Leonardo Casillas and Brianna Maggio from Eclipse Buys Homes share their journey from being homeless at 11 to building a million-dollar real estate business by 28. They discuss overcoming financial struggles, the importance of focus and KPIs, and how working together as partners helped them scale to 44 wholesale deals and $1.7M revenue in 2024.
Cut underperforming marketing channels and focus on mastering 2-3 channels that deliver 3x ROI before adding more
Track KPIs religiously and use weekly scorecards tied to yearly goals to maintain team alignment and accountability
Monetize every lead by offering multiple exit strategies - wholesale, novation, and listing - rather than limiting to one option
1:55:06Josh Stech, founder of LendingHome and Sundae, shares how he built a billion-dollar real estate lending company in just five years, scaling to 14% market share. He discusses the venture capital playbook, hiring at scale, maintaining culture with 500+ employees, and his transition to solving the property sourcing problem for investors through Sundae's marketplace model.
1:50:17Steve Trang interviews Damon Lyons of Sellers Advantage, who shares his journey from losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis to building a $30 million assignment fee business. Lyons discusses his evolution from loan officer to foreclosure auction specialist with Posted Properties, then to direct-to-consumer house buying, revealing the systems and massive marketing spend that enabled his California operation to dominate the market.
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Delete your resume and burn the boats when transitioning to entrepreneurship to eliminate the option of going back
Implement EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) to get the right people in the right seats and create clear role definitions
”“When you come from being homeless, the idea that you can manage and grow rental portfolio of multiple homes, it's like a dream come true. Like, you're kidding me? I got multiple homes. You can never be you can never be homeless if you got you own if you own a 100 homes.”
”“One of the best things I did was when I quit my job fully was I deleted my resume and all copies of it on my laptop and desktop and Google Drive. And I was very methodical of doing that. And I was like, if I don't ever have another choice, this needs to work.”
”“We were so light in, like, seven or eight different avenues and we couldn't penetrate anything. So we just stopped and we were like, okay, we're gonna do one really well. And then once we get that dialed in and we were we're good there, then we'll introduce a second.”
”“If you don't ever have another choice, this needs to work.”
25639 words
Leonardo Casillas: When you come from being homeless, the idea that you can manage and grow rental portfolio of multiple homes, it's like a dream come true. Like, you're kidding me? I got multiple homes. You can never be you can never be homeless if you got you own if you own a 100 homes. So for me, it was always gonna
Speaker 1: be
Leonardo: real. I saw what the ladder of corporate looked like, and that wasn't a scenario. That wasn't a viable option anymore. This needed to happen whether it was happening well or not. One of the best things I did was when I quit my job fully was I deleted my resume and all copies of it on my laptop and desktop and Google Drive.
Mhmm. And I was very methodical of doing that. Mhmm. And I was like, if I don't ever have another choice, this needs to work.
Steve Trang: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Leonardo Casillas and Brianna Maggio with Eclipse Buys Homes, and they flew in from Boston. Talk about going from homeless at 11 years old to millionaire at 28. A remarkable story. And now, guys, I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires.
The information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, hit that subscribe button because every week, we're dropping lessons that could create your first or next million dollars. And did you guys know that you guys can listen to the show on iTunes and Spotify? And make sure you guys also check out objectionproof.ai.
Guys ready? Let's do
Leonardo: this thing. Do it.
Steve: Alright. So I'm super excited. You know, I've known you guys for a couple years now. So let's just jump right into it. What was life like right before you guys both got into real estate?
Leonardo: Yeah. How'd you go first, Brie?
Brianna Maggio: So I went to school for architecture. I, never had any intention of actually doing anything with that degree other than flipping houses. Mhmm. So I get my degree, graduate. I'm doing kind of a hodgepodge of things.
I'm doing some architecture plans on the side. I am waitressing and bartending, and then I'm also launching my art career. I have my art in a gallery in Boston, which I'm selling it from. And I am really just saving every dollar to get into real estate.
Steve: So you got a degree Yes. In architecture.
Leonardo: Yes. No plans to ever work in the field. Yeah. How crazy is that?
Steve: But there was you were looking at flipping at the time?
Brianna: Yes. So So college was pushed pushed in my house, obviously.
Leonardo: Mhmm.
Brianna: And I was like, I'm going to flip houses. What can I study that will kind of help with that narrative?
Steve: That's massive potential. I don't think I've ever got anyone on the show. Yeah. That's that's insane.
Brianna: Yes. So, yeah, I was in school. All my friends are, you know, building out their resumes. I don't have a resume. I don't have a LinkedIn.
I don't have all the things. Like, I just never was never part of where I was going. I was just gonna work for myself. I was gonna figure it out. Had no plan of how I was gonna figure it out, but the plan was to figure that out.
Steve: Gotcha. That's awesome. And how about yourself?
Leonardo: Yeah. I mean, I took a completely different path. I took the nerd path. We went to the same high school, ironically enough, but we didn't speak at the time, but graduated top of my class in high school. And then as I was getting ready to go into college, I looked up top five careers that make the most money, attorneys, lawyers.
I mean, lawyers, doctors, and computer scientists and computer engineers. So I went into college for to be a computer scientist.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Started my first semester, and it was the worst time of my entire life.
Speaker: Really? Yeah.
Leonardo: I just couldn't connect with it. I was failing. I was just having a hard time. And then my college counselor sat me down, gave me a very straightforward conversation. He was like, hey.
Listen. If you continue on this path, not only will we have to take you out of the honors program, we have to kick you out of here because you're dropping below the GPA that you need to be. And I go, okay. She goes, you either switch your majors or you have to kinda double down and get better grades. I'm like, alright.
I looked at the I did my research one more time, and investment banking was the third, fourth choice. And I was like, okay. Let's do it. Yeah. I enrolled into finance.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And then, ended up my junior year. I ended up working at the tech company in Boston called Akamai Technologies. And then it worked out phenomenally and offered me a job when I graduated out of college, and I became a financial analyst for mergers and acquisitions. Oh. And then I started my kind of my life in tech and little into it.
I was like, this is not my cup of tea either.
Steve: It's a lot of money in that world.
Leonardo: It's a lot of money in that world. A lot of
Brianna: to sell your soul.
Leonardo: You guys have a lot of
Speaker: repressed a lot of money in that. Yeah.
Leonardo: And then one of the kind of the breaking points for me, we were I was joining a CFO conversation for the first time.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And one of the analysts that was in there was older in age, about in the mid thirties, you know, jokingly said, there must be more to life than Excel sheets. Mhmm. And everyone laughed. But for me, it was like a outside looking in perspective moment where I was like, oh, no. Like, there's not more.
There's more excels. Yeah. I'm like, okay. I gotta make a pivot. And at that point, I decided that I need to get into real estate.
And then, you know, we started our journey from there.
Steve: Gotcha. Were you guys talking at this point?
Leonardo: Not at all. So Okay. Completed separately.
Steve: So then how'd you get into real estate?
Brianna: So we connected because I was selling my art at the time. Mhmm. And, he commissioned a piece of art. We basically went, met at a Starbucks in Somerville, and I went to give him the art, take the money, and we stayed there for, like, three and a half hours just chatting. We're both kind of on the similar journeys, similar paths.
He was trying to get into real estate. I was saving to get into flipping, and so that's when we really started connecting.
Steve: Yeah. Gotcha.
Leonardo: And at that point, I'm like, this girl's phenomenal. We should go on we should go on a dinner date.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I'm like, let's go. And she goes, yeah. I have a one way flight to Thailand. I'm not sure when I'm gonna come back. I'm like, hey, dude.
Just say just say no. Like, why do you gotta make up the story for me?
Brianna: I really did go to Thailand now for
Steve: You're trying to close the sales too fast.
Leonardo: I was trying to I went too quickly to
Speaker: close it out.
Leonardo: Yeah. Too soon.
Steve: Okay. So then did you guys do your first deals together then?
Leonardo: Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the way it worked out is, she came back from Thailand.
She was like, hey. Let's kinda get started. I'm I'm like, let's do this thing. I've been saving up for quite some time now to buy my first multifamily, and it just was no success at the time.
Steve: When was this approximately?
Brianna: So this it was really COVID. It was, like, March. It was right when it started. The world kind of shut down. Leo and I were still, you know, talking, communicating, still on this path together, and that's when we both decided, hey.
Let's start a book club.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: So we picked, like, like, it was like flipping one zero one or flipping for dummies or something like that.
Leonardo: Yeah.
Speaker: And
Brianna: we're supposed to read a chapter a week and then connect on Thursdays. So I had just gotten laid off because it was COVID. I was waitressing at the time. So I'm still doing my art stuff, but I read through this book in the in the first week. Mhmm.
And, you know, he shows up and I'm like, okay. Like, I can I can do more here? I I have a lot of time right now. Mhmm. And I was like, let's kind of push this thing farther.
Leonardo: And I was just, you know, I was I had a very demanding job. I was like, dude, I can't. There's not much more to do here. Like, what are you talking about? You want me to do more?
Yeah. But I was working from home, so it was a little bit more flexibilities.
Speaker: Mhmm. So
Leonardo: from six in the morning to 9AM before kind of my regular day job started, we started kind of I started reading, getting myself educated, listened to all the podcasts. And then Brianna and I made it a goal for ourselves to listen to every single bigger pocket podcast
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Which we did. And then
Steve: Every single one. Every single one
Leonardo: for me.
Steve: And it's like, how many are there?
Leonardo: I thought in 2019, there was probably, like, 700.
Brianna: Definitely didn't retain everything, but it was it was there. It was on the background
Leonardo: where we were living. And the goal was to just kinda prime the mind and change the way we the outlook in our world. Because I was so linear right before it was, like, high school, college, corporate. I was gonna go the ladder, and then, you know, the FP and A world had steps, and I'm just gonna follow those steps. I'm like, I gotta break out of this.
Yeah. So that was a lot of the reasons we did that. But, oh, man, that was just like a challenging time. And I'm like, okay, Britney. Let's let's do this.
And then I still didn't get the message the first time around. So then she did what phenomenal leaders do. She was like, hey. Let's go change the environment.
Speaker: She took
Leonardo: it to the beach. We walked the pier, and she's like, you know where your path ends. Right? You
Steve: know where this is. Very visual.
Speaker: Yeah. You know where your path ends.
Leonardo: Right? You know what this looks like. You know what that progression looks like. You've mapped it out. But if we don't go full tilt on this, we'll never know where this takes us.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? And for me, that was, like, a pivotal moment. And at that point, I'm like, okay. Let's do it. So I put in plans to quit my job.
And as I was getting ready to quit my job during COVID and the craziness that was happening, I brought the idea to my mom, and mom just shut it down.
Brianna: Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Leonardo: For for the best reasons ever. Right? I was the number one provider there. I was taking care of them. They all lost their jobs.
So it's my mom. My adopted brother, Jerrell, my little sister. And, you know, I'm, you know, I'm the breadwinner in my household. So they were like, you're insane. You can't you can't do that.
Steve: And it's faster. Responsible for a family already. Correct?
Leonardo: It's a
Steve: lot harder.
Brianna: At we were 23. I remember when we connected, and I was like, this guy is like the world on his shoulders. You know?
Leonardo: Yeah. Yeah. I was just completely stressed out. And I just didn't know what to do, but I knew that if I continue that path, it wasn't gonna be for me. But more importantly, I needed to accelerate my velocity of earning money.
Yeah. And I knew that being an nine to five just wasn't gonna get me there. So I knew I needed to make a pivot. Mhmm. But the foresight was required to be able to tell my mom that, and her opinion is vital for me.
She put me through college. She was part you know, she's a stakeholder in the entire situation. So I sat her down. I'm like, hey. Listen.
I'm gonna do this. Right? And she's going You're the oldest? You're the oldest. I'm not the oldest.
Steve: But you're still responsible.
Leonardo: But I was still responsible. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I'm gonna do this. Here's my plan.
I walked her through it. And to be quite honest, she was still reeling for so much so there was so much scarcity in her mind that she couldn't visualize what I was talking about.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I'm like, I just need to go and do it and show you. And then all she told me was, I give you a year. What do you got? She's like, I'll do whatever I can, but you got a year. Yeah.
I'm like, done deal. All I need.
Brianna: He hadn't quit yet, though. That was the kind of agreement. He was gonna continue working until, basically, I, at that time, had been laid off. So I was like, listen, like, I'll work for free, basically. Like, I don't care about making money for at least until we run out of money.
Mhmm. So So that was the agreement. I was like, you keep working, you have other responsibilities. I don't have those. So I'm in a different position where I can, you know, I I have the availability to be able to do this.
Yeah. So that's where we kind of landed, and I was working kind of full time doing this. And then he was coming and meeting me after his nine to five, and then we'll just continue working on this.
