How I Dropped Out & Got My Real Estate License At 20 Years Old 4/9

If you have a gut feeling to learn something or to do something, go learn about it first, even if you have to invest some money to learn about it. Like I think one big thing that people fail to realize is that people think schooling and education are one and the same and you can get an education anywhere. You don't need to rely on school to get your education. Never be afraid to reach out to people who are already successful. Find out a way to provide them some sort of value to get with their time. But if you wanna learn something, reach out to the people who are doing it. Who are the most successful people in your area at doing what you wanna do.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, john Mendez.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. If you're tuning in on any of the podcast directories on YouTube, make sure to do yourself one teeny, tiny little favor Make sure to give us a follow, because I don't want you to miss any of the fire podcast episodes that I'm posting this year and all the fire guests that I'm bringing on. So to kinda pick up where we left off in the story, so last week's episode I started talking to you guys about how I got my job at K Jewelers and, in terms of the timeline wise, I got into K Jewelers and I got into real estate. In this episode I'm gonna be talking about how I got into real estate after I started working at Sign of the Whale. So I'm gonna be talking about how I got into Sign of the Whale in the next episode. The reason I didn't do that is because I stopped focusing on real estate long before I actually left Sign of the Whale. So actually I was at Sign longer than I was focusing on real estate. So I was like all right, I'll tell you guys how I got into real estate and then I'll tell you how I got my job at Sign of the Whale. And it all kind of plays into how I made $20,000 an hour or so, but without further ado, let's get right into this episode. So my story, if I could take you guys back, it all started, as you guys all know, when I read Rich that Poor Dad. That kind of would spark my entrepreneurial spirit. I guess I had my epiphany back in 2020, and I read Rich that Poor Dad and it kind of sparked me down in this giant rabbit hole of like persons relevant in investing in personal finance and just learning about things that I wasn't learning in school. And I actually stumbled across this course by this guy named Max Maxwell. It was a $500 wholesaling course and at that point in time in my life I never invested in some type of course or conference or training or mentorship of any sort. So for me, $500 to blow on a course online from people that I don't know was a lot of money. I ended up signing up for it. I took the course. I was watching the videos, taking notes. I learned a ton about wholesaling. For anyone that doesn't know what it is, wholesaling is pretty much it's like being an off-market real estate agent almost not technically, but like. Similarly, like you find properties that people want to sell. Usually these properties are beat up near and bad situations and you get them and you sell them to people who wanna buy and you make the difference right. And so I got into class, into that. I got my logo, my LLC, my domain name. I had everything filed ready to go. And wholesaling in the class it talked about one of the things you need is a good attorney, right? So after I got my you know on the phone, I looked up on Google top attorneys in Connecticut and from there I found a few. I hopped on the phone with them, asked them some questions and about four or five like they didn't really know what I was kinda talking about and there was one guy and you could just tell like he read every law book and he would just super buy the book. He was like oh, you can't do that. Wholesaling is illegal. You're not allowed to do that in Connecticut. You can't transact in real estate but out of real estate license. But the catch is with wholesaling you're doing everything off-market, so it is perfectly legal. And it wasn't until later on in my real estate journey that I met tons of wholesalers. I got a bunch of wholesaler friends now that are doing multiple deals per month. But at that point in time that was the professional I was like, oh, I guess I can't wholesale in Connecticut, and so then that happened. Then that pretty much screwed up my entire million dollar plan. Like I thought I was gonna get into real estate wholesaling and they said you don't need any credit, you don't need any money, you can easily do it, and that kinda just blew up everything. And then now we're in January of 2022, or 2021, if I'm not mistaken, we're in January of 2021, and around this time period it was right around when I was still going back to school I ended up going out to eat with one of my like a good old friend that I used to have and boys, I hear, and me and him we were just chopping it up, catching up, talking about life. He was also interested in real estate at the time. Now Zaire went to go talk to one of my old counselors, who just so happened to be at the restaurant I was eating at, and then Zaire and James were chopping it up, and so I'm like, where's how you go, because I'm sitting at the table by myself for a while. I ended up going to their conversation and they were talking about real estate and James is going to connect Zaire with a guy who happens to be my first mentor I guess you would call him and his name is Adam. So they were going to hop on a Zoom call, hop on like a one on one, so Zaire can learn a little bit about real estate, ask some questions. And then they offered to let me in on the call. I was like, of course, and so I hopped on the call and me, adam, zaire on the call and James, I think, was on the call as well, and Adam was just telling us about real estate and how he got into it and his journey, and he's in commercial real estate now. He's doing a lot of big things. And at the end of the call I don't remember anything he said, but at the end he was like you guys need to find a mentor. And so I was like, all right, find a mentor. So I pretty much reached out to him via email right after that, send him emails like, hey, you said