Episode 211 – Alejandro Szita
Welcome to another episode of The HERO Show. I am your host Richard Matthews, (@AKATheAlchemist) and you are listening to episode 211 with Alejandro Szita – Achieving Finnacial Objective Through Mortgage.
Alejandro Szita is the president of Prosperity Lending which is a licensed real estate brokerage for artists, business owners, and entrepreneurs. He currently serves California and Florida and is soon to expand to other states. He enjoys helping people get the mortgage they need, especially when their financial situation is complex and/or out of the ordinary (which it usually is). Alejandro has been involved with mortgages and real estate since 2006.
Here’s just a taste of what we talked about today:
The Ability to See the Bigger Picture
Alejandro’s superpower is the ability to see the bigger picture and see how the story helps them find the right product. When people call him, he never asks about their credit score or anything that’s related to numbers. He asks them what they want, because that frames the whole conversation, frames all of the numbers, and frames all of the formulas in a certain direction.
If he starts asking about formulas, he’s never going to get anywhere. And the client is probably never going to qualify.
To Look At Mortgage as a Financial Instrument
Alejandro’s driving force is for people to look at the mortgage, not as a bill, but as a financial instrument that they can mold to achieve their objective. He notices that some clients treat them as a commodity saying, “Oh like, oh, well you’re one of the three or four we’re calling”. And this never works because they can’t compete in terms.
The services they provide are a little bit more expensive because they take a long time and do a lot of things that other brokers don’t do. So people who are just looking for pricing don’t do well with them because that’s not what they are about.
Other Topics We Covered on the Show:
- We get to know more about Alejandro’s business, the people that he serves, and the services he provides for them.
- Then, we talked about Alejandro’s origin story. Receiving a financial seminar invite has paved the way for him to be a mortgage broker for artists, business owners, and entrepreneurs.
- Wanting to do everything by himself and trying to make others view reality as himself are Alejandro’s fatal flaws in his business. He is able to overcome these types of flaws by giving complete freedom to the people that he works with.
- Antagonizing clients with what they want and working with detail-oriented people are Alejandro’s arch nemesis in his business. He works these out by giving what the client wants and hiring a compliance officer.
- Lastly, Alejandro’s guiding principles are: Do only things that you believe in, don’t do things just for money, and always disclose things.
Recommended Tools:
- SpreadSheets
- Zoom
- Communication Course
Recommended Media:
Alejandro mentioned the following book/s on the show.
- Screw It, Let’s Do It by Richard Branson
The HERO Challenge
Today on the show, Alejandro Szita challenged his processor team in Alabama to be a guest on The HERO Show. Alejandro thinks that his processor team should come to the show and share their story because they do the hardest part of the loan, which is to comply with all the nitty gritty, all of the regulations, and put it all on the computer.
It’s a detailed job to do, and they still do it with a smile. They still manage to comply with this barrage of regulations in a nice way and provide a nice experience to the broker, the client, and to the borrower.
How To Stay Connected with Alejandro Szita
Want to stay connected with Alejandro? Please check out their social profiles below.
- Website: Prosperity-Lending.com
- Email: Info@ProsperityLending.us
With that… let’s go and listen to the full episode…
Automated Transcription
[00:00:00] So, this is my strength. You know, when people call me, I never ask them for, you know, what is your credit score? I don’t ask them numbers. Questions. I ask them, tell me what is that you want? Oh, I want loan. Well, why? Oh, because I want to buy a house. Tell me more. Oh, well this is my second house.
[00:00:20] This is a house for my daughter because I’m worried that she’s a waiter. This is a real example. She’s a waiter. She doesn’t have anything. And I want to help her buy a house. Okay. That immediately frames the whole conversation, frames all of the numbers, frames all of the formulas in a certain direction.
[00:00:37] If I start asking the formulas, I’m never gonna get anywhere. And probably that person is never going to qualify. So I would say that my ability, I would not call it necessarily a superpower, but my ability is to extrapolate myself from all of the intricacies, not look at all of the specifics just to have the macro view.
[00:00:57] And once I have the whole view of the person, then I start to channel them into the correct product into the correct way. And that’s how we get them qualified.
[00:01:11] Heroes are an inspiring group of people. Every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do.
[00:01:18] Every hero has a story to tell from the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risk his life for our freedom to the police officers and the firefighters who risk their safety to ensure ours. Every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there is one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what?
[00:01:38] I can fix that, I can help people. I can make a difference. Then they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service, some go on to change the world. Others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to The Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest Heropreneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success and their influence.
[00:01:56] So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3, 2, 1.
[00:02:05] Hello, and welcome to The Hero Show. My name’s Richard Matthews. And today I have the pleasure of having on the line, Alejandro Szita. Are you there?
[00:02:12] Yes. Hi Richard. PLeased to meet you.
[00:02:15] Glad to have you here. And I know we were just talking before we got on, but you were coming in from California, right?
[00:02:19] Yes. That is correct.
[00:02:21] The the land of the heavenly weather, is it has it been nice out there? You said that it was Irvine, right?
[00:02:25] It is Irvine. It’s Southern California. It’s very nice. It’s very similar to the country where I come from, which is Chile, where I used to live in Santiago, which is in the middle of the country. We have a very similar weather to Southern California.
[00:02:39] Yeah. I was actually looking at Chile as a secondary passport for us and the reason I was looking there is because apparently South America is like wine country and it’s supposed to be very similar to the coast of California.
[00:02:52] Yeah. And you know, why it’s wine country?
[00:02:55] I do not.
[00:02:56] Because back in the 1880s or 1870s in France, there was a certain region of France that had like a plague and the grapes were dying. You know, they didn’t know what to do. And some enterprising French people said, in order to save this, we need to take the grapes outta here.
[00:03:13] And they scout the world at the time to find a region that was the same or nearly the same as that region in France, where that particular grape was growing and that region, or the place they found was Chile, the central value of Chile. So they took and saved some of the vines to put them on a ship.
[00:03:34] They sail all the way to Chile and they planted them in Chile in that central valley. And that’s why we have such good wine because it’s essentially French wine from the 1870s.
[00:03:45] That’s awesome. Yeah. I did not know that. I knew it was a, a wine country area, but I didn’t know that story. That’s really cool.
[00:03:51] Yeah.
[00:03:51] So how long have you been in the U.S then?
[00:03:54] 24, 25 years.
[00:03:56] Long time.
[00:03:57] Yes, long time.
[00:03:59] I say almost as long as me, but I was born here, so, you know, and so for my audience, who’s been following my wife and I’s travels around, we’ve seen all over 48 states and we’re on our way back to Florida now.
[00:04:11] And I mentioned before we’re working on moving onto a sailboat and traveling more there. But yeah, right now we’re in Illinois. And the weather is not as nice here as in California, it’s warm and humid. And that’s my favorite part about California is there’s like no humidity. So.
[00:04:23] Yeah.
[00:04:25] So what I wanna do before we get too far into the interview is I just wanna do a brief introduction for what you do, and then we’ll just dive into your story.
[00:04:32] So Alejandro is the president of Prosperity Lending which is a licensed real estate brokerage. And you’re a mortgage outfit as well. You’ve been doing loans in real estate transactions in Southern California since 2005. So what I want you to start off our interview with is why don’t you tell me a little bit about what your business is, what it does, who you serve and like what you do for them?