Leonardo: Right. And so from there, I stepped down from that role into a governmental role that required much less of me and very I took a, like, a 70 it was, like, $60,000 pay cut Yeah. To go back to to the city that I was from to take a government job. But I had a maximum of thirty five hours. I was in the same city.
Didn't it wasn't demanding. It wasn't grueling.
Brianna: Mhmm. It
Leonardo: was, you know, pretty straightforward. And we'd I did we built the business full time because I was able to I was working seventy hours where I was at four. Now I'm working thirty five. I had forty extra butt hours. I'm like, dude, I gotta make this work.
So every weekend, and we just came together and started building Chris Bosh Homes.
Steve: So tell me about the first deal you guys did.
Brianna: Okay. So the first deal we did, the single family flip, we acquired it because Which
Steve: is not multifamily, which was what you guys had started with. Yeah. We were flipping houses.
Leonardo: Yeah. I went multifamily. Exactly.
Steve: Okay. Alright. So single family.
Brianna: So part of what I was doing when I was working for, like, that year was I would do some driving for dollars. And I had this bike app and I would track where I was going and I did, like, seven or eight of, like, the surrounding cities. I did every single street.
Steve: The bike app? Yeah.
Leonardo: Yeah. So it showed you, like
Steve: for driving for dollars?
Brianna: Yeah. That's what I was using. It was like Strava or something, but it would show you the route. So I knew, okay, I've done every all of these streets and I knew where I left out.
Leonardo: You're using
Steve: Strava for driving that's
Speaker: awesome. Yeah.
Brianna: I was just making it work.
Steve: That's awesome. Okay.
Brianna: So, we put together this driving for dollars list and we send out our first round of mailers that I actually like. I I know Photoshop, so I photoshopped and, you know, made the postcard, and we sent them out. We sent out our first round of mailers, and we get our first phone call, and we end up signing that as the first deal.
Leonardo: Sweet. Yes. It has never happened ever again in the history of advertising.
Brianna: Best ROI ever Ever. Other than the the full year I worked for for you guys.
Steve: Okay. So first direct mail, piece Yeah. Or drop, phone call, contract.
Speaker: Yes.
Leonardo: We only got one phone call.
Speaker 4: Oh. One
Brianna: call. That was it.
Speaker: That was it.
Leonardo: That was it.
Speaker: That was it.
Brianna: That was it.
Steve: Yeah. But it closed.
Leonardo: But it closed.
Brianna: It closed.
Steve: And you guys flipped that house.
Brianna: Yeah. We did.
Steve: Okay. So with what resources? I mean, was this, like, your savings?
Leonardo: Yeah. Yeah. I had I had roughly around, like, $80 saved just because, obviously, being the man of my house, there's always needs to be some sort of liquidity. But we always been very frugal growing up, so I always saved. So in college, I saved.
When I got in my corporate job, I saved everything. I just always saved. And, Brianna was saving at the time, too. We're like, dude, we got to just put our money together. Let's go fifty fifty on this thing.
You manage it. I'll finance what I can. I have a corporate job, so I could The hard money alone was like, dude, let's go easy. I had a you know, it was working well, so we made it work.
Brianna: So we financed the construction as well. The plan was to obviously hire GC to do the entire project. It's week one. The guy is not showing up, and we end up having to fire him, and he still sends us a massive bill for, like, $10,000. Mhmm.
Speaker: So
Brianna: we're like, I'm not gonna pay it. Why would I pay it? So we get sued
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: On our first deal. We end up talking our way out of it. I was like, you didn't do any work. You wanna get paid. Right.
Speaker: We
Brianna: don't we both don't wanna go to court. So we kinda talked our way out of that one. But it kinda put a a little bit of a sting in the road for us. Mhmm. And we ended up just doing a lot of the work ourselves and with our families and, you know, kind of subcontracting what we could.
Leonardo: We used to have ignorance written all over.
Brianna: For sure.
Steve: Well, first of all,
Leonardo: it's a first one. Yeah. People just took a lot of advantage of us and
Speaker: Yeah.
Leonardo: We didn't understand the timeline. We didn't understand how things stacked, and it was just tough.
Steve: You guys made money on the first one?
Leonardo: We did. Very little. Very little.
Brianna: Yeah. We did it. Okay.
Leonardo: Like, $30. It was supposed to be, like, 100. We made 30. I'm like, hey. Hey.
Better than zero or negative.
Steve: So we
Leonardo: walked away with something.
Steve: Okay. Cool. So then after that, what happened what happened to us?
Brianna: So we sold that property in August, and we are both now taking, like, a week off just to, like we hadn't taken probably a year and a half off. Mhmm. So we take a week off. He took his family to Puerto Rico, and I was with my best friend in Mexico. And he calls me.
He's like, I found the the multifamily on Facebook Marketplace, but they're showing us today. And I'm like, okay. So we look at the photos, and I'm like, this is it. Like, full send this thing.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: So I
Speaker: can
Brianna: say it unseen. I'm like, let's let's figure it out. Like, what what's the alternative to lose it? Like, send the deposit, and we'll figure it out.
Leonardo: And this is, like, the biggest difference, and I guess this is why we work so well together because Brianna has always been phenomenal at running towards something.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And I've been really good at running away from things.
Speaker: Mhmm. Right?
Leonardo: And that was a difference in the scarcity toward abundance mindset. She's like, lock it in, send the deposit, sign on scene. Let's do this thing. We'll figure it out just like we did the other one. Yeah.
And I am terrified out of
Speaker: my mind.
Leonardo: I am in absolute panic frenzy mode. I'm like, dude, we just got this money back. Like Mhmm.
Brianna: We're talk me out of it?
Leonardo: We just got sued on the last one. Like, what are you talking about? Sight on scene. There's so many variables. And I go into my nerd moment.
Like, if this is the worst case scenario, this is the best case scenario. But, abundance triumph, and we bought the property, and it's been Yeah. A life changing
Brianna: We're going back and forth for a while, and then I was like, send the money.
Speaker: And I just hung up.
Leonardo: And I
Speaker: was like, this is that. Because we're gonna
Leonardo: figure it
Speaker: out. Yeah.
Steve: You guys still have it?
Leonardo: We did. We do.
Brianna: Yeah. We cash out.
Steve: Okay.
Brianna: Cash out, refinance that one.
Speaker: What was
Steve: it about that property? It was, like, the one. Yeah.
Leonardo: I mean, it was the first time that we kind of applied all our skill sets. So it was gonna be a Burr. It was a two family that we that Brianna then drew up plans, got it approved, and converted to a three family because the attic was unused. Mhmm. We increased the value, forced appreciation.
We made the numbers work at a renovation of a $150.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Realistically, we needed $250. And then Brianna and I kinda anticipated that and saw that when we kinda got into the property. So we got a handy guy. His name is Justin. Love that dude.
He's like I'm like, dude, we gotta make this work, bro. So we came to a daily rate, and Brianna and I dropped everything else we did and joined construction work for six months straight. So we framed. We demoed. We did bathroom tiles.
We carried everything up there. We we tried to save every dollar. We kept we did roofing.
Speaker: I did siding.
Leonardo: Mhmm. This is a triple decker, so the people that live in Boston kinda
Speaker: know,
Steve: but
Leonardo: it's tall. Mhmm. So I'm I'm on the side where
Brianna: the finished Pump staging.
Leonardo: Pump staging. Like and it was just an absolute craziness. So
Steve: Would you recommend this to somebody else? Oh. Knowing what you know now.
Leonardo: I I think for I I would. It just gave us so much context and so much grit. More importantly, it allow us to understand the fulfillment part Mhmm. Of the renovation process. But I think if you're not in the weeds of it, you truly don't fully ever know.
Speaker: Mhmm. Yeah.
Leonardo: And I bet you can kinda know theoretically. But I think until you're there and at least for me, it developed my leadership skills because I'm working elbow to elbow with
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: The guys that I'm, like, kinda bossing around or telling what to do. And I'm a 23 year old guy at the time. Didn't know anything from anything. So Right. For me, it just gave me a lot of confidence and developed my leadership skill and helped to save a save a buck.
Brianna: Yeah. I think the knowledge too is just so crucial because, you know, someone would finish a job. Right? They they go and frame the room. They come in like, yeah.
I'm all set. And it's like, we have looks like framing.
Speaker: I don't know.
Leonardo: We we didn't know.
Brianna: So we were able to gain a lot of knowledge now where I can walk in and be like, no. That's incorrect. You know, you're missing a header. That's not large enough. Like, you you it it allowed us to really just kinda push forward.
So now moving forward, you know, I'm a lot more knowledgeable, and we're not making the same mistakes.
Steve: Got it. And it makes total sense. Mhmm. Right. I just never did any of that stuff because I have no idea.
So, like, that looks good enough. Okay. So what doubts did you guys have, right, between the first two deals? At which point are you like, man, this is not real. Like, this is a scam.
Yeah.
Leonardo: It's the cash flow management part that I think kills most people.
Brianna: A 100%.
Leonardo: There there's there's such a the cash cycle when it comes to flipping is just so elongated. And when you don't have short money coming in from either rentals or agency business or whatever, wholesales, whatever it may be, it's very draining. And I think we found ourselves in multiple times in financial strains where we're like, where did the money go? Mhmm. And why am I always broke?
Steve: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And why do I feel like I get this, you know, windfall of money, and then it's gone? Mhmm.
Steve: Evaporates quickly. Evaporates.
Leonardo: Yeah. And the most frustrating thing for me is I have a finance degree. You know? You would think that I would know this
Speaker: or I
Leonardo: would figure this out, and I didn't. It was just one of the there was just so many things I was learning at the same time that I just we never had a pulse in our finance that we're flipping.
Brianna: And Yeah.
Leonardo: It just it was tough. It was really hard.
Steve: Yeah.
Brianna: It was our first time too dealing with, like, large sums of money. Like, you know, when you're 23, 24, you're you're paying a contractor 14,000 here, 10,000 here. It was the largest amount of money we're, like, managing at that time, and it just came in and came out so quickly.
Leonardo: So quickly.
Steve: Yeah. So if everyone is watching, right, we got David Richter with Profit First for Real Estate Investors. We got Marcus Crigler. Those two podcasts, if you wanna go look back later on, talk about money. Sure.
That's so that's when it was the scariest for you guys. For sure.
Brianna: It was. Yeah.
Speaker: When did you guys know it
Steve: was gonna be real?
Leonardo: Like, when the success was gonna be real or, like, just this the This path.
Steve: Mhmm. Right? Because you had a year. Yeah. Figure this out.
Brianna: Yeah.
Steve: When you know it's like, okay. Like, this is it. We can do this. Okay.
Leonardo: At least personally for me, it was always real since the moment I made that decision because I told my mom I was gonna do it. Mhmm. But also, like, when we talked about earlier, like, when you come from being homeless, the idea that you can manage and grow a rental portfolio, multiple homes, just like a dream come true. Are you kidding me? I got multiple homes.
You can never be you can never be homeless if you got if you own if you own a 100 homes. So for me, it was always gonna be real. Like, it was never in a scenario because I already left. I already saw what my other train took me to.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? I saw what the ladder of corporate looked like, and that wasn't a scenario that wasn't a viable option for me. So this needed to happen whether it was happening well or not. Mhmm. So that was it.
This was it. Like, I had no idea.
Steve: You've you've burned the boat.
Leonardo: Yeah. Yeah. One of the best things I did was when I quit my job, a second job fully, was I deleted my resume and all copies of it on my laptop and desktop and Google Drive.
Speaker: Mhmm. And
Leonardo: I was very methodical of doing that. And I was like, if I don't ever have another choice, this needs to work. Yeah. So that was at least my my thought.
Steve: I thought you're gonna, like, flip off the bus on the
Speaker: way out. No. No. No.
Brianna: I think that when we cash out, refinance the BRRRR property that we had, I think that was a moment for us because we had
Steve: The multifamily.
Brianna: Yeah. We had that that project was just so hard in so many ways where we were so over budget. We ran out of money. We did not anticipate, you know, what this property needed to get to the end. And on those really hard days, we would just say, we just gotta get to the refi.
Leonardo: Get to the refi.
Brianna: Just have to get to the refi then.
Leonardo: Refi.
Brianna: We probably said it 12,000,000 times in that six months. And so when we refinance and stabilize the property and, his mom moved into it, it felt like, okay. Now we can really move into the next part of what this looks like. Mhmm. You know, his his home life now is good.
His his family is taken care of. We're taken care of. We have somewhere. Now we can really, like, rip rip everything into this and go go a lot harder.
Steve: Got it. So one of things take off.
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Speaker: Like Okay.
Steve: When I think it's, like, start accelerating, it's like, okay. Like, this thing's going well.