mention, you know, get a mentor, would you be my mentor? And he was with it. And so me and Adam started to hop on calls and I think after the first or second call that we and me and him ever hopped on. I decided you know what? I'm going to get my real estate license and that's going to be what I do from now on. And it's kind of like wholesaling didn't work out because it led me to become an agent and so I was like all right, perfect, it's almost the same thing. Just this way, if I wanted to get back into wholesaling, whether I can or can't, I was going to be good anyway, because I'm going to get my real estate license. And at that point in time, my mindset was I'm going to become an agent. Use the notoriety from becoming a top agent Because, of course, anything I do, I got to pop off, I got to do a vague right, and so I got to become a top agent. Use that money to get back into real estate investing. Use the notoriety from being a top agent to get into public speaking Right. So I signed up for my real estate class, I think in February of 2021. And this was real estate university. I signed up with them and then, from there, I started taking my classes and then I just stopped showing up for all my college classes completely, just stopped logging in, didn't do anything. I didn't even take my finals that semester and I still remember I spoke to an advisor because before you drop out you got to speak to someone at least at stores. And so I spoke to someone, hopped on a Zoom call with them and you could tell that they had no argument to try to convince me otherwise. Because it's like I was just so set in the fact that school isn't going to take me where I want to go in life. I have goals much bigger than school and not trying to don't have to, don't have school at all, but it's like for me it couldn't take me where I wanted to head. So I was like man, with this whole world being uncertain. The only thing I was certain of was myself. So I decided to bet on myself and then from there I ended up working a ton because I ended up working that time the way again and K-Jewelers, but along the way I was doing my real estate classes, ended up passing the class on my first try. And then I had to get my PSI exam taken and that exam I failed the first two times. The first time, I think, I had like a 68% and for anyone that doesn't know, it's like a two hour, like two three hour exam. It's a long exam and I had a 68%, meaning I was two points away, pretty much, from getting my PSA, you know, getting a passing grade and not having to retake it. And I took the PSI exam in Queens, which was about like an hour away and I had the axe to provide, which is super annoying. But I took the first test, failed. I'm like damn all right. So I think I scheduled it for a month afterwards after that one and then I failed the second one again and so I didn't study for either of the exams, but I was like I never studied in high school or college really, so it's like I was just doing what I normally did all my life. And then the third time I remember I started bringing my textbook to K-Jewelers sometimes to start studying, or I would use the online textbook and I'll bring my iPad and I would have my iPad out on top of the K-Jewelers iPad so I can start studying online and taking the digital quiz for the e-book. And I just started studying, I think a week before, and I have pretty good memory and I realized that the questions they asked from the first and second time were pretty much identical, and so I was like, all right, I actually got to study these questions. I know which ones I got wrong and which sections I didn't do well in Third tries a charm, right? And then from there ended up going to take my exam. I believe it was the day after my birthday, from not mistaken, the day right before my birthday, I took my third exam hour in September and I went to go take my exam. It was a Friday, I remember, because I still had to work. I signed the will that day, so it was a Friday. I went over to Queens, I believe. I took the train and a bus. I was like man, just getting here was too much work. I was like I cannot fail, I cannot go back and have to take the test again. Because it was too much work and I had to pay for the bus and the train, which was like 25 bucks each way. So from there I ended up passing. I got, like a 70-something, passed both of the exams and then from there, september of two weeks after I turned 20, that's when I got licensed. Now, along the way this is a part of the story I usually never tell anyone, but along the way I met with someone from Coalwell Banker. Now I'm not going to say her name, but I met with someone from Coalwell Banker. I was at K Jewelers and she came in because she needed some type of Ruby piece of jewelry for her 40th anniversary with her husband and the gift that they got they didn't like, no more, so they wanted to find another gift to replace it instead, and so I ended up talking to her about real estate and she just happened to be at Coalwell. So me and her were chopping it up and we hit it off really well and I actually didn't help her buy anything that day. But then she ended up coming back around. She told me that it took a connect with her, and so me and her we connected. We spoke at her office, we were talking, talking about, like you know, coalwell and how I'll be a good fit for them and all that stuff, and then, after me and her met the first time, she then gave me a ride over the K Jewelers and then I helped her buy a ring. So I pretty much I made a sale and I got to meet with someone that was a top producer in the area and along the way as well. Let me backtrack a little bit, because I forget this part of the story too. Before I even met her, I looked up on Google top five realtors in the area and one of the realtors that I talked to his name was Todd. So Todd is one of the top realtors in Stanford. He's been running the game in Stanford him and Jeannie for a while now and from there I had on a phone call with him. I cold emailed him and he happened to get on the phone with me and I started talking to him and he started telling me about, you know, kw and disc profile. I didn't even know what that, any of that stuff, meant, but he contacted me