[00:04:53] Yes, we serve the self-employed business people, the successful artists, and basically we serve people that don’t fit very well within the lending standards that currently exist. If you go to a bank today, or if you go to a credit union and you want to apply for a mortgage, they try to put you into a certain system because that system fits about 95 to 96% of all the borrowers.
[00:05:18] If you work for a company, if you are like a W2 employee you will fit within that mold and give or take, you’ll have a few challenges here and there, but you will be able to get a mortgage. But if you deviate from that, even a little, if you are a business owner, if you have income as a 10, 99, if you are a gig worker, if you are a successful artist, even if you are a successful business person I know one of my clients their business gross is $20 million a year.
[00:05:49] So, this is not just for somebody that, that is like starting out, you could be a very well established business owner, then most likely you won’t fit into that pattern and you won’t really get what you’re looking for and you have a lot of problems and that’s where we come in.
[00:06:07] Yeah, that’s amazing. Cuz I know like my wife and I are looking at getting into some of the real estate investing stuff and just because of my business. And I’m not a W2 employee though I’m working on changing that and actually getting myself to be a W2 employee in my business. So we don’t have as many of those problems, but yeah, when we bought this RV, we had a tremendous amount of problems getting a loan because they were like, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. It’s not W2 money. So it doesn’t count.
[00:06:29] Right. And they have a bunch of rules, you know about that. But, in essence, yes.
[00:06:35] Yeah. So there’s all these things that going. So you basically, you come and you serve that community of people. People like myself, who don’t fit the mold.
[00:06:44] I serve that community of people because I’m one of those people too. And I began my journey in the nineties when I wanted to buy a vehicle and I couldn’t, I have the money to buy it cash, but somebody said, you know what? You need credit. So go and buy your own credit. I thought, well, no big deal. You know? And then it was such a nightmare to buy this vehicle. I thought it was the exception rather than the rule.
[00:07:04] But then over the years, I found out that if you are in business by yourself, this is gonna be the rule, the rule, every time you apply for something, it’s gonna be a nightmare. So because I’ve always been interested in finances since the age of seven, I decided to make it my business, you know, to help people like me, like you, and like anyone that finds themselves in that situation.
[00:07:27] Yeah. Absolutely. So what I wanna find out then is how did you get started doing this? You know, every good comic book hero has their origin stories. The thing that made them into the hero they are today, and we wanna hear that story. Were you born a hero or you bit by a radioactive spider that made you wanna get into real estate lending or did you start in a job, essentially, just tell us how you how you got here.
[00:07:49] I got here. I used to be in marketing. I had another business partner. We used to make infomercials in the nineties. We had a lot of fun doing these things, you know, these long 30 minute television commercials. And then one day, one of my television commercial clients said, Hey, you know, would you like to come to a financial seminar?
[00:08:07] And I said, yeah, I’ve always been interested in finances. That financial seminar basically led me to real estate. And I met this real estate broker and he said, Hey, you can do this. All you need to do is get a license, which at the time, in my state, in California, you could get a real estate license and do loans.
[00:08:31] Now, today it’s not like that anymore, like as easy as it was before, but before you could get one license and do two things, real estate and mortgages. So that’s what I did. And that’s how I began in this business. You know, that’s how I began in the loan business. Basically by a suggestion of one of my infomercial clients
[00:08:53] And so you got into the loan business in the nineties. And then how did you go from doing that, to deciding who, like, the niche that you serve, which is the entrepreneurs.
[00:09:05] Basically by all the problems that I saw, you know helping people. I saw consistently that getting a mortgage traditionally, it’s a lot of work, even if you’re a W2 employee.
[00:09:17] Even if you fit all the boxes, it’s a lot of work. People usually don’t realize that people usually think that once you apply for a mortgage, once you submit the basic information and once you get sort of an approval you’re done, and it’s just the beginning, it’s like getting married. You know, you sign on the dotted line.
[00:09:36] Your wife is beautiful, everything looks rosy, but that’s the beginning. People don’t understand or sometimes get dismayed by the amount of paperwork, the amount of questions they think that everything is done just to find out that it’s not, and this can happen three quarters of the way on the process.
[00:09:54] You could be three weeks into this. You could have supplied a mountain of paperwork. You’ve got an approvals all the way. You think you’re done because you’ve disclosed everything pretty much everything about your life is in the hands of the lender just to not be the case. And this is very frustrating.
[00:10:13] So that’s, if you follow the normal guideline, that is if you fit in the mold. Now, when you are a little bit away from that, forget it. I have so many stories about that. That is unbelievable. And it’s not that there are no lenders that will not do your loan. It’s not that we do anything, like somebody else could not do.
[00:10:35] It’s just the time that it takes, you know, most mortgage brokers, most loan officers don’t wanna spend the time that it takes because you don’t get paid until the transaction closes. And there is no certainty when you get a business owner or when you get an independent person at the beginning, there is no certainty that the loan is going to close.
[00:10:55] So very few people want to invest the time to nurture the person. From let’s say a 50, 50 chance to a 100% chance that we’ve done it so many times that we’re not afraid of that. I’m not afraid of that. In all my career, I think that is only one loan. I was not able to close when I say not able to close.
[00:11:15] I mean, not able to close within two months, that lady is going to qualify eventually next year, but that’s pretty much the only one, anyone that comes to me or comes to us. I know that there is a roadmap or a way that we can make them qualify. But to answer your story, I mean, your question, my journey really began when I was seven.
[00:11:39] When I was seven, I used to draw these long contracts in a letter sized paper. And I used to lend money to my friends, to my brother. You know, my grandmother had an old typewriter, those very manual typewriter. So I just borrowed from her. I would just buy some paper. I would make this long contracts with collateral interest rates and this and that, and blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:03] Then I would lend the money mostly to my brother who never paid. He bankrupted my lending career. And then my first challenge is when my mom looked at these contracts and she went, how can you do this? How can you do this to your brother or to your friends? This is unfair. You know, you cannot charge these types of interest. So that was, those were my first challenges.
[00:12:27] That’s funny. So as a child, you were actually writing up legal contracts for lending.
[00:12:33] Trying to giving him my best shot.
[00:12:36] That’s funny. And so when you get into actually doing mortgage lending here in the states, do you do that lending just in California or do you actually work in multiple states now? Cause I know people all over the country that have the same problem. How wide is your net?
[00:12:53] You know, we started with our state, which is Southern California, Northern California. We’re licensed in Florida now. And now we have a program to get licensed in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.
[00:13:06] Nice. So you’re gonna be doing mortgage lending in several states.
[00:13:10] Yes. Mainly in the south because all of the forecasts that we’ve seen indicate that the south is gonna be what we think of the United States. I like that flag that you have in the back and I’m pretty much for that flag.
[00:13:26] This is not me. I mean, you can read this. This is all over the place, but people from several states are migrating to the Southern states because the Southern states are preserving our American values. So that in my opinion, from what I’ve read is gonna be the future. So we are getting licensed over there.