Leonardo: So at that point, once we once we stabilize that property, we then go buy two more flips.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Once more, the lesson sometimes you you get told the lesson. You don't fully you don't fully as if you don't fully You didn't receive it.
Speaker: Yeah. You
Leonardo: didn't receive it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said something the other day that I love.
It was like the hammer of humility.
Steve: Yes.
Leonardo: Right? I got hit with the hammer of humility twice on that one. So then we buy another flip. We get into it. Cash flow problems.
We run out of money.
Brianna: Not only that, we bought this property on market. And I'm at the open house, and every contractor that's going there is literally running the opposite direction. And I'm the idiot, like, you guys must be wrong here. There's something here. We've got something here.
You guys are all missing it. What do you
Steve: guys know?
Brianna: A 100. We end up putting it under agreement. We purchase it, and I bring my dad there. And for anyone who knows my dad, he's super chill. He will literally follow you to the end of Earth.
And, you know, he walks the property, and we're sitting on the beach after, and he's like, so, what's the plan with this? I'm like, what do you mean? We're gonna flip it. He's like, yeah. What about those foundation issues?
I'm like, foundation issues? What are you talking about? He's like, Bree, like, there's some serious foundation issues. And I was like I remember him telling me that, and my heart, like, sank to my stomach. And we we walked back over to the property, and now I see it.
It was like it was like unleashed. I'm like, I'm walking through, like, a ski town right now. Like and that's when, like, that project, I think, pushed us, like, again to kind of get to the next level.
Leonardo: Figure it out. It it was it was off pivot by nine inches from the left to the right of the home. Mhmm. We had to regut it fully, restructure it, move the found it was an entire immense project. And as in the middle of that, the agent that we bought this project from then takes us to her own her her own home and goes, yeah.
This is a rooming house. The stack broke, and the seller wants to sell in thirty five days. And I'm only willing to sell it to you guys. And I'm like, okay. I at this point, I think we were down to, like, $30 on our bank account.
We were probably out another 45 on liabilities on the other property. Mhmm.
Speaker: And
Leonardo: then I just called my hard money lender that I happened you know, his name is Eric.
Speaker: And I
Leonardo: was like, hey, buddy. You meet me in Winthrop. Walk this property with me.
Speaker: Mhmm. And
Leonardo: I didn't say a word. Just walk him with me. We looked at the basement. We looked at every room. And then I go, here's the price.
But I have no money for a down payment.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I would like to cross collateralize the equity I'm gonna get from Revere to use it as my down payment for the purchase here, and I also need you to from me the construction box so I can do it. Yeah. And then I proceeded to pull out my laptop, and I walked him through an Excel model
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Of what this looked like
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: Outside this water house. It was also a rooming house.
Speaker: Mhmm. And I
Leonardo: just walked him through it. He said nothing. And I'm nervously explaining this. I'm like, but if you look at my sensitivity analysis, if you look at the rate, doesn't say a word. Mhmm.
And then I finish, and then he goes, done deal. Walks in his car, drives away.
Brianna: That was it.
Leonardo: That was it. Three weeks later, all the money's at closing. He actually added 5 more grand for us
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: At the closing table. And, then we did those two then we flipped those two properties at the same time, and the Revere property ended up selling. But because we cross collateralized, we got zeroed in the anything. You didn't get
Speaker: anything. Mhmm.
Leonardo: And then we sold the other flip and went through. And then when that closed, we walked away with $257,000 net Mhmm. Net to us. And this was, like, the culmination of, like, two and a half years of, like, just doing the thing. Mhmm.
And I'm like, okay. We started off with $80
Speaker: three years ago. Now
Leonardo: we have $2.57 Mhmm. And a whole lot of experience.
Steve: Right.
Leonardo: What do we do now? And once more, right out of the nerd book, we were like, okay. We gotta interview people that are doing well. Mhmm.
Speaker: So then
Leonardo: we went on an interviewing spree of flippers, wholesalers, in our area. And
Steve: In Boston? In Boston. Yeah.
Brianna: We could not have been more annoying. People would be at their projects working and, you know, trying to get things done, and we show up when we have our little, like Notebook. Notebook of these questions. We're like, how about five minutes? And they're like, they're very busy.
You can tell they're like, get away. But, you know, they're we're going through the questions. We're not taking the hints of, like, that's enough questions. Finally, like, alright. That's enough.
You know?
Steve: Well and, you know, Boston.
Leonardo: I know. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. They
Leonardo: have the nicest people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Leonardo: Yeah. So then we're showing up, throwing trash out for people, trying to get to know them. And, you know, Jason was one of the guys we connected with. We connected with Tom. We connected with a few other developers.
And I'm like, dude, just walk me through this. And we didn't have enough money to get into the development game. I knew what flipping was already. The cash cycles, like I said, was a little too prolonged for us. Mhmm.
And at this point, we're dating, but I couldn't I couldn't, like, afford to take us, like, to dinner. Mhmm.
Speaker: Well,
Leonardo: we haven't taken a vacation two and a half years. Like, we haven't taken any weekends off of my dude. It's just we can't do that again. Right? And then we actually found three masterminds that we wanted to join after Jason recommended some, and then we applied to Collective Genius.
Mhmm. We got denied.
Brianna: We did.
Leonardo: And then I was like, oh my.
Brianna: This sucks.
Leonardo: I mean, this is my favorite one out of all the ones I interviewed. That's where I wanted to go.
Brianna: Yeah. We knew we needed to get educated and figure out, like, what the path forward. We knew it was real estate. We just needed to figure out we we didn't necessarily feel like it was flipping.
Speaker: Mhmm. And
Brianna: so that was our journey of just trying to figure out what that next path was for us. And so, you know, we applied all these masterminds, don't get in, and we just kinda give up on that. And we're like, alright. Let's just keep going down our path here.
Leonardo: Right.
Brianna: And we got a call from, the boardroom, and we had got accepted.
Leonardo: After Jason put in a phenomenal word on our
Brianna: He probably begged them.
Leonardo: And was like, hey. Listen. I know they don't have the volume. I know they don't have the network. I know they're, like, 24.
Speaker: On paper.
Leonardo: On paper. Yeah.
Speaker: Not not
Brianna: too shabby.
Leonardo: Not too shabby.
Brianna: Resume doesn't look too good.
Leonardo: Yeah. He's like, but I promise you these people are you know, they're the real deal. So we got on a phone call with Kent.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I just kind of you know, it was one of those situations that I explained what was going on, and he's like, come in. And then, from there on out, really, like, the point of success was when the education from actual people that were doing it in the field. When that information came in, we already had the grit. So we were just really missing, like, the direction. Mhmm.
So for us, it was just like, boom. Started really working out for us.
Steve: So what'd you get in joining Boardroom?
Leonardo: Right off the bat, just like processes
Brianna: Yeah.
Leonardo: Scalability. Our
Brianna: first our four first, time in Austin, we go up, we present, and they're asking about KPI's. KPI's.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Brianna: What is
Speaker: it? What is that?
Leonardo: You know?
Brianna: And so we left that mastermind. We're like, okay. We don't know anything about our numbers. We have no idea what we're doing here. So it really forced us to go back and look internally and put together the systems, the process, look at our numbers, look at what we're spending, look at our return, and really, again, with the finances, dial in what we have going on.
Steve: Yeah. Right. This was in '22?
Leonardo: This was in
Brianna: This was in '23.
Leonardo: '23.
Speaker: Almost a
Leonardo: couple years ago. '23. Yeah. And the great thing, I think, one of the first things we did early on was always like, we're gonna be ignorant, and there's this learning curve that's humongous, but it can be shrunk if you just work your ass off. Right.
Right. If you just work, like, you can just you can you can reduce any curve.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? And we just work constantly all the time. Right? So yeah. 23.
And then when the knowledge kinda started coming in, we just like when we learned about KPIs, I think we didn't sleep for, like,
Speaker: seven days.
Leonardo: So we just went we're like, what are our KPIs? And then Kent was nice enough to give us this Excel document. I'm like, we gotta fill this thing out.
Steve: I'll say, like, you should've been looking at it with your Excel sheets.
Leonardo: I know. I know. Too I was too busy learning construction and management. I just didn't know.
Steve: Okay. So then alright. So the first biggest takeaway, KPIs. Yeah.
Leonardo: KPIs. Right?
Brianna: For sure.
Speaker: What else?
Brianna: SOPs, systems.
Leonardo: Processes. SOPs and process was definitely secondary. And the third was, like, getting a getting a right person for the right seat.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Brianna and I were co sharing all responsibilities, and she was going on seller appointments. I was doing this. She was doing the other. There was You're the closing.
Brianna: Yeah. But I'm not. That's a problem. That was She was that was that was
Speaker: a problem.
Brianna: That was exactly what the KBS told why is she in the seat? And I was like, why am I in the seat? Like, I'm way too relaxed and chill. I'm not gonna push for a contract. I'm not gonna, like, a story for another time.
I have a tattoo. It literally says dupe dupe dupe. And it's like, go with your flow. Right? And so I'd be with sellers and, you know, they they were you know, needed that little that little push, and I'd be like, you know, go with your flow.
You know? Like, I'm not pushing for anything. We're not closing anything.
Leonardo: We're not closing anything. And then that 20 that '23 winner was, like, one of the slowest there's ever been. Mhmm. So I see a post on social media from Paul Verones, and he's like, hey. Looking to be an acquisition manager.
Mhmm. And at that point, we have nothing. We just have the Eclipse POS homes name.
Brianna: We got a vision.
Speaker: We got
Leonardo: a vision of where we wanna go, and a quarter quarter million bucks that we wanna deploy into something. Yeah. Or we don't know what that something is. And it was almost like he came in for an interview, but it was really more like an adverse a reverse interview. It's more like when he came into the office, what we did was we put everything and and the entirety of the vision on a table.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And I was like, hey. I have nothing, genuinely. You're joining on this thing. I'm gonna pay you a bit of a premium in the market because you're believing in something. You're you're we're working at a start up.
Speaker 5: Right.
Leonardo: You may not have a job in a year. Maybe, maybe not. But I promise you if you stick to the ride, we'll we'll kinda see it through.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I promise I'll see it through.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And that's what he agreed upon. And
Brianna: That was September 2023, and we did not close any deals until February 2024. And at that point, we were like, quarter million is gone.
Speaker: This We're bleeding dry.
Leonardo: Right through it. Really? All the way from
Steve: a what?
Brianna: How much Marketing. So $40,000 in one month in PPLs that I didn't close a single one.
Leonardo: Right. And we didn't even know that the off market market was a market. Mhmm. We thought that if we got a lead or because due to our first experience, once we get a call, who signed that thing?
Brianna: Yeah.
Leonardo: What is there to talk about? Like, there's not gonna be more more evil Yeah. Competing with you. Right? And then we have one of the biggest flippers in our backyard.
Mhmm. So it's like, you know, they had a really well oiled machine. And we were just kinda throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that something stuck, and
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Nothing stuck. And there was this level of paranoia, panic that was like, okay. We spend more on PBLs. And then we were on seven marketing channels. They're like it was, like, $3,500 a month hoping something happened, and nothing nothing ever happened until we just cut things down, got down to two channels, Paul in the white in the right seat.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And at that point, I was doing the we were doing, like, sales training, whatever Tom gave us at the time, and
Speaker: we
Leonardo: were going through it. And I'm like, dude, I'm not a sales trainer. Yeah. That's kind of realistically what you kinda came in the picture. I'm like, dude, I don't I don't I'm probably doing you more harm
Brianna: Yeah. Than I am doing And I can't close anything. So
Leonardo: So at that point, once more, we interviewed, like, three or four people, and
Speaker: that's where
Leonardo: we kinda discovered you. But, that was game changing for us too, and having Paul on our side was it just changed everything.
Steve: I had no idea that you guys didn't have very much experience when you first started working with me.
Leonardo: Oh, yeah. Very little. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. We were just
Brianna: winging it.
Leonardo: For sure winging it. Yeah. For sure winging it.
Steve: Well, because Paul is good.
Leonardo: Paul's an awesome from the
Steve: get go. Yeah. I had no idea, like, the situation there. Like, yeah. Paul's good.
He shows up, asks great questions, executes. And the the great thing about Paul is that ask a question, seek clarification Yeah. And he does it.
Brianna: Then he does it.
Leonardo: Do it. Yeah. Yeah. You can't
Steve: Can't ask for more.
Leonardo: You can't ask for more.
Brianna: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: So I think Paul I think you got an incredible team. I see it, like, you know, on your guys' Facebook post. Right? Like, you guys obviously, by now have built a great culture. Right?
Speaker: I don't
Steve: know what it looked like back then. But by now, you guys have built an incredible culture.