with the guy over at Coalwell. His name is Steve. I called Steve. Steve didn't return my call but a guy named Carlos did, and so me and Carlos, me and him started connecting back and forth. So along the way, when I met with this lady over at Coalwell, she met with me one time and then I met with Carlos a few times and from there I was really on the fence between where I should join, like should I go with KW or should I go with Co-Well, and I was really on the fence and that ended up getting licensed. And I remember, like it was yesterday, I was working at Sign in the Whale and I was really on the fence between where I should go and at that point in time, like everyone was pretty much talking about, like you know, covid and everyone getting sick, and so the lady from Co-Well she had, you know, we spoke on the phone quickly and for health reasons, she said that she wanted to back out of you know work with me and I was like, all right, bet, so that same right after I got off the phone with her, I'm still at Sign in the Whale. At the time I'm literally working. I got off the phone with her and then I texted Carlos over at KW and I was like I'm ready to start when you know where do I need to sign, when do I need to sign. And that's how I ended up working at KW. So that's why I chose KW and then that's how I became licensed with KW and it's one of those things where that whole portion of my life leading up to that, every day just felt like the same day, because I was working at KJewelers, I was working at Sign in the Whale and I was studying for our real estate exams. So it's like every day just felt like the same day, and once I got licensed I was like all right, like this is the start of a new chapter of my life. I think I got licensed I think there was a 15th of Stanford or something like that I became officially licensed with KW and that's where this story kind of ends off, and my biggest takeaway is really from this is if you have a gut feeling right to learn something or to do something, go learn about it first, even if you have to invest some money to learn about it. Like I had a gut feeling to get to wholesaling and I paid for a $500 course and I learned a ton from it. Did I end up doing it? No, have I ever done any wholesaling since then? No, but I definitely had learned a lot and it made me become okay with investing in myself and investing in education, not just school. I think one big thing that people fail to realize is like people think schooling and education are one of the same and you can get an education anywhere. You don't need to rely on school to get your education. And so for me, investing in that course is what that kind of was. For me it was. I invested in myself and I learned a ton Now also, the other thing I learned is that you don't have to be correct. Like wholesaling wasn't the correct decision and real estate you'll learn later on also wasn't the right decision, even as an agent. But as long as you're moving directionally in the right direction like you'll land in a good enough area where you can start getting some clarity and start really refining and honing down as to what you really want to do right. An ex big takeaway is never be afraid to reach out to people who are already successful. Find out a way to provide them some sort of value to get with their time. But at that point in time I wasn't even thinking about how I could help, you know, get them some type of value. I was just cold emailing people I've never spoken to before and hoping and praying that they would respond back, and from there I got multiple people to respond back that were top agents. So it's like when you got to reach out. If you want to learn something, reach out to the people who are doing it, who are the most successful people in your area that are doing what you want to do. Reach out to them, take them out to lunch, try to get their signal on their calendar some way, shape or form, so that you can learn from them and see if it's something that you really want to do. The next thing I want to tell you guys about is when it comes to taking exams at least for the rest of the exam, for all the people that want to get licensed, it is a long exam, but honestly, you don't have to read the whole book. I only read a few certain chapters, at least in Connecticut, in Connecticut. I can't speak for anyone else, but it's like take the test, fail and then learn from your mistakes and then try again. That's what I did. I took the test, I failed twice and I memorized the questions that I failed on and then from there I came back the third time and passed it. And the last thing then this is specifically for people that are also trying to get into real estate is start interviewing brokerages long before you actually get licensed, and that way, when you do get licensed, you know where you want to go and you can just pretty much get it started. And there's one more part of my story that I forget to say, but along the way with Adam, when he was mentoring me, he connected me to another guy named Joey or Joe, and so Joe and Adam kind of both mentored me along the way, and that's also where I learned the power of connections and networking, because I met Adam and he connected me to Joe and then Joe connected me with him, my photographer, who does my headshots, who worked with WWE, and since, like in this world of business, entrepreneurship, it's like you have to have connections and that is the most powerful things you can do and you can start tapping into people that you normally will have no business reaching out to if you have the right connections. So that's all for this episode. Next story, the next part of it, we'll pick up how I started working that sign of the whale during the pandemic, and that was one of the biggest chapters in my life because I was there almost three, four years. So I'm going to tell you the story of how I got that job and how I was able to quit and go full time as an entrepreneur, and that is kind of the day I quit. It was also the day that I made $20,000 an hour, but that's going to be the final part. Right, we still got some parts in between, so I'll see you guys in the next episode.

We'll see you on the next episode of Walk to Wealth with John Mendes.