[00:13:47] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so as you’re going forward and expanding into those states, does that mean you have to expand your operation or can you guys take your existing operation and just operate in those in multiple states?
[00:13:59] You know, the mortgage business is not the way it used to be before is very fragmented from a physical point of view, because thanks to the internet, your processor doesn’t have to be in the office.
[00:14:09] It’s usually a way, now you have so many systems that are cloud based that you don’t have to have a big frame a big server at your office. You don’t have to have a dedicated IT staff. So pretty much you can run a mortgage operation sort of virtually in a way, there are some states that require you to have a physical presence, but most states now, like the ones that I’ve mentioned, they don’t require you to have a physical presence.
[00:14:33] So to be honest, even though here I’m in Southern California, I can do a Florida alone as if I was right there. We are planning eventually of moving our head office to Florida because that’s really where the action it is now. And we foresee that the action is gonna be there in the future. So we are planning, this is not a project that is going to happen now.
[00:14:54] Probably it’s gonna happen in a couple of years from now. We’re planning on moving our headquarters to Florida.
[00:15:00] That’s really interesting. So the mortgage business is becoming more and more virtual then where you can actually operate in multiple states and serve a larger audience there, which I think is really powerful for the type of mortgage lending you’re doing. Cause you have a very specific niche that you’re serving.
[00:15:16] Yeah. And then the other advantage of that is the overhead. I mean the overhead is still a lot, but a lot less than what it used to be before, you know? So that translates also to the advantage of the borrower because costs are down as well.
[00:15:28] Yeah. Yeah. So I guess one of my other questions I have just on the mortgage lending process is do you have to have access to different or a wider array of products because of who you serve rather than like a traditional mortgage lender who’s serving W2 employee.
[00:15:44] Yes. We have to have several lenders and each one specializes on a slightly different aspect of the transaction.
[00:15:52] You know, for example, if you are self-employed borrower, but if you are sort of high end and in the sense that what you’re going to buy is in the millions of dollars. We have a lender specifically for that. They’re awesome. If you are high end, if you’re high income if you’re a doctor, if you are like I was saying, a client, his company makes $20 million or more.
[00:16:14] We have the lender for that. Now, if you’re at the under end of the spectrum where you’re not gonna buy a multimillion dollar home, you’re just gonna buy a normal home. We have another lender for that as well. You know, if you have the classical W2 or if you can fit into, because sometimes we have independent entrepreneurs, that we look at their case. And even though they have been denied by other lenders, or even though they’ve walked another client that walked into a major bank and they said that he could only qualify for half, most of those people, or most of those clients, all you have to do is just put a little bit more time, juggle their information a little bit, massage it here and there.
[00:16:53] And they would qualify in the traditional route. We always try to do that because if we can qualify you with the traditional lender, you are going to say, you know, your rate is gonna be about 1% lower in essence, you know, you’re going to save in a bunch of other fees. So we always try to do that.
[00:17:10] And we work with one particular lender. They are what we call the conventional lender, who have an, an awesome customer service. They are like, I think number six in the nation. So they’re not the biggest of the biggest, although they close about a thousand loans a day. Can you imagine that?
[00:17:27] Yeah.
[00:17:28] Per day, but they’re amazing on their customer service. So we use them. So we have different people for different things. Now, business owners not only have a need for residences like residential or investment. Sometimes they want to buy like a small retail property. Maybe they want to buy their own office. So we have another lender for that, that specializes on a small balanced commercial lending.
[00:17:53] And this is part of my job. My job is not just to do the transaction, but my job is to scour. If I may say the lending network and find those niche lenders that would do different aspects of what a self-employed individual might need.
[00:18:09] Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense and it makes you kind of a go-to indispensable person for someone who’s looking to do the kind of work that we might be doing too. If I’m hearing you correctly as an entrepreneur, I could hire you to help close the loan on my house or close the loan on the building for my company or help get an investment property.
[00:18:31] Correct.
[00:18:32] You have the skill sort of help in all those areas.
[00:18:35] Correct. And I also can tell you all of the differences and we present all the options. You know, one thing that always surprises people is two things. One, they cannot understand why if we serve the affluent entrepreneur, how come they cannot get a loan because people equate what he has money, how come he cannot get a loan, but that is the point.
[00:18:54] You know, he has money and he cannot get a loan. So that’s number one. And the number two thing is when you get a loan, most mortgage brokers will speed at you one interest rate. But that’s his personal decision. Usually a person qualifies for 50 I’m talking now in the conventional scenario, usually a person qualifies for like 50 rates of which maybe five or four make any sense, but would only be nice if somebody were to tell you, these are the four or five you qualify for.
[00:19:23] And these are the advantages or disadvantages of each, rather than just throwing one at you. And I get this all the time. People call me, he says, well, you know, I need to know my rate. And in my opinion, the fault of this is the advertising, because most lenders will advertise, do your loan with me.
[00:19:45] And your rate will be blank. But that is completely false. Even though there are rules about it, even though you have to do disclosures and there is a bunch of regulations when you put in advertising, that is false. And I will tell you why no one can quote you a rate unless they have your information, because the way it works is you put all of your information, your credit score, your income, where you’re gonna buy it, the zip code and, and like 20 more variables into a computer, the computer.
[00:20:13] And this is not just my computer. Everyone is the same. The computer has an algorithm. The algorithm takes this 20 variables and speeds a range of rates for you. So there is no way there is no way that over the phone, just by listening to you, I can quote you rate, but that’s what people continuously try to do.
[00:20:35] So I always say, when I get asked those questions and say, you know, I cannot quote you rate. I can quote you a range of what I’ve seen on my less transactions. Until I have your information, I’m unable to really quote a rate for you. And another thing is this, usually, unless the rate is over 1% difference, it doesn’t make a difference for most people.
[00:21:00] If you’re going to buy a 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000, or even a 700 or a million dollar home, the difference of 1% between one and a difference of 1% is really not gonna be that material. It has to go beyond 1%. So that’s why people, when people call me to refinance, if I cannot get them a 1% or more, I advise them not to refinance.
[00:21:24] Yeah. Cuz it wouldn’t wouldn’t make any sense.
[00:21:26] Exactly. Unless you have a $7 million home, but guess what? The guy that has a $7 million home, the 1%, even though it’s a material difference in terms of rate to him, monetarily is not that of a material difference. Anyhow.
[00:21:39] Yeah, it doesn’t make much of a difference cuz he’s got a much higher net worth. So as a percentage, it’s a smaller fraction.
[00:21:44] Exactly.
[00:21:46] So I wanna talk a little bit about your superpowers then. You know, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect or the ability to call down thunder from the sky. In the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over the course of your career that really help you slay the villains, so to speak. And help your clients come out on top of their journeys.
[00:22:08] And the way I like to frame this for my guests is if you look at all the skills that you’ve developed over the course of your career, there’s probably a common thread that sort of ties them all together. And that common thread is where your superpower is. So with that framing, what do you think your superpower is in your lending and mortgage business?
[00:22:24] Well you know, it’s very difficult for me to tell you what my superpower is. You should ask my wife or, but there is one thing that I can see, and there is one thing that I think helps people, which is this, the mortgage industry is extremely fragmented and is extremely specific.
