Josh Cantwell: So, hey listen, welcome back. This is Josh. And today, listen, I have a fantastic, fantastic guest on the show. His name is Martin Perdomo. He’s known as The Elite Strategist. And Martin not only has 24 years of business experience and has built a multimillion-dollar investment portfolio including multifamily properties and flips, but he’s also a certified mindset coach and speaker. Martin is also the host of the Latinos in Real Estate Investing Podcast. And today we’re going to talk about a couple of things. Number one, we’re going to talk about three specific marketing campaigns that Martin is using to prep the market for some of the softness, some of the crash, some of the slowdown that’s happening in 2023. So, we’re talking about those three marketing strategies. Number two, we’re going to talk about Martin’s podcast and content production team. We’re going to talk specifically about how he records videos, how he puts them online, how he syndicates this stuff out to Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and podcasts, and YouTube. Martin’s built a following of over 400,000 followers and friends on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn that’s brought him deal flow and investors and credibility. And I wanted him to explain to you, our audience, exactly how he does it and exactly how he executes it.

Also, number three, we’re going to talk about Martin’s start. Martin was actually born in the United States as an immigrant from the Dominican Republic with absolutely nothing, was actually raised in the ghetto in the Dominican Republic with a tin roof house, and how he was able to then move into and out of the ghetto of New York City to become a multi-millionaire real estate investor. And finally, we’re going to talk about the one big shift or the one big thing that Martin feels like you must do to succeed in 2023 and 2024 as the market continues to evolve. So, you’re going to love this content, this podcast, this interview with Martin Perdomo, The Elite Strategist. Here we go.

[INTERVIEW]

Josh Cantwell: So, hey, Martin, listen, been really looking forward to having you on the show and so glad you were able to make some time to join us today. So, welcome to Accelerated Investor.

Martin Perdomo: Thank you, brother. Thank you for having me. Really a pleasure to be here.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely. So, Martin, let’s talk about what you’re up to right now. Obviously, we’re rolling into the holidays wrapping up 2022, going into 2023. The markets obviously made a major shift and change this year. So, tell our audience a little bit as we kind of get to know you a little bit more about some of the things that you’re working on right now that you’re either really excited about or things that you’re working on that are giving you some anxiety as we wrap up the end of the year.

Martin Perdomo: I have a little bit of both, Josh. The first thing I’m working on is I’m working on a refi for a 57-unit apartment building we bought earlier this year. And it was a great buy. We bought it for 3 million. It appraised as it was at 4.5 without us doing anything to it. It sounds good, right? We raised the rent from an average of $700 to $1,100 a month, $1,000 to $1,100. Great deal, right? Well, interest rate is going up, money tightening up. Believe it or not, we’re having a difficult challenge, a difficult time getting someone to commit to that loan and refi. And with all this equity we have, we’re getting close to the finish line. We currently have a bank that has given us a commitment and keeping our fingers crossed because it’s weird out there right now, John, as you know. It’s weird times, man, but we’ll weather this storm and I’m excited. That’s a little bit keeping me up at night, a little bit worried about that. I got some investors that we promise to give them their money back, including my own money. I have some of my own money in the deal. And then we want to keep playing. 2022 is going to be a great year for real estate with tons of opportunities, in my opinion, and we want to make sure we have cash and we’re ready to execute.

One of the things I’m really excited about is I’ve always romanticized with owning hotels and we’re about to put our first offer on a hotel. And we’re excited about that. We are really, really excited about that because it’s like for me, real estate is a game, John. You know, it’s like playing monopoly. The houses start out with houses and to smaller multis, larger multis, and boom, ultimately, it’s a hotel. I’ve always romanticized with owning a hotel. For me, ultimately, it has been that, more large multi-families and hotel. So, those are the two things I’m excited and kind of concerned about, which is interest rates and economy and what we’re buying.

Josh Cantwell: So, Martin, yeah, we’re having a lot of the same thoughts and feelings and questions around refinances. We’ve got a huge part of our portfolio that’s already been refund and what fairly easy back in 2020, 2021, 2022, early 2022 of refiling those because interest rates were between 3.5% and 4.5%. Now, of course, we’re constrained by debt service coverage, right? We have to have enough net operating income to have a 1.25 coverage ratio. And that’s creating this new challenge, right? It’s making sure that although the value is there, if somebody would buy the building, the debt becomes burdensome, especially at 6.25, 6.5. And so, why don’t you just kind of explain your thoughts on debt service coverage and specifically about the troubles of refis right now and why also in 2023, 2024, how that might impact your buying strategy to actually buy properties that may be a lower price per door.

