yourself. And other thing is to invest in yourself. But then you got to put the work in, like, it's not going to just get handed to you. You know, you gotta, you gotta just put in that relentless work. And you're gonna get scraped and bumped and bruised and cut and it's going to hurt. But if you just, I always said, Right, you can't fail unless you quit. If you just you just keep going. You'll make it happen. But you got to put the work in. 32:27 Yeah, there you go. Right there. I still a little bit of words from Alex Pardo. Know, you guys heard me saying that. If you don't quit, you know, never fail. You know, you got to keep getting back up. 32:39 Just keep pushing. Thank you. Thank you for breaking that down and taken us through the journey of what that looked like. And it's my hope that our listeners can hear it's not going to be perfect. And it's okay to go in not knowing everything. Like sometimes mistakes are just inevitable. You just you were just figuring it out, nobody can predict the future. And I really believe that you smashed the hole, I'm afraid to fail, or I don't know what I'm doing limiting belief. You just knocked it out. Like, like, unconscious. So while we're on that topic, if you don't mind sharing, what are some what is a limiting belief that you had to overcome? or and or even that you overcome to this day, just to keep pushing? Even with the successes you've had it feel free to just one either or both? 33:25 Yeah, so I'll kind of share you know, I remember when I first got started, I think the fact that I accepted this job, I thought it was going to be everything I wanted it to be. It wasn't. And so I kind of at the time, I didn't have the growth and maturity I now have right I saw that as a failure. And so we have to be careful the stories that you tell yourself because they can empower you or disempower you. And at the time, I told myself, Hey, I'm quitting this job, I'm moving back into my parents house. Like I kind of saw myself as a failure. And so I remember, you know, while I was backpacking and making the decision to go to this event, I was thinking to myself, like, Am I worthy of success? Like, do I deserve this? Like, I believed in myself enough to make the investment. But I had that inner critic, that voice that we all have. Some people might say, it's the devil, other people might say, it's, you know, that, just that, that that's the thing on your shoulder that says, Hey, you can't do this. Right? Yeah. You know, like, I felt like I had somebody whispering in my ear, making me doubt myself. But again, I just kept going back to the fact of like, God, God designed me to do something bigger with my life. And I'll be damned if I'm just going to be 25 years old, like, you know, living in my parents house, you know, trying to like figure out my way, like, I just that pain was so great. And I had this desire to do something with my life that I said, even though I'm uncomfortable, even though I'm making all these mistakes, I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna and I and honestly, I just I haven't looked back and that's been a big confidence booster for me. So I think to answer your question, and I'm kind of not sure About way, just believing that I'm worthy, you know, believing that that I can be a success and that that's exactly what God wants for me. Love it. 35:11 I love it. Geez. 35:15 You caught up with your words right now, 35:18 is that happen? Often I will say, in the spirit of that, I love to hear you share, you know where you are now or even how people can reach you that are inspired because you have a phenomenal podcast and you have business, there's a lot that you're doing as well. So tell people what the other side of that of that deciding to say yes, decision and push and get through, tell him about that and how people can reach you. 35:44 Thank you so much. It's you guys know me, right. But for those of you that don't, it's it, I have a heart of that I really want to help people, I have a genuine desire to impact people's lives and and to work with the right people. And Brittany and Leon, obviously, are just two of those people, I'm super grateful to be able to work with them. But yeah, I have a podcast that I launched in 2016. So it's been almost six years at this point called the flip Empire show. Where if you go to flip empire.com forward slash podcast that'll take you right to Apple podcast, recently had a Brittany on their spit and fire. So it was awesome. And and, ya know, I just I love that platform, because it allows me to just be myself, be authentic, be vulnerable, not just share the wins, but also share, hey, I got knocked down, or here's a failure. Here's a lesson learned. And so the flip Empire show, I would highly encourage you guys to check that out. And then super grateful along with a good friend of mine, Steve Kavanaugh to get to co lead just an incredible awesome, and that's not hyperbole, just an incredible group of entrepreneurs, and really first people, incredible group of people. And we do that it's called the sense, Brittany and Leon had been a part of that from since day one. And sometimes I pinch myself that, you know, I get to do what I do so and then we recently closed on a 340 unit self storage facility. You know, I still have some rentals and do some other things in real estate. But But yeah, those are the main things really ascending the podcast is where I get just so much genuine joy and fulfillment, the real estate, those are just vehicles to allow me to live my vision. 37:18 Love it, love. And that's what I mean, that's one thing that we can agree is that real estate allows us to live our vision, you know, not a lot of people may be currently in that place, maybe they are, some of the listeners are, you know, still have a W two, maybe they still enjoy their W two. Or maybe they're just looking to get their first deal so that they can supplement their income, maybe some additional income. And that's how, that's how branding got started. And then we're like, wow, we can actually change our lives or direction of our family through real estate and use this tool and just this vehicle and take us to the moon and back, you know? 37:54 Absolutely. And just to drive the point home just a little bit deeper. Both of us, like everybody on this podcast right now had to say yes, yeah. If if we didn't say yes, this wouldn't be happy. In other words, listeners, you wouldn't be able to hear this. So when we say yes, let's let's make sure that we realize and identify the fact that we're not only saying yes to us, but we're saying yes to legacy to not only ourselves and impact on our life, but others and the impact we have on their life. 38:27 Yeah. So well said, powerful. 38:30 And we thank you so much, Alex, yes, you've been such an impact in our lives, man. If I did not if we did not say yes to, to, you know, to join us in I think that man who knows where the trajectory of our life would have gone and I'm so honored to be able to grow this business and in relationship with you guys and Steve and just everybody that's had a positive impact and those who we've been able 38:58 to pull up with us as well. Yes, yes, definitely. So if you have, if once you get past doing your first deal, and you are really wanting to stay in it like you've gotten a taste of a little bit and you want you want to do more of it, make sure that you get yourself a community a sand for us has been an incredible community. I mean, check out what Alex said he, I don't think he's spoken of it high enough. It is truly been a game changer for us. And on his podcast, y'all heat several 100 episodes in like that he lightly touched the surface. So you definitely have an opportunity to hear other perspectives there as well. Thank you so much, Alex for being here for for leading us forgiving your time. I can't think of a better way to go into the holiday was being grateful and being thankful. Those of you are listening in wherever you are whether you feel like you don't have the credit Did are the cash? Where do you find you don't know enough where you got to hit certain license things and all of that stuff. Listen, you too can get your first deal and do not let anything stop you. It look, he touched on several things being the first one his family in America, they came from Cuba, like there are so many things that he had to overcome and culture environment and talking to people and connecting like there's so many unknowns, y'all. And seriously, don't say yes, there is something powerful on the other side, whether it's yes to us, or Yes to somebody else that may resonate better with you say yes, and see what God will do with it. 40:44 All right, I love it. You guys got me pumped up here. I'm getting ready to go out and do another deal now because you guys I love it. Love it. Love it. Love 40:54 it. Well, thank you and this has been an incredible episode of The my first deal story podcast. Thank you again, Alex for joining us and listeners. Don't forget to subscribe and share. Take care guys