[00:22:45] If you talk to a loan officer, if you talk to a loan a mortgage lender, he’s gonna talk to you in acronyms. He’s gonna talk to you in numbers. He’s gonna always want to go to specifically the specific program, the specific loan, the specific payment, and you cannot almost, I never met anyone that you have junk them out.
[00:23:06] You have to junk them out of that paradigm, you know? And when I talk to my staff, I always say the same thing. You have to start from the big and go to the small. You have to begin from the overview from the macro view, and then go to the specific, not to begin at the specifics, cause you’re not gonna get nowhere.
[00:23:28] Like I had this discussions all the time. Oh, he doesn’t qualify because his DTI is blah, that DTI means debt-to-income ratio. And I go well, but why are you looking at the debt-to-income ratio? How does he make his money? How long has he been at his job? People in this industry are, it’s very difficult for them to extrapolate and look at the whole vision at once rather than specific.
[00:23:54] So this is my strength. You know, when people call me, I never ask them for, you know, what is your credit score? I don’t ask them numbers questions. I ask them, okay, tell me, what is that you want? Oh, I want loan. Well, why? Oh, because I wanna buy a house. Tell me more. Oh, well this is my second house or this is a house for my daughter because I’m worried that she’s a waiter.
[00:24:18] This is a real example. She’s a waiter. She doesn’t have anything. And I want to help her buy a house. Okay. That immediately frames the whole conversation, frames all of the numbers, frames all of the formulas in a certain direction. If I start asking the formulas, I’m never gonna get anywhere. And probably that person is never going to qualify.
[00:24:36] So I would say that my ability, I would not call it necessarily a superpower, but my ability is to extrapolate myself from all of the intricacies. Now look at all of the specifics just to have the macro view. And once I have the whole view of the person, you know, then I start to channel them into the correct product into the correct way and that’s how we get them qualified.
[00:25:03] Yeah. So if I’m hearing you correctly, sort of the standard way people do this is they, if someone comes, says, I wanna get a loan and they just immediately go to what’s your credit score? What’s your income? What’s your, whatever the things are without actually finding the story.
[00:25:16] Right? Cause I would imagine the big picture story if I want to buy a house for my daughter versus I want to buy a house for myself, or maybe I want to buy an investment property, like, it changes. It changes everything.
[00:25:29] It changes everything. If you call a mortgage broker, if you call any loan person, the first thing is they’re gonna do is okay, send this paper so I can run your credit report, send me your W2, send me your tax return.
[00:25:39] But that honestly, I mean, many people are not gonna agree with me and I’m gonna get a lot of hate mail, but that is really irrelevant to me. Why is it irrelevant? Because even if you see your tax return, that doesn’t mean anything. That’s what you declare to the government that you make. Is that how much money you make?
[00:25:57] Maybe yes, maybe not. Is that your only source of income? Maybe.yEs, maybe not. Does it mean that you’re gonna make the same this year? Maybe yes, maybe not. So that those pieces of paper, yes. They maybe need it later. Once you have the whole story first and once you know exactly where those things exactly fit in.
[00:26:19] But if you only get that to begin with and you try to build the story, you’re not gonna get the picture. And believe it or not, this sounds obvious. I’m saying these things to you and people will be listening and saying, well, how can you be any other way? But believe it or not, this is never done.
[00:26:35] That’s why people get rejected. That’s why people are not qualified. That’s why people don’t get what they want. And you may think, but this cannot be, but it is. And it’s not just today. This has been going on for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. The only time when this was not going on was in the seventies or earlier, when you could go to the bank, the guy knew you, he knew where you worked.
[00:26:59] He had all of the numbers on your account because your numbers is at your fingertips. You would say, Hey, Joe, I wanna buy a house. You didn’t have to say more because he already knew you. He already knew your parents probably, he already knew where you work. He already knew how you made.
[00:27:15] And he would probably say, yeah, but you know, you wanna buy this house, but you have this bill here that I’ve been seeing, you know, that was a different type of relationship. That was relationship banking that is dead. And it’s been dead. Unfortunately for many, many years, I got to experience that in Chile.
[00:27:30] When I was growing up, I had relationship banking for my small account, but that doesn’t exist anymore. Unless you have $10 million or more, then you have relationship banking. They did away with relationship banking so they could serve more people. So now the automated systems that exists. Yes, they can serve pretty much 95% of everyone.
[00:27:51] And yes, now you can get a loan for less than before. Cause you don’t have to pay a guy that knows about you. So in a way it’s good for the majority, but it’s bad for all of us who don’t fit the mold because now we don’t have a chance. If we don’t fit the mold, if we don’t fit the box, nobody’s gonna listen to you because it’s not worth it to them.
[00:28:11] Why? Because for everyone that they have to spend one or two months working with, they can do 10 other loans.
[00:28:18] Yeah. And it just makes them more money to do the high volume, rubber stamp loans rather than the ones that require some customization and effort.
[00:28:24] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:26] That makes a lot of sense.
[00:28:27] I don’t know if that answers your question.
[00:28:28] It does. It does. So the superpower is really being able to see the bigger picture and see how the story helps them find the right product.
[00:28:36] Yeah. And sometimes that gets me into a lot of trouble because sometimes that makes me have very politically incorrect opinions because you can imagine that this ability, that’s an only goal into the world of loans. It becomes a habit. And now you apply this everywhere and now it lands you into a lot of trouble because now you’re seeing the big picture and now you may not agree with the majority. And that becomes sometimes a problem.
[00:29:00] Yeah. That is accurate. I feel you there. I definitely, I have a similar take, we run a marketing agency and I always tell people, I was like, we do a specific thing in marketing.
[00:29:12] We work with podcasters and we help them run their podcasting. But I always tell them like a podcast is just a small part of a much bigger picture. And I’m like, so you have to have, there’s like at least seven things that you should have lined up sort of ahead of time. And so I’ll tell people like, either you need to like hire us or hire someone to get these things in order before you come and do this.
[00:29:29] Cuz otherwise if you do this without all these things in order, it doesn’t really make sense. Right. And it’s not gonna help you. So it’s a definitely a big picture sort of skill to pull out and look at it like how does this thing that we offer fit into the larger picture of your business? So I get it.
[00:29:45] Yes. So it’s good for one thing and it’s bad for others.
[00:29:49] Yeah, yeah. Cuz then it ends up, you saying no to people who like otherwise want to pay you money, right?
[00:29:54] Correct. In the world of loans, I think this is good because it allows me to serve the people that I like, in the sense I’ve seen myself in them, you know? So that’s good for that.
[00:30:04] Yeah, absolutely. So I wanna talk then about the the flip side of your superpower, right? So if your superpower is the ability to see the bigger picture, there’s always the other side of that coin, which is the fatal flaw. And just like Superman has this cryptonite or wonder woman has her bracelets of victory she can’t remove without going mad. You probably had a flaw that’s held you back and growing your business.
[00:30:21] For me it was a couple of things I struggled with perfectionism for a long time, kept me from shipping product. I also struggled with self care, which means I let my clients sort of walk all over me didn’t have good relationships with time boundaries and like communication boundaries and whatnot. I learned to fix a lot of those things over the years, but I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so that our audience might learn a little from your experience.