Martin Perdomo: For sure. That’s a great question. By the way, I was on a call with my investors I’m going to say a month ago and my business partner on that deal, she jokingly said, so we bought that particular property in January and my business partner jokingly said to my investors on the Zoom call, she was like, “Hey, we bought it in January, guys, and Martin has been talking to banks since February, March about refi.” And I’m going to tie it back into the question you just asked because I’ve been studying and I’ve been watching the feds, and this has been coming. If you’re studying this business and you’re paying attention to your professional investor, you could have seen this coming. Unfortunately, for us, if we would have been stabilized then, we would have been able to refi into better rates and we would have been good. That wasn’t the case. It took six, seven months to stabilize the asset.

So, I think that it’s challenging. I think there’s going to be plenty of opportunities next year with people that, look, you and I were both competing last year with other investors, right? We were writing up offers, and I’m sure you probably had the same experience. How are they penciling those deals? How are they making those deals work, right, when the margins were so thin? And there’s going to be a lot of those guys that have bridged that that are going to be in trouble, they can’t refi because the DSCR won’t work. I mean, I have banks telling me 1.30 DSCR and I’m like, “Whoa, wait a minute. We started talking 60, 90 days ago. You said 1.20, then you want up to 1.25. Now you’re at 1.30.” It’s like money tightening. It’s clear that the money is getting tighter. However, with adversity, there’s also opportunity. So, I’m excited about the potential opportunities that’s coming down the pipeline here in ‘23 and ‘24. I think that interest rates will give in historically, Josh. You probably know this. During election years, interest rates tend to go down. They say it’s not politicized but just coincidentally, if you look at history and interest rates, you will coincidentally find that interest rates tend to go down on an election year. We’re heading into one real soon here. So, that would be exciting to see.

Josh Cantwell: And I think the Fed fight against inflation is still around. They have to raise rates a little bit more but I think they’re already seeing some impact like house prices have obviously flattened out a little bit, possibly gone down, especially along the coastlines, used cars, campers, things that there was very little inventory and money was cheap so there was a lot of fight to buy those assets. Used cars, new cars, campers, motorhomes, RVs, that’s starting to soften a lot. And I really feel and what I’ve been telling my audience and even telling my investors is, look, 2023 is going to be a great time to buy because other people, Martin, as you mentioned, are going to be bumping into these interest rate caps that are going to expire, the cost of their debt is going to go up and they’re going to have to sell and they can’t or they’re going to have to refi and they can’t. So, it might not be the best year for us to refinance but the good thing is, is that building that you bought where you have $2 million, $3 million of equity and you raise the rents by $400, even though you want your cash out, you want your investors that you don’t have to.

You can just hold that thing for another two years, let this thing interest rates go up, and then slide back down maybe to end of 2024, right during the election. Maybe the Fed then starts to ease interest rates back down into the fives and then you refi. You only lose money in this game, Martin, as you know, when you’re either selling or refinancing at the wrong time, right? Sounds like you’ve insulated yourself with long-term financing. That’s what we’ve done. So, the guys that did buy with bridge loans in the last 1 to 4 years that are about to just hit a serious, serious hard place, those are the guys who need to sell. So, I’m curious, how are you going to plan on capturing that? Like, you have salespeople, you have an organization. I tend to feel like those distressed deals are not going to just get listed with brokers. If you have a distressed building, you’re probably going to kind of you might not be wanting to publicize that in the form of putting it out there with a broker or a realtor. I tend to think that those deals are going to happen more off-market. How do you feel about that and how are you going to capitalize on it?

Martin Perdomo: Agree. That’s a good question. Two months ago, we started a marketing campaign, a direct mail marketing campaign. And I’ll share this with the audience. So, we started, again, I’m constantly studying the market. I’m constantly spending time thinking about, hey, what’s my next move, trying to anticipate, as you know, anticipation is power in any game, in any business, right? If you can try to anticipate what’s coming ahead, you can then position yourself in a place to win. So, we were very specific. We started a direct mail campaign already. Then what are we? We’re in December. Let’s call it December. Tomorrow or the day after is December 1st. So, we’re doing it once a quarter. We wanted to start seeding for any potential investor. So, what we did was we were very particular in the list that we bought. So, we looked at, we bought a list of people that had high probability of being in bridge debt that bought over the last five years. And then we also looked at, we also marketed to board, and type of mom-and-pop investors. So, we already started a marketing campaign. Another thing that we started doing to be ahead of it is we also have a television commercial. We started marketing on television. We’re very, very unorthodox. It’s not common for investors to advertise on television but we’ve started a marketing branding campaign for distressed sellers looking for those distressed sellers.