Brianna: Right? I credit a lot to what we do to our team because we really, like, we really have a phenomenal team. Mhmm. Everyone's so committed. Everyone shows up.
I mean, Paul worked for six months with there was nothing. He didn't get paid anything. And, you know, the team that we have now, everyone is just so dedicated and, you know, they see the vision now, and they're, like, just right in this thing with us.
Steve: Yeah. So everyone is listening right now. I was like, okay. These guys didn't do anything in '23, really.
Leonardo: Right. Nothing at all.
Steve: Yeah. So why should anyone listen to you guys
Brianna: right now?
Leonardo: I know. So once we got super dialed and specific on what we needed to accomplish Mhmm. And our KPIs got a lot more streamlined, that year, we ended up doing 44 wholesales.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? And there was a moment in that was it March?
Brianna: Yeah. It was March where things started clicking. 2024.
Leonardo: Yeah. So we we closed our listing, which was cool. And then right after that, we closed the wholesale for a 100 and
Speaker: for a
Leonardo: $110.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And then three weeks after that, it was, like, another $80 wholesale. And then from there, it's like the floodgates just opened. And all the leads that we had in the past and everything in between, we just kinda dialed it in, and we ended up closing 44 wholesales that deal that year. Closed the top line at 1.7 that year. And for us, it was, like, one of those breakout years, but more importantly, it was one of those years that it was all about just being super specific on what we were doing.
Yeah. And kind of, for us, at least for me, was walking away from the two x opportunity to focus on the 10 x opportunity. What does that mean? So, originally, when I was in corporate, the 10 x opportunity was being a realtor.
Speaker: Mhmm. I'm like,
Leonardo: dude, I'm I I can make more money doing that. Mhmm. Mhmm. Right? It's all about that vantage point.
So once I left my corporate job, became a realtor. Right? And I was like, you know, I made six series that year. I was like, cool. Man, I saw flipping houses.
I'm like, oh, no. I want the two x opportunity. That's the 10 x opportunity.
Speaker: Mhmm. Let
Leonardo: me go into flipping houses. Start flipping houses. I'm like, dude, this cash flow thing sucks. Like,
Speaker: this is
Leonardo: I can't figure this out. Yeah. And then once I saw wholesaling and the the fact that my cash cycles were compressed at thirty to forty five days
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And it became like a marketing and sales business.
Speaker: Right.
Leonardo: I'm like, I can't handle two. What I can't handle is fundraising, cash management, fulfillment Mhmm. Contractors, guys buying houses, doing I that that's too much. I'm overwhelmed. We're young.
Like, we just don't have the capacity for that. But when we when we narrowed it down to marketing, sales Mhmm. We were able to get our grasp around that, and I think that's really when things started moving forward.
Brianna: Yeah. Just having the right people in the right seats.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: Like, I do operations. If someone asks me when operation questions, he probably doesn't even know, and he's gonna refer you over to me. Same thing with sales. I'm gonna refer you back to Leo because he's overseeing that department, or I'm gonna say, if you need to close the deal, we'll talk to Paul. We'll talk to John.
Don't talk to me about that.
Speaker: Right. Right?
Brianna: The ISA team that we have that's virtual, like, if they if it's about booking appointments, talk to them. So we just really, like, make sure that the the seat that you're in, you wanna be in it, and that you have the capacity to do it, and they have the training to do it. And then we just we just stay in our role. Right.
Steve: What would you credit for having that the clarity, the ability to figure out who belongs on what seat?
Brianna: We're an EOS.
Leonardo: Yeah. So and that came all through, like I said, boardroom. Mhmm. It was kind of, for me, it was a beautiful showcase of, like, multiple case studies Mhmm. Of what the top level guys are doing and what the bottom tier are doing.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And I remember when we were in the boardrooms, we listened we watched all the calls, and we're like, doing the bottom? Seems a lot of confusion.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Lot of confusion. I do this. I flip. I do this. I do the other.
I do mobile homes. I part money. I'm like, dude. Woah. And then and the top guy is like, I'm a wholesaler.
Clarity.
Brianna: Yeah. That's it. I wholesale homes.
Leonardo: I wholesale homes. And I'm like, that's that's that's a big indicator.
Steve: Graduating top of the class. Right? Pattern recognition.
Speaker: And I
Leonardo: was like, that's that's where we gotta go,
Speaker: Bri. If we're
Leonardo: doing I was like, you know, I pulled this out. I'm like, hey, love. We're doing too much. Mhmm. We're trying to do too much.
And like I said, all those all that suggestion, all those thoughts and everything came from boardroom. And for us, like I said, one of the cool things that Boardroom focuses on is the problems of your business.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Right?
Leonardo: So it's just they they glare at you. So for us, after being in a few rooms, we're like, okay. The commonality here is clarity. The commonality is lack of understandings of your KPIs and what truly moves the needle forward. Yeah.
Right? So we just really focus on those things and was able to perform.
Steve: So you said you really focus on two things.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Steve: Marketing and sales. Right. So let's elaborate on that. Yep. In what ways did you focus on marketing?
Leonardo: First and foremost, we cut off the additional marketing channels that weren't necessarily above a three x ROI. Mhmm. Right? We're like, these need to go. And the x is Yeah.
We just enough. Oh, and we couldn't also manage so many because we were doing we're just doing our self managed PPC.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Wasn't going anywhere. I'm like, what are you dude, you don't even know what you're doing.
Brianna: We were so light in, like, seven or eight different avenues and we couldn't penetrate anything. So we just stopped and we were like, okay, we're gonna do one really well. And then once we get that dialed in and we were we're good there, then we'll introduce a second. Once we get that up and running, then we'll go and we'll introduce the third. So we just really had to scale back in order to move forward.
Steve: Yeah. It was all about the discipline.
Leonardo: Yes. Yes.
Steve: Okay. So filter everything that wasn't a three x. Correct. But that's not
Leonardo: Which is everything. Right? It was everything. And then, one of our mentors was like, hey. You need to have a low cost per lead because you're Okay.
Steve: So everything got eliminated.
Leonardo: Everything everything got eliminated. Everything you're like, you're
Speaker: you're doing the market.
Leonardo: Everything is bad. Okay.
Steve: So you have seven marketing channels, and none of them have passed test.
Leonardo: Yeah. Because exactly. None of them were Okay.
Steve: So but you can't stop marketing. Correct.
Brianna: Correct.
Leonardo: But then he's like, you gotta have a low cost per lead. Start with cold calling. Just cold call. Become the phenomenal the best you can at cold calling. I'm like, oh, come on, man.
And that's what we did. And we, right now, have seven cold callers. You know? We we brought them all in house, and that's where we went to Columbia, right, to connect with them and build them and train them, and they're all part of your calls as well. Yeah.
But that was a huge emphasis on us. Build the build the cold call. Cold call for now. Figure that one out. And then we staggered on the rest.
Steve: So what was after that?
Leonardo: After that, we added PPLs.
Brianna: PPLs.
Leonardo: And that one was a situation where it was like, oh, we're gonna do PPLs? Mhmm. We're gonna have three or four PPL companies. Right. No.
No. No. No. No. Trim it down to two.
Right? And that's where we worked off that. And once we figured that one out, we're like, okay. We have a handle here.
Steve: So, yeah, 3.
Speaker: Yeah. 330.
Leonardo: Yeah. But that was because we were being methodical, and we were focusing on it and truly tracking it.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Before, it was more like a did my bank account get a credit or a debit? Yeah. Tell me. Mhmm. So it was just all about that focus.
Steve: Got it. And then you guys have a third channel?
Brianna: Mailers.
Leonardo: Mailers. Got it. Okay.
Brianna: That's it. That's all we do. Mailers. Keep it simple. Yeah.
It's working now, and that's the goal. It is we'll we'll introduce the fourth once we feel like we're good with these.
Steve: Yeah. You're getting a three x ROI in your marketing? Yes. Alright. I'm in direct mail?
Leonardo: Yes.
Brianna: Yes.
Steve: Okay. So when you say you'll you'll add more you might add a fourth when you feel good. What feels good?
Leonardo: Yeah. I mean, once we have we'd like to follow an omnipresent marketing campaign to all the channels. Mhmm.
Speaker: Right?
Leonardo: So if we're mailing them or texting them or calling them, whatever channel that people respond to, we wanna be able to be there. Yeah. And once we've stabilized that in the sales process for us for a while Mhmm.
Speaker: We
Leonardo: didn't wanna continue adding marketing channels until we had a solidified, structured, easy to follow sales system.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And prior to you, I was making that up myself. Mhmm. Like, once more, not the right
Speaker: person to
Leonardo: see. So one of the biggest things I tell Brianna once we we're looking at our expenses, right, our, p and l's every month, I'm like, you know, the sales training, it's almost like an insurance policy on our marketing
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Spend. Right? It's how we truly can monetize the marketing spend is by having consistent sales training. Right. It's the only way to maintain it that it continues where we're at.
So once that hits a bit of a cap, we'll go, okay. Now we'll add another channel.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Got it. So you mentioned you looked at multiple options
Leonardo: Mhmm.
Steve: On the sales side. Yeah. Why did you decide to go with us versus the other options?
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Leonardo: Great point. Once we did all the interviews and stuff, for me, it was important to encompass the entirety of the company.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Not Not just necessarily me or Verdon or Paul. Mhmm. I wanted my junior acquisition guy, John, to be on there as well. Mhmm. And then I wanted my inside sales agents to be on there as well.
Mhmm. There was options from other programs to do so, but the cost basis was too high for me. Mhmm. And I knew that, like, any sort of training or education, the compound effects happen over a period of time. Right.
So I needed to be able to afford it, not necessarily for the next six months, but for the next two years. Mhmm. So that's when I know that, okay, just like me. I was so, hey. Flipping kinda sucks.
Speaker: And it
Leonardo: took me five more flips to learn it. Mhmm. Right. Right? It's that repetition.
Yeah. Right? So your program was not only all encompassing, but the basis was great. And the fact that it's quarterly helps with the cash flow. Like, this works out.
You know? I'm like, I like this. I'm gonna take you sixty days to close a wholesale deal. I gotta pay Steve in ninety days. This works
Speaker: out great. So It
Steve: does work out great. And then, where I was gonna go with this. So you had the marketing. You got the sales. We haven't talked about much of this, but you also wear a realtor hat.
Mhmm.
Leonardo: So
Steve: we've talked about the 44 wholesale deals. Yeah. You got the marketing, you got the three x ROI. Yeah. How are you guys monetizing your marketing?
Brianna: Yeah. Yeah. So we work with sellers who wanna sell. Mhmm. And then we provide options based on the scenario they have, their circumstances, and what they're looking to get out of the, you know, out of the sale.
So our team is equipped to, you know, do a wholesale. We can do innovation. We can if we need to, you know, take the deal down and hold tail it, and we can also list it. Mhmm. So, you know, we have this whole kind of tool belt of things based on different, you know, sellers motives, and then, you know, the team is equipped to kinda go and figure out which one to take out of the tool belt.
Speaker: Mhmm. Right.
Brianna: We, you know, we're going to kind of turn away from listings at one point, but, you know, in Boston, in the market, like, a good listing is, like, twenty, twenty five thousand. And it just didn't make sense for us to get rid of those at the time, especially with the cash flow issues. So, you know, we incorporated them. We try to put as much on autopilot and put the systems in place, and now they're fully a part of our business. Right.
Steve: How many houses do you sell as realtors in 2024?
Leonardo: Yeah. Fun. I like to tell the story because as I was working my corporate job and still being a realtor, I actually won rookie of the year, because I was selling houses on the weekend and, like, picking up phone calls and speaking, like, m and a conversations on the other phone. So, we the great thing about us when we first came off, it was that professionalism.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And I just Brianna and I really kinda came at it as we did in our other settings. Right? I followed up when I said I was gonna follow-up. Mhmm. Right?
I we ran first time home buyer courses, and I ran them in a loop. Right? So I did twice twice a month. I partnered with nonprofits. I did first time home buyers.
I door knocked. I was actually the only person in my brokerage that went through the brokerage and, like, sat there
Speaker: for people to walk in.
Leonardo: Mhmm. It's funny
Steve: how that works.
Leonardo: It's funny it's funny how just being in the right places works. But our first year kinda coming off, we did, like, 8,000,000 volume.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Last year, we did 15,000,000.
Brianna: Yeah. 15 or 16. I mean
Leonardo: with, okay. If it wasn't wholesale, it was gonna be a list. Mhmm. Right? So the realtor side, you know, it works for us and really kinda got us in the space and helped with a bit of a cash flow problem.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: But we
Leonardo: know in the future that's gonna be something we
Steve: 16 mil, about somewhere around 3% commission?
Brianna: Yeah.
Steve: Alright. So that's $480?
Leonardo: Correct. Right? Yeah. 520, it was last year.