[00:30:42] You know, in that sense my fatal flaw was wanting to do everything myself because nobody could do any better than me. That’s the fatal flaw because there is only so much you can do. That’s one of them. My other fatal flaw was to try to make others view reality like me, that’s another fatal flaw because it’s never going to happen and it doesn’t have to happen.
[00:31:05] And moreover, and this is part of my journey. It’s okay that people have a different reality and a different point of view, you know that. So, what I’m doing now, I’m much more patient than before and what I’m doing now, I give complete freedom to the people that work with me. And I only say, look, this is what we need to achieve.
[00:31:28] You know, we’re a team we’re working together. This is what we have to achieve. You can get here any way you want. There are certain things you can do because in our industry we are regulated very regulated and there are certain no-nos that you must never do. So as long as you don’t do these things, just get the product, get to the end of the line, however you want, you know, and I’m much more open about that.
[00:31:52] And I don’t do myself. For instance. Now I’m trying to close a loan, which is really complicated. It’s really complicated not because there is an issue with money, not because there is an issue with collateral’s. It’s simply because the way the person has arranged his or her life that it got so outside of the mold that is being required. We’re able to accommodate it and push it into a conventional frame to save her money.
[00:32:21] But the accommodation has been quite severe in the sense that everything we have to bend for the lender you see?
[00:32:32] Yeah.
[00:32:32] And this loan is going on right now. We’re supposed to close on Friday. I don’t know if we’re going to close on Friday, but I’m letting the team do the work. Yes. Sometimes they call me and they say, Hey, you know, I run into this snack and I try to help, but I’m resistant temptation.
[00:32:47] I’m not putting my hands in it. They are trained. They know how to do it. I’m just letting them do it. And sometimes that’s difficult, but I’m just hands off.
[00:32:57] Yeah. I went through that in my business a number of years ago and I remember I was at a mastermind group and one of my mentors was like, Hey, what you need to do is you need to hire someone and stop being the bottleneck in your business.
[00:33:09] And I remember thinking at the time I was like, I can’t do that. I have to do everything myself. And I thought about it for, I don’t know, three months before I took him up on it and realized that like, oh, really was my own worst enemy and bottlenecking my business that way.
[00:33:24] Yeah. And another thing that it’s a little bit of a weakness is that, I come from Chile, but I sort of have like a German background that everything I do has to be perfect and impeccable. So whenever I do something, I study everything I can about something. So maybe someone else you say do this and it takes them two days, me, it takes me two weeks because I’m not just happy to do it or to find out how to do it.
[00:33:51] I wanna know all the ins and outs where it came from, what’s the history. What happens if you do it this way, that way, what other people have done? You know, how can you do it better? So I’m a little anal in that respect. And sometimes it’s good when I’m dealing with a borrower that really has a situation that really needs to take a look at.
[00:34:10] But many times, like you said, you become your worst enemy because you are applying a level of standard that is really not needed. And all it’s doing is like making things slower.
[00:34:22] Yeah. And it makes it more difficult to get things done. And sometimes you’re like, I just, the whole idea that done is better than perfect.
[00:34:29] Yes. Done is better than perfect. For sure. ,
[00:34:34] That’s a hard pill to swallow for us perfectionists too.
[00:34:36] Yeah. And then another thing is perfect is never there because perfect is really like a curve. You work towards perfection, but you never get there. But if you really try to get there, no matter what, then you are gonna lose out on so many other things in life.
[00:34:51] Yeah, absolutely. My cure for perfectionism actually came from a friend of mine who just sat me down and she was like, here’s the thing, perfection is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to because it’s unachievable. And she was like, so if you want to achieve something, you have to set a realistic standard that you can actually hit.
[00:35:10] Cuz you can’t hit perfection. Therefore you’re holding yourself to no standard.
[00:35:14] Yes. She’s very right.
[00:35:17] So that was a helpful mind shift for me. And it definitely helped helped me move my business forward. So I wanna shift gears a little bit then and talk about your common enemy.
[00:35:28] And every superhero has what we call an arch nemesis, it’s a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. And in the world of business, it takes a lot of forms, but we like to put it in the context of your clients and it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that you always have to fight to overcome when they come to you, right.
[00:35:44] They sign on the dotted line. And if you had your magic wand and you could bop your clients on the head and not have to deal with this, what is that common enemy that flaw, that mindset that you always have to overcome to help them get the results that they came to you for in the first place?
[00:35:57] There are two mindsets. One. I think I overcame, although it took me a while, which is the client shares his life, shares his goals, shares his finances. And because you’ve been doing, you do this every day and you’ve been doing it for years and years, very quickly, you figure out the ideal solution, but in about 50% of the cases.
[00:36:17] That’s not what the client wants, what he or she wants to do is something that you think, you know what he really should and should not be doing this. So my first lesson to overcome is like, if the client wants it, you give it to him. For example, the client wants a 15 year mortgage and you know that he can make the payment, but it’s not really his best interest.
[00:36:40] Why? Because if you get a 30 year mortgage, you can still make the 15 year payment. And then if your cash flow goes dips down, you can make the 30 year payment and you’re okay. If you have a 15 year loan, you can do that. You have to make the high payment, no matter what. So at the beginning I was trying to, this is one example, but there are many others, you know, like impound accounts, including in the payment, you don’t have to have them.
[00:37:04] They also increase your amount. You could have them removed and so on and so on. So at the beginning I was trying to convince people and I was antagonizing them. And then I realized, no, The guy wants a 15 year mortgage. I’ll give it to him. He qualifies. He can make the payment fine. I’ll give it to him.
[00:37:21] It’s not something that I would recommend. And I may say a comment. I say, Hey, you know this is our option, but very light. And if they say, no, no, no, I really want this. I just go for that. So that was the first thing I had to overcome very difficult by the way. But I did it. The other thing that still hits me in the face, and I don’t know how to overcome is the people that are the opposite of me.
[00:37:45] So instead of looking at the big picture, you only see the small picture. Usually you see this in people that work for a bureaucratic organization, like the government, you know, or people that are like the regulators where he said, they say, okay, this "T" doesn’t have a dot or this "I" doesn’t have a dot and you go, yeah.
[00:38:04] But that’s the material. Look at the big picture. No, the "I" doesn’t have a dot. The "T" is not crossed. That is very difficult because they won’t accept anything you say, unless you speak in those terms. And that to me is my nemesis. You know, I’m very good at the broad picture. I’m very bad at the specific…
[00:38:26] So you have to have someone that’s.
[00:38:27] That’s why I hire the compliance officer. Yeah, in this business, you have to have somebody says, well, you violated equal regulation B, I go, what, I’ve been in this business for years. So, but I have to go look at my manual. I have to go into, and then read it.
[00:38:44] Oh yeah, yeah. It means blah. But the guy that thinks like this, he’s gonna go equal regulation B and I’m gonna go like you know, I’m gonna be like you, what the F is this. But if I read it immediately, I remember what it is. And I can answer the question, but that is my nemesis, you know, the people that think like that.
[00:39:06] Yeah. The people who are super detail oriented.