And then lastly, the other thing that we started being very intentional around is that we started a text-blasting campaign for the brokers because we want to start getting in front of those brokers. So, we’re going after the sellers directly. And then if we missed them, then we want to partner up with brokers that they might get them and we want to be top of their list. So, we’ve also started a marketing strategy and a marketing campaign for those guys where we’re touching them once a month. On my podcast, I do a monthly market update, get data from CoStar and a bunch of different places. And what we’re doing is we’re then now providing value to them via text to the brokers like, “Hey, here’s the latest market update.” We kind of put it in a five-minute thing and just easy for you to digest and just providing value to them so that they can provide to their customers. Those are some of the things that we’re kind of playing and strategically looking ahead at where our opportunities can be.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. And I think, look, some sellers, we never know which route they’re going to pick, right? Some sellers are willing to sell directly to a buyer. No wholesaler in the middle, no broker in the middle. Other sellers will engage with the wholesaler because I know some wholesalers in town that are just relentless with their sales team of calling and following up and they have a legit sales crew and they’re really good and that’s not part of my business plan but I then partner up with those wholesalers and they wholesale those deals to me. Last year, I paid one wholesaler $305,000 for an apartment building. I paid another wholesaler $65,000 for a different apartment building. So, we buy that. Why? We don’t know who the seller is going to make a relationship with. The third thing the seller could do is if they’re very sophisticated and they’ve already probably had a relationship with a large brokerage, maybe a Newmark or a Cushman or a Marcus & Millichap or a Colliers then they might go to that broker and say, “Hey, go ahead and sell this to me.”

But then even with that, there’s a fourth option, which is they could sell it off-market with that broker. If the broker has a relationship with a buyer, Martin, like you or me, or they could go and “run the process” to do a full marketing campaign, a call for offers, and the whole bit, we just don’t know what that seller is going to pick and decide or what to buy. So, your plan here of buying the list direct-to-seller, TV commercial, texting the broker sounds like a really well-rounded approach. Now, on top of that, Martin, you have an amazing social media presence. You’ve built up 160,000 followers on Instagram. You have a massive following on YouTube, your podcast, social media via Facebook and LinkedIn. So, tell me how that has impacted your business when it comes to getting deals, when you’re maybe in a competitive situation and you have this, you put in the time, planted all the seeds to have this social media following. How has that helped you win deals specifically where you’re in a competitive situation?

Martin Perdomo: It’s vital, right? It’s been vital to us to our business because it’s what people see and perceive, right? Reason we started a podcast, reason I started a podcast is because I love doing it, first of all. My purpose is to empower others, right? That’s my purpose in life, empower others to be the best version of themselves. That’s my purpose in life. And I know real estate. I know it well. So, I decided that I wanted to start a podcast about something I know well and also empower people. I come from nothing. So, I remember being broke and poor, Josh, and thinking, who can help me? Who can teach me? I just need someone to teach me. I don’t want anyone giving me anything. I don’t want nothing handed to me. Just teach me and then I’ll go do it. Just teach me how to do it. And it’s through mentorship and masterminds and things like that, I decided, “Hey, I’m going to be that person.” So, it’s taken me years to build that but it’s been absolutely vital to my business. You know, I raise a lot of money from we get a lot of capital raised from social media we’re putting out there. I also flip, right? So, we do flips here in town.

So, I show it in my social media. I show the good, the bad, and the ugly, man. I show it all, right? Like, I don’t just show people the good stuff. You know, there’s bad days, man. You know that. There’s bad days in our business. There’s days that we got sellers that are not paying us or trashing our place. Do people make mistakes? No. Doesn’t matter how good your management team is, someone’s going to slip the cracks. Someone’s going to go bad. It just happens. It’s just a matter of when. But it’s been absolutely crucial. I am totally grateful. I’m up to the point now that I have a social media team that kind of manages that stuff for me running multiple businesses and as busy as I am and probably you are as well. With everything that we’re doing, it’s hard to be on there all of the time and I’m blessed to have a great team. They stay on top of it. I go out and I create the content and they make me look good. I personally engage with everyone personally. I have a set time where I’m just responding but I find that to be the key is to be relatable to people and I personally respond to everyone when I can. I take that time to do so.