Steve: 120. Yeah. Yeah. So and I bring this up because there are a lot of people that, for whatever reason, don't look to monetize it that way.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right. Not a
Steve: lot of people talk about it. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I know people do it. Right. But it doesn't seem to be mainstream.
I agree. And maybe that goes back to, like, focusing, do one thing well. Yeah. But, like, I made a lot of money.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Yeah. Wearing both hats. Like, when
Steve: I started the podcast, it was like, the realtor and wholesaler community is like oil and water, but it shouldn't be. Correct.
Leonardo: You should
Steve: just market to sellers Correct. And then give them options. Correct.
Brianna: And that's what we do.
Leonardo: That's exactly what we do.
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: And and there is a bit of a frowned upon to, like, the realtor side. Right? Because you're like, oh, dude. Am I doing this? But, realistically, it was our short money that helped us get in and stabilize us and do what we did best.
But last year, it was $500,000 that we made in commissions from being an
Speaker: agent. Mhmm.
Steve: And motivated sellers had no problems paying me 7%.
Speaker: Correct.
Leonardo: Right. Right.
Steve: Right? It's like so right now is normal. Not I mean, normal is not there. I don't wanna get in trouble. It's not normal.
A lot of people
Brianna: Mhmm.
Steve: Pay two and a half percent Mhmm. These days. Like, for me, when I was still wearing the realtor hat, marketing for motivated homeowners, I would, on a regular basis, get listings at seven and then pay the buyer's agent 2 and a half. Wow. And I get really angry calls.
Yes. And the buyer is just like, you're making four
Leonardo: and a half. I'm making two and a half.
Speaker: I was
Leonardo: like, yeah. Get the last thing. Yeah. Yeah. Total power.
Yeah.
Steve: Like, I didn't lie to you. Like, it says two and a half in the MLS. Yeah.
Leonardo: That's exactly right. Right.
Steve: They just assumed I was getting five.
Brianna: Right. Right.
Steve: So, but yeah. So I think, like, a lot of people are overlooking this. Like, you know, if nothing else, like, maybe find a a realtor partner. Like, get licensed so you can get paid legally.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Yeah. Which I think is a big thing. Like, don't get don't do the, marketing agreement deal. Right. That works, but unenforceable.
Brianna: Right.
Steve: The the realtor referral deal. Right? Right. You can nail them to the wall if they don't cooperate.
Brianna: Right.
Leonardo: I think you have to when the lead comes in, you have to monetize them. Yeah. And that was our number one priority. It's like, how do we monetize? But more importantly, how do we cater our solution set to whatever that struggle that that seller needs to Mhmm.
Get over. Right? So we were very methodical about that when we first started off. I'm like, dude, like, I'm not giving up my my my my realtor business. Are you kidding me?
Yeah. I'm like, it takes six months to make money from a flip, dude. Like, we'll be eating ramen noodles by the time it's all said and done. So
Brianna: And it it is something to monitor too because if you have so many options, you know, something we worry about is, does the sales team, you know, have clarity when they go in? Right? If, you know, maybe, they need to make some money and so it's easier to go for the listing. And so that is something I would just encourage people, like, you have to have the right people on your team
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: Who know the vision of the company, who are fully bought in Mhmm. Because then that becomes not a worry. Right? I know that the team knows where we're going.
Speaker: Right.
Brianna: They know, you know, what we're trying to hit. They know what we're trying to achieve. So I feel confident that I have the right people in the right seat and that my team is gonna go and kinda deliver based on what the seller needs and not what, you know, that acquisition agent needs for them at the time. Right.
Steve: So you say that they know that. They know the vision. Right. How do you ensure they know the vision? Repetition.
Leonardo: Constant repetition. Mhmm. And using your office space as a constant reminder of that vision.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: We have it everywhere in our in our office. But then, you know, we start off our, you know, our l tens with our scorecards, and the scorecards are our weekly breakdown or our yearly goals. And then when we do our monthly kind of town hall meetings, our yearly goals are there. Right? Yeah.
And we just kinda follow that. And that one, I took straight out of corporate.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? It was constantly being shown to us. It was constantly being talked about. It was constantly showing in our town hall meetings, and I just copied and pasted it.
Steve: And It's one of those benefits of working in a corporate job. Yeah.
Speaker: It
Steve: is. Like, I hated working at Intel. Yeah. But there were benefits
Leonardo: Tons of benefits.
Steve: Working in corporate business.
Leonardo: Yeah. Corporate Tons of that. For me, it was phenomenal. Like, it helped a lot, and I I'm one of those really people that really like, I enjoyed my corporate job. Yeah.
I had a cool job.
Speaker: I wish
Steve: I could say the same. How do you decide then? Because this is a tricky point. Right? Because you're saying you wanna make sure they know.
Mhmm.
Speaker: They
Steve: don't wanna go to the easy route.
Leonardo: Mhmm.
Steve: How then, if you're spending money on marketing, do you decide which like, do you send the same person no matter what? Or do you decide, like, hey. This is probably gonna be a listing. We'll send this person. This is probably the cash buyer we send that person.
Brianna: Yeah. It's still something where I can't say we have it, like, a 100% pinned down.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: But we our our team is able to present all of the options.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: And so, you know yeah.
Leonardo: We do isolate them to two, though. Mhmm. So if it's a cash so the Eclipse by Solomon is the cash entity. Eclipse group is the listing entity.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: So if it's cash or innovation, they're only gonna present those two. Right? If it's a listing, and it's, like, on, like, a 50 it's either gonna be a novation or a listing. So then what we do is we give them packets.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: So, you know, we have the donation packet, we have our cash packet, and we have our listing packet. Yeah. And they can only go with two.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And that's been the way we've kind of been working it out, but it goes right back to that reiteration of what our goal is. You know? Our goal this year is to do a 100 wholesale deals. Right? It's not to do a 100 listings.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? It's not to do this or the other. It's to do a 100 wholesale deals. Mhmm. They understand that operationally, internally, wholesales are much more straightforward than listings are.
They understand that's the vision of the company. They understand that, what gets the most per dollar, right, per per deal. So I think it just goes back to just being super clear and saying that numerous times. Yeah.
Steve: Clear on what the outcome is. Go ahead.
Brianna: Yeah. I think it was helpful too to bring the whole team to Columbia and, you know, have the moment where, you know, we rented a house and we had a villa and, you know, we had the whole team there. And, you know, it was a company paid trip, and we just had the opportunity to bond with bond with each other and, you know, have these moments together. And we had a chef that was cooking for us and, you know, really just like bring us together as a team Mhmm. And really talk about where we're going, what the vision is, and really get full buy in from the whole team.
And so for us, you know, it was a scary thing to, you know, the whole the whole team is off for a whole week. And it was a scary thing, but it's it paid 10 folds
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: Because our whole team is so on the same level that, you know, we're we're all rolling in the same direction.
Leonardo: Yeah. Right.
Steve: So let's talk about working with your partner.
Leonardo: What's that like? Oh, I think it's a superpower, to be honest. It allows you to get advice and actionable kind of feedback from the other person without giving too much contacts because they already know it.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: So sometimes you find myself like, hey. They don't wanna tell my friend a story. But I first gotta tell my ten minutes of the contact.
Steve: You have the foundation.
Speaker: I got you.
Leonardo: Origin story. Was that? What was I doing?
Speaker: Dude, I was at
Leonardo: the mall. I found this girl from high school. You You can't believe she's working as a four, whatever it may be. But the cool thing about Brianna is I'd be like, hey. It's not what Paul did today, dude.
And then just laugh about
Steve: it. Right.
Leonardo: Or, so it's been a superpower because it allows the flow of conversation happen easier and the feedback loop to be more accurate than it ever would have been if they didn't have the contacts. Mhmm.
Steve: So at
Leonardo: least that's my point
Brianna: of view. Yeah. I think that we also it's such a blessing in a way. Right? We get to we we we literally share a car right now.
So we we drive to work together. We get to eat breakfast in the morning together. We're on the same schedule. We get to eat lunch at the same time. And for some people, everyone's like, how do you work with your partner?
That's crazy. And I'm like, I feel like you don't like your partner because I love it. There are the days when, you know, I'm in a bunch of meetings or, you know, Leo's running wherever he's off-site. And I'm like, you know, I miss him for that time when he's not in the office. And I'm like, I can't imagine leaving the house and you don't see your significant other for, like, nine or ten hours.
You have one meal, you watch TV, and then that's it.
Leonardo: Mhmm. But you do have to have physical areas of containment. And what do I mean by that? So, like, we have an office. We go we don't work from home ever because our home is, like, our home.
Right? It's where we spend personal time. But you do have to have those environmental delineations of, like, home is for being home and for being a couple.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: The office is for being work partners and growing the business.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And you can never allow those two to blend. Because during COVID, we allowed it to blend, and then work just never ended. Right? We were working from
Brianna: home.
Leonardo: Then we were working at 9PM. We were working at 10PM. I'm like, dude. Woah. I'm like, fatigue.
Mhmm. Do not talk to me anymore. And Just having clear boundaries. Being nowhere, like, hey. I'm not I don't wanna talk about work anymore right
Speaker: now. Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? But we love what we do, so we just kinda talk about it all the time.
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: But just having clear delineation, like, hey. We're done. We're home now.
Steve: So hypothetical. Mhmm.
Brianna: Yes.
Steve: Talking about boundaries.
Leonardo: Yes.
Steve: You're tired. Yes. You wanna watch the game? I don't know. Yeah.
Brianna comes along, starts talking about work. Yeah.
Brianna: Yeah.
Leonardo: Oh, we're we're we're very safe space to be like, hey.
Brianna: I I don't wanna talk about that stuff.
Steve: We're done.
Brianna: Yeah. It's done. It's over. Yeah. And it happens.
For sure it happens because we're we work in different departments. He's in sales. I'm in operations.
Steve: Mhmm.
Brianna: So there'll be days that are very operationally heavy and chaotic. And I carry that home and I come home and I'm talking about it. He's like, woah, woah, woah, you know, and you'll have to just hold each other accountable because it's vice versa when, you know, the phones are ringing at 08:00 at night and then he's venting and I'm like, dude, I'm chilling. Like, go on the other
Speaker: room if you wanna if
Brianna: you wanna keep doing this. But, it's just about holding each other accountable.
Leonardo: 100%.
Brianna: It it we've there's been so many reiterations of it. So where we're at now is really beautiful, but, you know, there are a lot of difficulties that come with it. Right? Like Right. You're spending so much time together that you're you're trying to figure out, okay, when can I be girlfriend and when can I be business partner?
And, you know, when we were working so much at the beginning, it felt like the girlfriend part, like, was left for a little bit, and it didn't come out as much. Right? We'd be going to events until 09:10 o'clock at night, and you're at the meetups and this and you're like, okay. When is it acceptable to, like, hold hands for a second? Can you walk in and hold hands?
You know, when when you leave the office, can you, kiss each other? Like, what does that look like? And we just had to set those parameters up, you know, because for a while, it felt like we had to just solely be personal. And I was like I mean, business and I was like, alright. When we leave the office, we can kiss each other.
That's fine. You know? Like, we've got to figure out what this looks like for us.
Leonardo: It's just weird to have these type of conversations, though. But it's like the the the goal requires you to have these type of conversations. Mhmm. It's like you how often do you sit down with your wife and be like, hey. When when is it allowable for us?
But you do have you gotta have them. So Right.
Steve: Have there been instances where there's like, man, I don't think this is gonna work working on my partner?
Leonardo: No. I I personally never felt that way.
Brianna: No. We have a really good energy where, like, especially when we're flipping, and there would be, like, these really hard days where every time it was only one person that was feeling heavier. Right? So if if I saw that Leah was, like, really feeling this moment, I knew, okay, it's not my moment. And there was something that just turned it off and was like, you've gotta be in, you know, problem solving and just pushing forward, and you can't be upset right now.
And I think that that's happened beautifully in so many moments where, you know, I'm feeling it way more. And Leo's like, okay. Well, this is what we're gonna do. And, you know, this is our plan of action, and this is how we move forward. And so we just have a really good rhythm that has worked for us, and there's never been a moment where we see a lot of people who have worked together and they something bad happens, and they start blaming each other.
And with us, we're like, okay. Whatever happened happened. Yeah. Let's move on from it. And how do we come up with a solution together and, like, go in the same direction instead of attacking knees deep in poop water and whatever it is.
And, like, the only thing you can do is laugh about it because it like, if not, you'll cry. And then you'll both be crying and it's like, what's the point? Like, you have to just
Speaker: Is that literal?
Brianna: Yeah. It's happened before. Yeah. It has. Yeah.
Speaker: For sure.