[00:39:08] Super detail and super like…
[00:39:12] Yeah. And I found that myself as well. Cause I’m not the most detail oriented person. I have to have people on my team who are really good at the details because I’m a big picture person, you know, same as you where I’m like, I wanna get the big stuff done.
[00:39:26] And I’m like, I don’t really care about all the T’s and the I’s and whatnot. If they’re dotted properly, as long as at the end of the day, we accomplished our goal.
[00:39:35] Yeah. Well, in this business, you have to care because it’s part of the business, you know? So I hire someone that does that. So he knows exactly what it is right away. Me. I have to look it up and remember, you know, oh yeah, it means this. It means that.
[00:39:47] Yeah. So I wanna talk then about the flip side, right? So if your common enemy, your arch nemesis is are those tiny details with people who are like that. The driving force is the flip side, right? Is what you fight for.
[00:39:59] So just like Spiderman fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for at Prosperity, Lending your mission. So to speak.
[00:40:10] I fight for my clients to look at the mortgage, not as a bill, but as a financial instrument that they can mold to achieve their objective.
[00:40:19] Sometimes they don’t wanna do that. Sometimes they just, they just wanna rate which it’s a battle because I cannot give them the rate until they give me the information, you know, but I would say this, I would say that we tend to attract the kind of client who is willing to work with us. I notice that the client that treats us as a actual commodity, like, oh, well you’re one of the three or four we’re calling.
[00:40:45] It never works because we cannot compete in those terms. You know, actually we are a little bit more expensive because we take a long time and we do a lot of things that other brokers don’t do. We charge a little bit more. It’s not much a little, but we charge more. So people that are just looking for pricing don’t do well with us because that’s not what we are about.
[00:41:03] But to answer your question, that’s what we’re trying to do. I’m trying to tell people, okay, I know that you came here for a mortgage, but there is more, there is more than you can do with this mortgage. This mortgage not only can achieve your goal of buying the home, but it can also achieve a financial goal.
[00:41:22] If you do this and this and this and this and that, this could be your ticket to wealth. You know, if you administer in a certain fashion. And like I said before, they say, you know what, Alejandro, that’s cool. I really don’t want to hear about that. I respect that decision. I respect that decision, but most of the clients that we tend to attract are of the frame of mind if you know, I never thought about that. Tell me more about it.
[00:41:45] I’m like super curious. Now, I didn’t know you could do any of those things. I always thought like you were just said, I’ve always looked at the mortgage business, like a commodity business where like, you know, a loan is a loan as loan. But what I’m hearing you say is that’s not true.
[00:41:59] It’s not true at all. It’s like going to the supermarket and you say, I wanna buy an apple and you call the supermarket and say, Hey, what is the price for an apple? And supermarket goes well, it depends. You want a red apple? You want a green apple? You want an apple in New Zealand. You want a gala apple, you want a Fiji apple.
[00:42:13] Now, what size you want it? You have small apples. We have big apples and you go, you know what? Don’t gimme that crap. You’re just trying to sell me. I just wanna know how much is an apple and you go well, but you know, we have 15 species of apples and also depends how you buy them because we have packages of one box.
[00:42:29] We have packages of three apples, or you can buy just one apple, just tell me and you go, no, don’t gimme all that crap. Just tell me how much is the apple. So you understand what, you know what? You can buy apples from $1 to 10, 10? Are you kidding? Are you trying to Rob me? Hey, but the 10 apple is this size.
[00:42:47] It comes in a big crate. You get blah, blah, blah. You see that’s really how the mortgage business is. And it’s not just in my opinion. It’s the fault of advertising and it’s the fault of regulation because regulation tries to protect the customer, but in trying to protect the customer, they have gone so much overboard.
[00:43:10] That the thing now is a humanus complicated monster just to go through the forms is an ordeal for many people, and this is all to help them by the way. So the effort of the regulator to standardize the mortgage has made it look like a commodity to most people, but it is not. It’s like going to supermarket that specializes only on apples that has a hundred varieties of apples packed in many different ways and asking how much is the price of an apple.
[00:43:44] Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And again, that’s something that I didn’t know until today. Cause I always thought it was a commodity because that’s the way it’s presented to the market.
[00:43:55] That’s always presented, but it’s not like that at all. And not only that, not only that you could give all of your information, you could go through all the process and then the apple changes because if you don’t do something like locking the rate, for example, now the apple changes. It’s not the apple that you just sign up for.
[00:44:12] HYOu’re like I bought a red apple and this one is green.
[00:44:15] Yeah. And you have to be very careful because it’s not just buying the apple. We are gonna buy the apple, but show us this, show us this, shows us this, show us this show.
[00:44:23] Yeah. And you’re buying an apple that you’re gonna be with for 30 years. So, you know, you gotta really like that kind of apple
[00:44:33] So I wanna talk about some practical things then, right? I call this our hero’s tool belt, just like every superhero has awesome gadgets, like batarangs or web slingers or laser eyes, or, magical hammer they can spin around. I want to talk about the top one or two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business.
[00:44:48] Could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, just something you use for your marketing, to something you use for your actual product delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done on a day to day basis.
[00:44:57] Well, because this business is very theoretical. I made some spreadsheets that I made it very simple and user friendly and put colors in it.
[00:45:09] So those tools I created now, like had like 15 of those spreadsheets, by the way, most lenders have them, but they’re designed by someone else and they’re very complicated. So we made these spreadsheets that I usually use over Zoom, like we’re talking now I share with people and I share my screen. That’s how we talk about the mortgage.
[00:45:26] You know, it’s a completely interactive process instead of me saying, give me this, gimme this, gimme this, gimme this. And then I spit out a rate of them. I go, no, let’s talk. I put up the spreadsheet on the screen. We share, we have a talk and say, well, what kind of house you want? Oh, I want a house that is blah, blah, blah.
[00:45:41] We put it on the spreadsheet. What do you wanna do with the house? And then through the conversation, we are building the loan together. So it’s completely interactive. And then as I am building the spreadsheet, we get to the income, we get to the credit and they see the client sees right away how each of the different things impacts the loan and the amounts and everything.
[00:46:03] So by the time we’re done, he knows how loan works and why. And he already knows what I need to be supplied with and why I need it. So I would say if I have to talk about tools, Zoom is been awesome. Two years ago. I didn’t even know what zoom was. Somebody called me and says, let’s do Zoom. And I said, what.
[00:46:23] Now I use it constantly, the Zoom, those tables that we made, you know communication, I would say that the most important tool is a communication course that I did a long time ago when I was in my twenties. That told me really how to communicate to people without that I could not even be talking to you right now.
[00:46:43] So I would say that that was the foundation. And then the tables, the tables allow me to show people what it is that they’re getting into and why.
[00:46:55] Yeah. And when you were talking through like having the tables built, it reminded me, I just read a book called $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi and he talks about building tools like that, that really set your business apart.
[00:47:07] And that’s the kind of thing that changes the experience for someone who’s buying from you. Who’s going through that. So, I mean, that’s one of those standout sort of things that people are gonna remember that cuz. You know, other mortgage lenders, aren’t doing things like that with them. And they’re just like, all data.