But it’s been absolutely vital. I’ve won deals because of it. Again, that credibility in the space where people look me up and they’re like he’s legit. And a lot of times when you’re negotiating off-market deals and my team is out there negotiating deals and/or looking for deals for us is the seller’s biggest concern, as you may know, is can you close? Can you really close? Are you really who you say you are?

Josh Cantwell: Social media is key.

Martin Perdomo: Yeah. So, the minute they go to Google and they look it up, they look us up, yeah, they can close. So, that’s the biggest thing that it’s done for us. It just throws it out the window. Can you close?

Josh Cantwell: So, Martin, let’s pull this back, peel back the onion a little bit on your social media, your game, right? So, let’s talk about some of the actual team. You and I have a voice. We want to go out. We want to put that voice out into the world, but we don’t want to record the video, edit the video, upload it, upload it to Stitcher and SoundCloud and YouTube and Spotify, and then create blog posts out of it and Instagram posts from it. But all of that has to be done, right? So, tell me about your production. I’m specifically thinking for our audiences that will listen to this, that want to raise more money, that want to have a voice of their own. I feel like there are two things. If you want to be really good at multifamily, in particular, you have to, one, have a voice and, two, run a meetup or run some sort of group, some sort of live event. Both of those give you immediate credibility and authority because you’re either in front of the camera or you’re in front of the room. And people look up to the person who’s either in front of the camera or in front of the room. So, a lot of people want to do it, but they’re like, “I don’t have a voice. I don’t know what to say. I’m going to be embarrassed. I don’t know what to do. And then, like, how do I produce all this, the execution of the technology, the execution of the posting?”

So, let’s start with your team. So, do you have like a dedicated guy that just films you all day? Do you have a dedicated production team that then takes it, edits it, and posts it? Describe that for our audience so they can know what it’s going to take to cut. You’re not going to build up what Martin’s built or what I’ve built overnight but let’s talk about where you’re at today, Martin, and then we can maybe backtrack into kind of maybe some starting blocks.

Martin Perdomo: So, I’m glad you mentioned the meetup because I have a meetup and I love doing that. I just did it the day before, two days before Thanksgiving. So, last week I did it. And I’ve been doing that for three years now. I’m going on four almost. So, yeah, that’s one other thing that I do is I do the meetup. So, yeah, so as far as the team, believe it or not, a lot of it is like right now I’m in my studio. Right now, I’m in my studio. I have a full-fledged studio. I have my camera, all of my equipment set up. I basically come in here and I’m creating whether I’m recording a podcast or if I’m in the studio, I’m recording a podcast, doing a podcast, or creating content, right? And when it’s here, I basically record. We use different type of software. Let me see if I can see the name of the one, Ecamm. I use something called Ecamm Live. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it and you can go live on multiple streams. There are multiple social media there. You can self-record. And from there, what I use is we use Dropbox, which many people are familiar and we just upload to Dropbox and then my team takes it from there. They create shorts. They create blogs from there. They take it from there and they do it. As far as I don’t have a media crew following me around, not there quite yet.

Josh Cantwell: You just turn the camera around?

Martin Perdomo: I basically turn on the phone, brother. I basically turn on the phone. My team has, you know, they’ve done all the research for me and I carry mics in my truck. So, I have little lava mics in the truck and I have a selfie stick. So, when I’m out there, I’m just like, “Alright. Let me just record this rehab while these guys are here. We just ran into this problem here.” Actually, I have on my YouTube an interesting video of how to rehab a property. We bought a small multi that we purchased and the lady literally told me, Josh, “I’m not going to pay you rent,” she told me, “And it’s going to take six months to get me out of here.” And I laughed at her and I said, “You really don’t know who you’re playing with but okay.” And that lady the day that we were evicting her, 45 days later, I got it on camera and the constable was there that’s just because I just have everything there.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah.