Leonardo: What's this? Bro broken stack and the flip, and it was in a flood zone. So that stack broke. It was in a flood zone. Actually, funny story.
It was during Christmas. Brianna goes, we should go check on the winter property. I'm like, we should. We drive up there. Some pump broke.
Water in the basement is rising. The stack is broken. I'm like, oh my. Someone needs to get in there and turn the thing on. And she goes, we'll do it together.
Speaker: I'm like, no. I can do
Leonardo: it by myself.
Brianna: You have a rock, paper, scissors shoot who goes knee deep into the water? I won. So that was Leo.
Leonardo: So we went in there and got it done. But I I I think realistically, to give context is when I first migrated from Puerto Rico, I went into my sixth grade history class, and Brianna was in there.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And she had this luscious, long, black Italian hair. Mhmm. And I was like, you're pretty. So then I proceeded to ask her out, like, a 100 times. She said no every single time.
Like, you know what? Eff it. I won't ever talk to you again. So we I never did
Speaker: Yeah.
Leonardo: Until we got back, like, after college. But so when we started dating and we started flipping this business, for me, it wasn't a dream come true, dude. I'm like, this couldn't be better if I wrote it in a fairy tale myself.
Steve: Got it.
Leonardo: So it just worked out really well.
Steve: So not to change the topic for Mhmm. But for an Arizona boy Yeah. The
Leonardo: stack broke.
Speaker: What does that mean? Oh.
Brianna: The plumbing stack that would that
Leonardo: that would
Brianna: take the sewer line and exit the property, it was not exiting the property. It was pouring out into the
Steve: basement. The main sewer line.
Brianna: Okay.
Leonardo: Yeah. So in Boston, because usually the homes are stacked.
Speaker: Okay.
Leonardo: We have a lot of them connecting into one place. So that main stack would be where all those converge
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And go out to the sewer line. So that when we say the stack, that's what broke.
Steve: Got it. That sounds terrible.
Brianna: Yeah. It was it was out of out of a nightmare.
Leonardo: I remember remember, it was a rooming house.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah.
Leonardo: Yes. Yeah. Just So
Steve: you say rooming house. I'm thinking, like, we have sober living. Is that what we're talking about?
Leonardo: Room house? So rooming house in in the Northeast could be either that, which is commonly known. A rooming house could also be like you're, you know, you're a seller. You're down in your luck. You think that rooming you know, renting your house by rooms
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Could
Leonardo: be, like, the best choice. And then she went to renting every room in her house Mhmm. And then her living room, and then started splitting rooms in half.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And then started putting people there. So it was a four bedroom home, and it had how many it was, like, 12 people,
Speaker: I think?
Brianna: Yeah. So many people.
Leonardo: Twelve, thirteen people.
Steve: It was a wonder Yeah. That thing broke.
Leonardo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Yeah. Exactly.
Steve: Got it. Okay. So, we titled the show, from homeless at eleven Yeah. To millionaire at twenty eight. Yeah.
So this, I mean so just go back just go right into it. Why were you homeless?
Leonardo: Yeah. So, my family migrated out of Puerto Rico because my brother Joel had a really bad baseball accident. So he got hit on the side of his head. Huge concussion, put him in a coma for twelve days. My mom was just in a panic.
They didn't know what to do. And then my cousin was already living in Lynn and was like, hey. We have, you know, Boston Massachusetts. Massachusetts right next fifteen minutes outside of Boston. Like, we have the best doctors in the world here.
You should come up here. So my mom goes, okay. Packs us all up. Takes us to Boston.
Steve: That's it.
Leonardo: That's it. We're going we're going to Boston. And, you know, when we get to Boston, my brother's in therapy and recovering, and we're living in the worst apartments there is to get. You know, my mom didn't have a job. My older brother was working.
My cousin Milton was trying to do the best that he could. And then as we're trying to figure that out in fifth grade, I'm learning English. My mom was in no English. So you
Steve: weren't speaking English before you got here?
Leonardo: No. So it was the best way I tell people is, like, if you took elective French when you were in high school or in middle school, imagine your mom was like, hey. Now we're going to France now. We're gonna live in Paris.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: You wouldn't be conversational. You'd be like, dude, this is an elective. No one ever took it seriously.
Speaker: I took nothing out of here. That's true.
Leonardo: So I show up, ESL kid. Just had no idea what was going on. And, yeah, we were trying to figure it out. And one day from sixth grade, I I'm going home, and I see that there's this huge you know, everyone in the school is talking about this huge fire. What are they talking about?
And I didn't have a phone. I had an Obama phone. My mom didn't call me because I didn't have minutes. Mhmm. So I get off the bus, and I see this huge huge proof of smoke coming over.
And it was on my street. And I just keep walking normally, and then I take a left on my street, and my mom and my sister, like, in a blanket on the curve. I look up, and the entirety of our house is on fire. And we didn't have anything in there to begin with, but it was, like, our home.
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: Right? And this is right around o eight. So at that point, you know, we had nowhere to go, so they were, like, just start sending them to homeless shelters. And it was always like, hey. It's gonna be temporary.
Six months at a homeless shelter. They moved us to another homeless shelter, six months at another homeless shelter. And I spent all of middle school, and I'm bouncing around from homeless shelters to homeless shelters. And Brandon, when we got into high school, my mom kinda got tired of this. She's like, you know what?
We gotta, you know, we gotta figure this out. And during this period of time, my brother, Joel, the one that we came here for, has become very violent. At this point, he's, like, become gang associated. He's, like, getting into really a lot of trouble, and, everything was just focused on Joelle. And my mom was just like you know, all her attention and energy was on this you know, getting this guy to live a normal part of society life.
And I was failing out of school, wasn't learning any English, was being rude to girls like Brianna and asked her out a 100 times, was just getting in the wrong groups and the wrong activities. And, and we were living in shelters with all the kids that were that was okay in my environment. You know? All the kids were trouble kids. All the kids in the shelter kids were trouble kids.
We were all on the summer school programs. We were all on EBT. Like, it was just very common, and it was like, these are my friends, so it wasn't weird. I I fit in.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And we also none of us had dads. There was never, like, a weird thing for me at all. It was always like, oh, you're one of us. Like, let's just continue doing what we're doing. Let's go steal some bikes.
Let's, like, go kick skip class and go smoke cigarettes in the hallway. And that was my middle school life until my brother, you know, was put in prison for whatever reasons at the time. And then him and I happen to share a really shitty birthday. Right? So his birthday is September 11.
Our birthday is September 11.
Steve: Oh, really?
Leonardo: Oh, really? Yeah. So I was going into freshman year. And then, you know, our friends in high school and middle school were made a bet, and they were like, you know, Leo, I'll pay you a $100 if you can make honor roll. And they all laughed.
Like, you know, you're never gonna you're never gonna get paid for that. Mhmm. I'm like, dude, that's so mean. Like, it was like That's
Speaker: really mean.
Leonardo: I'm like, I'm smart, dude. I just don't know English. Like, that's so mean. And as I was going into fry high freshman year, I you know, we went to go visit my brother, the county jail. And then we're sitting there, and I'm looking at my brother, who's been the tough guy, like, the, you know, the leader of the family.
Everyone kinda looked up to him, and, he's behind this glass. And we're, like, singing happy birthday to him in Spanish. And they're singing happy birthday to me so we have the same birthday. And I just broke down crying. He was crying.
I was crying. Mom was crying. At that point, I was like, something needs to change. Like, I, once more, right, had a recognition. I see where this train goes.
Yeah. I don't want this for me. So I, went back to school, like, on the September 12, and I was just like, I'm gonna figure this out. And then I got on a high honor roll every single semester, every single quarter for the entirety of high school, the entire thing. And, we continue living in shelters, and, you know, I there was time high school?
Throughout high school, and I would just, do my math homework in the bathroom. I would do my math homework in the kitchen table. I would do my math homework, whatever. And, like, I would just do my homework. And then I found after school programs that changed my life.
And junior year, my mom actually, after being on the wait list for seven years for section eight, got section eight. Yeah. And some people were like, you know, came out of section eight. Now I'm this and the other. I'm like, when I got section eight, dude, that was almost like a saving miracle.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I was like, oh my god. Stable housing.
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: Right? Not better housing. Stable housing.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Right? So for me, that for our family, that was a saving grace and, very helpful. But when I went to college, it was, like, the first time that I had, like, a room to myself, right, where I didn't co share it. And it was the first time where my bed was in plastic. Right?
Because we were sleeping in plastic beds in the shelter for a long time because of bed bugs or whatever the reasons is. But huge, huge, huge thing for me.
Steve: First question.
Speaker: Did
Steve: you get your $100?
Leonardo: I never got my $100. No. I think. No one no one
Steve: else worthy of a cap.
Leonardo: No one paid me my $100.
Steve: I would I would get collections on them. What did you see in in the prison? Like I mean, obviously, he's like, okay. This doesn't end well. Right.
But was there something else? Like, was your brother, like, in a bad spot? Like, obviously, like, being prison is a bad spot. But was, like, did you see, like, this is not the brother I grew
Leonardo: up with?
Steve: Like, you can see, like, he's been defeated? Like, what was
Leonardo: the moment? For me so my brother and I have different fathers. So, you know, he's a honking dude. He's six three.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Huge guy, three hundred pounds, like, a big big monstrosity type of guy. And he's always been a violent person. He's always been a go, you know, go first. Go go go. And just seeing with his head down Mhmm.
And just crying just really kind of altered me. And then seeing the effects it had on my mother as well Yeah. It's kinda chain it's just changed me completely. Like, it just changed my outlook on who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do and, what I wanted my life to look like.
Steve: Yeah. And so this is the reason why, you are responsible Correct.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: For your family.
Leonardo: Correct. Yeah. And then, the best way I always think that the best way to control the environment is to lead. Mhmm. Right?
I wanted a stabilized home for them. So once I did my research on the top five careers that made the most money, I knew that the moment I graduated college, I had to get her home because I couldn't have her continue to be in the system. Right? And then once I went I went to a private Catholic, really good school in Boston, Looking back at it with the education that I had and and the life experiences that I had in college, I knew that the setting that they were in was wrong, and I knew that I could do better. Mhmm.
So because I knew I could do better, I had to do better. So it became my cross that I had to carry no matter the cost and no matter the time, no matter the effort. And that's why corporate wasn't the answer for me even though I enjoyed it. Mhmm. And I tell everyone all the time, like, I wouldn't be an entrepreneur without the need factor.
Right? Because realistically, I like what I was doing. But I I know that that I needed to succeed sooner rather than later Mhmm. Because my mother couldn't continue to be in that situation, especially when COVID was around. Right?
She was, three years through my junior year in college, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. So she had a portion of her lung removed, and my mom was overweight. And I lived in a three family house, in one of the highest densities of Boston. And you don't have to be a statistician, right, to know that if my mom contracted COVID during the period of time, her mortality rate was higher than normal. And that just put a fire in me that it was just unquenchable.
I just needed to figure it out, and I was willing to do anything and absolutely anything to make it happen. Yeah. So that's why we got into business, so we flipped houses. So I'm like, dude, we gotta go go go go go. And, honestly, for me, it's been a blessing.
Steve: Well, there's no alternatives.
Leonardo: There's no Exactly. There wasn't. There was just not another alternative. Correct. Yeah.
Brianna: That's why we bird that house, like, so early in our career because I knew, like, that was something that had to get satisfied. Right? It was always gonna be in the back of his head of, like, I need to help my family. I need to get this. And until that was satisfied, I knew that it it was kind of, like, encompassing him.
Leonardo: Correct.
Steve: So that was when you're pushing, like, no. We're doing this. Correct?
Brianna: Yeah.
Steve: Because, like, it it wasn't just it's we need a rental property. It was, like, we need a place
Leonardo: for your parents to live in. Yeah. It's all about, like, running towards and running away from. Mhmm. And that's been something that until very recently that I pivoted.
I'm running towards my goal now versus running away from my past. Yeah. Right? And that's just been that's been the difference maker for us.
Speaker: So your
Steve: mom still lives in the Yeah. Got it. And then now you can say for sure after all this, you guys are millionaires Right.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: For that. That's awesome.
Leonardo: Yeah. Thank you.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's no easy fee. Right? I mean, especially, like, you're talking like, sound like you guys are an absolute mess in '23.
Leonardo: Yeah. We were. I'm pretty sure. '23 is gonna be in front of the act.
Brianna: Twenty twenty four was where where things ticked.
Steve: So that's but that's huge. Right? For, like, everyone who's listening, like, you know, we say over and over again, take action. In the next five to seven years, you take consistent action Mhmm. You'll become one.
Right.
Speaker: There's a
Steve: proof of that.
Brianna: Just don't stop.
Leonardo: Just don't stop.
Brianna: That's the thing.
Steve: Do not stop. Action.