[00:47:22] And it’s not that I’m a genius or anything. These tables are very simple. Anybody could do them. But like I said before, nobody wants to do them because they take time. Especially at the beginning, when you’re crafting them, they can take two, three hours to make, you know, and then you have to make them simple.
[00:47:37] You know, like I was saying at the beginning, it’s nothing special. It’s just a combination of different things together.
[00:47:44] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I like the idea of having tools like that, that really help push your business forward, help set you apart and change the experience for your customers.
[00:47:54] Cuz the experience is really what people are gonna come back for is what people are going to recommend you for their friends. Cuz they’re gonna be like, I learned more about mortgages just going through the process with him that I’ve ever learned before. Right. And that’s definitely, it’s a unique selling proposition for what you guys are doing.
[00:48:09] Yeah. And another thing that we do, we disclose every single fee, every single penny and we tell them where he goes and you may think, well isn’t that part of the disclosure isn’t that where everybody does. And the answer is no. When most people do, they’ll shove the disclosure in your face because that’s legally what they have to do, but nobody really goes through them exactly.
[00:48:28] This is something that always perplexed me. People in the mortgage industry are afraid to disclose to the client, how much they make. They try to disguise it, you know, and everything is legal. But not because it’s legally means that it’s right. And not because it’s legally meaning transparent.
[00:48:45] For some reason, mortgage people try to minimize how much they make. They try to make the mortgage appear as if it doesn’t cost anything, which is very far from the truth. You know, they come with all these phrases, like no points mortgage, which really do not exist between you and me and so on and so on.
[00:49:03] So the other thing that we do is when we get to the form, the form is supposed to be easy, but we go line by line number by number explaining where each dollar is going and why. And when we come to our fee, we’re not ashamed. Say, this is how much we make. And almost no one says, oh my God, you make that much.
[00:49:23] How come? Because by the time we get there, there’s so much work into it. sometimes we get, oh, this is all that you make. Yeah. That is how much we make. We get the reverse reaction.
[00:49:37] I would imagine being a business owner, like, I refuse to work with businesses where I don’t understand how they’re making a profit.
[00:49:45] Because if they’re not making a profit, they’re not gonna be around long term to help support me. And I’ve been burned by things like that in the past, like I remember I was about 10 years ago, a big company. They had this new product out and they were like, oh, this new product is awesome and it’s wonderful and blah, blah, blah.
[00:49:59] And everyone should sign up for it. And I was like, I don’t understand the profit model. You’re not making money on this. So if I build all my business processes on it, the way that you’re telling us that we should and the way that they were marketing it, I was like, you’re gonna take it away because it’s not making money that I can see.
[00:50:12] And it only lasted about two years before they were gone. And that terrifies me as a business owner is putting my business on someone else’s business. It’s not profitable. So like, I wanna see, like, you’re gonna show me your money. Like how much you’re getting paid.
[00:50:25] I’m like, is that good? Are you making a profit here? Can you pay your employees? Will you be here next week? Like that, that makes me happy.
[00:50:32] And Richard you’re so right. My dad was a very successful businessman. And I saw this many times sales people came to selling things and after the sales presentation, he said, you know, all of this is wonderful and that’s great.
[00:50:45] And now I wanna know how you make your money, because if he did not understand how they made their money, then he didn’t buy. A bit like what you’re saying now.
[00:50:55] Yeah. Absolutely. Cuz if you don’t understand how they’re making money, they’re not gonna be there. Because it doesn’t last profitability is what creates long-term businesses and long-term relationships.
[00:51:04] And also, if you don’t understand how they make their money, then the question is how can they offer all of these things to me what it is in it for them. Because there must be something in it for the salesperson. Otherwise, why is he even here talking to me?
[00:51:19] Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, those of us who are into capitalism. Right. We understand it’s a value for value exchange.
[00:51:25] Yes oh, by the way, I just wanna say free enterprise system, not capitalism. Capitalism was the world invented by Carl Max to basically say that the free enterprise system was bad because he was ripping people off. That’s the meaning behind capitalism, but that was a word invented by Carl max who never worked in his life on a company who never founded anything.
[00:51:50] He was just a journalist that went to a library. That’s where all his theories come from. It’s free enterprise.
[00:51:56] Free enterprise. Yes. Where value is exchanged equally between all parties?
[00:52:02] Yes.
[00:52:03] I love it.
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[00:53:31] And now back to the hero show.
[00:53:35] So I wanna talk then about your own personal heroes, right? Every hero has their mentors, just like Frodo had Gandolf or, Luke had Obi Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad or even Spiderman had his uncle Ben. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers or authors?
[00:53:51] I have many heroes.
[00:53:53] Tell us us about them.
[00:53:54] Okay. One of my hero, one of my heroes is my mentor, my real estate mentor, I worked for him as a slave for 10 years. For 10 years, I did everything he said he asked me to do all the dirty work and he gave me the privilege to sit in front of him when he made every single phone call and every single deal.
[00:54:12] And I got to help him in deals that he was already made in progress. He was very generous. I even got married at his house, you know, and forever I will be grateful to him for the opportunity. He gave me to learn so much from him. He was an exception to the rule. He’s still in business and he’s still operating.
[00:54:32] He’s one of the most prominent real estate brokers on the west side of Los Angeles. And I didn’t know at the time, cause I didn’t know any better, but he is completely anal about what he does and the way he works is like a cut above every everyone else, which at the time I did not know.
[00:54:51] I only knew it when I ceased to work for him. And I went out in the real world and saw how things were done. So he’s one of my heroes.
[00:55:00] Another hero that I have have many, but another hero that I have is Richard Branson. The British entrepreneur, Richard Branson. I read his book and I was very impressed.
[00:55:10] I was, in particularly impressed and to me, it epitomizes the successful entrepreneur. He had an agreement, he had to sign, you know, he had an agreement that if he didn’t sign, basically it was disaster for him. And if he signed it, he was gonna go, you know, to another level. And he missed the deadline. He missed the deadline.
[00:55:36] He didn’t show up at the office of his lawyer at five o’clock, the agreement was not signed and that was it. He was done. He was pretty much done. And then he thought, Hey, the attorneys, this is in London. The attorneys have an office in LA, in LA is not the end of the business day yet. Isn’t it.
[00:55:59] And then he signed it in LA and he was on time and he signed the agreement. I went, wow. What vision, what it takes to never accept defeat, even when you are. Quote unquote defeated, but that is the thread that you see in all of the entrepreneurs.
[00:56:19] My other hero of recently I know that some of your listens are not gonna like this is Mr. Trump, because despite all the pressures, despite all the attacks, despite everything that is being thrown at him, regardless of whether he did something right or wrong, I’m just talking about him, not as a political leader, but as an entrepreneur, despite the gigantic opposition, he still comes on top of everything that throw at him.
[00:56:49] That is amazing. I’ve never seen this in my life. I’ve never read of an individual that has endured such level of persistent attacks from such a high level and still he comes up the winner. That is historically, I think not, not even Napoleon was able to do that, you know?
[00:57:11] Yeah. It’s been amazing to watch over the last, I don’t know, what is it, six years now, him being attacked for everything and suing him for this and suing him for that and putting him on front of committees and just all sorts of stuff. And there’s nothing sticks cuz he hasn’t done anything wrong.