Martin Perdomo: And so, it’s a really, really interesting blog but that’s some of the stuff that I do. I just carry my stuff with me. It’s in the truck and whenever I’m up and about, I just pull it out and go. As far as I got three people on the social media, I got someone that manages the podcast and just strictly just editing. That’s all they do. I got someone that’s managing the videos, editing the videos, and then I got someone that’s just putting the content in all the different social media platforms at all times. At all times. We’re about to take a little break because we’re going into season two of Latinos in Real Estate Investing Podcast behind closed doors, which you’ll be on the podcast soon. And we’re kind of going behind closed doors, really, really behind closed doors of what real estate investors are really like. And so, we’re excited about that. So, yeah, so that’s the team. It’s nothing really elaborate or crazy. I remember just everything that you said, editing the podcast, uploading it to Stitch, doing it. That stuff just makes my stomach cringe because at the beginning I was doing all of that. I was doing all of that and I’m not good at it.

Josh Cantwell: Right.

Martin Perdomo: You know, I suck at it, to be quite honest with you. I’m so grateful for these guys that I just give it to them and they just do it and they make me look good. And what I find is that if you’re going to stick, if you plan on using social media, it needs to be a long-term plan just like it is with real estate. You and I both know that real estate is long-term. It’s not a wait to buy. It’s don’t wait to buy real estate. It’s buy real estate and wait. You know, it’s a long-term play. And I believe in social media, it’s also a long-term play. It’s just that consistency, consistency, paying attention to what people are wanting, what people are telling you, and just being consistent with it.

Josh Cantwell: Martin, where did you think your social media broke through? Meaning the time frame from when you made the commitment to start posting and posting over the long haul to the point where you kind of woke up one day and you’re like, “Oh, crap. Our views, our followers like it’s really taken off. Like it’s really kind of now hockey sticking up.” How long was that process and did you post daily, weekly, multiple times a week? I want our audience because you’re actively involved in this, just like me. I want them to see that if you do the social media along with raising money, along with finding deals, like to me those are the three keys. It’s marketing, finding deals, finding money. Three things do them over the long haul, you can’t really lose it this game. Again, unless you go back to my comment at the beginning, which is you have to sell a refi at the wrong time. As long as you avoid that and you go long-term, you’re going to be fine. So, for you, you made the commitment. You’re into it. Was it three months? Was it six months? Was it a year? Was it a couple of years? How long did it really take you to really start to see that hockey stick growth in and say, “Wow, like this thing’s really taken off?”

Martin Perdomo: I got to tell you, brother, I still think that I’m just getting started. To me, it just feels like in real estate, even I don’t have as many stores as you do right now. And yet it still feels like to me like, hey, there’s so much more to go. I’m just getting started. There’s so much more to go. And even I look at my social media right now, it’s like, man, I still have so much more to go. Like, I look at people they got a million followers, 2 million. I’m like, “Man, yeah, you might be famous, but how do I get there?” Like, I’m always asking how can I do it. If you can do it, I can do it. And I still feel like a novice. I still feel like I’m learning. I still feel like I have so much more to go. I still feel like I have to become a better communicator. So many areas I still feel like I have to improve. To answer your question, in short, I think I had a mindset shift and it was, “Okay. I’m going to commit to this and I’m going to build a team around it.” It was when I started letting go of some of the things that I don’t like to do, editing. When I really committed, I said, “Okay. If I’m really going to do this long term and I want to raise money and I want to find deals and I want to get that credibility in the space, I got to invest in this like I invest in my business.”

And it was really then for me when it happened that that consistency then started to really happen because now, hey, I’m here doing this podcast interview with you and my people are editing. You know, I just recorded my 2023 market predictions yesterday. They’re working on that right now. I don’t know when they’re going to put it up but they’re putting that together right now. So, things are getting done while I’m not necessarily doing it.

Josh Cantwell: The message I think I’m hearing from you, Martin, is it doesn’t really matter when the impact happens, but if you take the long-term approach, there’s going to be impact and then it’s going to specifically result in finding deals, finding money, and then along with that, winning deals that you maybe would have lost if you didn’t have a social media presence, deals coming to you from social media. It all kind of compounds and mushrooms on top of that. It’s fantastic stuff. Martin, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned briefly, “I came from nothing. I was broke. I was poor.” Tell our audience about that. What was it like and how did you make the transition into real estate?