Leonardo: Consistent action. And I think for us, things compounded over time. Right. What really worked out for us really was once we started making the few the first few 100 thousands, was just staying consistent and and allowing it to compound.
Steve: Yeah. And then, you know, I guess, you're talking about studying in in the shelters. I mean, even through high school, it kinda reminds you, like, pursuit of happiness. Mhmm. Or Will Smith, like, he's studying.
Yeah. Right? Like, he he needs that light on in the bathroom. Right. So I can study.
Right. Sounds like you're kinda going you were living that life.
Leonardo: Yeah. I was just, for me, realistically, at the time, it didn't feel really odd or weird because it was just my reality of things. Mhmm.
Brianna: And we
Leonardo: were in a community where there was other kids in shelters. Like, I saw other kids from my high school in the shelters that I was in. And we never said out loud to each other in high school, and we never, like, enacted with each other
Steve: all the time. Back home?
Leonardo: Yeah. I never we never did any of that. So for me, it wasn't weird, but at the time, I knew that I needed to push and that being excellent was only gonna get me in the room. Mhmm. I was very aware of that.
And I was also more aware that my mom was broke and that there was no college tuition for me. There was no fun waiting at the end of some rainbow that if I didn't get a full ride, that I wasn't gonna go. Right? So for me, it was like either I got a full ride to college or the possibility of going to college it's not realistic.
Steve: Yeah. It's a lot of pressure.
Leonardo: Yeah. Sure. Pressure makes diamonds, though. So
Steve: It's true. Absolutely true. And then, you know, one of the big lessons, it sounds like we're talking about, is the learning never stops.
Leonardo: Right.
Steve: Let's talk about that.
Brianna: We are smart enough to know that we don't always have the right answer. And so what's gotten us so far is, like, we just try to get out of our own way. Right? So even in our team right now, when we have problems, you know, we sit at the table and everyone brings solutions. It's not, oh, well, Brianna thinks we should do this and that's it because she owns a company.
Or Leo says this is what we're doing. It's like, well, who has the best idea? Right. Right? Who has the most knowledge in this?
Who's who has the experience? Who knows what to do here? And then that's what we do. And we've learned that from, you know, just getting out of our own way and being in the boardroom and learning from people that are doing what we want to do and from people that are where we want to go at some point. Right?
And so we just know that we don't have the answers. And if we believe we do, then that's when we're gonna fail.
Leonardo: It's all about compressing the time horizon too. We talk about, like, the urgency that I have with my mom was diagnosed. But also, like, once you start dating your partner and you're, like, in debt and have no money, you want there's an urgency to make money and and and make this viable thing, make it a viable especially now I had Paul. I had a ISA. There was an urgency factor.
And the best way to compress any time horizon is to educate yourself on the mistakes that's gonna come on that journey. I'm like, hey. If we learn as much as we possibly can, as quickly as we possibly can, we can get there sooner. So we just made that a really emphasis for us.
Steve: There's something there that you said, though
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: That, you know, was kinda, like, buried under the answer about, like, education Yeah. And learning. Because that's true.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: You gotta learn.
Speaker: Right.
Steve: All learning is worthless if your ego's too big.
Leonardo: Oh, dude. Mhmm. I one of the things I tell everyone is, like, egos kill more egos ruin more businesses than economics ever will. Yeah. Like, people just get in their own way all the time.
Like, they think they're too big for it. They're too cool for it. They make too much money for it. Whatever it may be. Mhmm.
But you always have to be naive enough and ask enough questions and curious and just take your ego to the back of the barn and shoot it and just get over it. It's like you don't know anything. And, like, there's the beautiful thing is, like, I get into spaces. I'm like, dude, I don't I don't know anything. Mhmm.
It's like I'm just learning everything for me, at least. Everything is new for me, always. Mhmm.
Steve: Right. But this concept, even still, you're talking about learning and the humility, which is still valuable. But the key here, I wanna really emphasize, everyone who's listening. Right? For you, you're saying the best idea wins.
Brianna: Yeah. Always.
Steve: It's not like Leo says it. It's not Bree says it. It's just like the best idea wins. Everyone throw all your ideas on the table
Speaker: and
Steve: the best idea wins.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Steve: How did you create this culture? Because I think that's a culture that's admirable and probably not as prevalent not nearly as prevalent as it should be. Mhmm.
Speaker: How do
Steve: you guys create this culture?
Speaker: Hey. My name is Brian. I'm a real estate investor. Ian's sales training has helped me buy more houses at a deeper discount. Most recently, Ian helped me reframe a question which resulted in me buying a house for less money than other offers the seller had on the table.
If you're considering sales training, I don't think you can go wrong with agents.
Speaker 6: If you like what you just heard and would like similar types of success, text close to 33777, and we'll see if you qualify to join objection proof selling. We're taking good sales reps, and we're making them objection proof.
Leonardo: That's our secret sauce. If I have to mention everything, that's our secret sauce.
Brianna: I think when we started, like, we had no idea what we were doing. Right? So Leo and I would have these pow wow
Leonardo: sessions.
Steve: People start that way.
Brianna: Yeah. True.
Steve: Yeah. They don't stay that way.
Leonardo: I think it's just, you know, sometimes, like, relinquishing title. Oh, because I'm a boss, it's implied that I know. It's not necessarily accurate.
Steve: Yeah.
Leonardo: And I think I learned that a lot from being in that tech corporate environment
Speaker: Mhmm. Where
Leonardo: it was like the agile model. Right? It's like, we're gonna try this and see if it works. If not, we're gonna reiterate and try again.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: But I think when we got into building our team, it was more like, step back. You, the ISA, are on the front lines. You tell me where you think the best system and process for this ISA role is. Paul, you are in the front lines of the acquisition department. You tell me what you believe would make this work and be better.
Even when you inter when when I interviewed everyone, for the sales training, I'm like, John and Paul, get on calls and interview them too.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: You tell me what you mean like best. Yeah. Right? Because at the end of the day, I'm not gonna I'm not I'm not the consumer, and I'm also not the one in the space to get the feedback. So you will need to allow the employees in your organization to rise to the top and be like, hey.
You think this makes sense? And in theory, you think it makes sense, and you may think it makes sense, but it sucks. It just absolutely sucks
Speaker: because you
Leonardo: don't do this every day. Right. It's manual. You gotta do seven extra steps, and I it sucks. And then just simply just won't do it.
You just won't you'll realize over time. It's like, you gotta just allow for those spaces to happen.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: And when you give people the freedom to have input and have opinions and have a say, you get a lot more buy in.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: People are you know, it's not just us in the background. You know, we package up the steel and we come back and we're like, hey. We're doing this this way now. They, you know, they'll do it because they they work for us, but they might not fully ever understand it. Versus if they're at that table with us and they understand why we didn't do a, b, c, and d, and why we're going with this last result.
It allows them to just be bought in.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brianna: And it allows us to grow a lot faster. Yeah. And we know that. Mhmm.
Steve: So again, like, this might for someone who's listening is, like, why is he spending so much time on this? But, like, this is, like, one of those, like, big nuggets that's, like, totally hidden. Like, I have Ian. Right? He's on the other side of this wall.
The guy is rockstar. You you guys saw you guys got to experience the demo. Yes. All the things that he's creating. Right?
Leonardo: Yes.
Steve: So you guys gonna have to wait for that demo. And so, like, he's said to me, like, the day I earned, like, his trust, like, his, like, loyalty Yeah. Was we were doing a coaching call. Right? Like, I'm running the coaching call, and he's just, you know, one of the guys on the call.
Like, he's a trainer, but, like, we've never said, like, you know, Ian's this, Ian's that. It's just, like, we're both on the calls. And someone asked me a question, and I said it, and he raised his hand. He's like, hey. You know, here's the way I would say it.
And when he was done, I was like, hey. Ignore what I said. Mhmm. Ian's answer is better. Mhmm.
Right? And he said, like, that was the moment. He was like, okay. Steve's ego is not too big where it can interfere with the business.
Leonardo: Like Right.
Steve: I got room to speak. I got room to grow. There's no limit to where I can go here Right. Because Steve's ego is not gonna get in my way.
Leonardo: Right. That's huge. And I think everything. I think it's everything for us too. And I sometimes go, you know what?
Why don't you connect with Paul? He'll have a better answer than I would. Mhmm. I go, hey. John John knows this a little more than I would.
Yeah. Because at the end of the day, it's all about specialization and subject matter experts. Yeah. Right? I simply do not meet with sellers every day to be able to answer that question for you.
I also wanna listen to trainings twice a week from Steve to be able to answer that for you. Like, I understand the management of a sales team, But in terms of the sales process with the seller and best best practices and best case scenarios, John, you should connect with Paul on that one Yeah. And go through that. And I think that ability to be humble and to know when you're out of your depth is tremendous for us.
Speaker: Mhmm. Oh,
Steve: it's big. So what does your business look like now versus what it looked like just a few years ago?
Leonardo: Yeah.
Brianna: So two years ago, it was just three of us. It was us, and we had one, I say, who, Her name is Gabby. She was our first employee. That was in July. July 2023.
Speaker: Yeah.
Brianna: In September, that's when we onboard Paul. Those four of us. And then we start onboarding the inside sales agents. By January 2024, we have two ISAs and four of us working in person. And we're we also have someone who's working part time who, is just coming, and he's learning how to be an agent.
Yeah. So, you know, cut to now, we have six fully remote people. Five are doing the inside sales. Gabby is overseeing the team, and she also does a lot of everything. She's yeah.
She's amazing. And then we have Leo and myself. We have two acquisitions agents. We have a dispo agent, and then we have a realtor. Mhmm.
A total of 12. Right.
Leonardo: Pretty heavy team. Very Pretty heavy team.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Steve: You mentioned you're frugal. We don't like to spend money. Right. What would you guys do if money was no object?
Speaker: What would
Leonardo: I do if money was no object? In what regards personally, business, just in generality?
Steve: Yeah. Generally.
Leonardo: Money was no object. I would say, personally, college has changed my life.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I will start giving out scholarships left and right, to be honest. I mean, that's my ten year goal is to be able to sponsor, you know, multiple kids to go into college. So that's what I would do personally. I don't know. What what would you do?
Brianna: I don't even know. I think we have a lot of passion projects that we do wanna get off the ground at some point.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: We
Brianna: just know that right now, Eclipse is our baby and that's what is taking priority. But I do see in, like, our forties, I see a lot of those passion projects coming out to play when, you know, we do have a little bit more freedom and some money to to work with.
Steve: What are some of those fashion projects? Yeah.
Brianna: I don't know where this idea came from, but I, at some point, would like to start a program for veterans that come home, that can kind of get more acclimated and inclined to life. I think that there is such a shock and, you know, they're like, oh, you can go and we'll pay for school. Well, it's like, okay. Well, they just came from a war zone. Mhmm.
Right. So now you have them, you know, in a classroom. I just think that something needs to be done from for for that transition. And I think that it would be a mad a huge project, but I see that it's it's something I have no idea where it came from, but I know at some point, I I do wanna venture into that and see what that looks like.
Steve: Awesome. Yeah. What's your guys' biggest struggle today?
Leonardo: Attention. You're always kind of
Brianna: you're
Leonardo: in a situation now where you're, like, have some cash and you have some ability and you get so many things. You're like, oh, do you wanna do you wanna partnership with a hard money lender?
Speaker: Do you
Leonardo: wanna do this? Do you wanna do the other? Do you wanna do it's always about maintaining the attention of the things that matters the most. Because I think we get pulled in so many directions sometimes. It's like, we need to stay focused.
We need to stay focused. We need to stay focused. Mhmm. At least for me, the biggest issue we currently face is always attention.
Steve: How do you address that?
Leonardo: Great. We go back to reiterating our goals, but also learning that seeing no as a superpower, and it's a privilege to say no, and always kind of being able to go no. You know? I think before, it's always like it was like when you're starting off, it's always yes. Mhmm.
Just wanna get experience. I wanna do something. Mhmm. But it's powerful to also just be like, no. Doesn't work for me.
Sorry.
Brianna: I think it's a lot easier now to look back and see how many rabbit holes we've gone down that we're like, what what why?
Leonardo: Well, it's such a waste of time. Right.
Brianna: That was such a waste of time. Yeah. So So I think now we have the power to be able to know, like, is this a rabbit hole? Or is this where I'm trying to go? And then you're halfway in the hole and you're like, wait.
This has nothing
Speaker: to do with our goal.
Brianna: Someone help me out of this thing and we gotta move forward.
Steve: Correct. What did you say to goal?
Brianna: A 100 wholesales this year. That is our goal.
Speaker: That's
Steve: our goal. Okay. So if this doesn't help you guys get to 100 wholesale deals
Leonardo: Mhmm.