[00:57:28] But it’s not only that you or me with a hundredth of that effort, we probably would cave in. You know?
[00:57:37] So it’s like a superhero of some sort almost.
[00:57:40] Yeah. He’s sort of almost like he has superhero power.
[00:57:43] That is very true. So I’ve got one more question for you here, and that is about your guiding principles, right? One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings him to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, or maybe two principles that you use in your life, something that maybe you wish you had known when you first started out on your own entrepreneurs journey.
[00:58:07] Yeah. I would say do only things that you believe in don’t do things just for money. Do only things that you believe in. I knew that at the beginning, but at the beginning, when you don’t have any cash, you know, you are tempted to just not do, not follow that. But that is one of the guiding principles.
[00:58:25] When I take a client, I never think about the commission. I take the client when only I think that I can help him, you know, and only I think that I can work together with him and we are going to have fun. Cause I do this, not just for the money I do this cause I have fun to me doing a mortgage. Believe it or not is really fun.
[00:58:42] Yeah. It’s challenge to figure out how to get the right type of thing working. Right?
[00:58:45] Yeah. And I want it to be fun for the client too. Not just an ordeal that they have to endure, you know, so being true to yourself, doing something because you believe in it, that’s one of the guiding principles. Another guiding principle that I have is always disclosed.
[00:59:01] You know, as part of my license and as part of my background, I’m a realtor. Although I don’t buy houses anymore, you know I used to be in commercial real estate. I used to work for hedge fund management in capturing capitals. I don’t do any of that anymore. I just do loans.
[00:59:16] But as a realtor, you are drilled on disclose, disclose, disclose, meaning that anything that comes up, anything that could be even remotely misinterpreted by anyone don’t wait, you disclose, you know, a problem comes, you disclose it. So that’s the second principle disclose because usually when you disclose, even when there is a big problem and you disclose it. You find a solution.
[00:59:40] If you don’t disclose it, then it starts to breathe bad vibes.
[00:59:45] And it kinda become a monster.
[00:59:47] Yeah. So be true to yourself, disclose, you know, and have a vision of the result that you want to happen, because believe it or not, we are spiritual beings in this material universe, scientists in quantum physics have already demonstrated that when you look at a physical object, me or you or anyone, just by looking at a physical object, you are at an sub atomic level changing it.
[01:00:16] So what you think really materializes, except that it takes longer, you know, it takes all these molecules or whatever it takes time to arrange themselves. So you have to keep putting, you know, most people think, oh, well I want a million dollars. That’s a materialize. So it doesn’t work. No, it’s not that it didn’t work.
[01:00:36] You didn’t really put enough attention. You didn’t put enough mental energy because the moment you think it’s starting to happen, it says here you have to continue. So my guiding principles are this, see what you want to achieve. Keep putting attention, disclose, have fun and do things that you wholeheartedly believe in. That’s why I don’t do well with corporations because corporations try to kill all that.
[01:01:02] That’s accurate. Yeah. And I love those guiding principles too. I particularly the have fun do what you believe in like that kind of stuff is, you know, one of the reasons why I love being an entrepreneur as opposed and why I’m a terrible employee is for that particular reason, is that.
[01:01:17] A lot of particularly larger businesses, more bureaucratic businesses. It’s not fun. Right? No fun. And, and when it’s not fun, it’s no, it’s, you don’t wanna do it. Right. Nobody likes being there and it’s not, it’s not entertaining. And I don’t know. I just, I feel like we need more fun in our, just in general, our whole world needs to have a little bit more fun with what they’re doing. So I love that.
[01:01:39] Yeah. And that’s what we’re here for, in my opinion, we’re here to service others, so let’s do it with fun. Mm-hmm .
[01:01:45] I agree. So I think that’s a great place to wrap our interview, but I do finish up every interview with a simple challenge that I call the heroes challenge, and I do this to help get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own.
[01:01:56] So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with us here on The Hero Show? First person that comes to mind for you?
[01:02:08] I think My processor, my processor team they are in Alabama. They used to be in in Southern California and San Diego. And I think they should come to your show and share their story because they do the hardest part of the loan, which is comply with all the nitty gritty, all of the regulation, put it all on the computer. You know, that’s a really, really detailed and hard job to do, and they still do it.
[01:02:37] They still do it with a smile. They still manage to comply with this barrage of regulation in a nice way and provide a nice experience to us, the broker and to the client, the borrower.
[01:02:51] Yeah, absolutely.
[01:02:52] And it’s not simple. It’s not a simple job, you know, and it has a lot of ups and downs and, but they still manage to do it and they manage to do it well.
[01:03:01] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We’ll reach out later and see what we can do about maybe setting something up. But you know, in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. So as we close our analogous to that is where can my audience find you?
[01:03:13] If they’re looking to get a mortgage, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak and say, Hey, Alejandro, I’m in that space. I need help with something. Where can I find you? And I think more importantly, who are the right types of people to reach out and ask for your help?
[01:03:26] Anyone who is relatively successful. When I say relatively successful, it means that they are independent people, they are business owners, but they are over the hump in the sense. Now they compare their bills. Now they have a little bit of cash extra, you know, they’re on their way to success because those people are the ones that are ignored.
[01:03:44] If you already made it, you have a line of financial professionals waiting for you. You know, if you are just starting out, nobody cares about you. And if you’re in the middle, nobody cares about you either. You know, if you are sufficiently poor, you have mortgages for people to have less than six, 20 and so on and so on.
[01:04:02] But if you’re in the middle, if you’re relatively successful, there’s not really anyone. Anyone is gonna want you to adapt to a certain mold. So if you’re relatively successful business owner, entrepreneur, you know, you’re on your way up. You can just send me an email or Info@Prosperity, like something prosperous ProsperityLending.us.
[01:04:23] Our website is the same as www.ProsperityLending.us. But the best is send me an email. This is something that I learned from reading biographies of successful people. Successful people are always available, you know, it’s the secretaries and it’s the other people that try to stop you to get to them. But if you manage to get to them, there are like quite nice people that are like no problem in talking to you.
[01:04:48] So I always try to do that Info@ProsperityLending.us. That’s the best way.
[01:04:54] Awesome. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing your story with us today, Alejandro. We’ll make sure that the links to your website and the email address are with the show notes. If you are listening and you’re looking for a mortgage, definitely take the time to reach out to Alejandro.
[01:05:07] Obviously he knows his stuff and he is serving our industry specifically, which is very cool. So again, thank you very much for your time on the interview today. And do you have any final words of wisdom before I hit this stop record button?
[01:05:18] Richard, thank you very much for giving me a voice to your audience, and I’m very honored by that.
[01:05:23] Awesome. Thank you for being here.
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Richard Matthews
Would You Like To Have A Content Marketing Machine Like “The HERO Show” For Your Business?
The HERO Show is produced and managed by PushButtonPodcasts a done-for-you service that will help get your show out every single week without you lifting a finger after you’ve pushed that “stop record” button.
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What Is The Hero Show?
A peak behind the masks of modern day super heroes. What makes them tick? What are their super powers? Their worst enemies? What's their kryptonite? And who are their personal heroes? Find out by listening now
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