Martin Perdomo: So, for me, my mom came pregnant here with me. My mother, we’re originally from Dominican Republic. My mother came pregnant here with me. And when you think, I want your audience to think and visualize a third-world country, a third-world country, the poor, where the roof of my house was a tin roof that when it rained, it rained in my house. My mother came pregnant with me here. And when she came here, she had no place to stay. So, she sent me back when I was born to be with my grandmother. And I lived in Dominican Republic the first five years of my life. And we came back at five. At the age of five, I came back to the U.S. and I went to school here. I graduated from high school here and all that stuff. I went to live in Washington Heights in New York City, which is the ghetto of New York, all the way up to George Washington Bridge, tons of drugs and tons of violence and things like that. But my mom kicked me out at 16, Josh, and when I was sleeping in trains and in the beach and rooftops, I remember I made an unconscious decision. I remember that being such a painful state for me, being in that situation, I realized at an early age, human being needs two things: shelter and food.

And then right then and there, I made a decision that I was going to own a lot of real estate so that I don’t ever have to go through that pain again. It wasn’t going away from pain, which is not necessarily good but it was a decision I made. I made that decision that I was going to own a lot of real estate and people needed a place to live. Then I started really understanding people got to pay to the owner to live and I was like, “Whoa, this is something even better. Now, I can make a lot of money doing this.” So, that’s kind of when I made that decision and it was an unconscious decision. I realized I came into real estate, bought my first deal in 2007. I was a broker, I was a mortgage broker, bought my first duplex in ’07. Two years later, I was $100,000 underwater. I made a statement to you earlier is, “Don’t wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait.” And recently I just bought a distressed triplex not too far from my office here. And the appraiser comes to my office, he says to me, I say to him, “Hey, Jeff, what are you bringing this appraisal in?” And he’s like, “I don’t know but here.” He hands me this manila envelope with comps, and I’m like, “Okay. Let me look at that.”

And I find a property two doors down from the first property I bought, right? Two doors down from the first property I bought exactly the same just sold a month ago for $385,000. So, just remember this is ’07. I paid 275. I was the broker, I made $15,000. I got the asset and I kept $15,000. Like two years later, the property was $100,000 underwater. And now 14 years later, the property appreciated by $110,000.

Josh Cantwell: Oh, that’s a great story. It’s a great example, a direct example of buy real estate and wait. And you only get baked. You only get cooked. If you had sold in 2009 when it was $100,000 less and a lot of people did that. They got in ’05, ‘06, ’07, and a lot of people now same thing, right? They got in, in 2019, 2021. They got with bridge loans and now they’re going to get cooked because they can’t sell a refi in 2023, 2024. Guys like you and I that lived through that and that know better are going to be waiting for those assets to fall into distress. You have a sales team or brokers or wholesalers, TV commercials, text blasting. It’s all bringing you those opportunities. And as long as you can again assemble the capital stack, whether it’s debt, equity, investors, whatever you have, now you’re going to be able to buy that stuff or it could be 2030. I don’t think you’re going to see deals at 50%, 70% off like we did in ’08, ’09, ‘10. But we’re going to see stuff that’s 20%, 30% off for sure. No question about it. And then it’s going to be, again, buy real estate and wait. Just let it depreciate and let it rip into it 2030, and then maybe sell it, liquidate it. You know, you’re rich and going crazy.

So, outside of, Martin, buy real estate and wait, right outside of all the marketing I just mentioned like you’re obviously a marketing machine through buying lists and TV commercials and text blasts and your social media game, what other advice as we kind of wrap up here, what kind of things do you think you did right along your journey over the last 15 years? And what’s maybe one of the two or things that you look back on that maybe you thought maybe I didn’t do that quite right, that you learn from that you’ll apply going forward?

Martin Perdomo: Best investment you’ll ever make, hands down, and this is going to sound cliche for guys like you and me, people coming on our podcast achievers like us like you hear this all the time, invest in yourself. Like, the best decision I ever made was when I decided that I was going to take serious my personal development, that I was really going to not skimp on it. As a matter of fact, I’m going to Ohio tomorrow. I’m flying out to Ohio tomorrow to do a two-day workshop with one of the biggest rehabbers in the country, right? He’s doing 40 rehabs a month and something like that. So, I’m just constantly investing in myself. Right? I’m constantly investing in myself. So, one of thing I should have done earlier was made that decision. So, I made six figures when I was 24 selling insurance. After reading a book, the name of that book is The Magic of Thinking Big, and I was struggling financially. You probably read the book by David Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big. That book shifted my mind. I had a paradigm shift. And immediately over the next 12 months, my dream was to make $100,000. I made it.