Speaker: This
Steve: is not part of the plan. Correct?
Speaker: Correct.
Steve: Right. Who holds you accountable to that?
Brianna: Our whole team.
Leonardo: Exactly. It becomes a circle of accountability. Mhmm. Awesome. So I'm holding them accountable for their number of deals.
They're holding me accountable for the number of appointments. I'm holding them accountable for for how long it takes things to close and my 45, you know, my cash cycle or my gas to close in thirty days. Well, can I close next week? You're messing up my cash cycle. Okay?
Right? So we all hold each other accountable.
Steve: Got it. Got it. That's great. What's your superpower?
Brianna: Our team. Without a doubt. I think it's our team.
Leonardo: And I'm their superpower.
Brianna: Our team is awesome. Everyone that we have right now is amazing. They show up. They put the work in. They, you know, get educated, and they do it on, you know, off hours, on hours.
They really they're dedicated, and I think that that's been our biggest superpower. I think one of our other superpowers has been Leo, because I think that he has a really amazing vision, and I lack the vision. I have, like, good ideas here and there, but Leo's very good at, like, this is where we're going. Right? And then I'm great at, like, okay.
Well, this is how operation we're gonna get there. And so for me, like, I think Leo's always been the blessing behind Eclipse. Oh, that's a
Leonardo: I really do.
Speaker: No. I do. I do.
Leonardo: That's really cute.
Brianna: I lack vision. And so when you lack vision, when someone else comes with that superpower, you have to it's it's I appreciate it.
Leonardo: Thank
Steve: you. What about yourself?
Leonardo: Yeah. I mean, I mean, in terms of the vision thing, for for me, it really came from you have to have a vision at least when I I always everything's a exercise if you form it and you exercise and utilize it. When I lived in a shelter, I had to have a vision because my current sucked.
Speaker: Mhmm. So
Leonardo: I always I was always forward looking, always projecting. Oh, when I go to college, I'll be better. Get to college. Okay. When I get my job, I'll be better.
Mhmm. Right? So when you get your corporate job, it's like, okay. Now when I build my business, I'll be better. Right?
So you you develop this this habit of always being a forward looker. Right? Always having a vision. And then when you're coming from the environment that I came from, I did a lot of self advocating. You know, when I first got to college, I had to advocate to, like, get a stipend to be able to drive my car back home so I can go see my family.
But it's not like that's something you fill out on a form.
Speaker: Mhmm. Like, you
Leonardo: have to go and be like, hey. I'm gonna walk you through why I think I'm this guy and why we need to figure this out so I can go check that out.
Steve: Like your hard money conversation. Yeah.
Brianna: Yeah. But
Leonardo: it's a lesson that I learned there that I utilized there that I learned with the hard money guy. Right? Just advocating. So in terms of my superpower, I I realistically wanna say, we're in a really awesome market in Boston. Mhmm.
Right? The the sways of the economies kinda come and go, Mhmm. And there's a lot of stabilization there. And that allow us to it allows us to plan in the long term of things. Right?
So other than our team being phenomenal and seeing the vision we wanna go, and we wanna grow tremendously there and be able to connect and help many families. But I think personally, my superpower is my empathy, my ability to connect with that homeowner, my ability to connect with, you know, my different team members.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Because I just been I've just seen a lot of flares of life. Right. It just allows me to communicate and and deliver things and and really understand people a lot better than most, I believe.
Steve: So this might not make a lot of sense as a question because you came here when you were 11. Mhmm. But going back to Bree's answer about you being a visionary
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: Did you have that when you were in Puerto Rico?
Leonardo: I was just being a child. I probably not. No. Probably no. I mean, at least I wasn't aware of it.
I was too busy with, like, trying to play Pokemon. Alright.
Steve: Yeah. Gotcha. What would you guys say is the, failure you guys learned the most from?
Brianna: Probably the the. Yeah. Not that it was a failure, but, you know, on an Excel doc, a 100 is what the rental was. And then we
Steve: Missed a little bit.
Leonardo: Just missed it. Yeah.
Brianna: That that was what made a cash flow. And so we were like a 100 k, like, I can make that work. And realistically, we're at probably 210 after all said and done.
Leonardo: We're making that work. You know,
Brianna: I think just being naive in that of like being realistic of, like, that's not what it's gonna cost. Like, it it's not that just because it's in the Excel doc and it makes it show green.
Speaker: Right.
Leonardo: It's just I think one of one of the mistakes is, like, we've been in situations where, like, oh, this person is not a good fit for the team. Like, let's go up. We gotta fire them. Without fully ever understand the full context. Right?
And I think we've made some decisions off the heat of emotion or anger or whatever. And I think sometimes, like, when you're younger, especially in the space, you have to take a step back and be like, what am I missing here?
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: I wanna do this in Berkeley from right to left or left to right. I get to the same conclusion. So just being a master of your emotions, I think I found myself in many times where I was heated. I'm like, and you're gone. You know?
Or and that's come back to bite me in the butt. So just being aware of it.
Brianna: High or slow?
Leonardo: Fire fast.
Brianna: Fire fast. We really took that kinda to heart, especially when we were doing a lot of the construction where, you know, people wouldn't show up and we're like, okay. This is it. That's it. You're done.
Right? And so we really learned, like, in construction, it that was true. You had to fire them very quickly. And so once we had a team of people who were actually working for us, I think that sometimes, you know, if someone wasn't performing, it was hard to
Leonardo: We went
Brianna: see past the emotion and be like, okay. Well, what do we do? Like, you know, do do they not wanna be here? We needed this figure out, okay, do they not have the education they need to actually do the position? Do they have the capacity to do the job?
Is there something at home that's going on that's like leaking over? Like, you have to get to the root of the problem and solve that and really just, like, have all of the information from them sit down and speak with them before you're, like, making brunt decisions.
Steve: For sure. You said you buy it bit you in the ass. What is an example of a fast fire that bit you in the ass?
Leonardo: It was a semi fast fire. So, there was a situate towards the end of that tenure when we hired Paul. Right? It was a key we hired him in September. It was, like, almost November.
It was a few things kinda going on. I'm like, oh, it must be my close rate. We have to fire him without, like, going like, oh, I never trained the guy.
Speaker: Right. We weren't diet we were
Brianna: not the guy that knows it. Yeah.
Leonardo: I know the ability of mine. Never trained the guy. We're giving him awful leads. We're gonna just didn't make any sense. No sales process.
No structure. I'm like, nope. Must be his fault.
Speaker: Mhmm. At
Leonardo: least to go. And then and then we just have this brilliant idea to have a conversation with him. And he's like, bro, but, you know, this and this and this. And I'm like, I understand, and we kinda got a better full picture. And we're like, okay.
Sorry. He's like, I'm sorry. I'm like, let's try this one more time. Mhmm. And then we gave it another go.
But that was almost a situation where, you know, it could have been detrimental to us, and we found ourselves in multiple situations. Like, they were like, okay. This isn't working. Just like the construction work
Brianna: Must be the person.
Leonardo: Must be the person that has to go. It just doesn't apply. It doesn't it doesn't translate well.
Steve: So I've only met, like, the cheery version of Leo. Mhmm. So there's a spicy version.
Speaker: Oh, for sure. Very spicy.
Leonardo: No such thing.
Steve: Yeah. That that that would be the
Speaker: I don't
Brianna: call it I think he's passionate. Yeah. He's very passionate. And sometimes it can come off as, like, bruntness and spiciness. And it's more of, like, if you just remember, he has no ill intent.
No one on the team has ill intent. When they get upset, like, they're not upset with you. They're upset with the situation. Right? And they're upset with the results.
And everyone on our team is very much like that. And so just being mindful of, like, it's it's it's passion.
Steve: I'm gonna call Paul after this.
Speaker: Yeah. Give me give
Steve: me the real scoop.
Speaker: Give me
Leonardo: give me the real scoop,
Steve: man. What book have you gifted more than any other?
Brianna: Richard Aborta, for sure. If you read that book and you don't have any emotion, you have no change of thought, just don't ever look in the path of real estate because it's not for you.
Leonardo: Not for you.
Brianna: So for me, that was the first book I read this, and I was
Speaker: like, woah. Mhmm.
Brianna: Woah. And I get that book when whenever someone's like, oh, I wanna get into real estate. I have them read the book, and then if they don't, you know, call me or text me, they're like, oh my god. This is the best book. This has changed my life.
Then I'm like, I know. Right? So that that's been the best book for me.
Speaker: Superbometer. Your book.
Leonardo: How about yourself? The Way of a Superior Man.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: It's more like a I don't wanna say like a how to book, but it's like a have you read the book at all?
Steve: Couldn't finish it, to be honest with you.
Leonardo: Yeah. Yeah. It was it it got weird. It it it does get a little weird. It's a little intense.
It gets a little weird. But for me, it was very impactful. It was more like a backtracking. It was more like one of those things like when you when you grow up without a dad, you're always looking for, like, lessons, role models, structures, ideas, ideologies of how to structure certain things. For me, that book just kinda hit the spot.
And I, you know, I read it a few times, and I and I journaled through it when I read it. And I was like, alright. Yeah. Gotta just get closer to my being, gotta close to my passions. You know?
Gotta give results. So it just helped a lot.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's
Steve: an amazing book because, someone I look up to who helped me a lot recommended it.
Leonardo: Okay.
Speaker: And I
Steve: just told her, I was like, look.
Speaker: It's just not working for me.
Speaker: So, like, I'm sure it's a great book.
Leonardo: It's a phenomenal book.
Steve: It just it just didn't
Speaker: Yeah.
Leonardo: Didn't go all the way over. It
Steve: didn't work for me. One of the very few books I was like, I I I just can't
Speaker: do it.
Steve: But, like, everyone should, though. Right? I mean, like, again, like, the testament to like, the reason why we're we're we're talking here. Right? Almost at eleven, nine or twenty eight.
Like, obviously, you've got a lot of things figured out. So, so Don't tell me that. I'm not
Leonardo: I'm trying it might go to my head.
Brianna: You're getting real spicy real
Speaker: quick. Yeah.
Steve: So I'm not trying to, like, dismiss the book. I was just saying, like, for myself, I had a hard time with it. Alright. So perfect. So then, guys, if you got value out of this episode, please make sure you guys subscribe.
We got even more disruptors coming. We got a long list. You guys saw that list, who will break down the exact moves that they made to win. If someone wants to get a hold of you too, like, what's the best way for them to do that?
Leonardo: Yeah. So on Instagram, I go by Leo Buys Holmes. Super simple.
Brianna: And I'm Bree Buys Holmes.
Steve: So Really simple.
Leonardo: Super simple. Super simple. Yeah.
Steve: Alright. Perfect. And then what are some last thoughts you wanna leave everybody with?
Brianna: Just keep keep going forward. Like, there's been so many times where things got really tough, and I think that people, you know, quit right when they're on the cusp of, like, greatness. And, you know, we've been negative in our bank account, and then that's, you know, a few weeks later, that's when things clicked, and then that's when we close 44 deals. Mhmm.
Speaker: Right?
Brianna: So right when you feel like you're on the cusp of, like, I've gotta throw in a towel, like, that's when you should double down and keep going. And just ride it, like, we have the saying, like, ride it until the wheels fall off.
Leonardo: Mhmm.
Brianna: Like, don't quit until literally the wheels have fallen off of your car and the car will not go forward anymore. Yeah. That's it.
Leonardo: And then try some more.
Brianna: Yeah. And then Flintstones that.
Leonardo: For me this is more basic advice right? It's more of when you're starting off to all those people that are starting off be super frugal right? Because there's a lot of learning to happen and the only way you stay in the game is to stay is to have some money to be in the game.
Brianna: Mhmm.
Leonardo: Sometimes winning the game is just it's like the last man standing sort of thing. So be frugal. Keep your expenses slow. You know, when we first started this thing, we were living with our parents. We saved every dollar.
We invested every dollar. We still did until very recently. So just being mindful that you are there's a lot to learn.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Leonardo: And then if you're a student at all time, you can learn from everyone.
Steve: Yeah. And I think, you know, for everyone that's watching right now, it's, like, it's super easy, right, young couple to to underestimate you guys.
Leonardo: Mhmm. Right?
Steve: Like, you know, when we walk around boardroom, like, everyone's walking out with their chest up. Right. Right? It's really easy, again, to, like, you know, overlook you guys, but you guys are powerhouses.
Leonardo: Oh, thank you.
Brianna: Thank you.
Steve: Right? So I think everyone here, like, you know, hopefully, you guys made all the way through because there's a lot a lot to learn.
Leonardo: No. Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Steve: Thank you.
Leonardo: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Thank you.
Brianna: Thank you.
Speaker: We'll see
Steve: you guys next time.
Leonardo: Thank you. Out the Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.