Where I missed it was I used to think I discovered something and I discovered my power. I played with it a little bit, right, with my mental power, my mindset power. And I used to think I could turn it on and off, but I used to think I can just, hey, I discovered this thing. So, I know that if I think big enough or if I can visualize something big enough and I get to work, I can do it. But I used to get lazy, so I used to go towards in a way I mentioned going away from earlier when you hit that thermometer, right? You hit a certain income, now it’s like I’m calm again. So, it’s just working on yourself. And I did that. I would do that. I did that for many years. And it wasn’t until I committed like, “Hey, there’s still so much more for me to learn. There’s still so much more for me to go and grow and learn and get better.” It was really when I took off when I started going to some Tony Robbins events. I just play full-out, man. Just everything I do, I play full out. My business partner is going to a Date With Destiny. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tony Robbins, Date with Destiny. She’s going on the 1^st, day after tomorrow. A couple of days. Seven days.

That event, not to promote Tony or his event, but I have to tell you that event changed my life. That one event really changed, that really made a paradigm shift. But again, to me, it’s been that investing in myself, that commitment in myself. You can take all of my real estate. You can take everything I have, but you can never take away what I’ve learned. You can never take the human skills. You can never take away what I have up here.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. You can make a small shift in your social media game or that’s more of a tactic, right? You can make a small shift in your marketing for deal flow, that’s a tactic. A small shift in your ad spend on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, that’s a tactic. A lot of people are like, “Well, what can I do to make money right now?” I think the answer is you have to lever up and make a major lever pull on yourself. That’s the biggest leverage point you could ever change is the way you think, the way you look at the world, the way you look at yourself, the way you look at money, the way you appreciate where you came from, the struggle with where you think you can go. A lot of things for a lot of people is just where can I go? And the ceiling is it’s right above their head versus, man, your ceiling is so much higher than like people would look at and you say, “Oh, I’ve got all these Instagram followers and look at this podcast,” and you’re like, “Dude, I’m just getting started.” That is a mindset shift that happened when you decided to invest in yourself. That’s the application, right? Amazing stuff. So, Martin, listen, as we wrap up the show, again, tell our audience where they can connect with you. Obviously on Instagram, obviously all over social media. Where else can they engage with you if they want a joint venture with you, invest with you, do deals with you, where can they go?

Martin Perdomo: You can check out my YouTube channel. Also, you can check out my website, SkilledPropertyFinders.com, and make sure you come visit my podcast. Check out my podcast. It’s free. I’m always talk about mindset stuff. I have guys like yourself on there all the time, high-level people just bringing them in and talking about these really important topics of mindset, right? Because we can talk interest rates and all of that stuff all day long. And if people can’t really understand just what you said, I love the way you put that, Josh, that lever, right? What’s that lever? If people can’t really understand it, that’s a lever you got to pull. You can listen to our podcast all day long and you won’t take action and you’ll just be a really smart, educated listening to smart people but if you don’t believe you can, you won’t. So, check out my podcast. Come visit us on our podcast and check out my YouTube. I’m constantly putting things out there and I respond to all your stuff.

Josh Cantwell: Awesome stuff. We’ll put all that stuff in the show notes, guys. Make sure you check it out. Of course, we’re going to push this out all over social media from our site as well. So. Martin, listen, fantastic job on the Interview today. Congratulations on all your success.

Martin Perdomo: Congratulations to you, man. You’re doing really big things. Congratulations on your podcast. Awesome. And congratulations to all of your success.

Josh Cantwell: Awesome, man. I appreciate it very much and we’ll see you guys next time. Martin, thanks so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor.

Martin Perdomo: Thank you, brother.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: Well, listen, guys, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Martin. I love where he’s coming from. I love that he’s coming from this place of gratitude, this place of really starting with nothing but this place of constantly leveling up, constantly leveling up his business, himself, and the levers that he’s trying to pull to become a better, more successful real estate investor, a more successful person, and have bigger and bigger impact. If you enjoyed this interview, please, I’d be so grateful, so grateful if you would leave us a rating, leave us a review, and share this all over social media. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the video and also go visit JoshCantwellCoaching.com to become one of our members in our Forever Passive Income Mastermind. Also, visit ForeverPassiveIncome.com to grab a ticket to our next live event. Forever Passive Income Live is online. It’s coming. Go ahead and register at ForeverPassiveIncome.com. We’ll see you next time. Take care.